... it's a lot more complicated than just a few sets of stats. And I'll also agree with you that some unions have shot themselves in the foot, I'll even give an example. Back in the 60's when I hit 18 I went to work in a car factory, joined the UAW. MAN were most of them dudes tards. I saw the japanese takeover with cars coming, and we were making EXCELLENT money for the time. My entry level pay was full benefits, many vacation days, etc, hourly wage over 3 times minimum wage and tons of overtime. It was plenty. Housing was cheap, cars cheap, it was "enough". That was off the street-goto work entry level. And they always wanted to go on strike for these huge increases. BUT, they would never make a bargaining point like "we demand better built cars, and keep a freeze on prices for several years in a row" or anything along those lines, to make sure their jobs stayed viable. I'd get in all sorts of arguments saying the japanese cars were well built, got good mileage, had acceptable power, and were cheap, so we better adapt. Got laughed at. Got told no one would ever buy japanese cars, that that was a fantasy, etc.
I was right, all them guys were wrong, simple as that.
I like being rational. I realise we live on the planet earth and are gonna trade around, so I support quid quo pro excise tariffs, with the other nations setting the rates, then the onus is on them to trade as fair as they want to, not on us. I support rational slow and controlled legal immigration, not uncontrolled chaos with the added benefit of complete loss of national security. I support war as a last resort, not just a convenience. I support an immediate manhattan level national effort to develop and deploy any alternative energy scheme we can come up with, to reduce dependence on imported petroleum, all the way to (perhaps) 100% tax credits like we had for a few years,I remember it, and it was effective, it just got shut off too soon. I support a certain amount of industries being declared "perpetually vital for national security", they would include agriculture, energy, and some basic manufacturing and production of metals/alloys, etc, because they ARE vital for national security, and insure that we always had enough of those industries domestically to support us. As in "no" tax breaks to move production offshore, like we still have now, that's just nuts.
As to foreigners "investing" in the US, well, in some aspects it's a little scary, them holding the bulk of our mortgages and government debt paper is...uhh.. well, it's just slap wrong, and I don't care ioif we make a few bucks on it short term, because that's all it is, if they are the ones raking in the interest and profits, it's more than what we make in essence working for them.. And if they want to come here and own property and build factories and whatnot, their respective governments MUST allow the same exact access to US citizens. This isn't the case now, they can come here and own outright,but several large nations we trade with DON'T allow that for us, notably japan, china and mexico. That should be illegal as well until those nations open up the playing field.
I'm for fair trade, rational trade, not this scam "free trade" they pull. That's a scam.
in the US, 50% don't even vote, and in the popular vote it was an almost even split, so only 25% of eligible adult voters elected bush.
Of course, we have an electoral college, they actually decide. It varies state to state how they do that though.
I support "no professional politicians". Single terms for every elected office. No more than 10 years total government service or involvement, and no pensions whatsoever. Medical and survivors bereavement benefits for veterans, or people in current employ only. Limit campaign contributions to 100$, from individuals only, no soft money from corporations, no lobbying gifts, trips, speakers fees, etc. Let's call bribes "bribes" and finalize outlawing them. It's not a free speech issue.
And stuff like that there, along those lines.
Basically, turn government back to being a peoples government, and not a separate class of connected washington insiders.
How to get people to vote? Easiest way,not my idea, but, I heard this before and it's really cool, make income tax deadline day be the day before the main elections, instead of april 15th. You'll get much higher voter participation, no doubt about it.. We could also declare voting day a national holiday, so no one has to choose between going to work or voting, and make it a full 24 hour vote period. It SHOULD be patriotic to vote, and it SHOULD make a difference. Maybe if we even had runoffs instead of just any number majority wins, call it you need 2/3rds to win, like a supermajority in congress, it would help, and having a ranking system on the candidates, with a zero being a legitmate number. There's lots of possibilities.
People are still "afraid" to vote third parties or independents, they got brainwashed into that "lookout! you'll 'waste' your vote" meme, and you hear party activists from both the democrats and the republicans saying that. Don't "waste" your vote. Phooie. They just want to keep a lock on the process, like it's written someplace that we can only have democrats or republicans, forever and ever, like it's the law or something. To me, a vote not cast is the only wasted vote. I've been voting for decades, hardly ever got my guy in, so what, I voted who I wanted, not who I thought would win, and I won't vote against someone either.
Besides that, don't know. Whenever I hear people in meatspace bitching about somethin in politics/government, I question them, it's tricky but effective.. usually they get embarrased quickly, they can't hardly name any persons in politics, don't really know what's going on, but sure can rattle off their "teams" roster and the latest scores, or how their favorite band is doing, craplike that. I then nail them on some current events or names, get blank stares, and I go "How do you come to your opinion if you aren't aware of the issues or names?" Along those lines. Basically, I shame them, politely, show them they really don't know what's going on, then point them in a few directions in case they decide they SHOULD find out more and get active. Probably not effective, but dang if I'm going to stand there and nod my head "yes" to blather from people who really have nothing more than the most meager 15 second sound bite awarness of what's going on, then they think I should value their opinions or something. I just can't do that anymore, lost my patience long ago with that.
I can appreciate someone I really disagree with, AS LONG AS they have at least done some reading and research into a topic. Those people can learn from you, and you can learn from them, it's important to be honest and open to new data and be able to adjust your opinion, I certainly have over the years, I'm not static except from the POV of always trying to find out the real truth in a matter. I DETEST being lied to.. But the "don't bother me with any more facts, my mind is made up" crowd are nuts, better to just shine them folks on, it's a waste of calories dealing with them on anything more than the most trivial matters. doesn't mean they can't be nice people in all other aspects, but if it's anything important having to do with politics and directions and government, if their minds are locked, they are lost, they drank the kool aid, poisoned themselves. Just move on then.
...except for the camera angle. but all in all, smooth.
Funniest one I ever read about was the phony night deposit box. All official looking, placed next to the banks night deposit slot, tape a BORKEN, DON'T USE sticker over the real one. The thing sat there until it was stuffed,lotta bars and restaurants, etc stuffing it in after closing time. The perps were rolling it into their truck in the early AM, (they got guard uniforms on), the real cops show up and HELP THEM LOAD IT UP.
the reference to pearl harbor is inside one of the downloadable documents from their site called "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century"
I read it a long time ago but don't have a copy now, I wiped my drive when I reinstalled OS last time, what I usually do, BTW, so I just relooked where it's located. the other documents are good there, too, to get a feel for the background of these guys and what they wanted. You can also reference who is connected to which international corporation, see where the money goes. Lot of the same guys there who really wanted us in the war sem to be profiting handsomely.
In it,back to the reference, paraphrasing, after first arguing for a huge massive increase in military preparedness and for getting the US on the ground in the mideast, says that it will be slow to get the US people to swallow it, short of a pearl harbor like event. and then-we had that event. And when theysay they had no prior knowledge, no idea, that they just missed it, that there was an "intelligence failure", etc..well, that's a whopper.
Plenty of websites out there have overlapping credible evidence that shows that there was prior knowledge, at least good enough for any normal grand jury. And the whitewash commission is just that, a whitewash.
Websites with a lot of the info about the lie of the "intelligence failure" abound on the web now,there's hundreds of them, so I won't pick out any particular one link, it's easy to find for anyone so inclined.
Now, I don't disagree that the US should always be strong, and it is the US governments and military's business to protect the US--I just don't think they have been doing it,they made it much worse, not better, and I sure don't trust anyone in the past few administrations. Plenty of evidence to show some serious shenanigans and malfeasance going on across major party lines there. Plenty.
if you are in a flying craft, you want range as well as power. Higher MPG gives you longer range. Even if you can afford it and the fuel is there, be a real PITA to have to land every 50 miles and fill up again.
If it was mine, I'd want as long a range as possible, sacrafice some of the speed instead. It could go 100 MPH slower that what they are claiming it's speed is going to be, but that still leaves it plenty fast compared to tooling down the highway in your normal ride.
Still neat, hope he finally gets it working enough so it can be produced, then rich guys buy enough of them to get the prices down. Maybe joe average won't be able to afford one by himself, but like planes are owned now, a few guys chip in and buy them. That's real common now with personal aircraft.
Just in the installation program, check custom install, then go check off what you want. You can pare it down a lot that way. It's not as detailed as I would like it to be, but you can carve off big huge chunks if you want to on initial install.
You can also just keep what you have, wait for the downloads to settle down in a coupla weeks, then do just apt-get or yum upgrades in pieces as well. Well, or so I hear. I've never done it, but they claim you can. I'm on dialup, so I just send off get the disks, a lot easier that way.
But ya,I know what you mean. In another discussion I was turned onto Vector Linux, basically shrunken redhat, go check it out.
On the contrary, the Project for A New American Century group, a coupla dozen high ranking neocons, CLEARLY outlined what they were going to do once they got in power. It's all on their publically available website. Some of it is in PDF downloads, but it's there. They planned to invade basically the oil producing nations of the middle east, and some others. They got in power, in charge,and wow, they invaded. They also said they needed a "pearl harbor" like event in advance to justify the invasion, and get the US people all enthused around it, and golly gee mother of all coincidences, that event occurred..
