There is such a thing as the Separation of Powers, and the President (Bush) has no power to dictate what the Judicial Branch does. Once the courts are engaged in a case against Microsoft, the Executive or Legislative branches of gov't has no way to interfere.
Re:Best weapon against counterfeiting:
on
Make Money Fast
·
· Score: 1
"Yes, I've looked at the other posts--those 'advantages' presume a return to a full-blown fully-backed gold standard, which isn't possible for the reasons outlined in the grandparent. Plus, instead of the limited degree of control we can now exercise over the Federal Reserve, we abdicate all authority, leaving it to the whims of South African mining cartels."
Utter nonsense!
First of all, a return to the gold standard is quite possible, but of course, it requires political will, and you won't find that in 'democratic' nations with omnipresent entrenched power-hungry buerocrats that know they will lose control of the economy (and as such, their entire base of power erodes) if they let people use gold. Read up on how the US prohibited use of gold as an exchange collateral and confiscated it from private holder in the USA, 20th century.
Second, the advantages I've outlined need not be adorned by quotiation marks as you have done it. If you have a minimum of economic knowledge, you will know that government control of a printing press can, and often is, the kiss of death for an economy, or at least for prosperity of the society which the government controls.
The gold standard was very widespead a few centuries back, and any ruler who tried weaken the standard by "watering down" the gold, or overusing fiat money, doomed himself and was overthrown by various means in short order. (read: Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy, the God that failed, pp56-57).
Plus, the idea that the Fed provides a security as a semi-govenment agency is an illusion. The fed is a consortium of dejure-secured private banks. Your money is already controlled by a cartel.
Lastly, there is lots of gold in circulation, and many producers. If one cartel tries to screw with the gold supply, you can be sure that the market will correct it.
Re:Best weapon against counterfeiting:
on
Make Money Fast
·
· Score: 1
"Not sure if I agree with that, but that doesn't really address counterfeiting anyways, unless you consider the government capable of counterfeiting."
Exactly. Though not technically counterfeiting, govenment overuse of the printing press is damaging to the entire society that makes use of the money being printed. And like sattelite economies, as well.
Read up on Milton Friedman's Monetarism sometime for in-depth explanations.
Re:Best weapon against counterfeiting:
on
Make Money Fast
·
· Score: 1
My argument is quite valid. Alloying old is a common practise, as 24c gold is very soft and thus not useful for common handling.
Oh, and post under a username if you want to be taken seriously.
Re:Best weapon against counterfeiting:
on
Make Money Fast
·
· Score: 1
On the contrary, I know quite well what the GS represents. And contrary to what you think I'm not advocating replacing ALL fiat money with gold. As it has been pointed out, gold is heavy and as such quite unweildy to use in large quantities for common purposes.
Naturally, not everybody would walk around with their money in gold in their pocket, but for common purposes, gold coins would effectively be un-fakeable (weight, non-corrodability, toughness).
And then there are the political/economic advantages which I have briefly touched upon in an answer to another poster.
Re:Best weapon against counterfeiting:
on
Make Money Fast
·
· Score: 1
"Why is that any better than paper currency? Modern paper bills are hard enough to fake. If we really wanted to, we could check every bill we received for all the anti-counterfeit measures and features, to be (reasonably) certain we are not receiving counterfeit money. How does gold help with any of this?"
The gold standard is better than fiat money for a number of reasons, principally that the powers that be being unable to accellerate the princing presses, and thus create monetary inflation (empoverishing all in the process).
Plus, from what this story, and a good deal of other experince tells us, paper money can always be faked, sometimes quite easily.
Gold helps because it can be acid tested (acid resistance), it can be wighted (it is very heavy), and it is fairly hard when not 24-carat pure (the bite test).
Re:Wooden nickels in gold foil ?
on
Make Money Fast
·
· Score: 1
"They started paper currency coz precious metals were too difficult to test for purity and weight ALL the time . Also they were too heavy to lug around and too hard to denominate down (Silver, Bronze, Copper were used instead). "
I disagree. The gold standard was very efficient, and was abolished for political reasons, at least in the US after Keynes started his intellectual reign in economic circles.
