Yes, the federal government can not bail out states from their own budgetary shortfalls. That is not the same thing as saying that Bush is responsible for creating those shortfalls.
"Some agency or division budgets..." SHOULN'T be depending on the federal government for funding. If it's a state agency, the state should fund it. If it's a federal agency, the fed should fund it. If they've been sucking at the Federal teat, they should have read the Constitution and not done that. Again, not Mr. Bush's fault.
Bottom line: The state deficits are not of Bush's creation. Whether the Federal government should be able to bail 'em out is a different question.
You're right: The federal budget has some affect on state budgets. I probably should have said that Bush's fiscal and tax policies did not create the state budget problems, because he's not responsible for those budgets. Yes, the deficit spending has made it difficult for the Fed to dig the states out of their hole, but the President did not dig the hole in the first place.
Unfunded mandates are stupid. Me, I don't think the Fed should be doing much of anything in the States, but I'm a states-rights weirdo. : )
The federal budget mismanagement is one issue. I made no comments one way or the other about the federal budget issue, save to discard it from this conversation.
(For the record, I think that a balanced budget, while a laudable goal, is overrated. Modest deficit spending is not harmful to the economy. Excessive deficit spending, like we're seeing now, is moderately harmful to the economy. Yes, I have taken economics classes. Thanks for askin'.)
The state budgets' mismanagement is another issue. This discussion is about state budgets, and their budget shortfalls, precipitating a tax money-grab. The budget shortfalls (caused by collecting less taxes, not spending more money) are what's at issue here.
Is that clear enough?
Maybe you're too tired to think this through. Fair enough. Sleep well, and post again when you're feeling a little bit more polite.
Incidentally, Al Franken is a fuckwit, and if you think numbers never lie, you've never seen a statistician at work.
Well, that turned up a whole lot of nothin'. Would you care to be more specific?
Has Mr. Bush implemented some policies that might negatively affect state budgets? If so, he joins a list of about oh, 40 odd other presidents to have done so.
Is Mr. Bush responsible for the catastrophic budget shortfalls caused by the shrinking of the tax base due to the collapse of the Internet bubble? Uh, no.
What, exactly, did Bush do to create the budget shortfall in just about every state in the Union?
Answer: Tie his shoes.
Come on. The President has very, very little to do with the economy. His tax cut didn't do much. His economic "stimulus" package wouldn't have done much. Now, preventing a bunch of morons investing in any company whose CEO could spell "internet", causing a market bubble that would inevitably burst, now that would have made a difference.
I don't understand how you can say that calculators give you different mistakes than slide rules. Seems like the only error you can make either way is an input error.
I mean, if you want to use a slide rule, bully for you. But a blanket statement like "calculators suck" is just foolhardy.
for my HP 48G. Does anybody have one they'd be willing to unload? Or a.PDF I can grab from somewhere? HP wants $40 for the book, which is ridiculous IMO.
I'll bake ya some bad-ass cookies if you can give me that.pdf.
I'm also looking for a hard case. I love my 48, and you can pry it from my cold dead hands. Or from my newly distracted hands when I can get a Palm that'll run the emulator. : )
I should not do business with Amazon because I believe they are defending a stupid patent.
You're being ridiculous. I should "get the fuck out" of the COUNTRY if I think Amazon is doing something I don't like? You're delusional. I think it's a lot easier for me to take my business elsewhere than to single-handedly change the patent system.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Amazon obviously enjoys the legal fruits of their personhood. If they enjoy the advantages, then they are equally responsible for the disadvantages of my ire. (Yeah, like they REALLY care)
Is your argument that I SHOULD be doing business with Amazon?
Re:I still don't get cryptomoncomonmon
on
Quicksilver
·
· Score: 1
It's difficult to consider your literary criticism "worthwhile" unless you can spell "genius" correctly.
You're entitled to your opinion, but I disagree vehemently. Stephenson amuses me greatly, and I'm looking forward to reading his new work immensely.
I don't care if the "boycott" works. I won't do business with an unethical corporation.
I blame any person for their actions. Since Amazon is (due to malfeasance by a court clerk in the mid 1850's) a legal person, I can blame Amazon for Amazon's actions. It is, corporately, responsible for the decisions that it, corporately, makes.
So I can and do blame Amazon for abusing the patent system. Just because it's not illegal doesn't mean it's right.
Re:Looking forward... mostly
on
Quicksilver
·
· Score: 1
Umm, it was a novel. A science fiction novel. Give the man some artistic license.
I didn't moderate it, I just expressed my (biased, certainly: There's no other kind!) opinion. Guess somebody else agreed with me.
