Seriously, taxes are evil. A necessary evil at times, but evil. The fewer the better... We accept them as unavoidable, but only kdawson and his kind are happy to see others pay them.
while also depriving states and localities of hundreds of millions of dollars of legally due revenue each year
Paying sales-tax is the buyer's responsibility. The seller is merely charged with helping the State collect. I find it worryingly hypocritical of kdawson — and people like him — to accuse retailers like Amazon of "depriving" States of sales taxes, while defending pirate bays and napsters against charges of piracy, in which the end-users engage.
Maybe, this is because Amazon's stand harms the Government, while the napsters harm private enterprise?
i can see you haven't done much porting to Qt 4, at least not of any apps with serious amounts of code in them.
I have done that, and it is much easier, than, say, porting to Gnome — which people do undertake on occasion in their own apps.
some people want others to do it, nobody wants to do it, however. funny that.
I'm not forcing anybody to do it — I'm just warning, that I will not switch — nor advise my users to switch — to KDE-4, until some sort of "upgrade wizard" is available.
i honestly doubt that your desktop is so customized, given what was possible with KDE 3, that a transition would be painful
I tried it, and it was painful. I am not trying again, thank you.
many of the apps in KDE 4 are also mostly or completely backwards compat configuration wise.
Yes, they are. And yet, the decision to keep all settings in a brand new ~/.kde4 killed all the compatibility possible. At the very least, you should've implemented some sort of one-way copying of stuff from the old ~/.kde to the new location — updating and changing what old settings are replaced by new values. But you chose not to.
in any case, mountain, meet molehill.
If that's how you feel, then you are simply reinforcing my impression of KDE's arrogance towards users. Screw you, folks — by the time I'm done upgrading everybody and myself, you'll have a shiny new (and dysfunctional, if 4.1's history is any guide) KDE-5.1, that will be just as incompatible as 4.x. Have a good one...
However, there are many, many other cases of extreme US interventionism.
None of such cases in recent memory have installed a "brutal military dictator," who "slaughtered" his countrymen for generations. None...
You want to know why socialism fails? US. We do it. We infiltrate, kill, lie, steal, rape...
Do you have a list of such kills, lies, thefts, and rapes, that the US has perpetrated in Bulgaria, Chechoslovakia, Estonia, Ukraine, Poland, Kazahstan, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cambodia? Because Socialism there failed even more spectacularly, than in Nicaragua... Or, perhaps, Stalin and Pol Pot were well-hidden CIA-operatives?
We are a nation of brutal, arrogant, power hungry thugs [emphasis mine -mi], destroying anything that displeases us. [...] someone constructively criticizes the US.
Perfect! What a great example of constructive criticism! Thank you, thank you... I don't suppose, I even need to ask: "Why do you hate America?" You've already gaven me the answer...
Are you really worried that one man probably spent a few days writing this up?
Scientists are expensive, and should be busy with real problems... Unless, of course, this guy undertook it on his own free time...
don't even get me started on what our defense budget comes out to be.
Our defense budget — despite two ongoing wars — is just over 40 times that of NASA: still about the same size as the Social Security and way below the Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention the rest of the Federal spending. Considering the fact, that military is constitutionally a federal government's charge, whereas healthcare and pensions are not, your outrage would be quite misplaced... But I digress.
what exactly are you implying these questions and blog are strawmen for?
I meant, that these arguments are addressing a superstition and are thus misplaced to begin with — and too easy to make. Perhaps, the term "strawman" was not a good match, because there is not really a "real" concern there, you are right...
Why is the taxpayer's money being spent on this nonsense? What's next? Scientific evidence, that there is no Santa Claus? That black cats crossing your path do not cause "bad luck" (whatever that is)?
Democracy is not the only form of government in the world, and certainly has its share of problems. China's current government also has its problems
There is not a problem with Democracy, that China does not have in a much more serious form.
Your attitude is that of a person equating illegal behavior of a jay-walker with that of a child rapist...
the trick is keeping a dictatorship benevolent.
Such dictatorships are not stable systems and "the trick" is simply unachievable. Democracies, on the other hand, are usually self-correcting and thus, however imperfect, are the best systems known today:
Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. Winston Churchill
[... ]rather than mindlessly jumping on the "democracy is best" bandwagon.
You've been given a mindful consideration and dismissed. Run back, see, what else People's Red Army can feed you to disseminate on the West's free forums.
Unless there is an upgrade path for the current users of KDE-3.x, I'm not interested. I wish, somebody were to simply fork the project an picked up the 3.x branch, porting to Qt-4.x (easy) and merging fixes (tedious), but maintaining compatibility with the existing installs.
