they also get jobs (1500 at the place where I worked and a lot more in companies created and/or attracted by us)
I wonder how many jobs there would have been if the government hadn't taxed that money in the first place? I find it funny people think that somehow the government can magically make the economy better by taking money from the citizens and then redistributing it in whatever inefficient manner it sees fit.
It reminds me of a story I heard on NPR about some dying town in New Jersey. Some of the elected officials were complaining that they could not get a small real estate tax increased so they could fund their various 'economic development' projects. They were trying to get people and business to move into the area.
The funny thing is, they had already built a multi-million dollar industrial park with taxpayer dollars, hoping that business would flock to the town in droves, and it was a big flop.
Maybe if they kept taxes low in the first place, people would be more likely to want to live there!
The key problem is that our country is helplessly dependent on oil. If we were not critically dependent on the oil, we would not care what happened in the Middle East.
The only reason why I question this correlation is because I have heard that we only get 5% of our oil from the middle east. I think our current leadership honestly believes there is a serious terror threat from the middle east. I don't agree with them on pretty much any point, but my instinct is the situation is more complicated than just energy.
As I have said before, think about what we could have done with the hundreds of billions of dollars we have spent on the war effort, if instead it was spent on alternative energy research.
This won't change until campaign contributions are limited to registered voters.
So the rules immediately change tommorrow and all contributions now come from registered voters. The following day, the top 10 executives of Corp X each contribute 50k to Senator Soandso. Same problem.
There is a book by former Clinton Staffer called Outrage (Dick Morris) it talks about campaign finance reform (and a myriad of other problems with our government). One of the things I remember from the book is a lot of contributions come from individuals who 'happen' to work at a particular company. I see no clear way to stop that.
As an aside, the book goes on to talk about how many of the senators end up funneling money to their own bank accounts by employing their wives and/or children on their campaign staff (to the tune of up to $180,000 a year for 'campaign consulting').
Personally, I would just get rid of bar associations and the like and subject the whole lot of you to the harsh winds of the free market and watch your tear yourselves apart.
That is an interesting proposition (and sort of scary, I would hate to be stuck with a lawyer who was a good salesman but had no understanding of the law). Would you advocate the same idea for the medical profession?
The free market is good for a lot of things, but regulation can be an important component just because consumers do not have perfect information. Of course self regulation isn't always the best way to acheive this--would the bar be considered self regulation?
Also, aren't most judges also lawyers? From my understanding most judges take a dim view of non-lawyers trying to argue their own defense. I can imagine they would be quite hostile to someone who was a 'lawyer' but did not belong to whatever professional association the bar would turn into.
I was all set to try out their new streaming video feature, but after downloading the plugins it gave me an error saying that you had to have at least 2GB free space on your drive to watch the movies.
I had plenty of room, just not on my c: drive, I have another, much larger disk for data. There was no option to tell it to use another drive at all, it just failed.
Immediately I looked around on their web-site for some sort of support to contact, but I couldn't find anything other than the phone number. I was pretty sure I did not want to talk to a live person about this problem, there is nothing they would be able to do about it, it is something that would have to be passed on to some developers somewhere.
As a result I haven't bothered with the new feature (although I did spend a few minutes hacking my registry to try and get it to run on my other drive--failure).
Let's say you went to the mall, and you were looking for some Christmas gifts. You phone has a neat little feature called 'Instant Discount'. If you turn it on while shopping, it will feed you coupons and specials from the various stores as you walk around. So you pass a Banana Republic and see a coupon for 25$ off on a pair of pants.
You duck in, get some pants, save some cash. The store gets a sale they might not have had. Whoever runs the ad service gets a little piece of the sale. Everyone is happy.
I have no problem with this kind of feature, as long as you can turn it on or off.
If there were a finite set of what could go in metavalue, then search engines and screen readers could use the information to better understand what is in a particular tag.
I always wonder what we could have done with the hundreds of billions of dollars we have spent fighting in Iraq, if instead we spent it on alternative energy research. It always seemed like a better long term strategy to me.
In the United States roughly three times as many people are killed in gun accidents per year than 9/11.
Not that I agree, but the argument I hear most against your point of view is that the terrorist attacks will get much more serious if we do nothing about them. The war on terror is a kind of preemptive war in that respect, trying to prevent the day when the numbers flip and more people die in terrorist attacks than are killed in gun accidents etc.
Of course, that argument hinges on:
1) Our methods of fighting terrorism are effective. Personally I do not think they are, we still have millions of people in this country on expired visa's (9 of the 9/11 hi-jackers were here on expired visas. If the government just enforced EXISTING laws, 9/11 probably would not have happened).
2) The deaths due to terrorism left unchecked are going to increase dramatically. I am not convinced this is true, I am sure there will always be a certain amount of terrorism in the world, but I am not sure that we are really going to see the net loss of life dramatically rise to be on par with the huge volume of accidental deaths we already have.
