Not always -- some child support claims are managed by the State collection apparatus in some of the states. All of which assumes you're limiting the discussion to the U.S. There are probably other exceptions.
Because the 5 conversatives are all relatively young . . . I'm not about to pull a Robertson anytime soon, but it seems thats the only way this court will shift under Obama.
McDonalds requires every employee to sign away class action rights -- boom, they can nick a buck off each employee every day and it will never be worth an individual suit. They can just fire you as the total from you approaches the cost of filing your claim.
Add in Walmart and all the other chain stores and shady dealers. This ruling was NOT limited to consumer cases.
I disagree that a workforce tilted toward humanities majors is "better" than a less educated person free from debt and in the workforce sooner. There are many ways to educate the populace, like supporting PBS and culture events in their home towns -- but colleges often promise the world only to deliver a shitty job and a debt load that drags you further from owning your own home and being sefl-sufficient.
I wish it was not so, but that's my opinion. Shit on it as you will.
As designed originally SSI would take wages from working Americans and pay them to retired Americans. However, over the course of the program's existence politicians (the good kind that fix things) saw trouble ahead as populations grew in bubbles, like the baby boom generation and the echo boomers that followed. If the system had been left unchanged then baby boomers would get equally small shares of the income taken from the gap generation until the echo boomers got up to speed economically and refunded the system.
Thus: The Fix -- create a trust fund and increase the rate of taxation while the baby boomers were still working. Here the boomers put in capital in excess of the systems needs over the course of their employment (starting in the 80's I believe, though there were early tweaks in this direction). The trust fund would invest in Treasury bonds (safest most secure investment in the world, aka "IOUs" from the U.S. Government backed by a constitutional requirement that the government MUST print money to cover those debts if they cannot raise the capital elsewhere).
Thus, until very recently you were paying into a system that was saving funds for your own retirement. However, when the recession hit and unemployment broke 8%, the income stream going into the trust fund tanked. (thanks in large part to early claimaints). Now the system is running "in the red" and "as designed." SSI is drawing down on the trust fund. Currently there is enough money in the fund to cover full SSI benefits for everyone who retires out for the next 27-35 years (based on how much you fiddle with unemployment and salary shrinkage in the math -- the expectation is that aggregate salary in the workforce will decrease as the bulk of older more experiened workers bow out).
The myths: There are additionally a bunch of mythical attacks that come after SSI -- for example that it can't work now because we're living older than we used to. We're not. If you survive to age 18, life expectency is roughly flat since 1930 or so -- but when you include the massive number of people who didn't die as children from polio, dysenterry and malnutrition, the number bounces up.
Social Security is driving the deficit -- no, its not -- medicare is. End of life care is growing in cost at an exponential rate at the same time that the boomers are retiring. This is no accident -- there are identifiable market drivers (increase profit margins in the pharma-tech and insurance industries chief among them) but the basic answer is this: We've embraced miracle drugs and research medicine in the United States. That shit is expensive. Fix that? Only if you kill people or socialize the technology. Or, we raise taxes and ride it out. Personally, I'm good either way.
The only funds they extract from the U.S. government goes to pay for franking expenses (your congressmen sending you letters) and other government uses. The business pays for itself otherwise.
I know we're all hot and bothered by the thought of automated conspiracy theories about government spying... but warrants are stupid easy to get and they can force you to unlock your e-mail for review or put you in jail for refusing. That's in the US where there's a presumption of innocence (Hi UK) and procedural integrity (looking at you Italy, France and Spain).
That's not a quickly overlooked triffle. Low gravity causes loss of bone and muscle density and allows organs to shift about in ways that could make it extremely difficult to do the work an mars explorer would be required to accomplish in the first few weeks. Think about it, not only do they have to survive land-fall (sudden jarring impact after months losing bone and muscle mass -- remember, there's no water or runways on Mars to take the edge off that landing) but they then need to be able to get up and do whatever equipment setup NASA dosen't leave to robots (more below).
Then, they either need to bring enough equipment with them to establish a long duration stay on Mars or jump back out before their bodies have had time to rebuild. That's a pretty scary scenerio.
Which brings me to the part that always bugs me -- why land at all? It's a huge waste of resources. If they got close enough to direct robotic explorers with real-time control, that would be a major advancement. And, if we build it right, they could leave some of their equipment in orbit -- contributing to a space station on the Mars side. This eliminates some problems (fear of gravity wrecking astronauts) and introduces others (at least twleve months in low gravity is not terribly safe).
What I'm curious about, and maybe someone can explain this -- why don't they just design the entire craft to tumble -- the whole centrifugal gravity concept that's been with us since serious futurists first looked at the problem of low gravity and said "hey, wait, here's a replacement." I'm betting the answer is something borring like "dosen't work" or "tears the craft apart" . . . yes/no?
