"Heavier taxes on finance income, or some sort of legal restructuring or limitation of finance itself."
Why? Why should you... or anyone else... decide how much property someone should have? And money is property. What gives a man the right to take what others have earned and give it to people that they decide are more "deserving"?
"The wealth gap in the US is absurd."
Again, why? Most people with money earned it, and work very hard for it. Look at the profile of just about any high earner. They're typically up earlier, work longer, and get home later than average. This is true in finance, or any other high-paying endeavor. They earn their money.
This isn't France. This isn't a European social democracy. In the US, we have equality under the law, but that's it, and in a free country, that's the way it should be. (And Europe has been moving away from the social-democrat thing themselves) If you want more money, then go out and make it. If you're just mad that the other guy has a lot more than you, well, tough.
"It's not slavery. Working for the betterment of mankind instead of its hasty demise is liberating. On the contrary, working for greedy pigs is slavery, no matter how much money they give you."
If you want to work for the "betterment of mankind", knock yourself out. But if opportunities are there, people should work wherever they like. You think working for "greedy pigs" is slavery? What a coincidence. I think working someplace for 1/3rd of what I'm worth sucks. So if you want to pat yourself on the back for your sacrifice to mankind, hey, congrats. But other people have other dreams and motivations. And in America, we get to do that.
You're not talking about "participating" in society. You're talking about, at best, guilt tripping students into a path that's less profitable for them, and at worst, coercing them into that path, because YOU think it'd be good for society. It's a good thing that you don't have any authority about it.
If your existing refrigerator is perfectly good, then what incentive do you have to buy the NEW refrigerator?
People periodically buy things... appliances included... simply because they want new. More shiny, more function, or in the case of wives, simply a matter of "That look is so ten years ago". In many cases, people buy new things for the sheer pleasure of doing so.
I don't know who is worse; the people that bitch about how much better it was when there was one Ma Bell, or the people that bitch when a company merges or buys out another company.
"From December through March 1945, he served at the Bureau of Aeronautics, Navy Department, Washington, D.C."
Whether it was an "eyesore" is really in the eye of the beholder. The Navy didn't maintain it properly because it was intended to be temporary from the start.
Ah, now you've stoked the architecture buff in me. That was the Main Navy & Munitions buildings, built as "temporary" headquarters during WWI. But they were built of steel-reinforced concrete, and so lasted a long, long time. Externally, they had an attractive, federal-style facade and fit in with the surrounding building. Inside, however, they were said to have a rather dingy look and feel to them. Regardless, the real reason Nixon wanted them torn down is that he was stationed there as a young officer and hated them. But compared to some of the modernist monstrosities in DC, the old Main Navy buildings looked more like federal buildings than some of the glass and steel and concrete horrors that we've since built in the capitol. Next to the J. Edgar Hoover building or some parts of the State Department headquarters, Main Navy was a veritable Monticello.
I'm confused. Why would I ever want to pay for news?
While you can certainly get breaking headlines anywhere on the web, those that subscribe to newspapers usually want a whole package that isn't available for free via the web. I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, and I like the culture section, which is as good as any paper in the world. I like their editorial content and letters section, and of course, they have the best business and financial coverage anywhere (though the Investors Business Daily folks would argue that point).
If you just want "latest headlines", then yeah, you can get that for free anywhere. But the nice thing about newspapers... at least good ones... is the total content they have.
No matter where you stand on the issue of a no-fly zone... I'm conflicted on it myself... it's too late now. It was needed a week ago, at least. Gaddafi has basically won already, crushing the rebels brutally with airpower and pushing them to their last refuge. He doesn't need airpower to beat them now. He has them encircled with superior forces now. Once again, the UN arrives after the damage is already done. If you're placing your hopes in the "international community" to save you from someone like Gaddafi, then you really have no hope at all.
If you're going to do something like a no-fly zone, then above all things, you have to be decisive. Either do it or don't do it, but don't sit around for weeks seeking "consensus". It's too late by then.
He's an inertial nav test guy, I'm a former avionics developer.
We both agreed that we can understand the financial incentives to remove inertial nav from planes, but that it's misguided.
You *NEED* a backup in case GPS fails (and dead reckoning has a good chance of leaving you just that -- dead).
