The most fundamental postulate of Libertarianism is the protection of citizens life, liberty and property. These basic rights are repeatedly affirmed in the fundamental Bill of rights of US constitution. To the extent that these rights of citizens have to be protected, a strong police force and justice system are fully favored by even the most limited government proponents.

The last I checked, your life, liberty and property are not safe in Somalia.

More importantly, my main point of contention about windows phone OS itself is....even after fixing the UI to Flat style, fixing the app styles to fixed style, it is not able to compete with iOS and Android on performance. Several youtube videos show how the browsers in other platforms are faster. Ditto with many graphically intensive games.

13 minutes ago, MasterPie wrote

*snip*

Yes. Did you think they'd make only one phone a year?

 

The rest of your post has to do with the software, which doesn't need to change for every hardware release, and thus, isn't really relevant.

However,

*snip*

what exactly do you mean by this?

Unless any recent updates changed it...you can't label contact fields the way you like in windows phone...can you ?

10.2 mm width and 160 grams. "Big dissapointment" is an understatement. Oh ...and software stays the same... no special service or app or anything.

And don't get me started on Windows Phone 8. Missing custom fields, street view maps, temple run2, temple run oz, flat UI, jeez.

Only the offline maps are the compelling thing.

Is the entire industry that has 3D gradient buttons everywhere doing it wrong ? If 2-D flat cartoons is really that cool, Pixar would have never been born. 

Concentrate, spend more time on making Windows 8 more performant.

The UI is not 3-D aero style but flat drab 2-D style and the battery still gets less than iPad ? WTF ? Surface NEEDS TO BE more performant. Make more usable apps.

Quit spending resources and energy on trying to be a hardware guy.

I stopped by at Microsoft store on the first day and immediately noticed that Asus Vivo RT (at Bestbuy) is more responsive than Surface RT. But even then, many WinRT apps suffered from bad UX design. I would touch on something in an app and couldn't tell if the App has started doing something or if the touch failed to register. After touching the same app couple of times, the first action would start anyway. The general laginess in almost every app was not good at all.

I want this thing to succeed. But the whole thing needs to be more performant on the ARM processors.

In the end, I kept thinking, why would I shell out 500 bucks for this. At the basic level though, the basic framework (live tiles, charms, etcetra) looks exciting and I like the flow, but things gotta improve .....

It doesn't take any particular "philosophy" to look at something and figure out what a disaster it is.

"Anything I can do to help ?"

ROFL...LOL.... "Spy who loved me" is my favorite Bond movie of all. If only I could get that lucky

1 hour ago, spivonious wrote

@JohnAskew: I never liked Twinkies or Ding Dongs. But it is still sad to see almost 20,000 workers go unemployed.

Well, making those "bad rich people" not get their paychecks anymore is so satisfying and heart warming for the unions...... 20,000 getting unemployed is so worthy of that. So goes the thinking of economically challenged. There is a phrase for this kind of thinking...it's called "Scorch earth policy".

1 hour ago, JohnAskew wrote

*snip*

In a separate thread, I'd enjoy reading how the government's regulations prevent $10-50M IPO's.

In the separate thread: How does the government force FB, for example, to wait years before it can go public, and then, finally, grossly overprice itself for it's IPO? Greed is greed, who's clueless?

This article explains all I wanted to say on this topic. Please read

For this thread: The fact remains that the since 1970, Republican Presidents spend more than Democrat Presidents; most times for war, as you pointed out.

For this thread: There is a very big difference between the Texan and New Hampshire Republicans. Mostly to do with social / fundamental religious conservatism. New Hampshire are the Republicans of Lincoln, socially liberal. Southern Republicans are well represented by students at Ol' Miss ranting racial epitaths at Obama's reelection, plus the secession baloney -- social hebephrenics. The GOP is going to be torn apart during the next 4 years and a new party will hopefully emerge...

You make it sound like we Ron Paul supporters don't fault the Republican presidents. As you might already know, Ron Paul criticized Bush heavily. He even called Bush's foreign policy "demented". You are raising non-existing argument...atleast with me. Republican presidents not only wasted tons of money on wars but also actually turned in to liberals in the domestic policies. Like Bush's prescription drug program and highway spending. 

