"whats wrong with giving people power over their retirement?"
People already have this power. SS is not designed to be your sole source of income after retirement. So people who can save already do.
"at least with personal accounts the money left over when you die can be given to your children instead of staying with the government 'trust fund'"
Uh huh. And what if the money runs out before you die, then what? See, the great thing about Social Security as it stands is that it is risk free. Really, that's the best part. Most of us save through IRA's and 401k's and the like. But if you're like my dad, who is retiring soon, you saw your IRA and 401k go through the floor when the stock market tanked at the end of 2000. Private accounts are vulnerable to the same market forces. The lack of risk is what makes Social Security valuable.
"We are told of some secure "trust fund" but such a fund doesn't exist."
Please explain what you mean by this. The fund does indeed exist. Yes, the money has been transferred into the general fund, but it is guaranteed by Treasury bonds. If these bonds are "worthless" then SS is the least of our worries.
Not very well, unfortunately. I have run the wizard twice, and in neither case did it migrate all my settings. The files came over ok, but the settings for the various programs I selected did not. Disappointing, but honestly, not surprising.
So, what you're saying is that the price goes up when you add optional upgrades and accessories. Well, I guess you saw right through the hype! If you did not already own a computer (and this machine is marketed to those who do), the only things you'd need to buy would be a keyboard, mouse, and display; which would run you ~$250. At this point, you'd buy an eMac. So yes, it is the cheapest Mac ever. The price of upgrades and accessories is irrelevant to that point. The fact that 40GB won't hold your pr0n collection doesn't make the base model any more expensive.
I will agree that making money is a major motivator for most people, myself included. But the idea that a lack of compensation will stifle people's progress is a red herring. People will learn new skills for personal reasons, whether that is to advance society, industry, or just because they want to know how to do something. So it has to be a combination. I hold an MCSE for purely economic reasons. But I learned how to play bass guitar because I wanted to know how to play bass guitar.
"...it was that they made (and this is a hyperbole for the sake of argument however is true on the right scale) 10 bazillion dollars instead of 12.5 bazillion dollars."
This really boils it down for me. Right, wrong, theft, copyright infringment, whatever. In this case I don't care. Personally, I just don't have any sympathy for rich people whining about how they aren't getting richer. And that is what all of this looks like to me. Making money today is no guarantee that you can make money that way tomorrow. I buy CD's and I download from P2P. But I would not care if the record industry went out of business tomorrow. Music was around before them, and will be around after.
"Where is the incentive to learn new skills? Why bother if you're going to get the same money anyway?"
This is why you learn skills? To make money? If that is our only motivation, we are doomed.
"Human (and basic biological) nature IS capitalistic. We kill other beings to eat, survival of the fittest and all. Communism goes against basic nature.
You are confusing capitalism with competition. Yes, nature is competitive, but it is not capitalistic. Nature has no concept of property rights or ownership. These are human constructs. Nature, on the whole, is actually more communistic, as it relies on many different parts working together to preserve the whole.
"IE a Pentium 2/3 CPU with enough memory runs XP just fine - i expected an appropriately configed G3 to do the same with OS X - and i was wrong."
I'm not sure what your experience was with OSX on old hardware. I set up OSX.3 on a Rev C iMac (purple, 333MHz G3) with 256MB RAM and it runs fine, if a bit slowly.
"I think the point Ballmer is trying to make is that if a person can save a few hundred dollars on the price of a PC, they'd be more willing to buy software with some or all of that savings."
That may be his point, but if so, it is a dumb one. Yes, it is true that if one spends less on a PC, they may have more money to buy software. But this point makes a number of assumptions. First, cheaper PC's will let people with less money buy PC's. So they will not "save" any money because they don't have the extra money to begin with. Second, there is the assumption that the saved money would be spent on software. But why? Especially when it's available for free. If I had no moral obstacle to taking software without paying, why would an extra $200 in my pocket change that? I think Steve-o is really off base with this one. But that is not unusual.
This is where the mixing of terms becomes a problem. Is Ballmer talking about actual piracy, i.e. People making packaged duped copies of Windows and Office and selling them? Or is he talking about people getting copies of Office from their friends or relatives? Either way, I don't see how a low cost PC would help. How is the cost of the PC relevent to whether one can get software cheaper or free?
He begins by saying that these countries need a low cost PC, but then says prices don't need to come down. Honestly, after R'ing the FA, I don't really understand what Steve's point is.
You advocate firing people for installing spyware but call LAN admins inhuman? The fact is that There is probably not a single LAN admin who has the authority to fire anyone. And if you think the boss is going to fire the top selling sales guy because he constantly installs spyware, you have another thing coming.
