Reps aren't usually the ones you see. Those old white guys spouting opinions on your network are, typically, other journalists-- typically ones promoted to the level of Pundit. When congressmen/senators/appointees are interviewed, they are typically given only a few seconds, and are put into situations where there is a strong opponent right next to them. Even then, they are typically gracious to their colleagues. The media works very hard to keep them at each others' throats. But usually, they just stick a few real leaders in between hoards of the media elite, who are paid to be jerks.
This happens because the media benefits from conflict. A news story about a learned debate between a tax cut of N% and a cut of (.95)N% just won't earn ratings. So they find the one guy in congress who is storming mad about it, and interview him. That's, IMO, why Sen. McCain gets so much media attention: he isn't easily pigeonholed by party, and is more often at odds with other Senators about something than his colleagues.
The legislative process is fundamentally boring and consensus driven. It consists of legislative assistants (working for the various committees and in the Member's personal offices) getting together and hammering out a budget based largely on that agency's requests. It takes months and is filled with formal letters requesting fair consideration from other members, then rushed markup sessions where priorities are set and horses traded. The members themselves only set goals and targets; they personally negotiate only if things break down. This is totally unreportable. For one thing, the people who are doing the work are between 25 and 35 years old-- way too young to look like Government Officials. For another, they won't talk to the press-- that's what press secretaries are for, to shield legislative staff from reporters (with the occasional senior staffer who does off the record interviews). So the press interviews the only people who will still talk to them: each other.
Sit down with a stopwatch one night on the nightly news and record how much time people with real political power (someone with a position in the government) speaks. Then do the same with crossfire (on a night when they have anyone who actually does policy-making for a living at all). You just don't have time to be thoughtful.
One excellent point I drew out of the report was the shortage of technical people. You have no idea how easy it is to get into politics and be in a position of at least moderate influence. The trick is to always work to put more into your efforts than you ever want to take out. Find some state rep or state senator who you agree with on most issues. Then contribute your most valuable resource: time. With recent layoffs, this shouldn't be a problem for some of us. Read Heinlein's book, Take Back Your Government.
You won't get everything you want, but you'll gain a new respect for our leaders, and also help them make good decisions about many of our most critical issues in technology.
The problem with the Estate Tax, as I see it at least, is that it really bites farmers and ranch owners in the arse if they don't prepare well enough before their deaths. They don't have the large cash reserves to pay for ingenious little accountants like the "biggies" such as WillyG do.
This is a major problem in most of America, which is still rural and family-owned. I've heard from a lot of farmers who have had to lose their land and sell out to a big agribusiness conglomerate over estate taxes.
Besides, I thought that M$ doesn't pay income taxes because of the massive deduction they get on the options they give to their employees...
The super mega rich in America can afford to hire accountants to jump through all the loopholes in the system. The poor don't have much to spare. The middle class have just enough to get robbed, and not enough to hire accountants to defend themselves.
What we need to do is close these loopholes. In the flat tax plan, for instance, you take your income, subtract 11,000 dollars (22,000 if you are filing jointly with your SO), or 14,000 if you are a single parent. Then subtract 5,000 per dependant. Then multiply by.17 and that's what you pay, period. The poor don't pay anything; the rich don't have any loopholes to use.
In the meantime, I don't see what the problem is with lowering the lowest tax bracket from 15% to 10%. That's between one and two thousand dollars to the average person. Sheesh, we don't get these arguments when we raise taxes.
My understanding is that the concern is that people in substandard schools, especially racial minorities, who are often trapped in the worst schools, tend to do disproportionately badly in these tests. However, once admitted to higher education, students in bad schools do significantly better than their scores would have predicted (because of natural ability, higher work ethic, etc, which was ignored in their schools). The idea is that once in college, students who never had the advantages that other the other kids had finally have the opportunity to excel.
Right now, the unions are opposed to any attempt to give kids in bad schools any way out (even when these plans only target the worst schools and the poorest families). So we need some way to not penalize kids who have the talent and attitude but didn't have the advantages of wealthier families.
The solution of using racial weighting doesn't cover students who went to bad schools but aren't in a minority. And my asian friends in HS felt an even worse side effect of this system-- it penalized them just because asians tend to do better academically.
Until we can clean up the public school system-- which will take decades-- we need some solution that doesn't discriminate, but does take into account a person's background and potential.
For now, the solution is focusing more on well trained admissions boards who take a real look at a student. This is just what the workplace has been doing for years with great success. When a company hires a programmer, they take the applicant's GPA, certifications and school into account, but also the interview, references, maybe a code sample, etc. Paper resumes aren't everything.
I think this is a very positive step. I got a 1570 SAT back in the days before they bumped all the scores up, so this isn't sour grapes on my part. But I do think that we need to look at everything about a person, not just a test they took in an afternoon one saturday morning.
I don't think they'll be the last. White Wolf, for instance, is another big fat juicy target. Vampire and Mage were groundbreaking, but their work since then has been either boilerplate Whitewolf or worse, boilerplate for the RPG industry. Add to that their shortsighted financial policies and you see a company ripe for bankruptcy.
