It really is remarkable how the uncivilized internet "snark" has not only become so pervasive among self-hating white people eager to prove their conformity with political correctness, but it is all so similar. Literally millions of delusional, self-loathing white people use the same insulting phrases and passive-aggressive questions.
It's sort of like all the individualistic liberal youths wearing the same clothes, getting the same tattoos, and listening to the same banal music, with all of these trends foisted down our throats via twitter, et al.
When you look in the mirror, do you not realize your entire personality and everything in which you believe is little more than a cheap carbon copy of the indoctrination you willingly swallow? Do you not recognize that it is all completely transparent that the anger you feel is completely due to your own sexual frustration and inability to be a man? That you have no place in this world and can derive no sense of belonging except by pretending to conform with a negative morality that allows you only to make choices between pointless options presented to you from mass culture?
It's sad. Enjoy your porn and video games while you can.
Monetary policy is a complex thing. The short answer: Sovereign nations do not "borrow" money as you borrow money. They create money. The purpose of taxation is to create demand for money within the political sphere of influence of a given power as well as control the inflationary effects that necessarily come from money creation. Modern economies issue debt to provide financial stability, while the US has gone even further in a system some call imperialist (Read Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism). The US Empire as it exists today would be impossible without the vast issuance of debt.
But, when it comes to the ratings agencies, you'll just have to read this.
You really need to turn of the left wing press that is funded by bankers. The "Tea Party" - i.e. the middle class - has nothing to do with this. If you really believe that, you have no ability to think critically nor have any understanding of economics, let alone social organization. You probably think our economic crisis is caused by all the racists, sexists, and homophobes too.
Read, and learn from a progressive economist more concerned with real prosperity than proving his moral superiority and participating in some weird inquisition.
There is and never was a "disaster". The president has always had the authority to order the Treasury to create money. This was all a sham, and the only thing it teaches us is how the people are easily mislead with crisis after crisis. And it is all to make you happy and content with declining living standards and permanent debt peonage.
I read through these 1,000 comments, and it is really tragic how the so-called "left" has been completely, utterly indoctrinated with economic illiteracy in order that bankers might profit in their continued looting of this nation. While you haven't exhibited the penchant for that inquisitorial moral crusade to hunt down all the racists, sexists, and homophobic white people who are the reason the world is going to hell, I have no doubt that particular theory appeals to you as well.
The first, fundamental concept that must be understood is this: The federal government DOES NOT tax the people in order to raise revenue. There is no need. A sovereign nation with a fiat currency can create as much money as possible. While it is possible for hyperinflation to occur, that typically only happens when the money creation is much greater than economic growth or there are extraneous issues like war. That, ultimately however is the reason taxes are imposed: it is a direct way to control inflation, i.e. it is the way the government takes money out of circulations.
Now, the other more complicated matter pertains to that ratio of taxation and money creation, and why public debt is not only necessary but has always existed since the founding of the very first cities and advanced economies. Taxation MUST be less than money creation otherwise people will become poorer. The only way for personal wealth to increase is for the total money supply to increase, and the only way that can happen in a rational fashion is with a government or an entity with government powers coordinating that creation in a given social order.
If you really want to know the truth, it was the "surplus" years under Clinton that really precipitated this crisis. The immediate result was a rapid loss of incomee, which could only be remediated by massive borrowing on a personal level. This was intentional to MAKE YOU a debt slave.
Now, we have this nonsense. And why is it? Because the solution is for the government to simply print money until aggregate demand and employment returns with rational public works projects like every society has employed from Hammurabi until modern times. But to do that will 1) reduce the value of the debt holders notes due to inflation and 2) free you from their grasp.
All of this is a sham.
What's worse is the truly wealthy, the people who benefit from this high level corruption and the trillions of dollars given to the banks instead of put into public works projects don't even pay income taxes. Why? They are paid with capital instruments, and therefore pay ridiculously low capital gains taxes.
I encourage you to read the works of genuine progressive economists like Michael Hudson, and to search for the various top sites of economists who promote Modern Monetary Theory. You'll learn a lot, and realize why your specific example has zero relevance to our continually collapsing economy and only serves to make bankers richer at your expense.