I mean, it's real, it's there, you can see the names, the documents, it's written clearly, and the mass controlled media won't hardly ever mention it. I've seen very brief mentions at the best. I have yet to meet anyone in meatspace who has ever heard of them or their documents though. Wonder why that is? And I know it's been posted on slashdot several times, by various people, as well as on literally thousands of other forums and blogs. Radio talk show hosts all over have been clued in, but only a small handful even bother to acknowledge it, let alone come to the obvious conclusions looking at it. Journalists by the thousands have been clued in, yet there's a severe lack of coverage by most of the big names out there.
No I don't blame democrats, or republicans, I blame the US people in general for being so unbelievably stupid and naieve and un-caring for this disaster. We are a nation of sports and entertainment addicts more than anything else. No one gives a crap. They are taught from the time they are toddlers to NOT give a crap. They are taught to parrot one of two party lines that are always essentially complete lies, and to be happy with that, and to never go further than to keep corralled into one of those two parties and to swallow down the 6 o clock news pablum. So they do it, brainwashing since being able to understand human speech is quite effective apparently. They simply refuse to learn from history,and they refuse to acknowledge reality, and that's why we generation after generation keep getting hosed. You are force fed you are either a liberal-democrat, or a conservative-republican and that is SUCH A LOAD OF CRAP. I am so amazed people keep falling into that trap.
.. already out there now. Like I'd like to see a lot of the Black Vault's thousands of documents translated, just for one interesting example, one of many. woo hoo this is cool!
... they changed the sampling methods in 95. How much they changed it I'd have to go back and look, but I know it affected it a lot. They also changed the way they count folks receiving unemployment insurance checks just last year, in january of last year if I am remembering correctly. They used to keep counting them for awhile after the last check went out, now they don't, until you get to the U-6 numbers, which they do NOT use on TV, and the reason is that the U-6 is much higher, and much truer.
Really, jobs ARE an issue. We've been shipping off-shore jobs now at an extremely steady pace for many years, and shipping in illegals at the an even higher pace. That has caused severe stress in the market, many more people competing for fewer jobs. You can read business news article after article about it, point to about any big company, you can find articles where they ceased domestic production, laid off people, shipped production overseas. You'd have a hard time finding companies that haven't done this. It's almost daily it appears, and contrast that to say new factories going in, hiring thousands, etc, those are pretty rare now. Now neither of those are absolutes,they are broad statements, but the gist is true in the aggregate. Look at every article posted here, how many guys will chime in and say they are having a harder time finding quality work, even guys with decades of experience. Look at that last article on being forced to train your replacements. It's real stuff, it's happening. It's happened to me several times now, had two factories I worked at shipped overseas. Had another job I worked at for over a decade get so diluted with laid off blue collar guys entering it in desperation from losing their jobs that it went from well paid and plenty of hours to struggle to get a 40 hour week out of it, a lot of times couldn't. On and on, and I know I ain't alone. And I can remember quite clearly what the job market was in the 60's on to now, I've always followed the business news, and I'll just state it's a lot harder to get a job,that production has dramatically gone overseas in the last two decades, and it's a lot harder to get a well paid job, and it's a lot harder to get a well paid job with good benefits. That's just my anecdotal, but you can see examples all over the nation, that's why we see so many articles about it, it's of interest to so many people, because so many people are in the same boat. Your job poofs, you get another, that job poofs, it takes you longer to find another, then that job poofs, even longer, the replacements pay less etc. and people DO increase their skills, retrain, learn new things, etc, but even that now it's starting to suck bad. It takes time, money, skill, tools, training to get a completely different job, and if they aren't there anyway-what then?
These numbers-whatever they are-represent real humans in real trouble now. It is NOT the same it was 30 or 20 or 10 years ago, not even close. If it was great, you just wouldn't see all the interest in it, all the controversy, all the articles. This isn't a vaporware issue, it's real, and it has gotten steadily worse for a long time, with the exception of a few years in the mid 90's (the dot com boom obviously) to 2001, then it slumped again. Look at it like I said in conjunction with the other numbers, level of bankruptcies, level of mortgage defaults, etc. It's just real, don't know what else I can say about it. If you insist that the economy is just fantastic and that there's no difference in employment levels and wage scales, etc, from years ago...well, not much more to be said then. I've showed the numbers, showed that the practical unemployment level is hovering at 10%,not this 5-6% they always quote, you can go look at the other stats in the other areas, they all suck bad. They all add up to a jobs and income crisis, there's no other way to characterise it. There's nothing else I can do in this conversation, you can believe those numbers mean it's just great all you want, or no different from years past, I see it now
maybe offer to do some of the sound (intros, backgrounds, whatever)for new video games, that gets people to listen to your stuff, they'll go look for more of it.
Got a favorite distro? I think it'd be a hoot if every new distro that was given away contained some MP3s as well, people could use them to test out their sound configs after a fresh install. I always wondered why we didn't have that anyway, at least a few tunes and a few vid clips with new releases. Heck, most releases are several CDs long now anyway, so whut the heck, a few more megs won't make much of a difference.
I think the peer to peer internet streaming projects are all worthwhile efforts(not file trading, direct spawning streaming), being involved in them, to get people using those sorts of technologies, could help spread awareness as more independent broadcasters start appearing. And also make sure you are being played on the normal shoutcast/icecast whatever channels someplace, even if it's only *some* streams.
Besides that, not sure. I'll think on it more, still waking up right now.
I have a BIL been playing professionally for over 20 years, but never made it past the local bar venues on the weekends, and always just had a regular job during the week. He's happy enough doing that, it's more just fun for him than anything else.
Hmm cross -artist compilation releases? collaborate with other artists to do albums, each band/artist gets one track, use combined distribution efforts as a force multiplier. usually when you see something like a "best of beach music from the 60's" it's just that, real old stuff. I don't remeber ever seeing a "new" CD or album that had all different bands on it. People might want to sample that, knowing at least they will get variety if nothing else.
Basically you are trying to figure out how to break several overlapping near monopolies..and it's just gonna be hard. I don't think there will be any single one solution, you'll have to get pretty creative to work around it. Both in the music and in the distribution/marketing. The way it is so easy to make copies, you'll have to be very content with extraordinarily cheap copies and do volume as much as possible. On the airtime, really, that will only be broken once microbroadcasting is legitimised more, and is more accepted and used by the listening public. The net is just as viable now formost purposes, but over the air is still good, too, obviously, but as you say, clear channel, etc just overhwlems most of the stations. Only way around that is to overhwlem clear channel stations on a 10 to one basis with microbroadcasters. That, and netbroadcasting.
The market is saturated, too, it really is. How many bands and individuals are there now trying to be full time professionals, just inside the US? It has to be hundreds of thousands, easy. There's at least one per city, no matter how small, and larger cities can have hundreds or thousands just there. That's a completely saturated market. And it's obvious they sure can't all be full time professionals. Maybe that's just the reality of it.
I lived in vermont for 6 months, it was beautiful. Looks to me sorta like what switzerland is supposed to look like, just smaller. And remember, you are the only state in the union that "gets it" on the second amendment. There's worse places to live. And the freestate project is next door.
St. Albans was the place,BTW, home to the furthest north city to be successfully sacked by the confederacy! yee, haww, that was one sneek attack!
I always thought that was just funny as heck. Not funny back then, but sure funny now.
Ya, there seems to be a lot of similarity in the party "extremists", The major differences are just how much government is enough. Both sides are seeing the light on the multinationals. the left is finally seeing the light on the necessities of self defense and to not trust the government, the right is finally figuring out that you can't start restricting freedoms on others, because it will turn around, byte you on the butt. From the right, they see some sort of weird NWO global government, from the left they see giant corporations just running everything and polluting and screwing workers, etc.
It's a floorwax! No, it's a dessert topping! Stop fighting you boys, it's BOTH!
heh heh heh original SNL was a scream....
I tend to fall on to the "less is more" category, just given the nature of government to de-evolve into hopeless bureaucracy. Any time we can shift any piece of government to a more local level, it works better. Once you can get on a first name in your face basis with government, you can at least get heard, and maybe get the problem solved. You keep adding layers, you add complexity and stupidity. Intelligence never gets magnified, it's stupidity that compounds and accrues interest.....
I thought about other nations, never really considered it a whole lot though. Brazil seems interesting, has a lot of potential,a LOT, but who knows. Mozambique is welcoming smart farmers immigrants and offering cheap land. They saw what happened in rhodesia/zimbabwe,and what's gonna happen in SA, and want NO part of that action, they recognize "good farmers=lotsa chow" and aren't lamers like mugabwe. Nice climate, cheap land, etc. Who knows though.
