I don't think he's trying to attack it, rather he's explaining the shortcomings. For the most part I agree - the thing I hate the most about using linux is the entire X infrastructure. Everything else about linux is done beautifully.
Most of what I do therefore is at the command line. When I make changes to my servers, I almost never do anything involving X, even if doing so would be more efficient.
Pretty much the only reason I don't virtualize windows and use another host OS is due to games not virtualizing well. However everything else can virtualize just fine.
The Silk Road has been rather successful, and to this date, nobody has been kidnapped and beheaded, hanged, or robbed during any drug transactions. Plus, it seems that the quality of the substances made is much higher than those found on the street, and less likely to kill you.
Here voting is a responsibility and not a priviledge, so we don't even stop "convicted felons" from voting. That changes things such that a leader of the country that was hated by many could still go for a jog in the same public park every morning and expect nothing worse than shouted insults and a comedy team with a plastic battleaxe asking for a hug. At worst in three years a disgruntled person gets to put the name last, or turn in a paper covered in obscenities, blank, or just walk out without putting it in the box, plus if they don't get voted out their own side will knife a lame duck leader in the back (so no second term Nixon, Reagan or Bush waiting for the waste of space to go when even their own party wants them gone).
Actually I thought Reagan did pretty good. The voters did too, apparently, because in his second term he won by a huge landslide of nearly 60% of the popular vote and 98% of the electoral vote. In his first election, he did even better. That isn't a party thing, that is an overwhelming majority thing. They called him the great communicator, a title I think is well earned. I wasn't alive through all of his presidency, so I can't say I experienced it for myself, but when I look at both the numbers and the results, it makes sense.
Besides, a lot of the socialists/communists out there despise him for pushing the country as a whole away from that direction (some who call themselves left say his presidency just resulted in a general shift to the right - but I don't believe in left vs right politics, I believe there are multiple dimensions that are too often ignored because of that shitty pigeonhole.) (See what I did there?)
Voting for me was just an in and out thing. In fact, in the last election I didn't go anywhere, I just filled out a ballot and mailed it in sealed and signed. (I only voted for two people and one referendum, but still that is what I voted for.)
The incidents you are speaking of were rather limited but were in high profile districts that attracted media attention. No one entity controls the polling system in the US, different jurisdictions have their own balloting policies. In my state, there's a connect the line ballot which is counted very fast (takes under a second to scan the whole ballot - which is impressive because the ballot is very large, and it's rather neat watching how fast it goes through your document) and leaves a paper trail. In other states, individual counties make those decisions, and some counties make poor ones.
Because there were a lot of people who opposed him, take for example those two detectives who were out to arrest him at every turn, which he left alone.
This is why I don't like people like you or anonymous. You just assume scorched earth mowing down everybody who you disagree with is the answer to not getting your way.
My personal experiences reflect the fact that I am responsible with my money. I found out recently when applying for a bond that my credit score is 842. Here's why: I borrow, but pay back what I owe before interest is due. Novel concept, isn't it? Raises your creditworthiness, plus you get all of the perks of borrowing (e.g. hedging, fraud protection - and in the case of mastercard 1% rebates, free extended warranties, 60 day price guarantees.)
Contrast to that of somebody who does the opposite (borrowing while making the minimum payment or being late all the time) is going to get gouged. And it makes sense too, people like that are a huge risk to loan money to. I've loaned out my money before, interest free too, but I never loan it to somebody who I believe to be the slightest risk. For example, my friend who I loaned a very large sum of money to I am confident will pay me back, but I would never loan to my brother in law who is a model example of those who get gouged, namely because he owes everybody (including his parents) in the tens of thousands of dollars, with no plans to ever pay them back. He almost lost his car to one of those title loan agencies and financed his house recently at a 14% interest rate.
My personal experience could be the average if people would simply be more responsible with their borrowing, but that's about as hard as asking most people to think before they vote.
Protectionism is every bit of a "corporate" profit thing as it is a "union profit" thing. In fact, unions pushed for that much harder than any corporation did. That whole thing was all about saving jobs, and it had the result of taking away jobs elsewhere for the reason you just stated. They did the same with the sugar tariffs. Or this:
Hey look at that, we're paying our tax dollars to brazilian farmers for giving us...nothing...