But more importantly, why is it a conspiracy for white people to organize as an ethnic block? Are you some kind of racist who thinks only certain races should have such a privilege?
I suppose you're one of those liberals who approves of newspapers not reporting the racist bent of the numerous vicious anti-white attacks by mobs of blacks that have been occurring week after week in this country. You also probably believe intelligence is not heritable.
What other fantasies do you promote? Let me guess. White people are the cause of all that's wrong in the world.
I have to say, I too find it remarkable someone actually would misunderstand this fairly simple logical fallacy. What's worse is how many slashdot readers not only share a similar lack of understanding, but applaud it and moderate it up.
You really have no idea what you are talking about.
Even Adam Smith and Ayn Rand support intellectual property laws. I challenge you to find one "free market" economist who has not advocated intellectual property laws.
I don't even know where you can buy a 70" screen. The largest I have seen are 65". That said, you expect us to believe you spent $7 to $10,000 on a television, and you're happy with lower resolution images?
I live in a NYC apartment and 50" is about all I can reasonably fit in my place. I spent a lot of money on my system, and let me tell you - I want the BEST. I can see a difference in the resolution, but I can also hear the difference with compressed audio.
Why bother spending money on a high end setup if you aren't going to have the opportunity to appreciate it?
I see a lot of these posts on these sites, and I strongly suspect they are written by poor kids/students who just haven't actually seen this technology in action and enjoy pretending that it doesn't matter. Is it an ego thing? Does it really bother you that you can't participate in this orgy of high def because of your limited earnings? Does it really make you feel better about yourself?
This is no tragedy; we should be celebrating this man's life. We should all be as lucky to live such a full life, and die as old men under such circumstances. When most reach old age, they give up on life entirely. When your body begins to fail, it takes real courage to tempt fate on a regular basis.
It was no secret FDR wanted war, but it would have been crazy to go to war in 1939. It's not like the US went to war when the Soviet Union invaded Poland, Finland, and most of Eastern Europe in the 1920s. What changed in 1939?
FDR worked against Japan all throughout the 1930s via trade blockades and other forms of harassment. The same was true against Germany from the beginning. As a communist, FDR of course applied no such pressure against the Soviet Union despite their nearly relentless military campaigns on all their borders. Likewise, the British Empire was allowed the rape and pillage the world without a peep from Washington. We of course defended all the European colonialists in the Far East, at least diplomatically.
Me thinks you have bought into the propaganda nonsense of the US ruling elite. History did not happen like you think it did.
And that's the problem with your post. You might be a sysadmin, but real work is more than maintaining windows pcs. Lots of companies are involved with businesses that heavily rely upon analyzing large amounts of information. If you aren't aware of any reason to have more than 4 gigs of ram, you are simply ignorant of what really goes on in the modern economy.
I hope you feel better about yourself now that you've written this incredibly tedious and pointless post.
Truth be told, I don't even believe in democracy. The bigger question is why would a smart man like you believe the future of humanity should be the subject of a popularity contest?
If someone cannot take the time to devote a minimum amount of effort to fill out a ballot properly, perhaps they should not vote at all.
A frivolous lawsuit.
Disenfranchising the minuscule number of people who cannot fill out a paper ballot pails in comparison with the threat posed by computerized voting systems. The ACLU has their priorities all wrong.
Secondly, the bodycount difference you're talking about is due to difference betweens methods (industrial VS manual), not motivations. People have been executed and tortured for far longer, and in many more places by religious forces than by atheists.
Preposterous. The Hutus killed 1.5 million Tutsis in six months with nothing but blunt instruments and machetes. Whatever else can be said about authoritarian genocidal activities of the 20th century, industrialization had nothing to do with the volume of those killed. People harp on it because there is still the mystery of where all the bodies went in Naziland. The most common explanation is they were all incinerated into dust, which of course requires high power furnaces and petroleum - products of industry. Industrial technology was not necessary for the murder of people, but it was necessary for the disposal of the bodies. At least, that is the most popular theory.
That of course is a demonstrable falsity, promulgated by our would-be "betters" since times immemorial. It wasn't the peons that made empires and kingdoms "work", it were the "nobility", right? Starting with examples such as an idiot named Cheops who made thousands of men align stones on top of each other so that his "glorious" and "totally above average" ass can ascend to Heaven as a bigger yet king. No one remembers those "averages" who actually built the thing, never you mind those who fed the empire and its oh-so-superior parasites.
