am no fan of deficit spending. As a percentage of GDP the current deficit is manageable. The idea is to keep deficit growth at or below rates of economic growth and gradually growth out of the debt. As much as a genious as you fancy yourself, do you choose to ignore this simple idea, or are you unaware?
I am not unaware, and I am seriously worried about a Dem taking office and using inflation as debt management, as you point out, that has a problematic effect on growth. The problem currently is that the debt is growing at an alarming rate, and with the insane, and extremely expensive, adventure the idiots sent us on in Iraq, that isn't likely to change for another decade or so.
This will most likely put the US in a situation where managing debt with economic growth becomes impossible, and the options will then be to go further into debt or to use Dem-style inflationary measures. Not pretty.
This gross mismanagement of our finances have happened in a time when the US needs to stay nimble and agressive to counter the real threat to our freedom, namely strong competition from Asia (Europe is in the shitter, no worries from that direction). This gross mismanagement has happened for reasons only religious nutcases would be able to understand, financing in-door rain-forests in Ohio and ridiculous military adventures in regions of the world where there is no benefit to our presence.
I think this sentence shows how retarded amightywind is...must have a US education.
Cornell '86
And they didn't even teach you how to read basic English? Can you sue to get your money back?
You can be born trailer-trash and end up as president (Clinton essentially did). This is not at all the case in most of Europe.
Another nitwit swayed by his Georgetown/Yale populism. I do believe you have spent time in Europe.
In the paragraph you are quoting above I state that a good thing about the US is that you can be born with little or nothing and move all the way to the top. This is part of the "American Dream", and I pointed to Clinton as an example of someone who has actually done this. Do you disagree with my statement that it is good that someone with very little in the US can work his way all the way to the top, or are you just trying to prove to the entire world that you actually are completely incapable of reading and understanding a basic English text?
Did the communists average 5% economic growth?
In the Soviet Union, no. In China right now, well... in socialist Norway, absolutely. You are again showing your lack of basic comprehension of the English language though. Big government spending is the socialist way. No other party ever has been more pro big-government spending than the morons who call them self Republicans in todays Washington DC. Bush is not a republican. The current house and Senate are not under control of Republicans. They are controlled by nut-case socialists who squander money at a rate never before seen in the history of our country. Most of it on inane stupidities like an in-door rain forest in Ohio. This is what makes them socialist.
Factors outside of the ruling class' control can contribute to economic growth in spite of their politics. The Bushman has been good at giving tax-breaks and thereby ensuring economic growth, that is a good thing. The problem is that he has done it by borrowing insane amounts of money which we have to pay back some day, which is a bad thing. He has been doing the most irresponsible thing possible, by partying with my childrens money. What gives him the right to squander my childrens money and not take any responsibility for it? The White House and the (R) controlled legislature has spent more money more recklessly than was done under the New Deal, and we are going to pay for that for decades.
You seem to be about as bad at basic math as you are in basic reading and writing. You seem not to understand how Bush has crippled our economy for decades to come. Now, ask your self a simple question: We have borrowed trillions of dollars over the past 6 years. We have to pay that back. How is the government going to pay it back? And, no, a 5% economic growth doesn't come close to paying for it.
amightywind: I wish the state department would screen you turds more carefully before letting you in?
I think this sentence shows how retarded amightywind is, and it also is a good example on the points the parent poster was trying to make. Obviously amightywind is unable to read relatively basic English, he must have a US education.
Americans have no idea what communism or socialism is
Why don't you ask the Ruskies or the Chinese about communism?
Again a rather bizarre answer to the original comment. This mighty wind he is talking about is not a caused by a mighty brain with a mighty intellect. Of course you can ask the chinese about communism and socialism, and the ruskies too. What does that have to do with the fact that most americans have no clue what socialism is? If most americans had a clue, they would realize that the current lunatic in the White House is a staunch, Stalin-style socialist. How on earth the socialists managed to take control of the Republican party I will never understand, but it is still the case. The current Washington crowd are big-government, imperialist, nepotistic, soviet-style communists. That includes Bush and Cheney.
Toss a dollar or a Euro on the ground in your home country and see which one gets picked up
Probably the US doller you retarded dimwit, he is a US citizen living in the US of A. As you it seems, and as me.
The US by many metrics isn't the best place in the world to live.
I imagine most of them are from elsewhere
Most of what? The metrics? Metrics do not come from anywhere, they are metrics. Are you mentally handicapped? Oh, yes, we had already established that fact, hadn't we?
US is, by most metrics, not a very good place to live. It is a great place to live for me, but I have an excellent 6-figure salary and work for a company with outstanding non-salary benefits. For a lot of people that is not the case. The US spends more than any country in the world on our medical system, and it falls so far behind all other systems in comparable countries it is sick. This is not because of litigation happy citizens, it is due to the fact that our system is grossly mismanaged and that lots of people (cronyism) are getting fat on our health-dollars. Our education system is a total mess, probably only better, and by a slight margin at best, than systems in Africa. Hell, even a piss-poor socialist dictatorship like Cuba has more literate people than does the US. Our university system is great, but that doesn't help much when such a large part of the population, amightywind included, lack the most basic reading and comprehension skills. And then there is starvation. In the US. I love the US, but the richest country in the world should be ashamed that only third-world countries have more starving children than we do.
There are things that are absolutely excellent about the US.
Racism is far less of a problem here than in most other countries. Europe is more racist than is the US, a lot more racist. They don't think they are, but the numbers speak for them selves. One out of three US immigrants (including the ones from poor countries) will own their own home before they retire, a huge portion of immigrants to France (for example) will not work, even after three generations. That is racism in practice. Having spent two decards in Europe, it always shocks me when they think they are not particularly racist. Their racism just shows it self in a different manner. This is also a reflection on the US having a far more humane immigration policy than any other country I know of.
