U.S. is at the bottom of every list for the developed world. In fact, the U.S. is less and less resembling a developed country in many ways. -Education -Health/Longevity -Debt -Trade
The only things that keep the U.S. from turning into some crashing 2/3rd world disaster are: -Immigrants from good education systems -Acceptance of our Debt (for now)
I go to register, put in the graphic code and: Server Error in '/' Application. Runtime Error Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.
Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".
Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.
Great. More rainforest destruction for fetishistic
on
Real Wood iPod
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
Great. More rainforest destruction for fetishistic, shallow consumers.
I know that with the current political climate, making those who benefit most from our institutions and infrastructure is unfashionable... but a tax on all companies engaged in electrical or electronic businesses.
A governing board of the IEEE could be consulted on the definition of who these businesses are and they would be taxed proportionally to a formula that took into account their revenues and profits and the needs of the IEEE.
After all, that is de facto how the NIST works... only it's called a fee.
It's Ebay's problem and they're obviously doing nothing about it.
Somehow SOMEONE doing NOTHING about it is ok. But this is the usual liburrrtariown claptrap: leave it alone and everyone will be fine getting robbed, poisoned, ripped off, run over, thrown thru the windshield, shot with semi-automatic weapons, etc.
If everyone who drives a car here and all drivers of trucks and deliver vehicles drove the way they do in, for example, Sweden or Germany, we would reduce our demand by 15%:
Turn you car off when stopped and never leave it idling.
The really outrageous aspect of this remark is that, clearly, if there is one area of organized human activity Americans seem to have been getting worse at at a faster rate than any other, it's managing. If Dilber didn't exist, he would have to be invented.
....and another military exec about to become an aerospace industry exec heading the business area that serves the needs of the initiative started while still on government pay.
I'm starting to take a more benign view of such people. Rather than viewing them as the corrupt officials they are..... hey, they are the only ones creating jobs in this country. After all, we're still a few years away from the moral nadir of outsourcing our military work to our "enemies:.
The remark cited from some clueless person that they're waiting for a viable alternative to MS reminds me of ignorance standard set in the last presidential election. We got Bush and he'll get MS. Mediocrity's success rides on the ignorance of the consumer.
Please see my "Why don't I just become God?" posting... In case you miss it. You will lead a richer life. Hey, come to think of it, maybe you'll even have a life to enrich. You're welcome.
So, again those liberarianiscts are at it again. Let me see. In between (in no particular order, go to item 1000): 1) Working my day job 2) Doing my non-day consulting work 3) Doing occasional committee and club work at my son's school 4) Studying the insurance market to try to understand how I can get the best plan and lower premiums 5) Reading the business papers daily to figure out where the economy is going and where I should be 6) Volunteering for my favorite political candidates (still a democracy somewhat) 7) Reading the general news to stay ahead of where the macro social and political things are and are headed 8) Maintaining my German by reading turn-of-the-century novels 9) (No car, thank heaven so no need to bother about all that!) 10) Studying the fixed income markets and the mortage sheets to figure whether to refi again or not 11) Contributing to Open Source discussion groups 12) Studying and paying my bills 13) Reading my personal email (including Spam that gets through/is only suspicious) 14) Helping my wife with her work VPN and other home technical projects 15) Helping all my friends with all their technical problems 16) Writing contracts for various construction projects in my house 17) Studying the wireless market for the best cell phone deal (with this item i can start thinking about shooting myself...or others) 18) Studying the POTS market for the best POTS service 19) Studying the Cable/DSL market for the best high-speed data service 20) Studying the Disability Insurance market for the best coverage/premium 21) Studying the home-care/nursing home market for my father 22) Talking to my father everyday 23) Visiting my father 100 miles away 24) Reading Slashdot 25) Maintaining my website 26) Reading (some of) the handful of technical journals I subscribe to 28) Installing and working with some relevant new technology I've found...... 100) Learning how to pick and choose among drugs on an unregulated drug market 101) Trying not to get poisoned again from that Salmonella-contaminated beef from the supermarket 102) Protesting at all the automobile , electric power generators, mining, chemical, plastics, battery, consumer goods, etc. companies to get them to stop making my immediate environment barely livable for organic life 103) Trying to get a signal from that underground radio station in our community to get away from Monopol Communications programming.... 1000) Fight spam on my own.....
