Coke at one point in time had cocaine in it. It caused headache's in many people and the FDA forced them to take it out and reformulate. It maintained the name and the same great taste though. The headaches were completely irrelevant. The FDA forced Coca Cola (and many other companies)to take cocaine out their product when cocaine became a controlled substance. Cocaine did not become a controlled substance because of headaches.
I don't have a mentor. I have a supervisor, if I can't do my job to the satisfaction of my supervisor, I will be looking for work. Some companies assign an experienced employee at the same level as the new hire as the new hire's mentor, but such arrangements usually only last for a couple of months.
So, how much do you pay that mentor? BTW the various sites (government programs and university sites) I looked up to get information referred to the payment given for post-doc fellowships as stipends. If you don't think that is enough money, why don't you leave Academia?
But you see, that is not a salary, it is a stipend. In addition to this stipend, these people are students, they are receiving an education. Looking at the tuition rates for UC this amounts to close to another $20,000 a year. The stipend combined with the tuition comes to in excess of $60,000 a year. That puts them in the top 20% of incomes in the US.
I said "academic" which is where the VAST MAJORITY of researchers work.
In academic institutions, a technician with a BS will usually make as much or more than a post-doc with a PhD.
And to clarify, I am talking biomedical research here. You are contradicting yourself. If a BS is making more than a post-doc, than obviously the post-doc is working for something besides money. If the post-doc wanted more money more than whatever else they are getting, they would either leave Academia and go to work for companies like mine (we are also in biomedical research and would hire 2 to 6 more scientists--current total staff of about 50, if we could find ones that met the qualifications we are looking for), or they would take the technician job in place of the BS.
The point is you used the salary of post-docs in an academic institution of evidence that they are not valued in our society. My response is that they are valued but choose rewards besides money because if they valued money more, they could leave Academia and receive a much higher salary. I know of two other companies in our metropolitan area who hire people with the same qualifications for similar salaries (people have left us to go to them, we have hired people away from them--the reasons for the switch usually being personality conflicts or geography). There are eight to ten additional companies that do similar enough work that I am sure they hire people with similar qualifications.
I work IT for a for profit research laboratory. We hire Lab Technicians with a BS at about $45,000 a year. When we hire PhD's it is for significantly more (although we haven't hired a new PhD since I started there, so I don't know what the going rate is for our post doc's). So those post doc's making less than $32,000 a year are either working at the wrong place or in the wrong field.
Suggestions even 5 years ago that Xbox would beat or rival Sony and Nintendo in the console market was unheard of, the point being, that Microsoft has a 'monopoly' on a large and diverse business and consumer userbase. When the Xbox was announced, every review I saw said that no matter how bad the initial version is, look 5 to 10 years down the road and this will be the dominant player. The fact that the Xbox is not clearly beating the other players is what is contrary to the predictions I saw.
That's all fine and good but I want to know when we are going to get a candidate who will let settled law be. If the SCOTUS has already decided on the issue then why does it need to be brought up in EVERY election? You know it is time that we as a country start to move forward. As much as things change they stay the same. This R v W is an OLD issue. Don't we have other things that need deciding as well? The right to own slaves was "settled law" for a lot longer than the right to abortion has been, so I guess all of those abolitionists should have just shut up and moved on?
The thing that pro abortionists don't seem to understand is that those who oppose abortion, generally, consider abortion to be killing a human being. They believe that the rights enumerated in the Constitution apply to those humans that are not yet born as well.
You can take different points of view, but to say that "it's settled law" and say they should just accept it is hypocritical unless you think that abolitionists were in the wrong as well.
So you want the police to have the power to harass people because they think that maybe they did something that in some circumstances is dangerous? I want the police to enforce the law, not farm it out to some automated system that might get it wrong.
That is what you have traffic cops for, so that you know that the person who you are charging with a traffic offense was the person who was driving the car.
