I don't really care what we call these people, the point is they have a tactic that - while damaging to the US - is not working to further their cause.
No, I'm not. You can use tactics that have nothing at all to do with your goals. You might even use tactics that you find unpalatable. Your tactics themselves can be quite successful without furthering your goals at all. Yes, terrorists want us to be afraid, and they wanted to damage us in various ways. And mission successful. But the Mideast has changed in a way that is not favorable to their ultimate cause. Thus, while they have been tactically effective, they have not advanced their goals at all - and in fact appear to have damaged their cause.
Again, that is just their strategy and not their end goal. Their strategy, while going according to plan, is not having the results that they expected. So while it is true to say that they have successfully executed their strategy, it is also true that their strategy appears to be failing.
I'm certain that the idiots blowing themselves up don't have a sophisticated strategy, but the people recruiting, training, equipping, and financing them sure do have some goal in mind.
political breakup: Score 0.5 - our political polarization is damn close to a breakup.
But has nothing to do with Afghanistan. We were having government shutdowns in the 90s. Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton, etc. Fun times.
ideological downfall
Again, when you look at what the US did during the cold war (Cuba, Shah of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, etc), I fail to see how we have changed in this respect.
economic bankruptcy
That was due to a housing bubble, bad government debt policies, and shoddy deregulation. The US could afford - in financial terms - to occupy Afghanistan pretty much perpetually. Even if you disagree, most of the costs are long term and in no way precipitated the financial crisis. The human toll, on the other hand...
If you want to talk short term, they have made no progress towards their long term goals. Radicals do undermine democracy, but they can strengthen a dictatorship as moderate people fear the radicals and side with the dictatorship. You see this right now in Egypt and Syria. The result of these dictatorships harms the cause of the terrorists. They probably have more representation in Turkey than they do in these other countries that they've been working so hard in, because their assumptions are flawed. They make temporary victories, capturing cities which quickly empty. But ultimately they make no long-term progress.
By what objective standard did the terrorists "win"? Their goal was to eject the US from the Mideast and unite the Muslim world under something like Sharia law. I see no progress on that front.
That's true, but I can hardly blame them. So long as the product is decent, what do I care? I'm just glad that people are buying nicer stuff - it forces the whole market to up the quality game. It's not just Apple - remember how many nicer flip phones became available got once Motorola showed that people would pay a little extra for the Razor? And of course look at how Toyota and Honda changed the small car game. Prius is now doing the same for hybrids, and perhaps Tesla for electrics.
In addition to public offerings, stock price can affect their ability to borrow money and entice talent through stock options. It also keeps stockholders happy, who might otherwise demand profits.
I think I agree. I mean, scraping data from a public-facing web page isn't exactly felony material - so long as your activities do not disrupt the service.
On the other hand, there is a line that you can cross. Certainly, we'd all agree that brute-forcing passwords would be over the line. Making your scripts evasive to avoid countermeasures is not as blatant, but definitely is shadier than just scraping a site with no countermeasures....
Anyway, this kind of disagreement is exactly why we have a civil court system.
Yes, they should probably salt it. Right now they seem to simply apply the SHA-1 hash: getUserId: (callback) ->
require('getmac').getMac (error, macAddress) =>
if error?
callback require('node-uuid').v4()
else
callback crypto.createHash('sha1').update(macAddress, 'utf8').digest('hex')
I agree that is preferable on initial run of the app, but even then there are slimy options (like Flash installing that crap if you forget to uncheck the box) and there are harmless ones like the anonymized usage data this app collects. And while I will complain loudly that Flash installs crapware with their pre-selected checkbox, I would not object to these guys pre-checking the box because the behavior is so harmless.
A unique identifier that is generated by computing the SHA-1 of the machine's MAC address. The screen width and height The version of Atom being used The name of each item opened in a pane such as EditorView, SettingsView, and MarkdownPreviewView The amount of time the current window was open for The amount of time the current window took to load The amount of time the app took to launch
I'm of the opinion that we should abolish the corporate tax and then, as you suggest, tax capital gains at full income tax rates. Dividends as well.
Then, if there is any shortfall from the loss of corporate revenue, raise income taxes in the higher brackets... though I suspect that we would actually be able to lower the rate since (actual paid) corporate taxes are already so low.
The rich pay an outsized amount of the income tax, but these days payroll taxes pay as much into the federal coffers as income tax does. That is what is often left out of tax discussions. I think payroll tax, which is regressive, should be a much smaller part of our revenue mix.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't really care what we call these people, the point is they have a tactic that - while damaging to the US - is not working to further their cause.
