26gf not really all that impressive. There was an article I saw last year talking about how they were getting in the ball-park of 300gf+ out of one of ATI's video cards set up to crunch folding@home software. Gigabyte made a 4 slot motherboard for a while that could have for PCIx video cards in it. I would think something along those lines would have some insane numbers if they could get it all to work together.
I've been streaming everything from MP3's all the way up to HD-DVD's accross a 100bT wired LAN with no problems.
What I have seen though is one of my machines absolutley insists on connecting as if it were on a public network everytime I restart it. In short you can do little or nothing until you change it back to private, since Vista immediately circles the wagons and refuses to let anything work because it's scary to be out in public. It has been driving me nuts, I can't find any setting that nixes this behavior.
'Lord of the Rings' looks fake and the effects are laughable/
They look laughable now, no need to wait 20 some odd years.
To be fair everything looks fake once you've seen a movie a few times. You spend less time engrossed in the story and more on the technical aspects. I've noticed much of it seems to be with inaccurate or sloppy lighting for composite images or things being too perfect or too perfectly imperfect (ie Star Trek & Star Wars), rather than the level of detail. That and how ridiculous the cliche flooded action scenes have become.
My take on it will be kids of that generation will either wonder about a world that isn't entirely engrossed in civil and global conflicts or be so bored out of their minds that suicide at 40 is considered a proper end to a long and full life.
Again, failure to identify one's country of orgin is impolite. It doesn't matter now, I see now that you are from Turkey. I could have made some generalized 3rd world joke and that probably would not have been entirely acurate. After all one man's 3rd world is another man's 1st, that and Turkey hardly qualifies as 3rd world, more like 2 1/4. I haven't had the chance to visit yet, but according to my friends who have been there it is a nice place to live.
Now I do find it kind of funny that you are quick to bash Westerners, when at the same time your country is trying to throw their lot in with them. When that finally happens will you be part of the "Evil Western-Mega corp" machine too?
Back to the original question, what to do with the monkeys?
Habitat encrouchment and settlement of marginal lands is a big problem in Africa and in many other parts of the world. People shouldn't just live anywhere they damn well please, or at least shouldn't complain when Mother Nature bitch slaps them when they do, and defintely we shouldn't running in there every time with food aid unless it is apart of a movement to depopulate the area through birth-control or relocation.
So back to the original question. What is more valuable people or monkeys? Obviously the government thinks more highly of the monkeys, even though they are not even remotely endangered, which begs the question why? Either these people are living on or near a known animal santuary, which means they are most likely squators and the government has no sympathy for them. Or the people in power are playing some sort of game for either ethnic or economic reasons.
Shoot the monkeys, well you already said this one is out, and so does the local government.
Shoot the villagers, this would take care of the habitat encroachment/enivronmental damage problems or at least a minimum all the bitching and whining. Though on a down note the monkeys might go hungry till they figure out how to forage again or conduct sustainable eco-friendly agriculture.
Outsmart the monkeys, but it looks like this particular village has brought the proverbial "knife to a gun fight" in this battle of wits.
Or who really gives a fuck and let's just welcome our New Monkey Overlords by giving them our food and women.
Also if you are going to make fun of Americans at least have the common courtesy of identify your country of origin so that we can ridicule you properly.
We do have similar programs for peace and constructive purposes. Not every military mission in the world is combat related. Most are simply training so other countries can have control on their own borders as well as medical aid missions that drop a mobile hospital anually into areas that would never have any access at all.
The problem with alot of the countries that have a poor perception of us are the same ones we were pouring tons of aid into, but they became quit indignant when we raised the bullshit flag since most were just lining the pockets of the elite rather than helping out their people. They don't want our help, they just want our money and to hold onto their position. It's a catch-22. We can go in and help people, but many of the governments will fight any changes we make. The Peace-corps can build all the roads, wells, and schools you want, but if no one is around to protect them from the "rebels" and government forces in most cases they wont last long.
