"The government gives parties money to run the elections"
Sorry, but I'm still gagging at the prospect of PAYING candidates to screw me when they are elected. Public financing sounds all good until you realize that election starts the corruption in *earnest*. Then it seems, to me, to be public financing of the screwers by the screwees.
Lest we forget, our Constitution was radical and crazy IN THE BEGINNING. It was CREATED THAT WAY, AND ON PURPOSE.
Even today, rights being inherently endowed within the people of a nation is not al that common, and a nation's constitution specifying WHICH powers are invested in the state and that ALL OTHERS are therfore invested in the people is also not all that common.
Our nation was founded to be radical and crazy, compared to the norm then. And it still is, so much so that there are significant factions within our nation that take up the fight to deny us our rights, as enumerated in our Constitution, and do so to re-form us into the image of other nations that were, even when we were founded, constituted very differently than we were and are. Some of those same nations are still very different than us.
Ron Paul goes slightly overboard for my taste. Not in his philosophy, but in his intended practice. Disband the Federal Department of Education, absolutely. Disband the Federal Department of Energy, maybe not. Disband FEMA, well, that takes some planning. He's close, very close, but he's also honest about his intentions. Mix in a little restraint, and he would be a winner, but then he wouldn't be Ron Paul.
Well, I can't speak for your father, but I can tell you how I feel about the 'tax the rich' ideas.
First, the premise that the rich aren't paying their fair share is difficult to support if you consider how much a share of tax revenue they already pay.
Second, when you see that 49-51% of all taxpayers aren't paying taxes at all, you might ask yourself 'why?'. Two possiblities:
1. These are the housholds that are so close or below the poverty line, that they ought to be excused from taxes. 2. Our representatives have, in their largesse, repeatedly made such changes to tax code that half their constituents pay no taxes, for various reasons. Some related to #1, some not.
If half our households are below the poverty line, I propose that we need to reconsider the 'poverty line' settings. Half is closer to normal than not.
And of course, our representatives aren't above buying votes.
I think also that the idea of 'taxing the rich' is essentially 'tax someone else'. This is most likely to lead to eventually running out of 'someone else' to tax. Not good.
This is not the time to shrink our government, even if we can, but it is also not the time to continue to tax as if there is no problem spending that revenue, be it on expenses or interest or debt amortization.
But there's never any good time to pay down your debt, except now. Make hard choices.
Then talk more about taxes.
ps - You'll be pissed off in a couple of decades or so when someone writes that 'perhaps in 20 years or so I'll be going senile too' in response to your ideas. Pure arrogance that your father's disagreement with you is senility, unless he is actually going senile, in which case you should be ashamed of yourself, and I pray for your father and your familyas they deal with this. And you.
"That's why more drastic action, like the protests and beyond, must be taken."
Well, if we paid attention at election time and actually examined the candidates, we would, sadly, conclude that none of them can be trusted, and none of them deserve our votes.
Then we would pay more attention to the selection process, and would realize, sadly, that none of them can be trusted, and none of them deserve our support.
Then, perhaps, we would pay more attention to the media, and realize, sadly, that none of it serves us. And we would look elsewhere for such meager scraps of information as can be useful in selecting our political leaders.
All of which is a waste of time, since the majority in the U.S. will never care who they vote for, so long as they can vote for the one that promises they will not have to pay taxes and will taken care of by their government, for others will pay the taxes.
This whole thread starts as a discussion of Google changing search algorithms, and devolves into rants about not clicking the right buttons and what crap gets installed.
That is better presented as a rant about advertising, generating revenue with tie-ins, and why Adobe feels the need to partner with Google and slip Chrome onto the reader install page at all. Which is all about $$$.
When I rebuilt my laptop with Vista (I know...) it pulled that, but following the prompts and paying attentioj to the one for the plug-in was not a big problem, worked as expected, and I didn't have Bing showing anywhere after that.
Sometimes, following instructions solves those pesky 'bugs'. I know, it's annoying to actually read the screen.
So Firefox development is taking (presumably) more money from Bing than it was getting rrom Google? It certainly can't be the ir checking they evil-o-meter, since MS and Google are too close to call.