I DON'T care about AAC. Frankly, I don't care about MP3. I care about being able to carry a lot of music in a convenient, compatible device that does stuff I find useful. Vorbis, or AAC, or MP3, or WMA (OK, I hate WMA because I believe MS will use it to bludgeon people someday...there's that bias again!), carrier pigeon, whatever: If it sounds good to me, I don't really care how it got that way.
Vorbis is great. There's nothing wrong with it. But there's also nothing right enough about it for me to switch. There are a heck of a lot of people out there who feel the same way.
I certainly wouldn't advocate stopping development on that basis. I would absolutely argue that battery powered electric cars are not the free-energy panacea that their proponents would like us to believe they are.
I believe that battery powered cars will be more expensive to operate, and only slightly (if at all) less harmful to the environment than internal combustion engines, particularly advanced technologies like VW's TDI engines running on biodiesel (which, again, is not perfect; only really pretty darn good).
In the medium to long term, I hope we can use h2 fuel cells charged by clean nuclear plants to be the primary fuel source. But chemical batteries are teh sux.
Wow, you're really all over the place, aren't you? The psychological phenomenon you're undergoing right now is called projection, whereby you map your own shortcomings onto the people around you.
Allow me to take your points in order (which is my favourite way to deal with whiny little trolls. Dance for my amusement, puppet!)
If you have a way to implement a moderated internet, I hope you do so immediately. The rest of us will be sorry to see you go, but we'll find a way to soldier on. Arrivaderci, you whiny little asscrack.
I'm going to skip the security patching comment. I have no idea where that came from. Well, that's not true...it came out of your fevered little cesspit of a brain. Let's put it back in there, shall we? It's gauche to show that stuff to polite company.
I'm not sure what you think "people like me" is supposed to mean. I take it from your hamfisted use of parallel structure that you're trying to disparage me, which might work if I had anything like a concern about your opinion. So, proceeding from my projection hypothesis, it sounds like you need a hug there, big guy.
Your next statement shows me that, in addition to your projection issues, you have a superiority complex by which you think you speak for the, what, 750 million worldwide users of the Internet. Well, take me off your list, homeboy. You don't speak for me. (And, I've got a sneaking suspicion that you don't speak for the other 749,999,998 people that are neither you, nor me, but that's just a guess. Maybe you've got a mouse in your pocket.)
In point of fact, I purchased and built my dad's computer for him. And my mom's. And my sister's. And my grandfather's. So, your disparagement of my technical acumen is, well, amusing.
Go ask your mommy for a cookie. You'll feel better. Come back when you feel like having a civil discussion, you whiny little assgoblin.
Cliff Stoll is a retro-grouch. He's come to the conclusion that if it's all technology-y it must be anti-human, and therefore to be avoided. (Yes, I did read his book. I even owned it for a while, until I decided it was crap and gave it away)
He's certainly entitled to his opinion, and his technology consumption preferences, but for him to take the next step and say that/I/ need to change my habits is utter bullshit.
The Internet is a tool. It is my slave. It does as I bid it. I use whatever tools are appropriate to solve a given problem, and for a large number of problems, the Internet is an excellent solution.
Don't like it? That's cool. Don't use it. Nobody's got a gun to your head. Show some individualism and do it your own way. Or show some individualism and say the BBC survey doesn't apply to me, and I like the Internet just fine. Whatever.
Well, we'll be sure to come ask you before we put up any more crap. Sure is nice to know who's responsible for editing the internet. I'd like your home phone number, your mobile number, and your email address please. I'll start vetting my content with you right away!
Must be nice to not need any sleep. Or money. You're going to have quite a job on your hands!
If you don't think page layout and design are professional talents, then you've got another thing coming. Designing attractive and usable information resources (whether on the Web or in print) is not easy, and it takes a lot of training and forethought.
So just because you might not be any good at it, or appreciate it when it's done well, doesn't mean that it's not a valuable professional skill.
There's more to life than programming. Most of those things, unlike programming, are interesting.
Yeah, nice, but you can't exactly get one of those free with a box of Cheerios.
IPv6 will be grand...when I can buy it for a reasonable price from my ISP. It's disingenouous for you to say "Well, just use IPv6!" when that's simply not an option for the overwhelming majority of Internet users.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, the federal government can not bail out states from their own budgetary shortfalls. That is not the same thing as saying that Bush is responsible for creating those shortfalls.
"Some agency or division budgets..." SHOULN'T be depending on the federal government for funding. If it's a state agency, the state should fund it. If it's a federal agency, the fed should fund it. If they've been sucking at the Federal teat, they should have read the Constitution and not done that. Again, not Mr. Bush's fault.