Maybe because that HD-DVD size wise is not that much smaller than Blu-Ray. The 15gb single layer discs have been out for a while. The Dual layer 30gb/per side discs are out now and sooner or later the triple layer 45gb/per side discs will hit the market.
My latest purchase was for the movie 300. It filled the first side to the max with the movie and all the special features and the movie at 1080p taking up a grand total of 26gb of space. They still had 4gb of space left over, so exactly how much more space is really needed? This is not to mention that the backside being put to use with a DVD copy which takes up aroun 6gb leaving another 25gb or so of free space not even being utilized
If they make the jump to a higher resolution than 1900x1080 it's going to take something alot bigger than either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD has to offer. I think the only real reason they are stearing towards HD-DVD is because it's a cheaper technology that is backwards compatable and is plenty big for their current storage needs. That and the fact that SONY has pretty much failed to deliver the promised PS3 units to market that they were most likely hyping up in getting these exclusive deals. I think SONY's Blu-Ray discs will end up being the standard format for recording in their disc based video cameras as well as the disc of choice for raw storage, but when it comes to mass media, all something needs to succeed is be "good enough" and cheaper Which is how VHS burried Betamax.
Well technically you can already do that now. Of course what do you mean by sub-$100? A Xbox 360 external HD DVD drive is $180 and comes with 6 free movies. King Kong + 5 titles of your choice from a list of 15. So with movies being around $20 a piece that's $120 for the movies and $60 for the player. Of course none of the movies are new releases.
It also depends on if you are using it on a PC, then you need PowerDVD Ultra for playback which $70-100, free if you hack it.
Also you'll need AnyDVD HD ($30 from Slysoft) that will over ride the HDCP so you can play them back on machines that are not fully HDCP compliant and as an added bonus rip them as well. It works very well and does as good as DVDdecryptor for regular DVD's as well.
As much as I love having media PC, rips of HD content take up too much space. The movie 300 was 25gb! By ripping it does let you set up things so you can stream the movie. HD content streams just fine over a 100bT lan.
So technically it's bellow $100, but in reality I've spent $280 to get the player, two pieces of software for playback, ripping, and shrinking, and six movies. Not a bad deal since now I'm able to watch HD content on my 720p 40" TV PC theater setup downstairs, and my 1080p capable gaming PC upstairs.
My mistake, we were talking about two different types of rich here. You are talking about the top 1% of saleries and I was talking about people amass wealth through intelligent life choices. Most people don't realize how little it takes to become "rich".
As far as CEO's that are making 300 to 1 compared to the lowest worker I can see your point, but what is the difference between say being the CEO of a company you started and owned and amassing a vast fortune and say a the board of directors hiring someone to make sure the money comes rolling in?
Even the loweliest worker is not prevented from buying shares in a company and taking his piece of the pie, or getting educated and moving up the ranks of the company. The only thing that I see that can be considered criminal is when the system sets up the little guy to be taken advantage of by those at the top or purposely having systems in place that deny his ability to accend in the system. While the system is still not 100% fair it is alot better than it has been in most modern history.
As far as the system being top-heavy there isn't really such a thing. The economy is not a zero-sum game. Just because I make money doesn't mean you can't. I make money and you make money it just means there is more money. Now that money's worth will move up and down depending on many things, but for the most part it's pretty stable. It's true there are limits to how many people can have a job like Bill Gates, but at the same time the number of jobs are growing including those up at the top.
I haven't read any Steinbecks that I'm aware of, I take that back I have read Grapes of Wrath.
Imbalance's in this country? The whole rich getting richer lament I assume? The rich are getting richer. That's what the rich do, but also the numbers of people that are getting rich are increasing as well. That is not a bad thing.
I do agree that the current big push of globalism is causing most of the pain for anyone with economic difficulties, but most of that is going to be over the short term. It's not much comfort to someone who has become unemployed in their current career field. The government should have made the tarrif changes much more slowly and restricted it to countries that have similar labor, environmental, and human rights laws. Unfortunately they didn't, so it's going to take a while for things to balance out and imporvements to occur.