You have lost control of it. You can make any claims you want, but if your agreement with users permits you to share the data, you should be legally bound to state that you cannot guarantee privacy. In essence, you have ended your agreement with your users at that point.
Since asking users in advance if you can share their data with a third party is both impractical and likely to cause outrage and refusal, no company is going to do this willingly. So we are back to square one.
If you share user data with a third party, you have lost control. Any claims to privacy are deceptive at best, outright fraudulent at worst.
Even if you claim to compel the third parties to abide by agreements, there is no guarantee unless you own them and/or control the data. That would not be 'giving'.
Gee. If it's all bullshit, what's the point of differentiating?
Though the question of why God gives out different messages begs an answer.
I don't believe God gives out different answers. Though He may, and for His reasons, I don't believe he does.
If your question was really why are there multiple religions, well, some must be invalid, 'wrong' or 'lies' as many say. Since we are dealing with faith, then there are no empirical tests for validity.
However, if your question is more like 'why do people say and do different and incompatible things about the same religions', well, trust me on this - people are imperfect. At best we misunderstand, at worst we twist words to suit us. These shortcomings are not limited to religion, of course.
Stick with the no evidence idea. all you have to do is ignore the Old Testament and the New Testament. and deny Jewish history. and deny the claims of men who died for their statements that they saw what they said they dud.
after all, it was a long time ago, and in 2000 years we will be recorded in history as barbarians and deluded by our unsophisticated science.
I had an all-to-rare chance to chat with someone I know in the chip industry. Among his greatest challenges right now is how to 'characterize' performance and failures. The state of the art is so profoundly advanced that production facilities are using what are truly research technologies to deal with their production needs.
To put it differently, imagine that mainstream medicine was being manufactured at university research labs, using the research facilities as if they were production lines. State of the art chip fabs are pretty much at that level.
His assessment was that China barely has close-to-useful chip research going on, and they can only indulge in truly state of the art research if they steal/buy the necessary hardware AND personnel to operate it. And they haven't been caught kidnapping researchers. And their plants in U.S. universities haven't been smuggling such equipment, though he can't guess as to what they may have been able to purchase on the Q.T. with the necessary government assistance. And that's what he fears, that the Chinese will draw to parity with the rest of the world not through their own efforts, but through espionage, subterfuge, and the willing accomplices in other governments that see the opportunity for growth but not the opportunity for dominance.
And then, he thinks, a transcendent China will fail to exhibit the creativity to develop a lead, and will merely out-price the competition. He truly only fears his employer will somehow squander or fail to maintain their currrent dominant position, and be reduced to price wars, which is, in his opinion, the way to their demise.
So far, no sign that they are letting up on the innovation acclerator.
China is still considering it a victory to copy 20-year old technology. We should hope this is their model for a while longer.
ps - He thinks we will see a push to U.S. manufacturing of semiconductors, electronics devices, and such when it becomes even more evident that we cannot trust Chinese-made devices. UEFI-based PCs will make this even more evindent than Cisco hardware, he thinks, and will first bring Korean and Japanese manufacturers a new opportunity. Then the DOD will realize they can't trust even the solder from China. Then we can be honest about this issue.
Please. Since Obama took office, we've been racist and small-dicked Do try to see it from his point of view. It's the only point of view that matters. To him.
As was just pointed out, you would feel differently if you bought your new PC and had to load the BIOS just to get it to the point where you could format the hard drive and load the video BIOS. We get a lot of stuf predetermined in PCs.
My G1 I rooted and upgraded past what HTC expected. Along the way I had to update to new radio code that took up less memory so newer OS builds would fit. Phones come with radio code to ensure that the hardware actually functions, similar to a PC BIOS though for slightly different reasons. This you do not mess with lightly, as problems here make your phone a doorstop. And the bootloader for obvious reasons as well.
1. I bought a G1 and knew how limited the memory was. It got to the point that Eclair just hammered it, and of course the Google apps grew until I could do little else but mail, Internet, and map. But it worked, mostly. Rooting it got me along for another year before I realized my time was worth more then the cost of a new phone. Oh, and my wife could leave TMO 'cause they were/are enver getting iPhones.
