Please give me one good reason why someone would post such information to a website frequented by opponents of the RNC
The most obvious example is funding. Wouldn't you like to be able to cross-reference databases of people who dumped stock just before a company slipped into bankruptcy or tanked its stock price with databases of people who make up the political parties? Isn't it nice to have a list of people who stand to directly profit from underhanded political add-ons to bills in Congress? Wouldn't it be better if the citizens could actively determine which of these members seems to always get the hot tip which somehow makes their investments soar while the rest of us deal with funds moving at a snail 6% rate?
Well, no. Of course we wouldn't want that information. Americans have a long history of giving in to BOHICA--mostly because, even if we have these lists and can cross-reference the databases, there isn't a darn thing we can do about it. For every crooked politician we replace there are 5 of last year's new recruits who are being sucked into the system of graft and fraud.
whether they succeed or not is entirely up to the individual
No. It's not. You've shown that the greater organization has complete control over the individual.
The military, the credit companies, and major corporations all have accountants and managers whose sole job is to figure out the cost of being in business. This includes figuring out how much the janitors spend on clothes as opposed to the mid-managers per year. This includes figuring out the average commuting distance, the average car payments, and the average rent or mortgage payments. There are figures which will tell them how many movies your family will average a year and it's broken down by your income level, your zip code, and the number of children you have. They have this broken down by geographic distribution, by tax bracket, by total worth, by debt load, by education level, and by any other delimiter you can think of. This is even MORE true if your employer subsidizes a credit union which makes it even easier to pass the relevant databases back and forth.
The military uses these numbers to ensure that you can scrape by so as to browbeat everyone else later on in life. Did you really think it was coincidence that they just happened to give you just enough to make it through every month while still keeping you happy enough that you didn't go postal on the job? Corporate America, controlled by the financial brokers who head banks, insurance companies, and investment houses, has no such good intentions and uses these numbers to maximize profit. That means, directly, that the working class population is going to be sold into debt. It's not even a personal thing--it's just a statistical fact. They won't be sold into deep debt because that would be bad for worker morale. They are sold into marginally increasing debt so that there's always another carrot to keep working harder to try and get the next 2.5% raise or promotion rather than a 2.0% raise.
You know what I do with those offers?
This has nothing to do with credit card offers and everything to do with the overall debt load carried by the average American middle-class worker. If my tax load, every year, wasn't 60% I could afford to have 20 credit cards and easily live within my means.
If the military had decided that it needed a new fleet of tanks it could very well have cut your pay and your benefits and forced you to live on credit. The military doesn't do that, though, because it's not good PR for people to leave the military saying,"Sorry. You guys just couldn't pay the bills." The rest of the population, and especially middle-class working America, does not have the luxury of being employed by an entity that is as philanthropic.
So... again... I will not feel guilty about not paying back my debt. It wasn't my debt. It was debt which was engineered out of my control which I had no chance of ever getting ahead on. If corporations really wanted us to pay back our debt they would raise our wages. Instead the.com boom-bust made a few people enormously wealthy while the rest of us lost our savings, our jobs, and saw our salaries cut to ribbons. In my particular field the average salary for someone 5 years out of undergraduate was $65k last year. This year the average salary for someone 6 years out of undergraduate is $50k. The IRS has reported that the average American salary dropped 10% from 2000-2002.
When's the last time you took a 23% pay cut while the top execs, such as the 292 at Enron, ran off with billions of dollars? Why should I feel guilty about not paying a "debt" to those crooks? The same social circles sit on executive boards across every industry. I don't see anyone repaying the debt to the 401k investment funds. Alan Greenspan isn't repaying his debt to the millions of Americans whose retirement accounts were flushed. I don't see Strong Funds rushing to repay the investors they defrauded. And what of government prosecution? Does the government turn around and cu
What could any 'anti-RNC' groupie do with that new information that is not unethical or harassing?
Investigate avenues of illegitimate funding, perhaps? No... It's always gotta be the crazies, the stalkers, and the harassers. There's never a legitimate reason to want to see where the money comes from, where it goes to, and who it goes through to be laundered on the way.
The possible benefit they're looking for is to have a bunch of people harrassing the republican delegates. Remember when 'Bruce Almighty' came out, and there was that big flap because Bruce's beeper showed 'God's' phone number, and a bunch of idiots called up the number and asked for God?
Right... because if it's shown in a John Carrey movie that obviously means it'll be the first thing to happen in real life. That's precisely why John Carrey is a specialist in infantile slapstick comedy.
I'm sure that's the intended goal
I'm sure you're right. The intended goal probably has nothing to do with wanting to let the American people know who REALLY selects the president.
Where did you get harassment out of this? I didn't read anywhere that there were complaints of harassment made by any of the RNC families. I only read that the SS was harassing the people who feel that we should know the identities of the committee members who pick the token figurehead that we have the satisfying privelege of casting our wasted vote for.
They represent a political party, which is a separate entity from the government.
You can argue technicalities all you want. When you come back to reality with the rest of us you'll recognize that the national committee delegates, for any political party, are the real power holders in the party. If President Bush would rub enough RNC delegates the wrong way you can bet that he'd be scraping his political career out of the toilet.
When the RNC and the DNC get together it is THEY who decide the next president. They only go through the motions of letting you vote so that you feel good about it. For the greatest part, however, they know months in advance how the charade is going to play out.
So, yes, people with that kind of power over the politicians who will spend 60+% of your hard-earned cash every year should be publicly accessible.
leaving me with about $600 to cover utilities, the car payment and insurance, and food, for the rest of the month
We received a yearly clothing allowance, but just like BAQ, it was a set amount and didn't cover all I had to buy
And guess what - I paid my bills, rent, car insurance and car payment - on time, despite my finances being very tight.
You've clearly demonstrated that a large organization, such as the military, has carefully figured out just how much they need to provide in clothing allowance, food allowance, and housing allowance in order to leave you with enough money to just barely scrape by. The military has a vested interest in not bankrupting you since they do actually need you.
Yet you will argue to your death that it is nothing short of a conspiracy theory that another organization, such as the credit industry, has not carefully figured out just how much particular segments of the population need for clothing, food, and housing. You will also categorically deny for all time that the credit industry is further liberated by not having any care in the world whether or not you go bankrupt. You will also ignore that the credit industry will increase its profit margin by continuing to use its knowledge and position to continue to ensure that there are large segments of the population which are kept in debt.
Where is this magic mantra that allows the military the ability to keep people at the brink of subsistence, as evidenced by your own recollection of tight finances and struggle and sacrifice, but prevents the credit industry from taking full blown advantage of the same COST/EARNING/EXPENSE/PROFIT data to ensure that a large portion of the public don't scrape by (as you did) but fall consistently behind? There is none. That is their business model. That is what they do. You only refuse to see it because it would hurt your ego to think that you were given preferential treatment when you thought you were toughing it out in your boots.
How much would the military have to raise its clothing prices to have put you in the red? How much would they have had to cut the BAS/BAQ to put you in debt, to make it your only option to live on credit because there just was nothing left which you could reasonably cut from your lifestyle? Yet you will ignore, from now until forever, that credit companies have any collusion with real estate companies. To you it will be preposterous that insurance agencies, covering the business insurance for credit agencies and realtors and brokers, would have any interest in sharing their databases on the demographics in American society. For some reason the military is able to provide its soldiers with just enough to scrape by but for the credit industry to take that one step farther and use it as a noose to perpetually indenture a significant portion of the population is nothing short of madness in your eyes.
Clue: It's the SAME SYSTEM, only the military wants to keep you afloat and the credit industry wants you to sink.
And lest you try the same argument on me as you attempt on the above anonymous coward, there was no light at the end of the tunnel, no knowledge that the situation had an endpoint - The only thing I knew is that once I was an adult it would be up to me to make my way.
