...They already know what you think.

Bingo.

Actually I am for anything that works. Anything goes as long as its not tossing folks off of the boat or enslaving the crew. Capitalism seems to work as well as anything else, when implemented fairly. Only people can make it work or make it fail, whatever the ideology.

It totally sucks. People are being subjected to all sorts of crap. And it is entirely unnecessary. Just because we're coping with reality, that's no excuse to behave like jerks. The golden rule works better than genocide. Some are just slow learners.

You must have been paying attention. Don't confuse the argument with facts. Its just not fair.

Or as H.S.Thompson would paraphrase Nixon in 'Where the Buffalo Roam': "The doomed....I hate the doomed"

But I agree with you.

Its sink or swim for ALL of us on this ship of fools. If anyone thinks that other people deserve to be tossed off of the boat into the abyss, they are free to volunteer themselves to that cause. As for the rest of us, lets all coexist as golden rulers. And that starts with helping each other. Even the doomed. Even Nixon.

Communism can only be imposed by force and mass murder, because it's so completely incompatible with human nature.

People are incompatible with human nature.

Oh shit! We're all gonna die!

ALL of us, even them!

Now what should we do ?

(a) Draw straws and see who dies first?
(b) Read Lord of the Flies?
(c) Plan your retirement?
(d) Kill mutants?
(e) Burma Shave

That's what I was thinking at the last Grateful Dead concert I attended. Trippy green glowing helmets can be distracting during flight!

Clearly, he's doing it to confound you.

Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 4.

It would probably take longer to accomplish this as humans as it would for monkeys at typewriters to accomplish Hamlet.

In other words, its difficult to reach the sublime when you're busy grasping for bananas.

Its a galaxy eat galaxy universe, I guess.

Exactly. And notice how this functions right here on Slashdot, for example: everyone believes it.

Suddenly 400 million dollars disappearing in nanoseconds due to an error in which no one is actually accountable is somehow considered to be a reasonable possibility.

Ideologues of free market psychopathy and their fundamentalist counterparts are so busy wasting their breath on each other that nobody thinks twice about the fact that this is not a reasonable explanation. If everyone were cooperating on common goals instead of debating the philosophy of social Darwinism and the defects of human nature then perhaps we wouldn't be so quick to accept such ludicrous bullshit as a way of life. In other words, its acceptable to lose 42 billion in 16 days as long as nobody on the good team or the bad team gets it. But maybe we're so distracted with our petty ideological feuds and winning and the other side losing that we are willing to accept a total loss, all of the time. How very convenient this is for anyone who is clandestinely manipulating the situation in order to benefit indirectly in a way that cannot be detected by the Hatfields and the McCoys.

It seems to me that we have created a perverse incentive for exactly that situation, and its unlikely the SEC or anyone else willing to point fingers at old enemies is open minded enough to detect. We need to all pull our heads out of our collective asses, irregardless of our delusional sense of correctness, and simply focus on cooperating to solve problems that impact us all.

Easier said than done, so I realize that I need to take my own advice, and I apologize for that.

Good point. Nevertheless, its being used as budgeted. The only subtle distinction is that the terror that we need to worry about are increasingly of the domestic variety. That may always have been the case, but this spending is being done more conspicuously on the municipal scene. I credit the government for being more transparent in this regard. I just wish they would focus the money on jobs for humans and not cash for import data centers... One day at a time a guess.

Right. They were treated more like the stuff swirling down in the Coriolis effect - flushing down the toilet.

Engineers may be Broadcom's bread and butter, but all lunch will find its way down the drain.

Corporations eat people like food. Its not personal, and the food source is irrelevant. The indifference to individual human beings stems from the fact that corporations are not people, they are an organization of hierarchical power...like the Donner Party.

Soylent Green is people. We should look twice before we chew and spit out other human beings, no matter how legitimate or profitable our sociopathic "corporate" behavior seems.

Hear, hear. I second that emotion! Where's the outrage America?

We've all been willfully ignorant of widespread deceit and market manipulation. Perverse incentives trump ethics or any ideology no matter how dogmatic. So lets start looking at the results honestly: you're being screwed if you pay a lot of money for invisible fairy dust, or bandwidth, or media. When in doubt, just remember that any product that can constantly afford to advertise at prime time is a total RIP OFF. Especially insurance, financial services, new cars, telecom, cable, dish, pharmaceuticals, booze, fast food....

Like the prophet Carlin (George) once put it: "People are either Stupid, Crazy, or Full of Shit" Take yer pick. ...and this idiotic shit makes me crazy. Can you hear me now, Verizon?

HP bought EDS 5 years 5 months ago. That's the firm my brother was happily telecommuting for, for years. I guess he was expecting this to happen eventually. After all, why else would government work be privatized and then bought and sold by the likes of Ross Perot and Meg Whitman? It was all part of the nefarious plan to contract to perform government work for less by avoiding the costs that the government customarily pays its employees. Its like union busting but on a larger scale, and NOW its payday for them! But please America, don't be so naive that you don't see the truth about corporate America and the state of the economy. Its all just smoke in mirrors, and they intend to lower their costs and increase their profits now that they have stolen the business from you citizens. So, isn't it about time we stopped these assholes?