No, it is CAPABLE of killing an animal that sized - you still need to hit it in a vital area.
And your nitpicking is CAPABLE of ruining my +5 Informative, you insensitive clod!
You're right, of course. I've shot plenty of critters, for the purpose of eating them. I've never had to shoot something that would likely have eaten me. That sort of alarming situation would either make you a very good shot, or a very bad one. I think a repeating shotgun would be a VERY good idea in that situation. Most LEOs use pumps or gas-operated guns that with at least 5 rounds onboard. Vital areas or not, connect with at least a couple of those within 50 yards, and you'll slow down even a large animal enough to make sure that you DO have a good head or vitals shot to quickly finish the job. It would really suck to have to kill one of those big cats for such a dumbass reason, though. I bet the cops feel like crap about having to do it.
Yes, well, they weren't too young to have driven their vehicle to the zoo specifically to screw around, and to have drained a bottle of Vodka, were they? Old enough to operate a potentially deadly vehicle on public roads is old enough not to climb over a fence and walk up to the off-limits edge of an eclosure and start screwing with a 350-pound predator.
A shotgun? Very unlikely to kill it, almost guaranteed to enrage it.
Actually, I believe they DID kill it with a shotgun - just not loaded with birdshot. Slugs. You don't use a high powered rifle in a setting like that, or bet your life on a handgun. A 12-gauge with slugs will definitely kill something that sized, no problem.
But a judge telling a firm that they can't do it any more isn't NEARLY as good as congress making it a big ol' Federal No-No. So, c'mon, Pelosi. Reid? Where's all of that protect-the-little-guy stuff? Hillary? Obama? Where are the firey populist bits about how they'll use their party's control of congress to work on this sort of thing? Well, first things first. Like... hearings on steroid use in baseball leagues.
I'm sorry, this is slashdot. Please keep the facts out it, would you? Next you're going to cite the fact that it was Bill Clinton's stated policy to see Saddam removed from power, too.
Isn't this sorta like those missionaries who will feed the starving if they convert?
No. This is like a company that sells things offering a deal to other businesses/organizations (colleges) as part of their overall approach to growing their business. Just like the people who are competing to supply food products/services to the campus dining facilities, or those that want to sell other products. People who are spending their money (or yours) to attend college aren't "starving." If they have any motivation and can read, they can step right into all sorts of open source options, too. Do you really think so little of a college student that if they get some free training on one company's product that they won't be able to personally expand their brains enough to also try another? If you think so little of the students, why do you care what software they use? You obviously don't consider them to be thinking people, so don't sweat it.
Re:All I have to say is....
on
RIAA Website Hacked
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Goooooooooooooooooooooooooo!! Hackers!!!!!!!!
Yeah, man! Now everyone, including legislators, will definitely see that the people who want free music and movies aren't punk-ass vandals! This will definitely result in a thoughtful reconsideration of copyright law in congress, and will certainly make musicians and filmakers want to give more stuff away. Goooo hackers.
Do not rule out the RIAA to hire someone to do the hacking to win moral high ground.
OK, I won't rule that out. Also, you should not rule out that all of the people who are ripping off movies are possibly - on purpose - doing it in a very easy-to-track way so that they'll get caught appearing to be too cheap to use netflix even though all they're really trying to do is get a day in court to show that information, especially the kind that stars their favorite actors, wants to be free, to them personally, like beer ought to be, dude. Fight the power, man!
You know what? I think this was just some idiot script kiddies. If your tinfoil hat scenario were true, they'd have hacked the content in a way that specifically made the I-want-all-of-my-entertainment-for-free crowd actually say that.
the only problem with that line of logic is the fact that 100K in 1979 is about 200K or more today so the whole middle class still there we just lie about who is in it. If anything real wages have been on the decline the past 10 years because pay hasn't kept up with inflation.
The only problem with that is that it's not a problem. The numbers cited in the Post piece were adjusted for inflation.
I know for sure! 20 years ago, one parent could work 3 days a week as an IT consultant, and earn their employer ten times what they were paid, while being paid double what was needed to support a family of three.