Actually though we are still the top manufacturing country in the world, just we could be doing a lot better if there weren't any tariffs. It's a bit of a shock when you tell people this when they are already under the assumption that the US doesn't manufacture anything any more. China makes a lot of junk like t-shirts and iphones. We make earth movers and jumbo jets.
Something you always need to take into consideration though is that labor rates figure into the cost of *everything* you buy. If you pay higher wages, then you are going to pay higher prices. If you pay higher prices, then how does having a higher minimum wage benefit you? It's just a wash. And we're not just talking imported goods either, look at food prices. I've done research on Australia because I'm looking at taking up a job there. Personally I don't take politics into consideration when I'm moving unless it affects my livelihood. If I always did that, hell I'd have nowhere to go.
The only political thing I'd have an issue with there is if I ever became a national, I'd be forced to vote. As it currently is, I think voting is mostly just a waste of time as I've found most voters don't actually give a shit about what they are voting for, they just want to see their side win as if it was a football game. The signal to noise is so bad that trying to get your message across is an act in futility, so there's really no point. I'd imagine that forcing them to vote probably amplifies the problem, but I have little experience with the average Australian voter.
They haven't failed in anything. There is no central authority on bitcoins, so I'm not sure what or who they would regulate. That would be like saying the government could regulate the tor network. If they had that much power, the Silk Road would be gone already.
I'm pretty sure you only pay capital gains upon those gains actually being realized. For example, if you own a house that suddenly doubles in value, you aren't expected to pay any taxes* on those gains until you sell it. Otherwise they could very well be taxing you for money that you never earned and possibly don't even have. I don't think the government would fare too well if they booted you out of your house because you haven't paid them on the income that you never received.
You both are confusing libertarianism with anarchy.
Also, what one considers ethical another may not. For example, if PETA ruled the united states, I would be considered a serial murderer, or at least an accessory to it. In Iran, it is expected to execute your daughter to restore your family honor if she has sex before marriage.
In the places you list, these people don't value the same things we do.
Who wants to have control over this are people like Chuck Schumer. They get off on telling people what to do. If some dumbass wants to get high on weed, Chuck Schumer wants to put him in jail. Chuck Schumer also foolishly asked the DOJ to seize the Silk Road's domain name. Chuck Schumer and his kind don't like bitcoin because they can't control it. They can and do control mastercard, visa, and paypal. If the US government doesn't like you enough, they'll make sure nobody in the world can pay money to you electronically, even if they aren't trading in US currency.
As for banks? Banks will always be around, period. Besides, I'd rather banks exist than not. In fact, I know this is going to be controversial, but those scam check advance and title loan agencies should be around too. Why? When stupid people get desperate, they make stupid moves, which includes stupid borrowing choices. It's either they go to these companies, or they go to loan sharks. Loan sharks answer to nobody but themselves, and if these stupid people borrow from them, things get much worse. Unlike loan sharks, scam companies can't rough up your wife, break your legs, or shoot up your house. They don't fund organized crime, and it actually is possible to pay them off. When you think you've paid off a loan shark, chances are he says you were a minute too late to the meeting and you owe him double interest. Repeat forever. Loan sharks are NOT subject to usury laws.
Not only that, but regular people make money off of banks. I do it all the time. If you ever need to start a business, often times banks are the best source of quick capital. Need to buy a home? Same thing. I rather like it that banks exist.
In any case, it doesn't help anything when Anonymous and Lulzsec make threats. Personally I liked the Guy Fawkes image that V put out, but Anonymous doesn't fit it at all, in fact they ruin it if anything. Would V espouse silencing his opposition? That's what anonymous does when they DDoS. It seemed to me that V wanted to bring justice and empower the oppressed, if not he would have killed or at least silenced those detectives who were actively working against him, yet he didn't do either.
Anonymous and Lulzsec are nothing like that. They've attacked people who aren't oppressing anybody. They attack people who they simply have a disagreement with. Justice my ass.
Who are these people with no money? Outside of say north korea or some other extremely socialist country, these people don't exist.
