What does consumer spending have to do with CEO bonuses and accounting gymnastics? There are more ways for the wealthy to increase their wealth than simply selling things. And the wealthier and more powerful one gets, the more of those doors to even more wealth and more power one can open up.
Wealth that isn't well-founded eventually crashes. Are there not criminal charges being set against some of the Enron execs, lately? Lying, cheating, and stealing are still illegal, I think.
If they are able to get away with no legal recourse, then we should examine the very laws that allowed their freedom. Corruption is corruption, whether it is in an un-checked government or in an un-checked executive. Creating even more laws, rules, and, inevitably, more loopholes is not the way out, IMO. Rather, the unconstitutional laws that housed the loopholes to begin with should be revoked or replaced. Of course, the government doesn't have the resources to do this, so the only fix is even more government, leaving only the possibility of a long-term downward spiral into a hopeless oblivion? Is that why humans can't go 50 years without a major war?
How many Slashdotters out there feel that censorship is bad but restricting free trade is good? How many Slashdotters out there feel that domestic spying is bad but nationalized health care is good?
How many people realize that there is no difference between censorship and tarriffs and that there is no difference between TIA and universal health care?
I hope there aren't too many heads exploding over this. Or did I just create a mopping opportunity for someone who is unemployed? Oh, the sweet sweet irony of social justice.
Re:Why do you think Bush gave them tax cuts?
on
Tech Rich Get Richer
·
· Score: 1
For some odd reason there are a few people on slashdot who disapprove of that.
No one has to go to Bangalore. Only people who are so rigidly entrenched in the idea that nothing exists outside of Information Technology are so naive. If a person finds themselve priced out of a city, there is the whole Earth to choose from. Perhaps opportuniy is merely the next town over...perhaps it's Indiana. Whichever, there will be a place where a person can find a sustainable cost of living while figuring out where they can go next. Even if it means taking a less-than-ideal job, a person practically never has no options. Our economy, even today, is strong enough that prostitution really is not the only way out. Those that think it is have given up too early.
You do not "make" money in vacuum, you "make" them living in a society, and most successful means to do this currently are by exploiting others and limiting their freedom. This must stop, or else.
Or else what? The people being "exploited" have a right to not spend their money, and that right exists more today than ever before. Our economy is huge and the poor and middle class have never had it better.
There is no conflict of freedom, here. It "us" against "them" in a free country that lets us seek our own path through that "battle." As the economy grows, our number of options grows, too. Who would have imagined artists using computers with tremendously flexible graphics and sound? Who would have imagined that commerical space flight might be merely a few decades away?
So, if you want to live in a hole, you have that right. However, I have a right to not be dragged into that hole with you. It's that simple.
We as a society have a right to decide together if a tiny fraction of us should be allowed unlimited power and wealth.
We already do, because it is us who forfeits the cash that makes others rich. While it is sad that too many people give up their hard-earned money too easily, they never lost their right to not spend.
I will only believe the rants of poor people who are truly poor, not the ones who complain but are wearing Air Jordans or drive a used Lexus. Even then, there are often outlets for the truly poor that don't require arbitrary "social justice". Just yesterday there was a story on PBS News Hour about a college-educated well-spoken woman who was homeless, drug-addicted, and living illegally in a Chicago tenement. Okay, first the prices of her drugs are artifically inflated by the DEA and the local police (drug laws). Second, she should at least be able to get a job sweeping porches, but no one wants to pay minimum wage for that (labor laws). So, she bottomed out, and, in a non-trivial way, the government is blocking her from returning into society, and, then, the Democrats, for example, want to spend even more money to right the wrongs that the legislation created in the first place. I think that's just great.
Earning $2/hour sweeping porches would allow this woman to buy bread, soap, water, apples, a hairbrush, etc.--basic stuff--on her own accord while getting her drug fix cheap (all after just one week of work). That's a start that she'd be hard pressed to get from government cheese handouts while squandering every earned dollar on a hit of heroine. The next big challenge for her is shelter, but if she could at least afford a couple hundred dollars a month, she should move out of the city to live in a single-wide trailer that has a locking door--already better than being homeless under a bridge somewhere open to rape and theft. She could get out of her situation, but we simply aren't letting her. Where's the social justice in that?
