A word of caution though. The fact that they don't wear a ring while they're working doesn't necessarily mean they're single.
During one cleaning, I spent the whole time thinking about how I was going to ask this new hygienist to go out with me. When she told me she was married, I started to say "Why don't you wear..." and then it dawned on me and I felt like a bloody idiot for not considering that.
"when communicating with a larger group of people, who use proper Spelling and Grammar"
Where do you encounter large groups of such people? I can certainly grasp the meaning of text with a few spelling and grammatical errors, but such errors are a distraction. For instance, your use of 'effect' in place of 'affect' was like hitting a bump in the road. I know exactly what you're saying, but I can't simply gloss over an error as if it were not there.
That sucks about your teacher. Do you remember the question?
Yes, they're good at writing sensational headlines to appeal to their liberal/Democratic readership base. Among their many other talents, HuffPo is skilled at getting unflattering photos of their 'enemies'.
As for the comment boards, I found them to be awash in trolls, full of sniping and insults, largely devoid of serious and insightful discussion and generally difficult to read. Attempting to participate was even more frustrating. It's like a vast echo chamber where any contrary opinion or argument, no matter how logical, is met with a deluge of insults, accusations and talking points. You can tell by looking at the number of "one liner" comments. Even worse, the comments containing the most clever insults tend to get modded up. I gave up trying to communicate with those people after a few months and ~100 comments.
The/. discussion boards at least tend to generate comments with some substance. Don't waste your time trying to communicate with the nitwits at HuffPo.
It's not semantics. There are critical differences between 'democracy' which amounts to mob rule and 'republic' where the individual has basic rights. The latter is not a 'variation' of the former. The power of the state can be just as oppressive under the tyranny of the majority as it can under an individual tyrant.
Since the federal and state governments embarked on their massive intervention in the medical system, they have DICTATED prices to medical service providers. You get $X for performing procedure 'A', no arguments.
They also passed a law called EMTALA which DICTATES that hospitals provide treatment to anyone that shows up in the ER, regardless of their willingness or ability to pay.
Guess what the result is? A hard working middle class person who needs medical services has to pay as much as 10X or 20X (no exaggeration. for medications it can be 1000X) the price that Medicare/Medicaid pays for the SAME service!
I therefore got stuck with $30,000+ worth of bills when I needed a life saving medical procedure in 1997. What would the free market price have been? Maybe $5000? At least something manageable that I could pay in 2 years (vs. TEN)
Working people pay the taxes for government programs so that deadbeats can get free services and then get shafted covering the losses those programs force on the providers? Thank you federal government. You're doing so well, that I want to give you MORE control over the system.
Stick your 'single payer' big government nonsense up your collective arseholes.
The United States did not become the world's economic and military super-power by deciding from the outset that we needed a big government nanny-state. The socialist BS that we started in the 1960s is the genesis of our current healthcare disaster.
You should thank those lobbyists. Due to the government re-importation bans on drugs and medical devices, the American people subsidize drug and device development for the rest of the world.
Competition, efficiency and innovation drive down the prices of goods and services and/or increase quality. Government price controls, mandates and cost shifting never do. The best they can do is reduce costs by limiting supply, which is exactly how the Canadians do it.
Political dissent should be welcomed in our nation. I applaud those that go against the conventional wisdom, and respect folks that are interested enough in public policy to be politically active. If you're dis-satisfied with something in the country, you have a right to pursue ways of changing it.
I wouldn't use the "If you don't like it, then leave" argument. However, I keep hearing this refrain about how awesome things are in Canada and Europe. Although I wouldn't suggest that someone depart the U.S. if they are dissatisfied, I will suggest that if they believe things are so great to the North or on the other side of the Atlantic, please depart forthwith.
Suppose I could point to a country in Europe with the sort of government I want (government spending 10% of GDP and something equivalent to the Bill of Rights for starters) and I argued incessantly about how great it was and that it should be a model for the U.S. I wouldn't mind a polite suggestion that I relocate there.
Unfortunately, the disease of statism seems to have infected the entire Western world. I guess we'll just need to wait until these socialist bureaucracies collapse so that we can rebuild a society based on liberty and individual responsibility.