We complain about how abhorrent the working conditions in china are, yet nobody actually looks at what is going on there. The media makes a big stink about the suicides of workers, but the suicide rate is about the same there as anywhere else.
Personally, I'm comfortable with how I live. Yet somebody from France would think that it's abhorrent to make less than $14 an hour and work more than 35 hours a week, while only taking 2 weeks out of the year on vacation. Australians have $15 minimum wage, but look at how expensive shit there is. What good does it do to have double the minimum wage if everything costs twice as much anyways? What are you gaining, exactly?
The economy will find an equilibrium somewhere and expenses will match wages, no matter how high you set the floor. People don't realize this and scream bloody murder when they see it happen. But WHY? In China, one USD will take you a LOT further than it will here. So yeah, they CAN live comfortably off of what we consider abhorrent wages.
I might sound like a doomsayer with the above, but I'm not doing any such thing. I already know I'll survive whatever comes, and so will most people. The problem is going to be the activists who bust out the guillotines like in the French revolution because the can't charge their ipad.
Hmm...right now? My mortgage is $450, my phone bill is $30, my internet connection is $32, water/trash $90, electricity $200, food $200, car insurance $70, maybe $100 a month on gas if I drive around a lot that month (typically I do less than that.) If we want to account for other misc stuff, round that up to $1300. $1300 is on a bad month, so yeah, 1920 is plenty, in fact I could retire on that.
We all like New York, but not all of us live there. I live in a decent looking neighborhood in the suburbs of the Phoenix area. The cost of living index of Phoenix is 99, which means we're within the margin of error of the average of the US as a whole, so it isn't as if I'm living in the boondocks. As for medicine...when you're on disability, you get medicare, so the cost is zero.
Well let's suppose for a minute that we are in a feudal society, as is a frequently expressed opinion on slashdot. What do we do to change it? More unions? End corporate profits? Force the wealthy to give up everything they have? We've been heading in that direction for the last 30 years, and while things seem to be improving, what we're actually doing is building a house of cards based on the assumption that future generations will continue to grow forever, which so far isn't holding true at all. The countries who are moving in this direction the most are faring the worst.
Look at France, virtually nobody wants to do business with them in the global economy because they are unprofitable, so their unemployment is through the roof. They are currently in the process of taxing all of the wealthy out of there, which was intended to bring increased revenue and more jobs, only it resulted in the exact opposite. The US isn't all peachy either; the number of people on disability has risen 50% faster than the growth of the population. Why acquire wealth and work for a living when the government will just hand you dinner on a silver platter? I shouldn't need to tell you that that isn't going to last.
People complain about the debt situation in the US really badly all the time. However the US isn't alone, and in fact isn't the worst. Most of Europe has a much higher dept to GDP ratio. What we're doing right now is living off of the backs of future generations, meanwhile those who call it a feudal society don't realize at all how good we have it. When this house of cards falls apart (WHEN, not IF) you're going to wish like hell that we keep what we have right now, as unsustainable as it is.
I thought that the sequester would be a good thing, because it would show the populace that the politicians were lying their asses off about how the world would end tomorrow if they didn't get to continue increasing the budget at a rate beyond economic growth forever. Oh, the horror of going back to the 2010 budget (after inflation considered). And for the most part, it showed the populace exactly that the politicians were full of shit. That dumbass Arne Duncan was rattling on about how teachers were already being fired...and when he was called out on it, he did the typical politician weaseling. Meanwhile, the Republicans and the Democrats both went ahead and increased the budget anyways (it is currently pending senate approval).
Greece and Cyprus are just the face of things to come. The only thing with them is that they are just ahead of the game; they've already taken steps to end this so called feudalism that everybody else is trying to do. It is inevitable. There WILL be another great depression, my guess is sometime within the next 30 years.
BTW, when I say we shouldn't punish the wealthy, people like you work under the false pretense that I assume that one day I'll be wealthy as well. I don't by any stretch. What I'm against is getting your pitch forks and torches against what you perceive as the boogeyman. If you make more than $42,000 USD per year, regardless of what country you live in, you are the 1% of the worlds' wealthiest. Yet if it ever came to the international occupy wall street banging on your door asking where's their money, you'd be wondering what the hell you ever did to deserve that.
