So because you can't make a point through logic and facts you resort to personal attacks?
This from the guy who just told us that only one in a hundred of us has any clue? In a post that included little logic and no actual facts? You reap what you sow, pal.
So, how many people have read the 9/11 Commission reports? I'd bet 99% of the people responding in this forum really don't have a clue as to the real facts. [...] I have read excerpts of the 9/11 report.
Excerpts, eh? Well, then, gosh, your oh-so-superior tone is utterly justified.
Can you ever forgive us for occasionally reading some analysis from people who actually read the whole thing and make it their living to study these things? I promise we'll never make that mistake again, O exalted one.
Considering past behaviour you go looking for non legitimate uses - and you find one. After a decade of deciet - which concept for the tube's use do YOU latch on to?
When I'm on the verge of spending a couple hundred billion dollars, killing tens of thousands of civilians, and putting hundreds of thousands of American troops in harms way? Personally, I wouldn't "latch on" to anything. I'd be really careful, especially when there's no immediate threat. But hey, maybe that's why I'm not the President.
No doubt the current administration put the screws to all of them to supress this damning story and loosened them just in time for the Primaries. I mean, what better time is there to shoot yourself in the foot by letting key sources blather away about political secrets that you'd managed to keep anybody from knowing for the last two years?
Have you ever worked for the government? I did a contract for a state department once, and everybody there was incredibly timid. Why? Because they plan to be there for life, and the only way for most people to advance is for them to keep their noses very clean.
The Bush team ran the tightest, most leak-resistant administration in modern history for most of their term. But during the Sept 11th commission, they started to lose control; people started to leak and get away with it. That made others realize that they could leak safely, which they have been doing in increasing numbers. And now that Bush has a decent chance of losing, it's even safer. It's not particularly surprising that people are coming forward now.
Oh, and Michael, the little personal spin you decided to tack on the end of that submission -- I'll never buy a Slashdot subscription thanks to that. I come here to get the facts, not your personal anti-Bush agenda.
Oh, please. Your user number makes it pretty clear that you've been around long enough to buy a subscription. Your threat to not buy one is only credible if you might actually have bought one.
Personally, I'm happy to get a small amount of honest opinion from the editors. I may not agree, but I'd much rather have people be straight about their views than have them pretend to be "fair and balanced".
What about the 4 Al-Quaida related attacks [...]? Wow. Bush is kickin' ass and taking names.
Yes! Great question! Given that Al Qaeda is such a danger, why did we pull resources from a country where they were to invade one where they weren't? I'm not against a little ass-kicking, but with 6 billion asses out there, I think we should prioritize a little.
No, he let the weapons inspectors in and let them search anywhere. We gave them the locations of where we thought they were producing WMDs and they all turned out completely wrong. We kicked the weapons inspectors out so that we could bomb Iraq.
That's not entirely true. Bush certainly did rush to war, but Saddam was always very shifty. See, for example, the documentary by Scott Ritter, one of the head weapons inspectors, In Shifting Sands. His basic take was that Saddam made it impossible to tell whether all the bad stuff was gone, but he was sure that such a large proportion of it was gone that Iraq was no longer a strategic threat.
One of the big unanswered questions about all of this was why Hussein continued to play games with the inspectors, the UN, and the US even though it now seems like he had nothing to hide. The best theory I heard was that maintaining the doubt helped him look scary to his neighbors. But that seems like small reward for the massive damage that sanctions inflicted. My personal notion is that the only way you can survive that long as a brutal absolute dictator is to never give in to anybody, and that although that bias worked for him inside Iraq, it eventually screwed him on the global stage.
Just because it looks like he was screwing with us instead of building weapons doesn't mean the casus bella was wrong. The ball was in Saddam's court.
If that were the justification for war, you might have had a point. However, it was sold not on the grounds of failure to follow UN resolutions but on the grounds of immediate threat.
I agree that the UN should have grown a pair and cracked down on Saddam. But the whole point of the UN is international cooperation to achieve things of global importance and benefit. The notion that the US should take unilateral action to strengthen the UN is an obvious self-contradiction.
many people, if pressed to do so, would agree that the world is at least a little bit safer without Saddam Hussein in charge in Iraq, regardless of whether he had any WMD's.
And that would be relevant how?
I think the making the world safer is a fantastic goal. But for the massive cost of invading and occupying Iraq (so far: 1000+ US dead, 10-20x that in Iraqi dead, $100 billion, strained relationships, lost credibility, and hugely increased dislike of America in the Muslim world) we got a lousy deal if all we got is "a little bit safer".