Plus, the gold standard naturally does not exclude paper money or certificates of value. The point is that that in a gold standard system, you can walk into your bank any time and reclaim the value of your exchange certificates as gold.
Best weapon against counterfeiting:
on
Make Money Fast
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
The Gold standard. When money is gold, you can't fake it. Unless you have access to a large accellerator, a lot of energy, and a lot of time on your hands.
"Man, the North Koreans went to communism because the alternatives at the time were worse in their eyes. Maybe it was was wrong, but fuck it, they're people. All most of 'em wanna do is bring up their kids and have food on the table."
Heavens, don't you know what a military coup is?
Read up on history:
http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/kimilsun.htm
The North Koreans didn't choose communism, it was forced upon them by Stalin and his cronies.
"Thus we now have them in a position where they have nothing to lose, and a little bitter and twisted.
To the US's credit, there were attempts to try and help Pyongyang out of this dead-end situation, by offering assistance in building reactors that were more efficient and would not produce weapons-grade materials. Unfortunatley, the Clinton administration never came good with their promises, and then the Bush administration came into power and... well, you know the rest. With the likes of John "Deputy Dawg" Bolton doing negotiations with them it's a small miracle South Korea or Japan aren't small burning heaps by now. That's if NK actually do have any nukes. Who knows... the entire government is crazy and senile, so it's hard to guess what they are doing or thinking."
Oh come on! Now NK's problems are suddently the result of international relations and not their own insane societal/state model, where the individual is worth zilch and only the state and the "star of chosun" matters ?!
And by the way, is that "assistance" you're talking about by any chance Jimmy Carter's usual hug-o-rama in 1994 where he singlehandedly allowed the NK despots to produce Nukes under the guise of transitioning to A-power ?
"In addition he has announced tax cuts for the middle to higher income earners and no help at all for lower income earners. Small business in Australia is treated like nothing, even though close to half of Australia's economy runs on the back of it."
Pardon me, but tax cuts are good for everybody. Taxation punishes productivity, and when you punish "the rich", you make the highly educated move away, thus robbing society of igenuity and prosperity.
While the basic user probably doesn't need to run more than three apps at a time (say, browse the web while eding a doc in Office + having an MP3 file playing in the background), are there any bets how long it will be before there is a patch out to allow more than 3 apps open at a time? =)
"Malware has been disabling the firewalls of machines it infects for years. It is simply not possible for a firewall to remain an effective security measure on a machine where hostile code has been run at the same level of privilege. "
Well, isn't it as confirmation of the previous poster's point, when Microsoft by Windows design allows the firewall to be disabled by a userspace app?
C# may be a Microsoft invention, but now that Mono has opened it for the Linux and Mac people, I bid it welcome. As far as I can see, it is a very powerful language, which offers a number of functions and features of ex. Objective C.
Why was the parent rated "redundant"? It's true - Microsoft will conquer a new market by
1) bunding a preferred blogging solution with Windows 2) opening up its war chest with funds from Windows and Office to combat the small entrepreneurs 3) "embrance and extend"
What you neglect in your argument is that the commendation by the boss' bosses is worth jack shit when they:
1) tell the admin to piss of when he complains that his boss is doing nothing.
2) proceeds to reprimand the boss after all.
You don't smell something contradictory here ?
FYI, commendations are often worthless, and in this case, it smells like the higher-ups are coviring their asses because THEY failed to act on blatant waste of taxpayer money.
I've seen people who work their socks off get hosed by management and people who do little work get praise. That's often happening in business today, ESPECIALLY public business. (Try reading Dilbert sometime.)
Lastly, what you, like most others continually ignore is that this boss is getting money FROM YOUR TAX SLIP for playing Solitaire. Do you really think that is appropriate ?
First of all, you're not differentiating between private and public companies.