The US has far better social mobility than most countries. You can be born trailer-trash and end up as president (Clinton essentially did). This is not at all the case in most of Europe.
huh? Science works via the scientific method which looks like this:
Hypothesis: Describe a testable idea that is capable of being false
Test: Gather data related to hypothesis
Does data corroborate hypothesis?
yes) Publish results for peer review
Ideas come in a few variations. Conjecture, hypothesis, theory. Often, but not always, an idea will evolve (no pun intended) through these different stages. Now, a theory needs to be (among several other things, such as have data that corroborate it) falsifiable, any conjecture or hypothesis that is not falsifiable can never be a Theory.
Science is about putting together falsifiable theories, and then falsify these. A theory that hasn't been falsified will generally stand, but not as "truth", only as a theory.
I am probably not phrasing this particularly well, but you get my point. Yes, you are correct, creating a hypothesis is where most of the work happens in science, but science isn't about being "wrong until proven correct, it is about being "theoretical until proven wrong", which is almost the exact opposite. A huge part of scientific theory can not be proven right, but easily, if we find data, be proven wrong. Newton for example, created a set of theories that could never be proven correct, but Einstein easily proved them "wrong" for a given subset of the data available.
Science can prove plenty of things . V=IR. The Earth goes around the Sun.
You are absolutely correct, science can prove a lot of things. When it comes to work with theories, such as Newton as you mention, the bulk of the intellectual effort is not in proving it, but falsifying it. My comment was to the "science is like -- wrong until proven correct", which isn't really the case. Newtons theories were considered "correct" or "reasonable" or however you want to phrase it, until proven "wrong", which is kinda, sorta, the opposite of what was said.
Re: Closing tags, that's what the "Preview" button is for <big grin>
Science by default says that any statement is wrong until proven otherwise.
Someone failed their science class. It is Law that says something is "wrong" until proven otherwise. Science in many ways says almost the exact opposite. In science any Theory (and there is a difference between conjecture and Theory) is correct until proven false.
Outside of a few diciplines, science generally doesn't go around proving stuff, quite the opposite, science falsifies stuff.
To the grandparent here, who states that Science is compatible with religion as such, that is also generally wrong. Any particular scientific dicipline may be compatible with your paticular religion at any moment in time, but science isn't any particular dicipline, it is a methodology. Using scientific methodology there are no divine entities or other "supernatural" stuff. Belief and science is inherently incompatible, the only way that scientists can stay religious is that they accept that their belief is incompatible with their science and move on. Such dual standards is one of the easiest feats for most humans.
Dude, you don't think about everything; most of us don't.
This is correct, but the router between slashdot and me doesn't have any real impact on how I live my life or what decisions I make. Morals and ethics does. Leaving the heavy lifting of the basis of your thinking to other people is just plain scary. Lots of people have over the years, and every time they did, lots of poeple died. In fact, leaving the heavy lifting of thinking to someone else is the main problem in the US today, IMNSHO.
And note that I'm not advocating that one not think at all--merely that one hire an expert to do the heavy lifting
Did you design & build your own car? Did you design & mix the allows to create it? Did you explore, drill for & refine the oil to make its fuel?
I have no aptitude for car-building, and I have not acheieved the appropriate training.
If not, why do you expect people to do the same with morality or philosophy? Get a basic understanding of the field, then hire an expert to do the heavy lifting for you; know just enough to keep a sanity check on him. It's called delegation.
I desperately hope you are sarcastic. Not thinking, which you advocate above, is the main cause of problems in human history. Allowing your self not to think about things makes you a mindless puppet on someone elses string. The only people who do not think are mentally ill people.
I agree that Huntsville is a nice place, I have done quite a bit of work there. Very nice indeed. Personally I would not want to live there, but I might choose Huntsville over Silicon Valley. Personally I like southern California, we have no rain, no heat, no humidity, no bugs and only the odd earthquake (far fewer than tornadoes and hurricanes in the souht east). I would argue that there are very few places in the world that are nicer than Southern California. East coast Australia and parts of Mediterranean Europe are similar.
Now, one thing I have to jump to though is the following statement:
Do you know why there's no crime? Most of these people go to church!
This is a patently absurd statement. Yes, there is lower crime levels, but it is not because people go to church. There is lower crime in Huntsville because it is a relatively affluent area, affluence means less crime. What impact does church attendance have on crime? Well, some studies have been done, and they are not good news for church-goers.
In general, a society that has high church attendence also has higher rates of the following: Murder, rape, teen pregnancy, divorce, abortions and child abuse.
Now, just to make it absolutely clear, I am not saying above that the reason for these higher numbers of "social problems" is high church attendance, I am just saying that they do show a covariance. In other words, I find it unlikely that going to church makes a person a murderer or a rapist, however the data shows that it doesn't help against that person becoming a such.
You are correct that Democrats generally wants higher taxes than Republicans, but that is only theoretically the case currently. The Republican party, even excluding the war in Iraq, are increasing the budget significantly. They are spending enormous amounts of money. Amounts that are not sustainable in any way whatsoever.
With this significant increase in federal spending, we either have to take in more money in federal tax, or we have to borrow the money. Taking in the extra cash in tax means that we get a relatively instant feedback on this spending increase. The in-door rainforest in Ohio cost money for the regular joe immediately. Now, the Republicans don't want to increase tax, so they borrow the money. What happens when we borrow money? We have to pay it back, as per usual. This means that someone has to re-pay.
So, how are we to pay them back? There is nothing indicating that we will have a significant economic growth going forward, so to pay the interest on our loans, we will not have money as a result of increased economic activity. We will have to increase taxes to pay this back. Luckily for the bush-child, his father is the bush-man, he will not have to preside over the paying back. He justs spends the money and runs. That is pathetic.