Considering how relatively cheap LORAN was to maintain, I don't think we should have retired it. In a war with a peer enemy... say China just for illustration here... one of the first things they'll do is fire off ASAT's at our orbiting assets like GPS and communications satellites. Something other than a compass and a map would be nice to have as a backup in cockpits and quarterdecks.
A representative democracy with constitutional limitations to protect the individual is the very DEFINITION of a republic. Do some reading.
Uh, no. I would suggest that you do some reading, because history is filled with republics that were neither representative nor democratic. There are quite a few of them around today. A republic is simply a non-royal sovereign government. The Soviet Union was, after all, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
No, they're not right. We are a representative democracy or a democratic republic. As in we have a representative government, but we vote for the representatives. A nation as large as the US does not function with direct democracy. Theres just way too many issues for everybody to vote on everything the way that they do in some smaller countries.
You're right in that the US couldn't function with direct democracy, i.e. the Athenian model. But that still doesn't make us a democracy. A democratic republic is still a republic. It's representatives are simply elected by democratic means, but still can vote against the will of the people (and frequently do). A democracy... a real democracy... uses vote by eligible citizens for legislation. The founding fathers didn't trust that model at all. They thought that while government should be ultimately accountable to citizens, it had to have a bit of distance from them.
""NeXT wasn't a "popular" computing company, it built high-end workstations and an object-oriented OS for the scientific and government markets, actually a lot like Sun. NeXT actually did pretty well at this"
Did pretty well? Not exactly. People loved the OS. The hardware, with that expensive-yet-trouble-prone combo optical drive... eh, not so much. Even if the hardware was beloved, there simply wasn't enough of a market in terms of total sales to support what NeXT was spending. They burned through cash at a mind-boggling rate. Jobs spent much of his fortune from Apple on NeXT, and didn't have much to show for it near the end. Eventually the company downsized radically, becoming essentially a small software tools shop, selling off their expensive-yet-stylish factory facilities. There have been entire chapters written about how Jobs was at his most obsessive over things like how the furniture looked at the factory during the period. NeXT, where Jobs was totally in charge of a company for the first time, was essentially a learning experience in how NOT to run a company for him. Considering what was invested and lost in it, NeXT was considered to mostly be a failure. This is why there was such a loud "WTF?" when the public found out just how much Apple paid for NeXT. Buying NeXT? Sure. Buying NeXT for $400 million? At the time it looked insane. People generally thought "Wow, Jobs sure conned them, didn't he?".You're right in that NeXT had an "exit strategy"; having Jobs talk (sucker?) a bigger company into buying them
I use OS X and love it, so you can argue that buying NeXT was great because it gave Apple a foundation for a post-Classic operating system, but let's be honest here. Apple wasn't buying NeXT or an operating system or software tools. In retrospect, Apple was buying Steve Jobs. And it was the best investment they ever made.
Even somebody as awful as Mugabe has supporters enough to keep him in power. Same with Hitler. Same with Saddam.
The trick to being a good dictator is to satisfy a hard-core minority of your supporters so that they will control the majority.
Which is precisely why invading, even in a humanitarian cause, is a non-starter. Even though we'd literally be coming to rescue them, Mugabe's folks would start screaming "White Colonialism!" and we'd be in an African Vietnam.
Nope, these people chose Mugabe years ago, and now they're stuck with him. So they can either A) overthrow him, B) trick Western intelligence agencies into believing they have WMD's, or C) lay in the bed they've made.
you guys are next in this revolution wave thing...
Next? Nope. The Iranian people tried "next" in 2009. They didn't get "wave". They got "dead". The Iranian government... much like the Chinese government... proved that it's willing to go to pretty much any lengths to put down uprisings. It has a huge apparatus built for just such control, literally a religious army separate from the "regular" army, well armed, trained, and equipped. And they're fanatically devoted to preserving the Islamic revolution. Think Waffen SS, only dedicated to helping protect the Islamic Republic while it awaits the coming of the 12th Imam.
No, I don't think we're going to see any Berlin Walls falling in Iran.
That is not about fear, it is about anger and outrage at the actions of certain wealthy, rich people in America destroying the things we hold most dear as a country, and have since the days of our founding.
