You posted a link which says, across the entire UK, 81 people were killed with guns in a year.
That many people are killed by guns in any major American city in a year.
I'm not sure what you think your point is, but you're not making it very well.
Oh, and your article mentioned 4000 people shot. Half of them were shot with... air guns. I guess I'm pretty lucky to survive that bb shooting I endured as a kid, eh?
You take the current administration -- heck, ANY government, ever -- at face value when they claim the right to detain citizens indefinitely with no charges filed, extraordinary rendition, unprecedented domestic spying -- you're saying you believe them when they say will only use those powers for the sole purpose of protecting us from the boogeymen, uh, terrorists?
You've got an individual in Iraq, involved in school planning with... wait for it... documents of how other schools plan!
You've got a warning from the Dept of Educaiton to be on the lookout, a month after Beslan. This is what's known in the business as CYA. That warning was not prompted by a specific threat, just current events.
You've got some guys who got on the wrong bus. This is probably the most fishy, but hey, they did get arrested and questioned. And if you google their names all you find is the handful of blogs like the one you posted, so unless you're telling me the government flushed this incident down the memory hole, which would imply some sort of 9/11-type conspiracy in the works...
YOU'VE GOT NOTHING.
Remember when the difference between America and the Soviet Union was that we didn't need to show our papers just to travel inside our own country? That's the type of thing people are talking about when they say their rights are being taken away. As it turns out, their rights are being taken away.
Other countries with sane electoral systems actually have shades of grey.
Really?
Name three. France's fractious electoral system was gamed by Le Pen, the UK has Blair. Russian democracy is in retrograde, Italy can't make it through Act II of the opera, and Germany's Grand Coalition conjoins shades of gray at the expense of white and black. China doesn't have elections, and voting in Japan is like choosing Mothra or Gamera. (Hint: Vote Mothra!)
Before you say "You forgot Poland" there are about 100 other countries where people's votes also don't matter, simply because their countries have become less than relevant. I'm looking at you Canada, Australia, and Iraq. LOL!
That leaves you with, I dunno, India, and to be fair I haven't the faintest clue how the "world's largest Democracy" takes care of business. But I have a hunch "money" still buys, well, whatever it wants. Heck, I'm pretty sure skin color still plays a role. Tata, salesman.
(If you disagree with my post, I kindly suggest you mod me down, get a sex change, and move to Darfur.)
"The batteries were shipped to customers between April 1, 2004 and July 18, 2006. The words "DELL" and "Made in Japan" or "Made in China" or "Battery cell made in Japan, Assembled in China" or "Assembled in Taiwan" are printed on the back of the batteries."
Only batteries manufactured in Korea were not part of the recall.
I don't think is QC issue, more likely a fundamental design flaw/change that for whatever reason was never implemented in Korea. Don't blame the factories of China for churning out batteries that meet a faulty specification. Blame the guys who wrote that spec.
Healthy skepticism is great, but to dismiss the entire field of mental health as the work of QUACKS is ridiculous. You sound like Tom Cruise.
Do not dismiss the role of Big Pharma in codifying new conditions that can now be treated, in pill form. "Ask your doctor if {INSERT EXPENSIVELY CRAFTED NOUN HERE} is right for you."
We are an Instant Gratification culture, we'll always choose the diet pill over exercise.
In essence, you're blaming the market for providing products people (think they) want.
Socialization, i.e., reducing the pressure from market forces on the health-care decision making process, is probably the most effective fix.
Yes, the federal income tax rate is progressive. But come now, federal income taxation is not the only tool in the taxman's shed. (Though, with the abolition of the inheritance tax, a move that stands economic justice on its ear, at least so far as the Founding Fathers were concerned, there is one less tool.)
"Sales and fuel taxes are consumption taxes." Great, I guess I'll stop eating, stop putting fuel in the car so I can drive to work, and stop buying clothes.:)
As for the 9-1-1 tax, that shows up on my phone bill (or at least it did when I had dialtone.) And yes, you can be poor and still have a phone, and a car. And you'll pay the same $100 to renew your registration as someone making orders of magnitude more. Admittedly this may not exactly be a tax, per se, it probably varies from state to state. But the burden is carried proporionately more by those with less wealth.
As others have stated it's a matter of relative terms. In other words, so what if a poor person in America would be rich in some third world country, it's not like they can just move there and presto! become rich. You can't just add up the wealth, you have to look at cost of living, purchasing power, etc. Not to mention they probably wouldn't let you in the country since you'd just take a job from a citizen.
