Actually they do, the FDIC administers that fund. The rate of losses nearly exceeded its ability to pay out. Additionally regulators required insurance on all of the transactions that went sour due to non-payment. The amount of insurance default was so high that one of the largest insurers in the world had to be bailed out.
Where do you think the IOU's in the parcel come from? Do you pay cash and never take loans out for anything?
You're trading your future estimated worth, which is how much someone will pay you to do something with your time that you don't want to, and neither do they, to have something today. Other people place bets on whether or not you'll succeed at repaying your debts. The banks shuffle around the debts playing a giant game of musical chairs.
If you fail, they fail. And all those people who bet on you and whether or not your bank is smarter than the bank next door, lose too.
We could all go back to the barter system, but civilization decided long ago that this setup was more efficient.
You can like or dislike it, but yes, it's a game, and even choose to try to change it, but today and likely for the rest of my life, the way we keep score is the biggest number on your W-2. The bankers play it better than you do, but the only time anyone cares is when they screw up.
People don't like it when they can't play house, on the house's money. The public demanded that the house release a trillion more chips, instead of letting "too big to fail" organizations die.
The geeks are silly enough to promise things without strings attached. Note how each faster computer promises to be the last computer you'll ever need to buy. And each new programming language will be the last programming language you'll ever need. And every faster network speed will be fast-enough for all the data you can possibly ever need to push around...
... motivating software engineers (by loss of MONEY) who release things that have big ass security bugs in them in the first place. And put up a scoreboard of the engineer with the most stupid bugs for all to see.
"We have gone X days without an exploit." - just like the safety signs in factories. Since after all, it is software safety we're talking about here.
I'm guessin' there's other factors involved in a factory in Taiwan than *just* evil ol' capitalism... the popular whipping boy topic of the consumers who decry it while living from it's teat.
It couldn't *possibly* be that the Taiwanese are too chicken to enact a few labor laws, or anything approaching civilization, and none of their politicians are paid off by Foxconn... noooo. Certainly not.
Remember, the "market" is just millions of individual choices that the people who made them are ultimately responsible for.
You, for example, choose to pay for Internet Access and spend time on Slashdot discussing "the market" you're part of, instead of helping those people in Africa with those funds and time used for the online discussion.
If the "market" doesn't have good values, look at the individuals within it and their individual decisions.
You say that the "market" is broken, even as you are one of millions of examples of someone who chooses to not have the values you want the "market" to have.
It's difficult to admit we're all selfish bastards. Even most altruism has been studied and shown that the person doing something altruistic *usually* gets something out of it, even if it's subtle approval of peers, or whatever... there's a million reasons for such behavior... in the "market".
There are definitely "average people" being annoyed and harassed by their bullshit on a fairly regular basis. Mostly as part of the "Security Theatre" at airports, but also via subpoenas to read data from personal devices... in cases like the above... where the document in question wasn't even classified, and the Canadian government published it with additional details on their website, as quickly as the U.S. Citizen bloggers posted links to it.
Your wish that government agencies would always act sanely, is a nice platitude, but not playing out in reality.
Would it have been a whole heck of a lot easier for both of these guys if their devices had a wipe feature? Hard to say, but remember even if the subpoena called for only certain data, the DHS got a bit by bit copy of the entire hard drive.
Agreed. Wouldn't it be smarter to deploy devices from more than one carrier in a large deployment anyway?
I know the carriers make this difficult with "bulk" deals on service, but for cryin' out loud... if you at least choose TWO vendors, and use both equally -- you'd be able to hand the one guy who lives out in the one coverage area that Vendor A doesn't cover, one of Vendor B's USB sticks and say, "Go try this one."
And if they both don't work, you have a lot more leg to stand on to say, "You just live out in the styx, sorry."
And of course, if you find that Vendor A blows Vendor B away, you can slowly migrate over...
Diversity. It's not just for people, anymore. Try it with networks. It's helpful.