I once wrote a real long detailed proposal on colonizing antarctica,took me like 6 weeks to write it up, just a good outline, that was a hoot, I even tried to shop the idea to some pretty wealthy dudes (no I won't say, to protect me from embarassement, ha), never got much response tho......
amazing the way you'll burn up energy when you are young..
hey, listening to this dude on the rad-ee-oo right now, he sez that when gasoline hits 3 clams a gal, it'll be cost comparative with ethanol (corn likker basically, sugar beets,spuds, carrots whatever). With a regular carb, your jets need to be 50% bigger, more or less, and she'll run. I made a little a long time ago when I was doing all my alt energy experimenting, ran a suzuki 250 (mine), a 500 (friends), and my old cox chainsaw on it. Worked OK,little harder to start,but it ran, not bad for first batch. I just wanted to try it, see if it was easy. It was.
you are more than welcome to make your own title, copy it, share it, even fix the typos! Freely released under the universal internet forum ranters posting license.
my dad had one he built way back in ww2 when he was a radar tech, it was hilarious and he burned me with it good when I got older. It was a book with a hot babe on the cover, he'd hand it to you and say "check it out, hot babes" and etc. Well, any righteous red-blooded dude out there is gonna lose any amount of normal smarts he has and quick open it up.... ZAPPPP you'd get a good one.... man you felt stoopid then... HAHAHAHAHAH!
Some friends of mine got their two teenage boys matching electric scooters for Christmas last, they said they paid 100$ for them. They seemed zippy enough , was watching them blast around the hood on them. Me, though, I would prefer a gas powered assist. I used to have one, YEARS ago called an aquabug, it bolted onto the front forks of basically any bike, would go around 30, and you could still pedal all you want. Wish they still made the things, they were great, got fantastic mileage. I drove mine all over bolted onto an old solid but heavy schwinn 10 speed. You could haul some serious cargo (groceries, laundry, etc) on the back and still go up hills real easy. At the time IIRC they were around 150$, (I swapped for mine but that's what I remember they were going for) and most likely they might be the same today if they still sold them, economies of scale, etc. What was really nice is, being front wheel drive, when you pedaled you were in all-wheel drive, a nice ride. they sucked until you got going more than 5 mph though, front steering heavy, but after that they cruised nice. I think they only weighed around 15 lbs, I know it wasn't that bad to shoulder it and hump it to my upstairs apartment I had at the time.
... I have seen,including the analysis of others and my own, points to a severe crisis around the end of this decade to the middle of the next decade, and it might go all the way to total war. The demands for oil are rising so rapidly, and the *apparent* supplies shrinking so fast, something is gonna pop. there's enoug oil to more or less support what we have now currently, but there sure isn't enough to make any sort of middle class for another few hundred million chinese, indians, moslems, africans, latin americans, etc, it simply cannot be done, there aren't enough raw materials in the world for that, and oil and water are #1 & 2 respectably. You can't have the bulk of the planet living like americans and industrialised europaens. It can NOT be done now, not enough energy or materials, but the pressure is for exactly that to happen.
whoops
China thinks the same. They are averaging a 10% aggregate increase per year in military spending, and all of it is either tasked to assymetrical and cyber warfare, or to conventional force-projection warfare. And they make no distinction between civilian and military assets,and in that case, they have the most ships and planes in the world already, ie, the biggest navy and air force. Granted, these are not all pure warfare machines, but they think quite differently, they think nothing of putting cruise missiles on a normal freighter in a container for example. they now have a missile frigate. That's how they think, use a "force multiplier". They are, without any doubt what-so-ever, getting ready for the next war, and they plan to win it, and a primary military directive (that you can read, they don't even hide it) they labor under is "first strike and hard strike is the best strike".
We stand a better than even chance of getting our butts kicked, hard. China has no other option than to expand by 2010 to 2015 time period, and all the clues point to them prepping for it now. It's as obvious as the japanese build up before we embargoed them before ww2, or the buildup of the german military forces in the mid 30's. It's REAL obvious.
Now china has never really attempted that on any huge scale, but there's a first time for everything, and they will have the advantage of having literally millions of technicians/workers/students/business men already deployed overseas, which means a large part of them will be dual soldiers, and they are heavy into areas of interest vital to the US now. For example, they are all over mexico, inside canada a lot, in venezuela, and various places in africa, including the sudan, a rowboat ride across from saudi arabia. Lotta other places, too, they are always buddying up to the various oil producing nations. There's a reason for that, and it's because the abacus comes from there, and they know how to count, and the numbers say "#$%^&^&!!!11!, we bettah do something!" to them.
Makes ya stop and think what the heck is going on here with our current foreign policy and trade practices..
and many of the remnants of the independent ranchers totally agree with you. What has happened over the last 30 years in ranching is that the stockyards and big feedlots/packers conglomerates have monopolized marketing to the extent that a lot of ranchers were forced into selling at a loss, or went under. A few who owned their land outright, and more importantly could still market effectively, have done quite well on grass fed beef, but they are in a severe minority now. I prefer grass fed myself, and I also agree on the economics of using grains for the beef critters-it's quite nuts and wasteful..
On a dairy, it's better to have a larger herd, the equipment costs are (I am being quite broad now)almost the same for a 50 cow herd as a 500, so it just makes sense to try and max out there, even if the daily chores are more. It would also lead to schemes such as the methane plant being more cost effective to implement. With free range grass fed ranching, it isn't practical, your methane producing stock (heh) is not all easy to scoop up, it's all over yonder all over the pastures. On a dairy it is highly concentrated and you got to do something with it. Same with the poultry farmers now, MAN, they get a lot. usually now it'scomposted, then spread, it's held in very large barns for a year or so, various EPA regs and so on to control runoff. I think that's reasonable, although I'd like to see them use more methane production as well, and in fact, that's where a lot of the large methane plants are now.
heh, one of my jobs on a dairy once, head poop scooper in the free stall barn. man, that's a lotta stuff! I used a bobcat to scoop to an underground chain driven dealie that moved it outside and directly into a HUGE spreader wagon. That's exactly why I built that example small digester I was talking about in my post. Saw all that methane gas going to waste, thought it would save joe farmer some cash, maybe get me a raise...maybe.
Nope. too hippy of an idea....
Back to ranching, it's very close to being akin to desktop dominance with the big packers. In fact I'd say it's a worse monopoly than with MS. There are few alternatives, you go with the packers and sell your beef, or struggle spend half your time developing a market rather than ranching. the independnets hate it, but they are enscrewed in it. There's some effort going on now with the independents to get some sort of anti trust relief, but it's a struggle for them, as you can imagine.
And as to land valuation, etc, there's a vital interst there that goes beyond current day to day economics. Food isn't a luxury. To me, it is more important to have widely diverse and localized points of production in "food", same as I mentioned for energy. In a crisis, or say something happens, transportation gets borked, fuel costs skyrocket from some new war, etc(man, if that ain't happening now, sheesh), you are gonna want *real close by* food production. It'll come in handy. The average US grocery store has around 3 days food before they are tapped. In a crisis, you don't want to rely totally on stuff being able to get shipped in from thousands of miles away, not all of it anyway, and with what might get in, you sure ain't gonna wanna pay them prices.
I don't think you can place an adequate $ price on that, that can address the main issue there.. That's why I think nations as a rule should first always make sure they are completely indpendent on food and fresh water and energy supply and a nice bare minimum manufacturing, it is just too critical for national security to ignore or to "farm" it out to another nation, even if it involves protectionism to some degree. Human necessities SHOULD be protected, other products, just "wants" and luxuries, sure, let the market determine what gets done where, no problems there much from my POV as long as the tariffs are equitable.
... I understand what you are saying and agree pretty much with it. it seems if both parties in the work contract can stick to a certain amount of reasonalbness, then things will neither get out of hand or descend into boring unproductive heck-fire.
Oh man, your ugly trucks. I can relate. I worked for a company for years made me wear a fluroescent orange shirt. I mean that sucker was loud. I can't even say the name of the company it's even lamer and more embarrassing. But.. I got a lot of work from them and they treated me more or less OK.
I just checked the latest real stats at the BLS website. Go down the chart and look at U-6. That's the sum total of unemployed, the figures the TV normally uses in "business reports" stop at U-3. this is fairly common knowledge, BTW, but the lower number is mostly used for propoganda purposes, once you wipe away the shilling grins of the TV/WS casino traders and various politicians trying to make things look rosy. That's an opinion,I admit it, but it's based on these two quite different numbers.
U-3, which is commonly used for the news shows,the most quoted and used in an argument to show how great the economy is, which counts any sort of employment, is as of April 2004 = 5.4 %
Sounds good, not too bad! Well, lets mosey on down the chart a scosh.
U-6, which is total unemployed including distressed workers, part time (no matter how part time), marginally attached, etc, what I am referring to is, as of april 2004 = 9.3 %
here is their little explanation that will cover U-6
Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want
and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally
attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for a job. Persons employed part time for economic
reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule. For further
information, see "BLS introduces new range of alternative unemployment measures," in the October 1995 issue of the Monthly Labor
Review. Beginning in January 2004, data reflect revised population controls used in the household survey.
url for reference
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm
There's also a practical consideration with telephone surveys. It's pretty simple, although alien to most people nowadays,especially on slashdot I would guess, but very poor and broke people--uhh, these unemployed we are talking about- in a lot of cases do not have telephones in order to be surveyed. That's usually the first utility to get shut off. I can personally think of 4 families in my (poor underemployed, rural) neighborhood where no telephone exists. Myself, having a cell service, landline and internet connection, am an exception to the rule around here. I don'tknow anyone else around here who has internet. Even the couple of households I know about that have a landline do not have internet. Two families I know of, the father has a beeper, but no phone, they need to drive 2.5 miles to a payphone. I don't know everyone around here yet, but I know the closest people except for one house, who pretty much stay to themselves and don't seem too friendly so I don't push it. The house looks good(large and expensive), I am assuming they have a phone based on that.
