OK, so we have a high of 16% in fourth quarter of 2007 and a low of 9% in the fourth quarter of 2010. Leaving aside that neither here nor in the linked story does it say precent of what, we still have the question of what happened between 2007 and 2010. The article concludes that it must be because of the shutdown of Limewire in the 3rd quarter of 2010. I might buy that if the high point had been the fourth quarter of 2009 or if they presented numbers showing a large drop between the third quarter of 2010 and the fourth quarter of 2010. Since the large drop they show me is between fourth quarter of 2007 and fourth quarter of 2010, I conclude that if we had the numbers in between we would see a steady downward trend, which would not support the conclusion they wish me to accept.
So, basically, you didn't answer my questions. You apparently have never seen what happens in a job situation where one person out of 10-20 is a malcontent. I have known people who were on and off of government assistance. A significant number of them were lazy, dishonest and unreliable. Nothing was ever their fault. Others were hard workers who had received some bad breaks (whether because of bad luck or one or two bad decisions at the wrong time). I worked for a company that hired a lot of otherwise unemployable people. Their workforce could be divided into two groups: management/skilled labor, unskilled labor. For the unskilled labor position they were willing to hire anybody who came through the door when they had an open position. It was hard work, for little pay. The unskilled labor fell into three categories. 1. people who worked hard for a short while before using the recommendation of the bosses to get a better job. 2. people who worked there for the rest of their life because no place else would tolerate their idiosyncrasies (one was a barely functional alcoholic who only bathed/washed his clothes because the boss insisted that he do so). 3. people who continued their bad work habits and either stopped showing up after a short while or were fired for not getting the work done.
BTW, Hoover Dam was not built by the WPA. Hoover Dam was built by a joint venture formed by six companies for the purpose of bidding on the job. One of those companies is now the Bechtel Corporation. I think from your earlier comments that you would call that corporate welfare.
I don' t think your solution is any more realistic than mine. What happens if they don't show up for work? Or if they do show up, but don't work? Or work in ways contrary to instructions? Or...? You get my point. I like the idea, I just don't think it would work. There are several reasons. The first is what I am pointing out with those questions. There is a reason why people are not gainfully employed. That reason is not always the fault of the individual, but it often is.
Another problem with the idea is this, if these things are really going to make these people productive, aren't there already people doing them? If so, what happens to them when you start having a bunch of people doing the same thing rather than being on welfare? If not, why not?
As I said, I like the idea, but I think the problems with it would cause it to be unsuccessful. The details as to why I think it would be unsuccessful would require a more in depth discussion than this forum allows. However, it is the right sort of answer to social problems.
Not all research is academic. I with a large number of research scientists, very few of them are doing anything academic. This particular security researcher is someone who makes his living by providing his skills to companies and other organizations in return for money. He researches security risks and ways to compromise computer systems and develops tools to combat them (my interpretation of the information on his business website). The overlap between what he does as a security researcher and what a cyber investigator would do is significant. Additionally, the link you posted mentions that he works at a university, suggesting that he may indeed do quite a bit of academic research. There is no evidence in any of the articles that have been brought forward so far that he is in any way employed by a law enforcement agency.
The simplest explanation of the facts as we know them is that he really is a security researcher who in the course of his research came across a video of someone hacking into a hospital computer system and reported it to the FBI. I am not sure why the idea that a private citizen might feel it is their public duty to report crimes they come across is so difficult for you to get your head around.
I will qualify my initial statement taking money from productive people and/or corporations through taxation and giving it to non-productive people and/or corporations through government expenditures does not work. The best way to improve the economy is to reduce the power of politicians and bureaucrats.
Either you were not alive for the 70s and 80s, or you lived in a different world than I do. What has been shown not to work is taking money from productive people through taxes and giving it to non-productive people through government expenditures.
When the Senators in question (or other legislators) introduce a bill to make this app illegal, then is the time to get angry and up in arms. On the other hand, if you disagree with these Senators, it is perfectly acceptable to express that, just don't go overboard and accuse them of "censorship" until they actually start to try and censor.
