I don't doubt you *can* harden and XP machine so it will be pretty resilient to most exploit attempts even without it being on a recent patch level. But in practice this isnt possible. As I pointed out things don't stay air-gaped. You can shutdown all those services and "unneeded" processes if all you want to do is read txt files with notepad but in the real world stuff depends on those services. You'd be amazed at how much software that does not *need* the network just won't run if the server or workstation services are stopped. Yes it half backed PLC vendor kludgeware but that stuff is why its being run on XP in the first place.
My comments on its light enough were directed at people developing control software. There is NO good reason to write it for windows. Its usually got its own interface anyway and it would be much easier to maintain on the other platforms.
There are lots options here any current *BSD or Linux Kernel with basic gnu tools and a purpose built interface would still be lighter than XP. No X and Gnome 3 or KDE 5 won't be but there are plenty of things that would. That's before you even look into the other choices like QNX and friends out there as well.
2. It's air gapped.
That's bullshit son and you know it. Nothing air-gapped ever stays air-gapped. Anyone who has worked in a manufacturing environment and delt with plant engineers knows "it won't be on the network, honest" really means "I'll have a vulnerable version of VNC on this thing next week for bonus points I'll set the net mask wrong so I'll have problems that seem strange to me; ask you to help out and forget all about the conversation we had about not putting it on the network."
3. It's secured via elimination of infection vectors.
Right because vendors never update their own software and have to issue fixes and stuff that should not be there never finds its way onto that USB stick they bring into the building. Sorry seen that too way to many times.
4. It's needed for legacy reasons.
Right -- This unfortunitly is true and I really wish I could find a solution.
5. Etc.
Excuses, excuse, number 4 is really the only quasi legitimate reason and when its $100,000+ machine it controls 4 is good enough. Don't waste our time with etc etc... What reasons you imagine its okay are crap.
There's this comical belief that Congress should have the ability to approve of War Powers, which the constitution clearly states are those powers reserved to the President.
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
What Constitution are you reading? The congress pretty clearly has the power to declare or not a war.
It accumulates to certain individuals who instead of keeping the cash flowing and market running hoard it like Scrooge McDuck.
That isn't a problem. It just means few coins will exchange for more goods or services due to availability or lack there of.
Sure long term deflation that does not end would be a problematic but there isn't much historic precedent out there for long term deflationary patterns. Where they have happened its been after a major inflationary event like a war, and the deflation mostly stops when the currency reaches prewar values such as the panics after the war of 1812.
Ultimately deflation at the macro level is just a redistribution from debtors to creditors. At the macro level a monetary event not real wealth changing event. The creditors having just witnesses how the relative value of money can change start to want to diversify or just want a way to make more money so they start investing (lending) again.
The only reasons this is a problem at all is because we have decided its a good political policy to enable half the population to run around with a negative net worth for large portions of their adult lives. Which leaves them with no flexibility whatsoever to cope with changing market conditions. If they can't get their paycheck for a few weeks, or if wages go down, or if interest rates go up, they can't adjust.
What is wrong with good old fashion detective work? You get tips from people you follow them up, you listen to truly public chatter learn who the malcontents are and infiltrate their groups, etc.
All things police and spy agencies have been doing as long as they have existed and it worked without with to a large degree without global privacy shredding mass data collection. Is it likely to be as "effective" my guess is probably not as effective as mass surveillance can be but then again there is little evidence to suggest the the mass surveillance has worked so well, I mean people are still going abroad to meet with terror organizations come home and then sneak bombs on planes; they have just failed to detonate.
Its a question of finding balance: risks, costs, and rewards. The real solution is we need to start getting rational about that.
Well for one thing Snowden isn't leaking anything anymore and has not been since he got to Russia it's a condition of his freedom there. What's happening is the paper he leaked it to continues to go thru the material and publish the interesting stuff. So Snowden would have needed lots of foresight to arrange something like that. Could the Gaurdian start making up Snowden leaks? I suppose but he might dispute them, and it would harm the papers image, and with the UK government breathing down their necks over the leaks it would be risky too.
The most sensible solution is to allow only sessions cookies. I know everyone loves their "keep me logged in button" but simple solution is to have browsers silently convert all cookie requests to session cookies no matter what the server or script asks for.
