Can anyone explain to me how North Carolina can claim it is losing $680m in revenue that it isn't even legally entitled to collect? That isn't a "loss" as much as it is "diabolical plotting."
I seem to launch into an uncontrollable rage whenever I hear about how unfair it is for competition that mail order and Internet sales have no sales tax applied. The *only* solution these money-grubbers can come up with is--you guessed it--MORE FREAKING TAXES!!!! Hello? How about repealing the state sales taxes that are the root of the "competition" problem to begin with?
And what of the interstate commerce clause in our now outdated and largely ignored US Constitution? Does it mean anything anymore?
The government breaks your legs, then hands you a pair of crutches and says: "See? Without me, you couldn't walk!"
I am thoroughly ashamed that such educated people can hold the free market in such contempt! First of all, there is no free market in electricity, the term has been abused beyond recognition. To politicians, "free market" means "carefully regulated." It is hardly under-regulated in the US and abroad.
Does anyone here really think that a power company could not be created with an infrastructure that is totally blackout-proof? The problem, of course, is that most of you wouldn't want to pay the higher price for that quality of service. There are trade-offs in every industry that have to be made in order to make service affordable and widely available. If you need dead-reliable electrical service, there are plenty of ways to achieve that using UPS systems and diesel generators. No one is stopping you!
If Americans truly want hurricane reliable electricity, then they should be willing to pay for having the cables buried, redundant systems installed, and everything else that is necessary to ensure super-reliable service.
There are many problems in the electrical power industry, and they will never all be solved. But to sit here and bash the free market (which is the usual tactic of all leftists whenever anything goes wrong) is not constructive. Command economies such as China and the USSR could not offer better electrical service (in fact, it was much, much WORSE), so shut the hell up already! And there, if you complain, you might have been taken away in the middle of the night.
If you want better and more reliable electrical service, then let the market work without government involvement. The government didn't invent electricity and it had no hand in the original wiring of the USA. All that was accomplished by an unregulated marketplace. That we have problems now is mostly due to regulation, taxation and crazy environmental laws that make power companies jump through too many hoops.
Bottom line: Don't be a fool, the marketplace is more than capable of supplying high quality electrical service if we are smart enough to let it work.
While interesting, I lose no sleep over TIA because it simply won't scale into any sample size big enough to actually be useful for catching terrorists. As with baggage screening, face recognition, and pretty much every other system the US Goverment has been thinking about or implementing, the false positive rate is far too high. If terrorists were 50% of the population and easy to identify, it might be useful.
And what does this example prove? If you "game" the system, in other words, actively try to thwart being tracked, you will find it is easy to do. It would be easy to make the system think you are out getting groceries while you are actually off committing a murder in another state. The perfect alibi!
I'm not getting richer. I've been jobless since May, 2003 (and didn't have that much of an income even then) Basically, I am desperately trying to keep from dropping another rung from "poor" to "hopeless." Reading articles about the rich have gotten richer only makes me want to start hunting them down. Get it?
What a brilliant publicity stunt this is! What the RIAA is saying is: "See, we gave them all a chance to come clean. Now we're going to prosecute."
Why give them any satisfaction? Make them work to reveal your identity and battle you in court to *prove* you did anything wrong. This whole "prosecute your customer" thing is going nowhere fast.
No one with any brains would play ball with these bozos anymore than a bootlegger would tell the revenue agents where he hides his still (and yes, there are still bootleggers where I come from), or pot smokers telling the (insert drug war agency acronym here) where they cultivate their homegrown.
Maybe RIAA is just desperate--they can't figure out who abadafsvbasdf@nowhere.com really is!
Bruce Schneir's Crypto-Gram featured the reports about rigging elections using the Diebold system.
Let's put this in perspective: Elections in the US have always been rigged one way or another. What electronic voting brings that is new is a means of rigging an election with subtletly so that malfeasance is easier to deny. Ballot box stuffing is a crude way to steal an election compared to this new system whereby a candidate can be made to win by only a few votes in certain precincts. No more dead people voting, no more reliance on illegal aliens.
If this stuff goes mainstream, American democracy is finished. Not that it isn't already, in most respects. I'm not a fan of democracy anyways, in my lifetime all I have seen is government grow and grow at the expense of everything else.
Anyone who spends five minutes thinking about the implications of a 5-10 percent error rate could only reach one conclusion about these systems.
Now those multi-million dollar baggage scanning machines that they *had to have* are next you know. It's all a huge waste of time and money because you can't use a system where the error rate is higher than the rate of possible success.
The TSA is a monumental boondoggle.
