I'm pretty sure Gates is either against or has no official position on keeping (or bringing back? I'm not sure what the current status is in the US) the estate tax. The prominent billionaire who's all for the estate tax that you're thinking of is probably Warren Buffet.
Nope, William Gates I wrote the book on the subject, Wealth and Our CommonWealth, and little Billy follows his father on this one. It's also the main reason for the Foundation- Melinda had the idea for the vehicle, but Bill wants to give it all away (asside from enough to keep himself and his family comfortable) before he dies- and the most his kids will inherit is what he did: A $100,000 startup loan.
It won't- but it will LIKELY affect business as usual at the Gates Foundation, which is the good part. If the Gates Foundation has less clout at the money making business, that means fewer dividends for all stockholders- and less money that the Gates Foundation, as a stockholder, can give away.
He certainly accepted that nihilism leads to nothing and that you need to take yourself through it with a leap of faith essentially but his solution was entirely different to yours (he was an atheist who believed in living his life to get as much joy as he could at the end of the day, you could call him decadent)
But being an atheist- without God and duty in his life- that's entirely a reasonable response to Nilhism. It's ONLY my belief in God and duty to family and future (futile as that may be, wrong as that may be) that keeps me from lving my life the same way Nietzche did. Within my duty to family and society- I still do take joy wherever I can find it, otherwise my lack of faith in governments, money, and future would end up in my suicide.
while I agree with your premise I don't agree with the solution but then again its never about agreement which was the whole point. It's based entirely on faith its just whether you aim your faith at god or at whatever you decide. I've never argued against this, people are entirely justified to believe in god if they want to believe in god.
OR NOT, as the case may be, completely correct. But both ways, it's a belief based on blind faith- we have no more evidence that there is no God than we have evidence that there is, or was, a God. Remember, Nietzche wasn't really a total atheist- he simply thought that God was Dead (no longer dealing with our universe). I may have faith in God, but I'm not entirely sure he's wrong on that point; certainly free will has a disportionate effect on our universe.
Which parts. the core of the EU economy isn't too bad, certainly the UK's unemployment rate is quite low (though worryingly rising at the moment if just slowly) and debt is nowhere near where it was when Blair came in (though again is increasing slowly) but we're probably the strongest economy in Europe currently. Anyway if we ever get rid of the CAP thats 440B that can actually be spent on things other than producing 100 times the food the world would ever need then dumping it on a big mountain.
Well, you might have a strong economy in the UK- but Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy all have unemployment rates in the mid 20s. You might be getting new markets in the EU- but those new markets are about as usefull as adding China, India, or random African nations to your trading partners- all they have to give is cheap labor, and they are too poor to take- not a large enough middle class to create consumerism. Evil as I believe consumerism is today- I recognize that international trade must stay balanced if it is to be free between producers and consumers. Too much production is as bad as too little.
The question is whether the new EU members will drag the established ones down. Certainly the EU has held back richer members in the past (in a form, everyone is better off but the poorer countries like Ireland and Belgium have gained the most).
The problem is, as soon as poorer countries gain (often at the expense of the richer ones) the richer countries start searching for new poor countries. Cheap Labor and Free Trade is the race to the BOTTOM, not the TOP.
Its interesting, you make very similar arguments to Friedrich Nietzsche yet the conclusions drawn from both arguments are so massively opposed it shows the value of any attempt to reason on this level.
Not at all- for without God, without Religion, without Duty to Family, Society, and the Future- Nietzsche was RIGHT. In the long run, we have nothing and are nothing, and nothing we do matters.
As for the US being crucial to the world economy. On whose measure. The US economy has been performing quite badly in recent times while the likes of growing economies like India and China are booming so much that the most conservative measures suggest China will have overtaken the US as the worlds largest economic superpower within 11 years.
On output only- they're not paying their workers enough to ever build a middle class- and when the United States dies, they'll be in a world of hurt manufacturing far more than they'll ever be able to afford to consume. Result: deflation and depression will be the result of China's failure to create a middle class in time.
The US debt is growing much faster than anywhere else in the world even when the population size is taken into account, the EU economy is growing in quite a stable manner above predictions again this year and its enlarging it membership futher again which will bring a whole new market and politicians are beginning to talk about ending consumer patriotism which will make a futher boost over a very long period (consumer patriotism being the biggest drag on the EU economy after the bloody CAP).
The EU has too high of an unemployment rate- though they're ceratinly second for stability, they're almost as unbalanced as the United States is.
True the US is facing the toughest period for a long time and I wish your country nothing but success, however to claim that the US is somehow crucial to the world economy is a stretch at best.
We are the consumers of the world- without our debt ridden spending, there isn't enough consumerism in the world to balance the output of the factories- result will be deflation and depression.