All you need to do to understand my distaste for the NYT is look at its history of inaccuracy. You might want to start with the Pulitzer Prize a NYT writer got for a series of articles "debunking" the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s and going forward from there including such wonderful reporting as minimizing reporting on the Holocaust and Jayson Blair getting promoted for making up stories (until he got caught by someone outside of the NYT, when they fired him).
Personally, my attitude is that I favor those who favor individual rights vs opposing those who favor group rights/greater government power (both NPR and the NYT do the latter).
If you are asked if you are asked if you were ever arrested and you truthfully answer yes and the employer does not offer you the job, you may have grounds for a lawsuit for discrimination. I have worked as the hiring manager for several companies and they all had a list of questions that we were forbidden to ask prospective employees. That was one of them.
The only enforcement I am aware of for employers asking questions they are not allowed are lawsuits. However, most companies of any significant size are very careful to cross their t's and dot their i's to avoid as many lawsuits as possible. Even if an employer wins a discrimination lawsuit, it is expensive and a PR hit, so most do everything they can to avoid there being enough grounds for a lawyer to hope to get a settlement.
You do realize that the NYT has been bleeding subscribers at a steady rate since before the advent of the Internet, right? I will admit that there are a lot of people who believe what they read in the NYT, although considering their history, I have to wonder why.
Paywalls only work when there is something of value behind them. Since this particular paywall only has NYT content behind it, it is unlikely to succeed.
It is illegal in the U.S. to ask if someone has been arrested. Any large company that asks if you have been arrested has a bad HR department and is probably one you don't want to work for. It is also setting itself up for a lawsuit.
P.S. The deficit isn't the problem. The deficit is the symptom of an economy which hasn't recovered for the middle and lower class. A lack of decent jobs is the problem.
Considering that technically we have had a deficit my entire lifetime (no, the budget was not balanced under Clinton, if you look, you will see that Federal debt increased every year under Clinton, which means that the Federal Government was spending more than it took in, even when they claimed a "balanced budget"), your diagnosis is also incorrect. The problem is that Congress spends too much. Historically, Federal Governemnt tax revenues have very consistently maintained between 18-19% of GDP, while Congress has spent between 20-21% of GDP. However, in the last few years, spending has increased to around 25% of GDP, making the problem worse. Basically, the problem is that in bad times, Congress is afraid to not continue increasing spending because they are afraid that will cause the times to get even worse and in good times they see no reason not to increase spending.
However, the deficit is not the problem, the problem is Congress spending too much money. Unfortunately, if Congress does not soon address the problem, the deficit will become a problem in its own right.
Personally, I have no problems with the Senators calling for this app to be removed, as long as they do not threaten to pass some law about it. The existence of this app is no business of the Federal Government. If the Senators want to express their personal opinion that this app is a bad idea, that is their right.
There is good reason to disagree with your example as well. The biggest problem with your argument is that unilateral government spending started immediately and yet the economy did not recover until the late 1930s. There had been other depressions which were significantly shorter with no unilateral government spending. Ultimately, it is very hard to make a good argument about causes and solutions to the Great Depression because the various economic factors were so complicated. You had the stock market crash of 1929, the effects of which were almost recovered from when the drought hit the U.S. midwest in the spring of 1930, exacerbated by various bad polciy decisions by various governments throughout the world (such as Great Britain's decision to return to the Gold Standard at pre-WWI parities).
Overall, it is not clear what actually caused the Great Depression, nor what lead to its end. I do, however, think that our current economic situation lends weight to the Austrian School of Economics theory about the cause of the Great Depression (the Federal Reserve overinflating the money supply throughout the 1920s). I think determining what to do about such an economic downturn once it happens is much more complicated. While I think the correct solution is the exact opposite of what you think it is, I think it is much too complicated to effectively argue either side in a forum such as this.
Basically, the reason you do not see much further work with experiments like this is because the assumptions behind it were badly flawed. The early atmosphere of the earth is no longer considered to have been composed of the chemicals in the proportions that were assumed (and used) for this experiment. Additionally, amino acids are no longer considered to be the precursor building blocks to life. That role is now believed to belong to RNA. These two facts make this experiment merely an interesting footnote and not the groundbreaking study it was viewed as at the time (and is sometimes still presented as).