I'm sure you know all this. What I can't understand why you're so combative regarding the simple fact that, when you add it all up, our tax system is regressive.
For example, FICA: If you make over about $75,000 a year you max out your FICA contribution and they stopy deducting it from your payroll. Over $75K , the more you make, the less you pay, percentage-wise, to FICA. That my friend is the very definition of regressive.
Now you can argue all you want the reasons for the cap, and how much should we be taxed in the first place, but no amount of squirming is going to change the fact that the overall tax burden is regressive.
Not that I have any suggestions on how to fix it (aside from eliminiating or heigtening the FICA cap and reintroducting the means test for social security eligibility), but it is in society's best interest to enable the working poor to become the working middle-class, and identifying one of the obstacles, namely, a regressive tax structure, seems like a good place to start.
You're right, the Federal Income Tax is structured in such a way that "the poor" might actually get money rather than pay.
But they still have to pay sales tax, fuel tax, vehicle excise tax, 9-1-1 tax, etc. etc.
The overall tax burden in the United States is generally regressive; those with lower incomes pay proportionately more in taxes than those with higher incomes. And it's getting more lopsided as time goes on. Just a few years ago (back around the time the oil revenue was going to pay for the war, haha) we did away with the inheritance tax.
I'm surprised you aren't aware of these basic facts.
I remained convinced that the entire idea of "Intellectual Property" is broken, contradictory, and senseless. \strongly agree
If somebody has some beneficial "intellectual property" and they don't want to share it with the rest of the world, doesn't that pretty much make them a selfish, greedy bastard?
Intellectual property law enshrines greed and selfishness. Doesn't sound very "Enlightenment" to me; I wonder what our founding fathers were thinking when they came up with it? Let's have a look.
Article 1, Section 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
Nothing in there about protecting anyone's profits. The original intent was to promote progress. We have developed a whole body of law which has clearly lost sight of this goal, and in fact it actively works against the very progress it was intended to promote!
This, from what I understand, is a characteristic found throughout large, bureaucratic complex systems. Over time they come to actively hinder the very thing they were attempting to facilitate.
Consider, for example, the fact that the person with the largest influence over your quality of care at the hospital is the person who performs the initial data entry when you check in. In other words, the greatest influence is wielded by one of the least trained, least educated, and lowest paid individuals in the entire organization.
It had to do with incompetence of the person hired to set it up. Unless that person falsified their resume, I would place the blame on the incompetence of the person who extended the job offer.
If you hire someone with no arms to flip burgers, don't blame them when your hamburger stand is a failure. Unless s/he wore prosthetic arms to the interview or something. And even then, you still made a bad hire.
they [the RIAA] would lose their enforcement power and have to rely on the police to do the work.
The police? But what if the police don't give a rat's ass if someone is downloading MP3s, because there are real crimes being committed? (By real crimes, I mean black people driving cars, of course.)
But seriously, this is akin to what just happened in Germany, with the high court saying "sorry, but we can't be bothered with the petty offense of MP3 downloaders. Find another stooge."
No, I don't think the police will be much help. The RIAA is going to have to call in the big guns. Soon those trolling weirdos from "To Catch A Predator" will start doing their dirty work.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, then we just stole the tea and planted it in India anyway. I guess that would be an IP violation in today's world.
Depends. Was it Roundup Ready tea?
DU is a health for the same reason lead is. Not because of radioactivity, but because it's a heavy metal.
I'd like to see Bono pay her legal bill in full.
Maybe Trent Reznor or Radiohead or Smashing Pumpkins are more likely choices.
What? Muslims, Christians, and Jews are all children of Abraham. They all worship the same deity.
Large aspects of the Boeing 777 design were tracked using several thousand Excel spreadsheets.
Enjoy your next flight!
You posted a link which says, across the entire UK, 81 people were killed with guns in a year.
... air guns. I guess I'm pretty lucky to survive that bb shooting I endured as a kid, eh?
That many people are killed by guns in any major American city in a year.
I'm not sure what you think your point is, but you're not making it very well.
Oh, and your article mentioned 4000 people shot. Half of them were shot with
You just don't hear about how many crimes are actually prevented by guns.
So you're saying the USA, which leads the first world in gun-related crime, would actually have more gun-related crime if we didn't have so many guns?
