OT: Taxing shituation

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Absolutely =85 the teachers union is a scourge. But then what union isn=92t?

Another example of a government sponsored entitlement program.

A few years back the teachers in the state of Oregon were faced with the dilemma of early retirement or risk a cut in pension benefits. What do you think the majority of them did? Turns out they actually increased their monthly income as a result of early retirement.

The state of Calif is going broke trying to fulfill it=92s obligations to state employees.

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Precisely. Works for everyone.

Oh, I think the fun is just beginning. :-) The whitespace devices are going to recycle a lot of protocol standards that have been around for awhile, but there's enough "new stuff" technically to keep plenty of engineers going for the next few years and the clarification of just who can use which chunks of spectrum is going to spur sales pretty much across the board for non-consumer wireless widgets. This same problem that prompted the whitespace initiative -- lack of spectrum -- is becoming a real problem at larger venues, so you can also bet that frequency coordinators are going to start thinking hard about whether or not something like a wireless mic really ought to get the, e.g., 200kHz or so an old-school FM model might occupy... or whether it might be time to start looking for new devices as well. (And from that point of view, 2.4GHz might not look so appealing because there are already so many users there too... but then on UHF you have to deal with the whitespace guys and TV stations... so again you're back to... there's probably lots of opportunity right now to try to make truly improved product and sell a bunch...)

Well, at least no one was killed?

---Joel

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Not sure about this Ryan, he=92s been around for six terms, he=92s had plenty of time to get the ss excess out of the general fund.

You never here these guys talk about doing that. That maneuver in it self, having been completed years ago would have done a couple of things:

1)Exposed the magnitude of the US debt for what it was. Albeit, the recession would have undoubtedly been fast forwarded. 2)SS would currently be solvent and for many years to come. Even a modest return on investment from the surplus of 5 years ago would have done the job.

Of course now it maybe too late =85 the surplus maybe a thing of the past. This is all just a matter of poor fiscal management. If we as individuals lived our lives this way we=92d all be eating dog food.

It's an excellent idea, but with todays "younger people" having been schooled in the unionized socialist propaganda mills, will they even know that they could do that, let alone know how?

Thanks, Rich

Um, the people who want their kids educated rather than propagandized?

Thanks, Rich

Joel Koltner > I agree, although I've often wondered Joel Koltner > whether or not private industry is Joel Koltner > really any less wasteful *on average*.

keith > Certainly. Really wasteful businesses go keith > under. Really wasteful government causes keith > even more government.

Joel Koltner > Particularly when we're talking about, Joel Koltner > e.g., big private military contractors Joel Koltner > where the account managers are Joel Koltner > incentivized based on the number of Joel Koltner > dollars they manage to get out of the Joel Koltner > DoD -- isn't that just asking for inefficiency?

keith > Isn't that government?

Exactly!

If you want to propose that private industry is just as wasteful as government, why would you pick a private military contractor, blatantly infected by the "Industrial Military Complex" type of behavior??

I've heard second hand about "Cost Plus" manufacturing at defense contractors in the 1950's at Univac in Minneapolis.

An example was whole sheets of brass or copper plate where they stamped ONE part out of each sheet even though 6 would fit and there was NO EXCUSE not to at least use all four corners per sheet.

Employees used ""scrap"" brass as ornate wall covering for entire rooms in their houses.

Scrap dealers made FORTUNES off the ""scrap"".

But if you could describe perverse waste like that at US manufacturers not driven by government contracts you might have something.

Large corporations do seem very stupid and wasteful to me but NOT at the levels seen in government or government contractors.

One thing that seems especially wasteful to me is planned obsolescence and marginal "version" updates driven heavily by hyperactive ADHD Madison Avenue ad geeks.

Microsoft, for example, has always made only marginal improvements yet sold them as "Major revisions".

While probably very profitable for Microsoft, this "Version Hell" has easily cost customers collectively more than Microsoft ever made.

The way that Microsoft actually has to ""go to war"" against it's own successful versions to sell it's later marginal improvements is routine and SOP for Microsoft.

This behavior for DECADES has urged on and supported the market perception that computers more than 3 years old are junk.

As PC's have approached 3 GHz clock speed the ""horsepower"" is beyond the actual need for most users, home or business.

The liability for most people to step up from XP to Vista or W7 is greater than the benefit.

This usenet group probably has the greatest concentration of HIGH END users who could benefit from the latest hardware and OS, but they are painfully aware when some application they use has the true need for the high end hardware and OS.

Even a lot of those guys try to make stuff work using older, free or already owned software.

Even those guys feel the sting and know when somebody has them "over a barrel" when they are stuck buying the same thing they bought 2 years ago, all over again.

This routine where hardware from 3 years ago gets REPLACED because it doesn't run the latest iteration of MS Windows is slowing considerably.