"there aren't enough Americans graduating with master's and PhDs in STEM fields"
BULL - SHIT
Publish an advertisement for whatever STEM grad that you want. $200,000 per year plus great benefits, incentive bonuses and stock options. Are you trying to suggest that ZERO American citizens with the right qualifications would apply for this job?
"MSFT would gladly hire Americans to do these jobs,"
Yeah, they would be glad to hire Americans. i.e. Americans that are willing to work at the same shit wages they pay foreigners. There are plenty of Americans qualified to do the actual WORK, just not for subsistence level compensation.
It's a matter of their priorities. They waste 2 years and countless amounts of time and resources to bust a mere 26 carders?
Meanwhile, well documented white collar crimes committed by the banking cartel are largely ignored. The FBI reported back in 2003 that there was an "Epidemic of Fraud" in the mortgage market but we didn't see an epidemic of investigations and prosecutions.
I guess the carders need to hire some lobbyists so that they too can buy a federally issued license to steal.
Some people get a criminal conviction early in their lives which basically destroys their future earnings potential, regardless of whatever skills and education they might achieve.
Given the choice of serving burgers and fries for the rest of their lives or using their talents to earn a comfortable living (albeit with major risk) they choose the latter.
Citizens United v. FEC has nothing to do with corporate personhood. That concept has been around since the late 1800s.
"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech"
A law which prohibits an organization from running a TV ad about a politician is a clear violation. Remember, the SCOTUS doesn't "legislate" or weigh the predicted results of the decision. They interpret the Constitution, and they made the right decision.
Financial de-regulation is a red herring. The politicians want you to believe deregulation was the problem for a multitude of reasons. First, the people that did it are long gone so there's nobody to vote out. Second, it gives the appearance that no laws were broken, and third, the fix is easy. More regulation. It's BS.
Government has at least 4 agencies specifically to regulate the financial sector and the FBI to investigate. They have all the regulations and evidence they need. The problem is that the feds literally will NOT enforce the existing laws.
"Money is Not Speech"
You guys DEFINITELY need a better meme. That statement is completely meaningless. IMO, it gives the impression that only word-of-mouth is immune from government infringement.
One of the purposes of a "market" is to provide a mechanism for price discovery. The markets have instead morphed into a giant scam operation which has nothing to do with this.
There is rampant insider trading. For example, check out the purchase of 'short' positions on JPM the day before the announcement of their big loss. It's blatantly obvious that someone got the info in advance. The federal government has an army of regulators as well as the FBI, and they do nothing to stop this theft.
I've pulled all of my investment $$$ out of the markets, except the equity funds I've got in my 401K., and I'm on the verge of biting the bullet and pulling that out as well.
Good idea, but why does it need to be a random delay? If every order was valid for a fixed amount of time, say 15 seconds, wouldn't it serve the same purpose?
They could also assess a minuscule fee/penalty for every X # of orders which don't execute. The idea being that the bots who submit and then immediately cancel millions of orders pay a price that a human trader wouldn't notice.
Try visiting Yahoo! news or Politico or Huffington Post and explaining how guaranteed loans make college more expensive and you get flamed and accused of being a rich 1%er that only wants wealthy kids to go to college.
Visit/. and there's no need to explain the obvious.
"SOME forms of speech are not free, and should not be allowed: those that cause real harm to individuals."
Who defines "harm"? If someone hurts your feelings have they caused you harm? If someone advocates lifestyle choices that you deem unhealthy or even destructive (advice you don't want your kids to follow) have they caused "harm"? What about cases where exposing the truth causes "harm"?
Taking an absolutist position on free speech is no more simplistic than pretending you can draw a line through a giant gray area.
I actually think you're over-estimating the number of people who genuinely BELIEVE "anything goes". In my experience, that's more of a general philosophy and a sort of "tactical position". People who advocate for absolute free speech are often just approaching real world complexities from that starting point.
I also think this position is one of "holding the line" vs. pro-actively pushing for "anything goes" as a public policy objective. When for instance have people organized to repeal laws against slander or death threats?
For every 1 free speech fundamentalist, there are 100 government bureaucrats or other people who want to implement their own censorship pet projects, and another 10,000 people who don't give a damn. I think you need people who adopt the absolutist position as organized resistance to the various people who always want "just a little" restriction on free speech, because the sum of all those little restrictions is scary to contemplate.