Having set up family and friends with (then-latest) KDE-3.x, and all of us using customized desktops, menus, and shortcuts, we don't want to start all that from scratch. No way, no how...
If, as some KDE-apologists claim, version 4 is a "whole new desktop environment", then KDE-3.x is abandoned and I may as well consider Gnome or something yet different for the future. If KDE-project wants old users to trust them, they need to make their new code backward-compatible. In fact, if they are really good, they'd try to keep compatibility going both ways — so that you could go back to KDE-3 (such as when sharing home-directory with a system, that does not have KDE-4 installed) and things will work as much as possible. For example, the format of KNotes has not changed at all and the data can be shared between old and new versions of the application...
That link has information about America's initial support for Saddam Hussein. Although that man, certainly, does qualify as a butcher of generations, the US did not install him — we merely supported him once he gained power on his own...
Your example thus does not qualify... Want to try again? Remember, you have to find an example of America killing a Socialist leader and installing in his place "a brutal military dictator who will slaughter his people for generations to come."
Also, I nowhere defended China. Or singled out the US.
Your post did seek to temper the outrage against China, by reminding the audience, that the rest of the world is not perfect either. Like it or not, this did defend China. And even if you didn't single-out the US, you did include it on a very short list (made even shorter in reality by your including Russia)...
So try comparing China now to the US during its industrialization.
Actually, no, countries don't develop in isolation. What's considered unacceptable (by the "world community") for the US today, ought to be considered just as unacceptable for China.
And for recent US "bad things", one such example just happened in Italy where several CIA operatives were considered guilty of kidnapping an innocent person; and that happened in a country were they are not even police.
A show-trial, that convicted (in absentia) "ugly Americans" of kidnapping a foreigner, whose "guilt" was not even subject of the trial...
Regardless, China's police do this to their own citizens all the time — which means, as I predicted, whatever you can throw at the US, I can throw at China "with gusto".
Plugging this into excel and comparing with election08 data (Feel free to email me asking for the data if you don't trust me), the average Blue state gets $0.96 in spending for every dollar it pays in taxes. The average Red state receives $1.40 in spending for every dollar in taxes it pays.
These tables don't specify, what the money was spent on — a union-entrenching public-works project? Public housing? Paying off farmers to grow less food? One could make a case, that the Democrats are charging the productive to support the rest on purpose — to make everyone addicted to the government's support and destroy the "evil" Capitalism. Your figures would support that claim, actually...
But all that is only a little related to my earlier claim, that Democrats can't govern as good as Republicans. You dismissed my examples (New Orleans, New York before and after Giulliani, Seattle — I'd add Chicago, if I had anything to compare it with) as "cherry-picking" — so, why don't you pick some of your own cherries to demonstrate the opposite?
It's hard for "industrious profit driven capitalists" to get food when they can't leave their houses without being electrocuted to death by downed power-lines.
That's irrelevant — downed power-lines are a danger to the benevolent free food distributors from the government just as well. The broken infrastructure has to be fixed regardless of who is then helping avoid famine. Both, however, are going to happen quickly and without much drama under Capitalism. Under Socialism, on the other hand, things will suffer, even when there is money.
Since there are more Democrats then Republicans at every level of government right now, this creates a strong theoretical reason to believe that Republicans do not perform better then Democrats.
What? How?..
But Nicaragua's GDP is higher right now then it was a couple years ago when they were controlled by right-wing parties. So Nicaragua under "Capitalist" management would have actually done slightly worse.
For the GDP to be simply higher than in prior year, not much is needed. The measure of good government is the speed of the product's continuing growth. Nicaragua's Capitalists left a faster-growing GDP, than it has since grown under the Socialists. Although nobody knows for sure, the simple statistics show the exact opposite to what you are saying, and confirm my assertions: Socialism is bad.
I doubt, you — with your demonstrated knack for Math and Statistics — could've missed the difference between GDP being higher vs. faster-growing. That you picked the former to state: "under "Capitalist" management would have actually done slightly worse," — when the full picture shows the opposite, makes me think, you aren't posting in good faith and reinforces my suspicions about the rest of your data...
Of course, the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union funded a civil war in Nicaragua for two decades is a much larger factor in Nicaragua's current poverty then any decisions by their government.
The civil war wound down 20 years ago. I don't expect them all to have HDTV and nice cars by now, but it does not take that long to figure out, how to survive a bad harvest year...
