I read a statistic that 80% of the users on Google+ are male. Compare that with most of the active users on Facebook being women. Until they start getting women switching over instead of just geeky guys like us, I doubt if it will ever reach critical mass.
I see nothing in this article about S&P making a mistake and admitting it. I only see this quote from someone in the administration:
A senior Treasury official Saturday called S&P's move a "$2 trillion mistake" and said there was no justifiable rationale for the decision. "The magnitude of this mistake—and the haste with which S&P changed its principal rationale for action when presented with this error—raise fundamental questions about the credibility and integrity of S&P's ratings action," John Bellows, acting assistant secretary for economic policy, said in a blog on the Treasury's Web site.
How is this a story? A blog on the Treasury's website said the move is a "2 trillion mistake"?
If you honestly think a citation is needed, you have probably never used Digg much and place way too much weight on a story from some media outlet that probably understands Digg less than an active user.
I am hoping the troll tag is the moderators trying to be funny/ironic, since this was originally modded up as insightful. Otherwise, Slashdot is as doomed as Digg.
I stopped using Digg a long time ago because it had been taken over by left-wing pressure groups. It started as mostly tech news, but when it tried to expand, left-wing nutballs from the Huffington post and other left wing blogs took over. Every single comment that does not get modded down into oblivion would be considered a troll on Slashdot.
Will pressure from extremists on the other side balance it out or make it even more extreme?
Well, if not benefiting society is the standard by which you make a something illegal, most of the population would be out of work. You could argue that musicians, actors, or anyone who works in the tourism or entertainment industry are not doing anything to benefit society. Strippers are absolutely doing nothing for society. Most government workers are doing nothing good for society, but their salary is putting a burden on society, unlike these guys. It is not the job of government to decide which professions are useful and put and end to the ones they don't like.
Actually, this is not true at all. The problem is that we have the government deciding every aspect of everything taught in the classroom, so whatever politicians want is forced down the school districts throats.
Take a look at Finland. They have the highest test scores in the world, and teachers pretty much have free reign on what they teach. This allows teachers to be more than just mindless puppets of the government, and hence they are actually a respected profession. http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/08/13/howard.education.monopoly/index.html
You can stereotype people all you want. In a few cases those stereotypes may be warranted, but what people refer to as 'American ideals', are generally good things. You know - life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, justice, freedom, democracy, civil rights, etc. They were set fourth by our founding fathers, and not something that can be attributed or blamed on current Americans. But I will challenge you to compare the United States to any other country from the mid-1700s, and I would say that those ideals have brought us a long way. Most other industrialized nations are where they are today because this grand experiment worked, and they took a page from our playbook. Your stereotype of an American in 2010 is largely irrelevant to this concept.
"Besides, healthcare is national defense and will reduce abortions"
What? I do not follow this logic or see what it has to do with government spending.
"Now you blame Obama for the increase in debt when the bailout was designed by Bush in the first place"
The bailout was necessary, but implementation was rushed, ineffective, and more expensive than it should have been. That it was caused in any way by Bush is almost laughable, but at the very least debatable. Economic policies and deregulation that got us to that point happened mostly in the 90s under the pretense of helping low-income families obtain mortgages. As soon as these were passed in the late 90s, the housing bubble began to build. http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeqrguz/housingbubble/
The fallout in 2008 was a result of this bubble finally bursting. It was worse than the tech bubble bursting in the late 90s because it affected securities that have always been considered safe by institutional investors.
The bailout is only part of the spending increases under Obama, which together dwarf the $1Trillion expense of the war. (Which Obama is continuing and actually spending more on.) The other huge part is the stimulus bill which was mostly ineffective (what do you expect from a package special interest pork disguised as a stimulus bill?) and our jobless rate is worst that what was predicted by the administration if the bill were never passed.
I get your frustration. Obama did not get us to this point and should not be given all the blame. But he sure seems to be doing a great job at making it worse.
