Blogging -- all the cools kids are doing it

Why not me? Exactly!

Well, I was big on keeping personal websites and what not when I first came to the US but my interest in such means of communication waned over the years as I opted for more privacy and obscurity. Now that I have some downtime while looking for jobs and relocating, I am bored enough to get back on the tech bandwagon. Of course, I still would like to maintain some level of anonymity/obscurity, if that makes sense.

Comments

Correlation Between Taxes and Social/Economic Programs

I have always wondered if the taxes people pay correlate with the availability of social and economic programs and safety nets, not to mention the military programs that protect them. This idea comes in light of the notion that Europeans are highly taxed compared to their American counterparts, but they seem to have access to free (or almost free) education and health care while the US provides neither. The Europeans live and work at a more leisurely pace than Americans and they have the comfort of knowing that their government has put safety nets in case a disaster. The Europeans do a lot to ensure that all their citizens have comparable opportunities, and thus you are less likely to see a huge gap between the poor and the rich. Perhaps the lack of incentive to excel has stifled entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe to some extent. In fact, Europe has historically high unemployment rates than the US and the size of government there is significantly larger than that of the US....

2001 Recession Deferred for 2008?

Most people remember the Dot-Com bubble of the 1990s that peaked in 2000 before bursting in 2001-2003. Considering how the NASDAQ composite lost more than 60% of its value by 2001 alone, the country was about to go into a recession. The 9/11 attacks made things worse too. As the impact of 9/11 and Dot-Com bust were about to pull the country into a recession, another bubble came to the rescue. It was the housing bubble that deferred a sure recession and kept the US in an era of faux prosperity. It gave Bush a reason to soldier on with flawed economic policies as the housing bubble gave the impression that the good economic progress of the Clinton years were being sustained through Bush's years. This time though, there does not appear to be another bubble ready to bail the US out of the recession it is in. After suffering through the I.T. and housing bubbles in just a decade, I don't think investors and people in general will be adventurous enough to create another bubbl...

Linux Tips and Solutions

PROBLEM: Audacious on K/Ubuntu Doesn't play my mp3s:: On my kubuntu 8.04.1 audacious is not playing any audiofile. I've tried to run my mp3s with amarok and it works. Also audacity is playing mp3s. SOLUTION: Click on Preferences in Audacious; Select Audio Tab; Set the 'cCurrent output plugin' to 'aRts output plugin'. __________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: File associations in Firefox 3.0 disappear in Kubuntu SOLUTION: Install firefox-3.0-gnome-support . . . more to come

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