I'm in no way defending China here, but in which way is it different from what the US, Russia or the UK do and have done in the past?
For one example, the US has the legislation that forbids American companies and individuals to bribe foreign officials. That law existed for decades and has teeth, and prosecutions became particularly energetic under, ugh, George W. Bush.
It just annoys me when people single out a nation (in this case China) when in their backyard the same happens
Nothing "same" has happened in a long time... It just annoys me, when people rush to China's defense by dragging out something, that they believe is kinda-sorta similar, that the US has done... Whatever wrong you can accuse US of within the last 50 years, China has overdone with gusto within the last 10...
To sum up the data: Per Capita Income in "Blue" states is 20% higher then in Red States and Graduation rates are 5.4% higher.
Easily attributable to the Democratic politicans being better at siphoning the federal pork.
In terms of taxation, "Blue" States overwhelmingly pay far more in taxes then they receive in federal outlays
Per person? Anyway, I'm not going to bother with statistics, which even you admit to be partisan. There are many ways to misrepresent data like that — by, for example, excluding certain monies from "federal outlays", or not counting certain kinds of crimes, etc. If you play with data enough, you can come to rather dire conclusions just about anything you (pre)set your mind to.
Also, in many cases, a Democratic government can enjoy the situation left over by the previous Republican administration. And where such is not available — such as New Orleans or New York until Giulliani, the Democrats are demonstrably a disaster.
When my home state, Florida, got hit by Hurricanes in 2004, crop yields fell by 40%. But unlike Nicaragua, we were part of a large country, most of which was not hit by a Hurricane, that was able to carry us through for our eating needs.
Even a 60% crop wouldn't cause a famine in Florida... As for your being part of a large country, that's irrelevant, because you didn't get food as charity from the government — you paid for (most) it, with industrious, profit-driven capitalists in a hurry to deliver supplies in exchange for money. If Nicaragua had any of that (instead of living harvest-to-harvest) — they would've been able to absorb an occasional hurricane too.
Don't rewrite history. I remember when it took days and days for the government to get *anybody* to the Superdrome as 20,000 people were in dire need of food and water.
Yes, and how and why the heck did they all end up in that structure in the first place? Could that have been the fault of the local government? The Federal government did turn out unprepared for such a situation, no doubt (nor should it even be preparing for that, in my opinion, but that's separate). But to cause such a problem requires an incompetent local government.
It was a terrible display of incompetence, and voters saw it too, with the disaster triggering a huge structural decrease in Bush's approval ratings.
Voters saw, what the anti-Bush Tv and newspapers have shown them. That part of your argument is a non-starter, really... If they had drilled as much on the hundreds of the school buses, that were never used to take people out and instead allowed to flood (millions of dollars of gratuituos losses in itself), perhaps, the voter's perception would've been different.
Unless the pre-Katrina government of New Orleans engaged in policies that nationalized the means of production, then calling them "Socialist" makes you look like a dumbass.
Yes, you are right — a mayor can't nationalize anything, that kind of task would require a community organizer. I should've used the word "Democrat" — that's the only thing known about New Orleans mayor. Oh, and that he is racist and incompetent... In my defense, the word "Socialist" in my post was left over from the person I was responding to.
A bunch of fascists in the Honduran Congress, Courts and Military do not legitimize the fact that they staged a coup
Yeah, call them names... The actual fact is, they followed their country's Constitution to the letter. Except for the bit, where they threw the offender out of the country, instead of locking him up and putting him on trial. (I can't remember a "fascist" showing a weakness like that, BTW...)
There are many examples [of the US installing brutal military dictators, who slaughter their subjects for generations to come], this is only one of them: [Project FUBELT]
Pinochet — the "brutal military dictator" that the US helped get to power in place of a Socialist Allende — was, most certainly, not a slaughterer. His entire count of victims is measured in under 3000 people, most of whom really were Communists and deserved the worst fate possible. Allende's economic mismanagement is, no doubt, responsible for far more suffering. Seriously, Castro and Ch Guevarra are responsible for far more blood, but I'm sure, you own at least one T-shirt with the latter's picture.
Oh, and Pinochet stepped down volunterely — leaving Chile, until him a basket case — South America's strongest economy (by far). If that is, who you'd accuse of "slaughtering for generations", I wonder, what kind of case you are building against the Castro brothers...
