Re:The principle is good, but the evidence is lack
on
The Fresca Rebellion
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· Score: 1
You seem to be arguing that mere humans don't know what is good for them, and the wise government has to step in and protect the human herd from itself. The government, however, never stops there. Today it's ban on 'wrong' food; tomorrow - forced vaccinations; why not - these are 'good for you', aren't they? But day after tomorrow you suddenly realize that you are just a property.
Freedom, which is much talked about and less and less allowed, includes the right to do 'bad' or dangerous things. Of course there may be price to be paid, sometimes with a Darwin award. But a free man should be free to do even things that *you* think are against his best interests. This is because you can't know what his best interests are.
Re:is there any other way to prevent crowd dispers
on
Revisiting DIY HERF Guns
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· Score: 1, Troll
The idea is, basically, that you vote your friends into your parliament and they pass laws that forbid hi-tech crowd control.
This will work only in a parliamentary democracy, with fair elections and multiple parties. This will not work in today's USA because of the one-party (some say two-party) rule. Your voting choices would be limited to two evils, and it's hard to tell which is a lesser one. A third party, even if allowed onto the ballot, will not be elected.
It is also hard to get enough support for small issues. If Alice proposes to stop the war and Bob promises to permit demonstrations who do you think will win? Once elected, US politicians have only one concern - how to get reelected. Usually that requires working with important people and companies, often against interests of their constituents.
Re:And yet they do nothing to discourage the car
on
The Fresca Rebellion
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· Score: 1
though strangely it sounds like you truly believe in it.
It's psychology, a lot of it working on autopilot, outside of conscious control. Myself, I do my best to not involve my personal issues during an interview. Would my best be enough?
But thanks for proving my point for me.
I'm glad you liked it:-) I didn't really disagree with your point, I just added a few semi-objective reasons for the failed interview, just to balance the interviewer's prejudices and valid observations.
Putting someone who uses a bicycle in the same category as gangsters, drug users, skinheads, or prostitutes is kind of odd.
Another poster (above) suggested another, better example - being black.
Is this a new code word I should be aware of that's used to justify inaccurate prejudices?
The comfort zone is just a state, but it affects everything you do (see the link.) If you are a peaceful accountant and suddenly find yourself in a firefight in Afghanistan I wouldn't expect you to correctly count the number of attackers and note their positions. Your thoughts would be primarily about getting out alive.
Re:The principle is good, but the evidence is lack
on
The Fresca Rebellion
·
· Score: 1
I strongly support government intervention to discourage any harmful product or behavior as long as such intervention is supported by appropriate evidence and as long as the risk/benefit ratio of what the government is trying to discourage is sufficiently high.
"By overwhelming scientific evidence life is the leading cause of illness and death. Researchers demonstrated that 100% of dead people previously lived, and none of people who never lived suffered any health problems. Therefore it had been decided that life is deadly, and by this Presidential Decree everyone should report to the euthanasia chambers."
The more rights you cede to the government the fewer rights are left with you. The government is infinitely patient, and eventually it will have all rights and you will have none (except the right to do what you are told.) But don't worry, it will be for your own good. Life of a slave is so easy, so decision-free...
If we can agree with the science, then the fact is that everyone with health insurance is currently being forced to cover the costs of other people's consumption decisions.
Yes, but that should be fixed at the health insurance end because that's where the problem is. If you instead work on consequences then you need to outlaw *everything* that has a chance of raising healthcare costs, and that, in the end, would be the life itself.
Re:And yet they do nothing to discourage the car
on
The Fresca Rebellion
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· Score: 1
Riding a bike to the interview was just clearly a HUGE negative in this guys opinion.
Let me guess the interviewer's reasons:
He didn't show up in a suit. That shouldn't be of any importance, but an interview is all about "look and feel".
He was all dusty and sweaty (even if the company has showers, a visitor is not likely to get access to them.)
He was tired even before the interview started, and failed the interview just because of his weak answers.
He has a higher risk of a road accident, affecting his job performance and the insurance.
Finally, bicycling was outside of interviewer's comfort zone. The applicant would be also rejected if, considering other prejudices, he dresses up like a drug user, or like a prostitute, or like a gangster, or like a gay man, or like a skinhead, or like a cowboy...
The other end gets a blank message with 'this message is encrypted' on the top.. apparently the user is supposed to click somewhere.
I use encryption in Outlook at work, and it works 100% every time. What you were trying to recall is this: "This message is encrypted, double-click to open" and when you do that it asks for the password for your key and then the text appears. Can't be much simpler than that.