Regardless of the reason given, the statement about NT being able to utilize more varied hardware than OS/2 is dead on.
Then they should use a stripped-down NetBSD with a curses or basic GUI interface.
Re:Why do you think Bush gave them tax cuts?
on
Tech Rich Get Richer
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think the point of giving the middle and lower-class a larger portion of the tax cuts is the fact that the money they get back could make the difference in sending their children to college, or improving their standard of living.
But doing the hand-outs so arbitrarily does nothing to guarantee their success. Do people in government really think they have mastered economics so well that they can change the face of society with a poiticially-motivated tax system? The current tax system is insane and is so politically-trashed that it cannot possibly reflect ecnomic reality. Its almost as bad as subsidizing housing for people who would be much better off moving to a different city with a lower cost of living. Why prop up something that is simply unsustainable? Why should I pay for someone's $900 two-bedroom apartment in LA when they get $6.75/hour at a grocery store? Propping up the status quo with legislation will only cause our nation to collapse with money flowing nowhere it should leaving millions of people stranded in places they have no hope of surviving. What then?!?
a) lost their jobs because of the "recession" b) have to work for free or similar because there are too many people that are willing to do the same or c) have to work for 70 hours a week to have a life?
1) They didn't need to go into IT, but too many people did. 2) The resulting surplus started to break the trend of rising salaries. 3) The market is reseting itself, because there was literally three years of complete fantasy going on in IT. 4) EVERYONE will be better off as people who don't belong in IT go elsewhere and those who do belong stay.
Your statement about the American way being rotten is extremely short-sighted...and quite selfish in its own right. The recent crack in the IT industry is evidence that the truth is surfacing regarding what is sustainable and what is not. If you want to live some contrived fantasy, then fine, but don't do it as a member of the US Government, please.
The American Dream is about freedom to pursue your own life, it's not about getting rich.
I would start by imposing percentage-based salary caps on the richest citizens...
You demand freedom by taking it away from others. Gee, what a good plan.
I totally agree with your first statement, but if a person's ambitions require getting rich, first, they should have every chance to make it work. If another person doesn't need weath to be satisfied, then they, also, should have every chance to make it work.
I argue that you statements house the logical error.
It's like saying the hand on the wheel is 100,000 times as important as the lookouts in the crow's nests or the actual tiller man in the engine room.
1) The Captain is personally responsible for the continued livelihoods of his crew. The Captain calls the shots, the captain takes the risks, the captain accepts the responsibility. The crew follows his orders.
2) The Captain, by chance, was granted by Nature an above average intelligence coupled with an engaged and active personality. Social hierarchies exist practically everywhere in Nature, and humans are nothing special in this regard. We grew up in life-and-death hostile environments for millions of years, and it turns out that a social hierarchy can lead to greater chances of survival and genetic propogation. The fact that we invented abstractions for Nature, such as money, changes nothing. We are still out for survival, and it will be a long time before we evolve beyond this.
There is nothing linear in natural societies. It doesn't always seem fair, but the self-solving ecosystems of millions of years have given us what we have, now. Either we make the best of it or we try to mold it into something our imaginations think will work but probably fail. I prefer the time-tested solution rather than trying to play God.
What bothers me is there is no conceivable way these individuals could have performed over a billion dollars worth of labor, ever.
Yes, but they employ the people who can. You don't understand the non-linear aspects of business.
The money was not earned, it was stolen.
From whom? Did they break into someone's house?
In some cases, the money was stolen from fortunes made by the ideas and productive results of employees of the company.
In exchange for relatively stable employment. There are lots of smart people who don't want or can't handle the risks of inventing and marketing on their own. Employment contracts that give patents to the company are completely fair.
His daddy gave him millions to start his little software company. Dell is the same way.
And both companies now employ 100,000 people while turning the technology industry upside-down.
Boy them rich bastards really need a whippin!
Re:which taxes? Income taxes? Social Security tax?
on
Tech Rich Get Richer
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· Score: 1
Which is better, giving the money to the rich for them to invest in products they think people will buy; or giving the money to people to spend, and thereby directly showing what products they are interested in buying?