The costs of space travel would have to drop by four or five orders of magnitude before any of that becomes barely affordable for Bill Gates and others of his financial stature, and another couple of orders of magnitude before
Low-ranking millionaires can already go to the Space Station — one at a time. If the costs drop simply by 5-10 times (or did you mean binary orders of magnitude), it will not be unfeasible for a group of such people to travel to the Moon — getting on and off that rock is much easier, than Earth.
before John Q Upperclasspublic can afford it
I put my estimate at 40-60 years, and I'm sticking to it.
Yeah, those hurricanes never do as much damage as those Third World socialist creeps try to claim (cough) Katrina (cough).
There was no famine in New Orleans. There was a major break down in law and order and other failures of the local government. A Socialist needn't be from "Third World" to be a disaster — the US is hit by hurricanes regularly, but you don't get reports about shots fired at rescue helicopters from low income housing... You can blame Bush all you want, but I think, the mismanagement of the city (and the entire State of Louisiana) by the Democratic party, which ruled there exclusively ever since the Whigs have left the political scene, is too blame... It was a peculiar, but unpleasant city of high crime and racism long before Katrina struck.
If they weren't socialists, there wouldn't be a problem.
Yep, that's true... I invite you to compare, yet again, Katrina striking a Socialist-ruled New Orleans and all other hurricanes striking normal parts of the US. (Heck — there was no famine, nor threat thereof, in Thailand after tsunami either!) I also invite you to compare the riots in a Democratic-(mis)managed Seattle, vs. absence of anything like in the Republican-controlled New York during a Republican Convention of 2004. Or, the massive looting in the Democratic-(mis)managed New York during the power blackout of 1977 vs. the calm of the Republican-managed New York during the power blackout of 2003.
I don't think, you expected this many facts in response to your snide missile... It is good for you, though.
But would you expect ANY sort of technological improvement like this to boost output by 50%?
Yes, why not?
Such infrastructure improvements can take years to properly pay off dividends, so we may be waiting for some time before we get real results.
I'm not even asking for the improvements to pay off — this is separate from an actual output increase. I just want an appreciable increase — regardless of whether it has (yet) paid for the software — before I get excited.
It is now also the Latin American country with the most capable web-based information system for agriculture [...] already contains live data.
Shut up and report back, when agricultural output in the country increases by, at least, 50%...
For benchmark, this source reports: During 1990-2000 the agricultural output grew by a yearly average of 5.7%. In 2001, the agricultural trade surplus was $85.2 million. But that was when the Sandinistas were out of power. They are ruling the country again since 2006, when Daniel Ortega returned to the presidency with 37.99% of the vote.
In 2007 they were afraid of a famine blaming a hurricane. Unless their policies are drastically different now, they aren't going to achieve much good, even if they use Linux for their command-and-control implementation of economy — for the Greater Good (TM).
Your statement may prove similar, to Bill Gates' famous predictions regarding 640k memory... How do you know, for the Moon does not have expensive commodities to mine? It is hardly explored — up until recently, we didn't even know, there is water on its surface!
You are lacking imagination... How about vacation-destination for those, who want to experience five times lower gravity? How about retirement homes for people, too frail to move on their own on Earth — they may be able to dance on the Moon? Technics may appear exploiting the low gravity for therapies for, say, spine-injuries (such as when a person needs to re-learn, how to walk). Barring major world-conflicts, we might be able to have all or some of that within 40-60 years.
Lower gravity may also allow for some new manufacturing methods... You name it...
So, medicine, novelty, mining, manufacturing, what else? Oh, science! What will the scientists, able to dig a space body literally under their feet, be able to find out about Space in general, and Solar System in particular? What discoveries — some of them even with prompt practical applications — await?
They are a lot worse than that. Enterprises, whose explicit goals are maintaining and raising the prices of their members' services, what are they, but the cartels? Why is it, that most of the society wants pizzerias and plumbers to compete, but sympathize with workers, who want to stop competing? Why aren't they subject to the anti-trust laws?.. Why is it, that when their violent members break the law, they aren't treated under Federal anti-racketeering legislation?
They are objectively bad for economy and the country too... But most of all, they are illegal under the already-existing legislation — at least, under the spirit of it:
Competition law, known in the United States as antitrust law, has three main elements:
prohibiting agreements or practices that restrict free trading and competition between business entities. This includes in particular the repression of cartels.
banning abusive behavior by a firm dominating a market, or anti-competitive practices that tend to lead to such a dominant position. Practices controlled in this way may include predatory pricing, tying, price gouging, refusal to deal, and many others.
supervising the mergers and acquisitions of large corporations, including some joint ventures. Transactions that are considered to threaten the competitive process can be prohibited altogether, or approved subject to "remedies" such as an obligation to divest part of the merged business or to offer licenses or access to facilities to enable other businesses to continue competing.
