yeah, I think that 'something' is an inate sense of global fairness and earning your position... which is fine and dandy... but that's not how the rest of the world works:P
The engineer in me cannot get mad at workers from India. They work hard, they work just as well... they get paid. What is 'wrong' is the other jobs are paid to much in NA:P There is a global shift and evening out occurring. We engineers let it happen because in our heads we know that is the inevitable outcome. So we logically don't resist.
That is of course the opposite of more entrenched professions and unions who fight to maintain their position in society and the world. We may be 'right', but they're smarter and better off.
Actually I've thought I lot about a programmer's union... heck even an engineers union. Probably the hardest part of it would be how much should each worker be paid. I'm sorry traditional union seniority will not do.
So if such a union is to be made, I think it would have to be done by negotiating how much gets returned to investors versus how much is kept by the employees.
Example: Company makes 1 billion in profit. Union negotiations start and determine 500 million is returned to investors, 200 million put into cash, and 300 million given back to employees.
Something like that would make much more sense. Similarly, I'd personally just want better training, better ways to voice concerns... things that ultimately benefit the company but we know how often management likes to shoot itself in the foot just to look powerful.
As a teacher and an engineer... now back in Engineering I'll add one to the list.
LOWER teacher salaries and higher more of them.
Let me tell you why before I get bashed. I've taught before and I loved it, but you don't need to be 'smart' in the subject material. You don't need to be an engineering whiz to teach mathematics. In short, you don't NEED that level of expertise, except for maybe some curriculum design...
In the average classroom, what you need are caring individuals who know how to deal with the students. That's largely it. The rest is all in the teacher guides, lesson plans, and text books. Trust me, I've had to teach history and social studies (not my area of expertise). In the end it's all the same. I've dealt with some supply teachers who know nothing of mathematics, yet handle a math class so well.
What we should actually do is cut teacher salaries and hire 2 teachers per room. Or 1 teacher and a teaching assistant. That of course should be deducted from the teacher's salary as their work load is much less. I've spent some time in a room with teaching assistants, and even from my perspective, I'd have taken a pay cut to have them in their all year round.
Yes, this will never fly as the teacher's unions are very strong... I know first hand. It has nothing to do with your kids and everything to do with their jobs.
And please, don't tell us 'it's the parent's fault'. Yes it is, but I don't have a magic wand I can wave to make good parents. We get a room full of kids and have to make due with what we have. Yes, some parents care and it shows. Others don't give a rats behind about their own kids. That doesn't mean we shouldn't care. Kids don't get to choose their parents.
As others have said, the gold standard is just an arbitrary value system. Yet, it serves a valuable purpose: preventing government from blindly printing money... thus devaluing your savings.
Gold is physical and needs to be mined. This puts a natural cap on 'printing' money. Yes, as more gold is dugg out of the ground, technically, your currency is devalued. Yet, that rate is controlled by the fact that it takes time and investment to digg up the gold. Now there's nothing special about gold... a basket of real goods would do just as well.
I'd be fine of course with a completely fiat currency as long as the government was small... but you know that's not going to happen. SO they only way to control government is to limit the money it has to squander...aka... gold standard.
With completely fiat money... there is nothing stopping a government or reserve bank from completely devaluing the currency.. aka... Zimbabwe... aka United States. You know who gets hit the hardest when they do these things? The middle class. The poor don't have savings. The rich have enough and can hide and pay top dollar for good accountants and traders to minimize their risk.
Say what you want about Israel politically, but their high technology sector seems to be quite vibrant.
I used to work for a certain telecom manufacturer. They worked closely with Tier1 providers and what not (ATT, Verizon, Sprint..). These providers would actually request that hardware be developed by the Israeli team. Bastards don't trust Canadian hardware:P I had no idea they even knew which team developed products. Yet, apparently, they do, and they want the same quality again.
It really doesn't surprise me that the Israeli team pulled this miracle off for Intel.
It's say you're the leader of the most powerful country on Earth. A superhero if you will. Then you decide to invade a country to fix some problems with it. A coutnry without any super villains. Yet, by being a super hero and entering the country, he attracts super villains to the fight.
Hmm... pondering. Good moral dilemma.//wondering when someone is going to point out that sadam hussein was a super villain and not just a regular criminal.
The one thing that 100% benefits both myself and the company is training. The rest is unimportant to me. Pay me a decent salary and I'll take care of my own pension; though they would be nice.
