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Comment Re:Yes, totally (Score 1) 338

It seemed to work fine until a natural disaster struck. On the other hand, roads have potholes and cracks in them year round, and some city governments really don't give a shit about ever fixing them.

The problem in the Sandy case is people are demanding that they rebuild a copper POTS network when nobody wants POTS service any more, and yet in these same areas not enough people are willing to pay for fiber to make it worth it to roll that out either.

Sure, in situations like what we have on slashdot, everybody wants fast broadband. Slashdot doesn't represent everybody though; a majority of meatspace has lawns to mow and aren't really interested in that internet thing unless they want to surf the playboy site or talk on facebook. Likewise, these people don't give a shit about fiber, and/or think that an HFC network or VDSL2 is fiber.

For some rather classic proof on this, call your ISP and ask about downgrading to a slower internet tier. They won't give you bandwidth numbers unless you ask for them; instead they'll jump right to some crap like "well you can download an mp3 in 30 seconds on this tier." And worse, they often also tell you that you need their fastest tier for gaming (which is full of crap, but most people don't know any better, including the people selling you the service who are just reading from a script.) You know why this is? Because 99% of those who they talk to don't even understand what a megabit is.

Comment Re:this is fucking bullshit (Score 2, Interesting) 499

Ever cooked food before? Ever ground anything into a powder before doing something else to it before eating it? In either case, congratulations, it's processed. This also includes *any* kind of oil or milk alternative, which are very heavily processed extracts from different kinds of plants. *ANY* kind of soy that is actually edible is also heavily processed.

This whole article is bullshit. I first tried dieting by avoiding processed foods (namely, the kinds that tend to be higher in sodium, carbs, fats, etc) and it didn't work for shit. Know what did work? Just watching the caloric intake. Already lost 60 pounds over the last year, and it mainly just involved getting proper perspective on what an actual serving is. I still eat fast food, indeed all kinds of junk foods. I've also lowered my cholesterol and triglycerides in the process, while eating burgers, fries, and pizza no less. The trick is eating portion sizes that an actual human would eat instead of what a rhinoceros would eat.

A plain old hamburger at mcdonalds has about 360 calories. Contrary to popular belief, these hamburgers have been around since way before the obesity epidemic. Know what hasn't? Big triple stacked burgers globbed with mayo and ranch dressing. Another thing that hasn't is eating cereal in the large quantities most people do, which is actually primarily a result of the vegetarian movement (before that happened around the 60's, most people used to eat what we today call a "heavy" breakfast, e.g. eggs, bacon, which IS mostly protein and possibly small amounts of grits or toast.

Cereal (any variety) is mostly carbohydrates on the other hand and you also tend to crave higher amounts of calories worth of vegetarian breakfasts than you do traditional breakfasts; note how cereal bowls used to be tiny, and now they're about three times the size of what they started at mere decades ago.) The following is unscientific, but when I watch most people eat breakfast, I typically see most of them eat 750 calories in the cereal alone (that's typically 5 oz of cereal; it's uncommon to find cereals with less than 150 calories per 1 oz serving.) In fact to be honest, I'm pretty sure the whole vegetarian movement is bunk:

http://www.cholesterol-and-hea...

Comment Re:Oxymoron (Score 1) 231

smiling and saying jesus wants them to win may not be something that's important to many blacks.

You really don't know any blacks then. A LOT of them are VERY Christian. I'm atheist myself, and I RARELY find a black person who is also atheist. It's really strange too, because you see atheists of pretty much every ethnicity, but almost never blacks.

Of course, that's my experience, yours may differ.

Comment Re:So few (Score 1) 199

There is a certain current of Americans who hate France and all things related to French culture (I know, it's ironic, but stick with me...). Usually they tend to be tea party or hard core conservative types.

I'm none of the above. My thoughts about France are probably the same as the typical British person's are (if you're looking for a comparison, anyways.)

I'm also fairly certain that the French hate Americans more than I hate the French.