2. Apple will indeed let you update some pretty old phones. And they behave pretty, shall we say, poorly. Same issue - older hardware just isn't up to the demands of the modern OS.
3. Any discussion of orphaned Windows phones? Once upon a time, a WP was exactly what it was forever. No updates. I never bought one after hearing the tales of promised CE updates.
1. The concept that you can attribute blog posts to an individual, since it is not merely obvious but assured that they posted it, no matter what it is, if their identity is on it, well, that's an interesting concept. And naive.
2. Since identity is so difficult to be sure on on the Internet, we'll be seeing Chinese government accusations and wondering if they just fabricated the rumor postings to justify imprisonment. Yeah, I just wrote that.
3. And since Internet in China is entirely open and unfettered by government control, we would have no reason to question their findings, Right?
4. yes, I'm, not forgetting. Even in the U.S. the government would very much like to have the same laws, for the same reasons, and with the same results.
We are in a LOT of trouble here, my friends. Time to start paying more attention to who you vote for. And to start educating them about technology and how it should be used and not abused. But I'm afraid it's already too late.
Just as an aside, name me the SUV/pickup truck that has an entirely electonic ignition system - that is, without a key and ignition switch that physically controls the ignition system.
For me, I would turn the key to 'off' and expect the engine to stop providing power. Harder to steer and brake, but I'm unaware of a US made SUV/pickup truck that has such an ignition system that cannot be turned off by turning the key.
And if I'm wrong, please tell me. I want to avoid those makes and models.
Slashdot Mirror
No. 'Best' is the part missing on most sites. And professionals.
Speak for yourself. I'm hitting the 'dislike' button all the damned time, it seems.
But I'm outnumbered.
"The government gives parties money to run the elections"
Sorry, but I'm still gagging at the prospect of PAYING candidates to screw me when they are elected. Public financing sounds all good until you realize that election starts the corruption in *earnest*. Then it seems, to me, to be public financing of the screwers by the screwees.
Lest we forget, our Constitution was radical and crazy IN THE BEGINNING. It was CREATED THAT WAY, AND ON PURPOSE.
Even today, rights being inherently endowed within the people of a nation is not al that common, and a nation's constitution specifying WHICH powers are invested in the state and that ALL OTHERS are therfore invested in the people is also not all that common.
Our nation was founded to be radical and crazy, compared to the norm then. And it still is, so much so that there are significant factions within our nation that take up the fight to deny us our rights, as enumerated in our Constitution, and do so to re-form us into the image of other nations that were, even when we were founded, constituted very differently than we were and are. Some of those same nations are still very different than us.
Ron Paul goes slightly overboard for my taste. Not in his philosophy, but in his intended practice. Disband the Federal Department of Education, absolutely. Disband the Federal Department of Energy, maybe not. Disband FEMA, well, that takes some planning. He's close, very close, but he's also honest about his intentions. Mix in a little restraint, and he would be a winner, but then he wouldn't be Ron Paul.
Well, I can't speak for your father, but I can tell you how I feel about the 'tax the rich' ideas.
First, the premise that the rich aren't paying their fair share is difficult to support if you consider how much a share of tax revenue they already pay.
Second, when you see that 49-51% of all taxpayers aren't paying taxes at all, you might ask yourself 'why?'. Two possiblities:
1. These are the housholds that are so close or below the poverty line, that they ought to be excused from taxes.
2. Our representatives have, in their largesse, repeatedly made such changes to tax code that half their constituents pay no taxes, for various reasons. Some related to #1, some not.
If half our households are below the poverty line, I propose that we need to reconsider the 'poverty line' settings. Half is closer to normal than not.
And of course, our representatives aren't above buying votes.
I think also that the idea of 'taxing the rich' is essentially 'tax someone else'. This is most likely to lead to eventually running out of 'someone else' to tax. Not good.
This is not the time to shrink our government, even if we can, but it is also not the time to continue to tax as if there is no problem spending that revenue, be it on expenses or interest or debt amortization.
But there's never any good time to pay down your debt, except now. Make hard choices.