FASA displayed similar tendencies. Battletech and Shadowrun haven't been interesting in years; they are good games, but there is no incentive to buy the new stuff. They were being pushed like young vibrant games, but they just weren't being taken in new directions. Crimson Skies is cool, but it has to go head to head with Gear Krieg and others. Battlespace was a joke-- you're better off playing with Full Thrust rules and miniatures.
If you liked VOR, good news, the creator's contract stipulated that rights reverted back to him.
The bottom line is that this is sad, but not unexpected. I would like to see the gaming industry do something new, which it really hasn't since Vampire (which itself was a repackaged Call of Cthulu). Gaming seems to do well in recessions, so it will be interesting to see what emerges.
Nuclear waste is more of a NIMBY problem than anything else. The actual amount of nuclear waste is pretty small. And the major cost of nuclear power is the lawsuits and restraining orders that the legal seige has caused.
Remember the old line about how nuclear waste could make a road eight lanes wide and five feet deep from San Francisco to New York? It turns out that less than 1% is what we would normally think of as nuclear waste. The vast majority of what is classified as nuclear waste is actually one use disposable gowns worn during X-rays in hospitals, etc.
I think someone else already mentioned that watching TV, taking a transcontinental flight, and and living near a coal-fired power plant all expose you to more radiation than nuclear power, but that bears mentioning, too.
The bottom line is that the environmental movement is being poisoned from the inside from people who aren't pro-environment, they are anti-technology, and looking for any excuse to oppose anything (remember the lawsuits against solar power centers because they disturbed the desert ecologies?). This knee-jerk hatred of technology has brought blackouts to California, and is killing any real chance we have of protecting the environment.
Having a cell phone is a no win proposition: you either talk on it, in which case it is jammed up against your brain (and now, apparantly, gives you eye cancer, too). Or you don't talk on, and leave it your belt clip. Right next to your reproductive organs.
On second thought, never mind, it's an easy choice. I'll go for the three headed babies.
These kinds of tort proceedings are very common. Of course, the lawyers who file the lawsuits on behalf of the shareholders typically represent only a small fraction of shareholders. These lawsuits are designed to mainly benefit the law firms which file them, rather than the stockholders. (This, BTW, is the case with most class action lawsuits because they aren't adequately regulated. Lawfirms constantly defend the broken system by claiming that Big Corporations are trying to stop you from suing them.)
This is vulturism, and the whole field needs reform. However, President Clinton has pushed hard against every kind of tort reform effort. Hopefully we'll see something in the near future to stop these stupid and predatory lawsuits.
I think that is what he means by "that is to be expected". Everyone has areas of our system which they think is logically inconsistent with its basic premises (even those who agree on what those basic premises actually are don't agree on the specific implementation we have of them).
Are there things I would change? Sure. But the great thing about our government is that, compared to that of most other countries, it is clean and minimalist. You get some outcomes you don't like, but it is mostly good.
It is even better when you realize that the majority of humans on earth have never made a phone call. We don't recognize how good we have it.
Not only that, but the terms weren't even in the fine print. Customers complained that the contract mysteriously changed, to add a 'subject to change without notice' and 'price is +$1/kb when usage is above 300kb'.
In the wired article, most customers didn't read the small print. But those who did, and signed hard copies, report that those clauses weren't on the contracts they signed.
Many on/. are anti-corporate by nature-- some from experience, others are still in school and get that from academia's generally anti-corporate outlook. There is a great deal of merit in some of the critiques-- in others, not so much. I personally think that corporations are the best mass social institution in history-- better than bureaucratic governments (their immediate predecessors), monarchies (similar, but with the wonders of heredity mixed in), or theocracies. There is much we don't like about them, but until there is something better, they are great to have.
iKantBelieve states in the part 'below the fold' (not in the headline) that when he refused the offer, they told him they would fire him if he didn't take the promotion, because this would demonstrate that he was 'unqualified'.
There are times when this is legitimate-- when you hire someone, you sometimes want a person who agrees in advance to the promotion (for instance, if you know that their boss will leave in six months). In that case, you put that on the table when the job offer is made.
As this was described, without reading anything into it, making this threat is improper. It may be ok from a legal point of view, but it is a shitty way to treat employees, and I know if I were put in a situation like that, I would be out as soon as the new offer came in. Not only because such a threat is in and of itself bad, but also because it is a symptom of how management treats its employees.
In my previous job, I was in government service, so YMMV. I do think the principle carries over... If your boss puts improper pressure on you once, he or she will do so again. Best to get out before it escalates, while you can get a recommendation and while you are still employed.
Think of this department as your own company. The department is big enough (6 - 8 people) that it needs management and direction and you are obviously the best person to take on the responsibility in this temporary crisis. Step in, get things running smoothly and then hire your replacement. That way you'll be a hero and wind up working for someone competent and compatible.
I disagree on this one. Your idea is the right way to do it, if the management had handled the situation maturely from the start. They have handled the situation in a terribly unprofessional way, and these are not people you will want to continue working with.
Any 'heroism' you might display in saving the department would likely be ignored by these people. They obviously appreciate your skills enough to want to promote you now-- a lot of good that has done you.
Don't roll the dice of having them fire you. Instead, begin circulating your resume, and have a job offer ready. If you can't stall them any longer, leave. If you get a good offer-- even at the same pay as now-- take it. Don't get into bid and counterbid. Your current employer has taken a step which demands that you leave within the next 30 days anyway.