Educating users is important, no doubt. But securing the network is the Admin's responsibility, not the sales guy's. So if systems keep showing up with adware and spyware, and the user has "no idea how it got there", the machine has to be locked down or there needs to be an anti-virus-like centralized program to eliminate the malware.
In spirit, I agree with your views. I think it would be great to have no laws and have everyone pull their own weight and fix problems out of an appreciation for enlightened self interest. However, in our modern sociological mindset, this would not work. It relies on enlightened self interest. That is, understanding that we are all interconnected and that what diminishes one diminishes all. What hurts one hurts all. There is no Them, only Us. But this is not the way Americans, or most of the world think. If we get rid of Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Social Security, etc, many will fall ill and indigent under our current mindset (i.e. narrow self interest). I can tell you that if I suddenly started getting twice the pay I do now, my first impulse would be to buy a Porsche, not build a clinic. So it is the attitude that must change first.
Once we all realize that we are all interdependent, and start acting accordingly, we can start to get rid of some of these institutions. Though we might still find some of these systems to be beneficial in achieving certain goals (like having a healthcare "system").
So basically, I agree with your points, but I don't think society is ready. Until it is, I think a little socialism can fill the gaps.
"Did you know that the average US citizen pays nearly 50% of their yearly earnings to government through federal, state, and local taxes combined?"
I'm, not sure what "average" citizen this is, but I lose about 30% of my income to taxes. I file singly and make a professional level salary. Considering what I get in return, this does not seem onerous.
"Looking at the EXACT SAME INTELLIGENCE as Bush, Kerry came to the same conclusion about Iraq's weapons programs. Logically, Kerry is therefore either a dupe or a liar himself."
This is just not the case. The President had access to more information than Kerry did. The Defense Dept. set up the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon for the express purpose of bolstering the case for war. See here. This information was not given to Congress, but was used within the Administration in making the case for war. So when Bush says they looked at the same information he is relying on people to not know the whole truth. You also say they came to the same conclusion. That is also not true. Kerry's conclusion was that Hussein needed to be dealt with, and that the threat of force was needed to make our position credible. This credibility would then be used to let the inspectors finish their work. But Bush had no intention of letting the inspectors finish their work. The conclusion Bush came to was that Saddam needed to be taken out and military action was the way to do it. So he deceived congress and the American people into war.
"After the Rather affair, the acticle makes it clear that it is still dubious when,
speaking on the condition of anonymity
is involved in a story."
Yes, this is too true. But we actually learned this way before Dan Rather, courtesy of Phillip Glass, Jayson Blair, and others. It brings to the fore the need for honesty and integrity in reporting. The fact is that reporters need anonymous sources. Without them, there would be much less information, as many people will say things anonymously that they would not say if their identity were known. It is up to the news outlet to vet the information before they report it. So is this report fully factual? I honestly don't know. But considering the glaring similarity between Allawi's speech and the Bush campaign's regular rhetoric, I consider it credible.
Um, didn't Bush say that we went to war to uphold UN Security Council resolutions? The original rationale for the war was that Saddam was defying the UN, and we had to upstand the law. Many people seem to have forgotten this. So does the UN dictate foreign policy to Bush?
The thing is, the article specifically said he was coached by members of the Bush re-election campaign. This is different from just meeting with the President or his staff.
True. Neither is war. So why did Kenneth Adelman, a member of the Defense Policy Board (which advises the Pentagon) and personal friend of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, say the war would be a "cakewalk"? Paul Wolfowitz said the war would be over in a few months, and it could be paid for with oil revenues. The American people were led to believe that this would be easy. We were told to go about our business. It was to be the war that cost us nothing. Why are we giving up on this war after only one year? Because we were told by our government that it would be easy, and it's not.
You can call many Americans naive on this point, and I would agree. But I was against this war from the start, and I have seen nothing to make me change my mind.
" She's dismayed that there are reports of this, that, and the other!"
By reports, she of course meant newspaper reports. You know, the things most of us get our information from. From the Washington Post:
The unusual public-relations effort by the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development comes as details have emerged showing the U.S. government and a representative of President Bush's reelection campaign had been heavily involved in drafting the speech given to Congress last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Combined, they indicate that the federal government is working assiduously to improve Americans' opinions about the Iraq conflict -- a key element of Bush's reelection message.
Later in the article:
But administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the prime minister was coached and aided by the U.S. government, its allies and friends of the administration. Among them was Dan Senor, former spokesman for the CPA who has more recently represented the Bush campaign in media appearances. Senor, who has denied writing the speech, sent Allawi recommended phrases. He also helped Allawi rehearse in New York last week, officials said. Senor declined to comment.
