"Depending on what your skill set is, and how much you are being paid where you currently are, 3X may be no problem. Wages tend to be significantly higher in the area."
But that was the point. The offers have been "generous" in terms of the U.S. average. But not proportional to the actual costs of living (well) there, compared to other places.
"They may have thought that you might not know the cost of living, and they could get you and sell you cheaply, and you'd hang on for the year required for their finder's fee to be non-refundable."
Exactly. When I've shown recruiters the math, they just moved on. Presumably to find some poor young soul who will swallow their (seemingly but actually not so) generous offer.
"I really have heard quite a few people espouse the belief that I had incorrectly mistaken for your actual point.
Reply to This Share Flag as Inappropriate "
Not a problem. And I understand what you mean. I admit that I have developed a rather short trigger because I have very often here on Slashdot had people try to put words in my mouth, and some of those cases have been pretty darned egregious and offensive.
Case in point, in this very topic: I disagreed with somebody's Democrat propaganda (which is really what it was), so somebody else insulted me for being a Republican. When I explained that I don't vote Republican, he implied that I was too right-wing extreme to even be Republican. Neither of which is true, of course.
I'm just constantly amazed how when I disagree with somebody over what is factual, they have often assumed that I am an enemy or "on the other side". But that's just not how the real world works.
"... that sounds an awful lot like cows at a stockyard."
It's worse than that.
I've had A LOT of job opportunities in San Francisco. (I live far from there.) The cost of living there is significantly more than twice as high as it is here. (According to CNET's Cost of Living Calculator.) And that's not all... the "quality of life" is just plain different. Row houses with no yards, built an inch apart from each other. Lack of adequate opportunity for outdoor activities. Etc. I could go on for a while about how "quality of life" is just plain not as good there.
I keep telling recruiters that if they want me to move, it would have to be an improvement over what I can get here. So that means they'd have to pay me at least 3 times what I can make here, in order for it to be an actual step up.
They look at me like I'm crazy... but they're the ones who are crazy.
"Claiming that 4 or 8 years is the magic amount of time that all economic policy effects lag behind their enactments is every bit is flawed as direct correlation."
I didn't make that claim, so how could it be flawed. Give me a break. Read my comment in the context it was made.
Economic policies do not make a difference overnight. You many not see the all the good (or horrible) effects of BIG economic policy change fors years. I'm not saying 4 or 8 years is any kind of "magic" number. It just happens to be the amount of time those Presidents were in office. I could have said 3 or 9 but that wouldn't have made any sense, would it?
"The point made by the qualifier "when I actively log in." If someone wants an internet that is being manipulated by third parties, they can always uniquely identify themselves (by logging in, turning on cookies, etc.)."
That doesn't make any sense in the context of the posts I was replying to:
1. "They're just afraid of losing their revenue. Cowards."
2. "No, they are also afraid of us getting a less diverse Internet experience. "
While you may have a good point, that does not in fact seem to be what the poster was saying.
"Indeed. They are utterly unaware of just how much bandwidth individual streams take up for their services -> and just how obnoxious they are acting (from IT's point of view, repeatedly restreaming, as opposed to downloading once and replaying from a local copy, of a video, is the epitome of stupidity; it's unnecessary, costly traffic)."
They are not unaware. They are VERY aware. Netflix streaming at times makes up of 30% of all internet traffic in the US.
So why don't they do something about it? Because they don't want to. Paid streaming is their control mechanism of choice. That's why they consider BitTorrent to be the enemy. It isn't so much about copying. They aren't stupid; they know downloading does not really hurt their business significantly... all the studies have shown that for 13 years now. It's about controlling what you watch. Only that way can they control your pocketbook.
Correlating the reign of Presidents with economic activity at the time of their Presidency does not show any cause-and-effect. The analysis is fatally flawed on its very face.
The only way you can judge Presidents is how the economy fares AFTER their 4 or 8 years in office. Which means, as often as not, how it does when their political rivals are in office.
Spare me the overly-simplistic bullshit rhetoric. It's provably nonsense.
"Oh, screw you. How were we supposed to know he was going to pull this crap..."
