I can see a market for this for intense businessmen who might have 2 lines at home, a private line at work, and another line at their second home. But is there a demand from the tech savy young google user?
Absolutely.
I have one phone, and it's my cell phone. I don't have an unlimited calling/ unlimited text messaging service for my phone, and I cannot justify paying for it right now. In the last month, however, I've had a spike in my call volume--instead of using less than 300 minutes, I'm moving upward to 500 or so, and they're from many different numbers.
With Google Voice, I can give out one number and have it ring to my cell phone, and a cheap temporary service on my computer, such as Skype. If I am at my computer, I can pick up the phone there; if out, the call will go to my cellphone.
This allows me to overcome the temporary spike in the number of calls I am receiving for much less than paying for extra cell minutes (and less problems than switching to another cellphone plan),and by only having to hand out one number to my contacts.
Google Voice gives me one number for whatever phone(s) I want. It could help me save hundreds of dollars with minimal hassle. Change my phone service? Have a pay Skype account for three months? No worries!
Except when its UAC, because ya know... MS is teh evils.
I thought UAC was teh evils. I mean, the whole Phobos incident was pretty messy and reckless, and you can be certain that anything that was left of them after that certainly was evil.
Opening a gateway to Hell makes you a little worse than Microsoft.
Unless we're talking about DRM. Now that's another story....
General use of the word in the United States refers to unsophisticate, uneducated, unruly, generally racist backwoods people, possibly inbred for generations. There are so many connotations, I couldn't possibly do the term justice.
For more info, just google Southern American redneck You'll find tons of redneck humor among the results.
Doesn't excuse the blind vitriol, though. I can make a list of nasty and ignorant phrases that, if directed toward another person here, would have people recoiling in horror, or lashing out in rage (typically phrases that many AC posts consist of--no offense). But "redneck," when used in an equally hateful way, is okay--and that's not really right.
I'm not posting demanding an apology, or such. I'm just wanting to share that these groups may find such usage of the word a little offensive, or pointlessly hateful.
This word apparently means something different to you than it does to me. Not easy to find digital sources for this, but, from a GlobalSecurity.org article:
However, the miners arrived and organized along military lines (many of them having served in the First World War.) They created a system of communication and passwords that no participant ever revealed, even to historians many decades later. In addition, to distinguish themselves from people uninvolved they wore red kerchiefs around their necks (perhaps providing the origin of the word "redneck.") They also assembled commissary wagons and brought along clergy and medical personnel.
That's from the Battle of Blair Mountain, where those "rednecks" fought thugs--and some died--for the right to unionize.
Not saying I'm going to write a curse-laden response to you, but... heads up.
For the same reason that when I steal your car I should be made to give it back. They stole the browser market using explicitly illegal tactics and with criminal intent. The fact that they then set fire to the car doesn't mean that they are now excused and no longer owe you a car.
This is a bad example for this situation. Let's apply the spirit of this law to another industry. This is like if a car manufacturer has been installing a certain radio from a specific manufacturer into all their vehicles by default, and they're now being told that not only that they must install the any radio anyone wants when someone buys the car, but they must provide a full list of what could be considered "competitors" to that radio, and provide the installation.
Who is making that list? How could this list be accurate at all times? How does your radio--the one your company is making--get on the list? Who is controlling, and dictating, if my radio is a competitor, or not, and why should I have to get my product's name on that list to get the endorsement of being a "competitor," at all? Why should I have to prove to some group that I can compete?
Humorous, but this is exactly what we should be fearing. If this decision is used as a precedent, imagine the implications. For Windows--or any operating system--a list of all programs that could possibly compete with those included in the OS would have to be listed.
What makes this even worse is that you have a governing body deciding what will and will not be counted as a competing product. Did you make a new open source text editor that you think will revolutionize the world? Well, you had best submit it to the committee which will determine if you product is a worthwhile competitor so you can have your creation put up with the list of other mandated alternatives that must be shown on new systems.
This isn't out of nefarious intent, but the unintended consequences of a heavy, guiding hand.
Rather than just tell Microsoft that they need to make Internet Explorer easily de-integrated and/or removed from the Windows, they're making a decision that could affect every conceivable commercial OS out there; and if this decision is applied to any other industry, who knows how far it could reach? This is replacing a company's attempt to restrict users, with an indirect restriction through government control--one wrong to 'fix' another.