Of course to use this you need to have certificates generated and distributed within your organization, and the public keys of CA also set up, but that's not difficult. If you buy your certificates from an established CA then it's already done.
The US is large, and the elite and uniquely gifted will continue to innovate.
Let's assume you are right. The elite will not innovate, or even live here, if the percentage of barbarians rises to some level. Lack of education or skills results in proliferation of ghettos. Do you think the 10% of smart people can live in the same country with 90% of criminals and social parasites? Where will the money come from to feed those 90%? From taxing the 10%, of course, and these taxes will be confiscatory. The next thing you know, those inventors grab their DVDs full of inventions and run like bats from hell to the nearest international airport. I'm sure China will grant them a work visa right upon arrival.
fossil fuels have always been burned like they're water
Yes; wood was the only energy source for many thousands of years, starting at the discovery of fire. Wood burns "dirty" (with smoke,) and it has to be harvested one way or another, resulting in deforestation. Modern fossil fuels - even coal - are sparkling clean by comparison.
Let's look at this example. There are two friends, Alex and Bob. Alex lives in a high business tax state, and he makes widgets. However he sells them about at cost to Bob. Alex's business has very low profit, just enough to keep the lights on. After all expenses the tax to the state is near zero. Is Alex's business legal?
Now, Bob receives the widgets and resells them; he is a sales guy, for example. He buys a widget from Alex for $1 and sells it for $100. Huge profit - but the state receives very little tax because that's the law of that state. Is Bob's business legal?
Finally, Alex and Bob form a company that owns both businesses. This company is located anywhere you like, it generates no profit. Each business sends cash upstream, into that holding company, and it pays Alex's and Bob's salaries. Once paid, Alex and Bob pay their personal income taxes where they live. Is all that legal? If yes then those two guys managed to make and sell widgets while minimizing their taxes.
As a crude analogy I can offer this. When you come to the grocery store on some days you see signs "sale" and prices are lower. Is it illegal or immoral to try to buy stuff that is on sale when you are in the store? Or maybe you should insist on paying the highest price? In MS case Nevada has a sale, and MS keeps buying.
Oh, it's better than that. Encryption export restrictions. The USA would (maybe literally) destroy MSFT if they tried to leave.
Why? There would be no need to export any encryption, even though sources can be exported (see PGP books.) Besides, Windows has pluggable encryption modules, so if somehow the USA blocks export of that code it can be trivially rewritten. There are no original inventions in that code, just implementations of well known algorithms. And in any case encryption facilities of Windows are not something essential.
Their latest campus expansion alone cost a billion bucks.
I'm sure it would be much cheaper in India.
It may be even beneficial for MS to shift projects out of the USA. First, labor is cheaper offshore - and a lot of labor is menial; not just coding but documentation, QA, localization, media, graphics etc. Second, it's dangerous to keep all eggs in one basket. MS is big but the state has infinitely more power legally. So MS may want to only keep a handful of essential employees in the USA, and all the rest can be done abroad.
Now in terms that it is cheaper to pay the racketeer... yes, it's cheaper today, but tomorrow he will come again and ask for more. Eventually you will have to say "no" and then you will be at square one, minus all the money you paid already. So if I were MS I'd start looking around. Investments that MS already made in Washington will not be lost - the properties can be always sold or rented out, likely very profitably.
Remind them that use tax has to be reported, then record the license plate and/or driver's license number and make sure the Washington State Revenue Dept. "double checks" at the end of the year.
There is nothing to "double-check" unless the same police officer takes inventory of your belongings and records as a fact that some purchases were made in the "other" state. Not only that would be unconstitutional, there is no way to verify where some off the shelf items were bought (for cash) and when. It's not illegal to buy a new laptop, throw the box in the car and keep it there for a year as you repeatedly cross state borders. You are not required to keep the receipt - the country hasn't fallen that low yet.
But overall, more wealthy people choose to live in high-tax places like New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Being wealthy is not the same as having high income. Many wealthy people have their capital in trust funds and other devices. In an extreme case a billionaire may apply for social security benefits (he has no income) though if he wants he can have a million dollars delivered to him on a moment's notice. As I see it, there is no income until you get the money [usually.] For example, our billionaire can have all his capital held in shares of Microsoft, and until he sells some he'd be legally poor as church's mouse.
What I'm saying is, I can't do it and be productive - and I'm also saying that I don't think anyone else can either.
