Liberty means freedom to do things, but safety means restriction from doing (i.e. controls).
Liberty and safety can only co-exist in sufficient (read: expected modern American) levels with the third -ty item:
prosperity.
Prosperity is the water level that can raise or lower the levels of both.
A prosperous people can enjoy many of the benefits of liberty while affording the costs of being unsafe (insurance... basically, paying for the things you break), along with the associated costs of safety systems.
Given the current trends of wealth concentration and the corresponding need to create millions upon millions more wage slaves, prosperity is not in the cards, hence I have no expectation that liberty will be the preferred factor in the equation.
Safety is coming, but reducing all risks is overall the riskiest of behaviors.
Overall safety is going to paid for with a dull and vicious civilization that convulses into periods of violence in reaction.
Printer cartridges bring up an interesting viewpoint.
Pardon me for rambling a bit.
According to Rick Russell:
"99% of new compatible toner cartridges are manufactured in the USA; most "OEM" brand cartridges are manufactured overseas".
Another site said that "Most oem brand [inkjet] cartridges are manufactured overseas".
(The latter quote is here in a Google cache of this page, but some javascript keeps forwarding your browser to some Yahoo site for some reason; I saved the HTML and edited out the javascript in order to actually see the page.)
This suggests to me that corporations are making their products more and more proprietary because of the immense cloning operations going on overseas (particularly Southeast Asia), and to some extent America.
Specifically, HP could produce a cartridge, which could be refilled cheaper, re-manufactured cheaper, and ultimately made cheaper by a company lacking HP's infrastructure costs (their high cost of making a sale, which I firmly blame their marketing mentality for).
In my viewpoint, corporate America apparently loves cheap labor until the cheapness threatens their own business methods.
They love to outsource and export until they find their own competition from the same people.
Having been unemployed for years because of stuff like this, I find myself unable to pity HP, Canon, Lexmark and the rest of them.
These companies have a wholly and artificially high "cost of sale".
In my opinion, it's largely due to the entrenched greed of their marketing departments, taking their cue from the huge compensation handed to company executives.
To recover from this without foolish things like lobbying and locking up designs, they should tone down their marketing strategies and return to a culture of "the product speaks for itself".
HP could ensure the quality of printer cartridges to the extent that, say, a 30% increased sticker price would be worth it.
But that would involve a lower profit margin since real quality assurance involves real investment on the part of the manufacturer.
You'd have to bring back your facilities to a domestic location, for one.
Perhaps what I'm actually observing is that by outsourcing, one is actually creating one's own competition.
Tech booms and overall development are not the point.
The point is that investment excesses and perverse cultural expectations can destroy the sensibility in anything.
In order to continue to sensibly expand useful technology, we need a wholesale change in cultural attitude.
You'd have to be able to talk with your neighbor, who exclaims how he "made" 2000 dollars last month from day-trading, and simply not care.
You'd have to say "well good for you Fred" and then get back to your gardening.
Why do I say this?
Well, a prior neighbor of mine who was in her 70s had told me about how it used to be.
Farmers would come down into the city and sell fruits and vegetables right off their trucks.
(The supermarkets killed all that... by design.)
People could walk around anywhere, night and day without fear of assault.
After a snowfall, you couldn't hear anything disturbing during the cleanup, because not only were there no snowblowers, but shovels were made of wood.
And more to the point, she said that people didn't care what other people "made".
Now we do care; and to fulfill this desire, society is being ripped apart with nothing at all to replace it.
Greed is NOT GOOD, despite the implied philosophy in the movie "Wall Street".
Greed is a perversion of the Human need for property, and we have a long history of events that demonstrate how this perversion cannot be satisfied and ultimately requires a lot of destruction.
We can get away from greed and still invest in technology that doesn't destroy itself in the end.
Technology still needs investment, but it requires more personal investment... your involvement -- your concern and skill, not your money.
The money thing is ruining technology and making it an inhuman pipeline * for making more millionaires (and the Mahatma warned us about achieving "wealth without work").
Technology is more of an end than that, not just a means.
* This reminds me of one of my frequent sayings:
in college I was just a "pipeline between a bank and the university".
I take great exception to your laying much of the blame for the bubble on all those individual investors (I prefer to call them gamblers), which I assume you are doing when you say "largely the fault of the unreasonably [...] optimistic investors".
Those investors certainly relied upon a financial information system for their optimism.
But more and more this system turned to outright fraud in order to continue to pull investment money (from whatever source, large and small, centralized and diffused) out past any barrier of hesitation or consideration.
A good book has been recently released called "Buy, Lie and Sell High" (available here, here and here), which more than emphasizes this point.
There is also enough information out on various news services about the too-cozy relationships between investment banks, regulators and institutional investors.
The bubble was a period of burning investment capital like is was so much cord wood... and there were many financial professionals who threw morals, guidelines and law books to the wind in order to fan the flames.
To sum up:
The yokel doing the the day-trading I could chalk up to simple stupidity... but the professionals behind the financial information system operated in full knowledge of the fraud.
The overall situation is worse than the article leads you to believe.
This is something that I wouldn't expect to see fully explained on any major news site like MSNBC.
The situation is thus:
You don't need any proof -- or real proof -- in order to steal money from people via their phone bills.
Back in the 1990s I began to realize that a phone bill became viewed as a charge account that organized crime could tack charges onto.
This accusation includes organizations like AOL.
Charges for goods and services -- delivered or not, worthwhile or not -- could be tacked onto the billing statement, which would be automatically sent and almost automatically paid for.
It was simply too good to believe for mafiosi large and small... but by 1997 I could only change my own behavior in response to the groundswell of all the legalized fraud that was going on.
By that year, I knew that I had to hangup immediately to avoid entanglement with a calling telemarketer, and that my phone bills had to be carefully scrutinized every month. *
This new environment has encouraged sociopathic wariness to contact with businesses.
Congratulations, Corporate America!
By 1998, I could clearly see a workable but fraudulent business model arising.
It's relatively simple... you issue about 10 thousand blatantly false charges to 10 thousand homes and small businesses via your "Internet service company" and collect from the percentage that don't bother to (effectively) fight your fraud.
The next month, you go after another 10 thousand addresses.
After a year, you'll have to close down the business to stay ahead of the cops, but by then you've accumulated over half a mill.
You pay yourself well, your mafioso helpers okay, and then invest in the next scammer slammer business.
You don't need vox proof of anything, but such things can be falsified when necessary.
One anecdote (names altered) springs to mind of what happened within my circle of friends.
I know a small, used bookstore named Smather's Books, run by Ms. Smith.
One month she noticed a $29.95 item tacked onto her small-business phone bill for "Internet Yellow Pages service" (or something like that).
She called to investigate, and when she finally got to the right person at at the IYP service company, they played a recording for her from "Mister Smather".
On the tape she clearly heard Mr. Smather authorizing the IYP service.
This would all be fine and dandy, except for the fact that there is no Mr. Smather.
"Smather's Books" is just a name she made up that was close to her own name.
The tape was falsified.
Even after she pointed this out to the IYP company, she didn't get very far with them, and only after complaining to the telco did the charge get dropped from her bill.
The use of threat and deception to acquire money is morally criminal.
Make no mistake at all on this telemarketing and other boiler-room matters... much of it is organized crime, and it should be treated as such.
They should be arrested, charged and prosecuted for what they do.
Hopefully when arrested they try to resist and are shot dead on the spot.
* By 2001, I no longer answered my phone, preferring to screen all calls.
Sheesh.
If you'd actually talk with the "apathetic voters" as I have, you'd see that same-day registration, motor-voter registration, e-voting, whips, chains and even wild horses are all insufficient to get them to vote.
They don't vote because they just don't care.
Many times, they even understand the consquences of their not being involved... and they still don't care.
You could even implement mandatory voting, and firmly lay a monetary fine on those who don't comply... and too many people STILL won't vote.
(I postulate these seemingly preposterous occurances due to my historically hopeless efforts to convince people that if they'd bother to vote down tax renewals and increases, then they'd actually stand a chance of stopping the outflow from their wealth.
They certainly understand the concept, but still, still, still don't care to vote.)
To make virtually any American institution function again, the only effective answer is always "the people's attitudes have to change".
Gadgets, methods and legislation cannot compel Human understanding and motivation.
What needs to function first and most basically of all, is an operant culture.
And such a culture is simply gone from the United States of America.
Voting and the other trappings of political involvement are shadows cast from the light of citizenship.
America needs citizens again, instead of the millions and millions of wage-enslaved consumers.
Where are we to find them?
Accepting a man's money, you are beholden to him and eventually accept his ideology.
Similarly, those who take government grants are in a clear danger of (and I would argue obligation to) this.