This should do be the default, as it breaks very few sites and existing web applications other than you have to logon every time. Users should have to manually go white list domains that are allowed persistent storage.
Browsers need to stop providing useragents, they need to start sending strings like "traditional HTML 5.0 ready browser" or "touchscreen HTML 5.0 browser" instead.
The default behavior should be to only send a referer header when the request is to a page on the same domain as the one already being displayed.
As much as I hate to advocate it because its a waste of everyone's network resources, the same approach needs to be applied to document caching. There are to many possibilities for script based timing analysis attacks and server side request analysis that will enable tracking with the cache enabled.
Implement those changes and you will an WWW that still mostly works without alot of changes to existing sites but is decidedly less trackable.
I am talking about anything like a great purge, my point was we the people can't get something like that done even if we wanted to do it.
Which is why I want to have people down the food chain hang drawn and quartered. My hope is the Clappers of the world come to understand when the public get upset their masters will quickly abandon them to protect their own interests. That way when they get asked to follow orders that are wrong they just might say "No sir, I won't implement a massive domestic spy program it's un-American."
Will the pols just get someone else to do it? Probably but those someones will be the incompetents to dumb to see it's going to become a personal calamity
I used to be a big backer of the audit the FED movement but the reality is, if we want a fair economy where everyone gets equal treatment the only solution is END THE FED. What are we going to learn from an audit that could possibly matter when they tell us they are effectively printing $85B every month?
What they have been public about since the start of QE is so large in comparison to every reference frame we have, no other theft could amount to much of anything; because its a fiat currency reference is all the matters.
Right and lets not forget either that all that manufacturing equipment does not just get set on fire because of bankruptcy. It would have been sold off cheap to those same start ups. Deflation can be a good thing.
I can't have anything but a viseral reaction to your entire post. Critical thinking should be taught as early as possible, its habit, and you want to get good habits ingrained as early as possible. Brains are not really even capable of critical thinking until around age 8, so its a great time to stuff heads with rote learning like multiplication tables I agree with you there.
But by the time you are teaching history and algebra you should also be teaching critical thinking, because the two are all related. Your write protect bit concept is a off base too. Teachers at those subjects should be able to earn the respect of their students, enough to at least trust the information if not the opinions. If a teacher can't do that they are the failures.
Most our societies problems stem from blind trust of authority and people not engaging in thinking let alone critical thinking.
The "if you like your insurance you can keep it scandal" is the perfect example. It does not matter which side of the political debate you come down on. Everyone listening reasonable should have know in the context of a bunch of new requirements many even most current plans did not offer this statement was some place between a lie or incomplete. Instead three years later a bunch of people seem surprised and last moment measures have to be taken. Why because people don't think...
There isn't anything in any of these revelations many had not guessed or spotted. There were and still are tons of people who just wanted to live in denial about it. Snodens stuff is making that hard for them as they can't just dismiss the people saying it as tinfoil hat clad conspiracy nuts, with actual evidence floating about.
No the problems start at the top, Senators, Presidents, powerful Congressmen, generals. The problem is the system has no way to deal with them because at those levels it basically depends on the punishing themselves and they have learned to circle the wagons when the people get riled up.
The only option is to target their enablers, folks like clapper. If enough political pressure can be brought to bear and you give them the option to toss someone like Clapper under the bus along with a few low level admin types like snowdens coworkers who broke some rule somewhere some time they will.
Do this often enough and they won't be able to find these facilitators who are willing to go a long with what they know to unethical, immoral, illegal or some combination there of because they will also know that when it comes to light and it will someday, it's going to be them that pays for it.
As a Discordian Pope, I don't care what monuments they put up only that there are five of them, and I'd kinda like one to be a cabbage but am flexible on that.
yes they are trying to get an army of disposable low quality coders. Yes they need some good folks and will always need to some good folks to put together the infrastructure.
A company like facebook though is a little bit of technology developed by good people, and whole lot monkeys that know just enough about it string it together with the presentation layer.
Speaking as someone who would not be offended to be labels a TEA party member my problem with illegal immigration is its a basic question of rule of law. If the law does not work or we don't want to enforce it, than it should be repealed or amended. If its on the books it should be enforced. No exceptions no playing favorites, collar them a prosecute them; deport them. Its a stupid policy but we should change it not just ignore it and fail to enforce it.