Unfortunately, your selection of examples proves the exact opposite of your tirade. It is the profoundly ignorant view of democrats and communists that civilization was built on slavery. Quite the opposite was true. The natural world is vicious and barbaric and anarchy was the rule. Cheops did build his monuments with slaves. The reality is large numbers of humans were more than willing to leave behind their barbaric ways and choose freely to enter the cities that provide safety, security, and order.
The lowly workers lacked the vision and means to organize a civilization of their own, and thus were forced to join another. The entire world was ripe for the taking at that time, but what did people do? They joined Cheops. They did not flee him.
Total bullshit. The core of any economy are tradesmen (such as the majority of Slashdot readership), very small and small businesses, many millions of which operate in every country. Their owners are no more "special" then their employees and usually work hands-on in their chosen trade, as opposed to "managing" things or "investing" as is the case in larger operations. In most sane countries these owners also earn no more then double (after expenses and taxes) of what their employees make. In places such as Japan, even the CEOs of very large corporations make only about 10 times (on average) more then their workers. In neo-feudal nations, such as USA, that ratio is exceeding 500 and is on the way up.
To an extent you are correct, but that does not invalidate the parent posters view. The reality is the entirety of the world is too complex for any one group to have the means to decide which laws or best or who should lead. You make the democrat's error that the only options are tyranny or democracy. That is a false dichotomy.
We can renew the authority of the republican system by reorganizing the electorate along the very trades you discuss. Instead of people from a given territory electing a representative, we can have all the doctors in the country elect a representative just for them. The same is true for every other trade.
The Congress of the various representatives of the trades would then be the best and brightest minds of each speciality of the nation, rather than a cadre of scoundrals who pander to parasites and freeloaders. Decisions would be made not on how they aid re -election, but by the specialists who are actually qualified to make decisions.
The Congress would be both a legislative body and an executive. The representative of the doctors for instance could be the chief executive of the department of health, rather than a hack appointed by the president.
The would-be corporate royalty and the multi-mega-billionaires add nothing to the society as their activities are confined to "owning" land, machinery and people, people who in turn employ others who in turn do something actually useful. A process which would have gone on just as lively if the mega-billionaires were removed from the picture. Far more efficiently actually as a large number of small businesses competing in a marketplace is far more society-friendly then a few mega-bazillionaire corporate oligopolistic fiefdoms.
The problem however is your view has no historical proof. Everywhere where your views have been implemented has resulted in total societal breakdown. Marxist views today are wholly obsolete. Once again, you prove your ignorance of history.
Whatever it is, neo-feudalism (this time with hereditary "business" royalty) isn't it.
This conclusion is totally unsupported by the parent poster's argument.
I realize your life sucks and your pissed you don't have money. At the same time though, I don't give a shit. For a lot of people, having an HDTV set is not a status symbol. When you are at a high enough income level, it really is insignificant.
You are the one who seems to think I give a fuck what some kid on slashdot thinks about me. I don't. As I said, a $1000 bottle of some alcoholic beverage will get a chick to head back to my $2MM apartment where my television is a minor wall decoration. Put this in to perspective. Who do I give a shit about? Some pimply faced kid on slashdot who whacks off every day, or the hot chick in my pad? Why the fuck would I ever waive my dick at you?
There is a legitimate reason for people to want HDTV besides "dick waiving". Avarice will get you nowhere in life kid. Suck it up and learn to be a man and not an envy stricken pussy.
Slashdot Mirror
It really is remarkable how the uncivilized internet "snark" has not only become so pervasive among self-hating white people eager to prove their conformity with political correctness, but it is all so similar. Literally millions of delusional, self-loathing white people use the same insulting phrases and passive-aggressive questions.
It's sort of like all the individualistic liberal youths wearing the same clothes, getting the same tattoos, and listening to the same banal music, with all of these trends foisted down our throats via twitter, et al.