Better than spending on bad mortgages driven by politics through Fannie and Freddie by handing banks wads of cash that did nothing to alleviate the fact that those two quasi-government institutions are still dead-broke. At least we'll have technology gains and real jobs out of this type of spending.
p.s. This of course, still indicates that Obama's promises were lies... whereas at least the previous guy made no excuses for the bad government behavior... all of which is paid for by us, of course. It also continually (on a much larger scale) throws the whole concept of a benevolent government full of "progressives" spending our tax money and well beyond -- into record deficits -- while they have complete control of the Congress, into a very bad light. The same bad light their predecessors on the "other side" was in a few years ago. They're all robber-barrons, and they steal from your wallet to the tune of 40% or higher to supposedly provide you with things you could easily afford yourself... I'm all for government providing the trappings of civilization and paying for it. But they can stop flying around on Air Force provided and crewed private 757's any time now. I never asked nor wanted them to have that kind of perk. Same thing with healthcare... I've continually said as soon as Congress has the same plan they're shoving down the people's throats, they're more than welcome to pass whatever they like...
I see no real evidence that government is SIGNIFICANTLY more transparent in the numbers even after "digging" into them. In fact, using either set of numbers, you're still well within the range of statistical ambiguity. If the promise was more transparent government, it surely hasn't happened, and won't. The promise was always a lie to anyone who knew better. The "economies" of Government require secrets. This is no surprise to anyone. The ARTICLE may be biased/spun (or not, depending on your viewpoint) but there's no real transparency going on. And never will be.
Because nobody except rabid people on either side is confused or affected by the so-called bias of linking to that site to get an AP story (which is accurate and not-so-biased, barring the fact that EVERYONE's biased), perhaps? LOL.
What prescription drugs in the 50's? Aspirin? Polio vaccine?
Different times, different lives - Impossible to compare. I agree with you I wouldn't want to be dropped off in the 1950's tomorrow, but prescription drug advertising rules is a pretty big stretch, considering there virtually weren't any that anyone took on a regular basis.
Of course, there might be something good about the lack of prescription drugs back then, too... how many 60+ year old ass-hats are pumping up their penises on Viagra for sex with their third 20-something third-wifey today?
Progress or just different? I'm not judging. Just saying, half a century ago is difficult to compare to, in any society that's changed as much as ours has.
Or the more logical alternative, if it's not Breitbart's content, the points made in the article are squeaky clean of bias (ha!) because they're from the AP, and Breitbart's just a conduit so other than ad revenue from the link, it doesn't matter at all.:-)
"And so he resorts to straw men, insults, ad hominems, disingenuous misinterpretation, and appeals to emotion."
And that's exactly what your post is too... hiding behind well-written words, but isn't this exactly your true motivation behind them?
Nice work.:-)
p.s. Yes, I'm doing the same thing. To point out that you made no cogent argument in this posting, you just did exactly what you claim pudge does. If he's the poster boy for right-wing debate, you've apparently got the same title for the left... (Yawn.)
What was it you say to BlueSrat just two more posts down, "resorting to ad-hominem is cute, but doesn't add to your credibility" or something like that.
How about both of you admitting that EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE PLANET IS BIASED and get over it already. Sheesh.
When did it become unpopular to have opinions or a bias? The only interesting people worth knowing on the planet, DO have one. Yourselves included.
So why worry about it? Debate facts. Who cares about bias?
Aristotle was biased, Shakespere was biased, Plato, Henry VIII, Napoleon, Ceasar, Jesus, Budda... all biased. Keep listing anyone of interest or importance, and they'll all be heavily biased toward SOMETHING.
So... who cares if there's bias in the world. Learn to think critically and read through it. Bitching/Whining about it isn't going to remove bias from the World...
Make your points. Argue the topics, not who's "biased" about them. Who cares?
The Government borrows at under 1% from other countries (mainly China) who are manipulating their currencies to pretend they're not under-going an even larger bubble than we were a few years ago.
Both sides ARE equally bad. They take your money and give back far less than 100% of it in return for you believing their promises of "civilization". If it costs you 40% of your income today to pay them, both Parties, all "sides" of Government, and they're still running up trillions upon trillions in debt, you must not be getting a very good ROI on that payment...
Meanwhile they're flying around on Air Force operated 757's that you paid for, while decrying others flying around on Corporate-owned aircraft they actually earned.
You don't see that as "both sides are bad"? They're all living better than you or I are... on our dimes. Isn't that the very definition of Fascism?
Slashdot Mirror
Jealous much? Anyone can aspire to having one of those jobs.
Without connections to "old money" they're harder to come by, but its not like you can't do it, if you want to be one of those "few".
Actually they do, the FDIC administers that fund. The rate of losses nearly exceeded its ability to pay out. Additionally regulators required insurance on all of the transactions that went sour due to non-payment. The amount of insurance default was so high that one of the largest insurers in the world had to be bailed out.
