"That which can be taken away can be likely taken back. On much smaller scale, many bad laws have been reversed in the past. The areas in which privacy has been eroded and removed can be restored. In fact, many of the horrible ideas and changes can be reversed. People just have to want it and take some action. I take my own personal actions and I speak to all who will listen. I speak of simple things like getting out of and staying out of debt and refusal to finance. It's our whole culture of debt financing that is responsible for a lot of the mess we find ourselves in today. Now I save more money than ever before, and I'm all but completely out of debt. When more people start doing this, we'll find that prices of many things will start to drop since people will be less willing to go into debt to finance things any longer."
My issue in this case about debt. House do I buy a house if I do not have credit? How do I come up with $200,000 for an average house? I have 2 credit cards and 2 houses right now and 2 cars. I do not consider myself in debt as I had 4 credit cards last year and I have paid off 2 so far and cancelled them. When I am done I will have 1 credit card with a large balance.
Example of why having that credit card is necessary. Due to mechanical failure of a Uhaul trailer on the 28th of April I was in an accident. Without the credit card I would not have gotten the trailer, my vehicle and myself towed and transported to somewhere I could rest, eat and sleep. With the crime out there I am not going to carry a couple thousand dollars on my person just in case of an emergency when I can carry a credit card with as much a credit limit as the cash.
A lost wallet is lost money either way and at least with my credit card I can report it and keep the card from being used and my money stolen whereas cash is gone. Not to mention the current "Forfeiture - Seizure laws and how the police are gung ho to take any large ammounts of cash you are carrying for the simple fact that over 90% of all US cash has residual drugs traces and drug sniffing dogs will react. Despite the fact the 4th amendment should stop the forfeitures and seizure.
I don't like that I feel the need to carry a credit card but I feel a little safer with it. I am still opposed to a national ID.
I just came across the border Saturday into Detroit. I wasn't even asked to show my license. Guy asked me about my citizenship and commented on my 74 Blazer and let me through. I have gone between Detroit and Boston VIA Canada many times since 9/11 and even less than 2 weeks after and never been asked for more than my license. I bought this Blazer back last year. Forgot the License Plate and drove from PA to Niagara then across and to Detroit and across to home in the US. All the time riding with a "Cardboard" license plate and never once was I asked about why I did not have a real license plate or even ask for registratoin to verify the vehicle was legal. What border securtiy with Canada? Probably the only thing you could not take over the border is nuclear material.
A national ID sounds good. It sounds simple and less complicated. I still don't like it and would rather go to jail than have one. I am not a criminal but that does not mean I don't feel indignant of the US Government forcing all this crap on me. Just like Gun Control it only hinders and hurts honest citizens.
As for the statement of "if you are not a criminal what do you have to complain about or worry about" simple if something is wrong and intrusive it doesn't matter if you are a criminal or honest citizen it is still wrong and intrusive.
You want to put a tracking chip in me or some sort of RFID then do it after I died so my corpse doesnt get lost.
Bush may have the degrees but he averaged a C- and being so long since I was in college I cannot remember what the GPA for that was. 2.2 or somewhere around there.
Considering Benjamin Franklin first suggested the concept it will be tough to strangle him.
As for DST I was getting used to finally jogging in the morning in daylight. Now I have to get back another hour before I am in the light jogging. I also jog at night. The only time I do not jog morning and night is when there is too much snow to slog through. Not much of that this year in Michigan Though.
PS Hooray I am getting the hell out of this state by the end of the year.
That is where the problem is. We have enough gun control law.. well more than enough laws on the books. There is NO need whatever to add more laws. The problem there is the government would have to admit they are wrong about guns and that personal ownership was ok.
Just because I do not like guns does not mean you cannot own a gun. Sheesh if that thought wasn't true then you could apply it to anything. I do not like RAP music therefore you cannot listen to it either, just as an example.
The original framers of the Bill of Rights in many instances said that the right of the people to keep and bear arms was for ALL CITIZENS. Why do people have to twist and convolute this statement?
What has changed is attitude of the passengers. Prior to 911, everyone was told to let things play out and wait for the plane to land. No one imagined someone using a plane full of people as a weapon. That was the difference in the last aircraft. The passengers found out that the rules of the game had changed and adapted to the new rules.
Actually Tom Clancy the writer of Patriot Games and a quite a few other Novels wrote one called Executive Orders in 1996. In this Novel a terrorist used a plane to detroy Congress and the President just before the character Jack Ryan showed up to be sworn in as Vice President. Clancy has also warned and hounded the government for over a decade about our vulnerability to this sort of attack.
