I'm plenty old enough to see that you can't have capitalism and equity - you have to pick one; while socialism, liberty, and a greater degree of equality than we have here happily coexist in most of Europe and parts of Asia (not China, think South Korea and Japan). I find capitalism disgusting. It's probably the most abhorrent, dehumanizing, terrible, evil thing I could imagine. The failures of the "socialist" states in the 20th century were not failures of socialism they were failures of totalitarianism. Socialism REQUIRES democracy. The millions that died in the USSR and China did not die because of socialism they died because they lived under a dictatorship that was poorly run. In America, millions barely scrape by or worse because they live under a capitalist system that is poorly run.
The ignorance of what socialism is comes from never seriously challenging the notion that exploitation and greed are the best building blocks for a system of government and commerce. If we are to succeed in the long term as a nation, as a species, then we ought not to base our organizing structures on our worst qualities and fuel them with our basest desires for material wealth and lust for power.
Cutting taxes is often NOT good for the economy, especially long term when there is a lot of debt and unfunded entitlement programs, and programs that are desperately needed but have yet to be created and funded. I don't think Gore would have done much different to stop the coming recession, he's not socialist enough to have really challenged the corrupt capitalist system that causes the depression cycle, but we would have been in an incredibly more favorable position to ride it out than we were and are in. He also would not have attacked Iraq - a war of choice which has done nothing to improve our security and has in fact weakened it and squandered our hard earned reputation with the rest of the world.
Those are pretty much the priorities of most people for most years, although it seems to more favor Republicans. Illegal immigrants DO pay taxes, they pay sales and property taxes (which are unavoidable if you buy goods and rent property) and most have payroll taxes taken out of the checks by their employer to cover their own asses. Many also pay into SS with fake numbers, so they'll never see any of that money but are subsidizing people who will.
Jobs aren't being saved or created by making it harder for educated people to come to the US and stay here. Borders? I guess borders are an issue for me, in that I want them to be totally open, and give amnesty to all people currently here. Deficits can be fixed with higher taxes for the wealthy and corporations - as well as reducing the size and scope of our military. With the left over cash you increase social welfare and entitlement spending.
I guess that's why I'm not a Democrat or a Republican, but a socialist.
You'd only need one router/computer per floor (or every other floor) per dozen users. If every computer that needs net access is also a router, it works. Same with streets on the top down dimension.
Not everyone uses the Internet at all - ever. Hard to believe for us here on Slashdot but there are still plenty of people with no net access either by choice or for financial reasons. Of the people that do use and want internet access, not all of them will be online at one time, and I'd suspect that those people that are will be fairly evenly spread out over the area you are trying to cover with service. You could potentially have hundreds of users on each node, but still far from millions. If it were a true mesh network, it would scale beautifully as long as each sufficiently powerful and powered device was also a router but I don't see the system as it is described as being very reliable or useful to anyone outside the cab.
This is the idea. The open source software movement and creative commons show me that there is a viable alternative to controlling all the rights of a work for absurd amounts of time. I should say that copyright, as it exists TODAY, should be scraped and brought in line with the ideas of the OSS or CC movements, with a sane and short period of exclusive rights for the author - say, 5-10 years. After that, if you haven't made money from it what makes you think you can or that you deserve to collect royalties forever?
I'm going to continue doing what I normally do, and ignore copyright law. Absurdities like this just show how backwards and useless the system is. Scrap it, make everything public domain.
There are ads on the internet? Seriously, when did this happen?
The best targeted ads are useless if no one sees them. Firefox could include Adblock Plus functionality by default (with easylist enabled) and we'd have an instant restructuring of the entire online advertisement model. Sites that would throw up a pay-wall aren't worth my time anyway, good riddance to bad rubbish.
Perhaps my dream of having 1 port for everything, peripherals, storage, display, power even, will be achieved. Just a line of identical ports on the side/back of the computer.
That's why I hope he wins his case, and then turns around and sues the state and Police Department for millions.
Being "tough on crime" is a joke in an age where nearly everyone, everywhere in our country is guilty of SOMETHING that could land them in prison. There is something fundamentally wrong with our legal system. It no longer seeks justice, it seeks to create more criminals because criminals are now a product that the state can sell to industrialists who build and maintain prisons. You make more criminals by making more behavior criminal, and forcing segments of the population toward criminal behavior - our inner cities are crime factories, and that's exactly what the state wants because if the prisons are empty, then more won't be built.