Don't mix topics. The endpoint that makes things bearable has to do with the situation where every day means three meals and a semi-dry place to sleep. In the situation which you're discussing a home is not an issue so you're already ahead of the curve.
Mother military will *not* keep a bivouac over your head. Not paying your bills is, if I remember correctly, grounds for nonjudicial punishment (at least, the first time, if you don't get your shit together) The only metaphorical bivouac there is in the military is that they tell you that pretty plainly straight up during basic training
Once again you've lost scope of the thread. The discussion, at this point, was about "butch the hell up" having to do with how desparate of a situation one can be in. Additionally you're neglecting that, while on active duty, there's no debt for housing or food. There's also no consideration about buying dress shirts at $40/pop or ties at $30/pop. If one is living on base there's also little or no need for a car at $250/mo. plus gas at $1.80/gal for 120 miles of commuting every day.
The military some golden blanket?
No one said it was but, at the end of the day, the military provides food and shelter for its men.
You have pride in your military service. That's admirable. You're also extremely sensitive about it to the point where you lost scope of the discussion so that you could puff out your feathers.
Stop foisting the blame on everyone else and lay it square where it lies
People like you have always puzzled me. You'll take great glee in touting around "life isn't fair--deal with it" yet you'll steadfastly deny to the bitter end that large financial corporations are happily making that more true each and every day. So which is it? Is life fair or not? Make a decision and stick with it. On the other hand, you could admit that you get satisfaction out of taunting thirsty men with that rich glass of water you hold.
You can't have it both ways. The inconsistency in your position tells me that you haven't taken a moment to think the whole thing through.
not some nebulous credit conspiracy
The average consumer has no possible chance of understanding the inner workings of a financial system as complex as the stock market, or credit agencies, or banks. Likewise the average consumer has no chance to understand operating system design, or how to repair a car engine, or what it takes to produce a marketable pharmaceutical product. Does this make all of these things conspiracies? No. It means that you, as the average consumer, have no concept of what goes on in the minds of a VP or marketing director in an insurance agency or a credit agency. Is life fair or not? Why _wouldn't_ those people use their financial leverage to increase their profit margin? Do you think Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve chairs want the US Federal Gov't to pay off the national debt?
I don't hate you. For people like you numbers never really were your strong point. You struggled through algebra and trigonometry and were happier not knowing that calculus was dumbed down so that you could feel good about scoring 80s and 90s on your weekly tests. Don't start coughing up that "conspiracy" cop out because you haven't the brain to understand your place.
Some people just have no concept of personal responsibility.
Pointing out the faults of some people is no justification for predatory lending practices, or knowingly embezzling investment/401k funds, or setting up a.com boom-bust cycle to reap the profits and dump the defunct companies in the laps of business insurance carriers who will pass the loss onto honest owners of auto/home/health insurance.
It's amazing how tolerant they can be if you're honest with them
I was honest. I told them flat-out,"I have no money, no savings, no nothing. My car has been repossessed and I could no longer afford my apartment. I do not work at McDonald's because I spend my time preparing for and going on interviews for a REAL job. I've made my payments on time, in full, in twice the minimum amount for four years. Check your records. I am currently without a job and will be happy to resume payment when I am employed again."
The response? "Can you borrow money from friends, family, anyone? If you can't make a payment within the next 30 days we'll have to send you to a collection agency or take you to court."
These calls were repeated daily with me telling them the same thing and them repeating the same threats. It's at that point that I began to see that the whole industry is a casino-style scam. Since it's a scam I feel absolutely no guilt in advocating that every financial institution in this great nation of ours collectively goes and e2fsck's itself.
Yes, a person should have a certain obligation to fulfill their debts, but companies also shouldn't go around loaning people more money than they could ever pay back.
Just like a casino they recognize that, by and large, we have no statistical chance of getting ahead. Their goal is not to bankrupt us outright but rather to feed us with enough crumbs to milk us for every last dollar that we can make, running ourselves ragged trying to earn a promotion from a manager who's trying to do the same thing while the whole time the average salaries in the industry are dropping like the blood pressure of a slaughtered cow and the heads of the financial industry gather the profits home and reinvest those profits in ever tightening circles of self-serving submarkets.
Reduce wages, raise taxes, demand higher productivity, and offer loans at enormous interest rates to cover for events like a blown head gasket. I think the best example of how the current system works is the plight of the Irish Catholics throughout the 1700-1800s. Possibly a closer example is working class America through the 1930s. How can anyone pretend to be human while saying "live within your means!" to people whose savings and reserves have been wiped out by an artificial bust spawned by the financial industry? Even if they were living within their means they had no control over the surgically executed scam which both promised a fair investment and then hung out the sign that said "Sorry! We lied". The.com boom-bust was the same phenomenon, as were the junk bonds that led to the Black Monday of the 80s (which spawned the easily sidestepped sham that is FDIC).
the same people who will vocally and vehemently denounce the RIAA for suing infringers (that is: for legally enforcing their rights on their content) will hop on over to a story like this and cry for the heads of anyone who "violates" the GPL (that is: they'll demand that the developers enforce their rights on their content)
I'll be happy to support the RIAA when they begin using the GPL model rather than creating legal quagmires which rely on being able to mount the largest legal threat.
What other industry can get away with charging this year's price for a product which is 20 years old? If they're selling CDs then we own the CD the moment we buy it. If they're licensing content then they should begin recognizing that last year's music has depreciated in value.
Our debt loading was nearly always nil simply because they managed their money in a very frugal manner.
I think you're eating your own self-righteousness. The overwhelming perception of the 40s and 50s is quaint frugality because of the hardships that America had to endure. People weren't any more frugal back then than they are now. Frugality, I hope you understand, is a relative term. People were perceived as frugal because there was no wholesale industry in keeping a significant portion of the population in debt back then. There was no $6 trillion national debt to the Federal Reserve--which portion of the taxpaying public do you suppose shoulders the bulk of that load as a percentage of their total yearly income? While I appreciate your love and admiration for your parents I must point out that, for the context of this discussion, you're wearing the same self-righteous blinders that are common to people who've never really had to worry about the outcome.
The bottom line is, butch the hell up and live within your means. By all means, don't have oatmeal every day, but don't whine because you can't wear designer clothing, drive a new car, and eat well simultaneously
Who's whining about designer clothing? Those threadbare pants sure look quaint on the job interview. They'll look even more quaint walking down the road with a pocketful of rejection letters. Who's whining about a new car? I've never owned a new car in my life and my first three were each less than $3000, bought with hard earned cash. Who's whining about eating well? I'm 6'2" and 200 lbs. Unless the US suddenly plunges into a famine and crop shortage I can't feel guilty about this.
YOU start out in control
I'll correct you: YOU started out in control. The majority of Americans do not start out in control.
I've been in situations where my only concern were three hots (meals) and a cot with a roof over my head
But you knew that situation had an endpoint. You knew that, in a year or two, you would be back. It is the knowing that makes the situation bearable. You may preach when you've been there with _NO_ certainty of ever coming back. Who hasn't been there? Mostly it's the people getting rich off of predatory lending, price fixing, or the.com boom-bust which made a select few people enormously wealthy because they knew the game the whole time. Could the rest of America be held at fault when their 401k subsidized the.com boom? With bitter old-timers and conniving politicians preaching daily that Americans don't save enough, and no one will be able to retire, while hiding their own plundering of Social Security, who could afford not to invest in 401k? Where did all of that go? Right into the pockets of the same people who are now lobbying for tougher laws to force people to pay back debt. The same people who dumped their own bankrupt business ventures onto the insurance companies through business insurance. The same people who draw up business plans for those insurance companies to recoup their losses by spreading the bill onto the bulk consumer through auto insurance, home insurance, health insurance, dental insurance...