As someone else pointed out, you turn nine years old exactly nine years after you are born when you enter your tenth year. You do not enter your second decade until you enter your eleventh year.
No, he was not "in his ninth decade", until the moment after he turned 80. You are "in your first year" the moment after you are born. That lasts until one year later, when you turn one year old. You are, also, "in your first decade" the moment after you are born. That lasts for ten years, until you turn 10 years old, at which point you enter your second decade.
You are probably right, but I just don't understand why there is not some company that is hungry enough to build and market something like the device you described. $250 is more than I would pay for what I envision as a netbook, but if someone started building and selling them at $250 it would not be long until either they or someone else had one at around $200. I agree that the screens should be 7-9". I don't care if it has a spinning disk drive or a solid state drive (actually, I would like to see some models with each).
Sorry, your example is a failure. The White Citizens Councils failed to prolong the oppression of blacks that up until that time had been done by government regulation. If you do a study of economics, you will discover that segregation (and the oppression of blacks that went along with it) only still existed in the 1950s because of government regulation mandating it. (You probably think Jackie Robinson was the first black major league player, when in fact in 1884, Moses and Welday Walker played in the American Association--a major league of the time) Economics had gone a long way towards eliminating segregation in the U.S. until Woodrow Wilson gave it new life by using the power of the Federal government to institute segregation in areas where it had already gone away.
Please try again using an example where a wealthy group actually successfully used their money to destroy a less wealthy group.
The problem with yor example is that I can easily distinguish between the seriousness of the two cases you listed simply by looking at the printed words with no need to try and determine which of the two sounds more stressed. If that is the type of distinction this system is designed to interpret, it is a waste of time.
Let's use another example, a mother calling in about a car accident in which her child is involved and an EMT calling in about the same accident. If you did not know any facts about either one of these callers, which do you think your neural net would process as calling about the more urgent situation? Especially if the child was injured, but not in a life threatening way?
The ultra rich will attempt to dominate and control any institution or group that they feel has any power over them.
This quote is the heart of the problem. I have no interest in having power over anyone else (whether they be ultra rich or otherwise). Additionally, I have no interest in someone else having power over me. Any institution or group that has power over the ultra rich has that much more power over me.
As to the rich all favoring deregulation, the Kennedys are wealthy, yet they favor increased government regulation. George Soros is wealthy, yet he is a strong proponent of government regulation, spending billions of dollars bankrolling organizations that campaign for increased government regulation in all sorts of areas. The wealthiest counties in the U.S. consistently vote for politicians who favor increased government regulation.
You are the one who appears to worship power and hierarchy. You repeatedly express the belief that if we can just set up the right system of rules and regulations, we can change human nature and create an orderly utopia.
The article does describe what they measure to determine stress. "The algorithm measures parameters such as the speed at which the caller is speaking, rises and falls in the pitch and tone of their voice, and their rate of breathing."
Leaving that aside, when I am in a situation where I have a course of action that will adress the problem with what I consider a high probability of success I have little or no stress (this often results in my wife freaking out at me because she thinks I am not taking the situation seriously enough). Of course, if the emergency dispatch operator were to communicate to me that the lack of stress in my voice lead them to believe the situation was not urgent when I felt it was, the stress in my voice would ratchet up rapidly (as happens when people around me do not respond appropriately to an emergency situation..either because I am trying to get them to follow my directions to keep the situation controlled or because I am trying to get them to calm down/get out of the way of those who are dealing with the situation).
The difference being, netbooks were cheap. iPads are not. Android tablets might be; we'll see.