Are you F***ing serious? He had just been pulling the same bullshit for 4 years. You had 4 years (now 5) to figure out that he was doing all this. We knew. Why didn't you? It isn't like we weren't screaming about it to the heavens for years, eh? Oh, wait... yes, we were. We know more about the specifics now. But big deal. We did see it coming and we did warn you, loudly, for a long time.
"... and how would voting for the other asshole have been any better?"
And as someone else already pointed out, there have always been more than 2 choices. And some of them were actually pretty decent choices. If, that is, you did your own research and did not listen to all the media's attempts to marginalize them.
"No, they are also afraid of us getting a less diverse Internet experience.
The only time I want your "internet" to differ from mine is when I actively log in."
What kind of nonsense is this?
The only difference here is whether somebody accepts cookies or not in their own browser. It's kind of like choosing which sources of email are spam and which are not. YOU get to choose.
Frankly, I have never once heard any of the advertisers credibly argue that they want either "diversity" or "conformity". What they want is to control what you see in your own home.
The internet is NOT about me having "the same experience" as you. It's about me having the freedom to do what the hell I want. If YOU want to see the same things, including all the same ads, as everybody else, then you can choose that. But stay the hell out of MY computer!
But that isn't really it, either. In fact, we have proof that this isn't about "having the same experience" at all. It's about information gathering and targeted ads. Blocking the cookies means they don't get to make your experience different from everybody else's.
The "content" companies created this situation themselves. They don't want people recording (even for legal timeshifting purposes). They want people to stream (which is terribly inefficient) or rent, or otherwise pay royalties. Even on TV shows.
Well, this is what they get as a result. They have nobody to point fingers at but themselves. The hell with them.
And the really shitty part is: they'll complain that this is yet more evidence that people are dishonest. When in reality, it's only more evidence that trying to lock people in to their corporate bullshit profit-and-power-mongering has consequences.
"Human study of this phenomenon is still in its infancy. We didn't really have the tools to observe it in the past - what's to say this isn't anything "special" at all, and that this type of event has naturally occurred many times in the past and in the same manner?"
But that's the whole point. What's to say it IS special? Frankly, nothing. 2002 was not a particularly warm year (it was slightly cooler than it had been 4 years before). We have nothing at all to show that this has any significance. But there are certainly some people out there who want you to think it is. (Hint: the same people who tried to blame Kilimanjaro's loss of snowcap on "global warming". But we have actually known conclusively for 2 decades that simply isn't so.)
The point was: some are larger, some are smaller. Remember that 2002 was cooler than 1998... again probably not very significant. We just have no real evidence that the timing of this particular calving has ANY special significance.
"Is useful to predict what will happen maybe soon if there are big ice shelves in similar conditions?"
This sort of thing happens all the time. It's a natural process, and the basic process hasn't changed in recorded history.
This is a bit oversimplified, but snow is deposited on top. It builds up, and gets heavy. Gradually the snow and ice migrate sideways, pushing outward. This is also (besides gravity) what moves glaciers.
So pieces are always breaking off the edges. The 2002 incident might have been one of the larger ones, but in the overall scheme of things is nothing very special.
"I'm not sure if I would classify that as "his site". He's one of many bloggers. His site, only seems to block 2 cookies (using ghostery), and they are twitter and wordpress stats."
He blogs there, it's his site. There is no reason to split hairs. He is famous enough, he can blog wherever he damned well pleases, and he pleases to do it on Boing Boing. So it's "his site". Or where he chooses to blog.
Having said that, there are at least 7 javascript libraries on the site, 2 that appear on Ghostery, that are potential trackers, and some of them are definitely trackers.
"This is just playing a semantic game. It was declared ratified by the Secretary of State. The declaration has been confirmed on multiple occasions by the courts. That's what DEFINES ratified."
Bullshit. The Constitution defines "ratified".
If the conditions layed out in the Constitution were not met (and they were not met), then it wasn't ratified. Period.