It isn't easy, I know, to leave your job for something new. But you have to recognize when that step is necessary and find the will to act on it. I've watched a lot of friends stay in bad situations out of momentum when they knew it was time to go. It never pays off.
Nice of Clinton to leave us a recession while he's at it. NASA's important work of crushing private space ventures will be really critical while we're losing our jobs.
While we're at it, let's raise taxes, too. My company has too much money anyway, and if they have to fire me to afford the taxes, well, I'm just taking one for the team.
In reality NASA spent a great deal of time researching the optimal crew size for high-stress envirinments and determined that 3 is the optimal number. All of the material is publically availiable & applied in a wide range of disciplines from physchiatry to business management.
I've been trying to convince my girlfriend of this for some time. Could you post some of the online studies that have been published?
Disclaimer: I am an embittered former federal employee, not a lawyer. Advice which follows is from experience.;)
A key problem isn't technology related. Government information has typically been inaccessible in general. Your web design might present it in a way which doesn't put up obstacles, but the fundamental problem is that things are extremely complicated. Also, if you are like the agency I used to work for, you'll be overwhelmed with a mountain of government regulations on how your page is designed, and what kind of back end you could use. In my agency, Zope and PHP were banned, for instance, and perl scripts had to be approved by a committee of non-programmers-- ie they were effectively banned, too.
1) Don't design to internal, organizational boundaries. From the outside, a government is a single monolithic entity, and people won't know what entity (or more likely, entities) their problem falls under.
An alternative is to design similarly to the Linux Documentation project. Have a series of howtos, based around basic tasks (for instance, property tax rebates, or disaster loans, or filing an environmental complaint). To take disaster loans as an example, you could tell them how to contact the federal Small Business Administration, your state government equivalent, your state Emergency Management Agency, your Department of Agriculture, as well as what they can reasonably expect through each avenue. Include a checklist, troubleshooting section (include a link to the State Legislature email list-- you'll take some heat from the executive branch, but it is a definite plus for your constituents).
2) Design a knowledge base (plenty of shrink-wrapped stuff is available if you can get it through procurement). When questions are asked, the responses can come from the agencies themselves, along with links to relevent information.
Basically, when you buy from IBM or General Electric, you don't go fishing around for someone who can help you (ok, you do, but not as much as you do in government). Ultimately, treat your state as a single entity providing services, and hide the internal details of government as much as possible.
You will, I guarantee, experience a major headache trying to do a good job. Press, the public sector equivalent of marketing, will demand that their agency have special billing and its own section that they can play with-- more than just the 'general information' that they need, they'll want everything related to their agency on its own page. Legal/Ethics will want to control what technology you use and how you use it. The executives will want their initiatives to take top billing over the things people will actually use your site for. There is no 'customer service' per se; most is run out of the offices of the elected officials. So you won't have people to hold responsible for populating the knowledge base with knowledge. Most agency employees only know their own agency, and aren't in any case accountable for their contribution to the web effort.
It is a major challenge, and I don't envy you. Ultimately, to make it work, you'll need to push very hard, and get buyin at the Governor's office. But good luck: people don't realize how hard government employees work to, despite everything, get the work done, and done well.
Why is it that Reagan won the Cold War and was responsible for our current economy, but Clinton was just in the right place at the right time? What did Reagan do that wasn't just due to his being there?
Fair question. The country had been in a 10 year stagflation period (high inflation and a recession simultaneously-- something economists previously thought was impossible). Most downturns are brief-- the recession of 1990 was only about a year long, for instance. Here we had a full decade of mostly uninterrupted bad times. A number of public policies had been attempted, to no effect.
Reagan pushed for a massive tax cut, along with a gov't spending cut. He got the one, but not the other. Meanwhile, to combat the Soviets, he sharply increased military spending, both on equipment and on training.
While the result was massive budget deficits (something he originally campaigned on reducing), it was also a massive kickstart to the economy: cutting taxes effectively raised everyone's income (from work and investment). The recession finally ended after 1982, and lead to a long, strong economic growth period.
Meanwhile, he initiated a massive research program to develop a defense to nuclear weapons. Many people still disagree about whether the idea is possible, but there is no doubt that the money into applied high energy physics, space science, and computer control systems has paid off. As our conventional forces grew in strength and quality, the Russians faced a choice: either try to out spend us, or risk losing the edge in both nuclear and conventional military power. They tried to outspend us, and couldn't maintain their occupied possessions (eastern Europe, Angola, rebel forces world-wide, and, of course, the war in Afghanistan). So they fell apart.
Clinton's 'recovery' happened before he was even elected. Reagan had to work for two years to get his recovery. Both men were wise enough to stay out of the way of advancing technology and economic growth. Reagan, though, had to jumpstart an economy which was adrift.
My point was more that ideologues' hatred for Reagan is not grounded in actual, real live history. He did a great job, and turned us around at a time when we were on the ropes. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter failed when faced with these challenges-- Reagan succeeded. Clinton never faced a challenge as great as the economic and geopolitical perils we faced, so we'll never know how great he could have been under fire.
I'm very nearly at the point where I will start to buy into the rogue DNS thing. It is dangerous, because you could end up with chaos. But ICANN is trying very hard to be worse. They're both incompetent and autocratic.
