taks

yes, a lot of people would and do, though they are pretty extreme. which goes both ways. it's very easy to sit back and armchair quarterback as we do in here (or anywhere not being shot at). it's easy to say "they had another options" when you don't have a gun pointed in your direction. put any of us on the front line, in the real situation, and our opinions may be changed rather quickly. life or death decisions made over a good night's sleep are much different than those made the instant the guy standing next to you drops from a bullet to the brain. nope, we must. there are limits, as war is hell and putting too high of a standard on troops may risk more lives anyway. taks

hehe, eldar's also a little more politically to the right of center than commissar. not to suggest that eldar is a fanatical right wing evangelical and commissar is a looney left liberal communist, just they are on opposite sides of the spectrum. who's confusing you two anyway, commissar? certainly not me. hehe... taks

btw, a grand jury found the whole sex abuse ring to be a hoax. king dropped the appeal of the judgement because he couldn't afford it. taks

strange, yes, but obviously a one-sided account of what happened. not one mention of the counter argument is made. it is also worth noting that the legal action resulting from this, an $800,000 judgement against mr. king (not larry king the media guy) was a default judgement in a civil case against a man that couldn't even pay his legal bills, i.e. he couldn't afford to fight the case let alone pay the judgement (and didn't show up, either, which resulted in the default judgement). much of whole "statanic ritual abuse" concept has been repeatedly refuted over the years. could it be true? yes, but unlikely. you'd think some savvy democrats would have had the wherewithal to uncover the story during the 8 years of the clinton administration or during either of the high-priced campaigns that followed. taks

blame canada! taks

get used to it. yrkoon does a google search and finds one phrase in a link that seems to support his claims. he rarely reads the source for full content, and often ends up posting evidence that supports his opposition. happens often. the religion itself is not to blame, the people that use it for their own ends are. the same is happening with the distortions used by fanatic islamists and the koran (or however it is spelled these days). i agree. however, one point that people are skipping is that this is not something new. i.e. bush didn't invent torture out of thin air. this has likely gone on under all presidents. to blame only bush is disingenuous at best, rewriting history at worst. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> btw, yrkoon once referred to suicide bombings at a cafe in jerusalem, which targeted only civilians as "sweet, sweet revenge." decide for yourself whether this makes him a hypocrite. just thought i'd point out what you're up against... for the record, IMO, debating yrkoon = shooting fish in a barrel. taks

i'm sure. the good experience is expected, as that's what you paid for. no reason to tell eveyone "yeah, i actually got what i paid for." OTOH, a bad experience is unexpected, which prompts spreading the word. taks

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! john is a gooey geiser fan. ugh. taks

i read once that these are called "ear bugs" (or similar) and that their underlying cause is due to a lack of sleep. that said, i constantly have some stupid song i don't like stuck in my head. and no, i don't sleep well (4-6 hours a night tops), either. it used to be one of the many blue's clues songs resulting from too many hours of my son watching said show. how ever, john has recently moved on to dora the explorer, which means i'll soon be switching ear bugs should the causes be true (lack of sleep and don't know all the words). unftortunately, i prefer blue's clues, which means i'm taking a mental turn for the worse. taks

i agree... more on this below. perhaps. this may be why some companies are reconsidering. in the end, even customer service will be compared by customers. i.e. you have two products with equal technical capabilities, which do you choose? "hmmm, first product comes with excellent customer service and i don't have to waste four hours on the phone trying to overcome a language barrier. second product has outsourced customer service. i'll buy the first." certainly this is nothing more than anecdote, but i'd be willing to bet this is a consideration companies are taking. such anecdotal examples can potentially hurt the bottom line, which negates the benefit of the outsourcing in the first place. taks

which i've mentioned before. it is mostly unskilled jobs and labor that are being outsourced, partly due to this added cost. it is easy to manage a call center from overseas with nothing more than office space and telephones with simple computers connected to a network. do any sort of skill-based effort and it starts to add up. in the end, it may not be the boon that companies expect. and we are already seeing jobs coming back to the US... taks

i disagree totally with this. we're having issues just with a satellite office in the states, let alone across an ocean. the highly skilled personnel certainly exist in foreign nations, but there are waaaay too many problems using them for anything other than customer service. even commercial companies are restricted in the resources they are allowed to ship overseas... this is particularly NOT happening in the government contracting sector, btw. but that's not happening. we're at 5% unemployment, which is ridiculously low compared to the 10%+ we've seen in the past, before the concept of outsourcing even existed. even at that, society didn't break down then, why should it now? sorry, but this view is not only alarmist, but not based on any known facts. taks

