BTW, do you realize that the term "the best and the brightest" is ironic, right? It was the name of a book by David Halberstam explaining how the vaunted geniuses in the White House got us sucked into the Vietnam War. You may want to find another phrase to modestly describe yourself.
No, it's not ironic. Halbertstam didn't coin the term, so it is only ironic in his context, but not in this one, nor is it in most other contexts. Not only that, but you can't expect every foreigner to know the etymology of every English word or idiom. I don't know GP's credentials, but I honestly doubt you'd be what we call insightful for thinking that, so please don't talk down to him.
Of course not, but the only people we genuinely need are those who are tops in their fields. Otherwise we have plenty of home grown talent, and the H-1B program exists to suppress their wages. I assure you that most H-1B's are very far from the best in their fields.
No, it doesn't. The H1-B program specifically forbids it as a tool for lowering wages, and even has provisions permitting civil and criminal suits against those who do use it for that purpose. Most H1-B recipients get paid about the same rate as everybody else.
And before you confuse me with being an immigrant fresh off the boat and attacking me for similar reasons you attacked GP, my lineage in the US traces back to prior to the Revolutionary War (two ancestors fought in that war, and later one in the civil war) and I am in favor of H1-B while also staunchly opposed to illegal immigration. I get called racist all the time for the later (even though it has nothing to do with race, forgetting entirely that Mexico isn't a race and some Mexicans are whiter than I am) and somehow I'm just a fascist for supporting H1-B, regardless of the reasons I support it.
I favor things that strengthen the economy. H1-B definitely does that, and I work in one of those careers that's supposedly "threatened" by it, but I don't feel threatened, nor should I. Illegal immigration on the other hand typically creates an economic burden by stressing the welfare system (which we already spend over a trillion dollars a year on) and rarely adds to it. Whether or not somebody is from another country doesn't impact my opinion of them (if anything I may be slightly biased against a lot of fellow Americans because of how twisted their sense of entitlement is compared to the rest of the world.)
Not only that, but is this pay per view on that screen or would you e.g. buy a blu-ray for $4? I might actually start buying them if that is the case (well, technically I've already started as I bought T2 on blu-ray for $5; no fucking way I'll ever spend $10 or more on a single movie disc though, and no way in hell I'll ever pay more than 50 cents for just one view.)
The US almost always suffers from the early adopter problem. That is, we get the earlier versions of standards merely because we adopt them first, and by the time Europe gets around to adopting them the technology has improved based on what was learned in the US. Note similar things like T1 equivalent E1 being faster, and given that superseding technologies (such as optical carrier) are sold in multipliers of T1 speeds, the Europe versions tend to be speced higher.
Broad adoption of standards is like a marriage: You're stuck with it, flaws and all, and changing to another incompatible one requires a lot of pain and sacrifice, with there being more pain the longer the marriage has lasted. For another perspective on this, look how much of a PITA it was to switch to digital TV, which the US actually did faster than most of the world.
And yes, I know Europe also had magnetic stripe. But like the marriage analogy they didn't have it for as long nor was it adopted as broadly before chip and pin came along, likewise switching wasn't as difficult.
There is a silver lining to our system though:
One time I saw somebody commenting on how much he hates chip and pin because it was supposedly only being pushed so that banks can force you to pay for fraudulent charges, whereas magnetic stripe they supposedly can't. The article was referring to the US adoption, and so I told him that we already have laws that strictly limit liability for consumers that mostly just make banks liable, and they aren't going away. He then lambastes me that "the rest of the world" doesn't do it that way, therefore chip and pin is evil, and I'm a stupid ignorant American for thinking that, even though the article was specifically about the US where such a problem doesn't exist.
Why doesn't it exist? Well, because us backward Americans have been on magnetic stripe for so long, that it was born out of necessity. (Which by the way, looking in his profile revealed he lived in Europe, which isn't "the rest of the world" as other non-European countries do have similar laws to the US, for the same reasons.)
Don't you just need a simple ISO7816 card reader? I remember paying $10 for those 8 years ago back in my directv hacking days. The communication method is simple serial/RS232, of which there is a Bluetooth standard for (and it works rather well with Android phones too, I've used it for OBD2 serial communication to avoid needing a wire connected under the dash.)
PayPal Here could likewise do ISO7816 via a bluetooth dongle and ask for the pin on the device itself. I don't imagine the whole thing would cost the same if not less than the present dongle they have. (My bluetooth OBD2 dongle cost me $20, and apparently the manufacturer makes a profit on it.)
I think your bank is probably more tired of it than you are as by law they are required to eat most of the liability. The good banks give you zero liability (as in, you aren't ever responsible for losses.)