When you look in the mirror, do you not realize your entire personality and everything in which you believe is little more than a cheap carbon copy of the indoctrination you willingly swallow? Do you not recognize that it is all completely transparent that the anger you feel is completely due to your own sexual frustration and inability to be a man? That you have no place in this world and can derive no sense of belonging except by pretending to conform with a negative morality that allows you only to make choices between pointless options presented to you from mass culture?
It's sad. Enjoy your porn and video games while you can.
Monetary policy is a complex thing. The short answer: Sovereign nations do not "borrow" money as you borrow money. They create money. The purpose of taxation is to create demand for money within the political sphere of influence of a given power as well as control the inflationary effects that necessarily come from money creation. Modern economies issue debt to provide financial stability, while the US has gone even further in a system some call imperialist (Read Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism). The US Empire as it exists today would be impossible without the vast issuance of debt.
But, when it comes to the ratings agencies, you'll just have to read this.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=15580
You really need to turn of the left wing press that is funded by bankers. The "Tea Party" - i.e. the middle class - has nothing to do with this. If you really believe that, you have no ability to think critically nor have any understanding of economics, let alone social organization. You probably think our economic crisis is caused by all the racists, sexists, and homophobes too.
Read, and learn from a progressive economist more concerned with real prosperity than proving his moral superiority and participating in some weird inquisition.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=15580
There is and never was a "disaster". The president has always had the authority to order the Treasury to create money. This was all a sham, and the only thing it teaches us is how the people are easily mislead with crisis after crisis. And it is all to make you happy and content with declining living standards and permanent debt peonage.
I read through these 1,000 comments, and it is really tragic how the so-called "left" has been completely, utterly indoctrinated with economic illiteracy in order that bankers might profit in their continued looting of this nation. While you haven't exhibited the penchant for that inquisitorial moral crusade to hunt down all the racists, sexists, and homophobic white people who are the reason the world is going to hell, I have no doubt that particular theory appeals to you as well.
The first, fundamental concept that must be understood is this: The federal government DOES NOT tax the people in order to raise revenue. There is no need. A sovereign nation with a fiat currency can create as much money as possible. While it is possible for hyperinflation to occur, that typically only happens when the money creation is much greater than economic growth or there are extraneous issues like war. That, ultimately however is the reason taxes are imposed: it is a direct way to control inflation, i.e. it is the way the government takes money out of circulations.
Now, the other more complicated matter pertains to that ratio of taxation and money creation, and why public debt is not only necessary but has always existed since the founding of the very first cities and advanced economies. Taxation MUST be less than money creation otherwise people will become poorer. The only way for personal wealth to increase is for the total money supply to increase, and the only way that can happen in a rational fashion is with a government or an entity with government powers coordinating that creation in a given social order.
If you really want to know the truth, it was the "surplus" years under Clinton that really precipitated this crisis. The immediate result was a rapid loss of incomee, which could only be remediated by massive borrowing on a personal level. This was intentional to MAKE YOU a debt slave.
Now, we have this nonsense. And why is it? Because the solution is for the government to simply print money until aggregate demand and employment returns with rational public works projects like every society has employed from Hammurabi until modern times. But to do that will 1) reduce the value of the debt holders notes due to inflation and 2) free you from their grasp.
All of this is a sham.
What's worse is the truly wealthy, the people who benefit from this high level corruption and the trillions of dollars given to the banks instead of put into public works projects don't even pay income taxes. Why? They are paid with capital instruments, and therefore pay ridiculously low capital gains taxes.
I encourage you to read the works of genuine progressive economists like Michael Hudson, and to search for the various top sites of economists who promote Modern Monetary Theory. You'll learn a lot, and realize why your specific example has zero relevance to our continually collapsing economy and only serves to make bankers richer at your expense.
Actually, the southern strategy was Nixon.
But more importantly, why is it a conspiracy for white people to organize as an ethnic block? Are you some kind of racist who thinks only certain races should have such a privilege?
I suppose you're one of those liberals who approves of newspapers not reporting the racist bent of the numerous vicious anti-white attacks by mobs of blacks that have been occurring week after week in this country. You also probably believe intelligence is not heritable.
What other fantasies do you promote? Let me guess. White people are the cause of all that's wrong in the world.
Umm, what a strange link you chose for the PSP.