See, when you're dead all the important organs required to laugh, including the brain, have this nasty habit of rotting off in a way that inhibits laughter.
Sometimes shrugging off evidence and flipping off the world is wisdom, sometimes its just stupidity. I do know that for all the claims coming from certain quaters of the U.S. poltical scene that there is a green/gay "agneda" which is so powerful and dominant that it has wrapped up 90%+ of the world's scientists in its conspiritorial grips, global tempatures continue to rise.
I don't futz with the IT guys' systems. They have their process, I have my home network if I want to tinker.
Amusingly enough though, they caught wind of my IT background and had my office located across from their cube-pod. So they can keep an eye on "the guy who thinks he knows computers." Ironically, many of the systems here are so old that I do know how they work inside and out, even after 7 years out of the buisness... but, I've got my home network if I want to tinker.:D
The authors suggest that organized crime might be financing itself in part through movie piracy (PDF)
I'm sorry -- but doesn't that miss the whole point of organized crime -- to wit -- organizing together for mutual success in criminal enterprise with the goal of MAKING MONEY. Organized crime doesn't finance an higher goal or sinister motive by committing crime, organized criminals engage in crime together in order to MAKE MONEY.
Wow -- the ratio of mantra to mental effort on that post slid heavily toward BS.
The market dictactes the most efficient way for capital to achieve it's end -- the creation of additional capital in the hands of those who hold capital. For the few who succeed in this effort it is an amazingly efficient system. Unfortunately these efficiencies include allowing the poor and the elderly to die of starvation and lack of health care -- a very economical solution to excess labor -- but one that our society fortunately rejected in Victorian England.
The problem with market efficiency arguments are that they rarely consider the fact that we have an inefficient number of mouths to feed. The key force of market efficiency is destruction, the stripping away of that which cannot survive on its own -- like bad banks and people born with diseases that lock them out of the job market -- allowing them to die makes the market better.
We do not have a free market, and we have rejected the concept that market efficiency is the same as human efficiency. Face facts, if you sat down the polis and debated between a pure free market solution -- including the mass starvation, depredation of wealth, exclusion and disolution of the middle class, they would rather string you up than vote for your dogma.
Free market capitalism is the opposition to hardline communism -- both extremes are corrupt and useless ideological dead weight. Get over it.
Ancient saying of the lawyer code:
If the law is against you, argue the facts.
If the facts are against you, argue the law.
If both the law and the facts are against you, speak loudly and with great indignation.
-GiH
Actually it's for realized ascensions to wealth.
If you get lucky and find a million dollars you haven't sold anything or provided a service, but you need to pay taxes on it.
At least under the U.S. Federal tax code.
I wish you were right... but I know I'm too weak to live up to that. If the game is super-sex-expols-awesome, I'm going to buy it.
But I will plot my revenge for decades.
This isn't a starship trooper scenerio -- it's an exoskeleton.
The original specs the DoD put out called for enhanced lifting capacity, the ability to move at 3mph for more than an hour, 1 5-10ft vertical jump, and 300 - 600 lbs of lifting force.
One of the consistent complaints you hear back from Iraq about weapons tech is weight -- the tracking and communications tools weigh too much, take up space that could be ammo, and essentially aren't all that useful.
Your proposed technology is basically an expensive flash bang with knockout gas.
The DoD isn't into making robots because they're cool -- nor into flights of fantasy with 10 ton mechs lumbering around.. but they do like useful tools, and they pay an awful lot in the hope of producing 1 in 10 technologies that actually works right.
Is the human form really the ideal form for urban warfare? Why not a swarm of robotic bees with taser stings? Furthermore, you aren't restricted to one form factor. You can have robotic spy-flies, robotic sapper-rats, robotic wall battering elephants. Sure -- but what's easier, building a frame for a human to drive, or designing tiny robots with tazers and a fail-safe AI to drive them?
miniaturization is the beast in this process. Getting something human sized has taken them years and years. Your idea is great, but much further off.
-GiH
but I can't think of any valid reason for two legs.
Psychological shock value
navigating narrow alleys / urban warfare generally
Intuitive combat tactics
BECAUSE IT'S COOL
okay, that last item sounds like fanboi-ism, but bear in mind that one of the roles played by military equipment is recruitment. Drive a mech!, shit, I might have to enlist.
-GiH
b) I am part of his constituancy actually -- currently out of state for school. I will probably never get a chance to vote for him though, since I'll be moving further in toward the city when I'm done here.
Congress likes to talk to professionals, lawyers, doctors, PhDs.
Congress rarely invites someone who writes code for a living to talk to them about technology. More often then not you wind up with a room full of lawyers talking to a panel of lawyers about how technology works. That is, when they don't just invite Billy G in to tell them what the H1-B Visa program should look like. (I know.. Billy used to be a coder, sort of, once, maybe.. but now he's repping as a buisiness man.)