The USA government is currently into transformation of a Republic into a world power... an Empire.
Those who support the government or takes its money or favors will eventually be called upon to support the Imperial model.
De Raadt and his people may find themselves in need of financial support, but they can't continue to avoid submission to this ideology.
Once the meta-phrase "supports terrorism" was used in relation to their work, no official, judge or jury will help their case.
Obviously, by my tone here, I think that de Raadt and his crew should ditch their naivete about the matter and separate themselves from the Empire's demands.
It's still legal to develop software for anyone to use... and it's still possible to do so without encountering a lynch mob.
P.S.
It's still legal... until Corporate American lawyers make their case in the courts that Open Source material is a de facto violator of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
I considered buying some rebated items recently, but for several reasons I abstained from doing so. *
I haven't applied for a rebate on an item for years, and one of the above reasons makes it clear that things have changed.
Reason:
What has changed is that rebate schemes are rife with fraud.
Worse yet, even if rebate frauds are a fraction of all schemes, they have fatally undermined (informed) consumer confidence in rebates in general.
With some research over the last several days, I've seen enough... I will never again buy an item on the basis of a rebate until the business climate radically alters.
When I say "fraud", I have a longer and more controversial meaning in mind.
"Fraud" means:
a corporate planned and executed scheme to wrest more money from the consumer, or to deliver less value to the consumer, through methods that may or may not be illegal but are certainly deceitful and immoral.
As the years have passed, I am finding more and more of this sort of thing.
As a consumer, my confidence is very low, and that has only stung the producers.
Since it's not much of a sting, I strive to advise and educate the folks around me to see more of these frauds... so that they will have the two faces of the thing that I am driving at:
a skeptical and educated consumer, and a frugal and demanding consumer.
Fraud is becoming mainstream and that bodes ill for society.
It is probably too late to write of this to your legislature... so use your other vote, your economic vote, and don't send your money to the criminal overclass.
* The other major reason is that I found myself planning on going to the store to get stuff just to get it all for "nothing".
After a bit, I stopped myself and reconsidered the wisdom of doing that.
It just wasn't right to buy something for nothing, even if it was "freely offered".
So, sorry, OfficeMax, but you should go back to selling things like keyboards, spray dusters, telephones and the like for a sensible price.
The critical flaw in the thinking of establishment dweebs like Painter and Winkler is that they assume that security experts who are lawful are also skill- and knowledge-equivalent to a criminal or professional hacker, even a benign or hobby hacker.
How do you know your code's broke unless you try to break it?
Breaking software is a good way to test it -- since real-world operations are what the software will experience normally -- hence hacking systems is the capstone on the surety that your systems are secure.
So, even if these so-called security experts do perform these tasks (i.e. hacking their own systems with permission), they must still come up with ways to assault systems... and I would bet my left testicle they would find this information in the writings or testimony of all types of hackers.
At the basis of knowledge and skill, knowing and doing are the same thing.
Painter and Winkler types don't dare admit this even if they do understand it.
They would be police admitting to the usefulness and need for criminals.
I never expect to see that happen.
Mitnick is still in prison, but now his bars are made of philosophy.
Cars and houses are currently overpriced in general.
The phrase "housing bubble" is being used in news media, and so it's not like I'm just making that up and you have to take my word for it.
Houses are highly inflated and with the looming Depression coming (arguably it's already here in the American Midwest), you just can't sell houses to people who have been laid off for years.
Neither can you support the home price in the face of repossessed houses that return to market.
Still neither can you support prices in the light of few buyers, all while the owners pay their inflated tax bills year after year without being able to cash out of the entire sucker's investment.
Eventually, brokers bow to the pressures of reality and drop their high estimates.
Eventually, people sneak down to their assessor's office and read them the riot act on their home's listed value.
And eventually, the prices slump down like a wave across entire regions and sanity returns.
Cars have become absurd in general pricing.
Low-end pricing for many models is often a marketing trick, since very few (if any) of those models were ever produced.
The absurdity of the costs of an SUV should be obvious to any thinking observer.
They are expensive to buy, insure, repair and fuel.
In order to become prosperous, one must not spend like a 14-year-old girl would.
Too many people have put themselves on payment plans that they cannot survive.
Hence, even though one could make the payments on a car or a house, it's still too much money to spend on such an item -- given the circumstances of the last decade in America for many people.
(Note that cars and houses are associated with various financiers chasing you in order to get you to start on their payment plans.
A point of wisdom is in recognizing is that being able to make payments on something is not automatically the ability to own it.)
The point is to accumulate wealth and to spend such larger sums wisely to avoid finance charges.
These finance charges are unavoidable when you don't pay immediately for the cost of the item.
They are obvious or otherwise -- since items you can buy on "payments same as cash" only means the price has been hiked to account for the costs of payment-over-time.
The short point of the long yakity-yak here is that once I got out of severe unemployment and started to return towards IT (I'm not back there yet), there's no call for me being foolish and spending like there will actually be a paycheck for me a month, a year or a decade from now.
I have no expectations for the future, as is the only wise response to years of unemployment.
I am now ultra-frugal and will remain so for the rest of my life.
For their rapacious and frankly immoral behavior, corporate America and the day-trading fscker with the pension plan will never get any cooperation from me again.
I will not use credit... I will use cash, cash only, and will use this cash mallet to bludgeon down prices.
It's time to return to sustainable prosperity.
The wise citizen carefully saves and frugally spends.
Overall, a population of people like this makes for an economy that can go for lifetimes without crashing.
However, it is hard to make megamillionaires in an environment like that, so I'm sure to hear all kinds of blather from you and people like you about how foolish I'm being.
And none of that matters since even if deemed foolish, I'm still not going to buy your fscking, overpriced, plastic shit, thank you very much.
Now you'll have to excuse me, I'm going to go into the garage of the place I'm living at, and repair some more stuff with all of my tools, just to avoid buying all that crap again at some strip mall.
Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle... with enough of that, America will return to a solid foundation.
I'm immediately reminded of some typical yuppie I know (unfortunately), who has stated to me that "any teenager can do your job".
Technical support, product development, and software testing?
These are the things that teenagers can just jump into with my level of mature handling?
Yes, that's what she meant.
I can hardly agree with her words, but they have iconized the sentiment I first encountered in the mid 90s.
Experience in the IT field isn't an asset -- it's considered a liability.
If I had a dollar for everytime that I heard the word "overqualified", I wouldn't need to find a job.
We tech workers (degreed, certified or not) have become about as replacable as manual labor.
I remember in the late 90s reading about how there was a shortage of ~300000 IT jobs in the American Midwest (where I live (unfortunately)).
The first thing that sprang to mind was "yeah, sure... in monkey-boy, call-centered phone support".
Months later Convergys started up in my town, and I was treated to years of call-center-hell news from across America and Ireland, all of which confirmed the trend and vindicated my cynicism.
Myself, this is all simply icing on the Depressionary cake, and I'm just waiting for the housing bubble to collapse so sane pricing can return.
I'm saving as much as I can (while putting it in a big tin bucket since it's not likely to lie to me about its goddamn financial performance).
Then -- assuming I still have a job -- I can actually afford to live on my own again, while the conspicuous-consumption class crashes and burns as it so richly deserves.
P.S. To all of you "get a degree" and "retrain for another job" motherfuckers out there... degrees and retraining are just efforts expended towards washing dishes anyway.
I can clearly foresee that I'm better off washing dishes without school debts.
This is also along the same lines of my understanding that I'm better off in the long run by not buying into your 14-yr-old-girl consumptive economy with all the throwaway appliances, cars and homes.
I agree with your sentiment, and I have my own invective to add.
This was never a "great idea", 1999 or otherwise.
The "build it and they will come" idea was completely assinine long before its demonstrated collapse across this American nation of "revitalized" city centers.
I live in Toledo, Ohio (yeah, yeah, I know, now please stop laughing) and I've been seeing the ponzi scheme of revitalization up close and personal for years.
Home prices are still rising, investment is still being lavished on the downtown area and certain rapid-growth outlier towns.
This can only lead to a terrible real estate market crash, and the public is walking around blissfully unaware that their municipalities have undersigned much of the debt behind these new developments.
Into this sick, sick economy, we have the constant drone of tax abatements, restructurings, bonds, levies, and a newspaper happily chirping out stories of local entrepreneurs looking to make it big.
The looting of America just has to stop.
We can't continue to fall for this empty line of hope and glitz without taking the serious risk of civil war.
Such a war grows more and more possible due to several factors.
American savings have been zeroized (allegedly rebounding slightly for early 2003) and we are firmly a culture of debtors now.
Those two margins of safety are effectively gone.