And although not everybody agrees, reasonable analysts suggest that the world is, in fact, less safe. We recently discovered that Pakistan was behind the biggest nuclear proliferation problems in decades. And we did nothing, even when they gave the guy responsible a pardon and a medal. Why? Because they're an "ally" in the war on terror.
Futher, Iran and North Korea, knowing that we are distracted by Iraq and politically stretched, are getting away with further bomb-building preparation. Meanwhile, Iraq is a big ol' recruiting poster for nut-job militants around the world. And the fact that we are unable to stabilize the situation there only encourages them, both now and in the future.
I think people are taking the whole "global test" thing a little too literally. It's not like were gonna print up a questionnaire and pass it out to world leaders.
Yeah, it amazes me how many people have apparently forgotten all but two words of that debate answer. To help them, I'll include it here:
KERRY: The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.
No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.
But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.
Here we have our own secretary of state who has had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations.
It's not clear to me why this is controversial. America's true authority in the world isn't military, it's moral. If neither our citizens nor our allies trust our government to act wisely, our ability to influence the world is much diminished. We can hardly persuade people to act against truly dangerous rogue nations like North Korea if they think we might be a dangerous rogue nation ourselves.
Whether or not one truly cares what the other 95% of the planet thinks, there's a lot of pragmatic value in working with allies to achieve our goals.
Now, if you never hear from them again after challenging them and feel you have a moral obligation to strike back (on behalf of future victims or something)...and after you've done your research and you're sure that the company isn't legit...then you should contact a lawyer and see what he or she suggests as a course of action.
I'd disagree a little with this. Most lawyers I've dealt with are good at helping you reduce the risk of a course of action, but aren't so good at suggesting them. Instead, come up with a few ways to strike back (I'm sure we'll help) and then have a lawyer help you evaluate the risks with each one.
Personally, if I really thought they were shaking down innocent startups, I'd make sure other people could Google them and find out your point of view, even if it's anonymized. Also consider talking to the folks who run Chilling Effects, and on-line clearinghouse of people using IP law to threaten you; they may be willing to publish material for you.
No, there's no point in making veiled (and probably idle) threats. It's in your best interests to remain polite.
I strongly agree.
I've never dealt with patent threats, but I used to work at a company that ran on-line communities. We regularly received legal threats from loons around the world. For non-credible threats, we'd just ignore them. Usually they'd just go away. For the plausible or persistent ones, we would be friendly but do nothing.
I found it was very helpful to ask questions about their position in a manner that was friendly, innocent, sincere, and slightly clueless. I also liked to be sympathetic and say pleasant, true things. E.g., agreeing that of course people's intellectual property should be protected. That conceeds nothing legally important, but helps to make people feel less scrappy. And mixing in moderate delays sapped their energy further.
Most people just wanted to vent or bully a little. When they got tired of getting nothing out of us, they just went away. But to maintain that, you must not seem like you're fighting them; many people love a good fight.
Even if your sharks are in it for the money, being polite, friendly, and eternally useless may be a good way to get them to move on to an easier mark.
In addition, those I've met from both groups tend to be pretty thoughtful, honest, respectful, and are used to being outside the mainstream without a burning need to disengage from or denigrate the mainstream. It wouldn't be my first matchmakery choice, but I could see them getting along.
On the other hand, I'd pay good money to see the dating adventures of a Jehovah's Witness and a Hare Krishna.
And it therefore costs your employer twice as much. Good programming teams will pair up when the going gets tough and two sets of eyes are better than one.
Therefore? That may or may not be true, but you've proven nothing.
Between me and the previous poster, we listed 11 things that pair programming improves. If those have any effect on productivity, then that changes the productivity ratio. The only thing that's 2x in pair programming is the hand/keyboard ratio, so your theory would only be true when typing speed is the limiting factor in programming. But in my experience it rarely is; most of the time, the barrier is thinking speed.
When you are just churning out code there is no need for two people to look at the screen - one is enough and you can get things done quicker working seperately. Pair programming inhibits the JFDI approach, in my experience.
And thank goodness for that.
f you're pounding out a short bit of write-only code that you never have to maintain, pair programming probably isn't necessary. But if you're doing serious development on a code base that you plan to keep, then you should never be "churning out" code.
If code is so obvious that you don't have to think while writing it, then it means you're missing an opportunity to abstract it and remove duplication.
I really don't think pair programming is productive.
