"Oh, foul. The wealthiest 50% of Americans pay approximately 95% of all income tax. The wealthiest 5% of Americans pay approximately 50% of all income tax."
As it should be, maybe moreso. I hate it when people whine about the rich getting taxed more. So what?
Look at it this way: here's the money we have to buy groceries for two weeks for a family of four, I have $1000, and you have $100 . Now we are both taxed, I'm taxed 30%, 'cause I'm richer than you are. You're taxed 10%.
I have $700, you have $90. Get it?
"How about this: a regressive income tax system that takes the poorer at a higher percentage but lower amount than those with more income than, then? You'd see prosperity abound in the US. That's Economics 101."
Uh huh... Yeaaaah. You want to just go ahead switch to a channel other than Fox, okay? Try Animal Planet.
" Yes, but right-click takes on a whole different meaning if you are left handed. I come from a multidexterous family and trust me one button mice make the world that much easier."
Humbug! I mouse both ways, on both Macs & PCs, I don't reconfigure my mouse every time I switch hands. Why? Just push the correct button. It's not a problem, unless you can't chew gum and walk at the same time.
" Did you see what they did with Phillip Jose Farmer's RiverWorld... ?
Amen, brother. Anyone who thinks the SciFi Channel is a good source of "SciFi" is a damn fool.
Not to mention the frickin' commercials. Jeez, they didn't have that many commercials back in the day when there was only broadcast TV, and the only place to see "SciFi" movies was on Saturday afternoons on UHF, or at conventions.
And we're paying for cable why? To watch crap programming with 5 minutes of commercials every 10 minutes?
You know, the other night I watched a 90 min movie on FX. It took 3 hours. That's an hour and a half of commercials. 1/1. Sick.
Maybe I need a PVR or something. Maybe I need a bigger DVD collection.
"...but twenty five years ago was not that *radically* different from today."
Uh huh, yeeeaahhh, right. 1979. Not that different...
Well, if you just ignore the advances in medicine, transportation, manufacturing, astronomy, politics, things like that, there's always telecommunications.
Small advances, like ubiquitous cell phones. PCs. PCs with 3Ghz clock speeds and 2 GBs of RAM, and who knows how many 'flops!
"...I feel that Macs are less likely to be infected because the platform was built from the ground up with security in mind."
Well, UNIX security aside, there is that OS X runs on a different processor than most unices out there. So even if there is a worm out there targeting unices, most likely it's aimed at the i386 version, rather than PPC.
****************
I understand this guy's point of view completely. I bought my Dad a digital camera for Xmas. I spent hours farting around with it, only to find that it conflicted with his USB printer. So in order to use it or the printer, one or the other has to be plugged in before a reboot. Whereas on my Mac, uh, you plug it in and...it works.
" I've purchased 44 tracks from iTMS. I have five macs, including 2 PowerMacs (dual 800 and a brand new dual 1.42), a PowerBook (1GHz 15" with SuperDrive), an iMac (15" 800MHz with SuperDrive) and an iBook (800MHz with combo). All of these computers spend most of their time in my house, with the only two ever leaving being the laptops.
I'm sorry, but I don't think I should be punished for buying more Macs."
WhatEVer! Quit whining and use speakers. Crank 'em up! Or if your computers are in 5 different rooms, take a portable that's registered into the room, or an iPod. C'mon, use yer noodle. You gotta expect some limitations. And quit crying 'cause there's no free lunch.
Hell, you couldn't stream 8 tracks to ANY computers. Not even the quadrophonic 8 tracks.
Y'know what strikes me as weird? Seeing people, typically women (no offense meant), who take classes in visual c++, and other languages, that basically are clueless about computers. I've seen at least two examples of this at my office. These are the same people who can't figure out how to set options in their email clients, or move tool bars around in applications. People who have trouble logging in.
I mean, what's their motivation?
I'm not a programmer, I'm an admin. I don't have the mindset to sit and plug away at code for hours. I troubleshoot. I put out fires. I build systems. I do security. I post web content. Desktop support. Etc. I admire coders, but I don't want to be one.
But most coders that I know can at least install a system, applications, and configure it, if not more, and usually more.
I grew up extremely poor, and was poor in college too. But when I couldn't afford music, I didn't buy any. I didn't get all my friends to copy their records to tape for me. I didn't go out and steal records. I did without. Or I bought used records when I had a little extra cash. Or listened to my friends' records at their houses. Or listened to the radio.