It generally doesn't happen overnight, or all at once. A certain paperhanger and his minions didn't transform Germany in one fell swoop -- it was done gradually, eroding the rights and privacies of the people little by little, step by step, always under the guise of it being for their own good or protection from bad guys. I'm not necessarily making a direct comparison here.....I'm just saying.... Actually, it was pretty close to overnight. The Weimar Republic was never very well supported by the German people. Hitler was appointed Chancellor on January 30, 1933, and his government suspended civil rights on February 28, 1933. The Nazi's got 37% of the vote in November 1932 and those who didn't know what Hitler intended weren't paying attention. The only reason Hindenburg agreed to appoint Hitler Chancellor was because he thought that Hitler could be controlled.
You are both wrong (although the first poster is closer), the courts ordered that they be released. The rulings were made in the early to mid 70's. The courts ruled that it was unconstitutional to institutionalize people against their will unless they were a demonstrable danger to society (even if the individual was incapable of taking care of themselves). By the late 70's/early 80's, when the outcome of these rulings became apparent (that most of those individuals who had been institutionalized couldn't take care of themselves), the activists who had led the charge to eliminate the institutions were surprised to discover that the average American wasn't willing to pay them to take care of these people (the average American thought that the institutions were a cost effective method that needed to have the abuses corrected).
I didn't say that a band needs to be on a record label. I actually don't think that the record labels bring that much to the table. However, that being said, if a band wants to be successful they need to spend money on marketing. Those flyers you referred to cost money to print. For most bands, they will get more by paying someone else to do the marketing for them. I think that the price that the record labels charge for the various services they offer is excessive.
The poster I was replying to suggested that since the bands currently get $2 for a CD (his number, not mine), that is all that a CD of music is worth. I was suggesting that there is value added above and beyond just making the music. I did not mean to suggest that the record companies were worth what they add to the cost of a CD. I happen to believe that as late as the 80's, the record companies were adding most of the value to most CD's. Sometime in the 90's this stopped being true.
So, since it is my car that ran the red light, my choosing to invoke the fifth amendment means I am guilty. The rule in the US is "proof beyond a reasonable doubt", they would never bring a case that went before a jury with just a red light camera picture. They shouldn't issue a traffic ticket without better evidence. The only reason they do it for red lights is because for most people it isn't worth their time to challenge it.
I can think of a fairly simple case where the owner wouldn't know who was driving when the violation occurred. A college student owns a car, he lets the other guys on his floor of the dorm use his car from time to time. One of them runs a red light. I don't know how long it takes them to get the ticket to you, but I doubt that I would remember who had my car a week ago under the type of situations we had in my dorm when I was in college.
I referred to Venezuela as a totalitarian regime in that thread, although not because they were buying this type of device. On the other hand, I find this type of development threatening. The thing I am most bothered by this sort of thing (red light cameras as well), is the assumption that the person who owns the car is driving at the time of the infraction. Although there is also the prevalence of surveillance that is bothersome as well.
One thing that the people who use variations on the "If you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear" argument forget is that one of the reasons that the Founding Fathers put the several of the Amendments in the Bill of Rights was to make it possible for their successors to overthrow the government by force if sufficient numbers thought that was necessary (several of the Founding Fathers were paranoids, but that is probably the reason why things haven't gotten worse sooner).
No, because the airlines generally do the reverse. "You are obviously a business traveler, who flies more often, therefore we will charge you more."
"You on the other hand, are a casual traveler who only flies occasionally, so we will give you a heavy discount so you don't go to our competitors."
Sorry, I watched the first of the three and couldn't be bothered to watch the rest...even now that I could watch them for free. I just assumed that there was an attempt to explain how a character that started out as similar to Luke at the beginning of the original could become Darth Vader.
J
Episode III was by far the best of the new set, but I wouldn't call it great by any stretch. The movie fricking starts with them landing half a fricking starship on a landing strip, rather than, you know, in a giant self-made crater. I know it's sci-fi, but come on. I'd have bought one of them levitating them to the ground using the Force (which doesn't make a ton of sense), but not a fricking crash landing.
If that is your evidence of the problem then the movie was doomed from the very first one... sound in a vacuum, come on.