And you should look up some history about just how important the courts are in these matters. Hint: not very. Try, for example, reading James Madison's Report of 1800 before the Virginia legislature. In it, he explains very clearly how the Federal government (including the Supreme Court) was never given the power to decide what its own powers should be... and that it is up to the States to be the ultimate arbiters of Constitutionality, when the Federal government may have overstepped its bounds.
In Madison's words:
"On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve."
His logic is perfect.
But even if that were not so, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals violated several important legal principles in its ruling. Quote:
"In United States v. Foster, 789 F.2d. 457, 462-463, n.6 (7th Cir. 1986), we relied on... the inconsequential nature of the objections in the face of the 73-year acceptance of the effectiveness of the sixteenth amendment, to reject a claim similar to Thomas's.
The problem here is that the Supreme Court has ruled in the past that the duration of a wrong or injustice is irrelevant to whether it is an injustice. This part of their ruling is directly contrary to Supreme Court precedent. They are in effect saying, "The objections are minor and the law has been in effect for a long time. So there." But legally that doesn't wash.
"See also Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 83 L. Ed. 1385, 59 S. Ct. 972 (1939) (questions about ratification of amendments may be nonjusticiable). Secretary Knox declared that enough states had ratified the sixteenth amendment. The Secretary's decision is not transparently defective. We need not decide when, if ever, such a decision may be reviewed in order to know that Secretary Knox's decision is now beyond review."
Another breach of long-held legal principle: they say that the Secretary's decision is not "transparently" defective. But it doesn't have to be "transparently" defective in order to be legally defective. If everything legal had to also be "transparent", there would be no need for lawyers.
There are many valid objections to the 16th Amendment, other than just Benson, and other than just Ohio statehood. In fact there are so many problems with the ratification process, it is amazing that the Secretary declared it to be ratified at all.
"The difference is between a Fiat Currency and a Commodity Currency."
I understand this, but the point here is whether the judge made a sensible ruling, or not. And I think it's pretty clear that the answer is NOT.
Even the government does not have the power to label anything it wants to be a lawful US currency. (And I include here paper dollars, or any other fiat currency, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion.) Among the problems with that is: who is 'issuing' this currency? If it isn't the government, it isn't (under current law, no matter how unconstitutional that may be) legal United States currency. So whose currency is it?
The Government has the authority to set an exchange rate. What should that exchange rate be? The current grossly inflated market value, or its "intrinsic" value?
Etc. This whole thing is fraught with problems, and no doubt we'll see more of them crawl out of the woodwork if the government continues to recognize it as any kind of "official" currency.
And yes, I am aware that the Government has a history of forcing people to do things how it wants, whether that is right or wrong.
A very good example: the 16th Amendment, which has been used to justify Federal income tax, was never legally ratified. Before anybody argues: I am aware that it was declared to have been ratified, but by the end of the time limit it was still one state short of the minimum required.
So technically, Federal income tax is unconstitutional as hell. (And there are more reasons, other than just the ratification of the amendment, but I'd rather not get into those.)
But of course, try to tell that to all the people who have been put in jail for intentionally evading it, that it is an unconstitutional tax. I am sure they would find that to be small comfort.
Slashdot Mirror
"Depending on what your skill set is, and how much you are being paid where you currently are, 3X may be no problem. Wages tend to be significantly higher in the area."
But that was the point. The offers have been "generous" in terms of the U.S. average. But not proportional to the actual costs of living (well) there, compared to other places.
"They may have thought that you might not know the cost of living, and they could get you and sell you cheaply, and you'd hang on for the year required for their finder's fee to be non-refundable."
Exactly. When I've shown recruiters the math, they just moved on. Presumably to find some poor young soul who will swallow their (seemingly but actually not so) generous offer.
"I really have heard quite a few people espouse the belief that I had incorrectly mistaken for your actual point. Reply to This Share Flag as Inappropriate "
Not a problem. And I understand what you mean. I admit that I have developed a rather short trigger because I have very often here on Slashdot had people try to put words in my mouth, and some of those cases have been pretty darned egregious and offensive.