Where do you think the IOU's in the parcel come from? Do you pay cash and never take loans out for anything?
You're trading your future estimated worth, which is how much someone will pay you to do something with your time that you don't want to, and neither do they, to have something today. Other people place bets on whether or not you'll succeed at repaying your debts. The banks shuffle around the debts playing a giant game of musical chairs.
If you fail, they fail. And all those people who bet on you and whether or not your bank is smarter than the bank next door, lose too.
We could all go back to the barter system, but civilization decided long ago that this setup was more efficient.
You can like or dislike it, but yes, it's a game, and even choose to try to change it, but today and likely for the rest of my life, the way we keep score is the biggest number on your W-2. The bankers play it better than you do, but the only time anyone cares is when they screw up.
People don't like it when they can't play house, on the house's money. The public demanded that the house release a trillion more chips, instead of letting "too big to fail" organizations die.
The geeks are silly enough to promise things without strings attached. Note how each faster computer promises to be the last computer you'll ever need to buy. And each new programming language will be the last programming language you'll ever need. And every faster network speed will be fast-enough for all the data you can possibly ever need to push around...
... motivating software engineers (by loss of MONEY) who release things that have big ass security bugs in them in the first place. And put up a scoreboard of the engineer with the most stupid bugs for all to see.
"We have gone X days without an exploit." - just like the safety signs in factories. Since after all, it is software safety we're talking about here.
... instead of QA'ing their car's control systems!
I'm guessin' there's other factors involved in a factory in Taiwan than *just* evil ol' capitalism... the popular whipping boy topic of the consumers who decry it while living from it's teat.
It couldn't *possibly* be that the Taiwanese are too chicken to enact a few labor laws, or anything approaching civilization, and none of their politicians are paid off by Foxconn... noooo. Certainly not.
Remember, the "market" is just millions of individual choices that the people who made them are ultimately responsible for.
You, for example, choose to pay for Internet Access and spend time on Slashdot discussing "the market" you're part of, instead of helping those people in Africa with those funds and time used for the online discussion.
If the "market" doesn't have good values, look at the individuals within it and their individual decisions.
You say that the "market" is broken, even as you are one of millions of examples of someone who chooses to not have the values you want the "market" to have.
It's difficult to admit we're all selfish bastards. Even most altruism has been studied and shown that the person doing something altruistic *usually* gets something out of it, even if it's subtle approval of peers, or whatever... there's a million reasons for such behavior... in the "market".
Do you actually own real Gold/Silver or just paper and computer accounts that say you do?
"You can't fix stupid."
NFS still doesn't effing work right? Wow.
Okay, replace SS with DHS/TSA.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/dhs-threatens-blogger/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/tsa-withdraws-subpoenas/
There are definitely "average people" being annoyed and harassed by their bullshit on a fairly regular basis. Mostly as part of the "Security Theatre" at airports, but also via subpoenas to read data from personal devices... in cases like the above... where the document in question wasn't even classified, and the Canadian government published it with additional details on their website, as quickly as the U.S. Citizen bloggers posted links to it.
Your wish that government agencies would always act sanely, is a nice platitude, but not playing out in reality.
Would it have been a whole heck of a lot easier for both of these guys if their devices had a wipe feature? Hard to say, but remember even if the subpoena called for only certain data, the DHS got a bit by bit copy of the entire hard drive.
Agreed. Wouldn't it be smarter to deploy devices from more than one carrier in a large deployment anyway?
I know the carriers make this difficult with "bulk" deals on service, but for cryin' out loud... if you at least choose TWO vendors, and use both equally -- you'd be able to hand the one guy who lives out in the one coverage area that Vendor A doesn't cover, one of Vendor B's USB sticks and say, "Go try this one."
And if they both don't work, you have a lot more leg to stand on to say, "You just live out in the styx, sorry."
And of course, if you find that Vendor A blows Vendor B away, you can slowly migrate over...
Diversity. It's not just for people, anymore. Try it with networks. It's helpful.
Better than spending on bad mortgages driven by politics through Fannie and Freddie by handing banks wads of cash that did nothing to alleviate the fact that those two quasi-government institutions are still dead-broke. At least we'll have technology gains and real jobs out of this type of spending.
