The last Democratic president was doing things quite clearly differently (i.e. supported Kyoto and didn't suppress embarrassing research results)
He supported Kyoto so much he didn't even submit it to the Senate for ratification.
If scientists want to speak any way they wish, they should bank roll their own research. As long as someone else is paying their salaries and research budgets, they will always have to produce results with permission of the person or organization doing the funding (in this article, that's the federal government). Now, if the government wasn't funding global warming research (which it shouldn't be) then no one could complain that any administration is influencing the research. If this research is so important, someone else can pay for it. If it isn't so important, I shouldn't be forced to pay for it.
Apples vs. Oranges
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Gmail vs Pine
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Stay tuned for the article on apples versus oranges. While many like the thick orange skin, record numbers are switching to the soft red skin of an apple.
Seriously, GMail and Pine do totally different things. What's the point?
Weren't large parts of the debt paid off [at one time] during the Clinton era?
During the Clinton administration, the (Republican) Congress passed the budget that had a surplus. That means the federal budget was taking in more tax money than it was spending. By the end of the Clinton administration, the economy was in a slump (thanks to Chairman Greenspan's insistance on a high prime interest rate.) Combined with September 11, 2001 the economy entered a weak recession, and the budget surplus became a defecit (meaning the national debt began to increase.) It should be noted that a budget surplus can be translated to "over taxation," since the government should never operate as a bank.
If most of the debt is held within the US and the govt pays it off using tax money, then in effect the cooperations are profiting from those paying taxes [which may be the most difficult on the lower middle classes] as well as the initial expendatures that caused the debt.
The people who buy the debt profit from it. You or an a corporation (which is really an artifical person) can buy up U.S. savings bonds. You or a corporation will be paid back more than you paid initially for said bond. So you or a corporation can make money off of lending money to the government for a period of time. It should be noted that taxes should be lower for most everyone so they can invest more of their money in things they see fit.
But in order for that to happen, the public had to pay for it through taxes... And those with large incomes are relatively unencumbered by taxes in the same way the lower-income familes are.
Corporations and citizens pay taxes. Those with large incomes pay the majority of taxes in the country. In order for the national debt to be reduced the government can either raise taxes above the expendature level or lower expendatures below the tax level or some combination thereof. This frees up money to pay off debt (for the government, or for you if you replace "taxes" with "earnings.") It should be noted that paying off the federal debt too quickly will upset investors. It really shouldn't be paid back quicker than the term the bonds were issued for, because recalling bonds means investors aren't getting what they expected.
Who will have the better quality of life? Is it easier to live off $9,000 a year or $90,000?
Is it easier to live working part time instead of working 60 hours a week? Is it easier to live without spending years (not to mention thousands of dollars) in college or going directly to work? These are of course value judgements.
This is the principle of Progressive Taxation; people who have more money pay a bit more so those who don't have much money pay a lot less, on the theory that the poor people need the money to survive more than the rich.
This is the principle of Progressive Taxation; people who have more money pay a penalty so those who don't have much money get tax cuts, on the theory that the rich people need to be taxed more than the poor. Doesn't sound very "fair" to me.
However, this does not take away the fact that they are facilitating a crime.
Much like makers of P2P software are facilitating the crime of copyright infringement? Tools in and of themselves are not good or bad, it's the use of good or bad. Don't blame the tool, blame the user.
Having the citizens select the precincts to be autided introduces an abstraction layer.
No, it removes the randomness. You get 10 people who will pick their own precinct, the one next to them, the one where they work, the one their mom lives in, and etc. This is not random.
Select all drivers licenses ending with 6.
How do I know that 90% of the people with DL#s ending in 6 are your friends, and that they will pick precincts that you didn't ballot stuff? Your plan is not statistically valid. Put all the precint numbers in a hat and draw from it, use a cryptographically secure random number generator, etc - don't let people do it because people are not random.
America signed the UN charter. The UN charter considers it a crime to go to war except in imminent self-defence, or when authorised by the UN security council.
The currency or futures/options trading markets have been doing this for years.
Yea, but in the US these markets are regulated. Therefore, the companies can't just produce stock out of nothing. Therefore the stock is rare, and if demand is higher than the supply, the stock has a positive value.
Contrast this with the game. The game designers can pump out islands as fast as they can hit copy and paste. There's no regulation to stop them from just adding another island, and another island, as long as they want. Sure, this guy paid thousands of dollars for his island. After the game produces enough islands for everyone that wants one, the price could be down to a dollar an island.
how is this any different from buying an over priced pair of shoes? or a nice car that costs $250k USD? Or a diamond necklace that is not truly rare at all?