Free markets must convince you to voluntarily consume their products instead of a competitor's.
To paraphrase: Free markets make business ventures. Governments make binding laws.
One is voluntary, and is not legally required to continue. The other will hit you with a fine or send you to a prison if you try to violate it.
The ugliest scenarios are when government starts mingling with, controlling, or becoming business. Then it's just an illusion of free choice in a wrapper with a smiley face. The corruption is not only rampant, but can be buried so deep in the system, itself, that you can't tell what is corruption, and what is the real government, anymore.
In his first year at Harvard, Camara was involved a racial controversy that would gain attention from the national media. Like many students, Camara posted his course outlines to a popular student-run website. Camara's, however, referred to blacks as nigs. For example, to summarize Shelley v. Kraemer, he wrote "Nigs buy land with no nig covenant; Q: Enforceable?"[7] The notes were prefaced with a disclaimer that they may contain racially offensive shorthand.[7]
The case was about a line in the covenant on the piece of property a black man purchased. In it, it said that "people of the Negro or Mongolian Race" could not own the property. Camara was very aware of his wording in his notes, and used "nigs" as shorthand.
The word obviously carries the same impact as the law's phraseology, is quick to write down, and functions as a memory-jogger for the full, real quote. His notes were no more offensive than the actual law--they were just not politically correct.
I know you meant that tongue-in-cheek, but you bring up an interesting concept. If you move to a place you feel is more free, it's nice if it's a place that has a standard of living that is as good--or better--than you're used to.
On the other hand, there is a point where the luxuries aren't worth the cost of principles. When that happens, you end up with things like rebellions, successions, and other transitions. People will forfeit plumbing, transit systems, electricity, and even food for the chance to govern themselves as they see fit, if the situation feels dire enough. The world can beat them, or join them--either way, it makes little difference in that situation, because the right to rule or be ruled as they believe, and thereby control their futures, becomes the first, and most basic need.
The food, the water, the electricity, medicine, fuel: to a desperate person, those things lose their worth. They're all tethers binding them to something they hate. Time and time, again, it's shown that the people will abandon or destroy them before allowing those things to hold them any longer.
Our last President had an MBA from Harvard. Just what are you trying to say?
Gasp! Obama, Kennedy, Thoreau, Emerson, Yo Yo Ma, W. E. B. Du Bois, and a and a plethora of others also got degrees from Harvard! That must mean he thinks they are fools, too!
Burn him! Burn him at the Stake of Generalization! The Internet must know no peace!
Now, with these services, the administration has the opportunity to campaign continuously in a low-key and less intrusive way that will, they hope, be more effective. Time will tell how well it works.
Jokes, sarcasm, and political leanings aside, I always felt that the White House was 'above' this sort of thing. It feels silly and degrading that my national government is using pop culture outlets--the same ones that people use to discuss how wasted they got at a party, or how Fluffy is feeling today--to communicate with the world.
It's the modern equivalent of making the White House your pen pal. I don't care what president it is; this just feels a little less-dignified and un-stately.
I guess the better analogy is this is like if you're having a party with your friends, and your stuffy, stick-in-the-rear boss shows up unexpectedly in a fine suit, a paper party hat, and blows on a little noisemaker every few minutes while quietly staring at everyone from a corner of the room.
"Or we'll go back to having pseudonyms and fake identities online and only our friends will know the truth."
You mean you stopped doing this for some reason!?!?!?!
I know this is probably the obligatory Orwell quote, but it just came to mind from this.
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system [...] It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. [...] You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
How ironic it is that the technology we imagined would free us more than ever before is becoming a medium capable of a new imprisonment. But it's not coming as Orwell suggested; it's coming with a smile, and a protective embrace--even if that embrace is an unprecedented, once-inconceivable death grip on free communication, thought, and choice, traded for security and caretaking.
I've told other people, and I'll post it on Slashdot, for which I'll get ridiculed. Unless there are some dramatic sunset provisions in this bill, or the economy starts magically growing at 4-5% a year, people will remember the days of Bush as "The Good Old Days", when budget deficits were no more than a few hundred billion, and the national debt was under $20 trillion. When spending $600 billion on a war over 5 years was considered profligate waste.
Do you think they'll remember money in that future, or see the first few years of the 21st century as some sort of romantic time when you had your economic credits, and chose what you wanted?