I've actually taken a break from software now and I am specifically looking for companies who take their time to 'build' their people. I've gotten a few hits. Microsoft seems up there despite the hate they generate:P
I can be 1000x more effective if I am trained on the product or working with someone who is. Yet, these companies like the throw the guy into the fire mentality. They like the 'flexibility' of throwing people at problems. We will definitely have a skills gap in NA. Not just on the web end, but in all industries as training and mentoring have suffered. Entry level jobs are swished aside to other places. How does the next generation of engineers develop? They don't... and thus there is a skills shortage... and thus we must outsource it to India/China...where they are investing in their people.
Some people think doing long division is somehow better than using a calculator. Yet, I question this as you all 95% of people do is memorize the steps. You memorize the steps on what buttons to press on your calculator. You memorize the steps on how to do long division. Neither gains you any insights into division as a concept.
There is a 5% of more gifted students who actually understand how long division works and take some conceptual aspects from it in terms of number theory... but most don't.
One of the sad things is that using a calculator SHOULD permit teachers the time to drive home the concepts. This enables the students to know what they're doing when they're dividing and how they should apply it in real life. It's like teaching kids multiplication. Yet, they don't understand when to use it and they don't *grasp* the connection to say calculate the sales tax on something.
I personally spent much more time with number theory, number lines... than most do precisely because teaching to use a calculator is trivial... which BTW it is not:P I was amazed at the number of kids who have trouble with a calculator.
Obviously if you presented a complex mathematical PHD level math problem to a crowd, the crowd have absolutely no concept of what the answer could be and the answer would never converge.
However, when looking at an example like counting the number of jellybeans in a jar, most of us are guessing within REASON. We know it's > 10 and we know it's 1 000 000. So we're testing our ability to approximate.
What this study says is our ability to judge increases with the number of people. Lots of people judging means the group's average is closer to the real answer than most individuals.
It also says that an individual judging multiple times with greater breaks between each judgment gets closer to the answer.
I don't think this should be too surprising. By judging multiple times, your subconscious is able to work on the problem. It also eliminates variations of things you don't think about. Maybe when you first judged the number of jellybeans in the jar, it was morning and you were hungry and your subconscious made you judge higher. Now its afternoon after you had lunch, and that apsect is not being played out. I think that given multiple judgments, we also take that into account. If last time I judged 900, but I had a 'feeling' it was too high, this time I might judge 800.
"So in short, the following question is purposeless: "is DRM compatible with OSS?" The question you should be asking: "why would an OSS developer donate his time to make his and everybody else's life harder?"."
no, that's not the question should be asking. I don't think any sane mind OSS developer would put their time to write DRM applications.
HOWEVER, would a company like Nokia have a reason to write open source DRM applications? Absolutely. That said, they'd have to provide the source code which would then make circumventing their DRM trivial. So the only way this could work is if they got governments (looking at you Canada) to go along with criminal offences with respect to software that breaks locking mechanisms. They seem to be having success in certain countries.
So it's not unthinkable for Nokia to have a linux based mobile OS, with an open source DRM package that they use for media content (which means it can ported and the media can remain fully compatible). The only thing protecting the open source DRM from being hacked as the laws against it (as above). If this became the norm, I'm pretty sure you would see other develops using the nokia package to allow other applications to access the media. Maybe a plugin for media players... Or maybe nokia would develop those too.
I must claim ignorance as to whether or not the GPL would legally prevent open source DRM from being implemented.
no easy answers without real change to the democratic process.
we could try elect heads of department. For example, instead of just voting for one president, we could vote for the head of healthcare head of criminal justice head of education head of transportation head of technology head of the military head of freedom head of finance
Hopefully we could keep the number small, but its an idea:) That way you could tailor your view more towards the issues than one candidate. It might be hard then to get a comprehensive budget, especially if the politicans refuse to work together or can't work together.
The other idea is allow people to vote without a fear of vote splitting. The easiest solution to this is to allow post-election transfer votes. So for example, in this election Nader/Barr are considered spoilers. They're going to take votes from the main republican/democrat parties. Why not allow Nader/Barr to give their votes to either party post election (Maybe before the election they have to state which party they'd give votes to...for transparecny purposes). That way, you could vote for Nader/Barr without thinking of strategic voting. Then in the end, Nader can give his votes to the dems. Barr will probably give his votes to the republicans. Yet, there will always be room for a surprise in this system. Ron Paul could run for example and get a lot of votes if people had no fear of stealing republican votes.
"Falling home prices hurt everyone, not just people who took out bad loans"
yeah, that makes sense. Falling home prices are great for regular people. I say bring on the complete collapse of the housing market. Why? I don't own a house. I rent and I am looking to buy.