Second, you're ignoring that the sysop had a clause in his job contract that says to track down, report and eliminate misuse of company computer resources. I have already pointed this out, and so has other posters.
Lastly, we're not talking a few innocent private emails here. We're talking 70% of randomly chosen samples over a timespan of 7 months showing the asshole boss playing Solitaire. Do you need it cut out for you ?
"To me, it's a sysadmin who's an idiot. The 'higher ups' were informed and chose to ignore it. He should have done the same thing.
And who exactly made the cartoons (one of which is not a cartoon at all, but rather an inadequately pixelated photo). If it was him, he's an idiot. If it was someone else (who would have gotten the information from him), he's still an idiot.
He may have been a sysadmin, but he won't be in the future. No potential boss would hire him knowing that they may be spied upon and end up seeing their names in the local paper in an unfavorable light. He abused his position and is now seeing the consequences."
I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, but how can your berate a man, who's exposing blatant inefficiency in the public sector, when you're the one paying for the boss waste of your taxpayer money ?
I'd say he's done a heroic thing to expose this crap. The uber-bosses reaction tells it all, though - they don't give a shit that forcefully collected funds are wasted on a guy getting paid for playing solitaire and making "Busywork" with oneline emails. When it's exposed, they kill the messenger, but leaves the culprit in place. Public productivity for ya.
Your analogy is false. There is a distinct difference between a private business relationship (your bank teller) and a public agency boss not doing his job and blatantly wasting taxpayer money (which isn't donated or provided on a contractual basis, but forcefully collected).
Furthermore, please read what the other poster wrote:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=116452&c id =9855703
In short, the boss had it coming to him, and it's a fucking disgrace that his ass wasn't handed to him on a platter, plus the admin getting a prize for his initiative.
For a fair verdict, you may also want to document the many failures and fuckups of FTC in the past. You may think of this as great, but do some research, and you will see that FTC is just as rotten as the rest of the gov't agencies.
Slashdot Mirror
"Not to mention it may very well be prohibited under the mccain-feingold act, a trashy unconstitutional piece of legislation if there ever was one."
Seems fitting for such a trashy unworthy piece of propagandistic motion picture if you ask me.
Nah. They're codenaming the technology "Exorcist". ;)
-1 Bullshit and the usual anti-Bush bashing.
There is such a thing as the Separation of Powers, and the President (Bush) has no power to dictate what the Judicial Branch does. Once the courts are engaged in a case against Microsoft, the Executive or Legislative branches of gov't has no way to interfere.
"Yes, I've looked at the other posts--those 'advantages' presume a return to a full-blown fully-backed gold standard, which isn't possible for the reasons outlined in the grandparent. Plus, instead of the limited degree of control we can now exercise over the Federal Reserve, we abdicate all authority, leaving it to the whims of South African mining cartels."
Utter nonsense!
First of all, a return to the gold standard is quite possible, but of course, it requires political will, and you won't find that in 'democratic' nations with omnipresent entrenched power-hungry buerocrats that know they will lose control of the economy (and as such, their entire base of power erodes) if they let people use gold. Read up on how the US prohibited use of gold as an exchange collateral and confiscated it from private holder in the USA, 20th century.
Second, the advantages I've outlined need not be adorned by quotiation marks as you have done it. If you have a minimum of economic knowledge, you will know that government control of a printing press can, and often is, the kiss of death for an economy, or at least for prosperity of the society which the government controls.
The gold standard was very widespead a few centuries back, and any ruler who tried weaken the standard by "watering down" the gold, or overusing fiat money, doomed himself and was overthrown by various means in short order. (read: Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy, the God that failed, pp56-57).
Plus, the idea that the Fed provides a security as a semi-govenment agency is an illusion. The fed is a consortium of dejure-secured private banks. Your money is already controlled by a cartel.
Lastly, there is lots of gold in circulation, and many producers. If one cartel tries to screw with the gold supply, you can be sure that the market will correct it.
"Not sure if I agree with that, but that doesn't really address counterfeiting anyways, unless you consider the government capable of counterfeiting."
