"I just said that the timing should make us suspicious of who and what is really ordering this prosecution."
Why should the timing be suspicious? Your theory that this is Bush's payback for all of the anti-Bush stuff Cuban has funded over the years has one huge flaw; when Bush leaves in two months, so does his appointees. This is just an indictment. The prosecution will be the responsibility of the Obama Administration, and if they don't see a problem, they can simply drop it. What are you going to say if they continue the prosecution? That Dick Cheney has a mind control device implanted in Obama's brain? It'd be about as plausible as all the other conspiracy theories you're offering.
"Fortunately, those of us in the U.S. are about to get rid of our despotic strongmen, along about January 20 of next year."
You realize that you just defeated your own argument, don't you? If you can vote them out, then are they despots? Despots don't tend to stand for things like free elections, and George Bush and his party have lost two in a row without sending the Army to void those elections. Just because you don't like the guy doesn't qualify him as a tyrant.
"Not necessarily so. Elevating free speech over other rights is a part of American ideology, however it is not universally accepted, certainly not in Europe or Asia."
And maybe that's why Europe and Asia has a long history of despotic strongmen. Order over freedom tends to get that for you.
That's where you and libertarians are ideologically out of touch. Markets can't be free without the proper regulation. Even 'bubbles' Greenspan admits it now. But there are still fanatics of the cult long after the comet has passed.
There are none so blind that will not see.
And you honestly think Bush was the end of regulation? Are you kidding me? Do you know how many pages are in the Federal Code of Regulations now? Do you think it's actually less?
There's still miles of regulation on the financial sector. And the Glass Stegall repeal played no part in this... it wouldn't have stopped the subprime loans, and it wouldn't have stopped the fraudulent securities ratings that the toxic paper got because of political pressure.
BTW, markets aren't "cults". They're simply an efficient way to determine what people want to pay for a good or service. Period. We should worry more about the real cult... the one where people think government is the answer to all our problems.
"Conservatives love to point fingers at the CRA, because then they can blame liberals and poor people instead of the rich assholes on Wall Street, but the fact is that it had almost nothing to do with the current crisis.
And liberals love to cover their asses, when they were at fault of the core of the greatest economic collapse since stagflation in the 70's. BTW, you guys were responsible for that one too. The rich did trade the toxic paper, but Democrats in Congress covered for them because it suited their political goals. But if there are no subprime loans, then there is no subprime crisis. Subprime loans were the product of your beloved CRA. In order to open bank branches in poorer neighborhoods, the CRA mandated that those banks had to give a percentage of home loans regardless of creditworthiness. You may think that's great social policy, but it's horrible economics.
And your BusinessWeek quote is from a commentary, not an analysis. It was his opinion. His opinion is flatly wrong, and I'll get you one hundred more qualified opinions saying so. Deep down, you know it. Even Barney Frank now admits those loans shouldn't have been made, though he denies any personal culpability. Just like the rest of you, apparently.
Deregulating Wall Street has done wonders for the US economy, unleashing the creative powers of the investor class unto the world. Deregulating the telecom industry is working just as well!
And what deregulation caused this financial crash? Be specific, and how it did. The repeal of Glass-Steagall? How did that cause the subprime crisis, the root of all of the problems? Oh that's right, it didn't. What did? One of your beloved regulations, the Community Reinvestment Act. I'll also remind you that many politicians tried to enact new regulations on Fannie and Freddie to keep the subprime mess from exploding. The same politicians that claim this came from lack of regulation, among others, your buddy Barney Frank, are the same people that blocked and killed the Fannie/Freddie reforms.
And tell me, what kind of economic model are you in favor of? Free markets are too mean and unfair for you? Well, there's that system where the state owns all large industry, or favors private firms with a monopoly. What's the track record for those kind of systems? The US, in a bad recession, has 6.5 percent unemployement. But that's better than Europe during the good times. So how about a little perspective, eh? The awful, bad free market system is what allowed you to buy that computer that you post stupid things on Slashdot with. Free markets aren't all fun and games, but to paraphrase Winston Churchill, capitalism is the worst economic system in the world... except for all the others.
