I think I recall seeing something a while back about an auto-drive feature that only works when you're in a traffic jam, and you set it to follow the car in front of you so that you don't have to be pissed off the whole time, and if enough people have it then it makes resolving the jam more efficient because all the cars move together. I think you're going to see a lot of stuff like this before you see truly autonomous cars on the road, and these features will be sold on mid range cars.
I should clarify that the state I live in does not require insurance to cover *any* autism therapy. The law here states that "insurance providers shall provide the same benefits to an autistic child that would be available to a non-autistic child", which is weasel words for saying that they don't have to cover anything. And since they don't *have* to cover it, they don't. And I can't afford the therapy on my own, regardless of what's available, except for quack cures that won't actually work.
You might find yourself agreeing more with the Scandinavian model.. They tend to focus on individual freedom with a strong social safety net and a focus on cost reduction. For instance, instead of simply providing unemployment insurance if you lose your job that stipulates that you must look for work, they allow you to go to school to retrain for jobs that are in demand. Basically the idea is that governing is hard work like any other job, and not the place for ideological battles. As a result, unemployment is low, wages are high, crime is low, and happiness is high.
I appreciate your concern for my son. I regret moving away from Portland, not so far from where you are, as the laws there do require insurance to cover autism.
I was a Libertarian before it was cool (registered since 2002, haven't bothered to un-register). Then life happened -- we found out that my son was autistic about a year ago. There's a proven treatment, ABA therapy, which is proven to work most of the time if you intervene early. It's especially effective on kids like my son, who are autistic but not mentally retarded. It's also prohibitively expensive -- about $50k/year. 22 states have laws on the books stating that health insurance companies must provide services for autistic children, but the state I live in isn't one of them. I don't have the money to get him help, and since my mortgage is underwater, I can't even take out a loan to pay for the therapy he needs. Unfortunately, my son will not get that treatment, and might not be able to live a normal life, all because of the right wing agenda on cutting social policies.
Libertarians don't seem to get that you can go through life doing everything right and still get unlucky. And when you bitch about "social programs", just remember that you're bitching about allowing people like my son to have a chance in life.
True but what happens when government is doing the polluting? There's a reason why the China and Russia have such terrible pollution problems while Korea, Japan and the US don't it's because a very strong central government is ok with the pollution. Companies in the Us may have some influence to allow them to pollute more than they should but it's nothing compared to China.
Okay, first lets clarify something -- those are corporations doing the polluting in China and Russia too. Some of them are subsidiaries of the government, but they operate with a great deal of autonomy. Remember that thing about poisoning baby formula in China in order to make it appear higher in protein? That was a corporation. Remember all the toys with the lead paint? That was a corporation. And the poisoned dog food from China a while back? Corporation.
Second, we're in no danger of a totalitarian regime in the west, so the comparison with China and Russia is a moot point anyway.
Don't worry. The state Republicans are hard at work stopping those nuisance lawsuits from interfering with free enterprise in the future.
On the contrary, they love class actions. A class action lawsuit means that nobody is justly compensated. Had a loved one die from a medical device that the manufacturer knew was defective? Well guess what, you'll get a shiny new $300! Employer illegally held your pay and caused you to lose your house? You'll get 30% of the pay you were due!
I'm exactly the opposite. I'm wary of multinational corporations but I'm downright afraid of what government can and does do when given free reign.
Most of the really terrible things (Western) governments do these days are in the name of corporate profits, because corporations have gained power over government. At least doing things for the public good is in the mission statement for government. The corporation's only interest is in acquiring as much of the pie as it can for itself and its investors. If you don't see a conflict of interest between absolute greed and the common good, then you've drowned in the kool aid.
The difference being that at least I can switch the company I'm dealing with but the government is the ultimate monopoly and represents the ultimate tragedy of the commons where people vote themselves goodies without caring how it affects the overall health of the economy.
Because corporations would never do something for themselves at the detriment of the economy as a whole, right?
The problem with Paul is that he fails to see that 'official' power (i.e. government) is no different really than 'de facto' power wielded by corporations. I'm wary of the government, but I'm downright afraid of what multinational corporations would do if given free reign.
There are two ways to get ahead in your career: a.) know your shit, and b.) don't be a dick. Either one will let you keep a job, and maybe even advance, but if you really want to get ahead in this world, you need to master both skills. Like most 22 year-olds, you appear to have focused your entire life around column a, and haven't put any effort into column b.