Money is meant as a representation of available goods and services. The more we inflate it, and the more we print it out and hand it out without a second thought, the more we misrepresent our resources and invalidate currency by continuing to devalue it. By undermining such an old, evolved system, we play terrifyingly dangerous games with society as a whole.
Under the socialized system, I'd vote to have her be considered a lost cause. She's not worth a quarter million dollars to anybody other than you.
Under the non-socialized system, you have the opportunity to pay much more. If she's worth ten billion dollars to you and you have the money, go right ahead.
Exactly. Do you really want the guy with the LPE tables and a spreadsheet to have all say in who gets what kind of care, or have some kind of chance to fight in an open system? In a socialized health care system, "terminal" means that they give up on you, and maybe provide you with some comfort before you expire. Want to fight it, anyway, and hope to beat the odds? Too bad--the odds bestowed the label "terminal" on in the first place, and further treatment would be considered an unnecessary line item in the budget.
Americans will drop $5k on a 60" hdtv, but don't want to spend a dime on doctor bills to have a baby. WTF?
This will probably get me modded for flamebait, but...
The developing perception is that people should not have to pay for health care--at least, they do not wish to perceive paying for it. It can be argued that a government would wish for its population to be healthy and productive, but I can make all of my other health choices for myself: I pay for what quality of food I want, buy tobacco or alcohol at my discretion, and purchase gym memberships/exercise equipment/etc. with my own money. If I want to spend less on good food for a good computer, I should be able to. I don't expect my tax money to go to a national food program which will hand me vouchers for my meals.
When looking at the situation from that perspective, it's odd that one can choose all of those things, but expect the government to assist with or choose healthcare. If I want good healthcare, I'll save my money, and negotiate with the healthcare providers to pay them if I cannot do so right away; I have done this for expensive emergency trips to the hospital without insurance.
Being without health insurance doesn't doom us, but it does change what we have to do. I would rather have the choice of insurance, and pay when I need healthcare, than no choice to pay for everyone's insurance and a compulsory 'safety net' for myself.
I wonder how much research has been done by the gaming media into synchronized product releases and how they may stimulate the gaming market.
Big game companies may line up their releases to 'cross-pollinate' the different titles' sales. Perhaps when a player is playing one game, they wish for the features of another, and find themselves playing both in the same period, or such.
Well, 2007 has bugs in it. I don't use Excel, I use something that can utilize math correctly. Have you checked your spreadsheet program? Or do you just assume that Microsoft does everything correctly?
I use Excel for daily business functions and data analysis, and will continue to do so, but I don't assume Excel is perfect. I do what I should do with any program I use for calculations, though: I stay aware of all of the quirks and bugs I can of the program, and try to work around them.
Every program is going to have a bug or two (or five thousand, seeing as Excel is part of MS Office), but part of working with software is to know what those are and learn to not let them ruin work.
This may be Bad Math, but...
The article says, "The tower unit was able to capture the equivalent of approximately 20 tonnes per year of CO2 on a single square metre of scrubbing material -- which amounts to the average level of emissions produced by one person each year in North America." A page I dug up claims a single tree removes "on average 50 pounds (22 kg) of carbon dioxide annually over 40 years."
The scrubber sounds pretty effective. No waiting for it to grow, and it's more space-efficient, which is good for cities and industrialized areas.
Hell, we're annoyed with the fact that your lovely Wall St. bankers are dragging us and the world down with you.
/rant
(So much for my karma).
I can understand your frustration over people prodding Canada to join the US in a single Northern Hemisphere nation, but I don't agree with one point in that rant.
The bankers aren't the only ones to blame. Anyone in the world (well, most of it) had the choice to buy stock and otherwise invest in those companies. It's not just the fault of the bankers. The terrible truth of the situation is that it's the fault of those that invested in the banks when they knew they were giving bad loans, the government that didn't step in when they should have noticed something could go terribly wrong, the people that didn't tell the government something could go terribly wrong, the people that signed contracts they didn't fully understand.... The list goes on, and whether the investors were in the US, Canada, China, or Djibouti, the blame doesn't rest in one group or one country, anymore. Not in a global economy.
To use an overused metaphor, it's a giant crap sandwich, and whether everyone in the world took little nibbles or big bites, we shouldn't have done it at all, and we're all going to have to pay for it.