I'm curious how this will work for internet transactions though, unless they expect everybody to have smartcard readers (wouldn't bother me, but buying things via smartphone or tablet will need some revamping.)
Those batteries are easily going to run you an additional $80. Yes, they're that expensive. And you're probably over-pricing the keyboard and under-pricing the display. I mean what kind of display are you talking, one of those silly 1366x768 displays found in an acer vivotab? I think you'd pay a fair bit more for a display that brand new doesn't look like you let it rot in the sun for a week.
I think the difference in price would be close to $250 cheaper for one of these of equal spec, again given economies of scale.
Besides that, gaming laptops suck dick. I've owned one before, and I was ultimately disappointed as hell with it. They're so damn heavy that you never actually take them anywhere, and they burn through battery life so fast that you can't live without always carrying around a power brick. I've since then stuck with sub-$300 laptops; not only are they cheaper but they're actually portable.
Besides, what you said here applies very much to laptops:
On top of that you can't just look at the cost of buying it and consider that the total cost. After all, these units depreciate in value over time either because components wear out or because the models themselves become inferior to newer machines. Thus there is a rate of turn over to be expected. And that turn over means either an upgrade cycle followed by a full system replacement or just a full system replacement.
I imagine that since you are forgoing the display and the battery found on a laptop, you could theoretically get beefier hardware for the same price. Probably not right now since these are relatively new, but given time and economies of scale (that is, if enough people buy into these) you could see these easily outperform similarly priced laptops.
I think these could also get much better if we see legit GPUs on the CPU die (namely, intel would need to either seriously step up their GPU game, or outright integrate nvidia components on die, or nvidia get into the x86 business, or AMD combine high end GPU with high end CPU rather than cheap GPU with high end CPU) and the combined APU could be easily swapped out or otherwise upgraded without throwing out the rest of the machine.
Well it's an inverse relationship. The government, and by that I mean congress and the president, does have certain control and influence of USPS. And inversely, the MPAA/RIAA does have certain control and influence over congress and especially the president.
I would think so. Going 80 and rear ending somebody who is going 65 is a lot less deadly than t-boning somebody who isn't even traveling in the same direction at 45. Not only that, but there are no pedestrians on freeways.
It seemed to work fine until a natural disaster struck. On the other hand, roads have potholes and cracks in them year round, and some city governments really don't give a shit about ever fixing them.
The problem in the Sandy case is people are demanding that they rebuild a copper POTS network when nobody wants POTS service any more, and yet in these same areas not enough people are willing to pay for fiber to make it worth it to roll that out either.
Sure, in situations like what we have on slashdot, everybody wants fast broadband. Slashdot doesn't represent everybody though; a majority of meatspace has lawns to mow and aren't really interested in that internet thing unless they want to surf the playboy site or talk on facebook. Likewise, these people don't give a shit about fiber, and/or think that an HFC network or VDSL2 is fiber.
For some rather classic proof on this, call your ISP and ask about downgrading to a slower internet tier. They won't give you bandwidth numbers unless you ask for them; instead they'll jump right to some crap like "well you can download an mp3 in 30 seconds on this tier." And worse, they often also tell you that you need their fastest tier for gaming (which is full of crap, but most people don't know any better, including the people selling you the service who are just reading from a script.) You know why this is? Because 99% of those who they talk to don't even understand what a megabit is.
A lot of the pro-organic crowd doesn't seem to realize that the "evil megacorps" also provide what they buy as well, only they sell organic at a much higher profit margin. People who go out of their way to buy organic food are really quite uneducated and gullible, to be honest.
Ever cooked food before? Ever ground anything into a powder before doing something else to it before eating it? In either case, congratulations, it's processed. This also includes *any* kind of oil or milk alternative, which are very heavily processed extracts from different kinds of plants. *ANY* kind of soy that is actually edible is also heavily processed.
This whole article is bullshit. I first tried dieting by avoiding processed foods (namely, the kinds that tend to be higher in sodium, carbs, fats, etc) and it didn't work for shit. Know what did work? Just watching the caloric intake. Already lost 60 pounds over the last year, and it mainly just involved getting proper perspective on what an actual serving is. I still eat fast food, indeed all kinds of junk foods. I've also lowered my cholesterol and triglycerides in the process, while eating burgers, fries, and pizza no less. The trick is eating portion sizes that an actual human would eat instead of what a rhinoceros would eat.
A plain old hamburger at mcdonalds has about 360 calories. Contrary to popular belief, these hamburgers have been around since way before the obesity epidemic. Know what hasn't? Big triple stacked burgers globbed with mayo and ranch dressing. Another thing that hasn't is eating cereal in the large quantities most people do, which is actually primarily a result of the vegetarian movement (before that happened around the 60's, most people used to eat what we today call a "heavy" breakfast, e.g. eggs, bacon, which IS mostly protein and possibly small amounts of grits or toast.