Sell it or maybe use the case, they look quite nice. That might take some work to get non-Apple components in it though (I'm not familiar with how they are set up internally). I was in a similar situation with an old P4 Dell. It's just not worth the noise, heat, and power drain for what essentially is a low intensity task. Serving files or even streaming video doesn't take that much power and G5s and P4s are just too inefficient for what you get.
Sell it and get a Mac mini, or some other comparable low cost/efficient computer. Attach some external drives to it and you're done. Alternatively you could buy an Airport Extreme and a USB hub, plug in a few external hard drives and you have a much better and efficient home server.
Marijuana smoke, second hand or otherwise is painful for me to breathe - like all smoke. I can't get over it, just doesn't work with my body. Marijuana cookies on the other hand...
Who says you can't buy large purchases with cash? I've bought cars and your example, TVs with cash, both multi-thousand dollar purchases. People were actually happy to get cash than some other form of payment as it was instant and hassle free. The TV was at a retail store too, the car was used but from a big name dealership.
I can grow my own tobacco if I want, tax free. I can brew my own beer if I want, tax free. I'm sure whatever form legalization takes that growing marijuana for your own use won't be taxed - there is a lot of precedent for that. You only start paying taxes when you sell it.
To borrow a phrase, the constitution is not a suicide pact. When it's not working, we change it. We've done so many times already. We've even undone changes that we thought would be good ideas (prohibition). Strict constructionalism has all but been abandoned because today the needs of government and society are not the same as when the constitution was written. It is not carved in stone, it's not a sacred text to be followed to the letter. It's just a rough outline of government, and, IMO not even a particularly good one. It left out a lot of things we consider vital today, and made some truly horrible compromises to get it accepted. There were some truly brilliant people behind it, and they had the foresight to make sure it was possible for the constitution to remain relevant by adapting to the needs of the nation while giving us a link to our shared past.
Do you think you shouldn't have to pay content creators?
When you get right down to it, yes. I think that. It should be optional at most; works of art that exist as purely commercial exercises will disappear. I'm ok with that. As for other types of imaginary property that don't fall under the term "art" (like patents for physical devices and computer programs) there are better ways to deal with the regulation of who gets to sell them than making ideas (information) illegal - something that should be avoided at all costs, regardless of consequences. Programmers can sell their labor instead of the finished product, and a reasonable and short (10-15 years) government granted monopoly can protect a person or company's investment into developing some product. Software patents however, should not in any form be allowed.
Since I don't see ads (no one I know does) the only issues are privacy concerns which can be fixed by setting everything to friends only and not accepting requests from people you don't personally know. I guess at a basic level I have to trust that FB won't share anything I put on there with anyone, but I don't have anything on Facebook that isn't already public knowledge.
If you think politics don't enter into what products get made, promoted, reviewed, and how "impartial" third parties assess them then you're probably a libertarian who believes the market would just sort all this out for the benefit of the little guy if we left everyone alone enough.
Fuel isn't so expensive to make it attractive enough at that price then, especially in the US, even more so when you consider what you have to give up for it. A Golf would cost less, goes faster, has longer range, holds more people or cargo, is safer and is probably less costly to repair because it's not so unique.
If they could sell that for under $10,000 I would be first in line to buy one. I have a feeling if it ever gets to market it's going to be just too expensive though. If it's 20 grand or around there I'd rather just get one of VW's larger models like the Golf or Jeta.
These problems can nearly all be traced back to one thing: corn subsidies. We pay farmers to grow corn so intensively that it has become cheaper to chemically process corn into whatever food-like product we want than it is to grow real, healthy food. Our entire food chain is dependent on mass produced, cheap corn - but it doesn't have to be that way. Farms do not have to be operated on the factory model, and we don't have to sacrifice output to do things the right way, the sustainable way if good public policy decisions are made. We WOULD however be sacrificing profitability and efficiency and that's why market forces cannot be trusted to fix the problem, as the market will always tend towards higher profits regardless of the long term problems it causes. We need policy that will encourage small scale farming, and discourage the kinds of practices that we know are harmful to our health and the environment: chemically altered corn-derived ingredients like HFCS, use of hormones, over-use of chemical fertilizers and insecticides, feed lots, shipping food hundreds of miles to be sold. I'm thankful I can afford to buy healthy food, millions cannot and this is a tragedy worthy of the greatest of efforts to end.
The competitors (Android would be the closest equivalent) have their own sets of problems, and hardware becoming quickly obsolete is something that you will never be able to get away from as long as you are using hardware.