Why should I, the consumer, have to agree to a fscking EULA every time I want to watch a stupid movie?
Because such is the condition, on which the movie's owner chooses to make his property available to you. Both of you are voluntarily entering into an agreement. Since we are talking about freaking entertainment, there is not even the usual (if still flawed) argument on how important a part of life this is — unlike, say, food, employment, or (dare I bring it up?) healthcare...
If you hate even being asked about the EULA — stick to books. If enough people do this, *AA will change their practices. If not, then this is not a big deal.
[...] thus legitimizes some form of civil disobedience - hence the sympathy for those developing the means to do just that.
Actually, actively fighting a government's law-enforcement effort is no mere "disobedience". But that's hair-splitting. But you missed the other — wouldn't it be comparably legitimate to try to punish a scumbag (such as a "pig") with the pain and discomfort of malfunctioning pacemaker? Certainly, inquiring minds need to know, and the researchers themselves wouldn't be doing anything illegal, so they should be applauded and allowed to continue using taxpayers' research money...
This leads to fears by some that our current society is leaning towards an Orwellian 'Big Brother' like world
Being from where I was born and raised, I understand these fears better than many. But I can see, where this same logic can be applied — people praising DoS-ing police, if they were consistent in their beliefs, should also be praising research into hijacking the medical devices...
But if they were really consistent, these same people would never allow the Government to extend itself into controlling health care either, or the Internet ("net neutrality"), or TV and radio ("fairness doctrine"), etc. One observer — herself a life-long Democrat — for example, wrote in August:
But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills. The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration's outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable "casual conversations" to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.
have now developed a scheme for protecting implantable medical devices against wireless attacks.
The same kind of people, who'd seek to learn, how to DoS a police wire-tap — and publish their "research" for all, could try to see, how to defeat this scheme too. And with the same justifications and excuses:
We need to know, how reliable the method is.
We are just providing information, even if using it is illegal (or unethical).
Somehow, I don't think, they'll be as well accepted as those other guys are... Which is really silly, because both are, essentially, sociopaths... Even if we all instinctively sympathize with the subject of a government wiretap, and the government could on occasion, be in the wrong, it is far more likely, that they are onto something real. (And if they aren't, then nothing particularly bad will happen to their suspect.)
An implant-wearer could, just as easily, be a real scumbag and somebody wanting to pain (or outright kill) him, could be doing the right thing...
Slashdot Mirror
No, I don't. I love kdawson — and his FUD.
Seriously, taxes are evil. A necessary evil at times, but evil. The fewer the better... We accept them as unavoidable, but only kdawson and his kind are happy to see others pay them.
Paying sales-tax is the buyer's responsibility. The seller is merely charged with helping the State collect. I find it worryingly hypocritical of kdawson — and people like him — to accuse retailers like Amazon of "depriving" States of sales taxes, while defending pirate bays and napsters against charges of piracy, in which the end-users engage.
Maybe, this is because Amazon's stand harms the Government, while the napsters harm private enterprise?
If there is an article about virtues of taxes on Slashdot, you can bet, it was posted by kdawson...
Just saying...
I have done that, and it is much easier, than, say, porting to Gnome — which people do undertake on occasion in their own apps.
I'm not forcing anybody to do it — I'm just warning, that I will not switch — nor advise my users to switch — to KDE-4, until some sort of "upgrade wizard" is available.
I tried it, and it was painful. I am not trying again, thank you.
Yes, they are. And yet, the decision to keep all settings in a brand new ~/.kde4 killed all the compatibility possible. At the very least, you should've implemented some sort of one-way copying of stuff from the old ~/.kde to the new location — updating and changing what old settings are replaced by new values. But you chose not to.
If that's how you feel, then you are simply reinforcing my impression of KDE's arrogance towards users. Screw you, folks — by the time I'm done upgrading everybody and myself, you'll have a shiny new (and dysfunctional, if 4.1's history is any guide) KDE-5.1, that will be just as incompatible as 4.x. Have a good one...
None of such cases in recent memory have installed a "brutal military dictator," who "slaughtered" his countrymen for generations. None...
Do you have a list of such kills, lies, thefts, and rapes, that the US has perpetrated in Bulgaria, Chechoslovakia, Estonia, Ukraine, Poland, Kazahstan, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cambodia? Because Socialism there failed even more spectacularly, than in Nicaragua... Or, perhaps, Stalin and Pol Pot were well-hidden CIA-operatives?