There are people who require complete silence to think. You are one of them, as it seems, and so am I. However there are people who perform best in a loud, noisy environment. I do not know why it is so, but some of my coworkers are such people - if they are at their desks they have headphones on. I guess that would be an interesting question for scientists.
I personally find the music a distraction when I'm trying to design things. On the other hand, if I'm doing a repetitive, non-creative work (like assembling a PCB) then music helps me a lot. A job of soldering of a handful of 0805 capacitors requires exactly zero creativity and almost zero brain power - my hands do the work on autopilot. The brain is free to listen to the music.
Mom and Dad users now believe annual subscriptions to Norton and McAfee are part of owning a computer.
Norton and McAfee will be selling Linux versions of their products to those very Mom and Dad users.
Have you ever got a useful response out of the support infrastructure that comes with Windows? Me neither.
Not so fast, please. IT people at work made many long phone calls to Dell when they installed a bunch of servers, domain controllers and tape drives. And when they installed a RH server they made a support call to RedHat (IIRC, something about joining the domain.)
But most people want a machine that will let them email/browse. If it kept working for ten years, they'd be happy to continue using it.
The box came with some Windows, XP probably, and it's still in good shape, support-wise, if the box is only used for simple tasks. There is no need to load Linux onto that old box - the original OS is fine. Also don't forget the original email and browser software, the users need to migrate their email archives and bookmarks.
you'd understand why most Mom and Dad users (and corporate users for that matter) would be a lot better off with Linux.
A/.ter would be better off with Linux. But Mom and Dad would be better off with what they know how to use. Besides, every household is bound to have one or more programs that won't work under Wine. There are just too many Windows apps, most of them small and irrelevant, written by small teams years ago and no longer supported. Maybe it's an ancient Quicken, maybe it's AutoCAD R12 (DOS, by the way) maybe it's something else. These programs won't run on Linux and their data will be lost. Who wants that?
There is some cost to Windows. But that cost usually gets paid up front, when you buy the box, and is amortized over the life of the computer. It's not like you need to buy new Windows CD every year or two. The cost is also not that high - I saw numbers around $50 to Dell and other high volume OEMs. If a replacement is needed what do you think should Mom and Dad choose - to pay extra $50 for a new Windows box and have all their data and software migrated automatically, or save that $50 and risk their data and their software that they purchased years ago for far more than that? It may be a difficult decision for a child, but an adult won't even think twice.
I migrated my parents to Linux three years ago for my own sanity.
Great if it works in your situation. But I'm sure before you migrated them you did all the IT work that I mentioned - checked that their Webcam works with whatever IM they need to talk to their relatives, and checked that their Paint Shop Pro is working under Wine or has an acceptable replacement, and that their financial software is moved over, etc. etc. This is some work, and it's good that you chose to do it. But regular people, not blessed/cursed with a Linux aficionado child, would have to do that how?
Why shouldn't middle-aged workers be able to enroll in a college, university, or vocational program just like a younger person?
They are able to do that, no problem. However once they graduate they will have a snowball's chance in hell of getting a job. I think this applies to any job, not just programmers. Today it was announced that unemployment in CA exceeds 12%. Everyone is spending as little as possible and businesses continue to reduce the workforce. The economy is in hibernation mode.
the government ought to provide an income replacement program for people out of work
The only jobs the government can offer are paid by taxpayers, and I don't think there are many vacancies. CA government is not exactly having a huge budget surplus these days...
That is probably true, but a lot of US economy depends on that fallacy. Jobless, middle-aged PG&E workers can't become DSP programmers overnight (or ever.)
I have a storage water heater (with a 40 gal tank) and it is electrical. However the tank is exceptionally well insulated, so much that the temperature rise in the closet is only a couple of degrees. I think the power leakage does not exceed 20 Watts, judging by comparable power release from electronic equipment in a comparable enclosed volume.
Those 20W of power will add up to (20*24*30/1000) = 14.4 kWh per month. At $0.10/kWh that would cost you $1.44. If you use hot water then that costs extra; the $1.44 number above is only the cost of keeping the water hot.
But a modern TV can draw 60-100W when off. So a single TV will definitely cost more than an idling water heater. Even if you draw lots of hot water the TV can't be ignored.
3(a) A local powerplant is closed, 100 jobs are lost.
3(b) PG&E receives so little revenue that it has to fire 25% of the line crews. Not only lobs are lost, the grid becomes more vulnerable to damage during winter since not enough people are available to maintain and repair the wires.