Slashdot Mirror
I can see a market for this for intense businessmen who might have 2 lines at home, a private line at work, and another line at their second home. But is there a demand from the tech savy young google user?
Absolutely.
I have one phone, and it's my cell phone. I don't have an unlimited calling/ unlimited text messaging service for my phone, and I cannot justify paying for it right now. In the last month, however, I've had a spike in my call volume--instead of using less than 300 minutes, I'm moving upward to 500 or so, and they're from many different numbers.
With Google Voice, I can give out one number and have it ring to my cell phone, and a cheap temporary service on my computer, such as Skype. If I am at my computer, I can pick up the phone there; if out, the call will go to my cellphone.
This allows me to overcome the temporary spike in the number of calls I am receiving for much less than paying for extra cell minutes (and less problems than switching to another cellphone plan),and by only having to hand out one number to my contacts.
Google Voice gives me one number for whatever phone(s) I want. It could help me save hundreds of dollars with minimal hassle. Change my phone service? Have a pay Skype account for three months? No worries!
Except when its UAC, because ya know... MS is teh evils.
I thought UAC was teh evils. I mean, the whole Phobos incident was pretty messy and reckless, and you can be certain that anything that was left of them after that certainly was evil.
Opening a gateway to Hell makes you a little worse than Microsoft.
Unless we're talking about DRM. Now that's another story....
General use of the word in the United States refers to unsophisticate, uneducated, unruly, generally racist backwoods people, possibly inbred for generations. There are so many connotations, I couldn't possibly do the term justice.
The wiki has a decent rundown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck From it's earliest use in reference to Americans, it was derogatory.
For more info, just google Southern American redneck You'll find tons of redneck humor among the results.
Doesn't excuse the blind vitriol, though. I can make a list of nasty and ignorant phrases that, if directed toward another person here, would have people recoiling in horror, or lashing out in rage (typically phrases that many AC posts consist of--no offense). But "redneck," when used in an equally hateful way, is okay--and that's not really right.
I'm not posting demanding an apology, or such. I'm just wanting to share that these groups may find such usage of the word a little offensive, or pointlessly hateful.
... you cretinous redneck!!
This word apparently means something different to you than it does to me. Not easy to find digital sources for this, but, from a GlobalSecurity.org article:
That's from the Battle of Blair Mountain, where those "rednecks" fought thugs--and some died--for the right to unionize.
Not saying I'm going to write a curse-laden response to you, but... heads up.
I laughed for a solid ten minutes at this. It's too bad scores stop at 5.
For the same reason that when I steal your car I should be made to give it back. They stole the browser market using explicitly illegal tactics and with criminal intent. The fact that they then set fire to the car doesn't mean that they are now excused and no longer owe you a car.
This is a bad example for this situation. Let's apply the spirit of this law to another industry. This is like if a car manufacturer has been installing a certain radio from a specific manufacturer into all their vehicles by default, and they're now being told that not only that they must install the any radio anyone wants when someone buys the car, but they must provide a full list of what could be considered "competitors" to that radio, and provide the installation.
Who is making that list? How could this list be accurate at all times? How does your radio--the one your company is making--get on the list? Who is controlling, and dictating, if my radio is a competitor, or not, and why should I have to get my product's name on that list to get the endorsement of being a "competitor," at all? Why should I have to prove to some group that I can compete?
Humorous, but this is exactly what we should be fearing. If this decision is used as a precedent, imagine the implications. For Windows--or any operating system--a list of all programs that could possibly compete with those included in the OS would have to be listed.
What makes this even worse is that you have a governing body deciding what will and will not be counted as a competing product. Did you make a new open source text editor that you think will revolutionize the world? Well, you had best submit it to the committee which will determine if you product is a worthwhile competitor so you can have your creation put up with the list of other mandated alternatives that must be shown on new systems.
This isn't out of nefarious intent, but the unintended consequences of a heavy, guiding hand.
Rather than just tell Microsoft that they need to make Internet Explorer easily de-integrated and/or removed from the Windows, they're making a decision that could affect every conceivable commercial OS out there; and if this decision is applied to any other industry, who knows how far it could reach? This is replacing a company's attempt to restrict users, with an indirect restriction through government control--one wrong to 'fix' another.
Free markets must convince you to voluntarily consume their products instead of a competitor's.
To paraphrase: Free markets make business ventures. Governments make binding laws.