Perfect! What a great example of constructive criticism! Thank you, thank you... I don't suppose, I even need to ask: "Why do you hate America?" You've already gaven me the answer...
Scientists are expensive, and should be busy with real problems... Unless, of course, this guy undertook it on his own free time...
Our defense budget — despite two ongoing wars — is just over 40 times that of NASA: still about the same size as the Social Security and way below the Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention the rest of the Federal spending. Considering the fact, that military is constitutionally a federal government's charge, whereas healthcare and pensions are not, your outrage would be quite misplaced... But I digress.
I meant, that these arguments are addressing a superstition and are thus misplaced to begin with — and too easy to make. Perhaps, the term "strawman" was not a good match, because there is not really a "real" concern there, you are right...
Why is the taxpayer's money being spent on this nonsense? What's next? Scientific evidence, that there is no Santa Claus? That black cats crossing your path do not cause "bad luck" (whatever that is)?
There is not a problem with Democracy, that China does not have in a much more serious form.
Your attitude is that of a person equating illegal behavior of a jay-walker with that of a child rapist...
Such dictatorships are not stable systems and "the trick" is simply unachievable. Democracies, on the other hand, are usually self-correcting and thus, however imperfect, are the best systems known today:
You've been given a mindful consideration and dismissed. Run back, see, what else People's Red Army can feed you to disseminate on the West's free forums.
Unless there is an upgrade path for the current users of KDE-3.x, I'm not interested. I wish, somebody were to simply fork the project an picked up the 3.x branch, porting to Qt-4.x (easy) and merging fixes (tedious), but maintaining compatibility with the existing installs.
Having set up family and friends with (then-latest) KDE-3.x, and all of us using customized desktops, menus, and shortcuts, we don't want to start all that from scratch. No way, no how...
If, as some KDE-apologists claim, version 4 is a "whole new desktop environment", then KDE-3.x is abandoned and I may as well consider Gnome or something yet different for the future. If KDE-project wants old users to trust them, they need to make their new code backward-compatible. In fact, if they are really good, they'd try to keep compatibility going both ways — so that you could go back to KDE-3 (such as when sharing home-directory with a system, that does not have KDE-4 installed) and things will work as much as possible. For example, the format of KNotes has not changed at all and the data can be shared between old and new versions of the application...
That link has information about America's initial support for Saddam Hussein. Although that man, certainly, does qualify as a butcher of generations, the US did not install him — we merely supported him once he gained power on his own...
Your example thus does not qualify... Want to try again? Remember, you have to find an example of America killing a Socialist leader and installing in his place "a brutal military dictator who will slaughter his people for generations to come."
Your post did seek to temper the outrage against China, by reminding the audience, that the rest of the world is not perfect either. Like it or not, this did defend China. And even if you didn't single-out the US, you did include it on a very short list (made even shorter in reality by your including Russia)...
Actually, no, countries don't develop in isolation. What's considered unacceptable (by the "world community") for the US today, ought to be considered just as unacceptable for China.
A show-trial, that convicted (in absentia) "ugly Americans" of kidnapping a foreigner, whose "guilt" was not even subject of the trial...
Regardless, China's police do this to their own citizens all the time — which means, as I predicted, whatever you can throw at the US, I can throw at China "with gusto".
These tables don't specify, what the money was spent on — a union-entrenching public-works project? Public housing? Paying off farmers to grow less food? One could make a case, that the Democrats are charging the productive to support the rest on purpose — to make everyone addicted to the government's support and destroy the "evil" Capitalism. Your figures would support that claim, actually...
But all that is only a little related to my earlier claim, that Democrats can't govern as good as Republicans. You dismissed my examples (New Orleans, New York before and after Giulliani, Seattle — I'd add Chicago, if I had anything to compare it with) as "cherry-picking" — so, why don't you pick some of your own cherries to demonstrate the opposite?
That's irrelevant — downed power-lines are a danger to the benevolent free food distributors from the government just as well. The broken infrastructure has to be fixed regardless of who is then helping avoid famine. Both, however, are going to happen quickly and without much drama under Capitalism. Under Socialism, on the other hand, things will suffer, even when there is money.
What? How?..
For the GDP to be simply higher than in prior year, not much is needed. The measure of good government is the speed of the product's continuing growth. Nicaragua's Capitalists left a faster-growing GDP, than it has since grown under the Socialists. Although nobody knows for sure, the simple statistics show the exact opposite to what you are saying, and confirm my assertions: Socialism is bad.
