I agree, but Americans are too timid. We're living in a country where everyone owns a gun to "defend themselves" against the government, but when the time comes, they'd rather watch Dancing with the Stars.
I remember hearing about this from a friend, but couldn't find any news articles, didn't see it covered by the TV media, didn't hear about it on the radio, and now it's turning out that ytou can't email about it either...
And we're complaining about China?
And BTW: The "SEC" is cracking down on Standard and Poors, as well as anyone else that had the audacity to bet against the US during the credit downgrade.
How interesting. If any of you still believe you're in the land of the free, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. You're under the heel of your corporate masters, who are running Washington.
I mean SERIOUSLY. Current hardware is good enough that we can "skip a generation" and/or buy components directly, assemble our own PCs without restrictions (don't think the Chinese won't be supplying those) and install our own OS.
Maybe if we all "skipped this generation" we can cause our own storm of "Linux on the Desktop", send a strong message to MS and the big PC makers that we're not going to stand for this shit.
We have to vote with our wallets. That's they only way they are ever going to "get it". Otherwise, we will continue to have this crap shoved down our throats.
I don't know about the rest of you, but we're getting closer and closer to the day that a desktop PC is considered a relic. For the vast majority of people, "mobile" is where it's at. I'm quickly realizing that for what I spend most of my day interfacing with a "computer", I can just as easily do it with an iPad, assuming I have the bluetooth keyboard.
Admittedly, for development, a PC is a requirement, but, these days, a lot of development can happen under linux, on a server that you ssh into, and again, I'm back at the iPad/keyboard as a "on my desk" solution.
More and more, I'm using my mobile devices as my primary connection to the internet, and less and less, the power-hungry, noisy, slow, crash-prone clunker sitting on my desktop.
No, because even with a dollar buying less than 95% of what it used to, most people are still earning $40,000 per year or less.
You're forgetting that despite inflation and the devaluing of the dollar, middle class wages have been flat for more than 30 years.
So, even though the dollar buys less, we earn the same amount. Our wages aren't adjusted for inflation or what a dollar is "worth". That *why* everyone is in credit card debt, because it's impossible to make ends meet without going into debt because every year, we actually earn LESS.
I'm unlikely to earn $1 million per year, even if the dollar was worth a penny. So, please, go back to basic economics class and try and think with what little brain you've got.
This bill is dead on arrival that the House, which is Republican controlled. Too many there have signed Grover Norquist's pledge to NEVER raise any taxes of any kind.
I'm sorry to say this, but the radicals are now in control. Just like the Taliban, they have an extreme ideology and will not compromise or make "common sense" decisions because they carry a radical philosophy.
As such, there is no longer any 'bargaining" going on. The bill will be flat out struck down or filibustered into oblivion. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but our Congress has passed almost no legislation of any kind since taking office 18 months ago. All they've done is argue.
This is the Congress that campaigned on a platform of "jobs", came in and immediately wasted two days reading the Constitution, then tried to repeal Obamacare and abortion rights, and since then, hasn't done anything except destroy the nation's credit rating.
This is political hackery that boils down to the following:
#1) The job will be bid on via a no-bid contract to some firm that some senator is either friends with the owner or a part-owner thereof.
#2) All the current TSA employees will be fired.
#3) All the former TSA employees will be rehired by the private firm (such as Blackwater), at LOWER pay.
#4) Despite hiring everyone at lower pay, the contractor will bill the government double or more what it was costing the government to run the TSA by itself.
#5) Owner and Senator become super-rich, and lobby hard to have their personal income taxes cut because they are Job-creators.
#6) Deficit explodes due to cost-over-runs and how much money is being pocketed by owner/senator. Meanwhile Congress votes to cut taxes on the rich to "reduce" the deficit.
Is there any part of this I haven't covered? It's pretty obvious, and they've done it to us a million times and we let them do it more. The Rich get richer and the middle class becomes poor.
Thanks government for fucking me in the ass again.
My understanding was that the X-33 couldn't be build as the composite fuel tanks never worked, and without that, the thing could not be built light-enough to actually fly with the available fuel. I'm sure these hurdles could have been overcome, but 'they' decided not to throw good money after bad, although 'they' were willing to fund a decade of useless wars. Go figure.
And yes, this design looks like it's just about continued funding for certain contractors who have paid off the right senators.