No- thanks to Gates and his father and their Foundation, it doesn't. Right now, Microsoft is a money grubbing, profit-centered, fuck anybody who gets in our way, sociopathic corporation, with a chairman who gives money and software licenses to schools and libraries, not to mention disease aid to foreign countries, contraception aid to the poor (ok, I'm not so sure of THIS good deed, but it's fitting within Gates' left wing morality) and campaigns for the Estate tax (the only person with more than a $7 million estate that I know of who does). Now true, this won't end with the decoupling of the Foundation from Microsoft- but I'm wondering if the Foundation will end up with slightly fewer resources because of it (having to just make due with private contributions from the Gates family and the Public). And by subtracting the foundation out, you take away what little good is left in Microsoft.
But his morality is the only morality that company has. At all. This move will make Microsoft into more of a money grubbing, profit-centered, fuck anybody who gets in our way, sociopathic corporation. And they didn't have very far to fall to begin with.
I have tremendous hope for the future, both on a personal level and for mankind as a whole. It's based not on blind faith, but on an ongoing analysis of where we are, what our society is doing, and a reasonable projection of our current social and technological trends.
Then you're coming to a completely different conclusion given the same data than I am- I not only have no hope based on an ongoing analysis of where we are, what our society is doing, and a reasonable projection of our current social and technological trends, I have my doubts that the Unites States will continue to exist as a civilization past the end of the next generation (because we're no longer having children in sufficient enough numbers to replace ourselves, and we're bringing in illegal immigrants with a different culture to make up the difference; as well as the fact that our civilization is based on an unsustainable rate of resource consumption). And since the current world reserve currency has nothing backing it up other than human trust in the United States paying it's bills, the collapse of the United States WILL create the collapse of international trade worldwide. I see no reason whatsoever to be optimistic in the face of that- and to come to a conclusion of hope in the future based on extrapolation of current events would suggest a large measure of blind faith and superstitious ignorance is involved.
Galileo recanted before they could burn him at the stake.
They never intended to burn him at the stake- that was NEVER the punishment for insulting the Pope (which was Galileo's real "crime", BTW, circular orbits having been removed from the realm of heresy some 20 years before with Copernicus) but they did lock him up under house arrest in a 47 room appartment with on-site laboratory, thus limiting his freedom of motion and publication.
ALS is a pretty awful disease, but it isn't quite like that.
I'd say it's worse than what really happened to Galileo- eventually Stephen Hawking will be a brilliant mind trapped in a decaying body with no chance of creative output whatsoever. Unless we find some way of keeping him in a jar first.
And worse yet, he hadn't researched what REALLY happened to Galileo first- otherwise he'd realize his own body was doing far worse to him than the Inquisition ever did to Galileo.
RTFA= they had web filtering software. What they didn't have is:
a) an outgoing desktop firewall or b) limited functionality browsers on the desktop.
I just don't see why the Department of Administrative Services insists that everybody needs IE 6.0, the most unsafe browser immaginable, on the desktop. That's just asking for this kind of abuse.
Better yet- a limited access, SERVER based browser, that both encrypts contents runnning between the Java client and the proxy server, but ALSO does not allow executable code to be downloaded. Build such a mousetrap, and all the better government mice including schools will beat a path to your doorstep.
It's possible- AND it's a part of the hardware. Sort of. It depends on the USB drive itself- and how it is constructed. Some of them do not report removable media bit correctly to begin with- others use part of the flash memory to hold the code and thus can be modified.
Under Windows XP, it's just like a CD Drive- just add an autorun.inf file, and you can do whatever you want on insertion. If none is found, there's a whole host of other automatic things that can happen as well- it will also search the drive for multimedia stuff and prompt the user to play/show the files found, copy the files to a local folder, etc.
No more than rock concerts or boom-boom cars I would suspect; this has been a standard worry since the begining of rock&roll, that the kids are damaging their hearing by turning up their personal music devices too loud. There may be some truth in it, but I don't think a large enough percentage of the population does it to worry about.
The problem with a true democracy is that people don't have time to give issues enough thought to consider anything but superficial arguments. There is no deep thought or discussion. We'd get dumb laws like "Brad and Jennifer must stay together" and "Nobody can be rich" and "all people must follow x religion" and dumb crap like that. Our society is a complicated system with complex behavior and interactions. Laws don't ever simply do what their creators intended them to, they change the system's balance to a new equilibrium. Representative democracy works better because the people making laws have time to understand them.
Ah, but you miss my point with this. I want only the superficial, dumb laws to get through- deep laws should be decided LOCALLY not NATIONALLY.
The problem isn't the absence of the gold standard. The problem is allowing deficit spending. That should be banned.