Contrary to the typical socialist viewpoint, those wealthier do deliver wealth lower down, only it doesn't come in the form of money. Say for example people working at Intel or Google, who design devices on a daily basis. Out of their own self interest, they try to make these as cheap as possible so that they can sell as many as possible. As a result, those with less money can afford to have these nice things. When they can have these nice things, their wealth increases. Note that money is not wealth. Money buys wealth. By making material goods cheaper, you increase the leverage at which money converts to wealth. There's your trickle down economics. But those who believe we are living in a feudal society are opposed to that. People like that believe that when something is too cheap, that means somebody wasn't paid enough to do it. Somehow the old days of the 1920's when most of the population worked on farms were so much better.
In a developed economy, probably, however in the intended markets that presents a problem. The difference in cost between a 1024x786 LCD vs 1366x786 isn't that much either, but they want to save that extra bit of cash. Due to hardware requirements alone, an Android device would be so much more profitable that there's simply no reason to stick with W8 if you are so concerned about cost that you have to drop to a low resolution display.
I'm trying to think of what you'd actually do with it though. In spite of Balmer's "developers developers developers" rain dance, it never did end up raining.
In spite of what their PR department says, MS has a rather hostile attitude towards developers.
It especially shows in RT due to the lack of apps that actually do anything that a web browser can't already do better. In fact a lot of those apps are basically just nothing other than a walled garden IE instance of a link to an already existing web page.
I think if microsoft wants to hit this market segment, they should scale up WP8 rather than try to scale down W8. The hardware requirements for W8 are just stupid for anything other than what we classically consider a PC.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think he's trying to attack it, rather he's explaining the shortcomings. For the most part I agree - the thing I hate the most about using linux is the entire X infrastructure. Everything else about linux is done beautifully.
Most of what I do therefore is at the command line. When I make changes to my servers, I almost never do anything involving X, even if doing so would be more efficient.
How come something like ksplice hasn't gone mainstream to solve that last problem?
Pretty much the only reason I don't virtualize windows and use another host OS is due to games not virtualizing well. However everything else can virtualize just fine.
The Silk Road has been rather successful, and to this date, nobody has been kidnapped and beheaded, hanged, or robbed during any drug transactions. Plus, it seems that the quality of the substances made is much higher than those found on the street, and less likely to kill you.
Here voting is a responsibility and not a priviledge, so we don't even stop "convicted felons" from voting. That changes things such that a leader of the country that was hated by many could still go for a jog in the same public park every morning and expect nothing worse than shouted insults and a comedy team with a plastic battleaxe asking for a hug. At worst in three years a disgruntled person gets to put the name last, or turn in a paper covered in obscenities, blank, or just walk out without putting it in the box, plus if they don't get voted out their own side will knife a lame duck leader in the back (so no second term Nixon, Reagan or Bush waiting for the waste of space to go when even their own party wants them gone).
Actually I thought Reagan did pretty good. The voters did too, apparently, because in his second term he won by a huge landslide of nearly 60% of the popular vote and 98% of the electoral vote. In his first election, he did even better. That isn't a party thing, that is an overwhelming majority thing. They called him the great communicator, a title I think is well earned. I wasn't alive through all of his presidency, so I can't say I experienced it for myself, but when I look at both the numbers and the results, it makes sense.
Besides, a lot of the socialists/communists out there despise him for pushing the country as a whole away from that direction (some who call themselves left say his presidency just resulted in a general shift to the right - but I don't believe in left vs right politics, I believe there are multiple dimensions that are too often ignored because of that shitty pigeonhole.) (See what I did there?)
Voting for me was just an in and out thing. In fact, in the last election I didn't go anywhere, I just filled out a ballot and mailed it in sealed and signed. (I only voted for two people and one referendum, but still that is what I voted for.)