That last is just anecdotal, but I hope my points on the *real* numbers are more clear now, and also why telephone surveys might not be as accurate as some claim. By their own admission, the real numbers on a "practical" look on unemployment are almost twice as high (roughly) as they usually use for TV reports. Now, after that, I am of the opinion-note, I said opinion only- it is still lowballed for a few more percentage points. I have reasons for that opinion, fairly involved, some arcane,some I could spend more time on and provide references but I really don't feel like it right now, but all in all I think it's lowballed. I would guess it'scloser to 12 %. I've shown it's offically lowballed already, close to 10, and last month it was slightly over 10% by their own numbers. It will lower next month as high school kids get summer jobs, that will happen too, usually a percent and a fraction then.
I will also freely admit that black market/illegal working is not included, even though no one brought that up to me yet. I have no rational figures to access for inclusion (I don't
oh yes, it's all imaginary. That's why a lot of the presidential election bantering is about "jobs", because there is so little unemployment. That's what's drawing a lot of the crowds at some campaign stops, people have noticed that they are not working. It sneaks up on you eventually come bill paying time. they look around, see jobs going overseas, jobs that stay here are being slipped to undocumented immigrants, and they wonder "why" this is going down.
So do I.
We are a soverign nation that looks out for it's OWN citizens first, or we aren't. Either borders and patriotism have meaning, or they don't. Either the people elect reps to represent them, or they merely hire-on paid off industry spokespeople to pass laws for some international companies, while maintaining some illusion of self government and a little rational nationalism.
As to minimum wage, yes, as long as there isn't a maximum wage or some equivalent thereof,anything to stem the tide of returning to serfdom and maximum monopolistic exploitation, and as long as they have an income tax system and legal personhood for corporations instead of import/export and excise -use taxes and named-humans responsible for their actions as replacements respectively.
As to unions, yes, in general, I think they are pretty necessary now, as to the public government mandated teachers unions, I am in favor of home schooling and private schooling, and eliminating the entire federal department of education. If that means less public teachers, so be it. If they can exist in a private setting, and get a decent wage, more power to them. I LIKE teachers for the most part, I dislike a lot of the agenda of the NEA, way too radical big government for me, too much social engineering brainwash action is emphasized. I am in favor of constitutionally limited government, and some over all decent prrotections for the people under the general welfare clause, protections against exploitation, fraud and abuse. For better or worse, they put it in there, it can be abused, and it has, but in some situations it's a good idea. It's on a case by case basis, which immediately removes it from a single thread sort of discussion, as there are literally thousands of different "types" of cases that you could discuss.
they are liable to a limited extent, but they enjoy certain laws and priveleges that apply to corporations, namely, the contract is with a non -human, an artifical person. Originally, corporations *didn't* have this ability to have a separate entity that assumed all the risks and liabilities. They were required to have named humans always have the liability, ie, they couldn't just blame actions on a thing that isn't a human, because on the face of it, it's absurd. OF COURSE humans make all the decisions, either the CEO who may be the majority owner can make the big ones, or a board, or whatever, however it's setup, but THEN they assign this decision to "the corporation" a "thing" that doesn't exist except as a legal abstract.
I merely and simply propose a return to the original design.
The law that changed this all is santa clara vs southern pacific railroad, many google links exist for the nitty gritty details.
You can also google for the original intent of states to grant corporate charters-they weren't automatic, and they had provisions beyond "only making the shareholders money". They USE to be required to be of the public benefit and use as well, and "the public" were the citizens of the state in which they were granted the charter. If the company committed to an action that harmed the public, they were dissolved. It's a matter of degree of course, but it was not-contrary to what the predatory capitalists contend- "only" to maximise profits for the owners and shareholders, even though they repeat that falswehood constantly.
In the famous case, the 14th amendment was applied (indirectly but it was there) to an abstract, this abstract given "human" status. And in it's enforcement, giving natural rights to a fictitious abstract, a mere construct, they allowed that layer of removal from responsibility to the humans who make up the corporation, because you can't put a contract in jail. You can't make a piece of paper do hard labor.
People have argued over it for years, but the fact remains, immediately after the civil war, and the amendment which made all humans legally "human", they then went and made a contract human.
It's nuts. I mean it's crazy, out to lunch, weird, obviously borked, cuckoo. It's a real schweet deal for them, but it's still *nuts*.
It is not as important to note if it is a privately held or publically held corporation, as it it is to note if they *are* a corporation or not. About the only real practical difference is number of humans involved in the two, and who calls the shots, and there's so many variations of how they can go about it the point is moot anyway.
cool link, thanks, I'm going to look into these guys and run their products past my friend, see what he thinks about them. I really like the no maintenace aspects of it, and being multi fuel. Seems like a serious winner here. Electric or heat or cooling from the same unit...hmm, sounds like what joe homeowner needs, doesn't it?
--it's only been recently that music was purposefully made to not be recorded from. I used to record to reel to reel from vinyl and off the airwaves. As soon as the technology got there for joe home user, we could use it. What's different now is, these various industries want all the use of modern high technology to increase productivity and lower their expenses,to increase profits, but they don't want anyone else to have access to roughly the same technoilogy. And they most definetly COLLUDE to keep that in place, ie, "break the law".
Well, that just sucks. They've had years to adjust to changing times, all they have done is legislate away our rights to use technology so they can maintain a pricing schedule that reflects standards from years ago, and to keep it that way, forever.
Music and art used to be live only,and expensive, it was restricted to kings and such like that could afford to hire musicians and artists, or to people freely sharing with others, the local hoe down. Then it got to be recorded,first on paper rolls, then wax cylinders then vinyl, then tape now digital on hard magnetic media or plastic that is embedded, etc, and it's cheap beyond belief.
That's reality. But, it was expensive way back when it was first able to be copied for later use and didn't require the artists to be there to hear it (or view it), and they charged accordingly, but it was BECAUSE it was still difficult to make copies. It was more or less fair then, because it was still hard to do, it was expensive to make those copies.
Now, this isn't so, yet they still want the higher fees of yester-year, and, frankly, people revolted eventually. They revolted because the rip off prices were-revolting. Quite revolting.
The music and movie industry is going through changes, and they will NOT suceed in keeping technology away from people, so my best advice to them is to come up with a new way of doing things or get left in the dust.
Perhaps they may need to come to grips that there are so many people making music and art, that our society can't support those millions *just* doing that for a living, and if that is so, we will also no longer support an artifical class of music and art copier middle men.
It could be that the expensive media middlemen copiers and sellers are the buggy whip retailers of the 21st centyury, and their business is close to becoming completely obsolete, and they just can't stand the thought of having to go get another job after decades of some extraordinary fat city profits. Seems like everyone else around here is in the same boat, what makes them so special that it can't affect them as well? Joe rustbelt assembly line worker is told he's too expensive and tough crap, he can be replaced at a dime on the dollar, and gets replaced. Joe keyboartd banger is now being told he can be replaced by another person someplace else for a dime on the dollar, and too bad to him too. So what makes these music and art copying mechanics all that special? the answeer is NOTHING, they can be replaced, and quite easily, and for not dimes but PENNIES on the dollar, so tough crap to them, too, they are in the same boat everyone else is in now.
It looks to me more and more that what artists that are hip and honestly understand what is happeneing and are smart enough to deal with it and the various consumers of said art will get closer together, and just keep bypassing the middlemen, to the point of making independent studios and marketing concerns and professional copying mechanics massively and redundantly *unnecessary*. for most practical purposes, they are NO LONGER NEEDED IN OUR ECONOMY.
Maybe I am wrong, but that is what it looks like to me. The tools avaialable to both the productive artists and to the end users of that art are fantastic now, stuff that only the most wealthy of businesses could assemble and use just ten years ago. Well, it follows then then those specialty niche industries that used to be necessary in the middle are on the way out, they have been a
... the more I think you may be correct as regards closed source propietary software. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see stolen code in a lot of it, if it was honestly audited by independent third parties. Right now, fat city for them, snag what they want, claim it as their own, no one (more or less, very broadly speaking) can look at it. Change a little here and there, poof,it's their "own" IP.
We really did base a lot of our productive growth on extremely cheap oil and by extremely cheap products from overseas that we bought with petrodollars.
I think the gravy train is over, we are cruising on inertia now more than anything. And as we watch, the dollar is being quietly abandoned as the world's reserve currency. I think almost ALL made up money digits from this nation or that will gradually lose worth, to be replaced with tangible products. The oil producers are sitting in the pilots seat now, from here on out, along with the manufacturing titans, notably china.