In this economy? No, I don't think he'll keep the funding promise. I think we just kicked the new age of human space exploration back to the curb, and we're going back to "better, faster, cheaper", with all small probes, all the time. As for the Shuttle, we should extend it's life (it'd be kind of stupid to depend on the Russians now), but I don't know if he will. He might very well decrease our commitment to the ISS, and basically punt to the Russians and the Europeans on it.
"Dolphins and similar are fast moving/smart enough to think we might eat them"
You wouldn't know it by the way they race with our ships. When I was on the Enterprise, the Dolphins (Porpoises perhaps?) would run right along side us, playing all day. They were fearless, swimming into our wake, under our keel, even running out ahead of us withe the carrier only a few yards behind. I can't speak to whale experiences, but as far as Dolphins went, the Big E had no "policy"... hell, as fast as we could go, they'd go faster, and sometimes run rings around us. And they looked like they were having fun doing it.
Most parents buy on price, not quality or brand name. If Chinese Legos cost a third of real Legos, they'll buy the Chinese version. Which is a shame because Legos' core sales helped fund some of their other intellectually interesting Lego projects, like the mindstorms stuff. If Lego stays in business, they'll have to reinvent themselves, but they wont be in the plastic brick business for very long now.
What makes you think they care about continuity? As much as JJ Abrams is hyped to be a great sci-fi writer, it's obvious he didn't know and didn't care about the history of the series. And in Star Trek, the history of the series... the canon, if you will, is very, very important to Trek fans.
I think this movie will appeal to teenagers who don't know and don't care about Star Trek. But it's looking like it'll absolutely horrify the rest of us with it's typical Hollywoodish "who gives a fuck about the details?" attitude. If it's turning out how I think it will, I hope it crashes and burns and Paramount refuses to make another Trek movie for 10 years. Then at least it'll be another ten years before they fuck things up again.
"I was expecting changes, but this awkward kitbash makes me very unhappy."
Younger fans that don't give a crap about the franchise will love the new iLook, in all probability. But those of us that have been fans all our lives aren't going to like this very much. Most of us are, frankly, sick of the retconning in the cannon. We fought for years to get Rick Berman kicked out of the franchise for precisely this kind of garbage. "Canon? Fuck that! If we can eke out another Nielson's point or two, lets do yet another time travel story and totally screw the franchise history up! It'll be Die Hard on a Starship!"
You'd expect some minor touchups to take advantage of current technology, but this is a complete retooling of the classic series, a reboot. Real longtime fans would probably be happier with Jim Cawley's New Voyages/Phase II. How ironic that an Elvis impersonator has more love and respect for the series than the current movie's creative team does.
According to the spec, the XOs have a 433 MHz CPU and 256 MB of RAM.
Windows XP requires, a 233 MHz CPU and 64 MB of RAM.
Minimums are one thing, but from personal experience I've seen that XP isn't worth a damn without at least a 700mhz cpu and 512 mb of RAM. Now I don't know for sure, but isn't the version of XP the MS puts on these OLPC machines somewhat stripped down to run faster on fewer resources? If not, a version of Windows 2000 would have been more appropriate.
And how long will OLPC be relevant anyway? Now you've got netbooks with 1.6 gig cpu's and 1 gig of RAM running full versions of XP, and their price point is starting to close in on the under $299 mark. If that price keeps going down, how much will an underpowered OLPC (which we all knows costs more than the $100 design target) really matter when you'll eventually be able to get full power netbooks for a little over a couple of hundred bucks pretty soon?
Windows 7 is just a rehash of a just released OS, and this article is a rehash of a just released article. There's so much synchronicity, Sting is singing in the background.
Not as bad as you made it look. The MS offer involved MS stock, and if people had taken it, they would now have about $20. Still not the best decision Yahoo ever made.
Microsoft's stock is sure to go back up after the recovery comes. Does anyone honestly think Yahoo's is going to rise all that much?
No, grandparent poster was right. Epic fail. It's one thing to hold out for a better deal when several companies want to buy yours. It's another when no one else really does.
got a link? not being sarcastic, genuinely curious as it seems you have some details I don't.
Sure. There's a lot out there, so just Google for it. "Barney Frank + Subprime" is a good place to start.