i believe this is true as well. partly (maybe mostly?) because labor is not organized in the places we outsource to. should such places ever achieve wage equality with developed nations, outsourcing won't even be possible. yeah, it is sort of a catch-22. the best way around it i think is to make sure developing nations actually develop and grow themselves. it really won't be equitable to ship jobs overseas when they are paying similar wages. taks

well, it isn't happening in the highly skilled arena. i have not once heard of anybody worth a salt losing their job overseas. also, the supposed "cheaper labor" is not quite true when all the expenses of running an overseas operation are taken into account. perhaps for low (or no) skill jobs there is a benefit, but when supervision and review of the work is required as they are with design services, the extra overhead to manage such positions replaces the savings in wages. taks

silly, yes, but some companies are starting to reverse their positions on such ideas. i heard that dell is bringing their customer service dept. back into the states because of all the problems. we'll see, i suppose, how long this lasts. taks

and be good at it... i suppose it wouldn't be called a "skill," however, if you sucked. taks

yes, that's what i was getting. i wasn't really interested in that part with my comment so much as i was interested in the bit about attributing this to science. i.e. that it is not testable makes it unscientific, but not necessarily scientifically incorrect, either. we can never know, actually, and i have to take it on my own faith that it is incorrect. agreed. i think you just said the same thing i did in the preceding comment. however, there are many aspects of ID that actually can be not only tested, but disproved. in particular, their idea of irreducible complexity (at least with some examples). taks

i kinda thought bt 3 was the easiest... we (my brothers and i) never really finished the final level puzzle in bt 2 (the one with the arrow hints), however. bt 1 was our first game, and the three of us stayed up nights playing (i was 17, bro 1 was 14, bro 2 was 12, 1985 i think...) i thought gothic was a pain, but mostly because of the controls. at least, it turned me off quick enough that i quit, early, and just never got psyched to play again. taks

btw, the bureaucratic mess is why i bill out at about $200/hour. if i ever manage to make principal engineer, that rate jumps to about $250/hour (no, not a $50/hour raise for me, more like $2 or $3). a chief scientist in our company (i won't make that till the phd is landed) is nearly $300/hour... oh, sorry, derailment. taks

dang. actually, i thought i heard you say that once before? oh well, thought i had ya. oh, lower middle class, btw... at least, my folks both came from relatively low income families. my father made it out with an education that he paid for himself. by the time i was in high school, we were probably upper middle class, but things changed yet again... i haven't really touched on that one, nor do i care to at the moment... i'm really not sure reconcile my logic and my emotion on this issue... my criticism was about as facetious as your tale of irony. oh we do know how to cost, and we can. that's not the problem. the problem is that the larger the program, the larger the error bar in the estimation for many reasons. for example, a company i know just won a big program. big as in multi-billion over a decade or so. turns out there's an issue with weight which means they need a larger vehicle to carry the weight. the cost impact is not just the vehicle cost (to the tune of millions per unit), but the hourly cost in fuel (thousands or more per hour, adds up in a year). what do you do? they're retooling the entire design in hopes of removing the weight and providing a compromise solution. this is a huge hit just in R&D alone. unfortunately, the program was bid before all the details were in, so the obvious answer would be to have more detail before the bid. however, those details come at a price, and in spite of the general complaining from the doves, defense contracting companies are anything but rich. even a multi-billion dollar company like LM can't afford to continuously throw 20 million at a job in hopes of winning (5-10 isn't out of the question, however). they'd go broke quick. so you go in with a SWAG and hope it's right. unforseen design changes ripple and become devastating quickly. it is a very complex issue that the general public is just plain not aware of. agreed, btw, that it sucks. and, between me, you, the fence post and any idiot that reads this rant, i'd rather work commercial. just none around here, that's all... (i was commercial before moving to the springs in 2002). taks

