Dude, and you're still writing letters? Awesome! You gotta tell me how pulled a Yoda.:P
I asked them to figure out the amount of the lease and I'd go right to the bank and get a cashiers check for the full amount up front. Amazing how they no longer needed to run my credit.
You lucked out. They were telling me to stuff it. I've actually had several businesses do that... and they're still in business. I'm trying to figure that one out.
The problem in the USA is the absolutely insane marketing. If public information shows that you make a good income and keep your debts under control, you will be bombarded with "pre-approved credit cards", "refinance your home with us", "buy a new car here", "lose all your money in our casino", and other lovely stuff.
If you live in Europe, you have no idea. When I went back to visit the US for several weeks a couple of years ago, I found the incessant marketing just incredible. The bank tellers trying to sign you up for credit cards. Every phone call to a company begins with a recorded sales pitch. Television shows contain more commercials than content, especially the children's shows. It's just incredible. I suppose you must eventually get numb to it...
Even with the insane marketing, I say we either keep it completely closed or go completely open. Anything else does not work in our favor. Since it is being partly opened (has been for a while), I think we should open it all the way.
Oh... You also said we get numb to it. A few of us (like me) do: I turn off the television and ignore those kinds of requests. For the majority of people, though, they can't control their impulses and they are taken advantage of. It's really quite sad to see... especially when it happens to those you care deeply about.
Hmm... where do I start? I'll rebut you point by point, I guess.
The people who get elected do not make laws and take actions that affect just the people who voted for them, they affect everyone in their constituency (and often people not in their constituency as well.)
Agree. 100%.
Your analogy is a rather poor one. [snip.] You can't just say "i'm running in a different direction" and expect that to exclude you from the results of what the majority of the "lemmings" vote for.
My lemmings analogy is spot on. I can't run in the opposite direction. I'll get trampled -- another suicidal move. I can try to influence the people around me and try to move a small group in a different direction away from the cliff. That's a long shot. If I'm really lucky, maybe I can influence the herd. That' s a really long shot. So far, it looks like me and a bunch of people I love are going to go over the cliff at some point.
I don't vote for someone i believe in because i am a realist, not an idealist. I will cast my vote in the way that i believe results in the best outcome. As such when faced with multiple options i have to balance the good of each option with the likelihood of my vote affecting the outcome when placed in that bucket.
Agree. 100%. I do the same.
An individual vote may not be worth a lot, but if enough of us teamed up to vote for a third party candidate to "matter", it would also be enough to affect the balance between the two main parties. The process of transition would inevitably result in at least one election cycle, quite possibly more, where the people i definitely _don't_ want to see in power would win the election.
Here is where we begin to differ. I believe in casting my vote "for" someone, not "against the other candidate". In the last election, I didn't want to see McCain nor Romney in the White House. It sounds like you would prefer to see neither there as well. Did you vote for one of the candidates or vote against one of the candidates? Look, I used to vote for the lesser of two evils, but only means evil will be put into power. No more. I'm voting for someone who I think is not evil. That candidate and I don't have to see eye-to-eye on everything, but they damn well ought to have views, positions, and a track record to have an overall positive influence on this country -- even if it means it is painful in the short term. Quite frankly, there is no way out of our current position without short term pain. (Short term is defined as at least several years.)
That's already a huge sacrifice to pay, but it's further compounded by the fact that even if we succeeded in bringing a third party to prominence it wouldn't take long for everything to settle out the same way with two parties controlling everything and having a vested interest in not rocking the boat. The nature of the electoral system pretty much guarantees that outcome. (I'm sure you're already familiar with the process, but just for reference: The Problems with First Past the Post Voting Explained [youtube.com]
Yes. There are a thousand different things that need to change in the U.S. This is one of them. A two party system is the same as a choice between cable and DSL. We need more than two choices if this is going to work. There are countries that share power between parties. Hell, I don't even look at parties. I look at the candidates. I think the mentality that country must vote for a particular party is ludicrous. It ties into my use of describing most of my fellow Americans as lemmings. People vote in similar ways as the person next to them. I refuse to do so even if I am pushed in the same direction as everyone else.
And which third party am i supposed to vote for anyway? From what little research i've done there isn't any one party that i agree with 100%. (Ultimately the only person who an
I voted for Obama in both of the previous elections. I didn't vote for him because i honsetly thought he would Change anything. [snip] I would rather have had a president who didn't do _any_ of the crappy things i believe the Republicans would do, but realistically there was no way to achieve that. In game theory terms i got the best outcome (from my perspective) that was possible under the current system.