God! eBay is a nightmare to use, is covered with graphics to slow it down and has one of the worst user-interfaces I've ever had to deal with. But worst of all, they force all seller-buyer interaction THROUGH ebay.com -- you can't email each other, you can't pay with any method except paypal, etc., etc.
Craiglist, on the other hand, is easy to use, clean interface, pretty much text-only, fast, and forces the buyer & seller to deal with each other OUTSIDE of Craiglist, so transactions happen much more cleanly, 99% of Craigslist sales are local, done via emails and phone calls, and it's all cash.
I only *wish* eBay had "stolen" from Craigslist. Maybe then eBay would be a use-able website instead of the incredible mess it is, filled with Romanian scammers and identity thieves.
Ask R.Goddard - patents go poof when the gov't requires it.... When the Soviets launched Sputnik and the cold war suddenly became a race to the high ground of space, do you think the USA spent ONE DIME to compensate the patent holder for a lot of rocket technology?
What's amazing is that the government we trust to uphold the "law" is the most frequent violator of that law when it suits their agenda. Of course, our recent history is filled with examples in just the last decade alone.
Point is: If there was actually anything 'useful' in any of these patents, you can rest assured that the military will use and abuse anything that they can without any kind of fear that the patent holder will sue.
Patents in this case are kind of like auto insurance, it's something you pay for, and then find out how useless it is when you actually need it.
What they are holding they will never give up. They want copyright in perpetuity throughout the universe. They will keep getting extension after extension well into the time the Sun burns out and Earth is reduced to a cold ember.
Heck, the RIAA would sue God if they thought they could get money from him.
Kirk: Everything Harry Mudd says is a lie, do you hear me, everything he says is a LIE!
Mudd: Now listen carefully... I'm lying.
Norman: But... if everything you say is a lie, and you say you are lying then you are telling the truth, but you cannot be telling the truth because everything you say is a lie... Conflict! Conflict! Co-ordinate!
I don't get it; Big Business wants it both ways. They want the USA to protect their corporate interests around the world *at taxpayer expense*, and then, their CEOs get on TV and shout that we need smaller government, and the government should get it's nose out of business, and there needs to be less regulation.
Well sure. If the fat cats want unbridled capitalism with no restraint, then I say let that also be the end of copyright law, patent law, and every other government agency that works for Big Business, but is paid for by the common man.
Let Big Business hire private security to protect their interests.
Quick, someone patent Virtual Money so we can virtually pay for our virtual entertainment!
I'm going to patent "Virtual Housing", "Virtual Transportation", and "Virtual Utilities"...
Really... This is just fucking stupid. I'm so done. Please someone just blow up the patent office with a few RPGs, or there's going to be no end to this insanity.
If they think a brand new, fully working "city" is going to stay uninhabited for long, they are too stupid to be performing "science".
Once construction starts, and word gets out, all the contractors will know, which will pass word down to the friends and families of people who know the construction workers, and pretty soon, you've got illegal immigrants moving in, homeless people moving in, people who've been foreclosed on and locked out of their own houses, i.e., basically a squatter situation, and, unless you've got a lot of guys with guns, it's going to be very hard to get them out of their free houses.
This will end badly. Anybody remember Lethal Weapon 3, where Richard Donner basically got permission to burn down an entire town that was never finished because the contractor ran out of money?
And why don't they use the abandoned town the Mythbusters already use for their driving tests?
It seems to me there's *already* quite a few abandoned towns west of the Rockies. Do we really need another?
It took just 13 years to go from 6 to 7 Billion. I am assuming it also took 26 years to go from 5 to 6 Billion. However, I think it took far less than that.
I remember being a kid and reading that the world population was only 3 Billion in the early 70's. So, in the space of 4 decades, the world's population more than doubled.
Given our scale of population growth; it's fairly to easy to guess the following:
8 Billion in 6 more years == 2018 (assuming a start @ 2012)
9 Billion just 3 years later == 2021
10 Billion just 1 year later == 2022
War/population crash/food shortages/global catastrophes/plague somewhere by or before 2023. I'll be 58 by then, so I will probably live to see the great purging of mankind from this planet.
Do these retards understand that in a couple of years, your iphone is going to have the 3D capability of a PS2? Who's going to play "asteroids" as an iPhone app when Sega will be releasing Shenmu as an app?
