I am wondering how big the internet currently is. Google is trying to cache as much as possible. They might have some sort of base numbers for comparison. It would be nifty to have a huge chunk of the entire internet stored locally right now.
I'd rather end the rubber stamped spectrum hijacking the major networks have enjoyed for generations, and replace it with a more open way of assigning spectrum. When's the last time any major broadcasters/networks license wasn't automatically renewed? It's a big fat joke. We need more microbroadcasters, not just a handful of big media outlets. We need to end the local monopoly on wired access a lot of communities have. We need to open up the shared commons of the right of way granted to the powerline and telcos so that that area and the poles are free for others to use for reasonable fees to the providers, so that some real competition can occur. There are a varietuy of sound decent ideas out there that would help, yet they aren't being implemented-because of payoffs and legalised bribery more than anything else. Eliminate that, open it back up and treat the commons AS a commons,and that would address the issue of diversity of opinion and content over the airwaves, and over the wired avenues, more than anything. Right now for under one thousand dollars I could put up quite a decent local community radio station, yet it is illegal for me to do so. The FCC has consistently caved in to larger corporate-and so-called "public broadcasting"-demands on this issue. And now they want in on the internet as well. Frankly, I don't even see where they have dipsquat for authroity to regulate any airwaves that cross state lines, they are a federal agency after all, and weaseled their way in under the commerce clause that only kicks in when commerce crosses state lines. If I were to put up a small 5 watt transmitter, and it really didn't cross state lines, where do they get off regulating it? The majority large broadcasters and the FCC don't want competition basically, so they got it legislated in. It's not technologys fault, we still have a ton of unused spectrum and mal-used spectrum, just we have a bureaucratic and legislative process that is geared to those with the deepest pockets, and a lot of that pocket stuffing tends to be "off the books" I would wager.
We don't need more big brother, we need *less* big brother, IMO.
It wouldn't matter much in a war. If their copies were good enough, and close enough to top of the line, and they could pump out ten to one on the copies, it might be sorta hard to fight them. One thing is for sure, given their huge industrial expansion that is poised right now to outstrip the rest of the planet in raw material needs and in energy requirements, something is gonna give. It's one thing for-say-a US dominated coalition to go in and takeover and sorta run a small nation like iraq, with total air superiority, etc, quite another with a nation the size of china. All the projections I have seen show china starting around 2010 to be up a very large stump when it comes to energy needs. They are going to not only want but *need* this huge amount of petroleum, right when a lot of even the larger fields are peaked out every place but a few nations in the middle east. I don't see them remaining passive about it for too much longer.
I also think the west bankrolling their industrial expansion will be proven to be the most critical geopolitical strategic blunder ever in the history books of the future. The western bankers got away with it when they bankrolled all sides in the leadup to ww2, and we saw what happened then. This time, the only difference is the scale is much larger, and the technology available-even crummy copies- is much more lethal.
But, we'll see. Maybe the Mr. Fusion backyard reactor will be perfected, and the chinese overlord leaders will all automagically turn into really nice guys in the next decade.
The theory where we started to bankroll them was that if we forced them to be trading partners, there would be no incentive for them to want to hurt their trading partners then. My concern is that if you look at what they buy from the west, it's all geared to make them independent from the west. Like I said, they buy factories and machine tools, why we close factories and machinists get older and are forced out of work. We buy walmart stuff from them, they buy *infrastructure expansion* products, so that they can make their own infrastructure expansion products. They are switching to vertically integrated manufacturing, while we are dropping to mere assembly of outside produced components, almost busywork.
I know that is simplistic, but it's based on a lot of research I have done over the years and just noticing where "stuff" comes from now. I mean, you have to give them some credit, they are a space power now, we've shipped them airplane factories and technology, they are manufacturing a deep sea navy with some advanced weaponry especially designed to counter the carrier battle group, etc. It looks like they are serious to me. And you look at projected population and various demographical demands, then the released reserve numbers for various raw materials around the world, and the conclusion is inescapable. We have a world poised on the brink of a 10 gallon need and desire and at best around 2 gallons remaining. That's why I said something's gonna give.
I once walked off a job-quit-so I could go vote, and I was getting time and a half at the time. Bossman would neither let me come in late in the morning, nor leave to go vote, so I quit. Cost me some serious coin at the time.
The place I was at had a huge number of blue collar workers, very few left to vote, the job and check was more important. You are correct, the system is skewed against lower economic workers. Welfare recipients, retirees, manager class and owners can go vote, but joe schmoo "gotta be there no matter what" grunt worker has a hard time with limited voting hours. I did a little poll around my block that week, very few people voted, most didn't, all because of either work and timing issues, or just had developed such a cyncicsm with the whole deal of government and voting that they had given up, an attitude like "it makes no difference", when it's mostly true it's hard to blame them sometimes, because it really makes not much difference which R or D is president or controls congress. On a few issues with small variations it seems to make an illusion of a difference, but overall, nope. At least that's my opinion being involved with politics as an enthusiasm of mine since the early 60's.