The incidents you are speaking of were rather limited but were in high profile districts that attracted media attention. No one entity controls the polling system in the US, different jurisdictions have their own balloting policies. In my state, there's a connect the line ballot which is counted very fast (takes under a second to scan the whole ballot - which is impressive because the ballot is very large, and it's rather neat watching how fast it goes through your document) and leaves a paper trail. In other states, individual counties make those decisions, and some counties make poor ones.
Because there were a lot of people who opposed him, take for example those two detectives who were out to arrest him at every turn, which he left alone.
This is why I don't like people like you or anonymous. You just assume scorched earth mowing down everybody who you disagree with is the answer to not getting your way.
My personal experiences reflect the fact that I am responsible with my money. I found out recently when applying for a bond that my credit score is 842. Here's why: I borrow, but pay back what I owe before interest is due. Novel concept, isn't it? Raises your creditworthiness, plus you get all of the perks of borrowing (e.g. hedging, fraud protection - and in the case of mastercard 1% rebates, free extended warranties, 60 day price guarantees.)
Contrast to that of somebody who does the opposite (borrowing while making the minimum payment or being late all the time) is going to get gouged. And it makes sense too, people like that are a huge risk to loan money to. I've loaned out my money before, interest free too, but I never loan it to somebody who I believe to be the slightest risk. For example, my friend who I loaned a very large sum of money to I am confident will pay me back, but I would never loan to my brother in law who is a model example of those who get gouged, namely because he owes everybody (including his parents) in the tens of thousands of dollars, with no plans to ever pay them back. He almost lost his car to one of those title loan agencies and financed his house recently at a 14% interest rate.
My personal experience could be the average if people would simply be more responsible with their borrowing, but that's about as hard as asking most people to think before they vote.
Protectionism is every bit of a "corporate" profit thing as it is a "union profit" thing. In fact, unions pushed for that much harder than any corporation did. That whole thing was all about saving jobs, and it had the result of taking away jobs elsewhere for the reason you just stated. They did the same with the sugar tariffs. Or this:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1978963,00.html
Hey look at that, we're paying our tax dollars to brazilian farmers for giving us...nothing...
Actually though we are still the top manufacturing country in the world, just we could be doing a lot better if there weren't any tariffs. It's a bit of a shock when you tell people this when they are already under the assumption that the US doesn't manufacture anything any more. China makes a lot of junk like t-shirts and iphones. We make earth movers and jumbo jets.
Something you always need to take into consideration though is that labor rates figure into the cost of *everything* you buy. If you pay higher wages, then you are going to pay higher prices. If you pay higher prices, then how does having a higher minimum wage benefit you? It's just a wash. And we're not just talking imported goods either, look at food prices. I've done research on Australia because I'm looking at taking up a job there. Personally I don't take politics into consideration when I'm moving unless it affects my livelihood. If I always did that, hell I'd have nowhere to go.
The only political thing I'd have an issue with there is if I ever became a national, I'd be forced to vote. As it currently is, I think voting is mostly just a waste of time as I've found most voters don't actually give a shit about what they are voting for, they just want to see their side win as if it was a football game. The signal to noise is so bad that trying to get your message across is an act in futility, so there's really no point. I'd imagine that forcing them to vote probably amplifies the problem, but I have little experience with the average Australian voter.
Something tells me you didn't fully read my post...
They haven't failed in anything. There is no central authority on bitcoins, so I'm not sure what or who they would regulate. That would be like saying the government could regulate the tor network. If they had that much power, the Silk Road would be gone already.
I'm pretty sure you only pay capital gains upon those gains actually being realized. For example, if you own a house that suddenly doubles in value, you aren't expected to pay any taxes* on those gains until you sell it. Otherwise they could very well be taxing you for money that you never earned and possibly don't even have. I don't think the government would fare too well if they booted you out of your house because you haven't paid them on the income that you never received.
* property tax is separate.
You both are confusing libertarianism with anarchy.
Also, what one considers ethical another may not. For example, if PETA ruled the united states, I would be considered a serial murderer, or at least an accessory to it. In Iran, it is expected to execute your daughter to restore your family honor if she has sex before marriage.
In the places you list, these people don't value the same things we do.