"don't want to" - this is not so, they made commitment to security several years ago and they removed all the insecure (and unsecurable) API calls from their software. For example, see this. Unfortunately strcpy is still alive and well in 3rd party products, and MS can't do much about that.
"don't know how to" - may be true sometimes, Windows is complex and nobody actually understands all the interactions.
"don't understand the need to do so" - this lawsuit clearly shows that at least now MS understands that their lack of security hurts them.
"no amount of money would be enough" - recent releases of Windows were kind of OK, so I guess they already spent most of the needed money and achieved most of achievable results.
"it's more lucrative to sell insecure systems" - MS doesn't sell systems, but it handles security incidents, often on its own dime.
I think the #2 is most important here. Windows is just too big to be fully understood. I'm sure there are tons of security-critical bugs in the code that is rarely used. It is very difficult to review and sanitize that code, especially if it "just works" and changes are likely to add bugs, not to reduce them. Additionally, more and more (percentage-wise) malware is distributed through social engineering, running.scr attachments, etc. - and that path is hard to close without going iPhone all the way.
In any case, the technical side of things is handled by one department and the legal side of things is handled by another department. I see no reason to pit them against each other. There are complaints about technical faults of the OS, but they should be addressed only to the development side of the house.
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You seem to be arguing that mere humans don't know what is good for them, and the wise government has to step in and protect the human herd from itself. The government, however, never stops there. Today it's ban on 'wrong' food; tomorrow - forced vaccinations; why not - these are 'good for you', aren't they? But day after tomorrow you suddenly realize that you are just a property.
Freedom, which is much talked about and less and less allowed, includes the right to do 'bad' or dangerous things. Of course there may be price to be paid, sometimes with a Darwin award. But a free man should be free to do even things that *you* think are against his best interests. This is because you can't know what his best interests are.
The idea is, basically, that you vote your friends into your parliament and they pass laws that forbid hi-tech crowd control.
This will work only in a parliamentary democracy, with fair elections and multiple parties. This will not work in today's USA because of the one-party (some say two-party) rule. Your voting choices would be limited to two evils, and it's hard to tell which is a lesser one. A third party, even if allowed onto the ballot, will not be elected.
It is also hard to get enough support for small issues. If Alice proposes to stop the war and Bob promises to permit demonstrations who do you think will win? Once elected, US politicians have only one concern - how to get reelected. Usually that requires working with important people and companies, often against interests of their constituents.
though strangely it sounds like you truly believe in it.
It's psychology, a lot of it working on autopilot, outside of conscious control. Myself, I do my best to not involve my personal issues during an interview. Would my best be enough?
But thanks for proving my point for me.
I'm glad you liked it :-) I didn't really disagree with your point, I just added a few semi-objective reasons for the failed interview, just to balance the interviewer's prejudices and valid observations.
Putting someone who uses a bicycle in the same category as gangsters, drug users, skinheads, or prostitutes is kind of odd.
Another poster (above) suggested another, better example - being black.
Is this a new code word I should be aware of that's used to justify inaccurate prejudices?
The comfort zone is just a state, but it affects everything you do (see the link.) If you are a peaceful accountant and suddenly find yourself in a firefight in Afghanistan I wouldn't expect you to correctly count the number of attackers and note their positions. Your thoughts would be primarily about getting out alive.
I strongly support government intervention to discourage any harmful product or behavior as long as such intervention is supported by appropriate evidence and as long as the risk/benefit ratio of what the government is trying to discourage is sufficiently high.
"By overwhelming scientific evidence life is the leading cause of illness and death. Researchers demonstrated that 100% of dead people previously lived, and none of people who never lived suffered any health problems. Therefore it had been decided that life is deadly, and by this Presidential Decree everyone should report to the euthanasia chambers."
The more rights you cede to the government the fewer rights are left with you. The government is infinitely patient, and eventually it will have all rights and you will have none (except the right to do what you are told.) But don't worry, it will be for your own good. Life of a slave is so easy, so decision-free...
If we can agree with the science, then the fact is that everyone with health insurance is currently being forced to cover the costs of other people's consumption decisions.
Yes, but that should be fixed at the health insurance end because that's where the problem is. If you instead work on consequences then you need to outlaw *everything* that has a chance of raising healthcare costs, and that, in the end, would be the life itself.
Riding a bike to the interview was just clearly a HUGE negative in this guys opinion.
Let me guess the interviewer's reasons:
It is now mandatory for you to have car insurance if you own and drive a vehicle on the public roads in pretty much every state, if not all of them.