Your point that both Bush and Reagan were big spenders compared to what they claimed is true, but you can't deny that the current administration is making no effort to reduce the debt, and it is exploding way faster than any previous president with no end in sight, while we are losing the surpluses of Social Security and Medicare that we had in the past. We can debate the past all we want but no one is going to change sides. I personally think it is worth noting that most of the companies that created the tech boom of the 90s really started in the 80s, and that the tech boom and Bill Gates had more to do with the Economic boom and surpluses of the 90s than did Bill Clinton. You would probably disagree. But surely we can all agree that we are headed in the wrong direction. If spending does not drastically slow down soon, we will be past the point of no return to becoming an insolvent nation within this decade.
This is not true. Few of the chips are made in China. Circuit boards are likely to be made in Taiwan. Individual components on the boards besides chips are made in lots of countries. Dell used to assemble many of their machines in Austin, TX until recently.
As with a car, most complex machines do have parts from all over the world. We are only stuck with no other option than China if we continue the current trend of giving all manufacturing to China. This can be reversed if you look at where the items you are buying are made.
Oh, Vivek, what brilliant thing will you think of next? How much energy will it take to replace all of these server farms? How much energy will be required for the taxpayers to earn the money necessary to pay for it? What about security concerns of consolidating all of this data?
Grow up, this has nothing to do with copyright law.
You could maybe say this had nothing to do with copyright if it were not for the DMCA. Now we cannot legally copy works before they are public domain, but we do not have access to originals after they become public domain. That is a pretty screwy situation, wouldn't you say?
How exactly is recognizing that the national debt is tripling "drinking the GOP Kool-Aid"? It seems to me his comment shows more logical thought than your belief that lowering taxes on 99% of the population is sustainable after tripling a debt. (Which we had no chance in hell of paying off in the first place.) Obama can give all the tax cuts he wants, but sooner or later someone is going to have to pay for all of the increased spending. Recognizing that is the exact opposite of drinking either party's Kool-Aid.
However the USA has fallen behind with the rest of the world with it's attitude to gun ownership. It's definitely behind with it's "fear" of tougher gun regulation.
*sigh* My BS meter begins to go off whenever I hear someone say the US has "fallen behind" the rest of the world in something. Usually, "rest of the world" refers to a handful of countries, mostly in Europe, with less than 1/10th of the worlds population, and "fallen behind" means we haven't blindly followed the latest political fads.
In this particular case, it is thankfully not the first time we have fallen behind. In 1938, we must have looked like we were living in the dark ages when Nazi party introduced their gun control laws. We are STILL hearing stories of people alive back then who didn't resist because they were "powerless" to do so. (Know the story of the current pope?)
Complete loss of power to the ruling party is the real reason we have the second amendment. Nazi Germany is but one of many examples of what this looks like. And it certainly had nothing to do with civil wars. Good grief! The argument of whether there will be more or less deaths with or without gun control is irrelevent when trying to understand why people believe in the importance of the right to bear arms. That is completely sitution dependent, but from what I see, the places with more people carrying guns *legally* have less violent crime. The cities in the US with the most murder have the toughest (and in some cases unconstitutional) gun laws. Although I can see that in different cultures depending on the situation and the history of the laws there, etc., gun laws could possibly reduce murder. Still, if you seriously think the second amendment should be repealed to save lives, you need to understand why it is there, and the risks that were all too obvious to the founding fathers.
This has nothing to do with "fear of change", and the resistance is not "pettish". Those who resist are the ones who know history, and understand the concept of greater of the two dangers.
Only on Slashdot could a rant that ends with "to Hell with you" be considered insightful. There may be something true in there, but hardly insightful or even on topic. This is another examply of why Slashdot was so much better before they added the "politics" catagory. The transformation to a rant-infested forum is reminiscent of that of the Jerry Springer show.
That is quite an accomplishment. I feel like I am doing good if more than 50% of the products I buy aren't made in China. Do you have any suggestions or resources? As far as everyday household items, it seems like there isn't much choice in many places but Wal-Mart and Target.