Well at least you get most of the terms right, I've always been terrible with memorizing the terms. Even so you are over simplifying your argument and throwning around some numbers which are completely bogus in terms of the current economic situation.
1800-1900 Let's see, westward expansion. The government was running off the sales of land stolen from the indians. A large influx of cheap land and resources and a economy based on hard currency will always have a depressing affect on price. Throw in a civil war which led to the death of a large portion the working population as well as the complete and utter destruction of the southern economy. It's kind of hard for things like inflation to get going when things are caving in on themselves and whole generations of workers/consumers are dead.
1900-1950's Two major world wars and a cold war that were financed to the point of bankruptcy and the abandonment of the gold standard by most of the free world. The free ride of westward expansion at home was over. Europe/Asia was completely destroyed, but still needed a massive influx of money from the US even though we were already tapped out. Inflation went beserk. Alot of the rest of that price creep in the last 40 years goes hand in hand with a massive increase in the standard of living, safety standards, and government support programs.
So yes you are correct, doesn't it feel so good to be right.
As for all the rest. From personal experience and observations of those around me, most people dig their own economic hole. Prolonged personal medical crisis are the exception, but the majority do it through getting their wants and needs confused and living well beyond their means.
I do agree with your statement that the poor in the US are significantly better off than the poor in some other countries, and probably not as well off as they are in other (mostly European) countries.
By the global definition of poor the poor in the US are better off than a significant portion of people that are considered well to do in many 3rd world countries.
Also after living in Europe this past year, (UK, Norway, Cyprus, Albania), I've not been overly impressed by the supposedly superior welfare and health care nets Eropean countries provide to the poor. Especially when it comes to nailing the population with very high taxes in order to provide what amounts to mediocre services.
But why does that matter. Being rich or poor is never about absolute values, but rather about comparison with those around you. And that comparison is getting more and more out of hand in the US.
That's the kind of argument someone living on someone else's dime would say (aka a student). So what you are saying is that because someone is making alot more money than everyone else then it's not fair?
Well, my friend welcome to the really, real world, get over it.
If the poor as a whole start making more money you get a magical thing called inflation.
Wow, I'm sorry I didn't realize we had an economic major in our midst.
So please pray tell explain how then even though the global economy as a whole has grown massively over the past ten years and at least a billion new people have been added to the consumer life style that was typically only found in select 1st world nations that somehow inflation has not reared it's ugly head and put us all in the poor house?
Economics is not a zero sum game. Just because I made a dollar last year and this year you made a dollar too mean that the price of everything just doubles. Only scarce items such as front row seats, beanie babbies, oil, land, and rare art get more expensive in an expanding economy. Over all everything else gets less expensive since various efficiencies cause prices to drop, a simple one being economies of scale.
So it's your contention that all of the poor in the USA could just work a little harder and they could all become middle class or something?
Payroll tax is a sore spot with me. Technically you get all that back, if you manage to live long enough and if they government can borrow enough to cover it.
The only way to fix that problem is make the Federal Government adhere to the same accounting rules Corporate American must follow.
Last time I checked inflation has been consistently the lowest it's been the last twenty years than in any other time in our nation's history.
Now maybe you mean cost of living. Yes that has gone up, but not so much do to increase costs, those have been steadily dropping as well in terms of real dollars, but in terms of people's expectations.
When I was a kid my family was I guess what was typical middle class, but there were things we just didn't get to have. Most people's bills are filled with wants rather than needs. Designer & premium named brand clothes, cell phones, cable, internet, computers, game counsels, DVD's, tv's, anything beyond a functional used car, and eating out are wants. If you have most of those things you are not poor.
Wages do keep up with real inflation, they just don't keep up very well with people's lifestyle inflation.
I know someone that is a case example of this. They live in a mammoth fully furnished brand new home, drive SUV's that are less than 5 years old and are talking about buying a new one, have three kids, and all the electronic goodies for themselves and toys for the kids. They are going to be up in their eyeballs in debt for the next 20 years and are more or less broke. All it would take is for the bread winner to get hurt and unable to work for a year and they'll be out on the street.