The whole 'ICANN is short of money' thing is getting way too old. Most of ICANN's money is going into a single expensive lawfirm, which has a cozy relationship with the Board of Directors. The rest is being squandered on staff salaries. ICANN could tighten its belt if it wanted to; but it still isn't willing. They'd rather just tax countries which had and have nothing to do with them.
As for the economy, the Regan Era (including his "third term" under Daddy Bush) was an unmitigated economic disaster. The recovery started almost the day GBSr left office, and has continued unabated ever since.
1) Actually, the CBO figures which revealed the end of the recession (a light and pretty short recession, as recessions go) were released about a week or two after the election-- and covered the previous quarter. When Clinton was asked how he could take credit for ending the recession when it was over a month before the election (let alone inauguration, let alone before he had time to actually do anything), he said it was because people knew he would be elected, and were so happy they went out and started buying things again.
If the recession ended 'almost the day of the election', that seems to argue that Clinton's policies had nothing whatsoever to do with the recovery. For what it's worth, that seems to be your argument, too:
Frankly, I don't think a president can do much about the economy directly, but what does matter IMO is the optimism of consumers, small businesses, etc., who were in constant fear of being crushed under Regan's "trickle down" philosophy, but who have actually stood a fighting chance in the post-Regan era.
2) You spelled Reagan wrong. Sorry to nitpick.
3) Most small businessmen supported Bush. I don't know how you could call the longest and strongest expansion in US history a state of 'constant fear'. What did frighten people was the Cold War, which Reagan won, and which is definitely attributable to the work of a president, unlike the economic cycles. At first, people were, under Clinton, also frightened that the government would nationalize the healthcare system-- effectively turning doctors and hospitals into a big government program. Then Congress changed hands and people have been pretty happy ever since.
4) To be honest, I don't know what your beef is with Bush or Reagan. If you like Clinton, you should realize that thanks to Congress, he has basically pursued the same policies-- and we've enjoyed growth of record strength and length. Clinton signed welfare reform and a balanced budget. He had to be dragged to each kicking and screaming, but both initiatives were so successful that he bragged about them, to roaring crowds, at his own convention.
5) Finally, as for Reagan, early in his term, Clinton listed Ronald Reagan as one of the presidents who he would like to be like, along with JFK, FDR and other Democrats. I don't know if you are old enough to remember ten years of humiliation overseas (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran, Angola, etc), runaway inflation (I remember earning 11% on a one year CD!), gas lines, or neverending recession, but that's the mess that Reagan inherited. Ten years later, the Cold War was over, inflation was dead, our energy supply was secure, and our economy was good. We still had problems, but I think you need to look objectively at the 80's.
Noone is denying that the 90's have been good, too. Clinton deserves some credit for not getting in the way of economic growth. In an economy like this, even though we have a recession on the way, every historical precedent says that Gore should have clobbered Bush. But I think one reason that Gore did so much worse than expected despite the good times is that people sensed that he isn't a moderate the way Clinton is.
According to the proposal, all health-related content would be pulled into.health. The UN has tried things like this before... while it demonstrates that they don't understand unrestricted TLDs like.com or.org, they are most certainly making an attempt to powergrab health resources on the internet by fiat.
First, this violates the first Amendment (not that the UN cares, but people in democracies should be concerned about attempts to regulate any content).
Second, intelligent people do disagree on medical issues. For instance, herbal remedies or chiropractic medicine. Some say it's quackery, and others say it works, and shouldn't be banned just because the mechanism by which it works hasn't been understood yet.
Third, the whole value of the internet is its freedom. ANYONE can make a web site. But if the WHO is going to regulate anything, they will have to have prior approval. If they do, that pretty much bans all 'unofficial' health web sites. If they don't, that just guarantees that hospitals, companies, doctors and other credentialled providers have a huge regulatory hurdle to jump through, when the quacks and con men don't.
Really, what does this accomplish which the WHO can't do already with a gif, a review committee and a 'seal of approval'. If they like a web site, just give it the seal and the right to use the trademarked gif.
Answer: Noone cares what the WHO does or thinks. By getting the force of law behind them (through ICANN's power over TLDs), they are hoping to grab legitimacy and importance by force-- when they certainly haven't earned it.
That depends on what the robofighters would consider to be friendly.
An automated, networked system, a kind of Sky Net, if you will, would be a threat to all of humanity. It would rapidly attempt to take over the work and destroy all of humanity.
If the mysterious destruction in the mid-eighties of an LA police station, the more mysterious destruction ten years later of the CyberDyne Systems building, or the rampage that hit the Itchy and Scratchy Themepark doesn't convince you, I don't know what will. Robots will, inevitably, turn on their masters. We would be fools to ignore the evidence that Television gives us.
Just wanted to let you all know. When the nuclear holocaust hits and the HKs and Terminators start rounding us up for disposal, I'll be there to tell you I Told You So.
Great. So Free Speech counts as porno, racism, and the 'right' to have a coax network. But it doesn't count when you're buying a TV ad to tell people you are endorsing a political candidate. Could someone remind me why we have a 1st Amendment?
Re:Punchcards == Computers
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Don't talk to me about Nader. I traded my vote for Nader to a perl script.