Deficit spending is always possible with a fiat money system- if the government needs more money they just print it.
I would like to see a constitutional amendment forcing a general population vote to approve any deficit spending with a 4 year time limit on that approval. I'd also like to see a hard limit on spending of 30% of the income in the entire population. Let them distribute the taxes however they like but don't let them exceed that number without the vote.
I wouldn't even allow that- TAXPAYERS should get to allocate their own taxes, and if that's not enough, then the additional is something the government shouldn't be doing.
Public opinion is even easier to sway than politicians. Remember, the money that is corrupting things isn't for the politicians personally, it's simply to convince the public that they should vote for them instead of kicking them out of office. I remember a great example of this somewhere, Australia I think, where DeBeers actually convinced the general public to allow DeBeers to have a monopoly on all the country's diamonds instead of selling them on the open market.
It would be interesting though, if each city/town/rural district were allowed to set it's own tariffs- I wonder what the corps would do if they needed to sway not one, but several thousand different elections at different times.
Everyone who donates to campaigns are rich. The idea that this could be different is silly. You won't be donating to candidates unless you have nothing better to do with the money and that only happens when you are pretty well off.
If we had Sound Money, this would be different. It would also be different if we had a true democracy and the rich had nothing to gain from bribing politicians. Give the budgeting capaibility back to the people- take away the central government and central bank, and you'll solve that problem.
However, the idea that receiving money from wealthy people makes you thier puppet is silly. People are individuals who in general do things that they feel are in their best instrest. If they want to get elected again they will do things that will get them more votes.
Only fake, superficial things. And since spending money on the campaign is the #1 way to get elected- doing what your contributers want you to do is the easiest way to get re-elected. And who ever said people were individuals? Human beings are social- they sucumb to peer pressure.
The problem is that challengers are so empoverished that unless you killed a hooker or something they won't have the money to explain to voters that you are corrupt and shouldn't be voted for. The $1000 limit ensures that.
Having a centralized government that the rich can go to for one-stop shopping ensures that- remove the power of the central government, and they'll have to bribe 180 million voters instead, and then we'll have TRUE democracy.
The way to fix it is to create a system where politicians lose more votes for getting paid to support bad legislation than they win.
Or simply take away their right to legislate at all- run everything through a national referendum instead.
Look at the laws that have come out since then- except on a few superficial items, the money and the laws flow a single direction. Vote for the Republican, you're voting for the rich elitest business interest. Vote for the Democrat you're voting for the rich elitest business interest. Vote for the Libertarian and you're voting for the rich elitest business interest. Vote for the Green and you're voting for a guy who denies that he's getting money from the rich elitest business interest, until somebody brings out his campaign contributer's list, and finds only rich business people on it becase hippies have no money.
And there are no other viable parties.
It's all a show, a fake, no different than a cartoon on TV.
No way. The average family has cell phones and cable and air conditioning and 2 reliable cars (not that shit Detroit tried to push on us 20 and 30 years ago) and spend tons of money keeping ourselves healthy (whereas before we just died). While employment may be down around you, it's doing fine most places. Life isn't perfect, far from it, but it's better than it used to be.
Then why are there more renters now than homeowners? Why is home ownership down since 1950? Why, in the past 5 years, have wages risen.07% on average, but inflation 3%? Yes, we've got a few technological toys- but it's all financed on several trillion dollars of governmental, trade, and consumer debt.
One of the most powerful influences on the buying power of the average American is the giant efficient chain stores like Wal*Mart driving the prices down lower than they ever have been.
Wrong- the most powerfull influence on the buying power of the average American is the willingness of banks to hand out credit cards at 37% Annual Interest Rates.
You argue that the standard of living in the US is dropping.. that just isn't true. That may be true for you personally, but that might just be because you are a militant nut and nobody wants to hire you for a good job.:)
Just got hired yesterday- for a government job. I've given up on private industry which no longer seems competent for the place they've been given in the social structure.
Incorrect. Most of these laws come from town/city zoning boards. Thats as local as government gets. They are influenced by overall trends and ideas like the "suburban sprawl" misinformation you keep hearing people spew but the decisions are purely local.
I've seen the farmland disappear- and btw, large metro areas are ALSO centralized government. You have to go back to the tribes to find truly decentralized government.
Oh please! Nearly every mom and pop store will have plenty of chinese made stuff in it and Wal*Mart has plenty of US made stuff in it.
Not if you go directly to the local craftsmen it isn't. I buy American made, not Chinese crap. And last time I was in a Wal*Mart, I took a good look at the shelves, and couldn't find ONE US made item in any department other than food. And even then, things like Vlassic Pickles and good ole' Kerry Ketchup were coming from MEXICO. There are closed factories all over the United States due to Wal*Mart and Target and stores of their ilk.