So, have you tried living the same way you would have 20 years ago? Most people can't even imagine the basic, day-to-day home-making frugality that was the social norm. You say it takes two people working, and I say that two people working means a gigantic increase in the household expenses on eating, clothing, transportation, etc. No, the problem is that it's no longer as socially acceptable for one or the other adult to be the homemaker - producing the meals on a lower budget, reading to the kids instead of buying them $80 games for their $500 gaming platform (replaced every 24 months), and so on. Your affection for the days when one income could pull the weight is not being seeing in the context of what that sort of living actually entailed for most people. Not even close. You can't have it both ways. If you want all of the toys, the high-tech amenities, the convenient services for everything you do or want, the broad spectrum of cuisines, and all the rest - you have to pay. Those would all have been considered fantastically ridiculous luxuries to most people who DID run a household on a single worker's income a quarter of a century ago. Combine all of that with the ever-increasing sense of entitlement to things that are provided by the government to other people out of the steeper and steeper taxes you pay, and there you have it.
A middle class position in an ever poverty-increasing society due to the tremendous shift of wealth towards a small number of businessmen?
Way to buy the class warfare line, hook line and sinker, there. The prosperity pie isn't some fixed size, with the slices being re-arranged. Any increase in your standard of living is a result of your producing it. Do you REALLY think that you're not better off than someone 20 years ago, doing roughly the same amount of work with the same overall level of dedication and relative knowledge about a given area of work? What are you spending your money on? Video games, instant access to information from all over the world, three televisions, a new web-enabled cell phone every 18 months, fresh vegetables from all over the world at your finger tips year round...? The averge middle class person's standard of living HAS improved, dramatically. You're using the wrong measurements.
From the Washington Post the other day: Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 - because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. "So," Rose says, "the entire 'decline' of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder."
Try actually living with the same creature comforts, vehicles, entertainment, and quality of food and medical care that our parents and grandparents did just a few decades ago. You live like a king.
Complaining about the cost of the baseball inquiries when we're in a $275M/day senseless war
My point is that since the congress has discovered that they can't actually change the need for what the troops are doing on the ground by threatening to defund them, and the congressional leadership got where it is by stamping its feet over that very issue and proclaiming democracy and any sort of stability in Iraq as lost beyond hope, they're in a bind. And they're resorting to astonishingly sophomoric displays of domestic hand wringing (over things like baseball) in a vain attempt to get people to look the other way and not notice that they were either: 1) lying, or 2) clueless.
What the current administration is doing is this: they are spending as if their credit will go on forever
No, that's congress. The administration cannot spend anything that the congress doesn't approve and provide. There is no budget with congress approving it.
Although I agree we could certainly cut down the theatrics, they are hardly expensive.
I believe they've proven to be very expensive to the dem leadership, credibility-wise. There's a reason the administration's luke-warm approval rating is twice that of the people running the congress.
Out of intellectual laziness, or out of the fear that in actually making a judgement about someone else's actions or idealogy, you'll expose the mixed premises that make the shaky foundation of your own value system.
So, the people that are most anxious to appease loons who actively call for their deaths and actually do things like blow up trains full of commuters in those countries where they have had an easier time operating, do so because they find it morally uncomfortable to actually say: "The people who think like them are damaged or actually evil, by any rational standard." People are so queasy about calling a spade a spade, that they'd rather argue over whether or not it makes sense for states to actually improve the odds that they'll know who they're issue IDs to than to discuss the possibility that, just perhaps, we're dealing with an actual idealogical conflict here - one that includes fairly demonstrably good and bad sides. Every tactic on each side has wiggle room, and every person who lives within the general domain of those two camps doesn't validate or invalidate them. But the larger picture is pretty damn clear. One camp trends toward the ability to have conversations like this, and one camp trends towards killing the people who have conversations like this. We don't even have to get past that example.
I wasn't aware the the USA's economy depended on constant acquisition of new lands and resources as Rome's did.
It doesn't, and neither did theirs. A thriving economy depends on stability, and an atmosphere in which someone can consider their vote, or the pouring of their life savings into starting an economy-boosting business, to not be at the mercy of neighboring dictators that hand cash to medieval-minded religious terrorists or worse. An economic landscape in which it's possible for poorer people to actually grow their way out of poverty depends on the rule of constitutional law, and the awareness that what they set themselves to building isn't going to be grabbed and nationalized (or simply rubbed out) by that week's Hugo Chavez, or the fine fellows that are busy raping villages into non-existance in Darfur. You want prosperity? Make it harder for people who would rather kill than tolerate the the open communication, personal liberty, and routinely elected officials necessary for it to screw with it. Take away their supply chains. Prevent them from setting up shop in places like Pakistan after taking away their playground in Afghanistan. Prevent them from doing in Iraq what they've done in Sudan. Encourage the sort of transformation we're seeing in Lybia (largely a result of taking care of Saddam), and don't walk away from the border facing North Korea. Don't tell Taiwan that we don't have the cash this week to prevent their immediate assimilation by the Borg across the water on the mainland.