Anyway -- if we did have a genunine coder in congress, than this community would have a real representative of those interests common to programs -- like say H1-B visas and net neutrality.
Slashdot Mirror
Not always -- some child support claims are managed by the State collection apparatus in some of the states. All of which assumes you're limiting the discussion to the U.S. There are probably other exceptions.
Because the 5 conversatives are all relatively young . . . I'm not about to pull a Robertson anytime soon, but it seems thats the only way this court will shift under Obama.
-GiH
McDonalds requires every employee to sign away class action rights -- boom, they can nick a buck off each employee every day and it will never be worth an individual suit. They can just fire you as the total from you approaches the cost of filing your claim.
Add in Walmart and all the other chain stores and shady dealers. This ruling was NOT limited to consumer cases.
-GiH
(Yes, IAAL)
i.e. -- Congrats, ATT loves you, you're no longer a lawyer!!
I disagree that a workforce tilted toward humanities majors is "better" than a less educated person free from debt and in the workforce sooner. There are many ways to educate the populace, like supporting PBS and culture events in their home towns -- but colleges often promise the world only to deliver a shitty job and a debt load that drags you further from owning your own home and being sefl-sufficient.
I wish it was not so, but that's my opinion. Shit on it as you will.
-GiH
Thus: The Fix -- create a trust fund and increase the rate of taxation while the baby boomers were still working. Here the boomers put in capital in excess of the systems needs over the course of their employment (starting in the 80's I believe, though there were early tweaks in this direction). The trust fund would invest in Treasury bonds (safest most secure investment in the world, aka "IOUs" from the U.S. Government backed by a constitutional requirement that the government MUST print money to cover those debts if they cannot raise the capital elsewhere).
Thus, until very recently you were paying into a system that was saving funds for your own retirement. However, when the recession hit and unemployment broke 8%, the income stream going into the trust fund tanked. (thanks in large part to early claimaints). Now the system is running "in the red" and "as designed." SSI is drawing down on the trust fund. Currently there is enough money in the fund to cover full SSI benefits for everyone who retires out for the next 27-35 years (based on how much you fiddle with unemployment and salary shrinkage in the math -- the expectation is that aggregate salary in the workforce will decrease as the bulk of older more experiened workers bow out).
The myths: There are additionally a bunch of mythical attacks that come after SSI -- for example that it can't work now because we're living older than we used to. We're not. If you survive to age 18, life expectency is roughly flat since 1930 or so -- but when you include the massive number of people who didn't die as children from polio, dysenterry and malnutrition, the number bounces up.
Social Security is driving the deficit -- no, its not -- medicare is. End of life care is growing in cost at an exponential rate at the same time that the boomers are retiring. This is no accident -- there are identifiable market drivers (increase profit margins in the pharma-tech and insurance industries chief among them) but the basic answer is this: We've embraced miracle drugs and research medicine in the United States. That shit is expensive. Fix that? Only if you kill people or socialize the technology. Or, we raise taxes and ride it out. Personally, I'm good either way.
-GiH
The only funds they extract from the U.S. government goes to pay for franking expenses (your congressmen sending you letters) and other government uses. The business pays for itself otherwise.
I know we're all hot and bothered by the thought of automated conspiracy theories about government spying... but warrants are stupid easy to get and they can force you to unlock your e-mail for review or put you in jail for refusing. That's in the US where there's a presumption of innocence (Hi UK) and procedural integrity (looking at you Italy, France and Spain).
That's not a quickly overlooked triffle. Low gravity causes loss of bone and muscle density and allows organs to shift about in ways that could make it extremely difficult to do the work an mars explorer would be required to accomplish in the first few weeks. Think about it, not only do they have to survive land-fall (sudden jarring impact after months losing bone and muscle mass -- remember, there's no water or runways on Mars to take the edge off that landing) but they then need to be able to get up and do whatever equipment setup NASA dosen't leave to robots (more below).
Then, they either need to bring enough equipment with them to establish a long duration stay on Mars or jump back out before their bodies have had time to rebuild. That's a pretty scary scenerio.
Which brings me to the part that always bugs me -- why land at all? It's a huge waste of resources. If they got close enough to direct robotic explorers with real-time control, that would be a major advancement. And, if we build it right, they could leave some of their equipment in orbit -- contributing to a space station on the Mars side. This eliminates some problems (fear of gravity wrecking astronauts) and introduces others (at least twleve months in low gravity is not terribly safe).
What I'm curious about, and maybe someone can explain this -- why don't they just design the entire craft to tumble -- the whole centrifugal gravity concept that's been with us since serious futurists first looked at the problem of low gravity and said "hey, wait, here's a replacement." I'm betting the answer is something borring like "dosen't work" or "tears the craft apart" . . . yes/no?