I do. All the time. Wal*Mart is cheaper. Sometimes a lot cheaper. Like 1/10th the price. Some US company wants to sell me an 16 foot inflatable plastc pool for $3,000. It's well made, superior in every way to Wal*Mart's, but Wal*Mart sells a 16' pool for $279. The US company and the Mom&Pop store (which is right across the street from Wal*Mart by the way) can take their $3k price tag and shove it. I don't want a pool that bad, I wouldn't buy it, I wouldn't have one. I'd go without. The Wal*Mart one I'd buy. Those aren't the only things I've found at 1/10th the price either. We live in a world where it's unimaginable that people would gouge us for things if it werent for competition, but we get just the slightest touch of what it would be like and it crushes us as with the recent gas price hikes. Imagine going to the store and not paying $100 for groceries but $500. And you beg and plead and haggle with the store owner so they cut you a break and let you leave for $400. That's not better.
1/10th the price, 1/10th the quality. And I buy all of my groceries from the FARMERS, not from a store which charges a markup.
And in a free market you can't sell it for much more either or someone will undercut you and steal your business. There are pockets for profiteering but when the playing field is level, they must remain small or you will get your customers stolen.
Or you simply use your profits elsewhere in the country to undercut prices until
That's a horrible goal. I don't want to have to work more, I want to work less and get more for it.
You've been working more and getting less in return for it, on average, for 40 years now. And worse yet, you have less of a chance (as a percentage of the total population) of being able to work at all now than ever before in the history of the country.
So far, I'm getting what I want and so are most of the people in the US.
Actually, you probably aren't even getting that- wages are down in relation to inflation and have been for 40 years now.
Inflated house prices are usually due to crappy restrictive local policies that aim to reign in the normal flow of housing expansion which drives prices up. That makes things better for all the existing home owners and dramatically worse for anyone looking to buy a house.
And who passes such laws? Centralized governments who know NOTHING about local environment or local conditions. Yet another way centralization is the problem.
Unless you boycot walmart, however, your purchasing power has probably gone up from what it would have been many years ago and you probably live better.
Not according to that leading economic indicator, the Cost of Living Equation. You know, the one that gives us the idea of inflation? Buying power for just about anybody drawing a paycheck has not kept up with inflation over the past 40 years. However, if you inherited all your wealth and are living off of dividends, it's a different story. Oh yeah, and Wal*Mart- you really need to compare their prices to the Mom&Pop stores sometime, if there are any left. Interesting thing about Wal*Mart's pricing scheme- it goes down, then goes back up as local competitors go out of business.
That's untrue. If I shop at my local mom and pop store they buy the same crappy manufactured goods they just spend more time and effort selling it to me. Frankly.. I don't want to pay 100 shopkeepers 30% markup so they can put their kids through college while mine starve.
Actually, they're NOT the same crappy manufactured goods if you shop at the right places- they're American made pride, not Chinese crap. And in addition to that- your kids will starve anyway if you shop at Wal*Mart because nobody will be left to hire them when they drop out of high school. Add to that the fact that 92 cents of every dollar you spend at Wal*Mart goes to support the communists in Bejing and Bentonville, that makes you a TRAITOR.
I'd rather pay 10 walmart people minimum wage and push people who want to make good money into productive useful jobs instead of pushy retail sails.
Too bad under the Wal*Mart model there won't be any productive jobs left- just work for the Chinese Labor Gulags.
The free market is very good at making something as expensive to buy as it is to produce. I know you don't believe that but you are wrong.
Where did I say that the free market did any less? I said that the pricing of the free market supports PROFITEERING- you can't make a profit if you're selling something for less than it's produced for.
I highly doubt, after all the recent press coverage, whether anyone will let Exxon/Mobile buy anything remotely resembling a competitor for a while.
The press doesn't matter- this is no longer a democracy. What matters is the bribes Exxon/Mobile pays in the form of campaign contributions, not what some pansy voter thinks when choosing between the Democrat, who took money from Exxon/Mobile, and the Republican, who took money from Exxon/Mobile.
The courts aren't corrupt they have just done some silly things lately and are floundering in a lack of reasonable leadership.
Boy, you really are naive- the courts have been purchased, lock stock and barrel, by the corporations since 1876.
You are quite right about politicians being corrupt, and I see very little reasonable talk about the right way to solve i
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I'm pretty sure Gates is either against or has no official position on keeping (or bringing back? I'm not sure what the current status is in the US) the estate tax. The prominent billionaire who's all for the estate tax that you're thinking of is probably Warren Buffet.