One is voluntary, and is not legally required to continue. The other will hit you with a fine or send you to a prison if you try to violate it.
The ugliest scenarios are when government starts mingling with, controlling, or becoming business. Then it's just an illusion of free choice in a wrapper with a smiley face. The corruption is not only rampant, but can be buried so deep in the system, itself, that you can't tell what is corruption, and what is the real government, anymore.
In his first year at Harvard, Camara was involved a racial controversy that would gain attention from the national media. Like many students, Camara posted his course outlines to a popular student-run website. Camara's, however, referred to blacks as nigs. For example, to summarize Shelley v. Kraemer, he wrote "Nigs buy land with no nig covenant; Q: Enforceable?"[7] The notes were prefaced with a disclaimer that they may contain racially offensive shorthand.[7]
The case was about a line in the covenant on the piece of property a black man purchased. In it, it said that "people of the Negro or Mongolian Race" could not own the property. Camara was very aware of his wording in his notes, and used "nigs" as shorthand.
The word obviously carries the same impact as the law's phraseology, is quick to write down, and functions as a memory-jogger for the full, real quote. His notes were no more offensive than the actual law--they were just not politically correct.
And most of all, has fast internet. ;)
I know you meant that tongue-in-cheek, but you bring up an interesting concept. If you move to a place you feel is more free, it's nice if it's a place that has a standard of living that is as good--or better--than you're used to.
On the other hand, there is a point where the luxuries aren't worth the cost of principles. When that happens, you end up with things like rebellions, successions, and other transitions. People will forfeit plumbing, transit systems, electricity, and even food for the chance to govern themselves as they see fit, if the situation feels dire enough. The world can beat them, or join them--either way, it makes little difference in that situation, because the right to rule or be ruled as they believe, and thereby control their futures, becomes the first, and most basic need.
The food, the water, the electricity, medicine, fuel: to a desperate person, those things lose their worth. They're all tethers binding them to something they hate. Time and time, again, it's shown that the people will abandon or destroy them before allowing those things to hold them any longer.
The article is from the Daily Mail, hardly a good source.
While not another paper covering the same story, this does lend some weight to it.
I'm not a British citizen, though, so I don't know which papers are fraudulent this week.
Our last President had an MBA from Harvard. Just what are you trying to say?
Gasp! Obama, Kennedy, Thoreau, Emerson, Yo Yo Ma, W. E. B. Du Bois, and a and a plethora of others also got degrees from Harvard! That must mean he thinks they are fools, too!
Burn him! Burn him at the Stake of Generalization! The Internet must know no peace!
Now, with these services, the administration has the opportunity to campaign continuously in a low-key and less intrusive way that will, they hope, be more effective. Time will tell how well it works.
Jokes, sarcasm, and political leanings aside, I always felt that the White House was 'above' this sort of thing. It feels silly and degrading that my national government is using pop culture outlets--the same ones that people use to discuss how wasted they got at a party, or how Fluffy is feeling today--to communicate with the world.
It's the modern equivalent of making the White House your pen pal. I don't care what president it is; this just feels a little less-dignified and un-stately.
I guess the better analogy is this is like if you're having a party with your friends, and your stuffy, stick-in-the-rear boss shows up unexpectedly in a fine suit, a paper party hat, and blows on a little noisemaker every few minutes while quietly staring at everyone from a corner of the room.
The Microsoft.com URL you're redirected to, and the Microsoft logos on the page may also hint at the owner. Oh, and "© 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved."
RTF link? I haven't checked--are we allowed to create new acronyms as we go?
"Or we'll go back to having pseudonyms and fake identities online and only our friends will know the truth."
You mean you stopped doing this for some reason!?!?!?!
I know this is probably the obligatory Orwell quote, but it just came to mind from this.
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system [...] It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. [...] You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
How ironic it is that the technology we imagined would free us more than ever before is becoming a medium capable of a new imprisonment. But it's not coming as Orwell suggested; it's coming with a smile, and a protective embrace--even if that embrace is an unprecedented, once-inconceivable death grip on free communication, thought, and choice, traded for security and caretaking.
Gee, I'm chipper today!
Do you think they'll remember money in that future, or see the first few years of the 21st century as some sort of romantic time when you had your economic credits, and chose what you wanted?
