The US has a projected deficit this FY of $1.4 trillion, and a population of about 304 million, or about $4600 per person. California has a projected deficit of $21 billion, and a population of about 36.7 million, or about $570 per person.
LOL...are you serious? So you're comparing the deficit of the entire nation, with its vast federal government spending hundreds of billions of dollars on foreign wars, and a hundred thousand other bullshit things it's spending a few hundred million on here and there, vs California alone's much fewer financial responsibilities and corresponding lesser (though still horrendous by more conservative states' standards) budget shortfall. And then you're implying that we (inbreds and rednecks, inhabitants of the "lesser" states, also referred to as "Red" states by our superiors in the "Blue" states) are sucking at your teat?
I'm from Alabama. This year we too had a small deficit. You know how we fixed it? Our governor cut funding back on a few programs. Times will be tough in education, etc for a while, but everyone is going to grit their teeth and get through these tough times. Our deficit was so small because our representatives are fiscally conservative. You see, in our state we elect representatives who act in our interests, and vote the corrupt and scandalous mother fuckers out. Our older generation lived through the Depression when the South was still a long ways from recovering economically from the Civil War. They don't blow money left and right like the retards in your government do, so we didn't spend ourselves into a crisis like you did.
At this point I'm sure some asshole will pipe up to point out that my state receives a lot of federal budget dollars, etc., claiming that we're poor. You think California would fare better if the USA was dissolved tomorrow? OK, shut off the power, water, gas, discounted/subsidized products from other states (wheat, petroleum, ad infinitum) across all state lines. Now what? California is in anarchy. Widespread rioting across the state as millions of dumbfounded dipshits (as Mr. Keenan so eloquently put it) are without basic services, food, water, etc.
Meanwhile back in Alabama we simple folk have a 3.4GW nuclear reactor. We have countless dams, large and small, and plenty of places for new ones to be built. Hell, there are many abandoned dams that could be brought back online within a week if someone was inclined. We have plenty of coal generating capacity. We have enough to power to both of our states, and we might sell it to you, as long as none of our long standing allies (Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, etc) needs it, and at fair market prices considering the effort involved of course. We only work on a cash basis with states whose credit rating is so poor though (ours is AA.)
Grain and other food staples prosper in our rich soils and water is abundant, so there's no food shortage here. Most importantly we have an abundance of people who know how to make do and survive when times get tough, as opposed to the hordes of clueless retards who inhabit your state. The smart ones can come live over here if they're smart enough. Actually, I guess they already do considering Huntsville has the most Ph.D's per capita of any state in the U.S. We have plentiful natural resources and huge industries based on mining, refining, and putting them to use or selling them, and we have engineers who can design and build anything up to and including a rocket engine or spacecraft. We have everything we need to survive and prosper.
In short, we (the other sane states in general, and my state in particular) don't need you. At all. California wants to leave the Union? Bye. Take your immigration problems, insane regulations, and general stupidity and GTFO. Please.
I made the underlying claim that "willpower alone is the panacea for all" is bullshit.
Willpower IS all it takes to quit smoking. The problem is a lot of people are pussies who don't have enough willpower to muster up, so they go on smoking for 40 years "trying to quit" the whole time. I really don't feel sorry for them or for how shitty their lives inevitably become. As for the veteran in question, it sounds like the quitting smoking thing is the "straw that broke the camel's back" so to speak. Most people who attempt to quit smoking cold turkey, successfully or not, are not driven to suicide by it.
Where I'm from it's easier to take drag Johnny's bad attitude out in the hallway and bust his ass with a paddle. Parents of course can "opt out" their child from being punished in this manner, but few do. We really don't have any problems with kids who cause a lot of problems in school.
LOL what retard modded this troll? This should be +5, Informative. Parent nailed it. The government (i.e. you and I) just wasted $3 billion on this program where--in the majority of cases--lower income people were paid to trash their--in the majority of cases--perfectly serviceable, good condition, nice older vehicles. Those vehicles weren't even allowed to go to junkyards to be parted out and their parts used to keep other serviceable vehicles running. They were instead sent straight to the crusher, then the scrap sold to China for maybe $200-$300 per car.
The end result will be a huge shortage of affordable used vehicles for the people who can't afford to buy new vehicles. They'll just have to go on maintaining their existing (older, likely more polluting) cars for longer. In the mean time a lot of people who really couldn't afford to buy a new vehicle went ahead and did it anyway, and as time goes on some of those vehicles will start getting repossessed. Normally when your shiny new car gets repossessed you just go back to driving an older vehicle. But now those vehicles are all gone, trashed, coming back from China as dishwashers and microwaves. The ones that are still running won't be for much longer once nobody can afford to repair them, since all the junkyards dried up and went out of business. Things are going to get harder on the lower classes in the next year or two. These guys are being hit at all angles already from the shitty economy, the last thing they need is this additional problem to deal with.
The spike in car sales was brief and not really that impressive; anyone who feels that meaningful numbers of permanent jobs were created by this program is delusional.
So basically we spent a shitload of money and gained nothing, in fact lost out in some ways, thus making "Cash for Clunkers" an abysmal failure in every way except wasting taxpayer dollars and further screwing the lower classes. Great job assholes.
I understand where you're coming from. I think you'll eliminate a lot of stress from your life if you stop trying to change these people and your environment. Not because the ideas you have are unworthy or that your changes wouldn't make things better, but because some battles you just can't win.