Exactly. Though not technically counterfeiting, govenment overuse of the printing press is damaging to the entire society that makes use of the money being printed. And like sattelite economies, as well.
Read up on Milton Friedman's Monetarism sometime for in-depth explanations.
My argument is quite valid. Alloying old is a common practise, as 24c gold is very soft and thus not useful for common handling.
Oh, and post under a username if you want to be taken seriously.
On the contrary, I know quite well what the GS represents. And contrary to what you think I'm not advocating replacing ALL fiat money with gold. As it has been pointed out, gold is heavy and as such quite unweildy to use in large quantities for common purposes.
Naturally, not everybody would walk around with their money in gold in their pocket, but for common purposes, gold coins would effectively be un-fakeable (weight, non-corrodability, toughness).
And then there are the political/economic advantages which I have briefly touched upon in an answer to another poster.
"Why is that any better than paper currency? Modern paper bills are hard enough to fake. If we really wanted to, we could check every bill we received for all the anti-counterfeit measures and features, to be (reasonably) certain we are not receiving counterfeit money. How does gold help with any of this?"
The gold standard is better than fiat money for a number of reasons, principally that the powers that be being unable to accellerate the princing presses, and thus create monetary inflation (empoverishing all in the process).
Plus, from what this story, and a good deal of other experince tells us, paper money can always be faked, sometimes quite easily.
Gold helps because it can be acid tested (acid resistance), it can be wighted (it is very heavy), and it is fairly hard when not 24-carat pure (the bite test).
"They started paper currency coz precious metals were too difficult to test for purity and weight ALL the time . Also they were too heavy to lug around and too hard to denominate down (Silver, Bronze, Copper were used instead).
"
I disagree. The gold standard was very efficient, and was abolished for political reasons, at least in the US after Keynes started his intellectual reign in economic circles.
Plus, the gold standard naturally does not exclude paper money or certificates of value. The point is that that in a gold standard system, you can walk into your bank any time and reclaim the value of your exchange certificates as gold.
The Gold standard. When money is gold, you can't fake it. Unless you have access to a large accellerator, a lot of energy, and a lot of time on your hands.
... that there's finally a broad consensus about standards adherence.
How about we sue California for predatory larceny of our paycheques ? CA has one of the largetst marginal income tax rates in the US:
http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/ind_inc.html
"Man, the North Koreans went to communism because the alternatives at the time were worse in their eyes. Maybe it was was wrong, but fuck it, they're people. All most of 'em wanna do is bring up their kids and have food on the table."
Heavens, don't you know what a military coup is?
Read up on history:
http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/kimilsun.htm
The North Koreans didn't choose communism, it was forced upon them by Stalin and his cronies.
"Thus we now have them in a position where they have nothing to lose, and a little bitter and twisted.
To the US's credit, there were attempts to try and help Pyongyang out of this dead-end situation, by offering assistance in building reactors that were more efficient and would not produce weapons-grade materials. Unfortunatley, the Clinton administration never came good with their promises, and then the Bush administration came into power and... well, you know the rest. With the likes of John "Deputy Dawg" Bolton doing negotiations with them it's a small miracle South Korea or Japan aren't small burning heaps by now. That's if NK actually do have any nukes. Who knows... the entire government is crazy and senile, so it's hard to guess what they are doing or thinking."
Oh come on! Now NK's problems are suddently the result of international relations and not their own insane societal/state model, where the individual is worth zilch and only the state and the "star of chosun" matters ?!
And by the way, is that "assistance" you're talking about by any chance Jimmy Carter's usual hug-o-rama in 1994 where he singlehandedly allowed the NK despots to produce Nukes under the guise of transitioning to A-power ?
"In addition he has announced tax cuts for the middle to higher income earners and no help at all for lower income earners. Small business in Australia is treated like nothing, even though close to half of Australia's economy runs on the back of it."
Pardon me, but tax cuts are good for everybody. Taxation punishes productivity, and when you punish "the rich", you make the highly educated move away, thus robbing society of igenuity and prosperity.
