Y2HH

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Jul 24, 2011 -> 09:14 PM) I want my taxes raised. Dead serious. If you want them raised, why? Personally, I'd have NO problem with raised taxes if I see VISIBLE added/increased benefit to doing so. But as I've stated in the past, taxes are raised, just not at the federal level. They lowered income taxes all the while everyone else raised local/state and any other sort of tax you can stuff into a cell phone or cable bill, not to mention a bottled water tax, soda tax, etc. Our taxes never went down, they just shifted around a bit. As for increasing tax just to be a patriot and help the government pay down debt (which they won't do), you can always just pay more on your own...you don't need them to force you to do that.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 24, 2011 -> 06:53 PM) Yeah. Healthcare is an insane benefit. That's why they provide it in Europe; their people are all insane, so they all need healthcare. People getting sick should be screwed. That's how God intended it. Not remotely what I said, but thanks for completely misunderstanding and for your weak ass attempt to misrepresent what I said. To translate to easier to understand terms, we have a much lower tax rate -- in part -- BECAUSE we don't have things like free healthcare or government benefits for retiring at age 52. Also, to note, you purposefully took the way I used insane and tried to apply a "clinical" definition to it... When I meant something more along the lines of, OMG PAUL KONERKO IS f***ING INSANE. And you know it. So do me a favor and stop playing the willfully ignorant game.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 24, 2011 -> 12:50 PM) And on all of those, Germany is substantially higher than the U.S. rate. That's easy to check. Corporate rates. Marginal rate. Average rate. Effective rate. Each level, German rates are 10 percentage points higher than the U.S., except on people with incomes lower than 8000 euros. This is in comparison to GDP, so it would be easily skewed. The United States GDP is around 15 trillion. Germany's is 3.3. As a matter of fact, to surpass the US, it takes the ENTIRE eurozone, and depending who's numbers you use, they still don't. That said, the US *IS* a relatively low tax country, but we also don't have "free" healthcare and other such insane benfits (for example, look at the Greece retirement age).

They play some form of pick up football at Soldier Field every year -- they suck balls -- but 'da fans' of 'dat team' that plays there swear they're not only the greatest team ever, but have an excuse at the ready as to why they win fluke games and somehow that it's all part of the plan, but if they happen to lose, it's because they gave the game away...not because they suck balls. If you happen to be a WR, you're probably better than anything they have at the moment, too. Ok...I swear I'm done. Just go to Grant Park as Rock said, there is always enough room.

QUOTE (FlySox87 @ Jul 21, 2011 -> 09:15 PM) Hanoi Jane Fonda whines about QVC cancelation, claims she "loves her country" and has "never done anything to hurt my country or the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for us". I don't care if you oppose foreign wars like the ones in Iraq or Vietnam. Feel free to protest as much as you want. Doesn't bother me one bit. But when you go to the house of the enemy and pose with the very weapons that he uses to kill fine American men, and you come home and call American Soldiers liars for claiming they were tortured and having the physical problems to prove it...well, that makes you a traitor. Jane Fonda thinks it's ridiculous that, even forty years later, many Americans have yet to forgive her (and it's not just extreme right wingers either). Personally, I think she should be grateful she wasn't put on trial and then shoved in front of a firing squad. Commie rat. My father is a Vietnam Vet, I've never actually seen him get "politically angry" in my life until her name come up in a conversation. He hates her with the fire of hell, and he's NEVER like that.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Jul 19, 2011 -> 09:08 PM) Honest question, but are there any examples of how "Obamacare" has screwed someone over? You won't know what negatives it has (if any) until after it fully kicks in, which isn't for a while. And it's not Obamacare.

I've avoided Pale Hose Talk about 95% of the time this year...it's to the point this isn't a White Sox message board for me anymore, it's the Slam board for anything BUT baseball. Mostly because the board has become baseball retarded since the year after we won the World Series.