I joined the army, trained in a trade, and then used my G.I. bill to finish an undergrad program
That explains your lack of perception about how the financial system is played. You've been trained to follow along, stand in line, wait your turn, and in your case it seems to have served you well. Many of us earned our keep in life by staring the impossible risk in the face every day without the assurance that mother military would always keep a bivouac over our heads.
I'd like to congratulate you on being both priveleged and perfect. You are fit to rule in supremacy over your fellow man who was unfortunate enough not to be given your golden seat.
It doesn't mean that little morons must play along
It is so much easier to call your fellow Americans morons than it is to recognize that there is a problem with the precious system. The average American household has something close to $8k in credit card debt alone and yet they're all morons. There's no foul play on the part of the financial companies. Why, they're perfect, and they wouldn't even dream of exploiting loopholes in the concrete tower of iron laws that keeps you safe and warm at night.
It's because people like to live beyond their means - they like to live in huge houses, they like to have 3 big cars instead of one normal (European or Asian) car, etc
The vast majority of people with huge houses and three cars are precisely those people manipulating the financial market to ensure that the people with no house and half a used car continue to rely on the credit which they can afford to extend. Maybe you're disgusted with the rich and pompous nature of American society but you're not doing any good by taking your derision out on those who are left fighting over the table scraps.
you don't have money, you don't spend money - you work harder and you save
Once again, you are perfect and fit to rule in supremacy over your fellow man. The rest of us need to eat. Since we're not at war, there's no famine in the US, and we're willing to put in an honest days work there's no reason why we should subsist on oatmeal gruel just to please the likes of you.
It's the careless parents and the stupid kids
That is the viewpoint of a bitter old man. It's not careless parents and stupid kids. It's parents at the end of their own financial rope and kids who are seduced by marketing and offered a drop of fresh water from which everyone drinks deeply. It is predatory lenders who keep their funds locked solidly away in self-promoting investments for the explicit purpose of justifying ridiculous interest rates, inflation, and the rapacious fines and fees that come along with an infraction no worse than wanting butter on the bread.
it's the new and competitive 21st century
Is this the century where we starve our neighbor to increase the profit margin on our apple pie? Is this the century where the middle class finally realizes that it is not an equal citizen in this nation but rather a cash crop of willing debtors who are browbeaten into feeling guilty for enjoying life above the lot of the Catholic Irish during the potato famine?
Oh, wait. I forgot - nobody is responsible for the consequences of their own actions anymore
I think you and I both know where you can stick your pompous head.
The people running up debts they can't afford to pay are to blame
That's the type of mentality that charges $10 for a glass of water to a man dying of thirst. What's worse is that you probably get some sort of self-satisfaction out of your profit margin.
It is quite possible the parents "should" have done a better job of teaching their kids how to handle money
That's pretty tough to do when the parents didn't have any money either and were born into a debting system. I imagine that your generation of financially priveleged and secure individuals will go to your death beds reveling in how much more financially knowledgeable you were than those irresponsible heathens who couldn't pay their bills. You'll picture, over and over, all the spoiled teenagers who picked up credit cards to buy clothes, CDs, cars, alcohol, rent hotel rooms for prom or homecoming parties, and won't think for a moment that your self-imposed shortsightedness only served to further empower banks and credit agencies to withhood cash from the population by keeping it locked tightly in top-level corporate and government coffers.
Let me guess. You're of the mentality that everyone who was suddenly plunged into debt in 1929 did it to themselves, right? There wasn't a single bank or stock broker or insurance company that saw the whole fiasco as a perfect way to continue to hamstring the society and reap huge amounts of profit. Not at all. In your mind you glorify at always having been priveleged enough to receive opportunities which enabled you to stay ahead of the debt curve, if only so that you could take pleasure in ridiculing people who weren't as lucky.
it's the complete lack of understanding what a credit card is that students get into trouble with
I'd just like to say, politely, that you need to be knocked down a few notches. There is no lack of understanding what a credit card is. What gets people into trouble with credit cards is that they're being financially manipulated. They're starved. It's the same biological response as not eating for seven days and then being offered a $10 cheeseburger. $10 is way too much but hunger plays a factor.
Credit agencies, insurance agencies, government agencies, collection agencies--they all work to keep the general population starved of cash. They can do it because they CONTROL the financial system. Give me one good reason why the bean-counters crunching numbers for banks and credit agencies WOULDN'T take advantage of their position to hamstring a few hundred million people. Look at the overwhelming evidence: The National Debt is up to what, about $6 trillion? Which segment of the taxpaying public is carrying the greatest burden of that as a percentage of their annual income? Minimum wage hasn't gone up in how many years? The cost of living goes up at a steady rate of how much? Student loans have increased by how much yearly? It doesn't take a conspiracy theory to demonstrate how easily the financial institutions can manipulate credit to keep people starved for funding which they RIGHTFULLY worked for but were sorely undercompensated.
Rather than being so self-important perhaps you should consider a little perspective. I'll have none of this "well, back in my day" crap. Things were different back in your day--there was community and a sense of good society. In today's world, it's all about Alan Greenspan's profit margin.
Our sympathies (at least for many of us) are not for the monkey who did the crime and has to pay the time, but for the monkey who may get extra time to cover for the judge's mistakes and not just his own
Well said. The phenomenon here is betrayal. The monkey who gets a double helping of punishment to make up for the mistakes of others has been betrayed. As you've noted it is the head monkey who has done the betraying and left the others out on a limb to hang.
Though the article makes absolutely no mention of this I have a sad suspicion that the head monkey had verbally assured the other monkeys that, in the event of legal action, he had attorneys who would cover the issue. Once again we must keep in mind that, in today's America, it's not so much a matter of IF an individual is breaking a law as it is a matter of being able to handle the possibility that the law will take notice. This is where the betrayal of the lower monkeys takes place. The head monkeys will often assure their followers that there is a contingency plan in place to deal with legal unpleasantries. The head monkeys have little or nothing to worry about because they are covered by their business lawsuit insurance or personal wealth. If all else fails they are able to flee in the event that the legal issues become too hot. Those people who work to live do not have significant personal funds for legal defense and are not worth defending in the eyes of an insurance company. The majority of us are quite familiar with the endless ways with which an insurance company can deny a claim. Likely the government won't file charges against the corporate entity as having broken the law but will arraign the individuals on private charges. Once again it is apparent that corporations not only have the same rights as individuals--they have MORE rights than individuals. I have yet to see a corporation playing boyfriend for Bubba in prison.
I am not sympathizing with criminals, per se, but rather I'm sympathizing with normal citizens who've been betrayed by their corporate masters.
But that's not _really_ wear, although I'm told it has a similar failure profile
You're right, it is pedantic. "wear" would be physical degradation without a necessary change in chemical composition. Component failure would be a result of chemical degradation.
vacencies develop in the silicon
Assuming that's a breakdown of crystalline structure is that physical wear? Technically the chemical composition of the unit cells are still the same in the crystalline lattice but the macroscopic crystal now has discrepencies. Unless the breakdown of the crystal lattice is caused by a change in oxidation state of a component of the crystal. That would be a chemical event which leads to physical aberration.
without government who would enforce contracts, correct monopolies, and provide pure public goods?
Who's to judge that the contracts which they enforce are actually fair and legitimate, or that the monopolies don't simply reemerge as legal cartels of majority shareholders, or that the pure public goods are a more obfuscated business model?