That was sort of my point. Manufacturers tried to get people to pay a lot of money for highly portable devices with limited functionality (netbooks for over $400). Apple got people to do so. Personally, I thought it was obvious that manufacturers did not understand the netbook market when they started selling "netbooks" for more than $300.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so we have a high of 16% in fourth quarter of 2007 and a low of 9% in the fourth quarter of 2010. Leaving aside that neither here nor in the linked story does it say precent of what, we still have the question of what happened between 2007 and 2010. The article concludes that it must be because of the shutdown of Limewire in the 3rd quarter of 2010. I might buy that if the high point had been the fourth quarter of 2009 or if they presented numbers showing a large drop between the third quarter of 2010 and the fourth quarter of 2010. Since the large drop they show me is between fourth quarter of 2007 and fourth quarter of 2010, I conclude that if we had the numbers in between we would see a steady downward trend, which would not support the conclusion they wish me to accept.
I'm saying that politicians would say that the ways that the "stimulus" bill of 2009 worked was similar to the way that building Hoover Dam worked.
Where do you get 12 months from?
From the poster he was replying to, who said that he thought citizenship should take 12 months.
So, basically, you didn't answer my questions. You apparently have never seen what happens in a job situation where one person out of 10-20 is a malcontent. I have known people who were on and off of government assistance. A significant number of them were lazy, dishonest and unreliable. Nothing was ever their fault. Others were hard workers who had received some bad breaks (whether because of bad luck or one or two bad decisions at the wrong time). I worked for a company that hired a lot of otherwise unemployable people. Their workforce could be divided into two groups: management/skilled labor, unskilled labor. For the unskilled labor position they were willing to hire anybody who came through the door when they had an open position. It was hard work, for little pay. The unskilled labor fell into three categories. 1. people who worked hard for a short while before using the recommendation of the bosses to get a better job. 2. people who worked there for the rest of their life because no place else would tolerate their idiosyncrasies (one was a barely functional alcoholic who only bathed/washed his clothes because the boss insisted that he do so). 3. people who continued their bad work habits and either stopped showing up after a short while or were fired for not getting the work done.
BTW, Hoover Dam was not built by the WPA. Hoover Dam was built by a joint venture formed by six companies for the purpose of bidding on the job. One of those companies is now the Bechtel Corporation. I think from your earlier comments that you would call that corporate welfare.
I don' t think your solution is any more realistic than mine. What happens if they don't show up for work? Or if they do show up, but don't work? Or work in ways contrary to instructions? Or...? You get my point. I like the idea, I just don't think it would work. There are several reasons. The first is what I am pointing out with those questions. There is a reason why people are not gainfully employed. That reason is not always the fault of the individual, but it often is.
Another problem with the idea is this, if these things are really going to make these people productive, aren't there already people doing them? If so, what happens to them when you start having a bunch of people doing the same thing rather than being on welfare? If not, why not?
As I said, I like the idea, but I think the problems with it would cause it to be unsuccessful. The details as to why I think it would be unsuccessful would require a more in depth discussion than this forum allows. However, it is the right sort of answer to social problems.
Not all research is academic. I with a large number of research scientists, very few of them are doing anything academic. This particular security researcher is someone who makes his living by providing his skills to companies and other organizations in return for money. He researches security risks and ways to compromise computer systems and develops tools to combat them (my interpretation of the information on his business website). The overlap between what he does as a security researcher and what a cyber investigator would do is significant. Additionally, the link you posted mentions that he works at a university, suggesting that he may indeed do quite a bit of academic research. There is no evidence in any of the articles that have been brought forward so far that he is in any way employed by a law enforcement agency.
The simplest explanation of the facts as we know them is that he really is a security researcher who in the course of his research came across a video of someone hacking into a hospital computer system and reported it to the FBI. I am not sure why the idea that a private citizen might feel it is their public duty to report crimes they come across is so difficult for you to get your head around.
I will qualify my initial statement taking money from productive people and/or corporations through taxation and giving it to non-productive people and/or corporations through government expenditures does not work. The best way to improve the economy is to reduce the power of politicians and bureaucrats.
Either you were not alive for the 70s and 80s, or you lived in a different world than I do. What has been shown not to work is taking money from productive people through taxes and giving it to non-productive people through government expenditures.
When the Senators in question (or other legislators) introduce a bill to make this app illegal, then is the time to get angry and up in arms. On the other hand, if you disagree with these Senators, it is perfectly acceptable to express that, just don't go overboard and accuse them of "censorship" until they actually start to try and censor.