How's that work, exactly?
I have no idea how, when I hit Ctrl-V, "Seattle City Light" came up as the subject of this post, but:
Your corporate customers will, on the whole, pay for your software.
You're wasting your time coding vs. the miscreants, why are people so perpetually clueless about this?
Those people you just described have nothing to do with the shot-callers. Rather, they are the grunts in the trenches.
You should take a statistics class while you're at it; a sample size of {people you know} don't mean much.
Let's take this offline. Hit my journal. The Truth Is Out There.
That's so cute, your little map shows Pakistan and Egypt (not to mention most of Africa) as having "methods of election."
You take the current administration -- heck, ANY government, ever -- at face value when they claim the right to detain citizens indefinitely with no charges filed, extraordinary rendition, unprecedented domestic spying -- you're saying you believe them when they say will only use those powers for the sole purpose of protecting us from the boogeymen, uh, terrorists?
Are you out of your fucking mind?
Go fly a kite, er, commercial airline.
YOUR LINKS ARE DUMB.
You've got an individual in Iraq, involved in school planning with... wait for it... documents of how other schools plan!
You've got a warning from the Dept of Educaiton to be on the lookout, a month after Beslan. This is what's known in the business as CYA. That warning was not prompted by a specific threat, just current events.
You've got some guys who got on the wrong bus. This is probably the most fishy, but hey, they did get arrested and questioned. And if you google their names all you find is the handful of blogs like the one you posted, so unless you're telling me the government flushed this incident down the memory hole, which would imply some sort of 9/11-type conspiracy in the works...
YOU'VE GOT NOTHING.
Remember when the difference between America and the Soviet Union was that we didn't need to show our papers just to travel inside our own country? That's the type of thing people are talking about when they say their rights are being taken away. As it turns out, their rights are being taken away.
Other countries with sane electoral systems actually have shades of grey.
Really?
Name three. France's fractious electoral system was gamed by Le Pen, the UK has Blair. Russian democracy is in retrograde, Italy can't make it through Act II of the opera, and Germany's Grand Coalition conjoins shades of gray at the expense of white and black. China doesn't have elections, and voting in Japan is like choosing Mothra or Gamera. (Hint: Vote Mothra!)
Before you say "You forgot Poland" there are about 100 other countries where people's votes also don't matter, simply because their countries have become less than relevant. I'm looking at you Canada, Australia, and Iraq. LOL!
That leaves you with, I dunno, India, and to be fair I haven't the faintest clue how the "world's largest Democracy" takes care of business. But I have a hunch "money" still buys, well, whatever it wants. Heck, I'm pretty sure skin color still plays a role. Tata, salesman.
(If you disagree with my post, I kindly suggest you mod me down, get a sex change, and move to Darfur.)
I'm not here to defend Chinese industry, but it's not just China.
:)
From https://www.dellbatteryprogram.com/ (why is this a https: page?)
"The batteries were shipped to customers between April 1, 2004 and July 18, 2006. The words "DELL" and "Made in Japan" or "Made in China" or "Battery cell made in Japan, Assembled in China" or "Assembled in Taiwan" are printed on the back of the batteries."
Only batteries manufactured in Korea were not part of the recall.
I don't think is QC issue, more likely a fundamental design flaw/change that for whatever reason was never implemented in Korea. Don't blame the factories of China for churning out batteries that meet a faulty specification. Blame the guys who wrote that spec.
In other words, blame Sony.
Healthy skepticism is great, but to dismiss the entire field of mental health as the work of QUACKS is ridiculous. You sound like Tom Cruise.
Do not dismiss the role of Big Pharma in codifying new conditions that can now be treated, in pill form. "Ask your doctor if {INSERT EXPENSIVELY CRAFTED NOUN HERE} is right for you."
We are an Instant Gratification culture, we'll always choose the diet pill over exercise.
In essence, you're blaming the market for providing products people (think they) want.
Socialization, i.e., reducing the pressure from market forces on the health-care decision making process, is probably the most effective fix.
These days EVERYTHING is a network resource
Everyone, let's welcome John Gage to Slashdot.
Though I must say, I'm intrigued by your choice of username, and that your UID is even higher than mine.
Nobody is actually in shape for the kind of physical stress that combat puts on a person, you simply put out all you have and hope its enough.