No, I'm not. You can use tactics that have nothing at all to do with your goals. You might even use tactics that you find unpalatable. Your tactics themselves can be quite successful without furthering your goals at all. Yes, terrorists want us to be afraid, and they wanted to damage us in various ways. And mission successful. But the Mideast has changed in a way that is not favorable to their ultimate cause. Thus, while they have been tactically effective, they have not advanced their goals at all - and in fact appear to have damaged their cause.
Again, that is just their strategy and not their end goal. Their strategy, while going according to plan, is not having the results that they expected. So while it is true to say that they have successfully executed their strategy, it is also true that their strategy appears to be failing.
I'm certain that the idiots blowing themselves up don't have a sophisticated strategy, but the people recruiting, training, equipping, and financing them sure do have some goal in mind.
If you believe that terrorists simply want to strike fear in our hearts, and have no larger goal in mind, well... let's just say that we disagree.
political breakup: Score 0.5 - our political polarization is damn close to a breakup.
But has nothing to do with Afghanistan. We were having government shutdowns in the 90s. Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton, etc. Fun times.
ideological downfall
Again, when you look at what the US did during the cold war (Cuba, Shah of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, etc), I fail to see how we have changed in this respect.
economic bankruptcy
That was due to a housing bubble, bad government debt policies, and shoddy deregulation. The US could afford - in financial terms - to occupy Afghanistan pretty much perpetually. Even if you disagree, most of the costs are long term and in no way precipitated the financial crisis. The human toll, on the other hand...
If you want to talk short term, they have made no progress towards their long term goals. Radicals do undermine democracy, but they can strengthen a dictatorship as moderate people fear the radicals and side with the dictatorship. You see this right now in Egypt and Syria. The result of these dictatorships harms the cause of the terrorists. They probably have more representation in Turkey than they do in these other countries that they've been working so hard in, because their assumptions are flawed. They make temporary victories, capturing cities which quickly empty. But ultimately they make no long-term progress.
By what objective standard did the terrorists "win"? Their goal was to eject the US from the Mideast and unite the Muslim world under something like Sharia law. I see no progress on that front.
Head voices. Surprisingly common. Lots of functional people with head voices.
That's true, but I can hardly blame them. So long as the product is decent, what do I care? I'm just glad that people are buying nicer stuff - it forces the whole market to up the quality game. It's not just Apple - remember how many nicer flip phones became available got once Motorola showed that people would pay a little extra for the Razor? And of course look at how Toyota and Honda changed the small car game. Prius is now doing the same for hybrids, and perhaps Tesla for electrics.
In general iPods, iPhones, and iPads are also better-than-average quality, with some famous exceptions.
I agree - I just think it is a civil and not a criminal matter.
In addition to public offerings, stock price can affect their ability to borrow money and entice talent through stock options. It also keeps stockholders happy, who might otherwise demand profits.
I should have said "scaping data from a public-facing web page SHOULDN'T be felony material".
I think I agree. I mean, scraping data from a public-facing web page isn't exactly felony material - so long as your activities do not disrupt the service.
On the other hand, there is a line that you can cross. Certainly, we'd all agree that brute-forcing passwords would be over the line. Making your scripts evasive to avoid countermeasures is not as blatant, but definitely is shadier than just scraping a site with no countermeasures....
Anyway, this kind of disagreement is exactly why we have a civil court system.
Yes, they should probably salt it. Right now they seem to simply apply the SHA-1 hash:
getUserId: (callback) ->
require('getmac').getMac (error, macAddress) =>
if error?
callback require('node-uuid').v4()
else
callback crypto.createHash('sha1').update(macAddress, 'utf8').digest('hex')
I agree that is preferable on initial run of the app, but even then there are slimy options (like Flash installing that crap if you forget to uncheck the box) and there are harmless ones like the anonymized usage data this app collects. And while I will complain loudly that Flash installs crapware with their pre-selected checkbox, I would not object to these guys pre-checking the box because the behavior is so harmless.
Makes it pretty difficult to get good usage data for your software, doesn't it?
Opt-in always results in lower participation than opt-out.
By the way, the data they are collecting:
I disagree. It can be helpful to authors of software to see how their product is being used. As long as they are up-front about it, I have no issue.
When they try to pull the wool over your eyes, then it gets into "scummy" territory.
So turn it off?
I'm of the opinion that we should abolish the corporate tax and then, as you suggest, tax capital gains at full income tax rates. Dividends as well.
Then, if there is any shortfall from the loss of corporate revenue, raise income taxes in the higher brackets... though I suspect that we would actually be able to lower the rate since (actual paid) corporate taxes are already so low.
Yes, of course - my fault.
The rich pay an outsized amount of the income tax, but these days payroll taxes pay as much into the federal coffers as income tax does. That is what is often left out of tax discussions. I think payroll tax, which is regressive, should be a much smaller part of our revenue mix.