So, a vote for the republican party today is a vote for higher taxes, even though the gutless republicans will probably not have to take the responsibility of actually raising those taxes. An alternative is of course to de-value the dollar, with a significant price increase in the US, which will have the exact same effect.
Some weird stuff has happened in this country over the last 10 years, the strangest of them all is that the Republican Party now is entirely controlled by a gang of socialist thugs. I don't know how that happened, but the Republican party is now the party that stands for big government spending:
Pork spending is up by at least a factor of 10 since the republicans took full control of all branches of government. Think about that. Enormous amounts of our tax dollars are now being funneled to weird projects like in-door rain forests in Utah, through the Republican-controlled Washington, DC.
Civil liberties are being removed from the population one by one.
More and more power is being concentrated on fewer and fewer hands
I don't have any other way to describe this than good old, Soviet-style, socialism and cronyism. If this had been the current administration only, I would have been able to understand it as a fluke, but it is not. It is almost every single republican senator and representative. They have all joined the party, and they are all behaving like good, old socialist thugs. How on earth did the Repulican party become a socialist institution? Someone needs to write a book about this transformation.
What can we do about it? I am not sure. We have the right to vote. It seems every non-republican politician today, even lunatics like Howard Dean, are more capitalists and more "Republican" than any current RINO in DC. I guess the answer is that we have to vote non-republican in the future. At least until normality has been restored in the Republican party.
It seems that if you are someone who likes lower taxes, smaller government, less socialism, you have no choice but to vote non-Republican. It is just plain weird. Even a vote for the Democrats would be a vote for lower taxes and smaller government. Utterly strange.
So, yeah, vote. And only vote for the republicans if you think that Stalin was a good idea.
Regardless of what that does for HDTV, though, it doesn't really mean much to BR or HDDVD. The better picture is nice, but it's still hard to justify a whole new player and library when there aren't any convenience benefits,
I don't get this argument. This year players are going to be expensive. Toshiba is subsidizing theirs with some $200 I think. They will come down in price though. Significantly. I will probably buy a new DVD player some time next year, the one I have now is getting old. Perhaps in 2008. When I upgrade, why on earth would I get something that couldn't do HD as well?
Also, the "and a new library". Why would I have to get a new library? My old DVDs are going to play fine on the new player. If I get an HD player to go with my HD TV, I wouldn't continue to buy regular DVDs, now would I? But then again, at the sime time, I wouldn't run out and replace all of my old DVDs with new ones, why would I want to do that?
Floppies: Cheap, convenient and sufficient for a lot of people. For a while.
Zip drives: 120 MB cartridge, worked for a while, but out-competed by
CD-R: Cheaper, more storage, can also rip music etc.
Will HD/DVD replace DVD. Definitely on the computer side of things. 4G of storage, or even 7.5 on a dual layer disk, simply isn't even close to enough. I want 50G on a disk, and no, I don't want tapes. Tapes are inconvenient. They are not random access. They are a pain in the neck. Will some HD format replace the DVD for video? I sure as hell hope so. DVD resolution looks like crap on a 50" TV.
Hardrives as backup? You must be crazy. Way to inconvenient. Can you imagine someone in the room next to you saying: "Can you give me that image you just created?" and you going: "Sure, catch!" with a harddrive?
Your personal experience conflicts with mine where I have NEVER been asked for my passport number and I have NEVER been told that the airline is under an obligation to as a matter of routine share my confidential information with any government.
As I have stated, I have also never been asked for my passport number, how do our experiences conflict?
It's now non optional
Sigh. On the Frequent Flyer website? Please.
Yesterday I purchased, online, a ticket from Calgary, Canada, to Los Angeles, USA. I used the online reservation system of Air Canada. Air Canada does not have my passport number, this is the first time I fly with them. They did not ask for my passport number when I booked the ticket, and I did not enter it.
If this is, as you claim, something Air Canada has to collect prior to me showing up at the airport, how come I was able to purchase this ticket?
Just out of curiosity, when did BA stop checking passports at the airport for US flights?
I'm pretty sure they didn't when I flew in 2003 and after that.
Well, I know for sure they have done it every time I have gone through Heathrow to go to the US, Canada, Colombia, Australia, Hong Kong etc. They did it in 1991 and they did it in January.
Does your bank show your account number on the website when you log in? If they do, change your bank
Yeah, they show it, and so did the last one. How else would I identify my different accounts
As I said, get a new bank. They are obviously not particularly security concious. I am willing to bet that the last few digits of all of your bank accounts are different. Why would the bank show anything more than they need? Do their ATMs print the account number on the receipt?
What I'm arguing is that airlines had no interest in collecting and storing this information before the US government said that they wouldn't allow passengers to fly to the US unless the airlines collected it and passed it on to them.
BZZZ! WRONG! Again. I have been doing business travel sine the late 1980s. Most of the companies I have worked for have used various travel agents for booking tickets, so I have filled in a large number of travel profiles. Until the late '90s, they were all on paper, and you know what, they have all asked me to fill in my passport number (optional). This is not information BA collects because the US wants it, it has always been a standard part of a travel profile. The hare-brained idea of collecting it and storing it on the Frequent Flyer site comes from BA though.
The whole point of the online service is not having to queue up, you can simply collect your tickets from the machine and go. If your passport had to be checked at the airport, that would make the service essentially useless
Just out of curiosity, when did BA stop checking passports at the airport for US flights? Last time I went we all queued up to have our passports checked, and that has been the case every time I have flown from Heathrow to the US the last 10 years. For the record, they also check my passport when I fly from London to Norway.