They are assuming nostalgia value, but seriously, the larger market for the smartphones is 20-somethings who have NO memory of 8-bit Atari games. To them nostalgia is Pokemon and Power Rangers, and the games they played were SNES Starfox or better.
New Yorkers get hysterical during any earthquake for a good reason. Most of them are working 60 stories up in buildings that are 50 or more years old and are not built to withstand ANY kind of earthquake.
San Fran and LA are built to much more exacting specs because your cities have been knocked down so many times.
If a 7.0 earthquake hit NYC during a workday, it would be catastrophic -- I don't think there's a building in Manhattan that would be standing. You'd be talking about millions of people dead.
Remember Haiti? So many died there because every structure was poorly built. Yet, if that same level of earthquake had hit LA, chances are there'd be a lot less damage and significantly less loss of life.
Even worse is that Manhattan is surrounded by water. If something like Japan's recent quake hit off the east side of the city, the Tsunami would wipe NYC off the map. That wave in Japan traveled 6 miles inland. That's akin to starting on the east side of Manhattan, washing over the entire city, slamming through Hoboken, and not stopping until reaching Giant's Stadium in Seacacus.
Again, millions dead if it was to happen during a work day. Those not killed from the tumbling buildings will certainly drown.
The point is: the major cities along the East Coast are not prepared for natural disasters, and with everything built hodge-podge since the times of the colonists, it's still built only well-enough to get by given our climate, no one ever spends the extra money to think about safety - one of the many reasons so many died on 9/11
Of course, since you're living in a zone more likely to be rattled, give us an update after you've had your 9.0, and half of the West Coast is lying in ruins. Let us know how well you slept through that.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, but Americans are too timid. We're living in a country where everyone owns a gun to "defend themselves" against the government, but when the time comes, they'd rather watch Dancing with the Stars.
We deserve the government we've got.
I remember hearing about this from a friend, but couldn't find any news articles, didn't see it covered by the TV media, didn't hear about it on the radio, and now it's turning out that ytou can't email about it either...
And we're complaining about China?
And BTW: The "SEC" is cracking down on Standard and Poors, as well as anyone else that had the audacity to bet against the US during the credit downgrade.
How interesting. If any of you still believe you're in the land of the free, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. You're under the heel of your corporate masters, who are running Washington.
HP is "up for sale", looking for a buyer.
They are hoping to be bought by Lenovo, but the Chinese responded "Who the hell needs a top-heavy organization that doesn't make anything?"
Meanwhile HP is looking for a new CEO, and the board are considering the former head of SCO, Darl McBride...
Better idea -- stop buying PCs.
I mean SERIOUSLY. Current hardware is good enough that we can "skip a generation" and/or buy components directly, assemble our own PCs without restrictions (don't think the Chinese won't be supplying those) and install our own OS.
Maybe if we all "skipped this generation" we can cause our own storm of "Linux on the Desktop", send a strong message to MS and the big PC makers that we're not going to stand for this shit.
We have to vote with our wallets. That's they only way they are ever going to "get it". Otherwise, we will continue to have this crap shoved down our throats.
I don't know about the rest of you, but we're getting closer and closer to the day that a desktop PC is considered a relic. For the vast majority of people, "mobile" is where it's at. I'm quickly realizing that for what I spend most of my day interfacing with a "computer", I can just as easily do it with an iPad, assuming I have the bluetooth keyboard.
Admittedly, for development, a PC is a requirement, but, these days, a lot of development can happen under linux, on a server that you ssh into, and again, I'm back at the iPad/keyboard as a "on my desk" solution.
More and more, I'm using my mobile devices as my primary connection to the internet, and less and less, the power-hungry, noisy, slow, crash-prone clunker sitting on my desktop.
No, because even with a dollar buying less than 95% of what it used to, most people are still earning $40,000 per year or less.
You're forgetting that despite inflation and the devaluing of the dollar, middle class wages have been flat for more than 30 years.
So, even though the dollar buys less, we earn the same amount. Our wages aren't adjusted for inflation or what a dollar is "worth". That *why* everyone is in credit card debt, because it's impossible to make ends meet without going into debt because every year, we actually earn LESS.
I'm unlikely to earn $1 million per year, even if the dollar was worth a penny. So, please, go back to basic economics class and try and think with what little brain you've got.