Cereal (any variety) is mostly carbohydrates on the other hand and you also tend to crave higher amounts of calories worth of vegetarian breakfasts than you do traditional breakfasts; note how cereal bowls used to be tiny, and now they're about three times the size of what they started at mere decades ago.) The following is unscientific, but when I watch most people eat breakfast, I typically see most of them eat 750 calories in the cereal alone (that's typically 5 oz of cereal; it's uncommon to find cereals with less than 150 calories per 1 oz serving.) In fact to be honest, I'm pretty sure the whole vegetarian movement is bunk:
smiling and saying jesus wants them to win may not be something that's important to many blacks.
You really don't know any blacks then. A LOT of them are VERY Christian. I'm atheist myself, and I RARELY find a black person who is also atheist. It's really strange too, because you see atheists of pretty much every ethnicity, but almost never blacks.
Of course, that's my experience, yours may differ.
There is a certain current of Americans who hate France and all things related to French culture (I know, it's ironic, but stick with me...). Usually they tend to be tea party or hard core conservative types.
I'm none of the above. My thoughts about France are probably the same as the typical British person's are (if you're looking for a comparison, anyways.)
I'm also fairly certain that the French hate Americans more than I hate the French.
Sorry, but that 90% figure is sensationalist and just another way to say "look, we're getting screwed by the 1% more than we used to! Torches and pitchforks now!" and ultimately isn't useful. Why? Because practically nobody ever paid 90%, and furthermore the rich paid less of a burden then than they do today. Why? The tax system worked a lot differently then. It was the top marginal rate on an income above $300,000 for single, $400,000 for married. In order to effectively be paying 90%, they had to make over $2 million per year. Keep in mind that that kind of money was practically unheard of during that time.
Even if you adjust for inflation, you'll find less people making that amount then than there are today, mainly because all economies were much smaller, there was less money to be made, and overall there was much less wealth that even existed to begin with (and yes, the amount of "wealth" does increase as economies grow, which means there's more to go around.)
Bottom line: Today the rich DO pay a higher portion of taxes than they did then, even when adjusted for inflation. I'll let an investment broker do the explaining here:
In 1958, approximately two million filers (4.4% of all taxpayers) earned the $12,000 or more for married couples needed to face marginal rates as high as 30%. These Americans paid about 35% of all income taxes. And now? In 2010, 3.9 million taxpayers (2.75% of all taxpayers) were subjected to rates that were 33% or higher. These Americans—many of whom would hardly call themselves wealthy—reported an adjusted gross income of $209,000 or higher, and they paid 49.7% of all income taxes.
In contrast, the share of taxes paid by the bottom two-thirds of taxpayers has fallen dramatically over the same period. In 1958, these Americans accounted for 41.3% of adjusted gross income and paid 29% of all federal taxes. By 2010, their share of adjusted gross income had fallen to 22.5%. But their share of taxes paid fell far more dramatically—to 6.7%. The 77% decline represents the single biggest difference in the way the tax burden is shared in this country since the late 1950s.
So you see, even though the top marginal rate was higher back then, the rich paid LESS taxes than they do today. So stop with this Michael Moore bullshit (sorry, just that 90% figure gets thrown around so often, but it doesn't mean what the typical person thinks it would mean; as is typical in Michael Moore fashion.)
The problem is not over-production, it is that for some odd reason we see production as the goal of economy. Problem is, the goal is not production, it's selling.
No, the goal of an economy is to sort out who gets what scarce resources. That involves both producing the resources and selling them, though the selling part is optional. For example, if you build a computer, you didn't sell anything, meanwhile you have produced (the whole product is worth more than the sum of its parts, generally speaking. E.g. a graphics card is somewhat worthless unless it is inside of a working computer.)
The goal is cheaper, cheaper, CHEAPER! We have to produce cheaper. Cheaper than the competitor, and even if there is no competitor, we have to produce cheaper. Not to sell it cheaper, as the market theory would demand, but to increase the profit margin. But hell, even if we WERE selling it cheaper, it would not make a difference. Because whether you sell something for 100 or 50 does not matter if the prospective buyer has NOTHING.
That hasn't always been the case, and it still isn't in certain cases. Lean manufacturing is where the concept of cheaper being better largely comes from (it also simultaneously results in a more reliable product in most cases...there's the stereotype of "things just aren't made the way they used to be" but that largely isn't true...today we often throw out or sell perfectly good things, not because they break, but because we want to replace it with the latest and greatest. Concepts like six sigma and ISO9000 didn't exist in the 60's.)
Cheap simultaneously means the poor have greater purchasing power, which means they become weathier without the need for higher income.