Here's a few links to get you started. The first is a transcript from Fannie and Freddie hearings in 2003 where he says flat out that he didn't see a problem with subprime loans:
The next is actual video of Congressional hearings in 2004 on Fannie and Freddie. Republicans called for much tighter regulations on both, while Frank, and various Congressmen not only flatly state that there was no crisis coming, but that the Republicans just wanted to keep poor people from owning their own homes. In particular, Maxine Watts repeatedly kissed the ass of Franklin Raines, the man who drove Fannie into the ground with subprimes.
Lastly, here's a YouTube composite video called "Burning Down The House". It was made specifically to help Republicans in the elections, but the first half gives a brief but informed history of the subprime crisis, with screen shots of stories covering the history from name newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times, as well as graphs from major papers. Watch at least the first half of it. It's a really good jumping off point for further reading.
There's plenty out there to read. One last thing... Frank was not only personally culpable in this crisis, he's a lying, two-faced bastard about it too. For years he repeatedly said "there is no problem", and yet two months ago he gave an interview to Money Magazine, stating that basically he'd seen this coming for years, and it was.... wait for it... all Alan Greenspan's fault. He takes absolutely no responsibility for this mess whatsoever. In fact, he basically adopted 90 percent of the very criticisms the GOP was making about Fannie and Freddie. He basically pretends he never ever denied there was a problem. Read this interview, and then go back to the video of his testimony before Congress. You'll never see a more two-faced man on Capitol Hill.
Here US News and World Reports displays more of Frank's bald-faced lying: US&WR Article
Lastly, even honest liberals see his hypocrisy. Alec Baldwin calls Frank out over subprimes on Bill Maher's program. I'd link it, but it was pulled from YouTube on a DMCA complain from HBO... but here's the transcript:
Baldwin - "The, the thing we have to remember, a friend of mine who is very close to the financial community in New York pointed out that Democrats have a lot of the responsibility for this as well. I mean, it was Clinton who killed the Glass-Steagall, and it happened under a Democratic president. Barney Frank and his committee, they, they kept propping up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saying everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's good. And it was his job to know everything wasn't fine. And Barney Frank let you down and let us down as well. And so, but I want to say there's blame to go both ways. But I will say, I want to, I maybe keep beating this to death, but I still think anyone in this Congress who voted to add $140 billion to that bill, they should be ashamed of themselves. That is a disgrace. It's a disgrace. This Congress is a disgrace, Democrat and Republican. "
Open source software didn't drive the economy of the 90's, or the economy of the last few years.
Says you. In my professional experience over the last 10 years, Linux and Apache on commodity hardware have been integral in lowering barriers to entry for small companies and the cost of scaling for large ones.
-Isaac
The big difference being that those private companies had the choice of what to use, and used rational self interest as a basis for using Linux and Apache. Their reasoning was financial, not ideological. And they couldn't force it on everyone else via government policy. There's a huge honkin' difference here.
We don't need a national CTO. We can make our own technology decisions without the government telling us what to do.
We don't need a Secretary of the Treasury. We can make our own monetary decisions without the government telling us what to do.
Imbecile.
The Government has a monopoly on the printing of money. Last time I checked, government bought most of its technology from privately developed sources. Fucktard.
"The government has millions of computers, and you don't want someone to set policy? Look at what the mindless, out of control, dead in a ditch projects have cost us.
The government has lots of cars too. Lots of law enforcement officers. Lots of guns.
I know! Lets put them all under one secretary! When the Army needs to change specs on their M-16's, then they'll have to get permission from the secretary of guns. And when the FBI wants to change their sidearms, they'll need to get permission from him too! It'll be sooooo much more orderly and efficient!
We don't need a national CTO. We can make our own technology decisions without the government telling us what to do.
I think such things as the prevalence of spyware on PCs and the reluctance of many people to offer music or movie shares stands as proof that most people actually can't make their own technology decisions.
You could say the same thing about automobile ownership. There are a lot of wrecks. I guess people just can't be trusted to own a car.
It's pretty rare to actually see cheerleaders for a nanny state on Slashdot. Congrats, you can start your own club now.
No one in the government encouraged mortgage lenders to make the "liars loans" (loans with no effort to verify employment and income status), package them and re-market them as AAA securities on the international market.
