taks

hehe, read the reviews for that monitor. starts off with one guy griping, legitimately, about the monitor flickering. of course, the obvious path is to return it and see if the problem is endemic to the product, or just a one-off. so he follows up his comment with "I couldnt even return it because i trashed the box..." and feels justified giving it a 1 out of 5 rating. taks

are you joking? seriously, where have i EVER said that there is no risk, instability or periodic fluctuations. you are now making the exact same type of strawman argument, incapable of reading or understanding what i have said. for shame. try the first 100 years of US history. the value of the dollar actually increased. booms and busts did not begin until we began to regulate the economy. did you forget about that? unbelievable. you're smart enough to avoid the strawman. please do so. taks

that's a complete cop-out. everything touches everything in an economy, and when the federal government creates artificially low levels of risk, it effects every aspect of the economy. artificial risk, enoch. i'm sorry if you don't understand, but that permeates the entire system. here's a good article on the problem: http://mises.org/story/3165 taks

sometimes i think you need to really think a bit more before you post... the point, killian, is that the government does not do anything "well" except maybe defense, but particularly not education, not at all. yet you want them to have an even larger role at a federal level. yeah, that's a good solution. see my earlier homer concept. you totally missed my charter school comment, too. they are free, and get less funding than standard public schools yet outperform standard public schools... why is that? hint: privately run. anyway, if all schools were private they wouldn't be accessible only to the rich. competition would see to that. plus, we'd all be spending less on taxes (locally, and at the state level). here you have yet another moronic comment that's based on the current socialist system (being applied to the capitalist system), rather than looking at how it would be different if the state was out of it totally. taks

OK, that's just laughably idealistic. The implementation of some state of mythical supercapitalism isn't going to abolish human nature. Believing otherwise is every bit as nuts as Marx's dream of a socialist worker's paradise. People have always done dumb things from time to time, and sometimes people do dumb things en masse. Yes, markets do adjust and correct for mistakes better than pure command-and-control economies, but it still takes time before confidence returns and business gets going again. nonsense. you have even less evidence to support your position than i do and you call my position "idealistic?" the only evidence we have is "less regulation means more growth and more wealth, and more regulation creates booms and busts." period. human nature is entirely the reason capitalism works. artificial risk, enoch, artificial risk, created by government regulation. sigh... taks

ok, matthews is the idiot here... the VP presides over the senate, indeed, the US consititution names the VP as the President of the Senate in article 1, section 3. the position is mostly procedural except when a tie is expected, which also coincides with, typically, the only time the VP shows up. taks

uh, it already has a national standard. education is a state issue, however, and i was speaking about adding yet another monster bureaucracy on to the list. i disagree. first, you're reading waaay too much into the media hype. second, private education seems to be working fine, without any government intervention (other than testing standards). in fact, they do it for less cost per child... hmmm. oh, i should add, private, non-profit charter schools are gaining ground in the US quite rapidly. they do not get the same amount of funding, considerably less, yet somehow they are outperforming standard public schools. kwinkydink? nope. bush's little policy is nothing more than a continuation of clinton's "goals 2000" or whatever it was called. not sure what you mean by not seeing a single state government taking charge. of course, you don't have kids, either, so all you get is what the media reports, and can't be expected to speak from anything other than ignorance on this subject. get the unions out of teaching and let performance determine salaries and we'll see big changes. that's only the first step... get rid of national test standards is the next step. they don't work. whereever you set the bar, that's where schools will teach to. lowering the bar to "pass" more students simply moves the teaching standards down. increasing the bar means more students will fail. sorry, but the bell-curve really exists w.r.t. ability to learn (it is likely not even the "bell" that everyone knows, but more like a chi-square of some sort, IMO). the world needs to come to grips with the fact that not everyone is capable of learning the same things at the same rate. the current attitude is to assume it is bad for a childs ego to treat him as if he's not smart enough, and in the end, you get kids that are graduating without any skills because they got so far behind they never had a chance to learn what they were even capable of learning. this whole thing is a mess, and the federal government has proven one thing: it is incapable of cleaning up any mess. yet here we have yet another example of someone advocating letting the federal government "solve" all of our problems. it's sort of like homer's beer concept... the federal government: cause of and solution to all of our problems. taks

chevy is a very dry talent. i love his acting and his comedy, but only in certain settings. he had a few stinkers, but all of the vacation movies are on my list of faves. his stint as a talk-show host, however, was abysmal. beverly == milf back then. taks