And for fuck's sake cut the old guys some slack. They probably know all kinds of obscure shit about making boot disks, compiling the OS from source, mainframe backups, configuring zfs, or whatever new and exciting knowledge there was to glean for IT workers back when they were 22.
And what happens if the whole economy collapses because not enough people are working and contributing to that social safety net? Just look at Greece for instance; everyone's getting largesse from the government and doing very little actual work to pay for it, so they keep asking for loans and bailouts. Safety nets only work if enough people in the population are working to pay for it.
And that would be a great point if it wasn't for the fact that Greece has been distinctly irresponsible with their money. France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, The Netherlands, etc. are all welfare states, and they're all doing relatively well. You need to get over your preconceptions and recognize that social security and work ethic are not mutually exclusive concepts.
You are either from the USA or bizarrely uninformed - possibly both.
How's that 20+% unemployment working out for you and your union right now?
Rather well, compared to how it would work out in the US. European countries tend to have social safety nets and such, meaning that, if you lose your job, you don't have to go die in a ditch somewhere.
Does it matter? Go back to 1960, get some DDT, and you won't have this problem anymore. Sure, a few people might get cancer, but damn did it ever kill those bugs.
Good pay, lots of time off, an emphasis on quality over quantity, and make it clear to devs that you must both a.) do good work, and b.) not be a dick. Do that, and the rest should take care of itself.
Uh, not to hijack this thread, but simply to answer spiffmastercow's question, if somebody believes life begins at conception, then the left's advocating for abortion rights IS advocating for murder.
Not arguing either way, just pointing out the "critical thought" that you missed completely.
Oh yeah, I forgot about whole line of reasoning. I was thrown off when he went on "Actual murder, look it up" thing, since I assumed he was going by the actual definition of murder, not the Monty Python "Every Sperm is Sacred" song version.
I'm with you on the soda ban, but universal health care isn't a loss of freedom, but a trade. The insurance companies are less free, but you are more free to choose an employer or work for yourself without facing the possibility of being permenantly screwed by a 'prexisting condition'.
Seriously, what the fuck are you talking about? Since when does the American left advocate murder? Or are you just hoping that if you dance around words long enough people won't notice how full of shit you are?
Yeah, I'm in full agreement that a BSCS is not needed or even useful for admin work. I'd say it shouldn't be a requirement for dev work either, though a dev with no degree needs to make sure and fill in the theory gaps or he'll run into some issues down the road.
I had an internship that actually involved some CS work.. Had to reverse engineer an obscure compression scheme, code some high performance data processing stuff, write a PCL5 emulator, etc.
most college are not setup to be part time class part time work. In-less you are working nights.
Now the tech schools and community college do offer night classes (but even then the time tables for classes may still may you have to take some day classes)
No that classes 20 hours a week needs to be a apprenticeship system where work and class time is part of the over all time table not 2 differnt party's having there own time tables.
It's called an internship, and it works really well. Unfortunately, most universities don't want to bother setting them up for students.
Any time I parse something like "(Partnership).*(American|(Econom(y|ic)))", I immediately lump it into the right wing propoganda bin.
Assuming they are a right wing org, does that mean that if they say "immigrants are good for us", that makes it bad?
It means that the right wing has an agenda in encouraging immigration, and that agenda may or may not be the one that they claim. If I had to guess, I'd bet their real goal is to increase H1-B visas in order to drive down tech worker salaries.
Most illegals have no interest in being citizens -- they want to come, work here for a few years, and go home with way more money than they could have gotten in their home country. I'm all for giving a path to citizenship for those who want to stay, and even to grant it to those who have been here long enough (legally or otherwise) to show they are committed to staying in the US, but we need to stop people from simply coming here to make a quick buck going back home, because those immigrants reduce local wages and cause an outflow of money from our economy. Of course, that's a problem with both legal and illegal immigrants.
Any time I parse something like "(Partnership).*(American|(Econom(y|ic)))", I immediately lump it into the right wing propoganda bin.
The Partnership for a New American Economy sounds more corporatist than hard-right; there's more than one right-wing propaganda bin, and they're not in, for example, the right-wing nativist bin.
(Oh, and given who heads up the list of co-chairs, the "chair" part is a bit amusing....)
They're the same bin.. The nationalist right is just a PR front for the corporatist right, designed to fool the masses into voting against their own economic and social interests.
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I think I recall seeing something a while back about an auto-drive feature that only works when you're in a traffic jam, and you set it to follow the car in front of you so that you don't have to be pissed off the whole time, and if enough people have it then it makes resolving the jam more efficient because all the cars move together. I think you're going to see a lot of stuff like this before you see truly autonomous cars on the road, and these features will be sold on mid range cars.