All you need to do to understand my distaste for the NYT is look at its history of inaccuracy. You might want to start with the Pulitzer Prize a NYT writer got for a series of articles "debunking" the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s and going forward from there including such wonderful reporting as minimizing reporting on the Holocaust and Jayson Blair getting promoted for making up stories (until he got caught by someone outside of the NYT, when they fired him).
Personally, my attitude is that I favor those who favor individual rights vs opposing those who favor group rights/greater government power (both NPR and the NYT do the latter).
If you are asked if you are asked if you were ever arrested and you truthfully answer yes and the employer does not offer you the job, you may have grounds for a lawsuit for discrimination. I have worked as the hiring manager for several companies and they all had a list of questions that we were forbidden to ask prospective employees. That was one of them.
The only enforcement I am aware of for employers asking questions they are not allowed are lawsuits. However, most companies of any significant size are very careful to cross their t's and dot their i's to avoid as many lawsuits as possible. Even if an employer wins a discrimination lawsuit, it is expensive and a PR hit, so most do everything they can to avoid there being enough grounds for a lawyer to hope to get a settlement.
You do realize that the NYT has been bleeding subscribers at a steady rate since before the advent of the Internet, right? I will admit that there are a lot of people who believe what they read in the NYT, although considering their history, I have to wonder why.
Paywalls only work when there is something of value behind them. Since this particular paywall only has NYT content behind it, it is unlikely to succeed.
It is illegal in the U.S. to ask if someone has been arrested. Any large company that asks if you have been arrested has a bad HR department and is probably one you don't want to work for. It is also setting itself up for a lawsuit.
P.S. The deficit isn't the problem. The deficit is the symptom of an economy which hasn't recovered for the middle and lower class. A lack of decent jobs is the problem.
Considering that technically we have had a deficit my entire lifetime (no, the budget was not balanced under Clinton, if you look, you will see that Federal debt increased every year under Clinton, which means that the Federal Government was spending more than it took in, even when they claimed a "balanced budget"), your diagnosis is also incorrect. The problem is that Congress spends too much. Historically, Federal Governemnt tax revenues have very consistently maintained between 18-19% of GDP, while Congress has spent between 20-21% of GDP. However, in the last few years, spending has increased to around 25% of GDP, making the problem worse. Basically, the problem is that in bad times, Congress is afraid to not continue increasing spending because they are afraid that will cause the times to get even worse and in good times they see no reason not to increase spending.
However, the deficit is not the problem, the problem is Congress spending too much money. Unfortunately, if Congress does not soon address the problem, the deficit will become a problem in its own right.
Personally, I have no problems with the Senators calling for this app to be removed, as long as they do not threaten to pass some law about it. The existence of this app is no business of the Federal Government. If the Senators want to express their personal opinion that this app is a bad idea, that is their right.
There is good reason to disagree with your example as well. The biggest problem with your argument is that unilateral government spending started immediately and yet the economy did not recover until the late 1930s. There had been other depressions which were significantly shorter with no unilateral government spending. Ultimately, it is very hard to make a good argument about causes and solutions to the Great Depression because the various economic factors were so complicated. You had the stock market crash of 1929, the effects of which were almost recovered from when the drought hit the U.S. midwest in the spring of 1930, exacerbated by various bad polciy decisions by various governments throughout the world (such as Great Britain's decision to return to the Gold Standard at pre-WWI parities).
Overall, it is not clear what actually caused the Great Depression, nor what lead to its end. I do, however, think that our current economic situation lends weight to the Austrian School of Economics theory about the cause of the Great Depression (the Federal Reserve overinflating the money supply throughout the 1920s). I think determining what to do about such an economic downturn once it happens is much more complicated. While I think the correct solution is the exact opposite of what you think it is, I think it is much too complicated to effectively argue either side in a forum such as this.