Who wants to have control over this are people like Chuck Schumer. They get off on telling people what to do. If some dumbass wants to get high on weed, Chuck Schumer wants to put him in jail. Chuck Schumer also foolishly asked the DOJ to seize the Silk Road's domain name. Chuck Schumer and his kind don't like bitcoin because they can't control it. They can and do control mastercard, visa, and paypal. If the US government doesn't like you enough, they'll make sure nobody in the world can pay money to you electronically, even if they aren't trading in US currency.
As for banks? Banks will always be around, period. Besides, I'd rather banks exist than not. In fact, I know this is going to be controversial, but those scam check advance and title loan agencies should be around too. Why? When stupid people get desperate, they make stupid moves, which includes stupid borrowing choices. It's either they go to these companies, or they go to loan sharks. Loan sharks answer to nobody but themselves, and if these stupid people borrow from them, things get much worse. Unlike loan sharks, scam companies can't rough up your wife, break your legs, or shoot up your house. They don't fund organized crime, and it actually is possible to pay them off. When you think you've paid off a loan shark, chances are he says you were a minute too late to the meeting and you owe him double interest. Repeat forever. Loan sharks are NOT subject to usury laws.
Not only that, but regular people make money off of banks. I do it all the time. If you ever need to start a business, often times banks are the best source of quick capital. Need to buy a home? Same thing. I rather like it that banks exist.
Until of course, there are no more bitcoins to mine.
In any case, it doesn't help anything when Anonymous and Lulzsec make threats. Personally I liked the Guy Fawkes image that V put out, but Anonymous doesn't fit it at all, in fact they ruin it if anything. Would V espouse silencing his opposition? That's what anonymous does when they DDoS. It seemed to me that V wanted to bring justice and empower the oppressed, if not he would have killed or at least silenced those detectives who were actively working against him, yet he didn't do either.
Anonymous and Lulzsec are nothing like that. They've attacked people who aren't oppressing anybody. They attack people who they simply have a disagreement with. Justice my ass.
Who are these people with no money? Outside of say north korea or some other extremely socialist country, these people don't exist.
We complain about how abhorrent the working conditions in china are, yet nobody actually looks at what is going on there. The media makes a big stink about the suicides of workers, but the suicide rate is about the same there as anywhere else.
Personally, I'm comfortable with how I live. Yet somebody from France would think that it's abhorrent to make less than $14 an hour and work more than 35 hours a week, while only taking 2 weeks out of the year on vacation. Australians have $15 minimum wage, but look at how expensive shit there is. What good does it do to have double the minimum wage if everything costs twice as much anyways? What are you gaining, exactly?
The economy will find an equilibrium somewhere and expenses will match wages, no matter how high you set the floor. People don't realize this and scream bloody murder when they see it happen. But WHY? In China, one USD will take you a LOT further than it will here. So yeah, they CAN live comfortably off of what we consider abhorrent wages.
I might sound like a doomsayer with the above, but I'm not doing any such thing. I already know I'll survive whatever comes, and so will most people. The problem is going to be the activists who bust out the guillotines like in the French revolution because the can't charge their ipad.
Hmm...right now? My mortgage is $450, my phone bill is $30, my internet connection is $32, water/trash $90, electricity $200, food $200, car insurance $70, maybe $100 a month on gas if I drive around a lot that month (typically I do less than that.) If we want to account for other misc stuff, round that up to $1300. $1300 is on a bad month, so yeah, 1920 is plenty, in fact I could retire on that.
We all like New York, but not all of us live there. I live in a decent looking neighborhood in the suburbs of the Phoenix area. The cost of living index of Phoenix is 99, which means we're within the margin of error of the average of the US as a whole, so it isn't as if I'm living in the boondocks. As for medicine...when you're on disability, you get medicare, so the cost is zero.
Nice job on the -1 disagree moderation BTW.
Well let's suppose for a minute that we are in a feudal society, as is a frequently expressed opinion on slashdot. What do we do to change it? More unions? End corporate profits? Force the wealthy to give up everything they have? We've been heading in that direction for the last 30 years, and while things seem to be improving, what we're actually doing is building a house of cards based on the assumption that future generations will continue to grow forever, which so far isn't holding true at all. The countries who are moving in this direction the most are faring the worst.