I'll vote for the last. Taxing "long term" (greater than 1 year is long term?) capital gains at a a max marginal rate of 15%, even if you're a billionaire, while middle class schnooks pay a higher marginal rate on their earned income (IRS term), is obscene. Have you noticed the vast political movement to change that? Or that the average person in the street, fed "information" by the sycophantic media, are even aware of such an absurd disparity?
The problem here is there are people who are middle class and people who think they are middle class. You are middle class if you have a professional job or are a tradesmen with some savings and the ability to make choices. You quit and move to a different city because you want to for example. If you nothing but debts and your credit is maxed out and would be looking at foreclosure after a few months if you lose a job, you are not middle class. I don't care how big your McMansion is or have many SUVs you have parked on the driveway with no equity in. You sir are still poor.
The actual middle class has savings in investments and that 15% tax rates helps them lots. Its what enables them to save enough to retire and maintain their standard of living. Does it also function as give away to the very wealthy yes, but rates should be the same for everyone. Maybe it should be 15% on the first 100K and go up from there but just blanket raising the capital gains would be bad for middle class America.
Its not their responsibility to train you but we probably should ask the question whey they don't want to. Is it because the American education system is not turning out young adults that are even fit for entry level positions in tech firms?
Is it that other nations are turning out young adults that are so much better qualified?
Do companies no longer see a benefit from developing and retaining talent in house? People used to have entire professional careers at just one or two organizations. Why has this changed?
It is a problem that companies don't seem to want to hire anyone without a decade of experience now. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have than but young enough not have ageism close the doors to us as well can do okay, for now...
I like many of my peers I talk to at different organizations, get great reviews but never "promoted" I mean we get title promotions where they add additional roman numerals on our business cards and pay bumps but the job does not really change. When something like a team lead position opens up they almost always hire an outsider. It was clear at one company I spent a lot years at I was never going to get moved up in the organization sense. As soon I left an went somewhere else laterally for a little while though, I saw the position I had wanted their open up and got the job with no more than a phone call "So you want to come back? Great!". I am certain though had I still be occupying my old desk I never would have been considered for the potion.
As I have stated before I have many friends with very similar experiences. Its weird as a policy I don't really understand it. Maybe the idea is it brings outside ideas in. I can understand seeking to do this if the business practice/unit at a given organization is immature in terms of process or unsuccessful but when you have a sub organization that is working why not promote from within?
We've found tolerable solutions to our other toxic waste problems.
Yes if you consider shipping it off to some place in the third world to poison them instead of us a tolerable solution.
Most of solutions to other toxic waste were really only ecologically sustainable when the population was a few billion people small. We are going to eventually run out of places to dump stuff.
So you could add it to water and turn it into wine?
No probably just some nasty brownish sludge. All of the volatiles including the alcohol will be gone. The rest of the what was once there will probably be heavily oxidized and taste pretty nasty too. Its not instant coffee ( which is generally pretty bad itself).
Right, the problem is solved but we need to get real about the proliferation issue.
I say the genie is out of the bottle at this. The policy might have made sense in the past but now our insistence on not having breeder reactors around is creating more risk then its preventing. Lots of people we did not want to get the bomb have the bomb now. China -check, North Korea -check, Pakistan -check, India -check, and Iran is so near it now that the Iranian nuclear issue is a political play thing. The President can send the Secretary of State out to strike a meaningless deal where the various parties don't even agree on what the language means just to distract from domestic issue, because it no longer matters they take the final steps anytime. All of these plays could without our ability to stop them spread it farther as well.
So it comes to the morals issues now. Firstly is clearly immoral to leave future generations piles of toxic waste for which the only solution for dealing with is one we have deemed unacceptable in our time.
Secondly though, what right do we have to deny another sovereign people nuclear power. We certainly under no obligation to give it to them but to deny them is wrong. Look what convulsions our own economy goes through whenever there is a oil price shock. It should be clear that cheap, abundant, reliable energy is critical to, if not the driver for success in the modern world economy. As a practical matter support for nonproliferation policies at this point is synonymous with support for poverty and inequality and war.