"Off lease" Dell GX280 2.80 GHz SDT's selling for $100 with legal WinXP Pro (and COA) are in great supply.

Even MICROSOFT had to come up with an authorized REFURBISHER designation used by the contractor (Joy) warranteeing them when sold for $179 at Staples stores.

Soon MS will again "go to war" against their own successful product (Win XP Pro) in order to force their W7 product into the market.

I brought this up as an example of corporate WASTE, but doesn't this all PALE in comparison to the waste that takes place in government itself?

krw came up with this:

Pat Buchanan The Message of Tokyo's Kowtow

The Chinese have just made a serious strategic blunder.

They dropped the mask and showed their scowling face to Asia, exposing how the Middle Kingdom intends to deal with smaller powers, now that she is the largest military and economic force in Asia and second largest on earth.

A fortnight ago, a Chinese trawler rammed a Japanese patrol boat in the Senkaku Islands administered by Japan but also claimed by China. Tokyo released the ship and crew, but held the captain.

His immediate return was demanded by Beijing.

Japan refused. China instantly escalated the minor incident into a major confrontation, threatening a cut off of Japan's supply of "rare- earth" materials, essential to the production of missiles, batteries and computers.

Through predatory trading, China had killed its U.S. competitor in rare-earth materials, establishing almost a global monopoly.

The world depends on China.

Japan capitulated and released the captain.

Now Beijing has decided to rub Japan's nose in her humiliation by demanding a full apology and compensation.

Suddenly, the world sees, no longer as through a glass darkly, the China that has emerged from a quarter century of American indulgence, patronage and tutelage since Tiananmen Square.

The Chinese tiger is all grown up, and it's not cuddly anymore.

And with Beijing's threat to use its monopoly of rare-earth materials to bend nations to its will, how does the Milton Friedmanite free- trade ideology of the Republican Party, which fed Beijing $2 trillion in trade surpluses at America's expense over two decades, look now?

How do all those lockstep Republican votes for Most Favored Nation status for Beijing, ushering her into the World Trade Organization and looking the other way as China dumped into our markets, thieved our technology and carted off our factories look today?

The self-sufficient republic that could stand alone in the world is more dependent than Japan on China for rare-earth elements vital to our industries, for the necessities of our daily life, and for the loans to finance our massive trade and budget deficits.

How does the interdependence of nations in a global economy look now, compared to the independence American patriots from Alexander Hamilton to Calvin Coolidge guaranteed to us, that enabled us to win World War II in Europe and the Pacific in less than four years?

Yet China's bullying of Japan is beneficial, for it may wake us up to the world as it is, as it has been, and ever shall be.

Consider.

China now claims all the Paracel and Spratly islands in the South China Sea, though Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Brunei border that sea. To reinforce her claim, a Chinese fighter jet crashed a U.S EP-3 surveillance plane 80 miles off Hainan Island in 2001. Not until Secretary of State Colin Powell apologized twice did China agree to release the American crew.

China's claim to the Senkakus (the Diaoyu Islands to the Chinese) was emphasized last week. While these are largely volcanic rocks rather than habitable islands, ownership would give a nation a powerful claim to all the oil, gas and minerals in the East China Sea.

China has repeatedly warned the United States to keep its warships, especially carriers, out of the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait. On the mainland opposite, Beijing has planted 1,000 missiles to convince Taipei of the futility and cost of declaring independence.

When the U.S. Navy launched exercises with South Korea after the sinking of South Korea's warship Cheonan by the North, China threatened the United States should it move the 97,000-ton carrier George Washington into the Yellow Sea between Korea and China. The carrier stayed out of the Yellow Sea and remained east of the Korean Peninsula.

In addition to her claims to sovereignty over all the seas off her southern and eastern coasts, China occupies a large tract of Indian land in the Aksai Chin area of India's northwest. Thousands of square miles were seized by Beijing in the 1962 war with New Delhi -- and annexed.

In 1969, China and the Soviet Union battled on the Amur and Ussuri rivers over lands Czar Alexander I seized at the end of that bloodiest war of the 19th century, the Chinese civil war known as the Taiping Rebellion. Leonid Brezhnev reportedly sounded out the Nixon White House on U.S. reaction to Soviet use of atomic weapons to effect the nuclear castration of Mao's China.

China's claims to her lost lands in Siberia and the Russian Far East have not been forgotten in Beijing, and remain on Chinese maps.

How should America respond?

As none of these territorial disputes involves our vital interests, we should stay out and let free Asia get a good close look at the new China. Then explore the depths of our own dependency on this bellicose Beijing and determine how to restore our economic independence.

Ending the trade deficit with China now becomes a matter of national security.

Conspicuously absent is a comment that younger people would PAY less, since they GET less.