Look at France, virtually nobody wants to do business with them in the global economy because they are unprofitable, so their unemployment is through the roof. They are currently in the process of taxing all of the wealthy out of there, which was intended to bring increased revenue and more jobs, only it resulted in the exact opposite. The US isn't all peachy either; the number of people on disability has risen 50% faster than the growth of the population. Why acquire wealth and work for a living when the government will just hand you dinner on a silver platter? I shouldn't need to tell you that that isn't going to last.
People complain about the debt situation in the US really badly all the time. However the US isn't alone, and in fact isn't the worst. Most of Europe has a much higher dept to GDP ratio. What we're doing right now is living off of the backs of future generations, meanwhile those who call it a feudal society don't realize at all how good we have it. When this house of cards falls apart (WHEN, not IF) you're going to wish like hell that we keep what we have right now, as unsustainable as it is.
I thought that the sequester would be a good thing, because it would show the populace that the politicians were lying their asses off about how the world would end tomorrow if they didn't get to continue increasing the budget at a rate beyond economic growth forever. Oh, the horror of going back to the 2010 budget (after inflation considered). And for the most part, it showed the populace exactly that the politicians were full of shit. That dumbass Arne Duncan was rattling on about how teachers were already being fired...and when he was called out on it, he did the typical politician weaseling. Meanwhile, the Republicans and the Democrats both went ahead and increased the budget anyways (it is currently pending senate approval).
Greece and Cyprus are just the face of things to come. The only thing with them is that they are just ahead of the game; they've already taken steps to end this so called feudalism that everybody else is trying to do. It is inevitable. There WILL be another great depression, my guess is sometime within the next 30 years.
BTW, when I say we shouldn't punish the wealthy, people like you work under the false pretense that I assume that one day I'll be wealthy as well. I don't by any stretch. What I'm against is getting your pitch forks and torches against what you perceive as the boogeyman. If you make more than $42,000 USD per year, regardless of what country you live in, you are the 1% of the worlds' wealthiest. Yet if it ever came to the international occupy wall street banging on your door asking where's their money, you'd be wondering what the hell you ever did to deserve that.
Contrary to the typical socialist viewpoint, those wealthier do deliver wealth lower down, only it doesn't come in the form of money. Say for example people working at Intel or Google, who design devices on a daily basis. Out of their own self interest, they try to make these as cheap as possible so that they can sell as many as possible. As a result, those with less money can afford to have these nice things. When they can have these nice things, their wealth increases. Note that money is not wealth. Money buys wealth. By making material goods cheaper, you increase the leverage at which money converts to wealth. There's your trickle down economics. But those who believe we are living in a feudal society are opposed to that. People like that believe that when something is too cheap, that means somebody wasn't paid enough to do it. Somehow the old days of the 1920's when most of the population worked on farms were so much better.
I think they'd buy out the Mortal Kombat franchise and then sell it in tablet form.
Worst. Director. Evar.
http://www.mediamikes.com/2010/03/interview-with-director-uwe-boll/
In a developed economy, probably, however in the intended markets that presents a problem. The difference in cost between a 1024x786 LCD vs 1366x786 isn't that much either, but they want to save that extra bit of cash. Due to hardware requirements alone, an Android device would be so much more profitable that there's simply no reason to stick with W8 if you are so concerned about cost that you have to drop to a low resolution display.
No, you can turn wow gold into real money. Several people actually make a business out of it in fact. And no, blizzard is not taxed on that income.
I'm trying to think of what you'd actually do with it though. In spite of Balmer's "developers developers developers" rain dance, it never did end up raining.
In spite of what their PR department says, MS has a rather hostile attitude towards developers.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/tales-from-the-trenches-how-microsoft-is-losing-the-battle-for-indie-develo
It especially shows in RT due to the lack of apps that actually do anything that a web browser can't already do better. In fact a lot of those apps are basically just nothing other than a walled garden IE instance of a link to an already existing web page.
I think if microsoft wants to hit this market segment, they should scale up WP8 rather than try to scale down W8. The hardware requirements for W8 are just stupid for anything other than what we classically consider a PC.