However not all products are defined by how much bang for your buck they are, rather they are defined by their sticker price and strict distribution controls to prevent underselling. Such products are e.g. anything Apple sells, certain luxury cars, Bose speakers, certain high-fashion clothing, etc. Products like these are where "cheap" is generally thrown out the window. And you know what? This is the way things always have been for items that traditionally rich people buy. Once upon a time, for example, only really rich people had cars. This model started to end in the early 1800's, and it's what the Luddites were making a fit over: Now that the poor could have access to high quality goods, it suddenly made being an artisan not as lucrative as it once was. But, there still is room for luddites in niche markets, like paintings, pottery, etc.
It is a fact that the worlds poorest are now wealthier than they've ever been. That doesn't mean that they have more money, but things like world hunger have largely ended (still exists in a few pockets of areas, but that is mainly due to politics rather than economics in those cases) and quote-unquote "nice things" are much easier to afford. A common example I like to make is to compare the 80's with today...Remember how only the filthy rich could have 50" TVs, car phones, personal computers, and laser disc players? Now even the poor have much better TVs than the ones rich had in the 80's, cell phones that aren't tied to a car and have unlimited talk time for a flat rate, and blu-ray players, and I've seen more than one homeless person walking around with a working laptop. Used to be the homeless were lucky if they eat more than one meal in a day; now they're often overweight.
Today's poor make the rich of the 30's look like paupers, and the middle class of the 80's look like welfare recipients. I'm tired of this rhetoric of the occupy types who make a stink about being poor just because the goalpost for "poor" keeps moving higher and higher on some spreadsheet, meanwhile they ask for "fixes" that will just end up making things worse.
What do personal tax rates have to do with a corporation paying corporate taxes? There are no "75%" corporate taxes in France?
Technically true, and my point wasn't to say that corporations pay a 75% tax, rather my aim was to point out the biggest absurdity in their tax system in order to emphasize how bad it is. It is quite so bad that in fact that they are reversing course, which again I wanted to emphasize. As far as the 75% tax itself...the 75% figure cannot be taxed to individuals directly; I don't know exactly why, but apparently it's against their higher laws (constitution? I honestly don't know enough about French law.) What I do know is that it comes in the form of a payroll tax. The original law was written so that it was a regular personal income tax, but it was shot down in their court system, so it had to be rewritten to its current form, and the tax is paid before they even receive the money, or something to that effect.
In some countries, maybe there's some blame to be had for escaping taxes...but France is a whole other argument. I mean shit, 75% tax on the wealthiest has resulted in a lot of them just flat out leaving that country. It got so bad that their dear leader is now lobbying against his own tax plan; the same plan that put it there to begin with.
I'm sick and tired of this thought process that there must be exactly X portion of a given race, gender, etc in a particular job field or working at a particular company to match the demographic portions of the overall society.
The fact is, not everybody wants to do these jobs in equal numbers. I recall not long ago a slashdot article mentioning the science of why given races/ethnicities prefer sticking together instead of intermingling (I'd get the link, but I don't want to take the time to find it) and it has nothing to do with racism.
Ever notice how blacks have their own co-culture? They call anybody who doesn't quote-unquote "act" that way "acting white." Gays do something similar, and they refer to ones who don't fit into the mainstream gay culture as "straight acting."
Likewise, it would follow that different ethnic groups, and indeed different genders and orientations, would pick up their own co-culture. These co-cultural differences *WILL* influence career choices, believe it or not. Likewise, not the same number of Asians may be interested in the same career choices as Arabs, or pick your own favorites and compare. It therefore also follows that not the same percent of any given demographic is going to be interested in a particular job to match their representation of the overall population.
What you're effectively trying to do is force whites and blacks to be equally interested in rap and country music in equal numbers, and it will never work no matter how hard you try. So can we please end this affirmative action madness already?
Usually there are other indications along with these, such as scratches, abrasions, lacerations, etc, (RARELY bruising, as bruising usually occurs after the fact) that are normal when you struggle on the ground. In most of these pictures, you see no such indications. Typically that means the person was very quickly brought to the ground and cuffed as that picture was being taken. If that is the case, then it's very hard to argue that there was any kind of abuse. Abuse is when they beat on them either before or while they're on the ground, and you'd see marks show up rather quickly.
When I need to get an evil villain job done, at first I thought nuking it from orbit was the only way to be sure, but if you have one of these then you officially have more than one way to be sure. Convenient times we live in.
Slashdot Mirror
BTW, do you realize that the term "the best and the brightest" is ironic, right? It was the name of a book by David Halberstam explaining how the vaunted geniuses in the White House got us sucked into the Vietnam War. You may want to find another phrase to modestly describe yourself.