QUOTE (Big Hurtin @ Jul 20, 2011 -> 04:31 PM) Downloading Lion now, anyone else? Had installed it earlier yesterday, I like it. In some ways, it's a pretty radical departure from the old idea of a desktop. But, you don't really have to use such features, either...so if you liked how OSX used to be, you can pretty much keep it that way.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 01:04 PM) The Nasdaq was responding to the enormous investment by everyone in tech stocks and the assumption that it would never go down. Just like the real estate market was responding to the believe that real estate never goes down. That belief is an inflationary belief, and raising rates was the appropriate response. The screwup was in the runnup, not in the popping. Saying the screwup was in the run up, not in the popping is basically saying 1+1=2. Without the run up (bubble) there can be no pop (.com collapse), one must exist for the other to exist. One is a cause, one is an effect of that cause. The problem in raising the interest rates to "control" the run up is that it didn't work. If it had worked, there would have been no pop. This goes back to my original point of the "illusion of control". Raising the rates wasn't being done just to control inflation, it was being done to control the NASDAQ in specific, however it also affected every other area of the economy that wasn't in the midst of a bubble, including the Dow, NYSE, etc...and therein was the problem. A problem Greenspan admitted to screwing up on. He never had control from the get go, interest rates or not...you can't try to control ONE very specific area of the economy (tech stocks), without adversely affecting others when you use a global control mechanism like interest rates. That's what he tried to do, and that's what failed to work.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 12:47 PM) I dunno, I think that raising interest rates in 1999 was probably the right move just as it was in 2006. The problem is that once a big enough bubble is inflated, there's no way to slowly let the air out of it at the Fed level. You might have been able to do it with federal policy, i.e. start in 2004 with stronger controls on mortgage qualifications, but once its built, a small prick is enough to pop it, and one it pops, it's going to go almost the whole way down. The alternative would have been a significant inflationary response in both cases, which would have popped the bubble anyway, probably in more catastrophic ways. Especially with the 2007 commodity price binge. The Feds mistakes were in the runup, not in the actual popping. It wasn't just raising the interest rates, it was using the interest rates to attempt to "control" the stock market, which was a fools game. Yes, raising the interest rates -- to a point -- was the right thing to do, but not for the sake of controlling the NASDAQ...there is no "controlling" markets...they do what they do, and if you try to leverage them one way or the other, they will eventually hit a tipping point in which you'll lose all control -- and that's what happened. He pumped the interest rates way up, market collapsed, and then subsequently dropped them down. He admitted he screwed up, too.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 12:22 PM) For once, I'll agree with 2k5 here...the 2001 recession and evaporation of most of that surplus was pretty much unavoidable. Of course, I also have to add other caveats. First, the move to deficits rather than balance at that point was almost entirely a choice, made in the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, the 2003 Medicare Drug bill, the expansion of the DHS, and the unnecessary wars. And the other caveat, especially regarding the follow up...the 2001 recession was a choice of the Clinton administration, they blew through (willingly) the level that was previously thought to be overheating, that was bound to push a recession in response. The 2008 debacle was entirely a policy choice as well. The lack of regulation of the financial industry, the hidden but bad employment situation, the focus on gains at the top while the rest of the population stagnated...those were all policy choices. Not all of them Bush choices (the 1999 Financial deregulation, for example), but they were all policy choices. That .com bubble bursting was also helped along by poor fed decisions under Greenspan, who kept rocketing up the interest rates to "control" the markets. The only problem was that control was an illusion, at best.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 11:58 AM) Not all corporations outsource IT people. I only know of a few large ones in Illinois that do and most have them in house. And I would say the "switch" over is because of many reasons. The corp culture, the legacy applications and also what advantage does it give their actual users. Companies like CDW who are tech sales organizations made a switch very early because they not only beta tested windows 7, but they get a great discount and their users are all technical savvy. I saw companies like Northern trust switch slowly as a piece meal because some of their legacy back office apps werent fully tested on the new platform until it had been out a long time. Even so they still have users on different versions. I work for Blue Cross, we outsource nobody. For many large corporations, outsourcing has backfired on them due to poor customer service that usually goes hand in hand with outsourcing, etc...while the upfront savings was huge, the loss of customer base in drove ended up costing them more money than they saved. Good, I say. Companies like Dell that made me talk to unskilled Indian after unskilled Indian who could barely be understood cost them a customer for life, not to mention the companies I've since swapped AWAY from Dell products due to that extended -- and very poor -- experience. While outsourcing CAN be a beneficial thing, if done properly, blanket outsourcing simply to save money is and always will be a mistake. There is something to be said for paying for skill and top notch service...none of which you will find outsourcing.