I personally think the system is so corrupt and broken it won't stand a chance of repair until it's torn down completely and rebuilt. I think the US experiment in people ruling themselves has de evolved into just another autocratic "us versus them" government, same as-not much different from- hundreds more down through history. I hate to feel like that, but I have no other rational conclusion to embrace given all the evidence. I still vote and would like to see some reforms, like the 24 hour vote or your idea of a 48 hour vote which is even better, but I'm....not convinced it's really valid anymore. I think it's predetermined political psycodrama at the higher levels. I think they are picked and used as puppets by really the fattest of cats unseen off to the side. I think they are bought and paid for tools. I vote independent and third party, even if I have to write it in, but really, in my case it's just inertia now. In local races I think the vote is still important, but above even the county level, nope, I think it's pretty much for-sale politics and it won't matter much who gets in. I have yet to see any significant change in government over the last 40 years except for way more restrictions, way more just lamer laws, way more inefficient and expensive government, and way more corruption, and it was bad back then.
Increasingly over the next ten yearts currency won't be as important in international trade as commdoities, especially energy. Soon china will have a large enough domestic market that it won't need US dollars or us as a market, they will only need massive amounts of raw materials and energy sources, which we can't supply much of. Our dollar has been dropping steadily the past several years. that makes our exports cheaper, but we are exporting less, and what we have been exporting is more in the line of factories/machine tools, etc, things to make manufacturing easier to china. They are also heavy into double digits into force-projection styled military buildup, and a buck there goes a lot further than here. A million bucks in china actually gets stuff done, here it forms a few committess to decide if more committes are necessary to study the project at hand. They are also pumping out engineers like we pump out wannabe pro sports starts and musicians.
It's gonna get ugly sometime, and we stand a good chance of losing.
Hope your friends are ok! It's now too late in the day, my shortwave reception has dropped off. I saw some pics uploaded last night from another forum that showed some nasty destruction in I think port charlotte, someone still had net connection some how. Whole buildings smashed, etc.
I've been through at least three I can remember the names of, agnes, frederick and opal. Agnes I though we were goners, we were supposed to evac, but all we had were bicycles so we stayed put and buttoned it down, little duplex on the beach I had with two girls, hmm, this was 72. It flooded the block and tore a lot of shingles off, etc. the next day we wandered around looking at what we called sea monsters, all kinza huge fish washed ashore and stranded. It was quite the mess. That whole neighborhood is gone now, it's all very expensive beachfront high rise hotels, etc. That was at madeira beach florida. Agnes hit much further north, we only got the sideways edge of it and it was one spooky night, tell ya what. Frederick I was living in my VW camper at the time, I stayed down at the beach as long as I could to enjoy it,sto9rms are pretty nifty if you like that sort of thing, then went inland to some campground and parked it in the middle of a field away from any trees with the windshield pointed towards the storm front. Pretty high winds but I don't think they went past 70 mph or so, so it was like driving on the freeway but sitting still except for some rocking. That was outside tampa as well. Hurricane Opal I was up in atlanta, it churned it's way a;; the way up there and knocked down thousands of trees all over, lady up the street from me had a huge tree squish her real pretty old 60's barracuda. My landlady at the time evacced to her basement, a big tree fell, penetrated her roof and drove a tree branch right through her bed where she would have been sleeping. Man, I got a lot of free woodchips and firewood after that storm, the powerline guys were begging for places to put the stuff, so I filled my driveway with it, then used it landscaping, etc. What a mess that storm was.
I've also been through some dandy blizzards and floods and forest fires and tornadoes, which got ot be the worst I think because the destruction is so total. Seen most of the usual natural disasters except for a big earthquake, and I'll pass on that.
I have no idea why we don't have a hurricane thread running, it's big news. Slashdot is large enough to maybe have direct postings from the site,to actually *break some news*, see what folks got for emergency communications and gear working. I'm monitoring it on a dozen websites and trying to get some info off the emergency shortwave nets. I'm getting some info off of 14.325 and 14.265 megaherz.
a small (whatever size is needed I mean) writers co-op might work, they all chip in and get one machine for those various small runs. It's a possibility anyway.
To me it's like distros, I can't afford full price ones, and I can't download being on dialup, so the clone copy/sellers hit the sweet spot with me at price and convenience. Books might be a similar deal for a lot of people. I prefer dead trees myself for reading, but I can get by with digital on the screen, but it just doesn't feel the same and isn't as comfortable. A lot of people are just going to be incredibly cheap about it and always try to find comopletely free, but enough would be willing to pay reasonable fees. To me,cash wise were I the producer of the book or software or music or video, and needed some coin for it, reasonable and some is better than unreasonable and none.
no link but I know that is more or less true, and it's easy to see why. The 1900s began the age of serious transfer from horse/mule/oxen power to mechanised power. Much less pastures needed, they got abandoned and turned to forest. It also was the era that had people switching from firewood to fuel oil for heat and cooking, again, more trees left growing.
You can walk around in new england in the woods and just about as far back and deep as you want to go, you'll still find massive stone walls left over from when it was all mostly pasture and they cleared rocks every year out of the fields.
... just publish it and release it yourself? It's digital, it doesn't get much easier than that to publish, and you can contract dvd or cd burning and packaging yourself, or even do that yourself.