Basically, the reason you do not see much further work with experiments like this is because the assumptions behind it were badly flawed. The early atmosphere of the earth is no longer considered to have been composed of the chemicals in the proportions that were assumed (and used) for this experiment. Additionally, amino acids are no longer considered to be the precursor building blocks to life. That role is now believed to belong to RNA. These two facts make this experiment merely an interesting footnote and not the groundbreaking study it was viewed as at the time (and is sometimes still presented as).
As someone else pointed out, you turn nine years old exactly nine years after you are born when you enter your tenth year. You do not enter your second decade until you enter your eleventh year.
No, he was not "in his ninth decade", until the moment after he turned 80. You are "in your first year" the moment after you are born. That lasts until one year later, when you turn one year old. You are, also, "in your first decade" the moment after you are born. That lasts for ten years, until you turn 10 years old, at which point you enter your second decade.
You are probably right, but I just don't understand why there is not some company that is hungry enough to build and market something like the device you described. $250 is more than I would pay for what I envision as a netbook, but if someone started building and selling them at $250 it would not be long until either they or someone else had one at around $200. I agree that the screens should be 7-9". I don't care if it has a spinning disk drive or a solid state drive (actually, I would like to see some models with each).
Sorry, your example is a failure. The White Citizens Councils failed to prolong the oppression of blacks that up until that time had been done by government regulation. If you do a study of economics, you will discover that segregation (and the oppression of blacks that went along with it) only still existed in the 1950s because of government regulation mandating it. (You probably think Jackie Robinson was the first black major league player, when in fact in 1884, Moses and Welday Walker played in the American Association--a major league of the time) Economics had gone a long way towards eliminating segregation in the U.S. until Woodrow Wilson gave it new life by using the power of the Federal government to institute segregation in areas where it had already gone away.
Please try again using an example where a wealthy group actually successfully used their money to destroy a less wealthy group.
The problem with yor example is that I can easily distinguish between the seriousness of the two cases you listed simply by looking at the printed words with no need to try and determine which of the two sounds more stressed. If that is the type of distinction this system is designed to interpret, it is a waste of time.
Let's use another example, a mother calling in about a car accident in which her child is involved and an EMT calling in about the same accident. If you did not know any facts about either one of these callers, which do you think your neural net would process as calling about the more urgent situation? Especially if the child was injured, but not in a life threatening way?
The ultra rich will attempt to dominate and control any institution or group that they feel has any power over them.
This quote is the heart of the problem. I have no interest in having power over anyone else (whether they be ultra rich or otherwise). Additionally, I have no interest in someone else having power over me. Any institution or group that has power over the ultra rich has that much more power over me.
As to the rich all favoring deregulation, the Kennedys are wealthy, yet they favor increased government regulation. George Soros is wealthy, yet he is a strong proponent of government regulation, spending billions of dollars bankrolling organizations that campaign for increased government regulation in all sorts of areas. The wealthiest counties in the U.S. consistently vote for politicians who favor increased government regulation.
You are the one who appears to worship power and hierarchy. You repeatedly express the belief that if we can just set up the right system of rules and regulations, we can change human nature and create an orderly utopia.
The article does describe what they measure to determine stress. "The algorithm measures parameters such as the speed at which the caller is speaking, rises and falls in the pitch and tone of their voice, and their rate of breathing."
Leaving that aside, when I am in a situation where I have a course of action that will adress the problem with what I consider a high probability of success I have little or no stress (this often results in my wife freaking out at me because she thinks I am not taking the situation seriously enough). Of course, if the emergency dispatch operator were to communicate to me that the lack of stress in my voice lead them to believe the situation was not urgent when I felt it was, the stress in my voice would ratchet up rapidly (as happens when people around me do not respond appropriately to an emergency situation..either because I am trying to get them to follow my directions to keep the situation controlled or because I am trying to get them to calm down/get out of the way of those who are dealing with the situation).
The difference being, netbooks were cheap. iPads are not. Android tablets might be; we'll see.
That was sort of my point. Manufacturers tried to get people to pay a lot of money for highly portable devices with limited functionality (netbooks for over $400). Apple got people to do so. Personally, I thought it was obvious that manufacturers did not understand the netbook market when they started selling "netbooks" for more than $300.