Once I tried to find an online resource for information on a shoe company that actually has a good reputation and treats its employees fairly. All I could find were websites which listed a few companies they hated, but didn't give anything practical other than, "These companies and these politicians suck." If we vote with our dollar, we don't have to put all our trust politicians.
Slashdot: News for people who have absolutely no idea how the world works.
A president has very little control on the economy in general, much less the price of oil. First, the Anti-Bushites were saying he wanted cheap oil to help out all his oil friends. (I mean he is from Texas, he must have oil friends who he cares a lot more about than the country or his legacy.) Now they are saying he wants high oil prices. Now you are saying he wants high oil prices but not yet. Good greif! The only thing he could do to reduce the price of oil is to eliminate the federal gas tax (which he has not done), and not without the help of Congress. Gas prices are so high around the rest of the world because all the socialist governments put insanely high gas taxes in place. Ours are much lower, though still too high in this economy. The reason the price of oil has gone up is because there are more people around the world driving cars these days. In developing countries this number is expanding rapidly. Demand is much higher than ever in history. I was in South Korea last year and traffic was absolutely insane because everybody and his brother decided to buy a car in the last few years. OPEC also plays a role, but it is certainly not GWB pulling the strings.
If Bush had the powers you think he has, this would not even be a close race.
Speaking of making the "recovery fee" for cell phones part of the regular monthly charge, instead of an "add-on", I think this should be true of e everything. I get so tired of agreeing to some service for a particular price, and being charge extra fees after the initial agreement. I don't care what expenses my local oil change place needs to pay for "shop fees" or "oil disposal", I should know exactly what I will be paying before I make a verbal agreement to have my oil change. I can think of a million other things in which this could apply.
Sure, we've really been trying to convince countries around the world that Iraq is ours, not that we are just trying to help them, haven't we? All domestic politics aside, look at how China forces countries to acknowledge that separate countries (by the rest of the world's standards) are theirs, but we spend our time trying to convince countries that we are NOT trying to claim countries as ours. Quite a stark difference if you ask me.
China doesn't even have to go to war, they just use their muscle to convince the rest of the world to agree with a lie in return for cheap labor and "peace".
I couldn't agree with you more. I get so tired of people saying that our public schools are in trouble only because of lack of funding. Growing up, my school system did not have tons of money, but it did have teachers who actually knew something and who enforced discipline. This is completely absent in many schools, in which the kids basically run the classroom. Even with this structure, my high school still had problems simply because of the American cultural problems you mention. I went to an engineering school for college where most of the students were not from the U.S. It was refreshing being around people who were simply living their life and trying to do their best in school, not trying to impress people and keep up an image.
Yes, good teachers are very important, and they do require money, but the most important things holding our public education system back is lack of dicipline in schools and our scewed up values which stress superficial things over learning and bettering yourself. Unless this changes, our country will never get back on track.
Also, I hope that India and other Asian countries don't get caught up in the retarded youth rebellion culture that began in the 60s that continues to bring our contry down.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this photo pretty well sums it up.
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/10/down-with-evil-corporations-photo.html
I read a statistic that 80% of the users on Google+ are male. Compare that with most of the active users on Facebook being women. Until they start getting women switching over instead of just geeky guys like us, I doubt if it will ever reach critical mass.
I see nothing in this article about S&P making a mistake and admitting it. I only see this quote from someone in the administration:
A senior Treasury official Saturday called S&P's move a "$2 trillion mistake" and said there was no justifiable rationale for the decision. "The magnitude of this mistake—and the haste with which S&P changed its principal rationale for action when presented with this error—raise fundamental questions about the credibility and integrity of S&P's ratings action," John Bellows, acting assistant secretary for economic policy, said in a blog on the Treasury's Web site.
How is this a story? A blog on the Treasury's website said the move is a "2 trillion mistake"?