To me, and I'm not a downloader of anything that is gray market, music movies or games,so I got no dog in this fight, I just wonder why they charge those ridiculous prices, when they could severely drop the prices to very cheap and make it on volume sales. Like today, there's no reason music cds couldn't be 3 bucks retail at the store, they don't need to be 10 to 20 dollars. The companies would most likely even make more money and there would be less pirating/copying/trading going on if they had kept dropping prices as the technology let them. Instead, the rest of humanity noticed that "copies" were extremely cheap, that the technology had arrived and was universally avaialable, then they looked at the rip off prices still being charged, got pissed off, and went "screw it, they want to rip me, I'll rip them back first" and this stoopid digital war started. That's exactly what happened, and it never had to happen in the first place.
Now, it's up to the content producers to take charge of their own productions and start to cut the middleman skimmers out of the deal and go direct to the end user with your product, at very reduced rates. It has to be cheap enough and clean enough to let people get the content they want, yet still make ya'all a few coins. Seems like a happy medium would be possible, as long as you cut the middle man profit skimmers out of the transaction. IMO, that's about the only practical way this dilemma will be solved, unless we go to a totally regulated internet and a bunch more stupid draconian laws applying to everyone and with future hardware and software.
I have read them. Mostly, they were against a large centralised federal government, that's why they were careful to outline the only rights and duties of a federal government, delineated them, and left the rest by default to the states and more importantly, the soverign individual. It's bass ackwards from that now, everything from the large permanent standing army to phony counterfeit money to the sheer scale of it is just wrong. It's nothing like they wanted, and the proof is in the results, massive debt, insecurity, more corruption than you can shake a flock of prosecutors at.
...it's working now is such a resounding success story? Really? You believe that?
Nope, we've been doing it your way for a long time, and it's broken, broken to the tune of trillions in debt and crappy C- government at it's best. It's because we have career bureaucrats and career professional politicians, and little practical way to remove most of them, even when they screw up.
I would add an incentive to get people to WANT to serve in government, besides old fashioned actually WANTING to make government better, or maybe you forgot that in civics class, if you even took it. End the fiscal hypocrisy and huge layer of redundant busywork jobs created by taking tax money to pay for government, then turning around and taking taxes back away from the workers. Pay them a fair wage with some minimum benefits while they are in, but no taxes on them from the federal level. Then when they get out, there would be a huge incentive for them to vote for politicians and policies that would lead to continuation of cheaper more efficient government, and for maintaining jobs inside the US that actually pay well and have benefits., instead of what we have now, which is exactly the opposite in both design and outcome.
I'll repeat--we're DOING it your way now, I doubt you could find a dozen americans who thought the system was just swell now if you asked them. I have yet to meet a single human who thinks government is just great, everyone I know or have ever met thinks it's broken-because it IS. The system as it stands is broken, and only radical constructive change will fix it. The founders in no way, shape, manner or form envisioned a perpetual class of professional politicians and unelected edict spewing faceless bureaucrats and shuffling mostly busywork drones, that's one of the things they rebeled against. they also were totally against a large standing army, especially one being lead by a dictator. We fought against what we have now! Nuts! And they also weren't too happy with the idea of perpetual political parties hijacking government for that matter. We got warned against that, and it's unpatriotic to persue goals like that. It was supposed to be government SERVICE, not the government (our taxes) serving some class of people removed from any responsibility. The alleged "oversight" now is a big fat joke, it's corrupt, inefficient, and overstepping it's constitutional bounds by the hour. It is not fair and it's illogical to put even the unborn into lifelong debt to support this crooked bloated monstrosity we have now. Enough's enough.
...no "careers" in government. Elected, appointed or hired on, no full time leading to a pension careers. No exceptions. Make it something like 10 years maximum "service", then back to the private sector, with an additional several years cooling off period before you could lobby or sell or contract to the government in any manner. Put "service" back into "government service", and turn government back into "we the people" not "we the government ruling over them other folks, the people". It's turned into an "us versus them" deal now, with little in the way of accountability, and the election process hijacked by two for-maximum-profit criminal cartels so that they can run government as a jobs and profit center for themselves. That's just nutso to let that go on generation after generation.
.... the lower amounts of bribery that are even possible with open source. Governments by and large exist by cash payments, bribes, kickbacks and blackmail. When there's not a lot of money involved in a proposal, it doesn't have the potential to be corrupt.
And I'm not being a pessimist, just a realist about it. Corruption is more the norm than not in government, at any level.
The pilot could pedal for a minute or so prior to liftoff and tighten a coil spring, which would be used for the intital takeoff, just to get the blades up to speed faster. Don't know if that would violate the rules though.
....accumulating slashdot logins by the scads over the past year, almost like script kiddies with zombie machines....in fact.... looks around, lowers voice..... "we don't know who we can trust now...it could be anybody!"