wasn't accusing you of doing that... uh, that sort of requires socialist (government) control of the market. so ya kinda are blaming it on socialism even if you don't want to admit it. the capitalist system wouldn't be susceptible to it because mass bad decisions couldn't happen (particularly not like the current one), and leadership certainly wouldn't have a role to play. i fully believe in the creeping socialism concept, and it has slowly been working towards more and more since the first income taxes (interestingly, the highest tax brackets used to be MUCH higher than they are now, but only the rich paid taxes in the beginning, too). it results from compromise, which is hailed some sort of bipartisan "we're working together" when in fact it is nothing more than capitalists slowly conceding rights. it's not going to happen over night, but look at what we're facing already. an obama presidency means it will be easier for unions to grow again - in spite of the fact that the public no longer needs nor wants them - universal health care will happen, the ultimate of all boogeymen will be implemented thanks to the new religion known as environmentalism, taxes will go up, the federal government will play an even larger role in education... mccain in the office will only slow this down a bit, as will the economic woes we are currently experiencing. the last bit, education, is really where it can go bad. taks

you can almost hang meat on that! taks

are you sure that's not one of them zztop guys? taks

they all actually embody one underlying tenet: collectivism (or statism). socialism is just the easier one to understand because it is more prevalent. there are not now, nor have there ever been, many fascist states. well, we are debating on a message board on the intraweb, so legitiimate or not, your last bit is what we get. well, the pie in the sky arguments actually come from (at least on my side) repeatedly listening to blame for our economic system being inappropriately placed on the wrong culprit. i personally get tired of the problems of this quasi-socialist system getting blamed on capitalism. it is the ultimate in misdirection, made possible because the general population does not understand the theoretical distinctions at play. as a result, we move ever more towards a true socialist system (even more of a joke, socialism failed because we didn't have enough of it), be it a large step with obama or a small step with mccain. sigh... taks

you're the one that asserted the argument from authority, not me. i merely replied in kind, noting that citing "well respected" anything really doesn't mean anything. for what it's worth, greenspan is one of the most "well respected" and he started out an austrian. in general, this all went down after government intervention was already playing a major role in what was happening in the economy. you remark that "capitalism creates booms and busts" (paraphrased, and implied in what i didn't include in this quote), but there's no evidence to that end. you can't really use the huge expansions of the industrial revolution because the market was completely dominated by a massive influx of cheap labor (among other things). THIS is what i meant by "i don't understand." all of the observations that ultimately place blame on "unregulated free market capitalism" actually occurred during times of heavy regulation and/or extreme circumstances in which no system would work. that is the strawman. actually, it has always been claimed, even by you, that the hypothetical pure-free-market causes these expansions. your examples have never actually been shown, or demonstrated, to exist in a pure-free-market economy. taks

well, at home i have a samsung syncmaster, 21" i think... can't recall. it works ok. on my desk here (right now) i have a dell 2208WFPt. i'm using it with a standard DB25 cable, rather than the DVI one, which may explain why the colors are wrong. the monitor is otherwise OK and i'm beginning to get used to widescreen mode even on a PC (PC widescreen is 16x10, not 16x9 as with HDTV). dang it, now i just noticed that this monitor has a DVI input, my vid card has one of those double DVI outputs (not sure what it's called), and i don't have a single DVI cable in the entire building (though i have a double to two singles adapter). taks

bummer... hope she gets better fi. taks

ok, am i dreaming or is LG actually a zenith spin-off? click on the commercial products section at the zenith website and it takes you to LG. anyway, we got about an inch of snow last night, maybe two here at the office. apparently it's turning into some sort of blizzard on the eastern plains and kansas. yay! taks

finally, you notice that i really was replying to hades, though more generally, ideologues. oddly enough, hades is a mishmash of ideologies so he almost fits the bill as an independent. he's just hung up on a few socialist ideals so i chide him about it. i don't care if there are lots of "well-respected professional economists on both sides of the aisle." most tend towards friedman or von mises, keynsians are few and far between relatively speaking. marx was a smart guy and well-respected, too, you know. history seems to be proving the chicagoans/austrians right: market failures result from regulatory control over currency (the market in general, but it all boils down to currency control in the simplest form). i don't agree that it's in the nation's best interest to sacrifice economic growth for societal goals, either. the societal goals will be better met if we're all wealthier, and there's only one way to grow wealth. i wish i could understand where folks like you came up with the whole "capitalism results in booms and busts" idea. not from history, that's for sure. it's as if you've been told this so often by the liberal establishment (primarily media) that you believe it. repeat a lie often enough i guess... truth, except maybe the first bit. i think the media and the parties themselves (catering to the media) is where the sorting actually was derived. but you're totally right, when faced with two extremists, people tend to vote for the one that's "on their own side" rather than the opposite. taks