This sort of behavior seems to be prevalent in the US these days with everyone trying to live a life style a tax bracket or two above their paycheck.
Other than catostrophic health issues, typically the poor are poor for a reason that is self-inflicted.
I loved that movie, and the guy had the right atittude to go after what he wanted, but as you so pointed out he made bad decisions, one after another.
He gave up on school, poured all his savings into an investment scheme, had a kid while he was barely able to afford one, and refused to give up on his dreams and tanked his marriage in the process.
Of course it seems he could have made his life alot less miserable if he would have just gone out and gotten a job, any job, and from a better position chased after his dreams, but that would have been a much less interesting movie.
Now as far as those "programs" to help him out back in the 80's most of those did not exist in the quantity and quality that you find today.
Last time I checked the federal tax rate was progressive. 10%-35%
Now as far as inheritance tax, exactly how many times should the same dollar be taxed? 1, 2, 3 times? You made the $ we tax it, you invest the dollar we tax it you die we tax it. How many times should we tax it to make it fair?
Sales and fuel taxes are consumption taxes. If you don't spend then you don't pay. Personal property tax (vehicle tax) is non-existant on an older car in the places that do charge it.
9-1-1 tax, I assume you mean fire and police emergency taxes, those are usually included in property taxes. Are you really poor if you own your own home?
Yes it is hard to make ends meet on minimum wage jobs, but at the same time it doesn't take much just to live. The problem is everyone wants more, but at the same time aren't willing to change their situation to get it. You are not poor when you own a car, have a tv, relatively decent clothes, a cell phone, cable TV, a computer, money left over for alcohol and a smokes, the ability to eat out occassionaly, and a couple of kids.
God forbid you actually have to work for any of that or maybe actually have to make some sacrifices to improve one's situation.
Poor is when you have to decide do I pay the gas bill in winter for heat or do I buy medication. Poor is when you wonder where you are going to sleep tonight and whether or not you'll have anything to eat.
Most people in the US are not poor by any stretch of the imagination. Goto a third world country if you want to see what poor is. When they talk about the top 10% having 90% of the world's income that includes most the "poor" in the US.
Their is nothing capatalistic about the telco industry. It's a heavily regulated partial monopoly, which is why things are moving so slowly in the States.
There are all kinds of stupid rules about who can provide what and where. Until the FCC starts cleaning house and gets rid of regulations that support the big telco's well never see service improve quickly.
The poor don't pay taxes in the US, especially so if they have kids. Uncle Sam gives you a nice big fat federal income tax check back, inexcess to anything that was collected, at the end of the year that refunds everything you just listed.
The poor fuck themselves over more than the system does in this day and age. Poverty these days is due to piss poor decissions (education dropout, criminal behavior, pregnancy, debt) and a it's not my fault and the world owes me something attitude.
The only way the system fucks over the poor is by putting up with this childish behavior and continuouusly giving them handouts.
A manual, A MANUAL?! That would go against all that is good and holy in the tech world. That would be like asking for clear and concise instructions on how to set up a router.....pure blasphemy
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26gf not really all that impressive. There was an article I saw last year talking about how they were getting in the ball-park of 300gf+ out of one of ATI's video cards set up to crunch folding@home software. Gigabyte made a 4 slot motherboard for a while that could have for PCIx video cards in it. I would think something along those lines would have some insane numbers if they could get it all to work together.
What I have seen though is one of my machines absolutley insists on connecting as if it were on a public network everytime I restart it. In short you can do little or nothing until you change it back to private, since Vista immediately circles the wagons and refuses to let anything work because it's scary to be out in public. It has been driving me nuts, I can't find any setting that nixes this behavior.
They look laughable now, no need to wait 20 some odd years.
To be fair everything looks fake once you've seen a movie a few times. You spend less time engrossed in the story and more on the technical aspects. I've noticed much of it seems to be with inaccurate or sloppy lighting for composite images or things being too perfect or too perfectly imperfect (ie Star Trek & Star Wars), rather than the level of detail. That and how ridiculous the cliche flooded action scenes have become.