Bullshit. Oh yes they did. Banks were pressured to make these loans and rating agencies were pressured to ignore the toxic status of those mortgages, because it suited the political aims of some powerful people. If you don't think political pressure to keep getting the poor into houses with these loans wasn't real, then you're either blind, stupid, or both.
While I'll be the first to tell you that Republicans needed to pay politically for their political mistakes this election, it's a crying fucking shame that guys like Barney Frank, who was neck deep in this problem, has gotten re-elected while telling people he tried to stop the subprime mess, when the son of a bitch is actually complicit in it. He and a bunch of other powerful congressmen stopped reforms and new regulations on Fannie and Freddie everytime it came up in Congress. He's been caught on camera repeatedly saying "I don't see what the problem is here". You want someone to blame for this shit? Start with Frank, and work your way down his list of cronies that wanted to keep the subprime system rolling along because it benefitted them politically.
Paying attention? The unregulated market brought us the Great Depression 70 years ago and until Bush the markets stayed regulated. The _recent_ deregulation is why we're in the mess we're in now.
There's no way you don't already realize this, I'm not sure why you posted what you did.
The mess we're in now is because of one thing and one thing only... subprime mortgages. Those mortgages were the result of political legislation, the Community Reinvestment Act. It was the root cause of everything else that's going on. The paper on these mortgages, despite being bad, was still rated AAA because of political pressure. The rating agencies failed in their job, but they did so because they were told not to stop the carnival by politicians that wanted to keep the subprime gravy train going. George Bush didn't create these things, and in fact, tried to actually enact new regulations on them. Guess who blocked that? And guess why they blocked it.
The repeal of Glass Steagall simply allowed financial companies to enter new markets... it allowed bank holding companies to be stockbrokers to their customers, for instance. Even Bill Clinton still doesn't think the repeal was wrong, because it didn't have a stinkin' thing to do with the subprime mess.
Regulation wasn't the problem. Politics was the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
"I just said that the timing should make us suspicious of who and what is really ordering this prosecution."
Why should the timing be suspicious? Your theory that this is Bush's payback for all of the anti-Bush stuff Cuban has funded over the years has one huge flaw; when Bush leaves in two months, so does his appointees. This is just an indictment. The prosecution will be the responsibility of the Obama Administration, and if they don't see a problem, they can simply drop it. What are you going to say if they continue the prosecution? That Dick Cheney has a mind control device implanted in Obama's brain? It'd be about as plausible as all the other conspiracy theories you're offering.
Well, reason doesn't seem to be enough to overrule your paranoia.
"Fortunately, those of us in the U.S. are about to get rid of our despotic strongmen, along about January 20 of next year."
You realize that you just defeated your own argument, don't you? If you can vote them out, then are they despots? Despots don't tend to stand for things like free elections, and George Bush and his party have lost two in a row without sending the Army to void those elections. Just because you don't like the guy doesn't qualify him as a tyrant.
"Not necessarily so. Elevating free speech over other rights is a part of American ideology, however it is not universally accepted, certainly not in Europe or Asia."
And maybe that's why Europe and Asia has a long history of despotic strongmen. Order over freedom tends to get that for you.
That's where you and libertarians are ideologically out of touch. Markets can't be free without the proper regulation. Even 'bubbles' Greenspan admits it now. But there are still fanatics of the cult long after the comet has passed.
There are none so blind that will not see.
And you honestly think Bush was the end of regulation? Are you kidding me? Do you know how many pages are in the Federal Code of Regulations now? Do you think it's actually less?
There's still miles of regulation on the financial sector. And the Glass Stegall repeal played no part in this... it wouldn't have stopped the subprime loans, and it wouldn't have stopped the fraudulent securities ratings that the toxic paper got because of political pressure.
BTW, markets aren't "cults". They're simply an efficient way to determine what people want to pay for a good or service. Period. We should worry more about the real cult... the one where people think government is the answer to all our problems.
"Conservatives love to point fingers at the CRA, because then they can blame liberals and poor people instead of the rich assholes on Wall Street, but the fact is that it had almost nothing to do with the current crisis.