-GiH
See, when you're dead all the important organs required to laugh, including the brain, have this nasty habit of rotting off in a way that inhibits laughter.
Sometimes shrugging off evidence and flipping off the world is wisdom, sometimes its just stupidity. I do know that for all the claims coming from certain quaters of the U.S. poltical scene that there is a green/gay "agneda" which is so powerful and dominant that it has wrapped up 90%+ of the world's scientists in its conspiritorial grips, global tempatures continue to rise.
-GiH
I don't futz with the IT guys' systems. They have their process, I have my home network if I want to tinker. Amusingly enough though, they caught wind of my IT background and had my office located across from their cube-pod. So they can keep an eye on "the guy who thinks he knows computers." Ironically, many of the systems here are so old that I do know how they work inside and out, even after 7 years out of the buisness... but, I've got my home network if I want to tinker. :D
... the Chinese can't steal this technology.
-GiH
The authors suggest that organized crime might be financing itself in part through movie piracy (PDF)
I'm sorry -- but doesn't that miss the whole point of organized crime -- to wit -- organizing together for mutual success in criminal enterprise with the goal of MAKING MONEY. Organized crime doesn't finance an higher goal or sinister motive by committing crime, organized criminals engage in crime together in order to MAKE MONEY.
-GiH
The market dictactes the most efficient way for capital to achieve it's end -- the creation of additional capital in the hands of those who hold capital. For the few who succeed in this effort it is an amazingly efficient system. Unfortunately these efficiencies include allowing the poor and the elderly to die of starvation and lack of health care -- a very economical solution to excess labor -- but one that our society fortunately rejected in Victorian England.
The problem with market efficiency arguments are that they rarely consider the fact that we have an inefficient number of mouths to feed. The key force of market efficiency is destruction, the stripping away of that which cannot survive on its own -- like bad banks and people born with diseases that lock them out of the job market -- allowing them to die makes the market better.
We do not have a free market, and we have rejected the concept that market efficiency is the same as human efficiency. Face facts, if you sat down the polis and debated between a pure free market solution -- including the mass starvation, depredation of wealth, exclusion and disolution of the middle class, they would rather string you up than vote for your dogma.
Free market capitalism is the opposition to hardline communism -- both extremes are corrupt and useless ideological dead weight. Get over it.
-GiH
wisdom should be rewarded.
Ancient saying of the lawyer code: If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law. If both the law and the facts are against you, speak loudly and with great indignation. -GiH
Actually it's for realized ascensions to wealth. If you get lucky and find a million dollars you haven't sold anything or provided a service, but you need to pay taxes on it. At least under the U.S. Federal tax code.
I wish you were right... but I know I'm too weak to live up to that. If the game is super-sex-expols-awesome, I'm going to buy it. But I will plot my revenge for decades.
Yay!
I hate the idea of funding the development of content that only 5% of the player base is intended to enjoy.
Sorry, but I want them to spend their development $$s making content I can get into with my wife and a few friends.
cc
-GiH
Tazers are dangerous. Multiple tazings, or those near the heart, especially so. -GiH
This isn't a starship trooper scenerio -- it's an exoskeleton.
The original specs the DoD put out called for enhanced lifting capacity, the ability to move at 3mph for more than an hour, 1 5-10ft vertical jump, and 300 - 600 lbs of lifting force.
One of the consistent complaints you hear back from Iraq about weapons tech is weight -- the tracking and communications tools weigh too much, take up space that could be ammo, and essentially aren't all that useful.
Your proposed technology is basically an expensive flash bang with knockout gas.
The DoD isn't into making robots because they're cool -- nor into flights of fantasy with 10 ton mechs lumbering around.. but they do like useful tools, and they pay an awful lot in the hope of producing 1 in 10 technologies that actually works right.
-GiH
Psychological shock value
navigating narrow alleys / urban warfare generally
Intuitive combat tactics
BECAUSE IT'S COOL
okay, that last item sounds like fanboi-ism, but bear in mind that one of the roles played by military equipment is recruitment. Drive a mech!, shit, I might have to enlist. -GiH
a) I said "If we had"
b) I am part of his constituancy actually -- currently out of state for school. I will probably never get a chance to vote for him though, since I'll be moving further in toward the city when I'm done here.
-GiH
Congress likes to talk to professionals, lawyers, doctors, PhDs.
Congress rarely invites someone who writes code for a living to talk to them about technology. More often then not you wind up with a room full of lawyers talking to a panel of lawyers about how technology works. That is, when they don't just invite Billy G in to tell them what the H1-B Visa program should look like. (I know.. Billy used to be a coder, sort of, once, maybe.. but now he's repping as a buisiness man.)
Anyway -- if we did have a genunine coder in congress, than this community would have a real representative of those interests common to programs -- like say H1-B visas and net neutrality.
-GiH