The PSP 2000 retails for $169.99 in the US.
I have to say, I too find it remarkable someone actually would misunderstand this fairly simple logical fallacy. What's worse is how many slashdot readers not only share a similar lack of understanding, but applaud it and moderate it up.
What has happened to this site?
You really have no idea what you are talking about.
Even Adam Smith and Ayn Rand support intellectual property laws. I challenge you to find one "free market" economist who has not advocated intellectual property laws.
You obviously suck way too much dick.
Seriously, I really have no idea how the hell you relate the words Blue and Ray with any kind of sexual activity.
I don't even know where you can buy a 70" screen. The largest I have seen are 65". That said, you expect us to believe you spent $7 to $10,000 on a television, and you're happy with lower resolution images?
I live in a NYC apartment and 50" is about all I can reasonably fit in my place. I spent a lot of money on my system, and let me tell you - I want the BEST. I can see a difference in the resolution, but I can also hear the difference with compressed audio.
Why bother spending money on a high end setup if you aren't going to have the opportunity to appreciate it?
I see a lot of these posts on these sites, and I strongly suspect they are written by poor kids/students who just haven't actually seen this technology in action and enjoy pretending that it doesn't matter. Is it an ego thing? Does it really bother you that you can't participate in this orgy of high def because of your limited earnings? Does it really make you feel better about yourself?
What does the UMD, a portable game system format, have to do with Blu Ray?
The reality is the Blu Ray specification has finalized at a quicker pace than DVD did - I wouldn't worry.
This is no tragedy; we should be celebrating this man's life. We should all be as lucky to live such a full life, and die as old men under such circumstances. When most reach old age, they give up on life entirely. When your body begins to fail, it takes real courage to tempt fate on a regular basis.
I guess you don't have many friends in Eastern Europe, eh?
This Wikipedia article is obviously all bullshit then?
It was no secret FDR wanted war, but it would have been crazy to go to war in 1939. It's not like the US went to war when the Soviet Union invaded Poland, Finland, and most of Eastern Europe in the 1920s. What changed in 1939?
FDR worked against Japan all throughout the 1930s via trade blockades and other forms of harassment. The same was true against Germany from the beginning. As a communist, FDR of course applied no such pressure against the Soviet Union despite their nearly relentless military campaigns on all their borders. Likewise, the British Empire was allowed the rape and pillage the world without a peep from Washington. We of course defended all the European colonialists in the Far East, at least diplomatically.
Me thinks you have bought into the propaganda nonsense of the US ruling elite. History did not happen like you think it did.
We are all very curious. How precisely is Ron Paul against women's rights?
More than 4Gb RAM? So what?
And that's the problem with your post. You might be a sysadmin, but real work is more than maintaining windows pcs. Lots of companies are involved with businesses that heavily rely upon analyzing large amounts of information. If you aren't aware of any reason to have more than 4 gigs of ram, you are simply ignorant of what really goes on in the modern economy.
I hope you feel better about yourself now that you've written this incredibly tedious and pointless post.
Truth be told, I don't even believe in democracy. The bigger question is why would a smart man like you believe the future of humanity should be the subject of a popularity contest?
If someone cannot take the time to devote a minimum amount of effort to fill out a ballot properly, perhaps they should not vote at all.
A frivolous lawsuit.
Disenfranchising the minuscule number of people who cannot fill out a paper ballot pails in comparison with the threat posed by computerized voting systems. The ACLU has their priorities all wrong.
MS Virtual PC is actually quite good and free, and even includes tools for us in OS/2.
That said, DOS support in XP sucked and have used Virtual PC and DOS 6.22 for some time for this reason.
Secondly, the bodycount difference you're talking about is due to difference betweens methods (industrial VS manual), not motivations. People have been executed and tortured for far longer, and in many more places by religious forces than by atheists.
Preposterous. The Hutus killed 1.5 million Tutsis in six months with nothing but blunt instruments and machetes. Whatever else can be said about authoritarian genocidal activities of the 20th century, industrialization had nothing to do with the volume of those killed. People harp on it because there is still the mystery of where all the bodies went in Naziland. The most common explanation is they were all incinerated into dust, which of course requires high power furnaces and petroleum - products of industry. Industrial technology was not necessary for the murder of people, but it was necessary for the disposal of the bodies. At least, that is the most popular theory.