No, it's not ironic. Halbertstam didn't coin the term, so it is only ironic in his context, but not in this one, nor is it in most other contexts. Not only that, but you can't expect every foreigner to know the etymology of every English word or idiom. I don't know GP's credentials, but I honestly doubt you'd be what we call insightful for thinking that, so please don't talk down to him.
Of course not, but the only people we genuinely need are those who are tops in their fields. Otherwise we have plenty of home grown talent, and the H-1B program exists to suppress their wages. I assure you that most H-1B's are very far from the best in their fields.
No, it doesn't. The H1-B program specifically forbids it as a tool for lowering wages, and even has provisions permitting civil and criminal suits against those who do use it for that purpose. Most H1-B recipients get paid about the same rate as everybody else.
And before you confuse me with being an immigrant fresh off the boat and attacking me for similar reasons you attacked GP, my lineage in the US traces back to prior to the Revolutionary War (two ancestors fought in that war, and later one in the civil war) and I am in favor of H1-B while also staunchly opposed to illegal immigration. I get called racist all the time for the later (even though it has nothing to do with race, forgetting entirely that Mexico isn't a race and some Mexicans are whiter than I am) and somehow I'm just a fascist for supporting H1-B, regardless of the reasons I support it.
I favor things that strengthen the economy. H1-B definitely does that, and I work in one of those careers that's supposedly "threatened" by it, but I don't feel threatened, nor should I. Illegal immigration on the other hand typically creates an economic burden by stressing the welfare system (which we already spend over a trillion dollars a year on) and rarely adds to it. Whether or not somebody is from another country doesn't impact my opinion of them (if anything I may be slightly biased against a lot of fellow Americans because of how twisted their sense of entitlement is compared to the rest of the world.)
Not only that, but is this pay per view on that screen or would you e.g. buy a blu-ray for $4? I might actually start buying them if that is the case (well, technically I've already started as I bought T2 on blu-ray for $5; no fucking way I'll ever spend $10 or more on a single movie disc though, and no way in hell I'll ever pay more than 50 cents for just one view.)
The US almost always suffers from the early adopter problem. That is, we get the earlier versions of standards merely because we adopt them first, and by the time Europe gets around to adopting them the technology has improved based on what was learned in the US. Note similar things like T1 equivalent E1 being faster, and given that superseding technologies (such as optical carrier) are sold in multipliers of T1 speeds, the Europe versions tend to be speced higher.
Broad adoption of standards is like a marriage: You're stuck with it, flaws and all, and changing to another incompatible one requires a lot of pain and sacrifice, with there being more pain the longer the marriage has lasted. For another perspective on this, look how much of a PITA it was to switch to digital TV, which the US actually did faster than most of the world.
And yes, I know Europe also had magnetic stripe. But like the marriage analogy they didn't have it for as long nor was it adopted as broadly before chip and pin came along, likewise switching wasn't as difficult.
There is a silver lining to our system though:
One time I saw somebody commenting on how much he hates chip and pin because it was supposedly only being pushed so that banks can force you to pay for fraudulent charges, whereas magnetic stripe they supposedly can't. The article was referring to the US adoption, and so I told him that we already have laws that strictly limit liability for consumers that mostly just make banks liable, and they aren't going away. He then lambastes me that "the rest of the world" doesn't do it that way, therefore chip and pin is evil, and I'm a stupid ignorant American for thinking that, even though the article was specifically about the US where such a problem doesn't exist.
Why doesn't it exist? Well, because us backward Americans have been on magnetic stripe for so long, that it was born out of necessity. (Which by the way, looking in his profile revealed he lived in Europe, which isn't "the rest of the world" as other non-European countries do have similar laws to the US, for the same reasons.)
Don't you just need a simple ISO7816 card reader? I remember paying $10 for those 8 years ago back in my directv hacking days. The communication method is simple serial/RS232, of which there is a Bluetooth standard for (and it works rather well with Android phones too, I've used it for OBD2 serial communication to avoid needing a wire connected under the dash.)
PayPal Here could likewise do ISO7816 via a bluetooth dongle and ask for the pin on the device itself. I don't imagine the whole thing would cost the same if not less than the present dongle they have. (My bluetooth OBD2 dongle cost me $20, and apparently the manufacturer makes a profit on it.)
I think your bank is probably more tired of it than you are as by law they are required to eat most of the liability. The good banks give you zero liability (as in, you aren't ever responsible for losses.)
I'm curious how this will work for internet transactions though, unless they expect everybody to have smartcard readers (wouldn't bother me, but buying things via smartphone or tablet will need some revamping.)
I'm wondering if Occulus could help cure somehow managing to have a duplicate post within the same posting.