Easy. Just make sure, on the day of combat, that you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Yes, the federal income tax rate is progressive. But come now, federal income taxation is not the only tool in the taxman's shed. (Though, with the abolition of the inheritance tax, a move that stands economic justice on its ear, at least so far as the Founding Fathers were concerned, there is one less tool.)
:)
"Sales and fuel taxes are consumption taxes." Great, I guess I'll stop eating, stop putting fuel in the car so I can drive to work, and stop buying clothes.
As for the 9-1-1 tax, that shows up on my phone bill (or at least it did when I had dialtone.) And yes, you can be poor and still have a phone, and a car. And you'll pay the same $100 to renew your registration as someone making orders of magnitude more. Admittedly this may not exactly be a tax, per se, it probably varies from state to state. But the burden is carried proporionately more by those with less wealth.
As others have stated it's a matter of relative terms. In other words, so what if a poor person in America would be rich in some third world country, it's not like they can just move there and presto! become rich. You can't just add up the wealth, you have to look at cost of living, purchasing power, etc. Not to mention they probably wouldn't let you in the country since you'd just take a job from a citizen.
I'm sure you know all this. What I can't understand why you're so combative regarding the simple fact that, when you add it all up, our tax system is regressive.
For example, FICA: If you make over about $75,000 a year you max out your FICA contribution and they stopy deducting it from your payroll. Over $75K , the more you make, the less you pay, percentage-wise, to FICA. That my friend is the very definition of regressive.
Now you can argue all you want the reasons for the cap, and how much should we be taxed in the first place, but no amount of squirming is going to change the fact that the overall tax burden is regressive.
Not that I have any suggestions on how to fix it (aside from eliminiating or heigtening the FICA cap and reintroducting the means test for social security eligibility), but it is in society's best interest to enable the working poor to become the working middle-class, and identifying one of the obstacles, namely, a regressive tax structure, seems like a good place to start.
The poor don't pay taxes in the US
Yes they do.
You're right, the Federal Income Tax is structured in such a way that "the poor" might actually get money rather than pay.
But they still have to pay sales tax, fuel tax, vehicle excise tax, 9-1-1 tax, etc. etc.
The overall tax burden in the United States is generally regressive; those with lower incomes pay proportionately more in taxes than those with higher incomes. And it's getting more lopsided as time goes on. Just a few years ago (back around the time the oil revenue was going to pay for the war, haha) we did away with the inheritance tax.
I'm surprised you aren't aware of these basic facts.
I remained convinced that the entire idea of "Intellectual Property" is broken, contradictory, and senseless.
\strongly agree
If somebody has some beneficial "intellectual property" and they don't want to share it with the rest of the world, doesn't that pretty much make them a selfish, greedy bastard?
Intellectual property law enshrines greed and selfishness. Doesn't sound very "Enlightenment" to me; I wonder what our founding fathers were thinking when they came up with it? Let's have a look.
Article 1, Section 8:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
Nothing in there about protecting anyone's profits. The original intent was to promote progress. We have developed a whole body of law which has clearly lost sight of this goal, and in fact it actively works against the very progress it was intended to promote!
This, from what I understand, is a characteristic found throughout large, bureaucratic complex systems. Over time they come to actively hinder the very thing they were attempting to facilitate.
Consider, for example, the fact that the person with the largest influence over your quality of care at the hospital is the person who performs the initial data entry when you check in. In other words, the greatest influence is wielded by one of the least trained, least educated, and lowest paid individuals in the entire organization.
Suggestion: Just run Vista in a VM on those occasions when you must.
Thanks, that is a great read.
It had to do with incompetence of the person hired to set it up.
Unless that person falsified their resume, I would place the blame on the incompetence of the person who extended the job offer.
If you hire someone with no arms to flip burgers, don't blame them when your hamburger stand is a failure. Unless s/he wore prosthetic arms to the interview or something. And even then, you still made a bad hire.
they [the RIAA] would lose their enforcement power and have to rely on the police to do the work.
The police? But what if the police don't give a rat's ass if someone is downloading MP3s, because there are real crimes being committed? (By real crimes, I mean black people driving cars, of course.)
But seriously, this is akin to what just happened in Germany, with the high court saying "sorry, but we can't be bothered with the petty offense of MP3 downloaders. Find another stooge."
No, I don't think the police will be much help. The RIAA is going to have to call in the big guns. Soon those trolling weirdos from "To Catch A Predator" will start doing their dirty work.