...older PCs that have had windows taken off and replaced with linux. I bet every guy here-and around the world- who has ever run linux has done that, yet, it appears in no market surveys. That number has to be vastly higher than people who have never used linux and bought a brand new blank machine just to install linux, or got one with windows and then replaced it. We are right now seeing the opening salvos of serious numbers of machines coming with linux installed right from the beginning, so I think it's too early to say how successful it will be, but given the momentum and the huge worldwide interewst, my loot will be on linux or a linux styled free operating system becoming very common and even dominant within ten years or so. The last holdouts will be gamers, because increasingly, that's about all windows is useful for given it's apparent inability to ever be secure. Business is tired of getting burned, and consumers are past getting tired of it, many of them have now dropped significant money going -with new machines every time- from win 95 to 98 then to XP and it's still broken. You've hit the magic pain threshold with consumers,3 strikes and you are out, it's psychological, brand recognition is such now that people think windows=bugs, and as soon as they physically see with their eyeballs something that works as least as good and for a cheaper price they will switch, FUD not with standing. The biggest problem right now,IMO, is not seeing linux in retail space on running demo machines. As soon as that is cracked with some of the big chains you'll see an avalanche of switching.
"elitist" nerds are the *only* reason you even have a home desktop computer and ANY operating system that joe average-the cusp of mainstream, who have adopted them- can use. Early adopters and innovators and inventors mostly tend to be elitist because they are usually significantly more intelligent than any median in a given population. It makes them not want to hangout or interact with a large segment of the people around them in meatspace, and vice versa-they are just...too different, and that leads to involved sociological happenstances.
... what the globalist technofeudalist billionaire overlords want--willing serfs. Add in implanted RFID chips, remote controlled drug delivery, then this type of drug, you start to get a lot closer to the alpha to epsilon society. You will learn your place, and stay in your place, slave, and like it, literally.
of course I have heard of dividends. And, being careful to point out I was generally speaking, most people buy stocks in the expectation of re selling them for a higher price to someone who in turn wants to sell them for a higher price, and so on, which requires ever increasing amounts of new cash being introduced for the same stock, well above and beyond any rational expectations of the true earning of your average company. And by far most trading is centered around that activity, and that leads to a perpetual artifically created boom/bust cycle, rather than steady growth, which could theoretically have a more dividends scenario for people.
Now you can dispute these two points, but I think P and Es prove otherwise taken as both an aggregate and as an average in the market in general. I would wish that it was the opposite, that stocks were way more bought for the long haul and for dividend income, but I just don't think that's the case, most trading is done for speculative purposes, not for accruing long term ownership leading to dividends. And don't get me wrong. I am not totally against the stock market in it's theory or entirety, I just think it needs a lot of reform.
...one of the skits on the drew carey show "who's line is it anyway?". The skit was the german version of "who wants to be a filthy stinking rich millionaire". No matter the questions, "INVADE POLAND!" Was always one of the answers in the multiple choice.
they probably snagged the idea though.... it was still pretty funny
I'm no longer dealing with Acs who hit and run and start a reply with an insult. I'll give you one short reply, that's it.
Basically, you are giving the theory of stock markets,not the bulk of todays practice, and also completely ignoring all the paper products based on it that have little to do with investing in a company, things that are totally pure gambling, like the original topic of the article. Unless you consider hedges and derivatives to be actual products of any societal value beyond institutionalised fiscal irresponsibility.
There's a difference between scamming money and producing wealth, and if you think I approve of scamming money, you're wrong, I think it's abhorrent, no matter the scale. I know some folks think it's an admirable trait, to be able to scam tons of loot, I think it's no different from sticking up a package store.
Most of the stock market is a rip, you'll never hear a broker advise anything but buying or selling a stock, even when it's not in the clients best interest to advise otherwise.
Get an account if you want to continue, I'm going back to one reply per Ac only, hit and runs are of no interest to me.
Good deal for your dad, he understands the difference between long term investing in a company and speculative trading. I am against speculative trading as it does nothing but suck in innocent folks money and gives it to people who do little work for a lot of other peoples cash. The shills and snakeoil salespeople fall into that category, which is most of them in the newsletters and in broadcast. I think they are parasites more than businessmen, and I'd put the big brokerage houses in the same description, and I make no bones over my contempt for them and their advanced scammery. What you call morons are people who have been induced into it for the most part, promised magic beans for their cow, just in a slick sophisticated manner. Advanced buncoism is stillbuncosim, the scale doesn't matter, although many will try to justifyu it, they cannot change the facts. They get advised to speculate, although it's always called "investing"., same as millions get encouraged to get credit way beyond their means until it becomes a driving societal force, even encouraged by our central bank and their subsidieries in every neighborhood. They don't teach or encourage economic rationality or the differences between money and wealth anymore, they teach snakeoil trading and credit and discourage honest production in favor of middleman skimming.
I think it *sucks*. We need wall street reform badly, it's broken and out of control and will lead to something worse than '29 to '45.
You may not have read it here first, but you read it again anyway. Hope you enjoy eating your valuable stocks some time.
cool! for what it's worth, I've been playing with feather linux, another live CD distro. Only 64 megs but it's jam packed. Maybe you could get by with copies of that instead of a full huge live cd distro. It's a debian knoppix remaster, severely debloatified, and runs on older boxes OK.
Slashdot Mirror
... the concept of the "training bra". A whole lotta something to try and cover a whole lotta nuthin......