Mitt Romney is a "northern" Repub..and the staunchest NeoCon there ever was. We all know about the illustrious Rick Santorum. You seem to be placing too much optimism on your "Northerners". When the heads are not screwed right, it doesn't make a difference whether you are a Notherner or a Southerner.

When it comes to being attracting young people with socially liberal policies, Ron Paul already proved he can bring in thousands of people. The only survival for Republican party is if they move towards libertarians.

1 hour ago, JohnAskew wrote

The budget was balanced. It is documented. Tricksey? Sure, it's politics. But the deficit under the Democrats is always far smaller than under Republicans. You may not promote the idea that wars started under Bush are Obama's spending ideas. You must subtract the two war costs from Obama's deficits to be honest about which party has the spending problem.

The budget was not balanced. National debt went up every year of Clinton's presidency. The only way Clinton showed yearly deficit as Zero was by actually raiding the Social security trust fund. That's right, his administration moved money from the trust fund in to the current account, and showed a deficit of zero. It's called smoke and mirrors. But *National Debt* went up EVERY YEAR. Look it up. 

Besides, I already pointed out to you that all of that money in to government coffers was all FAKE. It was based on a fake prosperity engineered by government financial engineering (Greenspan interest rates).

Government doesn't declare Facebook is worth 100 billion, Wall Street does that -- and is always greedy wrong. Same with all other IPOs of ridiculousness. You want to blame government?

Government doesn't micro-manage private corporations (unless they are insolvent). Misallocations are from private company decisions going after short-term profits.

Again, clueless on why FaceBook IPO was so high in the first place. It is the government regulations that delayed the debut of facebook IPO. The myriad of government regulations means only expensive companies can afford to go public. The regular people should have gotten a chance to invest in FaceBook long ago, should have gotten a chance to really get in on the ground floor (so to speak). There are no $10million, $50million IPOs for people to invest anymore. Government has made it so expensive such that only after the big institutional investors have bid up the valuation, can they come in to the public market. If not for myriad of government  regulations, FaceBook would have gone public long ago.

Besides, the point I was making in my earlier post about the market distortion caused by Government financial engineering has got nothing to do with IPO topic. Why are you switching the topic ? Are you trying to follow the logic of "let's justify one worse thing by pointing out to yet another worse thing" ? How does the incorrect facebook valuation justify the engineering a housing bubble ? Do you even realize the scale of Housing bubble ?  Facebook IPO is peanuts compared to the scale of housing bubble.

1 hour ago, JohnAskew wrote

I do listen. You didn't prove that Obama claimed his tax increase idea for income > $250,000 will balance the budget, yet you accuse him of saying so.

Oh ok. Obama is doing Theatrics then. There... is that good enough for ya ? There is no real interest in *actually* addressing the issue he says he is addressing. In fact there is no real interest in addressing the deficit but all a bunch of deceptive talk like a typical street side performer. He is the one who initiated this "tax the rich" talk...supposedly to address the deficit. That makes him a dishonest person at best and a liar at worst.

Most of the Economically challenged "deficits don't matter" crowd seem to be having a hard time comprehending the real danger of such high Debt. In programming, we account for things called "exception conditions". On a current account debt of $16.5 trillion, if interest rates reach 10%, government will have to pay $1.6 trillion on just interest payments alone. That's right, majority of tax receipts just go for one single line item..aka Interest payments. May be the mentally challenged "mainstream" parties that you seem to favor over the one sane person (Ron Paul) don't want to account for the exception conditions, but those of us who care about this country are genuinely concerned.

By the way, 10% interest rates are very much with in the realm of possibilities. Back in 1980s interest rates reached > 15%.

2 hours ago, JohnAskew wrote

*snip*

It has been made clear that raising taxes on those who earn > $250,000 will not balance the budget. No one claims it will except for you. Personally, I think all the Bush era tax cuts should expire and everyone should pay taxes like we did in the 1990s. It balanced the budget. Other opinions are just irresponsible, even the 'tax the rich only' approach.

Liberals understand everything, at least I do. You must believe what conservative shock jocks tell you that Liberals believe, because that isn't coming from me. No one believes Obama's tax increases alone will balance the budget, that's stupid talk. Where did it come from? I laugh at it.