Nope, William Gates I wrote the book on the subject, Wealth and Our CommonWealth, and little Billy follows his father on this one. It's also the main reason for the Foundation- Melinda had the idea for the vehicle, but Bill wants to give it all away (asside from enough to keep himself and his family comfortable) before he dies- and the most his kids will inherit is what he did: A $100,000 startup loan.
It won't- but it will LIKELY affect business as usual at the Gates Foundation, which is the good part. If the Gates Foundation has less clout at the money making business, that means fewer dividends for all stockholders- and less money that the Gates Foundation, as a stockholder, can give away.
He certainly accepted that nihilism leads to nothing and that you need to take yourself through it with a leap of faith essentially but his solution was entirely different to yours (he was an atheist who believed in living his life to get as much joy as he could at the end of the day, you could call him decadent)
But being an atheist- without God and duty in his life- that's entirely a reasonable response to Nilhism. It's ONLY my belief in God and duty to family and future (futile as that may be, wrong as that may be) that keeps me from lving my life the same way Nietzche did. Within my duty to family and society- I still do take joy wherever I can find it, otherwise my lack of faith in governments, money, and future would end up in my suicide.
while I agree with your premise I don't agree with the solution but then again its never about agreement which was the whole point. It's based entirely on faith its just whether you aim your faith at god or at whatever you decide. I've never argued against this, people are entirely justified to believe in god if they want to believe in god.
OR NOT, as the case may be, completely correct. But both ways, it's a belief based on blind faith- we have no more evidence that there is no God than we have evidence that there is, or was, a God. Remember, Nietzche wasn't really a total atheist- he simply thought that God was Dead (no longer dealing with our universe). I may have faith in God, but I'm not entirely sure he's wrong on that point; certainly free will has a disportionate effect on our universe.
Which parts. the core of the EU economy isn't too bad, certainly the UK's unemployment rate is quite low (though worryingly rising at the moment if just slowly) and debt is nowhere near where it was when Blair came in (though again is increasing slowly) but we're probably the strongest economy in Europe currently. Anyway if we ever get rid of the CAP thats 440B that can actually be spent on things other than producing 100 times the food the world would ever need then dumping it on a big mountain.
Well, you might have a strong economy in the UK- but Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy all have unemployment rates in the mid 20s. You might be getting new markets in the EU- but those new markets are about as usefull as adding China, India, or random African nations to your trading partners- all they have to give is cheap labor, and they are too poor to take- not a large enough middle class to create consumerism. Evil as I believe consumerism is today- I recognize that international trade must stay balanced if it is to be free between producers and consumers. Too much production is as bad as too little.
The question is whether the new EU members will drag the established ones down. Certainly the EU has held back richer members in the past (in a form, everyone is better off but the poorer countries like Ireland and Belgium have gained the most).
The problem is, as soon as poorer countries gain (often at the expense of the richer ones) the richer countries start searching for new poor countries. Cheap Labor and Free Trade is the race to the BOTTOM, not the TOP.
Its interesting, you make very similar arguments to Friedrich Nietzsche yet the conclusions drawn from both arguments are so massively opposed it shows the value of any attempt to reason on this level.
Not at all- for without God, without Religion, without Duty to Family, Society, and the Future- Nietzsche was RIGHT. In the long run, we have nothing and are nothing, and nothing we do matters.
As for the US being crucial to the world economy. On whose measure. The US economy has been performing quite badly in recent times while the likes of growing economies like India and China are booming so much that the most conservative measures suggest China will have overtaken the US as the worlds largest economic superpower within 11 years.
On output only- they're not paying their workers enough to ever build a middle class- and when the United States dies, they'll be in a world of hurt manufacturing far more than they'll ever be able to afford to consume. Result: deflation and depression will be the result of China's failure to create a middle class in time.
The US debt is growing much faster than anywhere else in the world even when the population size is taken into account, the EU economy is growing in quite a stable manner above predictions again this year and its enlarging it membership futher again which will bring a whole new market and politicians are beginning to talk about ending consumer patriotism which will make a futher boost over a very long period (consumer patriotism being the biggest drag on the EU economy after the bloody CAP).
The EU has too high of an unemployment rate- though they're ceratinly second for stability, they're almost as unbalanced as the United States is.
True the US is facing the toughest period for a long time and I wish your country nothing but success, however to claim that the US is somehow crucial to the world economy is a stretch at best.
We are the consumers of the world- without our debt ridden spending, there isn't enough consumerism in the world to balance the output of the factories- result will be deflation and depression.