You're welcome to your opinion, of course. But the studies on pair programming don't confirm that. And having done serious projects both ways, neither does my experience.
What is to be done about this? Ask for a different partner, maybe?
It's good to change pairing parters every 2-4 hours. That's short enough that you should be able to deal with anybody on your team, and long enough to get something done and checked in.
Also, learning to pair is exhausting. When people are first getting used to it, I encourage them to work into it slowly. E.g., 1 short session the first day, 2 the second, and so on.
Agreed. When people are learning to pair, I tell them they should make sure the keyboard changes hands every 10 minutes or so.
Another good way to force collaboration is to have person A write a test and person B make it pass. Then B writes the test and A makes it pass. It's a fun game.
Pair programming is like watching a woman change channels. "You know what's on this channel, it's shit, keep going."
If it's like that, you're doing it wrong.
For me, it's like the driver/navigator combination on a road trip through an unfamiliar city. Except it's better. If I notice my partner glazing over, I just shove the keyboard over to him. That's harder to do in a car.
I had a discussion with another senior architect (like me) the other day, and both of us agreed that it would be fun for us to try pair programming together some time because both of us have concluded that the other has expertise that we wish we had.;-) He's the only one in his group I'd be willing to work that way with, though.
That's one good reason for pair programming, but it's far from the only one. Here are reasons I like promiscuous pair programming:
instant code review
instant design review
keeps me from making stupid mistakes
keeps me from gold-plating
I spend less time debugging
I know more about the system
handing off work is easier
code is more consistent throughout system
when we get tired, we notice and take breaks
improves truck factor massively
That last one is probably my favorite. When I'm on an XP team, taking a vacation is never a big deal, because I'm never the only person who knows how to do something.
On the other hand, if both have totally different approaches to the problem, it can cause a nuclear war, especially if both programmers have a large ego.
Well, this is true whether or not you're pair programming. It's just that in pairing, you get to find out about the conflict before the code gets written. That's generally the best time to resolve things. And if things are hard to resolve, it's often a sign that
they don't have enough data to make a good judgment, in which case a little research is in order, or
they have different priorities.
That last one can be an especially big problem; the team should be working from a common set of priorities and values. Much better to discover this as soon as possible, so that everybody can get together and agree on what's important. For example, if it's really a problem of ego (in the sense of arrogance), it's good for everybody on the team to figure out that they're not getting paid to stroke their own egos.
Isn't there a more appropriate internation technology body that should be handling this?
Yes. It's called the Internet.
Forget the official government bodies, especially the international ones. The real power lies with the myriad people who make decisions about implementation and adoption. The Internet enables those people to communicate and self-organize in ways that are more effective and efficient than a government bureaucracy could ever be.
I read about SPF here. It seemed like a good idea, so I implemented it for my servers, for both incoming and outgoing mail. If it works well, I'll keep it and tell my friends. Eventually, either SPF will take off or die out. Nowhere in this process is the need for a government mandate.
The *only* spam I receive on my permanent accounts is an occassional worm-sent e-mail and a guessed-address spam every 3 or 4 months (and those have never led to more spam).
Then you're a lucky fellow. A few months back I enabled a bunch of aliases for common dictionary attack names, and those aliases are rising rapidly in volume. (That's fine with me, as they're just fed right to the Bayesian training program.) But eventually, it will spread, and your oh-so-pure address will be compromised.
Part of his plan to ensure the survivability of SS [...] My generation will end up paying twice; once into the existing system to support the baby boomers, and again into our personal accounts to support ourselves.
This is the part that, as far as I've seen, they haven't admitted yet. I've always heard it pitched as giving people control over their SSI savings. But as you say, it really means letting everybody continue to pay SSI taxes and then instituting something like a mandatory 401k. Or doubling the SSI tax. Either way, Bush is being very slippery about how he expects us to pay for all his plans.
Re:Nice flamebait re: GWB
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Ok and what has SS turned into? A pyramid scheme that is looted by Congress. It's dying and needs to be replaced. Support Bush's plan [whitehouse.gov] for SS reform.
As anybody with a calculator can figure out, Bush's plan has a huge hole. The cost of switching from pay-as-you-go to individual-investment plans is dumbfoundingly large (some estimate it as $1 trillion), and I've seen no coherent explanation from Bush's administration as to where the money will come from.
I think pension plans with up-front contributions and more individual control are a great idea, and I'm glad that people have at least started to talk about reforming Social Security. But Bush, et al, have only given us fairy tales and titanic defecits, so it's hard to believe that they're serious.
