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Comment: Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This? (Score 1) 844

by cwtrex (#36957604) Attached to: Debt Deal Reached

social care is an obligation, not something that government should abolish responsibility for

While I agree, there is a need to limit the abuses to our social care programs further.

My own personal experiences and acquaintances show that people are willing to abuse easy money whether whether it was marked for needs they actually have or not.

It may make me seem heartless, but I have to ask, "Should we really keep handing out assistance to those who abuse the system time and time again instead of using the money as intended?"


+ - Anonymous releases restricted NATO document->

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes "Anonymous has released a document on marked "restricted" from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The 36-page document, which is dated Aug. 27, 2007, appears to be budget and equipment outlays for what was termed a new "HQ ISAF JOINT CIS CONTROL CENTRE." NATO's press office could not be immediately reached. Anonymous claimed on its "AnonymousIRC" Twitter handle that it has 1GB of material from NATO but said that most would not be published because it would be "irresponsible.""
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Sorry, guys. . . (Score 1) 74

by cwtrex (#36762146) Attached to: Bruce Campbell Confirms New <em>Evil Dead</em> Movie

Sorry, wrong. As it was pointed out above, Evil Dead II had a 7 minute rehash of the first Evil Dead movie. The rest of Evil Dead II was its own deal. Also if you fail to watch Evil Dead I, then II, then AoD, you will miss out on the progression of the movies as well as some pretty good laughs and connections between the 3.

The question that I have not seen up to this point (haven't read below this comment yet), is whether or not the movie will be made with comedy in mind or as a campy serious version much like the original?


+ - Researchers create "transparent" computer chip->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "A breakthrough achieved by a world-spanning group of engineering professors has led to the creation of photonic computer chips that can propogate light without slowing it down and without changing phase. In the words of one of the researchers, Serdar Kocaman, "the light disperses through the material as if the entire space is missing." To do this, the researchers had to create photonic crystals with a negative refractive index out of nanostructures. These photonic crystals are then alternated with a positive refractive index dielectric to create a chip with zero refraction. In other words, light enters and leaves the chip at exactly the same speed and without losing phase.

Other than providing a huge boost to the telecommunications industry, Chee Wei Wong, the project's lead engineer, thinks this technology could lead to invisibility cloaks: "We can now control the flow of light, the fastest thing known to us. This can enable self-focusing light beams, highly directive antennas, and even potentially an approach to cloak or hide objects, at least in the small-scale.""

Link to Original Source

Spamming Becoming Financially Infeasible 212

Posted by samzenpus
from the let-the-market-decide dept.
itwbennett writes "Making money in spam isn't as easy as it used to be. 'It's not something financially feasible for anyone to even consider,' said Robert Soloway, who in his heyday made $20,000/day as a spammer. 'Spam — the Internet's original sin — dropped for the first time ever at the end of 2010,' writes IDG News Service's Robert McMillan. 'In September, Cisco System's IronPort group was tracking 300 billion spam messages per day. By April, the volume had shrunk to 34 billion per day, a remarkable decline.' Soloway says spam filters have become too good."

Comment: Re:People's price tolerance (Score 1) 473

by cwtrex (#36572236) Attached to: Hulu For Sale: Is There Good News For Users?

While true, would those same people watch those men with sticks if they were forced to watch ads instead of get another beer before their game comes back on?

There are different lines drawn for everyone, and if a suitable replacement can easily be found, then you can bet they will move on: that's why cable is finding their subscriber base shrinking while netflix, hulu, and dvd (and other media) purchase base grows.

If hulu pulls too many shenanigans, you can bet that eventually they will find their subscriber base shrinking as well. They could move to netflix, or perhaps find another service that isn't as well known (or yet created).

Comment: Re:Gary Johnson and libertarians (Score 1) 462

by cwtrex (#36539824) Attached to: Re: the U.S. 2012 election campaign, I am:

How is decreasing the government's size a poor solution? We have to make up for the 43 cents in borrowing per dollar spent and you want to do that all by raising taxes on an already over tax-burdened society? What about those that are paying rent or mortgages and only have a few hundred dollars a month to spare. You want to raise taxes 43% or more to cover our current borrowing trend? You do realize how many people will continue to go bankrupt if such a step is made?

Do you realize the amount of money we could save just by eliminating government overlap (without reducing regulation or services)?

Where did you read that I think that socialism is "capitalism with a mid-sized government"? I was simply asking what system you prefer.

Also, how do you define a mid-sized government? As you can see here, government as an employee percent has grown 10% just in the past 2 or 3 years. Looking at this chart you can see that government has never really shrunk. If anything, this is the largest, government has ever been and every year it once again is the largest it has ever been again. So once again, what do you define as mid-sized?

"replace it with civil unions (with the same legal content that marriage has today), and separate civil unions and cultural marriage forever. If so, he should say that" - He has on his website, which you refuse to read in depth. This is exactly what he has been saying over and over again.

If by a better health care plan, you mean more expensive and therefore bound to bankrupt this country in no time? Then you would be correct. Here is just one of the many COSTLY issues with the bill and why it needs to be repealed even if it means doing so before a better replacement can be made: middle class now included.