The difference is that the game producers can very easily produce whatever they want in the game. Fancy shoes take raw material (leather, which takes raising a cow and tanning the hide and so on) and manufacturing (a hand craftsman that produces sharp looking shoes) which all takes time. Thus fancy shoes are more rare than a copy and paste action on a pair of shoes in a game. A nice car is more rare than a copy and paste action on a car in a game (Grand Theft Auto generates fancy cars all day if you're in the right part of town.) A diamond necklace is rare because the De Beers company hoards diamonds. Say there are a million gem quality diamonds mined in a year, they buy 800,000 of them and release 250,000 to the market. It doesn't matter that there are 550,000 diamonds out there, YOU can't buy them. So to you they're rare. And because they're rare for you, you'll pay more for them. But Command and Conquer will let me mine all day long, I just have to restart the game.
No more stupid than the people in the States that bought shares in WorldCom and Enron
Well WorldCom and Enron are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. As such, their stock was finite (i.e. they wern't just inventing shares, there was a limited supply and at one time a high demand - making the stock valuable.) What's to stop the game makers from just adding another nice island? And another, and another - then they aren't rare, leaving the first guy with light pockets while the last guy can buy the same thing for $5.
And if you want to claim that it's "virtual" and thus not "really" worth what it sold for, then don't look too closely at why diamonds are priced as they are.
Diamonds are priced the way they are because the De Beers company buys those on the market up, then sells fewer than they buy. The diamonds are expensive because the supply is limited (and the supply is artifically lowered by De Beers) and the demand is high (due to women being suckers.) That said, you can't make gem quality diamonds as easily as generating some more bits to add an island to a game.
Therefore, the whole 'value' of these 1s and 0s depends strictly on the false value people give it.
The "value" of anything, 1s and 0s included as well as cars and houses, is the value people give it. The 1s and 0s ChoicePoint has are valuable to lots of people, but still are 1s and 0s. The difference is that ChoicePoint's 1s and 0s idealy represent real world phenonema that can be leveraged for real world cash.
In this game, the 1s and 0s are supposed to mimic property. The reason property is valuable in the real world is because it is rare and desirable (property next to the lake is rare, property with oil is rare, etc.)What's to stop the makers of the game from just adding another really nice island to the game? The possibilities are endless.
As in, Congress passes a law saying soldiers must be quartered (or if you think having police power installed on a router is quartering, Congress passes a law requiring police power installed on routers.) We're at war with terrorists, recall. I don't think the courts would buy that a University of buisness is a "house" in any event. Use encryption if you want privacy.
You mean you approved your pet conservative cause that is not proven to reduce crime because you won't pay for the services that are?
It reduces crime for approximately two million individuals per year. Police have no obligation to defend individuals, so even if "crime" were reduced by dumping more money into police, that may or may not have a bearing on violent crime. Moreover, a well paid police force is little comfort to the family of a law abiding citizen complying with state and local laws abridging the Second Amendment who gets attacked by a criminal.
Simple solution: have syslogd log when the time changes. That way if there's a "time adjusted for daylight savings time" between events, you know to add an hour. Make checks payable to my/. account.
The whole point of the Constitution is to protect the rights of all US citizens, regardless of which state they live in.
Well, that would be the point of the XIV Amendment, which applies the Bill of Rights to the states (prior to that, the Court held it didn't apply to states.)
Anyway, the XIVth Amendment says "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In other words, if a state passes a law it can deprive a person of property.
Slashdot Mirror
If scientists want to speak any way they wish, they should bank roll their own research. As long as someone else is paying their salaries and research budgets, they will always have to produce results with permission of the person or organization doing the funding (in this article, that's the federal government). Now, if the government wasn't funding global warming research (which it shouldn't be) then no one could complain that any administration is influencing the research. If this research is so important, someone else can pay for it. If it isn't so important, I shouldn't be forced to pay for it.
Stay tuned for the article on apples versus oranges. While many like the thick orange skin, record numbers are switching to the soft red skin of an apple.
Seriously, GMail and Pine do totally different things. What's the point?
Some jokes don't translate very well to a message board.
Contrast this with the game. The game designers can pump out islands as fast as they can hit copy and paste. There's no regulation to stop them from just adding another island, and another island, as long as they want. Sure, this guy paid thousands of dollars for his island. After the game produces enough islands for everyone that wants one, the price could be down to a dollar an island.
In this game, the 1s and 0s are supposed to mimic property. The reason property is valuable in the real world is because it is rare and desirable (property next to the lake is rare, property with oil is rare, etc.)What's to stop the makers of the game from just adding another really nice island to the game? The possibilities are endless.
Iraq violated UN sanction after UN sanction for more than a decade. How much analysis did you want? Iraqi generals thought they had WMD, good luck analyzing that.
Anyway, the XIVth Amendment says "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In other words, if a state passes a law it can deprive a person of property.