I doubt, you — with your demonstrated knack for Math and Statistics — could've missed the difference between GDP being higher vs. faster-growing. That you picked the former to state: "under "Capitalist" management would have actually done slightly worse," — when the full picture shows the opposite, makes me think, you aren't posting in good faith and reinforces my suspicions about the rest of your data...
The civil war wound down 20 years ago. I don't expect them all to have HDTV and nice cars by now, but it does not take that long to figure out, how to survive a bad harvest year...
For one example, the US has the legislation that forbids American companies and individuals to bribe foreign officials. That law existed for decades and has teeth, and prosecutions became particularly energetic under, ugh, George W. Bush.
Nothing "same" has happened in a long time... It just annoys me, when people rush to China's defense by dragging out something, that they believe is kinda-sorta similar, that the US has done... Whatever wrong you can accuse US of within the last 50 years, China has overdone with gusto within the last 10...
Easily attributable to the Democratic politicans being better at siphoning the federal pork.
Per person? Anyway, I'm not going to bother with statistics, which even you admit to be partisan. There are many ways to misrepresent data like that — by, for example, excluding certain monies from "federal outlays", or not counting certain kinds of crimes, etc. If you play with data enough, you can come to rather dire conclusions just about anything you (pre)set your mind to.
Also, in many cases, a Democratic government can enjoy the situation left over by the previous Republican administration. And where such is not available — such as New Orleans or New York until Giulliani, the Democrats are demonstrably a disaster.
Even a 60% crop wouldn't cause a famine in Florida... As for your being part of a large country, that's irrelevant, because you didn't get food as charity from the government — you paid for (most) it, with industrious, profit-driven capitalists in a hurry to deliver supplies in exchange for money. If Nicaragua had any of that (instead of living harvest-to-harvest) — they would've been able to absorb an occasional hurricane too.
Yes, and how and why the heck did they all end up in that structure in the first place? Could that have been the fault of the local government? The Federal government did turn out unprepared for such a situation, no doubt (nor should it even be preparing for that, in my opinion, but that's separate). But to cause such a problem requires an incompetent local government.
Voters saw, what the anti-Bush Tv and newspapers have shown them. That part of your argument is a non-starter, really... If they had drilled as much on the hundreds of the school buses, that were never used to take people out and instead allowed to flood (millions of dollars of gratuituos losses in itself), perhaps, the voter's perception would've been different.
Yes, you are right — a mayor can't nationalize anything, that kind of task would require a community organizer. I should've used the word "Democrat" — that's the only thing known about New Orleans mayor. Oh, and that he is racist and incompetent... In my defense, the word "Socialist" in my post was left over from the person I was responding to.
Yeah, call them names... The actual fact is, they followed their country's Constitution to the letter. Except for the bit, where they threw the offender out of the country, instead of locking him up and putting him on trial. (I can't remember a "fascist" showing a weakness like that, BTW...)
Pinochet — the "brutal military dictator" that the US helped get to power in place of a Socialist Allende — was, most certainly, not a slaughterer. His entire count of victims is measured in under 3000 people, most of whom really were Communists and deserved the worst fate possible. Allende's economic mismanagement is, no doubt, responsible for far more suffering. Seriously, Castro and Ch Guevarra are responsible for far more blood, but I'm sure, you own at least one T-shirt with the latter's picture.
Oh, and Pinochet stepped down volunterely — leaving Chile, until him a basket case — South America's strongest economy (by far). If that is, who you'd accuse of "slaughtering for generations", I wonder, what kind of case you are building against the Castro brothers...
Unless the country is Honduras, in which case, we'll defend you against your own country's Congress and Supreme Court...
Citations needed
Low-ranking millionaires can already go to the Space Station — one at a time. If the costs drop simply by 5-10 times (or did you mean binary orders of magnitude), it will not be unfeasible for a group of such people to travel to the Moon — getting on and off that rock is much easier, than Earth.
I put my estimate at 40-60 years, and I'm sticking to it.
There was no famine in New Orleans. There was a major break down in law and order and other failures of the local government. A Socialist needn't be from "Third World" to be a disaster — the US is hit by hurricanes regularly, but you don't get reports about shots fired at rescue helicopters from low income housing... You can blame Bush all you want, but I think, the mismanagement of the city (and the entire State of Louisiana) by the Democratic party, which ruled there exclusively ever since the Whigs have left the political scene, is too blame... It was a peculiar, but unpleasant city of high crime and racism long before Katrina struck.
