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Comment: About that.... (Score 3, Informative) 218

by dfenstrate (#47416619) Attached to: Meet the Muslim-American Leaders the FBI and NSA Have Been Spying On

Every American should incorporate themselves. It's the only way to guarantee you have rights. If you are a closely held corporation, your religious rights cannot be infringed, your property cannot be confiscated, you can commit heinous crimes and only face a fine (no jail time for CEOs); and furthermore, NSA "spying" can be sued over as industrial espionage or as copyright violations under intellectual property rights laws.

Basically you have way more rights as a corporation. If you're an individual or "citizen", you're screwed.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you're someone who hates the recent hobby lobby decision; nonetheless, the opinion delivered by Alito directly addresses this 'corporations are treated like people and it's wrong!!!' outrage perpetuated by the left.




Comment: Misused? Murder is intrinsic in communism. (Score 1, Insightful) 526

by dfenstrate (#47404781) Attached to: Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots

Unfortunately, communism has earned a fatally bad reputation after being misused by so many dictators during the 20th century.

The murder part of communism is a necessary component to deal with people who don't want to play along. That's why it happens all the time. If you don't want to play by the rules of a society that has anything resembling a market economy, the outcome is well known: Your standard of living slides down to the lowest your fellow citizens will tolerate seeing.

If you don't want to play by the rules of a society with a Marxist economy, well, abject poverty is always an option there, too. A rather common one. But if you want to work for yourself, and keep a significant portion of the fruits of your labor? Well, sorry, that's where the murder comes in. Against the fundamental rules of the society, you see.

If you disagree, kindly tell me what you do with people in your ideal communist society who want to put in above-average effort, and reap the extra rewards. Besides murdering them. The communist societies that exist within larger market economies can eject slackers, and the motivated can simply leave. The societies that are entirely communist need other options. Exiling the motivated will simply rapidly impoverish those that remain.

Comment: Re:Incoming international flights (Score 1) 683

by technomom (#47399445) Attached to: TSA Prohibits Taking Discharged Electronic Devices Onto Planes
This is yet another stupid security theater thing, yes, but the headline is overwrought. First up, this is only for flights to/from very specific places and secondly, it's really not hard to figure out a way to not be caught up by this one. Find an outlet and plug it in for a while....or carry one of those spare charger thingees.

Comment: Re:IBM FORUMS were user-driven too (Score 1) 131

by technomom (#47380939) Attached to: Employees Staying Away From Internal Corporate Social Networks
IBMPC / IBM Forums no longer exists in its old VM form. They've now been moved to the w3 version of connections. The internal IBM connections community gets quite a lot of content, contrary to what this article says. It's pretty much the standard way to set up any kind of shared content team room now.

Comment: Re:Administrators (Score 4, Insightful) 538

by dfenstrate (#47290073) Attached to: Teaching College Is No Longer a Middle Class Job

In all aspects of education, from primary school to university, the growing swarms of administrators soak up the budget. In some school systems, they vastly outnumber the actual teachers, have better pay, and yet contribute nothing to the operation of the schools.

You beat me to it. It's time for adjunct administrators and more full time professors.

Comment: The disease spreads.... (Score 1) 389

. Mitt Romney takes advantage of loop-holes in tax laws to hide his money from US taxes by shuffling it around shell corporations in the Cayman islands. Mitt pays accountants and lawyers to set all that stuff up. The whole reason the US produces so many lawyers is to help rich people and corporations walk right up the the often fuzzy line between what is legal and what isn't.

Oh, look, it's a 'Take every chance to blame an enemy of the left whenever possible even though it's not remotely connected to the topic at hand' post. I thought these were confined to fark.com; it appears I was mistaken, and it also appears there are moderators on board. Perhaps your very own sock puppet moderators.

Comment: Re:Well duh (Score 1) 477

by dfenstrate (#46929685) Attached to: Sony Warns Demand For Blu-Ray Diminishing Faster Than Expected

Then there's the DRM. "That wouldn't affect you unless you are a pirate!" you say? Bullshit. .

There's an Anime series (a remake of Neon Genesis Envangelion) I would have purchased by now, except it's coded in a different region. That means I have to want to watch it enough to not only pay for the discs, but a region-free player as well. So I haven't purchased anything, when they could have had my money already for the discs.

Comment: Re:I love start ups but they're not for everyone (Score 1) 274

by technomom (#46920313) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Joining a Startup As an Older Programmer?
....which, btw, doesn't just happen in startups. I'm working in a company that's been in the tech industry since there was a tech industry and we still do the "OMG! Trade show coming up, better be able to code quickly!" thing all the time, complete with other, competing deadlines. The only difference is the ending. In the established company, you get laid off with maybe a severance.

Comment: Hmmm... (Score 3, Interesting) 89

I think it makes sense if you consider that Microsoft and Google are starting to make peace with each other. Microsoft recently officially gave their blessing to using office.com on Chrome and ChromeOS. So, imagine now that maybe you'll be able to save and edit actual word docs in Drive using Office and that perhaps Microsoft will also be opening its own Skydrive (or whatever they're calling it now) up to other document types? I admit it's a stretch, but given the new focus on the cloud from Microsoft, it could happen. This also makes more sense from the "merging Android and Chrome" point of view as well as mobile tends to favor smaller, single purpose apps.

Comment: Re:Punishment fits the crime (Score 1) 1198

by dfenstrate (#46880441) Attached to: Oklahoma Botched an Execution With Untested Lethal Injection Drugs

Taking someone's life through a death sentence or a whole-life prison term will never bring restoration to the family of the victim.

So do away with most whole-life sentences. Restore decent parole opportunities. That's what happens in almost every other civilized country, allowing almost all prisoners an opportunity to reform.

The rise in supermax prisons has way more to do with the potential profit for the commercial prison industry than it has to do with crime.

I never said anything about life in prison or a death sentence bringing restoration to the victim's family. I'm concerned with getting dangerous, extremely violent people away from the living permanently. A dog gets rabies. Am I mad at the dog for getting rabies? No. Does it matter how he got rabies? Only insofar as we can eliminate the source; for the fate of the dog, it doesn't matter one wit. The dog is put down because it is simply too dangerous to be allowed around the living anymore. So it is with death row inmates. As for what 'civilized countries do', kindly provide some stories of comparable murderers who were successfully re-introduced to society.