The above advice comes from some wisdom I picked up on over the past few years from dealing with a friend of mine. As an intelligent, rational person, it can be difficult to understand just how stupid and inflexible most people really are. This particular friend is dumb as a brick when it comes to critical thinking and evaluating sources. Oh, and he listens to and retains information about as well as a bucket with no bottom. He's the kind of guy who sounds intelligent at first because he can quote all kinds of facts and figures he read in one of his college books, but when you question him on obvious logical inconsistencies (introduced during his misinterpretation of what he read), he's totally lost, but will argue with you about it til he's blue in the face. Once he has his mind set on a certain ridiculous idea you can assault him with wisdom, logic, and sound arguments until the end of time and you won't change his mind. He's the kind of guy who would walk up to a hobo and a self-made multi-millionaire and ask both of them for advice on how to get rich, then defer to the hobo's advice because they both like the same football team and he seems like a nice guy.
The insight I gained from many hours spent arguing with this fool is that most people are the same way, though to a lesser degree in most cases. Just because people are rejecting your ideas as being stupid or unnecessary or whatever doesn't mean that your ideas are actually bad. It often means that the people you addressing simply aren't mentally equipped to understand and process the information you are trying to get across to them. Unlike you, they can't visualize how the improvements you are suggesting will actually help them. This is one of the blessings and also burdens of being truly smart; being able to understand things that others don't, can't, never could, and never will.
Don't stress yourself out by attempting to do the impossible. You're like a guy who has a thousand bucks and is going to solve poverty by giving away a dollar to every poor person he sees. Pretty soon you're broke and all the poor people are still poor. Instead, focus your energies and attention on greater things. Albert Einstein said "Great spirits have always encountered violent oppostion from mediocre minds." As long as you continue to follow idiots and listen to naysayers, your life will not be what it could. What you need to do is find a great leader to follow--someone who will appreciate your talents and put them to use on the path to greatness--instead of continuing to wallow in mediocrity and misery. Your current environment sounds like its full of bland people destined to live inconsequential lives. Is that really something you want to be part of?
But is that 250GB really the magic line that anyone ever would need then? When I was visiting an other country I had internet for 200MB a day. That comes up to 6000MB a month. It sure as hell wasn't enough, as even some slashdot articles take 2MB+ to load with comments, and thats just a single page not involving any video, audio or other high-bandwidth content (steam downloads?) we've now a days getting from internet. Yeah it's significantly less than 250GB a month, but where do you draw the line?
If 250 GB/month is not enough for you, I have a very simple solution to offer. Upgrade to Comcast Business Class service. $59/mo for 6/1 up/down. No limits, no throttling, no nothing. I have this service and I frequently hit 800-900k or even 1 meg/sec download speeds. If you have a problem with the service (unlikely) you call the local account manager on his cell phone, not "Bob" in Pakistan. Pretty fucking fair price for the level of service you get, wouldn't you think?
wow. bad idea. ever had an engine explode on you? do that and it most likely will.
LOL, your fucking engine is not going to explode. Do you, or any of the others who made this brain dead comment, have the slightest clue how an engine works? Even back in the 60s, even with a shitty bottom of the barrel Chevrolet motor you weren't likely to blow up an engine from holding it wide ass open, especially for the 30 seconds it might take to pull over and stop the car. The valves will float and limit engine RPMs long before the engine reaches speeds high enough to sling it apart. Nowadays, every modern car engine has a rev limiter which keeps the engine within safe operating limits. You can bounce the thing off the rev limiter all day long and you're not going hurt a thing. If your engine explodes into flaming pieces and kills you because you bounced it off the rev limiter for a few seconds, then you and your Yugo both deserved to die anyway.
That would have been a throttle linkage, i.e. a solid bar connecting throttle pedal to carburetor. The scenario you described is the very reason throttle linkages went the way of the dodo in the early 70s to be replaced by throttle cables, which are not susceptible to that problem.
Sorry, but that's not true. It is true that in off-road race engines, where the mixture is usually somewhat fuel-rich, leaning it out will cause higher combustion temperatures, but those peak temperatures occur very close to the stoichiometric fuel/air ratio that all modern cars with three-way catalytic converters are designed to operate at. If you lean it out from there, you'll have a much more dilute mixture, which not only makes detonation much less likely to occur, but in that extreme, makes it less likely that the fuel will ignite at all. I did my dissertation research on highly dilute SI combustion, and even with a very advanced spark timing, the problems to be avoided are always misfires and incomplete combustion, not detonation.
Wow, I'm glad you're not an engine tuner. I think you need to take your degree back for a refund. A gasoline automobile engine only operates around stoich at idle and cruise conditions. Under moderate to heavy acceleration, a properly-tuned engine runs much richer than stoich. If you tried to run an automobile engine at stoich under acceleration it'd self destruct from detonation in short order.
The problem, IMO, is likely that drive-by-wire systems have too much unnecessary complication. Now, I know absolutely nothing about cars,
That much is obvious. But then again, what ever stopped a random Slashdotter from having an opinion on something he knows nothing about?
Drive by wire systems are becoming standard because they cut down on noise and vibration being introduced in the cabin, because they make the throttle response more linear and smooth (especially when the A/C compressor, cruise control, hydroboost braking system, power steering, etc are kicking on and off) and because most importantly, giving the ECU control over throttle position enables better launch and traction control schemes to be implemented. It's not about cost at all. I guarantee a simple throttle cable is a hell of a lot cheaper to manufacture than the double or triple redundant throttle position sensor plus highly fault tolerant throttle position motor and extra wiring required for a drive by wire scheme.