Government funding for media has been something we hold dear since our founding? Really? Shows like Sesame Street make millions of dollars in merchandise and licensing alone, but cutting off the small portion of their budget that comes from tax dollars is stabbing George Washington in the back?
NPR states on one hand how government funding makes up such a small portion of their budget... combined government support is 5.8% of their budget... yet when someone suggests cutting off taxpayer support, their listeners act as if Hitler were back banning newspapers. That isn't hypocritical fearmongering?
"Sarah Palin's calls for violence incited her followers and real people died."
When?
It certainly wasn't the Giffords shooting. Jared Lee Loughner is a guy whose two favorite books were the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf. He liked using drugs, was a religion hating atheist, was a registered Independent who usually didn't even vote, and according to his friends, would well up at anger at the very sight of George W. Bush.
Truly, your prototypical Palin supporter.
I know it was politically useful for Palin haters to pin Loughner on her, but that doesn't change the fact that this guy was just a paranoid, grade A random nut.
This is way over the top
on
Why Nokia Is Toast
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I'd be shocked if Nokia were "toast". They're still one of the biggest handset makers in the world, and their name recognition alone is worth billions in the market. And while guys like Steve Jobs are going "simplify!", there are millions of customers going "Really? This is all you've got? Where are all the choices?". Just because Apple's strategy is good for Apple doesn't mean it'll be good for Nokia, just like Mercedes isn't going to pursue the same strategy as Ford. They're both still going to make a lot of money.
The unique challenge isn't the stealth part.It's building a truly robotic carrier aircraft. The difference between this and other UAV's isn't just that it can take off and land from carriers. This plane will eventually be fully robotic, with pre-programmed missions instead of a remote control pilot sitting in a trailer with a joystick and a monitor. This is meant to be a launch-and-forget warplane.
The biggest virtue of the Super Hornet is that it's cheap and has a larger payload and more range than the older versions of the Hornet. As a fighter, it's a dog. It's slower, has less zip, less acceleration, and less maneuverability than older Hornets. The F/A-18C pilots that flew against them during trials actually said they felt sorry for them. In the fleet, Tomcat vets call them "Not So Super Hornets". Again, the biggest virtue is the price tag... $50 million apiece, which is a bargain for modern fighters. The CBO says the F-35 could reach $184 million apiece, flyaway. So I predict that we'll be using Super Hornets for a long, long time, and will simply attempt to make up for the plane's deficiencies via training and tactics. It's a great,economical strike aircraft. But the Super is nowhere near where the Navy would like it to be as a fighter.
The F-35 is not a big enough leap in capability to warrant the price tag and not as stealthy as originally advertised.
All true. The F-35 may end up being the biggest military procurement boondoggle of all time. It does nothing well, and at a price astronomically higher than it's competitors.
UCAVs are the future.
Yes,but the problem is that the future is probably far,far away. We're in the infancy of UAV's, practically in the same place as the Sopwith Camel in terms of fighter development. Thus, you're going to see manned fighters in wide production for at least another 50 years.
I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that he's been on something of an anti-vaccination crusade, especially when it comes to flu shots. He basically is of the position that the whole campaign to inoculate people against H1N1 is in and of itself a conspiracy. He's adamant that you don't need vaccines if you eat right.
Really? Saddam gave women equal legal status, sure, but "legal status" under Saddam meant whatever Saddam's mood on a given day was. If Saddam's sons felt like raping your daughters... which seemed to be their favorite hobby... then that was the law. If that's your idea of progress, you can keep it.
I think what you're going for is that Iraq under Saddam was secular, rather than just progressive. Secular doesn't necessarily equal progress. The Soviet Union , after all, had universal education, health care, and near-equal incomes. And everyone was near-equal miserable. Slaves usually are.
Slashdot Mirror
"Heavier taxes on finance income, or some sort of legal restructuring or limitation of finance itself."
Why? Why should you... or anyone else... decide how much property someone should have? And money is property. What gives a man the right to take what others have earned and give it to people that they decide are more "deserving"?
"The wealth gap in the US is absurd."
Again, why? Most people with money earned it, and work very hard for it. Look at the profile of just about any high earner. They're typically up earlier, work longer, and get home later than average. This is true in finance, or any other high-paying endeavor. They earn their money.
