On the point of beating the system... You can get weed through the TSA on internal flights easier than you can get 3.5 oz of deodorant.
To me that says any kind of solid explosive will get on the plane if it is in a non-conventional shape. So we are giving up tons of freedom for almost no protection.
If a company wants to do something for profit, they are welcome to purchase or write the entire software stack but cannot use many open source products.
If the chinese government wants to suppress it's own people, and then recreate all the benefits of western society and businesses, go for it. But for companies based in the west to use the safety here to suppress people in other countries is horrible. Executives who support dictatorships should be ejected from free societies and sent to live in those dictatorships.
Since it is MY search results that give them money, it is MY standards that apply.
I feel they are behaving evilly and so I will no longer use them as a search engine or support their business.
My standards for good and evil are based on thirty years of pondering them in connection with my own lack of religious belief and the search for an ethical system not based on random assertions by ancient tribes people while also recognizing that those random assertions were the ones that helped those societies survive and prosper.
And plus, I hold google that pledges to "do no evil" to a slightly higher standard than yahoo (tho I won't be using them for search either because even by the lower standard they still crossed the line). Also, some articles i read recently show that google appears to be engaging in age discrimination as well so they had already burned some of the the good will they had with me. The fact is they are a large corporation and they are colluding with a quasi-dictator government.
Now- the chinese government may be the appropriate government for the chinese people. But, I do not have to give it money and support since many of it's value are against those I want for the world. By supporting google when it engages in this behavior, I am approving of and even to some small extent supporting financially the chinese slave prison labor, suppression of tibet, lack of religous freedom, and erasing people's existence, and other things.
Even more so- supporting scummy businesses and governments gives them an edge and slowly corrupts the less scummy businesses and governments in the world. So my small actions create an increasingly bad environment for myself-- or an increasingly better environment.
Regarding suppressing references to the chinese professor:
I'm sorry, but I must stop using Google as a result of your collusion with the chinese government in erasing his existence. It certainly violates your stated founding principles so you can make money.
I will advise my friends to do so as well. Hopefully the loss of non-chinese profits will be sufficient to convince your company that this kind of behavior is too costly to continue.
I *TRUSTED* them to give me impartial and accurate information (vs MSN which was hilariously slanted for microsoft some times).
I am going to look for another search engine.
I find this behavior to be extremely repugnant.
I'm not sure I can forgive them. They will join Sony on my entire list of companies that I won't buy products from.
Full disclosure- I do still play everquest which sony bought... but other than that no purchases of any of their products for close to 6 or 7 years now as well as directing company purchases I advise on against sony every time.
Sad that a company sworn to be ethical would fall to this kind of evil behavior.
In my experience, once things get beyond a certain size, the economies of scale are lost and bureaucratic overhead consumes the savings.
So 1 item is expensive; 10 items are less per piece, 1000 items are 10% of the cost per piece; but 10,000 items is back up to 15% of the cost and it just gets worse from there. Before you know it, you have $600 hammers and similar items.
And the only problem there is that really a "state" should be limited to about 25 million people. Larger populations produce unaccountable governments that are essentially "federal" governments.
Regarding "Blade Runner", released in 1982 (26 years)
Aug 3, 2007 Ladd jury orders WB to pay up over profits
The 12-juror panel then ruled 10-2 to adopt the plaintiffs' suggested damage calculations for 12 films produced by the Ladd Co., including "Blade Runner," "Chariots of Fire" and the "Police Academy" movies.
The Superior Court jury delivered a unanimous verdict in finding that the studio breached its duties to the producers. The 12-juror panel then ruled 10-2 to adopt the plaintiffs' suggested damage calculations for 12 films produced by the Ladd Co., including "Blade Runner," "Chariots of Fire" and the "Police Academy" movies.
---
The movie was profitable loooooong ago and the studios are still ripping people off with fancy accounting.
I personally support the original "14 years + option to reup 14 years".
The current disney purchased "forever" system is obscene and removes any respect for the copyright system because it is so obviously unfair and corrupt.
Microsoft good for small to medium business data processing. IBM (oracle, unix, etc) good for large to top 500 corporation data processing.