Slashdot Mirror
... it's a lot more complicated than just a few sets of stats. And I'll also agree with you that some unions have shot themselves in the foot, I'll even give an example. Back in the 60's when I hit 18 I went to work in a car factory, joined the UAW. MAN were most of them dudes tards. I saw the japanese takeover with cars coming, and we were making EXCELLENT money for the time. My entry level pay was full benefits, many vacation days, etc, hourly wage over 3 times minimum wage and tons of overtime. It was plenty. Housing was cheap, cars cheap, it was "enough". That was off the street-goto work entry level. And they always wanted to go on strike for these huge increases. BUT, they would never make a bargaining point like "we demand better built cars, and keep a freeze on prices for several years in a row" or anything along those lines, to make sure their jobs stayed viable. I'd get in all sorts of arguments saying the japanese cars were well built, got good mileage, had acceptable power, and were cheap, so we better adapt. Got laughed at. Got told no one would ever buy japanese cars, that that was a fantasy, etc.
I was right, all them guys were wrong, simple as that.
I like being rational. I realise we live on the planet earth and are gonna trade around, so I support quid quo pro excise tariffs, with the other nations setting the rates, then the onus is on them to trade as fair as they want to, not on us. I support rational slow and controlled legal immigration, not uncontrolled chaos with the added benefit of complete loss of national security. I support war as a last resort, not just a convenience. I support an immediate manhattan level national effort to develop and deploy any alternative energy scheme we can come up with, to reduce dependence on imported petroleum, all the way to (perhaps) 100% tax credits like we had for a few years,I remember it, and it was effective, it just got shut off too soon. I support a certain amount of industries being declared "perpetually vital for national security", they would include agriculture, energy, and some basic manufacturing and production of metals/alloys, etc, because they ARE vital for national security, and insure that we always had enough of those industries domestically to support us. As in "no" tax breaks to move production offshore, like we still have now, that's just nuts.
As to foreigners "investing" in the US, well, in some aspects it's a little scary, them holding the bulk of our mortgages and government debt paper is...uhh.. well, it's just slap wrong, and I don't care ioif we make a few bucks on it short term, because that's all it is, if they are the ones raking in the interest and profits, it's more than what we make in essence working for them.. And if they want to come here and own property and build factories and whatnot, their respective governments MUST allow the same exact access to US citizens. This isn't the case now, they can come here and own outright,but several large nations we trade with DON'T allow that for us, notably japan, china and mexico. That should be illegal as well until those nations open up the playing field.
I'm for fair trade, rational trade, not this scam "free trade" they pull. That's a scam.
in the US, 50% don't even vote, and in the popular vote it was an almost even split, so only 25% of eligible adult voters elected bush.
Of course, we have an electoral college, they actually decide. It varies state to state how they do that though.
I support "no professional politicians". Single terms for every elected office. No more than 10 years total government service or involvement, and no pensions whatsoever. Medical and survivors bereavement benefits for veterans, or people in current employ only. Limit campaign contributions to 100$, from individuals only, no soft money from corporations, no lobbying gifts, trips, speakers fees, etc. Let's call bribes "bribes" and finalize outlawing them. It's not a free speech issue.
And stuff like that there, along those lines.
Basically, turn government back to being a peoples government, and not a separate class of connected washington insiders.
How to get people to vote? Easiest way,not my idea, but, I heard this before and it's really cool, make income tax deadline day be the day before the main elections, instead of april 15th. You'll get much higher voter participation, no doubt about it.. We could also declare voting day a national holiday, so no one has to choose between going to work or voting, and make it a full 24 hour vote period. It SHOULD be patriotic to vote, and it SHOULD make a difference. Maybe if we even had runoffs instead of just any number majority wins, call it you need 2/3rds to win, like a supermajority in congress, it would help, and having a ranking system on the candidates, with a zero being a legitmate number. There's lots of possibilities.
People are still "afraid" to vote third parties or independents, they got brainwashed into that "lookout! you'll 'waste' your vote" meme, and you hear party activists from both the democrats and the republicans saying that. Don't "waste" your vote. Phooie. They just want to keep a lock on the process, like it's written someplace that we can only have democrats or republicans, forever and ever, like it's the law or something. To me, a vote not cast is the only wasted vote. I've been voting for decades, hardly ever got my guy in, so what, I voted who I wanted, not who I thought would win, and I won't vote against someone either.
Besides that, don't know. Whenever I hear people in meatspace bitching about somethin in politics/government, I question them, it's tricky but effective.. usually they get embarrased quickly, they can't hardly name any persons in politics, don't really know what's going on, but sure can rattle off their "teams" roster and the latest scores, or how their favorite band is doing, craplike that. I then nail them on some current events or names, get blank stares, and I go "How do you come to your opinion if you aren't aware of the issues or names?" Along those lines. Basically, I shame them, politely, show them they really don't know what's going on, then point them in a few directions in case they decide they SHOULD find out more and get active. Probably not effective, but dang if I'm going to stand there and nod my head "yes" to blather from people who really have nothing more than the most meager 15 second sound bite awarness of what's going on, then they think I should value their opinions or something. I just can't do that anymore, lost my patience long ago with that.
I can appreciate someone I really disagree with, AS LONG AS they have at least done some reading and research into a topic. Those people can learn from you, and you can learn from them, it's important to be honest and open to new data and be able to adjust your opinion, I certainly have over the years, I'm not static except from the POV of always trying to find out the real truth in a matter. I DETEST being lied to.. But the "don't bother me with any more facts, my mind is made up" crowd are nuts, better to just shine them folks on, it's a waste of calories dealing with them on anything more than the most trivial matters. doesn't mean they can't be nice people in all other aspects, but if it's anything important having to do with politics and directions and government, if their minds are locked, they are lost, they drank the kool aid, poisoned themselves. Just move on then.
...except for the camera angle. but all in all, smooth.
Funniest one I ever read about was the phony night deposit box. All official looking, placed next to the banks night deposit slot, tape a BORKEN, DON'T USE sticker over the real one. The thing sat there until it was stuffed,lotta bars and restaurants, etc stuffing it in after closing time. The perps were rolling it into their truck in the early AM, (they got guard uniforms on), the real cops show up and HELP THEM LOAD IT UP.
almost as much fun as google bombing for the best place to shop for nigritude ultramarine, the breakfast of champions
the reference to pearl harbor is inside one of the downloadable documents from their site called "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century"
I read it a long time ago but don't have a copy now, I wiped my drive when I reinstalled OS last time, what I usually do, BTW, so I just relooked where it's located. the other documents are good there, too, to get a feel for the background of these guys and what they wanted. You can also reference who is connected to which international corporation, see where the money goes. Lot of the same guys there who really wanted us in the war sem to be profiting handsomely.
In it,back to the reference, paraphrasing, after first arguing for a huge massive increase in military preparedness and for getting the US on the ground in the mideast, says that it will be slow to get the US people to swallow it, short of a pearl harbor like event. and then-we had that event. And when theysay they had no prior knowledge, no idea, that they just missed it, that there was an "intelligence failure", etc..well, that's a whopper.
Plenty of websites out there have overlapping credible evidence that shows that there was prior knowledge, at least good enough for any normal grand jury. And the whitewash commission is just that, a whitewash.
Websites with a lot of the info about the lie of the "intelligence failure" abound on the web now,there's hundreds of them, so I won't pick out any particular one link, it's easy to find for anyone so inclined.
Now, I don't disagree that the US should always be strong, and it is the US governments and military's business to protect the US--I just don't think they have been doing it,they made it much worse, not better, and I sure don't trust anyone in the past few administrations. Plenty of evidence to show some serious shenanigans and malfeasance going on across major party lines there. Plenty.
if you are in a flying craft, you want range as well as power. Higher MPG gives you longer range. Even if you can afford it and the fuel is there, be a real PITA to have to land every 50 miles and fill up again.
If it was mine, I'd want as long a range as possible, sacrafice some of the speed instead. It could go 100 MPH slower that what they are claiming it's speed is going to be, but that still leaves it plenty fast compared to tooling down the highway in your normal ride.
Still neat, hope he finally gets it working enough so it can be produced, then rich guys buy enough of them to get the prices down. Maybe joe average won't be able to afford one by himself, but like planes are owned now, a few guys chip in and buy them. That's real common now with personal aircraft.
Just in the installation program, check custom install, then go check off what you want. You can pare it down a lot that way. It's not as detailed as I would like it to be, but you can carve off big huge chunks if you want to on initial install.
You can also just keep what you have, wait for the downloads to settle down in a coupla weeks, then do just apt-get or yum upgrades in pieces as well. Well, or so I hear. I've never done it, but they claim you can. I'm on dialup, so I just send off get the disks, a lot easier that way.
But ya,I know what you mean. In another discussion I was turned onto Vector Linux, basically shrunken redhat, go check it out.
On the contrary, the Project for A New American Century group, a coupla dozen high ranking neocons, CLEARLY outlined what they were going to do once they got in power. It's all on their publically available website. Some of it is in PDF downloads, but it's there. They planned to invade basically the oil producing nations of the middle east, and some others. They got in power, in charge,and wow, they invaded. They also said they needed a "pearl harbor" like event in advance to justify the invasion, and get the US people all enthused around it, and golly gee mother of all coincidences, that event occurred..