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 09:52 AM) lol. Not even remotely the same thing. come on now. His administration briefed on that pretty thoroughly but the Bush administration was more concerned with pointless and expensive missile defense shields that would've been completely useless on 9-11. THEN it became a priority. I don't really think you can compare the 2001 recession to the 2008 mega-recession in depth and scope, especially when you look at them on a graph together, but that's just me. I'm not pinning the 2008 recession on him either but the deficit is not Obama's fault. That's ludicrous, and easily traceable back to Bush and his policies without even much effort. It was there as soon as Obama took office. With the exception of the stimulus anything Obama's tried to do to reverse it in any kind of meaningful, structural way (ending Bush tax cuts, defense cuts of any kind, healthcare reform that actually does something to lower costs) is met with fierce, vigorous opposition. Yes, like how Obama waited until he lost his democratic SUPERmajorities in the house AND senate...when he COULD HAVE DONE THINGS but was so preoccupied with his barely-anything-resembling-Obamacare that he didn't? Stop giving Obama excuses if you aren't going to afford Bush the same exact excuses. Bush was ONE guy. He lost his majority house/senate half way into office, and still got things passed despite a supermajority democratic house/senate. So if anything, the democratic house/senate passed everything you're b****ing about now...yet you blame Bush, and only Bush. That makes no sense. And while he had those supermajorities, fierce opposition wouldn't have mattered. His own party sold him out during the healthcare debate, when they didn't have too...because they're bought and paid for by the same corporations that own the republicans, too.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 09:16 AM) Except the reality is that he also left a major recession behind and that surplus was gone no matter who was the President next. That is a completely partisan line that ignores reality. Clinton benefited from the .com bubble, however, credit where credit is due, he DID balance the budget. That said, they paid exactly ZERO debt down with that surplus, then came Bush who spent like a drunken sailor, then came Obama that continued on the path Bush set. Every president comes into office with problems left behind by the older administration, that said, I don't believe the old administration WANTS to leave problems...it just happens. Bush inherited a post .com popped bubble, but that doesn't give him the excuse to blame Clinton at every turn, and so on down the line. My problem is it's become "ok" to blame the previous administration in the eyes of the majority...this gives every new president a built in excuse to fail. I don't accept that excuse. I wouldn't let Bush blame Clinton, and I'm not letting Obama blame Bush. Obama's entire campaign was that he was going to FIX all the s*** Bush f***ed up. Same goes for Bush, etc. Then they get into office and realize that a President only has so much power and can't wave a wand and "fix everything"...and the blame game begins. Not interested in that blame game. Obama needs to right the ship, he's the captain now, no matter how hard it may be. And that's that.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 15, 2011 -> 10:07 AM) The GOP easily argues a lot of fantasy rhetoric, so I don't doubt that they wouldn't have a hard time making that claim. The problem with that is Obama is staying the course, continuing every war (including starting a new one), as Bush...adding more bailouts, adding more deficit. It's all of their faults. What Bush did is history, however...what Obama is doing is now. I guess the next guy can blame Obama, and the guy after that can blame that guy...and so on and so fourth...the problem is, nothing gets solved, nothing changes...because the people sit on forums arguing that it's the previous administrations fault rather than telling the new administration that they're sick of excuses and want things to actually -- get this -- change.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 15, 2011 -> 04:10 PM) The relevant discussion is in the other thread, but these links are blogs, so I may as well put them here where no one will complain. Krugman and DeLong have outlined, once again, the method by which, in a liquidity trap, budget cuts at the federal level actually make the deficit worse rather than better. (Remember, this only works in a depressed, high unemployment, low inflation economy where the inflation-adjusted interest rate on government debt is below 0%, which it is right now). So Paul Krugman says not giving money away and not spending foolishly makes deficits worse? I'm not surprised.