I fail to see the logic to vote for someone you don't believe in. I cast my votes for people who I think will make a positive difference -- even if it is third party. If enough people do that, it can change for the better under the current system. (Not that I believe enough of my fellow Americans are educated enough to make this happen.)
Personally, I think we're a herd of lemmings running towards a cliff led by two maniacs. Does it really matter which maniac falls off the cliff first? Screw that. I'm going to run in a different direction from the herd in a way that hopefully won't get me trampled. Maybe I'll be ok, maybe I won't. Anything else is suicidal and I'm not feeling suicidal.
Firstly, when did Congress declare war against the "nation" of Al Qaeda?
Secondly, you ask what legal authority did the Federal Government use to kill U.S. Citizens in the civil war. I'm no civil war buff and I'm horrible at history, but I'll reply with this: if it was illegal back then, they shouldn't have done it. They could have easily passed laws (even Constitutional amendments if necessary) to make it legal. If the U.S. was killing American citizens illegally back then, it has no bearing on what we are doing now. What our government is doing now is definitely illegal and definitely immoral.
Thirdly, warfare in a different country where a rogue American among a thousand enemy combatants is a completely different scenario than dropping a bomb from a drone in New York or sniping someone walking on an L.A. sidewalk. If we can reasonably get a treasonous American in another country and bring them to a U.S. court, we should do so even if they are in another country. (This does not necessarily mean going in there and kidnapping them.)
Finally, as far as Al-Qaeda declaring war on us goes, we need to be working in other ways to stop them. Marching into %country% to shoot without that country's permission is not right, not legal, and not moral. Even if the country did give us permission, I highly question that political position. (What laws allow the president to use the U.S. military to temporarily invade a country even with that country's permission?) We have financial, political, media-blitz campaigns that we should be exploring. There's a lot we can do that we aren't doing.
I generally have different problems. I gave up on talking to he common person, but I try to engage my family hoping to talk some sense into them. So far, no luck. I have family who believe all the conspiracy stuff. Heaven help you, though, if you tell them that the people they voted into office were just as responsible for the mess we're in as the party they demonize. All I hear after that is how much worse the other guys are.
I agree with what you said... and I'll add that I take offense with the phrase theoretically "at war" in GP's statement. There is no theoretical about it. Either we are at war (as declared by Congress) or we are not. War can only be defined against a country. It is impossible to be at war against some organization.
Bleh. I know what you mean. My wife and I have been married for 11 years. Between mergers and sucky banks (which we abandon) we've been through about a dozen banks -- over one per year that we've been married.
I like your suggestion about percentage of population affected, but also appreciate the difficulty in using that.
[Sigh] I don't suppose there is anything simple about today's banking anymore.
I'd like to add that I've seen downloaded HD movies at my friend's apartment. They are pixelated pretty badly. Hell, it could be argued that my DVD version of the movie looked better. (He certainly didn't download 40 GB or 50 GB.) If I want to see a high quality movie, then disks are my preferred medium.
If we're playing a numbers game, we should stick to percentages: what percentage of banks failed? Compare that to the first depression. Branch count doesn't seem like a good way to measure since there a lot more people in the country and therefore more branches are needed.
RMS's experience is simply that 'large entities' don't behave in a 'good' manner, and thus there is a clear advantage to society of having fewer of them.
Excellent comment, but I'd like to clarify and detail a bit: most companies at any particular point in time don't naturally behave in a good manner -- large or small. Small companies that don't behave fail. (There are competitors waiting to take their business.) All companies that are good in nature eventually become bad in nature. It may take a few years or a few decades, but it will happen. Because of this, it is better to have all companies be smaller so that no 'large entity' exists. Small entities don't take everything else with them when they go down. Going down is not a matter of if, but when.
We can argue about how things SHOULD be, but the above is a stark and accurate assessment of how things ARE, and we have to live and work in the real world. Stallman either does not realize this or chooses to ignore it and operate in a utopa.
I feel that a real solution will mean listening to a number of people's suggestions and merging them together.
You want a real solution? Eliminate the corporate tax code entirely. Then the money stays at home, and you implement the Fair Tax. That's a national sales tax which replaces ALL forms of federal taxation in favor of a tax on consumption. It's made non-regressive via a pre-bate.
I'm no expert on Fair Tax, but I don't think it has any provisions to for anti-monopoly. Richard Stallman's idea could be incorporated into the Fair Tax idea to prevent monopolies and encourage small business -- which is what we need.
Good idea. There aren't enough people in U.S. prisons.
Just because the jails are full of people we shouldn't have in there doesn't mean that these bankers don't belong in there. The "jails are too full" is another discussion entirely.