Another problem with anarchy is that some individuals would form coalitions to take on and extort individuals not in their on coalition
We have the same system now. Media coalitions extort politicians. Political coalitions extort businesses. Business coalitions extort consumers. Consumer coalitions extort taxpayers. The only difference would be the amount of taxpayer money funnelled under the table to the major players. The current system fosters the delusion that everyone is playing fair. In a system of microgovernment it would be obvious who is really benefitting.
I don't disagree with the idealistic views of the current system. Ideally it's beautiful. In reality, however, it's really no different China, the former Soviet Union, or any other large government with a multi-trillion dollar budget.
-National defense
I'd like to point out that there isn't a single entity in the world that's going to attempt to try and land a force on American soil and no amount of gargantuan Big Brother oversight could ever stop a dedicated small group of terrorists from committing a one-time atrocity. We have mountain ranges on both coasts to slow their advance and pound them out. The Canadians to the north are peaceful enough to give us plenty of warning and Mexico to the south is too small to host an invading force secretly before the US could squash it. Texas alone has enough silver spurs to cut any insurgents to ribbons. National defense is a political pyramid scheme. The free riders that you speak of are not working class citizens but rather the upper class politicians and stock brokers. What we need is more local control not more national oversight.
-Cure for a disease
I'd like to speak as a medicinal chemist on this who does work in pharmaceutical R&D. I'm going to keep it simple: don't delude yourself. The free riders are, once again, the upper execs and the politicians. New innovations are summarily squelched unless there's a proven profit margin for the people in the highest offices. If the profit, financial or reputation, is distributed to the researcher more than the executives the research direction is said to not be in the business model.
How much does the government tax and spend on pure public goods for the optimal ammount of wellbeing in society?
I prefer to take the overall approach. Consider the ratio of the Federal Budget to the GNP and the percentage of my yearly income that I lose to taxes and fees. I've not bothered to find the Budget:GNP ratio since we run a deficit every year but I do know that, last year, the government took a total of 56% of my gross pay and I make less than $60k/year. This year the number is edging closer to 57%. I'm not trying to rate myself against other people who may make less or are taxed more. I'm asking the simple question: "What am I getting for that 56% that I couldn't provide if I kept it?"
Who is to say why these officals don't see the harm done from cartels
There's no harm if the officials are turning a profit in their private investments. It helps to be farther up the food chain.:)
Re:News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
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If you want OSS to be respected, start respecting other operating sytems
What the crowd of zealots lack in objectivity they make up in history. Microsoft and closed source vendors have never had any respect for other architectures or operating systems. Could you say Mac back in the mid-90s without catching a snicker from suit-and-tie businessmen? Could you ever say Amiga, even when it was producing 1024x768x24 bit color in '85, without catching either a blank stare or a put-down about Commodore? For that matter, what system could even match the capabilities of Commodore--with the 6502 SID and the BASIC v2 interpreter? The C64 was the closest that the average consumer could get to the t/csh+C combo. Yet, for years, anyone with an interest in those technologies has been ridiculed and subject to derisive attack by the vast majority of the business world. They could dish it out for all those years and now we're to have sympathy when they can't take it? We lived through it. How tough are they?
because the community behind it is cheap. Really cheap
Are we cheap because we can do it ourselves? Society has truly taken a turn for the worse when the do-it-yourself enthusiast is stuck playing second fiddle to Richie Rich with a few purchased paper certifications.
Are you all proud that you're bashing an operating system that your favourite OS is aspiring to replace?
Enthusiasts and developers endured that bashing for years--and it came from the vantage point of Microsoft featureware. We finally have an opening to point out the technical deficiencies in Windows and, due to lack of historical knowledge, the public perceives this as negative bashing.
You're right in that the OSS movement needs a better PR campaign but I see no reason to compromise on the steadfast ideals that have allowed F/OSS enthusiasts and developers to weather the storm of derision that we've endured for 15 years.
None of it would have happened without users choosing Microsoft
The users didn't choose Microsoft. IBM chose Microsoft for a rudimentary OS. This gave MS the jump start in capital that they needed. It's also quite possible that Microsoft benefitted enormously from collaborative agreements throughout the years which allowed them to quickly bring their OS up to speed while still retaining full rights to the licensing of the code. The users never had much of a choice in the matter. By the time the public realized how deeply they'd been swindled Microsoft was already entrenched as the dominant player in consumer oriented OS and they were quickly moving to cement in the corporate field with NT.
These lawsuits are not about a common good
I agree wholeheartedly with that. Every single taxpayer is shelling out money for what amounts to a big PR rush for Microsoft. At the end of the day we've paid the attorneys millions and Microsoft has a legal ruling to show that, if they weren't always playing by the rules, they are now.
right vs wrong battle which only exists in their minds
It does exist a little more tangibly than that. It is a battle of right vs. wrong. Microsoft's social model encourages marketing over technology. It encourages perception over reality. It is a direct reflection of the distorted sense of productivity which actively causes frustration for those of us who are trying to advance real ideas.
Take Powerpoint, for example. It's a beautiful presentation tool. It has all sorts of bells and whistles built in that can make presentations dynamic and exciting. At the end of the day, however, the people who need to dress up their presentations with the bells and whistles are the people who really had nothing to say in the first place. The majority of middle managers, and even upper managers, use one slide per minute as a general rule. In my (not so humble) opinion, people use more slides when they don't know enough about their topic to have anything real to say. I rarely have more than one slide every three minutes because, when I set up my presentation, any more than that is extraneous fluff which will distract my audience from what I'm telling them. The business world is, however, addicted (like heroin) to flash and display because it attracts attention and produces PROFIT. Public shareholder meetings of large companies are perfect examples. People invest when their eyes are tickled. Microsoft unconscionably encourages this: pay no attention to the design flaws or the underhanded compatibility lock-ins a la MS HTML featureware. Recognize only Microsoft's dominance and perceived legitimacy as the only viable provider of an OS.
Without going into the ethical considerations of the action I feel that the only thing that Microsoft can do to salvage their OS is to do what Apple did: ditch the whole thing and leech off BSD. Then we can see just how real the BSD crew is about preserving their control of their license. Apple's been a cooperative player and hasn't tried to assume control (that I'm aware of) of vast portions of BSD development. Expect no such fair play from Microsoft.
In fact, free market ideas are dangerous to Capitalism
Why and how?
But examples of a free market include ideas like international outsourcing
International outsourcing is a symptom of capitalism gone awry with top heavy flow of capital. In a properly functioning capitalist system we wouldn't need to outsource because we would have an abundance of fairly priced services at home. The only reason why call centers are not profitable here has little to do directly with free market or capitalism and revolves mostly around greed and pyramidal corporate structure.
second-hand sales are clearly free market activities, but if it becomes too popular, it begins to erode sales of new items
Only if you make the extremely naive and silly assumption that products have an unlimited lifetime with no significant evolution or improvement. There's nothing unhealthy about feedback in a systems.
I dont recall anyone ever saying that government has no place in a free market economy
Government's place is in dealing with other governments. Government's place is not in picking winners on the stock market.
Without government there would be anarchy, and that seems to be bad for business;).
Other than the typical FUD about how society would turn into a conglomerate of raving lunatics who would eventually kill each other off... what's bad about it?
Government does many things including provide for enforcement of contracts (legal system)
I don't see how this is for the benefit of society given that the enforcement of contracts is weighted in favor of people who already have an abundance of wealth. It stands to reason that they simply use that abundance of wealth to enforce predatory contracts.
provide pure public goods
Care to name any? There are people making HUGE profits off of even the simplest of utilities like water and electricity. Don't get started on raods.
ontop of busting up monopolies
And turning them into legal cartels. No real difference.