I am wondering how big the internet currently is. Google is trying to cache as much as possible. They might have some sort of base numbers for comparison. It would be nifty to have a huge chunk of the entire internet stored locally right now.
Anyone have any WAGS on the numbers?
I'd rather end the rubber stamped spectrum hijacking the major networks have enjoyed for generations, and replace it with a more open way of assigning spectrum. When's the last time any major broadcasters/networks license wasn't automatically renewed? It's a big fat joke. We need more microbroadcasters, not just a handful of big media outlets. We need to end the local monopoly on wired access a lot of communities have. We need to open up the shared commons of the right of way granted to the powerline and telcos so that that area and the poles are free for others to use for reasonable fees to the providers, so that some real competition can occur. There are a varietuy of sound decent ideas out there that would help, yet they aren't being implemented-because of payoffs and legalised bribery more than anything else. Eliminate that, open it back up and treat the commons AS a commons,and that would address the issue of diversity of opinion and content over the airwaves, and over the wired avenues, more than anything. Right now for under one thousand dollars I could put up quite a decent local community radio station, yet it is illegal for me to do so. The FCC has consistently caved in to larger corporate-and so-called "public broadcasting"-demands on this issue. And now they want in on the internet as well. Frankly, I don't even see where they have dipsquat for authroity to regulate any airwaves that cross state lines, they are a federal agency after all, and weaseled their way in under the commerce clause that only kicks in when commerce crosses state lines. If I were to put up a small 5 watt transmitter, and it really didn't cross state lines, where do they get off regulating it? The majority large broadcasters and the FCC don't want competition basically, so they got it legislated in. It's not technologys fault, we still have a ton of unused spectrum and mal-used spectrum, just we have a bureaucratic and legislative process that is geared to those with the deepest pockets, and a lot of that pocket stuffing tends to be "off the books" I would wager.
We don't need more big brother, we need *less* big brother, IMO.
It wouldn't matter much in a war. If their copies were good enough, and close enough to top of the line, and they could pump out ten to one on the copies, it might be sorta hard to fight them. One thing is for sure, given their huge industrial expansion that is poised right now to outstrip the rest of the planet in raw material needs and in energy requirements, something is gonna give. It's one thing for-say-a US dominated coalition to go in and takeover and sorta run a small nation like iraq, with total air superiority, etc, quite another with a nation the size of china. All the projections I have seen show china starting around 2010 to be up a very large stump when it comes to energy needs. They are going to not only want but *need* this huge amount of petroleum, right when a lot of even the larger fields are peaked out every place but a few nations in the middle east. I don't see them remaining passive about it for too much longer.
I also think the west bankrolling their industrial expansion will be proven to be the most critical geopolitical strategic blunder ever in the history books of the future. The western bankers got away with it when they bankrolled all sides in the leadup to ww2, and we saw what happened then. This time, the only difference is the scale is much larger, and the technology available-even crummy copies- is much more lethal.
But, we'll see. Maybe the Mr. Fusion backyard reactor will be perfected, and the chinese overlord leaders will all automagically turn into really nice guys in the next decade.
The theory where we started to bankroll them was that if we forced them to be trading partners, there would be no incentive for them to want to hurt their trading partners then. My concern is that if you look at what they buy from the west, it's all geared to make them independent from the west. Like I said, they buy factories and machine tools, why we close factories and machinists get older and are forced out of work. We buy walmart stuff from them, they buy *infrastructure expansion* products, so that they can make their own infrastructure expansion products. They are switching to vertically integrated manufacturing, while we are dropping to mere assembly of outside produced components, almost busywork.
I know that is simplistic, but it's based on a lot of research I have done over the years and just noticing where "stuff" comes from now. I mean, you have to give them some credit, they are a space power now, we've shipped them airplane factories and technology, they are manufacturing a deep sea navy with some advanced weaponry especially designed to counter the carrier battle group, etc. It looks like they are serious to me. And you look at projected population and various demographical demands, then the released reserve numbers for various raw materials around the world, and the conclusion is inescapable. We have a world poised on the brink of a 10 gallon need and desire and at best around 2 gallons remaining. That's why I said something's gonna give.
And I sincerely hope I am wrong.
I once walked off a job-quit-so I could go vote, and I was getting time and a half at the time. Bossman would neither let me come in late in the morning, nor leave to go vote, so I quit. Cost me some serious coin at the time.
The place I was at had a huge number of blue collar workers, very few left to vote, the job and check was more important. You are correct, the system is skewed against lower economic workers. Welfare recipients, retirees, manager class and owners can go vote, but joe schmoo "gotta be there no matter what" grunt worker has a hard time with limited voting hours. I did a little poll around my block that week, very few people voted, most didn't, all because of either work and timing issues, or just had developed such a cyncicsm with the whole deal of government and voting that they had given up, an attitude like "it makes no difference", when it's mostly true it's hard to blame them sometimes, because it really makes not much difference which R or D is president or controls congress. On a few issues with small variations it seems to make an illusion of a difference, but overall, nope. At least that's my opinion being involved with politics as an enthusiasm of mine since the early 60's.