No- thanks to Gates and his father and their Foundation, it doesn't. Right now, Microsoft is a money grubbing, profit-centered, fuck anybody who gets in our way, sociopathic corporation, with a chairman who gives money and software licenses to schools and libraries, not to mention disease aid to foreign countries, contraception aid to the poor (ok, I'm not so sure of THIS good deed, but it's fitting within Gates' left wing morality) and campaigns for the Estate tax (the only person with more than a $7 million estate that I know of who does). Now true, this won't end with the decoupling of the Foundation from Microsoft- but I'm wondering if the Foundation will end up with slightly fewer resources because of it (having to just make due with private contributions from the Gates family and the Public). And by subtracting the foundation out, you take away what little good is left in Microsoft.
Flying chairs, thrown by a Donkey-kong like figure with Balmer's face. Yep, I could just see that being a standard screen saver in Vista.
But his morality is the only morality that company has. At all. This move will make Microsoft into more of a money grubbing, profit-centered, fuck anybody who gets in our way, sociopathic corporation. And they didn't have very far to fall to begin with.
I have tremendous hope for the future, both on a personal level and for mankind as a whole. It's based not on blind faith, but on an ongoing analysis of where we are, what our society is doing, and a reasonable projection of our current social and technological trends.
Then you're coming to a completely different conclusion given the same data than I am- I not only have no hope based on an ongoing analysis of where we are, what our society is doing, and a reasonable projection of our current social and technological trends, I have my doubts that the Unites States will continue to exist as a civilization past the end of the next generation (because we're no longer having children in sufficient enough numbers to replace ourselves, and we're bringing in illegal immigrants with a different culture to make up the difference; as well as the fact that our civilization is based on an unsustainable rate of resource consumption). And since the current world reserve currency has nothing backing it up other than human trust in the United States paying it's bills, the collapse of the United States WILL create the collapse of international trade worldwide. I see no reason whatsoever to be optimistic in the face of that- and to come to a conclusion of hope in the future based on extrapolation of current events would suggest a large measure of blind faith and superstitious ignorance is involved.
Galileo recanted before they could burn him at the stake.
They never intended to burn him at the stake- that was NEVER the punishment for insulting the Pope (which was Galileo's real "crime", BTW, circular orbits having been removed from the realm of heresy some 20 years before with Copernicus) but they did lock him up under house arrest in a 47 room appartment with on-site laboratory, thus limiting his freedom of motion and publication.
ALS is a pretty awful disease, but it isn't quite like that.
I'd say it's worse than what really happened to Galileo- eventually Stephen Hawking will be a brilliant mind trapped in a decaying body with no chance of creative output whatsoever. Unless we find some way of keeping him in a jar first.
And worse yet, he hadn't researched what REALLY happened to Galileo first- otherwise he'd realize his own body was doing far worse to him than the Inquisition ever did to Galileo.
RTFA= they had web filtering software. What they didn't have is:
a) an outgoing desktop firewall
or
b) limited functionality browsers on the desktop.
I just don't see why the Department of Administrative Services insists that everybody needs IE 6.0, the most unsafe browser immaginable, on the desktop. That's just asking for this kind of abuse.
Better yet- a limited access, SERVER based browser, that both encrypts contents runnning between the Java client and the proxy server, but ALSO does not allow executable code to be downloaded. Build such a mousetrap, and all the better government mice including schools will beat a path to your doorstep.
Is it possible, or is it part of the hardware?
It's possible- AND it's a part of the hardware. Sort of. It depends on the USB drive itself- and how it is constructed. Some of them do not report removable media bit correctly to begin with- others use part of the flash memory to hold the code and thus can be modified.
Under Windows XP, it's just like a CD Drive- just add an autorun.inf file, and you can do whatever you want on insertion. If none is found, there's a whole host of other automatic things that can happen as well- it will also search the drive for multimedia stuff and prompt the user to play/show the files found, copy the files to a local folder, etc.
And can't it be mitigated somewhat by say, using that little wheel marked "volume"?
btw how are ipods a health issue?
No more than rock concerts or boom-boom cars I would suspect; this has been a standard worry since the begining of rock&roll, that the kids are damaging their hearing by turning up their personal music devices too loud. There may be some truth in it, but I don't think a large enough percentage of the population does it to worry about.
My answer to that specific objection is "well, then why should we allow Chinese companies to sell here?". That usually stymies them....
The problem with a true democracy is that people don't have time to give issues enough thought to consider anything but superficial arguments. There is no deep thought or discussion. We'd get dumb laws like "Brad and Jennifer must stay together" and "Nobody can be rich" and "all people must follow x religion" and dumb crap like that. Our society is a complicated system with complex behavior and interactions. Laws don't ever simply do what their creators intended them to, they change the system's balance to a new equilibrium. Representative democracy works better because the people making laws have time to understand them.
Ah, but you miss my point with this. I want only the superficial, dumb laws to get through- deep laws should be decided LOCALLY not NATIONALLY.
The problem isn't the absence of the gold standard. The problem is allowing deficit spending. That should be banned.