Case in point, in this very topic: I disagreed with somebody's Democrat propaganda (which is really what it was), so somebody else insulted me for being a Republican. When I explained that I don't vote Republican, he implied that I was too right-wing extreme to even be Republican. Neither of which is true, of course.
I'm just constantly amazed how when I disagree with somebody over what is factual, they have often assumed that I am an enemy or "on the other side". But that's just not how the real world works.
Hahahahahaha!
It's really hilarious that you think I'm right-wing at all.
Get off it, fella. Accept that you made a guess, and you were wrong.
Keep in mind: the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.
"... that sounds an awful lot like cows at a stockyard."
It's worse than that.
I've had A LOT of job opportunities in San Francisco. (I live far from there.) The cost of living there is significantly more than twice as high as it is here. (According to CNET's Cost of Living Calculator.) And that's not all... the "quality of life" is just plain different. Row houses with no yards, built an inch apart from each other. Lack of adequate opportunity for outdoor activities. Etc. I could go on for a while about how "quality of life" is just plain not as good there.
I keep telling recruiters that if they want me to move, it would have to be an improvement over what I can get here. So that means they'd have to pay me at least 3 times what I can make here, in order for it to be an actual step up.
They look at me like I'm crazy... but they're the ones who are crazy.
"Claiming that 4 or 8 years is the magic amount of time that all economic policy effects lag behind their enactments is every bit is flawed as direct correlation."
I didn't make that claim, so how could it be flawed. Give me a break. Read my comment in the context it was made.
Economic policies do not make a difference overnight. You many not see the all the good (or horrible) effects of BIG economic policy change fors years. I'm not saying 4 or 8 years is any kind of "magic" number. It just happens to be the amount of time those Presidents were in office. I could have said 3 or 9 but that wouldn't have made any sense, would it?
"I figured out why you vote Republican: it's because you use internal argumentation to arrive at conclusions instead of looking at reality. "
Well, since I have seldom if ever voted Republican in the last 20 years, that would make your conclusion a pretty big FAIL, wouldn't it?
"The point made by the qualifier "when I actively log in." If someone wants an internet that is being manipulated by third parties, they can always uniquely identify themselves (by logging in, turning on cookies, etc.)."
That doesn't make any sense in the context of the posts I was replying to:
1. "They're just afraid of losing their revenue. Cowards."
2. "No, they are also afraid of us getting a less diverse Internet experience. "
While you may have a good point, that does not in fact seem to be what the poster was saying.
"Indeed. They are utterly unaware of just how much bandwidth individual streams take up for their services -> and just how obnoxious they are acting (from IT's point of view, repeatedly restreaming, as opposed to downloading once and replaying from a local copy, of a video, is the epitome of stupidity; it's unnecessary, costly traffic)."
They are not unaware. They are VERY aware. Netflix streaming at times makes up of 30% of all internet traffic in the US.
So why don't they do something about it? Because they don't want to. Paid streaming is their control mechanism of choice. That's why they consider BitTorrent to be the enemy. It isn't so much about copying. They aren't stupid; they know downloading does not really hurt their business significantly... all the studies have shown that for 13 years now. It's about controlling what you watch. Only that way can they control your pocketbook.
"The opposite is literally true. "
No[me] it[me] isn't[me].
Correlating the reign of Presidents with economic activity at the time of their Presidency does not show any cause-and-effect. The analysis is fatally flawed on its very face.
The only way you can judge Presidents is how the economy fares AFTER their 4 or 8 years in office. Which means, as often as not, how it does when their political rivals are in office.
Spare me the overly-simplistic bullshit rhetoric. It's provably nonsense.
"Oh, screw you. How were we supposed to know he was going to pull this crap..."
Are you F***ing serious? He had just been pulling the same bullshit for 4 years. You had 4 years (now 5) to figure out that he was doing all this. We knew. Why didn't you? It isn't like we weren't screaming about it to the heavens for years, eh? Oh, wait... yes, we were. We know more about the specifics now. But big deal. We did see it coming and we did warn you, loudly, for a long time.
"... and how would voting for the other asshole have been any better?"
And as someone else already pointed out, there have always been more than 2 choices. And some of them were actually pretty decent choices. If, that is, you did your own research and did not listen to all the media's attempts to marginalize them.