So you accept the Fed regardless of the consequences and their abuses. I do not.

I accept your premise that if Iraq and Afghanistan were left now, that they would likely have difficulties stabilizing versus if we stayed and helped them through every little issue. The issue, however, is not whether they would be better off, but rather if our presence in those two countries is more important than supporting the American people. I believe the debt is at a critical point and that risking any stable ground we have in those countries is worth while in the process of turning our debt situation around. If any major threats do pose themselves in those countries, what stops us from shooting a few missiles, or sending a small force to eliminate the issue? Why must we risk going bankrupt for this countries when it is NOT do or die for us?

I believe Gary Johnson is very clear that he plans to give health care to the states to deal with. Some states may privatize health care, others will not. That is the extent to where I believe any privatization might enter. Johnson has mentioned cost and benefit analysis many times. Analysis includes risk assessment. Keep that in mind before thinking Johnson would throw money at something not worth while since this guy was a VERY successful business man and understands these important concepts.

"unions did not cost that much" I don't know about you, but 30% more cost is costly to me. That's a big profit loss. Most business margins are 15% and you are talking about a 30% increase just due to unions alone? I do not argue against the lack of R&D and proper risk assessment these car companies failed to exercise, but make no mistake, unions make a HUGE impact on their profit margins. Either way, all the above would have been a good reason to let them fail. Any company that fails to change with the times, perform R&D, perform proper risk assessment, etc deserves to fail and generally without assistance will fail or they will reform. Why prop up a broken model that is guaranteed to fail again?

under regulation leading to financial crashes? Please source and explain. I fail to see the connection.

Where did I label socialists? I asked a general question so I knew where you were heading with your argument and so that I may understand you better. Simple answers are all I was asking for - not labeling of any kind.

Ron Paul is apparently pulling out 10% in some polls ... I wouldn't call that exactly rejecting. It is my hope that understanding and education catch on so that the proper people are elected (which happens to INCLUDE Gary Johnson).

Comment: Re:Gary Johnson and libertarians (Score 1) 462

by cwtrex (#36526094) Attached to: Re: the U.S. 2012 election campaign, I am:

I don't see how he is differently bad. Libertarian = advocating a much smaller government and less policies.

The 43 number is one of Gary Johnson's corner stones of his campaign. The fact that you didn't look further into it means I know have to explain a lot of details I shouldn't have to.

If you look up "43 cents on every dollar" in Google, you will find a LOT of sites/PDF files explaining that "the US borrows 43 cents of every dollar it spends". So in other words, for every dollar we spend on defense for Iraq or Afghanistan and for every dollar we spend on Medicare, we are borrowing 43% of that spent dollar from China (who is one of the largest holders of our debt btw) and several other foreign countries.

The issue with the above, is you have to keep the interest up for people to buy your debt. If they think you are going bankrupt, that you have no interest in paying back your loan, or that you will devalue your currency then you will lose interest in people buying your debt. The problem with that is, if people do not buy our debt, we WILL be bankrupt as a nation.

So Gary Johnson's case/stance/etc is that we need to prevent that and prevent that ASAP.

While cutting federal funding for science programs, military funding, and medical assistance seems crazy, irresponsible, or other wise illogical, if you look at the financial state of his country, we simply cannot afford to keep spending and printing money.

Also, this is based less on fact and more on preference: Do you prefer socialism, or capitalism? In other words, do you prefer taxes, or keeping money to yourself and being responsible for yourself? I prefer the later. I'd rather not support that lazy person on welfare of the old person who can still walk perfectly fine but applies for a $10,000 scooter through Medicare just because they can (and most often get accepted ... although sometimes they do have to apply for it more than once to cheat the system).

If we cannot agree on the above points, then what I post below will simply end up in disagreement again. I have at least one liberal friend who thinks we can print money for ever and that our debt means nothing. If you fall into his category, then there is no need to continue this discussion further.

I will respond to some of the points.

* Gary see's marriage as a religion deal that should not be used as a federal standard. He promotes civil unions instead and that both hetero and homo should be using that stance rather than marriage. So in other words, he does SUPPORT GAY CIVIL UNIONS. He DOES NOT SUPPORT MARRIAGE AS A FEDERAL STANDARD BUT RATHER LEFT TO RELIGION (since marriage is based on religion this makes sense to me and i would hope it would make sense to you as well). If you watched his videos and read into his site you would know this and that your posted statement is incorrect.

* Good point on University run stem cell research. I'm not sure if that is his intended consequence or if he simply wants to limit subsidizing it with grants to corporations researching it. I would agree with the later.

* Since he would use Marijuana taxes (arguably a possibly HUGE amount of funds) and at the same time attempt to balance the budget by cutting Defense and Medicare by 43 percent, I would argue that he would be extremely fiscally responsible (more so than any previous Administration)

* He explains on his site why Obamacare is a bad idea and why it would cost the Government WAY more to continue it than it would to get rid of it. As such, the healthcare forms were NOT financially responsible. If you have a question as to whether his arguments are correct, please make sure you read that section and quote it from the site or other article based on Gary Johnson for me to find a source for you.