The statists are propagandized into believing that big government is the solution to the majority of societal problems. They support this massive and inherently corrupt(infected as you say) government in the futile hope that SOME DAY the little people will be able to take over this massive power and use it for the general good. It will never happen, and if it does, it will be a transient situation.
What the statists fail to understand is that concentrated power is an inherently corrupting influence, and that some systems are far too large and chaotic to be managed and controlled. The problem isn't with the current people in charge, as the statists like to suggest ("we just need to elect the right people"), the problem is with human nature and the institution of government itself. A big government built on a central planning model naturally becomes corrupted.
Why blame the corporations (whom we all know exist for the single purpose of maximizing profits) for corrupting the government? Why not blame the government (whom we all know is SUPPOSED TO exist to serve the governed) for betraying the people?
Government bailouts, subsidies, no-bid contracts, selectively enforced regulations and laws granting "special privileges" to the elite few are what maintains and exacerbates the disparities between the big guys and little guys. It is no coincidence that the concentration of wealth in the private sector has grown in lockstep with the concentration of power in the public sector.
That free market "mythology" coupled with a small and decentralized government(not zero government) is what turned the U.S. into the world's economic super power. Our decline can be traced directly to our abandonment of that model and our drift toward central planning, which has always failed and will continue to fail.
Everything has its limits. The problem arises when someone attempts to define those limits. A major problem arises when people attempt to define those limits and then impose them on others who might not see it the same way. What if the Catholic church was put in charge of defining the limits? Suppose all governments defined limits that mimicked those imposed by the Chinese government?
I stick to my absolutist position on free speech because we should always err on the side of favoring unrestricted communication over government-imposed "limits". We "fundamentalists" are a necessary counter-balance to the authoritarian nuts who want to use government power to enforce their subjectively defined limits.
At one time it was "common knowledge" that the Sun orbited the Earth, the earth was flat, taking a bath more than a few times per year was unhealthy, Newtonian mechanics was completely accurate, The Knack was going to be the new music of the '80s and Iraq had WMD.
Thank goodness you weren't around to censor information that was detrimental to common knowledge.
This is NOT a matter of Google self censorship. It is government authorities coming to Google with "polite requests" and court orders about certain content that the authorities and government's don't like. It's likely that they're making profit-based decisions, but those decisions are also being made under government coercion. Look at what happened to WikiLeaks. They did something the government didn't like, and all of a sudden government strong-arms PayPal, Amazon and others to dissociate themselves. Even though WikiLeaks had committed no crime other than embarrassing the government. Authorities shouldn't have such arbitrary powers.
I understand your point, but the point of this story is that the removals are being done at the request of government authorities. This is not Google making independent decisions about what to remove.
Few, if any governments in the Arab world govern by the consent of the governed. What the Saudi Arabian royalty wants is not reflective of what the bulk of the Saudi population want. Just like the policies of Mubarak were not reflective of what the people of Egypt want.
I'm sure their hatred has nothing to do with our military intervention, installation and support for puppet dictatorships, blind support for a military aggressor state in the middle of their region, crippling economic sanctions aimed at coercion, etc. etc.
This is why it's important to have free and open communication. We can listen to Bush say "they hate us for our freedom", when we should be getting the word from their point of view.
Various Al Queda figures have said repeatedly that their main grievances are U.S. military occupation of their holy land and unconditional U.S. support for Israel.
With regard to Iran, the U.S. CIA conducted a coup to overthrow Mohamad Mossadegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, and consolidated power under The Shah, a brutal dictator who ruled until the Iranian revolution in 1979.
If you want to know why the Muslim world (and the rest of the world) hates the U.S. I recommend the book "Blowback" by Chalmers Johnson. It was published in Spring 2001 before 9-11 happened.
Slashdot Mirror
A word of caution though. The fact that they don't wear a ring while they're working doesn't necessarily mean they're single.
During one cleaning, I spent the whole time thinking about how I was going to ask this new hygienist to go out with me. When she told me she was married, I started to say "Why don't you wear..." and then it dawned on me and I felt like a bloody idiot for not considering that.