"...I want cheap music. Its that simple."
And I want a four bedroom house on the North Shore. How hard is it for YOU to understand that we don't always get what we want? If you're so poor, you'd better lose the sense of entitlement, 'cause you're gonna be damned disappointed in life. The world doesn't owe you a music collection.
And here's a clue: "the poor" don't use Napster. The poor don't have computers, or internet connections, or MP3 players.
C'mon, you've seen the video. How can you take anything this guy has to say seriously. He's so obviously a corporate shill. He's the Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf of the computer world.
"As a film student and special effects guru-type, I can only say thank god for this..."
BZZZZZZT!!! *Red Flag*
C'mon, everybody knows you SFX guys only care about production values and completely lack discrimination in terms of plot and story.
"Cameron knows how to use effects well, and has enough of a reputation to command an impressive budget..."
BZZZZZZT!!! *red flag (again)*
Cameron is an effects whore. He nearly always uses movies as vehicles for his "groundbreaking" special effects. "Aliens" was blight on the "Alien" franchise and sucked badly. Cameron movies are the definition of lowest common denominator for SF films. He's a hack.
James Cameron is the number one reason Hollywood thinks a movie can be driven by SFX, rather than plot and writing. A movie can be sold by SFX, but if it doesn't have good writing and acting to back it up, it's still second rate, no matter how much money you throw at the effects.
He'll rape BAA, and it'll suck if you love the original.
I wish Firefly had made it. But then I wish Max Headroom & The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. would have made it too.
It's very disappointing that the STTNG franchise still pumps out the sewage that they do and stay on the air for years. But when you something that has real potential, the networks drop it. There's a long list of short run SF series that could've been contenders. BTW, STTOS is on that list.
Meanwhile, Paramount continues to serve up one steaming pile of tribble crap after another.
Thankfully, Red Dwarf wasn't raped by the American lowest-common-denominator school of television production, and didn't fly in the US.
People here can joke all they want, and make their flag-wavin'-'merikun "love-it-or-leave-it" snide remarks about Canadian immigration, but the way our country's been going lately has make me take a hard look at immigration.
I'm older, and making a life change like this would be very difficult, but I'm sick and tired of all the bile out of the so-called "patriots" who've backed this so-called "administration". GWB and his cronies are looking more like Saddam than not. All this talk of "If you're not with us, you're against us", and "...all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do..." is starting to sound a lot more fascist than democratic.
"They are both a bit citrisy. Apples tend to be sweet, while oranges have a stronger citrus taste. However, organs tend to be juicier with pulp exploding in your mouth."
I wish our government would address some of the real threats to our country, like this. Basically our email accounts are constantly under attack by what amounts to terrorists, the spammers. If you follow the jargon, everything that the government doesn't like is "terrorism". How about they fight the "terrorism" that is spam?
If George had to wade through a hundred or so spam emails a day to get to the stuff he really needs to read, maybe he'd jump on the bandwagon. Unfortunately, he strikes me as the kind who doesn't use a computer much, if at all.
'Course if he did, we'd be sending thousands of taxpayer dollars to Nigeria in an attempt to help Mr. William Ngongo get that surplus cash out of the country, making a tidy profit on our assistance. And we'd probably notice that Mr. Bush's pants would have a strangely large bulge in the crotch, and that his breasts seem to be getting larger. But at least the government would be free of credit card debt at last!
Frickin' Cingular here in Illinois refuses to get any cool phones whatsoever. I was forced to upgrade to a new phone because of Nokia crappiness out of warranty (the infamous 3360 firmware flaws), the phone that appealed to me the most, in terms of features and form factor was the 6340i(I don't like external antennae and flippy things that can get ripped loose in a struggle).
It was free, so when, and if, Cingular ever decides to offer a bluetooth phone in the Chicago area market, I guess I could just toss it. I even searched on eBay for a Cingular T68i.
" Most Windows users (including myself) are afraid of what we lose when moving to Linux."
What do you lose? The ability to play games? Big loss. When I was using Linux I never felt I'd lost anything. If anything I felt I'd gained. Gained an enormous selection of what was arguably free, as in "free", at no cost, software. But I'm not a gamer.