Then talk more about taxes.
ps - You'll be pissed off in a couple of decades or so when someone writes that 'perhaps in 20 years or so I'll be going senile too' in response to your ideas. Pure arrogance that your father's disagreement with you is senility, unless he is actually going senile, in which case you should be ashamed of yourself, and I pray for your father and your familyas they deal with this. And you.
"That's why more drastic action, like the protests and beyond, must be taken."
Well, if we paid attention at election time and actually examined the candidates, we would, sadly, conclude that none of them can be trusted, and none of them deserve our votes.
Then we would pay more attention to the selection process, and would realize, sadly, that none of them can be trusted, and none of them deserve our support.
Then, perhaps, we would pay more attention to the media, and realize, sadly, that none of it serves us. And we would look elsewhere for such meager scraps of information as can be useful in selecting our political leaders.
All of which is a waste of time, since the majority in the U.S. will never care who they vote for, so long as they can vote for the one that promises they will not have to pay taxes and will taken care of by their government, for others will pay the taxes.
Doomed. We are doomed.
My IE doesn't default to Bing. Unless Bing's result to every search I make is a Google result page.
Ditto. My research into past events will not be aided by this.
Tthanks, Google. Once again, reminding me that old things are not very important. To you.
If you uncheck the option, you don't get Chrome.
This whole thread starts as a discussion of Google changing search algorithms, and devolves into rants about not clicking the right buttons and what crap gets installed.
That is better presented as a rant about advertising, generating revenue with tie-ins, and why Adobe feels the need to partner with Google and slip Chrome onto the reader install page at all. Which is all about $$$.
Fight the real enemy.
When I rebuilt my laptop with Vista (I know...) it pulled that, but following the prompts and paying attentioj to the one for the plug-in was not a big problem, worked as expected, and I didn't have Bing showing anywhere after that.
Sometimes, following instructions solves those pesky 'bugs'. I know, it's annoying to actually read the screen.
So Firefox development is taking (presumably) more money from Bing than it was getting rrom Google? It certainly can't be the ir checking they evil-o-meter, since MS and Google are too close to call.
And I don't begrudge them a penny of it.
You have lost control of it. You can make any claims you want, but if your agreement with users permits you to share the data, you should be legally bound to state that you cannot guarantee privacy. In essence, you have ended your agreement with your users at that point.
Since asking users in advance if you can share their data with a third party is both impractical and likely to cause outrage and refusal, no company is going to do this willingly. So we are back to square one.
If you share user data with a third party, you have lost control. Any claims to privacy are deceptive at best, outright fraudulent at worst.
Even if you claim to compel the third parties to abide by agreements, there is no guarantee unless you own them and/or control the data. That would not be 'giving'.
You're overthinking this. Rush and Beck are seeing this as sponsorship for profit. Malice is unnecessary unless you see profit as malicious.
Leo Laporte, on the other hand, doesn't easilty fit into the category of 'evil' for me. You may have a different opinion, I know...
So I should believe as you do. At least you're humble.
Gee. If it's all bullshit, what's the point of differentiating?
Though the question of why God gives out different messages begs an answer.
I don't believe God gives out different answers. Though He may, and for His reasons, I don't believe he does.
If your question was really why are there multiple religions, well, some must be invalid, 'wrong' or 'lies' as many say. Since we are dealing with faith, then there are no empirical tests for validity.
However, if your question is more like 'why do people say and do different and incompatible things about the same religions', well, trust me on this - people are imperfect. At best we misunderstand, at worst we twist words to suit us. These shortcomings are not limited to religion, of course.
Any help at all?
Stick with the no evidence idea. all you have to do is ignore the Old Testament and the New Testament. and deny Jewish history. and deny the claims of men who died for their statements that they saw what they said they dud.
after all, it was a long time ago, and in 2000 years we will be recorded in history as barbarians and deluded by our unsophisticated science.
Making his point, methinks.
I had an all-to-rare chance to chat with someone I know in the chip industry. Among his greatest challenges right now is how to 'characterize' performance and failures. The state of the art is so profoundly advanced that production facilities are using what are truly research technologies to deal with their production needs.