How about this: give it to them both! Phasing out the income tax will to amazing things to bring the government sprawl into check along with empowering people with an additional wad of cash to call their own.
There was a report a while back that said almost unanimously that people expected to pay no more than 25% of ther incomes in total taxes. Yet why do we routinely spend upwards of 40% to 50%?!? Because the government invented the income tax, where they can take your money at will threatening prison terms for those who don't comply. Feel all warm and fuzzy, now?
Somewhat due to welfare programs that allow people to stagnate in untenable areas (inner cities with no factories...imagine that!) rather than motivating them to move to where better opportunities exist.
Somewhat due to excessive taxation of the poor and middle class by the government (income tax is unfair by any measure--get rid of it).
Somewhat due to illicit drug prices artificially inflated by the DEA and the resulting organized crime in cities and cartels in foreign countries (legalize drugs, collapse the crime rings, and let people get their fix cheap).
Somewhat due to artificial trade barriers and labors laws, such as the minimum wage, that keep a non-trivial number of people unemployable. Let them work, even if it is for $2/hour (that'll at least put bread on their cardboard box).
Somewhat due to a failing public school system that does not provide children an education about money while also failing to educate them about basic algebra, reading, and writing.
There are lots of reasons why people are poor, but I think they are probably not the reasons you think they are.
Do people actually like those laptop touchpads for the mouse? Or do people buy them simply because the look cool?
They just seem to lack the resolution, accuracy, and intuitiveness of regular mice or those mid-keyboard knobs that some Thinkpads have. Yet, it seems that 85% of laptops come with them.
an ATM OS can be tested very rigorously much more easily than an entire OS
Even a pared-down OS isn't trivial...do you still trust Microsoft? Do you trust them enough to let them keep every penny of your account straight? Do you trust the ATM manufacturer to not become complacent with their software security (much less tangible than physical security)? Do you trust them to not get so distracted by buzzwords and new technology so they can catch themselves making stupid decisions?
Wasn't Diebold the same company that put a wireless networking adapter on a voting machine? Is voting somehow less important than money?
You know, I can't believe the mass-retardation that Microsoft has unleashed upon us all. Of course, the people were already stupid, but Microsoft brought it all right to the surface for all of us to see. One day, a cracker will find a very very widely undiscovered vulnerability in a wide scale of Microsoft systems and, then, *blink*...nothing. No banking, no power, no water, embedded appliances on the fritz, cars stalled everywhere...all because of the craze for Microsost operating systems coupled with the naive desire for a networked world.
There's no easy way to fit that sort of design into a chassis less than an inch deep (even if it is over 17" wide).
I disagree. The G5 case is designed very similarly to the high-end UNIX workstations (Sun Blade 2000, Ultra 80, etc.), where optimum cooling and reliability are high priority (let's not flame about no ECC in the G5...oops).
Using a laptop hard drive, battery, etc. along with a slightly powered-down G5 would be very feasible in a laptop. Third-party manufacturers did this for the UltraSPARC IIi in laptops, where the only obvious deficiency, then, was battery life. No one really expects a laptop to be as powerful as a desktop, anyway (settling for a 5400RPM disk is pretty sucky).
It'll probably take a full year of subscription fees just to pay for the server hardware and staff driving XBox Live...and another year to pay for the custom software...and another year to cover the marketing...and perhaps after four years they'll begin to cover their regular business expenses.
Microsoft really would be better off publishing teen magazines or manufacturing action figures of Steve Ballmer or something.
No they didn't. How is some highschool cult in Colorado different than Al Queda, other than funding and scale? Gangs in cities are little more than animalistic herding of human trash for genetic propogation. There are not any clear well-debated reasons behind their actions, they are abberations of logic and humanity.
Slashdot Mirror
What does consumer spending have to do with CEO bonuses and accounting gymnastics? There are more ways for the wealthy to increase their wealth than simply selling things. And the wealthier and more powerful one gets, the more of those doors to even more wealth and more power one can open up.