Funny that it happened with this movie, when the producers of this movie ripped off the real-life story from this guy:
http://www.thewrap.com/movies/column-post/hurt-locker-sued-over-stolen-identity-14850
He was never credited or compensated. How hypocritical can the movie studios get?
If you honestly think a citation is needed, you have probably never used Digg much and place way too much weight on a story from some media outlet that probably understands Digg less than an active user.
I would say this should suffice:
http://digg.com/tech_news/Does_Digg_Have_a_Liberal_Bias_Share_Your_Thoughts
I am hoping the troll tag is the moderators trying to be funny/ironic, since this was originally modded up as insightful. Otherwise, Slashdot is as doomed as Digg.
I stopped using Digg a long time ago because it had been taken over by left-wing pressure groups. It started as mostly tech news, but when it tried to expand, left-wing nutballs from the Huffington post and other left wing blogs took over. Every single comment that does not get modded down into oblivion would be considered a troll on Slashdot.
Will pressure from extremists on the other side balance it out or make it even more extreme?
Well, if not benefiting society is the standard by which you make a something illegal, most of the population would be out of work. You could argue that musicians, actors, or anyone who works in the tourism or entertainment industry are not doing anything to benefit society. Strippers are absolutely doing nothing for society. Most government workers are doing nothing good for society, but their salary is putting a burden on society, unlike these guys. It is not the job of government to decide which professions are useful and put and end to the ones they don't like.
Actually, this is not true at all. The problem is that we have the government deciding every aspect of everything taught in the classroom, so whatever politicians want is forced down the school districts throats.
Take a look at Finland. They have the highest test scores in the world, and teachers pretty much have free reign on what they teach. This allows teachers to be more than just mindless puppets of the government, and hence they are actually a respected profession.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/08/13/howard.education.monopoly/index.html
American stereotype != American ideals
You can stereotype people all you want. In a few cases those stereotypes may be warranted, but what people refer to as 'American ideals', are generally good things. You know - life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, justice, freedom, democracy, civil rights, etc. They were set fourth by our founding fathers, and not something that can be attributed or blamed on current Americans. But I will challenge you to compare the United States to any other country from the mid-1700s, and I would say that those ideals have brought us a long way. Most other industrialized nations are where they are today because this grand experiment worked, and they took a page from our playbook. Your stereotype of an American in 2010 is largely irrelevant to this concept.
"Besides, healthcare is national defense and will reduce abortions"
What? I do not follow this logic or see what it has to do with government spending.
"Now you blame Obama for the increase in debt when the bailout was designed by Bush in the first place"
The bailout was necessary, but implementation was rushed, ineffective, and more expensive than it should have been. That it was caused in any way by Bush is almost laughable, but at the very least debatable. Economic policies and deregulation that got us to that point happened mostly in the 90s under the pretense of helping low-income families obtain mortgages. As soon as these were passed in the late 90s, the housing bubble began to build. http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeqrguz/housingbubble/
The fallout in 2008 was a result of this bubble finally bursting. It was worse than the tech bubble bursting in the late 90s because it affected securities that have always been considered safe by institutional investors.
The bailout is only part of the spending increases under Obama, which together dwarf the $1Trillion expense of the war. (Which Obama is continuing and actually spending more on.) The other huge part is the stimulus bill which was mostly ineffective (what do you expect from a package special interest pork disguised as a stimulus bill?) and our jobless rate is worst that what was predicted by the administration if the bill were never passed.
I get your frustration. Obama did not get us to this point and should not be given all the blame. But he sure seems to be doing a great job at making it worse.
This is pretty misleading. Total government spending went up pretty much lineraly at the same rate during both the Reagan and Clinton years.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1980_2000&view=1&expand=&units=b&fy=fy11&chart=F1-total&bar=0&stack=1&size=m&title=&state=US&color=c&local=s
In comparison to GDP, it did go down somewhat during the Clinton years:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1980_2000&view=1&expand=&units=p&fy=fy11&chart=F1-total&bar=0&stack=1&size=m&title=&state=US&color=c&local=s
But what really helped as far as the debt there was increased income tax rates and more money being made in the private sector.