"when communicating with a larger group of people, who use proper Spelling and Grammar"
Where do you encounter large groups of such people? I can certainly grasp the meaning of text with a few spelling and grammatical errors, but such errors are a distraction. For instance, your use of 'effect' in place of 'affect' was like hitting a bump in the road. I know exactly what you're saying, but I can't simply gloss over an error as if it were not there.
That sucks about your teacher. Do you remember the question?
Yes, they're good at writing sensational headlines to appeal to their liberal/Democratic readership base. Among their many other talents, HuffPo is skilled at getting unflattering photos of their 'enemies'.
As for the comment boards, I found them to be awash in trolls, full of sniping and insults, largely devoid of serious and insightful discussion and generally difficult to read. Attempting to participate was even more frustrating. It's like a vast echo chamber where any contrary opinion or argument, no matter how logical, is met with a deluge of insults, accusations and talking points. You can tell by looking at the number of "one liner" comments. Even worse, the comments containing the most clever insults tend to get modded up. I gave up trying to communicate with those people after a few months and ~100 comments.
The /. discussion boards at least tend to generate comments with some substance. Don't waste your time trying to communicate with the nitwits at HuffPo.
It's not semantics. There are critical differences between 'democracy' which amounts to mob rule and 'republic' where the individual has basic rights. The latter is not a 'variation' of the former.
The power of the state can be just as oppressive under the tyranny of the majority as it can under an individual tyrant.
Want a horror story?
Since the federal and state governments embarked on their massive intervention in the medical system, they have DICTATED prices to medical service providers. You get $X for performing procedure 'A', no arguments.
They also passed a law called EMTALA which DICTATES that hospitals provide treatment to anyone that shows up in the ER, regardless of their willingness or ability to pay.
Guess what the result is? A hard working middle class person who needs medical services has to pay as much as 10X or 20X (no exaggeration. for medications it can be 1000X) the price that Medicare/Medicaid pays for the SAME service!
I therefore got stuck with $30,000+ worth of bills when I needed a life saving medical procedure in 1997. What would the free market price have been? Maybe $5000? At least something manageable that I could pay in 2 years (vs. TEN)
Working people pay the taxes for government programs so that deadbeats can get free services and then get shafted covering the losses those programs force on the providers? Thank you federal government. You're doing so well, that I want to give you MORE control over the system.
Stick your 'single payer' big government nonsense up your collective arseholes.
The United States did not become the world's economic and military super-power by deciding from the outset that we needed a big government nanny-state. The socialist BS that we started in the 1960s is the genesis of our current healthcare disaster.
You should thank those lobbyists. Due to the government re-importation bans on drugs and medical devices, the American people subsidize drug and device development for the rest of the world.
Competition, efficiency and innovation drive down the prices of goods and services and/or increase quality. Government price controls, mandates and cost shifting never do. The best they can do is reduce costs by limiting supply, which is exactly how the Canadians do it.
Political dissent should be welcomed in our nation. I applaud those that go against the conventional wisdom, and respect folks that are interested enough in public policy to be politically active. If you're dis-satisfied with something in the country, you have a right to pursue ways of changing it.
I wouldn't use the "If you don't like it, then leave" argument. However, I keep hearing this refrain about how awesome things are in Canada and Europe. Although I wouldn't suggest that someone depart the U.S. if they are dissatisfied, I will suggest that if they believe things are so great to the North or on the other side of the Atlantic, please depart forthwith.
Suppose I could point to a country in Europe with the sort of government I want (government spending 10% of GDP and something equivalent to the Bill of Rights for starters) and I argued incessantly about how great it was and that it should be a model for the U.S. I wouldn't mind a polite suggestion that I relocate there.
Unfortunately, the disease of statism seems to have infected the entire Western world. I guess we'll just need to wait until these socialist bureaucracies collapse so that we can rebuild a society based on liberty and individual responsibility.
"Why would costs rise and quality decrease in the US?"
Medicare
Medicaid
EMTALA
Insurance anti-trust exemptions
Import bans on drugs and medical devices
Big government at its finest.
Plus, a bunch of fat-assed, chain-smoking hypochondriacs.