I should clarify that the state I live in does not require insurance to cover *any* autism therapy. The law here states that "insurance providers shall provide the same benefits to an autistic child that would be available to a non-autistic child", which is weasel words for saying that they don't have to cover anything. And since they don't *have* to cover it, they don't. And I can't afford the therapy on my own, regardless of what's available, except for quack cures that won't actually work.
You might find yourself agreeing more with the Scandinavian model.. They tend to focus on individual freedom with a strong social safety net and a focus on cost reduction. For instance, instead of simply providing unemployment insurance if you lose your job that stipulates that you must look for work, they allow you to go to school to retrain for jobs that are in demand. Basically the idea is that governing is hard work like any other job, and not the place for ideological battles. As a result, unemployment is low, wages are high, crime is low, and happiness is high.
I appreciate your concern for my son. I regret moving away from Portland, not so far from where you are, as the laws there do require insurance to cover autism.
I was a Libertarian before it was cool (registered since 2002, haven't bothered to un-register). Then life happened -- we found out that my son was autistic about a year ago. There's a proven treatment, ABA therapy, which is proven to work most of the time if you intervene early. It's especially effective on kids like my son, who are autistic but not mentally retarded. It's also prohibitively expensive -- about $50k/year. 22 states have laws on the books stating that health insurance companies must provide services for autistic children, but the state I live in isn't one of them. I don't have the money to get him help, and since my mortgage is underwater, I can't even take out a loan to pay for the therapy he needs. Unfortunately, my son will not get that treatment, and might not be able to live a normal life, all because of the right wing agenda on cutting social policies.
Libertarians don't seem to get that you can go through life doing everything right and still get unlucky. And when you bitch about "social programs", just remember that you're bitching about allowing people like my son to have a chance in life.
True but what happens when government is doing the polluting? There's a reason why the China and Russia have such terrible pollution problems while Korea, Japan and the US don't it's because a very strong central government is ok with the pollution. Companies in the Us may have some influence to allow them to pollute more than they should but it's nothing compared to China.
Okay, first lets clarify something -- those are corporations doing the polluting in China and Russia too. Some of them are subsidiaries of the government, but they operate with a great deal of autonomy. Remember that thing about poisoning baby formula in China in order to make it appear higher in protein? That was a corporation. Remember all the toys with the lead paint? That was a corporation. And the poisoned dog food from China a while back? Corporation.
Second, we're in no danger of a totalitarian regime in the west, so the comparison with China and Russia is a moot point anyway.
i.e. everyone can form class-action lawsuits!
Don't worry. The state Republicans are hard at work stopping those nuisance lawsuits from interfering with free enterprise in the future.
On the contrary, they love class actions. A class action lawsuit means that nobody is justly compensated. Had a loved one die from a medical device that the manufacturer knew was defective? Well guess what, you'll get a shiny new $300! Employer illegally held your pay and caused you to lose your house? You'll get 30% of the pay you were due!
I'm exactly the opposite. I'm wary of multinational corporations but I'm downright afraid of what government can and does do when given free reign.
Most of the really terrible things (Western) governments do these days are in the name of corporate profits, because corporations have gained power over government. At least doing things for the public good is in the mission statement for government. The corporation's only interest is in acquiring as much of the pie as it can for itself and its investors. If you don't see a conflict of interest between absolute greed and the common good, then you've drowned in the kool aid.
The difference being that at least I can switch the company I'm dealing with but the government is the ultimate monopoly and represents the ultimate tragedy of the commons where people vote themselves goodies without caring how it affects the overall health of the economy.
Because corporations would never do something for themselves at the detriment of the economy as a whole, right?
The problem with Paul is that he fails to see that 'official' power (i.e. government) is no different really than 'de facto' power wielded by corporations. I'm wary of the government, but I'm downright afraid of what multinational corporations would do if given free reign.
There are two ways to get ahead in your career: a.) know your shit, and b.) don't be a dick. Either one will let you keep a job, and maybe even advance, but if you really want to get ahead in this world, you need to master both skills. Like most 22 year-olds, you appear to have focused your entire life around column a, and haven't put any effort into column b.
And for fuck's sake cut the old guys some slack. They probably know all kinds of obscure shit about making boot disks, compiling the OS from source, mainframe backups, configuring zfs, or whatever new and exciting knowledge there was to glean for IT workers back when they were 22.