The housing market is just like any other market. When price goes up, sellers win. When price goes down, buyers win.
The question is why do you only want to support the sellers?
Myself, I converted to Ubuntu about a year ago. Unfortunately, I don't really see any day 2 day difference in terms of the OS. It did take me some time to get Ubuntu configured... but overall, it is rather benign. Though I have had some updates which were 'bad' (new kernel updated without nvidia binaries out = non working GUI). I hope the Ubuntu repos make sure this never happens again:) Though nicely, I could choose to boot from another kernel...yeah!
The key is the apps. For the most part...again. I don't really see a difference. I'm almost all web based these days (email, flash games...). Open office is fine. Though I do need vbox for my tax software.
However...and some people more experienced with unix will surely argue this. I still find it is way easier to fix problems in windows. This is mostly due to my being more familiar with it. Installing/removing drivers, wireless management, exploring admin options... are all easier in windows.
Even stability wise, they are the same. I had windows xp sp2, and it was rock solid. Ubuntu has never crash/locked me out...but several apps have, including the update-manager (does so often enough).
So overall...both are okay. To be honest... on my next purchase, I won't really care which OS is installed. The 50 bucks or so windows tax is fine for me. Especially since there still are some apps that I need on windows...and development on windows is easier...Yes sue me. I love visual studio as opposed to vi or emacs... Not that I can't use those...but why??? lol.
yes...and that it's been in use of a while. I've signed contracts over email/pdf before. The last job I had, I didn't need to fax my acceptance letter. They had some online system where they sent me the pdf and I accepted it through some website. I don't even remember the process. I'm assuming it is just as valid as it was a very large company.
In Canada, there's also http://www.datawitness.com/products/signoff which seems to have some kind of legitimacy. I think they also have contracts with the government of british columbia for online Wills and other things.
The law takes time to change. The proper legal use of online methods (email, PGP, certificates...) will get there.
I know many people are going to say well...it's the users choice to paste their pictures or write about their life, or sign up to applications...so it's their responsibility/fault.
However, there is nothing wrong with having a commission look at facebook. I hope as a productive force, as opposed to a legal force. By that I mean a commission to look at how facebook can improve privacy/protect citizens, as opposed to finding a way to sue it.
Maybe we need to change the default options for some parts of facebook. Maybe the default security options for external applications can change? Maybe you should be able to use an alias for 3rd party applications. Maybe we need to look at the social consequence of idiots posting embarrassing photos or videos of other people? How should facebook handle that?
Facebook really is pretty different as most people actually use their real names and people seem to be putting in their real information. I try to limit it (no address/phone numbers...), but others might not be as careful. It's definitely worth looking into. Again not to shutdown or sue facebook, but to improve it from a public policy/safety standpoint.. and to help all those men/women caught cheating on their gfs by posted photos or wall posts:P
This is what government should be doing...setting up coops and non-profits. Take healthcare as a great example. not even Obama is bothering to setup a non-profit federal health-inusrance company open to all americans. Let private health insurance compete if they can.
It's a total lack of thinking on the part of our 'democracy'. Their only solution seems to be letting companies run rampant maximixing profits, and then taxing us/them to make up for the difference.
The north east dare i say, is particularly prone to this. Let's speak of Canada for example. In Ontario, people complain of bank fees and charges... and our leftist leaders even want to call in the government to control bank fees... Meanwhile, out west, the credit unions are strong.
see the difference. One sets up quality non-profit entity. The other believes in bureaucracy, taxes, legislation...
I would actually suggest, the government be banned for providing such services (healthcare, education, insurance...0, and should only be allowed to build non-profit entities based on member contributions.
The best way to view media is in terms of overall compensation. Otherwise, you will just drive yourself insane.
If we take say music. You take all of your costs (artists, editing, promotion...) You take all your revenue streams (live performance, ads, mp3 sales, cd sales...)
Then if you're making a good living...the business model works.
What I'm seeing now is 'free' for 90% of personal users. Pay for the other 10%. Checkout sites like zoho.com or freshbooks... They're all basically free for the individual. But for any business, you'd want to pay for the extra features (ssl, more space...).
In terms of media specifically...well that's all disposable income anyways. People only spend money on movie/music when have spare change to spend on entertainment. So you have to make it as convenient as possible for them to spend it on movies/music. Yes, it is 'morally' wrong to 'pirate' music, but you're in business. You deal with your customers as they are. Make it easier and cheaper to access music online than to sit there and torrent and go on shady sites and people will do it. Remember...it's disposable income. We know we're wasting it on sh**t.