Is that what you want ?
"Wonder what this laptop, resting on my lap, cooking my legs with the battery, and my gonads with Wi-Fi is doing to me?"
Why do you care ? You're a slashdotter. You don't have any use for them gonads anyhow.
While the basic user probably doesn't need to run more than three apps at a time (say, browse the web while eding a doc in Office + having an MP3 file playing in the background), are there any bets how long it will be before there is a patch out to allow more than 3 apps open at a time? =)
Question:
"Malware has been disabling the firewalls of machines it infects for years. It is simply not possible for a firewall to remain an effective security measure on a machine where hostile code has been run at the same level of privilege.
"
Well, isn't it as confirmation of the previous poster's point, when Microsoft by Windows design allows the firewall to be disabled by a userspace app?
C# may be a Microsoft invention, but now that Mono has opened it for the Linux and Mac people, I bid it welcome. As far as I can see, it is a very powerful language, which offers a number of functions and features of ex. Objective C.
Why was the parent rated "redundant"? It's true - Microsoft will conquer a new market by
1) bunding a preferred blogging solution with Windows
2) opening up its war chest with funds from Windows and Office to combat the small entrepreneurs
3) "embrance and extend"
Hey, smart guy, I did RTFA.
What you neglect in your argument is that the commendation by the boss' bosses is worth jack shit when they:
1) tell the admin to piss of when he complains that his boss is doing nothing.
2) proceeds to reprimand the boss after all.
You don't smell something contradictory here ?
FYI, commendations are often worthless, and in this case, it smells like the higher-ups are coviring their asses because THEY failed to act on blatant waste of taxpayer money.
I've seen people who work their socks off get hosed by management and people who do little work get praise. That's often happening in business today, ESPECIALLY public business. (Try reading Dilbert sometime.)
Lastly, what you, like most others continually ignore is that this boss is getting money FROM YOUR TAX SLIP for playing Solitaire. Do you really think that is appropriate ?
You're obfuscating the issues.
First of all, you're not differentiating between private and public companies.
Second, you're ignoring that the sysop had a clause in his job contract that says to track down, report and eliminate misuse of company computer resources. I have already pointed this out, and so has other posters.
Lastly, we're not talking a few innocent private emails here. We're talking 70% of randomly chosen samples over a timespan of 7 months showing the asshole boss playing Solitaire. Do you need it cut out for you ?
"To me, it's a sysadmin who's an idiot. The 'higher ups' were informed and chose to ignore it. He should have done the same thing.
And who exactly made the cartoons (one of which is not a cartoon at all, but rather an inadequately pixelated photo). If it was him, he's an idiot. If it was someone else (who would have gotten the information from him), he's still an idiot.
He may have been a sysadmin, but he won't be in the future. No potential boss would hire him knowing that they may be spied upon and end up seeing their names in the local paper in an unfavorable light. He abused his position and is now seeing the consequences."
I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, but how can your berate a man, who's exposing blatant inefficiency in the public sector, when you're the one paying for the boss waste of your taxpayer money ?
I'd say he's done a heroic thing to expose this crap. The uber-bosses reaction tells it all, though - they don't give a shit that forcefully collected funds are wasted on a guy getting paid for playing solitaire and making "Busywork" with oneline emails. When it's exposed, they kill the messenger, but leaves the culprit in place. Public productivity for ya.
Your analogy is false. There is a distinct difference between a private business relationship (your bank teller) and a public agency boss not doing his job and blatantly wasting taxpayer money (which isn't donated or provided on a contractual basis, but forcefully collected).
c id =9855703
Furthermore, please read what the other poster wrote:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=116452&
In short, the boss had it coming to him, and it's a fucking disgrace that his ass wasn't handed to him on a platter, plus the admin getting a prize for his initiative.
For a fair verdict, you may also want to document the many failures and fuckups of FTC in the past. You may think of this as great, but do some research, and you will see that FTC is just as rotten as the rest of the gov't agencies.