Likewise, at the idiots claiming that fly-by-wire is worse because OMG the computer could go into an infinite loop or something: what, is the ECU running Windows Vista? Did they hire some 16 year old hacker to design their hardware with parts ordered off Newegg? No, dumb asses. Automotive ECUs are some of the finest embedded and integrated electronic control systems ever built. The manufacturers put a metric fuckload of thought, effort, and money into engineering (in the real sense of the term, not like "software engineering") reliable, trustworthy firmware and hardware for their ECUs. They are designed from A to Z to be highly reliable and safe. Yes, minor bugs do sometimes slip through, but it's pretty much unheard of for a major bug to get through that could actually result in injury or death.
answer... yes and no. I'd release him from prison but still keep him away from the general population (think quarantine) and/or cure him from this disease.
So here... Italy is releasing him early but not doing anything else to either protect the rest of the population from him or cure him of the side effects of this aggression gene.
Prison may very well be the wrong place, but completely free is also the wrong place. They keep criminally insane people in a mental hospital don't they? What about this guy?
You've stumbled onto the answer but don't seem to have recognized it. The answer is ostracism. I'm sure there are indeed persons out there whose undesirable behavior (extreme aggression resulting in murder, etc) is explainable by genetics. Perhaps we don't yet have the necessary knowledge to identify who these individuals are with any certainty, but one day we will. As we gain more knowledge of how genes control behavior, I think genetic tendencies should indeed factor in to punishment for crime. Those who are judged to be incurable should simply be ostracized from society. Drop their asses off in the middle of the wilderness somewhere with a month's worth of supplies and let them fend for themselves. Put their DNA and other identifying information in a database and if they return, put them to death.
No, he's saying that with the same (or less) effort, privileged people will usually achieve success while non-privileged people won't. At the very least, that means that rich people shouldn't assume that poor/non-rich people are lazy and deserve their fate.
I started out poor and am now well on my way to being rich. I've seen both sides of the equation. In most cases, yes, poor people are poor and stay poor because they are too lazy and/or stupid to do any better.
Your post is a great example of this 'you didn't deserve it, while I did'-mentality. You assume that the person you replied to is lazy, even though it is a fact that most people who work two jobs have a low income. In fact, one of the major issues that is keeping poor people down is that they don't have the time to get a better education, because they spend most of it working + taking care of their family.
#1 why the fuck did they have that big ass family to begin with if they couldn't afford to support one? Why should I feel sorry for these people? Why is America the bad guy because these dumb asses made shitty choices?
#2 my mom also used to work two jobs just to make ends meet. She didn't have the time or the money to get a better education either, but she found a way to do it anyway. Now she's a nurse and doing well for herself. People who cry about how they don't have the time or the money to better their lives are just like fat asses who claim they don't have time to go to the gym--i.e. full of shit. Someone who really wants to better his life will find a way to do it. Someone who really wants to lose that fat will find a way to do it. The history of America is full of ridiculously poor immigrant families who found a way to raise themselves up above their circumstances against all odds. Today's prosperous middle class families were yesterday's dirt poor Greek/Italian/Irish/etc immigrants. Do I feel sympathy for whining bitches who'd rather sit around waiting for handouts and crying about how tough America is, while watching TV and playing video games? LOL, get the fuck out of here.
You're obviously a troll rather than interested in honest conversation, but someone worthwhile might be interested in the response, so I'll give one.
Ohh, you're breaking my heart. I'm on the edge of my seat here. Reading on....
I am no stranger to risk. My point stands: people who can rely on their parents to bail them out if a risk fails have a huge advantage in business (and in life in general, of course).
Yeah, they do. They have that advantage because somebody, somewhere in their family history did what it took to elevate their family from their almost assuredly poor immigrant background--assuming we're talking about a U.S. citizen here. And your point is?
Regardless of any "fairness" issue, it is to our advantage as a society to do our best to see that people who could improve our lives get a chance to do so, with as much chance of success as makes sense when the risks & rewards are weighed.
Every single person in this country does have a chance to improve his life, you stupid fuck. But it's a chance, an opportunity, not a guarantee!
Of course, being 17, you probably have never thought of what taking a financial risk means when you have real responsibility.
LOL, once again you demonstrate your stupidity. I also grew up in a poor family. When my dad was growing up he and his brothers would sometimes eat sugar sandwiches because thats all they had in the cupboard. He joined the military when he was old enough and served for a while. He scrounged and saved and bought some land back home and we moved there after the Gulf War. I grew up in a shitty, run-down 1970s era single wide trailer in the backwoods of Alabama. When I was a kid I had the bare necessities and that was it, certainly not a life of luxury or wealth. After high school I joined the military, gained some technical skills and a security clearance, and now I'm making six figures a year. No college degree. In five years I will be a self made millionaire.
Do I feel sorry for anybody in America who isn't able to make something of himself? Fuck no. Because there are countless opportunities available in this country to anyone who bothers looking. There's even mother fuckers who don't have legs or are blind or have some other genuine excuse who are still making something of themselves and prospering. Anyone who is able bodied yet claims he can't make it in America is a fucking dumbass, period.
Presumably, you are whining that only a small minority of people are responsible for very large investments. But nothing is stopping you from joining them. All you need is a solid business plan, and they will loan you three times your current net worth, in order to pursue your idea. All they ask is that they get a cut, for their trouble. Heck, if you have good management experience and a solid business plan but not much capital, they'll finance your entire operation.