However, to be fair, if everyone had to install Windows themselves, also, I think the majority of the population just would never use a computer AT ALL.
I grew up in Massachusetts and I live in Michigan. Well I do not believe I am in the Midwest even though they claim Michigan is Midwest... they drive worse here than Massachusetts. I just got back from being in Massachusetts for the Holiday week. One of my saving graces on my 1974 Chevy Blazer 4X4 (NOT an SUV) is that I have 3" tube bumpers custom made for it and cement filled as well as welded to the frame front and back with matching nerf bars. This basically means if you hit me you bounce off. I also unfortunately drive a Focus as well. Seems people have no problem cutting off me in my Focus but give me plenty of room in the Blazer. So trust me stay in Massachusetts... it really is worse out here in Michigan and Ohio. Though my wife says Virginia is actually quite nice to drive in.
Doesn't help if you have upgraded to Quicken 2005 and the bank only has support to Quicken 2003 or earlier. The downloaded QIF files from my bank wont import to 2005. So I manually check my balance and enter from the bank site.
Though if it can keep up with Quickbooks I would be happy.
"there are two things in the world that is infinite (1) the universe (2) human stupidity"
You forgot the rest of the quote - and I am not sure about the first. - Albert Einstein
As to the topic. Considering I run a MUD and have been an IMM on several it would not have suprised me if somewhere along the way it comes out that they had "Cybersex" before even meeting over an IM.
I DO NOT condone what the 19 year old did... Especially if the sex was forced. Problem being here is that I had a friend in college whos whole life was screwed up because the morning after the girl he was with decided to claim rape and despite my testimony and several of her friends he was convicted of sexual assault and put on probation for 10 years. Thankfully that was 20 years ago and at least he did not have to be listed as a sexual offender.
Also as for first date etiquette, MS. Manners can go to hell. In my years of dating I have only had one date that I did not get a kiss at the end and many that went all the way on the first date including breakfast the next morning. Anyone in the baby boomer generations who claims that a kiss on a first date is the norm must have grown up isolated from the rest of the world.
Again lest others get the wrong impression - I DO NOT condone what the 19 y/o did, He should never have tried to have any type of sex with someone under the age of 18.
A few months back I read an article similar to the following. I had one grandmother who died after over 15 years with Alzheimers and one that is currently going through Alzheimers and probably will be around for another 10, She is 93 now.
This article and a few others if you google tells an interesting tale.
9/11 had not even happened yet, yet the previous administration implemented the domestic spying NSA program. They did not even have the excuse of terrorism.
Umm not to defend Billy boy but
1: Bombing of the Trade Center
2: US Cole Bombing
3,4,5: Few other attacks that happened during that administration.
On second thought - Don't Impeach Bush. I do not want Cheney as President.
besides, it is actually immoral for a corporation to worry about anything else, because it is fully possible and even likely that the interest the shareholder receives will be spend on charity, as rich shareholders often turn there wealth into endowments.
Corporations are neither moral or immoral. They are an entity of business. Morality is the place of people not busineses.
With that said Most of the arguements to this point are exactly what people said in the 30's and 40's about Unions and look what happened. I am not a big union fan considering that a lot of those workers in the Auto Industry are only High School Graduates and make more than I do. I have only once seen a union do anything to help an employee. My wife was an 8 year veteran for Lear when they closed plant 2 I think it was. She found out about the Clause in NAFTA that the government gives you 2 years of school to retrain and almost 2 years of unemployment. She took the info to her Union reps and they sat on it. She had to go and tell people about this so that they could take advanatage of the provision. The union failed the workers there.
With that said I would love to see a Union to help stabilize wages and set standards on what an employers responsibility to their workers is and make it a legal document. Maybe we can stop this crap with the H1B visas and IT people from overseas taking jobs at 1/2 what an American usually makes.
Bush - I did wiretaps without warrant and I will continue to do so (not exact words) - Translation - I dont give a rats ass about the Constitution and you folks are too stupid to impeach me.
Robbers, thieves, murderers, assaulters, drunkards, slanderers, rapists, pedophiles, embezzlers, illegal drug makers/dealers/users, illegal aliens, kidnappers and all the rest of humanity's evil doers get to continue their nefarious acts while you and I and every lawful, polite, peaceful citizen get to pay for it.
Stop watching the nightly news and get back on topic please.
This is just another example of legislators usurping parents' roles. It will be struck down, they're doing it all for show.