However, it comes down to this: in the first trilogy, you have the paladinesque Luke Skywalker going on Quest to rescue the Princess and defeat the Evil Tyrant. In the end, our hero defeats evil completely. In the second trilogy, you have Anakin Skywalker gradually seduced by the Evil Tyrant until he joins forces with the Evil Tyrant ensuring his victory.
The first plot line is easy and fun, and even if moderately poorly done often enjoyable. The second plot is difficult and disheartening, and if not done close to perfect, generally unsatisfying. The movie industry keeps trying to make movies with the second type of plot because when they are really well done, they are classics. The problem with this approach is that while there is an essentially bottomless market for the first plot, there is a limited market for the second.
That seems like a reasonable price. I'd also buy a lot more music. The question is whether or not the movement artists are slowly making to get away from the major distribution labels and moving into self-distribution (thanks, intarweb!), will result in artists dropping the price of their product significantly, while still managing to raise the amount they would receive from royalties with a corporate label? Or will they decide that if record labels can charge $20 for a CD and give them a buck, they should be able to charge $20 and keep it all?
See, here is the thing. How much is music worth? Well, it is worth whatever the artist is paid. The idiot anonymous coward who posted elsewhere here in reply to me suggesting that I am somehow obligated to buy music I don't even line for whatever value corporations place on them is completely off base.
How much does a VERY successful band get from a single $20 CD? A buck. Maybe two bucks if they are lucky. Therefore, the music is worth one or two dollars for an entire album of content. The other $18 is the price of advertising, distribution, lawyers, music videos, corporate revenue building. It has nothing to do with the value of the actual music to me as a consumer. Those are all added expenses by other people to get the music to me. It isn't needed anymore. Especially since I don't find out about music on the radio or television, but through friends and the internet. If a band is paid $2 for the royalty on each album, then $2 is what the album itself is worth. Do away with the middle man and sell me the product for $2. Or charge $4 if you like, as the artist.
So until the artist is the one dictating the price of their product, people like that anonymous coward who want CORPORATIONS to dictate the price of an artist's product can suck it. So, you only find out about music from friends and the internet, how do your friends find out about new music? There is value added by marketing and distribution, not as much as the record companies are trying to get for it, but there is value added. As for what the album itself is worth, that depends on what people are willing to pay. For example, I think that most current pop music is worth negative dollars... that is you would need to pay me to own it, if you gave it to me I would throw it away. On the other hand there is music that I would pay as much as $20 for an entire CD. However, for most of the music I listen to the price point is between $10 and $15 for a CD. Of course that is where is gets kind of tricky, because I would probably spend more money total on music at $5 for a CD, than at $10 (If I would buy 5 CD's at $10, I would probably buy 15 at $5).
The point I am making is that the value of music is what people are willing to pay for it compared to the price at which people are willing to make it available. This is something that people seem to forget, if the price people are willing to pay is less than the cost to make it available, the product will not be available. The record companies seem to think that if the product is not available for less than they are willing to sell it for, people will pay that for it. What they don't seem to understand is that if the product is not available for less than people are willing to pay, people won't buy it (they may however attempt to steal it). Right now the latter attitude seems to play a larger role in the problems of music distribution than the former.
If you read the summary, she feared that the vandals were still on the property, this implies that there were parts of the property that were not visible to her from where she was. If you read the actual article (which is a bit much to expect on slashdot) this is made explicitly clear. She dialed 911 because there was a reasonable possibility that criminals of some sort were still present. That is the course of action that I would recommend that all of my female friends take in that situation.
And this is where the real victims will be, those of us who do programming work on the side for some extra income. The hassle of getting a tax ID (which might require setting up a real company), collecting and passing on sales tax to the state is pretty big when all you had to do previously was declare a couple thousand extra dollars on your income taxes at the end of the year. The big consulting companies will complain about it, but in the end they'll just keep on rolling. The little guys will get rolled over.
The little guys will just drop off the books entirely. Many of them will still do the work, only now it will be cash payment. Then they won't report it on their federal or state income tax reports. My suspicion is that this will be a "revenue neutral" tax increase.