I personally think the system is so corrupt and broken it won't stand a chance of repair until it's torn down completely and rebuilt. I think the US experiment in people ruling themselves has de evolved into just another autocratic "us versus them" government, same as-not much different from- hundreds more down through history. I hate to feel like that, but I have no other rational conclusion to embrace given all the evidence. I still vote and would like to see some reforms, like the 24 hour vote or your idea of a 48 hour vote which is even better, but I'm....not convinced it's really valid anymore. I think it's predetermined political psycodrama at the higher levels. I think they are picked and used as puppets by really the fattest of cats unseen off to the side. I think they are bought and paid for tools. I vote independent and third party, even if I have to write it in, but really, in my case it's just inertia now. In local races I think the vote is still important, but above even the county level, nope, I think it's pretty much for-sale politics and it won't matter much who gets in. I have yet to see any significant change in government over the last 40 years except for way more restrictions, way more just lamer laws, way more inefficient and expensive government, and way more corruption, and it was bad back then.
Increasingly over the next ten yearts currency won't be as important in international trade as commdoities, especially energy. Soon china will have a large enough domestic market that it won't need US dollars or us as a market, they will only need massive amounts of raw materials and energy sources, which we can't supply much of. Our dollar has been dropping steadily the past several years. that makes our exports cheaper, but we are exporting less, and what we have been exporting is more in the line of factories/machine tools, etc, things to make manufacturing easier to china. They are also heavy into double digits into force-projection styled military buildup, and a buck there goes a lot further than here. A million bucks in china actually gets stuff done, here it forms a few committess to decide if more committes are necessary to study the project at hand. They are also pumping out engineers like we pump out wannabe pro sports starts and musicians.
It's gonna get ugly sometime, and we stand a good chance of losing.
Hope your friends are ok! It's now too late in the day, my shortwave reception has dropped off. I saw some pics uploaded last night from another forum that showed some nasty destruction in I think port charlotte, someone still had net connection some how. Whole buildings smashed, etc.
I've been through at least three I can remember the names of, agnes, frederick and opal. Agnes I though we were goners, we were supposed to evac, but all we had were bicycles so we stayed put and buttoned it down, little duplex on the beach I had with two girls, hmm, this was 72. It flooded the block and tore a lot of shingles off, etc. the next day we wandered around looking at what we called sea monsters, all kinza huge fish washed ashore and stranded. It was quite the mess. That whole neighborhood is gone now, it's all very expensive beachfront high rise hotels, etc. That was at madeira beach florida. Agnes hit much further north, we only got the sideways edge of it and it was one spooky night, tell ya what. Frederick I was living in my VW camper at the time, I stayed down at the beach as long as I could to enjoy it,sto9rms are pretty nifty if you like that sort of thing, then went inland to some campground and parked it in the middle of a field away from any trees with the windshield pointed towards the storm front. Pretty high winds but I don't think they went past 70 mph or so, so it was like driving on the freeway but sitting still except for some rocking. That was outside tampa as well. Hurricane Opal I was up in atlanta, it churned it's way a;; the way up there and knocked down thousands of trees all over, lady up the street from me had a huge tree squish her real pretty old 60's barracuda. My landlady at the time evacced to her basement, a big tree fell, penetrated her roof and drove a tree branch right through her bed where she would have been sleeping. Man, I got a lot of free woodchips and firewood after that storm, the powerline guys were begging for places to put the stuff, so I filled my driveway with it, then used it landscaping, etc. What a mess that storm was.
I've also been through some dandy blizzards and floods and forest fires and tornadoes, which got ot be the worst I think because the destruction is so total. Seen most of the usual natural disasters except for a big earthquake, and I'll pass on that.
thanks, plain didn't see it. Running slashdot lite here, didn't notice it, I don't look at the polls much, just the articles.
I have no idea why we don't have a hurricane thread running, it's big news. Slashdot is large enough to maybe have direct postings from the site,to actually *break some news*, see what folks got for emergency communications and gear working. I'm monitoring it on a dozen websites and trying to get some info off the emergency shortwave nets. I'm getting some info off of 14.325 and 14.265 megaherz.
a small (whatever size is needed I mean) writers co-op might work, they all chip in and get one machine for those various small runs. It's a possibility anyway.
To me it's like distros, I can't afford full price ones, and I can't download being on dialup, so the clone copy/sellers hit the sweet spot with me at price and convenience. Books might be a similar deal for a lot of people. I prefer dead trees myself for reading, but I can get by with digital on the screen, but it just doesn't feel the same and isn't as comfortable. A lot of people are just going to be incredibly cheap about it and always try to find comopletely free, but enough would be willing to pay reasonable fees. To me,cash wise were I the producer of the book or software or music or video, and needed some coin for it, reasonable and some is better than unreasonable and none.
no link but I know that is more or less true, and it's easy to see why. The 1900s began the age of serious transfer from horse/mule/oxen power to mechanised power. Much less pastures needed, they got abandoned and turned to forest. It also was the era that had people switching from firewood to fuel oil for heat and cooking, again, more trees left growing.
You can walk around in new england in the woods and just about as far back and deep as you want to go, you'll still find massive stone walls left over from when it was all mostly pasture and they cleared rocks every year out of the fields.