So the new US policy gave them a choice between removing a popular service that paying customers liked and storing that information on those servers.
Now, if BA had to collect the information through the web, why on earth would they have to make it accessible and easily changable? Now, they didn't have to store it, but who on earth would make this information visible? Does your bank show your account number on the website when you log in? If they do, change your bank
British Airways... wouldn't be given the opportunity to collect this information if it wasn't as a result of the US pressure to collect the information.
What do you mean by "given the opportunity". What type of information BA asks for on their website is entirely up to BA. The US government has never asked BA to collect this information in this manner. This is not something the US government has requested, it is a "fetaure" BA has added for BA travellers "convenience".
The USA pushed for the collection of it, ergo it's the USA's fault.
No, it didn't. It never did. BA is the only airline I know of that collects information like this in this manner. If the US government required BA collect this information through their website then all airlines flying into the US had to do it. I'll let you in on a little secret, I fly into the US 3, maybe four times a year. I last flew to the US on American Airlines, they do not have my passport number on their website, in January I flew KLM, a dutch airline, tell you a secret, they don't have it on their site either. In October I flew from Copenhagen to New York on SAS, want me to go on? I just bought tickets that will take me on Air Canada from Calgary to Los Angeles on Friday of next week. Do you think they have my passport information on their website? NO THEY DO NOT!
I don't like the US government more than the next European, but you know what, I don't blame them for me losing a hand in poker, the ebola virus or the bird flu. I blame them for things they caused, not for BAs f.ck ups.
Dude, you're flying off half-cocked in an expression of your own "religion". It would seem that one of the central tenets of that religion is that any criticism of policies which are implemented as a result of US pressure is wrong because the US can do no harm.
Eh, no. That is why I, in another posting wrote: That the current US administration is among the disturbing administrations the US has ever had is beyond doubt.. The original idea was that a BA foul-up, magically was the fault of the US, don't confuse that with a general support for anything the US does. I do not harbor such notions. Please stick to what I actually say rather than your own ideas about what you think I think.
ou're right that this shouldn't be focused on the USA though, and I don't think it is
It isn't? The article, and the original poster, both blamed the US for something that has nothing at all to do with the US, it's citizens or it's laws. This was 100% a BA foul-up, and has nothing to do with US law.
In this case it was due to Clinton that the airlines were pushed to start collecting this information... They asked for it, so they caused the problem.
No, they didn't, which is evident by the fact that, as far as I know, only BA is so incredibly stupid that they make this information available through a website. The US government has never asked BA, or any other airline, to store our identidy information on a website. Please explain to me how the US can be blamed for something they had absolutely nothing do do with.
this article is about one of the dumb parts: insisting on airline companies collecting data for a near useless passenger screening program.
No, in fact it isn't. It is about making this information available through a low-security (or any for that matter) website. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that the airline should store such information anywhere outside of their corporate network. Making it available on a website is not nessessary, or even smart. In fact it ia amazingly dumb, and it is a dumb move by the airline, not related at all to the US. Please explain to me how the fact that the US wants this information collected is related to the fact that BA puts it up on a publically available website? Why would they? They did it to add a "feature" to their Frequent Flyer Program, and only for that reason. The idiot who came up with the idea in BA should be fired.
Instead of protecting us from terrorists it exposes us to fraud
Collecting such information doesn't expose us to fraud, putting it on a website does. I don't know of any company that is that stupid. Even when I log in to my bank online, it doesn't show me the freaking account number.
it's obvious with only a tiny bit of research that this is a dumb thing to be doing
What is dumb, collecting the information or putting it on a website?
British Airway's own disgusting part in this involved leaving their website vulnerable for months after they'd been alerted the vulnerability
No it isn't, it is the fact that they even considered collecting this information through the web and and displaying it for anyone logging in. Tell me, when you log into your banks website, is your bank dumb enough to actually show the account numbers of your accounts?
Storing information in a way that is usable to meet the requirements of widespread screening and not have that data vulnerable to being leaked is damn hard
It is hard to secure information like this, but there are a few things you can do if you have to collect it.
If you do not need to store the information, discard it as soon as possible: BA failed, they do not have to store the information, why are they sitting on it?
If you have to store the information, only keep it inside your corporate network or transport it over trusted communication channels: BA Fai
But the information wouldn't be there in the first place if it wasn't for the US.
Rubbish! You are clearly not reading what the article states. The US doesn't require that BA stores the passport number on the Frequent Flyer site. In fact, the US doesn't require that BA stores the information anywhere as long as they ship it to the US before you board the plane, in other words, they could have you supply the information when you buy the ticket, ship it accross, and promptly remove it.
The only reason BA had the passport number on their Frequent Flyer site is so that they could make it convenient for the traveller. The US doesn't require this, and if you ask anyone in the US government, they would probably strongly recommend against it. Having your identification number accessible through a website, in any manner, is a huge security issue.
This is BA messing up, not thinking about what they should and should not store on their Frequent Flyer website, and completely making an arse out of them selves by allowing access to this information with no password.
This problem is not related to the US government at all, in any way, except inside the head of a lobotomized journalist.
I am a Norwegian, and I am saddened by the new religion that has Europe in it's grips. There are various sects in this religion, but they all have one thing in common, the big "Satan" is the US of effing A.
That's funny, I'm an American and I subscribe to that religion... Stupid government.
That the current US administration is among the disturbing administrations the US has ever had is beyond doubt. The massive amounts of lies and deceit that underlies a lot of what they do is scary beyond measure. On the other hand, that doesn't mean that everything in the world is the fault of the US. The Bird Flu is not a US product, and isn't spread by the US government. AIDS wasn't created in US laboratories to wipe out the african population. The next killer asteroid to come zooming our way isn't a US weapon to kill communism in North Korea.