If a board of education (not even a business) is thinking about claiming copyright for things that are not theirs, where will it stop? It doesn't matter if they do it or don't do it. It doesn't matter if they lose a battle in court. This is a common thought that many people in power are thinking: how can I claim someone else's idea as our own and make money off of it while screwing them? We see it all the time in the business world. (Especially the music world, but in many other areas as well.) This is a trend that is not slowing down. I would say this article is an indication that it is accelerating.
Indeed, how long will it be before I write a story or make a drawing or write a program at my home in my own privacy only to have it considered Microsoft property or property of the government?
A word of warning about AT&T (as if my story is going to come as shock to anyone here). I had problems with something and they promised a reduced rate for 6 months. I had to call them back when the price didn't change the next month. Then it went sky high. (They had "upped" my speed without my permission.) Then it went way low. Then I had to call them again when the bill on the Internet didn't match the bills on paper.
tl;dr Reduced bill from AT&T may mean several headaches afterward.
The course is Government 1310: "Introduction to Congress" so I'd think cheating was required.
It is. It's also required in Congress that you don't get caught or if you do, you pay off the right people. Obviously, these students have some maturing to do before they are ready to graduate.
"Taking ownership" would mean 1) Putting out a patch which fixes 50 flaws [now done] 2) saying they are sorry for letting Java rot 3) laying out a one year plan and a three year plan as to what they will do with Java 4) following through with said plan in a logical fashion 5) Becoming active in the Java community.
If they do all of that for six months, I think that's when I would define that as "taking ownership". We're still missing steps 2 through 5. It's going to take time before we stop being bitter, but if they take it on the chin while working hard, developers will forgive them. (What's the alternative? C# for Metro? Oracle really could get the following of developers if they really wanted.)
I agree. Sucking it up and not shelling out the money is easy if the company is small and there are competitors. That is not what we have today. Every company is like this. I don't play video games, but I'm feeling the pinch in other areas and it's the exact same damn thing as what is happening here.
A half truth is still a full lie. We as a society, don't mind half truths, though. Actually, we demand half truths instead of full truths. ("No, honey, that dress doesn't make you look fat. Honest!")
Slashdot Mirror
...then I bought the farm...
Dude, and you're still writing letters? Awesome! You gotta tell me how pulled a Yoda. :P
I asked them to figure out the amount of the lease and I'd go right to the bank and get a cashiers check for the full amount up front. Amazing how they no longer needed to run my credit.
You lucked out. They were telling me to stuff it. I've actually had several businesses do that... and they're still in business. I'm trying to figure that one out.
The problem in the USA is the absolutely insane marketing. If public information shows that you make a good income and keep your debts under control, you will be bombarded with "pre-approved credit cards", "refinance your home with us", "buy a new car here", "lose all your money in our casino", and other lovely stuff.
If you live in Europe, you have no idea. When I went back to visit the US for several weeks a couple of years ago, I found the incessant marketing just incredible. The bank tellers trying to sign you up for credit cards. Every phone call to a company begins with a recorded sales pitch. Television shows contain more commercials than content, especially the children's shows. It's just incredible. I suppose you must eventually get numb to it...
Even with the insane marketing, I say we either keep it completely closed or go completely open. Anything else does not work in our favor. Since it is being partly opened (has been for a while), I think we should open it all the way.
Oh... You also said we get numb to it. A few of us (like me) do: I turn off the television and ignore those kinds of requests. For the majority of people, though, they can't control their impulses and they are taken advantage of. It's really quite sad to see... especially when it happens to those you care deeply about.
Hmm... where do I start? I'll rebut you point by point, I guess.
The people who get elected do not make laws and take actions that affect just the people who voted for them, they affect everyone in their constituency (and often people not in their constituency as well.)
Agree. 100%.
Your analogy is a rather poor one. [snip.] You can't just say "i'm running in a different direction" and expect that to exclude you from the results of what the majority of the "lemmings" vote for.
My lemmings analogy is spot on. I can't run in the opposite direction. I'll get trampled -- another suicidal move. I can try to influence the people around me and try to move a small group in a different direction away from the cliff. That's a long shot. If I'm really lucky, maybe I can influence the herd. That' s a really long shot. So far, it looks like me and a bunch of people I love are going to go over the cliff at some point.
I don't vote for someone i believe in because i am a realist, not an idealist. I will cast my vote in the way that i believe results in the best outcome. As such when faced with multiple options i have to balance the good of each option with the likelihood of my vote affecting the outcome when placed in that bucket.
Agree. 100%. I do the same.
An individual vote may not be worth a lot, but if enough of us teamed up to vote for a third party candidate to "matter", it would also be enough to affect the balance between the two main parties. The process of transition would inevitably result in at least one election cycle, quite possibly more, where the people i definitely _don't_ want to see in power would win the election.