Wealth that isn't well-founded eventually crashes. Are there not criminal charges being set against some of the Enron execs, lately? Lying, cheating, and stealing are still illegal, I think.
If they are able to get away with no legal recourse, then we should examine the very laws that allowed their freedom. Corruption is corruption, whether it is in an un-checked government or in an un-checked executive. Creating even more laws, rules, and, inevitably, more loopholes is not the way out, IMO. Rather, the unconstitutional laws that housed the loopholes to begin with should be revoked or replaced. Of course, the government doesn't have the resources to do this, so the only fix is even more government, leaving only the possibility of a long-term downward spiral into a hopeless oblivion? Is that why humans can't go 50 years without a major war?
How many Slashdotters out there feel that censorship is bad but restricting free trade is good? How many Slashdotters out there feel that domestic spying is bad but nationalized health care is good?
How many people realize that there is no difference between censorship and tarriffs and that there is no difference between TIA and universal health care?
I hope there aren't too many heads exploding over this. Or did I just create a mopping opportunity for someone who is unemployed? Oh, the sweet sweet irony of social justice.
For some odd reason there are a few people on slashdot who disapprove of that.
No one has to go to Bangalore. Only people who are so rigidly entrenched in the idea that nothing exists outside of Information Technology are so naive. If a person finds themselve priced out of a city, there is the whole Earth to choose from. Perhaps opportuniy is merely the next town over...perhaps it's Indiana. Whichever, there will be a place where a person can find a sustainable cost of living while figuring out where they can go next. Even if it means taking a less-than-ideal job, a person practically never has no options. Our economy, even today, is strong enough that prostitution really is not the only way out. Those that think it is have given up too early.
You do not "make" money in vacuum, you "make" them living in a society, and most successful means to do this currently are by exploiting others and limiting their freedom. This must stop, or else.
Or else what? The people being "exploited" have a right to not spend their money, and that right exists more today than ever before. Our economy is huge and the poor and middle class have never had it better.
There is no conflict of freedom, here. It "us" against "them" in a free country that lets us seek our own path through that "battle." As the economy grows, our number of options grows, too. Who would have imagined artists using computers with tremendously flexible graphics and sound? Who would have imagined that commerical space flight might be merely a few decades away?
So, if you want to live in a hole, you have that right. However, I have a right to not be dragged into that hole with you. It's that simple.
We as a society have a right to decide together if a tiny fraction of us should be allowed unlimited power and wealth.
We already do, because it is us who forfeits the cash that makes others rich. While it is sad that too many people give up their hard-earned money too easily, they never lost their right to not spend.
I will only believe the rants of poor people who are truly poor, not the ones who complain but are wearing Air Jordans or drive a used Lexus. Even then, there are often outlets for the truly poor that don't require arbitrary "social justice". Just yesterday there was a story on PBS News Hour about a college-educated well-spoken woman who was homeless, drug-addicted, and living illegally in a Chicago tenement. Okay, first the prices of her drugs are artifically inflated by the DEA and the local police (drug laws). Second, she should at least be able to get a job sweeping porches, but no one wants to pay minimum wage for that (labor laws). So, she bottomed out, and, in a non-trivial way, the government is blocking her from returning into society, and, then, the Democrats, for example, want to spend even more money to right the wrongs that the legislation created in the first place. I think that's just great.
Earning $2/hour sweeping porches would allow this woman to buy bread, soap, water, apples, a hairbrush, etc.--basic stuff--on her own accord while getting her drug fix cheap (all after just one week of work). That's a start that she'd be hard pressed to get from government cheese handouts while squandering every earned dollar on a hit of heroine. The next big challenge for her is shelter, but if she could at least afford a couple hundred dollars a month, she should move out of the city to live in a single-wide trailer that has a locking door--already better than being homeless under a bridge somewhere open to rape and theft. She could get out of her situation, but we simply aren't letting her. Where's the social justice in that?
you are an idiot. RTFP.
I did and understood it clearly. My post was making a different point.
Regardless of the reason given, the statement about NT being able to utilize more varied hardware than OS/2 is dead on.
Then they should use a stripped-down NetBSD with a curses or basic GUI interface.