Microsoft just doesn't scale well yet. Microsoft is much better for office software for all sizes but Openoffice and other products are getting very close to eating Microsoft Office for lunch.
But don't even think about using IBM hosting-- gawd what a nightmare that has turned out to be. They just do not maintain the staff to get the job done. Places like Rackspace provide much better hosting for the same price and have a lot more feet on the ground at 10pm at night. Adding 11 hard drives to our hosted systems took over 30 days. Sure they were big hard drives but wtf? IBM should have had a room of them ready to add at a moments notice.
You are correct. It is very complicated and to give a fully nuanced answer would not only take a lot more time and space but would also probably never be fully correct without a lot of verification and input from other people.
My feeling is this... I think we give aid to prevent other countries from becoming threats. This worked when countries were threats. For example- perhaps all of our african aid prevented the formation of a strong african nation for the last 85 years. However, increasing technology means that even small groups of people can do major damage. So now the aid and interference is creating a lot of enemies.
It may be better now to let the opposing nation form and get into a legitimate war and have one side gain total victory. Partial victories are going to be very dangerous to the world going forward. The IRA/British, the Palestine/Isreal, and other interminable conflicts are reaching a point where they pose a risk to the entire world. At some point, if the differences cannot be resolved peacefully, you are going to see one side or the other engage in a genocidal rooting out of every last person on the other side of the conflict. There is just too much danger that a quasi nation state can create a pandemic, hit cities with small nuclear bombs, etc.
I am looking forward to dying in 25 years because I think i will avoid the worst of it. I think within 50 years, we are going to have one hella nasty murderous no holds bar conflict. The underlying problem is too many people. If we could get the population down to 2-3 billion, earth would be like a paradise.
I'm not ron paul- I was simply repeating his positions to answer those questions.
All we need to do to secure our borders is to enforce our current laws mostly. As soon as they started prosecuting business owners in Oklahoma and Arizona, the illegals started streaming out. There are two factors.
1) stop the huge flow of illegal immigrants and now you can easily police the smaller flow. 2) make marijuana legal and further reduce the border crossings (and restore the rule of law to mexico and other south american countries currently being destroyed by our drug war which is creating very powerful criminal gangs in those countries with billions of dollars) by turning illegal drug traders into ordinary business men and women just like those who sell whiskey and tequila.
You are misinformed on the welfare issue. It depends on the city but at a minimum, they get free schooling and free medical care. They often drive without required insurance or documents as well. Mothers frequently get aid for their children's food under W.I.C. Out and out welfare and unemployment - not so much. But even citizens only get 24 months/ 12 months maximum of those social services.
A typical Ron Paul approach would be to allow states and the airlines to have those policies. So one airline might allow you to take guns on their flights. And you would know it. Another airline might require that they be stored in the overhead bins. Another might ban them entirely.
Then as a consumer you would decide which airline you wanted to take. Ron Paul would probably not prevent rogue elements-- the logic is that (like the shoe-bomber), a potential terrorist would stand up with his gun and be blown away by granny in row 7. Now the pilot, the left engine, and other parts might be blown away too. Personally, the current plan of hardening the cockpit and trying to stop bombs seems best.
Ron Paul says that the influence we get from foreign subsidies is not free politically. We often support tyrants and after twenty or thirty years end up with millions of really pissed off citizens. And (my opinion of his standings) if those subsidies are really disguised subsidies to the military industrial complex businesses (as japan often does), then let those companies stand on their own two feet or give the money to them directly.
The policies we are currently attempting are destroying America from the inside out. We are becoming a fascist state and losing our civil liberties every year. All because 3,000 people died. Not worth it. Better to be free and suffer some deaths than to lose everything.
Oh i would say a vote for a third party candidate in the purple states has an even bigger impact. Third party votes gave bush the whitehouse in 2004 (ignoring the suspicious crap-- just on the face of it a lot of votes when to liberal third party types).