just plain middle class, actually. i've surpassed my parents, however, but there are many reasons for that. actually, i paid for most of my own college. oh goody. you don't mind a raise in taxes even though you're in the highest tax bracket. what about the rest of us that suddenly have to cut back? huh? i don't get exemptions and i certainly don't have enough money not to care. rather than think about yourself, why not think about the 20% of us that are paying all the bills. 30% of my income goes out the door to uncle sam. most people pay next to nothing. uh, how is that ironic? like i have control over that? btw, it is the bureaucracy that causes over expenditures. laws and red-tape that cause the bog-down. i love how people that have no idea what they're talking about just love to criticize the system. well, you and the rest of your do-good friends that refuse to let the government conduct business made sure that the regulations were so stiff that even legit companies can't function without violating some sort of law. sarbannes-oxley? what a joke. just more red-tape and another class i have to go through because the left thinks big bad corporate america has to justify EVERYTHING it does, on paper, even if it is ludicrously obvious. in triplicate, too. $700 toilet seat? how about 50 cent toilet seats that 20 people had to sign off on before approving it for use. that doesn't count the ridiculous amount of testing that goes into it... government accounting practices (uh, GAPP, i think) make sure that i bill out at $200/hour. if i touch something for two hours to make sure it works, it is immediately a $400 item, even if i can buy it for under a buck at walmart. while i love your ironic story, please try to understand what you are talking about first, commissar, when talking about government contracting. taks

yeah, right... gotcha. i think you've pretty much dispelled that myth all by yourself. oooh. you are good, aren't you... did you practice that one? i'm curious, how long did it take to stretch your vocabulary to these limits? taks

well, you're starting out with a flawed position. switching over isn't an overnight thing. it takes a while for the mentality to switch from welfare state to working for what you get. it also takes solid law enforcement, which places like the former soviet union did not have after switching. what they experienced is tragic, but not the fault of capitalism. the short term shock should be short term. in order to guarantee long term stability, there needs to be ample protection from the government, which most countries that "switched" did not have... thnk about what you're saying... "what we have sucks, but rather than try for something better, let's just settle for what sucks." that is a socialist mantra if i ever heard one. why not hope they try to better themselves and get even better health care? at least in a capitalist system, the option is there. in a socialist health care system, there isn't even an option... you're trying to base the function of a capitalist system on the perversion we already have. in general, costs for everything will go down. people will be paying less taxes, and have more money in their pockets. everything goes up, so more people can afford more. of course, there will always be those that can't afford anything, and charities will help with that... there are people without even state/federal health care now. this is not a problem of capitalism, it is just a problem of society. taks

yes, it is a straw man. what the country did or did not do 'back in the day' is irrelevant and, due to hindsight, a much weaker argument easier for you to attack. that is the definition of a strawman. to put it into terms even you can understand... try education, perhaps www.fallacyfiles.org. no. i merely pointed out to you the reason you can afford it is due to extra money (in part). of course, your tax rates are much higher, too... which is another problem. hmmm, where are your sources? uh, those don't talk about efficiency at all. try to be on point, please. the first link is about medicare + private, which does not work. it is still medicare, with an attempt to "privatize" part of it. better explanation is that it is private, with socialized control. i.e. less efficient. the reason they want to add privitization is the hope that they can actually make it more efficient, in order to properly compete with private health care. the second link is nothing more than kucinich's hope, which is harldy testament to any real world data. the third, again, is nothing more than a hypothesis, so i'm not sure how this even comes close to proving your point. the real cool part about logical arguments is that whe someone does not know how to put one together, it is easy for someone like me to spot it. your links aren't even a measure of the problems of medicare. btw, it helps if you actually pay taxes into the system to find out what goes in and comes out. dunno, what are you doing? let's review... so far, your "evidence" is a couple links to... hypothetical future implementations without comparison, a problem with semantics regarding nazism, the idea that i haven't provided "sources" (uh, when debating opinion, i am my own source) and what else... oh yeah, nothing. at the very least, i have provided very detailed arguments and, whether you like the sources or not, i have provided them. you have provided nothing but "socialism works" without any proof. you have trounced my arguments without even an explanation as to why your way is better. as a matter of fact, i'm still wondering what it is that constitutes your way. oh yeah, scandinavia has free health care. gee, that last bit is hard to overcome. taks

never said i was better. i said i make mistakes and i admit them when i do. actually, i'm probably much more arrogant than the average bird. but, at least i can back up my claims with solid logic and rational thought. no kidding. you making claims about nazism and then stating "as far as i know"... in other words, "i think this is right, but really, i don't know." that's why i put the ? there. taks