Since when do parents actually do anything for their child like discipline them or heaven forbid say something negative and deny them what they want. Sheesh parents shouldnt have to raise their kids, the government should (End heavy sarcasm response)
Would someone get Bush a blowjob so we can impeach him
Just to note if you read my post again I said I 'USED' to travel 696. That was about 6 years ago. I currently travel almost daily down I75. From Exit 35 MI to exit 161 OH is it actually 84 miles. The speed limit being 70 in MI the average driver does 79/80. In Ohio it is 65 and the average is about 74/75. If I did the speed limits of 70 and 65 It would take me about 15 minutes longer on the freeway. I live 4 miles from 75 which is on a road that averages 40. The office location off 75 in Ohio is 2 miles away. So about 95% of my drive is pure highway. It has gotten longer by about 20 minutes due to the current pain in the butt construction.
Someone tell me why they cut 3' by 6' squares out of the highway and fill them back up?
"Or go into business for yourself. Harder. More work than you ever thought possible. Have to learn how to sell. But you can charge whatever the market will bear. Until computers become appliances, there is a huge market for computer help. It's not sexy. When you've cleaned up your 5th windows virus in 3 days, you'll be totally bored, but the checks will keep on coming in.
But, yeah, it's a waste of a computer science degree. More like being a plumber."
Running my own business is rewarding. The days I am not onsite at my one big account I can sleep late. I usually run about 4 computers reloading or virus scanning while I am building a website for a customer. Then when I have free time between rebooting a computer I play online games and read slashdot. I do not have to answer to a PHB as I am the PHB. Well okay my wife is the Boss but she lets me think I am. I set my own schedule for clients that call in for work. I never do the same thing every day and I use all my skills. Linux, MS, Mac, Webpage development, Server building, Network design and many others. I do not have to sell because word of mouth has brought me the clients so my clients sell me.
I cannot complain too much but I am human and do. A plumber has a worse reputation than a IT guy working out of his house for screwing customers. I charge fair market - a little and the clients are happy.
Used to be that if I ran I-75 south from Oakland County to Detroit that if I left at 5:20 I'd be in at 6:15AM. If I left at 5:30, I wouldn't be there until 7:10AM. That was before Chrysler moved out to Auburn Hills. Now it doesn't make any difference!
I take 75 south from Exit 35 to Ohio Exit 161 almost daily.
Hit the far left lane and set the cruise at 79 till Ohio then 74 from then on. Usually miss most traffic and even with the crappy construction from Mile 24ish to 15 it isnt too bad.
As for speeding and time. If you drive less than 60 miles to work or other location your saving of time is less than 10 minutes. The lower the speedlimit and the shorter the distance the less time speeding subtracts from your communte. Doing 100 miles a day at an average of almost 80 saves me about 15-20 minutes a direction over doing the speed limit.
Damn glad I do not have to drive into Detroit to work daily. Though my wife will in a couple weeks... hehehehe. She will finally get a taste of what I deal with daily.
BTW 696 traffic depends on what direction you are going. If you are going west in the morning and east in the evening the traffic is not as bad. used to do it a few years back.
Growing up in Massachuesetts though is different. If you think you live in a place that has bad drivers as well as dangerous speeders go to Massachusetts for 2 months and drive in and out of Boston daily. I have lived many places up and down the East Coast and in Michigan. I have visited LA and other big Cities over the years. They cannot even hold a candle to Boston Drivers. I have even driven in New York City traffic. What most of the rest of the country does at 20-40 MPH is done on the highways in the Boston area at 50-80 mph.
I'm not sure humans are yet capable of producing the quantities of pollutants necessary to create significant changes in the earths' climate.
With reports like this http://www.cmar.csiro.au/e-print/open/greenhouse_2 000e.htm
and others like it (I recall reading somewhere that, globally, volcanic eruptions during a more active year can expel more pollutants than the human race has since we discovered fire..can't find the quote/report dangit) along with a realisation of what an enormously large system we're talking about, and the enormous amount of "inertia" to be overcome making any significant change to such a system, I have a feeling we may be giving ourselves too much credit, that we may not be able to significantly change climate patterns even if we tried.
Though I am not on the side of Global Warming I do not think we should shy away from doing everything we can to limit what we produce as pollution.
More importantly our denuding the planet of trees is more of a threat than if we rolled back pollution controls to 1960s levels on cars and factories. As I am searching now I do not have the citing but if we remove all that is green from the surface of the earth we will just barely survive the lowered oxygen in the atmosphere as a result. If we leave all the trees and make every square inch of the land greenery but destroy all the plankton and other similar plants in the sea the world will die. In both these cases our actions as an industrial world affect our quality of life and global warming more than the actual pollutants in the air other than how the pollutants affect the plants.
