But the government definitely has business setting minimum wages, instituting union frameworks so that workers can deal with employers on more equal footing, and generally doing their best to make sure the powerful don't fuck with the powerless.
I was offered my first job as a web developer when I was 17. I'd been studying English Literature at Otago University (New Zealand) until then, but had been doing casual front-end web development on the side.
Now I'm still on this first job, although I've been there well over a year. I'm earning above the average (New Zealand) salary, I've plenty of future prospects, I'm involved in some fairly interesting projects and I'm having a good time.
I don't see my lack of degree as being any problem in the future. Once you've got experience and can show previous work you've done you shouldn't have any problems. As other comments have said; getting your foot in the door is the hardest part.
So it's their fault that they were invaded by Ethiopia? Their fault that their traditional government was destroyed by the British and Italians in the late 1800s?
Somalia is as it is because of greater forces, and their role in the generation of those greater forces is minimal. The blame is collective, and no individual has ever had the power to change the country.
It is NOT our responsibility to take care of the Somali people. The problem with people like you is that you want it both ways. Before we go in it's help us, save us, protect us from ourselves, keep the peace. After we go in we're heartless imperialists. If the Somali people want help, they should get after helping themselves. I suppose if someone broke into your house, murdered your family, and held you and your belongings for a ransom, you'd advocating paying them off as well.
Why is not our responsibility? Is it acceptable for use to take our stolen wealth and deny reparations to those we stole it from?
You're wrong about 'people like me'. I've never advocated direct intervention in internal politics. It inevitably makes the situation worse. I advocate fair and equitable economic policy; the protection of emerging economies and regulation preventing economic arm-twisting. Yes - the Somali have to help themselves. We can make it a whole lot easier for them with minimal effort.
War is caused by poverty, in one form or another. The only way to prevent it is to prevent poverty.
Someone breaking into my house is a false analogy and not relevant to this conversation.
Shoot enough pirates, and everyone that could potentially become a pirate will realize that it's fruitless, and will perhaps start fixing their own problems.
No. They'll still become pirates, because they need to eat. They'll just become better-armed, more violent pirates with chips on their shoulders.
Perhaps the problem isn't everyone else, but the inability of the Somali people to control and govern themselves. So if you blame the free-market for this pathetic failure, what's the solution? A benevolent dictator that takes over forcing everyone to share everything equally, taking nothing for themselves. I hate to be the one to have to clue you in, but that's never, ever, going to happen, and believing otherwise is, at the very least, naive.
Do you really think that their inability is their fault? Do you think there's some kind of taint in the air in Somalia that makes people incapable of rational decision-making?
The Somali people are subject to greater economic and social pressures, just like everyone else. Their political instability is a product of these forces, not of some kind of 'moral' failure on their part.
Don't blame the victim. Don't blame people who are acting as best they can within the social framework that has been imposed on them.
What needs to happen? In general terms, the Western world provides free education to Somalia, and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund provide low-interest loans *without* the usual strings attached.
In detail? I don't know. Somalia is a ridiculously complicated situation, and there are no easy answers.
If we want to stop Somalian piracy, however, shooting the pirates we can catch will achieve nothing. There will always be more. Unless we can change the economic pressures within Somalia that drive these people to piracy in the first place, nothing can be done.
Individual action is a bit pointless. What is needed is an end to foreign economic intervention, so the Somali government can stabilise.
The problem, fundamentally, is that the Western world sees the application of free-market/neo-liberal principles to the world economy as a legitimate activity, which inevitably leads to resource-rape and economic exclusion.
Terrorism is not actually any more of a problem than it has always been, except insofar as it has been recently used as an excuse for all sorts of bad internal and foreign policy on the part of the US, UK and Australian governments.
There's a fair argument to make that the poor Somali are simply trying to make ends meet.
We're rich. They're not. This dichotomy is at least partly our fault. Is it surprising that they're resentful and willing to *take* what they don't have.
In New Zealand, where I'm from, that would be completely illegal.
Time you spend at a job doing something related to the job is paid. No exceptions. Hell, there's an allocated amount of time you spend at the job *not* doing anything related to the job we get paid for as well. It's called 'lunch' (and there are mandatory paid tea breaks).
I've lived in the US before, though, and the balance of employee/employer power is much more in favour of the employer than it is here. NZ is quite socialist, so there are much more extensive union and labour-protection laws.