While there are things that are disturbing about the US government, and many other governments for that matter, blaming the US for a British Airways foul-up is still amazingly irrational.
I have no idea when you last travelled to the US but all airlines flying to the US are required by *law* to provide advance passenger information. This information must include the passport number. Therefore it has everything to do with the USA.
I travel to the US many, many times each year, and I also travel a lot inside the US. Every time I do so, whatever airline I use send my passport number to the US authorities, which I really don't have a problem with. Not a single one of the airlines I travel with have my passport number stored on their Frequent Flyer website though. Not one of them. Storing my passport number or any other identification number, on the Frequent Flyer website is insane.
Thanks for proving my point about the full frontal lobotomy though.
No, it isn't. The US requires that the passport number be sent to the appropriate US authorities before you board the plane, but it doesn't require it be available on the freaking Frequent Flyer website, or any other website for that matter.
Thank you for proving my point about the full frontal lobotomy though.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a bit of a difference between name-calling and reporting scientific fact.
am no fan of deficit spending. As a percentage of GDP the current deficit is manageable. The idea is to keep deficit growth at or below rates of economic growth and gradually growth out of the debt. As much as a genious as you fancy yourself, do you choose to ignore this simple idea, or are you unaware?
I am not unaware, and I am seriously worried about a Dem taking office and using inflation as debt management, as you point out, that has a problematic effect on growth. The problem currently is that the debt is growing at an alarming rate, and with the insane, and extremely expensive, adventure the idiots sent us on in Iraq, that isn't likely to change for another decade or so.
This will most likely put the US in a situation where managing debt with economic growth becomes impossible, and the options will then be to go further into debt or to use Dem-style inflationary measures. Not pretty.
This gross mismanagement of our finances have happened in a time when the US needs to stay nimble and agressive to counter the real threat to our freedom, namely strong competition from Asia (Europe is in the shitter, no worries from that direction). This gross mismanagement has happened for reasons only religious nutcases would be able to understand, financing in-door rain-forests in Ohio and ridiculous military adventures in regions of the world where there is no benefit to our presence.
And they didn't even teach you how to read basic English? Can you sue to get your money back?
In the paragraph you are quoting above I state that a good thing about the US is that you can be born with little or nothing and move all the way to the top. This is part of the "American Dream", and I pointed to Clinton as an example of someone who has actually done this. Do you disagree with my statement that it is good that someone with very little in the US can work his way all the way to the top, or are you just trying to prove to the entire world that you actually are completely incapable of reading and understanding a basic English text?
In the Soviet Union, no. In China right now, well... in socialist Norway, absolutely. You are again showing your lack of basic comprehension of the English language though. Big government spending is the socialist way. No other party ever has been more pro big-government spending than the morons who call them self Republicans in todays Washington DC. Bush is not a republican. The current house and Senate are not under control of Republicans. They are controlled by nut-case socialists who squander money at a rate never before seen in the history of our country. Most of it on inane stupidities like an in-door rain forest in Ohio. This is what makes them socialist.
Factors outside of the ruling class' control can contribute to economic growth in spite of their politics. The Bushman has been good at giving tax-breaks and thereby ensuring economic growth, that is a good thing. The problem is that he has done it by borrowing insane amounts of money which we have to pay back some day, which is a bad thing. He has been doing the most irresponsible thing possible, by partying with my childrens money. What gives him the right to squander my childrens money and not take any responsibility for it? The White House and the (R) controlled legislature has spent more money more recklessly than was done under the New Deal, and we are going to pay for that for decades.
You seem to be about as bad at basic math as you are in basic reading and writing. You seem not to understand how Bush has crippled our economy for decades to come. Now, ask your self a simple question: We have borrowed trillions of dollars over the past 6 years. We have to pay that back. How is the government going to pay it back? And, no, a 5% economic growth doesn't come close to paying for it.
I think this sentence shows how retarded amightywind is, and it also is a good example on the points the parent poster was trying to make. Obviously amightywind is unable to read relatively basic English, he must have a US education.
Again a rather bizarre answer to the original comment. This mighty wind he is talking about is not a caused by a mighty brain with a mighty intellect. Of course you can ask the chinese about communism and socialism, and the ruskies too. What does that have to do with the fact that most americans have no clue what socialism is? If most americans had a clue, they would realize that the current lunatic in the White House is a staunch, Stalin-style socialist. How on earth the socialists managed to take control of the Republican party I will never understand, but it is still the case. The current Washington crowd are big-government, imperialist, nepotistic, soviet-style communists. That includes Bush and Cheney.
Probably the US doller you retarded dimwit, he is a US citizen living in the US of A. As you it seems, and as me.
Most of what? The metrics? Metrics do not come from anywhere, they are metrics. Are you mentally handicapped? Oh, yes, we had already established that fact, hadn't we?
US is, by most metrics, not a very good place to live. It is a great place to live for me, but I have an excellent 6-figure salary and work for a company with outstanding non-salary benefits. For a lot of people that is not the case. The US spends more than any country in the world on our medical system, and it falls so far behind all other systems in comparable countries it is sick. This is not because of litigation happy citizens, it is due to the fact that our system is grossly mismanaged and that lots of people (cronyism) are getting fat on our health-dollars. Our education system is a total mess, probably only better, and by a slight margin at best, than systems in Africa. Hell, even a piss-poor socialist dictatorship like Cuba has more literate people than does the US. Our university system is great, but that doesn't help much when such a large part of the population, amightywind included, lack the most basic reading and comprehension skills. And then there is starvation. In the US. I love the US, but the richest country in the world should be ashamed that only third-world countries have more starving children than we do.
There are things that are absolutely excellent about the US.