Comment Re:So few (Score 2) 199

Sorry, but that 90% figure is sensationalist and just another way to say "look, we're getting screwed by the 1% more than we used to! Torches and pitchforks now!" and ultimately isn't useful. Why? Because practically nobody ever paid 90%, and furthermore the rich paid less of a burden then than they do today. Why? The tax system worked a lot differently then. It was the top marginal rate on an income above $300,000 for single, $400,000 for married. In order to effectively be paying 90%, they had to make over $2 million per year. Keep in mind that that kind of money was practically unheard of during that time.

Even if you adjust for inflation, you'll find less people making that amount then than there are today, mainly because all economies were much smaller, there was less money to be made, and overall there was much less wealth that even existed to begin with (and yes, the amount of "wealth" does increase as economies grow, which means there's more to go around.)

Bottom line: Today the rich DO pay a higher portion of taxes than they did then, even when adjusted for inflation. I'll let an investment broker do the explaining here:

In 1958, approximately two million filers (4.4% of all taxpayers) earned the $12,000 or more for married couples needed to face marginal rates as high as 30%. These Americans paid about 35% of all income taxes. And now? In 2010, 3.9 million taxpayers (2.75% of all taxpayers) were subjected to rates that were 33% or higher. These Americans—many of whom would hardly call themselves wealthy—reported an adjusted gross income of $209,000 or higher, and they paid 49.7% of all income taxes.

In contrast, the share of taxes paid by the bottom two-thirds of taxpayers has fallen dramatically over the same period. In 1958, these Americans accounted for 41.3% of adjusted gross income and paid 29% of all federal taxes. By 2010, their share of adjusted gross income had fallen to 22.5%. But their share of taxes paid fell far more dramatically—to 6.7%. The 77% decline represents the single biggest difference in the way the tax burden is shared in this country since the late 1950s.

http://online.wsj.com/news/art...

So you see, even though the top marginal rate was higher back then, the rich paid LESS taxes than they do today. So stop with this Michael Moore bullshit (sorry, just that 90% figure gets thrown around so often, but it doesn't mean what the typical person thinks it would mean; as is typical in Michael Moore fashion.)

Have a nice day.

Comment Re:tl;dr (Score -1, Troll) 331

The problem is not over-production, it is that for some odd reason we see production as the goal of economy. Problem is, the goal is not production, it's selling.

No, the goal of an economy is to sort out who gets what scarce resources. That involves both producing the resources and selling them, though the selling part is optional. For example, if you build a computer, you didn't sell anything, meanwhile you have produced (the whole product is worth more than the sum of its parts, generally speaking. E.g. a graphics card is somewhat worthless unless it is inside of a working computer.)

The goal is cheaper, cheaper, CHEAPER! We have to produce cheaper. Cheaper than the competitor, and even if there is no competitor, we have to produce cheaper. Not to sell it cheaper, as the market theory would demand, but to increase the profit margin. But hell, even if we WERE selling it cheaper, it would not make a difference. Because whether you sell something for 100 or 50 does not matter if the prospective buyer has NOTHING.

That hasn't always been the case, and it still isn't in certain cases. Lean manufacturing is where the concept of cheaper being better largely comes from (it also simultaneously results in a more reliable product in most cases...there's the stereotype of "things just aren't made the way they used to be" but that largely isn't true...today we often throw out or sell perfectly good things, not because they break, but because we want to replace it with the latest and greatest. Concepts like six sigma and ISO9000 didn't exist in the 60's.)

Cheap simultaneously means the poor have greater purchasing power, which means they become weathier without the need for higher income.

However not all products are defined by how much bang for your buck they are, rather they are defined by their sticker price and strict distribution controls to prevent underselling. Such products are e.g. anything Apple sells, certain luxury cars, Bose speakers, certain high-fashion clothing, etc. Products like these are where "cheap" is generally thrown out the window. And you know what? This is the way things always have been for items that traditionally rich people buy. Once upon a time, for example, only really rich people had cars. This model started to end in the early 1800's, and it's what the Luddites were making a fit over: Now that the poor could have access to high quality goods, it suddenly made being an artisan not as lucrative as it once was. But, there still is room for luddites in niche markets, like paintings, pottery, etc.