Orin Hatch called the Napster hearings because he believes that his law is being misused in the courtrooms. He is fighting to change the law he wrote, because it isn't doing what he wants it to. The US Senate submitted a briefing to the court in the Napster case saying that the DMCA was being misused, and did not support its use against Napster.
Diane Feinstein is vocal in supporting the RIAA and MPAA-- and spoke out against fair use at the Napster hearings. SHe's running for re-election in California, and like all Democrats, has the strong backing of the RIAA, MPAA, and the trial lawyers. Make your own judgements.
The Clinton/Gore legal team have defended the modified interpretations of the DMCA that have caused so many problems. Judges they appointed are making the rulings we don't like. ICANN, which they created, is slowly turning into a tyranny.
As for the UCITA, this just shows how important it is that we support state and local candidates. If you are in a state which passed the UCITA, remember this when you vote for your state offices.
People on/. have said that Bush is dumb, that he is mean, that he lies, etc. But I have yet to hear, even from CmdrTaco, anything other than cheap shots. Gore, meanwhile, is actively supporting virtually every technology policy we don't like. In Texas, Bush was re-elected as governor in a race where the highest ranked Democrats in the state supported Bush over their own party. So I don't know how people believe that it would be such a disaster if he was elected, any more than anyone else who thementve policy disagreements with.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a little more complicated than that.
One excellent point I drew out of the report was the shortage of technical people. You have no idea how easy it is to get into politics and be in a position of at least moderate influence. The trick is to always work to put more into your efforts than you ever want to take out. Find some state rep or state senator who you agree with on most issues. Then contribute your most valuable resource: time. With recent layoffs, this shouldn't be a problem for some of us. Read Heinlein's book, Take Back Your Government.
You won't get everything you want, but you'll gain a new respect for our leaders, and also help them make good decisions about many of our most critical issues in technology.
This is a major problem in most of America, which is still rural and family-owned. I've heard from a lot of farmers who have had to lose their land and sell out to a big agribusiness conglomerate over estate taxes.
Besides, I thought that M$ doesn't pay income taxes because of the massive deduction they get on the options they give to their employees...
The super mega rich in America can afford to hire accountants to jump through all the loopholes in the system. The poor don't have much to spare. The middle class have just enough to get robbed, and not enough to hire accountants to defend themselves.
What we need to do is close these loopholes. In the flat tax plan, for instance, you take your income, subtract 11,000 dollars (22,000 if you are filing jointly with your SO), or 14,000 if you are a single parent. Then subtract 5,000 per dependant. Then multiply by .17 and that's what you pay, period. The poor don't pay anything; the rich don't have any loopholes to use.
In the meantime, I don't see what the problem is with lowering the lowest tax bracket from 15% to 10%. That's between one and two thousand dollars to the average person. Sheesh, we don't get these arguments when we raise taxes.
My understanding is that the concern is that people in substandard schools, especially racial minorities, who are often trapped in the worst schools, tend to do disproportionately badly in these tests. However, once admitted to higher education, students in bad schools do significantly better than their scores would have predicted (because of natural ability, higher work ethic, etc, which was ignored in their schools). The idea is that once in college, students who never had the advantages that other the other kids had finally have the opportunity to excel.
Right now, the unions are opposed to any attempt to give kids in bad schools any way out (even when these plans only target the worst schools and the poorest families). So we need some way to not penalize kids who have the talent and attitude but didn't have the advantages of wealthier families.
The solution of using racial weighting doesn't cover students who went to bad schools but aren't in a minority. And my asian friends in HS felt an even worse side effect of this system-- it penalized them just because asians tend to do better academically.
Until we can clean up the public school system-- which will take decades-- we need some solution that doesn't discriminate, but does take into account a person's background and potential.
For now, the solution is focusing more on well trained admissions boards who take a real look at a student. This is just what the workplace has been doing for years with great success. When a company hires a programmer, they take the applicant's GPA, certifications and school into account, but also the interview, references, maybe a code sample, etc. Paper resumes aren't everything.
I think this is a very positive step. I got a 1570 SAT back in the days before they bumped all the scores up, so this isn't sour grapes on my part. But I do think that we need to look at everything about a person, not just a test they took in an afternoon one saturday morning.
My US$0.02
I don't think they'll be the last. White Wolf, for instance, is another big fat juicy target. Vampire and Mage were groundbreaking, but their work since then has been either boilerplate Whitewolf or worse, boilerplate for the RPG industry. Add to that their shortsighted financial policies and you see a company ripe for bankruptcy.
FASA displayed similar tendencies. Battletech and Shadowrun haven't been interesting in years; they are good games, but there is no incentive to buy the new stuff. They were being pushed like young vibrant games, but they just weren't being taken in new directions. Crimson Skies is cool, but it has to go head to head with Gear Krieg and others. Battlespace was a joke-- you're better off playing with Full Thrust rules and miniatures.
If you liked VOR, good news, the creator's contract stipulated that rights reverted back to him.
The bottom line is that this is sad, but not unexpected. I would like to see the gaming industry do something new, which it really hasn't since Vampire (which itself was a repackaged Call of Cthulu). Gaming seems to do well in recessions, so it will be interesting to see what emerges.