This isn't France. This isn't a European social democracy. In the US, we have equality under the law, but that's it, and in a free country, that's the way it should be. (And Europe has been moving away from the social-democrat thing themselves) If you want more money, then go out and make it. If you're just mad that the other guy has a lot more than you, well, tough.
"It's not slavery. Working for the betterment of mankind instead of its hasty demise is liberating. On the contrary, working for greedy pigs is slavery, no matter how much money they give you."
If you want to work for the "betterment of mankind", knock yourself out. But if opportunities are there, people should work wherever they like. You think working for "greedy pigs" is slavery? What a coincidence. I think working someplace for 1/3rd of what I'm worth sucks. So if you want to pat yourself on the back for your sacrifice to mankind, hey, congrats. But other people have other dreams and motivations. And in America, we get to do that.
You're not talking about "participating" in society. You're talking about, at best, guilt tripping students into a path that's less profitable for them, and at worst, coercing them into that path, because YOU think it'd be good for society. It's a good thing that you don't have any authority about it.
amusingly, that only confirms Kaku's prediction.
If your existing refrigerator is perfectly good, then what incentive do you have to buy the NEW refrigerator?
People periodically buy things... appliances included... simply because they want new. More shiny, more function, or in the case of wives, simply a matter of "That look is so ten years ago". In many cases, people buy new things for the sheer pleasure of doing so.
The free market will save us!
Any minute now...
I don't know who is worse; the people that bitch about how much better it was when there was one Ma Bell, or the people that bitch when a company merges or buys out another company.
He was indeed stationed in the South Pacific for awhile, but did a few months duty at BuAir" in the Main Navy building as well:
"From December through March 1945, he served at the Bureau of Aeronautics, Navy Department, Washington, D.C."
Whether it was an "eyesore" is really in the eye of the beholder. The Navy didn't maintain it properly because it was intended to be temporary from the start.
Ah, now you've stoked the architecture buff in me. That was the Main Navy & Munitions buildings, built as "temporary" headquarters during WWI. But they were built of steel-reinforced concrete, and so lasted a long, long time. Externally, they had an attractive, federal-style facade and fit in with the surrounding building. Inside, however, they were said to have a rather dingy look and feel to them. Regardless, the real reason Nixon wanted them torn down is that he was stationed there as a young officer and hated them. But compared to some of the modernist monstrosities in DC, the old Main Navy buildings looked more like federal buildings than some of the glass and steel and concrete horrors that we've since built in the capitol. Next to the J. Edgar Hoover building or some parts of the State Department headquarters, Main Navy was a veritable Monticello.
The Bay of Pigs was not aborted, it was a failure. In fact it was an embarrassment for Kennedy.
The air support from the CIA was aborted, and that's why it was a failure. And withdrawal of air support was Kennedy's decision.
I'm confused. Why would I ever want to pay for news?
While you can certainly get breaking headlines anywhere on the web, those that subscribe to newspapers usually want a whole package that isn't available for free via the web. I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, and I like the culture section, which is as good as any paper in the world. I like their editorial content and letters section, and of course, they have the best business and financial coverage anywhere (though the Investors Business Daily folks would argue that point).
If you just want "latest headlines", then yeah, you can get that for free anywhere. But the nice thing about newspapers... at least good ones... is the total content they have.
No matter where you stand on the issue of a no-fly zone... I'm conflicted on it myself... it's too late now. It was needed a week ago, at least. Gaddafi has basically won already, crushing the rebels brutally with airpower and pushing them to their last refuge. He doesn't need airpower to beat them now. He has them encircled with superior forces now. Once again, the UN arrives after the damage is already done. If you're placing your hopes in the "international community" to save you from someone like Gaddafi, then you really have no hope at all.
If you're going to do something like a no-fly zone, then above all things, you have to be decisive. Either do it or don't do it, but don't sit around for weeks seeking "consensus". It's too late by then.
He's an inertial nav test guy, I'm a former avionics developer.
We both agreed that we can understand the financial incentives to remove inertial nav from planes, but that it's misguided.
You *NEED* a backup in case GPS fails (and dead reckoning has a good chance of leaving you just that -- dead).
