Disassemble it, then pulverize and burn the platters. I always keep the magnets. Sometimes I keep the disk controller too. The rest either gets recycled or ends up in a landfill.
Off-topic in the OTF
- Thread starter LozHinge the Unhinged
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Disassemble it, then pulverize and burn the platters. I always keep the magnets. Sometimes I keep the disk controller too. The rest either gets recycled or ends up in a landfill.
If you or someone else is going to use it, one thing you can do is boot to a live Linux distro and have it write random ones and zeros across the disc. It's a step above formatting since it will scramble the data as opposed to just covering it up. That will be enough to protect you from anyone who isn't seriously determined to get your specific information and is willing to sink a large money investment into doing so. I don't remember the command off the top of my head, but it should be easy to find.
Otherwise, if you're sure no one is going to use it or you don't want anyone to, the safest bet is simply removing the platters and destroying them. You may need some torx tools to do it if you don't want to try just prying everything apart, depending on what screws the manufacturer decided to use. Should be able to find them in most hardware stores. Just be aware that generally speaking, laptop drives will shatter because they are made of glass, while desktop drives are aluminum.
Otherwise, if you're sure no one is going to use it or you don't want anyone to, the safest bet is simply removing the platters and destroying them. You may need some torx tools to do it if you don't want to try just prying everything apart, depending on what screws the manufacturer decided to use. Should be able to find them in most hardware stores. Just be aware that generally speaking, laptop drives will shatter because they are made of glass, while desktop drives are aluminum.
Taxes now, eh? If only it was that simple, but the democrats and even most of the republicans will never allow the tax code to be that simple. Way too easy to hide breaks and benefits for your cronies in a tax code that's seventy or eighty thousand pages long.
So called "trickle down" does work. That part really is simple. The more money you have, the more jobs you can create, the more people you can hire, the more you can afford to pay the good ones to make them want to stick around. (Or encourage ones from your competitors to come work for you instead.) Taxes are an expense. They take money away from job creators, meaning fewer jobs and less hires and smaller paychecks. But beyond that, being able to keep your costs down also means you can afford to lower your prices for products and services, which is what in particular allows smaller businesses to compete with larger ones. Lower prices also means consumers are happy, which generally means they actually spend more, stimulating the economy.
Unfortunately the tax code is written in such a way that smaller businesses are frequently subjected to having to pay more in taxes than their more established competitors, which is exactly the way politicians want it. Which is also why on this...
The solution, however, is not to raise taxes. As both of us know, some companies can navigate all the tax breaks to essentially wind up paying nothing or even receiving money instead. So what happens when you go raising taxes on the "rich", is all the ones who can't navigate the tax code to that degree just end up paying even more while the big guys who already pay nothing continue paying nothing.
Ever wonder why you'll sometimes see supposedly altruistic rich guys standing side by side with politicians as they demonize the rich and claim we need to make them pay their "fair share"? Thats why. It puts pressure on and eliminates their competition.
So if you really wanted to fix that problem, you should be for leaving the rate alone while stripping the tax code of all those breaks across the board. In fact ideally you'd be for a flat tax situation. "How much profit did you make? Give us 10%." Done. The entire U.S. tax code and it fits on a postcard. No loopholes. No teams of overpaid accountants and lawyers. No under the table handshakes with lobbyists. Just a basic math equation that any junior high school student should be able to do. Well, as long as we're not talking public school anyway.
So called "trickle down" does work. That part really is simple. The more money you have, the more jobs you can create, the more people you can hire, the more you can afford to pay the good ones to make them want to stick around. (Or encourage ones from your competitors to come work for you instead.) Taxes are an expense. They take money away from job creators, meaning fewer jobs and less hires and smaller paychecks. But beyond that, being able to keep your costs down also means you can afford to lower your prices for products and services, which is what in particular allows smaller businesses to compete with larger ones. Lower prices also means consumers are happy, which generally means they actually spend more, stimulating the economy.
Unfortunately the tax code is written in such a way that smaller businesses are frequently subjected to having to pay more in taxes than their more established competitors, which is exactly the way politicians want it. Which is also why on this...
...we can agree.
The solution, however, is not to raise taxes. As both of us know, some companies can navigate all the tax breaks to essentially wind up paying nothing or even receiving money instead. So what happens when you go raising taxes on the "rich", is all the ones who can't navigate the tax code to that degree just end up paying even more while the big guys who already pay nothing continue paying nothing.
Ever wonder why you'll sometimes see supposedly altruistic rich guys standing side by side with politicians as they demonize the rich and claim we need to make them pay their "fair share"? Thats why. It puts pressure on and eliminates their competition.