I think the point of giving the middle and lower-class a larger portion of the tax cuts is the fact that the money they get back could make the difference in sending their children to college, or improving their standard of living.
But doing the hand-outs so arbitrarily does nothing to guarantee their success. Do people in government really think they have mastered economics so well that they can change the face of society with a poiticially-motivated tax system? The current tax system is insane and is so politically-trashed that it cannot possibly reflect ecnomic reality. Its almost as bad as subsidizing housing for people who would be much better off moving to a different city with a lower cost of living.
Why prop up something that is simply unsustainable? Why should I pay for someone's $900 two-bedroom apartment in LA when they get $6.75/hour at a grocery store? Propping up the status quo with legislation will only cause our nation to collapse with money flowing nowhere it should leaving millions of people stranded in places they have no hope of surviving. What then?!?
a) lost their jobs because of the "recession"
b) have to work for free or similar because there are too many people that are willing to do the same
or
c) have to work for 70 hours a week to have a life?
1) They didn't need to go into IT, but too many people did.
2) The resulting surplus started to break the trend of rising salaries.
3) The market is reseting itself, because there was literally three years of complete fantasy going on in IT.
4) EVERYONE will be better off as people who don't belong in IT go elsewhere and those who do belong stay.
Your statement about the American way being rotten is extremely short-sighted...and quite selfish in its own right. The recent crack in the IT industry is evidence that the truth is surfacing regarding what is sustainable and what is not. If you want to live some contrived fantasy, then fine, but don't do it as a member of the US Government, please.
The American Dream is about freedom to pursue your own life, it's not about getting rich.
I would start by imposing percentage-based salary caps on the richest citizens...
You demand freedom by taking it away from others. Gee, what a good plan.
I totally agree with your first statement, but if a person's ambitions require getting rich, first, they should have every chance to make it work. If another person doesn't need weath to be satisfied, then they, also, should have every chance to make it work.
This is an example of a logical error.
I argue that you statements house the logical error.
It's like saying the hand on the wheel is 100,000 times as important as the lookouts in the crow's nests or the actual tiller man in the engine room.
1) The Captain is personally responsible for the continued livelihoods of his crew. The Captain calls the shots, the captain takes the risks, the captain accepts the responsibility. The crew follows his orders.
2) The Captain, by chance, was granted by Nature an above average intelligence coupled with an engaged and active personality. Social hierarchies exist practically everywhere in Nature, and humans are nothing special in this regard. We grew up in life-and-death hostile environments for millions of years, and it turns out that a social hierarchy can lead to greater chances of survival and genetic propogation. The fact that we invented abstractions for Nature, such as money, changes nothing. We are still out for survival, and it will be a long time before we evolve beyond this.
There is nothing linear in natural societies. It doesn't always seem fair, but the self-solving ecosystems of millions of years have given us what we have, now. Either we make the best of it or we try to mold it into something our imaginations think will work but probably fail. I prefer the time-tested solution rather than trying to play God.
What bothers me is there is no conceivable way these individuals could have performed over a billion dollars worth of labor, ever.
Yes, but they employ the people who can. You don't understand the non-linear aspects of business.
The money was not earned, it was stolen.
From whom? Did they break into someone's house?
In some cases, the money was stolen from fortunes made by the ideas and productive results of employees of the company.
In exchange for relatively stable employment. There are lots of smart people who don't want or can't handle the risks of inventing and marketing on their own. Employment contracts that give patents to the company are completely fair.
Rich get richer, poor get children
Birth control is the best form of welfare there is.
His daddy gave him millions to start his little software company. Dell is the same way.
And both companies now employ 100,000 people while turning the technology industry upside-down.
Boy them rich bastards really need a whippin!
Which is better, giving the money to the rich for them to invest in products they think people will buy; or giving the money to people to spend, and thereby directly showing what products they are interested in buying?
How about this: give it to them both! Phasing out the income tax will to amazing things to bring the government sprawl into check along with empowering people with an additional wad of cash to call their own.