My take on it will be kids of that generation will either wonder about a world that isn't entirely engrossed in civil and global conflicts or be so bored out of their minds that suicide at 40 is considered a proper end to a long and full life.
Now I do find it kind of funny that you are quick to bash Westerners, when at the same time your country is trying to throw their lot in with them. When that finally happens will you be part of the "Evil Western-Mega corp" machine too?
Back to the original question, what to do with the monkeys?
Habitat encrouchment and settlement of marginal lands is a big problem in Africa and in many other parts of the world. People shouldn't just live anywhere they damn well please, or at least shouldn't complain when Mother Nature bitch slaps them when they do, and defintely we shouldn't running in there every time with food aid unless it is apart of a movement to depopulate the area through birth-control or relocation.
So back to the original question. What is more valuable people or monkeys? Obviously the government thinks more highly of the monkeys, even though they are not even remotely endangered, which begs the question why? Either these people are living on or near a known animal santuary, which means they are most likely squators and the government has no sympathy for them. Or the people in power are playing some sort of game for either ethnic or economic reasons.
Shoot the monkeys, well you already said this one is out, and so does the local government.
Shoot the villagers, this would take care of the habitat encroachment/enivronmental damage problems or at least a minimum all the bitching and whining. Though on a down note the monkeys might go hungry till they figure out how to forage again or conduct sustainable eco-friendly agriculture.
Outsmart the monkeys, but it looks like this particular village has brought the proverbial "knife to a gun fight" in this battle of wits.
Or who really gives a fuck and let's just welcome our New Monkey Overlords by giving them our food and women.
Also if you are going to make fun of Americans at least have the common courtesy of identify your country of origin so that we can ridicule you properly.
The problem with alot of the countries that have a poor perception of us are the same ones we were pouring tons of aid into, but they became quit indignant when we raised the bullshit flag since most were just lining the pockets of the elite rather than helping out their people. They don't want our help, they just want our money and to hold onto their position. It's a catch-22. We can go in and help people, but many of the governments will fight any changes we make. The Peace-corps can build all the roads, wells, and schools you want, but if no one is around to protect them from the "rebels" and government forces in most cases they wont last long.
They already do that now, it's called joining the Army. Of course there is that little thing about being shot at on occassion.
:) Order them off of Amazon.com instead of .co.uk. You'll get your HD DVD's for L10-15 each.
My latest purchase was for the movie 300. It filled the first side to the max with the movie and all the special features and the movie at 1080p taking up a grand total of 26gb of space. They still had 4gb of space left over, so exactly how much more space is really needed? This is not to mention that the backside being put to use with a DVD copy which takes up aroun 6gb leaving another 25gb or so of free space not even being utilized
If they make the jump to a higher resolution than 1900x1080 it's going to take something alot bigger than either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD has to offer. I think the only real reason they are stearing towards HD-DVD is because it's a cheaper technology that is backwards compatable and is plenty big for their current storage needs. That and the fact that SONY has pretty much failed to deliver the promised PS3 units to market that they were most likely hyping up in getting these exclusive deals. I think SONY's Blu-Ray discs will end up being the standard format for recording in their disc based video cameras as well as the disc of choice for raw storage, but when it comes to mass media, all something needs to succeed is be "good enough" and cheaper Which is how VHS burried Betamax.
Go take a look at a program called AnyDVD HD. It takes care of all the customer features we've grown to loath in both DVD and HD media.
It also depends on if you are using it on a PC, then you need PowerDVD Ultra for playback which $70-100, free if you hack it.
Also you'll need AnyDVD HD ($30 from Slysoft) that will over ride the HDCP so you can play them back on machines that are not fully HDCP compliant and as an added bonus rip them as well. It works very well and does as good as DVDdecryptor for regular DVD's as well.
As much as I love having media PC, rips of HD content take up too much space. The movie 300 was 25gb! By ripping it does let you set up things so you can stream the movie. HD content streams just fine over a 100bT lan.