my gawd... you're actually a) pulling out IQ data published by... liberals... hehe, and b) falling for the "divide" myth. are you really that... easily bought? go look, btw, at all the "red and blue" states and, surprise surprise, they're all nearly 50/50 (mostly closer than 55/45) regardless of which way you split (red or blue). in other words, you're bifurcating what isn't a simple red/blue split, not even close, and using dubious (if not outright ridiculous) statistics as if that "proves" something. yet another case of someone posting evidence that makes my case for me (yrkoon was famous for failing to actually read his own links). all this and the only thing i had to do is call liberals sheep. out you went to prove it. hook. line. sinker. taks

^deraldin (from other thread) yup, i'm at nearly 6900 feet AMSL. i work at about the same. we camped at 9400 feet last weekend when we got the early a.m. snow (about 2-3 inches sunday morning). ahhhh... winter. taks

oh, so it was doom, just for a different reason. i see... you should give the states a try. you don't have to pretend to be unhappy if you don't want to. taks

hey, i've got something cool today, in that "playing keep-up with alanschu's cool job" game... i'm actually figuring out how to pre-whiten single source data to create vectors simulating multiple sources, which then get used in a component analysis algorithm! woohoo, i'm not sure what i just said, but it sounds cool in the book. oh, meshugger, deraldin, it is supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow morning here in colorado springs. the mountains have been getting a lot lately, too (pike's peak has been alternating snowy/clear for a month now). yay! taks

yup, and even that may be compromised from the bribe he's offering up now due to the financial issues, if it is implemented at all. don't get me wrong, both candidates are trying to bribe us with tax cuts for the majority of the electorate. wow, you sound almost as pessimistic as me... ahem. actually, as gfted1 said, #2 is already happening, it just doesn't get much press since that's not newsworthy compared to economic issues. #3, they'll push for more regulation, wrongly blaming de-regulation as the cause of what is underway. #4 just won't happen unless the economy clears up completely before a filibuster becomes possible again (assuming the senate loses the filibuster as it is). #5, no way. the federal government only accounts for a bit over 10% of public education for k-12 as it is, plus aid to college students. no way we can afford that without bankrupting ourselves. the economic woes really have changed the political landscape, even with a liberal supermajority. ultimately, what they need to get most of this through is the economic situation of the 90s, as biff hound dog had, but without being saddled by republicans in congress, which biff the hound dog also had. if biff had the supermajority they are looking at getting this time, we'd have a failed universal health care system by now. taks

yes and no on the pay. i think it depends upon what you are doing. in the US, you get saddled by the additional 7% or so FICA up through the first ~$100k. that's $7k right off the top. you don't get unemployment insurance or any kind of health insurance (vision, dental, too), either, unless you pay for it yourself, and you don't get holidays or paid vacations. since some of these come out before taxes, your overall tax burden will be greater as a contractor, too (due to increased income and fewer before tax deductions). these are definitely drawbacks. however, you can easily double your pay through contract work. if your salary is only $15/hour, doubling that to $30/hour ain't going to cover all the losses you've taken (particularly insurance and additional taxes). once you start comparing higher wages, say $50/hour, it begins to make a little more sense if you can double it to $100/hour. mind you, not everyone can, and you're certainly trading long-term for short-term gain... oh, btw, while i've never been in the upper echelons of management, i have several close friends that have been, and have generally been on good terms with those that are at the corporations i've worked for. they earn their money, trust me on this. not because they're good at what they do, not all are, but because they really, really do have to give up most of the rest of their lives to get into the high pay brackets. these guys ultimately pay for it in just about every other way possible. the stress is insane. ya know, i was going to comment on this as not true, but i have known a lot of people that think this way, and i can say for certain there is a bit of competition among engineers at the same level. ultimately, that is what supply and demand is all about, being paid what you're worth which means you kinda have to have an idea of what everyone else is making. taks

of course we do... as i said, if i can't pick on you, who can i pick on? certainly, i'm sure there are plenty of threads in which any one of us walk away either peeved, totally pissed off, or outright fuming. but then we come back the next day and talk about how fun/boring/stupid some game is and whether or not the latest GFX card lives up to the hype. what would a political discussion be without at least one extremist on either side of the debate*, anyway? taks *i've never thought of these as debates... simply arguments for the sake of arguing, maybe just plain venting. we are on the internet, ya know.

hehe, yeah, somehow tolerance that is forced through threat of violence or death seems so... intolerant. taks