I do not advocate complacency. It is not simply a choice between supporting this tax cut and sitting at home twiddling your thumbs. Even as a liberal, I would like to see the government trimmed down a bit -- at least, no more statues erected in some town in Alabama with federal funds -- but supporting this tax cut doesn't get us any closer. If you want to attack the problem, then it needs to be attacked head-on.
Actually, the Office of Management and Budget recently began "scoring" the effect of tax cuts in their economic forecasts, which is to say that they take into account likely economic growth caused by tax cuts when they're projecting revenue over the next several years. Their conclusion was that it's highly probable that the tax cuts will increase the size of the deficit, not decrease it. This has been the trend: your claims to the contrary notwithstanding, Reagan's tax cuts added to the deficit, not subtracted.
Bah, I work too, and I disagree with you. What do "bushy-bearded professors" have to do with any of this? Taking your cues on debating from O'Reilly and Limbaugh again, have you?
I will resist the urge to flame, but your reasoning is incoherent. "Cutting off [the government's] money" does nothing when the (conservative) political leadership shows no inclination to cut spending, and chooses instead to finance virtually everything. Moreover, it is unlikely that our budget shortfall will drive conservatives to try to cut spending in the long run; in recent memory, Reagan showed that there are no real political consequences to racking up a huge national debt without even trying to address the issue. For all that President Bush talks about constraining spending, he's shown no inclination to put any effort into doing so. In short, "the nanny state" is not going to be eliminated through any number of tax cuts, and trying to use tax cuts for such policy purposes is a fairly assed-backwards way of doing things anyway. The only effect of this tax cut is that we will end up paying billions extra over the course of many years to foreign and domestic bondholders for the privilege of having a little more spending money right now (or a lot more, if you're rich).
I've never read the Hulk, but I have a question: is he just a Jekyll/Hyde takeoff?
Re:Article helps with suspension of disbelief
on
The Science of the Matrix
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Maybe when they say that humans are being used to generate power, they're actually saying that using humans is the best way to minimize (without eliminating, of course) entropic loss. Humans are referred to in the movie as batteries. Perhaps when the sun was taken out of the picture, the machines were stuck with only a limited amount of energy in their (suddenly closed) system. The energy would have to be stored somehow; it seems extremely unlikely but not impossible that us meatsacks were the ideal power storage mechanism.
I had half a mind to mod you as flamebait just because you asked for it. Saying "doubtless this will get modded down" is a scam which seems to almost universally result in up-mods, because the moderators are essentially challenged to prove that they're not part of the imaginary Slashdot hive mind. The fact that there have been at least twenty posts prior to yours saying exactly what you said without getting modded down ought to be assurance enough, don't you think? Just say your piece and be done with it.
In many senses it is a rehash, but it's definitely an innovative rehash. The idea of making sophisticated integrated groupware for social (i.e., non-business)use is an idea whose time has come.
That's a radical interpretation of what I said. Certainly, we can all perform significantly better given the benefit of notes and practice. Even an idiot can probably get out a full speech without making any sort of serious verbal misstep given enough coaching. (In fairness, the president does better than most idiots could probably manage.) But if you take away the coaching -- leave him to fend for himself with his wits alone at his side -- the man has not shown that he's capable of communicating in English, let alone articulating coherent arguments.
Still, there is only so much you can tell about a man by how he speaks. His critics tend to point to that particular trait as representative of his overall intelligence, but I don't believe that there's an actual direct relationship between his shoddy grasp of English and his shoddy grasp of economics, foreign policy, or history. I have my own reasons for my lack of faith in the president, you see.;-)
Insofar as his speeches are eloquent, you can give most of the credit to the people who actually write said speeches. When he speaks without extensive notes and coaching is when it gets ugly.
The vast majority of people use IE, and IE's FTP support is some absurd joke. On my list of things that I'd really rather not do, downloading files using IE over FTP ranks only slightly lower than gouging my eyes out with a tree branch.
Re:Technology gives - and technology takes away
on
Instant Concert CDs?
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· Score: 1
So what you're saying is, you want them to give you tons of goodies for less than what they're thinking of charging. Well, uh, I want goodies too, but since I'm sure this will be quite popular at the reasonable prices they're considering already, I'm not sure there'll be much market support for your position.
But that's not really analogous to the topical situation, is it?
It's not as though South Africa randomly said, "Hey, Open Source, that sounds 1337, let's install Linux on...everything we have! Whoo!" They did what everybody wishes their respective governments would do: take a year to think about things, and then take decisive action once they're done pondering. I think that's the essence of it: people wouldn't mind so much if it took five years to get anything done, if it actually got done at the end of those five years. In America, we debate a policy forever, and then finally implement said policy in the most half-assed way possible. That's a good way of ensuring that things don't get too much worse, but it's not how you build a better future, either.