He has people to read his e-mail... seriously.
p.s. This of course, still indicates that Obama's promises were lies... whereas at least the previous guy made no excuses for the bad government behavior ... all of which is paid for by us, of course. It also continually (on a much larger scale) throws the whole concept of a benevolent government full of "progressives" spending our tax money and well beyond -- into record deficits -- while they have complete control of the Congress, into a very bad light. The same bad light their predecessors on the "other side" was in a few years ago. They're all robber-barrons, and they steal from your wallet to the tune of 40% or higher to supposedly provide you with things you could easily afford yourself... I'm all for government providing the trappings of civilization and paying for it. But they can stop flying around on Air Force provided and crewed private 757's any time now. I never asked nor wanted them to have that kind of perk. Same thing with healthcare... I've continually said as soon as Congress has the same plan they're shoving down the people's throats, they're more than welcome to pass whatever they like...
I see no real evidence that government is SIGNIFICANTLY more transparent in the numbers even after "digging" into them. In fact, using either set of numbers, you're still well within the range of statistical ambiguity. If the promise was more transparent government, it surely hasn't happened, and won't. The promise was always a lie to anyone who knew better. The "economies" of Government require secrets. This is no surprise to anyone. The ARTICLE may be biased/spun (or not, depending on your viewpoint) but there's no real transparency going on. And never will be.
Because nobody except rabid people on either side is confused or affected by the so-called bias of linking to that site to get an AP story (which is accurate and not-so-biased, barring the fact that EVERYONE's biased), perhaps? LOL.
So you're saying the time honored and tested, "Neener neener neener!" is inappropriate.
Got it. :-)
What prescription drugs in the 50's? Aspirin? Polio vaccine?
Different times, different lives - Impossible to compare. I agree with you I wouldn't want to be dropped off in the 1950's tomorrow, but prescription drug advertising rules is a pretty big stretch, considering there virtually weren't any that anyone took on a regular basis.
Of course, there might be something good about the lack of prescription drugs back then, too... how many 60+ year old ass-hats are pumping up their penises on Viagra for sex with their third 20-something third-wifey today?
Progress or just different? I'm not judging. Just saying, half a century ago is difficult to compare to, in any society that's changed as much as ours has.
Or the more logical alternative, if it's not Breitbart's content, the points made in the article are squeaky clean of bias (ha!) because they're from the AP, and Breitbart's just a conduit so other than ad revenue from the link, it doesn't matter at all. :-)
"And so he resorts to straw men, insults, ad hominems, disingenuous misinterpretation, and appeals to emotion."
And that's exactly what your post is too... hiding behind well-written words, but isn't this exactly your true motivation behind them?
Nice work. :-)
p.s. Yes, I'm doing the same thing. To point out that you made no cogent argument in this posting, you just did exactly what you claim pudge does. If he's the poster boy for right-wing debate, you've apparently got the same title for the left... (Yawn.)
What was it you say to BlueSrat just two more posts down, "resorting to ad-hominem is cute, but doesn't add to your credibility" or something like that.
How about both of you admitting that EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE PLANET IS BIASED and get over it already. Sheesh.
When did it become unpopular to have opinions or a bias? The only interesting people worth knowing on the planet, DO have one. Yourselves included.
So why worry about it? Debate facts. Who cares about bias?
Aristotle was biased, Shakespere was biased, Plato, Henry VIII, Napoleon, Ceasar, Jesus, Budda... all biased. Keep listing anyone of interest or importance, and they'll all be heavily biased toward SOMETHING.
So... who cares if there's bias in the world. Learn to think critically and read through it. Bitching/Whining about it isn't going to remove bias from the World...
Make your points. Argue the topics, not who's "biased" about them. Who cares?
The Government borrows at under 1% from other countries (mainly China) who are manipulating their currencies to pretend they're not under-going an even larger bubble than we were a few years ago.
Both sides ARE equally bad. They take your money and give back far less than 100% of it in return for you believing their promises of "civilization". If it costs you 40% of your income today to pay them, both Parties, all "sides" of Government, and they're still running up trillions upon trillions in debt, you must not be getting a very good ROI on that payment...
Meanwhile they're flying around on Air Force operated 757's that you paid for, while decrying others flying around on Corporate-owned aircraft they actually earned.
You don't see that as "both sides are bad"? They're all living better than you or I are... on our dimes. Isn't that the very definition of Fascism?
Exactly how is continually higher taxation on the middle class progressive, civilized, and egalitarian again? Just wondering what country you live in.