Having the huge army around just means people are going to want to use it even if it is not needed. See: Iraq.
Is that like having a well-equipped fire department? Just start some fires so they can be used? Is that really how you see a ready military? Are you saying that you personally could not resist deploying them because of their size and capabilities? Are is it that only you personally are wise enough not to, and the rest of the country is just too inferior, mentally?
Well, what it really needs to cut the military budget in half, and spend that money on things that actually help US citizens.
Presuming you can make a good case for simply not needing a ready, experienced military, and can find half of that budget to be simply unecessary, why would you presume that government spending and entitlements are the best way to use it? How about simply cutting taxes? Or are you saying that the Nancy Pelosi is better at appointing committee members to lead budget panels that are in turn better at deciding what to do with that "extra" money than the poeple who actually produce it? Since you obviously have a better plan for my earnings than I do, why aren't you just proposing the full realization of that perspective? Isn't a centrally controlled economy, with government assigned work and government assigned use of each other's money what you're really asking for? Don't be such a puss about it! Just come right out and say it: you think that most Americans are smart enought to work and produce things, but not as smart as the federal government - as populated by your preferred politicians - about what to do with it, and you think that sort of thinking is best done by those select few.
Just say it! "It takes a village!" Come on! Say it! Loud as you can, "Candidate for change!" Louder! Doesn't matter that the "change" candidates won't and can't say what they actually want to change (other than punishing success more, and through the use of expensive-to-administer government agencies, redistribute the takings to those that best vote for the policy holders who promise to hurt the upper middle class the worst for having the audicity to work hard) - they just like to rant about vague change because that word polls well with people like you. You know, people who talk about "spending money on citizens" rather than "taking less money from them in the first place." Which of Harry Reid's or Nancy Pelosi's pet initiatives are you the most proud of, as they lean lefter with their preferences for taxing and spending? Baseball steroid investigations, perhaps? Staged sleep-over Senate sessions (with cots!) to insist on the passage of a bill that no president would ever sign, and for which they already know they have no workable majority? More theatrics like that are what you have in mind, in the expanded contest for the redistribution of productive people's output? All of the taxes I'll ever pay in my lifetime won't even come close to what Pelosi is spending to fly in people to testify about freakin' baseball. You want to spend more money on citizens? How about just ceasing to spend money on bad dinner theater productions like that?
I'll take the corrupt oligarchy without all the Jesus in it.
Yeah, the new one with all the Marx in it is much better. But Ron Paul will fix that, too, right? After all, he's the one that can determine the budgets, the regulatory atmosphere, and whatnot. Oh, right, that's congress. But at least he's the right man for telling foreign allies that they're not "adult" enough. Way to win back that international respect he's pining away for! Yeesh.
This is basically the exact reason that Homeland Security is the biggest terrorist organization in the US.
Do you want to be burned alive? No? Do you take any precautions to avoid that? Does your city or county require sprinklers in commercial buildings? Is your local fire chief "the biggest terrorist" in your town, because he's the guy that has to make the case on that sort of thing, and deal with the consequences? Are the local EMTs that go to schools and talk about what it's like to scrape up teenage drinkers from the side of the road "terrorists," from your point of view? Is a guy who got to spend time scraping people off the walls of a Madrid train station, and now talks about it in a preventative way a terrorist? Are you perhaps completely missing the point?
Modern management practices are astoundingly fascist
You must be referring to the book burnings? You know, the fascist book burnings that destroyed all of the dictionaries and history books that might have given you a clue as to what that word actually means? How embarassing.
My sympathy is with the guy who tried to crash them. If there is one single person in an organization that gets routinely shit on, crash the whole thing. Screw 'em.
Because, you certainly wouldn't want to just go get a different job or anything like that.