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jul 15, 2011 -> 09:39 PM) I'm currently on a contract with T-Mobile and I'm a year away from any kind of upgrade, so unlocked or no-contract phone are my only options right now. I'm also on a $200 budget and I'm looking strictly for Android phones. So I'm looking at three phones right now. HTC myTouch 3G - $180. Kind of old (this is the revised version from a year and a half ago). LG Optimus 540GT - $120 (from Amazon). A bit newer, has good reviews. LG Optimus T - $160 (from T-Mobile), won't be unlocked, newer version of the GT540. I'm leaning heavily towards either the Optimus T or the myTouch, as both are similarly priced. I would like to get the Optimus 540GT since it's a nice bang for the buck, but that thing has a resistive screen and I've had some terrible experiences with those. I have never owned an Android phone and I would love to get some advice from those that have owned Android phones. It would be especially awesome if you've owned any of the above phones before, especially the Optimus GT540. Because the resistive screen is the only thing keeping me from buying that right now and I'd like to know if it's an issue. This is always the burning question with Android devices, since there are so many. If you can, you want to wait on the Samsung Galaxy S II, but who knows when/if they'll release it in the US. There are a lot of questions when it comes to Android phones, from carrier support (I know Google thinks they'll be able to "force" carriers into supporting their devices for 18 months, but they have no legal means to enforce this), and since it's carriers that have to upgrade the software for any non-Google branded devices, it could literally be 18 months between updates. Hacking? Do you plan on basically jailbreaking it and installing a custom rom on it? If so, you can ignore carrier support, but you'll be supporting the device on your own at that point. Screen size...how big do you want it? Some Android devices are obscenely big unless you're a Sasquatch like BigSqwert. Battery life...this is a major concern for most factory Androids -- people hack these devices because the roms available will literally double your effective battery life. Last but not least, the big 4G question. And I'm not talking about fake 4G, which is what T-Mobile borderline illegally advertises...since T-Mobile has NO such 4G network. At the moment, I tell people avoid 4G. The chipsets powering 4G LTE networks are in their first generation/infancy, they're power hungry and big, forcing handsets to be larger than necessary. I say wait until the next generation of 4G chips gets released, they're 1/2 the size and about 80% better in terms of power consumption. Also, with carriers advertising their huge 4g networks, but bandwidth capping people at arbitrary levels such as 2 gigs...it really renders any speed advantages of 4g almost null and void since you can literally burn through 2 gigs of cap in a day. Also, in terms of data speed, if you are anything like me you'll find yourself connected to vastly faster WiFi networks 99% of the time anyway, which consume about 99% less battery life, and are far more stable. Last but not least, BigSqwert is a good person to ask about Androids around here, since I'm devoutly in the Apple camp.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Jul 15, 2011 -> 03:06 PM) Well I have no idea how old the computers are, but they certainly don't look old. Maybe we just kept the old mice? I don't know, but I really couldn't care less because, again, I don't use MACs, so I could careless how well they work because I use my PC for everything I can. Technically, a Mac is a PC, same hardware. Using Windows vs OSX is merely a difference in operating systems.

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Jul 15, 2011 -> 10:04 AM) When I was in college they were still teaching C. Then 10 years later I went back and tried to take an Advanced C++ class. That was rough. I still don't really have a good grasp on it. I'm much better with older mainframe stuff. Even languages most people have never heard of like PL/1 and Natural. I took both JCL and Cobol in college...hated both. I hate mainframes and the outdated code that rides on them. I vowed to never program in COBOL or anything related to mainframes after graduation...and I've kept that promise.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 15, 2011 -> 09:01 AM) IIRC Microsoft had to quickly back off their plans to end support for XP because of this. The computers in our office are a mix of XP and 7. I'm glad I've got my ridiculously overpowered Windows 7 workstation, though it's currently broken thanks to .NET issues. Does it make sense for say an entire accounting department to upgrade to 7 from XP? Why not just stick with what works? This is a business decision based on something completely different than learning a trade on outdated software (like a student). I have no qualms about businesses not upgrading what doesn't need to be upgraded, however, there is no need to learn on only XP, when various newer versions have since come out. I'm not saying a well rounded education isn't necessary, students absolutely SHOULD know something about XP and other such things that are still in real world use, but I wouldn't make it the focus of their educations. They should focus on the newer generation of technologies.