The middle class and "home-owners" (a term I use advisedly since so many people's mortgages are effectively rentals) are being forced to shoulder more and more of the general tax burden, as the wealthy and corporations escape more taxes and the lower class expands.
There's another shrinking margin of safety.
Homes and lives are being organized around non-self-sufficient services like natural gas, gasoline, electricity, package delivery and foreign maintenance labor.
Price bumps in these areas have abrupt fiscal consequences for the populace, who are also ill equipped to reduce dependency.
What would fix all of this is "restraint of trade".
I've no problem with that since what is happening now is clearly capitalism out of control (I call it "hypercapitalism"), and humane social controls need to be re-applied. *
Some controls spring immediately to mind.
Companies should not be exempted from taxation.
Nor should they be allowed to close down factories -- destroying lives -- just to chase a few more percentage points of profit elsewhere.
Little old ladies who can't afford their home taxes shouldn't be kicked out of their homes.
Etc.
The "fear of falling" which is the cultural foundation of a place like Toledo, Ohio is not natural nor necessary.
But despotic plans are easy to sell to people in a state of terrible desperation.
If this city is any indication, tyranny is being manufactured in America's heartland, leading to a great deal of pain and probably death for the population.
* The most recent piece of evidence that comes to mind is an article that reported that during 2002, corp executive pay rose 15%.
Now, 2002 is definitely a year of pain for the working man, and I spend the entire year watching all manner of news media report on the fiscal condition of the nation.
The condition was terrible, and about 1 million Americans lost their jobs during that period.
Yet the execs on average continued to receive excessive awards while all that was going on.
This is clearly OUT OF CONTROL.
If the National Archives and Records Administration keeps the US Constitution, it's a museum, not an archive.
With the way things are going, they may as well put all of the federal government's documents and operations online, since there will be no practical way for any alleged citizen to get into the soon-to-be-made W3S (Washington DC Special Security Sector).
You can pick any event in American history to show the downfall starting (my favorite is Shay's Rebellion), but after the events of 1913 (Federal Reserve and income tax), 1933 (overblown socialism and anti-gun law), 1945 (atomic/nuclear bombs and OSS/CIA), the Cold War, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, and now the War on Anything Islamic... well, it's time to say that the Republic is long dead.
Get over it.
Adapt and survive.
Buy weapons, ammunition, reloading equipment, tools, books... I know I am.
As Bruce Sterling has implied, life moves in clades, and if we need something solid and dependable around, we'll have it orbit ourselves.
Oh, look, another fucking Young Republican.
No, you get a grip.
You need to get a grip on the severe economic injustice that is being ladled out daily here in modern America (which I assume you are in).
An important finger in your grip is the recognition that there are three worlds in America... the one for the wealthy, the one for the middle class (and I draw a very broad stroke with this brush here), and finally the one for the lower class (which includes the destitute and the "working poor").
Taxation and entitlements are very sensitive to these boundaries... in general, the flow of taxes is away from the lower end and the entitlements is therefore towards the upper.
Another finger in your needed grip is the recognition that corporations and wealthy persons are too entangled to treat separately.
Ever hear of trusts?
How about an entitlement program (like anything out of the Export-Import Bank) that a CEO arranges for his company, which translates into further salary and options benefits for himself?
The wealthy are making themselves immune to many taxes simply by transforming their financial lives into corporations of a sort.
Executives are racing to put their homes, cars, meals and vacations on the tabs of their companies.
Again, that's a deal that's summarily denied for over 90% of us.
Corporate welfare payments were 3 times the level of individual welfare payments (as of 2001, to my recollection).
From just this example among many other ones about how public funds are being shoveled into the maws of the wealthy, I find it very difficult to see how the lower class is a clear beneficiary in this nation.
Do you think that I should give weight to a person making $8/hr at WalMart, who lives in a trailer, allegedly enjoying figher jet protection from Iraqis who are about 12000 miles away?
Get serious, "dude"... the defense industries are throughly corrupt (I myself had the pleasure of seeing* this first hand) and serve to funnel public funds to corporations and their elite masters.
Mr. Eight Bucks an Hour is being fleeced for every hour he works, to ensure Boeing's cash flow, stocks and bonds.
Redistribution of wealth is the nature of charity.
If we are indeed the leading nation in the world, then charity must be a part of our character (and I note that there's a lot to be said for a large, private charitable sector).
We've seen enough American history to understand our errors in the 1930s (Depression and public works), the 1960s (War on Poverty), and the enormous state of error in which we now live (hypercapitalism).
Like James Simon Kunen has said (paraphrasing) we can provide homes and food for everyone in this country, so we should do it.
We just need to keep the Clintonistas (the vicious, corporate-owned Democrats) and Bushites (the vicious, corporate-owned Republicans) out of managing things.
Let me give you some advice.
Your "Young Republican" philosophies will only serve you until your neck is on the chopping block next... and unless your last name matches one of those in Who's Who, your time is certainly coming in this country.
There is a clear difference between our current state of hypercapitalism and the capitalism expounded by men like Elbert Hubbard (to paraphrase, he said that "a man with a home and savings is unavoidably a capitalist").
Capitalism with involved social controls is certainly socialism of a sorts... and we really need to return to that form of socio-economics in America.
Before the shooting starts in earnest.
* Did you know that the government evaluates aerospace innovations by submitting the ideas to officials from the current aerospace companies (i.e. the competitors)?
Did you also know that this is an illegal practice?
Have you ever seen the look of fear and confusion on the face of an involved government official when you explain all this to him?
Oh, look, another Young Republican, trotting out the old and tired "3 guys paid for dinner and how do you divide up a refund" argument about taxation.
The thing that's not mentioned is that the guy who paid the most for dinner got an incredible feast for his money, including a hotel stay, movie, and air travel to and from the hotel... while the guy who paid the least also got the equivalent of "just crumbs".
This argument is popular with the middle class since they are caught in the middle, and so the argument seems to have merit from their personal financial experience.
The middle class is getting a so-so meal for too much money, so they are naturally interested in a larger return on any tax refund or rebate.
But don't try to pass the dinner-divide story off as a universal argument.
Rich individuals and corporations can afford to hire people to hide their money from taxes... so they do, and are still doing so in droves.
For instance, Enron managed to have ZERO tax liability in 4 of its last 5 years... and what working man managed to have that deal?
I've no sympathy for the wealthy due to their vicious avoidance of taxes.
If taxation takes a couple more thousand from them out of their millions, then I say WE NEED MORE OF THE SAME.
... until, of course, the man who pays the least gets a meal he can live on.
No one should go back for seconds until everyone gets a first serving.
Ho hum.
If you can finally come up with a flexible touch screen that emits/absorbs sound, light and radio waves, THEN I'll be impressed... single-sheet computers with all the fixin's.
Remember those handhelds in the movie "Red Planet"?
They were like sheet metal and were highly interactive with their environment.
Gimme dat, dog.
Disclaimer: I am not certified or degreed in any way.
I really worry about the implied attitude in this/. article.
If we can downgrade our respect of programmers from engineer or artificer to a "monkey", then it can and will happen to any skilled trade.
Medical doctors can be made into "pill dispensers".
Bridge engineers can be made into "steel workers".
Judges can be made into "security guards".
Electronic engineers can be made into "assemblers".
Lawyers can be made into "librarians".
My personal -- perhaps overly paranoid -- theory is that the whole idea behind this implied attitude is that skilled trades are to be progressively underpaid to the benefit of capital owners.
With so many people owning stock through various means, this seems to be a great idea for a while... until the costs of maintaining the skillsets drives the skills out of them.
The assertion that skill will be driven out is hardly an unfounded one.
Would you go to college for 4 years just to make $12 an hour?
At that wage, would you spend $40+ at a crack for each computer book, and have many computers and distros at your disposal?
Computer skills require a good many hours (in classrooms and/or out) of study and enthusiastic interest, and twelve bucks an hour doesn't buy that kind of loyalty (especially since the median house prices in your area are at US$90K and climbing).
Despite this, what do I hear from the Young Republicans (and the sold-out Young Democrats)?:
Code monkey:
Jesus Fucking Christ, I am so tired of hearing that term.
Programming is as hard a mental labor as any of the mental professions.
This mental labor is intrinsically worthwhile since it produces stuff that is intrinsically worthwhile, and THEREFORE is worth compensating.
This link from value to compensation is being broken all over the place due to criminal and sociopathic greed... and shouldn't we stop that before we end up in a civil war?
A high school student can do your job:
Holy Bastard Hell, I am even MORE tired of hearing THAT phrase.
I find it particularly amusing that people with skillsets that are as codified into books as computer programming, still think that programming could be assumed by immature people with a few reference books.
But not their own skills!... no, not those... they have REAL elite skills, not 1337 5k1llz.