If you trash 70 servers, you are seriously down and out of business for a while. And someone with that degree of access may also have corrupted data that goes way back into your backups. You don't know. You have to check. And for many businesses, being down and out for, say, 48 hours... it's a death sentence. Just-in-time manufacturers, retailers... they can wind up in contract breach, lose customers... if that happened to some retailers during the peak of their holiday sales season, it would bankrupt them. And when an IT person who KNOWS that chooses to shut down a business - and possibly kill it, costing everyone who works there their jobs, and everyone who invested in the business their money, and every customer who uses the vendor a resource - then that's not a bit different than torching their warehouse or otherwise acting to ruin the operations and the people who depend on it and have worked to build it. Three years in prison for deliberately, methodically attempting to ruin other people's lives and livehihood? You think that's too much? Your moral compass is way off, friend.
Only when disgruntled sysadmins start damaging meatspace.
When someone blows away the contents of 70 servers, they ARE damaging meatspace. Real time, stress, cash, and possibly very serious side-effects to real meat can result (especially in health care operations and record keeping). We just need more people to be aware of how the things that they pay money for, and get or don't get with the fruits of their labor, are diminished by the acts of crooks and vandals of ALL sorts. Inside IT jackasses, retail store theft/shrinkage - all of that. People don't want to think about it, not least because it's a reminder that there really are just plain bad people out there, and that they cost us all a little (and sometimes not so little) piece of our lives. I don't know about you, but the only life I'm getting is in meatspace. Chip away at that - however indirectly - and you're messing with the only thing that matters. And there are thousands of people chipping away, every day. Disgruntled IT guys aren't any different than disgruntled anyone else, but they can cause damage in unique ways, given their reach and the subtlety of their line of work.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it is CAPABLE of killing an animal that sized - you still need to hit it in a vital area.
And your nitpicking is CAPABLE of ruining my +5 Informative, you insensitive clod!
You're right, of course. I've shot plenty of critters, for the purpose of eating them. I've never had to shoot something that would likely have eaten me. That sort of alarming situation would either make you a very good shot, or a very bad one. I think a repeating shotgun would be a VERY good idea in that situation. Most LEOs use pumps or gas-operated guns that with at least 5 rounds onboard. Vital areas or not, connect with at least a couple of those within 50 yards, and you'll slow down even a large animal enough to make sure that you DO have a good head or vitals shot to quickly finish the job. It would really suck to have to kill one of those big cats for such a dumbass reason, though. I bet the cops feel like crap about having to do it.
someone who was very young
Yes, well, they weren't too young to have driven their vehicle to the zoo specifically to screw around, and to have drained a bottle of Vodka, were they? Old enough to operate a potentially deadly vehicle on public roads is old enough not to climb over a fence and walk up to the off-limits edge of an eclosure and start screwing with a 350-pound predator.
A shotgun? Very unlikely to kill it, almost guaranteed to enrage it.
Actually, I believe they DID kill it with a shotgun - just not loaded with birdshot. Slugs. You don't use a high powered rifle in a setting like that, or bet your life on a handgun. A 12-gauge with slugs will definitely kill something that sized, no problem.
The repeated mentioning of this guy taunting the animal irritates me, because it seems to imply it was his fault.
Yeah, climbing over the fence to deliberately provoke a large predator and whatnot... totally the zoo's fault.
It's just nice to see that the zoo's kharma system was working. Unfortunately, someone meta-modded the tiger with a shotgun.
[Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player, who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition," Microsoft said.]
Sound like anyone you know?
Actually, no. Microsoft has (as so many people here love to point out), a decreasing share of server and desktop users.
Now we know where Jack Bauer's headed next. Unfortunately, there's a lot of vodka available there. Hmmm. Dangerous! Just Jack's style.
But a judge telling a firm that they can't do it any more isn't NEARLY as good as congress making it a big ol' Federal No-No. So, c'mon, Pelosi. Reid? Where's all of that protect-the-little-guy stuff? Hillary? Obama? Where are the firey populist bits about how they'll use their party's control of congress to work on this sort of thing? Well, first things first. Like... hearings on steroid use in baseball leagues.
By Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait.
Say what you want. Thats where it all started.
I'm sorry, this is slashdot. Please keep the facts out it, would you? Next you're going to cite the fact that it was Bill Clinton's stated policy to see Saddam removed from power, too.