Nuclear waste is more of a NIMBY problem than anything else. The actual amount of nuclear waste is pretty small. And the major cost of nuclear power is the lawsuits and restraining orders that the legal seige has caused.
Remember the old line about how nuclear waste could make a road eight lanes wide and five feet deep from San Francisco to New York? It turns out that less than 1% is what we would normally think of as nuclear waste. The vast majority of what is classified as nuclear waste is actually one use disposable gowns worn during X-rays in hospitals, etc.
I think someone else already mentioned that watching TV, taking a transcontinental flight, and and living near a coal-fired power plant all expose you to more radiation than nuclear power, but that bears mentioning, too.
The bottom line is that the environmental movement is being poisoned from the inside from people who aren't pro-environment, they are anti-technology, and looking for any excuse to oppose anything (remember the lawsuits against solar power centers because they disturbed the desert ecologies?). This knee-jerk hatred of technology has brought blackouts to California, and is killing any real chance we have of protecting the environment.
If you think the company has no future, bail. Bottom line.
If you want what's best for your team, be in a position to help them when the ship sinks. You can't be there for them when you're going down yourself.
Having a cell phone is a no win proposition: you either talk on it, in which case it is jammed up against your brain (and now, apparantly, gives you eye cancer, too). Or you don't talk on, and leave it your belt clip. Right next to your reproductive organs.
On second thought, never mind, it's an easy choice. I'll go for the three headed babies.
These kinds of tort proceedings are very common. Of course, the lawyers who file the lawsuits on behalf of the shareholders typically represent only a small fraction of shareholders. These lawsuits are designed to mainly benefit the law firms which file them, rather than the stockholders. (This, BTW, is the case with most class action lawsuits because they aren't adequately regulated. Lawfirms constantly defend the broken system by claiming that Big Corporations are trying to stop you from suing them.)
This is vulturism, and the whole field needs reform. However, President Clinton has pushed hard against every kind of tort reform effort. Hopefully we'll see something in the near future to stop these stupid and predatory lawsuits.
I think that is what he means by "that is to be expected". Everyone has areas of our system which they think is logically inconsistent with its basic premises (even those who agree on what those basic premises actually are don't agree on the specific implementation we have of them).
Are there things I would change? Sure. But the great thing about our government is that, compared to that of most other countries, it is clean and minimalist. You get some outcomes you don't like, but it is mostly good.
It is even better when you realize that the majority of humans on earth have never made a phone call. We don't recognize how good we have it.
We do have a government-approved standard. It is called Ada.
This would be just like Ada, except that it would cover every conceivable standard!
And, best of all, there is no escape!
Not only that, but the terms weren't even in the fine print. Customers complained that the contract mysteriously changed, to add a 'subject to change without notice' and 'price is +$1/kb when usage is above 300kb'.
In the wired article, most customers didn't read the small print. But those who did, and signed hard copies, report that those clauses weren't on the contracts they signed.
Many on /. are anti-corporate by nature-- some from experience, others are still in school and get that from academia's generally anti-corporate outlook. There is a great deal of merit in some of the critiques-- in others, not so much. I personally think that corporations are the best mass social institution in history-- better than bureaucratic governments (their immediate predecessors), monarchies (similar, but with the wonders of heredity mixed in), or theocracies. There is much we don't like about them, but until there is something better, they are great to have.
iKantBelieve states in the part 'below the fold' (not in the headline) that when he refused the offer, they told him they would fire him if he didn't take the promotion, because this would demonstrate that he was 'unqualified'.
There are times when this is legitimate-- when you hire someone, you sometimes want a person who agrees in advance to the promotion (for instance, if you know that their boss will leave in six months). In that case, you put that on the table when the job offer is made.
As this was described, without reading anything into it, making this threat is improper. It may be ok from a legal point of view, but it is a shitty way to treat employees, and I know if I were put in a situation like that, I would be out as soon as the new offer came in. Not only because such a threat is in and of itself bad, but also because it is a symptom of how management treats its employees.
In my previous job, I was in government service, so YMMV. I do think the principle carries over... If your boss puts improper pressure on you once, he or she will do so again. Best to get out before it escalates, while you can get a recommendation and while you are still employed.
I disagree on this one. Your idea is the right way to do it, if the management had handled the situation maturely from the start. They have handled the situation in a terribly unprofessional way, and these are not people you will want to continue working with.
Any 'heroism' you might display in saving the department would likely be ignored by these people. They obviously appreciate your skills enough to want to promote you now-- a lot of good that has done you.
Don't roll the dice of having them fire you. Instead, begin circulating your resume, and have a job offer ready. If you can't stall them any longer, leave. If you get a good offer-- even at the same pay as now-- take it. Don't get into bid and counterbid. Your current employer has taken a step which demands that you leave within the next 30 days anyway.
It isn't easy, I know, to leave your job for something new. But you have to recognize when that step is necessary and find the will to act on it. I've watched a lot of friends stay in bad situations out of momentum when they knew it was time to go. It never pays off.
Nice of Clinton to leave us a recession while he's at it. NASA's important work of crushing private space ventures will be really critical while we're losing our jobs.
While we're at it, let's raise taxes, too. My company has too much money anyway, and if they have to fire me to afford the taxes, well, I'm just taking one for the team.