Money is meant as a representation of available goods and services. The more we inflate it, and the more we print it out and hand it out without a second thought, the more we misrepresent our resources and invalidate currency by continuing to devalue it. By undermining such an old, evolved system, we play terrifyingly dangerous games with society as a whole.
Exactly. Do you really want the guy with the LPE tables and a spreadsheet to have all say in who gets what kind of care, or have some kind of chance to fight in an open system? In a socialized health care system, "terminal" means that they give up on you, and maybe provide you with some comfort before you expire. Want to fight it, anyway, and hope to beat the odds? Too bad--the odds bestowed the label "terminal" on in the first place, and further treatment would be considered an unnecessary line item in the budget.
This will probably get me modded for flamebait, but...
The developing perception is that people should not have to pay for health care--at least, they do not wish to perceive paying for it. It can be argued that a government would wish for its population to be healthy and productive, but I can make all of my other health choices for myself: I pay for what quality of food I want, buy tobacco or alcohol at my discretion, and purchase gym memberships/exercise equipment/etc. with my own money. If I want to spend less on good food for a good computer, I should be able to. I don't expect my tax money to go to a national food program which will hand me vouchers for my meals.
When looking at the situation from that perspective, it's odd that one can choose all of those things, but expect the government to assist with or choose healthcare. If I want good healthcare, I'll save my money, and negotiate with the healthcare providers to pay them if I cannot do so right away; I have done this for expensive emergency trips to the hospital without insurance.
Being without health insurance doesn't doom us, but it does change what we have to do. I would rather have the choice of insurance, and pay when I need healthcare, than no choice to pay for everyone's insurance and a compulsory 'safety net' for myself.
You could check the Stanford Engineering Everywhere program's resources. They released some great beginner level programming courses under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. Those could be adapted for teaching the subject to students, and the content used for instructional material.
I wonder how much research has been done by the gaming media into synchronized product releases and how they may stimulate the gaming market.
Big game companies may line up their releases to 'cross-pollinate' the different titles' sales. Perhaps when a player is playing one game, they wish for the features of another, and find themselves playing both in the same period, or such.
Well, 2007 has bugs in it. I don't use Excel, I use something that can utilize math correctly. Have you checked your spreadsheet program? Or do you just assume that Microsoft does everything correctly?
I use Excel for daily business functions and data analysis, and will continue to do so, but I don't assume Excel is perfect. I do what I should do with any program I use for calculations, though: I stay aware of all of the quirks and bugs I can of the program, and try to work around them.
Every program is going to have a bug or two (or five thousand, seeing as Excel is part of MS Office), but part of working with software is to know what those are and learn to not let them ruin work.
Who asked you? Seriously?
Who asked you to ask who asked him?
Wait, who asked me to ask you to ask who asked you to ask him? And if no one asked us to ask, then why do we ask at all?!
It's all been for naught. Our keyboards... useless, now.
This may be Bad Math, but... The article says, "The tower unit was able to capture the equivalent of approximately 20 tonnes per year of CO2 on a single square metre of scrubbing material -- which amounts to the average level of emissions produced by one person each year in North America." A page I dug up claims a single tree removes "on average 50 pounds (22 kg) of carbon dioxide annually over 40 years."
The scrubber sounds pretty effective. No waiting for it to grow, and it's more space-efficient, which is good for cities and industrialized areas.
Hell, we're annoyed with the fact that your lovely Wall St. bankers are dragging us and the world down with you.
/rant
(So much for my karma).
I can understand your frustration over people prodding Canada to join the US in a single Northern Hemisphere nation, but I don't agree with one point in that rant.
The bankers aren't the only ones to blame. Anyone in the world (well, most of it) had the choice to buy stock and otherwise invest in those companies. It's not just the fault of the bankers. The terrible truth of the situation is that it's the fault of those that invested in the banks when they knew they were giving bad loans, the government that didn't step in when they should have noticed something could go terribly wrong, the people that didn't tell the government something could go terribly wrong, the people that signed contracts they didn't fully understand.... The list goes on, and whether the investors were in the US, Canada, China, or Djibouti, the blame doesn't rest in one group or one country, anymore. Not in a global economy.
To use an overused metaphor, it's a giant crap sandwich, and whether everyone in the world took little nibbles or big bites, we shouldn't have done it at all, and we're all going to have to pay for it.
For the nostalgic or uninitiated.