The world isn't black and white or good vs. evil. People are often shades in between.
We have 300 million people in America. I'm sorry, but I really can expect our elected officials to be good, completely good, and not "shades in between."
(Really, Ted Stevens may have done some good things, but I hated his guts for the amount of wasteful pork he was responsible for -- that's OUR MONEY he's wasting. FUCK TED STEVENS.)
Stevens is the perfect representative of one of the most influential segments of the internet community: spammers.
No way dude, they're clogging up the tubes, and he knows it. Why, he'd have to be unscrupulous to represent them.
By the way, could someone introduce Slashdot to the wonder of TRANSPARENT GIFS (at least), so they can remove the white corners showing up on their "curvy" grey buttons on these forms? It's kind of embarrassing.
Granted CAT5 doesn't have have security to access (like wifi tkip/aes key), but it is physically secure, which is at the same level of security as the physical machines themselves.
I use WPA2 with an apple 802.11n router at home, and all my important traffic goes over SSL connections. I would say this combination is close enough to "secure" that it's extremely unlikely my data is at risk. It's more likely that someone will break into my house and steal my computer.
I find WIFI performance and coverage to be dodgy at best. It's an absolute pain to support.
You didn't mention in what context, nor with what equipment, but now that I switched to an apple airport extreme, I completely disagree.
At home, 1400 sq. ft. house built in 1963, I get extremely high speeds throughout my house with this router, and have not had any trouble with it. I can't say the same thing for my previous linksys routers, but then again, they were a fraction of the price.
What I mean to say is, what admin HASN'T had an outage like this?
Shit happens. I'd rather get email that works 99% of the time, and when there's a problem, google engineers are dealing with it, leaving me time to work on more important things.
I think his point was that the reason we are in this mess is because hypocrites like Barney Frank supported legislation to encourage Freddie/Fannie to lower it's lending standards. Although Frank can say his goal was to help the minorities and poor, the end result was that, like you said, many others also took out loans they couldn't afford.
Coupled with the federal government lowering interest rates to create artificially cheap money lending, and you have this current disaster.
Now Frank and the rest of the Dems are saying the problem was the republicans decreasing regulation, when in fact the problem was both parties INCREASING FEDERAL INVOLVEMENT with the market.
I am astonished that a country which refuses to pay for a national 'free at point of provision' health service, supported by taxes, yet they happily hand over the entire country's income tax to the banking system, and now 700 billion because they stayed greedy for a bit too long.
Let me astonish you further by pointing out that many of us that don't support federal government based health-care ALSO don't support the federal government propping up banks.
I think I might develop a liking for throwing stones at the roof of your house, Unpossible. But you better not ask for me to be regulated, because next time, they might end up banning you from leaving your house during daylight hours or something.
I'm a Libertarian, not an anarchist. There is a police force for a reason. You're violating my basic liberties through violence. How is this analogy accurate in any way?
You're forgetting that the concepts of "discretion" and "judgement" can be (and always should be) applied to regulation. But I guess if you understood or believed in those, you couldn't be a libertarian.
As a Libertarian, I understand that the government is incredibly bad at discretion and judgment, and therefore I don't believe in giving them the leeway to try and apply it.
If you'll recall, un- or under-regulated banking practices led to the current mess.
No they didn't.
What led to this mess was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac providing money that was artificially cheap. If the free market was allowed to work without government intervention (through Fannie/Freddie), then you wouldn't have had the real estate explosion, because you wouldn't have had the banks writing insane loans, because you wouldn't have had the artificially cheap money available.
Regulations are only needed when the government interferes with the market in the first place. They create an artificial imbalance, which they then must try to counter with another artificial regulation.
Refraining from doing business with PayPal is not an option. There is in many cases no good alternative.
Don't use eBay. Don't use PayPal.
If you want to use those services, use them. Don't involve the government, because there are always unintended consequences. One of which will be higher fees, guaranteed.
I know there are some sissies on here that would tell you just "drink fluids like athletes... it's the easiest solution."
Balls!
I would recommend setting up your own thirst quenching solution. First, locate a sizeable chunk of Hydrogen and Oxygen. Don't worry, they're floating all around you.
Next, wait for a bolt of lightning, or move to Florida in the summer.
Position your glass beneath the thunderstorm (this is really quite simple, I feel foolish for even spelling it out at such great length).
When the lightning bolt strikes your glass filled with hydrogen and oxygen, it sparks a reaction necessary to generate H2O -- WATER!!!
(Be careful not to mix your pure H2O with the rainwater that is probably pouring down around you at this point.) Also, don't forget to wear rubber boots so that the lightning will bounce harmlessly off your chest. Oh drat, I should have mentioned this earlier.
Well as you can see, this method is far easier than using google apps, I mean drinking gatorade.
I suggest, instead of calling your legislators to ask them for more laws and restrictions, I suggest that you use your freedom of choice, and stop doing business with PayPal.
Because the next time you ask a legislator to regulate something you don't like, they may end up regulating something you DO like.
The heavy hand of government should be the absolute last resort.
End result: those who are NOT in the loop (e.g. the little guy) gets screwed, those who ARE in the insular center keep getting wealthier.