Slashdot Mirror
Vancouver Bars Experience Unexplained Dropoff in Sales
British Columbia Homebrew Beer Supplier Reports Record Profits
I don't know about you all, but when I go out for a beer, I'm not in the mood for mickey mouse bullshit hassles, I get enough of those at work
Can anyone explain to me how North Carolina can claim it is losing $680m in revenue that it isn't even legally entitled to collect? That isn't a "loss" as much as it is "diabolical plotting."
I seem to launch into an uncontrollable rage whenever I hear about how unfair it is for competition that mail order and Internet sales have no sales tax applied. The *only* solution these money-grubbers can come up with is--you guessed it--MORE FREAKING TAXES!!!! Hello? How about repealing the state sales taxes that are the root of the "competition" problem to begin with?
And what of the interstate commerce clause in our now outdated and largely ignored US Constitution? Does it mean anything anymore?
The government breaks your legs, then hands you a pair of crutches and says: "See? Without me, you couldn't walk!"
I am thoroughly ashamed that such educated people can hold the free market in such contempt! First of all, there is no free market in electricity, the term has been abused beyond recognition. To politicians, "free market" means "carefully regulated." It is hardly under-regulated in the US and abroad. Does anyone here really think that a power company could not be created with an infrastructure that is totally blackout-proof? The problem, of course, is that most of you wouldn't want to pay the higher price for that quality of service. There are trade-offs in every industry that have to be made in order to make service affordable and widely available. If you need dead-reliable electrical service, there are plenty of ways to achieve that using UPS systems and diesel generators. No one is stopping you! If Americans truly want hurricane reliable electricity, then they should be willing to pay for having the cables buried, redundant systems installed, and everything else that is necessary to ensure super-reliable service. There are many problems in the electrical power industry, and they will never all be solved. But to sit here and bash the free market (which is the usual tactic of all leftists whenever anything goes wrong) is not constructive. Command economies such as China and the USSR could not offer better electrical service (in fact, it was much, much WORSE), so shut the hell up already! And there, if you complain, you might have been taken away in the middle of the night. If you want better and more reliable electrical service, then let the market work without government involvement. The government didn't invent electricity and it had no hand in the original wiring of the USA. All that was accomplished by an unregulated marketplace. That we have problems now is mostly due to regulation, taxation and crazy environmental laws that make power companies jump through too many hoops. Bottom line: Don't be a fool, the marketplace is more than capable of supplying high quality electrical service if we are smart enough to let it work.
While interesting, I lose no sleep over TIA because it simply won't scale into any sample size big enough to actually be useful for catching terrorists. As with baggage screening, face recognition, and pretty much every other system the US Goverment has been thinking about or implementing, the false positive rate is far too high. If terrorists were 50% of the population and easy to identify, it might be useful. And what does this example prove? If you "game" the system, in other words, actively try to thwart being tracked, you will find it is easy to do. It would be easy to make the system think you are out getting groceries while you are actually off committing a murder in another state. The perfect alibi!
I'm not getting richer. I've been jobless since May, 2003 (and didn't have that much of an income even then) Basically, I am desperately trying to keep from dropping another rung from "poor" to "hopeless." Reading articles about the rich have gotten richer only makes me want to start hunting them down. Get it?
What a brilliant publicity stunt this is! What the RIAA is saying is: "See, we gave them all a chance to come clean. Now we're going to prosecute." Why give them any satisfaction? Make them work to reveal your identity and battle you in court to *prove* you did anything wrong. This whole "prosecute your customer" thing is going nowhere fast. No one with any brains would play ball with these bozos anymore than a bootlegger would tell the revenue agents where he hides his still (and yes, there are still bootleggers where I come from), or pot smokers telling the (insert drug war agency acronym here) where they cultivate their homegrown. Maybe RIAA is just desperate--they can't figure out who abadafsvbasdf@nowhere.com really is!
Bruce Schneir's Crypto-Gram featured the reports about rigging elections using the Diebold system. Let's put this in perspective: Elections in the US have always been rigged one way or another. What electronic voting brings that is new is a means of rigging an election with subtletly so that malfeasance is easier to deny. Ballot box stuffing is a crude way to steal an election compared to this new system whereby a candidate can be made to win by only a few votes in certain precincts. No more dead people voting, no more reliance on illegal aliens. If this stuff goes mainstream, American democracy is finished. Not that it isn't already, in most respects. I'm not a fan of democracy anyways, in my lifetime all I have seen is government grow and grow at the expense of everything else.
Anyone who spends five minutes thinking about the implications of a 5-10 percent error rate could only reach one conclusion about these systems. Now those multi-million dollar baggage scanning machines that they *had to have* are next you know. It's all a huge waste of time and money because you can't use a system where the error rate is higher than the rate of possible success. The TSA is a monumental boondoggle.