Obama is not a liar. Save your emotions for football games, please. I drink coffee, plenty.

Given that you work with the financial industry gives you exactly zero superhero powers of economic genius. Many of us have worked in the field. Why do you believe your opinions are somehow more genuine?

 

Au Contraire, you seem to be not listening to what Obama himself is saying. And more importantly the rhetoric coming out of Liberal echo chamber known as MSNBC. So far, Obama proposed raising the taxes on "those rich" and closing some tax loopholes (we don't know what those "some loopholes" are). All of this makes like *a dent* in his Trillion dollar per year deficits. It does make for a good talking point though...you gotta have a boogeyman and this time it's the rich.

Nope. 1990s taxes did not balance the budget. This tells me how misinformed you are on 1990s economy. You see, as it so happened, the tax revenues of 1990s are NOT because we all got taxed slightly higher rates. It was because, Fed Reserve artificially kept interest rates lower than what the actual market would have priced them. It fueled a fake boom in DotCom companies on one hand and also (and more importantly) the stock market bubble on the other hand.

When Government manipulates the economy through it's artificial financial engineering, the three main factors of Capitalist economy, namely Labor, Resources and Capital will get grossly misallocated. We all have seen how many DotCom companies got started on the Flimsiest of business cases. So much of capital moved in to the fake boom of stock market. At one point in time, Yahoo itself was valued at more than the entire GDP of New Zealand. That's right, Newzealand with it's rich mineral, timber, tourism, agriculture, fishing, etcetra was less than Yahoo. That is one incredible fake movement of capital in to stock market. The fakeness of Clinton era boom was fully brought to bear in the subsequent crash. And then Bush, with help from Greenspan and Bernanke, engineered even bigger boom called "housing" and we all know how it turned out. Again, everybody and their grandma was a real-estate agent...lol (labor allocation).

@cbae:

Yes, I would be glad to explain. Let's take today's topic for example. Today Obama proposed raising $1.6 trillion revenue over the next decade by means of Tax increases on "those rich" people.

 Lot of Dem voters seem to have hard time deciphering Obama's today's lie. You see, Obama is running $1 trillion deficit PER YEAR. His proposed tax increases on "those rich" people amounts to nothing on a PER YEAR basis. As usual, he offers KoolAid, and Dem voters just drink it. If Obama were not a liar, he would tell the truth. If he intends to fill the deficit by Taxes only...then taxing "those rich" amounts to nothing. He really needs to tax "us middle class" people. Then, only then, can his $1trillion/year deficit can be covered. Comprende' ?

Now, I understand that lot of Liberals believe that if only the taxes on "those rich" can be increased  and spending not reduced, we can all hold hands and enjoy the milk and honey. But sometimes, Liberals need to drink coffee and smell their "batshit" ( to use your language).

Given that I work with commodity prices, interest rates, FX rates data and use advanced statistical models to perform option valuation and risk metrics on millions of dollars of my customers commodity portfolios for my "daily" living ( and actually make a pretty good living at that), I would be glad to explain any other economic topic of interest to you. Do let me know what topic you need a little bit teaching on.

Ron Paul, September 6, 2001.. On the floor of the Congress.

   He pleaded with the Congress and the president Bush not to embark on yet another Government engineered economic bubble called Housing bubble. He predicted the exact trajectory of commodity prices, interest rates, FX rates, GSE securities, you name it.... all of that 7 years in advance. His  many speeches on economics (over many years)are part of the official congressional records and can be accessed at www.house.gov.

 On the other hand, we have the Economically challenged keynesian called Paul Krugman, who, in 2001 advocated for a housing bubble in response to the Dot Com Crash. Yet another clueless Keynesian, Fed Chariman Ben Bernanke, as late as 2007 was on primetime CNBC saying "sub-prime crisis is contained" and there is no financial crisis. That's right. He was on Primetime CNBC making this Economically challenged claim.
 

 Now, I understand that Economics is not everybody's subject of interest. But then, everybody seems to chime in on subject they know nothing about ( by electing economically challenged Obama).

 He bought the youth in to Republican party and the mental comprehension challenged Repub voters (both north and south)  did not want any of that. In defense of the North though, I would like to point out one Brownie point, Ron Paul did come in second in New Hampshire primary.