"No, they are also afraid of us getting a less diverse Internet experience.
The only time I want your "internet" to differ from mine is when I actively log in."
What kind of nonsense is this?
The only difference here is whether somebody accepts cookies or not in their own browser. It's kind of like choosing which sources of email are spam and which are not. YOU get to choose.
Frankly, I have never once heard any of the advertisers credibly argue that they want either "diversity" or "conformity". What they want is to control what you see in your own home.
The internet is NOT about me having "the same experience" as you. It's about me having the freedom to do what the hell I want. If YOU want to see the same things, including all the same ads, as everybody else, then you can choose that. But stay the hell out of MY computer!
But that isn't really it, either. In fact, we have proof that this isn't about "having the same experience" at all. It's about information gathering and targeted ads. Blocking the cookies means they don't get to make your experience different from everybody else's.
I imagine that if you played Chutes 'n' Ladders competitively, for time, you would get sharper in some ways, too.
It's all relative. Why did they study Starcraft, rather than Warcraft? (Or Everquest II, or...)
I'll add to that:
The "content" companies created this situation themselves. They don't want people recording (even for legal timeshifting purposes). They want people to stream (which is terribly inefficient) or rent, or otherwise pay royalties. Even on TV shows.
Well, this is what they get as a result. They have nobody to point fingers at but themselves. The hell with them.
And the really shitty part is: they'll complain that this is yet more evidence that people are dishonest. When in reality, it's only more evidence that trying to lock people in to their corporate bullshit profit-and-power-mongering has consequences.
"There would be no need to pirate it if everyone knew that it would be on TV. How many knew that this was the case?"
Then there is that other issue, for which people used to use their VCRs. It's called "Time Shifting". Which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled was legal...
BUT almost nobody records on tape anymore. And most DVRs are, sadly for everybody, linked to a particular service.
So what "time shifting" option do they have these days? Unless it's something on Netflix, It's called BitTorrent...
"Human study of this phenomenon is still in its infancy. We didn't really have the tools to observe it in the past - what's to say this isn't anything "special" at all, and that this type of event has naturally occurred many times in the past and in the same manner?"
But that's the whole point. What's to say it IS special? Frankly, nothing. 2002 was not a particularly warm year (it was slightly cooler than it had been 4 years before). We have nothing at all to show that this has any significance. But there are certainly some people out there who want you to think it is. (Hint: the same people who tried to blame Kilimanjaro's loss of snowcap on "global warming". But we have actually known conclusively for 2 decades that simply isn't so.)
The point was: some are larger, some are smaller. Remember that 2002 was cooler than 1998... again probably not very significant. We just have no real evidence that the timing of this particular calving has ANY special significance.
"Is useful to predict what will happen maybe soon if there are big ice shelves in similar conditions?"
This sort of thing happens all the time. It's a natural process, and the basic process hasn't changed in recorded history.
This is a bit oversimplified, but snow is deposited on top. It builds up, and gets heavy. Gradually the snow and ice migrate sideways, pushing outward. This is also (besides gravity) what moves glaciers.
So pieces are always breaking off the edges. The 2002 incident might have been one of the larger ones, but in the overall scheme of things is nothing very special.
I think somebody missed the point. So what if it's "marketing"? IF THIS WERE NOT A PROBLEM, THERE WOULD BE NO "MARKETING" POINT TO SELL.
I mean, sheesh, people. Talk about missing the forest for the trees.
"I'm not sure if I would classify that as "his site". He's one of many bloggers. His site, only seems to block 2 cookies (using ghostery), and they are twitter and wordpress stats."
He blogs there, it's his site. There is no reason to split hairs. He is famous enough, he can blog wherever he damned well pleases, and he pleases to do it on Boing Boing. So it's "his site". Or where he chooses to blog.
Having said that, there are at least 7 javascript libraries on the site, 2 that appear on Ghostery, that are potential trackers, and some of them are definitely trackers.
And yes, hypocrisy applies here.
"How does history show that it was specifically because of copyright and not for a myriad of other reasons?"
