Here's a few yoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyo for the next time you need to use the word "you."
Anyway, it wasn't necessarily a wise purchase -- I bought it because I'm a sucker for new tech. Most people are going to buy a device for what it does for them, rather than it simply being a new and interesting technology that does very little more than existing tech despite costing 5x as much. Now that MP3 players hold hundreds or thousands of times what you could fit on a cassette, and are as cheap or cheaper than a walkman (or even just integrated into a phone) -- the rational consumer won't buy a walkman.
Boogers -- my mod points just expired and you need someone to mod you up.
Anyway, here's another example. WA state used to have state run liquor stores and used the profit from those stores to fund state services, like fire departments and whatnot. Now, WA did have some of the higher booze prices in the nation, but we also don't have an income tax, so it used a "sin tax" in part as a way to make up the difference. The stores had a really nice selection too.
On June 1st, the first day of privatization, selection went in the toilet, and prices skyrocketed. Here's one example from page 6 of the price list for Red Breast Irish Whisky.
The state store price was $49.95 out the door. The state retail price was $39.11 The wholesale price can be calculated (*): $25.66
Fred Meyer is currently selling Red Breast at a special price of $60 (reg is $65). This is pretax. Many voters favoring the initiative stupidly believed that "competition" was synonymous with "lower prices," but I-1183 included a provision that wholesalers would have to pay a 10% fee, and retailers a 17% fee, to make up for the loss to the state from losing the stores. The Office of Financial Management, as required by law, evaluated the law and concluded prices would rise. This summary was even in the voter's pamphlet, but if many slashdotters can't RTFA, most voters only watch TV and totally bought the notion that competition and lower costs go hand in hand -- they never read more than the title let alone the summary -- just voted like the ads told them to.
Anyhow, starting with a wholesale price then of $25.66, after the wholesale fee, it would be $28.23, and after the retail fee, $33.03. The reg shelf price at Fred Meyer is almost a 100% markup, and even the sale price is an 81% markup, to which the old state taxes are added, making the out-the-door price of the bottle of Red Breast, $75.13 (on sale) or $81.16 (reg price).
Now, certain store brand rotguts are perhaps 50 cents to a buck cheaper than rotgut carried by the state stores, but anything decent is at 25% more expensive and some things are substantially more, Red Breast being about 60% (reg price). Worse, the profit the state would have used to benefit all Washingtonians, is now largely exported. It has been partly replaced by the new fees, but surely an initiative will kill those in the future and it is at that point, a WA income tax would become more likely. I'd really rather just decide whether to "sin" and pay a sin tax, than to have an income tax shoved down my throat every year.
So, this is an example where privatization costs the public much more in the short run, AND increases the likelihood of an income tax, which will cost the public much more in the long run. But Costco will make gazillions so its all good right? Corporate socialism is the name of the game now.
As another data point -- I bought my first MP3 player in 2000 or 2001 -- a Creative MG II... without a doubt, it had one the most unintuitive UIs ever created. It had built in memory of 64mb -- about enough for one album at good quality, and two or three at lousy quality. It did have a memory card slot so you could triple the capacity with 128mb card but back then, those cards were pricey.
Anyway, it might be fair to say that even as recently as 2000, the consumer tech for the players we enjoy today just wasn't there yet. Having a portable MP3 player back then was functionally equivalent to have a a mix tape or two.
OK, I'm no ubergeek, but explain to me how not using DNS is going to prevent your ISP from logging the IPs of sites you visit. Sure, if you use DNS then both your ISP and your DNS provider (if it is a 3d party DNS provider) know the IP you sought, but cutting out DNS only cuts out one log, not all of them.
Comments like yours fill me with a sense of despair for the future because there are so many people like you.
Essentially, you're the kind of person who would be absolutely shocked if, after you smeared dog shit on someone's face, they got mad at you for smearing dog shit on their face. Rather than note the obvious fact that they got pissed because you just smeared dog shit on their face, you'd have to come up with some justification for what you did, like, "he has freckles and hates people who don't."
That explains why prior to his election and campaign promises, he either voted every for full funding of the Iraq war or did not vote (not the same as coming out against, especially when the votes came closer to the presidential election) and of course voted to extend the PATRIOT act.
I voted third party for the first time last election because I believed his campaign was a lie based on his record. Turns out I was right and made the correct presumption.