As to making money on support contracts...who cares. If Novell/Red hat can do it...wonderful. If MS can 'sell' the software itself...equally wonderfull. 50 bucks on a new pc that costs in the hundreds of dollars...that's worth it for most people when buying a new computer.
Last I checked, both MS and Kanye West are still doing very well financially. Neither gives things away for free.
I'm Canadian, and I signed in to Google Health just to check it out. I find the privacy concerns a bit off beat.
I do online banking. I file my taxes online...
When is there such sensitivity about my health data. As far I see, it is password protected, and as long as the data is not shared with people outside my 'approved list', I have no issue with it. Google might eventually adopt HIPAA, but I seriously doubt Google will be freely sharing your private information with health insurance providers without your consent. Maybe I trust google too much.
Quite frankly, I hope google is able to do this securely. I'd love to go to my doctor, and have everything he writes about me be sent to google health. I'd love for test results to be automatically sent to my google profile. The system is in bad need of this kind of electronic health freedom. Right now the medical system is a veil of secrecy.
As long as it remains opt-in and give you control of what is stored, I think it can only be a good system. I could definitely see people wanting to hide certain diseases like HIV... from their online system. They might be afraid a friend or family member might get into their account.
I'm an engineer paid very well, but quite frankly, I'm already sick of this field. It's not the work itself, but how it is managed, the whole work environment...
Non-cash rewards are often just as valuable as cash rewards. Heck, I'd take a 20% pay cut right now if it meant a less bitter work environment.
Country is in need of wealth Hoards of men (normally men) get put to productive work like engineering, where they work their asses off to bring wealth to their own families and the nation This wealth is then spread to other parts of the economy (law, healthcare, service...) Generations pass and the young men suddenly start to question why they should work their asses off in engineering when they could instead be an X, and earn more money with less work. Nation claims to have a lack of engineers. Engineering moved to new country where a new generation of young men are put to work in engineering.
so basically, its a micro-kernel for web browsers. Ah, good old micro-kernels...they missed the boat with desktop OS and then they missed the boat on web browsers....but have no fear. They are the 'right' solution.
Sarcasm aside, their 'security' model should be operating system wide for any networked application. I should be able to instruct an application that I don't think need to access my harddrive to never be able to. On install, the application requests a security profile and you either approve/disapprove accordingly.
Good luck to them getting this working on a web browser.
This I can agree with. I'm a young engineer, and quite frankly, where's the training? I went through a coop program which was wonderful. My fundamentals are thoroughly in tact and new language or things that can just be referenced...no problem. I can learn it on my own.
New project: totally new technology...just learn it and do it. How about some time to learn? How about you send me for some bloody training? I remember I left to go work for a rather large networking company. They made it so difficult, many senior guys left. I took the place of a guy on a critical project. Here I am with no experience on their product, put into a position where I'm literally debugging and fixing issues on live router setups on the backbone of several countries. Field engineers demanding fixes. Anyone see anything wrong with that? Heck, I was even proactive, I put up with it, then asked my manager to send me for training. While fixing the problems, I saw the gaps in my knowledge (I needed to learn about OSPF, BGP...). I couldn't just hack it anymore. Yet, the work just kept coming and the training never came.
I was hailed as a hero a few times, but I left as well... rather disillusioned actually as I had really really high admiration for the company. Not anymore...
Needless to say, I'm fairly jaded at this point. I just do what I do. What I'd do to work in a place with senior engineers and actually have a mentor. The last place I worked at, the mentor was someone around my age, who ended up asking me more questions about her project...
I'm seriously thinking of relocating back to my university town. At least there's somewhat of an academic focus.
And this is different from any other political group how?
I'm pretty sure you can take almost any political initiative/law and use this statement.
"Such laws do not serve the community -- they serve to create a society that better aligns itself with X interests."
I'm pretty sure, we've all heard this before. The best boss is not one that tries to be your friend, but one that tries to be fair. The same is true for government. It shouldn't try and solve all the problems, it should only seek to be fair. In that respect all political parties are failures.
I can't get school choice because it goes against the teacher unions who run the democratic party. I have to spend my tax dollars support public sector union pensions, while the government does not offer the same pension to me....
Slashdot Mirror
yeah, I think that 'something' is an inate sense of global fairness and earning your position... which is fine and dandy... but that's not how the rest of the world works :P
The engineer in me cannot get mad at workers from India. They work hard, they work just as well... they get paid. What is 'wrong' is the other jobs are paid to much in NA :P There is a global shift and evening out occurring. We engineers let it happen because in our heads we know that is the inevitable outcome. So we logically don't resist.