This bill is dead on arrival that the House, which is Republican controlled. Too many there have signed Grover Norquist's pledge to NEVER raise any taxes of any kind.
I'm sorry to say this, but the radicals are now in control. Just like the Taliban, they have an extreme ideology and will not compromise or make "common sense" decisions because they carry a radical philosophy.
As such, there is no longer any 'bargaining" going on. The bill will be flat out struck down or filibustered into oblivion. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but our Congress has passed almost no legislation of any kind since taking office 18 months ago. All they've done is argue.
This is the Congress that campaigned on a platform of "jobs", came in and immediately wasted two days reading the Constitution, then tried to repeal Obamacare and abortion rights, and since then, hasn't done anything except destroy the nation's credit rating.
Good luck getting this through.
This is political hackery that boils down to the following:
#1) The job will be bid on via a no-bid contract to some firm that some senator is either friends with the owner or a part-owner thereof.
#2) All the current TSA employees will be fired.
#3) All the former TSA employees will be rehired by the private firm (such as Blackwater), at LOWER pay.
#4) Despite hiring everyone at lower pay, the contractor will bill the government double or more what it was costing the government to run the TSA by itself.
#5) Owner and Senator become super-rich, and lobby hard to have their personal income taxes cut because they are Job-creators.
#6) Deficit explodes due to cost-over-runs and how much money is being pocketed by owner/senator. Meanwhile Congress votes to cut taxes on the rich to "reduce" the deficit.
Is there any part of this I haven't covered? It's pretty obvious, and they've done it to us a million times and we let them do it more. The Rich get richer and the middle class becomes poor.
Thanks government for fucking me in the ass again.
Actually, it's too bad they haven't developed a rocket engine that burns a tank-full of $100 dollar bills. That would be cheaper to run.
My understanding was that the X-33 couldn't be build as the composite fuel tanks never worked, and without that, the thing could not be built light-enough to actually fly with the available fuel. I'm sure these hurdles could have been overcome, but 'they' decided not to throw good money after bad, although 'they' were willing to fund a decade of useless wars. Go figure.
And yes, this design looks like it's just about continued funding for certain contractors who have paid off the right senators.
God! eBay is a nightmare to use, is covered with graphics to slow it down and has one of the worst user-interfaces I've ever had to deal with. But worst of all, they force all seller-buyer interaction THROUGH ebay.com -- you can't email each other, you can't pay with any method except paypal, etc., etc.
Craiglist, on the other hand, is easy to use, clean interface, pretty much text-only, fast, and forces the buyer & seller to deal with each other OUTSIDE of Craiglist, so transactions happen much more cleanly, 99% of Craigslist sales are local, done via emails and phone calls, and it's all cash.
I only *wish* eBay had "stolen" from Craigslist. Maybe then eBay would be a use-able website instead of the incredible mess it is, filled with Romanian scammers and identity thieves.
Great!
Can we use this law to imprison anyone still using an address @aol.com ?
Ask R.Goddard - patents go poof when the gov't requires it.... When the Soviets launched Sputnik and the cold war suddenly became a race to the high ground of space, do you think the USA spent ONE DIME to compensate the patent holder for a lot of rocket technology?
What's amazing is that the government we trust to uphold the "law" is the most frequent violator of that law when it suits their agenda. Of course, our recent history is filled with examples in just the last decade alone.
Point is: If there was actually anything 'useful' in any of these patents, you can rest assured that the military will use and abuse anything that they can without any kind of fear that the patent holder will sue.
Patents in this case are kind of like auto insurance, it's something you pay for, and then find out how useless it is when you actually need it.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
What they are holding they will never give up. They want copyright in perpetuity throughout the universe. They will keep getting extension after extension well into the time the Sun burns out and Earth is reduced to a cold ember.
Heck, the RIAA would sue God if they thought they could get money from him.
Ellen Muth is worried about this.
For those of you who won't get this joke:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Like_Me
Kirk: Everything Harry Mudd says is a lie, do you hear me, everything he says is a LIE!
Mudd: Now listen carefully... I'm lying.
Norman: But... if everything you say is a lie, and you say you are lying then you are telling the truth, but you cannot be telling the truth because everything you say is a lie... Conflict! Conflict! Co-ordinate!