This is my tally on 22 highly important issues: Worse than Bush: 8 Same as Bush: 9 Better than Bush: 2 Worse than Bush, but not Obama's fault: 1 Better than Bush, but not Obama's accomplishment: 1 Can't make a fair comparison: 1
Actually, I think war with Iran is MORE likely under Obama than it would be under Santorum exactly because the Democrats won't do squat if he pulls another Libya. Obama has set a huge precedent there by conducting war without even getting permission under the War Powers Act.
This cartoon basically sums up Democrats' relationship to Obama, War, and Iran:
That would surely require a constitutional amendment.
Hardly. It would just require our silent acquiescence.
Like how Obama has normalized Bush's radical policies of due process free detention, and has gone a step further with his policy of due process free execution. I mean, if your willing to let the executive branch on its own and in secret be the "due process" in the phrase "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law," then there is absolutely nothing the president can't do because executing American citizens without trial is as big as it gets.
Obama has been the worst thing to happen to freedom and liberty ever -- at least when GWB was doing the things Obama does, Democrats pretended to care and push back. Now they just silently acquiesce, or worse, actively support the constitutional destruction they once opposed (for instance Marty Lederman.
As a liberal, I hate to say it, but we'd be better off with a freak like Santorum as president, who basically promised war with Iran, because then perhaps the Democrats would go back to pretending to care about peace and freedom, and fight back against all this crap. With Obama in the office for another four years though, the damage to civil liberties and freedom will be immense because Democrats will just sit on their hands and let it continue to happen.
The LA Times identified the victims as "Mohammed Shafi, his wife and his six children," and cited the statements from the spokesman for the Paktia governor's office that "there is no evidence that Shafi was a Taliban insurgent or linked with Al Qaeda." The Afghan spokesman blamed the incident on the refusal of NATO to coordinate strikes with Afghan forces to ensure civilians are not targeted ("If they had shared this with us, this wouldnâ(TM)t have happened").
Anarchists stand for obolition of governments, these retards are simply ludite/eco terrorists. I say kill them all, kill all ludites and eco tree huggers. The world would be a better place.
I wonder if there has ever been any data analysis performed comparing the number of people killed by governments, compared to the number killed by the non-law-abiding whacko who lives down the street. I'm guessing government is more dangerous, but I'd like to see some numbers.
What I want to know is how people deal with the cognitive dissonance of their (presumed) conviction that they're doing good, in the context of the methods that they're employing? Isn't there ever a moment of "Holy shit, my quest to make the world a better, more natural place is now manifest in me doing things like shooting nuns and throwing acid in infants' faces.
No.
Evidence: Drone Attacks. Afghanistan (the first 6-8 weeks were justified, but for the ensuing decade, we just killed a lot of innocent people and helped with the other side's recruiting propaganda). Iraq.
There's an important part in there that you forgot to mention, where all off the shelf parts are manufactured in the third world because the money behind the demoplicans and republocrats has been interested in offshoring everything it can since at least the Clinton era. So perhaps we would have had a stronger manufacturing economy (as opposed to a boom/bust economy based selling ever more esoteric investment schemes), a stronger middle class, AND the ability to buy off the shelf parts made in America had our politicians not been so bought.
I'm guessing that the bike part replacement you mention is more complex than just cutting up a tin can and jamming a piece of metal into the bike.
Actually no, that's exactly it. The author's friend was quite disturbed about the idea of fixing his expensive bimmer with a bit of beer can:
I was so baffled by his refusal even to think about any mechanical subject I kept searching for ways to clue him to the whole thing but didn't know where to start.
I thought I would wait until something went wrong with his machine and then I would help him fix it and that way get him into it, but I goofed that one myself because I didn't understand this difference in the way he looked at things.
His handlebars had started slipping. Not badly, he said, just a little when you shoved hard on them. I warned him not to use his adjustable wrench on the tightening nuts. It was likely to damage the chrome and start small rust spots. He agreed to use my metric sockets and box-ends.
When he brought his motorcycle over I got my wrenches out but then noticed that no amount of tightening would stop the slippage, because the ends of the collars were pinched shut.
"You're going to have to shim those out," I said.
"What's shim?"
"It's a thin, flat strip of metal. You just slip it around the handlebar under the collar there and it will open up the collar to where you can tighten it again. You use shims like that to make adjustments in all kinds of machines."