Actually, the best evidence is that it would be a more efficient expenditure of money (that is less cost for bigger impact) to develop programs to deal with the negative effects of global warming than it would to reduce the amount of temperature change by reducing CO2 emissions.
Oh yeah, I should be as worried about CO2 in the air as about heavy metals in the water supply.
What environmental problems are you talking about? Twenty years ago, several species of fish that were native to rivers near me, that had not been seen in them in the at least 30 years were once again found in the rivers. The populations of those fish have steadily risen since then. The polar bear population is larger than it has been in two or three human generations. The air in the cities near me are cleaner than they were a century ago. 40 years ago if you had talked about CO2 as pollution, environmentalists would have told you to worry about a real problem. The fact that CO2 is our biggest pollution worry, means that we have made huge strides at addressing pollution and other environmental problems.
Actually, if I recall correctly, Richard Jewel only had problems because the news media figured out that he was being investigated by the FBI. The news media assumed that since he was a suspect he must be guilty. The FBI was doing its job, the media made his life hell. The FBI did overstep itself after the media jumped all over the case because they were afraid of evidence being destroyed. However, what went wrong in the Richard Jewel case was the media.
And if you think the FBI is the equivalent of the Gestapo, you live an insanely sheltered life.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have a mentor. I have a supervisor, if I can't do my job to the satisfaction of my supervisor, I will be looking for work. Some companies assign an experienced employee at the same level as the new hire as the new hire's mentor, but such arrangements usually only last for a couple of months.
So, how much do you pay that mentor? BTW the various sites (government programs and university sites) I looked up to get information referred to the payment given for post-doc fellowships as stipends. If you don't think that is enough money, why don't you leave Academia?
But you see, that is not a salary, it is a stipend. In addition to this stipend, these people are students, they are receiving an education. Looking at the tuition rates for UC this amounts to close to another $20,000 a year. The stipend combined with the tuition comes to in excess of $60,000 a year. That puts them in the top 20% of incomes in the US.
In academic institutions, a technician with a BS will usually make as much or more than a post-doc with a PhD.
And to clarify, I am talking biomedical research here. You are contradicting yourself. If a BS is making more than a post-doc, than obviously the post-doc is working for something besides money. If the post-doc wanted more money more than whatever else they are getting, they would either leave Academia and go to work for companies like mine (we are also in biomedical research and would hire 2 to 6 more scientists--current total staff of about 50, if we could find ones that met the qualifications we are looking for), or they would take the technician job in place of the BS.
The point is you used the salary of post-docs in an academic institution of evidence that they are not valued in our society. My response is that they are valued but choose rewards besides money because if they valued money more, they could leave Academia and receive a much higher salary. I know of two other companies in our metropolitan area who hire people with the same qualifications for similar salaries (people have left us to go to them, we have hired people away from them--the reasons for the switch usually being personality conflicts or geography). There are eight to ten additional companies that do similar enough work that I am sure they hire people with similar qualifications.
I work IT for a for profit research laboratory. We hire Lab Technicians with a BS at about $45,000 a year. When we hire PhD's it is for significantly more (although we haven't hired a new PhD since I started there, so I don't know what the going rate is for our post doc's). So those post doc's making less than $32,000 a year are either working at the wrong place or in the wrong field.
The thing that pro abortionists don't seem to understand is that those who oppose abortion, generally, consider abortion to be killing a human being. They believe that the rights enumerated in the Constitution apply to those humans that are not yet born as well.
You can take different points of view, but to say that "it's settled law" and say they should just accept it is hypocritical unless you think that abolitionists were in the wrong as well.
So you want the police to have the power to harass people because they think that maybe they did something that in some circumstances is dangerous? I want the police to enforce the law, not farm it out to some automated system that might get it wrong.
That is what you have traffic cops for, so that you know that the person who you are charging with a traffic offense was the person who was driving the car.
