Speaking of massive layoffs and the employment situation in NoVa, how long do you folks think that the government feeding frenzy is going to last? Not every techie can become an employee or contractor of the US Government, but that seems to be what we are trying to do here in this country.
All we're doing is forestalling a tragedy of biblical proportions. When the fed.gov employment bubble finally bursts, there will be an all new meaning to the words 'ye reap what ye sow.' Security clearnances be damned! The military/industrial complex cannot expand much furuther than it already has in our Sparta-esque militarized state known as the USA.
Enjoy it while it lasts though. I'm guessing we have fewer than ten years left until total meltdown. State governments will follow right along--all their expansion money is coming from the feds, too.
I doubt you will make a very good attorney, you can't seem to put your foot down or tell people to take a flying leap when you need to.
I'd say it is pretty apt that you have chosen the profession of lawyer so that you can hang with your sewer and trash collection buddies. How very appropriate.
Uh, doesn't anyone doing any verification before something like this gets posted on slashdot? This is clearly a hoax website--the "army guy" in the picture is wearing deck shoes for Pete's sake!
I don't know what you folks are talking about--cars have always been disposable. Ever visit a junkyard? Those are disposed of cars.
Cars are among the most recycled products--usable parts are salvaged, then the cars are crushed and the steel is reused. The process could be improved through better design.
A lot of people still want to be able to work on their cars themselves. The cost of having work done can break you, but the cost of most parts is still reasonable. What I want is a car that is *easy* to work on--one with the oil filter that is reachable without having to do inhuman contortions. Automakers should focus on making their wares affordable for the life of the vehicle, not just until the warranty expires.
Before you espouse a national sales tax, you might want to do some reading on it:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/archives/fm/11-97.htm l
even worse are those who want a "national sales tax" to "replace" the income tax. There is no virtue in replacing one high tax system with another high tax system. The transition costs would be draconian for American business. Proponents say it would mean the end of the IRS, but that's abracadabra: if taxes exist they will be collected, and no tax is voluntary by its very nature. In addition, the states will be required to administer the tax for D.C., a huge violation of federalism.
There are dozens of other articles that dig deeply into why a national sales tax is a terrible idea. Forget about it.
While real, the issue of terrorism is just the latest scheme to get people to succumb to increased government control and surveillance. I wonder what the effect on the global terrorist threat would be if the US simply withdrew its troops from the 135 countries they are now stationed it (70% of the countries in the world or some such)?
They can't even find Osama Bin Laden (if he really even exists), and they know his name. What good is all this profiling going to do? It smacks of all the same horrible things that all Americans have been taught to rail against since, oh, probably 1945 or so. The world has been through this so many times. Do we need another Dark Ages (TM) to learn what history has already taught us? The victims of past totalitarian regimes are all screaming from their graves--"don't let this happen to you!"
Something I have not seen during this discussion about bundling is a complaint about the "other" shows that you don't watch on the channels you do watch.
There is much derision over the issue of having to pay for BET, MTV and Nick so you can get Comedy Central, which is the only channel you happen to watch (YMMV). But what I want is content-level granularity--on CC, I only watch South Park and The Daily Show and occassionally Reno 911! (yeah, yeah, as if the stuff *you* watch is somehow justifiable). My point is: I could not give a rat's patootie about any other CC content, for all I care, the screen can be blacked out right before South Park and right after.
I like IFC, TechTV, History Channel, and the audio stations, but there are so many damn commercials on all but the audio-only channels (and why are the Techtv commercials compressed so much that the volume is DOUBLED?) that I have about had it with the whole damn thing.
I am glad Echostar decided to stand up to Viacom. But honestly, I am at the point where if there is one more price increase, I'm dumping the dish and will not watch tv anymore at all. We live out in the sticks and there is no cable service, so Time-Warner can bit my butt, too. In fact, I got the dish back when we lived in an apartment because I was so fed up with Time -Warner Cable and found myself to be morally compromised if I paid them another single cent.