"Oh," he said. He was getting interested. "Good. Where do you buy them?"
"I've got some right here," I said gleefully, holding up a can of beer in my hand.
He didn't understand for a moment. Then he said, "What, the can?"
"Sure," I said, "best shim stock in the world."
I thought this was pretty clever myself. Save him a trip to God knows where to get shim stock. Save him time. Save him money.
But to my surprise he didn't see the cleverness of this at all. In fact he got noticeably haughty about the whole thing. Pretty soon he was dodging and filling with all kinds of excuses and, before I realized what his real attitude was, we had decided not to fix the handlebars after all.
As far as I know those handlebars are still loose. And I believe now that he was actually offended at the time. I had had the nerve to propose repair of his new eighteen-hundred dollar BMW, the pride of a half-century of German mechanical finesse, with a piece of old beer can!
One of my assistants was basically doing her work between using facebook, plenty of fish, etc., etc. I discovered this because work wasn't getting done on time, what was getting done was poorly done, and things were getting totally forgotten. Fortunately, she was using the office computer and not her phone so it was easy to check the logs.
Maybe there really are people who can multitask so that checking FB or whatever every 10 minutes doesn't interfere with their work, but I'm skeptical. I know whenever I try to do complex tasks simultaneously, I end up doing everything less well. From watching how this particular assistant, who always seems to be doing everything frenetically, and yet accomplishing very little and that, poorly, I'm even less convinced there is any value in FB for my business. So I'm one of those assholes who just blocks it at the firewall, along with a bunch of other crap.
I'm using Mint now too, and I fricken hate it. My home desktop is not a powerhouse, but it isn't totally antiquated -- 1.8 ghz core 2 duo system, used for youtube and surfing. Mint just chokes it, and then sits its fat ass on that systems face and won't let it recover. Maybe its gnome 3, I don't know, but I'm thinking I'm just going to put CentoOS on it and not watch video, or go back Ubuntu 8 which ran great on the same hardware.
Re:They have lost all trust, but they retain distr
on
In Nothing We Trust
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
And don't say "Vote third party." Been there; done that with Harry Browne, and it does no good. Third parties have never won any seat higher than the Congress.
Stop focussing on winning, and then maybe you can experience victory. Winning isn't everything -- affecting the dialogue is important and can lead to real change, and THAT is victory. With a few losses for the major parties (to the other side), it won't take a brilliant partisan hack to realize that selling out their constituency is not the way to win elections, and because the Repubs and Dems are concerned primarily with winning, not issues, they will adjust their issues to win back dissidents. But your voice won't be heard if you join the masses of disinterested by not voting. A protest vote, even though you know your candidate will lose, has value and the more people who realize that, the more likely we will see change. Not this year, not in four years, not in eight -- but long term. It is the short-term lesser-evil thinking that is the true evil.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a few yoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyo for the next time you need to use the word "you."
Anyway, it wasn't necessarily a wise purchase -- I bought it because I'm a sucker for new tech. Most people are going to buy a device for what it does for them, rather than it simply being a new and interesting technology that does very little more than existing tech despite costing 5x as much. Now that MP3 players hold hundreds or thousands of times what you could fit on a cassette, and are as cheap or cheaper than a walkman (or even just integrated into a phone) -- the rational consumer won't buy a walkman.
Boogers -- my mod points just expired and you need someone to mod you up.
Anyway, here's another example. WA state used to have state run liquor stores and used the profit from those stores to fund state services, like fire departments and whatnot. Now, WA did have some of the higher booze prices in the nation, but we also don't have an income tax, so it used a "sin tax" in part as a way to make up the difference. The stores had a really nice selection too.
Here is the last price list the state published:
http://whatcomnewsforums.com/misc/washington_state_liquor_control_board-MAY_2012_PRICE_LIST.pdf
On June 1st, the first day of privatization, selection went in the toilet, and prices skyrocketed. Here's one example from page 6 of the price list for Red Breast Irish Whisky.
The state store price was $49.95 out the door.
The state retail price was $39.11
The wholesale price can be calculated (*): $25.66
Fred Meyer is currently selling Red Breast at a special price of $60 (reg is $65). This is pretax.