... just publish it and release it yourself? It's digital, it doesn't get much easier than that to publish, and you can contract dvd or cd burning and packaging yourself, or even do that yourself.
To me, and I'm not a downloader of anything that is gray market, music movies or games,so I got no dog in this fight, I just wonder why they charge those ridiculous prices, when they could severely drop the prices to very cheap and make it on volume sales. Like today, there's no reason music cds couldn't be 3 bucks retail at the store, they don't need to be 10 to 20 dollars. The companies would most likely even make more money and there would be less pirating/copying/trading going on if they had kept dropping prices as the technology let them. Instead, the rest of humanity noticed that "copies" were extremely cheap, that the technology had arrived and was universally avaialable, then they looked at the rip off prices still being charged, got pissed off, and went "screw it, they want to rip me, I'll rip them back first" and this stoopid digital war started. That's exactly what happened, and it never had to happen in the first place.
Now, it's up to the content producers to take charge of their own productions and start to cut the middleman skimmers out of the deal and go direct to the end user with your product, at very reduced rates. It has to be cheap enough and clean enough to let people get the content they want, yet still make ya'all a few coins. Seems like a happy medium would be possible, as long as you cut the middle man profit skimmers out of the transaction. IMO, that's about the only practical way this dilemma will be solved, unless we go to a totally regulated internet and a bunch more stupid draconian laws applying to everyone and with future hardware and software.
I have read them. Mostly, they were against a large centralised federal government, that's why they were careful to outline the only rights and duties of a federal government, delineated them, and left the rest by default to the states and more importantly, the soverign individual. It's bass ackwards from that now, everything from the large permanent standing army to phony counterfeit money to the sheer scale of it is just wrong. It's nothing like they wanted, and the proof is in the results, massive debt, insecurity, more corruption than you can shake a flock of prosecutors at.
...it's working now is such a resounding success story? Really? You believe that?
Nope, we've been doing it your way for a long time, and it's broken, broken to the tune of trillions in debt and crappy C- government at it's best. It's because we have career bureaucrats and career professional politicians, and little practical way to remove most of them, even when they screw up.
I would add an incentive to get people to WANT to serve in government, besides old fashioned actually WANTING to make government better, or maybe you forgot that in civics class, if you even took it. End the fiscal hypocrisy and huge layer of redundant busywork jobs created by taking tax money to pay for government, then turning around and taking taxes back away from the workers. Pay them a fair wage with some minimum benefits while they are in, but no taxes on them from the federal level. Then when they get out, there would be a huge incentive for them to vote for politicians and policies that would lead to continuation of cheaper more efficient government, and for maintaining jobs inside the US that actually pay well and have benefits., instead of what we have now, which is exactly the opposite in both design and outcome.
I'll repeat--we're DOING it your way now, I doubt you could find a dozen americans who thought the system was just swell now if you asked them. I have yet to meet a single human who thinks government is just great, everyone I know or have ever met thinks it's broken-because it IS. The system as it stands is broken, and only radical constructive change will fix it. The founders in no way, shape, manner or form envisioned a perpetual class of professional politicians and unelected edict spewing faceless bureaucrats and shuffling mostly busywork drones, that's one of the things they rebeled against. they also were totally against a large standing army, especially one being lead by a dictator. We fought against what we have now! Nuts! And they also weren't too happy with the idea of perpetual political parties hijacking government for that matter. We got warned against that, and it's unpatriotic to persue goals like that. It was supposed to be government SERVICE, not the government (our taxes) serving some class of people removed from any responsibility. The alleged "oversight" now is a big fat joke, it's corrupt, inefficient, and overstepping it's constitutional bounds by the hour. It is not fair and it's illogical to put even the unborn into lifelong debt to support this crooked bloated monstrosity we have now. Enough's enough.
...no "careers" in government. Elected, appointed or hired on, no full time leading to a pension careers. No exceptions. Make it something like 10 years maximum "service", then back to the private sector, with an additional several years cooling off period before you could lobby or sell or contract to the government in any manner. Put "service" back into "government service", and turn government back into "we the people" not "we the government ruling over them other folks, the people". It's turned into an "us versus them" deal now, with little in the way of accountability, and the election process hijacked by two for-maximum-profit criminal cartels so that they can run government as a jobs and profit center for themselves. That's just nutso to let that go on generation after generation.
.... the lower amounts of bribery that are even possible with open source. Governments by and large exist by cash payments, bribes, kickbacks and blackmail. When there's not a lot of money involved in a proposal, it doesn't have the potential to be corrupt.
And I'm not being a pessimist, just a realist about it. Corruption is more the norm than not in government, at any level.
The pilot could pedal for a minute or so prior to liftoff and tighten a coil spring, which would be used for the intital takeoff, just to get the blades up to speed faster. Don't know if that would violate the rules though.
....accumulating slashdot logins by the scads over the past year, almost like script kiddies with zombie machines. ...in fact .... looks around, lowers voice..... "we don't know who we can trust now...it could be anybody!"