Those batteries are easily going to run you an additional $80. Yes, they're that expensive. And you're probably over-pricing the keyboard and under-pricing the display. I mean what kind of display are you talking, one of those silly 1366x768 displays found in an acer vivotab? I think you'd pay a fair bit more for a display that brand new doesn't look like you let it rot in the sun for a week.
I think the difference in price would be close to $250 cheaper for one of these of equal spec, again given economies of scale.
Besides that, gaming laptops suck dick. I've owned one before, and I was ultimately disappointed as hell with it. They're so damn heavy that you never actually take them anywhere, and they burn through battery life so fast that you can't live without always carrying around a power brick. I've since then stuck with sub-$300 laptops; not only are they cheaper but they're actually portable.
Besides, what you said here applies very much to laptops:
On top of that you can't just look at the cost of buying it and consider that the total cost. After all, these units depreciate in value over time either because components wear out or because the models themselves become inferior to newer machines. Thus there is a rate of turn over to be expected. And that turn over means either an upgrade cycle followed by a full system replacement or just a full system replacement.
I imagine that since you are forgoing the display and the battery found on a laptop, you could theoretically get beefier hardware for the same price. Probably not right now since these are relatively new, but given time and economies of scale (that is, if enough people buy into these) you could see these easily outperform similarly priced laptops.
I think these could also get much better if we see legit GPUs on the CPU die (namely, intel would need to either seriously step up their GPU game, or outright integrate nvidia components on die, or nvidia get into the x86 business, or AMD combine high end GPU with high end CPU rather than cheap GPU with high end CPU) and the combined APU could be easily swapped out or otherwise upgraded without throwing out the rest of the machine.
Well it's an inverse relationship. The government, and by that I mean congress and the president, does have certain control and influence of USPS. And inversely, the MPAA/RIAA does have certain control and influence over congress and especially the president.
http://boingboing.net/2012/01/...
And what use would a bluetooth headset be if your phone is jammed?
I would think so. Going 80 and rear ending somebody who is going 65 is a lot less deadly than t-boning somebody who isn't even traveling in the same direction at 45. Not only that, but there are no pedestrians on freeways.
It seemed to work fine until a natural disaster struck. On the other hand, roads have potholes and cracks in them year round, and some city governments really don't give a shit about ever fixing them.
The problem in the Sandy case is people are demanding that they rebuild a copper POTS network when nobody wants POTS service any more, and yet in these same areas not enough people are willing to pay for fiber to make it worth it to roll that out either.
Sure, in situations like what we have on slashdot, everybody wants fast broadband. Slashdot doesn't represent everybody though; a majority of meatspace has lawns to mow and aren't really interested in that internet thing unless they want to surf the playboy site or talk on facebook. Likewise, these people don't give a shit about fiber, and/or think that an HFC network or VDSL2 is fiber.
For some rather classic proof on this, call your ISP and ask about downgrading to a slower internet tier. They won't give you bandwidth numbers unless you ask for them; instead they'll jump right to some crap like "well you can download an mp3 in 30 seconds on this tier." And worse, they often also tell you that you need their fastest tier for gaming (which is full of crap, but most people don't know any better, including the people selling you the service who are just reading from a script.) You know why this is? Because 99% of those who they talk to don't even understand what a megabit is.
A lot of the pro-organic crowd doesn't seem to realize that the "evil megacorps" also provide what they buy as well, only they sell organic at a much higher profit margin. People who go out of their way to buy organic food are really quite uneducated and gullible, to be honest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Ever cooked food before? Ever ground anything into a powder before doing something else to it before eating it? In either case, congratulations, it's processed. This also includes *any* kind of oil or milk alternative, which are very heavily processed extracts from different kinds of plants. *ANY* kind of soy that is actually edible is also heavily processed.
This whole article is bullshit. I first tried dieting by avoiding processed foods (namely, the kinds that tend to be higher in sodium, carbs, fats, etc) and it didn't work for shit. Know what did work? Just watching the caloric intake. Already lost 60 pounds over the last year, and it mainly just involved getting proper perspective on what an actual serving is. I still eat fast food, indeed all kinds of junk foods. I've also lowered my cholesterol and triglycerides in the process, while eating burgers, fries, and pizza no less. The trick is eating portion sizes that an actual human would eat instead of what a rhinoceros would eat.
A plain old hamburger at mcdonalds has about 360 calories. Contrary to popular belief, these hamburgers have been around since way before the obesity epidemic. Know what hasn't? Big triple stacked burgers globbed with mayo and ranch dressing. Another thing that hasn't is eating cereal in the large quantities most people do, which is actually primarily a result of the vegetarian movement (before that happened around the 60's, most people used to eat what we today call a "heavy" breakfast, e.g. eggs, bacon, which IS mostly protein and possibly small amounts of grits or toast.