Many voters favoring the initiative stupidly believed that "competition" was synonymous with "lower prices," but I-1183 included a provision that wholesalers would have to pay a 10% fee, and retailers a 17% fee, to make up for the loss to the state from losing the stores. The Office of Financial Management, as required by law, evaluated the law and concluded prices would rise. This summary was even in the voter's pamphlet, but if many slashdotters can't RTFA, most voters only watch TV and totally bought the notion that competition and lower costs go hand in hand -- they never read more than the title let alone the summary -- just voted like the ads told them to.
Anyhow, starting with a wholesale price then of $25.66, after the wholesale fee, it would be $28.23, and after the retail fee, $33.03. The reg shelf price at Fred Meyer is almost a 100% markup, and even the sale price is an 81% markup, to which the old state taxes are added, making the out-the-door price of the bottle of Red Breast, $75.13 (on sale) or $81.16 (reg price).
Now, certain store brand rotguts are perhaps 50 cents to a buck cheaper than rotgut carried by the state stores, but anything decent is at 25% more expensive and some things are substantially more, Red Breast being about 60% (reg price). Worse, the profit the state would have used to benefit all Washingtonians, is now largely exported. It has been partly replaced by the new fees, but surely an initiative will kill those in the future and it is at that point, a WA income tax would become more likely. I'd really rather just decide whether to "sin" and pay a sin tax, than to have an income tax shoved down my throat every year.
So, this is an example where privatization costs the public much more in the short run, AND increases the likelihood of an income tax, which will cost the public much more in the long run. But Costco will make gazillions so its all good right? Corporate socialism is the name of the game now.
(*) WA markup was 13c for a 750 ml bottle, plus 51.9% http://liq.wa.gov/stores/liquor-pricing
As another data point -- I bought my first MP3 player in 2000 or 2001 -- a Creative MG II ... without a doubt, it had one the most unintuitive UIs ever created. It had built in memory of 64mb -- about enough for one album at good quality, and two or three at lousy quality. It did have a memory card slot so you could triple the capacity with 128mb card but back then, those cards were pricey.
Anyway, it might be fair to say that even as recently as 2000, the consumer tech for the players we enjoy today just wasn't there yet. Having a portable MP3 player back then was functionally equivalent to have a a mix tape or two.
The liars that concern me even more, are the ones who claim that Obama is a liberal, or a progressive, or has a moral character greater than GWB had.
OK, I'm no ubergeek, but explain to me how not using DNS is going to prevent your ISP from logging the IPs of sites you visit. Sure, if you use DNS then both your ISP and your DNS provider (if it is a 3d party DNS provider) know the IP you sought, but cutting out DNS only cuts out one log, not all of them.
Comments like yours fill me with a sense of despair for the future because there are so many people like you.
Essentially, you're the kind of person who would be absolutely shocked if, after you smeared dog shit on someone's face, they got mad at you for smearing dog shit on their face. Rather than note the obvious fact that they got pissed because you just smeared dog shit on their face, you'd have to come up with some justification for what you did, like, "he has freckles and hates people who don't."
I don't know what about my post suggests I liked GWB, but to make it clear, Bush was as much an evil murderous SOB as Obama is.
There's barely any collateral damage now that Obama has defined "militant" as being "military age male".
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/
A few infants here and there don't really bother democrats.
That explains why prior to his election and campaign promises, he either voted every for full funding of the Iraq war or did not vote (not the same as coming out against, especially when the votes came closer to the presidential election) and of course voted to extend the PATRIOT act.
I voted third party for the first time last election because I believed his campaign was a lie based on his record. Turns out I was right and made the correct presumption.
This presumes that Obama wanted single payer or financial reform or peace. That's a big presumption.
I used to think that, but look at the major douche his Lieberman is.
Then WTF are you doing voting for Obama?
http://nothingchanged.org/
This is my tally on 22 highly important issues:
Worse than Bush: 8
Same as Bush: 9
Better than Bush: 2
Worse than Bush, but not Obama's fault: 1
Better than Bush, but not Obama's accomplishment: 1
Can't make a fair comparison: 1
Actually, I think war with Iran is MORE likely under Obama than it would be under Santorum exactly because the Democrats won't do squat if he pulls another Libya. Obama has set a huge precedent there by conducting war without even getting permission under the War Powers Act.
This cartoon basically sums up Democrats' relationship to Obama, War, and Iran:
http://americanextremists.thecomicseries.com/comics/192/
Hardly. It would just require our silent acquiescence.