More than anything else we need to stop the destruction of the Rain Forests, put extremely severe restrictions on dumping stuff in the ocean and make the penalties harsh enough as well as enforced enough to put these companies out of business and make it more profitable to be clean than pollute. Mother Earth will forgive only so much and she may not be warming up but she sure as well is having a hell of a time breathing.
Drive through Lizbeth NJ any workday in the week and breathe deeply. Then go to the top of the Appalachian mountains and breathe deeply. Notice the difference.
Global Warming is not the problem. Loss of greenery and oxygen creating plants is.
No Room in Sig for this - Sig Addendum - Impeach Bush
I am certainly not a friend of Dubyah.
But
Fossil records show both times of drought and times of high waters throughout the history of the world. There has been many Ice Ages and conversely many times that the temperature of the earth has risen.
Why then with only about 100 years of scientific measurements and less than 50 with good equipment and knowledge do we think that what we have done in the past 50 years or so is the cause? 100 years out of millions that the planet has been around (10,000ish if you are a devout Catholic) is not an acceptable scientific average. If I roll a die 10 times and claim that the average is 4.5 because I rolled a bunch of 6's and not a lot of other numbers I have used a very small sampling. If I roll it 1000 times and find out it is more like 2.6 for the average I have a more reliable basis.
Do not forget the issue of Global Warming, Ozone Hole and how it is created is still a theory, it is not hard fact. Give me 1 shred of factual evidence that the world has not warmed up in the past to higher temperatures than now. Give me 1 shred of fact that the Ozone layer is only recently showing a hole. I have been searching the net because I remember an article shortly after the annoucement of the hole. The article had two statements. 1: The hole was only found now because we had just figured out how to find that type of thing in the atmosphere and 2: It maybe a Natural Cycle of the worlds enviroment.
All we have right now is Theory and Hypothesis from observations and a limited set of results.
This does not mean we should not try to reduce our production of harmful gasses and chemicals it just means that we do not need to panic and act like it is the end of the world. After all think about it. If most of the polution in the air that may be causing this is from the last 50 years then things are going so fast we might actually see a "Day after tomorrow" speed of an Ice Age returning and we do not have the time to reverse everything anyways.
BTW one other article/bit of information I am trying to find online is that there was smog in the LA valley area when settlers first found it.
Impeach Bush - This is not flamebait - it wont fit in my sig with the quote of Benjamin Franklin
I was under the impression that for any seiziure of private property for investigation
As far as I am concernned unless the ISP has a TOS that state my E-Mail and Surfing habits are useable by the company for anything then my e-mail and surfing habits are personal property and the government or any lawyers wanting this information or others have to subpoena the information from me.
It is my property and not the ISPs property.
The affluent and expensive life style of America, which is totally out of touch with the reality of the rest of the world, is to blame.
I have about 40 hardware Certifications between HP and other companies out there. I am damn good at troubleshooting. I also have my CNE. I make a little over 40K a year doing deskside support instead of whatever I could make in the server room. I have a Wife and a mortgage payment on a $130K house in the Dearborn area of Michigan. Just bought a used 2003 Escape for the wife. How is that out of touch with reality? I know many IT people in similar situations as far as pay and expenses.
How much is a college degree worth? How much is years of experience worth? How much is it worth to a company to have someone with years of experience walk in and in less than 10-20 minutes diagnose and other than hardware or total system crash have the Accounting department back up and running so they can bill and bring in money to the company over having to call India or some other part of the world and spend hours trying to work through a problem from remote while the network or computer is down?
Hell I have trouble talking to those people over the phone when I just want to get a part through warranty. Dell being the worst. I am Dell Certified on anything they make. I call and say I want a Tape Drive for a Server and they say are you in front of the machine we need to troubleshoot. Why the hell do I pay them $3000 a year to be a company that they send warranty work to and then another $150+ a year for the certifications to let some phone jockey from half way across the world walk me through troubleshooting I already did.
You can also wake me when a single arab/muslim run country has even a sliver of the human rights that the evil west has, even the west under Bush. It is no excuse for westerners but it certainly means that arabs should first fix their own affairs. Just check resent developments in indonesia where muslims are suprresing the other religions for being to erotic.
King Hussein and to a great extent his son continues the legacy in Jordan. Programs for Women, the poor, disabled and others underprivileged people in the country are in some cases better than those here in the US.
Impeach Bush - Alone the warrantless wiretaps are a violation of his oath of office.
Support our Troops - Lets find a way to bring them home soon, not in 10 years.