* I apologize that i did not explain my father is retired and previously worked for social security. As such, he has first hand experience of the abuses of the system both due to retiree ads for Medicare and actual experience with Social Security. But here's a source for you. There are many other expensive items that Medicare pays for that I would argue are not needed for most cases. Such expensive purchases should be cut completely, or further scrutinized.

  * One example of abuse for you There are better examples, but I didn't want to spend more time on this point until I see if you are more serious about this conversation. Also, you can control debt *gasp* TWO WAYS. Tax more, OR spend less...

* After reading this I more or less agree with you that without increasing public school funding, this would be a poor idea. Although implemented properly or the way I described, it could benefit greatly. Someone had explained to me of the voucher system used in either Arizona or New Mexico (I cannot remember which), but they mentioned that they could use it regardless of which PUBLIC school they attended and could use it to escape the limited school zone they purchased their house in. Perhaps that's more of a hybrid system, but I could not find such a system mentioned looking up vouchers. I will, however, point out that even without the voucher system in place, those "religious nuts" are already limited actual education in favor of creationism at a local or state level. I fail to see how a voucher system would increase the stupidity. With any luck, perhaps those nuts would find themselves in the minority.

* How have we not already over stayed our presence in Iraq or Afghanistan and how could we not still keep an eye on them or use a lesser force to keep things more secure in the area? I fail to see why we need to keep such large forces there at this time especially with our nations debt at a tipping point.

* Please point out these other statements that suggest privatising Social Security.

* This can be debated. I seem to remember that Ford was no where near the dire situation as GM. Although, I do believe that GM would have found it impossible to survive without assistance (Ford easily could have picked up this slack). There would have been even larger amounts of job losses as well, but most of them were related to costly Unions which are part of this issue to begin with. Gary thinks that the car industry would have fallen harder, but bounced back quicker and supplied even more jobs than it does today. I could not argue this point in favor of Gary without building a research paper of its own. I refuse to do that, but I will say that i believe in capitalism and that subsidizing the industry was the result of socialism, which I disagree with.

I believe that he polls well in New Mexico where he ran two terms signifies that he does merit high office.

Once again, however, I would like to hear: Do you prefer socialism over capitalism? Do you agree that the nations debt needs to be paid off?

My answers to the above (just to make it more clear) are that: I prefer capitalism and so therefore believe that the nation needs less regulation and subsides; I believe our debt not only needs to be paid off, but that it needs to be paid off ASAP and that I would prefer to do it by cutting tremendous amounts of spending rather than increasing taxes (except for Gary's idea of taxing and regulating marijuana use which I think we should have been doing for years).

Comment: Re:Gary Johnson and libertarians (Score 1) 462

by cwtrex (#36518198) Attached to: Re: the U.S. 2012 election campaign, I am:

Did you actually check the site out or did you just gloss over it thinking he's like some other Republican you read about?

* A search of his site finds "I support gay unions" and "advocating gay rights" (How is he against gay marriage?)

* Stem cell research should only be completed by private laboratories that operate without federal funding (he's not against researching it, he's against using federal funding for it how are the two the same?)

*He proposes taxing marijuana AND living within our means rather than spending like we have for the past 20 years how is he fiscally irresponsible?

* So you defend Obamacare, but knock Johnson for wanting to get rid of it due to it's costliness while at the same time say he's fiscally irresponsible? Why do you contradict yourself?

* My father mentions all the time that currently people on Medicare can get free scooters and other expensive devices regardless if they need them or not. He expects states to WANT TO BE fiscally responsible and as such would manage the medicare funds as such.

* The fed is abused too often and is the current reason why the dollar is worth less than it was last year while also limiting the desire for foreign nations wanting to purchase our debt.

* School vouchers does not mean private schools. It means that the public school who does the best job gets the most students and the most money. It also means each school gets funded proportionality to the number of students and it's effectiveness. Where do you get private schools from in all of that? As for the Department of Education, he thinks that 50 states doing what they think best is better than federal regulation. This gives American's choice when they pick a state to live in. State failures will find they have less citizens then states that have better policies.

* We are building over there in Iraq and Afghanistan rather than here in the United States while our infrastructure has been falling apart since the 70's. You'd rather they have better roads than us? Also, the amount of forces we have to do either of those wars was over kill and over kill on our budget. I would, however, argue against Johnson that Libya is warranted due to the limited number of forces being used and that Gaddafi has already stated he will enlist the help of al-Qaeda if we do not take him out of power now. (but that's one of my FEW issues with Gary Johnson versus the many I have with the others)

* Social security "Fix Social Security by changing the escalator from being based on wage growth to inflation" ... how is that killing Social Security?

* He regrets we wasted money on the auto industry when if they were allowed to fail, they might have come back stronger than they did or allow new auto companies to form and practice better business. And from my view point, teach the unions that special treatment that expands expenses beyond what will sustain a business is bad practice.

Overall, his proposed policies are in line with where the US needs to be and only sensible people will vote for him.

Btw, just to test if you really looked at his site (and after reading your post, I already know you didn't), what does he use the number 43 for and can you explain his use for it in detail? My bet is that you can't.