My biggest fear is that they will continue to refuse to understand the necessity of mature intellectual labor until some wetback or recent grad boots them out of their own supposedly so-terribly-skilled jobs.
Then they'll shed the same tears while the capitalists add another power of ten to their bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.
It's time to stick my neck out for the chopping....
Why should I care about Linux's market share?
It has market presence, not share, and that's as it should be.
Concentration on market share is the thing that crippled Microsoft Windows.
System reliability became a distant 2nd priority to new features.
If there are Linux companies out there that are harping on market share to that degree, then I wish them luck... their distros will soon suck so much ass that they'll bomb in a hurry.
Lack of serious competition was the boat that floated Microsoft, and no Linux company can get such a ticket.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
we shouldn't be out to ruin Microsoft, especially their flagship product MS-Windows.
Even though Microsoft has abused we users, technicians and engineers, their OS is useful.
It just needs to be fixed.
Microsoft clearly hasn't felt the need to really fix it for some years, so perhaps the presence of Linux will start to compel them.
* One good attempt to fix MS-Windows is to make a minmum Windows version (called "Mindows" or "Portholes") .
That way, the smaller codebase can be made more optimized... perhaps even more reliable.
The diverse base of users can plug all kind of apps into it.
Since apps need developers, perhaps even some Linux developers will come back to the Windows fold.
Mr. Forbes at least has a very public forum and it is a pleasure to see him using it to set the horrible patent/trademark situation a bit more aright.
But, there are two errors.
Firstly, Congress has no authority to change the US Constitution.
(Even if that does seem to be legislative fashion these days... pass a law and wait to the cowering American sheep to summon the courage to strike it down in the courts.)
Hence, it is silly to see him suggest that the Congress should declare trademarks to be eternal.
Secondly, Lessig's compromise also violates the US Constitution.
According to this link, the document says in Article I Section 8:
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;
Note it says "for limited Times".
Allowing patent, copyright and trademark holders to retain their works as long as they pay for them, is not limited time.
The only two fixes that are moral and legal are to either amend the Constitution to allow for unlimited works rights, or to never again extend such rights.
In fact, the time limits should be reduced... since life+70 years or 95 years is a long fucking time.
I am 35 right now, and if I want to make use of the trademark or copyright of what a 20-year-old neighbor made, I'd have to wait until I was about 35+55+70=160 years old until I could use it legally.
It can't be done.
Hence, works rights that extend well beyond the Human lifetime seem unreasonable when faced with the word "limited".
The remaining fix is to lob mortar shells at the US Capitol building until the Congresspeople begin to see the light.
Myself, I prefer this option.
The US Constitution is a body of rules, not guidelines, but the use of opinion and lassitude are making it a piece of paper.
Is there any mystery as to why the populace has so little regard for the rule of law?
It's about time some thinking Humans expressed their intent in a space program.
After all, if you want to conquer Earth orbit, you've got to mine the moon.
It takes 22 times the energy to get a load from Earth to low-Earth orbit (LEO), than if you launched it from the moon to LEO.
Launching everything from Earth (the current NASA and American favorite) is just fucking daft.
Space facilities -- real ones, not the Skylab/Mir/ISS type of political toys -- will demand billions of tons of material; even at an amazingly reduced $100/pound launch cost, you can clearly see the impossibility of the $200 trillion price tag.
In a Geocentric space program, there's no ability to colonize anything, and I must honestly say that there's also no will either.
Just thinking about conservation of Luna in her "natural" state is very funny.
There's about 10^23 kg of dead rock floating there.
She represents silicon, aluminum, iron and titanium deposits of reasonable quality with significant oxides of same.
The regolith itself is very mine-able due to its exposure and finely crushed state.
In fact, I'd say that Lunar mining is more of a Lunar scraping operation... there's little need to actually dig.
Mine the moon, China.
I wish you well.
Your round-eye brethren across the Pacific have totally lost touch with the physical realities of space exploration and exploitation.
Forget them.
Build your Lunar mines and solar power satellites... make the Western world look up at a glittering Chinese sky with the deep, burning shame of having squandered the technical lead for the false security of world empire.
Why would anyone emulate a bunch of thugs, who largely prey on their own people?
Because it is so lucrative to be an executive, lawyer, or policeman.
Oh, wait, you weren't talking about those thugs....
You have a really, really skewed view of things that any amount of TV viewing will only support. The urban areas are war zones and those growing up in them -- surprise! -- end up warriors instead of citizens. And this is fair enough, since people like you undoubtedly from your environment end up consumers and are not citizens either.
So, keep consuming, fella... it'll keep you off the street and diminish your chances of coming into contact with a law enforcement officer.
'Nuff said.
The Balance of Four Problems
on
Cashless Society
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Jeebus!
Digital cash... welcome to one of the most pervasive myths of the digerati.
One good thing about all these permanent layoffs in the IT industry is that there will be fewer of the technology-intoxicated yuppies that dream of this kind of stupidity.
Digital cash is a terrible mistake:
You can't loan someone 5 bucks.
You lose privacy.
Your card can be duplicated.
A software or electrical error can wipe out your money.
These points counteract each other; if you attempt to solve one of them, the other problems grow larger.
One thing that seems to underlay the digerati's love of digital cash is a lack of understanding about counterfeiting.
Falsifying paper currency is difficult... it's analog technology.
About the only common counterfeiting scheme that works nowadays is the passing of bad copies of twenty-dollar bills in dimly-lit bars (I work in a bank; the word is getting out about this kind of thing).
This contrasts to duping cards.
It's just data; if it is open to inspection then it's open to hacking and duping.
And if that's not the case... then we're talking centralized controls, so please see the list of problems above.
Digital cash, shit!... you know, I read Omni magazine in the 80s too, but many aspects of the featured technocratic futures are inhuman and not only shouldn't be adopted, but can't.
Human society is far too vicious and unstable to make such futures workable.
Technologies that can be used for tracking, will be, and then will be used to attack the lower classes.
Before such methods gain momentum, societies crack apart in warfare.
Are you for real?
Why have a space program at all, when you are studying places that mankind will never go?
As for science... fuck science, it can hang on the coattails of orbital industry.
Build comm satellites, solar power stations, and finally the means to reach the asteroids and Jupiter/Saturn to harvest ores and water.
(The energy requirements mandate the use of Lunar industry to get it done, hence Moonbases are essential.)
Once this kind of stuff is in place, there will be plenty of infrastructure for science to finally eke out its existence and finally have to justify itself for once.
The "scientific research" model for space exploration is clearly a failure and the continued flying of its flag is just more whining from PhD's who don't want to get real jobs.
Finally, putting man in space may not harden the nipples of your average scientist and engineer who are just dying to solve the problems of remote administration, but I don't want billions of dollars spent just to jack off their nerdly hobbies and satisfy their academic egos.
Men in space are the real problem solvers for things that happen in space.
How many more spacecraft do we have to lose around Mars and Jupiter before we see the light of this truth?
People make their own lasers, robots, cloud chambers, musical instruments, cars, aeroplanes, telescopes, electronic equipment, software programs and many other techy items.
We know this because this information is shared inevitably due to common interest.
Now, seeing that people make things as complicated as lasers and telescopes and the information of those is quite public, I find it just impossible to believe that a "simple" fusor unit is nowhere operating even though 40 years of (some) development has occurred.
Corporate suppression just doesn't work to that degree.
Once again, I think we are faced with an unworkable energy program that hides its lack of technical strength with accusations of conspiracy.
Once again, all we have to do to nip this bullshit in the bud is to demand a working and TESTABLE unit.
If the unit can survive the likes of James Randi, then I'll start to believe it.
As for fusion... well, the problem is in the confinement, as always.
Call me when somebody does something original with that.
Zzzzz....
Men on the Moon?
What the hell are you talking about?
Anything to do with the Moon is a load of nonsense, since it has nothing to do with k3wl 1nt3rn3t stuff, junk bonds, strip malls and of course the pervasive War on Terror.
Sarcasm aside, the Lunar missions are one (now defunct) aspect of the American Empire.
That time has passed, and for whatever internal reasoning in the other nations, it is now up those other nations to actually pursue space policies.
The American Empire has now turned inward in order to eat its own belly, and the only outward appearances will be general emigration and military actions.
American space missions were visionary but only served a transitory function in the evolution of the Empire.
They couldn't continue no matter what value they returned to it.
The problem lies in the definition of "value"; once enough billions were spent to prove the USA was the land of bigger penises that that of the Soviet landmass, the entire thing became obsolete.
At this point, I have a great many questions for Mr. Joe A. American.
What does NASA actually do, anyways?
Sure, we can all see the Shuttle launches, the ISS, placing satellites into orbit, and interplanetary missions... but what good is it all for all the billions that are lavished upon the program in general?