Racism is far less of a problem here than in most other countries. Europe is more racist than is the US, a lot more racist. They don't think they are, but the numbers speak for them selves. One out of three US immigrants (including the ones from poor countries) will own their own home before they retire, a huge portion of immigrants to France (for example) will not work, even after three generations. That is racism in practice. Having spent two decards in Europe, it always shocks me when they think they are not particularly racist. Their racism just shows it self in a different manner. This is also a reflection on the US having a far more humane immigration policy than any other country I know of.
The US has far better social mobility than most countries. You can be born trailer-trash and end up as president (Clinton essentially did). This is not at all the case in most of Europe.
Capita
Ideas come in a few variations. Conjecture, hypothesis, theory. Often, but not always, an idea will evolve (no pun intended) through these different stages. Now, a theory needs to be (among several other things, such as have data that corroborate it) falsifiable, any conjecture or hypothesis that is not falsifiable can never be a Theory.
Science is about putting together falsifiable theories, and then falsify these. A theory that hasn't been falsified will generally stand, but not as "truth", only as a theory.
I am probably not phrasing this particularly well, but you get my point. Yes, you are correct, creating a hypothesis is where most of the work happens in science, but science isn't about being "wrong until proven correct, it is about being "theoretical until proven wrong", which is almost the exact opposite. A huge part of scientific theory can not be proven right, but easily, if we find data, be proven wrong. Newton for example, created a set of theories that could never be proven correct, but Einstein easily proved them "wrong" for a given subset of the data available.
You are absolutely correct, science can prove a lot of things. When it comes to work with theories, such as Newton as you mention, the bulk of the intellectual effort is not in proving it, but falsifying it. My comment was to the "science is like -- wrong until proven correct", which isn't really the case. Newtons theories were considered "correct" or "reasonable" or however you want to phrase it, until proven "wrong", which is kinda, sorta, the opposite of what was said.
Re: Closing tags, that's what the "Preview" button is for <big grin>
Someone failed their science class. It is Law that says something is "wrong" until proven otherwise. Science in many ways says almost the exact opposite. In science any Theory (and there is a difference between conjecture and Theory) is correct until proven false.
Outside of a few diciplines, science generally doesn't go around proving stuff, quite the opposite, science falsifies stuff.
To the grandparent here, who states that Science is compatible with religion as such, that is also generally wrong. Any particular scientific dicipline may be compatible with your paticular religion at any moment in time, but science isn't any particular dicipline, it is a methodology. Using scientific methodology there are no divine entities or other "supernatural" stuff. Belief and science is inherently incompatible, the only way that scientists can stay religious is that they accept that their belief is incompatible with their science and move on. Such dual standards is one of the easiest feats for most humans.
This is correct, but the router between slashdot and me doesn't have any real impact on how I live my life or what decisions I make. Morals and ethics does. Leaving the heavy lifting of the basis of your thinking to other people is just plain scary. Lots of people have over the years, and every time they did, lots of poeple died. In fact, leaving the heavy lifting of thinking to someone else is the main problem in the US today, IMNSHO.
What heavy lifting?
Did you design & build your own car? Did you design & mix the allows to create it? Did you explore, drill for & refine the oil to make its fuel?
I have no aptitude for car-building, and I have not acheieved the appropriate training.
If not, why do you expect people to do the same with morality or philosophy? Get a basic understanding of the field, then hire an expert to do the heavy lifting for you; know just enough to keep a sanity check on him. It's called delegation.
I desperately hope you are sarcastic. Not thinking, which you advocate above, is the main cause of problems in human history. Allowing your self not to think about things makes you a mindless puppet on someone elses string. The only people who do not think are mentally ill people.
I agree that Huntsville is a nice place, I have done quite a bit of work there. Very nice indeed. Personally I would not want to live there, but I might choose Huntsville over Silicon Valley. Personally I like southern California, we have no rain, no heat, no humidity, no bugs and only the odd earthquake (far fewer than tornadoes and hurricanes in the souht east). I would argue that there are very few places in the world that are nicer than Southern California. East coast Australia and parts of Mediterranean Europe are similar.
Now, one thing I have to jump to though is the following statement:
Do you know why there's no crime? Most of these people go to church!
This is a patently absurd statement. Yes, there is lower crime levels, but it is not because people go to church. There is lower crime in Huntsville because it is a relatively affluent area, affluence means less crime. What impact does church attendance have on crime? Well, some studies have been done, and they are not good news for church-goers.
In general, a society that has high church attendence also has higher rates of the following: Murder, rape, teen pregnancy, divorce, abortions and child abuse.
Now, just to make it absolutely clear, I am not saying above that the reason for these higher numbers of "social problems" is high church attendance, I am just saying that they do show a covariance. In other words, I find it unlikely that going to church makes a person a murderer or a rapist, however the data shows that it doesn't help against that person becoming a such.
You are correct that Democrats generally wants higher taxes than Republicans, but that is only theoretically the case currently. The Republican party, even excluding the war in Iraq, are increasing the budget significantly. They are spending enormous amounts of money. Amounts that are not sustainable in any way whatsoever.
With this significant increase in federal spending, we either have to take in more money in federal tax, or we have to borrow the money. Taking in the extra cash in tax means that we get a relatively instant feedback on this spending increase. The in-door rainforest in Ohio cost money for the regular joe immediately. Now, the Republicans don't want to increase tax, so they borrow the money. What happens when we borrow money? We have to pay it back, as per usual. This means that someone has to re-pay.
So, how are we to pay them back? There is nothing indicating that we will have a significant economic growth going forward, so to pay the interest on our loans, we will not have money as a result of increased economic activity. We will have to increase taxes to pay this back. Luckily for the bush-child, his father is the bush-man, he will not have to preside over the paying back. He justs spends the money and runs. That is pathetic.