Slashdot Mirror
Please give me one good reason why someone would post such information to a website frequented by opponents of the RNC
The most obvious example is funding. Wouldn't you like to be able to cross-reference databases of people who dumped stock just before a company slipped into bankruptcy or tanked its stock price with databases of people who make up the political parties? Isn't it nice to have a list of people who stand to directly profit from underhanded political add-ons to bills in Congress? Wouldn't it be better if the citizens could actively determine which of these members seems to always get the hot tip which somehow makes their investments soar while the rest of us deal with funds moving at a snail 6% rate?
Well, no. Of course we wouldn't want that information. Americans have a long history of giving in to BOHICA--mostly because, even if we have these lists and can cross-reference the databases, there isn't a darn thing we can do about it. For every crooked politician we replace there are 5 of last year's new recruits who are being sucked into the system of graft and fraud.
whether they succeed or not is entirely up to the individual
.com boom-bust made a few people enormously wealthy while the rest of us lost our savings, our jobs, and saw our salaries cut to ribbons. In my particular field the average salary for someone 5 years out of undergraduate was $65k last year. This year the average salary for someone 6 years out of undergraduate is $50k. The IRS has reported that the average American salary dropped 10% from 2000-2002.
No. It's not. You've shown that the greater organization has complete control over the individual.
The military, the credit companies, and major corporations all have accountants and managers whose sole job is to figure out the cost of being in business. This includes figuring out how much the janitors spend on clothes as opposed to the mid-managers per year. This includes figuring out the average commuting distance, the average car payments, and the average rent or mortgage payments. There are figures which will tell them how many movies your family will average a year and it's broken down by your income level, your zip code, and the number of children you have. They have this broken down by geographic distribution, by tax bracket, by total worth, by debt load, by education level, and by any other delimiter you can think of. This is even MORE true if your employer subsidizes a credit union which makes it even easier to pass the relevant databases back and forth.
The military uses these numbers to ensure that you can scrape by so as to browbeat everyone else later on in life. Did you really think it was coincidence that they just happened to give you just enough to make it through every month while still keeping you happy enough that you didn't go postal on the job? Corporate America, controlled by the financial brokers who head banks, insurance companies, and investment houses, has no such good intentions and uses these numbers to maximize profit. That means, directly, that the working class population is going to be sold into debt. It's not even a personal thing--it's just a statistical fact. They won't be sold into deep debt because that would be bad for worker morale. They are sold into marginally increasing debt so that there's always another carrot to keep working harder to try and get the next 2.5% raise or promotion rather than a 2.0% raise.
You know what I do with those offers?
This has nothing to do with credit card offers and everything to do with the overall debt load carried by the average American middle-class worker. If my tax load, every year, wasn't 60% I could afford to have 20 credit cards and easily live within my means.
If the military had decided that it needed a new fleet of tanks it could very well have cut your pay and your benefits and forced you to live on credit. The military doesn't do that, though, because it's not good PR for people to leave the military saying,"Sorry. You guys just couldn't pay the bills." The rest of the population, and especially middle-class working America, does not have the luxury of being employed by an entity that is as philanthropic.
So... again... I will not feel guilty about not paying back my debt. It wasn't my debt. It was debt which was engineered out of my control which I had no chance of ever getting ahead on. If corporations really wanted us to pay back our debt they would raise our wages. Instead the
When's the last time you took a 23% pay cut while the top execs, such as the 292 at Enron, ran off with billions of dollars? Why should I feel guilty about not paying a "debt" to those crooks? The same social circles sit on executive boards across every industry. I don't see anyone repaying the debt to the 401k investment funds. Alan Greenspan isn't repaying his debt to the millions of Americans whose retirement accounts were flushed. I don't see Strong Funds rushing to repay the investors they defrauded. And what of government prosecution? Does the government turn around and cu
What could any 'anti-RNC' groupie do with that new information that is not unethical or harassing?
Investigate avenues of illegitimate funding, perhaps? No... It's always gotta be the crazies, the stalkers, and the harassers. There's never a legitimate reason to want to see where the money comes from, where it goes to, and who it goes through to be laundered on the way.
The possible benefit they're looking for is to have a bunch of people harrassing the republican delegates. Remember when 'Bruce Almighty' came out, and there was that big flap because Bruce's beeper showed 'God's' phone number, and a bunch of idiots called up the number and asked for God?
Right... because if it's shown in a John Carrey movie that obviously means it'll be the first thing to happen in real life. That's precisely why John Carrey is a specialist in infantile slapstick comedy.
I'm sure that's the intended goal
I'm sure you're right. The intended goal probably has nothing to do with wanting to let the American people know who REALLY selects the president.
to have to suffer harrassment
Where did you get harassment out of this? I didn't read anywhere that there were complaints of harassment made by any of the RNC families. I only read that the SS was harassing the people who feel that we should know the identities of the committee members who pick the token figurehead that we have the satisfying privelege of casting our wasted vote for.
They represent a political party, which is a separate entity from the government.
You can argue technicalities all you want. When you come back to reality with the rest of us you'll recognize that the national committee delegates, for any political party, are the real power holders in the party. If President Bush would rub enough RNC delegates the wrong way you can bet that he'd be scraping his political career out of the toilet.
When the RNC and the DNC get together it is THEY who decide the next president. They only go through the motions of letting you vote so that you feel good about it. For the greatest part, however, they know months in advance how the charade is going to play out.
So, yes, people with that kind of power over the politicians who will spend 60+% of your hard-earned cash every year should be publicly accessible.
You're just paranoid.
Who will say it's all just a conspiracy theory.
leaving me with about $600 to cover utilities, the car payment and insurance, and food, for the rest of the month
We received a yearly clothing allowance, but just like BAQ, it was a set amount and didn't cover all I had to buy
And guess what - I paid my bills, rent, car insurance and car payment - on time, despite my finances being very tight.
You've clearly demonstrated that a large organization, such as the military, has carefully figured out just how much they need to provide in clothing allowance, food allowance, and housing allowance in order to leave you with enough money to just barely scrape by. The military has a vested interest in not bankrupting you since they do actually need you.
Yet you will argue to your death that it is nothing short of a conspiracy theory that another organization, such as the credit industry, has not carefully figured out just how much particular segments of the population need for clothing, food, and housing. You will also categorically deny for all time that the credit industry is further liberated by not having any care in the world whether or not you go bankrupt. You will also ignore that the credit industry will increase its profit margin by continuing to use its knowledge and position to continue to ensure that there are large segments of the population which are kept in debt.
Where is this magic mantra that allows the military the ability to keep people at the brink of subsistence, as evidenced by your own recollection of tight finances and struggle and sacrifice, but prevents the credit industry from taking full blown advantage of the same COST/EARNING/EXPENSE/PROFIT data to ensure that a large portion of the public don't scrape by (as you did) but fall consistently behind? There is none. That is their business model. That is what they do. You only refuse to see it because it would hurt your ego to think that you were given preferential treatment when you thought you were toughing it out in your boots.
How much would the military have to raise its clothing prices to have put you in the red? How much would they have had to cut the BAS/BAQ to put you in debt, to make it your only option to live on credit because there just was nothing left which you could reasonably cut from your lifestyle? Yet you will ignore, from now until forever, that credit companies have any collusion with real estate companies. To you it will be preposterous that insurance agencies, covering the business insurance for credit agencies and realtors and brokers, would have any interest in sharing their databases on the demographics in American society. For some reason the military is able to provide its soldiers with just enough to scrape by but for the credit industry to take that one step farther and use it as a noose to perpetually indenture a significant portion of the population is nothing short of madness in your eyes.
Clue: It's the SAME SYSTEM, only the military wants to keep you afloat and the credit industry wants you to sink.
I am not arrogant. You are a fool.
And lest you try the same argument on me as you attempt on the above anonymous coward, there was no light at the end of the tunnel, no knowledge that the situation had an endpoint - The only thing I knew is that once I was an adult it would be up to me to make my way.