What is the return on the investment?
Why are hundreds of millions of dollars spent to make a spacecraft that cannot be fixed if it breaks millions of miles away?
Do Americans believe in equipment that doesn't break?
Businesses measure and enforce productivity, and government agencies are being increasingly pressured into doing the same... so why can't these same considerations apply to NASA?
I'm sure there will be the usual blather about "that's not how you think about science", but... there's no reason to assume that science is a cost and not an investment.
And if it's an investment, there ought to be a measure of its performance.
I think that that is a good summary of what ill has befallen the American Republic in order to transform it into an Empire.
If spending on science is done with an investment mindset or expectation, perhaps we would have solar power satellites, two or more tiers of launch vehicles (at least "maintenance" and "heavy lift" types), and a thriving Cislunar industry.
I look forward to the 30th anniversary of the first solar power satellite... which will be Chinese or Indian, or course -- not American.
Slashdot Mirror
Liberty means freedom to do things, but safety means restriction from doing (i.e. controls). Liberty and safety can only co-exist in sufficient (read: expected modern American) levels with the third -ty item: prosperity. Prosperity is the water level that can raise or lower the levels of both. A prosperous people can enjoy many of the benefits of liberty while affording the costs of being unsafe (insurance ... basically, paying for the things you break), along with the associated costs of safety systems.
Given the current trends of wealth concentration and the corresponding need to create millions upon millions more wage slaves, prosperity is not in the cards, hence I have no expectation that liberty will be the preferred factor in the equation. Safety is coming, but reducing all risks is overall the riskiest of behaviors. Overall safety is going to paid for with a dull and vicious civilization that convulses into periods of violence in reaction.
Printer cartridges bring up an interesting viewpoint. Pardon me for rambling a bit.
According to Rick Russell: "99% of new compatible toner cartridges are manufactured in the USA; most "OEM" brand cartridges are manufactured overseas". Another site said that "Most oem brand [inkjet] cartridges are manufactured overseas". (The latter quote is here in a Google cache of this page, but some javascript keeps forwarding your browser to some Yahoo site for some reason; I saved the HTML and edited out the javascript in order to actually see the page.)
This suggests to me that corporations are making their products more and more proprietary because of the immense cloning operations going on overseas (particularly Southeast Asia), and to some extent America. Specifically, HP could produce a cartridge, which could be refilled cheaper, re-manufactured cheaper, and ultimately made cheaper by a company lacking HP's infrastructure costs (their high cost of making a sale, which I firmly blame their marketing mentality for).
In my viewpoint, corporate America apparently loves cheap labor until the cheapness threatens their own business methods. They love to outsource and export until they find their own competition from the same people. Having been unemployed for years because of stuff like this, I find myself unable to pity HP, Canon, Lexmark and the rest of them. These companies have a wholly and artificially high "cost of sale". In my opinion, it's largely due to the entrenched greed of their marketing departments, taking their cue from the huge compensation handed to company executives.
To recover from this without foolish things like lobbying and locking up designs, they should tone down their marketing strategies and return to a culture of "the product speaks for itself". HP could ensure the quality of printer cartridges to the extent that, say, a 30% increased sticker price would be worth it. But that would involve a lower profit margin since real quality assurance involves real investment on the part of the manufacturer. You'd have to bring back your facilities to a domestic location, for one.
Perhaps what I'm actually observing is that by outsourcing, one is actually creating one's own competition.
Tech booms and overall development are not the point. The point is that investment excesses and perverse cultural expectations can destroy the sensibility in anything.
... by design.)
People could walk around anywhere, night and day without fear of assault.
After a snowfall, you couldn't hear anything disturbing during the cleanup, because not only were there no snowblowers, but shovels were made of wood.
... your involvement -- your concern and skill, not your money.
The money thing is ruining technology and making it an inhuman pipeline * for making more millionaires (and the Mahatma warned us about achieving "wealth without work").
Technology is more of an end than that, not just a means.
In order to continue to sensibly expand useful technology, we need a wholesale change in cultural attitude. You'd have to be able to talk with your neighbor, who exclaims how he "made" 2000 dollars last month from day-trading, and simply not care. You'd have to say "well good for you Fred" and then get back to your gardening.
Why do I say this? Well, a prior neighbor of mine who was in her 70s had told me about how it used to be. Farmers would come down into the city and sell fruits and vegetables right off their trucks. (The supermarkets killed all that
And more to the point, she said that people didn't care what other people "made".
Now we do care; and to fulfill this desire, society is being ripped apart with nothing at all to replace it. Greed is NOT GOOD, despite the implied philosophy in the movie "Wall Street". Greed is a perversion of the Human need for property, and we have a long history of events that demonstrate how this perversion cannot be satisfied and ultimately requires a lot of destruction.
We can get away from greed and still invest in technology that doesn't destroy itself in the end. Technology still needs investment, but it requires more personal investment
* This reminds me of one of my frequent sayings: in college I was just a "pipeline between a bank and the university".
I take great exception to your laying much of the blame for the bubble on all those individual investors (I prefer to call them gamblers), which I assume you are doing when you say "largely the fault of the unreasonably [...] optimistic investors".
... and there were many financial professionals who threw morals, guidelines and law books to the wind in order to fan the flames.
... but the professionals behind the financial information system operated in full knowledge of the fraud.
Those investors certainly relied upon a financial information system for their optimism. But more and more this system turned to outright fraud in order to continue to pull investment money (from whatever source, large and small, centralized and diffused) out past any barrier of hesitation or consideration.
A good book has been recently released called "Buy, Lie and Sell High" (available here, here and here), which more than emphasizes this point. There is also enough information out on various news services about the too-cozy relationships between investment banks, regulators and institutional investors. The bubble was a period of burning investment capital like is was so much cord wood
To sum up: The yokel doing the the day-trading I could chalk up to simple stupidity
The overall situation is worse than the article leads you to believe. This is something that I wouldn't expect to see fully explained on any major news site like MSNBC. The situation is thus: You don't need any proof -- or real proof -- in order to steal money from people via their phone bills.
... but by 1997 I could only change my own behavior in response to the groundswell of all the legalized fraud that was going on.
By that year, I knew that I had to hangup immediately to avoid entanglement with a calling telemarketer, and that my phone bills had to be carefully scrutinized every month. *
... you issue about 10 thousand blatantly false charges to 10 thousand homes and small businesses via your "Internet service company" and collect from the percentage that don't bother to (effectively) fight your fraud.
The next month, you go after another 10 thousand addresses.
After a year, you'll have to close down the business to stay ahead of the cops, but by then you've accumulated over half a mill.
You pay yourself well, your mafioso helpers okay, and then invest in the next scammer slammer business.
... much of it is organized crime, and it should be treated as such.
They should be arrested, charged and prosecuted for what they do.
Hopefully when arrested they try to resist and are shot dead on the spot.
Back in the 1990s I began to realize that a phone bill became viewed as a charge account that organized crime could tack charges onto. This accusation includes organizations like AOL. Charges for goods and services -- delivered or not, worthwhile or not -- could be tacked onto the billing statement, which would be automatically sent and almost automatically paid for. It was simply too good to believe for mafiosi large and small
This new environment has encouraged sociopathic wariness to contact with businesses. Congratulations, Corporate America!
By 1998, I could clearly see a workable but fraudulent business model arising. It's relatively simple
You don't need vox proof of anything, but such things can be falsified when necessary. One anecdote (names altered) springs to mind of what happened within my circle of friends. I know a small, used bookstore named Smather's Books, run by Ms. Smith. One month she noticed a $29.95 item tacked onto her small-business phone bill for "Internet Yellow Pages service" (or something like that). She called to investigate, and when she finally got to the right person at at the IYP service company, they played a recording for her from "Mister Smather". On the tape she clearly heard Mr. Smather authorizing the IYP service.
This would all be fine and dandy, except for the fact that there is no Mr. Smather.
"Smather's Books" is just a name she made up that was close to her own name. The tape was falsified. Even after she pointed this out to the IYP company, she didn't get very far with them, and only after complaining to the telco did the charge get dropped from her bill.
The use of threat and deception to acquire money is morally criminal. Make no mistake at all on this telemarketing and other boiler-room matters
* By 2001, I no longer answered my phone, preferring to screen all calls.
Sheesh. If you'd actually talk with the "apathetic voters" as I have, you'd see that same-day registration, motor-voter registration, e-voting, whips, chains and even wild horses are all insufficient to get them to vote.
... and they still don't care.
... and too many people STILL won't vote.
(I postulate these seemingly preposterous occurances due to my historically hopeless efforts to convince people that if they'd bother to vote down tax renewals and increases, then they'd actually stand a chance of stopping the outflow from their wealth.