So, a vote for the republican party today is a vote for higher taxes, even though the gutless republicans will probably not have to take the responsibility of actually raising those taxes. An alternative is of course to de-value the dollar, with a significant price increase in the US, which will have the exact same effect.
That is a very good question.
Some weird stuff has happened in this country over the last 10 years, the strangest of them all is that the Republican Party now is entirely controlled by a gang of socialist thugs. I don't know how that happened, but the Republican party is now the party that stands for big government spending:
I don't have any other way to describe this than good old, Soviet-style, socialism and cronyism. If this had been the current administration only, I would have been able to understand it as a fluke, but it is not. It is almost every single republican senator and representative. They have all joined the party, and they are all behaving like good, old socialist thugs. How on earth did the Repulican party become a socialist institution? Someone needs to write a book about this transformation.
What can we do about it? I am not sure. We have the right to vote. It seems every non-republican politician today, even lunatics like Howard Dean, are more capitalists and more "Republican" than any current RINO in DC. I guess the answer is that we have to vote non-republican in the future. At least until normality has been restored in the Republican party.
It seems that if you are someone who likes lower taxes, smaller government, less socialism, you have no choice but to vote non-Republican. It is just plain weird. Even a vote for the Democrats would be a vote for lower taxes and smaller government. Utterly strange.
So, yeah, vote. And only vote for the republicans if you think that Stalin was a good idea.
I don't get this argument. This year players are going to be expensive. Toshiba is subsidizing theirs with some $200 I think. They will come down in price though. Significantly. I will probably buy a new DVD player some time next year, the one I have now is getting old. Perhaps in 2008. When I upgrade, why on earth would I get something that couldn't do HD as well?
Also, the " and a new library ". Why would I have to get a new library? My old DVDs are going to play fine on the new player. If I get an HD player to go with my HD TV, I wouldn't continue to buy regular DVDs, now would I? But then again, at the sime time, I wouldn't run out and replace all of my old DVDs with new ones, why would I want to do that?
Bad analogy, try:
Floppies: Cheap, convenient and sufficient for a lot of people. For a while.
Zip drives: 120 MB cartridge, worked for a while, but out-competed by
CD-R: Cheaper, more storage, can also rip music etc.
Will HD/DVD replace DVD. Definitely on the computer side of things. 4G of storage, or even 7.5 on a dual layer disk, simply isn't even close to enough. I want 50G on a disk, and no, I don't want tapes. Tapes are inconvenient. They are not random access. They are a pain in the neck. Will some HD format replace the DVD for video? I sure as hell hope so. DVD resolution looks like crap on a 50" TV.
Hardrives as backup? You must be crazy. Way to inconvenient. Can you imagine someone in the room next to you saying: "Can you give me that image you just created?" and you going: "Sure, catch!" with a harddrive?
Your personal experience conflicts with mine where I have NEVER been asked for my passport number and I have NEVER been told that the airline is under an obligation to as a matter of routine share my confidential information with any government.
As I have stated, I have also never been asked for my passport number, how do our experiences conflict?
It's now non optional
Sigh. On the Frequent Flyer website? Please.
Yesterday I purchased, online, a ticket from Calgary, Canada, to Los Angeles, USA. I used the online reservation system of Air Canada. Air Canada does not have my passport number, this is the first time I fly with them. They did not ask for my passport number when I booked the ticket, and I did not enter it.
If this is, as you claim, something Air Canada has to collect prior to me showing up at the airport, how come I was able to purchase this ticket?
I'm pretty sure they didn't when I flew in 2003 and after that.
Well, I know for sure they have done it every time I have gone through Heathrow to go to the US, Canada, Colombia, Australia, Hong Kong etc. They did it in 1991 and they did it in January.
Yeah, they show it, and so did the last one. How else would I identify my different accounts
As I said, get a new bank. They are obviously not particularly security concious. I am willing to bet that the last few digits of all of your bank accounts are different. Why would the bank show anything more than they need? Do their ATMs print the account number on the receipt?
What I'm arguing is that airlines had no interest in collecting and storing this information before the US government said that they wouldn't allow passengers to fly to the US unless the airlines collected it and passed it on to them.
BZZZ! WRONG! Again. I have been doing business travel sine the late 1980s. Most of the companies I have worked for have used various travel agents for booking tickets, so I have filled in a large number of travel profiles. Until the late '90s, they were all on paper, and you know what, they have all asked me to fill in my passport number (optional). This is not information BA collects because the US wants it, it has always been a standard part of a travel profile. The hare-brained idea of collecting it and storing it on the Frequent Flyer site comes from BA though.
The whole point of the online service is not having to queue up, you can simply collect your tickets from the machine and go. If your passport had to be checked at the airport, that would make the service essentially useless
Just out of curiosity, when did BA stop checking passports at the airport for US flights? Last time I went we all queued up to have our passports checked, and that has been the case every time I have flown from Heathrow to the US the last 10 years. For the record, they also check my passport when I fly from London to Norway.
So the new US policy gave them a choice between removing a popular service that paying customers liked and storing that information on those servers.
Now, if BA had to collect the information through the web, why on earth would they have to make it accessible and easily changable? Now, they didn't have to store it, but who on earth would make this information visible? Does your bank show your account number on the website when you log in? If they do, change your bank
British Airways ... wouldn't be given the opportunity to collect this information if it wasn't as a result of the US pressure to collect the information.
What do you mean by "given the opportunity". What type of information BA asks for on their website is entirely up to BA. The US government has never asked BA to collect this information in this manner. This is not something the US government has requested, it is a "fetaure" BA has added for BA travellers "convenience".
The USA pushed for the collection of it, ergo it's the USA's fault.