So it seems that it is a bit more than mere suspicion, as you would characterize it. The article makes it pretty clear that Allawi was a mouthpiece for the Bush campaign while he was here in the US. So that's why Ms. Feinstein was dismayed. Frankly, so am I.
I agree with your basic point, but a new Mac can be had for $800 these days. Sorry to gripe, but as a Mac user I get tired of hearing about how overpriced Macs are. Yeah, the top Power Mac is expensive. But a high end Dell workstation (which is what a Power Mac is, a workstation) is as expensive with similar components.
In essence, I agree with your point. We should be looking into the long term consequences of taking energy from the wind. However, the earth is not a closed system. Energy arrives from the sun and dissipates into space. So energy that we remove from the wind should be replaced by the sun's energy. That energy is alot of why the air moves to begin with. Again, not disagreeing, just elucidating.
Another big assumption is that the/. community is a representative sample of the US. I believe it is not. In my experience (also not a representative sample, I admit) people involved in the high tech and scientific fields tend to be liberal/progressive in their political and social views. So I would say that the/. community skews liberal and therefore not republican.
I will certainly agree that republicans are not, by definition, evil. But I must say that some of your more prominent members, like Tom DeLay, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, and Dick Cheney don't seem like very nice people.
Slashdot Mirror
People already have this power. SS is not designed to be your sole source of income after retirement. So people who can save already do.
"at least with personal accounts the money left over when you die can be given to your children instead of staying with the government 'trust fund'"
Uh huh. And what if the money runs out before you die, then what? See, the great thing about Social Security as it stands is that it is risk free. Really, that's the best part. Most of us save through IRA's and 401k's and the like. But if you're like my dad, who is retiring soon, you saw your IRA and 401k go through the floor when the stock market tanked at the end of 2000. Private accounts are vulnerable to the same market forces. The lack of risk is what makes Social Security valuable.
Please explain what you mean by this. The fund does indeed exist. Yes, the money has been transferred into the general fund, but it is guaranteed by Treasury bonds. If these bonds are "worthless" then SS is the least of our worries.
Not very well, unfortunately. I have run the wizard twice, and in neither case did it migrate all my settings. The files came over ok, but the settings for the various programs I selected did not. Disappointing, but honestly, not surprising.
So, what you're saying is that the price goes up when you add optional upgrades and accessories. Well, I guess you saw right through the hype! If you did not already own a computer (and this machine is marketed to those who do), the only things you'd need to buy would be a keyboard, mouse, and display; which would run you ~$250. At this point, you'd buy an eMac. So yes, it is the cheapest Mac ever. The price of upgrades and accessories is irrelevant to that point. The fact that 40GB won't hold your pr0n collection doesn't make the base model any more expensive.
I will agree that making money is a major motivator for most people, myself included. But the idea that a lack of compensation will stifle people's progress is a red herring. People will learn new skills for personal reasons, whether that is to advance society, industry, or just because they want to know how to do something. So it has to be a combination. I hold an MCSE for purely economic reasons. But I learned how to play bass guitar because I wanted to know how to play bass guitar.
This really boils it down for me. Right, wrong, theft, copyright infringment, whatever. In this case I don't care. Personally, I just don't have any sympathy for rich people whining about how they aren't getting richer. And that is what all of this looks like to me. Making money today is no guarantee that you can make money that way tomorrow. I buy CD's and I download from P2P. But I would not care if the record industry went out of business tomorrow. Music was around before them, and will be around after.
This is why you learn skills? To make money? If that is our only motivation, we are doomed.
"Human (and basic biological) nature IS capitalistic. We kill other beings to eat, survival of the fittest and all. Communism goes against basic nature.
You are confusing capitalism with competition. Yes, nature is competitive, but it is not capitalistic. Nature has no concept of property rights or ownership. These are human constructs. Nature, on the whole, is actually more communistic, as it relies on many different parts working together to preserve the whole.
A missile defense shield of course! Go back to sleep America. Your government is in control.
I'm not sure what your experience was with OSX on old hardware. I set up OSX.3 on a Rev C iMac (purple, 333MHz G3) with 256MB RAM and it runs fine, if a bit slowly.
But its flawed logic. If I give my mom a free PC, why not just pirate Windows and really keep the cost down?