So if you really wanted to fix that problem, you should be for leaving the rate alone while stripping the tax code of all those breaks across the board. In fact ideally you'd be for a flat tax situation. "How much profit did you make? Give us 10%." Done. The entire U.S. tax code and it fits on a postcard. No loopholes. No teams of overpaid accountants and lawyers. No under the table handshakes with lobbyists. Just a basic math equation that any junior high school student should be able to do. Well, as long as we're not talking public school anyway.
Ha! Yeah, that just might do it. Had the same thought regarding emergency powers as well the other day. There's a few practical concerns here and there, but at this point I'm really doubting they outweigh the potential benefits of just kicking them out.
They're dead set against term limits, which is essentially what this would create. Because as the sagacious P.J. O'Rourke said,
Oh I have no delusions that anything remotely like that would be allowed to even be put on the table, let alone passed into law. There is a subtle difference between that and straight up term limits though. This way they'd have an incentive to keep their job. Term limits say it doesn't matter what they do because they will lose their job anyway. That's something to consider at least.
There is no humankind without those who are to be called politicians. Somebody is going to grab the power and then they will do what politicians do and thus turn into politicians. The question is in which manner can they be controlled to at least some extent? I've come up with no better idea than separation of power somehow originating from the people, like through elections. It still sucks because humans tend to become corrupt when they achieve positions of power and a lot of the people are narrow-minded, ignorant, hypocritic, selfish, silly or outright dumb (the list is terribly incomplete), but your buddy Winston Churchill himself said that democracy is the worst system, except all the others.
That's why you're not conservative nor libertarian. The solution is self-empowerment & freedom at the expense of government control, which means that people have to be trusted to rule themselves rather than be ruled.
Not a popular theme in any country, at the moment.
It would be nice if humans (edit) would be were like that or could be taught so, but they have never been like that since the dawn of mankind and I doubt that it will ever happen in the next few thousands of years. We have to find something that's somehow working now, but I agree that there's nothing wrong with working on us becoming less gullible.
There are kinds of freedom that could be abused at the expense of others and as long as a certain amount of people tend to abuse them, out of whatever reasons or motives, there has to be some kind of control, else we wouldn't need anything like laws, a constitution and a stately order. Except OTFers, of course, they already have the right combination of virtues.
There are kinds of freedom that could be abused at the expense of others and as long as a certain amount of people tend to abuse them, out of whatever reasons or motives, there has to be some kind of control, else we wouldn't need anything like laws, a constitution and a stately order. Except OTFers, of course, they already have the right combination of virtues.
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Except that American history shows that it does work and it works very, very, very well. So well in fact that we were directly responsible for advancing human society by leaps and bounds. So successful were we that we actually dragged the whole rest of the world kicking and screaming to a higher standard of what poverty is.
That is of course, until some self-righteous dirtball gets a little power and teaches people that it can't be done, that you're oppressed, that everything wrong in your life is all the fault of people who have more. Every single time that has happened, we took two steps backward.
In a way it's something of a self fulfilling prophesy. People can do amazing things if you just believe in them and let them do their thing. Conversely, if you constantly beat the socialist drum that they can't do it and that only big brother government should be making decisions, you'll find that they start believing that they can't. And that's before we get into the intricacies of socialist hypocrisy.
Upset over America's sweetheart Matt Gaetz getting called out for being a right wing international sex trafficker, pedophile, and rapist?
Not particularly... oh, wait, you said Matt Gaetz, not President Xiden or his spawn Snorter Xiden.
Well, still no. Gaetz definitely has that 'frat bruh' aura even though he's great at shredding Progressive fascists. Steven Miller, too, has a faint hint of slime, even though the only one I truly despised was Corey Lewandowski (and despite my positive opinion of Michelle Fields, people who I trust said that she's definitely an attention-seeker).
Of course, you may want to consider you're comparing salacious unsourced allegations from that fount of deceit labeled the NYT, apparently disclosed because of an FBI investigation into Gaetz himself being blackmailed, versus proof of working on behalf of the Chinese PLA to the tune of ~$10M in payoffs, credible accusations of ****, & underage international sex trafficking... to say nothing of being such a desperate crackhead as to try to smoke parmesan cheese.
But hey, you do you.
P.S. I don't doubt that you're in total agreement with that lawyer-dude on the Florida beach who dressed up as the Grim Reaper:
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Honestly haven't been paying all that much attention to the Gaetz thing. After all, the left flinging bogus accusations at republicans happens on every day that ends with a 'y'. I know they're accusing him of maybe sleeping with a seventeen year old and he claims he's being extorted. That's about it.