You are both wrong (although the first poster is closer), the courts ordered that they be released. The rulings were made in the early to mid 70's. The courts ruled that it was unconstitutional to institutionalize people against their will unless they were a demonstrable danger to society (even if the individual was incapable of taking care of themselves). By the late 70's/early 80's, when the outcome of these rulings became apparent (that most of those individuals who had been institutionalized couldn't take care of themselves), the activists who had led the charge to eliminate the institutions were surprised to discover that the average American wasn't willing to pay them to take care of these people (the average American thought that the institutions were a cost effective method that needed to have the abuses corrected).
I didn't say that a band needs to be on a record label. I actually don't think that the record labels bring that much to the table. However, that being said, if a band wants to be successful they need to spend money on marketing. Those flyers you referred to cost money to print. For most bands, they will get more by paying someone else to do the marketing for them. I think that the price that the record labels charge for the various services they offer is excessive.
The poster I was replying to suggested that since the bands currently get $2 for a CD (his number, not mine), that is all that a CD of music is worth. I was suggesting that there is value added above and beyond just making the music. I did not mean to suggest that the record companies were worth what they add to the cost of a CD. I happen to believe that as late as the 80's, the record companies were adding most of the value to most CD's. Sometime in the 90's this stopped being true.
So, since it is my car that ran the red light, my choosing to invoke the fifth amendment means I am guilty. The rule in the US is "proof beyond a reasonable doubt", they would never bring a case that went before a jury with just a red light camera picture. They shouldn't issue a traffic ticket without better evidence. The only reason they do it for red lights is because for most people it isn't worth their time to challenge it.
I can think of a fairly simple case where the owner wouldn't know who was driving when the violation occurred. A college student owns a car, he lets the other guys on his floor of the dorm use his car from time to time. One of them runs a red light. I don't know how long it takes them to get the ticket to you, but I doubt that I would remember who had my car a week ago under the type of situations we had in my dorm when I was in college.
I referred to Venezuela as a totalitarian regime in that thread, although not because they were buying this type of device. On the other hand, I find this type of development threatening. The thing I am most bothered by this sort of thing (red light cameras as well), is the assumption that the person who owns the car is driving at the time of the infraction. Although there is also the prevalence of surveillance that is bothersome as well.
One thing that the people who use variations on the "If you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear" argument forget is that one of the reasons that the Founding Fathers put the several of the Amendments in the Bill of Rights was to make it possible for their successors to overthrow the government by force if sufficient numbers thought that was necessary (several of the Founding Fathers were paranoids, but that is probably the reason why things haven't gotten worse sooner).
What they need are non corrupt governments.
No, because the airlines generally do the reverse. "You are obviously a business traveler, who flies more often, therefore we will charge you more."
"You on the other hand, are a casual traveler who only flies occasionally, so we will give you a heavy discount so you don't go to our competitors."
Sorry, I watched the first of the three and couldn't be bothered to watch the rest...even now that I could watch them for free. I just assumed that there was an attempt to explain how a character that started out as similar to Luke at the beginning of the original could become Darth Vader.
Episode III was by far the best of the new set, but I wouldn't call it great by any stretch. The movie fricking starts with them landing half a fricking starship on a landing strip, rather than, you know, in a giant self-made crater. I know it's sci-fi, but come on. I'd have bought one of them levitating them to the ground using the Force (which doesn't make a ton of sense), but not a fricking crash landing.
If that is your evidence of the problem then the movie was doomed from the very first one... sound in a vacuum, come on.
However, it comes down to this: in the first trilogy, you have the paladinesque Luke Skywalker going on Quest to rescue the Princess and defeat the Evil Tyrant. In the end, our hero defeats evil completely. In the second trilogy, you have Anakin Skywalker gradually seduced by the Evil Tyrant until he joins forces with the Evil Tyrant ensuring his victory.
The first plot line is easy and fun, and even if moderately poorly done often enjoyable. The second plot is difficult and disheartening, and if not done close to perfect, generally unsatisfying. The movie industry keeps trying to make movies with the second type of plot because when they are really well done, they are classics. The problem with this approach is that while there is an essentially bottomless market for the first plot, there is a limited market for the second.