I've been trying to convince my girlfriend of this for some time. Could you post some of the online studies that have been published?
The men of Slashdot appreciate your efforts.
Disclaimer: I am an embittered former federal employee, not a lawyer. Advice which follows is from experience. ;)
A key problem isn't technology related. Government information has typically been inaccessible in general. Your web design might present it in a way which doesn't put up obstacles, but the fundamental problem is that things are extremely complicated. Also, if you are like the agency I used to work for, you'll be overwhelmed with a mountain of government regulations on how your page is designed, and what kind of back end you could use. In my agency, Zope and PHP were banned, for instance, and perl scripts had to be approved by a committee of non-programmers-- ie they were effectively banned, too.
1) Don't design to internal, organizational boundaries. From the outside, a government is a single monolithic entity, and people won't know what entity (or more likely, entities) their problem falls under.
An alternative is to design similarly to the Linux Documentation project. Have a series of howtos, based around basic tasks (for instance, property tax rebates, or disaster loans, or filing an environmental complaint). To take disaster loans as an example, you could tell them how to contact the federal Small Business Administration, your state government equivalent, your state Emergency Management Agency, your Department of Agriculture, as well as what they can reasonably expect through each avenue. Include a checklist, troubleshooting section (include a link to the State Legislature email list-- you'll take some heat from the executive branch, but it is a definite plus for your constituents).
2) Design a knowledge base (plenty of shrink-wrapped stuff is available if you can get it through procurement). When questions are asked, the responses can come from the agencies themselves, along with links to relevent information.
Basically, when you buy from IBM or General Electric, you don't go fishing around for someone who can help you (ok, you do, but not as much as you do in government). Ultimately, treat your state as a single entity providing services, and hide the internal details of government as much as possible.
You will, I guarantee, experience a major headache trying to do a good job. Press, the public sector equivalent of marketing, will demand that their agency have special billing and its own section that they can play with-- more than just the 'general information' that they need, they'll want everything related to their agency on its own page. Legal/Ethics will want to control what technology you use and how you use it. The executives will want their initiatives to take top billing over the things people will actually use your site for. There is no 'customer service' per se; most is run out of the offices of the elected officials. So you won't have people to hold responsible for populating the knowledge base with knowledge. Most agency employees only know their own agency, and aren't in any case accountable for their contribution to the web effort.
It is a major challenge, and I don't envy you. Ultimately, to make it work, you'll need to push very hard, and get buyin at the Governor's office. But good luck: people don't realize how hard government employees work to, despite everything, get the work done, and done well.
Fair question. The country had been in a 10 year stagflation period (high inflation and a recession simultaneously-- something economists previously thought was impossible). Most downturns are brief-- the recession of 1990 was only about a year long, for instance. Here we had a full decade of mostly uninterrupted bad times. A number of public policies had been attempted, to no effect.
Reagan pushed for a massive tax cut, along with a gov't spending cut. He got the one, but not the other. Meanwhile, to combat the Soviets, he sharply increased military spending, both on equipment and on training.
While the result was massive budget deficits (something he originally campaigned on reducing), it was also a massive kickstart to the economy: cutting taxes effectively raised everyone's income (from work and investment). The recession finally ended after 1982, and lead to a long, strong economic growth period.
Meanwhile, he initiated a massive research program to develop a defense to nuclear weapons. Many people still disagree about whether the idea is possible, but there is no doubt that the money into applied high energy physics, space science, and computer control systems has paid off. As our conventional forces grew in strength and quality, the Russians faced a choice: either try to out spend us, or risk losing the edge in both nuclear and conventional military power. They tried to outspend us, and couldn't maintain their occupied possessions (eastern Europe, Angola, rebel forces world-wide, and, of course, the war in Afghanistan). So they fell apart.
Clinton's 'recovery' happened before he was even elected. Reagan had to work for two years to get his recovery. Both men were wise enough to stay out of the way of advancing technology and economic growth. Reagan, though, had to jumpstart an economy which was adrift.
My point was more that ideologues' hatred for Reagan is not grounded in actual, real live history. He did a great job, and turned us around at a time when we were on the ropes. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter failed when faced with these challenges-- Reagan succeeded. Clinton never faced a challenge as great as the economic and geopolitical perils we faced, so we'll never know how great he could have been under fire.
I'm very nearly at the point where I will start to buy into the rogue DNS thing. It is dangerous, because you could end up with chaos. But ICANN is trying very hard to be worse. They're both incompetent and autocratic.
The whole 'ICANN is short of money' thing is getting way too old. Most of ICANN's money is going into a single expensive lawfirm, which has a cozy relationship with the Board of Directors. The rest is being squandered on staff salaries. ICANN could tighten its belt if it wanted to; but it still isn't willing. They'd rather just tax countries which had and have nothing to do with them.
1) Actually, the CBO figures which revealed the end of the recession (a light and pretty short recession, as recessions go) were released about a week or two after the election-- and covered the previous quarter. When Clinton was asked how he could take credit for ending the recession when it was over a month before the election (let alone inauguration, let alone before he had time to actually do anything), he said it was because people knew he would be elected, and were so happy they went out and started buying things again.