Now I use OS X. Again, nothing lost. Well, not as much free software, but less is more in the Mac world since you don't have to wade through as much crap to find a gem. And for fun, check out Perversion Tracker, especially the entry on Opera.
Don't get me wrong though, Windows is fine as long as you don't try to install and uninstall a lot of different kinds of software on a machine you actually plan to use. Registry bloat and file system fragmentation will soon render your screaming 2.5 GHz system slower than an old lady on thorazine.
I haven't read all the posts re: this email, but most of what I've seen has been responding to her naivete about email and the net, and her ignorance about blogs and discussion groups and the communities surrounding them. Much chiding, and not much response to what was in the email. Supposing the whole thing's not a hoax, and that the woman writing it is accurate in her interpretation of what attendees' were expressing, it's kinda frightening. And if I may be so "liberal" it shows just how out of touch with world economics, political opinion, and global business concerns the Bush administration appears to be.
It's truly frightening to learn that what I previously felt annoyance at, the gung-ho, "let's have a war" attitude of the Bush admin, may actually screw the entire planet, instead of just Iraq and us.
Y'know, I'd be on board if Iraq had directly attacked us, just as I supported getting Bin Laden (though not without some concern over collateral damage to Afghani civilians). I'm no peacenik, necessarily, but I don't see the need to attack Iraq without UN and worldwide support.
Hey George, it's still the economy, stupid!
Re:The really cool chicks: a retrospective
on
Half Mast
·
· Score: 1
This is the third mention of cow orking in this thread. I mean, isn't that offto-pic? And aren't there laws against the orking of cows? Somebody call the SPCA! I thought this was a family website.
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"Oh, foul. The wealthiest 50% of Americans pay approximately 95% of all income tax. The wealthiest 5% of Americans pay approximately 50% of all income tax."
As it should be, maybe moreso. I hate it when people whine about the rich getting taxed more. So what?
Look at it this way: here's the money we have to buy groceries for two weeks for a family of four, I have $1000, and you have $100 . Now we are both taxed, I'm taxed 30%, 'cause I'm richer than you are. You're taxed 10%.
I have $700, you have $90. Get it?
"How about this: a regressive income tax system that takes the poorer at a higher percentage but lower amount than those with more income than, then? You'd see prosperity abound in the US. That's Economics 101."
Uh huh... Yeaaaah. You want to just go ahead switch to a channel other than Fox, okay? Try Animal Planet.
" Yes, but right-click takes on a whole different meaning if you are left handed. I come from a multidexterous family and trust me one button mice make the world that much easier."
Humbug! I mouse both ways, on both Macs & PCs, I don't reconfigure my mouse every time I switch hands. Why? Just push the correct button. It's not a problem, unless you can't chew gum and walk at the same time.
" Did you see what they did with Phillip Jose Farmer's RiverWorld... ?
Amen, brother. Anyone who thinks the SciFi Channel is a good source of "SciFi" is a damn fool.
Not to mention the frickin' commercials. Jeez, they didn't have that many commercials back in the day when there was only broadcast TV, and the only place to see "SciFi" movies was on Saturday afternoons on UHF, or at conventions.
And we're paying for cable why? To watch crap programming with 5 minutes of commercials every 10 minutes?
You know, the other night I watched a 90 min movie on FX. It took 3 hours. That's an hour and a half of commercials. 1/1. Sick.
Maybe I need a PVR or something. Maybe I need a bigger DVD collection.
The windows quit working? Holy shit! You mean you couldn't see out of 'em anymore? Weird. What caused that?
"...but twenty five years ago was not that *radically* different from today."
Uh huh, yeeeaahhh, right. 1979. Not that different...
Well, if you just ignore the advances in medicine, transportation, manufacturing, astronomy, politics, things like that, there's always telecommunications.
Small advances, like ubiquitous cell phones. PCs. PCs with 3Ghz clock speeds and 2 GBs of RAM, and who knows how many 'flops!
Didja just miss history happening, or what?
"...I feel that Macs are less likely to be infected because the platform was built from the ground up with security in mind."
Well, UNIX security aside, there is that OS X runs on a different processor than most unices out there. So even if there is a worm out there targeting unices, most likely it's aimed at the i386 version, rather than PPC.