Cereal (any variety) is mostly carbohydrates on the other hand and you also tend to crave higher amounts of calories worth of vegetarian breakfasts than you do traditional breakfasts; note how cereal bowls used to be tiny, and now they're about three times the size of what they started at mere decades ago.) The following is unscientific, but when I watch most people eat breakfast, I typically see most of them eat 750 calories in the cereal alone (that's typically 5 oz of cereal; it's uncommon to find cereals with less than 150 calories per 1 oz serving.) In fact to be honest, I'm pretty sure the whole vegetarian movement is bunk:
http://www.cholesterol-and-hea...
smiling and saying jesus wants them to win may not be something that's important to many blacks.
You really don't know any blacks then. A LOT of them are VERY Christian. I'm atheist myself, and I RARELY find a black person who is also atheist. It's really strange too, because you see atheists of pretty much every ethnicity, but almost never blacks.
Of course, that's my experience, yours may differ.
There is a certain current of Americans who hate France and all things related to French culture (I know, it's ironic, but stick with me...). Usually they tend to be tea party or hard core conservative types.
I'm none of the above. My thoughts about France are probably the same as the typical British person's are (if you're looking for a comparison, anyways.)
I'm also fairly certain that the French hate Americans more than I hate the French.
Sorry, but that 90% figure is sensationalist and just another way to say "look, we're getting screwed by the 1% more than we used to! Torches and pitchforks now!" and ultimately isn't useful. Why? Because practically nobody ever paid 90%, and furthermore the rich paid less of a burden then than they do today. Why? The tax system worked a lot differently then. It was the top marginal rate on an income above $300,000 for single, $400,000 for married. In order to effectively be paying 90%, they had to make over $2 million per year. Keep in mind that that kind of money was practically unheard of during that time.
Even if you adjust for inflation, you'll find less people making that amount then than there are today, mainly because all economies were much smaller, there was less money to be made, and overall there was much less wealth that even existed to begin with (and yes, the amount of "wealth" does increase as economies grow, which means there's more to go around.)
Bottom line: Today the rich DO pay a higher portion of taxes than they did then, even when adjusted for inflation. I'll let an investment broker do the explaining here:
In 1958, approximately two million filers (4.4% of all taxpayers) earned the $12,000 or more for married couples needed to face marginal rates as high as 30%. These Americans paid about 35% of all income taxes. And now? In 2010, 3.9 million taxpayers (2.75% of all taxpayers) were subjected to rates that were 33% or higher. These Americans—many of whom would hardly call themselves wealthy—reported an adjusted gross income of $209,000 or higher, and they paid 49.7% of all income taxes.
In contrast, the share of taxes paid by the bottom two-thirds of taxpayers has fallen dramatically over the same period. In 1958, these Americans accounted for 41.3% of adjusted gross income and paid 29% of all federal taxes. By 2010, their share of adjusted gross income had fallen to 22.5%. But their share of taxes paid fell far more dramatically—to 6.7%. The 77% decline represents the single biggest difference in the way the tax burden is shared in this country since the late 1950s.
http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
So you see, even though the top marginal rate was higher back then, the rich paid LESS taxes than they do today. So stop with this Michael Moore bullshit (sorry, just that 90% figure gets thrown around so often, but it doesn't mean what the typical person thinks it would mean; as is typical in Michael Moore fashion.)
Have a nice day.
The problem is not over-production, it is that for some odd reason we see production as the goal of economy. Problem is, the goal is not production, it's selling.
No, the goal of an economy is to sort out who gets what scarce resources. That involves both producing the resources and selling them, though the selling part is optional. For example, if you build a computer, you didn't sell anything, meanwhile you have produced (the whole product is worth more than the sum of its parts, generally speaking. E.g. a graphics card is somewhat worthless unless it is inside of a working computer.)
The goal is cheaper, cheaper, CHEAPER! We have to produce cheaper. Cheaper than the competitor, and even if there is no competitor, we have to produce cheaper. Not to sell it cheaper, as the market theory would demand, but to increase the profit margin. But hell, even if we WERE selling it cheaper, it would not make a difference. Because whether you sell something for 100 or 50 does not matter if the prospective buyer has NOTHING.
That hasn't always been the case, and it still isn't in certain cases. Lean manufacturing is where the concept of cheaper being better largely comes from (it also simultaneously results in a more reliable product in most cases...there's the stereotype of "things just aren't made the way they used to be" but that largely isn't true...today we often throw out or sell perfectly good things, not because they break, but because we want to replace it with the latest and greatest. Concepts like six sigma and ISO9000 didn't exist in the 60's.)