The little guy DAY TRADER may get screwed. The little guy INVESTOR is making money just fine. Instead of worrying about trading triggers, why don't you buy stock in a company worth holding for years?
Why would we need to outlaw something that has a built in mechanism to discourage its use (i.e. getting burned in a deal like this). It's a perfect system.
No, sorry, you do not. You have the right to refuse to sell the product to me - which to an extent prevents me from selling it. However, you have no legal or moral right to force me to not sell your product after I have legally purchased it from you, or someone you have authorized to sell it.
Then you've already provided Apple with a way out of this mess. Force the purchaser to enter into an agreement before purchasing the product, instead of after purchase as EULAs do today.
"You agree that you are purchasing this product to use on your Apple-created hardware, and you acknowledge that you are not permitted to re-sell the software to someone else."
If the person agrees to that statement before purchasing the software, where's your wiggle room then?
All this lawsuit will do is force Apple to be even more of a hardass, not less, because their business model of being hardware-centric is not going to change anytime soon.
When you have a problem with your OSX86 because you're running it on some POS hardware that it wasn't designed to run on, who are you going to call to fix it?
Tell me, what is GMail non-beta going to do differently than GMail beta? Will it be faster? Have more features? Fewer bugs? (I am not aware of any gmail bugs!) What??? I'm dying to know, because Gmail currently rocks, and this non-beta you speak of sounds amazing!
Having company sponsored childcare doesn't mean other employees are getting paid less, is just means the stockholders are not seeing as big of a profit as they could have.
Maybe in a vacuum. In reality, if a company is making less profit:
- They pay less dividends to shareholders (as you mentioned)
- They cut wages (perhaps not across the board, which is the only thing you seem to have considered)
- They cut the number of jobs they have available (so maybe the wages don't go down, but the openings do)
- They increase the cost of goods or services they sell
- They decrease the non-wage benefits to employees
- Their stock price takes a hit and the company loses the ability to make business deals, their employees that hold options tend not to make out well, it hurts morale, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I'll make you a deal.
We'll sell you back to Russia.
Enjoy Putin, bitches.
Ted Stevens played a greater role in the development of Alaska as a state than any other person.
That's wonderful to hear.
How much did it cost the rest of states' populations for him to do that?
The world isn't black and white or good vs. evil. People are often shades in between.
We have 300 million people in America. I'm sorry, but I really can expect our elected officials to be good, completely good, and not "shades in between."
(Really, Ted Stevens may have done some good things, but I hated his guts for the amount of wasteful pork he was responsible for -- that's OUR MONEY he's wasting. FUCK TED STEVENS.)
Stevens is the perfect representative of one of the most influential segments of the internet community: spammers.
No way dude, they're clogging up the tubes, and he knows it. Why, he'd have to be unscrupulous to represent them.
By the way, could someone introduce Slashdot to the wonder of TRANSPARENT GIFS (at least), so they can remove the white corners showing up on their "curvy" grey buttons on these forms? It's kind of embarrassing.
Granted CAT5 doesn't have have security to access (like wifi tkip/aes key), but it is physically secure, which is at the same level of security as the physical machines themselves.
I use WPA2 with an apple 802.11n router at home, and all my important traffic goes over SSL connections. I would say this combination is close enough to "secure" that it's extremely unlikely my data is at risk. It's more likely that someone will break into my house and steal my computer.
I find WIFI performance and coverage to be dodgy at best. It's an absolute pain to support.
You didn't mention in what context, nor with what equipment, but now that I switched to an apple airport extreme, I completely disagree.
At home, 1400 sq. ft. house built in 1963, I get extremely high speeds throughout my house with this router, and have not had any trouble with it. I can't say the same thing for my previous linksys routers, but then again, they were a fraction of the price.
No, it's the sound of one hand clapping.
What I mean to say is, what admin HASN'T had an outage like this?
Shit happens. I'd rather get email that works 99% of the time, and when there's a problem, google engineers are dealing with it, leaving me time to work on more important things.
I think his point was that the reason we are in this mess is because hypocrites like Barney Frank supported legislation to encourage Freddie/Fannie to lower it's lending standards. Although Frank can say his goal was to help the minorities and poor, the end result was that, like you said, many others also took out loans they couldn't afford.
Coupled with the federal government lowering interest rates to create artificially cheap money lending, and you have this current disaster.
Now Frank and the rest of the Dems are saying the problem was the republicans decreasing regulation, when in fact the problem was both parties INCREASING FEDERAL INVOLVEMENT with the market.
I am astonished that a country which refuses to pay for a national 'free at point of provision' health service, supported by taxes, yet they happily hand over the entire country's income tax to the banking system, and now 700 billion because they stayed greedy for a bit too long.
Let me astonish you further by pointing out that many of us that don't support federal government based health-care ALSO don't support the federal government propping up banks.
You're assuming the only trade-off for excepting government intervention is a slightly higher fees. That's just the start of it.
Name one thing not in the constitution that the government does well.
Indeed, let us all be glad that Microsoft won the PC war instead of Apple. Jobs would have been worse.