Transitition? Now that's one that had to either be deliberate or influenced by Martians. Or is it Marsians? We will only defeat the Martians by employing full time editors!
Just what the world needs: more and bigger means of destroying the little bit of unspoiled environment left. I always wonder whether these people have children (I don't, but...) and what a favor they are doing them by leaving them a world that will look not to different from the New Jersey shore on July 4.
Or maybe the only reason for putting out the fires on the Cuyahoga was so that they could turn in into a wildlife free waterpark.
How appropriate. Another productivity-sapping waste of money that adds to the mountain of debt being built up named after the guy who (nevertheless cluelessly) started this type of thing.
One can only hope it doesn't end up like it's namesake: a mindless blubbering dangerous puppet aimlessly serving the evil or ill-conceived agendas of a violent wannabe plutocracy.
Strange...I always hear such things from people who are in the door at 9:00 and out the door at 5:00.
But, I guess he's speaking relatively. He's obviously thinking about that single mother with breast cancer who got laid off the day after she was diagnosed.
You know, every time I hear this whine "rampant spending", I never hear it accompanied by "on such and such". Of course, I agree, the extra national guard planes, the military pork spending, the roads to nowhere with the names of their sponsors. However, apart from the military, that's a minor part of the spending. Most of it is for those hallmarks of a decent society: social safety nets.
Clinton was running herd on everyone regarding Bosnia...especially since M. Albright had such a high interest in the area. However, Europe kowtowed to Russia in the UN and Germany specically to Croatia, and the UN blocked a UN-sponsored mission that Clinton had tried to push through to put pressure on the Republican congress to abandon it's anti-nation-building no-war-unless-its-about-direct-national-interests (read oil). Europe stood by because it couldn't figure out what to do without the UN or Nato sponsoring the action.
In sum, Clinton/his admin was the only force at the time trying to put a stop to the insanity in BH. Clinton had no wising-up to do. What he had to do was fight a massive ongoing PR campaign that opposed anything he did.... right or wrong.
To compare Bush I to Bush II on foreign policy...jeez... you can almost not believe they are related...
Pardon the ad hominem nature of my opening... i always mean to say "your argument" instead of "you"... but I sometimes forget to separate these. So, reapply the points thus.
I guess it can end with this: "what's mine is mine to do with as I judge".
When we are children, we usually think everything we touch or that comes into our realm is ours and cry like hell when it's taken away. When we grow up, we learn that what's ours is very relative. Some people's views of things recognize they didn't create they world they live in and benefit from. Others, are a little more modest.
Nothing personal, but you seem more interested and informed on your individual trees than the forest you're living in...or not living in.
Re privacy: Anmeldegesetzte. Yeah. Go ahead, trust all you want. I would rather trust US incompetence that Swiss efficiency.
Re: taxes: 1) When I was living in Switzerland, I was making approximately the same thing as here. My effective tax rate, all inclusive here is about 27% of my gross income. There, it was about 25%. 2) I would actually be tax more there with my current assets, as they are over $1MM, although I haven't done the calculation 3) "Americans already have one of the most intrusive, repressive taxation systems in western society." Ummm is this just (another tree) because you have to file a 1040 even though you're living over there. (Yeah, I found it annoying, too, but I also understand it's necessity.) Otherwise, this seems like a rhetorical flourish without anything behind it.
Re American "values": 1) "a fundamental philosophy of American society is the freedom of the individual and liberty from undue taxation and government intervention". Now let me guess...you're a libertarian! There is no such "philosophy", except in your partisans minds. As I recall, the closest we get to a "philosophy" that can be so neatly captured is the famed "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness", which, for those who regard such statements as coming from historical people living in history, had its main origins in the French enlightenment and the political context of Europe toward the close of the 18th century. You're remark is more a confession of faith than any point in an empirical discussion. 2) "Remember that until the early 20th century, the US" Well, remember that until the late 19th century we had slavery...and remember that until the 20th century, the U.S. had no real standing army in peacetime....and remember that until the late 20th century we had no ban on Jim Crow laws...and until the early 20th century there were no laws regarding safety of food, drugs, radium, what-have-you. Every time I hear this line of argument, I wonder if I'm talking with someone who believes that all change since the hunter-gatherer stage of human development all has been downhill.