...older PCs that have had windows taken off and replaced with linux. I bet every guy here-and around the world- who has ever run linux has done that, yet, it appears in no market surveys. That number has to be vastly higher than people who have never used linux and bought a brand new blank machine just to install linux, or got one with windows and then replaced it. We are right now seeing the opening salvos of serious numbers of machines coming with linux installed right from the beginning, so I think it's too early to say how successful it will be, but given the momentum and the huge worldwide interewst, my loot will be on linux or a linux styled free operating system becoming very common and even dominant within ten years or so. The last holdouts will be gamers, because increasingly, that's about all windows is useful for given it's apparent inability to ever be secure. Business is tired of getting burned, and consumers are past getting tired of it, many of them have now dropped significant money going -with new machines every time- from win 95 to 98 then to XP and it's still broken. You've hit the magic pain threshold with consumers,3 strikes and you are out, it's psychological, brand recognition is such now that people think windows=bugs, and as soon as they physically see with their eyeballs something that works as least as good and for a cheaper price they will switch, FUD not with standing. The biggest problem right now,IMO, is not seeing linux in retail space on running demo machines. As soon as that is cracked with some of the big chains you'll see an avalanche of switching.
"elitist" nerds are the *only* reason you even have a home desktop computer and ANY operating system that joe average-the cusp of mainstream, who have adopted them- can use. Early adopters and innovators and inventors mostly tend to be elitist because they are usually significantly more intelligent than any median in a given population. It makes them not want to hangout or interact with a large segment of the people around them in meatspace, and vice versa-they are just...too different, and that leads to involved sociological happenstances.
I'm not saying this should be, just that it is.
... what the globalist technofeudalist billionaire overlords want--willing serfs. Add in implanted RFID chips, remote controlled drug delivery, then this type of drug, you start to get a lot closer to the alpha to epsilon society. You will learn your place, and stay in your place, slave, and like it, literally.
of course I have heard of dividends. And, being careful to point out I was generally speaking, most people buy stocks in the expectation of re selling them for a higher price to someone who in turn wants to sell them for a higher price, and so on, which requires ever increasing amounts of new cash being introduced for the same stock, well above and beyond any rational expectations of the true earning of your average company. And by far most trading is centered around that activity, and that leads to a perpetual artifically created boom/bust cycle, rather than steady growth, which could theoretically have a more dividends scenario for people.
Now you can dispute these two points, but I think P and Es prove otherwise taken as both an aggregate and as an average in the market in general. I would wish that it was the opposite, that stocks were way more bought for the long haul and for dividend income, but I just don't think that's the case, most trading is done for speculative purposes, not for accruing long term ownership leading to dividends. And don't get me wrong. I am not totally against the stock market in it's theory or entirety, I just think it needs a lot of reform.
...one of the skits on the drew carey show "who's line is it anyway?". The skit was the german version of "who wants to be a filthy stinking rich millionaire". No matter the questions, "INVADE POLAND!" Was always one of the answers in the multiple choice.
they probably snagged the idea though.... it was still pretty funny
I'm no longer dealing with Acs who hit and run and start a reply with an insult. I'll give you one short reply, that's it.
Basically, you are giving the theory of stock markets,not the bulk of todays practice, and also completely ignoring all the paper products based on it that have little to do with investing in a company, things that are totally pure gambling, like the original topic of the article. Unless you consider hedges and derivatives to be actual products of any societal value beyond institutionalised fiscal irresponsibility.
There's a difference between scamming money and producing wealth, and if you think I approve of scamming money, you're wrong, I think it's abhorrent, no matter the scale. I know some folks think it's an admirable trait, to be able to scam tons of loot, I think it's no different from sticking up a package store.
Most of the stock market is a rip, you'll never hear a broker advise anything but buying or selling a stock, even when it's not in the clients best interest to advise otherwise.
Get an account if you want to continue, I'm going back to one reply per Ac only, hit and runs are of no interest to me.
Good deal for your dad, he understands the difference between long term investing in a company and speculative trading. I am against speculative trading as it does nothing but suck in innocent folks money and gives it to people who do little work for a lot of other peoples cash. The shills and snakeoil salespeople fall into that category, which is most of them in the newsletters and in broadcast. I think they are parasites more than businessmen, and I'd put the big brokerage houses in the same description, and I make no bones over my contempt for them and their advanced scammery. What you call morons are people who have been induced into it for the most part, promised magic beans for their cow, just in a slick sophisticated manner. Advanced buncoism is stillbuncosim, the scale doesn't matter, although many will try to justifyu it, they cannot change the facts. They get advised to speculate, although it's always called "investing"., same as millions get encouraged to get credit way beyond their means until it becomes a driving societal force, even encouraged by our central bank and their subsidieries in every neighborhood. They don't teach or encourage economic rationality or the differences between money and wealth anymore, they teach snakeoil trading and credit and discourage honest production in favor of middleman skimming.
I think it *sucks*. We need wall street reform badly, it's broken and out of control and will lead to something worse than '29 to '45.
You may not have read it here first, but you read it again anyway. Hope you enjoy eating your valuable stocks some time.
cool! for what it's worth, I've been playing with feather linux, another live CD distro. Only 64 megs but it's jam packed. Maybe you could get by with copies of that instead of a full huge live cd distro. It's a debian knoppix remaster, severely debloatified, and runs on older boxes OK.