Let's face it: 100, 150, 250 channels, and there is still nothing much worthwhile (and if you don't count goofy shopping channels and audio stations, the number is more like 35). I have the Dish 100 (now called 120, go figure) and many of the shows I used to watch have been "moved" to premium channels only available on the more comprehensive packages. So if they can work on the granularity of individual shows, I see no reason why I can't demand to pay only for the shows I actually care about watching!
We are not getting much value for the entertainment dollar, especially now that there are so many more commercials on pay tv. Plus, everything has gone to reality shows or has been taken over by feminists--A&E, Discovery & TLC used to have a lot more documentaries and educational programming, but all of it has been replaced with complete garbage.
TNN (formerly The Nashville Network) used to have programming that had a niche following (people who like Country & Western music loved TNN), but even that is not allowed in today's New World Generic Order--TNN was gutted and turned into a bland nothingness. The NATIONAL NETWORK? Give me a break... Not everyone is a hip-hop fan, m'kay?
The bottom is going to fall right out of the monopoly, wait and see.
Then why did he help write the damn thing at all? The PATRIOT Act is a direct affront to the Bill of Rights. There is no getting around that fact.
Also, Mr. Dinh is buying into the myth that al qaeda is a bigger threat to the US than our own government. Let's see now:
Al Qaeda == small, relatively insignificant (on a whole-nation scale) pin-prick attacks that can only do damage to "America" if we let them cow us into submisssion.
US Federal Governemnt == Pervasive, all-encompassing central organization that can do serious damage to civil liberties.
Yes, if there is another terror attack, people will die. But if there is tyranny in America, a lot more people will die.
I cannot believe slashdotters would get all hot and bothered by this latest money extraction scheme. Politicians are notoriously incapable of understanding all the minute technical reasons why this system WILL NEVER WORK. Simply put, all those databases contain errors. Attempting to tie together databaes from multiple different state agencies, across multiple US states is not going to be a simple task. Then when you consider that all databases contain erroneous information such as misspellings, inaccuracies, multiple instances of two different people having the same name, and so on and so forth, all they are going to end up with is a big, expensive mess.
My guess is that Tax-achusetts had better start liquidating its assets if they think that this proposed system is going to actually INCREASE revenue. I predict that it will be a money sink forever and will be quietly abandoned at some point in the near future.
You have a very skewed understanding of public sector jobs and what that means to the economy as a whole. Surely, as a slashdotter, you have heard of a 'perpetual motion machine'? That is what most states are trying to create with more and more public sector (taxpayer subsidized) jobs. At some point, if the private base shrinks too much, how are all those people going to be paid? In any event, the states are robbing Peter to pay Paul, and it can't continue.
Folks, I don't think any of you see what is taking place here. My suspicion is that they know the shuttles are too dangerous to use and that there is no money for repairs or replacements. Bush made that grand speech about the moon and Mars, but all that was was PR--manned missions are over for the forseeable future and the spin has begun. Clinton made the same idiotic speech about Mars, it is never going to come true given the current bureaucracy and cost and international situation. The decision to not fix Hubble is just another clue about what is really taking place here.
I'm all for manned space flight, but not using money that was forcefully extracted from the citizens of the US. No matter what good comes from these missions into space, the coercive nature of how the money was gotten makes these missions of "peace" a joke.
I await the coming age of private space flight ventures.
Couldn't resist getting in the anti-motorcycle jibe in there, could you? So many people have been subjected to anti-motorcycle propaganda that they just accept it as truth. Yes, please, by all means go through life without ever taking any kind of risk whatsoever. I'm sure you are popular with the ladies since you are such a totally feminized wussy boy!
I rode motorcycles for years and barely ever looked at the gauges while I was underway to any significant degree. The speedos on bikes are notoriously imprecise, and all they really tell you is how much you are violating whatever local speed limit is posted. And if you can't shift a bike without a tach, you had better just park it and do something else because motorcycles are not for you.