Slashdot Mirror
So because you can't make a point through logic and facts you resort to personal attacks?
This from the guy who just told us that only one in a hundred of us has any clue? In a post that included little logic and no actual facts? You reap what you sow, pal.
So, how many people have read the 9/11 Commission reports? I'd bet 99% of the people responding in this forum really don't have a clue as to the real facts. [...] I have read excerpts of the 9/11 report.
Excerpts, eh? Well, then, gosh, your oh-so-superior tone is utterly justified.
Can you ever forgive us for occasionally reading some analysis from people who actually read the whole thing and make it their living to study these things? I promise we'll never make that mistake again, O exalted one.
Considering past behaviour you go looking for non legitimate uses - and you find one. After a decade of deciet - which concept for the tube's use do YOU latch on to?
When I'm on the verge of spending a couple hundred billion dollars, killing tens of thousands of civilians, and putting hundreds of thousands of American troops in harms way? Personally, I wouldn't "latch on" to anything. I'd be really careful, especially when there's no immediate threat. But hey, maybe that's why I'm not the President.
No doubt the current administration put the screws to all of them to supress this damning story and loosened them just in time for the Primaries. I mean, what better time is there to shoot yourself in the foot by letting key sources blather away about political secrets that you'd managed to keep anybody from knowing for the last two years?
Have you ever worked for the government? I did a contract for a state department once, and everybody there was incredibly timid. Why? Because they plan to be there for life, and the only way for most people to advance is for them to keep their noses very clean.
The Bush team ran the tightest, most leak-resistant administration in modern history for most of their term. But during the Sept 11th commission, they started to lose control; people started to leak and get away with it. That made others realize that they could leak safely, which they have been doing in increasing numbers. And now that Bush has a decent chance of losing, it's even safer. It's not particularly surprising that people are coming forward now.
When you people understand - he's not a scoundrel like Clinton, he's honestly doing the right things for the right reasons!
Given that no WMDs have been found, the very best case for Bush is that he mistakenly invaded Iraq. Oops!
If you want to call that "the right reasons", you go ahead; it saves us from wasting time looking carefully the rest of your post.
Oh, and Michael, the little personal spin you decided to tack on the end of that submission -- I'll never buy a Slashdot subscription thanks to that. I come here to get the facts, not your personal anti-Bush agenda.
Oh, please. Your user number makes it pretty clear that you've been around long enough to buy a subscription. Your threat to not buy one is only credible if you might actually have bought one.
Personally, I'm happy to get a small amount of honest opinion from the editors. I may not agree, but I'd much rather have people be straight about their views than have them pretend to be "fair and balanced".
What about the 4 Al-Quaida related attacks [...]? Wow. Bush is kickin' ass and taking names.
Yes! Great question! Given that Al Qaeda is such a danger, why did we pull resources from a country where they were to invade one where they weren't? I'm not against a little ass-kicking, but with 6 billion asses out there, I think we should prioritize a little.
We are foolishly repeating history now in the Middle East, and children being born today will pay for it dearly. I guarantee it.
If you're sure, put your money where your mouth is at Long Bets. I'm sure you can find some people here to take the other side of the bet.
No, he let the weapons inspectors in and let them search anywhere. We gave them the locations of where we thought they were producing WMDs and they all turned out completely wrong. We kicked the weapons inspectors out so that we could bomb Iraq.
That's not entirely true. Bush certainly did rush to war, but Saddam was always very shifty. See, for example, the documentary by Scott Ritter, one of the head weapons inspectors, In Shifting Sands. His basic take was that Saddam made it impossible to tell whether all the bad stuff was gone, but he was sure that such a large proportion of it was gone that Iraq was no longer a strategic threat.
One of the big unanswered questions about all of this was why Hussein continued to play games with the inspectors, the UN, and the US even though it now seems like he had nothing to hide. The best theory I heard was that maintaining the doubt helped him look scary to his neighbors. But that seems like small reward for the massive damage that sanctions inflicted. My personal notion is that the only way you can survive that long as a brutal absolute dictator is to never give in to anybody, and that although that bias worked for him inside Iraq, it eventually screwed him on the global stage.
Just because it looks like he was screwing with us instead of building weapons doesn't mean the casus bella was wrong. The ball was in Saddam's court.
If that were the justification for war, you might have had a point. However, it was sold not on the grounds of failure to follow UN resolutions but on the grounds of immediate threat.