Yes, but at least I would have enjoyed myself.
I think I might develop a liking for throwing stones at the roof of your house, Unpossible. But you better not ask for me to be regulated, because next time, they might end up banning you from leaving your house during daylight hours or something.
I'm a Libertarian, not an anarchist. There is a police force for a reason. You're violating my basic liberties through violence. How is this analogy accurate in any way?
You're forgetting that the concepts of "discretion" and "judgement" can be (and always should be) applied to regulation. But I guess if you understood or believed in those, you couldn't be a libertarian.
As a Libertarian, I understand that the government is incredibly bad at discretion and judgment, and therefore I don't believe in giving them the leeway to try and apply it.
Us little guys don't get much of a voice anymore if government doesn't do the shouting.
This argument is also false. In a free market, you are able to sue to receive restitution.
If you'll recall, un- or under-regulated banking practices led to the current mess.
No they didn't.
What led to this mess was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac providing money that was artificially cheap. If the free market was allowed to work without government intervention (through Fannie/Freddie), then you wouldn't have had the real estate explosion, because you wouldn't have had the banks writing insane loans, because you wouldn't have had the artificially cheap money available.
Regulations are only needed when the government interferes with the market in the first place. They create an artificial imbalance, which they then must try to counter with another artificial regulation.
Refraining from doing business with PayPal is not an option. There is in many cases no good alternative.
Don't use eBay. Don't use PayPal.
If you want to use those services, use them. Don't involve the government, because there are always unintended consequences. One of which will be higher fees, guaranteed.
I know there are some sissies on here that would tell you just "drink fluids like athletes... it's the easiest solution."
Balls!
I would recommend setting up your own thirst quenching solution. First, locate a sizeable chunk of Hydrogen and Oxygen. Don't worry, they're floating all around you.
Next, wait for a bolt of lightning, or move to Florida in the summer.
Position your glass beneath the thunderstorm (this is really quite simple, I feel foolish for even spelling it out at such great length).
When the lightning bolt strikes your glass filled with hydrogen and oxygen, it sparks a reaction necessary to generate H2O -- WATER!!!
(Be careful not to mix your pure H2O with the rainwater that is probably pouring down around you at this point.) Also, don't forget to wear rubber boots so that the lightning will bounce harmlessly off your chest. Oh drat, I should have mentioned this earlier.
Well as you can see, this method is far easier than using google apps, I mean drinking gatorade.
in other words: capitalists hate us for our freedom.
You process checks for a living, you apparantly love these checks and how they work, but you hate capitalism.
What do you do for a living?
I suggest, instead of calling your legislators to ask them for more laws and restrictions, I suggest that you use your freedom of choice, and stop doing business with PayPal.
Because the next time you ask a legislator to regulate something you don't like, they may end up regulating something you DO like.
The heavy hand of government should be the absolute last resort.
End result: those who are NOT in the loop (e.g. the little guy) gets screwed, those who ARE in the insular center keep getting wealthier.
The little guy DAY TRADER may get screwed. The little guy INVESTOR is making money just fine. Instead of worrying about trading triggers, why don't you buy stock in a company worth holding for years?
Why would we need to outlaw something that has a built in mechanism to discourage its use (i.e. getting burned in a deal like this). It's a perfect system.
I think you mean
whatcouldpossibliegowrong
No, sorry, you do not. You have the right to refuse to sell the product to me - which to an extent prevents me from selling it. However, you have no legal or moral right to force me to not sell your product after I have legally purchased it from you, or someone you have authorized to sell it.
Then you've already provided Apple with a way out of this mess. Force the purchaser to enter into an agreement before purchasing the product, instead of after purchase as EULAs do today.
"You agree that you are purchasing this product to use on your Apple-created hardware, and you acknowledge that you are not permitted to re-sell the software to someone else."
If the person agrees to that statement before purchasing the software, where's your wiggle room then?
All this lawsuit will do is force Apple to be even more of a hardass, not less, because their business model of being hardware-centric is not going to change anytime soon.
When you have a problem with your OSX86 because you're running it on some POS hardware that it wasn't designed to run on, who are you going to call to fix it?
Just wondering.
Tell me, what is GMail non-beta going to do differently than GMail beta? Will it be faster? Have more features? Fewer bugs? (I am not aware of any gmail bugs!) What??? I'm dying to know, because Gmail currently rocks, and this non-beta you speak of sounds amazing!
Having company sponsored childcare doesn't mean other employees are getting paid less, is just means the stockholders are not seeing as big of a profit as they could have.
Maybe in a vacuum. In reality, if a company is making less profit:
- They pay less dividends to shareholders (as you mentioned)
- They cut wages (perhaps not across the board, which is the only thing you seem to have considered)
- They cut the number of jobs they have available (so maybe the wages don't go down, but the openings do)
- They increase the cost of goods or services they sell
- They decrease the non-wage benefits to employees
- Their stock price takes a hit and the company loses the ability to make business deals, their employees that hold options tend not to make out well, it hurts morale, etc.
Oh, you mean several hours after my post when they had in fact not yet acknowledged anything yet?