The core problem with the current program is that the worker is beholden to the sponsoring company, and thus subject to potential abuse.
The solution is simple, when an H1B is granted to a worker, the H1B should be valid for the entire length of the H1B, regardless of whether or not the worker is in the employ of the original sponsor company. This would have two effects:
1) Workers would be free to quit and find the true market value for their skills if they were being exploited or underpaid
2) Companies would not bring workers over on H1B visas unless they really could not find a particular expertise.
I'd say if she were serving the wants of the people, that's significantly better than many, many politicians that server the wants of themselves. It's a strange idea, I know, but you do want your policymakers to listen to the will of the people and support it, and you'd like them to do that even when it is at odds with their own personal belief, if a sufficient majority of the nation wishes a particular change.
I remember from Government class that there were two schools of thought with elected representation:
1) The elected representative was responsible for discerning the will of the people on each issue, and to represent their wishes as closely as possible. This would require a lot of polling and may end up charting a very random course across the issues.
2) The representative was elected on their merits as a leader and decision maker. They are expected to use their judgement when dealing with laws and do what they think is best for their constituents.
The primary problem either way is you can only get good government when you have an educated, involved electorate. Of course, even with an educated electorate, having a good grasp of the current issues can be a difficult and time consuming process. Which is why most people just pick a party that matches their world view best and vote down the line.
In fact a friend of mine is a pediatrician, and he told me that the best thing you can do for your kid is to put them into day care, because they be exposed to all kinds of germs at an early age which will help develop their immune system.
Any idea how the change to salinity would effect the rate at which new ice forms?
My theory (based on nothing but wild speculation) is that as soon as the artic ice melts enough to change sea levels, it will have also made a big impact on salinity levels. Less salinity means higher freezing temperature, so suddenly ice formation becomes easier, reabsorbing all that water that got melted in the first place.
Here is where I have a problem with all the hysteria surrounding 'online predators'. Just because some jerk-face is using his amazing typing skills to try and 'hook-up' with an minor online doesn't mean:
a) the minor is harmed b) the minor would ever consider meeting up with said jerk-face c) we have plenty of existing laws that will take care of such a in-person meeting, as remote as that possibility is.
No matter what we put into law, minors will be exposed to things that parents want to protect them from, whether it be on the internet or in real life. That is why minors need good parenting and education about reality and the dangers within.
I am not sure why you should feel guilty about predators lurking on your social-networking site. If you owned a Mall, would you feel guilty about dirty old men sitting in the food court ogling teenage girls as they stand in the line for Burger King? If those same old men try and pick up those girls?
Just because they caught a bunch of 'online' predators doesn't mean there were a bunch of children being predated upon. Sure the potential exists, but I wonder how prevalent is this type of crime (with an actual victim, not some cop posing as one).
I have the sneaking suspicion that it is mostly a bunch of creepy old men talking dirty to a bunch of other creepy old men. I find it really hard to believe some teenage girl is seriously engaging in these sorts of activities (I can imagine them doing it and thinking it is funny to rattle peoples cages, but seriously being pulled in to this kind of relationship?).
As to your specific question, 'how are they supposed to catch these people without the logs'. No one has ever suggested that we record every minute of our voice communications over the phone or otherwise for use in these sorts of cases. Why would text be any different? I would support the ability to get a warrant to 'tap' irc or email, allowing law enforcement to log communication from the point of the warrant onwards, it seems like that would be pretty effective in building evidence against offenders while keeping the government out of the business of innocent citizens.
The chief problem with our government today vis-a-vis the state versus the federal government is that the federal government provides a massive amount of money to the states in the form of highway and other programs. The states grew dependant on this money, and are forced to cooperate with the federal government on issues they would rather regulate on their own.
I vaguely remember at some point Louisiana recieved no federal highway funding because they refused to raise their drinking age to 21, I think eventually they gave in. Federal highway money alone is hundreds of millions of dollars to states each year.
The only solution I see is to reduce the size of the federal government and the amount of money it has available to interfere in the operations of the states.
1) Al Qaeda is the creation of Osama Bin Laden partly as a response to his desire to overthrow the Saudi government and install a theocracy (guess who would be in charge?). Since the US has troops in Saudi Arabia, it makes it difficult for him to overthrow the government, hence his agenda to get us to remove ourselves from the middle east.
2) There are plenty of bad people in Iraq who are not members of Al Qaeda, and need detention. We shouldn't be there at all, but that is a separate supbject.
3) I agree, war is a political tool to keep the sheep in-line
4) Al Qaeda is not a signatory to the Geneva convention and they are not a recognized nation, thus the Geneva convention does not apply.