So technically it's bellow $100, but in reality I've spent $280 to get the player, two pieces of software for playback, ripping, and shrinking, and six movies. Not a bad deal since now I'm able to watch HD content on my 720p 40" TV PC theater setup downstairs, and my 1080p capable gaming PC upstairs.
As far as CEO's that are making 300 to 1 compared to the lowest worker I can see your point, but what is the difference between say being the CEO of a company you started and owned and amassing a vast fortune and say a the board of directors hiring someone to make sure the money comes rolling in?
Even the loweliest worker is not prevented from buying shares in a company and taking his piece of the pie, or getting educated and moving up the ranks of the company. The only thing that I see that can be considered criminal is when the system sets up the little guy to be taken advantage of by those at the top or purposely having systems in place that deny his ability to accend in the system. While the system is still not 100% fair it is alot better than it has been in most modern history.
As far as the system being top-heavy there isn't really such a thing. The economy is not a zero-sum game. Just because I make money doesn't mean you can't. I make money and you make money it just means there is more money. Now that money's worth will move up and down depending on many things, but for the most part it's pretty stable. It's true there are limits to how many people can have a job like Bill Gates, but at the same time the number of jobs are growing including those up at the top.
I haven't read any Steinbecks that I'm aware of, I take that back I have read Grapes of Wrath.
Imbalance's in this country? The whole rich getting richer lament I assume? The rich are getting richer. That's what the rich do, but also the numbers of people that are getting rich are increasing as well. That is not a bad thing.
I do agree that the current big push of globalism is causing most of the pain for anyone with economic difficulties, but most of that is going to be over the short term. It's not much comfort to someone who has become unemployed in their current career field. The government should have made the tarrif changes much more slowly and restricted it to countries that have similar labor, environmental, and human rights laws. Unfortunately they didn't, so it's going to take a while for things to balance out and imporvements to occur.
1800-1900 Let's see, westward expansion. The government was running off the sales of land stolen from the indians. A large influx of cheap land and resources and a economy based on hard currency will always have a depressing affect on price. Throw in a civil war which led to the death of a large portion the working population as well as the complete and utter destruction of the southern economy. It's kind of hard for things like inflation to get going when things are caving in on themselves and whole generations of workers/consumers are dead.
1900-1950's Two major world wars and a cold war that were financed to the point of bankruptcy and the abandonment of the gold standard by most of the free world. The free ride of westward expansion at home was over. Europe/Asia was completely destroyed, but still needed a massive influx of money from the US even though we were already tapped out. Inflation went beserk. Alot of the rest of that price creep in the last 40 years goes hand in hand with a massive increase in the standard of living, safety standards, and government support programs.
So yes you are correct, doesn't it feel so good to be right.
As for all the rest. From personal experience and observations of those around me, most people dig their own economic hole. Prolonged personal medical crisis are the exception, but the majority do it through getting their wants and needs confused and living well beyond their means.
By the global definition of poor the poor in the US are better off than a significant portion of people that are considered well to do in many 3rd world countries.
Also after living in Europe this past year, (UK, Norway, Cyprus, Albania), I've not been overly impressed by the supposedly superior welfare and health care nets Eropean countries provide to the poor. Especially when it comes to nailing the population with very high taxes in order to provide what amounts to mediocre services.
But why does that matter. Being rich or poor is never about absolute values, but rather about comparison with those around you. And that comparison is getting more and more out of hand in the US.
That's the kind of argument someone living on someone else's dime would say (aka a student). So what you are saying is that because someone is making alot more money than everyone else then it's not fair?
Well, my friend welcome to the really, real world, get over it.
Wow, I'm sorry I didn't realize we had an economic major in our midst.
So please pray tell explain how then even though the global economy as a whole has grown massively over the past ten years and at least a billion new people have been added to the consumer life style that was typically only found in select 1st world nations that somehow inflation has not reared it's ugly head and put us all in the poor house?
Economics is not a zero sum game. Just because I made a dollar last year and this year you made a dollar too mean that the price of everything just doubles. Only scarce items such as front row seats, beanie babbies, oil, land, and rare art get more expensive in an expanding economy. Over all everything else gets less expensive since various efficiencies cause prices to drop, a simple one being economies of scale.