And liberals love to cover their asses, when they were at fault of the core of the greatest economic collapse since stagflation in the 70's. BTW, you guys were responsible for that one too. The rich did trade the toxic paper, but Democrats in Congress covered for them because it suited their political goals. But if there are no subprime loans, then there is no subprime crisis. Subprime loans were the product of your beloved CRA. In order to open bank branches in poorer neighborhoods, the CRA mandated that those banks had to give a percentage of home loans regardless of creditworthiness. You may think that's great social policy, but it's horrible economics.
And your BusinessWeek quote is from a commentary, not an analysis. It was his opinion. His opinion is flatly wrong, and I'll get you one hundred more qualified opinions saying so. Deep down, you know it. Even Barney Frank now admits those loans shouldn't have been made, though he denies any personal culpability. Just like the rest of you, apparently.
Deregulating Wall Street has done wonders for the US economy, unleashing the creative powers of the investor class unto the world. Deregulating the telecom industry is working just as well!
And what deregulation caused this financial crash? Be specific, and how it did. The repeal of Glass-Steagall? How did that cause the subprime crisis, the root of all of the problems? Oh that's right, it didn't. What did? One of your beloved regulations, the Community Reinvestment Act. I'll also remind you that many politicians tried to enact new regulations on Fannie and Freddie to keep the subprime mess from exploding. The same politicians that claim this came from lack of regulation, among others, your buddy Barney Frank, are the same people that blocked and killed the Fannie/Freddie reforms.
And tell me, what kind of economic model are you in favor of? Free markets are too mean and unfair for you? Well, there's that system where the state owns all large industry, or favors private firms with a monopoly. What's the track record for those kind of systems? The US, in a bad recession, has 6.5 percent unemployement. But that's better than Europe during the good times. So how about a little perspective, eh? The awful, bad free market system is what allowed you to buy that computer that you post stupid things on Slashdot with. Free markets aren't all fun and games, but to paraphrase Winston Churchill, capitalism is the worst economic system in the world... except for all the others.
In this economy? No, I don't think he'll keep the funding promise. I think we just kicked the new age of human space exploration back to the curb, and we're going back to "better, faster, cheaper", with all small probes, all the time. As for the Shuttle, we should extend it's life (it'd be kind of stupid to depend on the Russians now), but I don't know if he will. He might very well decrease our commitment to the ISS, and basically punt to the Russians and the Europeans on it.
Oddly enough, TFA says nothing about the site being cleaned up.
I hear the site gets glowing reviews.
"Dolphins and similar are fast moving/smart enough to think we might eat them"
You wouldn't know it by the way they race with our ships. When I was on the Enterprise, the Dolphins (Porpoises perhaps?) would run right along side us, playing all day. They were fearless, swimming into our wake, under our keel, even running out ahead of us withe the carrier only a few yards behind. I can't speak to whale experiences, but as far as Dolphins went, the Big E had no "policy"... hell, as fast as we could go, they'd go faster, and sometimes run rings around us. And they looked like they were having fun doing it.
Most parents buy on price, not quality or brand name. If Chinese Legos cost a third of real Legos, they'll buy the Chinese version. Which is a shame because Legos' core sales helped fund some of their other intellectually interesting Lego projects, like the mindstorms stuff. If Lego stays in business, they'll have to reinvent themselves, but they wont be in the plastic brick business for very long now.
What makes you think they care about continuity? As much as JJ Abrams is hyped to be a great sci-fi writer, it's obvious he didn't know and didn't care about the history of the series. And in Star Trek, the history of the series... the canon, if you will, is very, very important to Trek fans.
I think this movie will appeal to teenagers who don't know and don't care about Star Trek. But it's looking like it'll absolutely horrify the rest of us with it's typical Hollywoodish "who gives a fuck about the details?" attitude. If it's turning out how I think it will, I hope it crashes and burns and Paramount refuses to make another Trek movie for 10 years. Then at least it'll be another ten years before they fuck things up again.
"I was expecting changes, but this awkward kitbash makes me very unhappy."
Younger fans that don't give a crap about the franchise will love the new iLook, in all probability. But those of us that have been fans all our lives aren't going to like this very much. Most of us are, frankly, sick of the retconning in the cannon. We fought for years to get Rick Berman kicked out of the franchise for precisely this kind of garbage. "Canon? Fuck that! If we can eke out another Nielson's point or two, lets do yet another time travel story and totally screw the franchise history up! It'll be Die Hard on a Starship!"