In all the years I've ridden bikes, I never remember abiding by a single speed limit at any point. Never once got a ticket and never had any accidents.
If you want to help riders, invent something that makes other motorists more aware of them. A device that jams cell phones would be good.
What's that quote about not being able to rule a free people and having to always have something to hold over them? I guess the drug laws weren't enough. For tyranny to really take hold in America, the hook has to be more universal.
Well, the people on Fox News seem to sing the praises of how free we are...but I usually feel like I'm living inside an America with many similarities to the low budget film "They Live." I can't seem to get it through many people's heads just how un-free and over-regulated America is. I wish it was as easy as issuing sunglasses...
Can you imagine such a thing happening if alcoholic beverage distribution was not centrally controlled? How many times does the world have to re-learn the same lesson about the state and its inability to provide goods and services? I hope this incident spurns a call for market reforms.
I was taken in by the possibility of winning a $10K prize and actually did some research and located some prior art to submarine one of the patents on BountyQuest. Long story short, they fucked me over. I can't prove it, but they told me someone had beaten me to punch. I find that difficult to believe given how quickly I located the prior art and submitted it. I think what really happened is that those assholes ran out of money to pay the honorariums. What a convenient business plan:
1) Convince other people to do your work
2) Pretend their efforts were unsuccessful for various reasons so you don't have to pay them
3) Sell the collected information to interested parties
4) Profit!
Didn't work though, did it?
When you consider what is going to happen when the costs of social security and mediscare rise in response to the coming wave of retirements, your "perfect storm" looks like a dust devil. I've read reports that estimate an income tax increase of 95% and a social security tax increase of 65% on all workers. I can't afford anything *now*, I don't see how I will be able to live when the government starts confiscating somewhere around 80% of my income.
Speaking of perfect storms, if you consider the monetary policy of the US, which is inflate, inflate, inflate, then consider how much the government spends on say *making war*, and how impossible it will be for the Pentagon statists to accept a budget cut of somewhere around $100B, you can quickly see that America is headed over a cliff. Unless there is a sea change away from statism and greedy welfare/warfare state politics, it's over. It's only a matter of time because you can't beat mathematics.
My conclusion: This great experiment in liberty is almost finished.
When figuring the cost "savings" of outsourcing, you have to include all the ancillary expenses such as insurance, worker's comp (a big issue in California right now), environmental laws, and a horde of other regulations. I don't understand how more government regulation can fix a problem that is being caused by government regulation.
I know you're kidding, but how insulting can one person be? Lenin and Stalin are responsible for millions of deaths, they simply starved people to death. I'm not suggesting the US Government is any better. What I am saying is that no central government ever created peace and prosperity, those are the things that only rise up from the bottom when the state does not suppress them. Get a clue!
So is the rest of the United States, what is your point? Pull back the veil anyplace, and you are immediately treated to the most ugly realization that nothing in America is as it seems and that we are tottering right on the brink of a societal meltdown. The near univeral lack of acknowledging reality *is* going to cause the collapse.
You can't "re-regulate" aka "regulate" if you haven't deregulated yet.
If regulation is such a great idea, why not conscript young American men and make them serve one or two year stints working on the electrical grid for no pay? After all, if central planning is the great solution (tm) that most of you pathetic souls on/. say it is, then you will willingly "donate" your time, right?
Statism is a disease man. Free your mind of the belief that the state can magically do for you and make everything right and you will be much better off in your life. What evidence is there that the state has had any success regulating the power grid in any country?
Yes, corrupt corporate interests will capitalize on the deregulation. But that is a symptom of the bigger problem of too much state power in the first place! Get a clue!
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of massive layoffs and the employment situation in NoVa, how long do you folks think that the government feeding frenzy is going to last? Not every techie can become an employee or contractor of the US Government, but that seems to be what we are trying to do here in this country.