The problem is that everyone seems to respond to the growth of filesharing technologies differently. Personally -- and I know this goes for a lot of other people too -- filesharing has caused an increase in the amount of music we buy. For some people, though, it has no discernible effect, and some people explicitly forgo buying music due to the availability of free MP3s.
Neither of those explosions were due to hydrogen. Rockets use liquid oxygen as their energy source, and the Hindenberg caught fire for reasons that had little to do with its hydrogen supply. I would link to the relevant information, but E2 is moving incredibly slowly today.
In America, the Supreme Court has famously stated that even though a term cannot be satisfactorily defined for purposes of law, the term does not lose its meaning (i.e., obscenity).
I might agree with you on the economics of the thing; the Vietnamese obviously can't go from a society of rural peasants to a modern industrialized society without going through the same growing pains that America and Britain and every other Western country faced a century ago. But explain to me why that means employees can't take fucking bathroom breaks? Paying the Vietnamese a low wage makes sense, but there are documented cases of blatant mistreatment at these "factories."
I agree with the principle, here, but isn't there a corollary to Godwin's Law stating that you're not actually allowed to verbally invoke Godwin's Law? I thought that you're just supposed to refrain from responding, and instead let the poster stew in his own delicious stupidity.
The fact that he's not strongly bound to his party's platform in no way implies that he has somehow taken on the incidental associations of the opposition party. I mean, there are too many logical fallacies to count here...
To hell with what the rest of the posters are saying...the whole tone of your post is really ignorant and arrogant, but what really bothers me is that you're stupid enough to quote yourself for your sig, and do it badly, too. And the quote is bad of itself; aphorisms are supposed to be self-evident, but that line makes no sense. Under what circumstances is the smart (i.e., rational) thing to do not the right thing to do? For a convincing argument against the sentiment expressed in your sig, check Plato's Republic.
I disagree. It's been a while since I sat through the movie, but I remember thinking that it tied into the series very well, with a lot of foreshadowing for the final two episodes. A lot of dialog (especially the stuff about dreams) is paralleled in the Real Folk Blues, and the fact that Spike saw himself in the character of the crazy terrorist gives you some insight as to how he felt at the very end. Not to say that I wouldn't have traded the movie for another Vicious episode...but I thought it was pretty good.
I noticed that it said he'd sold 40 million copies of Super Mario Brothers. Isn't that a record? I can't conceive of any game selling more than that, save perhaps Tetris, and only if you count all of the clones.
Slashdot Mirror
I do not advocate complacency. It is not simply a choice between supporting this tax cut and sitting at home twiddling your thumbs. Even as a liberal, I would like to see the government trimmed down a bit -- at least, no more statues erected in some town in Alabama with federal funds -- but supporting this tax cut doesn't get us any closer. If you want to attack the problem, then it needs to be attacked head-on.
Actually, the Office of Management and Budget recently began "scoring" the effect of tax cuts in their economic forecasts, which is to say that they take into account likely economic growth caused by tax cuts when they're projecting revenue over the next several years. Their conclusion was that it's highly probable that the tax cuts will increase the size of the deficit, not decrease it. This has been the trend: your claims to the contrary notwithstanding, Reagan's tax cuts added to the deficit, not subtracted.
Bah, I work too, and I disagree with you. What do "bushy-bearded professors" have to do with any of this? Taking your cues on debating from O'Reilly and Limbaugh again, have you?
I will resist the urge to flame, but your reasoning is incoherent. "Cutting off [the government's] money" does nothing when the (conservative) political leadership shows no inclination to cut spending, and chooses instead to finance virtually everything. Moreover, it is unlikely that our budget shortfall will drive conservatives to try to cut spending in the long run; in recent memory, Reagan showed that there are no real political consequences to racking up a huge national debt without even trying to address the issue. For all that President Bush talks about constraining spending, he's shown no inclination to put any effort into doing so. In short, "the nanny state" is not going to be eliminated through any number of tax cuts, and trying to use tax cuts for such policy purposes is a fairly assed-backwards way of doing things anyway. The only effect of this tax cut is that we will end up paying billions extra over the course of many years to foreign and domestic bondholders for the privilege of having a little more spending money right now (or a lot more, if you're rich).
I've never read the Hulk, but I have a question: is he just a Jekyll/Hyde takeoff?
Maybe when they say that humans are being used to generate power, they're actually saying that using humans is the best way to minimize (without eliminating, of course) entropic loss. Humans are referred to in the movie as batteries. Perhaps when the sun was taken out of the picture, the machines were stuck with only a limited amount of energy in their (suddenly closed) system. The energy would have to be stored somehow; it seems extremely unlikely but not impossible that us meatsacks were the ideal power storage mechanism.
I had half a mind to mod you as flamebait just because you asked for it. Saying "doubtless this will get modded down" is a scam which seems to almost universally result in up-mods, because the moderators are essentially challenged to prove that they're not part of the imaginary Slashdot hive mind. The fact that there have been at least twenty posts prior to yours saying exactly what you said without getting modded down ought to be assurance enough, don't you think? Just say your piece and be done with it.