Don't mix topics. The endpoint that makes things bearable has to do with the situation where every day means three meals and a semi-dry place to sleep. In the situation which you're discussing a home is not an issue so you're already ahead of the curve.
Mother military will *not* keep a bivouac over your head. Not paying your bills is, if I remember correctly, grounds for nonjudicial punishment (at least, the first time, if you don't get your shit together) The only metaphorical bivouac there is in the military is that they tell you that pretty plainly straight up during basic training
Once again you've lost scope of the thread. The discussion, at this point, was about "butch the hell up" having to do with how desparate of a situation one can be in. Additionally you're neglecting that, while on active duty, there's no debt for housing or food. There's also no consideration about buying dress shirts at $40/pop or ties at $30/pop. If one is living on base there's also little or no need for a car at $250/mo. plus gas at $1.80/gal for 120 miles of commuting every day.
The military some golden blanket?
No one said it was but, at the end of the day, the military provides food and shelter for its men.
You have pride in your military service. That's admirable. You're also extremely sensitive about it to the point where you lost scope of the discussion so that you could puff out your feathers.
Stop foisting the blame on everyone else and lay it square where it lies
People like you have always puzzled me. You'll take great glee in touting around "life isn't fair--deal with it" yet you'll steadfastly deny to the bitter end that large financial corporations are happily making that more true each and every day. So which is it? Is life fair or not? Make a decision and stick with it. On the other hand, you could admit that you get satisfaction out of taunting thirsty men with that rich glass of water you hold.
You can't have it both ways. The inconsistency in your position tells me that you haven't taken a moment to think the whole thing through.
not some nebulous credit conspiracy
The average consumer has no possible chance of understanding the inner workings of a financial system as complex as the stock market, or credit agencies, or banks. Likewise the average consumer has no chance to understand operating system design, or how to repair a car engine, or what it takes to produce a marketable pharmaceutical product. Does this make all of these things conspiracies? No. It means that you, as the average consumer, have no concept of what goes on in the minds of a VP or marketing director in an insurance agency or a credit agency. Is life fair or not? Why _wouldn't_ those people use their financial leverage to increase their profit margin? Do you think Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve chairs want the US Federal Gov't to pay off the national debt?
I don't hate you. For people like you numbers never really were your strong point. You struggled through algebra and trigonometry and were happier not knowing that calculus was dumbed down so that you could feel good about scoring 80s and 90s on your weekly tests. Don't start coughing up that "conspiracy" cop out because you haven't the brain to understand your place.
Some people just have no concept of personal responsibility.
.com boom-bust cycle to reap the profits and dump the defunct companies in the laps of business insurance carriers who will pass the loss onto honest owners of auto/home/health insurance.
Pointing out the faults of some people is no justification for predatory lending practices, or knowingly embezzling investment/401k funds, or setting up a
It's amazing how tolerant they can be if you're honest with them
I was honest. I told them flat-out,"I have no money, no savings, no nothing. My car has been repossessed and I could no longer afford my apartment. I do not work at McDonald's because I spend my time preparing for and going on interviews for a REAL job. I've made my payments on time, in full, in twice the minimum amount for four years. Check your records. I am currently without a job and will be happy to resume payment when I am employed again."
The response? "Can you borrow money from friends, family, anyone? If you can't make a payment within the next 30 days we'll have to send you to a collection agency or take you to court."
These calls were repeated daily with me telling them the same thing and them repeating the same threats. It's at that point that I began to see that the whole industry is a casino-style scam. Since it's a scam I feel absolutely no guilt in advocating that every financial institution in this great nation of ours collectively goes and e2fsck's itself.
or a decent used car for peanuts if you take the time to look
:)
I'm sure your manager will be more than happy to give you the paid time off every year to go car hunting.
Yes, a person should have a certain obligation to fulfill their debts, but companies also shouldn't go around loaning people more money than they could ever pay back.
.com boom-bust was the same phenomenon, as were the junk bonds that led to the Black Monday of the 80s (which spawned the easily sidestepped sham that is FDIC).
Just like a casino they recognize that, by and large, we have no statistical chance of getting ahead. Their goal is not to bankrupt us outright but rather to feed us with enough crumbs to milk us for every last dollar that we can make, running ourselves ragged trying to earn a promotion from a manager who's trying to do the same thing while the whole time the average salaries in the industry are dropping like the blood pressure of a slaughtered cow and the heads of the financial industry gather the profits home and reinvest those profits in ever tightening circles of self-serving submarkets.
Reduce wages, raise taxes, demand higher productivity, and offer loans at enormous interest rates to cover for events like a blown head gasket. I think the best example of how the current system works is the plight of the Irish Catholics throughout the 1700-1800s. Possibly a closer example is working class America through the 1930s. How can anyone pretend to be human while saying "live within your means!" to people whose savings and reserves have been wiped out by an artificial bust spawned by the financial industry? Even if they were living within their means they had no control over the surgically executed scam which both promised a fair investment and then hung out the sign that said "Sorry! We lied". The
I guess that's how we know we're not in heaven.
the same people who will vocally and vehemently denounce the RIAA for suing infringers (that is: for legally enforcing their rights on their content) will hop on over to a story like this and cry for the heads of anyone who "violates" the GPL (that is: they'll demand that the developers enforce their rights on their content)
I'll be happy to support the RIAA when they begin using the GPL model rather than creating legal quagmires which rely on being able to mount the largest legal threat.
What other industry can get away with charging this year's price for a product which is 20 years old? If they're selling CDs then we own the CD the moment we buy it. If they're licensing content then they should begin recognizing that last year's music has depreciated in value.
Our debt loading was nearly always nil simply because they managed their money in a very frugal manner.
.com boom-bust which made a select few people enormously wealthy because they knew the game the whole time. Could the rest of America be held at fault when their 401k subsidized the .com boom? With bitter old-timers and conniving politicians preaching daily that Americans don't save enough, and no one will be able to retire, while hiding their own plundering of Social Security, who could afford not to invest in 401k? Where did all of that go? Right into the pockets of the same people who are now lobbying for tougher laws to force people to pay back debt. The same people who dumped their own bankrupt business ventures onto the insurance companies through business insurance. The same people who draw up business plans for those insurance companies to recoup their losses by spreading the bill onto the bulk consumer through auto insurance, home insurance, health insurance, dental insurance...
I think you're eating your own self-righteousness. The overwhelming perception of the 40s and 50s is quaint frugality because of the hardships that America had to endure. People weren't any more frugal back then than they are now. Frugality, I hope you understand, is a relative term. People were perceived as frugal because there was no wholesale industry in keeping a significant portion of the population in debt back then. There was no $6 trillion national debt to the Federal Reserve--which portion of the taxpaying public do you suppose shoulders the bulk of that load as a percentage of their total yearly income? While I appreciate your love and admiration for your parents I must point out that, for the context of this discussion, you're wearing the same self-righteous blinders that are common to people who've never really had to worry about the outcome.
The bottom line is, butch the hell up and live within your means. By all means, don't have oatmeal every day, but don't whine because you can't wear designer clothing, drive a new car, and eat well simultaneously
Who's whining about designer clothing? Those threadbare pants sure look quaint on the job interview. They'll look even more quaint walking down the road with a pocketful of rejection letters. Who's whining about a new car? I've never owned a new car in my life and my first three were each less than $3000, bought with hard earned cash. Who's whining about eating well? I'm 6'2" and 200 lbs. Unless the US suddenly plunges into a famine and crop shortage I can't feel guilty about this.
YOU start out in control
I'll correct you: YOU started out in control. The majority of Americans do not start out in control.