That is of course the opposite of more entrenched professions and unions who fight to maintain their position in society and the world.
We may be 'right', but they're smarter and better off.
Actually I've thought I lot about a programmer's union... heck even an engineers union. Probably the hardest part of it would be how much should each worker be paid. I'm sorry traditional union seniority will not do.
So if such a union is to be made, I think it would have to be done by negotiating how much gets returned to investors versus how much is kept by the employees.
Example: Company makes 1 billion in profit.
Union negotiations start and determine 500 million is returned to investors, 200 million put into cash, and 300 million given back to employees.
Something like that would make much more sense. Similarly, I'd personally just want better training, better ways to voice concerns... things that ultimately benefit the company but we know how often management likes to shoot itself in the foot just to look powerful.
As a teacher and an engineer... now back in Engineering I'll add one to the list.
LOWER teacher salaries and higher more of them.
Let me tell you why before I get bashed. I've taught before and I loved it, but you don't need to be 'smart' in the subject material. You don't need to be an engineering whiz to teach mathematics. In short, you don't NEED that level of expertise, except for maybe some curriculum design...
In the average classroom, what you need are caring individuals who know how to deal with the students. That's largely it. The rest is all in the teacher guides, lesson plans, and text books. Trust me, I've had to teach history and social studies (not my area of expertise). In the end it's all the same. I've dealt with some supply teachers who know nothing of mathematics, yet handle a math class so well.
What we should actually do is cut teacher salaries and hire 2 teachers per room. Or 1 teacher and a teaching assistant. That of course should be deducted from the teacher's salary as their work load is much less. I've spent some time in a room with teaching assistants, and even from my perspective, I'd have taken a pay cut to have them in their all year round.
Yes, this will never fly as the teacher's unions are very strong... I know first hand. It has nothing to do with your kids and everything to do with their jobs.
And please, don't tell us 'it's the parent's fault'. Yes it is, but I don't have a magic wand I can wave to make good parents. We get a room full of kids and have to make due with what we have. Yes, some parents care and it shows. Others don't give a rats behind about their own kids. That doesn't mean we shouldn't care. Kids don't get to choose their parents.
As others have said, the gold standard is just an arbitrary value system. Yet, it serves a valuable purpose: preventing government from blindly printing money... thus devaluing your savings.
Gold is physical and needs to be mined. This puts a natural cap on 'printing' money. Yes, as more gold is dugg out of the ground, technically, your currency is devalued. Yet, that rate is controlled by the fact that it takes time and investment to digg up the gold. Now there's nothing special about gold... a basket of real goods would do just as well.
I'd be fine of course with a completely fiat currency as long as the government was small... but you know that's not going to happen. SO they only way to control government is to limit the money it has to squander...aka... gold standard.
With completely fiat money... there is nothing stopping a government or reserve bank from completely devaluing the currency.. aka... Zimbabwe... aka United States. You know who gets hit the hardest when they do these things? The middle class. The poor don't have savings. The rich have enough and can hide and pay top dollar for good accountants and traders to minimize their risk.
Say what you want about Israel politically, but their high technology sector seems to be quite vibrant.
I used to work for a certain telecom manufacturer. They worked closely with Tier1 providers and what not (ATT, Verizon, Sprint..). These providers would actually request that hardware be developed by the Israeli team. Bastards don't trust Canadian hardware :P I had no idea they even knew which team developed products. Yet, apparently, they do, and they want the same quality again.
It really doesn't surprise me that the Israeli team pulled this miracle off for Intel.
oh lets get political on this :P
It's say you're the leader of the most powerful country on Earth. A superhero if you will.
Then you decide to invade a country to fix some problems with it. A coutnry without any super villains.
Yet, by being a super hero and entering the country, he attracts super villains to the fight.
Hmm... pondering. Good moral dilemma. //wondering when someone is going to point out that sadam hussein was a super villain and not just a regular criminal.
The one thing that 100% benefits both myself and the company is training. The rest is unimportant to me. Pay me a decent salary and I'll take care of my own pension; though they would be nice.
I've actually taken a break from software now and I am specifically looking for companies who take their time to 'build' their people. I've gotten a few hits. Microsoft seems up there despite the hate they generate :P
I can be 1000x more effective if I am trained on the product or working with someone who is. Yet, these companies like the throw the guy into the fire mentality. They like the 'flexibility' of throwing people at problems. We will definitely have a skills gap in NA. Not just on the web end, but in all industries as training and mentoring have suffered. Entry level jobs are swished aside to other places. How does the next generation of engineers develop? They don't... and thus there is a skills shortage... and thus we must outsource it to India/China...where they are investing in their people.