If the recession ended 'almost the day of the election', that seems to argue that Clinton's policies had nothing whatsoever to do with the recovery. For what it's worth, that seems to be your argument, too:
2) You spelled Reagan wrong. Sorry to nitpick.
3) Most small businessmen supported Bush. I don't know how you could call the longest and strongest expansion in US history a state of 'constant fear'. What did frighten people was the Cold War, which Reagan won, and which is definitely attributable to the work of a president, unlike the economic cycles. At first, people were, under Clinton, also frightened that the government would nationalize the healthcare system-- effectively turning doctors and hospitals into a big government program. Then Congress changed hands and people have been pretty happy ever since.
4) To be honest, I don't know what your beef is with Bush or Reagan. If you like Clinton, you should realize that thanks to Congress, he has basically pursued the same policies-- and we've enjoyed growth of record strength and length. Clinton signed welfare reform and a balanced budget. He had to be dragged to each kicking and screaming, but both initiatives were so successful that he bragged about them, to roaring crowds, at his own convention.
5) Finally, as for Reagan, early in his term, Clinton listed Ronald Reagan as one of the presidents who he would like to be like, along with JFK, FDR and other Democrats. I don't know if you are old enough to remember ten years of humiliation overseas (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran, Angola, etc), runaway inflation (I remember earning 11% on a one year CD!), gas lines, or neverending recession, but that's the mess that Reagan inherited. Ten years later, the Cold War was over, inflation was dead, our energy supply was secure, and our economy was good. We still had problems, but I think you need to look objectively at the 80's.
Noone is denying that the 90's have been good, too. Clinton deserves some credit for not getting in the way of economic growth. In an economy like this, even though we have a recession on the way, every historical precedent says that Gore should have clobbered Bush. But I think one reason that Gore did so much worse than expected despite the good times is that people sensed that he isn't a moderate the way Clinton is.
According to the proposal, all health-related content would be pulled into .health. The UN has tried things like this before... while it demonstrates that they don't understand unrestricted TLDs like .com or .org, they are most certainly making an attempt to powergrab health resources on the internet by fiat.
First, this violates the first Amendment (not that the UN cares, but people in democracies should be concerned about attempts to regulate any content).
Second, intelligent people do disagree on medical issues. For instance, herbal remedies or chiropractic medicine. Some say it's quackery, and others say it works, and shouldn't be banned just because the mechanism by which it works hasn't been understood yet.
Third, the whole value of the internet is its freedom. ANYONE can make a web site. But if the WHO is going to regulate anything, they will have to have prior approval. If they do, that pretty much bans all 'unofficial' health web sites. If they don't, that just guarantees that hospitals, companies, doctors and other credentialled providers have a huge regulatory hurdle to jump through, when the quacks and con men don't.
Really, what does this accomplish which the WHO can't do already with a gif, a review committee and a 'seal of approval'. If they like a web site, just give it the seal and the right to use the trademarked gif.
Answer: Noone cares what the WHO does or thinks. By getting the force of law behind them (through ICANN's power over TLDs), they are hoping to grab legitimacy and importance by force-- when they certainly haven't earned it.
That depends on what the robofighters would consider to be friendly.
An automated, networked system, a kind of Sky Net, if you will, would be a threat to all of humanity. It would rapidly attempt to take over the work and destroy all of humanity.
If the mysterious destruction in the mid-eighties of an LA police station, the more mysterious destruction ten years later of the CyberDyne Systems building, or the rampage that hit the Itchy and Scratchy Themepark doesn't convince you, I don't know what will. Robots will, inevitably, turn on their masters. We would be fools to ignore the evidence that Television gives us.
Just wanted to let you all know. When the nuclear holocaust hits and the HKs and Terminators start rounding us up for disposal, I'll be there to tell you I Told You So.
Great. So Free Speech counts as porno, racism, and the 'right' to have a coax network. But it doesn't count when you're buying a TV ad to tell people you are endorsing a political candidate. Could someone remind me why we have a 1st Amendment?
Don't talk to me about Nader. I traded my vote for Nader to a perl script.
Orin Hatch called the Napster hearings because he believes that his law is being misused in the courtrooms. He is fighting to change the law he wrote, because it isn't doing what he wants it to. The US Senate submitted a briefing to the court in the Napster case saying that the DMCA was being misused, and did not support its use against Napster.
Diane Feinstein is vocal in supporting the RIAA and MPAA-- and spoke out against fair use at the Napster hearings. SHe's running for re-election in California, and like all Democrats, has the strong backing of the RIAA, MPAA, and the trial lawyers. Make your own judgements.
The Clinton/Gore legal team have defended the modified interpretations of the DMCA that have caused so many problems. Judges they appointed are making the rulings we don't like. ICANN, which they created, is slowly turning into a tyranny.
As for the UCITA, this just shows how important it is that we support state and local candidates. If you are in a state which passed the UCITA, remember this when you vote for your state offices.
People on /. have said that Bush is dumb, that he is mean, that he lies, etc. But I have yet to hear, even from CmdrTaco, anything other than cheap shots. Gore, meanwhile, is actively supporting virtually every technology policy we don't like. In Texas, Bush was re-elected as governor in a race where the highest ranked Democrats in the state supported Bush over their own party. So I don't know how people believe that it would be such a disaster if he was elected, any more than anyone else who thementve policy disagreements with.