I agree that the UN should have grown a pair and cracked down on Saddam. But the whole point of the UN is international cooperation to achieve things of global importance and benefit. The notion that the US should take unilateral action to strengthen the UN is an obvious self-contradiction.
many people, if pressed to do so, would agree that the world is at least a little bit safer without Saddam Hussein in charge in Iraq, regardless of whether he had any WMD's.
And that would be relevant how?
I think the making the world safer is a fantastic goal. But for the massive cost of invading and occupying Iraq (so far: 1000+ US dead, 10-20x that in Iraqi dead, $100 billion, strained relationships, lost credibility, and hugely increased dislike of America in the Muslim world) we got a lousy deal if all we got is "a little bit safer".
And although not everybody agrees, reasonable analysts suggest that the world is, in fact, less safe. We recently discovered that Pakistan was behind the biggest nuclear proliferation problems in decades. And we did nothing, even when they gave the guy responsible a pardon and a medal. Why? Because they're an "ally" in the war on terror.
Futher, Iran and North Korea, knowing that we are distracted by Iraq and politically stretched, are getting away with further bomb-building preparation. Meanwhile, Iraq is a big ol' recruiting poster for nut-job militants around the world. And the fact that we are unable to stabilize the situation there only encourages them, both now and in the future.
Yeah, it amazes me how many people have apparently forgotten all but two words of that debate answer. To help them, I'll include it here:It's not clear to me why this is controversial. America's true authority in the world isn't military, it's moral. If neither our citizens nor our allies trust our government to act wisely, our ability to influence the world is much diminished. We can hardly persuade people to act against truly dangerous rogue nations like North Korea if they think we might be a dangerous rogue nation ourselves.
Whether or not one truly cares what the other 95% of the planet thinks, there's a lot of pragmatic value in working with allies to achieve our goals.
Now, if you never hear from them again after challenging them and feel you have a moral obligation to strike back (on behalf of future victims or something)...and after you've done your research and you're sure that the company isn't legit...then you should contact a lawyer and see what he or she suggests as a course of action.
I'd disagree a little with this. Most lawyers I've dealt with are good at helping you reduce the risk of a course of action, but aren't so good at suggesting them. Instead, come up with a few ways to strike back (I'm sure we'll help) and then have a lawyer help you evaluate the risks with each one.
Personally, if I really thought they were shaking down innocent startups, I'd make sure other people could Google them and find out your point of view, even if it's anonymized. Also consider talking to the folks who run Chilling Effects, and on-line clearinghouse of people using IP law to threaten you; they may be willing to publish material for you.
No, there's no point in making veiled (and probably idle) threats. It's in your best interests to remain polite.
I strongly agree.
I've never dealt with patent threats, but I used to work at a company that ran on-line communities. We regularly received legal threats from loons around the world. For non-credible threats, we'd just ignore them. Usually they'd just go away. For the plausible or persistent ones, we would be friendly but do nothing.
I found it was very helpful to ask questions about their position in a manner that was friendly, innocent, sincere, and slightly clueless. I also liked to be sympathetic and say pleasant, true things. E.g., agreeing that of course people's intellectual property should be protected. That conceeds nothing legally important, but helps to make people feel less scrappy. And mixing in moderate delays sapped their energy further.
Most people just wanted to vent or bully a little. When they got tired of getting nothing out of us, they just went away. But to maintain that, you must not seem like you're fighting them; many people love a good fight.
Even if your sharks are in it for the money, being polite, friendly, and eternally useless may be a good way to get them to move on to an easier mark.
Why not? Both tend towards vegetarianism. :)
In addition, those I've met from both groups tend to be pretty thoughtful, honest, respectful, and are used to being outside the mainstream without a burning need to disengage from or denigrate the mainstream. It wouldn't be my first matchmakery choice, but I could see them getting along.
On the other hand, I'd pay good money to see the dating adventures of a Jehovah's Witness and a Hare Krishna.
And it therefore costs your employer twice as much. Good programming teams will pair up when the going gets tough and two sets of eyes are better than one.
Therefore? That may or may not be true, but you've proven nothing.
Between me and the previous poster, we listed 11 things that pair programming improves. If those have any effect on productivity, then that changes the productivity ratio. The only thing that's 2x in pair programming is the hand/keyboard ratio, so your theory would only be true when typing speed is the limiting factor in programming. But in my experience it rarely is; most of the time, the barrier is thinking speed.