Bottom line: The state deficits are not of Bush's creation. Whether the Federal government should be able to bail 'em out is a different question.
You're right: The federal budget has some affect on state budgets. I probably should have said that Bush's fiscal and tax policies did not create the state budget problems, because he's not responsible for those budgets. Yes, the deficit spending has made it difficult for the Fed to dig the states out of their hole, but the President did not dig the hole in the first place.
Unfunded mandates are stupid. Me, I don't think the Fed should be doing much of anything in the States, but I'm a states-rights weirdo. : )
Perfect.
Gold star.
Absolutely.
: )
Yes, unfunded mandates are detrimental to states' budgets. But if you think they're unique to Bush's administration, you're deluded.
Are they slightly larger than they have been in the past? You betcha. Are they a drop in the bucket compared to the drop in tax revenue? Nope.
What a pretty world you must live in.
That is not what I said.
The federal budget mismanagement is one issue. I made no comments one way or the other about the federal budget issue, save to discard it from this conversation.
(For the record, I think that a balanced budget, while a laudable goal, is overrated. Modest deficit spending is not harmful to the economy. Excessive deficit spending, like we're seeing now, is moderately harmful to the economy. Yes, I have taken economics classes. Thanks for askin'.)
The state budgets' mismanagement is another issue. This discussion is about state budgets, and their budget shortfalls, precipitating a tax money-grab. The budget shortfalls (caused by collecting less taxes, not spending more money) are what's at issue here.
Is that clear enough?
Maybe you're too tired to think this through. Fair enough. Sleep well, and post again when you're feeling a little bit more polite.
Incidentally, Al Franken is a fuckwit, and if you think numbers never lie, you've never seen a statistician at work.
Please explain how the federal deficit has anything to do with state budgets. (Hint: It doesn't, really) Use small words, because I'm a dipshit.
Or, dispense with the ad hominem attacks and try a civil discussion. Your call.
Well, that turned up a whole lot of nothin'. Would you care to be more specific?
Has Mr. Bush implemented some policies that might negatively affect state budgets? If so, he joins a list of about oh, 40 odd other presidents to have done so.
Is Mr. Bush responsible for the catastrophic budget shortfalls caused by the shrinking of the tax base due to the collapse of the Internet bubble? Uh, no.
I'm no Bush fan, but this is just a silly idea.
What, exactly, did Bush do to create the budget shortfall in just about every state in the Union?
Answer: Tie his shoes.
Come on. The President has very, very little to do with the economy. His tax cut didn't do much. His economic "stimulus" package wouldn't have done much. Now, preventing a bunch of morons investing in any company whose CEO could spell "internet", causing a market bubble that would inevitably burst, now that would have made a difference.
I don't understand how you can say that calculators give you different mistakes than slide rules. Seems like the only error you can make either way is an input error.
I mean, if you want to use a slide rule, bully for you. But a blanket statement like "calculators suck" is just foolhardy.
Yeah, because an abacus is really good at symbolic algebra. And it's absolutely brilliant at running numerical integrals and derivatives.
for my HP 48G. Does anybody have one they'd be willing to unload? Or a .PDF I can grab from somewhere? HP wants $40 for the book, which is ridiculous IMO.
.pdf.
I'll bake ya some bad-ass cookies if you can give me that
I'm also looking for a hard case. I love my 48, and you can pry it from my cold dead hands. Or from my newly distracted hands when I can get a Palm that'll run the emulator. : )
I should not do business with Amazon because I believe they are defending a stupid patent.
You're being ridiculous. I should "get the fuck out" of the COUNTRY if I think Amazon is doing something I don't like? You're delusional. I think it's a lot easier for me to take my business elsewhere than to single-handedly change the patent system.
I'm done with you.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Amazon obviously enjoys the legal fruits of their personhood. If they enjoy the advantages, then they are equally responsible for the disadvantages of my ire. (Yeah, like they REALLY care)
Is your argument that I SHOULD be doing business with Amazon?
It's difficult to consider your literary criticism "worthwhile" unless you can spell "genius" correctly.
You're entitled to your opinion, but I disagree vehemently. Stephenson amuses me greatly, and I'm looking forward to reading his new work immensely.
I don't care if the "boycott" works. I won't do business with an unethical corporation.
I blame any person for their actions. Since Amazon is (due to malfeasance by a court clerk in the mid 1850's) a legal person, I can blame Amazon for Amazon's actions. It is, corporately, responsible for the decisions that it, corporately, makes.
So I can and do blame Amazon for abusing the patent system. Just because it's not illegal doesn't mean it's right.