Re European govts: "I dispute your point about European governments" Well, feel free to dispute it, but I don't see any Europeans changing too substantially the way they've set up their lives. In fact, in contrast to here, they seem very intent on retaining the "work to live" way of life versus our letting the "live to work" way be determined by the parties most interested in that arrangement
Now let me see.... the logic here is... the U.S. has wars that only mess up other people's streets. Hey! You're right! But let's hope that the Europeans (and for that matter, the rest of the world) don't learn our trick. Oh shirt! They have: 9/11. Maybe we're in for some European style living, now that being an underpopulated continent no longer gives us the security it once did.
Well, having lived in Basel for 1.5 years, I'm well aware of Switzerland's situation.
And yes, I would like to shrink the U.S. to that size, eliminate membership in NATO, U.N., not have all these annoying coastal waters to patrol and regulate and so forth. I would also like to have VAT. I would also like to have the state have as much control and knowledge of its citizens private lives as the Swiss government does. And I also believe in conscription... I guess you got outta that, huh? I'd also like to have us regulate consumption the way the Swiss do and have an asset tax (boy, would that ever generate revenue here!!)
You see, I've lived in 3 European countries...Germany, Switzerland and France and I'm fully aware of the imperfections of these, as well. Not everything sensible that is done in any of these is directly transferrable to the US and vice versa.
However, my big point about this little point is that Americans are big whiners about taxes or any requirement for the "common good". Europeans consistently elect governments that understand and promote this. The US swings back and forth (now more and more back than forth) and tells everyone you can have it all for free, no pain, it's a party! Hell, let's institute the Swiss asset tax instead of an Internet tax.
Slashdot Mirror
U.S. is at the bottom of every list for the developed world. In fact, the U.S. is less and less resembling a developed country in many ways.
-Education
-Health/Longevity
-Debt
-Trade
The only things that keep the U.S. from turning into some crashing 2/3rd world disaster are:
-Immigrants from good education systems
-Acceptance of our Debt (for now)
I go to register, put in the graphic code and:
Server Error in '/' Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.
Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".
Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.
Great. More rainforest destruction for fetishistic, shallow consumers.
We're dead.
I know that with the current political climate, making those who benefit most from our institutions and infrastructure is unfashionable... but a tax on all companies engaged in electrical or electronic businesses.
A governing board of the IEEE could be consulted on the definition of who these businesses are and they would be taxed proportionally to a formula that took into account their revenues and profits and the needs of the IEEE.
After all, that is de facto how the NIST works... only it's called a fee.
It's Ebay's problem and they're obviously doing nothing about it.
Somehow SOMEONE doing NOTHING about it is ok. But this is the usual liburrrtariown claptrap: leave it alone and everyone will be fine getting robbed, poisoned, ripped off, run over, thrown thru the windshield, shot with semi-automatic weapons, etc.
"The Economist, reliably the most insightful English-language news publication"....
As a good Brit would say: "Utter rubbish"
The correct usage would be "AFFECTS". DUH.
If everyone who drives a car here and all drivers of trucks and deliver vehicles drove the way they do in, for example, Sweden or Germany, we would reduce our demand by 15%:
Turn you car off when stopped and never leave it idling.
The really outrageous aspect of this remark is that, clearly, if there is one area of organized human activity Americans seem to have been getting worse at at a faster rate than any other, it's managing. If Dilber didn't exist, he would have to be invented.
My favorite is Ken Lay's "I didn't know".
....and another military exec about to become an aerospace industry exec heading the business area that serves the needs of the initiative started while still on government pay.
I'm starting to take a more benign view of such people. Rather than viewing them as the corrupt officials they are..... hey, they are the only ones creating jobs in this country. After all, we're still a few years away from the moral nadir of outsourcing our military work to our "enemies:.
The remark cited from some clueless person that they're waiting for a viable alternative to MS reminds me of ignorance standard set in the last presidential election. We got Bush and he'll get MS.
Mediocrity's success rides on the ignorance of the consumer.