I'm not claiming that it was the cause. Just that there is a correlation.
"This is just playing a semantic game. It was declared ratified by the Secretary of State. The declaration has been confirmed on multiple occasions by the courts. That's what DEFINES ratified."
Bullshit. The Constitution defines "ratified".
If the conditions layed out in the Constitution were not met (and they were not met), then it wasn't ratified. Period.
And you should look up some history about just how important the courts are in these matters. Hint: not very. Try, for example, reading James Madison's Report of 1800 before the Virginia legislature. In it, he explains very clearly how the Federal government (including the Supreme Court) was never given the power to decide what its own powers should be... and that it is up to the States to be the ultimate arbiters of Constitutionality, when the Federal government may have overstepped its bounds.
In Madison's words:
"On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve."
His logic is perfect.
But even if that were not so, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals violated several important legal principles in its ruling. Quote:
"In United States v. Foster, 789 F.2d. 457, 462-463, n.6 (7th Cir. 1986), we relied on ... the inconsequential nature of the objections in the face of the 73-year acceptance of the effectiveness of the sixteenth amendment, to reject a claim similar to Thomas's.
The problem here is that the Supreme Court has ruled in the past that the duration of a wrong or injustice is irrelevant to whether it is an injustice. This part of their ruling is directly contrary to Supreme Court precedent. They are in effect saying, "The objections are minor and the law has been in effect for a long time. So there." But legally that doesn't wash.
"See also Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 83 L. Ed. 1385, 59 S. Ct. 972 (1939) (questions about ratification of amendments may be nonjusticiable). Secretary Knox declared that enough states had ratified the sixteenth amendment. The Secretary's decision is not transparently defective. We need not decide when, if ever, such a decision may be reviewed in order to know that Secretary Knox's decision is now beyond review."
Another breach of long-held legal principle: they say that the Secretary's decision is not "transparently" defective. But it doesn't have to be "transparently" defective in order to be legally defective. If everything legal had to also be "transparent", there would be no need for lawyers.
There are many valid objections to the 16th Amendment, other than just Benson, and other than just Ohio statehood. In fact there are so many problems with the ratification process, it is amazing that the Secretary declared it to be ratified at all.
"Or because 5400 rpm drives are much cheaper to produce, not requiring nearly as stringent tolerance levels as 7200/10k/15k rpm drives?"
Besides... according to OP this is on "most computers". What if you are a developer, or edit video for a living?
Looks to me like Seagate is going to give up that market to WD and others.
"The difference is between a Fiat Currency and a Commodity Currency."
I understand this, but the point here is whether the judge made a sensible ruling, or not. And I think it's pretty clear that the answer is NOT.
Even the government does not have the power to label anything it wants to be a lawful US currency. (And I include here paper dollars, or any other fiat currency, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion.) Among the problems with that is: who is 'issuing' this currency? If it isn't the government, it isn't (under current law, no matter how unconstitutional that may be) legal United States currency. So whose currency is it?
The Government has the authority to set an exchange rate. What should that exchange rate be? The current grossly inflated market value, or its "intrinsic" value?
Etc. This whole thing is fraught with problems, and no doubt we'll see more of them crawl out of the woodwork if the government continues to recognize it as any kind of "official" currency.
And yes, I am aware that the Government has a history of forcing people to do things how it wants, whether that is right or wrong.
A very good example: the 16th Amendment, which has been used to justify Federal income tax, was never legally ratified. Before anybody argues: I am aware that it was declared to have been ratified, but by the end of the time limit it was still one state short of the minimum required.
So technically, Federal income tax is unconstitutional as hell. (And there are more reasons, other than just the ratification of the amendment, but I'd rather not get into those.)
But of course, try to tell that to all the people who have been put in jail for intentionally evading it, that it is an unconstitutional tax. I am sure they would find that to be small comfort.
"Your logic and his logic regarding that particular part of the Constitution is pretty solid. So that may be true, but it doesn't matter!"
Yay! You got it right after all.
I didn't say the government was following the Constitution. Only that logically, that's the only Constitutional route.