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I don't doubt you *can* harden and XP machine so it will be pretty resilient to most exploit attempts even without it being on a recent patch level. But in practice this isnt possible. As I pointed out things don't stay air-gaped. You can shutdown all those services and "unneeded" processes if all you want to do is read txt files with notepad but in the real world stuff depends on those services. You'd be amazed at how much software that does not *need* the network just won't run if the server or workstation services are stopped. Yes it half backed PLC vendor kludgeware but that stuff is why its being run on XP in the first place.
My comments on its light enough were directed at people developing control software. There is NO good reason to write it for windows. Its usually got its own interface anyway and it would be much easier to maintain on the other platforms.
1. It's light enough.
There are lots options here any current *BSD or Linux Kernel with basic gnu tools and a purpose built interface would still be lighter than XP. No X and Gnome 3 or KDE 5 won't be but there are plenty of things that would. That's before you even look into the other choices like QNX and friends out there as well.
2. It's air gapped.
That's bullshit son and you know it. Nothing air-gapped ever stays air-gapped. Anyone who has worked in a manufacturing environment and delt with plant engineers knows "it won't be on the network, honest" really means "I'll have a vulnerable version of VNC on this thing next week for bonus points I'll set the net mask wrong so I'll have problems that seem strange to me; ask you to help out and forget all about the conversation we had about not putting it on the network."
3. It's secured via elimination of infection vectors.
Right because vendors never update their own software and have to issue fixes and stuff that should not be there never finds its way onto that USB stick they bring into the building. Sorry seen that too way to many times.
4. It's needed for legacy reasons.
Right -- This unfortunitly is true and I really wish I could find a solution.
5. Etc.
Excuses, excuse, number 4 is really the only quasi legitimate reason and when its $100,000+ machine it controls 4 is good enough. Don't waste our time with etc etc... What reasons you imagine its okay are crap.
There's this comical belief that Congress should have the ability to approve of War Powers, which the constitution clearly states are those powers reserved to the President.
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
What Constitution are you reading? The congress pretty clearly has the power to declare or not a war.
Can't anything live up to its promise
It accumulates to certain individuals who instead of keeping the cash flowing and market running hoard it like Scrooge McDuck.
That isn't a problem. It just means few coins will exchange for more goods or services due to availability or lack there of.
Sure long term deflation that does not end would be a problematic but there isn't much historic precedent out there for long term deflationary patterns. Where they have happened its been after a major inflationary event like a war, and the deflation mostly stops when the currency reaches prewar values such as the panics after the war of 1812.
Ultimately deflation at the macro level is just a redistribution from debtors to creditors. At the macro level a monetary event not real wealth changing event. The creditors having just witnesses how the relative value of money can change start to want to diversify or just want a way to make more money so they start investing (lending) again.
The only reasons this is a problem at all is because we have decided its a good political policy to enable half the population to run around with a negative net worth for large portions of their adult lives. Which leaves them with no flexibility whatsoever to cope with changing market conditions. If they can't get their paycheck for a few weeks, or if wages go down, or if interest rates go up, they can't adjust.
Outside the box, how about inside the box!
What is wrong with good old fashion detective work? You get tips from people you follow them up, you listen to truly public chatter learn who the malcontents are and infiltrate their groups, etc.
All things police and spy agencies have been doing as long as they have existed and it worked without with to a large degree without global privacy shredding mass data collection. Is it likely to be as "effective" my guess is probably not as effective as mass surveillance can be but then again there is little evidence to suggest the the mass surveillance has worked so well, I mean people are still going abroad to meet with terror organizations come home and then sneak bombs on planes; they have just failed to detonate.
Its a question of finding balance: risks, costs, and rewards. The real solution is we need to start getting rational about that.
Maybe it's overlap, bots crawling Netflix, maybe watching it. P
Well for one thing Snowden isn't leaking anything anymore and has not been since he got to Russia it's a condition of his freedom there. What's happening is the paper he leaked it to continues to go thru the material and publish the interesting stuff. So Snowden would have needed lots of foresight to arrange something like that. Could the Gaurdian start making up Snowden leaks? I suppose but he might dispute them, and it would harm the papers image, and with the UK government breathing down their necks over the leaks it would be risky too.
Its not uncommon for that very reason to mount /var noexec
The most sensible solution is to allow only sessions cookies. I know everyone loves their "keep me logged in button" but simple solution is to have browsers silently convert all cookie requests to session cookies no matter what the server or script asks for.