As an engineer and a teacher,
Some people think doing long division is somehow better than using a calculator. Yet, I question this as you all 95% of people do is memorize the steps. You memorize the steps on what buttons to press on your calculator. You memorize the steps on how to do long division. Neither gains you any insights into division as a concept.
There is a 5% of more gifted students who actually understand how long division works and take some conceptual aspects from it in terms of number theory... but most don't.
One of the sad things is that using a calculator SHOULD permit teachers the time to drive home the concepts. This enables the students to know what they're doing when they're dividing and how they should apply it in real life. It's like teaching kids multiplication. Yet, they don't understand when to use it and they don't *grasp* the connection to say calculate the sales tax on something.
I personally spent much more time with number theory, number lines... than most do precisely because teaching to use a calculator is trivial... which BTW it is not :P I was amazed at the number of kids who have trouble with a calculator.
Many people are taking this out of context.
Obviously if you presented a complex mathematical PHD level math problem to a crowd, the crowd have absolutely no concept of what the answer could be and the answer would never converge.
However, when looking at an example like counting the number of jellybeans in a jar, most of us are guessing within REASON. We know it's > 10 and we know it's 1 000 000. So we're testing our ability to approximate.
What this study says is our ability to judge increases with the number of people. Lots of people judging means the group's average is closer to the real answer than most individuals.
It also says that an individual judging multiple times with greater breaks between each judgment gets closer to the answer.
I don't think this should be too surprising. By judging multiple times, your subconscious is able to work on the problem. It also eliminates variations of things you don't think about. Maybe when you first judged the number of jellybeans in the jar, it was morning and you were hungry and your subconscious made you judge higher. Now its afternoon after you had lunch, and that apsect is not being played out. I think that given multiple judgments, we also take that into account. If last time I judged 900, but I had a 'feeling' it was too high, this time I might judge 800.
"So in short, the following question is purposeless: "is DRM compatible with OSS?" The question you should be asking: "why would an OSS developer donate his time to make his and everybody else's life harder?"."
no, that's not the question should be asking. I don't think any sane mind OSS developer would put their time to write DRM applications.
HOWEVER, would a company like Nokia have a reason to write open source DRM applications? Absolutely.
That said, they'd have to provide the source code which would then make circumventing their DRM trivial. So the only way this could work is if they got governments (looking at you Canada) to go along with criminal offences with respect to software that breaks locking mechanisms. They seem to be having success in certain countries.
So it's not unthinkable for Nokia to have a linux based mobile OS, with an open source DRM package that they use for media content (which means it can ported and the media can remain fully compatible). The only thing protecting the open source DRM from being hacked as the laws against it (as above). If this became the norm, I'm pretty sure you would see other develops using the nokia package to allow other applications to access the media. Maybe a plugin for media players... Or maybe nokia would develop those too.
I must claim ignorance as to whether or not the GPL would legally prevent open source DRM from being implemented.
no easy answers without real change to the democratic process.
:)
we could try elect heads of department. For example, instead of just voting for one president, we could vote for the
head of healthcare
head of criminal justice
head of education
head of transportation
head of technology
head of the military
head of freedom
head of finance
Hopefully we could keep the number small, but its an idea
That way you could tailor your view more towards the issues than one candidate. It might be hard then to get a comprehensive budget, especially if the politicans refuse to work together or can't work together.
The other idea is allow people to vote without a fear of vote splitting. The easiest solution to this is to allow post-election transfer votes. So for example, in this election Nader/Barr are considered spoilers. They're going to take votes from the main republican/democrat parties. Why not allow Nader/Barr to give their votes to either party post election (Maybe before the election they have to state which party they'd give votes to...for transparecny purposes). That way, you could vote for Nader/Barr without thinking of strategic voting. Then in the end, Nader can give his votes to the dems. Barr will probably give his votes to the republicans. Yet, there will always be room for a surprise in this system. Ron Paul could run for example and get a lot of votes if people had no fear of stealing republican votes.
It's definitely not less functional.
Now I would gladly use such a device...IF...AND ONLY IF... I could control which manners to obey.
-turn cellphone to silet mode in Movie Theatre = YES...I do it anyways...so this would be more convenient.
-control traffic speed = NO...
"Falling home prices hurt everyone, not just people who took out bad loans"
yeah, that makes sense. Falling home prices are great for regular people.