Answers from ronpaul2008.com issues page mostly. Unlike a lot of politicians, Ron makes some *very* clear statements about his intent... and with his history and voting record you can trust him to do what he says. I disagree with easily 40% of his positions- but I trust him to do what he says. ALL the other politicians left in the race, I trust to say whatever they need to say to be elected and then go right back to running the company for major corporations as soon as they are elected...
Question 1> Do you believe the current levels of illegal immigration are harmful to America in terms of economy and culture? If so, how do you propose to reduce/end illegal immigration? Do you believe in open borders -- unrestricted immigration? Answer 1>
The talk must stop. We must secure our borders now. A nation without secure borders is no nation at all. It makes no sense to fight terrorists abroad when our own front door is left unlocked. This is my six point plan:
* Physically secure our borders and coastlines. We must do whatever it takes to control entry into our country before we undertake complicated immigration reform proposals.
* Enforce visa rules. Immigration officials must track visa holders and deport anyone who overstays their visa or otherwise violates U.S. law. This is especially important when we recall that a number of 9/11 terrorists had expired visas.
* No amnesty. Estimates suggest that 10 to 20 million people are in our country illegally. That's a lot of people to reward for breaking our laws.
* No welfare for illegal aliens. Americans have welcomed immigrants who seek opportunity, work hard, and play by the rules. But taxpayers should not pay for illegal immigrants who use hospitals, clinics, schools, roads, and social services.
* End birthright citizenship. As long as illegal immigrants know their children born here will be citizens, the incentive to enter the U.S. illegally will remain strong.
* Pass true immigration reform. The current system is incoherent and unfair. But current reform proposals would allow up to 60 million more immigrants into our country, according to the Heritage Foundation. This is insanity. Legal immigrants from all countries should face the same rules and waiting periods.
Question 2> In Republican debate #2, you implied that America was not attacked on 9/11. What words, the, would you use to describe the events of that day -- the murder of thousands of people by organized foreign nationals subsidized by States, the destruction of hundreds of millions of dollars in property and the follow-on damage to our economy? Answer 2> I could find no clear answer to your question...There were answers around your question here: http://www.ronpaul2008.com/articles/?tag=Terrorism
Question 3>Should those on welfare be disallowed from voting? Answer 3> While I could find no clear answers to your question, I think most people who follow Ron Paul would find your question completely bizarre. Of course he is for every united states citizen's right to vote. He's never beaten his wife, and he's never called for welfare recipients to lose the right to vote. His positions on this area (voting record) appears to be here: http://www.thelangreport.com/?p=324
Question 4>What restrictions to firearm ownership do you support? Answer 4> http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/second-amendment/ I share our Founders' belief that in a free society each citizen must have the right to keep and bear arms. They ratified the Second Amendment knowing that this right is the guardian of every other right, and they all would be horrified by the proliferation of unc
What can you tell us about Ron Paul's team? He's been in office a long time-- do we have any knowledge of what his staff has been like? You do not succeed in congress that way voting down spending bills left and right without something happening right.
It is actually pretty consistent with the rest of his campaign literature...
His logic goes like this.
Why spend 1 trillion dollars and 100,000 soldiers protecting oil flow and royally pissing off huge numbers of people. If the "real" cost of oil is $200 a barrel and we are hiding that by using tax payer money to provide security then stop doing that. With the true price of oil unmasked, then other alternatives become economically viable.
Why put 35,000 troops and a hundred million dollars a year into other countries we have been at peace with since 1960 or earlier? We could have those troops ready to move fast to real problem areas and use the money to buy new planes and tanks instead of funding discos in germany, japan, and south korea where our young troops go to party on leave.
--- In a recent election in texas we passed 14 of 15 tax increases. Because they were phrased as vital new services instead of as tax increases. Easily 30% of what the federal government does could be cut back and then you can immediately pay off the deficit and then lower taxes. And those lost services would be replaced at the state level in the states that felt they were good enough to pay for.
We have essentially created a "commons" of "free" money in the federal government. We are looting and pillaging it while ignoring the fact that the "free" money is really coming out of our own pockets.
Mandatory pregnancy test on departure for all females of childbearing age. If they are no longer pregnant a month after their return, then short of a proven miscarriage, etc. they are prosecuted.