They certainly understand the concept, but still, still, still don't care to vote.)
They don't vote because they just don't care. Many times, they even understand the consquences of their not being involved
You could even implement mandatory voting, and firmly lay a monetary fine on those who don't comply
To make virtually any American institution function again, the only effective answer is always "the people's attitudes have to change". Gadgets, methods and legislation cannot compel Human understanding and motivation. What needs to function first and most basically of all, is an operant culture. And such a culture is simply gone from the United States of America.
Voting and the other trappings of political involvement are shadows cast from the light of citizenship. America needs citizens again, instead of the millions and millions of wage-enslaved consumers. Where are we to find them?
Accepting a man's money, you are beholden to him and eventually accept his ideology. Similarly, those who take government grants are in a clear danger of (and I would argue obligation to) this.
... an Empire.
Those who support the government or takes its money or favors will eventually be called upon to support the Imperial model.
De Raadt and his people may find themselves in need of financial support, but they can't continue to avoid submission to this ideology.
... and it's still possible to do so without encountering a lynch mob.
... until Corporate American lawyers make their case in the courts that Open Source material is a de facto violator of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The USA government is currently into transformation of a Republic into a world power
Once the meta-phrase "supports terrorism" was used in relation to their work, no official, judge or jury will help their case. Obviously, by my tone here, I think that de Raadt and his crew should ditch their naivete about the matter and separate themselves from the Empire's demands. It's still legal to develop software for anyone to use
P.S. It's still legal
I considered buying some rebated items recently, but for several reasons I abstained from doing so. * I haven't applied for a rebate on an item for years, and one of the above reasons makes it clear that things have changed.
... I will never again buy an item on the basis of a rebate until the business climate radically alters.
... so that they will have the two faces of the thing that I am driving at:
a skeptical and educated consumer, and a frugal and demanding consumer.
... so use your other vote, your economic vote, and don't send your money to the criminal overclass.
Reason: What has changed is that rebate schemes are rife with fraud. Worse yet, even if rebate frauds are a fraction of all schemes, they have fatally undermined (informed) consumer confidence in rebates in general. With some research over the last several days, I've seen enough
When I say "fraud", I have a longer and more controversial meaning in mind. "Fraud" means: a corporate planned and executed scheme to wrest more money from the consumer, or to deliver less value to the consumer, through methods that may or may not be illegal but are certainly deceitful and immoral.
As the years have passed, I am finding more and more of this sort of thing. As a consumer, my confidence is very low, and that has only stung the producers. Since it's not much of a sting, I strive to advise and educate the folks around me to see more of these frauds
Fraud is becoming mainstream and that bodes ill for society. It is probably too late to write of this to your legislature
* The other major reason is that I found myself planning on going to the store to get stuff just to get it all for "nothing". After a bit, I stopped myself and reconsidered the wisdom of doing that. It just wasn't right to buy something for nothing, even if it was "freely offered". So, sorry, OfficeMax, but you should go back to selling things like keyboards, spray dusters, telephones and the like for a sensible price.
The critical flaw in the thinking of establishment dweebs like Painter and Winkler is that they assume that security experts who are lawful are also skill- and knowledge-equivalent to a criminal or professional hacker, even a benign or hobby hacker.
... and I would bet my left testicle they would find this information in the writings or testimony of all types of hackers.
How do you know your code's broke unless you try to break it? Breaking software is a good way to test it -- since real-world operations are what the software will experience normally -- hence hacking systems is the capstone on the surety that your systems are secure. So, even if these so-called security experts do perform these tasks (i.e. hacking their own systems with permission), they must still come up with ways to assault systems
At the basis of knowledge and skill, knowing and doing are the same thing. Painter and Winkler types don't dare admit this even if they do understand it. They would be police admitting to the usefulness and need for criminals. I never expect to see that happen.
Mitnick is still in prison, but now his bars are made of philosophy.
Caution: A bit of a rant follows.
... I will use cash, cash only, and will use this cash mallet to bludgeon down prices.
... with enough of that, America will return to a solid foundation.
Cars and houses are currently overpriced in general.
The phrase "housing bubble" is being used in news media, and so it's not like I'm just making that up and you have to take my word for it. Houses are highly inflated and with the looming Depression coming (arguably it's already here in the American Midwest), you just can't sell houses to people who have been laid off for years. Neither can you support the home price in the face of repossessed houses that return to market. Still neither can you support prices in the light of few buyers, all while the owners pay their inflated tax bills year after year without being able to cash out of the entire sucker's investment. Eventually, brokers bow to the pressures of reality and drop their high estimates. Eventually, people sneak down to their assessor's office and read them the riot act on their home's listed value. And eventually, the prices slump down like a wave across entire regions and sanity returns.
Cars have become absurd in general pricing. Low-end pricing for many models is often a marketing trick, since very few (if any) of those models were ever produced. The absurdity of the costs of an SUV should be obvious to any thinking observer. They are expensive to buy, insure, repair and fuel.
In order to become prosperous, one must not spend like a 14-year-old girl would. Too many people have put themselves on payment plans that they cannot survive. Hence, even though one could make the payments on a car or a house, it's still too much money to spend on such an item -- given the circumstances of the last decade in America for many people. (Note that cars and houses are associated with various financiers chasing you in order to get you to start on their payment plans. A point of wisdom is in recognizing is that being able to make payments on something is not automatically the ability to own it.)
The point is to accumulate wealth and to spend such larger sums wisely to avoid finance charges. These finance charges are unavoidable when you don't pay immediately for the cost of the item. They are obvious or otherwise -- since items you can buy on "payments same as cash" only means the price has been hiked to account for the costs of payment-over-time.
The short point of the long yakity-yak here is that once I got out of severe unemployment and started to return towards IT (I'm not back there yet), there's no call for me being foolish and spending like there will actually be a paycheck for me a month, a year or a decade from now. I have no expectations for the future, as is the only wise response to years of unemployment. I am now ultra-frugal and will remain so for the rest of my life. For their rapacious and frankly immoral behavior, corporate America and the day-trading fscker with the pension plan will never get any cooperation from me again. I will not use credit
It's time to return to sustainable prosperity. The wise citizen carefully saves and frugally spends. Overall, a population of people like this makes for an economy that can go for lifetimes without crashing. However, it is hard to make megamillionaires in an environment like that, so I'm sure to hear all kinds of blather from you and people like you about how foolish I'm being. And none of that matters since even if deemed foolish, I'm still not going to buy your fscking, overpriced, plastic shit, thank you very much.
Now you'll have to excuse me, I'm going to go into the garage of the place I'm living at, and repair some more stuff with all of my tools, just to avoid buying all that crap again at some strip mall. Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle
You're right. IT is indeed doomed.
... in monkey-boy, call-centered phone support".
Months later Convergys started up in my town, and I was treated to years of call-center-hell news from across America and Ireland, all of which confirmed the trend and vindicated my cynicism.
... degrees and retraining are just efforts expended towards washing dishes anyway.
I can clearly foresee that I'm better off washing dishes without school debts.
This is also along the same lines of my understanding that I'm better off in the long run by not buying into your 14-yr-old-girl consumptive economy with all the throwaway appliances, cars and homes.
I'm immediately reminded of some typical yuppie I know (unfortunately), who has stated to me that "any teenager can do your job". Technical support, product development, and software testing? These are the things that teenagers can just jump into with my level of mature handling? Yes, that's what she meant.
I can hardly agree with her words, but they have iconized the sentiment I first encountered in the mid 90s. Experience in the IT field isn't an asset -- it's considered a liability. If I had a dollar for everytime that I heard the word "overqualified", I wouldn't need to find a job. We tech workers (degreed, certified or not) have become about as replacable as manual labor.
I remember in the late 90s reading about how there was a shortage of ~300000 IT jobs in the American Midwest (where I live (unfortunately)). The first thing that sprang to mind was "yeah, sure
Myself, this is all simply icing on the Depressionary cake, and I'm just waiting for the housing bubble to collapse so sane pricing can return. I'm saving as much as I can (while putting it in a big tin bucket since it's not likely to lie to me about its goddamn financial performance). Then -- assuming I still have a job -- I can actually afford to live on my own again, while the conspicuous-consumption class crashes and burns as it so richly deserves.
P.S. To all of you "get a degree" and "retrain for another job" motherfuckers out there
I agree with your sentiment, and I have my own invective to add.
This was never a "great idea", 1999 or otherwise. The "build it and they will come" idea was completely assinine long before its demonstrated collapse across this American nation of "revitalized" city centers.