Slashdot Mirror
"That which can be taken away can be likely taken back. On much smaller scale, many bad laws have been reversed in the past. The areas in which privacy has been eroded and removed can be restored. In fact, many of the horrible ideas and changes can be reversed. People just have to want it and take some action. I take my own personal actions and I speak to all who will listen. I speak of simple things like getting out of and staying out of debt and refusal to finance. It's our whole culture of debt financing that is responsible for a lot of the mess we find ourselves in today. Now I save more money than ever before, and I'm all but completely out of debt. When more people start doing this, we'll find that prices of many things will start to drop since people will be less willing to go into debt to finance things any longer."
My issue in this case about debt. House do I buy a house if I do not have credit? How do I come up with $200,000 for an average house? I have 2 credit cards and 2 houses right now and 2 cars. I do not consider myself in debt as I had 4 credit cards last year and I have paid off 2 so far and cancelled them. When I am done I will have 1 credit card with a large balance.
Example of why having that credit card is necessary. Due to mechanical failure of a Uhaul trailer on the 28th of April I was in an accident. Without the credit card I would not have gotten the trailer, my vehicle and myself towed and transported to somewhere I could rest, eat and sleep. With the crime out there I am not going to carry a couple thousand dollars on my person just in case of an emergency when I can carry a credit card with as much a credit limit as the cash.
A lost wallet is lost money either way and at least with my credit card I can report it and keep the card from being used and my money stolen whereas cash is gone. Not to mention the current "Forfeiture - Seizure laws and how the police are gung ho to take any large ammounts of cash you are carrying for the simple fact that over 90% of all US cash has residual drugs traces and drug sniffing dogs will react. Despite the fact the 4th amendment should stop the forfeitures and seizure.
I don't like that I feel the need to carry a credit card but I feel a little safer with it. I am still opposed to a national ID.
I just came across the border Saturday into Detroit. I wasn't even asked to show my license. Guy asked me about my citizenship and commented on my 74 Blazer and let me through.
I have gone between Detroit and Boston VIA Canada many times since 9/11 and even less than 2 weeks after and never been asked for more than my license.
I bought this Blazer back last year. Forgot the License Plate and drove from PA to Niagara then across and to Detroit and across to home in the US. All the time riding with a "Cardboard" license plate and never once was I asked about why I did not have a real license plate or even ask for registratoin to verify the vehicle was legal. What border securtiy with Canada? Probably the only thing you could not take over the border is nuclear material.
A national ID sounds good. It sounds simple and less complicated. I still don't like it and would rather go to jail than have one. I am not a criminal but that does not mean I don't feel indignant of the US Government forcing all this crap on me. Just like Gun Control it only hinders and hurts honest citizens.
As for the statement of "if you are not a criminal what do you have to complain about or worry about" simple if something is wrong and intrusive it doesn't matter if you are a criminal or honest citizen it is still wrong and intrusive.
You want to put a tracking chip in me or some sort of RFID then do it after I died so my corpse doesnt get lost.
Bush may have the degrees but he averaged a C- and being so long since I was in college I cannot remember what the GPA for that was. 2.2 or somewhere around there.
Considering Benjamin Franklin first suggested the concept it will be tough to strangle him.
As for DST I was getting used to finally jogging in the morning in daylight. Now I have to get back another hour before I am in the light jogging. I also jog at night. The only time I do not jog morning and night is when there is too much snow to slog through. Not much of that this year in Michigan Though.
PS Hooray I am getting the hell out of this state by the end of the year.
That is where the problem is. We have enough gun control law.. well more than enough
laws on the books. There is NO need whatever to add more laws. The problem there is the
government would have to admit they are wrong about guns and that personal ownership was ok.
Just because I do not like guns does not mean you cannot own a gun. Sheesh if that thought wasn't true then you could apply it to anything. I do not like RAP music therefore you cannot listen to it either, just as an example.
The original framers of the Bill of Rights in many instances said that the right of the people to keep and bear arms was for ALL CITIZENS. Why do people have to twist and convolute this statement?
Now back to our topic.....
Actually Tom Clancy the writer of Patriot Games and a quite a few other Novels wrote one called Executive Orders in 1996. In this Novel a terrorist used a plane to detroy Congress and the President just before the character Jack Ryan showed up to be sworn in as Vice President. Clancy has also warned and hounded the government for over a decade about our vulnerability to this sort of attack.
You say this like it is a bad thing.