All we're doing is forestalling a tragedy of biblical proportions. When the fed.gov employment bubble finally bursts, there will be an all new meaning to the words 'ye reap what ye sow.' Security clearnances be damned! The military/industrial complex cannot expand much furuther than it already has in our Sparta-esque militarized state known as the USA.
Enjoy it while it lasts though. I'm guessing we have fewer than ten years left until total meltdown. State governments will follow right along--all their expansion money is coming from the feds, too.
I doubt you will make a very good attorney, you can't seem to put your foot down or tell people to take a flying leap when you need to.
I'd say it is pretty apt that you have chosen the profession of lawyer so that you can hang with your sewer and trash collection buddies. How very appropriate.
Uh, doesn't anyone doing any verification before something like this gets posted on slashdot? This is clearly a hoax website--the "army guy" in the picture is wearing deck shoes for Pete's sake!
Slashdot needs an ombudsman...
I don't know what you folks are talking about--cars have always been disposable. Ever visit a junkyard? Those are disposed of cars.
Cars are among the most recycled products--usable parts are salvaged, then the cars are crushed and the steel is reused. The process could be improved through better design.
A lot of people still want to be able to work on their cars themselves. The cost of having work done can break you, but the cost of most parts is still reasonable. What I want is a car that is *easy* to work on--one with the oil filter that is reachable without having to do inhuman contortions. Automakers should focus on making their wares affordable for the life of the vehicle, not just until the warranty expires.
Before you espouse a national sales tax, you might want to do some reading on it:
m l
http://www.lewrockwell.com/archives/fm/11-97.ht
even worse are those who want a "national sales tax" to "replace" the income tax. There is no virtue in replacing one high tax system with another high tax system. The transition costs would be draconian for American business. Proponents say it would mean the end of the IRS, but that's abracadabra: if taxes exist they will be collected, and no tax is voluntary by its very nature. In addition, the states will be required to administer the tax for D.C., a huge violation of federalism.
There are dozens of other articles that dig deeply into why a national sales tax is a terrible idea. Forget about it.
If true, it would seem to be a useful justification for being able to stop anyone at any time for just about any made up crime. CONTROL.
While real, the issue of terrorism is just the latest scheme to get people to succumb to increased government control and surveillance. I wonder what the effect on the global terrorist threat would be if the US simply withdrew its troops from the 135 countries they are now stationed it (70% of the countries in the world or some such)?
They can't even find Osama Bin Laden (if he really even exists), and they know his name. What good is all this profiling going to do? It smacks of all the same horrible things that all Americans have been taught to rail against since, oh, probably 1945 or so. The world has been through this so many times. Do we need another Dark Ages (TM) to learn what history has already taught us? The victims of past totalitarian regimes are all screaming from their graves--"don't let this happen to you!"
Something I have not seen during this discussion about bundling is a complaint about the "other" shows that you don't watch on the channels you do watch.
There is much derision over the issue of having to pay for BET, MTV and Nick so you can get Comedy Central, which is the only channel you happen to watch (YMMV). But what I want is content-level granularity--on CC, I only watch South Park and The Daily Show and occassionally Reno 911! (yeah, yeah, as if the stuff *you* watch is somehow justifiable). My point is: I could not give a rat's patootie about any other CC content, for all I care, the screen can be blacked out right before South Park and right after.
I like IFC, TechTV, History Channel, and the audio stations, but there are so many damn commercials on all but the audio-only channels (and why are the Techtv commercials compressed so much that the volume is DOUBLED?) that I have about had it with the whole damn thing.
I am glad Echostar decided to stand up to Viacom. But honestly, I am at the point where if there is one more price increase, I'm dumping the dish and will not watch tv anymore at all. We live out in the sticks and there is no cable service, so Time-Warner can bit my butt, too. In fact, I got the dish back when we lived in an apartment because I was so fed up with Time -Warner Cable and found myself to be morally compromised if I paid them another single cent.