You comparison to the flu is spot on. The flu kills around 6 to 10 times more people in a single year than died in the 9-11 attacks. Yet we have had vaccine shortages which could have been prevent by the government spending a tiny fraction of what the 'war on terror' has cost us.
if they had behaved morally instead of selfishly and evilly, we would be less likely to suffer a terrorist attack
I believe this is a fallacy. The US is certainly to blame in parts for many problems in the world due to our involvement in dictatorships and the like, but your statement implies that somehow the 'terrorists' are moral and not selish and evil.
One of the reason's why Bin Laden wanted US troops out of Saudi Arabia has nothing to do with Islam and US imperialism, and everything to do with his ambition to overthrow the Saudi Government.
I hate to play the devil's advocate on something as nasty as torture; but torture most certainly does provide reliable information in certain situations.
If you are looking for specific verifiable information (where is the bomb planted) and the person knows, torture will get that information from them. If you are looking for someone to provide a 'confession' or other non-verifiable information, torture is indeed worthless.
Either way, torture is too extreme to be of use and it is apt to be abused.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a reason there are solo Big Daddies in the game, it is because of the plasmid that allows you to charm a Big Daddy to protect you.
I wonder how many jobs there would have been if the government hadn't taxed that money in the first place? I find it funny people think that somehow the government can magically make the economy better by taking money from the citizens and then redistributing it in whatever inefficient manner it sees fit.
It reminds me of a story I heard on NPR about some dying town in New Jersey. Some of the elected officials were complaining that they could not get a small real estate tax increased so they could fund their various 'economic development' projects. They were trying to get people and business to move into the area.
The funny thing is, they had already built a multi-million dollar industrial park with taxpayer dollars, hoping that business would flock to the town in droves, and it was a big flop.
Maybe if they kept taxes low in the first place, people would be more likely to want to live there!
As I have said before, think about what we could have done with the hundreds of billions of dollars we have spent on the war effort, if instead it was spent on alternative energy research.
So the rules immediately change tommorrow and all contributions now come from registered voters. The following day, the top 10 executives of Corp X each contribute 50k to Senator Soandso. Same problem.
There is a book by former Clinton Staffer called Outrage (Dick Morris) it talks about campaign finance reform (and a myriad of other problems with our government). One of the things I remember from the book is a lot of contributions come from individuals who 'happen' to work at a particular company. I see no clear way to stop that.
As an aside, the book goes on to talk about how many of the senators end up funneling money to their own bank accounts by employing their wives and/or children on their campaign staff (to the tune of up to $180,000 a year for 'campaign consulting').
That is an interesting proposition (and sort of scary, I would hate to be stuck with a lawyer who was a good salesman but had no understanding of the law). Would you advocate the same idea for the medical profession?
The free market is good for a lot of things, but regulation can be an important component just because consumers do not have perfect information. Of course self regulation isn't always the best way to acheive this--would the bar be considered self regulation?
Also, aren't most judges also lawyers? From my understanding most judges take a dim view of non-lawyers trying to argue their own defense. I can imagine they would be quite hostile to someone who was a 'lawyer' but did not belong to whatever professional association the bar would turn into.
I had plenty of room, just not on my c: drive, I have another, much larger disk for data. There was no option to tell it to use another drive at all, it just failed.
Immediately I looked around on their web-site for some sort of support to contact, but I couldn't find anything other than the phone number. I was pretty sure I did not want to talk to a live person about this problem, there is nothing they would be able to do about it, it is something that would have to be passed on to some developers somewhere.
As a result I haven't bothered with the new feature (although I did spend a few minutes hacking my registry to try and get it to run on my other drive--failure).
Oh, the US will land on Mars first. But the Chinese will land 100 cheap copies of our landing immediately thereafter! :)
Let's say you went to the mall, and you were looking for some Christmas gifts. You phone has a neat little feature called 'Instant Discount'. If you turn it on while shopping, it will feed you coupons and specials from the various stores as you walk around. So you pass a Banana Republic and see a coupon for 25$ off on a pair of pants.
You duck in, get some pants, save some cash. The store gets a sale they might not have had. Whoever runs the ad service gets a little piece of the sale. Everyone is happy.
I have no problem with this kind of feature, as long as you can turn it on or off.
I always wonder what we could have done with the hundreds of billions of dollars we have spent fighting in Iraq, if instead we spent it on alternative energy research. It always seemed like a better long term strategy to me.
Not that I agree, but the argument I hear most against your point of view is that the terrorist attacks will get much more serious if we do nothing about them. The war on terror is a kind of preemptive war in that respect, trying to prevent the day when the numbers flip and more people die in terrorist attacks than are killed in gun accidents etc.
Of course, that argument hinges on:
1) Our methods of fighting terrorism are effective. Personally I do not think they are, we still have millions of people in this country on expired visa's (9 of the 9/11 hi-jackers were here on expired visas. If the government just enforced EXISTING laws, 9/11 probably would not have happened).