This should do be the default, as it breaks very few sites and existing web applications other than you have to logon every time. Users should have to manually go white list domains that are allowed persistent storage.
Browsers need to stop providing useragents, they need to start sending strings like
"traditional HTML 5.0 ready browser" or "touchscreen HTML 5.0 browser" instead.
The default behavior should be to only send a referer header when the request is to a page on the same domain as the one already being displayed.
As much as I hate to advocate it because its a waste of everyone's network resources, the same approach needs to be applied to document caching. There are to many possibilities for script based timing analysis attacks and server side request analysis that will enable tracking with the cache enabled.
Implement those changes and you will an WWW that still mostly works without alot of changes to existing sites but is decidedly less trackable.
I am talking about anything like a great purge, my point was we the people can't get something like that done even if we wanted to do it.
Which is why I want to have people down the food chain hang drawn and quartered. My hope is the Clappers of the world come to understand when the public get upset their masters will quickly abandon them to protect their own interests. That way when they get asked to follow orders that are wrong they just might say "No sir, I won't implement a massive domestic spy program it's un-American."
Will the pols just get someone else to do it? Probably but those someones will be the incompetents to dumb to see it's going to become a personal calamity
I used to be a big backer of the audit the FED movement but the reality is, if we want a fair economy where everyone gets equal treatment the only solution is END THE FED. What are we going to learn from an audit that could possibly matter when they tell us they are effectively printing $85B every month?
What they have been public about since the start of QE is so large in comparison to every reference frame we have, no other theft could amount to much of anything; because its a fiat currency reference is all the matters.
Right and lets not forget either that all that manufacturing equipment does not just get set on fire because of bankruptcy. It would have been sold off cheap to those same start ups. Deflation can be a good thing.
I can't have anything but a viseral reaction to your entire post. Critical thinking should be taught as early as possible, its habit, and you want to get good habits ingrained as early as possible. Brains are not really even capable of critical thinking until around age 8, so its a great time to stuff heads with rote learning like multiplication tables I agree with you there.
But by the time you are teaching history and algebra you should also be teaching critical thinking, because the two are all related. Your write protect bit concept is a off base too. Teachers at those subjects should be able to earn the respect of their students, enough to at least trust the information if not the opinions. If a teacher can't do that they are the failures.
Most our societies problems stem from blind trust of authority and people not engaging in thinking let alone critical thinking.
The "if you like your insurance you can keep it scandal" is the perfect example. It does not matter which side of the political debate you come down on. Everyone listening reasonable should have know in the context of a bunch of new requirements many even most current plans did not offer this statement was some place between a lie or incomplete. Instead three years later a bunch of people seem surprised and last moment measures have to be taken. Why because people don't think...
There isn't anything in any of these revelations many had not guessed or spotted. There were and still are tons of people who just wanted to live in denial about it. Snodens stuff is making that hard for them as they can't just dismiss the people saying it as tinfoil hat clad conspiracy nuts, with actual evidence floating about.
No the problems start at the top, Senators, Presidents, powerful Congressmen, generals. The problem is the system has no way to deal with them because at those levels it basically depends on the punishing themselves and they have learned to circle the wagons when the people get riled up.
The only option is to target their enablers, folks like clapper. If enough political pressure can be brought to bear and you give them the option to toss someone like Clapper under the bus along with a few low level admin types like snowdens coworkers who broke some rule somewhere some time they will.
Do this often enough and they won't be able to find these facilitators who are willing to go a long with what they know to unethical, immoral, illegal or some combination there of because they will also know that when it comes to light and it will someday, it's going to be them that pays for it.
It's time to demand Clapper be hauled away in handcuffs
As a Discordian Pope, I don't care what monuments they put up only that there are five of them, and I'd kinda like one to be a cabbage but am flexible on that.
yes they are trying to get an army of disposable low quality coders. Yes they need some good folks and will always need to some good folks to put together the infrastructure.
A company like facebook though is a little bit of technology developed by good people, and whole lot monkeys that know just enough about it string it together with the presentation layer.
Speaking as someone who would not be offended to be labels a TEA party member my problem with illegal immigration is its a basic question of rule of law. If the law does not work or we don't want to enforce it, than it should be repealed or amended. If its on the books it should be enforced. No exceptions no playing favorites, collar them a prosecute them; deport them. Its a stupid policy but we should change it not just ignore it and fail to enforce it.