Cheap simultaneously means the poor have greater purchasing power, which means they become weathier without the need for higher income.
However not all products are defined by how much bang for your buck they are, rather they are defined by their sticker price and strict distribution controls to prevent underselling. Such products are e.g. anything Apple sells, certain luxury cars, Bose speakers, certain high-fashion clothing, etc. Products like these are where "cheap" is generally thrown out the window. And you know what? This is the way things always have been for items that traditionally rich people buy. Once upon a time, for example, only really rich people had cars. This model started to end in the early 1800's, and it's what the Luddites were making a fit over: Now that the poor could have access to high quality goods, it suddenly made being an artisan not as lucrative as it once was. But, there still is room for luddites in niche markets, like paintings, pottery, etc.
It is a fact that the worlds poorest are now wealthier than they've ever been. That doesn't mean that they have more money, but things like world hunger have largely ended (still exists in a few pockets of areas, but that is mainly due to politics rather than economics in those cases) and quote-unquote "nice things" are much easier to afford. A common example I like to make is to compare the 80's with today...Remember how only the filthy rich could have 50" TVs, car phones, personal computers, and laser disc players? Now even the poor have much better TVs than the ones rich had in the 80's, cell phones that aren't tied to a car and have unlimited talk time for a flat rate, and blu-ray players, and I've seen more than one homeless person walking around with a working laptop. Used to be the homeless were lucky if they eat more than one meal in a day; now they're often overweight.
Today's poor make the rich of the 30's look like paupers, and the middle class of the 80's look like welfare recipients. I'm tired of this rhetoric of the occupy types who make a stink about being poor just because the goalpost for "poor" keeps moving higher and higher on some spreadsheet, meanwhile they ask for "fixes" that will just end up making things worse.
What do personal tax rates have to do with a corporation paying corporate taxes? There are no "75%" corporate taxes in France?
Technically true, and my point wasn't to say that corporations pay a 75% tax, rather my aim was to point out the biggest absurdity in their tax system in order to emphasize how bad it is. It is quite so bad that in fact that they are reversing course, which again I wanted to emphasize. As far as the 75% tax itself...the 75% figure cannot be taxed to individuals directly; I don't know exactly why, but apparently it's against their higher laws (constitution? I honestly don't know enough about French law.) What I do know is that it comes in the form of a payroll tax. The original law was written so that it was a regular personal income tax, but it was shot down in their court system, so it had to be rewritten to its current form, and the tax is paid before they even receive the money, or something to that effect.
The biggest waste is that once ET finally makes it home, it turns out he's not really wanted there anyways:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
In some countries, maybe there's some blame to be had for escaping taxes...but France is a whole other argument. I mean shit, 75% tax on the wealthiest has resulted in a lot of them just flat out leaving that country. It got so bad that their dear leader is now lobbying against his own tax plan; the same plan that put it there to begin with.
Here's a good read on the subject:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/je...
Mod parent up, please.
I'm sick and tired of this thought process that there must be exactly X portion of a given race, gender, etc in a particular job field or working at a particular company to match the demographic portions of the overall society.
The fact is, not everybody wants to do these jobs in equal numbers. I recall not long ago a slashdot article mentioning the science of why given races/ethnicities prefer sticking together instead of intermingling (I'd get the link, but I don't want to take the time to find it) and it has nothing to do with racism.
Ever notice how blacks have their own co-culture? They call anybody who doesn't quote-unquote "act" that way "acting white." Gays do something similar, and they refer to ones who don't fit into the mainstream gay culture as "straight acting."
Likewise, it would follow that different ethnic groups, and indeed different genders and orientations, would pick up their own co-culture. These co-cultural differences *WILL* influence career choices, believe it or not. Likewise, not the same number of Asians may be interested in the same career choices as Arabs, or pick your own favorites and compare. It therefore also follows that not the same percent of any given demographic is going to be interested in a particular job to match their representation of the overall population.
What you're effectively trying to do is force whites and blacks to be equally interested in rap and country music in equal numbers, and it will never work no matter how hard you try. So can we please end this affirmative action madness already?
I guess this means my prime subscription will never include snu-snu.
Usually there are other indications along with these, such as scratches, abrasions, lacerations, etc, (RARELY bruising, as bruising usually occurs after the fact) that are normal when you struggle on the ground. In most of these pictures, you see no such indications. Typically that means the person was very quickly brought to the ground and cuffed as that picture was being taken. If that is the case, then it's very hard to argue that there was any kind of abuse. Abuse is when they beat on them either before or while they're on the ground, and you'd see marks show up rather quickly.
When I need to get an evil villain job done, at first I thought nuking it from orbit was the only way to be sure, but if you have one of these then you officially have more than one way to be sure. Convenient times we live in.