It is a fact that the worlds poorest are now wealthier than they've ever been. That doesn't mean that they have more money, but things like world hunger have largely ended (still exists in a few pockets of areas, but that is mainly due to politics rather than economics in those cases) and quote-unquote "nice things" are much easier to afford. A common example I like to make is to compare the 80's with today...Remember how only the filthy rich could have 50" TVs, car phones, personal computers, and laser disc players? Now even the poor have much better TVs than the ones rich had in the 80's, cell phones that aren't tied to a car and have unlimited talk time for a flat rate, and blu-ray players, and I've seen more than one homeless person walking around with a working laptop. Used to be the homeless were lucky if they eat more than one meal in a day; now they're often overweight.

Today's poor make the rich of the 30's look like paupers, and the middle class of the 80's look like welfare recipients. I'm tired of this rhetoric of the occupy types who make a stink about being poor just because the goalpost for "poor" keeps moving higher and higher on some spreadsheet, meanwhile they ask for "fixes" that will just end up making things worse.

Comment Re:So few (Score 1) 199

What do personal tax rates have to do with a corporation paying corporate taxes? There are no "75%" corporate taxes in France?

Technically true, and my point wasn't to say that corporations pay a 75% tax, rather my aim was to point out the biggest absurdity in their tax system in order to emphasize how bad it is. It is quite so bad that in fact that they are reversing course, which again I wanted to emphasize. As far as the 75% tax itself...the 75% figure cannot be taxed to individuals directly; I don't know exactly why, but apparently it's against their higher laws (constitution? I honestly don't know enough about French law.) What I do know is that it comes in the form of a payroll tax. The original law was written so that it was a regular personal income tax, but it was shot down in their court system, so it had to be rewritten to its current form, and the tax is paid before they even receive the money, or something to that effect.

Comment Re:So few (Score 0, Flamebait) 199

In some countries, maybe there's some blame to be had for escaping taxes...but France is a whole other argument. I mean shit, 75% tax on the wealthiest has resulted in a lot of them just flat out leaving that country. It got so bad that their dear leader is now lobbying against his own tax plan; the same plan that put it there to begin with.

Here's a good read on the subject:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/je...

Comment Re:And Amazon's not the only one either! (Score 2) 302

Mod parent up, please.

I'm sick and tired of this thought process that there must be exactly X portion of a given race, gender, etc in a particular job field or working at a particular company to match the demographic portions of the overall society.

The fact is, not everybody wants to do these jobs in equal numbers. I recall not long ago a slashdot article mentioning the science of why given races/ethnicities prefer sticking together instead of intermingling (I'd get the link, but I don't want to take the time to find it) and it has nothing to do with racism.

Ever notice how blacks have their own co-culture? They call anybody who doesn't quote-unquote "act" that way "acting white." Gays do something similar, and they refer to ones who don't fit into the mainstream gay culture as "straight acting."

Likewise, it would follow that different ethnic groups, and indeed different genders and orientations, would pick up their own co-culture. These co-cultural differences *WILL* influence career choices, believe it or not. Likewise, not the same number of Asians may be interested in the same career choices as Arabs, or pick your own favorites and compare. It therefore also follows that not the same percent of any given demographic is going to be interested in a particular job to match their representation of the overall population.

What you're effectively trying to do is force whites and blacks to be equally interested in rap and country music in equal numbers, and it will never work no matter how hard you try. So can we please end this affirmative action madness already?

Comment Re:Some of these are overreaction (Score 1) 173

Usually there are other indications along with these, such as scratches, abrasions, lacerations, etc, (RARELY bruising, as bruising usually occurs after the fact) that are normal when you struggle on the ground. In most of these pictures, you see no such indications. Typically that means the person was very quickly brought to the ground and cuffed as that picture was being taken. If that is the case, then it's very hard to argue that there was any kind of abuse. Abuse is when they beat on them either before or while they're on the ground, and you'd see marks show up rather quickly.

Comment Re:Some of these are overreaction (Score 1) 173

Right, because clearly beating somebody bloody with a baton is the only way they've ever handled it.

Most of these photos don't even depict abuse, rather they depict some derp acting like a jackass and then resisting arrest, and getting a knee to the neck. That's hardly what I'd call abuse, meanwhile the caption is "oh the humanity!"

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