Isn't this sorta like those missionaries who will feed the starving if they convert?
No. This is like a company that sells things offering a deal to other businesses/organizations (colleges) as part of their overall approach to growing their business. Just like the people who are competing to supply food products/services to the campus dining facilities, or those that want to sell other products. People who are spending their money (or yours) to attend college aren't "starving." If they have any motivation and can read, they can step right into all sorts of open source options, too. Do you really think so little of a college student that if they get some free training on one company's product that they won't be able to personally expand their brains enough to also try another? If you think so little of the students, why do you care what software they use? You obviously don't consider them to be thinking people, so don't sweat it.
Goooooooooooooooooooooooooo!! Hackers!!!!!!!!
Yeah, man! Now everyone, including legislators, will definitely see that the people who want free music and movies aren't punk-ass vandals! This will definitely result in a thoughtful reconsideration of copyright law in congress, and will certainly make musicians and filmakers want to give more stuff away. Goooo hackers.
Do not rule out the RIAA to hire someone to do the hacking to win moral high ground.
OK, I won't rule that out. Also, you should not rule out that all of the people who are ripping off movies are possibly - on purpose - doing it in a very easy-to-track way so that they'll get caught appearing to be too cheap to use netflix even though all they're really trying to do is get a day in court to show that information, especially the kind that stars their favorite actors, wants to be free, to them personally, like beer ought to be, dude. Fight the power, man!
You know what? I think this was just some idiot script kiddies. If your tinfoil hat scenario were true, they'd have hacked the content in a way that specifically made the I-want-all-of-my-entertainment-for-free crowd actually say that.
If we stopped trade with China tomorrow, are stock market would collapse
Not to mention that Chinese factories are the only place where we can purchase large quantities of the word "our."
the only problem with that line of logic is the fact that 100K in 1979 is about 200K or more today so the whole middle class still there we just lie about who is in it. If anything real wages have been on the decline the past 10 years because pay hasn't kept up with inflation.
The only problem with that is that it's not a problem. The numbers cited in the Post piece were adjusted for inflation.
I know for sure! 20 years ago, one parent could work 3 days a week as an IT consultant, and earn their employer ten times what they were paid, while being paid double what was needed to support a family of three.
So, have you tried living the same way you would have 20 years ago? Most people can't even imagine the basic, day-to-day home-making frugality that was the social norm. You say it takes two people working, and I say that two people working means a gigantic increase in the household expenses on eating, clothing, transportation, etc. No, the problem is that it's no longer as socially acceptable for one or the other adult to be the homemaker - producing the meals on a lower budget, reading to the kids instead of buying them $80 games for their $500 gaming platform (replaced every 24 months), and so on. Your affection for the days when one income could pull the weight is not being seeing in the context of what that sort of living actually entailed for most people. Not even close. You can't have it both ways. If you want all of the toys, the high-tech amenities, the convenient services for everything you do or want, the broad spectrum of cuisines, and all the rest - you have to pay. Those would all have been considered fantastically ridiculous luxuries to most people who DID run a household on a single worker's income a quarter of a century ago. Combine all of that with the ever-increasing sense of entitlement to things that are provided by the government to other people out of the steeper and steeper taxes you pay, and there you have it.
A middle class position in an ever poverty-increasing society due to the tremendous shift of wealth towards a small number of businessmen?
Way to buy the class warfare line, hook line and sinker, there. The prosperity pie isn't some fixed size, with the slices being re-arranged. Any increase in your standard of living is a result of your producing it. Do you REALLY think that you're not better off than someone 20 years ago, doing roughly the same amount of work with the same overall level of dedication and relative knowledge about a given area of work? What are you spending your money on? Video games, instant access to information from all over the world, three televisions, a new web-enabled cell phone every 18 months, fresh vegetables from all over the world at your finger tips year round...? The averge middle class person's standard of living HAS improved, dramatically. You're using the wrong measurements.
From the Washington Post the other day: Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 - because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. "So," Rose says, "the entire 'decline' of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder."
Try actually living with the same creature comforts, vehicles, entertainment, and quality of food and medical care that our parents and grandparents did just a few decades ago. You live like a king.