How would you rationalize charging them MORE for something they get LESS from later?

In fact, I am 51 and I feel that what I paid in over the last 40 years was basically a TAX, and NOT an INSURANCE payment as Social Security was initially sold to the working public.

If a person is unemployed or underemployed for 10 years before retirement age, which is actually LIKELY given my AGE and the ECONOMY, my previous 40 years of income become almost irrelevant.

I've got an elderly friend who took care of her ill parents and outlived them having never actually paid in a DIME to Social Security.

She's retirement age and can't collect any Social Security!

The amounts taken out of my paychecks in my best years are in the past far enough that they would get me only a pittance at retirement age, dwindling every day.

Social Security does NOT pay out based on a persons total contribution, nor does it take into account the BEST years, only the more recent years.

One of the President's cabinet has said that Americans are going to have to gradually get used to a lower standard of living.

Apparently our US standard of living needs to come down so that the standard of living for the rest of the world can come up.

This is from a guy actually IN the Obama cabinet.

No WONDER they say we are all SOCIALISTS now!

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If a parent takes a kid out of public school and home schools or puts them in private schools, don't they get a VOUCHER or tax break to assist in paying for that private school?

My impression is that in my state (Iowa) the homeschoolers work under the public school system for benchmark testing etc. and get COUNTED by the school district for the purposes of funding.

If the private school parents don't get a VOUCHER for kids they put through school, then they are getting ripped off!

That you see private school as a way to cut public schools in HALF is strange.

I think teachers and for that matter ALL government workers should LOSE their job security, entitlements, retirement benefits and I'd like to see their UNIONS BROKEN though.

NOBODY in the USA should have a job that is seen as a "sacred cow", with job security provided at government expense.

Tenure and "job security" are problems.

If you want to cut public schools, close them down and have them run by private contractors. Why not?

How much WORSE could private contractors do?

Why not privatize the public schools and tie their pay to the benchmark tests?

I was referring to our marketeering. We've been using the VHF spectrum resale as an advertising point for a couple of years now for our 2.4GHz stuff. We're about to branch out to the 900MHz ISM band, but that hasn't been without problems either.

Yet.

In particular, look for the Tempest belt-pack or sidelines trunk. They may be using anything for a headset. We don't market headsets into the upper-end market (only with the "high school and small college" boxes).

Ah, gotcha.

A 900MHz version strikes me as a smart move right now!

---Joel

Now? No. Except for perhaps a few rare exceptions, they pay twice.

In VT they also get the use of school facilities (sports, libraries, extra-curricular activities).

Where the tax-payer is involved, what else is new? OTOH, there is also an argument that says that people without children are getting ripped off.

Private schools cost about half of what public schools cost. What's strange?

Certainly.

Nope.

Still no feedback.

The problem is the tests. There are always ways to game tests. Tie it to the change, instead.

A big problem is the reduced data-rate at 900. We had all sorts of other unforeseen problems (from the antenna to RF in the audio), but the data rate problem is permanent.

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hey krw,

but the rf problems aren't a result of the frequency allocation ... correct?

is the data rate a function of the allocated bandwidth in the new spectrum? or are these just teeth cutting issues inherent with your new product intro?

just curious.

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correction, that should have been data rate problem ... in my previous question to krw. regards

Hmm, yes, that is a good point.

Historically, yes, although I'm seeing quite a backlash at the moment.

That's human nature for you. Historically I haven't seen either major political party really try to get rid of direct government jobs... it'll be interesting to see if the Tea Partiers handle this any differently.

That would have been a moderating influence, but there you're kinda at the loggerheads of conservatives typically not wanting to impose tariffs or other restrictives that would slow down free trade/garner less money for businesses vs. the vast majority of consumers shopping almost entirely by price -- country of origin be damned!

I agree completely. The change necessary, I think, is more that we will just have to work somewhat harder and smarter (not necessarily more hours).

I'm not too worried about it yet in that western Europe is still far more socialistic than the U.S., and while their standard of living isn't quite as good as the U.S.'s, in general they do just fine anyway.

I believe this is the standard excuse for any failed policy. :-)

Every 1st world country around today has a certain amount of socialism, as has the U.S. for many decades now. I see it more of a balancing act -- clearly too much socialism is a bad thing, but 100% laissez-faire capitalsm is just as bad.

---Joel

The lack thereof. The FCC has taken a huge chunk of the spectrum away from these unlicensed users. There are *big* fines for ignoring these new rules, too.

Bandwidth. Basically, we don't have the same error correction capability so errors degrade the audio quality more. Audio is a little different than data. If an Internet connection takes a hit everything retries until the packet is transferred successfully and unless the connection is gone, the user isn't even suspicious. Digital audio doesn't get another chance; drop it and move on.