I've been in situations where my only concern were three hots (meals) and a cot with a roof over my head
But you knew that situation had an endpoint. You knew that, in a year or two, you would be back. It is the knowing that makes the situation bearable. You may preach when you've been there with _NO_ certainty of ever coming back. Who hasn't been there? Mostly it's the people getting rich off of predatory lending, price fixing, or the
I joined the army, trained in a trade, and then used my G.I. bill to finish an undergrad program
That explains your lack of perception about how the financial system is played. You've been trained to follow along, stand in line, wait your turn, and in your case it seems to have served you well. Many of us earned our keep in life by staring the impossible risk in the face every day without the assurance that mother military would always keep a bivouac over our heads.
I don't even HAVE a credit card
I'd like to congratulate you on being both priveleged and perfect. You are fit to rule in supremacy over your fellow man who was unfortunate enough not to be given your golden seat.
It doesn't mean that little morons must play along
It is so much easier to call your fellow Americans morons than it is to recognize that there is a problem with the precious system. The average American household has something close to $8k in credit card debt alone and yet they're all morons. There's no foul play on the part of the financial companies. Why, they're perfect, and they wouldn't even dream of exploiting loopholes in the concrete tower of iron laws that keeps you safe and warm at night.
It's because people like to live beyond their means - they like to live in huge houses, they like to have 3 big cars instead of one normal (European or Asian) car, etc
The vast majority of people with huge houses and three cars are precisely those people manipulating the financial market to ensure that the people with no house and half a used car continue to rely on the credit which they can afford to extend. Maybe you're disgusted with the rich and pompous nature of American society but you're not doing any good by taking your derision out on those who are left fighting over the table scraps.
you don't have money, you don't spend money - you work harder and you save
Once again, you are perfect and fit to rule in supremacy over your fellow man. The rest of us need to eat. Since we're not at war, there's no famine in the US, and we're willing to put in an honest days work there's no reason why we should subsist on oatmeal gruel just to please the likes of you.
It's the careless parents and the stupid kids
That is the viewpoint of a bitter old man. It's not careless parents and stupid kids. It's parents at the end of their own financial rope and kids who are seduced by marketing and offered a drop of fresh water from which everyone drinks deeply. It is predatory lenders who keep their funds locked solidly away in self-promoting investments for the explicit purpose of justifying ridiculous interest rates, inflation, and the rapacious fines and fees that come along with an infraction no worse than wanting butter on the bread.
it's the new and competitive 21st century
Is this the century where we starve our neighbor to increase the profit margin on our apple pie? Is this the century where the middle class finally realizes that it is not an equal citizen in this nation but rather a cash crop of willing debtors who are browbeaten into feeling guilty for enjoying life above the lot of the Catholic Irish during the potato famine?
Oh, wait. I forgot - nobody is responsible for the consequences of their own actions anymore
I think you and I both know where you can stick your pompous head.
The people running up debts they can't afford to pay are to blame
That's the type of mentality that charges $10 for a glass of water to a man dying of thirst. What's worse is that you probably get some sort of self-satisfaction out of your profit margin.
It is quite possible the parents "should" have done a better job of teaching their kids how to handle money
That's pretty tough to do when the parents didn't have any money either and were born into a debting system. I imagine that your generation of financially priveleged and secure individuals will go to your death beds reveling in how much more financially knowledgeable you were than those irresponsible heathens who couldn't pay their bills. You'll picture, over and over, all the spoiled teenagers who picked up credit cards to buy clothes, CDs, cars, alcohol, rent hotel rooms for prom or homecoming parties, and won't think for a moment that your self-imposed shortsightedness only served to further empower banks and credit agencies to withhood cash from the population by keeping it locked tightly in top-level corporate and government coffers.
Let me guess. You're of the mentality that everyone who was suddenly plunged into debt in 1929 did it to themselves, right? There wasn't a single bank or stock broker or insurance company that saw the whole fiasco as a perfect way to continue to hamstring the society and reap huge amounts of profit. Not at all. In your mind you glorify at always having been priveleged enough to receive opportunities which enabled you to stay ahead of the debt curve, if only so that you could take pleasure in ridiculing people who weren't as lucky.
it's the complete lack of understanding what a credit card is that students get into trouble with
I'd just like to say, politely, that you need to be knocked down a few notches. There is no lack of understanding what a credit card is. What gets people into trouble with credit cards is that they're being financially manipulated. They're starved. It's the same biological response as not eating for seven days and then being offered a $10 cheeseburger. $10 is way too much but hunger plays a factor.
Credit agencies, insurance agencies, government agencies, collection agencies--they all work to keep the general population starved of cash. They can do it because they CONTROL the financial system. Give me one good reason why the bean-counters crunching numbers for banks and credit agencies WOULDN'T take advantage of their position to hamstring a few hundred million people. Look at the overwhelming evidence: The National Debt is up to what, about $6 trillion? Which segment of the taxpaying public is carrying the greatest burden of that as a percentage of their annual income? Minimum wage hasn't gone up in how many years? The cost of living goes up at a steady rate of how much? Student loans have increased by how much yearly? It doesn't take a conspiracy theory to demonstrate how easily the financial institutions can manipulate credit to keep people starved for funding which they RIGHTFULLY worked for but were sorely undercompensated.
Rather than being so self-important perhaps you should consider a little perspective. I'll have none of this "well, back in my day" crap. Things were different back in your day--there was community and a sense of good society. In today's world, it's all about Alan Greenspan's profit margin.
Our sympathies (at least for many of us) are not for the monkey who did the crime and has to pay the time, but for the monkey who may get extra time to cover for the judge's mistakes and not just his own
Well said. The phenomenon here is betrayal. The monkey who gets a double helping of punishment to make up for the mistakes of others has been betrayed. As you've noted it is the head monkey who has done the betraying and left the others out on a limb to hang.
Though the article makes absolutely no mention of this I have a sad suspicion that the head monkey had verbally assured the other monkeys that, in the event of legal action, he had attorneys who would cover the issue. Once again we must keep in mind that, in today's America, it's not so much a matter of IF an individual is breaking a law as it is a matter of being able to handle the possibility that the law will take notice. This is where the betrayal of the lower monkeys takes place. The head monkeys will often assure their followers that there is a contingency plan in place to deal with legal unpleasantries. The head monkeys have little or nothing to worry about because they are covered by their business lawsuit insurance or personal wealth. If all else fails they are able to flee in the event that the legal issues become too hot. Those people who work to live do not have significant personal funds for legal defense and are not worth defending in the eyes of an insurance company. The majority of us are quite familiar with the endless ways with which an insurance company can deny a claim. Likely the government won't file charges against the corporate entity as having broken the law but will arraign the individuals on private charges. Once again it is apparent that corporations not only have the same rights as individuals--they have MORE rights than individuals. I have yet to see a corporation playing boyfriend for Bubba in prison.
I am not sympathizing with criminals, per se, but rather I'm sympathizing with normal citizens who've been betrayed by their corporate masters.
But that's not _really_ wear, although I'm told it has a similar failure profile
You're right, it is pedantic. "wear" would be physical degradation without a necessary change in chemical composition. Component failure would be a result of chemical degradation.
vacencies develop in the silicon
Assuming that's a breakdown of crystalline structure is that physical wear? Technically the chemical composition of the unit cells are still the same in the crystalline lattice but the macroscopic crystal now has discrepencies. Unless the breakdown of the crystal lattice is caused by a change in oxidation state of a component of the crystal. That would be a chemical event which leads to physical aberration.
without government who would enforce contracts, correct monopolies, and provide pure public goods?
:)
Who's to judge that the contracts which they enforce are actually fair and legitimate, or that the monopolies don't simply reemerge as legal cartels of majority shareholders, or that the pure public goods are a more obfuscated business model?