I grew up in Massachusetts and I live in Michigan. Well I do not believe I am in the Midwest even though they claim Michigan is Midwest... they drive worse here than Massachusetts. I just got back from being in Massachusetts for the Holiday week. One of my saving graces on my 1974 Chevy Blazer 4X4 (NOT an SUV) is that I have 3" tube bumpers custom made for it and cement filled as well as welded to the frame front and back with matching nerf bars. This basically means if you hit me you bounce off. I also unfortunately drive a Focus as well. Seems people have no problem cutting off me in my Focus but give me plenty of room in the Blazer. So trust me stay in Massachusetts... it really is worse out here in Michigan and Ohio. Though my wife says Virginia is actually quite nice to drive in.
Doesn't help if you have upgraded to Quicken 2005 and the bank only has support to Quicken 2003 or earlier. The downloaded QIF files from my bank wont import to 2005. So I manually check my balance and enter from the bank site. Though if it can keep up with Quickbooks I would be happy.
"there are two things in the world that is infinite
(1) the universe
(2) human stupidity"
You forgot the rest of the quote - and I am not sure about the first. - Albert Einstein
As to the topic. Considering I run a MUD and have been an IMM on several it would not have suprised me if somewhere along the way it comes out that they had "Cybersex" before even meeting over an IM.
I DO NOT condone what the 19 year old did... Especially if the sex was forced. Problem being here is that I had a friend in college whos whole life was screwed up because the morning after the girl he was with decided to claim rape and despite my testimony and several of her friends he was convicted of sexual assault and put on probation for 10 years. Thankfully that was 20 years ago and at least he did not have to be listed as a sexual offender.
Also as for first date etiquette, MS. Manners can go to hell. In my years of dating I have only had one date that I did not get a kiss at the end and many that went all the way on the first date including breakfast the next morning. Anyone in the baby boomer generations who claims that a kiss on a first date is the norm must have grown up isolated from the rest of the world.
Again lest others get the wrong impression - I DO NOT condone what the 19 y/o did, He should never have tried to have any type of sex with someone under the age of 18.
A few months back I read an article similar to the following. I had one grandmother who died after over 15 years with Alzheimers and one that is currently going through Alzheimers and probably will be around for another 10, She is 93 now.
5 /12_15/2_advances_medicine01_21.html
This article and a few others if you google tells an interesting tale.
http://www.nationalreviewofmedicine.com/issue/200
Not sure how to format but heck if you can follow the link alls the better.
9/11 had not even happened yet, yet the previous administration implemented the domestic spying NSA program. They did not even have the excuse of terrorism.
Umm not to defend Billy boy but
1: Bombing of the Trade Center
2: US Cole Bombing
3,4,5: Few other attacks that happened during that administration.
On second thought - Don't Impeach Bush. I do not want Cheney as President.
besides, it is actually immoral for a corporation to worry about anything else, because it is fully possible and even likely that the interest the shareholder receives will be spend on charity, as rich shareholders often turn there wealth into endowments.
Corporations are neither moral or immoral. They are an entity of business. Morality is the place of people not busineses.
With that said Most of the arguements to this point are exactly what people said in the 30's and 40's about Unions and look what happened. I am not a big union fan considering that a lot of those workers in the Auto Industry are only High School Graduates and make more than I do. I have only once seen a union do anything to help an employee. My wife was an 8 year veteran for Lear when they closed plant 2 I think it was. She found out about the Clause in NAFTA that the government gives you 2 years of school to retrain and almost 2 years of unemployment. She took the info to her Union reps and they sat on it. She had to go and tell people about this so that they could take advanatage of the provision. The union failed the workers there.
With that said I would love to see a Union to help stabilize wages and set standards on what an employers responsibility to their workers is and make it a legal document. Maybe we can stop this crap with the H1B visas and IT people from overseas taking jobs at 1/2 what an American usually makes.
Bush - I did wiretaps without warrant and I will continue to do so (not exact words) - Translation - I dont give a rats ass about the Constitution and you folks are too stupid to impeach me.
"Canada is like living in a loft apartment above a really great party"
Robin Williams - Live on Broadway.
Robbers, thieves, murderers, assaulters, drunkards, slanderers, rapists, pedophiles, embezzlers, illegal drug makers/dealers/users, illegal aliens, kidnappers and all the rest of humanity's evil doers get to continue their nefarious acts while you and I and every lawful, polite, peaceful citizen get to pay for it.
Stop watching the nightly news and get back on topic please.
Please get Bush a blowjob so we can impeach him
This is just another example of legislators usurping parents' roles. It will be struck down, they're doing it all for show.