Deficit spending is always possible with a fiat money system- if the government needs more money they just print it.
I would like to see a constitutional amendment forcing a general population vote to approve any deficit spending with a 4 year time limit on that approval. I'd also like to see a hard limit on spending of 30% of the income in the entire population. Let them distribute the taxes however they like but don't let them exceed that number without the vote.
I wouldn't even allow that- TAXPAYERS should get to allocate their own taxes, and if that's not enough, then the additional is something the government shouldn't be doing.
Public opinion is even easier to sway than politicians. Remember, the money that is corrupting things isn't for the politicians personally, it's simply to convince the public that they should vote for them instead of kicking them out of office. I remember a great example of this somewhere, Australia I think, where DeBeers actually convinced the general public to allow DeBeers to have a monopoly on all the country's diamonds instead of selling them on the open market.
It would be interesting though, if each city/town/rural district were allowed to set it's own tariffs- I wonder what the corps would do if they needed to sway not one, but several thousand different elections at different times.
Everyone who donates to campaigns are rich. The idea that this could be different is silly. You won't be donating to candidates unless you have nothing better to do with the money and that only happens when you are pretty well off.
If we had Sound Money, this would be different. It would also be different if we had a true democracy and the rich had nothing to gain from bribing politicians. Give the budgeting capaibility back to the people- take away the central government and central bank, and you'll solve that problem.
However, the idea that receiving money from wealthy people makes you thier puppet is silly. People are individuals who in general do things that they feel are in their best instrest. If they want to get elected again they will do things that will get them more votes.
Only fake, superficial things. And since spending money on the campaign is the #1 way to get elected- doing what your contributers want you to do is the easiest way to get re-elected. And who ever said people were individuals? Human beings are social- they sucumb to peer pressure.
The problem is that challengers are so empoverished that unless you killed a hooker or something they won't have the money to explain to voters that you are corrupt and shouldn't be voted for. The $1000 limit ensures that.
Having a centralized government that the rich can go to for one-stop shopping ensures that- remove the power of the central government, and they'll have to bribe 180 million voters instead, and then we'll have TRUE democracy.
The way to fix it is to create a system where politicians lose more votes for getting paid to support bad legislation than they win.
Or simply take away their right to legislate at all- run everything through a national referendum instead.
Where do you get that?
Look at the laws that have come out since then- except on a few superficial items, the money and the laws flow a single direction. Vote for the Republican, you're voting for the rich elitest business interest. Vote for the Democrat you're voting for the rich elitest business interest. Vote for the Libertarian and you're voting for the rich elitest business interest. Vote for the Green and you're voting for a guy who denies that he's getting money from the rich elitest business interest, until somebody brings out his campaign contributer's list, and finds only rich business people on it becase hippies have no money.
And there are no other viable parties.
It's all a show, a fake, no different than a cartoon on TV.
No way. The average family has cell phones and cable and air conditioning and 2 reliable cars (not that shit Detroit tried to push on us 20 and 30 years ago) and spend tons of money keeping ourselves healthy (whereas before we just died). While employment may be down around you, it's doing fine most places. Life isn't perfect, far from it, but it's better than it used to be.
.07% on average, but inflation 3%? Yes, we've got a few technological toys- but it's all financed on several trillion dollars of governmental, trade, and consumer debt.
:)
Then why are there more renters now than homeowners? Why is home ownership down since 1950? Why, in the past 5 years, have wages risen
One of the most powerful influences on the buying power of the average American is the giant efficient chain stores like Wal*Mart driving the prices down lower than they ever have been.
Wrong- the most powerfull influence on the buying power of the average American is the willingness of banks to hand out credit cards at 37% Annual Interest Rates.
You argue that the standard of living in the US is dropping.. that just isn't true. That may be true for you personally, but that might just be because you are a militant nut and nobody wants to hire you for a good job.
Just got hired yesterday- for a government job. I've given up on private industry which no longer seems competent for the place they've been given in the social structure.
Incorrect. Most of these laws come from town/city zoning boards. Thats as local as government gets. They are influenced by overall trends and ideas like the "suburban sprawl" misinformation you keep hearing people spew but the decisions are purely local.
I've seen the farmland disappear- and btw, large metro areas are ALSO centralized government. You have to go back to the tribes to find truly decentralized government.
Oh please! Nearly every mom and pop store will have plenty of chinese made stuff in it and Wal*Mart has plenty of US made stuff in it.
Not if you go directly to the local craftsmen it isn't. I buy American made, not Chinese crap. And last time I was in a Wal*Mart, I took a good look at the shelves, and couldn't find ONE US made item in any department other than food. And even then, things like Vlassic Pickles and good ole' Kerry Ketchup were coming from MEXICO. There are closed factories all over the United States due to Wal*Mart and Target and stores of their ilk.