To put it differently, imagine that mainstream medicine was being manufactured at university research labs, using the research facilities as if they were production lines. State of the art chip fabs are pretty much at that level.
His assessment was that China barely has close-to-useful chip research going on, and they can only indulge in truly state of the art research if they steal/buy the necessary hardware AND personnel to operate it. And they haven't been caught kidnapping researchers. And their plants in U.S. universities haven't been smuggling such equipment, though he can't guess as to what they may have been able to purchase on the Q.T. with the necessary government assistance. And that's what he fears, that the Chinese will draw to parity with the rest of the world not through their own efforts, but through espionage, subterfuge, and the willing accomplices in other governments that see the opportunity for growth but not the opportunity for dominance.
And then, he thinks, a transcendent China will fail to exhibit the creativity to develop a lead, and will merely out-price the competition. He truly only fears his employer will somehow squander or fail to maintain their currrent dominant position, and be reduced to price wars, which is, in his opinion, the way to their demise.
So far, no sign that they are letting up on the innovation acclerator.
China is still considering it a victory to copy 20-year old technology. We should hope this is their model for a while longer.
ps - He thinks we will see a push to U.S. manufacturing of semiconductors, electronics devices, and such when it becomes even more evident that we cannot trust Chinese-made devices. UEFI-based PCs will make this even more evindent than Cisco hardware, he thinks, and will first bring Korean and Japanese manufacturers a new opportunity. Then the DOD will realize they can't trust even the solder from China. Then we can be honest about this issue.
No,and it's not because men aren't surprised, either.
It's that men are just not such attractive nuisances to most TSA agents.
Please. Since Obama took office, we've been racist and small-dicked Do try to see it from his point of view. It's the only point of view that matters. To him.
As was just pointed out, you would feel differently if you bought your new PC and had to load the BIOS just to get it to the point where you could format the hard drive and load the video BIOS. We get a lot of stuf predetermined in PCs.
My G1 I rooted and upgraded past what HTC expected. Along the way I had to update to new radio code that took up less memory so newer OS builds would fit. Phones come with radio code to ensure that the hardware actually functions, similar to a PC BIOS though for slightly different reasons. This you do not mess with lightly, as problems here make your phone a doorstop. And the bootloader for obvious reasons as well.
1. I bought a G1 and knew how limited the memory was. It got to the point that Eclair just hammered it, and of course the Google apps grew until I could do little else but mail, Internet, and map. But it worked, mostly. Rooting it got me along for another year before I realized my time was worth more then the cost of a new phone. Oh, and my wife could leave TMO 'cause they were/are enver getting iPhones.
2. Apple will indeed let you update some pretty old phones. And they behave pretty, shall we say, poorly. Same issue - older hardware just isn't up to the demands of the modern OS.
3. Any discussion of orphaned Windows phones? Once upon a time, a WP was exactly what it was forever. No updates. I never bought one after hearing the tales of promised CE updates.
1. The concept that you can attribute blog posts to an individual, since it is not merely obvious but assured that they posted it, no matter what it is, if their identity is on it, well, that's an interesting concept. And naive.
2. Since identity is so difficult to be sure on on the Internet, we'll be seeing Chinese government accusations and wondering if they just fabricated the rumor postings to justify imprisonment. Yeah, I just wrote that.
3. And since Internet in China is entirely open and unfettered by government control, we would have no reason to question their findings, Right?
4. yes, I'm, not forgetting. Even in the U.S. the government would very much like to have the same laws, for the same reasons, and with the same results.
We are in a LOT of trouble here, my friends. Time to start paying more attention to who you vote for. And to start educating them about technology and how it should be used and not abused. But I'm afraid it's already too late.
You're right, that never happens anywhere else in the credible, accepted mass media.
Just as an aside, name me the SUV/pickup truck that has an entirely electonic ignition system - that is, without a key and ignition switch that physically controls the ignition system.
For me, I would turn the key to 'off' and expect the engine to stop providing power. Harder to steer and brake, but I'm unaware of a US made SUV/pickup truck that has such an ignition system that cannot be turned off by turning the key.
And if I'm wrong, please tell me. I want to avoid those makes and models.