No, it didn't. It never did. BA is the only airline I know of that collects information like this in this manner. If the US government required BA collect this information through their website then all airlines flying into the US had to do it. I'll let you in on a little secret, I fly into the US 3, maybe four times a year. I last flew to the US on American Airlines, they do not have my passport number on their website, in January I flew KLM, a dutch airline, tell you a secret, they don't have it on their site either. In October I flew from Copenhagen to New York on SAS, want me to go on? I just bought tickets that will take me on Air Canada from Calgary to Los Angeles on Friday of next week. Do you think they have my passport information on their website? NO THEY DO NOT!
I don't like the US government more than the next European, but you know what, I don't blame them for me losing a hand in poker, the ebola virus or the bird flu. I blame them for things they caused, not for BAs f.ck ups.
Dude, you're flying off half-cocked in an expression of your own "religion". It would seem that one of the central tenets of that religion is that any criticism of policies which are implemented as a result of US pressure is wrong because the US can do no harm.
Eh, no. That is why I, in another posting wrote: That the current US administration is among the disturbing administrations the US has ever had is beyond doubt.. The original idea was that a BA foul-up, magically was the fault of the US, don't confuse that with a general support for anything the US does. I do not harbor such notions. Please stick to what I actually say rather than your own ideas about what you think I think.
ou're right that this shouldn't be focused on the USA though, and I don't think it is
It isn't? The article, and the original poster, both blamed the US for something that has nothing at all to do with the US, it's citizens or it's laws. This was 100% a BA foul-up, and has nothing to do with US law.
In this case it was due to Clinton that the airlines were pushed to start collecting this information ... They asked for it, so they caused the problem.
No, they didn't, which is evident by the fact that, as far as I know, only BA is so incredibly stupid that they make this information available through a website. The US government has never asked BA, or any other airline, to store our identidy information on a website. Please explain to me how the US can be blamed for something they had absolutely nothing do do with.
this article is about one of the dumb parts: insisting on airline companies collecting data for a near useless passenger screening program.
No, in fact it isn't. It is about making this information available through a low-security (or any for that matter) website. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that the airline should store such information anywhere outside of their corporate network. Making it available on a website is not nessessary, or even smart. In fact it ia amazingly dumb, and it is a dumb move by the airline, not related at all to the US. Please explain to me how the fact that the US wants this information collected is related to the fact that BA puts it up on a publically available website? Why would they? They did it to add a "feature" to their Frequent Flyer Program, and only for that reason. The idiot who came up with the idea in BA should be fired.
Instead of protecting us from terrorists it exposes us to fraud
Collecting such information doesn't expose us to fraud, putting it on a website does. I don't know of any company that is that stupid. Even when I log in to my bank online, it doesn't show me the freaking account number.
it's obvious with only a tiny bit of research that this is a dumb thing to be doing
What is dumb, collecting the information or putting it on a website?
British Airway's own disgusting part in this involved leaving their website vulnerable for months after they'd been alerted the vulnerability
No it isn't, it is the fact that they even considered collecting this information through the web and and displaying it for anyone logging in. Tell me, when you log into your banks website, is your bank dumb enough to actually show the account numbers of your accounts?
Storing information in a way that is usable to meet the requirements of widespread screening and not have that data vulnerable to being leaked is damn hard
It is hard to secure information like this, but there are a few things you can do if you have to collect it.
But the information wouldn't be there in the first place if it wasn't for the US.
Rubbish! You are clearly not reading what the article states. The US doesn't require that BA stores the passport number on the Frequent Flyer site. In fact, the US doesn't require that BA stores the information anywhere as long as they ship it to the US before you board the plane, in other words, they could have you supply the information when you buy the ticket, ship it accross, and promptly remove it.
The only reason BA had the passport number on their Frequent Flyer site is so that they could make it convenient for the traveller. The US doesn't require this, and if you ask anyone in the US government, they would probably strongly recommend against it. Having your identification number accessible through a website, in any manner, is a huge security issue.
This is BA messing up, not thinking about what they should and should not store on their Frequent Flyer website, and completely making an arse out of them selves by allowing access to this information with no password.
This problem is not related to the US government at all, in any way, except inside the head of a lobotomized journalist.
That's funny, I'm an American and I subscribe to that religion... Stupid government.
That the current US administration is among the disturbing administrations the US has ever had is beyond doubt. The massive amounts of lies and deceit that underlies a lot of what they do is scary beyond measure. On the other hand, that doesn't mean that everything in the world is the fault of the US. The Bird Flu is not a US product, and isn't spread by the US government. AIDS wasn't created in US laboratories to wipe out the african population. The next killer asteroid to come zooming our way isn't a US weapon to kill communism in North Korea.
While there are things that are disturbing about the US government, and many other governments for that matter, blaming the US for a British Airways foul-up is still amazingly irrational.
I have no idea when you last travelled to the US but all airlines flying to the US are required by *law* to provide advance passenger information. This information must include the passport number. Therefore it has everything to do with the USA.
I travel to the US many, many times each year, and I also travel a lot inside the US. Every time I do so, whatever airline I use send my passport number to the US authorities, which I really don't have a problem with. Not a single one of the airlines I travel with have my passport number stored on their Frequent Flyer website though. Not one of them. Storing my passport number or any other identification number, on the Frequent Flyer website is insane.
Thanks for proving my point about the full frontal lobotomy though.
No, it isn't. The US requires that the passport number be sent to the appropriate US authorities before you board the plane, but it doesn't require it be available on the freaking Frequent Flyer website, or any other website for that matter.
Thank you for proving my point about the full frontal lobotomy though.
You can buy a ticket in any name you wish, using your credit card or anything else. The name on the ticket is checked vs a picture ID at the airport.