See, here is the thing. How much is music worth? Well, it is worth whatever the artist is paid. The idiot anonymous coward who posted elsewhere here in reply to me suggesting that I am somehow obligated to buy music I don't even line for whatever value corporations place on them is completely off base.
How much does a VERY successful band get from a single $20 CD? A buck. Maybe two bucks if they are lucky. Therefore, the music is worth one or two dollars for an entire album of content. The other $18 is the price of advertising, distribution, lawyers, music videos, corporate revenue building. It has nothing to do with the value of the actual music to me as a consumer. Those are all added expenses by other people to get the music to me. It isn't needed anymore. Especially since I don't find out about music on the radio or television, but through friends and the internet. If a band is paid $2 for the royalty on each album, then $2 is what the album itself is worth. Do away with the middle man and sell me the product for $2. Or charge $4 if you like, as the artist.
So until the artist is the one dictating the price of their product, people like that anonymous coward who want CORPORATIONS to dictate the price of an artist's product can suck it. So, you only find out about music from friends and the internet, how do your friends find out about new music? There is value added by marketing and distribution, not as much as the record companies are trying to get for it, but there is value added. As for what the album itself is worth, that depends on what people are willing to pay. For example, I think that most current pop music is worth negative dollars... that is you would need to pay me to own it, if you gave it to me I would throw it away. On the other hand there is music that I would pay as much as $20 for an entire CD. However, for most of the music I listen to the price point is between $10 and $15 for a CD. Of course that is where is gets kind of tricky, because I would probably spend more money total on music at $5 for a CD, than at $10 (If I would buy 5 CD's at $10, I would probably buy 15 at $5).
The point I am making is that the value of music is what people are willing to pay for it compared to the price at which people are willing to make it available. This is something that people seem to forget, if the price people are willing to pay is less than the cost to make it available, the product will not be available. The record companies seem to think that if the product is not available for less than they are willing to sell it for, people will pay that for it. What they don't seem to understand is that if the product is not available for less than people are willing to pay, people won't buy it (they may however attempt to steal it). Right now the latter attitude seems to play a larger role in the problems of music distribution than the former.
If you read the summary, she feared that the vandals were still on the property, this implies that there were parts of the property that were not visible to her from where she was. If you read the actual article (which is a bit much to expect on slashdot) this is made explicitly clear. She dialed 911 because there was a reasonable possibility that criminals of some sort were still present. That is the course of action that I would recommend that all of my female friends take in that situation.
The little guys will just drop off the books entirely. Many of them will still do the work, only now it will be cash payment. Then they won't report it on their federal or state income tax reports. My suspicion is that this will be a "revenue neutral" tax increase.
Actually, the best evidence is that it would be a more efficient expenditure of money (that is less cost for bigger impact) to develop programs to deal with the negative effects of global warming than it would to reduce the amount of temperature change by reducing CO2 emissions.
Oh yeah, I should be as worried about CO2 in the air as about heavy metals in the water supply.
What environmental problems are you talking about? Twenty years ago, several species of fish that were native to rivers near me, that had not been seen in them in the at least 30 years were once again found in the rivers. The populations of those fish have steadily risen since then. The polar bear population is larger than it has been in two or three human generations. The air in the cities near me are cleaner than they were a century ago. 40 years ago if you had talked about CO2 as pollution, environmentalists would have told you to worry about a real problem. The fact that CO2 is our biggest pollution worry, means that we have made huge strides at addressing pollution and other environmental problems.
Actually, if I recall correctly, Richard Jewel only had problems because the news media figured out that he was being investigated by the FBI. The news media assumed that since he was a suspect he must be guilty. The FBI was doing its job, the media made his life hell. The FBI did overstep itself after the media jumped all over the case because they were afraid of evidence being destroyed. However, what went wrong in the Richard Jewel case was the media.
And if you think the FBI is the equivalent of the Gestapo, you live an insanely sheltered life.