Here is where we begin to differ. I believe in casting my vote "for" someone, not "against the other candidate". In the last election, I didn't want to see McCain nor Romney in the White House. It sounds like you would prefer to see neither there as well. Did you vote for one of the candidates or vote against one of the candidates? Look, I used to vote for the lesser of two evils, but only means evil will be put into power. No more. I'm voting for someone who I think is not evil. That candidate and I don't have to see eye-to-eye on everything, but they damn well ought to have views, positions, and a track record to have an overall positive influence on this country -- even if it means it is painful in the short term. Quite frankly, there is no way out of our current position without short term pain. (Short term is defined as at least several years.)
That's already a huge sacrifice to pay, but it's further compounded by the fact that even if we succeeded in bringing a third party to prominence it wouldn't take long for everything to settle out the same way with two parties controlling everything and having a vested interest in not rocking the boat. The nature of the electoral system pretty much guarantees that outcome. (I'm sure you're already familiar with the process, but just for reference: The Problems with First Past the Post Voting Explained [youtube.com]
Yes. There are a thousand different things that need to change in the U.S. This is one of them. A two party system is the same as a choice between cable and DSL. We need more than two choices if this is going to work. There are countries that share power between parties. Hell, I don't even look at parties. I look at the candidates. I think the mentality that country must vote for a particular party is ludicrous. It ties into my use of describing most of my fellow Americans as lemmings. People vote in similar ways as the person next to them. I refuse to do so even if I am pushed in the same direction as everyone else.
And which third party am i supposed to vote for anyway? From what little research i've done there isn't any one party that i agree with 100%. (Ultimately the only person who an
Standard policy states that the other party sucks. We are against sucking. We prefer bending over.
I voted for Obama in both of the previous elections. I didn't vote for him because i honsetly thought he would Change anything. [snip] I would rather have had a president who didn't do _any_ of the crappy things i believe the Republicans would do, but realistically there was no way to achieve that. In game theory terms i got the best outcome (from my perspective) that was possible under the current system.
I fail to see the logic to vote for someone you don't believe in. I cast my votes for people who I think will make a positive difference -- even if it is third party. If enough people do that, it can change for the better under the current system. (Not that I believe enough of my fellow Americans are educated enough to make this happen.)
Personally, I think we're a herd of lemmings running towards a cliff led by two maniacs. Does it really matter which maniac falls off the cliff first? Screw that. I'm going to run in a different direction from the herd in a way that hopefully won't get me trampled. Maybe I'll be ok, maybe I won't. Anything else is suicidal and I'm not feeling suicidal.
Firstly, when did Congress declare war against the "nation" of Al Qaeda?
Secondly, you ask what legal authority did the Federal Government use to kill U.S. Citizens in the civil war. I'm no civil war buff and I'm horrible at history, but I'll reply with this: if it was illegal back then, they shouldn't have done it. They could have easily passed laws (even Constitutional amendments if necessary) to make it legal. If the U.S. was killing American citizens illegally back then, it has no bearing on what we are doing now. What our government is doing now is definitely illegal and definitely immoral.
Thirdly, warfare in a different country where a rogue American among a thousand enemy combatants is a completely different scenario than dropping a bomb from a drone in New York or sniping someone walking on an L.A. sidewalk. If we can reasonably get a treasonous American in another country and bring them to a U.S. court, we should do so even if they are in another country. (This does not necessarily mean going in there and kidnapping them.)
Finally, as far as Al-Qaeda declaring war on us goes, we need to be working in other ways to stop them. Marching into %country% to shoot without that country's permission is not right, not legal, and not moral. Even if the country did give us permission, I highly question that political position. (What laws allow the president to use the U.S. military to temporarily invade a country even with that country's permission?) We have financial, political, media-blitz campaigns that we should be exploring. There's a lot we can do that we aren't doing.
I generally have different problems. I gave up on talking to he common person, but I try to engage my family hoping to talk some sense into them. So far, no luck. I have family who believe all the conspiracy stuff. Heaven help you, though, if you tell them that the people they voted into office were just as responsible for the mess we're in as the party they demonize. All I hear after that is how much worse the other guys are.
I agree with what you said... and I'll add that I take offense with the phrase theoretically "at war" in GP's statement. There is no theoretical about it. Either we are at war (as declared by Congress) or we are not. War can only be defined against a country. It is impossible to be at war against some organization.
Bleh. I know what you mean. My wife and I have been married for 11 years. Between mergers and sucky banks (which we abandon) we've been through about a dozen banks -- over one per year that we've been married.