Now, spending during Bush per GDP actually pretty much flatlined until 2006/2007. Does anyone know what happened then?
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=2000_2010&view=1&expand=&units=p&fy=fy11&chart=F1-total&bar=0&stack=1&size=m&title=&state=US&color=c&local=s
Your point that both Bush and Reagan were big spenders compared to what they claimed is true, but you can't deny that the current administration is making no effort to reduce the debt, and it is exploding way faster than any previous president with no end in sight, while we are losing the surpluses of Social Security and Medicare that we had in the past. We can debate the past all we want but no one is going to change sides. I personally think it is worth noting that most of the companies that created the tech boom of the 90s really started in the 80s, and that the tech boom and Bill Gates had more to do with the Economic boom and surpluses of the 90s than did Bill Clinton. You would probably disagree. But surely we can all agree that we are headed in the wrong direction. If spending does not drastically slow down soon, we will be past the point of no return to becoming an insolvent nation within this decade.
This is not true. Few of the chips are made in China. Circuit boards are likely to be made in Taiwan. Individual components on the boards besides chips are made in lots of countries. Dell used to assemble many of their machines in Austin, TX until recently.
As with a car, most complex machines do have parts from all over the world. We are only stuck with no other option than China if we continue the current trend of giving all manufacturing to China. This can be reversed if you look at where the items you are buying are made.
Oh, Vivek, what brilliant thing will you think of next? How much energy will it take to replace all of these server farms? How much energy will be required for the taxpayers to earn the money necessary to pay for it? What about security concerns of consolidating all of this data?
I think Vivek wants to make himself look useful after being exposed as a fraud by John C. Dvorak. http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2009/08/12/special-report-is-us-chief-information-officer-cio-vivek-kundra-a-phony/
Grow up, this has nothing to do with copyright law.
You could maybe say this had nothing to do with copyright if it were not for the DMCA. Now we cannot legally copy works before they are public domain, but we do not have access to originals after they become public domain. That is a pretty screwy situation, wouldn't you say?
How exactly is recognizing that the national debt is tripling "drinking the GOP Kool-Aid"? It seems to me his comment shows more logical thought than your belief that lowering taxes on 99% of the population is sustainable after tripling a debt. (Which we had no chance in hell of paying off in the first place.) Obama can give all the tax cuts he wants, but sooner or later someone is going to have to pay for all of the increased spending. Recognizing that is the exact opposite of drinking either party's Kool-Aid.
However the USA has fallen behind with the rest of the world with it's attitude to gun ownership. It's definitely behind with it's "fear" of tougher gun regulation.
*sigh* My BS meter begins to go off whenever I hear someone say the US has "fallen behind" the rest of the world in something. Usually, "rest of the world" refers to a handful of countries, mostly in Europe, with less than 1/10th of the worlds population, and "fallen behind" means we haven't blindly followed the latest political fads.
In this particular case, it is thankfully not the first time we have fallen behind. In 1938, we must have looked like we were living in the dark ages when Nazi party introduced their gun control laws. We are STILL hearing stories of people alive back then who didn't resist because they were "powerless" to do so. (Know the story of the current pope?)
Complete loss of power to the ruling party is the real reason we have the second amendment. Nazi Germany is but one of many examples of what this looks like. And it certainly had nothing to do with civil wars. Good grief! The argument of whether there will be more or less deaths with or without gun control is irrelevent when trying to understand why people believe in the importance of the right to bear arms. That is completely sitution dependent, but from what I see, the places with more people carrying guns *legally* have less violent crime. The cities in the US with the most murder have the toughest (and in some cases unconstitutional) gun laws. Although I can see that in different cultures depending on the situation and the history of the laws there, etc., gun laws could possibly reduce murder. Still, if you seriously think the second amendment should be repealed to save lives, you need to understand why it is there, and the risks that were all too obvious to the founding fathers.