And another thing-- my company decided that they wanted to go from 99% bug free to 99.999% bug free software rollouts (a bug costing us perhaps $1000 per minute of downtime).
The result is that our software takes a minimum of 8 to 12 times longer to roll out than it did before. It is now so slow that our developers are starting to lose their skill set because there is so much downtime.
Where before we could roll it out-- suffer the "$30k" loss, fix the bug (which takes weeks of testing but only a few minutes in production to flush out), and put in a fixed build in a total of 2x the time.
And the real kicker is that we STILL get bugs in production after all that testing because the best test site in the world doesn't simulate 70,000 users hammering on the software. (and the company doesn't begin to pay for the "best" test site anyway).
Sorry but you don't get those levels of accountability when you buy a $105 product (which is what system builders Vista OEM sells for now at Fry's).
If you want completely verified software- in some cases it is possible (in some cases it is provably impossible)- in either case the effort of verifying it that completely raises the cost by at least 1000%.
If you want to pay $100,000 for a certified PC with fully tested video drivers, operating system, hardware, etc. you go right ahead. I'll buy one for $400 and accept that it is going to crash now and then.
Oh? Your bridge has fallen down.. oh that just happens some time.
And people die (unlike when your computer goes down) so they spend a lot of money trying to prevent those kind of failures.
Bridges... elevated platforms in buildings... lots of things fail all the time. They are often the manifestation of a bug (mis-designed strut or brace most often). That bridge up north that went down was called a "faulty design".... i.e. a bug.
Slashdot Mirror
On the point of beating the system... You can get weed through the TSA on internal flights easier than you can get 3.5 oz of deodorant.
To me that says any kind of solid explosive will get on the plane if it is in a non-conventional shape. So we are giving up tons of freedom for almost no protection.
For what it is worth, you see examples of both being hit in this thread-- the example of the disabled elderly vet above being one.
Let's not make it about race-- it is about seizure of property without cause.
Let me relate this to open source.
If a company wants to do something for profit, they are welcome to purchase or write the entire software stack but cannot use many open source products.
If the chinese government wants to suppress it's own people, and then recreate all the benefits of western society and businesses, go for it. But for companies based in the west to use the safety here to suppress people in other countries is horrible. Executives who support dictatorships should be ejected from free societies and sent to live in those dictatorships.
Since it is MY search results that give them money, it is MY standards that apply.
I feel they are behaving evilly and so I will no longer use them as a search engine or support their business.
My standards for good and evil are based on thirty years of pondering them in connection with my own lack of religious belief and the search for an ethical system not based on random assertions by ancient tribes people while also recognizing that those random assertions were the ones that helped those societies survive and prosper.
And plus, I hold google that pledges to "do no evil" to a slightly higher standard than yahoo (tho I won't be using them for search either because even by the lower standard they still crossed the line). Also, some articles i read recently show that google appears to be engaging in age discrimination as well so they had already burned some of the the good will they had with me. The fact is they are a large corporation and they are colluding with a quasi-dictator government.
Now- the chinese government may be the appropriate government for the chinese people. But, I do not have to give it money and support since many of it's value are against those I want for the world. By supporting google when it engages in this behavior, I am approving of and even to some small extent supporting financially the chinese slave prison labor, suppression of tibet, lack of religous freedom, and erasing people's existence, and other things.
Even more so- supporting scummy businesses and governments gives them an edge and slowly corrupts the less scummy businesses and governments in the world. So my small actions create an increasingly bad environment for myself-- or an increasingly better environment.
Regarding suppressing references to the chinese professor:
I'm sorry, but I must stop using Google as a result of your collusion with the chinese government in erasing his existence. It certainly violates your stated founding principles so you can make money.
I will advise my friends to do so as well. Hopefully the loss of non-chinese profits will be sufficient to convince your company that this kind of behavior is too costly to continue.
I'm afraid this changes my view of google.
I *TRUSTED* them to give me impartial and accurate information (vs MSN which was hilariously slanted for microsoft some times).
I am going to look for another search engine.
I find this behavior to be extremely repugnant.
