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Comment: Monetary insanity (Score 2, Interesting) 820

by MikeRT (#39072965) Attached to: Obama Pushes For Cheaper Pennies

Other great civilizations have done this and it always leads to ruin. The more you debase your currency, the less valuable the actual coins and other forms of currency become, the worse the devaluation gets. The only sane thing here to do is begin discussing plans to fundamentally bolster the foundation of the US dollar, not find ways to make producing it cheaper.

It's not like they're doing the common man any favors. Inflation hits the poor first and hits them hardest. It's a backdoor flat tax.

Comment: Sad part is... (Score 1) 87

All Apple had to do to quash their critics is have two licenses: free and premium. Free lets you do whatever you want, provided you only sell it through Apple's store. Premium, which happens to cost $500 or something, lets you take it wherever you want AND entitles you to some sort of limited publicity if you make it on the Apple store.

Comment: Well, I guess if you're in favor of public schools (Score 2) 581

You're in favor of putting kids in ready access of tens of thousands of pedophiles since:

1) We know that predators seek places where their prey goes.
2) There have been thousands of cases in the last few years of public school teachers in the US going to jail for having sex with minors.
3) Whatever the cops can find is usually only the tip of the iceberg.

So clearly, since you support ripping kids out of the loving arms of their parents and putting them in public schools, you MUST be in favor of putting them at risk for actual molestation by a pedophile.

Comment: And yet... (Score 1) 108

by MikeRT (#39018925) Attached to: "Liberated" Tunisia Still Censoring Websites

This is actually forgivable compared to how the Saudi public is using their internet freedom: tens of thousands have joined a Facebook page calling for a journalist to be executed for dissing Mohammed. At least this is a post-revolution law aimed at trying to restore civil order. Whether done right or not, at least the purpose is justifiable (which means hopefully there can be good faith negotiation on how to make it work).

Comment: Before you jump on them about the UX (Score 2) 372

by MikeRT (#38994667) Attached to: Microsoft Details Windows 8 for ARM

Consider the fact that there are no mass market ARM-based desktop PCs. It's not like Dell is offering a low-end dual CPU ARM offering and Microsoft is doing their best Montgomery Burns impression at the suggestion that it be given a full desktop. Personally, I am not sure I'd want a Windows 7-like UI on a tablet (not sure I'd want Metro either, but that's beside the point).

Comment: I have been paying attention (Score 1) 1009

by MikeRT (#38966021) Attached to: Defendant Ordered To Decrypt Laptop Claims She Had Forgotten Password

Civilian casualties are irrelevant to the question of who won the war. Only a muddle-headed liberal thinker who doesn't understand that war is first and foremost about meeting a military objective, not a body count, would confuse the two. The insurgents succeeded in creating such a bad situation that the American people no longer supported it and wanted to pull out. Mission achieved, body account to achieve it irrelevant. To both sides, and that's what you miss, civilian casualties are just collateral damage.

You and I may not support such a pointless conflict on the grounds that the objective is not worth the cost in human life, but that doesn't mean anything from a cold analysis of whose goals prevailed.

Comment: Have you been living under a rock for the last 10? (Score 5, Insightful) 1009

You can't really argue that a rag-tag militia can compete with a trained army in these aspects.

You mean like the insurgents in Iraq who have killed about 5,000 US troops despite being out-gunned, out-numbered and not having the same training as our soldiers? You forget that many of the civilians in that "rag-tag militia" are also US military veterans and have the same training and even more combat exposure than many active duty soldiers. Many of our veterans have a hell of a lot more practical combat skills and experience than our police; the average infantry veteran is easily at the same level as a SWAT officer. In an open fighting, the police would get their asses kicked two ways to Sunday and back by armed veterans who meant business.

Comment: Management often doesn't even know what they have (Score 1) 494

by MikeRT (#38927263) Attached to: President By Day, High-Tech Headhunter By Night

I have seen projects run like this and management literally does not understand that one set of skills may be absolutely meaningless compared to the older way of doing things if the experience delta is high enough. For example, you may have the freshest "hot skills," but the senior guy making 2.5x more can actually get the work done in a "fuddy duddy language" like Java or C# in substantially less time and under budget. When you do contract work, that's what matters. A typical customer doesn't give a rat's ass if you're some wunderkind with Ruby or PHP if they have to sacrifice either code quality or more money than by hiring a more seasoned developer with a very solid, but conservative skill set.

Comment: The Tea Party isn't a social conservative movement (Score 4, Insightful) 857

by MikeRT (#38914639) Attached to: How the GOP (and the Tea Party) Helped Kill SOPA

sure. unless they can force a theocracy onto the US.

You obviously didn't notice the distinct lack of concern over social conservative issues at most Tea Party rallies. The uniting issues across the Tea Party movement are fiscal policy, civil liberties, immigration control and strong national defense. In fact, some of the major Tea Party figures have openly said that the Tea Party as a movement is welcoming to social conservatives, but that it simply does not have a social issue stance as a movement.

Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future. -- Pogo, by Walt Kelly

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