I mean, it's real, it's there, you can see the names, the documents, it's written clearly, and the mass controlled media won't hardly ever mention it. I've seen very brief mentions at the best. I have yet to meet anyone in meatspace who has ever heard of them or their documents though. Wonder why that is? And I know it's been posted on slashdot several times, by various people, as well as on literally thousands of other forums and blogs. Radio talk show hosts all over have been clued in, but only a small handful even bother to acknowledge it, let alone come to the obvious conclusions looking at it. Journalists by the thousands have been clued in, yet there's a severe lack of coverage by most of the big names out there.
No I don't blame democrats, or republicans, I blame the US people in general for being so unbelievably stupid and naieve and un-caring for this disaster. We are a nation of sports and entertainment addicts more than anything else. No one gives a crap. They are taught from the time they are toddlers to NOT give a crap. They are taught to parrot one of two party lines that are always essentially complete lies, and to be happy with that, and to never go further than to keep corralled into one of those two parties and to swallow down the 6 o clock news pablum. So they do it, brainwashing since being able to understand human speech is quite effective apparently. They simply refuse to learn from history,and they refuse to acknowledge reality, and that's why we generation after generation keep getting hosed. You are force fed you are either a liberal-democrat, or a conservative-republican and that is SUCH A LOAD OF CRAP. I am so amazed people keep falling into that trap.
oh well...
.. already out there now. Like I'd like to see a lot of the Black Vault's thousands of documents translated, just for one interesting example, one of many. woo hoo this is cool!
... they changed the sampling methods in 95. How much they changed it I'd have to go back and look, but I know it affected it a lot. They also changed the way they count folks receiving unemployment insurance checks just last year, in january of last year if I am remembering correctly. They used to keep counting them for awhile after the last check went out, now they don't, until you get to the U-6 numbers, which they do NOT use on TV, and the reason is that the U-6 is much higher, and much truer.
Really, jobs ARE an issue. We've been shipping off-shore jobs now at an extremely steady pace for many years, and shipping in illegals at the an even higher pace. That has caused severe stress in the market, many more people competing for fewer jobs. You can read business news article after article about it, point to about any big company, you can find articles where they ceased domestic production, laid off people, shipped production overseas. You'd have a hard time finding companies that haven't done this. It's almost daily it appears, and contrast that to say new factories going in, hiring thousands, etc, those are pretty rare now. Now neither of those are absolutes,they are broad statements, but the gist is true in the aggregate. Look at every article posted here, how many guys will chime in and say they are having a harder time finding quality work, even guys with decades of experience. Look at that last article on being forced to train your replacements. It's real stuff, it's happening. It's happened to me several times now, had two factories I worked at shipped overseas. Had another job I worked at for over a decade get so diluted with laid off blue collar guys entering it in desperation from losing their jobs that it went from well paid and plenty of hours to struggle to get a 40 hour week out of it, a lot of times couldn't. On and on, and I know I ain't alone. And I can remember quite clearly what the job market was in the 60's on to now, I've always followed the business news, and I'll just state it's a lot harder to get a job,that production has dramatically gone overseas in the last two decades, and it's a lot harder to get a well paid job, and it's a lot harder to get a well paid job with good benefits. That's just my anecdotal, but you can see examples all over the nation, that's why we see so many articles about it, it's of interest to so many people, because so many people are in the same boat. Your job poofs, you get another, that job poofs, it takes you longer to find another, then that job poofs, even longer, the replacements pay less etc. and people DO increase their skills, retrain, learn new things, etc, but even that now it's starting to suck bad. It takes time, money, skill, tools, training to get a completely different job, and if they aren't there anyway-what then?
These numbers-whatever they are-represent real humans in real trouble now. It is NOT the same it was 30 or 20 or 10 years ago, not even close. If it was great, you just wouldn't see all the interest in it, all the controversy, all the articles. This isn't a vaporware issue, it's real, and it has gotten steadily worse for a long time, with the exception of a few years in the mid 90's (the dot com boom obviously) to 2001, then it slumped again. Look at it like I said in conjunction with the other numbers, level of bankruptcies, level of mortgage defaults, etc. It's just real, don't know what else I can say about it. If you insist that the economy is just fantastic and that there's no difference in employment levels and wage scales, etc, from years ago...well, not much more to be said then. I've showed the numbers, showed that the practical unemployment level is hovering at 10%,not this 5-6% they always quote, you can go look at the other stats in the other areas, they all suck bad. They all add up to a jobs and income crisis, there's no other way to characterise it. There's nothing else I can do in this conversation, you can believe those numbers mean it's just great all you want, or no different from years past, I see it now
maybe offer to do some of the sound (intros, backgrounds, whatever)for new video games, that gets people to listen to your stuff, they'll go look for more of it.
Got a favorite distro? I think it'd be a hoot if every new distro that was given away contained some MP3s as well, people could use them to test out their sound configs after a fresh install. I always wondered why we didn't have that anyway, at least a few tunes and a few vid clips with new releases. Heck, most releases are several CDs long now anyway, so whut the heck, a few more megs won't make much of a difference.
I think the peer to peer internet streaming projects are all worthwhile efforts(not file trading, direct spawning streaming), being involved in them, to get people using those sorts of technologies, could help spread awareness as more independent broadcasters start appearing. And also make sure you are being played on the normal shoutcast/icecast whatever channels someplace, even if it's only *some* streams.
Besides that, not sure. I'll think on it more, still waking up right now.
I have a BIL been playing professionally for over 20 years, but never made it past the local bar venues on the weekends, and always just had a regular job during the week. He's happy enough doing that, it's more just fun for him than anything else.
Hmm cross -artist compilation releases? collaborate with other artists to do albums, each band/artist gets one track, use combined distribution efforts as a force multiplier. usually when you see something like a "best of beach music from the 60's" it's just that, real old stuff. I don't remeber ever seeing a "new" CD or album that had all different bands on it. People might want to sample that, knowing at least they will get variety if nothing else.
Basically you are trying to figure out how to break several overlapping near monopolies..and it's just gonna be hard. I don't think there will be any single one solution, you'll have to get pretty creative to work around it. Both in the music and in the distribution/marketing. The way it is so easy to make copies, you'll have to be very content with extraordinarily cheap copies and do volume as much as possible. On the airtime, really, that will only be broken once microbroadcasting is legitimised more, and is more accepted and used by the listening public. The net is just as viable now formost purposes, but over the air is still good, too, obviously, but as you say, clear channel, etc just overhwlems most of the stations. Only way around that is to overhwlem clear channel stations on a 10 to one basis with microbroadcasters. That, and netbroadcasting.
The market is saturated, too, it really is. How many bands and individuals are there now trying to be full time professionals, just inside the US? It has to be hundreds of thousands, easy. There's at least one per city, no matter how small, and larger cities can have hundreds or thousands just there. That's a completely saturated market. And it's obvious they sure can't all be full time professionals. Maybe that's just the reality of it.
I lived in vermont for 6 months, it was beautiful. Looks to me sorta like what switzerland is supposed to look like, just smaller. And remember, you are the only state in the union that "gets it" on the second amendment. There's worse places to live. And the freestate project is next door.
St. Albans was the place,BTW, home to the furthest north city to be successfully sacked by the confederacy! yee, haww, that was one sneek attack!
I always thought that was just funny as heck. Not funny back then, but sure funny now.
Ya, there seems to be a lot of similarity in the party "extremists", The major differences are just how much government is enough. Both sides are seeing the light on the multinationals. the left is finally seeing the light on the necessities of self defense and to not trust the government, the right is finally figuring out that you can't start restricting freedoms on others, because it will turn around, byte you on the butt. From the right, they see some sort of weird NWO global government, from the left they see giant corporations just running everything and polluting and screwing workers, etc.
It's a floorwax! No, it's a dessert topping! Stop fighting you boys, it's BOTH!
heh heh heh original SNL was a scream....
I tend to fall on to the "less is more" category, just given the nature of government to de-evolve into hopeless bureaucracy. Any time we can shift any piece of government to a more local level, it works better. Once you can get on a first name in your face basis with government, you can at least get heard, and maybe get the problem solved. You keep adding layers, you add complexity and stupidity. Intelligence never gets magnified, it's stupidity that compounds and accrues interest.....
I thought about other nations, never really considered it a whole lot though. Brazil seems interesting, has a lot of potential,a LOT, but who knows. Mozambique is welcoming smart farmers immigrants and offering cheap land. They saw what happened in rhodesia/zimbabwe,and what's gonna happen in SA, and want NO part of that action, they recognize "good farmers=lotsa chow" and aren't lamers like mugabwe. Nice climate, cheap land, etc. Who knows though.