I say bring on the complete collapse of the housing market. Why?
I don't own a house. I rent and I am looking to buy.
The housing market is just like any other market.
When price goes up, sellers win.
When price goes down, buyers win.
The question is why do you only want to support the sellers?
Myself, I converted to Ubuntu about a year ago. :) Though nicely, I could choose to boot from another kernel...yeah!
Unfortunately, I don't really see any day 2 day difference in terms of the OS. It did take me some time to get Ubuntu configured... but overall, it is rather benign. Though I have had some updates which were 'bad' (new kernel updated without nvidia binaries out = non working GUI). I hope the Ubuntu repos make sure this never happens again
The key is the apps. For the most part...again. I don't really see a difference. I'm almost all web based these days (email, flash games...). Open office is fine. Though I do need vbox for my tax software.
However...and some people more experienced with unix will surely argue this. I still find it is way easier to fix problems in windows. This is mostly due to my being more familiar with it. Installing/removing drivers, wireless management, exploring admin options... are all easier in windows.
Even stability wise, they are the same. I had windows xp sp2, and it was rock solid. Ubuntu has never crash/locked me out...but several apps have, including the update-manager (does so often enough).
So overall...both are okay. To be honest... on my next purchase, I won't really care which OS is installed. The 50 bucks or so windows tax is fine for me. Especially since there still are some apps that I need on windows...and development on windows is easier...Yes sue me. I love visual studio as opposed to vi or emacs... Not that I can't use those...but why??? lol.
yes...and that it's been in use of a while.
I've signed contracts over email/pdf before. The last job I had, I didn't need to fax my acceptance letter. They had some online system where they sent me the pdf and I accepted it through some website. I don't even remember the process. I'm assuming it is just as valid as it was a very large company.
In Canada, there's also http://www.datawitness.com/products/signoff which seems to have some kind of legitimacy. I think they also have contracts with the government of british columbia for online Wills and other things.
The law takes time to change. The proper legal use of online methods (email, PGP, certificates...) will get there.
I know many people are going to say well...it's the users choice to paste their pictures or write about their life, or sign up to applications...so it's their responsibility/fault.
:P
However, there is nothing wrong with having a commission look at facebook. I hope as a productive force, as opposed to a legal force. By that I mean a commission to look at how facebook can improve privacy/protect citizens, as opposed to finding a way to sue it.
Maybe we need to change the default options for some parts of facebook.
Maybe the default security options for external applications can change?
Maybe you should be able to use an alias for 3rd party applications.
Maybe we need to look at the social consequence of idiots posting embarrassing photos or videos of other people? How should facebook handle that?
Facebook really is pretty different as most people actually use their real names and people seem to be putting in their real information. I try to limit it (no address/phone numbers...), but others might not be as careful. It's definitely worth looking into. Again not to shutdown or sue facebook, but to improve it from a public policy/safety standpoint..
and to help all those men/women caught cheating on their gfs by posted photos or wall posts
I 100% agree.
This is what government should be doing...setting up coops and non-profits.
Take healthcare as a great example. not even Obama is bothering to setup a non-profit federal health-inusrance company open to all americans. Let private health insurance compete if they can.
It's a total lack of thinking on the part of our 'democracy'. Their only solution seems to be letting companies run rampant maximixing profits, and then taxing us/them to make up for the difference.
The north east dare i say, is particularly prone to this.
Let's speak of Canada for example. In Ontario, people complain of bank fees and charges... and our leftist leaders even want to call in the government to control bank fees...
Meanwhile, out west, the credit unions are strong.
see the difference. One sets up quality non-profit entity. The other believes in bureaucracy, taxes, legislation...
I would actually suggest, the government be banned for providing such services (healthcare, education, insurance...0, and should only be allowed to build non-profit entities based on member contributions.
The best way to view media is in terms of overall compensation. Otherwise, you will just drive yourself insane.
If we take say music.
You take all of your costs (artists, editing, promotion...)
You take all your revenue streams (live performance, ads, mp3 sales, cd sales...)
Then if you're making a good living...the business model works.
What I'm seeing now is 'free' for 90% of personal users. Pay for the other 10%.
Checkout sites like zoho.com or freshbooks... They're all basically free for the individual. But for any business, you'd want to pay for the extra features (ssl, more space...).
In terms of media specifically...well that's all disposable income anyways. People only spend money on movie/music when have spare change to spend on entertainment. So you have to make it as convenient as possible for them to spend it on movies/music. Yes, it is 'morally' wrong to 'pirate' music, but you're in business. You deal with your customers as they are. Make it easier and cheaper to access music online than to sit there and torrent and go on shady sites and people will do it. Remember...it's disposable income. We know we're wasting it on sh**t.