You'd expect some minor touchups to take advantage of current technology, but this is a complete retooling of the classic series, a reboot. Real longtime fans would probably be happier with Jim Cawley's New Voyages/Phase II. How ironic that an Elvis impersonator has more love and respect for the series than the current movie's creative team does.
Barack Obama is already fixing things!
That's not the sun in the sky. That is Barack Obama, shining down warmth, love, and hope upon us.
According to the spec, the XOs have a 433 MHz CPU and 256 MB of RAM.
Windows XP requires, a 233 MHz CPU and 64 MB of RAM.
Minimums are one thing, but from personal experience I've seen that XP isn't worth a damn without at least a 700mhz cpu and 512 mb of RAM. Now I don't know for sure, but isn't the version of XP the MS puts on these OLPC machines somewhat stripped down to run faster on fewer resources? If not, a version of Windows 2000 would have been more appropriate.
And how long will OLPC be relevant anyway? Now you've got netbooks with 1.6 gig cpu's and 1 gig of RAM running full versions of XP, and their price point is starting to close in on the under $299 mark. If that price keeps going down, how much will an underpowered OLPC (which we all knows costs more than the $100 design target) really matter when you'll eventually be able to get full power netbooks for a little over a couple of hundred bucks pretty soon?
Windows 7 is just a rehash of a just released OS, and this article is a rehash of a just released article. There's so much synchronicity, Sting is singing in the background.
...they say that prison is nothing but a graduate school to make better criminals. So anything from Microsoft Press, I suppose.
Not as bad as you made it look. The MS offer involved MS stock, and if people had taken it, they would now have about $20. Still not the best decision Yahoo ever made.
Microsoft's stock is sure to go back up after the recovery comes. Does anyone honestly think Yahoo's is going to rise all that much?
No, grandparent poster was right. Epic fail. It's one thing to hold out for a better deal when several companies want to buy yours. It's another when no one else really does.
got a link? not being sarcastic, genuinely curious as it seems you have some details I don't.
Sure. There's a lot out there, so just Google for it. "Barney Frank + Subprime" is a good place to start.
Here's a few links to get you started. The first is a transcript from Fannie and Freddie hearings in 2003 where he says flat out that he didn't see a problem with subprime loans:
Link One
The next is actual video of Congressional hearings in 2004 on Fannie and Freddie. Republicans called for much tighter regulations on both, while Frank, and various Congressmen not only flatly state that there was no crisis coming, but that the Republicans just wanted to keep poor people from owning their own homes. In particular, Maxine Watts repeatedly kissed the ass of Franklin Raines, the man who drove Fannie into the ground with subprimes.
Link 2
Lastly, here's a YouTube composite video called "Burning Down The House". It was made specifically to help Republicans in the elections, but the first half gives a brief but informed history of the subprime crisis, with screen shots of stories covering the history from name newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times, as well as graphs from major papers. Watch at least the first half of it. It's a really good jumping off point for further reading.
Link 3
There's plenty out there to read. One last thing... Frank was not only personally culpable in this crisis, he's a lying, two-faced bastard about it too. For years he repeatedly said "there is no problem", and yet two months ago he gave an interview to Money Magazine, stating that basically he'd seen this coming for years, and it was.... wait for it... all Alan Greenspan's fault. He takes absolutely no responsibility for this mess whatsoever. In fact, he basically adopted 90 percent of the very criticisms the GOP was making about Fannie and Freddie. He basically pretends he never ever denied there was a problem. Read this interview, and then go back to the video of his testimony before Congress. You'll never see a more two-faced man on Capitol Hill.