Yep, that's true... I invite you to compare, yet again, Katrina striking a Socialist-ruled New Orleans and all other hurricanes striking normal parts of the US. (Heck — there was no famine, nor threat thereof, in Thailand after tsunami either!) I also invite you to compare the riots in a Democratic-(mis)managed Seattle, vs. absence of anything like in the Republican-controlled New York during a Republican Convention of 2004. Or, the massive looting in the Democratic-(mis)managed New York during the power blackout of 1977 vs. the calm of the Republican-managed New York during the power blackout of 2003.
I don't think, you expected this many facts in response to your snide missile... It is good for you, though.
Yes, why not?
I'm not even asking for the improvements to pay off — this is separate from an actual output increase. I just want an appreciable increase — regardless of whether it has (yet) paid for the software — before I get excited.
Shut up and report back, when agricultural output in the country increases by, at least, 50%...
For benchmark, this source reports: During 1990-2000 the agricultural output grew by a yearly average of 5.7%. In 2001, the agricultural trade surplus was $85.2 million. But that was when the Sandinistas were out of power. They are ruling the country again since 2006, when Daniel Ortega returned to the presidency with 37.99% of the vote.
In 2007 they were afraid of a famine blaming a hurricane. Unless their policies are drastically different now, they aren't going to achieve much good, even if they use Linux for their command-and-control implementation of economy — for the Greater Good (TM).
Your statement may prove similar, to Bill Gates' famous predictions regarding 640k memory... How do you know, for the Moon does not have expensive commodities to mine? It is hardly explored — up until recently, we didn't even know, there is water on its surface!
You are lacking imagination... How about vacation-destination for those, who want to experience five times lower gravity? How about retirement homes for people, too frail to move on their own on Earth — they may be able to dance on the Moon? Technics may appear exploiting the low gravity for therapies for, say, spine-injuries (such as when a person needs to re-learn, how to walk). Barring major world-conflicts, we might be able to have all or some of that within 40-60 years.
Lower gravity may also allow for some new manufacturing methods... You name it...
So, medicine, novelty, mining, manufacturing, what else? Oh, science! What will the scientists, able to dig a space body literally under their feet, be able to find out about Space in general, and Solar System in particular? What discoveries — some of them even with prompt practical applications — await?
They are a lot worse than that. Enterprises, whose explicit goals are maintaining and raising the prices of their members' services, what are they, but the cartels? Why is it, that most of the society wants pizzerias and plumbers to compete, but sympathize with workers, who want to stop competing? Why aren't they subject to the anti-trust laws?.. Why is it, that when their violent members break the law, they aren't treated under Federal anti-racketeering legislation?
They are objectively bad for economy and the country too... But most of all, they are illegal under the already-existing legislation — at least, under the spirit of it:
Because such is the condition, on which the movie's owner chooses to make his property available to you. Both of you are voluntarily entering into an agreement. Since we are talking about freaking entertainment, there is not even the usual (if still flawed) argument on how important a part of life this is — unlike, say, food, employment, or (dare I bring it up?) healthcare...
If you hate even being asked about the EULA — stick to books. If enough people do this, *AA will change their practices. If not, then this is not a big deal.
You aren't really disagreeing...
Actually, actively fighting a government's law-enforcement effort is no mere "disobedience". But that's hair-splitting. But you missed the other — wouldn't it be comparably legitimate to try to punish a scumbag (such as a "pig") with the pain and discomfort of malfunctioning pacemaker? Certainly, inquiring minds need to know, and the researchers themselves wouldn't be doing anything illegal, so they should be applauded and allowed to continue using taxpayers' research money...
Being from where I was born and raised, I understand these fears better than many. But I can see, where this same logic can be applied — people praising DoS-ing police, if they were consistent in their beliefs, should also be praising research into hijacking the medical devices...
But if they were really consistent, these same people would never allow the Government to extend itself into controlling health care either, or the Internet ("net neutrality"), or TV and radio ("fairness doctrine"), etc. One observer — herself a life-long Democrat — for example, wrote in August:
The same kind of people, who'd seek to learn, how to DoS a police wire-tap — and publish their "research" for all, could try to see, how to defeat this scheme too. And with the same justifications and excuses:
Somehow, I don't think, they'll be as well accepted as those other guys are... Which is really silly, because both are, essentially, sociopaths... Even if we all instinctively sympathize with the subject of a government wiretap, and the government could on occasion, be in the wrong, it is far more likely, that they are onto something real. (And if they aren't, then nothing particularly bad will happen to their suspect.)
An implant-wearer could, just as easily, be a real scumbag and somebody wanting to pain (or outright kill) him, could be doing the right thing...