I'm not sure I can forgive them. They will join Sony on my entire list of companies that I won't buy products from.
Full disclosure- I do still play everquest which sony bought... but other than that no purchases of any of their products for close to 6 or 7 years now as well as directing company purchases I advise on against sony every time.
Sad that a company sworn to be ethical would fall to this kind of evil behavior.
The reason they can retaliate is that the have unlimited negatives.
If they were limited to the greater of 5% of their sales or 1 per month, then they would have to pick who they would hit negatively.
I've never gotten a negative mark on ebay myself. I've been ripped off one time in about 50 transactions for roughly $30.
In my experience, once things get beyond a certain size, the economies of scale are lost and bureaucratic overhead consumes the savings.
So 1 item is expensive; 10 items are less per piece, 1000 items are 10% of the cost per piece; but 10,000 items is back up to 15% of the cost and it just gets worse from there. Before you know it, you have $600 hammers and similar items.
And the only problem there is that really a "state" should be limited to about 25 million people. Larger populations produce unaccountable governments that are essentially "federal" governments.
Regarding "Blade Runner", released in 1982 (26 years)
Aug 3, 2007
Ladd jury orders WB to pay up over profits
The 12-juror panel then ruled 10-2 to adopt the plaintiffs' suggested damage calculations for 12 films produced by the Ladd Co., including "Blade Runner," "Chariots of Fire" and the "Police Academy" movies.
The Superior Court jury delivered a unanimous verdict in finding that the studio breached its duties to the producers. The 12-juror panel then ruled 10-2 to adopt the plaintiffs' suggested damage calculations for 12 films produced by the Ladd Co., including "Blade Runner," "Chariots of Fire" and the "Police Academy" movies.
---
The movie was profitable loooooong ago and the studios are still ripping people off with fancy accounting.
I personally support the original "14 years + option to reup 14 years".
The current disney purchased "forever" system is obscene and removes any respect for the copyright system because it is so obviously unfair and corrupt.
I think the basic point is.
Microsoft good for small to medium business data processing.
IBM (oracle, unix, etc) good for large to top 500 corporation data processing.
Microsoft just doesn't scale well yet.
Microsoft is much better for office software for all sizes but Openoffice and other products are getting very close to eating Microsoft Office for lunch.
But don't even think about using IBM hosting-- gawd what a nightmare that has turned out to be. They just do not maintain the staff to get the job done. Places like Rackspace provide much better hosting for the same price and have a lot more feet on the ground at 10pm at night. Adding 11 hard drives to our hosted systems took over 30 days.
Sure they were big hard drives but wtf? IBM should have had a room of them ready to add at a moments notice.
You are correct. It is very complicated and to give a fully nuanced answer would not only take a lot more time and space but would also probably never be fully correct without a lot of verification and input from other people.
My feeling is this... I think we give aid to prevent other countries from becoming threats. This worked when countries were threats. For example- perhaps all of our african aid prevented the formation of a strong african nation for the last 85 years. However, increasing technology means that even small groups of people can do major damage. So now the aid and interference is creating a lot of enemies.
It may be better now to let the opposing nation form and get into a legitimate war and have one side gain total victory. Partial victories are going to be very dangerous to the world going forward. The IRA/British, the Palestine/Isreal, and other interminable conflicts are reaching a point where they pose a risk to the entire world. At some point, if the differences cannot be resolved peacefully, you are going to see one side or the other engage in a genocidal rooting out of every last person on the other side of the conflict. There is just too much danger that a quasi nation state can create a pandemic, hit cities with small nuclear bombs, etc.
I am looking forward to dying in 25 years because I think i will avoid the worst of it. I think within 50 years, we are going to have one hella nasty murderous no holds bar conflict. The underlying problem is too many people. If we could get the population down to 2-3 billion, earth would be like a paradise.
Read up on Libertarian philosophy.
He's not as extreme as greenspan or ayn rand but he is consistently Libertarian.
The smarter libertarians are not for some kind of pie in the sky fantasy but are for a genuinely limited government.
I'm not ron paul- I was simply repeating his positions to answer those questions.