I like your suggestion about percentage of population affected, but also appreciate the difficulty in using that.
[Sigh] I don't suppose there is anything simple about today's banking anymore.
I'd like to add that I've seen downloaded HD movies at my friend's apartment. They are pixelated pretty badly. Hell, it could be argued that my DVD version of the movie looked better. (He certainly didn't download 40 GB or 50 GB.) If I want to see a high quality movie, then disks are my preferred medium.
If we're playing a numbers game, we should stick to percentages: what percentage of banks failed? Compare that to the first depression. Branch count doesn't seem like a good way to measure since there a lot more people in the country and therefore more branches are needed.
RMS's experience is simply that 'large entities' don't behave in a 'good' manner, and thus there is a clear advantage to society of having fewer of them.
Excellent comment, but I'd like to clarify and detail a bit: most companies at any particular point in time don't naturally behave in a good manner -- large or small. Small companies that don't behave fail. (There are competitors waiting to take their business.) All companies that are good in nature eventually become bad in nature. It may take a few years or a few decades, but it will happen. Because of this, it is better to have all companies be smaller so that no 'large entity' exists. Small entities don't take everything else with them when they go down. Going down is not a matter of if, but when.
We can argue about how things SHOULD be, but the above is a stark and accurate assessment of how things ARE, and we have to live and work in the real world. Stallman either does not realize this or chooses to ignore it and operate in a utopa.
I feel that a real solution will mean listening to a number of people's suggestions and merging them together.
You want a real solution? Eliminate the corporate tax code entirely. Then the money stays at home, and you implement the Fair Tax. That's a national sales tax which replaces ALL forms of federal taxation in favor of a tax on consumption. It's made non-regressive via a pre-bate.
I'm no expert on Fair Tax, but I don't think it has any provisions to for anti-monopoly. Richard Stallman's idea could be incorporated into the Fair Tax idea to prevent monopolies and encourage small business -- which is what we need.
Good idea. There aren't enough people in U.S. prisons.
Just because the jails are full of people we shouldn't have in there doesn't mean that these bankers don't belong in there. The "jails are too full" is another discussion entirely.
If a board of education (not even a business) is thinking about claiming copyright for things that are not theirs, where will it stop? It doesn't matter if they do it or don't do it. It doesn't matter if they lose a battle in court. This is a common thought that many people in power are thinking: how can I claim someone else's idea as our own and make money off of it while screwing them? We see it all the time in the business world. (Especially the music world, but in many other areas as well.) This is a trend that is not slowing down. I would say this article is an indication that it is accelerating.
Indeed, how long will it be before I write a story or make a drawing or write a program at my home in my own privacy only to have it considered Microsoft property or property of the government?
A word of warning about AT&T (as if my story is going to come as shock to anyone here). I had problems with something and they promised a reduced rate for 6 months. I had to call them back when the price didn't change the next month. Then it went sky high. (They had "upped" my speed without my permission.) Then it went way low. Then I had to call them again when the bill on the Internet didn't match the bills on paper.
tl;dr Reduced bill from AT&T may mean several headaches afterward.
The course is Government 1310: "Introduction to Congress" so I'd think cheating was required.
It is. It's also required in Congress that you don't get caught or if you do, you pay off the right people. Obviously, these students have some maturing to do before they are ready to graduate.
"Taking ownership" would mean 1) Putting out a patch which fixes 50 flaws [now done] 2) saying they are sorry for letting Java rot 3) laying out a one year plan and a three year plan as to what they will do with Java 4) following through with said plan in a logical fashion 5) Becoming active in the Java community.
If they do all of that for six months, I think that's when I would define that as "taking ownership". We're still missing steps 2 through 5. It's going to take time before we stop being bitter, but if they take it on the chin while working hard, developers will forgive them. (What's the alternative? C# for Metro? Oracle really could get the following of developers if they really wanted.)
As I've seen elsewhere on the Internet, there is a good phrase: "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away."
I agree. Sucking it up and not shelling out the money is easy if the company is small and there are competitors. That is not what we have today. Every company is like this. I don't play video games, but I'm feeling the pinch in other areas and it's the exact same damn thing as what is happening here.
Unlikely? I don't know. They're smoking some pretty potent stuff in Redmond right now.
Totally off topic, but cool game in your sig.
Funny. My pappy always said something similar:
if (lips.isMoving()) {
output.printf(false.toString());
}
A half truth is still a full lie. We as a society, don't mind half truths, though. Actually, we demand half truths instead of full truths. ("No, honey, that dress doesn't make you look fat. Honest!")
Huh. So there is some truth to the idea in the Matrix that machines could use us as batteries.