Please see my "Why don't I just become God?" posting... In case you miss it.
You will lead a richer life. Hey, come to think of it, maybe you'll even have a life to enrich.
You're welcome.
So, again those liberarianiscts are at it again. ...... .... .....
Let me see. In between (in no particular order, go to item 1000):
1) Working my day job
2) Doing my non-day consulting work
3) Doing occasional committee and club work at my son's school
4) Studying the insurance market to try to understand how I can get the best plan and lower premiums
5) Reading the business papers daily to figure out where the economy is going and where I should be
6) Volunteering for my favorite political candidates (still a democracy somewhat)
7) Reading the general news to stay ahead of where the macro social and political things are and are headed
8) Maintaining my German by reading turn-of-the-century novels
9) (No car, thank heaven so no need to bother about all that!)
10) Studying the fixed income markets and the mortage sheets to figure whether to refi again or not
11) Contributing to Open Source discussion groups
12) Studying and paying my bills
13) Reading my personal email (including Spam that gets through/is only suspicious)
14) Helping my wife with her work VPN and other home technical projects
15) Helping all my friends with all their technical problems
16) Writing contracts for various construction projects in my house
17) Studying the wireless market for the best cell phone deal (with this item i can start thinking about shooting myself...or others)
18) Studying the POTS market for the best POTS service
19) Studying the Cable/DSL market for the best high-speed data service
20) Studying the Disability Insurance market for the best coverage/premium
21) Studying the home-care/nursing home market for my father
22) Talking to my father everyday
23) Visiting my father 100 miles away
24) Reading Slashdot
25) Maintaining my website
26) Reading (some of) the handful of technical journals I subscribe to
28) Installing and working with some relevant new technology I've found
100) Learning how to pick and choose among drugs on an unregulated drug market
101) Trying not to get poisoned again from that Salmonella-contaminated beef from the supermarket
102) Protesting at all the automobile , electric power generators, mining, chemical, plastics, battery, consumer goods, etc. companies to get them to stop making my immediate environment barely livable for organic life
103) Trying to get a signal from that underground radio station in our community to get away from Monopol Communications programming
1000) Fight spam on my own
Transitition? Now that's one that had to either be deliberate or influenced by Martians. Or is it Marsians?
We will only defeat the Martians by employing full time editors!
"Unmeasurable". Jeez. Does this guy read books or just make up words?
I hope the robot will do better and use "immeasurable" in such a sentence.
Just what the world needs: more and bigger means of destroying the little bit of unspoiled environment left.
I always wonder whether these people have children (I don't, but...) and what a favor they are doing them by leaving them a world that will look not to different from the New Jersey shore on July 4.
Or maybe the only reason for putting out the fires on the Cuyahoga was so that they could turn in into a wildlife free waterpark.
Not of the U.S. Maybe of Canal Zone. Or, for quite some time now, the Ozone.
How appropriate. Another productivity-sapping waste of money that adds to the mountain of debt being built up named after the guy who (nevertheless cluelessly) started this type of thing.
One can only hope it doesn't end up like it's namesake: a mindless blubbering dangerous puppet aimlessly serving the evil or ill-conceived agendas of a violent wannabe plutocracy.
Strange...I always hear such things from people who are in the door at 9:00 and out the door at 5:00.
But, I guess he's speaking relatively. He's obviously thinking about that single mother with breast cancer who got laid off the day after she was diagnosed.
You know, every time I hear this whine "rampant spending", I never hear it accompanied by "on such and such". Of course, I agree, the extra national guard planes, the military pork spending, the roads to nowhere with the names of their sponsors. However, apart from the military, that's a minor part of the spending. Most of it is for those hallmarks of a decent society: social safety nets.
Next time, get real
Clinton was running herd on everyone regarding Bosnia...especially since M. Albright had such a high interest in the area. However, Europe kowtowed to Russia in the UN and Germany specically to Croatia, and the UN blocked a UN-sponsored mission that Clinton had tried to push through to put pressure on the Republican congress to abandon it's anti-nation-building no-war-unless-its-about-direct-national-interests (read oil).
Europe stood by because it couldn't figure out what to do without the UN or Nato sponsoring the action.