All we need to do to secure our borders is to enforce our current laws mostly. As soon as they started prosecuting business owners in Oklahoma and Arizona, the illegals started streaming out. There are two factors.
1) stop the huge flow of illegal immigrants and now you can easily police the smaller flow.
2) make marijuana legal and further reduce the border crossings (and restore the rule of law to mexico and other south american countries currently being destroyed by our drug war which is creating very powerful criminal gangs in those countries with billions of dollars) by turning illegal drug traders into ordinary business men and women just like those who sell whiskey and tequila.
You are misinformed on the welfare issue. It depends on the city but at a minimum, they get free schooling and free medical care. They often drive without required insurance or documents as well. Mothers frequently get aid for their children's food under W.I.C. Out and out welfare and unemployment - not so much. But even citizens only get 24 months/ 12 months maximum of those social services.
A typical Ron Paul approach would be to allow states and the airlines to have those policies. So one airline might allow you to take guns on their flights. And you would know it. Another airline might require that they be stored in the overhead bins. Another might ban them entirely.
Then as a consumer you would decide which airline you wanted to take. Ron Paul would probably not prevent rogue elements-- the logic is that (like the shoe-bomber), a potential terrorist would stand up with his gun and be blown away by granny in row 7. Now the pilot, the left engine, and other parts might be blown away too. Personally, the current plan of hardening the cockpit and trying to stop bombs seems best.
Ron Paul says that the influence we get from foreign subsidies is not free politically. We often support tyrants and after twenty or thirty years end up with millions of really pissed off citizens. And (my opinion of his standings) if those subsidies are really disguised subsidies to the military industrial complex businesses (as japan often does), then let those companies stand on their own two feet or give the money to them directly.
The policies we are currently attempting are destroying America from the inside out. We are becoming a fascist state and losing our civil liberties every year. All because 3,000 people died. Not worth it. Better to be free and suffer some deaths than to lose everything.
Oh i would say a vote for a third party candidate in the purple states has an even bigger impact.
Third party votes gave bush the whitehouse in 2004 (ignoring the suspicious crap-- just on the face of it a lot of votes when to liberal third party types).
Answers from ronpaul2008.com issues page mostly. Unlike a lot of politicians, Ron makes some *very* clear statements about his intent... and with his history and voting record you can trust him to do what he says. I disagree with easily 40% of his positions- but I trust him to do what he says. ALL the other politicians left in the race, I trust to say whatever they need to say to be elected and then go right back to running the company for major corporations as soon as they are elected...
Question 1> Do you believe the current levels of illegal immigration are harmful to America in terms of economy and culture? If so, how do you propose to reduce/end illegal immigration?
Do you believe in open borders -- unrestricted immigration?
Answer 1>
The talk must stop. We must secure our borders now. A nation without secure borders is no nation at all. It makes no sense to fight terrorists abroad when our own front door is left unlocked. This is my six point plan:
* Physically secure our borders and coastlines. We must do whatever it takes to control entry into our country before we undertake complicated immigration reform proposals.
* Enforce visa rules. Immigration officials must track visa holders and deport anyone who overstays their visa or otherwise violates U.S. law. This is especially important when we recall that a number of 9/11 terrorists had expired visas.
* No amnesty. Estimates suggest that 10 to 20 million people are in our country illegally. That's a lot of people to reward for breaking our laws.
* No welfare for illegal aliens. Americans have welcomed immigrants who seek opportunity, work hard, and play by the rules. But taxpayers should not pay for illegal immigrants who use hospitals, clinics, schools, roads, and social services.
* End birthright citizenship. As long as illegal immigrants know their children born here will be citizens, the incentive to enter the U.S. illegally will remain strong.
* Pass true immigration reform. The current system is incoherent and unfair. But current reform proposals would allow up to 60 million more immigrants into our country, according to the Heritage Foundation. This is insanity. Legal immigrants from all countries should face the same rules and waiting periods.
Question 2> In Republican debate #2, you implied that America was not attacked on 9/11. What words, the, would you use to describe the events of that day -- the murder of thousands of people by organized foreign nationals subsidized by States, the destruction of hundreds of millions of dollars in property and the follow-on damage to our economy?