Since when do parents actually do anything for their child like discipline them or heaven forbid say something negative and deny them what they want. Sheesh parents shouldnt have to raise their kids, the government should (End heavy sarcasm response)
Would someone get Bush a blowjob so we can impeach him
Just to note if you read my post again I said I 'USED' to travel 696. That was about 6 years ago. I currently travel almost daily down I75. From Exit 35 MI to exit 161 OH is it actually 84 miles. The speed limit being 70 in MI the average driver does 79/80. In Ohio it is 65 and the average is about 74/75. If I did the speed limits of 70 and 65 It would take me about 15 minutes longer on the freeway. I live 4 miles from 75 which is on a road that averages 40. The office location off 75 in Ohio is 2 miles away. So about 95% of my drive is pure highway. It has gotten longer by about 20 minutes due to the current pain in the butt construction.
Someone tell me why they cut 3' by 6' squares out of the highway and fill them back up?
"Or go into business for yourself. Harder. More work than you ever thought possible. Have to learn how to sell. But you can charge whatever the market will bear. Until computers become appliances, there is a huge market for computer help. It's not sexy. When you've cleaned up your 5th windows virus in 3 days, you'll be totally bored, but the checks will keep on coming in.
But, yeah, it's a waste of a computer science degree. More like being a plumber."
Running my own business is rewarding. The days I am not onsite at my one big account I can sleep late. I usually run about 4 computers reloading or virus scanning while I am building a website for a customer. Then when I have free time between rebooting a computer I play online games and read slashdot. I do not have to answer to a PHB as I am the PHB. Well okay my wife is the Boss but she lets me think I am. I set my own schedule for clients that call in for work. I never do the same thing every day and I use all my skills. Linux, MS, Mac, Webpage development, Server building, Network design and many others. I do not have to sell because word of mouth has brought me the clients so my clients sell me.
I cannot complain too much but I am human and do. A plumber has a worse reputation than a IT guy working out of his house for screwing customers. I charge fair market - a little and the clients are happy.
Used to be that if I ran I-75 south from Oakland County to Detroit that if I left at 5:20 I'd be in at 6:15AM. If I left at 5:30, I wouldn't be there until 7:10AM. That was before Chrysler moved out to Auburn Hills. Now it doesn't make any difference!
I take 75 south from Exit 35 to Ohio Exit 161 almost daily.
Hit the far left lane and set the cruise at 79 till Ohio then 74 from then on. Usually miss most traffic and even with the crappy construction from Mile 24ish to 15 it isnt too bad.
As for speeding and time. If you drive less than 60 miles to work or other location your saving of time is less than 10 minutes. The lower the speedlimit and the shorter the distance the less time speeding subtracts from your communte. Doing 100 miles a day at an average of almost 80 saves me about 15-20 minutes a direction over doing the speed limit.
Damn glad I do not have to drive into Detroit to work daily. Though my wife will in a couple weeks... hehehehe. She will finally get a taste of what I deal with daily.
BTW 696 traffic depends on what direction you are going. If you are going west in the morning and east in the evening the traffic is not as bad. used to do it a few years back.
Growing up in Massachuesetts though is different. If you think you live in a place that has bad drivers as well as dangerous speeders go to Massachusetts for 2 months and drive in and out of Boston daily. I have lived many places up and down the East Coast and in Michigan. I have visited LA and other big Cities over the years. They cannot even hold a candle to Boston Drivers. I have even driven in New York City traffic. What most of the rest of the country does at 20-40 MPH is done on the highways in the Boston area at 50-80 mph.
Doesn't fit in my sig so here - Impeach Bush
I'm not sure humans are yet capable of producing the quantities of pollutants necessary to create significant changes in the earths' climate. With reports like this http://www.cmar.csiro.au/e-print/open/greenhouse_2 000e.htm
and others like it (I recall reading somewhere that, globally, volcanic eruptions during a more active year can expel more pollutants than the human race has since we discovered fire..can't find the quote/report dangit) along with a realisation of what an enormously large system we're talking about, and the enormous amount of "inertia" to be overcome making any significant change to such a system, I have a feeling we may be giving ourselves too much credit, that we may not be able to significantly change climate patterns even if we tried.
Though I am not on the side of Global Warming I do not think we should shy away from doing everything we can to limit what we produce as pollution.
More importantly our denuding the planet of trees is more of a threat than if we rolled back pollution controls to 1960s levels on cars and factories. As I am searching now I do not have the citing but if we remove all that is green from the surface of the earth we will just barely survive the lowered oxygen in the atmosphere as a result. If we leave all the trees and make every square inch of the land greenery but destroy all the plankton and other similar plants in the sea the world will die. In both these cases our actions as an industrial world affect our quality of life and global warming more than the actual pollutants in the air other than how the pollutants affect the plants.