And what happens if the whole economy collapses because not enough people are working and contributing to that social safety net? Just look at Greece for instance; everyone's getting largesse from the government and doing very little actual work to pay for it, so they keep asking for loans and bailouts. Safety nets only work if enough people in the population are working to pay for it.
And that would be a great point if it wasn't for the fact that Greece has been distinctly irresponsible with their money. France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, The Netherlands, etc. are all welfare states, and they're all doing relatively well. You need to get over your preconceptions and recognize that social security and work ethic are not mutually exclusive concepts.
Unions become a problem when they start to see companies as being the enemy, rather than something they're in partnership with.
Sometimes they have good reason for seeing them as an enemy...
Nobody wants a union.
You are either from the USA or bizarrely uninformed - possibly both.
How's that 20+% unemployment working out for you and your union right now?
Rather well, compared to how it would work out in the US. European countries tend to have social safety nets and such, meaning that, if you lose your job, you don't have to go die in a ditch somewhere.
Does it matter? Go back to 1960, get some DDT, and you won't have this problem anymore. Sure, a few people might get cancer, but damn did it ever kill those bugs.
Good pay, lots of time off, an emphasis on quality over quantity, and make it clear to devs that you must both a.) do good work, and b.) not be a dick. Do that, and the rest should take care of itself.
Uh, not to hijack this thread, but simply to answer spiffmastercow's question, if somebody believes life begins at conception, then the left's advocating for abortion rights IS advocating for murder.
Not arguing either way, just pointing out the "critical thought" that you missed completely.
Oh yeah, I forgot about whole line of reasoning. I was thrown off when he went on "Actual murder, look it up" thing, since I assumed he was going by the actual definition of murder, not the Monty Python "Every Sperm is Sacred" song version.
I'm with you on the soda ban, but universal health care isn't a loss of freedom, but a trade. The insurance companies are less free, but you are more free to choose an employer or work for yourself without facing the possibility of being permenantly screwed by a 'prexisting condition'.
Seriously, what the fuck are you talking about? Since when does the American left advocate murder? Or are you just hoping that if you dance around words long enough people won't notice how full of shit you are?
Yeah, I'm in full agreement that a BSCS is not needed or even useful for admin work. I'd say it shouldn't be a requirement for dev work either, though a dev with no degree needs to make sure and fill in the theory gaps or he'll run into some issues down the road.
I had an internship that actually involved some CS work.. Had to reverse engineer an obscure compression scheme, code some high performance data processing stuff, write a PCL5 emulator, etc.
most college are not setup to be part time class part time work. In-less you are working nights.
Now the tech schools and community college do offer night classes (but even then the time tables for classes may still may you have to take some day classes)
No that classes 20 hours a week needs to be a apprenticeship system where work and class time is part of the over all time table not 2 differnt party's having there own time tables.
It's called an internship, and it works really well. Unfortunately, most universities don't want to bother setting them up for students.
Any time I parse something like "(Partnership).*(American|(Econom(y|ic)))", I immediately lump it into the right wing propoganda bin.
Assuming they are a right wing org, does that mean that if they say "immigrants are good for us", that makes it bad?
It means that the right wing has an agenda in encouraging immigration, and that agenda may or may not be the one that they claim. If I had to guess, I'd bet their real goal is to increase H1-B visas in order to drive down tech worker salaries.
Most illegals have no interest in being citizens -- they want to come, work here for a few years, and go home with way more money than they could have gotten in their home country. I'm all for giving a path to citizenship for those who want to stay, and even to grant it to those who have been here long enough (legally or otherwise) to show they are committed to staying in the US, but we need to stop people from simply coming here to make a quick buck going back home, because those immigrants reduce local wages and cause an outflow of money from our economy. Of course, that's a problem with both legal and illegal immigrants.
Any time I parse something like "(Partnership).*(American|(Econom(y|ic)))", I immediately lump it into the right wing propoganda bin.
The Partnership for a New American Economy sounds more corporatist than hard-right; there's more than one right-wing propaganda bin, and they're not in, for example, the right-wing nativist bin.
(Oh, and given who heads up the list of co-chairs, the "chair" part is a bit amusing....)
They're the same bin.. The nationalist right is just a PR front for the corporatist right, designed to fool the masses into voting against their own economic and social interests.
Any time I parse something like "(Partnership).*(American|(Econom(y|ic)))", I immediately lump it into the right wing propoganda bin.
I wonder how much they paid for Stonehenge back then...
A lot, in terms of GDP. It took maybe 1-5% of the population several years to move some big ass stones across the UK.