2) The deaths due to terrorism left unchecked are going to increase dramatically. I am not convinced this is true, I am sure there will always be a certain amount of terrorism in the world, but I am not sure that we are really going to see the net loss of life dramatically rise to be on par with the huge volume of accidental deaths we already have.
The solution is simple, when an H1B is granted to a worker, the H1B should be valid for the entire length of the H1B, regardless of whether or not the worker is in the employ of the original sponsor company. This would have two effects:
1) Workers would be free to quit and find the true market value for their skills if they were being exploited or underpaid
2) Companies would not bring workers over on H1B visas unless they really could not find a particular expertise.
1) The elected representative was responsible for discerning the will of the people on each issue, and to represent their wishes as closely as possible. This would require a lot of polling and may end up charting a very random course across the issues.
2) The representative was elected on their merits as a leader and decision maker. They are expected to use their judgement when dealing with laws and do what they think is best for their constituents.
The primary problem either way is you can only get good government when you have an educated, involved electorate. Of course, even with an educated electorate, having a good grasp of the current issues can be a difficult and time consuming process. Which is why most people just pick a party that matches their world view best and vote down the line.
In fact a friend of mine is a pediatrician, and he told me that the best thing you can do for your kid is to put them into day care, because they be exposed to all kinds of germs at an early age which will help develop their immune system.
Or perhaps children who have autism or autism like tendancies have a greater affinity for TV, so they spend more time watching it?
Great, can you give me a call and tell me to SELL MY GODDAMNED STOCK IMMEDIATELY.
Any idea how the change to salinity would effect the rate at which new ice forms?
My theory (based on nothing but wild speculation) is that as soon as the artic ice melts enough to change sea levels, it will have also made a big impact on salinity levels. Less salinity means higher freezing temperature, so suddenly ice formation becomes easier, reabsorbing all that water that got melted in the first place.
Here is where I have a problem with all the hysteria surrounding 'online predators'. Just because some jerk-face is using his amazing typing skills to try and 'hook-up' with an minor online doesn't mean:
a) the minor is harmed
b) the minor would ever consider meeting up with said jerk-face
c) we have plenty of existing laws that will take care of such a in-person meeting, as remote as that possibility is.
No matter what we put into law, minors will be exposed to things that parents want to protect them from, whether it be on the internet or in real life. That is why minors need good parenting and education about reality and the dangers within.
I am not sure why you should feel guilty about predators lurking on your social-networking site. If you owned a Mall, would you feel guilty about dirty old men sitting in the food court ogling teenage girls as they stand in the line for Burger King? If those same old men try and pick up those girls?
I have the sneaking suspicion that it is mostly a bunch of creepy old men talking dirty to a bunch of other creepy old men. I find it really hard to believe some teenage girl is seriously engaging in these sorts of activities (I can imagine them doing it and thinking it is funny to rattle peoples cages, but seriously being pulled in to this kind of relationship?).
As to your specific question, 'how are they supposed to catch these people without the logs'.
No one has ever suggested that we record every minute of our voice communications over the phone or otherwise for use in these sorts of cases. Why would text be any different? I would support the ability to get a warrant to 'tap' irc or email, allowing law enforcement to log communication from the point of the warrant onwards, it seems like that would be pretty effective in building evidence against offenders while keeping the government out of the business of innocent citizens.
I vaguely remember at some point Louisiana recieved no federal highway funding because they refused to raise their drinking age to 21, I think eventually they gave in. Federal highway money alone is hundreds of millions of dollars to states each year.
The only solution I see is to reduce the size of the federal government and the amount of money it has available to interfere in the operations of the states.
1) Al Qaeda is the creation of Osama Bin Laden partly as a response to his desire to overthrow the Saudi government and install a theocracy (guess who would be in charge?). Since the US has troops in Saudi Arabia, it makes it difficult for him to overthrow the government, hence his agenda to get us to remove ourselves from the middle east. 2) There are plenty of bad people in Iraq who are not members of Al Qaeda, and need detention. We shouldn't be there at all, but that is a separate supbject. 3) I agree, war is a political tool to keep the sheep in-line 4) Al Qaeda is not a signatory to the Geneva convention and they are not a recognized nation, thus the Geneva convention does not apply.
VIC20 for me as well. I had a tape drive that took forever to load anything, but I loved it.
The next computer was a Tandy 1000, which allowed me to play king's quest. Ahh the good old days.
One of the reason's why Bin Laden wanted US troops out of Saudi Arabia has nothing to do with Islam and US imperialism, and everything to do with his ambition to overthrow the Saudi Government.
If you are looking for specific verifiable information (where is the bomb planted) and the person knows, torture will get that information from them. If you are looking for someone to provide a 'confession' or other non-verifiable information, torture is indeed worthless.
Either way, torture is too extreme to be of use and it is apt to be abused.