So yes. My answer is that, if I'm at work waiting for my computer to boot, I'm *not* elsewhere doing other things, and I'll be paid for my time.
Socialistic policies lead to uniform poverty. Story at 11.
Would you like to substantiate that claim? I have lived in several socialist countries, and they have had far fewer problems with poverty and crime than the US.
Why are Americans (as a broad generalisation) so opposed to socialism? It works elsewhere, and a lot of people would argue it works a lot better.
That's a fairly...traditional American fallacy.
Yes, there are occasional examples of people transcending class boundaries in the US, but for the most part people are trapped within them.
Wealth begets wealth and poverty begets poverty.
I beg to differ.
The current copyright/patent system is designed in such a way that completely free software (BSD, public domain et al.) can be made less free by unscrupulous parties (extending and not releasing changes, etc).
The GPL, for better or for worse, is defined to protect GPL code from what could be defined as a "hostile" legal system. The only freedom the GPL blocks is the freedom to restrict freedom.
I would argue that the GPL removes one set of *specific* freedoms from the end user - in return for which it increases the overall freedom of the GPL ecosystem.
This is an interesting concept.
I think an accurate comparison is anarchy vs a (good) government of some kind. In theory, anarchy is the most free system, as it poses no restrictions on behaviour whatsoever. However, in practice, an anarchic system tends to concentrate power in the hands of a (charismatic, rich or similar) minority. This minority can, due to the nature of an anarchic system, impose any rules on those around them they choose - provided they have the power to enforce them. The net result of this is that the anarchic system becomes in practice less free than a regulated system would be.
It becomes necessary to impose rules and regulations on those who wish to join a social system in order to prevent them removing freedom from those around them. Everyone loses a few of their freedoms (the right to kill, the right to steal, etc), in return for which the overall freedom of that society increases.
I rather think something similar applies to software.
Slashdot Mirror
But the government definitely has business setting minimum wages, instituting union frameworks so that workers can deal with employers on more equal footing, and generally doing their best to make sure the powerful don't fuck with the powerless.
Absolutely.
I was offered my first job as a web developer when I was 17. I'd been studying English Literature at Otago University (New Zealand) until then, but had been doing casual front-end web development on the side.
Now I'm still on this first job, although I've been there well over a year. I'm earning above the average (New Zealand) salary, I've plenty of future prospects, I'm involved in some fairly interesting projects and I'm having a good time.
I don't see my lack of degree as being any problem in the future. Once you've got experience and can show previous work you've done you shouldn't have any problems. As other comments have said; getting your foot in the door is the hardest part.
(Oh. And shameless plug. My latest project was www.digitalnz.org
YES, it certainly isn't the fault of anyone else.
So it's their fault that they were invaded by Ethiopia? Their fault that their traditional government was destroyed by the British and Italians in the late 1800s?
Somalia is as it is because of greater forces, and their role in the generation of those greater forces is minimal. The blame is collective, and no individual has ever had the power to change the country.
It is NOT our responsibility to take care of the Somali people. The problem with people like you is that you want it both ways. Before we go in it's help us, save us, protect us from ourselves, keep the peace. After we go in we're heartless imperialists. If the Somali people want help, they should get after helping themselves. I suppose if someone broke into your house, murdered your family, and held you and your belongings for a ransom, you'd advocating paying them off as well.
Why is not our responsibility? Is it acceptable for use to take our stolen wealth and deny reparations to those we stole it from?
You're wrong about 'people like me'. I've never advocated direct intervention in internal politics. It inevitably makes the situation worse. I advocate fair and equitable economic policy; the protection of emerging economies and regulation preventing economic arm-twisting. Yes - the Somali have to help themselves. We can make it a whole lot easier for them with minimal effort.
War is caused by poverty, in one form or another. The only way to prevent it is to prevent poverty.
Someone breaking into my house is a false analogy and not relevant to this conversation.
Shoot enough pirates, and everyone that could potentially become a pirate will realize that it's fruitless, and will perhaps start fixing their own problems.
No. They'll still become pirates, because they need to eat. They'll just become better-armed, more violent pirates with chips on their shoulders.
Perhaps the problem isn't everyone else, but the inability of the Somali people to control and govern themselves. So if you blame the free-market for this pathetic failure, what's the solution? A benevolent dictator that takes over forcing everyone to share everything equally, taking nothing for themselves. I hate to be the one to have to clue you in, but that's never, ever, going to happen, and believing otherwise is, at the very least, naive.