Complaining about the cost of the baseball inquiries when we're in a $275M/day senseless war
My point is that since the congress has discovered that they can't actually change the need for what the troops are doing on the ground by threatening to defund them, and the congressional leadership got where it is by stamping its feet over that very issue and proclaiming democracy and any sort of stability in Iraq as lost beyond hope, they're in a bind. And they're resorting to astonishingly sophomoric displays of domestic hand wringing (over things like baseball) in a vain attempt to get people to look the other way and not notice that they were either: 1) lying, or 2) clueless.
What the current administration is doing is this: they are spending as if their credit will go on forever
No, that's congress. The administration cannot spend anything that the congress doesn't approve and provide. There is no budget with congress approving it.
Although I agree we could certainly cut down the theatrics, they are hardly expensive.
I believe they've proven to be very expensive to the dem leadership, credibility-wise. There's a reason the administration's luke-warm approval rating is twice that of the people running the congress.
Why would you appease someone who is wrong?
Out of intellectual laziness, or out of the fear that in actually making a judgement about someone else's actions or idealogy, you'll expose the mixed premises that make the shaky foundation of your own value system.
So, the people that are most anxious to appease loons who actively call for their deaths and actually do things like blow up trains full of commuters in those countries where they have had an easier time operating, do so because they find it morally uncomfortable to actually say: "The people who think like them are damaged or actually evil, by any rational standard." People are so queasy about calling a spade a spade, that they'd rather argue over whether or not it makes sense for states to actually improve the odds that they'll know who they're issue IDs to than to discuss the possibility that, just perhaps, we're dealing with an actual idealogical conflict here - one that includes fairly demonstrably good and bad sides. Every tactic on each side has wiggle room, and every person who lives within the general domain of those two camps doesn't validate or invalidate them. But the larger picture is pretty damn clear. One camp trends toward the ability to have conversations like this, and one camp trends towards killing the people who have conversations like this. We don't even have to get past that example.
I wasn't aware the the USA's economy depended on constant acquisition of new lands and resources as Rome's did.
It doesn't, and neither did theirs. A thriving economy depends on stability, and an atmosphere in which someone can consider their vote, or the pouring of their life savings into starting an economy-boosting business, to not be at the mercy of neighboring dictators that hand cash to medieval-minded religious terrorists or worse. An economic landscape in which it's possible for poorer people to actually grow their way out of poverty depends on the rule of constitutional law, and the awareness that what they set themselves to building isn't going to be grabbed and nationalized (or simply rubbed out) by that week's Hugo Chavez, or the fine fellows that are busy raping villages into non-existance in Darfur. You want prosperity? Make it harder for people who would rather kill than tolerate the the open communication, personal liberty, and routinely elected officials necessary for it to screw with it. Take away their supply chains. Prevent them from setting up shop in places like Pakistan after taking away their playground in Afghanistan. Prevent them from doing in Iraq what they've done in Sudan. Encourage the sort of transformation we're seeing in Lybia (largely a result of taking care of Saddam), and don't walk away from the border facing North Korea. Don't tell Taiwan that we don't have the cash this week to prevent their immediate assimilation by the Borg across the water on the mainland.
Having the huge army around just means people are going to want to use it even if it is not needed. See: Iraq.
Is that like having a well-equipped fire department? Just start some fires so they can be used? Is that really how you see a ready military? Are you saying that you personally could not resist deploying them because of their size and capabilities? Are is it that only you personally are wise enough not to, and the rest of the country is just too inferior, mentally?
Well, what it really needs to cut the military budget in half, and spend that money on things that actually help US citizens.
Presuming you can make a good case for simply not needing a ready, experienced military, and can find half of that budget to be simply unecessary, why would you presume that government spending and entitlements are the best way to use it? How about simply cutting taxes? Or are you saying that the Nancy Pelosi is better at appointing committee members to lead budget panels that are in turn better at deciding what to do with that "extra" money than the poeple who actually produce it? Since you obviously have a better plan for my earnings than I do, why aren't you just proposing the full realization of that perspective? Isn't a centrally controlled economy, with government assigned work and government assigned use of each other's money what you're really asking for? Don't be such a puss about it! Just come right out and say it: you think that most Americans are smart enought to work and produce things, but not as smart as the federal government - as populated by your preferred politicians - about what to do with it, and you think that sort of thinking is best done by those select few.