Another problem with anarchy is that some individuals would form coalitions to take on and extort individuals not in their on coalition
We have the same system now. Media coalitions extort politicians. Political coalitions extort businesses. Business coalitions extort consumers. Consumer coalitions extort taxpayers. The only difference would be the amount of taxpayer money funnelled under the table to the major players. The current system fosters the delusion that everyone is playing fair. In a system of microgovernment it would be obvious who is really benefitting.
I don't disagree with the idealistic views of the current system. Ideally it's beautiful. In reality, however, it's really no different China, the former Soviet Union, or any other large government with a multi-trillion dollar budget.
-National defense
I'd like to point out that there isn't a single entity in the world that's going to attempt to try and land a force on American soil and no amount of gargantuan Big Brother oversight could ever stop a dedicated small group of terrorists from committing a one-time atrocity. We have mountain ranges on both coasts to slow their advance and pound them out. The Canadians to the north are peaceful enough to give us plenty of warning and Mexico to the south is too small to host an invading force secretly before the US could squash it. Texas alone has enough silver spurs to cut any insurgents to ribbons. National defense is a political pyramid scheme. The free riders that you speak of are not working class citizens but rather the upper class politicians and stock brokers. What we need is more local control not more national oversight.
-Cure for a disease
I'd like to speak as a medicinal chemist on this who does work in pharmaceutical R&D. I'm going to keep it simple: don't delude yourself. The free riders are, once again, the upper execs and the politicians. New innovations are summarily squelched unless there's a proven profit margin for the people in the highest offices. If the profit, financial or reputation, is distributed to the researcher more than the executives the research direction is said to not be in the business model.
How much does the government tax and spend on pure public goods for the optimal ammount of wellbeing in society?
I prefer to take the overall approach. Consider the ratio of the Federal Budget to the GNP and the percentage of my yearly income that I lose to taxes and fees. I've not bothered to find the Budget:GNP ratio since we run a deficit every year but I do know that, last year, the government took a total of 56% of my gross pay and I make less than $60k/year. This year the number is edging closer to 57%. I'm not trying to rate myself against other people who may make less or are taxed more. I'm asking the simple question: "What am I getting for that 56% that I couldn't provide if I kept it?"
Who is to say why these officals don't see the harm done from cartels
There's no harm if the officials are turning a profit in their private investments. It helps to be farther up the food chain.
If you want OSS to be respected, start respecting other operating sytems
What the crowd of zealots lack in objectivity they make up in history. Microsoft and closed source vendors have never had any respect for other architectures or operating systems. Could you say Mac back in the mid-90s without catching a snicker from suit-and-tie businessmen? Could you ever say Amiga, even when it was producing 1024x768x24 bit color in '85, without catching either a blank stare or a put-down about Commodore? For that matter, what system could even match the capabilities of Commodore--with the 6502 SID and the BASIC v2 interpreter? The C64 was the closest that the average consumer could get to the t/csh+C combo. Yet, for years, anyone with an interest in those technologies has been ridiculed and subject to derisive attack by the vast majority of the business world. They could dish it out for all those years and now we're to have sympathy when they can't take it? We lived through it. How tough are they?
because the community behind it is cheap. Really cheap
Are we cheap because we can do it ourselves? Society has truly taken a turn for the worse when the do-it-yourself enthusiast is stuck playing second fiddle to Richie Rich with a few purchased paper certifications.
Are you all proud that you're bashing an operating system that your favourite OS is aspiring to replace?
Enthusiasts and developers endured that bashing for years--and it came from the vantage point of Microsoft featureware. We finally have an opening to point out the technical deficiencies in Windows and, due to lack of historical knowledge, the public perceives this as negative bashing.
You're right in that the OSS movement needs a better PR campaign but I see no reason to compromise on the steadfast ideals that have allowed F/OSS enthusiasts and developers to weather the storm of derision that we've endured for 15 years.
None of it would have happened without users choosing Microsoft
The users didn't choose Microsoft. IBM chose Microsoft for a rudimentary OS. This gave MS the jump start in capital that they needed. It's also quite possible that Microsoft benefitted enormously from collaborative agreements throughout the years which allowed them to quickly bring their OS up to speed while still retaining full rights to the licensing of the code. The users never had much of a choice in the matter. By the time the public realized how deeply they'd been swindled Microsoft was already entrenched as the dominant player in consumer oriented OS and they were quickly moving to cement in the corporate field with NT.
These lawsuits are not about a common good
I agree wholeheartedly with that. Every single taxpayer is shelling out money for what amounts to a big PR rush for Microsoft. At the end of the day we've paid the attorneys millions and Microsoft has a legal ruling to show that, if they weren't always playing by the rules, they are now.
right vs wrong battle which only exists in their minds
It does exist a little more tangibly than that. It is a battle of right vs. wrong. Microsoft's social model encourages marketing over technology. It encourages perception over reality. It is a direct reflection of the distorted sense of productivity which actively causes frustration for those of us who are trying to advance real ideas.
Take Powerpoint, for example. It's a beautiful presentation tool. It has all sorts of bells and whistles built in that can make presentations dynamic and exciting. At the end of the day, however, the people who need to dress up their presentations with the bells and whistles are the people who really had nothing to say in the first place. The majority of middle managers, and even upper managers, use one slide per minute as a general rule. In my (not so humble) opinion, people use more slides when they don't know enough about their topic to have anything real to say. I rarely have more than one slide every three minutes because, when I set up my presentation, any more than that is extraneous fluff which will distract my audience from what I'm telling them. The business world is, however, addicted (like heroin) to flash and display because it attracts attention and produces PROFIT. Public shareholder meetings of large companies are perfect examples. People invest when their eyes are tickled. Microsoft unconscionably encourages this: pay no attention to the design flaws or the underhanded compatibility lock-ins a la MS HTML featureware. Recognize only Microsoft's dominance and perceived legitimacy as the only viable provider of an OS.
Without going into the ethical considerations of the action I feel that the only thing that Microsoft can do to salvage their OS is to do what Apple did: ditch the whole thing and leech off BSD. Then we can see just how real the BSD crew is about preserving their control of their license. Apple's been a cooperative player and hasn't tried to assume control (that I'm aware of) of vast portions of BSD development. Expect no such fair play from Microsoft.
In fact, free market ideas are dangerous to Capitalism
Why and how?
But examples of a free market include ideas like international outsourcing
International outsourcing is a symptom of capitalism gone awry with top heavy flow of capital. In a properly functioning capitalist system we wouldn't need to outsource because we would have an abundance of fairly priced services at home. The only reason why call centers are not profitable here has little to do directly with free market or capitalism and revolves mostly around greed and pyramidal corporate structure.
second-hand sales are clearly free market activities, but if it becomes too popular, it begins to erode sales of new items
Only if you make the extremely naive and silly assumption that products have an unlimited lifetime with no significant evolution or improvement. There's nothing unhealthy about feedback in a systems.
I dont recall anyone ever saying that government has no place in a free market economy
;).
Government's place is in dealing with other governments. Government's place is not in picking winners on the stock market.
Without government there would be anarchy, and that seems to be bad for business
Other than the typical FUD about how society would turn into a conglomerate of raving lunatics who would eventually kill each other off... what's bad about it?
Government does many things including provide for enforcement of contracts (legal system)
I don't see how this is for the benefit of society given that the enforcement of contracts is weighted in favor of people who already have an abundance of wealth. It stands to reason that they simply use that abundance of wealth to enforce predatory contracts.
provide pure public goods
Care to name any? There are people making HUGE profits off of even the simplest of utilities like water and electricity. Don't get started on raods.
ontop of busting up monopolies
And turning them into legal cartels. No real difference.