There was a report a while back that said almost unanimously that people expected to pay no more than 25% of ther incomes in total taxes. Yet why do we routinely spend upwards of 40% to 50%?!? Because the government invented the income tax, where they can take your money at will threatening prison terms for those who don't comply. Feel all warm and fuzzy, now?
The rich get richer, The poor get poorer.
Somewhat due to welfare programs that allow people to stagnate in untenable areas (inner cities with no factories...imagine that!) rather than motivating them to move to where better opportunities exist.
Somewhat due to excessive taxation of the poor and middle class by the government (income tax is unfair by any measure--get rid of it).
Somewhat due to illicit drug prices artificially inflated by the DEA and the resulting organized crime in cities and cartels in foreign countries (legalize drugs, collapse the crime rings, and let people get their fix cheap).
Somewhat due to artificial trade barriers and labors laws, such as the minimum wage, that keep a non-trivial number of people unemployable. Let them work, even if it is for $2/hour (that'll at least put bread on their cardboard box).
Somewhat due to a failing public school system that does not provide children an education about money while also failing to educate them about basic algebra, reading, and writing.
There are lots of reasons why people are poor, but I think they are probably not the reasons you think they are.
Do people actually like those laptop touchpads for the mouse? Or do people buy them simply because the look cool?
They just seem to lack the resolution, accuracy, and intuitiveness of regular mice or those mid-keyboard knobs that some Thinkpads have. Yet, it seems that 85% of laptops come with them.
an ATM OS can be tested very rigorously much more easily than an entire OS
Even a pared-down OS isn't trivial...do you still trust Microsoft? Do you trust them enough to let them keep every penny of your account straight? Do you trust the ATM manufacturer to not become complacent with their software security (much less tangible than physical security)? Do you trust them to not get so distracted by buzzwords and new technology so they can catch themselves making stupid decisions?
Wasn't Diebold the same company that put a wireless networking adapter on a voting machine? Is voting somehow less important than money?
You know, I can't believe the mass-retardation that Microsoft has unleashed upon us all. Of course, the people were already stupid, but Microsoft brought it all right to the surface for all of us to see. One day, a cracker will find a very very widely undiscovered vulnerability in a wide scale of Microsoft systems and, then, *blink*...nothing. No banking, no power, no water, embedded appliances on the fritz, cars stalled everywhere...all because of the craze for Microsost operating systems coupled with the naive desire for a networked world.
From the Wired article: "With open technologies it is easier to run different types of hardware on the same software."
Holy shit, I can't believe the banks are so gullible. Did they actually believe what a saleman told them?!?
I thought that by handling so much money they would be more cynical by now. I guess not.
There's no easy way to fit that sort of design into a chassis less than an inch deep (even if it is over 17" wide).
I disagree. The G5 case is designed very similarly to the high-end UNIX workstations (Sun Blade 2000, Ultra 80, etc.), where optimum cooling and reliability are high priority (let's not flame about no ECC in the G5...oops).
Using a laptop hard drive, battery, etc. along with a slightly powered-down G5 would be very feasible in a laptop. Third-party manufacturers did this for the UltraSPARC IIi in laptops, where the only obvious deficiency, then, was battery life. No one really expects a laptop to be as powerful as a desktop, anyway (settling for a 5400RPM disk is pretty sucky).
500,000 subscribers
It'll probably take a full year of subscription fees just to pay for the server hardware and staff driving XBox Live...and another year to pay for the custom software...and another year to cover the marketing...and perhaps after four years they'll begin to cover their regular business expenses.
Microsoft really would be better off publishing teen magazines or manufacturing action figures of Steve Ballmer or something.
Looking at Pricewatch, building a 2GHz-class PC with good graphics for $400 doesn't appear to be a problem. What's the Infinium added value?
Build these power plants in America.
You don't need powerplants. Just start sewing fuel cells into men's underwear.
7 pounds of gas
Why, I can give you that right now! Okay, brace yourselves...
...have clear reasons for doing what they did.
No they didn't. How is some highschool cult in Colorado different than Al Queda, other than funding and scale? Gangs in cities are little more than animalistic herding of human trash for genetic propogation. There are not any clear well-debated reasons behind their actions, they are abberations of logic and humanity.