That may be his point, but if so, it is a dumb one. Yes, it is true that if one spends less on a PC, they may have more money to buy software. But this point makes a number of assumptions. First, cheaper PC's will let people with less money buy PC's. So they will not "save" any money because they don't have the extra money to begin with. Second, there is the assumption that the saved money would be spent on software. But why? Especially when it's available for free. If I had no moral obstacle to taking software without paying, why would an extra $200 in my pocket change that? I think Steve-o is really off base with this one. But that is not unusual.
He begins by saying that these countries need a low cost PC, but then says prices don't need to come down. Honestly, after R'ing the FA, I don't really understand what Steve's point is.
Educating users is important, no doubt. But securing the network is the Admin's responsibility, not the sales guy's. So if systems keep showing up with adware and spyware, and the user has "no idea how it got there", the machine has to be locked down or there needs to be an anti-virus-like centralized program to eliminate the malware.
You mean there's a second one!?
Once we all realize that we are all interdependent, and start acting accordingly, we can start to get rid of some of these institutions. Though we might still find some of these systems to be beneficial in achieving certain goals (like having a healthcare "system").
So basically, I agree with your points, but I don't think society is ready. Until it is, I think a little socialism can fill the gaps.
"Did you know that the average US citizen pays nearly 50% of their yearly earnings to government through federal, state, and local taxes combined?"
I'm, not sure what "average" citizen this is, but I lose about 30% of my income to taxes. I file singly and make a professional level salary. Considering what I get in return, this does not seem onerous.
This is just not the case. The President had access to more information than Kerry did. The Defense Dept. set up the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon for the express purpose of bolstering the case for war. See here. This information was not given to Congress, but was used within the Administration in making the case for war. So when Bush says they looked at the same information he is relying on people to not know the whole truth. You also say they came to the same conclusion. That is also not true. Kerry's conclusion was that Hussein needed to be dealt with, and that the threat of force was needed to make our position credible. This credibility would then be used to let the inspectors finish their work. But Bush had no intention of letting the inspectors finish their work. The conclusion Bush came to was that Saddam needed to be taken out and military action was the way to do it. So he deceived congress and the American people into war.
Yes, this is too true. But we actually learned this way before Dan Rather, courtesy of Phillip Glass, Jayson Blair, and others. It brings to the fore the need for honesty and integrity in reporting. The fact is that reporters need anonymous sources. Without them, there would be much less information, as many people will say things anonymously that they would not say if their identity were known. It is up to the news outlet to vet the information before they report it. So is this report fully factual? I honestly don't know. But considering the glaring similarity between Allawi's speech and the Bush campaign's regular rhetoric, I consider it credible.
Um, didn't Bush say that we went to war to uphold UN Security Council resolutions? The original rationale for the war was that Saddam was defying the UN, and we had to upstand the law. Many people seem to have forgotten this. So does the UN dictate foreign policy to Bush?
The thing is, the article specifically said he was coached by members of the Bush re-election campaign. This is different from just meeting with the President or his staff.
True. Neither is war. So why did Kenneth Adelman, a member of the Defense Policy Board (which advises the Pentagon) and personal friend of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, say the war would be a "cakewalk"? Paul Wolfowitz said the war would be over in a few months, and it could be paid for with oil revenues. The American people were led to believe that this would be easy. We were told to go about our business. It was to be the war that cost us nothing. Why are we giving up on this war after only one year? Because we were told by our government that it would be easy, and it's not.
You can call many Americans naive on this point, and I would agree. But I was against this war from the start, and I have seen nothing to make me change my mind.
By reports, she of course meant newspaper reports. You know, the things most of us get our information from. From the Washington Post:
Later in the article:
So it seems that it is a bit more than mere suspicion, as you would characterize it. The article makes it pretty clear that Allawi was a mouthpiece for the Bush campaign while he was here in the US. So that's why Ms. Feinstein was dismayed. Frankly, so am I.
The article is here
I agree with your basic point, but a new Mac can be had for $800 these days. Sorry to gripe, but as a Mac user I get tired of hearing about how overpriced Macs are. Yeah, the top Power Mac is expensive. But a high end Dell workstation (which is what a Power Mac is, a workstation) is as expensive with similar components.
In essence, I agree with your point. We should be looking into the long term consequences of taking energy from the wind. However, the earth is not a closed system. Energy arrives from the sun and dissipates into space. So energy that we remove from the wind should be replaced by the sun's energy. That energy is alot of why the air moves to begin with. Again, not disagreeing, just elucidating.
Well, at least you're accurate in calling it Bush's government...
I will certainly agree that republicans are not, by definition, evil. But I must say that some of your more prominent members, like Tom DeLay, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, and Dick Cheney don't seem like very nice people.