Considering how relatively cheap LORAN was to maintain, I don't think we should have retired it. In a war with a peer enemy... say China just for illustration here... one of the first things they'll do is fire off ASAT's at our orbiting assets like GPS and communications satellites. Something other than a compass and a map would be nice to have as a backup in cockpits and quarterdecks.
A representative democracy with constitutional limitations to protect the individual is the very DEFINITION of a republic. Do some reading.
Uh, no. I would suggest that you do some reading, because history is filled with republics that were neither representative nor democratic. There are quite a few of them around today. A republic is simply a non-royal sovereign government. The Soviet Union was, after all, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
No, they're not right. We are a representative democracy or a democratic republic. As in we have a representative government, but we vote for the representatives. A nation as large as the US does not function with direct democracy. Theres just way too many issues for everybody to vote on everything the way that they do in some smaller countries.
You're right in that the US couldn't function with direct democracy, i.e. the Athenian model. But that still doesn't make us a democracy. A democratic republic is still a republic. It's representatives are simply elected by democratic means, but still can vote against the will of the people (and frequently do). A democracy... a real democracy... uses vote by eligible citizens for legislation. The founding fathers didn't trust that model at all. They thought that while government should be ultimately accountable to citizens, it had to have a bit of distance from them.
""NeXT wasn't a "popular" computing company, it built high-end workstations and an object-oriented OS for the scientific and government markets, actually a lot like Sun. NeXT actually did pretty well at this"
Did pretty well? Not exactly. People loved the OS. The hardware, with that expensive-yet-trouble-prone combo optical drive... eh, not so much. Even if the hardware was beloved, there simply wasn't enough of a market in terms of total sales to support what NeXT was spending. They burned through cash at a mind-boggling rate. Jobs spent much of his fortune from Apple on NeXT, and didn't have much to show for it near the end. Eventually the company downsized radically, becoming essentially a small software tools shop, selling off their expensive-yet-stylish factory facilities. There have been entire chapters written about how Jobs was at his most obsessive over things like how the furniture looked at the factory during the period. NeXT, where Jobs was totally in charge of a company for the first time, was essentially a learning experience in how NOT to run a company for him. Considering what was invested and lost in it, NeXT was considered to mostly be a failure. This is why there was such a loud "WTF?" when the public found out just how much Apple paid for NeXT. Buying NeXT? Sure. Buying NeXT for $400 million? At the time it looked insane. People generally thought "Wow, Jobs sure conned them, didn't he?".You're right in that NeXT had an "exit strategy"; having Jobs talk (sucker?) a bigger company into buying them
I use OS X and love it, so you can argue that buying NeXT was great because it gave Apple a foundation for a post-Classic operating system, but let's be honest here. Apple wasn't buying NeXT or an operating system or software tools. In retrospect, Apple was buying Steve Jobs. And it was the best investment they ever made.
In the case of Mugabe, and even a lot of American politicians, it's as simple as "hate gays? Me too. Vote for me!"
In the case of Mugabe, it's "Hate Whitey? Keep me in power or he's coming back".
Even somebody as awful as Mugabe has supporters enough to keep him in power. Same with Hitler. Same with Saddam.
The trick to being a good dictator is to satisfy a hard-core minority of your supporters so that they will control the majority.
Which is precisely why invading, even in a humanitarian cause, is a non-starter. Even though we'd literally be coming to rescue them, Mugabe's folks would start screaming "White Colonialism!" and we'd be in an African Vietnam.
Nope, these people chose Mugabe years ago, and now they're stuck with him. So they can either A) overthrow him, B) trick Western intelligence agencies into believing they have WMD's, or C) lay in the bed they've made.
nice one, Iran.
you guys are next in this revolution wave thing...
Next? Nope. The Iranian people tried "next" in 2009. They didn't get "wave". They got "dead". The Iranian government... much like the Chinese government... proved that it's willing to go to pretty much any lengths to put down uprisings. It has a huge apparatus built for just such control, literally a religious army separate from the "regular" army, well armed, trained, and equipped. And they're fanatically devoted to preserving the Islamic revolution. Think Waffen SS, only dedicated to helping protect the Islamic Republic while it awaits the coming of the 12th Imam.