Answer 2> I could find no clear answer to your question...There were answers around your question here:
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/articles/?tag=Terrorism
Question 3>Should those on welfare be disallowed from voting?
Answer 3> While I could find no clear answers to your question, I think most people who follow Ron Paul would find your question completely bizarre. Of course he is for every united states citizen's right to vote. He's never beaten his wife, and he's never called for welfare recipients to lose the right to vote.
His positions on this area (voting record) appears to be here: http://www.thelangreport.com/?p=324
Question 4>What restrictions to firearm ownership do you support?
Answer 4>
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/second-amendment/
I share our Founders' belief that in a free society each citizen must have the right to keep and bear arms. They ratified the Second Amendment knowing that this right is the guardian of every other right, and they all would be horrified by the proliferation of unc
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What can you tell us about Ron Paul's team?
He's been in office a long time-- do we have any knowledge of what his staff has been like?
You do not succeed in congress that way voting down spending bills left and right without something happening right.
Oddly enough- we do.
And 1.3 billion dollars would fund a nice little chunk of space program.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_aid_to_China
It is actually pretty consistent with the rest of his campaign literature...
His logic goes like this.
Why spend 1 trillion dollars and 100,000 soldiers protecting oil flow and royally pissing off huge numbers of people. If the "real" cost of oil is $200 a barrel and we are hiding that by using tax payer money to provide security then stop doing that. With the true price of oil unmasked, then other alternatives become economically viable.
Why put 35,000 troops and a hundred million dollars a year into other countries we have been at peace with since 1960 or earlier? We could have those troops ready to move fast to real problem areas and use the money to buy new planes and tanks instead of funding discos in germany, japan, and south korea where our young troops go to party on leave.
---
In a recent election in texas we passed 14 of 15 tax increases. Because they were phrased as vital new services instead of as tax increases. Easily 30% of what the federal government does could be cut back and then you can immediately pay off the deficit and then lower taxes. And those lost services would be replaced at the state level in the states that felt they were good enough to pay for.
We have essentially created a "commons" of "free" money in the federal government. We are looting and pillaging it while ignoring the fact that the "free" money is really coming out of our own pockets.
Mandatory pregnancy test on departure for all females of childbearing age.
If they are no longer pregnant a month after their return, then short of a proven miscarriage, etc. they are prosecuted.
pretty horrific... but that is how you do it.
But despite the lofty engineering claims of perfection- it still happens even tho people die.
So why bust software engineer's asses for producing buggy $300 products?
And another thing-- my company decided that they wanted to go from 99% bug free to 99.999% bug free software rollouts (a bug costing us perhaps $1000 per minute of downtime).
The result is that our software takes a minimum of 8 to 12 times longer to roll out than it did before. It is now so slow that our developers are starting to lose their skill set because there is so much downtime.
Where before we could roll it out-- suffer the "$30k" loss, fix the bug (which takes weeks of testing but only a few minutes in production to flush out), and put in a fixed build in a total of 2x the time.
And the real kicker is that we STILL get bugs in production after all that testing because the best test site in the world doesn't simulate 70,000 users hammering on the software. (and the company doesn't begin to pay for the "best" test site anyway).
Sorry but you don't get those levels of accountability when you buy a $105 product (which is what system builders Vista OEM sells for now at Fry's).
If you want completely verified software- in some cases it is possible (in some cases it is provably impossible)- in either case the effort of verifying it that completely raises the cost by at least 1000%.
If you want to pay $100,000 for a certified PC with fully tested video drivers, operating system, hardware, etc. you go right ahead. I'll buy one for $400 and accept that it is going to crash now and then.
Oh? Your bridge has fallen down.. oh that just happens some time.
And people die (unlike when your computer goes down) so they spend a lot of money trying to prevent those kind of failures.
Bridges... elevated platforms in buildings... lots of things fail all the time. They are often the manifestation of a bug (mis-designed strut or brace most often). That bridge up north that went down was called a "faulty design".... i.e. a bug.