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Jul 15, 2011 -> 08:13 AM) Most public, hell most universities aren't up to date on the mos recent OS or Mac/PC computers. They just switched over to Windows 7 on the "new" computers at U of I, and all the old ones still run XP. The biggest thing I don't get there is that they have some actually very nice and new iMacs but they put Windows 7 on them, wtf!? The whole point of having the mix of Mac and PC is so that you can utilize the advantages of each OS, otherwise that $5k you spent in each computer room to have a few Macs is pointless. A lot of them do this because they get education discounts from Apple, or even donations for free computers...and since you can run either OSX or Windows on a Mac, if you have the money, you get the best of both worlds. I witnessed this very problem when I was in college, and I actually raised concern to the school about it at the time (which was ignored). To this day I tell students I meet that in the computer science arena, there is no room for solely learning outdated computers/materials/tools, it's detrimental to the students who will be entering the real world with outdated knowledge. I tell that that in addition to what you learn at school, be sure to do things at home, on your own, in order to learn the most up to date methods, etc. While it's not always bad if you want to begin working for an organization that never updates anything...it's counter to what this industry represents. When I was in college, they were giving COBOL classes because that's what much of the corporate world used at the time...and while that was useful for a time, it's simply behind the curve. IMO, students need to be AHEAD of the curve, or at the very least, with the curve. Students shouldn't be learning on Windows XP...it's nearly a decade old. They should be learning on Windows 7.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Jul 14, 2011 -> 06:59 PM) This is the mice we have everywhere at school. No scroll wheel, and it's just 1-solid button, no split clicking. All the computers ran Safari I believe, and there was no little "plus" sign for open a new tab like Chrome has. And it wasn't iMovie we were using. It was a much more sophisticated program, Final Cut Pro I believe. Yeah, couldn't figure that out at all, but luckily we do have some special video editing PC's in our library that run Sony Vegas, which I am very familiar with. But all of our teachers teach you everything assuming we all own an Apple computer, and know how to use Apple computers, so it's really frustrating sometimes when I am completely lost when it comes to doing things like use "drop folders" and "Thawspace" servers. I know a lot of people who have Macs and like them, but I've tried them and they are just not for me, especially at those prices. Your school is using old macs, and furthermore, old operating system software, which is the problem. They haven't made a mouse that looks like that in about 5 years now. Also, if your administrators bothered configuring anything properly, they'd work properly. It's not that the OS can't do these things, they can and have for years. Modern macs do everything you are questioning, including tabs, split clicking, scroll-wheels, etc. As a matter of fact, my mouse has 5 buttons and a scroll-wheel that can also scroll side to side as well as up/down. This is like me b****ing that Windows 2000 can't play certain games well, or doesn't work with my modern HD 1080p Camcorder (which would make sense since 1080p didn't exist when Windows 2000 was out). Both Leopard 10.5.x and Snow Leopard 10.6.x and Lion 10.7.x (coming out in the next few days), all support these features. Leopard, for example, was released in 2007...it's that old...and macs have supported all of these features since. In either case, it's not the macs problem...it's either the people administrating them that are incompetent, or they never upgraded anything since before 07...and in that case I'd recommend transferring to a better school.

QUOTE (Big Hurtin @ Jul 14, 2011 -> 05:59 PM) The issue with this, is that it isn't enabled by default. You have to go into the system preferences to enable it. It's not something obvious for those unfamiliar with Mac OS. It's enabled by default now...has been since last year.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jul 14, 2011 -> 11:53 AM) I've found Chrome uses just as much memory as FF, it just splits it up into threads per tab. Overall I am getting almost the exact same total useage. Since FF5, this is about right. Before FF5, however, FF was a memory leaking b****.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 14, 2011 -> 10:58 AM) It was more that I wouldn't pay 9.99. And in all likelihood i'll probably downgrade, but for 1 month I wanted to see all that it was. And it's pretty great. The equivelant to this prior was grooveshark which was an absolute mess filled with s***ty duplicates and poor sound quality. The ease of making a playlist, queuing up songs, and sharing things with friends is awesome. This is everything I thought it would be. After netflix's price increases, they're next to be canceled on my list. I have about 4 months pre-paid time remaining on my netflix acct before that's canceled.