Just say it! "It takes a village!" Come on! Say it! Loud as you can, "Candidate for change!" Louder! Doesn't matter that the "change" candidates won't and can't say what they actually want to change (other than punishing success more, and through the use of expensive-to-administer government agencies, redistribute the takings to those that best vote for the policy holders who promise to hurt the upper middle class the worst for having the audicity to work hard) - they just like to rant about vague change because that word polls well with people like you. You know, people who talk about "spending money on citizens" rather than "taking less money from them in the first place." Which of Harry Reid's or Nancy Pelosi's pet initiatives are you the most proud of, as they lean lefter with their preferences for taxing and spending? Baseball steroid investigations, perhaps? Staged sleep-over Senate sessions (with cots!) to insist on the passage of a bill that no president would ever sign, and for which they already know they have no workable majority? More theatrics like that are what you have in mind, in the expanded contest for the redistribution of productive people's output? All of the taxes I'll ever pay in my lifetime won't even come close to what Pelosi is spending to fly in people to testify about freakin' baseball. You want to spend more money on citizens? How about just ceasing to spend money on bad dinner theater productions like that?
I'll take the corrupt oligarchy without all the Jesus in it.
Yeah, the new one with all the Marx in it is much better. But Ron Paul will fix that, too, right? After all, he's the one that can determine the budgets, the regulatory atmosphere, and whatnot. Oh, right, that's congress. But at least he's the right man for telling foreign allies that they're not "adult" enough. Way to win back that international respect he's pining away for! Yeesh.
This is basically the exact reason that Homeland Security is the biggest terrorist organization in the US.
Do you want to be burned alive? No? Do you take any precautions to avoid that? Does your city or county require sprinklers in commercial buildings? Is your local fire chief "the biggest terrorist" in your town, because he's the guy that has to make the case on that sort of thing, and deal with the consequences? Are the local EMTs that go to schools and talk about what it's like to scrape up teenage drinkers from the side of the road "terrorists," from your point of view? Is a guy who got to spend time scraping people off the walls of a Madrid train station, and now talks about it in a preventative way a terrorist? Are you perhaps completely missing the point?
Modern management practices are astoundingly fascist
You must be referring to the book burnings? You know, the fascist book burnings that destroyed all of the dictionaries and history books that might have given you a clue as to what that word actually means? How embarassing.
My sympathy is with the guy who tried to crash them. If there is one single person in an organization that gets routinely shit on, crash the whole thing. Screw 'em.
Because, you certainly wouldn't want to just go get a different job or anything like that.
There are data backups which can be restored
If you trash 70 servers, you are seriously down and out of business for a while. And someone with that degree of access may also have corrupted data that goes way back into your backups. You don't know. You have to check. And for many businesses, being down and out for, say, 48 hours... it's a death sentence. Just-in-time manufacturers, retailers... they can wind up in contract breach, lose customers... if that happened to some retailers during the peak of their holiday sales season, it would bankrupt them. And when an IT person who KNOWS that chooses to shut down a business - and possibly kill it, costing everyone who works there their jobs, and everyone who invested in the business their money, and every customer who uses the vendor a resource - then that's not a bit different than torching their warehouse or otherwise acting to ruin the operations and the people who depend on it and have worked to build it. Three years in prison for deliberately, methodically attempting to ruin other people's lives and livehihood? You think that's too much? Your moral compass is way off, friend.
Only when disgruntled sysadmins start damaging meatspace.
When someone blows away the contents of 70 servers, they ARE damaging meatspace. Real time, stress, cash, and possibly very serious side-effects to real meat can result (especially in health care operations and record keeping). We just need more people to be aware of how the things that they pay money for, and get or don't get with the fruits of their labor, are diminished by the acts of crooks and vandals of ALL sorts. Inside IT jackasses, retail store theft/shrinkage - all of that. People don't want to think about it, not least because it's a reminder that there really are just plain bad people out there, and that they cost us all a little (and sometimes not so little) piece of our lives. I don't know about you, but the only life I'm getting is in meatspace. Chip away at that - however indirectly - and you're messing with the only thing that matters. And there are thousands of people chipping away, every day. Disgruntled IT guys aren't any different than disgruntled anyone else, but they can cause damage in unique ways, given their reach and the subtlety of their line of work.