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I'm plenty old enough to see that you can't have capitalism and equity - you have to pick one; while socialism, liberty, and a greater degree of equality than we have here happily coexist in most of Europe and parts of Asia (not China, think South Korea and Japan). I find capitalism disgusting. It's probably the most abhorrent, dehumanizing, terrible, evil thing I could imagine. The failures of the "socialist" states in the 20th century were not failures of socialism they were failures of totalitarianism. Socialism REQUIRES democracy. The millions that died in the USSR and China did not die because of socialism they died because they lived under a dictatorship that was poorly run. In America, millions barely scrape by or worse because they live under a capitalist system that is poorly run.
The ignorance of what socialism is comes from never seriously challenging the notion that exploitation and greed are the best building blocks for a system of government and commerce. If we are to succeed in the long term as a nation, as a species, then we ought not to base our organizing structures on our worst qualities and fuel them with our basest desires for material wealth and lust for power.
I'm a US citizen and that seemed wrong to me too. I felt like I was being talked down to. I can name every country in Europe, thank you very much.
Cutting taxes is often NOT good for the economy, especially long term when there is a lot of debt and unfunded entitlement programs, and programs that are desperately needed but have yet to be created and funded. I don't think Gore would have done much different to stop the coming recession, he's not socialist enough to have really challenged the corrupt capitalist system that causes the depression cycle, but we would have been in an incredibly more favorable position to ride it out than we were and are in. He also would not have attacked Iraq - a war of choice which has done nothing to improve our security and has in fact weakened it and squandered our hard earned reputation with the rest of the world.
Those are pretty much the priorities of most people for most years, although it seems to more favor Republicans. Illegal immigrants DO pay taxes, they pay sales and property taxes (which are unavoidable if you buy goods and rent property) and most have payroll taxes taken out of the checks by their employer to cover their own asses. Many also pay into SS with fake numbers, so they'll never see any of that money but are subsidizing people who will.
Jobs aren't being saved or created by making it harder for educated people to come to the US and stay here. Borders? I guess borders are an issue for me, in that I want them to be totally open, and give amnesty to all people currently here. Deficits can be fixed with higher taxes for the wealthy and corporations - as well as reducing the size and scope of our military. With the left over cash you increase social welfare and entitlement spending.
I guess that's why I'm not a Democrat or a Republican, but a socialist.
You'd only need one router/computer per floor (or every other floor) per dozen users. If every computer that needs net access is also a router, it works. Same with streets on the top down dimension.
Not everyone uses the Internet at all - ever. Hard to believe for us here on Slashdot but there are still plenty of people with no net access either by choice or for financial reasons. Of the people that do use and want internet access, not all of them will be online at one time, and I'd suspect that those people that are will be fairly evenly spread out over the area you are trying to cover with service. You could potentially have hundreds of users on each node, but still far from millions. If it were a true mesh network, it would scale beautifully as long as each sufficiently powerful and powered device was also a router but I don't see the system as it is described as being very reliable or useful to anyone outside the cab.
This is the idea. The open source software movement and creative commons show me that there is a viable alternative to controlling all the rights of a work for absurd amounts of time. I should say that copyright, as it exists TODAY, should be scraped and brought in line with the ideas of the OSS or CC movements, with a sane and short period of exclusive rights for the author - say, 5-10 years. After that, if you haven't made money from it what makes you think you can or that you deserve to collect royalties forever?
I'm going to continue doing what I normally do, and ignore copyright law. Absurdities like this just show how backwards and useless the system is. Scrap it, make everything public domain.
Have you ever driven a Camry? They offer a V6 configuration that's got plenty of power for any sensible person.
There are ads on the internet? Seriously, when did this happen?
The best targeted ads are useless if no one sees them. Firefox could include Adblock Plus functionality by default (with easylist enabled) and we'd have an instant restructuring of the entire online advertisement model. Sites that would throw up a pay-wall aren't worth my time anyway, good riddance to bad rubbish.
Perhaps my dream of having 1 port for everything, peripherals, storage, display, power even, will be achieved. Just a line of identical ports on the side/back of the computer.
That's why I hope he wins his case, and then turns around and sues the state and Police Department for millions.
Being "tough on crime" is a joke in an age where nearly everyone, everywhere in our country is guilty of SOMETHING that could land them in prison. There is something fundamentally wrong with our legal system. It no longer seeks justice, it seeks to create more criminals because criminals are now a product that the state can sell to industrialists who build and maintain prisons. You make more criminals by making more behavior criminal, and forcing segments of the population toward criminal behavior - our inner cities are crime factories, and that's exactly what the state wants because if the prisons are empty, then more won't be built.