When you are just churning out code there is no need for two people to look at the screen - one is enough and you can get things done quicker working seperately. Pair programming inhibits the JFDI approach, in my experience.
And thank goodness for that.
f you're pounding out a short bit of write-only code that you never have to maintain, pair programming probably isn't necessary. But if you're doing serious development on a code base that you plan to keep, then you should never be "churning out" code.
If code is so obvious that you don't have to think while writing it, then it means you're missing an opportunity to abstract it and remove duplication.
I really don't think pair programming is productive.
You're welcome to your opinion, of course. But the studies on pair programming don't confirm that. And having done serious projects both ways, neither does my experience.
What is to be done about this? Ask for a different partner, maybe?
It's good to change pairing parters every 2-4 hours. That's short enough that you should be able to deal with anybody on your team, and long enough to get something done and checked in.
Also, learning to pair is exhausting. When people are first getting used to it, I encourage them to work into it slowly. E.g., 1 short session the first day, 2 the second, and so on.
Your experience was done completely wrong.
Agreed. When people are learning to pair, I tell them they should make sure the keyboard changes hands every 10 minutes or so.
Another good way to force collaboration is to have person A write a test and person B make it pass. Then B writes the test and A makes it pass. It's a fun game.
Pair programming is like watching a woman change channels. "You know what's on this channel, it's shit, keep going."
If it's like that, you're doing it wrong.
For me, it's like the driver/navigator combination on a road trip through an unfamiliar city. Except it's better. If I notice my partner glazing over, I just shove the keyboard over to him. That's harder to do in a car.
That's one good reason for pair programming, but it's far from the only one. Here are reasons I like promiscuous pair programming:
That last one is probably my favorite. When I'm on an XP team, taking a vacation is never a big deal, because I'm never the only person who knows how to do something.
Well, this is true whether or not you're pair programming. It's just that in pairing, you get to find out about the conflict before the code gets written. That's generally the best time to resolve things. And if things are hard to resolve, it's often a sign that
- the people involved need to learn how to negotiate,
- they don't have enough data to make a good judgment, in which case a little research is in order, or
- they have different priorities.
That last one can be an especially big problem; the team should be working from a common set of priorities and values. Much better to discover this as soon as possible, so that everybody can get together and agree on what's important. For example, if it's really a problem of ego (in the sense of arrogance), it's good for everybody on the team to figure out that they're not getting paid to stroke their own egos.Isn't there a more appropriate internation technology body that should be handling this?
Yes. It's called the Internet.
Forget the official government bodies, especially the international ones. The real power lies with the myriad people who make decisions about implementation and adoption. The Internet enables those people to communicate and self-organize in ways that are more effective and efficient than a government bureaucracy could ever be.
I read about SPF here. It seemed like a good idea, so I implemented it for my servers, for both incoming and outgoing mail. If it works well, I'll keep it and tell my friends. Eventually, either SPF will take off or die out. Nowhere in this process is the need for a government mandate.
The *only* spam I receive on my permanent accounts is an occassional worm-sent e-mail and a guessed-address spam every 3 or 4 months (and those have never led to more spam).
Then you're a lucky fellow. A few months back I enabled a bunch of aliases for common dictionary attack names, and those aliases are rising rapidly in volume. (That's fine with me, as they're just fed right to the Bayesian training program.) But eventually, it will spread, and your oh-so-pure address will be compromised.
Part of his plan to ensure the survivability of SS [...] My generation will end up paying twice; once into the existing system to support the baby boomers, and again into our personal accounts to support ourselves.
This is the part that, as far as I've seen, they haven't admitted yet. I've always heard it pitched as giving people control over their SSI savings. But as you say, it really means letting everybody continue to pay SSI taxes and then instituting something like a mandatory 401k. Or doubling the SSI tax. Either way, Bush is being very slippery about how he expects us to pay for all his plans.
Ok and what has SS turned into? A pyramid scheme that is looted by Congress. It's dying and needs to be replaced. Support Bush's plan [whitehouse.gov] for SS reform.
As anybody with a calculator can figure out, Bush's plan has a huge hole. The cost of switching from pay-as-you-go to individual-investment plans is dumbfoundingly large (some estimate it as $1 trillion), and I've seen no coherent explanation from Bush's administration as to where the money will come from.
I think pension plans with up-front contributions and more individual control are a great idea, and I'm glad that people have at least started to talk about reforming Social Security. But Bush, et al, have only given us fairy tales and titanic defecits, so it's hard to believe that they're serious.