I'll vote for the last. Taxing "long term" (greater than 1 year is long term?) capital gains at a a max marginal rate of 15%, even if you're a billionaire, while middle class schnooks pay a higher marginal rate on their earned income (IRS term), is obscene. Have you noticed the vast political movement to change that? Or that the average person in the street, fed "information" by the sycophantic media, are even aware of such an absurd disparity?
The problem here is there are people who are middle class and people who think they are middle class. You are middle class if you have a professional job or are a tradesmen with some savings and the ability to make choices. You quit and move to a different city because you want to for example. If you nothing but debts and your credit is maxed out and would be looking at foreclosure after a few months if you lose a job, you are not middle class. I don't care how big your McMansion is or have many SUVs you have parked on the driveway with no equity in. You sir are still poor.
The actual middle class has savings in investments and that 15% tax rates helps them lots. Its what enables them to save enough to retire and maintain their standard of living. Does it also function as give away to the very wealthy yes, but rates should be the same for everyone. Maybe it should be 15% on the first 100K and go up from there but just blanket raising the capital gains would be bad for middle class America.
Its not their responsibility to train you but we probably should ask the question whey they don't want to. Is it because the American education system is not turning out young adults that are even fit for entry level positions in tech firms?
Is it that other nations are turning out young adults that are so much better qualified?
Do companies no longer see a benefit from developing and retaining talent in house? People used to have entire professional careers at just one or two organizations. Why has this changed?
It is a problem that companies don't seem to want to hire anyone without a decade of experience now. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have than but young enough not have ageism close the doors to us as well can do okay, for now...
I like many of my peers I talk to at different organizations, get great reviews but never "promoted" I mean we get title promotions where they add additional roman numerals on our business cards and pay bumps but the job does not really change. When something like a team lead position opens up they almost always hire an outsider. It was clear at one company I spent a lot years at I was never going to get moved up in the organization sense. As soon I left an went somewhere else laterally for a little while though, I saw the position I had wanted their open up and got the job with no more than a phone call "So you want to come back? Great!". I am certain though had I still be occupying my old desk I never would have been considered for the potion.
As I have stated before I have many friends with very similar experiences. Its weird as a policy I don't really understand it. Maybe the idea is it brings outside ideas in. I can understand seeking to do this if the business practice/unit at a given organization is immature in terms of process or unsuccessful but when you have a sub organization that is working why not promote from within?
What is going on?
We've found tolerable solutions to our other toxic waste problems.
Yes if you consider shipping it off to some place in the third world to poison them instead of us a tolerable solution.
Most of solutions to other toxic waste were really only ecologically sustainable when the population was a few billion people small. We are going to eventually run out of places to dump stuff.
So you could add it to water and turn it into wine?
No probably just some nasty brownish sludge. All of the volatiles including the alcohol will be gone. The rest of the what was once there will probably be heavily oxidized and taste pretty nasty too. Its not instant coffee ( which is generally pretty bad itself).
Right, the problem is solved but we need to get real about the proliferation issue.
I say the genie is out of the bottle at this. The policy might have made sense in the past but now our insistence on not having breeder reactors around is creating more risk then its preventing. Lots of people we did not want to get the bomb have the bomb now. China -check, North Korea -check, Pakistan -check, India -check, and Iran is so near it now that the Iranian nuclear issue is a political play thing. The President can send the Secretary of State out to strike a meaningless deal where the various parties don't even agree on what the language means just to distract from domestic issue, because it no longer matters they take the final steps anytime. All of these plays could without our ability to stop them spread it farther as well.
So it comes to the morals issues now. Firstly is clearly immoral to leave future generations piles of toxic waste for which the only solution for dealing with is one we have deemed unacceptable in our time.
Secondly though, what right do we have to deny another sovereign people nuclear power. We certainly under no obligation to give it to them but to deny them is wrong. Look what convulsions our own economy goes through whenever there is a oil price shock. It should be clear that cheap, abundant, reliable energy is critical to, if not the driver for success in the modern world economy. As a practical matter support for nonproliferation policies at this point is synonymous with support for poverty and inequality and war.