I once wrote a real long detailed proposal on colonizing antarctica,took me like 6 weeks to write it up, just a good outline, that was a hoot, I even tried to shop the idea to some pretty wealthy dudes (no I won't say, to protect me from embarassement, ha), never got much response tho......
amazing the way you'll burn up energy when you are young..
hey, listening to this dude on the rad-ee-oo right now, he sez that when gasoline hits 3 clams a gal, it'll be cost comparative with ethanol (corn likker basically, sugar beets,spuds, carrots whatever). With a regular carb, your jets need to be 50% bigger, more or less, and she'll run. I made a little a long time ago when I was doing all my alt energy experimenting, ran a suzuki 250 (mine), a 500 (friends), and my old cox chainsaw on it. Worked OK,little harder to start,but it ran, not bad for first batch. I just wanted to try it, see if it was easy. It was.
you are more than welcome to make your own title, copy it, share it, even fix the typos! Freely released under the universal internet forum ranters posting license.
I can't code, but I can rant!
%^)
my dad had one he built way back in ww2 when he was a radar tech, it was hilarious and he burned me with it good when I got older. It was a book with a hot babe on the cover, he'd hand it to you and say "check it out, hot babes" and etc. Well, any righteous red-blooded dude out there is gonna lose any amount of normal smarts he has and quick open it up.... ZAPPPP you'd get a good one.... man you felt stoopid then... HAHAHAHAHAH!
wonder if he still has that thing.....
Some friends of mine got their two teenage boys matching electric scooters for Christmas last, they said they paid 100$ for them. They seemed zippy enough , was watching them blast around the hood on them. Me, though, I would prefer a gas powered assist. I used to have one, YEARS ago called an aquabug, it bolted onto the front forks of basically any bike, would go around 30, and you could still pedal all you want. Wish they still made the things, they were great, got fantastic mileage. I drove mine all over bolted onto an old solid but heavy schwinn 10 speed. You could haul some serious cargo (groceries, laundry, etc) on the back and still go up hills real easy. At the time IIRC they were around 150$, (I swapped for mine but that's what I remember they were going for) and most likely they might be the same today if they still sold them, economies of scale, etc. What was really nice is, being front wheel drive, when you pedaled you were in all-wheel drive, a nice ride. they sucked until you got going more than 5 mph though, front steering heavy, but after that they cruised nice. I think they only weighed around 15 lbs, I know it wasn't that bad to shoulder it and hump it to my upstairs apartment I had at the time.
... I have seen,including the analysis of others and my own, points to a severe crisis around the end of this decade to the middle of the next decade, and it might go all the way to total war. The demands for oil are rising so rapidly, and the *apparent* supplies shrinking so fast, something is gonna pop. there's enoug oil to more or less support what we have now currently, but there sure isn't enough to make any sort of middle class for another few hundred million chinese, indians, moslems, africans, latin americans, etc, it simply cannot be done, there aren't enough raw materials in the world for that, and oil and water are #1 & 2 respectably. You can't have the bulk of the planet living like americans and industrialised europaens. It can NOT be done now, not enough energy or materials, but the pressure is for exactly that to happen.
whoops
China thinks the same. They are averaging a 10% aggregate increase per year in military spending, and all of it is either tasked to assymetrical and cyber warfare, or to conventional force-projection warfare. And they make no distinction between civilian and military assets,and in that case, they have the most ships and planes in the world already, ie, the biggest navy and air force. Granted, these are not all pure warfare machines, but they think quite differently, they think nothing of putting cruise missiles on a normal freighter in a container for example. they now have a missile frigate. That's how they think, use a "force multiplier". They are, without any doubt what-so-ever, getting ready for the next war, and they plan to win it, and a primary military directive (that you can read, they don't even hide it) they labor under is "first strike and hard strike is the best strike".
We stand a better than even chance of getting our butts kicked, hard. China has no other option than to expand by 2010 to 2015 time period, and all the clues point to them prepping for it now. It's as obvious as the japanese build up before we embargoed them before ww2, or the buildup of the german military forces in the mid 30's. It's REAL obvious.
Now china has never really attempted that on any huge scale, but there's a first time for everything, and they will have the advantage of having literally millions of technicians/workers/students/business men already deployed overseas, which means a large part of them will be dual soldiers, and they are heavy into areas of interest vital to the US now. For example, they are all over mexico, inside canada a lot, in venezuela, and various places in africa, including the sudan, a rowboat ride across from saudi arabia. Lotta other places, too, they are always buddying up to the various oil producing nations. There's a reason for that, and it's because the abacus comes from there, and they know how to count, and the numbers say "#$%^&^&!!!11!, we bettah do something!" to them.
Makes ya stop and think what the heck is going on here with our current foreign policy and trade practices..
and many of the remnants of the independent ranchers totally agree with you. What has happened over the last 30 years in ranching is that the stockyards and big feedlots/packers conglomerates have monopolized marketing to the extent that a lot of ranchers were forced into selling at a loss, or went under. A few who owned their land outright, and more importantly could still market effectively, have done quite well on grass fed beef, but they are in a severe minority now. I prefer grass fed myself, and I also agree on the economics of using grains for the beef critters-it's quite nuts and wasteful..
On a dairy, it's better to have a larger herd, the equipment costs are (I am being quite broad now)almost the same for a 50 cow herd as a 500, so it just makes sense to try and max out there, even if the daily chores are more. It would also lead to schemes such as the methane plant being more cost effective to implement. With free range grass fed ranching, it isn't practical, your methane producing stock (heh) is not all easy to scoop up, it's all over yonder all over the pastures. On a dairy it is highly concentrated and you got to do something with it. Same with the poultry farmers now, MAN, they get a lot. usually now it'scomposted, then spread, it's held in very large barns for a year or so, various EPA regs and so on to control runoff. I think that's reasonable, although I'd like to see them use more methane production as well, and in fact, that's where a lot of the large methane plants are now.
heh, one of my jobs on a dairy once, head poop scooper in the free stall barn. man, that's a lotta stuff! I used a bobcat to scoop to an underground chain driven dealie that moved it outside and directly into a HUGE spreader wagon. That's exactly why I built that example small digester I was talking about in my post. Saw all that methane gas going to waste, thought it would save joe farmer some cash, maybe get me a raise...maybe.
Nope. too hippy of an idea....
Back to ranching, it's very close to being akin to desktop dominance with the big packers. In fact I'd say it's a worse monopoly than with MS. There are few alternatives, you go with the packers and sell your beef, or struggle spend half your time developing a market rather than ranching. the independnets hate it, but they are enscrewed in it. There's some effort going on now with the independents to get some sort of anti trust relief, but it's a struggle for them, as you can imagine.
And as to land valuation, etc, there's a vital interst there that goes beyond current day to day economics. Food isn't a luxury. To me, it is more important to have widely diverse and localized points of production in "food", same as I mentioned for energy. In a crisis, or say something happens, transportation gets borked, fuel costs skyrocket from some new war, etc(man, if that ain't happening now, sheesh), you are gonna want *real close by* food production. It'll come in handy. The average US grocery store has around 3 days food before they are tapped. In a crisis, you don't want to rely totally on stuff being able to get shipped in from thousands of miles away, not all of it anyway, and with what might get in, you sure ain't gonna wanna pay them prices.
I don't think you can place an adequate $ price on that, that can address the main issue there.. That's why I think nations as a rule should first always make sure they are completely indpendent on food and fresh water and energy supply and a nice bare minimum manufacturing, it is just too critical for national security to ignore or to "farm" it out to another nation, even if it involves protectionism to some degree. Human necessities SHOULD be protected, other products, just "wants" and luxuries, sure, let the market determine what gets done where, no problems there much from my POV as long as the tariffs are equitable.
... I understand what you are saying and agree pretty much with it. it seems if both parties in the work contract can stick to a certain amount of reasonalbness, then things will neither get out of hand or descend into boring unproductive heck-fire.
Oh man, your ugly trucks. I can relate. I worked for a company for years made me wear a fluroescent orange shirt. I mean that sucker was loud. I can't even say the name of the company it's even lamer and more embarrassing. But.. I got a lot of work from them and they treated me more or less OK.
the things you'll do for money.....
I just checked the latest real stats at the BLS website. Go down the chart and look at U-6. That's the sum total of unemployed, the figures the TV normally uses in "business reports" stop at U-3. this is fairly common knowledge, BTW, but the lower number is mostly used for propoganda purposes, once you wipe away the shilling grins of the TV/WS casino traders and various politicians trying to make things look rosy. That's an opinion,I admit it, but it's based on these two quite different numbers.
U-3, which is commonly used for the news shows,the most quoted and used in an argument to show how great the economy is, which counts any sort of employment, is as of April 2004 = 5.4 %
Sounds good, not too bad! Well, lets mosey on down the chart a scosh.
U-6, which is total unemployed including distressed workers, part time (no matter how part time), marginally attached, etc, what I am referring to is, as of april 2004 = 9.3 %
here is their little explanation that will cover U-6
Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want
and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally
attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for a job. Persons employed part time for economic
reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule. For further
information, see "BLS introduces new range of alternative unemployment measures," in the October 1995 issue of the Monthly Labor
Review. Beginning in January 2004, data reflect revised population controls used in the household survey.
url for reference
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm
There's also a practical consideration with telephone surveys. It's pretty simple, although alien to most people nowadays,especially on slashdot I would guess, but very poor and broke people--uhh, these unemployed we are talking about- in a lot of cases do not have telephones in order to be surveyed. That's usually the first utility to get shut off. I can personally think of 4 families in my (poor underemployed, rural) neighborhood where no telephone exists. Myself, having a cell service, landline and internet connection, am an exception to the rule around here. I don'tknow anyone else around here who has internet. Even the couple of households I know about that have a landline do not have internet. Two families I know of, the father has a beeper, but no phone, they need to drive 2.5 miles to a payphone. I don't know everyone around here yet, but I know the closest people except for one house, who pretty much stay to themselves and don't seem too friendly so I don't push it. The house looks good(large and expensive), I am assuming they have a phone based on that.