This has nothing to do with "fear of change", and the resistance is not "pettish". Those who resist are the ones who know history, and understand the concept of greater of the two dangers.
Only on Slashdot could a rant that ends with "to Hell with you" be considered insightful. There may be something true in there, but hardly insightful or even on topic. This is another examply of why Slashdot was so much better before they added the "politics" catagory. The transformation to a rant-infested forum is reminiscent of that of the Jerry Springer show.
That is quite an accomplishment. I feel like I am doing good if more than 50% of the products I buy aren't made in China. Do you have any suggestions or resources? As far as everyday household items, it seems like there isn't much choice in many places but Wal-Mart and Target.
Once I tried to find an online resource for information on a shoe company that actually has a good reputation and treats its employees fairly. All I could find were websites which listed a few companies they hated, but didn't give anything practical other than, "These companies and these politicians suck." If we vote with our dollar, we don't have to put all our trust politicians.
Slashdot: News for people who have absolutely no idea how the world works.
A president has very little control on the economy in general, much less the price of oil. First, the Anti-Bushites were saying he wanted cheap oil to help out all his oil friends. (I mean he is from Texas, he must have oil friends who he cares a lot more about than the country or his legacy.) Now they are saying he wants high oil prices. Now you are saying he wants high oil prices but not yet. Good greif! The only thing he could do to reduce the price of oil is to eliminate the federal gas tax (which he has not done), and not without the help of Congress. Gas prices are so high around the rest of the world because all the socialist governments put insanely high gas taxes in place. Ours are much lower, though still too high in this economy. The reason the price of oil has gone up is because there are more people around the world driving cars these days. In developing countries this number is expanding rapidly. Demand is much higher than ever in history. I was in South Korea last year and traffic was absolutely insane because everybody and his brother decided to buy a car in the last few years. OPEC also plays a role, but it is certainly not GWB pulling the strings.
If Bush had the powers you think he has, this would not even be a close race.
Agreed. Of course it is the same people that mod reduntant lib* political comments up who are moderating that comment down.
In the words of Homestarrunner, "That's just ridiculous!"
Speaking of making the "recovery fee" for cell phones part of the regular monthly charge, instead of an "add-on", I think this should be true of e everything. I get so tired of agreeing to some service for a particular price, and being charge extra fees after the initial agreement. I don't care what expenses my local oil change place needs to pay for "shop fees" or "oil disposal", I should know exactly what I will be paying before I make a verbal agreement to have my oil change. I can think of a million other things in which this could apply.
Sure, we've really been trying to convince countries around the world that Iraq is ours, not that we are just trying to help them, haven't we? All domestic politics aside, look at how China forces countries to acknowledge that separate countries (by the rest of the world's standards) are theirs, but we spend our time trying to convince countries that we are NOT trying to claim countries as ours. Quite a stark difference if you ask me.
China doesn't even have to go to war, they just use their muscle to convince the rest of the world to agree with a lie in return for cheap labor and "peace".
I couldn't agree with you more. I get so tired of people saying that our public schools are in trouble only because of lack of funding. Growing up, my school system did not have tons of money, but it did have teachers who actually knew something and who enforced discipline. This is completely absent in many schools, in which the kids basically run the classroom. Even with this structure, my high school still had problems simply because of the American cultural problems you mention. I went to an engineering school for college where most of the students were not from the U.S. It was refreshing being around people who were simply living their life and trying to do their best in school, not trying to impress people and keep up an image.
Yes, good teachers are very important, and they do require money, but the most important things holding our public education system back is lack of dicipline in schools and our scewed up values which stress superficial things over learning and bettering yourself. Unless this changes, our country will never get back on track.
Also, I hope that India and other Asian countries don't get caught up in the retarded youth rebellion culture that began in the 60s that continues to bring our contry down.