In sum, Clinton/his admin was the only force at the time trying to put a stop to the insanity in BH. Clinton had no wising-up to do. What he had to do was fight a massive ongoing PR campaign that opposed anything he did.... right or wrong.
To compare Bush I to Bush II on foreign policy...jeez... you can almost not believe they are related...
Pardon the ad hominem nature of my opening... i always mean to say "your argument" instead of "you"... but I sometimes forget to separate these. So, reapply the points thus.
I guess it can end with this: "what's mine is mine to do with as I judge".
When we are children, we usually think everything we touch or that comes into our realm is ours and cry like hell when it's taken away. When we grow up, we learn that what's ours is very relative.
Some people's views of things recognize they didn't create they world they live in and benefit from. Others, are a little more modest.
Enjoy your stay in Somalia!
Nothing personal, but you seem more interested and informed on your individual trees than the forest you're living in...or not living in.
Re privacy:
Anmeldegesetzte. Yeah. Go ahead, trust all you want. I would rather trust US incompetence that Swiss efficiency.
Re: taxes:
1) When I was living in Switzerland, I was making approximately the same thing as here. My effective tax rate, all inclusive here is about 27% of my gross income. There, it was about 25%.
2) I would actually be tax more there with my current assets, as they are over $1MM, although I haven't done the calculation
3) "Americans already have one of the most intrusive, repressive taxation systems in western society." Ummm is this just (another tree) because you have to file a 1040 even though you're living over there. (Yeah, I found it annoying, too, but I also understand it's necessity.) Otherwise, this seems like a rhetorical flourish without anything behind it.
Re American "values":
1) "a fundamental philosophy of American society is the freedom of the individual and liberty from undue taxation and government intervention". Now let me guess...you're a libertarian! There is no such "philosophy", except in your partisans minds. As I recall, the closest we get to a "philosophy" that can be so neatly captured is the famed "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness", which, for those who regard such statements as coming from historical people living in history, had its main origins in the French enlightenment and the political context of Europe toward the close of the 18th century.
You're remark is more a confession of faith than any point in an empirical discussion.
2) "Remember that until the early 20th century, the US" Well, remember that until the late 19th century we had slavery...and remember that until the 20th century, the U.S. had no real standing army in peacetime....and remember that until the late 20th century we had no ban on Jim Crow laws...and until the early 20th century there were no laws regarding safety of food, drugs, radium, what-have-you. Every time I hear this line of argument, I wonder if I'm talking with someone who believes that all change since the hunter-gatherer stage of human development all has been downhill.
Re European govts:
"I dispute your point about European governments" Well, feel free to dispute it, but I don't see any Europeans changing too substantially the way they've set up their lives. In fact, in contrast to here, they seem very intent on retaining the "work to live" way of life versus our letting the "live to work" way be determined by the parties most interested in that arrangement
Now let me see.... the logic here is... the U.S. has wars that only mess up other people's streets. Hey! You're right! But let's hope that the Europeans (and for that matter, the rest of the world) don't learn our trick. Oh shirt! They have: 9/11. Maybe we're in for some European style living, now that being an underpopulated continent no longer gives us the security it once did.
Well, having lived in Basel for 1.5 years, I'm well aware of Switzerland's situation.
And yes, I would like to shrink the U.S. to that size, eliminate membership in NATO, U.N., not have all these annoying coastal waters to patrol and regulate and so forth. I would also like to have VAT. I would also like to have the state have as much control and knowledge of its citizens private lives as the Swiss government does. And I also believe in conscription... I guess you got outta that, huh? I'd also like to have us regulate consumption the way the Swiss do and have an asset tax (boy, would that ever generate revenue here!!)
You see, I've lived in 3 European countries...Germany, Switzerland and France and I'm fully aware of the imperfections of these, as well. Not everything sensible that is done in any of these is directly transferrable to the US and vice versa.
However, my big point about this little point is that Americans are big whiners about taxes or any requirement for the "common good". Europeans consistently elect governments that understand and promote this. The US swings back and forth (now more and more back than forth) and tells everyone you can have it all for free, no pain, it's a party! Hell, let's institute the Swiss asset tax instead of an Internet tax.