So you use it as a stylish space heater? :p
Sell it or maybe use the case, they look quite nice. That might take some work to get non-Apple components in it though (I'm not familiar with how they are set up internally). I was in a similar situation with an old P4 Dell. It's just not worth the noise, heat, and power drain for what essentially is a low intensity task. Serving files or even streaming video doesn't take that much power and G5s and P4s are just too inefficient for what you get.
Sell it and get a Mac mini, or some other comparable low cost/efficient computer. Attach some external drives to it and you're done. Alternatively you could buy an Airport Extreme and a USB hub, plug in a few external hard drives and you have a much better and efficient home server.
Marijuana smoke, second hand or otherwise is painful for me to breathe - like all smoke. I can't get over it, just doesn't work with my body. Marijuana cookies on the other hand...
Who says you can't buy large purchases with cash? I've bought cars and your example, TVs with cash, both multi-thousand dollar purchases. People were actually happy to get cash than some other form of payment as it was instant and hassle free. The TV was at a retail store too, the car was used but from a big name dealership.
I can grow my own tobacco if I want, tax free. I can brew my own beer if I want, tax free. I'm sure whatever form legalization takes that growing marijuana for your own use won't be taxed - there is a lot of precedent for that. You only start paying taxes when you sell it.
To borrow a phrase, the constitution is not a suicide pact. When it's not working, we change it. We've done so many times already. We've even undone changes that we thought would be good ideas (prohibition). Strict constructionalism has all but been abandoned because today the needs of government and society are not the same as when the constitution was written. It is not carved in stone, it's not a sacred text to be followed to the letter. It's just a rough outline of government, and, IMO not even a particularly good one. It left out a lot of things we consider vital today, and made some truly horrible compromises to get it accepted. There were some truly brilliant people behind it, and they had the foresight to make sure it was possible for the constitution to remain relevant by adapting to the needs of the nation while giving us a link to our shared past.
Do you think you shouldn't have to pay content creators?
When you get right down to it, yes. I think that. It should be optional at most; works of art that exist as purely commercial exercises will disappear. I'm ok with that. As for other types of imaginary property that don't fall under the term "art" (like patents for physical devices and computer programs) there are better ways to deal with the regulation of who gets to sell them than making ideas (information) illegal - something that should be avoided at all costs, regardless of consequences. Programmers can sell their labor instead of the finished product, and a reasonable and short (10-15 years) government granted monopoly can protect a person or company's investment into developing some product. Software patents however, should not in any form be allowed.
Since I don't see ads (no one I know does) the only issues are privacy concerns which can be fixed by setting everything to friends only and not accepting requests from people you don't personally know. I guess at a basic level I have to trust that FB won't share anything I put on there with anyone, but I don't have anything on Facebook that isn't already public knowledge.
If you think politics don't enter into what products get made, promoted, reviewed, and how "impartial" third parties assess them then you're probably a libertarian who believes the market would just sort all this out for the benefit of the little guy if we left everyone alone enough.
Fuel isn't so expensive to make it attractive enough at that price then, especially in the US, even more so when you consider what you have to give up for it. A Golf would cost less, goes faster, has longer range, holds more people or cargo, is safer and is probably less costly to repair because it's not so unique.
If they could sell that for under $10,000 I would be first in line to buy one. I have a feeling if it ever gets to market it's going to be just too expensive though. If it's 20 grand or around there I'd rather just get one of VW's larger models like the Golf or Jeta.
These problems can nearly all be traced back to one thing: corn subsidies. We pay farmers to grow corn so intensively that it has become cheaper to chemically process corn into whatever food-like product we want than it is to grow real, healthy food. Our entire food chain is dependent on mass produced, cheap corn - but it doesn't have to be that way. Farms do not have to be operated on the factory model, and we don't have to sacrifice output to do things the right way, the sustainable way if good public policy decisions are made. We WOULD however be sacrificing profitability and efficiency and that's why market forces cannot be trusted to fix the problem, as the market will always tend towards higher profits regardless of the long term problems it causes. We need policy that will encourage small scale farming, and discourage the kinds of practices that we know are harmful to our health and the environment: chemically altered corn-derived ingredients like HFCS, use of hormones, over-use of chemical fertilizers and insecticides, feed lots, shipping food hundreds of miles to be sold. I'm thankful I can afford to buy healthy food, millions cannot and this is a tragedy worthy of the greatest of efforts to end.
The competitors (Android would be the closest equivalent) have their own sets of problems, and hardware becoming quickly obsolete is something that you will never be able to get away from as long as you are using hardware.