All it takes is the initiative to do it.
And that's the problem. It's a hell of a lot easier to hang around slashdot whining and crying about how hard it is to succeed in America, so these lazy fuckers choose to do that instead.
No. In capitalism, the aristocrats -- the owners of capital -- are left free to make their own choices, and succeed by them, or be rescued by their cronies. The working classes -- including the professionals, all the folks who actual do productive work rather then skim off the top -- are left to scurry around in the footsteps of the giants, trying not to get crushed.
Is the saddest part of your post the fact that you actually believe this retarded bullshit, or the fact that a bunch of Slash-tards modded you up Insightful? I can't decide.
I'm not saying people who start with no money can't succeed, or people who start with money are guaranteed to succeed. I'm saying people with a healthy start (or ludicrously easy start) discount just how many times they can fail without consequences, and how much easier it is to succeed, in comparison to people with a middling or disadvantaged start.
So basically you're crying because you can't become a millionaire by just sitting around on your ass, or by working some cookie cutter 9-5 job. You actually have to take risks and put effort into it, and you are not guaranteed to succeed. OMG, America is SO unfair!
Fail. Republic is not the opposite of Democracy. It is entirely possible for a country to be both a Republic AND a Democracy -- which the U.S. most certainly is. Ever heard of the term "Democratic Republic"?
Yeah and in 1985 a brand new Mustang GT cost what, $9k? How much would your $1300 Amiga cost in today's dollars, and how does it compare in capability to a $300 bottom of the barrel Microsoft-powered netbook?
I'm sorry, but what is that supposed to prove? Having children is not a proof that you've had sex...
That statement was cleverly designed to prove that you need to get laid, by acting as bait for you to out yourself as the pedantic and almost assuredly virginal geek that you are.
As time progresses, it'll be interesting to see how this shapes.
One thing it (free access to music) is doing is broadly expanding minds and tastes, as you have illustrated. It's making the music better. Think of how shitty and limited music was back in, say, 1910 compared to today. There is a ton of good music available today that wasn't even thought of or imagined back then. As advances have been made in recording and distribution technology over the past few decades, people have been more and more exposed to different kinds of music and different ideas, and music as a whole has greatly benefited. Sure, there is plenty of shit music out there, but there's a fuckload of good stuff too, moreso than any other time in history. That's why we have computers and rating systems, to help us quickly sort out the shit from the good stuff. Is today's free and unlimited access to music going to have huge, sweeping, and generally positive results in the music industry? Fuck yeah it is, and anyone who can't see what's going on in the big picture is blind or stupid.
Digital distribution has made copying bits as easy as clicking a mouse button, and everybody is doing it. When a huge percentage of society is engaging in a certain activity, that activity is de facto not immoral or wrong, and someone is a fucking idiot if they think they can legislate or prosecute it out of existence. That's about as smart or effective as trying to legislate snake bites out of existence by making it illegal for snakes to bite people. Yeah good luck with that, dumb asses.
Unlimited copyright infringement is here to stay--there is no doubt about it--until the day that copyright is finally abolished for good. I can understand why a lot of people are trying to fight this. The Internet (and digital communication as a whole) is causing massive changes in the way we do a lot of things, and copyright is one of the big areas affected. It's going to put entire industries out of business and change others markedly and this is already happening as we speak. But prosecuting people and trying to make them feel like bad people for copying bits around are temporary measures that will only slow down the flood to a more manageable rate, not stop it or prevent it. These are the actions of idiots, people with no vision. The smart people will see what's going on in the big picture, realize that change is inevitable, and roll with it. Those are the ones who will found the future industries that nobody has even thought of yet that will spring up and generate billions of dollars.
Think of Google. Who in their right mind would have imagined even ten years ago, let alone 20 years ago, that you could make that much money from a friggin search engine? Twenty years ago who the hell had ever heard of a search engine? Back then the Google founders would have been labelled as dumb asses for their silly ideas and disregarded. But they had the vision, and the naysayers didn't, and guess who became incredibly rich? Today there are people out there who understand how things will be ten or twenty years from now. Those people will be tomorrow's billionaires, and all the dumb asses screaming about how the sky is falling because things are changing will still be nobodies then just as they are now.
A hundred years from now, the idea of it being illegal to make copies of stuff will seem as silly and antiquated (and downright wrong) to people as the idea of owning slaves seems to us now. That's where things are going, and you can take that to the bank.
I know this is an unpopular opinion and... my own behavior makes me a hypocrite here, but let's stop pretending that free software is awesome and great just because some of the claims about it are exaggerated.
Making software--good software--takes time and resources. Time that you can't really make money on, and tools and computer equipment that is not free. Unless you sell the software you're essentially losing money, in most situations. And no matter what some slashdotters CLAIM, yes, many people will not buy software at all just because they can get it off APT or yum or, god forbid, portage.
which I would be at fault for since I would have hit them in the rear end
This is a common myth. Just because you rear end someone doesn't mean that you are automatically at fault. In the situation you described above, the other driver would have clearly been at fault.
Not to mention all the "ex-Soviet" states are still being run by the same people as under the Soviet regime; they just rig the elections to stay in power, now.
I think any from Estonia (or Latvia, or Lithuania, or....) would take great exception to your thoughtless comment.
Slashdot Mirror
The US has a projected deficit this FY of $1.4 trillion, and a population of about 304 million, or about $4600 per person. California has a projected deficit of $21 billion, and a population of about 36.7 million, or about $570 per person.