More than anything else we need to stop the destruction of the Rain Forests, put extremely severe restrictions on dumping stuff in the ocean and make the penalties harsh enough as well as enforced enough to put these companies out of business and make it more profitable to be clean than pollute. Mother Earth will forgive only so much and she may not be warming up but she sure as well is having a hell of a time breathing.
Drive through Lizbeth NJ any workday in the week and breathe deeply. Then go to the top of the Appalachian mountains and breathe deeply. Notice the difference.
Global Warming is not the problem. Loss of greenery and oxygen creating plants is.
No Room in Sig for this - Sig Addendum - Impeach Bush
I am certainly not a friend of Dubyah.
But
Fossil records show both times of drought and times of high waters throughout the history of the world. There has been many Ice Ages and conversely many times that the temperature of the earth has risen.
Why then with only about 100 years of scientific measurements and less than 50 with good equipment and knowledge do we think that what we have done in the past 50 years or so is the cause? 100 years out of millions that the planet has been around (10,000ish if you are a devout Catholic) is not an acceptable scientific average. If I roll a die 10 times and claim that the average is 4.5 because I rolled a bunch of 6's and not a lot of other numbers I have used a very small sampling. If I roll it 1000 times and find out it is more like 2.6 for the average I have a more reliable basis.
Do not forget the issue of Global Warming, Ozone Hole and how it is created is still a theory, it is not hard fact. Give me 1 shred of factual evidence that the world has not warmed up in the past to higher temperatures than now. Give me 1 shred of fact that the Ozone layer is only recently showing a hole. I have been searching the net because I remember an article shortly after the annoucement of the hole. The article had two statements. 1: The hole was only found now because we had just figured out how to find that type of thing in the atmosphere and 2: It maybe a Natural Cycle of the worlds enviroment.
All we have right now is Theory and Hypothesis from observations and a limited set of results.
This does not mean we should not try to reduce our production of harmful gasses and chemicals it just means that we do not need to panic and act like it is the end of the world. After all think about it. If most of the polution in the air that may be causing this is from the last 50 years then things are going so fast we might actually see a "Day after tomorrow" speed of an Ice Age returning and we do not have the time to reverse everything anyways.
BTW one other article/bit of information I am trying to find online is that there was smog in the LA valley area when settlers first found it.
Impeach Bush - This is not flamebait - it wont fit in my sig with the quote of Benjamin Franklin
Since Women outlive Men my wife gets everything anyways.
Thats why I gave her a list of all my logins and passwords anyways.
Impeach Bush
I was under the impression that for any seiziure of private property for investigation
As far as I am concernned unless the ISP has a TOS that state my E-Mail and Surfing habits are useable by the company for anything then my e-mail and surfing habits are personal property and the government or any lawyers wanting this information or others have to subpoena the information from me. It is my property and not the ISPs property.
Additional Sig Info
Impeach Bush
The affluent and expensive life style of America, which is totally out of touch with the reality of the rest of the world, is to blame.
I have about 40 hardware Certifications between HP and other companies out there. I am damn good at troubleshooting. I also have my CNE. I make a little over 40K a year doing deskside support instead of whatever I could make in the server room. I have a Wife and a mortgage payment on a $130K house in the Dearborn area of Michigan. Just bought a used 2003 Escape for the wife. How is that out of touch with reality? I know many IT people in similar situations as far as pay and expenses.
How much is a college degree worth? How much is years of experience worth? How much is it worth to a company to have someone with years of experience walk in and in less than 10-20 minutes diagnose and other than hardware or total system crash have the Accounting department back up and running so they can bill and bring in money to the company over having to call India or some other part of the world and spend hours trying to work through a problem from remote while the network or computer is down?
Hell I have trouble talking to those people over the phone when I just want to get a part through warranty. Dell being the worst. I am Dell Certified on anything they make. I call and say I want a Tape Drive for a Server and they say are you in front of the machine we need to troubleshoot. Why the hell do I pay them $3000 a year to be a company that they send warranty work to and then another $150+ a year for the certifications to let some phone jockey from half way across the world walk me through troubleshooting I already did.
You can also wake me when a single arab/muslim run country has even a sliver of the human rights that the evil west has, even the west under Bush. It is no excuse for westerners but it certainly means that arabs should first fix their own affairs. Just check resent developments in indonesia where muslims are suprresing the other religions for being to erotic.
King Hussein and to a great extent his son continues the legacy in Jordan. Programs for Women, the poor, disabled and others underprivileged people in the country are in some cases better than those here in the US.
Impeach Bush - Alone the warrantless wiretaps are a violation of his oath of office.
Support our Troops - Lets find a way to bring them home soon, not in 10 years.