I don't get it; Big Business wants it both ways. They want the USA to protect their corporate interests around the world *at taxpayer expense*, and then, their CEOs get on TV and shout that we need smaller government, and the government should get it's nose out of business, and there needs to be less regulation.
Well sure. If the fat cats want unbridled capitalism with no restraint, then I say let that also be the end of copyright law, patent law, and every other government agency that works for Big Business, but is paid for by the common man.
Let Big Business hire private security to protect their interests.
Quick, someone patent Virtual Money so we can virtually pay for our virtual entertainment!
I'm going to patent "Virtual Housing", "Virtual Transportation", and "Virtual Utilities"...
Really... This is just fucking stupid. I'm so done. Please someone just blow up the patent office with a few RPGs, or there's going to be no end to this insanity.
If they think a brand new, fully working "city" is going to stay uninhabited for long, they are too stupid to be performing "science".
Once construction starts, and word gets out, all the contractors will know, which will pass word down to the friends and families of people who know the construction workers, and pretty soon, you've got illegal immigrants moving in, homeless people moving in, people who've been foreclosed on and locked out of their own houses, i.e., basically a squatter situation, and, unless you've got a lot of guys with guns, it's going to be very hard to get them out of their free houses.
This will end badly. Anybody remember Lethal Weapon 3, where Richard Donner basically got permission to burn down an entire town that was never finished because the contractor ran out of money?
And why don't they use the abandoned town the Mythbusters already use for their driving tests?
It seems to me there's *already* quite a few abandoned towns west of the Rockies. Do we really need another?
It took just 13 years to go from 6 to 7 Billion. I am assuming it also took 26 years to go from 5 to 6 Billion. However, I think it took far less than that.
I remember being a kid and reading that the world population was only 3 Billion in the early 70's. So, in the space of 4 decades, the world's population more than doubled.
Given our scale of population growth; it's fairly to easy to guess the following:
8 Billion in 6 more years == 2018 (assuming a start @ 2012)
9 Billion just 3 years later == 2021
10 Billion just 1 year later == 2022
War/population crash/food shortages/global catastrophes/plague somewhere by or before 2023. I'll be 58 by then, so I will probably live to see the great purging of mankind from this planet.
how will Kevin Costner save the country and bring back civilization after the Third World War?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119925/
Ironic; the movie is supposed to take place in 2013, just in time to see our country fall apart *and* have no postal system to bring it back together.
Do these retards understand that in a couple of years, your iphone is going to have the 3D capability of a PS2? Who's going to play "asteroids" as an iPhone app when Sega will be releasing Shenmu as an app?
They are assuming nostalgia value, but seriously, the larger market for the smartphones is 20-somethings who have NO memory of 8-bit Atari games. To them nostalgia is Pokemon and Power Rangers, and the games they played were SNES Starfox or better.
It's there in 3 weeks or it's Free!
As opposed to gasoline?
Do you really think that's any less explosive?
New Yorkers get hysterical during any earthquake for a good reason. Most of them are working 60 stories up in buildings that are 50 or more years old and are not built to withstand ANY kind of earthquake.
San Fran and LA are built to much more exacting specs because your cities have been knocked down so many times.
If a 7.0 earthquake hit NYC during a workday, it would be catastrophic -- I don't think there's a building in Manhattan that would be standing. You'd be talking about millions of people dead.
Remember Haiti? So many died there because every structure was poorly built. Yet, if that same level of earthquake had hit LA, chances are there'd be a lot less damage and significantly less loss of life.
Even worse is that Manhattan is surrounded by water. If something like Japan's recent quake hit off the east side of the city, the Tsunami would wipe NYC off the map. That wave in Japan traveled 6 miles inland. That's akin to starting on the east side of Manhattan, washing over the entire city, slamming through Hoboken, and not stopping until reaching Giant's Stadium in Seacacus.
Again, millions dead if it was to happen during a work day. Those not killed from the tumbling buildings will certainly drown.
The point is: the major cities along the East Coast are not prepared for natural disasters, and with everything built hodge-podge since the times of the colonists, it's still built only well-enough to get by given our climate, no one ever spends the extra money to think about safety - one of the many reasons so many died on 9/11
Of course, since you're living in a zone more likely to be rattled, give us an update after you've had your 9.0, and half of the West Coast is lying in ruins. Let us know how well you slept through that.