LOL...are you serious? So you're comparing the deficit of the entire nation, with its vast federal government spending hundreds of billions of dollars on foreign wars, and a hundred thousand other bullshit things it's spending a few hundred million on here and there, vs California alone's much fewer financial responsibilities and corresponding lesser (though still horrendous by more conservative states' standards) budget shortfall. And then you're implying that we (inbreds and rednecks, inhabitants of the "lesser" states, also referred to as "Red" states by our superiors in the "Blue" states) are sucking at your teat?
I'm from Alabama. This year we too had a small deficit. You know how we fixed it? Our governor cut funding back on a few programs. Times will be tough in education, etc for a while, but everyone is going to grit their teeth and get through these tough times. Our deficit was so small because our representatives are fiscally conservative. You see, in our state we elect representatives who act in our interests, and vote the corrupt and scandalous mother fuckers out. Our older generation lived through the Depression when the South was still a long ways from recovering economically from the Civil War. They don't blow money left and right like the retards in your government do, so we didn't spend ourselves into a crisis like you did.
At this point I'm sure some asshole will pipe up to point out that my state receives a lot of federal budget dollars, etc., claiming that we're poor. You think California would fare better if the USA was dissolved tomorrow? OK, shut off the power, water, gas, discounted/subsidized products from other states (wheat, petroleum, ad infinitum) across all state lines. Now what? California is in anarchy. Widespread rioting across the state as millions of dumbfounded dipshits (as Mr. Keenan so eloquently put it) are without basic services, food, water, etc.
Meanwhile back in Alabama we simple folk have a 3.4GW nuclear reactor. We have countless dams, large and small, and plenty of places for new ones to be built. Hell, there are many abandoned dams that could be brought back online within a week if someone was inclined. We have plenty of coal generating capacity. We have enough to power to both of our states, and we might sell it to you, as long as none of our long standing allies (Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, etc) needs it, and at fair market prices considering the effort involved of course. We only work on a cash basis with states whose credit rating is so poor though (ours is AA.)
Grain and other food staples prosper in our rich soils and water is abundant, so there's no food shortage here. Most importantly we have an abundance of people who know how to make do and survive when times get tough, as opposed to the hordes of clueless retards who inhabit your state. The smart ones can come live over here if they're smart enough. Actually, I guess they already do considering Huntsville has the most Ph.D's per capita of any state in the U.S. We have plentiful natural resources and huge industries based on mining, refining, and putting them to use or selling them, and we have engineers who can design and build anything up to and including a rocket engine or spacecraft. We have everything we need to survive and prosper.
In short, we (the other sane states in general, and my state in particular) don't need you. At all. California wants to leave the Union? Bye. Take your immigration problems, insane regulations, and general stupidity and GTFO. Please.
I made the underlying claim that "willpower alone is the panacea for all" is bullshit.
Willpower IS all it takes to quit smoking. The problem is a lot of people are pussies who don't have enough willpower to muster up, so they go on smoking for 40 years "trying to quit" the whole time. I really don't feel sorry for them or for how shitty their lives inevitably become. As for the veteran in question, it sounds like the quitting smoking thing is the "straw that broke the camel's back" so to speak. Most people who attempt to quit smoking cold turkey, successfully or not, are not driven to suicide by it.
Alabama
Where I'm from it's easier to take drag Johnny's bad attitude out in the hallway and bust his ass with a paddle. Parents of course can "opt out" their child from being punished in this manner, but few do. We really don't have any problems with kids who cause a lot of problems in school.
LOL what retard modded this troll? This should be +5, Informative. Parent nailed it. The government (i.e. you and I) just wasted $3 billion on this program where--in the majority of cases--lower income people were paid to trash their--in the majority of cases--perfectly serviceable, good condition, nice older vehicles. Those vehicles weren't even allowed to go to junkyards to be parted out and their parts used to keep other serviceable vehicles running. They were instead sent straight to the crusher, then the scrap sold to China for maybe $200-$300 per car.
The end result will be a huge shortage of affordable used vehicles for the people who can't afford to buy new vehicles. They'll just have to go on maintaining their existing (older, likely more polluting) cars for longer. In the mean time a lot of people who really couldn't afford to buy a new vehicle went ahead and did it anyway, and as time goes on some of those vehicles will start getting repossessed. Normally when your shiny new car gets repossessed you just go back to driving an older vehicle. But now those vehicles are all gone, trashed, coming back from China as dishwashers and microwaves. The ones that are still running won't be for much longer once nobody can afford to repair them, since all the junkyards dried up and went out of business. Things are going to get harder on the lower classes in the next year or two. These guys are being hit at all angles already from the shitty economy, the last thing they need is this additional problem to deal with.
The spike in car sales was brief and not really that impressive; anyone who feels that meaningful numbers of permanent jobs were created by this program is delusional.
So basically we spent a shitload of money and gained nothing, in fact lost out in some ways, thus making "Cash for Clunkers" an abysmal failure in every way except wasting taxpayer dollars and further screwing the lower classes. Great job assholes.
I understand where you're coming from. I think you'll eliminate a lot of stress from your life if you stop trying to change these people and your environment. Not because the ideas you have are unworthy or that your changes wouldn't make things better, but because some battles you just can't win.