I live in Toledo, Ohio (yeah, yeah, I know, now please stop laughing) and I've been seeing the ponzi scheme of revitalization up close and personal for years. Home prices are still rising, investment is still being lavished on the downtown area and certain rapid-growth outlier towns. This can only lead to a terrible real estate market crash, and the public is walking around blissfully unaware that their municipalities have undersigned much of the debt behind these new developments.
Into this sick, sick economy, we have the constant drone of tax abatements, restructurings, bonds, levies, and a newspaper happily chirping out stories of local entrepreneurs looking to make it big.
The looting of America just has to stop. We can't continue to fall for this empty line of hope and glitz without taking the serious risk of civil war. Such a war grows more and more possible due to several factors. American savings have been zeroized (allegedly rebounding slightly for early 2003) and we are firmly a culture of debtors now. Those two margins of safety are effectively gone. The middle class and "home-owners" (a term I use advisedly since so many people's mortgages are effectively rentals) are being forced to shoulder more and more of the general tax burden, as the wealthy and corporations escape more taxes and the lower class expands. There's another shrinking margin of safety. Homes and lives are being organized around non-self-sufficient services like natural gas, gasoline, electricity, package delivery and foreign maintenance labor. Price bumps in these areas have abrupt fiscal consequences for the populace, who are also ill equipped to reduce dependency.
What would fix all of this is "restraint of trade". I've no problem with that since what is happening now is clearly capitalism out of control (I call it "hypercapitalism"), and humane social controls need to be re-applied. * Some controls spring immediately to mind. Companies should not be exempted from taxation. Nor should they be allowed to close down factories -- destroying lives -- just to chase a few more percentage points of profit elsewhere. Little old ladies who can't afford their home taxes shouldn't be kicked out of their homes. Etc.
The "fear of falling" which is the cultural foundation of a place like Toledo, Ohio is not natural nor necessary. But despotic plans are easy to sell to people in a state of terrible desperation. If this city is any indication, tyranny is being manufactured in America's heartland, leading to a great deal of pain and probably death for the population.
* The most recent piece of evidence that comes to mind is an article that reported that during 2002, corp executive pay rose 15%. Now, 2002 is definitely a year of pain for the working man, and I spend the entire year watching all manner of news media report on the fiscal condition of the nation. The condition was terrible, and about 1 million Americans lost their jobs during that period. Yet the execs on average continued to receive excessive awards while all that was going on. This is clearly OUT OF CONTROL.
If the National Archives and Records Administration keeps the US Constitution, it's a museum, not an archive.
... well, it's time to say that the Republic is long dead.
... I know I am.
As Bruce Sterling has implied, life moves in clades, and if we need something solid and dependable around, we'll have it orbit ourselves.
With the way things are going, they may as well put all of the federal government's documents and operations online, since there will be no practical way for any alleged citizen to get into the soon-to-be-made W3S (Washington DC Special Security Sector).
You can pick any event in American history to show the downfall starting (my favorite is Shay's Rebellion), but after the events of 1913 (Federal Reserve and income tax), 1933 (overblown socialism and anti-gun law), 1945 (atomic/nuclear bombs and OSS/CIA), the Cold War, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, and now the War on Anything Islamic
Get over it. Adapt and survive. Buy weapons, ammunition, reloading equipment, tools, books
Oh, look, another fucking Young Republican. No, you get a grip. You need to get a grip on the severe economic injustice that is being ladled out daily here in modern America (which I assume you are in).
... the one for the wealthy, the one for the middle class (and I draw a very broad stroke with this brush here), and finally the one for the lower class (which includes the destitute and the "working poor").
Taxation and entitlements are very sensitive to these boundaries ... in general, the flow of taxes is away from the lower end and the entitlements is therefore towards the upper.
... the defense industries are throughly corrupt (I myself had the pleasure of seeing* this first hand) and serve to funnel public funds to corporations and their elite masters.
Mr. Eight Bucks an Hour is being fleeced for every hour he works, to ensure Boeing's cash flow, stocks and bonds.
... and unless your last name matches one of those in Who's Who, your time is certainly coming in this country.
There is a clear difference between our current state of hypercapitalism and the capitalism expounded by men like Elbert Hubbard (to paraphrase, he said that "a man with a home and savings is unavoidably a capitalist").
Capitalism with involved social controls is certainly socialism of a sorts ... and we really need to return to that form of socio-economics in America.
Before the shooting starts in earnest.
An important finger in your grip is the recognition that there are three worlds in America
Another finger in your needed grip is the recognition that corporations and wealthy persons are too entangled to treat separately. Ever hear of trusts? How about an entitlement program (like anything out of the Export-Import Bank) that a CEO arranges for his company, which translates into further salary and options benefits for himself? The wealthy are making themselves immune to many taxes simply by transforming their financial lives into corporations of a sort. Executives are racing to put their homes, cars, meals and vacations on the tabs of their companies. Again, that's a deal that's summarily denied for over 90% of us.
Corporate welfare payments were 3 times the level of individual welfare payments (as of 2001, to my recollection). From just this example among many other ones about how public funds are being shoveled into the maws of the wealthy, I find it very difficult to see how the lower class is a clear beneficiary in this nation. Do you think that I should give weight to a person making $8/hr at WalMart, who lives in a trailer, allegedly enjoying figher jet protection from Iraqis who are about 12000 miles away? Get serious, "dude"
Redistribution of wealth is the nature of charity. If we are indeed the leading nation in the world, then charity must be a part of our character (and I note that there's a lot to be said for a large, private charitable sector). We've seen enough American history to understand our errors in the 1930s (Depression and public works), the 1960s (War on Poverty), and the enormous state of error in which we now live (hypercapitalism). Like James Simon Kunen has said (paraphrasing) we can provide homes and food for everyone in this country, so we should do it. We just need to keep the Clintonistas (the vicious, corporate-owned Democrats) and Bushites (the vicious, corporate-owned Republicans) out of managing things.
Let me give you some advice. Your "Young Republican" philosophies will only serve you until your neck is on the chopping block next
* Did you know that the government evaluates aerospace innovations by submitting the ideas to officials from the current aerospace companies (i.e. the competitors)? Did you also know that this is an illegal practice? Have you ever seen the look of fear and confusion on the face of an involved government official when you explain all this to him?
Oh, look, another Young Republican, trotting out the old and tired "3 guys paid for dinner and how do you divide up a refund" argument about taxation.
... while the guy who paid the least also got the equivalent of "just crumbs".
... so they do, and are still doing so in droves.
For instance, Enron managed to have ZERO tax liability in 4 of its last 5 years ... and what working man managed to have that deal?
I've no sympathy for the wealthy due to their vicious avoidance of taxes.
If taxation takes a couple more thousand from them out of their millions, then I say WE NEED MORE OF THE SAME.
... until, of course, the man who pays the least gets a meal he can live on.
No one should go back for seconds until everyone gets a first serving.
The thing that's not mentioned is that the guy who paid the most for dinner got an incredible feast for his money, including a hotel stay, movie, and air travel to and from the hotel
This argument is popular with the middle class since they are caught in the middle, and so the argument seems to have merit from their personal financial experience. The middle class is getting a so-so meal for too much money, so they are naturally interested in a larger return on any tax refund or rebate.
But don't try to pass the dinner-divide story off as a universal argument. Rich individuals and corporations can afford to hire people to hide their money from taxes
Ho hum. If you can finally come up with a flexible touch screen that emits/absorbs sound, light and radio waves, THEN I'll be impressed ... single-sheet computers with all the fixin's.
Remember those handhelds in the movie "Red Planet"?
They were like sheet metal and were highly interactive with their environment.
Gimme dat, dog.
... if you build a product out of your efforts.
/. article.
If we can downgrade our respect of programmers from engineer or artificer to a "monkey", then it can and will happen to any skilled trade.
Medical doctors can be made into "pill dispensers".
Bridge engineers can be made into "steel workers".
Judges can be made into "security guards".
Electronic engineers can be made into "assemblers".
Lawyers can be made into "librarians".
... until the costs of maintaining the skillsets drives the skills out of them.
... and shouldn't we stop that before we end up in a civil war?
... no, not those ... they have REAL elite skills, not 1337 5k1llz.
My biggest fear is that they will continue to refuse to understand the necessity of mature intellectual labor until some wetback or recent grad boots them out of their own supposedly so-terribly-skilled jobs.
Then they'll shed the same tears while the capitalists add another power of ten to their bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.
Disclaimer: I am not certified or degreed in any way.