Umm, it was a novel. A science fiction novel. Give the man some artistic license.
I didn't moderate it, I just expressed my (biased, certainly: There's no other kind!) opinion. Guess somebody else agreed with me.
I DON'T care about AAC. Frankly, I don't care about MP3. I care about being able to carry a lot of music in a convenient, compatible device that does stuff I find useful. Vorbis, or AAC, or MP3, or WMA (OK, I hate WMA because I believe MS will use it to bludgeon people someday...there's that bias again!), carrier pigeon, whatever: If it sounds good to me, I don't really care how it got that way.
Vorbis is great. There's nothing wrong with it. But there's also nothing right enough about it for me to switch. There are a heck of a lot of people out there who feel the same way.
I certainly wouldn't advocate stopping development on that basis. I would absolutely argue that battery powered electric cars are not the free-energy panacea that their proponents would like us to believe they are.
I believe that battery powered cars will be more expensive to operate, and only slightly (if at all) less harmful to the environment than internal combustion engines, particularly advanced technologies like VW's TDI engines running on biodiesel (which, again, is not perfect; only really pretty darn good).
In the medium to long term, I hope we can use h2 fuel cells charged by clean nuclear plants to be the primary fuel source. But chemical batteries are teh sux.
Your sig is misspelled, smart guy.
HAND yourself.
Wow, you're really all over the place, aren't you? The psychological phenomenon you're undergoing right now is called projection, whereby you map your own shortcomings onto the people around you.
Allow me to take your points in order (which is my favourite way to deal with whiny little trolls. Dance for my amusement, puppet!)
If you have a way to implement a moderated internet, I hope you do so immediately. The rest of us will be sorry to see you go, but we'll find a way to soldier on. Arrivaderci, you whiny little asscrack.
I'm going to skip the security patching comment. I have no idea where that came from. Well, that's not true...it came out of your fevered little cesspit of a brain. Let's put it back in there, shall we? It's gauche to show that stuff to polite company.
I'm not sure what you think "people like me" is supposed to mean. I take it from your hamfisted use of parallel structure that you're trying to disparage me, which might work if I had anything like a concern about your opinion. So, proceeding from my projection hypothesis, it sounds like you need a hug there, big guy.
Your next statement shows me that, in addition to your projection issues, you have a superiority complex by which you think you speak for the, what, 750 million worldwide users of the Internet. Well, take me off your list, homeboy. You don't speak for me. (And, I've got a sneaking suspicion that you don't speak for the other 749,999,998 people that are neither you, nor me, but that's just a guess. Maybe you've got a mouse in your pocket.)
In point of fact, I purchased and built my dad's computer for him. And my mom's. And my sister's. And my grandfather's. So, your disparagement of my technical acumen is, well, amusing.
Go ask your mommy for a cookie. You'll feel better. Come back when you feel like having a civil discussion, you whiny little assgoblin.
Cliff Stoll is a retro-grouch. He's come to the conclusion that if it's all technology-y it must be anti-human, and therefore to be avoided. (Yes, I did read his book. I even owned it for a while, until I decided it was crap and gave it away)
/I/ need to change my habits is utter bullshit.
He's certainly entitled to his opinion, and his technology consumption preferences, but for him to take the next step and say that
The Internet is a tool. It is my slave. It does as I bid it. I use whatever tools are appropriate to solve a given problem, and for a large number of problems, the Internet is an excellent solution.
Don't like it? That's cool. Don't use it. Nobody's got a gun to your head. Show some individualism and do it your own way. Or show some individualism and say the BBC survey doesn't apply to me, and I like the Internet just fine. Whatever.
Well, we'll be sure to come ask you before we put up any more crap. Sure is nice to know who's responsible for editing the internet. I'd like your home phone number, your mobile number, and your email address please. I'll start vetting my content with you right away!
Must be nice to not need any sleep. Or money. You're going to have quite a job on your hands!
(In other words, you're an elitist fuckwit.)
If you don't think page layout and design are professional talents, then you've got another thing coming. Designing attractive and usable information resources (whether on the Web or in print) is not easy, and it takes a lot of training and forethought.
So just because you might not be any good at it, or appreciate it when it's done well, doesn't mean that it's not a valuable professional skill.
There's more to life than programming. Most of those things, unlike programming, are interesting.
Do you need a hug?
Yeah, nice, but you can't exactly get one of those free with a box of Cheerios.
IPv6 will be grand...when I can buy it for a reasonable price from my ISP. It's disingenouous for you to say "Well, just use IPv6!" when that's simply not an option for the overwhelming majority of Internet users.