The above advice comes from some wisdom I picked up on over the past few years from dealing with a friend of mine. As an intelligent, rational person, it can be difficult to understand just how stupid and inflexible most people really are. This particular friend is dumb as a brick when it comes to critical thinking and evaluating sources. Oh, and he listens to and retains information about as well as a bucket with no bottom. He's the kind of guy who sounds intelligent at first because he can quote all kinds of facts and figures he read in one of his college books, but when you question him on obvious logical inconsistencies (introduced during his misinterpretation of what he read), he's totally lost, but will argue with you about it til he's blue in the face. Once he has his mind set on a certain ridiculous idea you can assault him with wisdom, logic, and sound arguments until the end of time and you won't change his mind. He's the kind of guy who would walk up to a hobo and a self-made multi-millionaire and ask both of them for advice on how to get rich, then defer to the hobo's advice because they both like the same football team and he seems like a nice guy.
The insight I gained from many hours spent arguing with this fool is that most people are the same way, though to a lesser degree in most cases. Just because people are rejecting your ideas as being stupid or unnecessary or whatever doesn't mean that your ideas are actually bad. It often means that the people you addressing simply aren't mentally equipped to understand and process the information you are trying to get across to them. Unlike you, they can't visualize how the improvements you are suggesting will actually help them. This is one of the blessings and also burdens of being truly smart; being able to understand things that others don't, can't, never could, and never will.
Don't stress yourself out by attempting to do the impossible. You're like a guy who has a thousand bucks and is going to solve poverty by giving away a dollar to every poor person he sees. Pretty soon you're broke and all the poor people are still poor. Instead, focus your energies and attention on greater things. Albert Einstein said "Great spirits have always encountered violent oppostion from mediocre minds." As long as you continue to follow idiots and listen to naysayers, your life will not be what it could. What you need to do is find a great leader to follow--someone who will appreciate your talents and put them to use on the path to greatness--instead of continuing to wallow in mediocrity and misery. Your current environment sounds like its full of bland people destined to live inconsequential lives. Is that really something you want to be part of?
But is that 250GB really the magic line that anyone ever would need then? When I was visiting an other country I had internet for 200MB a day. That comes up to 6000MB a month. It sure as hell wasn't enough, as even some slashdot articles take 2MB+ to load with comments, and thats just a single page not involving any video, audio or other high-bandwidth content (steam downloads?) we've now a days getting from internet. Yeah it's significantly less than 250GB a month, but where do you draw the line?
If 250 GB/month is not enough for you, I have a very simple solution to offer. Upgrade to Comcast Business Class service. $59/mo for 6/1 up/down. No limits, no throttling, no nothing. I have this service and I frequently hit 800-900k or even 1 meg/sec download speeds. If you have a problem with the service (unlikely) you call the local account manager on his cell phone, not "Bob" in Pakistan. Pretty fucking fair price for the level of service you get, wouldn't you think?
wow. bad idea. ever had an engine explode on you? do that and it most likely will.
LOL, your fucking engine is not going to explode. Do you, or any of the others who made this brain dead comment, have the slightest clue how an engine works? Even back in the 60s, even with a shitty bottom of the barrel Chevrolet motor you weren't likely to blow up an engine from holding it wide ass open, especially for the 30 seconds it might take to pull over and stop the car. The valves will float and limit engine RPMs long before the engine reaches speeds high enough to sling it apart. Nowadays, every modern car engine has a rev limiter which keeps the engine within safe operating limits. You can bounce the thing off the rev limiter all day long and you're not going hurt a thing. If your engine explodes into flaming pieces and kills you because you bounced it off the rev limiter for a few seconds, then you and your Yugo both deserved to die anyway.
That would have been a throttle linkage, i.e. a solid bar connecting throttle pedal to carburetor. The scenario you described is the very reason throttle linkages went the way of the dodo in the early 70s to be replaced by throttle cables, which are not susceptible to that problem.
Sorry, but that's not true. It is true that in off-road race engines, where the mixture is usually somewhat fuel-rich, leaning it out will cause higher combustion temperatures, but those peak temperatures occur very close to the stoichiometric fuel/air ratio that all modern cars with three-way catalytic converters are designed to operate at. If you lean it out from there, you'll have a much more dilute mixture, which not only makes detonation much less likely to occur, but in that extreme, makes it less likely that the fuel will ignite at all. I did my dissertation research on highly dilute SI combustion, and even with a very advanced spark timing, the problems to be avoided are always misfires and incomplete combustion, not detonation.
Wow, I'm glad you're not an engine tuner. I think you need to take your degree back for a refund. A gasoline automobile engine only operates around stoich at idle and cruise conditions. Under moderate to heavy acceleration, a properly-tuned engine runs much richer than stoich. If you tried to run an automobile engine at stoich under acceleration it'd self destruct from detonation in short order.
The problem, IMO, is likely that drive-by-wire systems have too much unnecessary complication. Now, I know absolutely nothing about cars,
That much is obvious. But then again, what ever stopped a random Slashdotter from having an opinion on something he knows nothing about?
Drive by wire systems are becoming standard because they cut down on noise and vibration being introduced in the cabin, because they make the throttle response more linear and smooth (especially when the A/C compressor, cruise control, hydroboost braking system, power steering, etc are kicking on and off) and because most importantly, giving the ECU control over throttle position enables better launch and traction control schemes to be implemented. It's not about cost at all. I guarantee a simple throttle cable is a hell of a lot cheaper to manufacture than the double or triple redundant throttle position sensor plus highly fault tolerant throttle position motor and extra wiring required for a drive by wire scheme.