Do you really think that their inability is their fault? Do you think there's some kind of taint in the air in Somalia that makes people incapable of rational decision-making?
The Somali people are subject to greater economic and social pressures, just like everyone else. Their political instability is a product of these forces, not of some kind of 'moral' failure on their part.
Don't blame the victim. Don't blame people who are acting as best they can within the social framework that has been imposed on them.
What needs to happen? In general terms, the Western world provides free education to Somalia, and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund provide low-interest loans *without* the usual strings attached.
In detail? I don't know. Somalia is a ridiculously complicated situation, and there are no easy answers.
If we want to stop Somalian piracy, however, shooting the pirates we can catch will achieve nothing. There will always be more. Unless we can change the economic pressures within Somalia that drive these people to piracy in the first place, nothing can be done.
I think we have a contradiction in terms, here.
Individual action is a bit pointless. What is needed is an end to foreign economic intervention, so the Somali government can stabilise.
The problem, fundamentally, is that the Western world sees the application of free-market/neo-liberal principles to the world economy as a legitimate activity, which inevitably leads to resource-rape and economic exclusion.
And we're starving them through economic means. They're guilty. So are we. They're killing a few of us, and we're killing a lot of them.
Who is more evil?
Why? What right do we have to kill people who are trying to survive by taking a tiny segment of our vast wealth?
Terrorism is not actually any more of a problem than it has always been, except insofar as it has been recently used as an excuse for all sorts of bad internal and foreign policy on the part of the US, UK and Australian governments.
There's a fair argument to make that the poor Somali are simply trying to make ends meet. We're rich. They're not. This dichotomy is at least partly our fault. Is it surprising that they're resentful and willing to *take* what they don't have.
You could ... contribute to an interesting OSS project...
It'd freeze.
In New Zealand, where I'm from, that would be completely illegal. Time you spend at a job doing something related to the job is paid. No exceptions. Hell, there's an allocated amount of time you spend at the job *not* doing anything related to the job we get paid for as well. It's called 'lunch' (and there are mandatory paid tea breaks). I've lived in the US before, though, and the balance of employee/employer power is much more in favour of the employer than it is here. NZ is quite socialist, so there are much more extensive union and labour-protection laws. So yes. My answer is that, if I'm at work waiting for my computer to boot, I'm *not* elsewhere doing other things, and I'll be paid for my time.
Would you like to substantiate that claim? I have lived in several socialist countries, and they have had far fewer problems with poverty and crime than the US.
Why are Americans (as a broad generalisation) so opposed to socialism? It works elsewhere, and a lot of people would argue it works a lot better.
Yes, but then they're still stuck for however-many hours in a day with absolutely nothing to occupy them. It's mind-numbing and painful.
That's a fairly...traditional American fallacy. Yes, there are occasional examples of people transcending class boundaries in the US, but for the most part people are trapped within them. Wealth begets wealth and poverty begets poverty.
Why on earth would you drop a perfectly good Unixlike system for Windows?
I beg to differ. The current copyright/patent system is designed in such a way that completely free software (BSD, public domain et al.) can be made less free by unscrupulous parties (extending and not releasing changes, etc). The GPL, for better or for worse, is defined to protect GPL code from what could be defined as a "hostile" legal system. The only freedom the GPL blocks is the freedom to restrict freedom. I would argue that the GPL removes one set of *specific* freedoms from the end user - in return for which it increases the overall freedom of the GPL ecosystem. This is an interesting concept. I think an accurate comparison is anarchy vs a (good) government of some kind. In theory, anarchy is the most free system, as it poses no restrictions on behaviour whatsoever. However, in practice, an anarchic system tends to concentrate power in the hands of a (charismatic, rich or similar) minority. This minority can, due to the nature of an anarchic system, impose any rules on those around them they choose - provided they have the power to enforce them. The net result of this is that the anarchic system becomes in practice less free than a regulated system would be. It becomes necessary to impose rules and regulations on those who wish to join a social system in order to prevent them removing freedom from those around them. Everyone loses a few of their freedoms (the right to kill, the right to steal, etc), in return for which the overall freedom of that society increases. I rather think something similar applies to software.
A few of us in NZ have already written to the author to point this out - paraphrased nicely.