Let's face it: 100, 150, 250 channels, and there is still nothing much worthwhile (and if you don't count goofy shopping channels and audio stations, the number is more like 35). I have the Dish 100 (now called 120, go figure) and many of the shows I used to watch have been "moved" to premium channels only available on the more comprehensive packages. So if they can work on the granularity of individual shows, I see no reason why I can't demand to pay only for the shows I actually care about watching!
We are not getting much value for the entertainment dollar, especially now that there are so many more commercials on pay tv. Plus, everything has gone to reality shows or has been taken over by feminists--A&E, Discovery & TLC used to have a lot more documentaries and educational programming, but all of it has been replaced with complete garbage.
TNN (formerly The Nashville Network) used to have programming that had a niche following (people who like Country & Western music loved TNN), but even that is not allowed in today's New World Generic Order--TNN was gutted and turned into a bland nothingness. The NATIONAL NETWORK? Give me a break... Not everyone is a hip-hop fan, m'kay?
The bottom is going to fall right out of the monopoly, wait and see.
Then why did he help write the damn thing at all? The PATRIOT Act is a direct affront to the Bill of Rights. There is no getting around that fact.
Also, Mr. Dinh is buying into the myth that al qaeda is a bigger threat to the US than our own government. Let's see now:
Al Qaeda == small, relatively insignificant (on a whole-nation scale) pin-prick attacks that can only do damage to "America" if we let them cow us into submisssion.
US Federal Governemnt == Pervasive, all-encompassing central organization that can do serious damage to civil liberties.
Yes, if there is another terror attack, people will die. But if there is tyranny in America, a lot more people will die.
They already tried what you are suggesting, it was called "The Soviet Union." Didn't turn out very well though...
I cannot believe slashdotters would get all hot and bothered by this latest money extraction scheme. Politicians are notoriously incapable of understanding all the minute technical reasons why this system WILL NEVER WORK. Simply put, all those databases contain errors. Attempting to tie together databaes from multiple different state agencies, across multiple US states is not going to be a simple task. Then when you consider that all databases contain erroneous information such as misspellings, inaccuracies, multiple instances of two different people having the same name, and so on and so forth, all they are going to end up with is a big, expensive mess. My guess is that Tax-achusetts had better start liquidating its assets if they think that this proposed system is going to actually INCREASE revenue. I predict that it will be a money sink forever and will be quietly abandoned at some point in the near future.
You have a very skewed understanding of public sector jobs and what that means to the economy as a whole. Surely, as a slashdotter, you have heard of a 'perpetual motion machine'? That is what most states are trying to create with more and more public sector (taxpayer subsidized) jobs. At some point, if the private base shrinks too much, how are all those people going to be paid? In any event, the states are robbing Peter to pay Paul, and it can't continue.
Folks, I don't think any of you see what is taking place here. My suspicion is that they know the shuttles are too dangerous to use and that there is no money for repairs or replacements. Bush made that grand speech about the moon and Mars, but all that was was PR--manned missions are over for the forseeable future and the spin has begun. Clinton made the same idiotic speech about Mars, it is never going to come true given the current bureaucracy and cost and international situation. The decision to not fix Hubble is just another clue about what is really taking place here.
I'm all for manned space flight, but not using money that was forcefully extracted from the citizens of the US. No matter what good comes from these missions into space, the coercive nature of how the money was gotten makes these missions of "peace" a joke.
I await the coming age of private space flight ventures.
Couldn't resist getting in the anti-motorcycle jibe in there, could you? So many people have been subjected to anti-motorcycle propaganda that they just accept it as truth. Yes, please, by all means go through life without ever taking any kind of risk whatsoever. I'm sure you are popular with the ladies since you are such a totally feminized wussy boy!