"there aren't enough Americans graduating with master's and PhDs in STEM fields"
BULL - SHIT
Publish an advertisement for whatever STEM grad that you want. $200,000 per year plus great benefits, incentive bonuses and stock options. Are you trying to suggest that ZERO American citizens with the right qualifications would apply for this job?
"MSFT would gladly hire Americans to do these jobs,"
Yeah, they would be glad to hire Americans. i.e. Americans that are willing to work at the same shit wages they pay foreigners. There are plenty of Americans qualified to do the actual WORK, just not for subsistence level compensation.
It's a matter of their priorities. They waste 2 years and countless amounts of time and resources to bust a mere 26 carders?
Meanwhile, well documented white collar crimes committed by the banking cartel are largely ignored. The FBI reported back in 2003 that there was an "Epidemic of Fraud" in the mortgage market but we didn't see an epidemic of investigations and prosecutions.
I guess the carders need to hire some lobbyists so that they too can buy a federally issued license to steal.
Some people get a criminal conviction early in their lives which basically destroys their future earnings potential, regardless of whatever skills and education they might achieve.
Given the choice of serving burgers and fries for the rest of their lives or using their talents to earn a comfortable living (albeit with major risk) they choose the latter.
Good. Maybe the Germans remember the Gestapo or at least the Stasi.
Citizens United v. FEC has nothing to do with corporate personhood. That concept has been around since the late 1800s.
"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"
A law which prohibits an organization from running a TV ad about a politician is a clear violation. Remember, the SCOTUS doesn't "legislate" or weigh the predicted results of the decision. They interpret the Constitution, and they made the right decision.
Financial de-regulation is a red herring. The politicians want you to believe deregulation was the problem for a multitude of reasons. First, the people that did it are long gone so there's nobody to vote out. Second, it gives the appearance that no laws were broken, and third, the fix is easy. More regulation. It's BS.
Government has at least 4 agencies specifically to regulate the financial sector and the FBI to investigate. They have all the regulations and evidence they need. The problem is that the feds literally will NOT enforce the existing laws.
"Money is Not Speech"
You guys DEFINITELY need a better meme. That statement is completely meaningless. IMO, it gives the impression that only word-of-mouth is immune from government infringement.
One of the purposes of a "market" is to provide a mechanism for price discovery. The markets have instead morphed into a giant scam operation which has nothing to do with this.
There is rampant insider trading. For example, check out the purchase of 'short' positions on JPM the day before the announcement of their big loss. It's blatantly obvious that someone got the info in advance. The federal government has an army of regulators as well as the FBI, and they do nothing to stop this theft.
I've pulled all of my investment $$$ out of the markets, except the equity funds I've got in my 401K., and I'm on the verge of biting the bullet and pulling that out as well.
Good idea, but why does it need to be a random delay? If every order was valid for a fixed amount of time, say 15 seconds, wouldn't it serve the same purpose?
They could also assess a minuscule fee/penalty for every X # of orders which don't execute. The idea being that the bots who submit and then immediately cancel millions of orders pay a price that a human trader wouldn't notice.
This is a great discussion.
Try visiting Yahoo! news or Politico or Huffington Post and explaining how guaranteed loans make college more expensive and you get flamed and accused of being a rich 1%er that only wants wealthy kids to go to college.
Visit /. and there's no need to explain the obvious.
"well, duh"
Succinct AND accurate
Bravo.
"SOME forms of speech are not free, and should not be allowed: those that cause real harm to individuals."
Who defines "harm"? If someone hurts your feelings have they caused you harm? If someone advocates lifestyle choices that you deem unhealthy or even destructive (advice you don't want your kids to follow) have they caused "harm"? What about cases where exposing the truth causes "harm"?
Taking an absolutist position on free speech is no more simplistic than pretending you can draw a line through a giant gray area.
I actually think you're over-estimating the number of people who genuinely BELIEVE "anything goes". In my experience, that's more of a general philosophy and a sort of "tactical position". People who advocate for absolute free speech are often just approaching real world complexities from that starting point.
I also think this position is one of "holding the line" vs. pro-actively pushing for "anything goes" as a public policy objective. When for instance have people organized to repeal laws against slander or death threats?