Likewise, at the idiots claiming that fly-by-wire is worse because OMG the computer could go into an infinite loop or something: what, is the ECU running Windows Vista? Did they hire some 16 year old hacker to design their hardware with parts ordered off Newegg? No, dumb asses. Automotive ECUs are some of the finest embedded and integrated electronic control systems ever built. The manufacturers put a metric fuckload of thought, effort, and money into engineering (in the real sense of the term, not like "software engineering") reliable, trustworthy firmware and hardware for their ECUs. They are designed from A to Z to be highly reliable and safe. Yes, minor bugs do sometimes slip through, but it's pretty much unheard of for a major bug to get through that could actually result in injury or death.
answer... yes and no. I'd release him from prison but still keep him away from the general population (think quarantine) and/or cure him from this disease.
So here... Italy is releasing him early but not doing anything else to either protect the rest of the population from him or cure him of the side effects of this aggression gene.
Prison may very well be the wrong place, but completely free is also the wrong place. They keep criminally insane people in a mental hospital don't they? What about this guy?
You've stumbled onto the answer but don't seem to have recognized it. The answer is ostracism. I'm sure there are indeed persons out there whose undesirable behavior (extreme aggression resulting in murder, etc) is explainable by genetics. Perhaps we don't yet have the necessary knowledge to identify who these individuals are with any certainty, but one day we will. As we gain more knowledge of how genes control behavior, I think genetic tendencies should indeed factor in to punishment for crime. Those who are judged to be incurable should simply be ostracized from society. Drop their asses off in the middle of the wilderness somewhere with a month's worth of supplies and let them fend for themselves. Put their DNA and other identifying information in a database and if they return, put them to death.
No, he's saying that with the same (or less) effort, privileged people will usually achieve success while non-privileged people won't. At the very least, that means that rich people shouldn't assume that poor/non-rich people are lazy and deserve their fate.
I started out poor and am now well on my way to being rich. I've seen both sides of the equation. In most cases, yes, poor people are poor and stay poor because they are too lazy and/or stupid to do any better.
Your post is a great example of this 'you didn't deserve it, while I did'-mentality. You assume that the person you replied to is lazy, even though it is a fact that most people who work two jobs have a low income. In fact, one of the major issues that is keeping poor people down is that they don't have the time to get a better education, because they spend most of it working + taking care of their family.
#1 why the fuck did they have that big ass family to begin with if they couldn't afford to support one? Why should I feel sorry for these people? Why is America the bad guy because these dumb asses made shitty choices?
#2 my mom also used to work two jobs just to make ends meet. She didn't have the time or the money to get a better education either, but she found a way to do it anyway. Now she's a nurse and doing well for herself. People who cry about how they don't have the time or the money to better their lives are just like fat asses who claim they don't have time to go to the gym--i.e. full of shit. Someone who really wants to better his life will find a way to do it. Someone who really wants to lose that fat will find a way to do it. The history of America is full of ridiculously poor immigrant families who found a way to raise themselves up above their circumstances against all odds. Today's prosperous middle class families were yesterday's dirt poor Greek/Italian/Irish/etc immigrants. Do I feel sympathy for whining bitches who'd rather sit around waiting for handouts and crying about how tough America is, while watching TV and playing video games? LOL, get the fuck out of here.
You're obviously a troll rather than interested in honest conversation, but someone worthwhile might be interested in the response, so I'll give one.
Ohh, you're breaking my heart. I'm on the edge of my seat here. Reading on....
I am no stranger to risk. My point stands: people who can rely on their parents to bail them out if a risk fails have a huge advantage in business (and in life in general, of course).
Yeah, they do. They have that advantage because somebody, somewhere in their family history did what it took to elevate their family from their almost assuredly poor immigrant background--assuming we're talking about a U.S. citizen here. And your point is?
Regardless of any "fairness" issue, it is to our advantage as a society to do our best to see that people who could improve our lives get a chance to do so, with as much chance of success as makes sense when the risks & rewards are weighed.
Every single person in this country does have a chance to improve his life, you stupid fuck. But it's a chance, an opportunity, not a guarantee!
Of course, being 17, you probably have never thought of what taking a financial risk means when you have real responsibility.
LOL, once again you demonstrate your stupidity. I also grew up in a poor family. When my dad was growing up he and his brothers would sometimes eat sugar sandwiches because thats all they had in the cupboard. He joined the military when he was old enough and served for a while. He scrounged and saved and bought some land back home and we moved there after the Gulf War. I grew up in a shitty, run-down 1970s era single wide trailer in the backwoods of Alabama. When I was a kid I had the bare necessities and that was it, certainly not a life of luxury or wealth. After high school I joined the military, gained some technical skills and a security clearance, and now I'm making six figures a year. No college degree. In five years I will be a self made millionaire.
Do I feel sorry for anybody in America who isn't able to make something of himself? Fuck no. Because there are countless opportunities available in this country to anyone who bothers looking. There's even mother fuckers who don't have legs or are blind or have some other genuine excuse who are still making something of themselves and prospering. Anyone who is able bodied yet claims he can't make it in America is a fucking dumbass, period.
Presumably, you are whining that only a small minority of people are responsible for very large investments. But nothing is stopping you from joining them. All you need is a solid business plan, and they will loan you three times your current net worth, in order to pursue your idea. All they ask is that they get a cut, for their trouble. Heck, if you have good management experience and a solid business plan but not much capital, they'll finance your entire operation.
All it takes is the initiative to do it.