Like how Obama has normalized Bush's radical policies of due process free detention, and has gone a step further with his policy of due process free execution. I mean, if your willing to let the executive branch on its own and in secret be the "due process" in the phrase "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law," then there is absolutely nothing the president can't do because executing American citizens without trial is as big as it gets.
Obama has been the worst thing to happen to freedom and liberty ever -- at least when GWB was doing the things Obama does, Democrats pretended to care and push back. Now they just silently acquiesce, or worse, actively support the constitutional destruction they once opposed (for instance Marty Lederman.
As a liberal, I hate to say it, but we'd be better off with a freak like Santorum as president, who basically promised war with Iran, because then perhaps the Democrats would go back to pretending to care about peace and freedom, and fight back against all this crap. With Obama in the office for another four years though, the damage to civil liberties and freedom will be immense because Democrats will just sit on their hands and let it continue to happen.
Flaming aside, you can read the news right? How about the latest batch of 8, an entire family including 6 kids, in an Afghanistan airstrike:
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/27/the_authoritarian_mind_2/singleton/
USDA fed retard much?
I wonder if there has ever been any data analysis performed comparing the number of people killed by governments, compared to the number killed by the non-law-abiding whacko who lives down the street. I'm guessing government is more dangerous, but I'd like to see some numbers.
No.
Evidence: Drone Attacks. Afghanistan (the first 6-8 weeks were justified, but for the ensuing decade, we just killed a lot of innocent people and helped with the other side's recruiting propaganda). Iraq.
There's an important part in there that you forgot to mention, where all off the shelf parts are manufactured in the third world because the money behind the demoplicans and republocrats has been interested in offshoring everything it can since at least the Clinton era. So perhaps we would have had a stronger manufacturing economy (as opposed to a boom/bust economy based selling ever more esoteric investment schemes), a stronger middle class, AND the ability to buy off the shelf parts made in America had our politicians not been so bought.
Actually no, that's exactly it. The author's friend was quite disturbed about the idea of fixing his expensive bimmer with a bit of beer can:
http://www.design.caltech.edu/erik/Misc/pirsig.html
Hopefully instead of holding his dick, he'd have the presence of mind to use one of these:
http://www.samsung.com/us/photography/camcorders
or maybe on of these:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/#hdvideo
One of my assistants was basically doing her work between using facebook, plenty of fish, etc., etc. I discovered this because work wasn't getting done on time, what was getting done was poorly done, and things were getting totally forgotten. Fortunately, she was using the office computer and not her phone so it was easy to check the logs.
Maybe there really are people who can multitask so that checking FB or whatever every 10 minutes doesn't interfere with their work, but I'm skeptical. I know whenever I try to do complex tasks simultaneously, I end up doing everything less well. From watching how this particular assistant, who always seems to be doing everything frenetically, and yet accomplishing very little and that, poorly, I'm even less convinced there is any value in FB for my business. So I'm one of those assholes who just blocks it at the firewall, along with a bunch of other crap.
I'm using Mint now too, and I fricken hate it. My home desktop is not a powerhouse, but it isn't totally antiquated -- 1.8 ghz core 2 duo system, used for youtube and surfing. Mint just chokes it, and then sits its fat ass on that systems face and won't let it recover. Maybe its gnome 3, I don't know, but I'm thinking I'm just going to put CentoOS on it and not watch video, or go back Ubuntu 8 which ran great on the same hardware.
Funny, I just read about Rocky Anderson last night and liked a lot of what I read:
http://www.americanselect.org/profile-candidate/342450/bio
It's worth reading Laurence Kotlikoff's bio as well:
http://www.americanselect.org/profile-candidate/365903/bio
Stop focussing on winning, and then maybe you can experience victory. Winning isn't everything -- affecting the dialogue is important and can lead to real change, and THAT is victory. With a few losses for the major parties (to the other side), it won't take a brilliant partisan hack to realize that selling out their constituency is not the way to win elections, and because the Repubs and Dems are concerned primarily with winning, not issues, they will adjust their issues to win back dissidents. But your voice won't be heard if you join the masses of disinterested by not voting. A protest vote, even though you know your candidate will lose, has value and the more people who realize that, the more likely we will see change. Not this year, not in four years, not in eight -- but long term. It is the short-term lesser-evil thinking that is the true evil.