In many senses it is a rehash, but it's definitely an innovative rehash. The idea of making sophisticated integrated groupware for social (i.e., non-business)use is an idea whose time has come.
Wait, why did your computer make a clicking noise? IBM hard drive, right?
That's a radical interpretation of what I said. Certainly, we can all perform significantly better given the benefit of notes and practice. Even an idiot can probably get out a full speech without making any sort of serious verbal misstep given enough coaching. (In fairness, the president does better than most idiots could probably manage.) But if you take away the coaching -- leave him to fend for himself with his wits alone at his side -- the man has not shown that he's capable of communicating in English, let alone articulating coherent arguments.
;-)
Still, there is only so much you can tell about a man by how he speaks. His critics tend to point to that particular trait as representative of his overall intelligence, but I don't believe that there's an actual direct relationship between his shoddy grasp of English and his shoddy grasp of economics, foreign policy, or history. I have my own reasons for my lack of faith in the president, you see.
That's all well and good, but I asked for your address.
Insofar as his speeches are eloquent, you can give most of the credit to the people who actually write said speeches. When he speaks without extensive notes and coaching is when it gets ugly.
The vast majority of people use IE, and IE's FTP support is some absurd joke. On my list of things that I'd really rather not do, downloading files using IE over FTP ranks only slightly lower than gouging my eyes out with a tree branch.
So what you're saying is, you want them to give you tons of goodies for less than what they're thinking of charging. Well, uh, I want goodies too, but since I'm sure this will be quite popular at the reasonable prices they're considering already, I'm not sure there'll be much market support for your position.
But that's not really analogous to the topical situation, is it?
It's not as though South Africa randomly said, "Hey, Open Source, that sounds 1337, let's install Linux on...everything we have! Whoo!" They did what everybody wishes their respective governments would do: take a year to think about things, and then take decisive action once they're done pondering. I think that's the essence of it: people wouldn't mind so much if it took five years to get anything done, if it actually got done at the end of those five years. In America, we debate a policy forever, and then finally implement said policy in the most half-assed way possible. That's a good way of ensuring that things don't get too much worse, but it's not how you build a better future, either.
The problem is that everyone seems to respond to the growth of filesharing technologies differently. Personally -- and I know this goes for a lot of other people too -- filesharing has caused an increase in the amount of music we buy. For some people, though, it has no discernible effect, and some people explicitly forgo buying music due to the availability of free MP3s.
Neither of those explosions were due to hydrogen. Rockets use liquid oxygen as their energy source, and the Hindenberg caught fire for reasons that had little to do with its hydrogen supply. I would link to the relevant information, but E2 is moving incredibly slowly today.
In America, the Supreme Court has famously stated that even though a term cannot be satisfactorily defined for purposes of law, the term does not lose its meaning (i.e., obscenity).
I might agree with you on the economics of the thing; the Vietnamese obviously can't go from a society of rural peasants to a modern industrialized society without going through the same growing pains that America and Britain and every other Western country faced a century ago. But explain to me why that means employees can't take fucking bathroom breaks? Paying the Vietnamese a low wage makes sense, but there are documented cases of blatant mistreatment at these "factories."
Heroin is a chemical dependency. EQ is quite literally a lifestyle choice.
I agree with the principle, here, but isn't there a corollary to Godwin's Law stating that you're not actually allowed to verbally invoke Godwin's Law? I thought that you're just supposed to refrain from responding, and instead let the poster stew in his own delicious stupidity.
The fact that he's not strongly bound to his party's platform in no way implies that he has somehow taken on the incidental associations of the opposition party. I mean, there are too many logical fallacies to count here...
But all that shows is that you have a skewed view of what's smart. Since when is self-preservation the highest calling of all rational beings?
To hell with what the rest of the posters are saying...the whole tone of your post is really ignorant and arrogant, but what really bothers me is that you're stupid enough to quote yourself for your sig, and do it badly, too. And the quote is bad of itself; aphorisms are supposed to be self-evident, but that line makes no sense. Under what circumstances is the smart (i.e., rational) thing to do not the right thing to do? For a convincing argument against the sentiment expressed in your sig, check Plato's Republic.
I disagree. It's been a while since I sat through the movie, but I remember thinking that it tied into the series very well, with a lot of foreshadowing for the final two episodes. A lot of dialog (especially the stuff about dreams) is paralleled in the Real Folk Blues, and the fact that Spike saw himself in the character of the crazy terrorist gives you some insight as to how he felt at the very end. Not to say that I wouldn't have traded the movie for another Vicious episode...but I thought it was pretty good.
I noticed that it said he'd sold 40 million copies of Super Mario Brothers. Isn't that a record? I can't conceive of any game selling more than that, save perhaps Tetris, and only if you count all of the clones.