As to making money on support contracts...who cares. If Novell/Red hat can do it...wonderful. If MS can 'sell' the software itself...equally wonderfull. 50 bucks on a new pc that costs in the hundreds of dollars...that's worth it for most people when buying a new computer.
Last I checked, both MS and Kanye West are still doing very well financially. Neither gives things away for free.
I'm Canadian, and I signed in to Google Health just to check it out.
I find the privacy concerns a bit off beat.
I do online banking.
I file my taxes online...
When is there such sensitivity about my health data. As far I see, it is password protected, and as long as the data is not shared with people outside my 'approved list', I have no issue with it. Google might eventually adopt HIPAA, but I seriously doubt Google will be freely sharing your private information with health insurance providers without your consent. Maybe I trust google too much.
Quite frankly, I hope google is able to do this securely. I'd love to go to my doctor, and have everything he writes about me be sent to google health. I'd love for test results to be automatically sent to my google profile. The system is in bad need of this kind of electronic health freedom. Right now the medical system is a veil of secrecy.
As long as it remains opt-in and give you control of what is stored, I think it can only be a good system. I could definitely see people wanting to hide certain diseases like HIV... from their online system. They might be afraid a friend or family member might get into their account.
A market economy is more than just money.
I'm an engineer paid very well, but quite frankly, I'm already sick of this field.
It's not the work itself, but how it is managed, the whole work environment...
Non-cash rewards are often just as valuable as cash rewards.
Heck, I'd take a 20% pay cut right now if it meant a less bitter work environment.
Country is in need of wealth
Hoards of men (normally men) get put to productive work like engineering, where they work their asses off to bring wealth to their own families and the nation
This wealth is then spread to other parts of the economy (law, healthcare, service...)
Generations pass and the young men suddenly start to question why they should work their asses off in engineering when they could instead be an X, and earn more money with less work.
Nation claims to have a lack of engineers.
Engineering moved to new country where a new generation of young men are put to work in engineering.
Rinse and repeat.
good, now tell that to employers and government and we'll get somewhere.
so basically, its a micro-kernel for web browsers.
Ah, good old micro-kernels...they missed the boat with desktop OS and then they missed the boat on web browsers....but have no fear.
They are the 'right' solution.
Sarcasm aside, their 'security' model should be operating system wide for any networked application. I should be able to instruct an application that I don't think need to access my harddrive to never be able to. On install, the application requests a security profile and you either approve/disapprove accordingly.
Good luck to them getting this working on a web browser.
This I can agree with. I'm a young engineer, and quite frankly, where's the training?
... rather disillusioned actually as I had really really high admiration for the company. Not anymore...
I went through a coop program which was wonderful. My fundamentals are thoroughly in tact and new language or things that can just be referenced...no problem. I can learn it on my own.
New project: totally new technology...just learn it and do it. How about some time to learn? How about you send me for some bloody training? I remember I left to go work for a rather large networking company. They made it so difficult, many senior guys left. I took the place of a guy on a critical project. Here I am with no experience on their product, put into a position where I'm literally debugging and fixing issues on live router setups on the backbone of several countries. Field engineers demanding fixes. Anyone see anything wrong with that? Heck, I was even proactive, I put up with it, then asked my manager to send me for training. While fixing the problems, I saw the gaps in my knowledge (I needed to learn about OSPF, BGP...). I couldn't just hack it anymore. Yet, the work just kept coming and the training never came.
I was hailed as a hero a few times, but I left as well
Needless to say, I'm fairly jaded at this point. I just do what I do.
What I'd do to work in a place with senior engineers and actually have a mentor. The last place I worked at, the mentor was someone around my age, who ended up asking me more questions about her project...
I'm seriously thinking of relocating back to my university town. At least there's somewhat of an academic focus.
And this is different from any other political group how?
...
I'm pretty sure you can take almost any political initiative/law and use this statement.
"Such laws do not serve the community -- they serve to create a society that better aligns itself with X interests."
I'm pretty sure, we've all heard this before. The best boss is not one that tries to be your friend, but one that tries to be fair.
The same is true for government. It shouldn't try and solve all the problems, it should only seek to be fair. In that respect all political parties are failures.
I can't get school choice because it goes against the teacher unions who run the democratic party.
I have to spend my tax dollars support public sector union pensions, while the government does not offer the same pension to me.