And that's the problem. It's a hell of a lot easier to hang around slashdot whining and crying about how hard it is to succeed in America, so these lazy fuckers choose to do that instead.
No. In capitalism, the aristocrats -- the owners of capital -- are left free to make their own choices, and succeed by them, or be rescued by their cronies. The working classes -- including the professionals, all the folks who actual do productive work rather then skim off the top -- are left to scurry around in the footsteps of the giants, trying not to get crushed.
Is the saddest part of your post the fact that you actually believe this retarded bullshit, or the fact that a bunch of Slash-tards modded you up Insightful? I can't decide.
I'm not saying people who start with no money can't succeed, or people who start with money are guaranteed to succeed. I'm saying people with a healthy start (or ludicrously easy start) discount just how many times they can fail without consequences, and how much easier it is to succeed, in comparison to people with a middling or disadvantaged start.
So basically you're crying because you can't become a millionaire by just sitting around on your ass, or by working some cookie cutter 9-5 job. You actually have to take risks and put effort into it, and you are not guaranteed to succeed. OMG, America is SO unfair!
America is a Republic.
Fail. Republic is not the opposite of Democracy. It is entirely possible for a country to be both a Republic AND a Democracy -- which the U.S. most certainly is. Ever heard of the term "Democratic Republic"?
Yeah and in 1985 a brand new Mustang GT cost what, $9k? How much would your $1300 Amiga cost in today's dollars, and how does it compare in capability to a $300 bottom of the barrel Microsoft-powered netbook?
I'm sorry, but what is that supposed to prove? Having children is not a proof that you've had sex...
That statement was cleverly designed to prove that you need to get laid, by acting as bait for you to out yourself as the pedantic and almost assuredly virginal geek that you are.
Brilliantly played, AC!
As time progresses, it'll be interesting to see how this shapes.
One thing it (free access to music) is doing is broadly expanding minds and tastes, as you have illustrated. It's making the music better. Think of how shitty and limited music was back in, say, 1910 compared to today. There is a ton of good music available today that wasn't even thought of or imagined back then. As advances have been made in recording and distribution technology over the past few decades, people have been more and more exposed to different kinds of music and different ideas, and music as a whole has greatly benefited. Sure, there is plenty of shit music out there, but there's a fuckload of good stuff too, moreso than any other time in history. That's why we have computers and rating systems, to help us quickly sort out the shit from the good stuff. Is today's free and unlimited access to music going to have huge, sweeping, and generally positive results in the music industry? Fuck yeah it is, and anyone who can't see what's going on in the big picture is blind or stupid.
Digital distribution has made copying bits as easy as clicking a mouse button, and everybody is doing it. When a huge percentage of society is engaging in a certain activity, that activity is de facto not immoral or wrong, and someone is a fucking idiot if they think they can legislate or prosecute it out of existence. That's about as smart or effective as trying to legislate snake bites out of existence by making it illegal for snakes to bite people. Yeah good luck with that, dumb asses.
Unlimited copyright infringement is here to stay--there is no doubt about it--until the day that copyright is finally abolished for good. I can understand why a lot of people are trying to fight this. The Internet (and digital communication as a whole) is causing massive changes in the way we do a lot of things, and copyright is one of the big areas affected. It's going to put entire industries out of business and change others markedly and this is already happening as we speak. But prosecuting people and trying to make them feel like bad people for copying bits around are temporary measures that will only slow down the flood to a more manageable rate, not stop it or prevent it. These are the actions of idiots, people with no vision. The smart people will see what's going on in the big picture, realize that change is inevitable, and roll with it. Those are the ones who will found the future industries that nobody has even thought of yet that will spring up and generate billions of dollars.
Think of Google. Who in their right mind would have imagined even ten years ago, let alone 20 years ago, that you could make that much money from a friggin search engine? Twenty years ago who the hell had ever heard of a search engine? Back then the Google founders would have been labelled as dumb asses for their silly ideas and disregarded. But they had the vision, and the naysayers didn't, and guess who became incredibly rich? Today there are people out there who understand how things will be ten or twenty years from now. Those people will be tomorrow's billionaires, and all the dumb asses screaming about how the sky is falling because things are changing will still be nobodies then just as they are now.
A hundred years from now, the idea of it being illegal to make copies of stuff will seem as silly and antiquated (and downright wrong) to people as the idea of owning slaves seems to us now. That's where things are going, and you can take that to the bank.
I know this is an unpopular opinion and... my own behavior makes me a hypocrite here, but let's stop pretending that free software is awesome and great just because some of the claims about it are exaggerated.
Making software--good software--takes time and resources. Time that you can't really make money on, and tools and computer equipment that is not free. Unless you sell the software you're essentially losing money, in most situations. And no matter what some slashdotters CLAIM, yes, many people will not buy software at all just because they can get it off APT or yum or, god forbid, portage.
If for no other reason than you think swerving is a suitable reaction to anything.
And you don't? That would make you a dumb ass, as well as a poor driver.
Free clue: There are very often situations where braking wouldn't work and swerving is the only way to avoid a sudden hazard.
which I would be at fault for since I would have hit them in the rear end
This is a common myth. Just because you rear end someone doesn't mean that you are automatically at fault. In the situation you described above, the other driver would have clearly been at fault.
Not to mention all the "ex-Soviet" states are still being run by the same people as under the Soviet regime; they just rig the elections to stay in power, now.
I think any from Estonia (or Latvia, or Lithuania, or....) would take great exception to your thoughtless comment.