****************
I understand this guy's point of view completely. I bought my Dad a digital camera for Xmas. I spent hours farting around with it, only to find that it conflicted with his USB printer. So in order to use it or the printer, one or the other has to be plugged in before a reboot. Whereas on my Mac, uh, you plug it in and...it works.
Hey xdroop, nice cat pictures. No, really.
"Yeah, let's look at Enterprise. One possible clunker in a franchise that has spawned five live action series, an ani..."
ONE?! One? Bwahahahahaha!
Let's just say anything "Star Trek" after 1970 is bunk.
(Bald captains indeed, feh!)
"on a personal note, I've found 802.11 to be way more addictive than pot..."
Shaawww, dude, does it HAVE to be either-or? Weed 'n WIFI go together like...like...dill pickles and peppermint sticks!
" I've purchased 44 tracks from iTMS. I have five macs, including 2 PowerMacs (dual 800 and a brand new dual 1.42), a PowerBook (1GHz 15" with SuperDrive), an iMac (15" 800MHz with SuperDrive) and an iBook (800MHz with combo). All of these computers spend most of their time in my house, with the only two ever leaving being the laptops.
I'm sorry, but I don't think I should be punished for buying more Macs."
WhatEVer! Quit whining and use speakers. Crank 'em up! Or if your computers are in 5 different rooms, take a portable that's registered into the room, or an iPod. C'mon, use yer noodle. You gotta expect some limitations. And quit crying 'cause there's no free lunch.
Hell, you couldn't stream 8 tracks to ANY computers. Not even the quadrophonic 8 tracks.
Y'know what strikes me as weird? Seeing people, typically women (no offense meant), who take classes in visual c++, and other languages, that basically are clueless about computers. I've seen at least two examples of this at my office. These are the same people who can't figure out how to set options in their email clients, or move tool bars around in applications. People who have trouble logging in.
I mean, what's their motivation?
I'm not a programmer, I'm an admin. I don't have the mindset to sit and plug away at code for hours. I troubleshoot. I put out fires. I build systems. I do security. I post web content. Desktop support. Etc. I admire coders, but I don't want to be one.
But most coders that I know can at least install a system, applications, and configure it, if not more, and usually more.
Isn't Ouspensky associated with the Gurdjieff cultish, religionist thingy?
Great. Just what we need, another L. Ron Hubbard.
Maybe your expectations are unrealistic.
I grew up extremely poor, and was poor in college too. But when I couldn't afford music, I didn't buy any. I didn't get all my friends to copy their records to tape for me. I didn't go out and steal records. I did without. Or I bought used records when I had a little extra cash. Or listened to my friends' records at their houses. Or listened to the radio.
"...I want cheap music. Its that simple."
And I want a four bedroom house on the North Shore. How hard is it for YOU to understand that we don't always get what we want? If you're so poor, you'd better lose the sense of entitlement, 'cause you're gonna be damned disappointed in life. The world doesn't owe you a music collection.
And here's a clue: "the poor" don't use Napster. The poor don't have computers, or internet connections, or MP3 players.
C'mon, you've seen the video. How can you take anything this guy has to say seriously. He's so obviously a corporate shill. He's the Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf of the computer world.
"As a film student and special effects guru-type, I can only say thank god for this..."
BZZZZZZT!!! *Red Flag*
C'mon, everybody knows you SFX guys only care about production values and completely lack discrimination in terms of plot and story.
"Cameron knows how to use effects well, and has enough of a reputation to command an impressive budget..."
BZZZZZZT!!! *red flag (again)*
Cameron is an effects whore. He nearly always uses movies as vehicles for his "groundbreaking" special effects. "Aliens" was blight on the "Alien" franchise and sucked badly. Cameron movies are the definition of lowest common denominator for SF films. He's a hack.
James Cameron is the number one reason Hollywood thinks a movie can be driven by SFX, rather than plot and writing. A movie can be sold by SFX, but if it doesn't have good writing and acting to back it up, it's still second rate, no matter how much money you throw at the effects.
He'll rape BAA, and it'll suck if you love the original.
"This is the United States of America, not the Socialist Republic Of America."
In Socialist Republic of America WE TELL YOU what country you're in!
D'oh!
I wish Firefly had made it. But then I wish Max Headroom & The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. would have made it too.
It's very disappointing that the STTNG franchise still pumps out the sewage that they do and stay on the air for years. But when you something that has real potential, the networks drop it. There's a long list of short run SF series that could've been contenders. BTW, STTOS is on that list.