I rode motorcycles for years and barely ever looked at the gauges while I was underway to any significant degree. The speedos on bikes are notoriously imprecise, and all they really tell you is how much you are violating whatever local speed limit is posted. And if you can't shift a bike without a tach, you had better just park it and do something else because motorcycles are not for you.
In all the years I've ridden bikes, I never remember abiding by a single speed limit at any point. Never once got a ticket and never had any accidents.
If you want to help riders, invent something that makes other motorists more aware of them. A device that jams cell phones would be good.
Wow! What a great way to avoid the 'net tax ban, just let the government become the ISP!
Next: mormon family values censorshop
What's that quote about not being able to rule a free people and having to always have something to hold over them? I guess the drug laws weren't enough. For tyranny to really take hold in America, the hook has to be more universal.
Well, the people on Fox News seem to sing the praises of how free we are...but I usually feel like I'm living inside an America with many similarities to the low budget film "They Live." I can't seem to get it through many people's heads just how un-free and over-regulated America is. I wish it was as easy as issuing sunglasses...
Can you imagine such a thing happening if alcoholic beverage distribution was not centrally controlled? How many times does the world have to re-learn the same lesson about the state and its inability to provide goods and services? I hope this incident spurns a call for market reforms.
I was taken in by the possibility of winning a $10K prize and actually did some research and located some prior art to submarine one of the patents on BountyQuest. Long story short, they fucked me over. I can't prove it, but they told me someone had beaten me to punch. I find that difficult to believe given how quickly I located the prior art and submitted it. I think what really happened is that those assholes ran out of money to pay the honorariums. What a convenient business plan:
1) Convince other people to do your work 2) Pretend their efforts were unsuccessful for various reasons so you don't have to pay them 3) Sell the collected information to interested parties 4) Profit!
Didn't work though, did it?
When you consider what is going to happen when the costs of social security and mediscare rise in response to the coming wave of retirements, your "perfect storm" looks like a dust devil. I've read reports that estimate an income tax increase of 95% and a social security tax increase of 65% on all workers. I can't afford anything *now*, I don't see how I will be able to live when the government starts confiscating somewhere around 80% of my income.
Speaking of perfect storms, if you consider the monetary policy of the US, which is inflate, inflate, inflate, then consider how much the government spends on say *making war*, and how impossible it will be for the Pentagon statists to accept a budget cut of somewhere around $100B, you can quickly see that America is headed over a cliff. Unless there is a sea change away from statism and greedy welfare/warfare state politics, it's over. It's only a matter of time because you can't beat mathematics.
My conclusion: This great experiment in liberty is almost finished.
When figuring the cost "savings" of outsourcing, you have to include all the ancillary expenses such as insurance, worker's comp (a big issue in California right now), environmental laws, and a horde of other regulations. I don't understand how more government regulation can fix a problem that is being caused by government regulation.
I know you're kidding, but how insulting can one person be? Lenin and Stalin are responsible for millions of deaths, they simply starved people to death. I'm not suggesting the US Government is any better. What I am saying is that no central government ever created peace and prosperity, those are the things that only rise up from the bottom when the state does not suppress them. Get a clue!
So is the rest of the United States, what is your point? Pull back the veil anyplace, and you are immediately treated to the most ugly realization that nothing in America is as it seems and that we are tottering right on the brink of a societal meltdown. The near univeral lack of acknowledging reality *is* going to cause the collapse.
You can't "re-regulate" aka "regulate" if you haven't deregulated yet.
/. say it is, then you will willingly "donate" your time, right?
If regulation is such a great idea, why not conscript young American men and make them serve one or two year stints working on the electrical grid for no pay? After all, if central planning is the great solution (tm) that most of you pathetic souls on
Statism is a disease man. Free your mind of the belief that the state can magically do for you and make everything right and you will be much better off in your life. What evidence is there that the state has had any success regulating the power grid in any country? Yes, corrupt corporate interests will capitalize on the deregulation. But that is a symptom of the bigger problem of too much state power in the first place! Get a clue!