For every 1 free speech fundamentalist, there are 100 government bureaucrats or other people who want to implement their own censorship pet projects, and another 10,000 people who don't give a damn. I think you need people who adopt the absolutist position as organized resistance to the various people who always want "just a little" restriction on free speech, because the sum of all those little restrictions is scary to contemplate.
The statists are propagandized into believing that big government is the solution to the majority of societal problems. They support this massive and inherently corrupt(infected as you say) government in the futile hope that SOME DAY the little people will be able to take over this massive power and use it for the general good. It will never happen, and if it does, it will be a transient situation.
What the statists fail to understand is that concentrated power is an inherently corrupting influence, and that some systems are far too large and chaotic to be managed and controlled. The problem isn't with the current people in charge, as the statists like to suggest ("we just need to elect the right people"), the problem is with human nature and the institution of government itself. A big government built on a central planning model naturally becomes corrupted.
Why blame the corporations (whom we all know exist for the single purpose of maximizing profits) for corrupting the government? Why not blame the government (whom we all know is SUPPOSED TO exist to serve the governed) for betraying the people?
Government bailouts, subsidies, no-bid contracts, selectively enforced regulations and laws granting "special privileges" to the elite few are what maintains and exacerbates the disparities between the big guys and little guys. It is no coincidence that the concentration of wealth in the private sector has grown in lockstep with the concentration of power in the public sector.
That free market "mythology" coupled with a small and decentralized government(not zero government) is what turned the U.S. into the world's economic super power. Our decline can be traced directly to our abandonment of that model and our drift toward central planning, which has always failed and will continue to fail.
Everything has its limits. The problem arises when someone attempts to define those limits. A major problem arises when people attempt to define those limits and then impose them on others who might not see it the same way. What if the Catholic church was put in charge of defining the limits? Suppose all governments defined limits that mimicked those imposed by the Chinese government?
I stick to my absolutist position on free speech because we should always err on the side of favoring unrestricted communication over government-imposed "limits". We "fundamentalists" are a necessary counter-balance to the authoritarian nuts who want to use government power to enforce their subjectively defined limits.
TFA mentions much more than APCO, for instance
"the firm said it had received 461 court orders covering a total of 6,989 items between July and December 2011."
At one time it was "common knowledge" that the Sun orbited the Earth, the earth was flat, taking a bath more than a few times per year was unhealthy, Newtonian mechanics was completely accurate, The Knack was going to be the new music of the '80s and Iraq had WMD.
Thank goodness you weren't around to censor information that was detrimental to common knowledge.
This is NOT a matter of Google self censorship.
It is government authorities coming to Google with "polite requests" and court orders about certain content that the authorities and government's don't like.
It's likely that they're making profit-based decisions, but those decisions are also being made under government coercion.
Look at what happened to WikiLeaks. They did something the government didn't like, and all of a sudden government strong-arms PayPal, Amazon and others to dissociate themselves. Even though WikiLeaks had committed no crime other than embarrassing the government.
Authorities shouldn't have such arbitrary powers.
I understand your point, but the point of this story is that the removals are being done at the request of government authorities. This is not Google making independent decisions about what to remove.
Few, if any governments in the Arab world govern by the consent of the governed. What the Saudi Arabian royalty wants is not reflective of what the bulk of the Saudi population want. Just like the policies of Mubarak were not reflective of what the people of Egypt want.
I'm sure their hatred has nothing to do with our military intervention, installation and support for puppet dictatorships, blind support for a military aggressor state in the middle of their region, crippling economic sanctions aimed at coercion, etc. etc.
"....what do they hate us for?"
This is why it's important to have free and open communication. We can listen to Bush say "they hate us for our freedom", when we should be getting the word from their point of view.
Various Al Queda figures have said repeatedly that their main grievances are U.S. military occupation of their holy land and unconditional U.S. support for Israel.
With regard to Iran, the U.S. CIA conducted a coup to overthrow Mohamad Mossadegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, and consolidated power under The Shah, a brutal dictator who ruled until the Iranian revolution in 1979.
If you want to know why the Muslim world (and the rest of the world) hates the U.S. I recommend the book "Blowback" by Chalmers Johnson. It was published in Spring 2001 before 9-11 happened.