So it's your contention that all of the poor in the USA could just work a little harder and they could all become middle class or something?
Yeah something like that.
http://www.globalrichlist.com/
http://www.globalrichlist.com/
The only way to fix that problem is make the Federal Government adhere to the same accounting rules Corporate American must follow.
Last time I checked inflation has been consistently the lowest it's been the last twenty years than in any other time in our nation's history.
Now maybe you mean cost of living. Yes that has gone up, but not so much do to increase costs, those have been steadily dropping as well in terms of real dollars, but in terms of people's expectations.
When I was a kid my family was I guess what was typical middle class, but there were things we just didn't get to have. Most people's bills are filled with wants rather than needs. Designer & premium named brand clothes, cell phones, cable, internet, computers, game counsels, DVD's, tv's, anything beyond a functional used car, and eating out are wants. If you have most of those things you are not poor.
Wages do keep up with real inflation, they just don't keep up very well with people's lifestyle inflation.
I know someone that is a case example of this. They live in a mammoth fully furnished brand new home, drive SUV's that are less than 5 years old and are talking about buying a new one, have three kids, and all the electronic goodies for themselves and toys for the kids. They are going to be up in their eyeballs in debt for the next 20 years and are more or less broke. All it would take is for the bread winner to get hurt and unable to work for a year and they'll be out on the street.
This sort of behavior seems to be prevalent in the US these days with everyone trying to live a life style a tax bracket or two above their paycheck.
Other than catostrophic health issues, typically the poor are poor for a reason that is self-inflicted.
He gave up on school, poured all his savings into an investment scheme, had a kid while he was barely able to afford one, and refused to give up on his dreams and tanked his marriage in the process.
Of course it seems he could have made his life alot less miserable if he would have just gone out and gotten a job, any job, and from a better position chased after his dreams, but that would have been a much less interesting movie.
Now as far as those "programs" to help him out back in the 80's most of those did not exist in the quantity and quality that you find today.
Now as far as inheritance tax, exactly how many times should the same dollar be taxed? 1, 2, 3 times? You made the $ we tax it, you invest the dollar we tax it you die we tax it. How many times should we tax it to make it fair?
Sales and fuel taxes are consumption taxes. If you don't spend then you don't pay. Personal property tax (vehicle tax) is non-existant on an older car in the places that do charge it.
9-1-1 tax, I assume you mean fire and police emergency taxes, those are usually included in property taxes. Are you really poor if you own your own home?
Yes it is hard to make ends meet on minimum wage jobs, but at the same time it doesn't take much just to live. The problem is everyone wants more, but at the same time aren't willing to change their situation to get it. You are not poor when you own a car, have a tv, relatively decent clothes, a cell phone, cable TV, a computer, money left over for alcohol and a smokes, the ability to eat out occassionaly, and a couple of kids.
God forbid you actually have to work for any of that or maybe actually have to make some sacrifices to improve one's situation.
Poor is when you have to decide do I pay the gas bill in winter for heat or do I buy medication. Poor is when you wonder where you are going to sleep tonight and whether or not you'll have anything to eat.
Most people in the US are not poor by any stretch of the imagination. Goto a third world country if you want to see what poor is. When they talk about the top 10% having 90% of the world's income that includes most the "poor" in the US.
There are all kinds of stupid rules about who can provide what and where. Until the FCC starts cleaning house and gets rid of regulations that support the big telco's well never see service improve quickly.
The poor fuck themselves over more than the system does in this day and age. Poverty these days is due to piss poor decissions (education dropout, criminal behavior, pregnancy, debt) and a it's not my fault and the world owes me something attitude.
The only way the system fucks over the poor is by putting up with this childish behavior and continuouusly giving them handouts.
A manual, A MANUAL?! That would go against all that is good and holy in the tech world. That would be like asking for clear and concise instructions on how to set up a router.....pure blasphemy
I think you second point is more valid. The truly geeky build their own rig, not buy a Dell.