Money interview
Here US News and World Reports displays more of Frank's bald-faced lying: US&WR Article
Lastly, even honest liberals see his hypocrisy. Alec Baldwin calls Frank out over subprimes on Bill Maher's program. I'd link it, but it was pulled from YouTube on a DMCA complain from HBO... but here's the transcript:
Baldwin - "The, the thing we have to remember, a friend of mine who is very close to the financial community in New York pointed out that Democrats have a lot of the responsibility for this as well. I mean, it was Clinton who killed the Glass-Steagall, and it happened under a Democratic president. Barney Frank and his committee, they, they kept propping up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saying everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's good. And it was his job to know everything wasn't fine. And Barney Frank let you down and let us down as well. And so, but I want to say there's blame to go both ways. But I will say, I want to, I maybe keep beating this to death, but I still think anyone in this Congress who voted to add $140 billion to that bill, they should be ashamed of themselves. That is a disgrace. It's a disgrace. This Congress is a disgrace, Democrat and Republican. "
Says you. In my professional experience over the last 10 years, Linux and Apache on commodity hardware have been integral in lowering barriers to entry for small companies and the cost of scaling for large ones.
-Isaac
The big difference being that those private companies had the choice of what to use, and used rational self interest as a basis for using Linux and Apache. Their reasoning was financial, not ideological. And they couldn't force it on everyone else via government policy. There's a huge honkin' difference here.
We don't need a national CTO. We can make our own technology decisions without the government telling us what to do.
We don't need a Secretary of the Treasury. We can make our own monetary decisions without the government telling us what to do.
Imbecile.
The Government has a monopoly on the printing of money. Last time I checked, government bought most of its technology from privately developed sources. Fucktard.
"The government has millions of computers, and you don't want someone to set policy? Look at what the mindless, out of control, dead in a ditch projects have cost us.
The government has lots of cars too. Lots of law enforcement officers. Lots of guns.
I know! Lets put them all under one secretary! When the Army needs to change specs on their M-16's, then they'll have to get permission from the secretary of guns. And when the FBI wants to change their sidearms, they'll need to get permission from him too! It'll be sooooo much more orderly and efficient!
I think such things as the prevalence of spyware on PCs and the reluctance of many people to offer music or movie shares stands as proof that most people actually can't make their own technology decisions.
You could say the same thing about automobile ownership. There are a lot of wrecks. I guess people just can't be trusted to own a car.
It's pretty rare to actually see cheerleaders for a nanny state on Slashdot. Congrats, you can start your own club now.
No one in the government encouraged mortgage lenders to make the "liars loans" (loans with no effort to verify employment and income status), package them and re-market them as AAA securities on the international market.
Bullshit. Oh yes they did. Banks were pressured to make these loans and rating agencies were pressured to ignore the toxic status of those mortgages, because it suited the political aims of some powerful people. If you don't think political pressure to keep getting the poor into houses with these loans wasn't real, then you're either blind, stupid, or both.
While I'll be the first to tell you that Republicans needed to pay politically for their political mistakes this election, it's a crying fucking shame that guys like Barney Frank, who was neck deep in this problem, has gotten re-elected while telling people he tried to stop the subprime mess, when the son of a bitch is actually complicit in it. He and a bunch of other powerful congressmen stopped reforms and new regulations on Fannie and Freddie everytime it came up in Congress. He's been caught on camera repeatedly saying "I don't see what the problem is here". You want someone to blame for this shit? Start with Frank, and work your way down his list of cronies that wanted to keep the subprime system rolling along because it benefitted them politically.
Paying attention? The unregulated market brought us the Great Depression 70 years ago and until Bush the markets stayed regulated. The _recent_ deregulation is why we're in the mess we're in now.
There's no way you don't already realize this, I'm not sure why you posted what you did.
The mess we're in now is because of one thing and one thing only... subprime mortgages. Those mortgages were the result of political legislation, the Community Reinvestment Act. It was the root cause of everything else that's going on. The paper on these mortgages, despite being bad, was still rated AAA because of political pressure. The rating agencies failed in their job, but they did so because they were told not to stop the carnival by politicians that wanted to keep the subprime gravy train going. George Bush didn't create these things, and in fact, tried to actually enact new regulations on them. Guess who blocked that? And guess why they blocked it.
The repeal of Glass Steagall simply allowed financial companies to enter new markets... it allowed bank holding companies to be stockbrokers to their customers, for instance. Even Bill Clinton still doesn't think the repeal was wrong, because it didn't have a stinkin' thing to do with the subprime mess.
Regulation wasn't the problem. Politics was the problem.