No, I don't think we're going to see any Berlin Walls falling in Iran.
It was probably written by Westboro themselves to get some publicity.
So one group of attention whores used another group of attention whores. There's an Apple-like simplicity and elegance to the whole scheme.
That is not about fear, it is about anger and outrage at the actions of certain wealthy, rich people in America destroying the things we hold most dear as a country, and have since the days of our founding.
Government funding for media has been something we hold dear since our founding? Really? Shows like Sesame Street make millions of dollars in merchandise and licensing alone, but cutting off the small portion of their budget that comes from tax dollars is stabbing George Washington in the back?
NPR states on one hand how government funding makes up such a small portion of their budget... combined government support is 5.8% of their budget... yet when someone suggests cutting off taxpayer support, their listeners act as if Hitler were back banning newspapers. That isn't hypocritical fearmongering?
"Sarah Palin's calls for violence incited her followers and real people died."
When?
It certainly wasn't the Giffords shooting. Jared Lee Loughner is a guy whose two favorite books were the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf. He liked using drugs, was a religion hating atheist, was a registered Independent who usually didn't even vote, and according to his friends, would well up at anger at the very sight of George W. Bush.
Truly, your prototypical Palin supporter.
I know it was politically useful for Palin haters to pin Loughner on her, but that doesn't change the fact that this guy was just a paranoid, grade A random nut.
I'd be shocked if Nokia were "toast". They're still one of the biggest handset makers in the world, and their name recognition alone is worth billions in the market. And while guys like Steve Jobs are going "simplify!", there are millions of customers going "Really? This is all you've got? Where are all the choices?". Just because Apple's strategy is good for Apple doesn't mean it'll be good for Nokia, just like Mercedes isn't going to pursue the same strategy as Ford. They're both still going to make a lot of money.
The unique challenge isn't the stealth part.It's building a truly robotic carrier aircraft. The difference between this and other UAV's isn't just that it can take off and land from carriers. This plane will eventually be fully robotic, with pre-programmed missions instead of a remote control pilot sitting in a trailer with a joystick and a monitor. This is meant to be a launch-and-forget warplane.
The F/A-18E/F is a very capable fighter/bomber.
The biggest virtue of the Super Hornet is that it's cheap and has a larger payload and more range than the older versions of the Hornet. As a fighter, it's a dog. It's slower, has less zip, less acceleration, and less maneuverability than older Hornets. The F/A-18C pilots that flew against them during trials actually said they felt sorry for them. In the fleet, Tomcat vets call them "Not So Super Hornets". Again, the biggest virtue is the price tag... $50 million apiece, which is a bargain for modern fighters. The CBO says the F-35 could reach $184 million apiece, flyaway. So I predict that we'll be using Super Hornets for a long, long time, and will simply attempt to make up for the plane's deficiencies via training and tactics. It's a great,economical strike aircraft. But the Super is nowhere near where the Navy would like it to be as a fighter.
The F-35 is not a big enough leap in capability to warrant the price tag and not as stealthy as originally advertised.
All true. The F-35 may end up being the biggest military procurement boondoggle of all time. It does nothing well, and at a price astronomically higher than it's competitors.
UCAVs are the future.
Yes,but the problem is that the future is probably far,far away. We're in the infancy of UAV's, practically in the same place as the Sopwith Camel in terms of fighter development. Thus, you're going to see manned fighters in wide production for at least another 50 years.
I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that he's been on something of an anti-vaccination crusade, especially when it comes to flu shots. He basically is of the position that the whole campaign to inoculate people against H1N1 is in and of itself a conspiracy. He's adamant that you don't need vaccines if you eat right.
until we bombed them into the stone age.
Really? Saddam gave women equal legal status, sure, but "legal status" under Saddam meant whatever Saddam's mood on a given day was. If Saddam's sons felt like raping your daughters... which seemed to be their favorite hobby... then that was the law. If that's your idea of progress, you can keep it.
I think what you're going for is that Iraq under Saddam was secular, rather than just progressive. Secular doesn't necessarily equal progress. The Soviet Union , after all, had universal education, health care, and near-equal incomes. And everyone was near-equal miserable. Slaves usually are.