I do. All the time. Wal*Mart is cheaper. Sometimes a lot cheaper. Like 1/10th the price. Some US company wants to sell me an 16 foot inflatable plastc pool for $3,000. It's well made, superior in every way to Wal*Mart's, but Wal*Mart sells a 16' pool for $279. The US company and the Mom&Pop store (which is right across the street from Wal*Mart by the way) can take their $3k price tag and shove it. I don't want a pool that bad, I wouldn't buy it, I wouldn't have one. I'd go without. The Wal*Mart one I'd buy. Those aren't the only things I've found at 1/10th the price either. We live in a world where it's unimaginable that people would gouge us for things if it werent for competition, but we get just the slightest touch of what it would be like and it crushes us as with the recent gas price hikes. Imagine going to the store and not paying $100 for groceries but $500. And you beg and plead and haggle with the store owner so they cut you a break and let you leave for $400. That's not better.
1/10th the price, 1/10th the quality. And I buy all of my groceries from the FARMERS, not from a store which charges a markup.
And in a free market you can't sell it for much more either or someone will undercut you and steal your business. There are pockets for profiteering but when the playing field is level, they must remain small or you will get your customers stolen.
Or you simply use your profits elsewhere in the country to undercut prices until
That's a horrible goal. I don't want to have to work more, I want to work less and get more for it.
You've been working more and getting less in return for it, on average, for 40 years now. And worse yet, you have less of a chance (as a percentage of the total population) of being able to work at all now than ever before in the history of the country.
So far, I'm getting what I want and so are most of the people in the US.
Actually, you probably aren't even getting that- wages are down in relation to inflation and have been for 40 years now.
Inflated house prices are usually due to crappy restrictive local policies that aim to reign in the normal flow of housing expansion which drives prices up. That makes things better for all the existing home owners and dramatically worse for anyone looking to buy a house.
And who passes such laws? Centralized governments who know NOTHING about local environment or local conditions. Yet another way centralization is the problem.
Unless you boycot walmart, however, your purchasing power has probably gone up from what it would have been many years ago and you probably live better.
Not according to that leading economic indicator, the Cost of Living Equation. You know, the one that gives us the idea of inflation? Buying power for just about anybody drawing a paycheck has not kept up with inflation over the past 40 years. However, if you inherited all your wealth and are living off of dividends, it's a different story. Oh yeah, and Wal*Mart- you really need to compare their prices to the Mom&Pop stores sometime, if there are any left. Interesting thing about Wal*Mart's pricing scheme- it goes down, then goes back up as local competitors go out of business.
That's untrue. If I shop at my local mom and pop store they buy the same crappy manufactured goods they just spend more time and effort selling it to me. Frankly.. I don't want to pay 100 shopkeepers 30% markup so they can put their kids through college while mine starve.
Actually, they're NOT the same crappy manufactured goods if you shop at the right places- they're American made pride, not Chinese crap. And in addition to that- your kids will starve anyway if you shop at Wal*Mart because nobody will be left to hire them when they drop out of high school. Add to that the fact that 92 cents of every dollar you spend at Wal*Mart goes to support the communists in Bejing and Bentonville, that makes you a TRAITOR.
I'd rather pay 10 walmart people minimum wage and push people who want to make good money into productive useful jobs instead of pushy retail sails.
Too bad under the Wal*Mart model there won't be any productive jobs left- just work for the Chinese Labor Gulags.
The free market is very good at making something as expensive to buy as it is to produce. I know you don't believe that but you are wrong.
Where did I say that the free market did any less? I said that the pricing of the free market supports PROFITEERING- you can't make a profit if you're selling something for less than it's produced for.
I highly doubt, after all the recent press coverage, whether anyone will let Exxon/Mobile buy anything remotely resembling a competitor for a while.
The press doesn't matter- this is no longer a democracy. What matters is the bribes Exxon/Mobile pays in the form of campaign contributions, not what some pansy voter thinks when choosing between the Democrat, who took money from Exxon/Mobile, and the Republican, who took money from Exxon/Mobile.
The courts aren't corrupt they have just done some silly things lately and are floundering in a lack of reasonable leadership.
Boy, you really are naive- the courts have been purchased, lock stock and barrel, by the corporations since 1876.
You are quite right about politicians being corrupt, and I see very little reasonable talk about the right way to solve i
Of course, that's their motion NOW- they could have sped up or slowed down in the last 50 million years or so....
And then I forget MY line breaks:
However, oddly enough, the following will NOT produce the compile error:
if (a=b) then b=c
For reasons related to the history of basic....end if is not require if the if statement is all on one line.