In your dreams.
If they remove DRM, not a single Hollywood studio will release on the format. It's that simple.
That of course is a demonstrable falsity, promulgated by our would-be "betters" since times immemorial. It wasn't the peons that made empires and kingdoms "work", it were the "nobility", right? Starting with examples such as an idiot named Cheops who made thousands of men align stones on top of each other so that his "glorious" and "totally above average" ass can ascend to Heaven as a bigger yet king. No one remembers those "averages" who actually built the thing, never you mind those who fed the empire and its oh-so-superior parasites.
Unfortunately, your selection of examples proves the exact opposite of your tirade. It is the profoundly ignorant view of democrats and communists that civilization was built on slavery. Quite the opposite was true. The natural world is vicious and barbaric and anarchy was the rule. Cheops did build his monuments with slaves. The reality is large numbers of humans were more than willing to leave behind their barbaric ways and choose freely to enter the cities that provide safety, security, and order.
The lowly workers lacked the vision and means to organize a civilization of their own, and thus were forced to join another. The entire world was ripe for the taking at that time, but what did people do? They joined Cheops. They did not flee him.
Total bullshit. The core of any economy are tradesmen (such as the majority of Slashdot readership), very small and small businesses, many millions of which operate in every country. Their owners are no more "special" then their employees and usually work hands-on in their chosen trade, as opposed to "managing" things or "investing" as is the case in larger operations. In most sane countries these owners also earn no more then double (after expenses and taxes) of what their employees make. In places such as Japan, even the CEOs of very large corporations make only about 10 times (on average) more then their workers. In neo-feudal nations, such as USA, that ratio is exceeding 500 and is on the way up.
To an extent you are correct, but that does not invalidate the parent posters view. The reality is the entirety of the world is too complex for any one group to have the means to decide which laws or best or who should lead. You make the democrat's error that the only options are tyranny or democracy. That is a false dichotomy.
We can renew the authority of the republican system by reorganizing the electorate along the very trades you discuss. Instead of people from a given territory electing a representative, we can have all the doctors in the country elect a representative just for them. The same is true for every other trade.
The Congress of the various representatives of the trades would then be the best and brightest minds of each speciality of the nation, rather than a cadre of scoundrals who pander to parasites and freeloaders. Decisions would be made not on how they aid re -election, but by the specialists who are actually qualified to make decisions.
The Congress would be both a legislative body and an executive. The representative of the doctors for instance could be the chief executive of the department of health, rather than a hack appointed by the president.
The would-be corporate royalty and the multi-mega-billionaires add nothing to the society as their activities are confined to "owning" land, machinery and people, people who in turn employ others who in turn do something actually useful. A process which would have gone on just as lively if the mega-billionaires were removed from the picture. Far more efficiently actually as a large number of small businesses competing in a marketplace is far more society-friendly then a few mega-bazillionaire corporate oligopolistic fiefdoms.
The problem however is your view has no historical proof. Everywhere where your views have been implemented has resulted in total societal breakdown. Marxist views today are wholly obsolete. Once again, you prove your ignorance of history.
Whatever it is, neo-feudalism (this time with hereditary "business" royalty) isn't it.
This conclusion is totally unsupported by the parent poster's argument.
I don't think SACD is dead just yet. A lot of great classical music comes out on it still. I just ordered $200 of SACDs from amazon today. All new.
I realize your life sucks and your pissed you don't have money. At the same time though, I don't give a shit. For a lot of people, having an HDTV set is not a status symbol. When you are at a high enough income level, it really is insignificant.
You are the one who seems to think I give a fuck what some kid on slashdot thinks about me. I don't. As I said, a $1000 bottle of some alcoholic beverage will get a chick to head back to my $2MM apartment where my television is a minor wall decoration. Put this in to perspective. Who do I give a shit about? Some pimply faced kid on slashdot who whacks off every day, or the hot chick in my pad? Why the fuck would I ever waive my dick at you?
There is a legitimate reason for people to want HDTV besides "dick waiving". Avarice will get you nowhere in life kid. Suck it up and learn to be a man and not an envy stricken pussy.