Meanwhile, Paramount continues to serve up one steaming pile of tribble crap after another.
Thankfully, Red Dwarf wasn't raped by the American lowest-common-denominator school of television production, and didn't fly in the US.
No, seriously, how's the job market up there?
People here can joke all they want, and make their flag-wavin'-'merikun "love-it-or-leave-it" snide remarks about Canadian immigration, but the way our country's been going lately has make me take a hard look at immigration.
I'm older, and making a life change like this would be very difficult, but I'm sick and tired of all the bile out of the so-called "patriots" who've backed this so-called "administration". GWB and his cronies are looking more like Saddam than not. All this talk of "If you're not with us, you're against us", and "...all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do..." is starting to sound a lot more fascist than democratic.
"They are both a bit citrisy. Apples tend to be sweet, while oranges have a stronger citrus taste. However, organs tend to be juicier with pulp exploding in your mouth."
WTF!?
I wish our government would address some of the real threats to our country, like this. Basically our email accounts are constantly under attack by what amounts to terrorists, the spammers. If you follow the jargon, everything that the government doesn't like is "terrorism". How about they fight the "terrorism" that is spam?
If George had to wade through a hundred or so spam emails a day to get to the stuff he really needs to read, maybe he'd jump on the bandwagon. Unfortunately, he strikes me as the kind who doesn't use a computer much, if at all.
'Course if he did, we'd be sending thousands of taxpayer dollars to Nigeria in an attempt to help Mr. William Ngongo get that surplus cash out of the country, making a tidy profit on our assistance. And we'd probably notice that Mr. Bush's pants would have a strangely large bulge in the crotch, and that his breasts seem to be getting larger. But at least the government would be free of credit card debt at last!
Frickin' Cingular here in Illinois refuses to get any cool phones whatsoever. I was forced to upgrade to a new phone because of Nokia crappiness out of warranty (the infamous 3360 firmware flaws), the phone that appealed to me the most, in terms of features and form factor was the 6340i(I don't like external antennae and flippy things that can get ripped loose in a struggle).
It was free, so when, and if, Cingular ever decides to offer a bluetooth phone in the Chicago area market, I guess I could just toss it. I even searched on eBay for a Cingular T68i.
Now this! Aaaarrgggghhh!
" Most Windows users (including myself) are afraid of what we lose when moving to Linux."
What do you lose? The ability to play games? Big loss. When I was using Linux I never felt I'd lost anything. If anything I felt I'd gained. Gained an enormous selection of what was arguably free, as in "free", at no cost, software. But I'm not a gamer.
Now I use OS X. Again, nothing lost. Well, not as much free software, but less is more in the Mac world since you don't have to wade through as much crap to find a gem. And for fun, check out Perversion Tracker, especially the entry on Opera.
Don't get me wrong though, Windows is fine as long as you don't try to install and uninstall a lot of different kinds of software on a machine you actually plan to use. Registry bloat and file system fragmentation will soon render your screaming 2.5 GHz system slower than an old lady on thorazine.
I haven't read all the posts re: this email, but most of what I've seen has been responding to her naivete about email and the net, and her ignorance about blogs and discussion groups and the communities surrounding them. Much chiding, and not much response to what was in the email. Supposing the whole thing's not a hoax, and that the woman writing it is accurate in her interpretation of what attendees' were expressing, it's kinda frightening. And if I may be so "liberal" it shows just how out of touch with world economics, political opinion, and global business concerns the Bush administration appears to be.
It's truly frightening to learn that what I previously felt annoyance at, the gung-ho, "let's have a war" attitude of the Bush admin, may actually screw the entire planet, instead of just Iraq and us.
Y'know, I'd be on board if Iraq had directly attacked us, just as I supported getting Bin Laden (though not without some concern over collateral damage to Afghani civilians). I'm no peacenik, necessarily, but I don't see the need to attack Iraq without UN and worldwide support.
Hey George, it's still the economy, stupid!
Then there's the "kids who play sports AND "smoke and refuse to participate"
I thought the geek girl was pretty damn cute too. I liked Adam Goldberg's character better in Saving Private Ryan.
This is the third mention of cow orking in this thread. I mean, isn't that offto-pic? And aren't there laws against the orking of cows? Somebody call the SPCA! I thought this was a family website.