I really worry about the implied attitude in this
My personal -- perhaps overly paranoid -- theory is that the whole idea behind this implied attitude is that skilled trades are to be progressively underpaid to the benefit of capital owners. With so many people owning stock through various means, this seems to be a great idea for a while
The assertion that skill will be driven out is hardly an unfounded one. Would you go to college for 4 years just to make $12 an hour? At that wage, would you spend $40+ at a crack for each computer book, and have many computers and distros at your disposal? Computer skills require a good many hours (in classrooms and/or out) of study and enthusiastic interest, and twelve bucks an hour doesn't buy that kind of loyalty (especially since the median house prices in your area are at US$90K and climbing).
Despite this, what do I hear from the Young Republicans (and the sold-out Young Democrats)?:
Code monkey : Jesus Fucking Christ, I am so tired of hearing that term. Programming is as hard a mental labor as any of the mental professions. This mental labor is intrinsically worthwhile since it produces stuff that is intrinsically worthwhile, and THEREFORE is worth compensating. This link from value to compensation is being broken all over the place due to criminal and sociopathic greed
A high school student can do your job : Holy Bastard Hell, I am even MORE tired of hearing THAT phrase. I find it particularly amusing that people with skillsets that are as codified into books as computer programming, still think that programming could be assumed by immature people with a few reference books. But not their own skills!
It's time to stick my neck out for the chopping ....
... their distros will soon suck so much ass that they'll bomb in a hurry.
Lack of serious competition was the boat that floated Microsoft, and no Linux company can get such a ticket.
... perhaps even more reliable.
The diverse base of users can plug all kind of apps into it.
Since apps need developers, perhaps even some Linux developers will come back to the Windows fold.
Why should I care about Linux's market share? It has market presence, not share, and that's as it should be.
Concentration on market share is the thing that crippled Microsoft Windows. System reliability became a distant 2nd priority to new features. If there are Linux companies out there that are harping on market share to that degree, then I wish them luck
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we shouldn't be out to ruin Microsoft, especially their flagship product MS-Windows. Even though Microsoft has abused we users, technicians and engineers, their OS is useful. It just needs to be fixed. Microsoft clearly hasn't felt the need to really fix it for some years, so perhaps the presence of Linux will start to compel them.
* One good attempt to fix MS-Windows is to make a minmum Windows version (called "Mindows" or "Portholes") . That way, the smaller codebase can be made more optimized
Firstly, Congress has no authority to change the US Constitution. (Even if that does seem to be legislative fashion these days
Secondly, Lessig's compromise also violates the US Constitution. According to this link, the document says in Article I Section 8:
Note it says "for limited Times". Allowing patent, copyright and trademark holders to retain their works as long as they pay for them, is not limited time.
The only two fixes that are moral and legal are to either amend the Constitution to allow for unlimited works rights, or to never again extend such rights. In fact, the time limits should be reduced
The remaining fix is to lob mortar shells at the US Capitol building until the Congresspeople begin to see the light. Myself, I prefer this option. The US Constitution is a body of rules, not guidelines, but the use of opinion and lassitude are making it a piece of paper. Is there any mystery as to why the populace has so little regard for the rule of law?
It's about time some thinking Humans expressed their intent in a space program. After all, if you want to conquer Earth orbit, you've got to mine the moon. It takes 22 times the energy to get a load from Earth to low-Earth orbit (LEO), than if you launched it from the moon to LEO. Launching everything from Earth (the current NASA and American favorite) is just fucking daft. Space facilities -- real ones, not the Skylab/Mir/ISS type of political toys -- will demand billions of tons of material; even at an amazingly reduced $100/pound launch cost, you can clearly see the impossibility of the $200 trillion price tag. In a Geocentric space program, there's no ability to colonize anything, and I must honestly say that there's also no will either.
... there's little need to actually dig.
... make the Western world look up at a glittering Chinese sky with the deep, burning shame of having squandered the technical lead for the false security of world empire.
Just thinking about conservation of Luna in her "natural" state is very funny. There's about 10^23 kg of dead rock floating there. She represents silicon, aluminum, iron and titanium deposits of reasonable quality with significant oxides of same. The regolith itself is very mine-able due to its exposure and finely crushed state. In fact, I'd say that Lunar mining is more of a Lunar scraping operation
Mine the moon, China. I wish you well. Your round-eye brethren across the Pacific have totally lost touch with the physical realities of space exploration and exploitation. Forget them. Build your Lunar mines and solar power satellites
Why would anyone emulate a bunch of thugs, who largely prey on their own people?
....
... it'll keep you off the street and diminish your chances of coming into contact with a law enforcement officer.
Because it is so lucrative to be an executive, lawyer, or policeman.
Oh, wait, you weren't talking about those thugs
You have a really, really skewed view of things that any amount of TV viewing will only support. The urban areas are war zones and those growing up in them -- surprise! -- end up warriors instead of citizens. And this is fair enough, since people like you undoubtedly from your environment end up consumers and are not citizens either.
So, keep consuming, fella
'Nuff said.
Digital cash is a terrible mistake:
- You can't loan someone 5 bucks.
- You lose privacy.
- Your card can be duplicated.
- A software or electrical error can wipe out your money.
These points counteract each other; if you attempt to solve one of them, the other problems grow larger.One thing that seems to underlay the digerati's love of digital cash is a lack of understanding about counterfeiting. Falsifying paper currency is difficult
Digital cash, shit!
Are you for real? Why have a space program at all, when you are studying places that mankind will never go?
... fuck science, it can hang on the coattails of orbital industry.
Build comm satellites, solar power stations, and finally the means to reach the asteroids and Jupiter/Saturn to harvest ores and water.
(The energy requirements mandate the use of Lunar industry to get it done, hence Moonbases are essential.)
Once this kind of stuff is in place, there will be plenty of infrastructure for science to finally eke out its existence and finally have to justify itself for once.
The "scientific research" model for space exploration is clearly a failure and the continued flying of its flag is just more whining from PhD's who don't want to get real jobs.
As for science
Finally, putting man in space may not harden the nipples of your average scientist and engineer who are just dying to solve the problems of remote administration, but I don't want billions of dollars spent just to jack off their nerdly hobbies and satisfy their academic egos. Men in space are the real problem solvers for things that happen in space. How many more spacecraft do we have to lose around Mars and Jupiter before we see the light of this truth?
People make their own lasers, robots, cloud chambers, musical instruments, cars, aeroplanes, telescopes, electronic equipment, software programs and many other techy items. We know this because this information is shared inevitably due to common interest.
... well, the problem is in the confinement, as always.
Call me when somebody does something original with that.
Zzzzz ....
Now, seeing that people make things as complicated as lasers and telescopes and the information of those is quite public, I find it just impossible to believe that a "simple" fusor unit is nowhere operating even though 40 years of (some) development has occurred. Corporate suppression just doesn't work to that degree.
Once again, I think we are faced with an unworkable energy program that hides its lack of technical strength with accusations of conspiracy. Once again, all we have to do to nip this bullshit in the bud is to demand a working and TESTABLE unit.
If the unit can survive the likes of James Randi, then I'll start to believe it.
As for fusion
Men on the Moon? What the hell are you talking about? Anything to do with the Moon is a load of nonsense, since it has nothing to do with k3wl 1nt3rn3t stuff, junk bonds, strip malls and of course the pervasive War on Terror.
... but what good is it all for all the billions that are lavished upon the program in general?
What is the return on the investment?
Why are hundreds of millions of dollars spent to make a spacecraft that cannot be fixed if it breaks millions of miles away?
Do Americans believe in equipment that doesn't break?
Businesses measure and enforce productivity, and government agencies are being increasingly pressured into doing the same ... so why can't these same considerations apply to NASA?
... there's no reason to assume that science is a cost and not an investment.
And if it's an investment, there ought to be a measure of its performance.
... which will be Chinese or Indian, or course -- not American.
Sarcasm aside, the Lunar missions are one (now defunct) aspect of the American Empire. That time has passed, and for whatever internal reasoning in the other nations, it is now up those other nations to actually pursue space policies. The American Empire has now turned inward in order to eat its own belly, and the only outward appearances will be general emigration and military actions.
American space missions were visionary but only served a transitory function in the evolution of the Empire. They couldn't continue no matter what value they returned to it. The problem lies in the definition of "value"; once enough billions were spent to prove the USA was the land of bigger penises that that of the Soviet landmass, the entire thing became obsolete.
At this point, I have a great many questions for Mr. Joe A. American. What does NASA actually do, anyways? Sure, we can all see the Shuttle launches, the ISS, placing satellites into orbit, and interplanetary missions
I'm sure there will be the usual blather about "that's not how you think about science", but
I think that that is a good summary of what ill has befallen the American Republic in order to transform it into an Empire. If spending on science is done with an investment mindset or expectation, perhaps we would have solar power satellites, two or more tiers of launch vehicles (at least "maintenance" and "heavy lift" types), and a thriving Cislunar industry.
I look forward to the 30th anniversary of the first solar power satellite