That last is just anecdotal, but I hope my points on the *real* numbers are more clear now, and also why telephone surveys might not be as accurate as some claim. By their own admission, the real numbers on a "practical" look on unemployment are almost twice as high (roughly) as they usually use for TV reports. Now, after that, I am of the opinion-note, I said opinion only- it is still lowballed for a few more percentage points. I have reasons for that opinion, fairly involved, some arcane,some I could spend more time on and provide references but I really don't feel like it right now, but all in all I think it's lowballed. I would guess it'scloser to 12 %. I've shown it's offically lowballed already, close to 10, and last month it was slightly over 10% by their own numbers. It will lower next month as high school kids get summer jobs, that will happen too, usually a percent and a fraction then.
I will also freely admit that black market/illegal working is not included, even though no one brought that up to me yet. I have no rational figures to access for inclusion (I don't
oh yes, it's all imaginary. That's why a lot of the presidential election bantering is about "jobs", because there is so little unemployment. That's what's drawing a lot of the crowds at some campaign stops, people have noticed that they are not working. It sneaks up on you eventually come bill paying time. they look around, see jobs going overseas, jobs that stay here are being slipped to undocumented immigrants, and they wonder "why" this is going down.
So do I.
We are a soverign nation that looks out for it's OWN citizens first, or we aren't. Either borders and patriotism have meaning, or they don't. Either the people elect reps to represent them, or they merely hire-on paid off industry spokespeople to pass laws for some international companies, while maintaining some illusion of self government and a little rational nationalism.
As to minimum wage, yes, as long as there isn't a maximum wage or some equivalent thereof,anything to stem the tide of returning to serfdom and maximum monopolistic exploitation, and as long as they have an income tax system and legal personhood for corporations instead of import/export and excise -use taxes and named-humans responsible for their actions as replacements respectively.
As to unions, yes, in general, I think they are pretty necessary now, as to the public government mandated teachers unions, I am in favor of home schooling and private schooling, and eliminating the entire federal department of education. If that means less public teachers, so be it. If they can exist in a private setting, and get a decent wage, more power to them. I LIKE teachers for the most part, I dislike a lot of the agenda of the NEA, way too radical big government for me, too much social engineering brainwash action is emphasized. I am in favor of constitutionally limited government, and some over all decent prrotections for the people under the general welfare clause, protections against exploitation, fraud and abuse. For better or worse, they put it in there, it can be abused, and it has, but in some situations it's a good idea. It's on a case by case basis, which immediately removes it from a single thread sort of discussion, as there are literally thousands of different "types" of cases that you could discuss.
they are liable to a limited extent, but they enjoy certain laws and priveleges that apply to corporations, namely, the contract is with a non -human, an artifical person. Originally, corporations *didn't* have this ability to have a separate entity that assumed all the risks and liabilities. They were required to have named humans always have the liability, ie, they couldn't just blame actions on a thing that isn't a human, because on the face of it, it's absurd. OF COURSE humans make all the decisions, either the CEO who may be the majority owner can make the big ones, or a board, or whatever, however it's setup, but THEN they assign this decision to "the corporation" a "thing" that doesn't exist except as a legal abstract.
I merely and simply propose a return to the original design.
The law that changed this all is santa clara vs southern pacific railroad, many google links exist for the nitty gritty details.
You can also google for the original intent of states to grant corporate charters-they weren't automatic, and they had provisions beyond "only making the shareholders money". They USE to be required to be of the public benefit and use as well, and "the public" were the citizens of the state in which they were granted the charter. If the company committed to an action that harmed the public, they were dissolved. It's a matter of degree of course, but it was not-contrary to what the predatory capitalists contend- "only" to maximise profits for the owners and shareholders, even though they repeat that falswehood constantly.
In the famous case, the 14th amendment was applied (indirectly but it was there) to an abstract, this abstract given "human" status. And in it's enforcement, giving natural rights to a fictitious abstract, a mere construct, they allowed that layer of removal from responsibility to the humans who make up the corporation, because you can't put a contract in jail. You can't make a piece of paper do hard labor.
People have argued over it for years, but the fact remains, immediately after the civil war, and the amendment which made all humans legally "human", they then went and made a contract human.
It's nuts. I mean it's crazy, out to lunch, weird, obviously borked, cuckoo. It's a real schweet deal for them, but it's still *nuts*.
It is not as important to note if it is a privately held or publically held corporation, as it it is to note if they *are* a corporation or not. About the only real practical difference is number of humans involved in the two, and who calls the shots, and there's so many variations of how they can go about it the point is moot anyway.
cool link, thanks, I'm going to look into these guys and run their products past my friend, see what he thinks about them. I really like the no maintenace aspects of it, and being multi fuel. Seems like a serious winner here. Electric or heat or cooling from the same unit...hmm, sounds like what joe homeowner needs, doesn't it?
--it's only been recently that music was purposefully made to not be recorded from. I used to record to reel to reel from vinyl and off the airwaves. As soon as the technology got there for joe home user, we could use it. What's different now is, these various industries want all the use of modern high technology to increase productivity and lower their expenses,to increase profits, but they don't want anyone else to have access to roughly the same technoilogy. And they most definetly COLLUDE to keep that in place, ie, "break the law".
Well, that just sucks. They've had years to adjust to changing times, all they have done is legislate away our rights to use technology so they can maintain a pricing schedule that reflects standards from years ago, and to keep it that way, forever.
Music and art used to be live only,and expensive, it was restricted to kings and such like that could afford to hire musicians and artists, or to people freely sharing with others, the local hoe down. Then it got to be recorded,first on paper rolls, then wax cylinders then vinyl, then tape now digital on hard magnetic media or plastic that is embedded, etc, and it's cheap beyond belief.
That's reality. But, it was expensive way back when it was first able to be copied for later use and didn't require the artists to be there to hear it (or view it), and they charged accordingly, but it was BECAUSE it was still difficult to make copies. It was more or less fair then, because it was still hard to do, it was expensive to make those copies.
Now, this isn't so, yet they still want the higher fees of yester-year, and, frankly, people revolted eventually. They revolted because the rip off prices were-revolting. Quite revolting.
The music and movie industry is going through changes, and they will NOT suceed in keeping technology away from people, so my best advice to them is to come up with a new way of doing things or get left in the dust.
Perhaps they may need to come to grips that there are so many people making music and art, that our society can't support those millions *just* doing that for a living, and if that is so, we will also no longer support an artifical class of music and art copier middle men.
It could be that the expensive media middlemen copiers and sellers are the buggy whip retailers of the 21st centyury, and their business is close to becoming completely obsolete, and they just can't stand the thought of having to go get another job after decades of some extraordinary fat city profits. Seems like everyone else around here is in the same boat, what makes them so special that it can't affect them as well? Joe rustbelt assembly line worker is told he's too expensive and tough crap, he can be replaced at a dime on the dollar, and gets replaced. Joe keyboartd banger is now being told he can be replaced by another person someplace else for a dime on the dollar, and too bad to him too. So what makes these music and art copying mechanics all that special? the answeer is NOTHING, they can be replaced, and quite easily, and for not dimes but PENNIES on the dollar, so tough crap to them, too, they are in the same boat everyone else is in now.
It looks to me more and more that what artists that are hip and honestly understand what is happeneing and are smart enough to deal with it and the various consumers of said art will get closer together, and just keep bypassing the middlemen, to the point of making independent studios and marketing concerns and professional copying mechanics massively and redundantly *unnecessary*. for most practical purposes, they are NO LONGER NEEDED IN OUR ECONOMY.
Maybe I am wrong, but that is what it looks like to me. The tools avaialable to both the productive artists and to the end users of that art are fantastic now, stuff that only the most wealthy of businesses could assemble and use just ten years ago. Well, it follows then then those specialty niche industries that used to be necessary in the middle are on the way out, they have been a
... the more I think you may be correct as regards closed source propietary software. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see stolen code in a lot of it, if it was honestly audited by independent third parties. Right now, fat city for them, snag what they want, claim it as their own, no one (more or less, very broadly speaking) can look at it. Change a little here and there, poof,it's their "own" IP.
Can 0 worms some day.
We really did base a lot of our productive growth on extremely cheap oil and by extremely cheap products from overseas that we bought with petrodollars.
I think the gravy train is over, we are cruising on inertia now more than anything. And as we watch, the dollar is being quietly abandoned as the world's reserve currency. I think almost ALL made up money digits from this nation or that will gradually lose worth, to be replaced with tangible products. The oil producers are sitting in the pilots seat now, from here on out, along with the manufacturing titans, notably china.