Incorrect - you can be self-insured by keeping about $45,000, IIRC, at DMV. You do have options here.
The other end gets a blank message with 'this message is encrypted' on the top.. apparently the user is supposed to click somewhere.
I use encryption in Outlook at work, and it works 100% every time. What you were trying to recall is this: "This message is encrypted, double-click to open" and when you do that it asks for the password for your key and then the text appears. Can't be much simpler than that.
Of course to use this you need to have certificates generated and distributed within your organization, and the public keys of CA also set up, but that's not difficult. If you buy your certificates from an established CA then it's already done.
They don't seem to be teenagers, for sure, but that is only for better - by now they know what is important in this life and what isn't.
The US is large, and the elite and uniquely gifted will continue to innovate.
Let's assume you are right. The elite will not innovate, or even live here, if the percentage of barbarians rises to some level. Lack of education or skills results in proliferation of ghettos. Do you think the 10% of smart people can live in the same country with 90% of criminals and social parasites? Where will the money come from to feed those 90%? From taxing the 10%, of course, and these taxes will be confiscatory. The next thing you know, those inventors grab their DVDs full of inventions and run like bats from hell to the nearest international airport. I'm sure China will grant them a work visa right upon arrival.
fossil fuels have always been burned like they're water
Yes; wood was the only energy source for many thousands of years, starting at the discovery of fire. Wood burns "dirty" (with smoke,) and it has to be harvested one way or another, resulting in deforestation. Modern fossil fuels - even coal - are sparkling clean by comparison.
Let's look at this example. There are two friends, Alex and Bob. Alex lives in a high business tax state, and he makes widgets. However he sells them about at cost to Bob. Alex's business has very low profit, just enough to keep the lights on. After all expenses the tax to the state is near zero. Is Alex's business legal?
Now, Bob receives the widgets and resells them; he is a sales guy, for example. He buys a widget from Alex for $1 and sells it for $100. Huge profit - but the state receives very little tax because that's the law of that state. Is Bob's business legal?
Finally, Alex and Bob form a company that owns both businesses. This company is located anywhere you like, it generates no profit. Each business sends cash upstream, into that holding company, and it pays Alex's and Bob's salaries. Once paid, Alex and Bob pay their personal income taxes where they live. Is all that legal? If yes then those two guys managed to make and sell widgets while minimizing their taxes.
As a crude analogy I can offer this. When you come to the grocery store on some days you see signs "sale" and prices are lower. Is it illegal or immoral to try to buy stuff that is on sale when you are in the store? Or maybe you should insist on paying the highest price? In MS case Nevada has a sale, and MS keeps buying.
Why? There would be no need to export any encryption, even though sources can be exported (see PGP books.) Besides, Windows has pluggable encryption modules, so if somehow the USA blocks export of that code it can be trivially rewritten. There are no original inventions in that code, just implementations of well known algorithms. And in any case encryption facilities of Windows are not something essential.
Their latest campus expansion alone cost a billion bucks.
I'm sure it would be much cheaper in India.
It may be even beneficial for MS to shift projects out of the USA. First, labor is cheaper offshore - and a lot of labor is menial; not just coding but documentation, QA, localization, media, graphics etc. Second, it's dangerous to keep all eggs in one basket. MS is big but the state has infinitely more power legally. So MS may want to only keep a handful of essential employees in the USA, and all the rest can be done abroad.
Now in terms that it is cheaper to pay the racketeer... yes, it's cheaper today, but tomorrow he will come again and ask for more. Eventually you will have to say "no" and then you will be at square one, minus all the money you paid already. So if I were MS I'd start looking around. Investments that MS already made in Washington will not be lost - the properties can be always sold or rented out, likely very profitably.
Remind them that use tax has to be reported, then record the license plate and/or driver's license number and make sure the Washington State Revenue Dept. "double checks" at the end of the year.
There is nothing to "double-check" unless the same police officer takes inventory of your belongings and records as a fact that some purchases were made in the "other" state. Not only that would be unconstitutional, there is no way to verify where some off the shelf items were bought (for cash) and when. It's not illegal to buy a new laptop, throw the box in the car and keep it there for a year as you repeatedly cross state borders. You are not required to keep the receipt - the country hasn't fallen that low yet.
But overall, more wealthy people choose to live in high-tax places like New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Being wealthy is not the same as having high income. Many wealthy people have their capital in trust funds and other devices. In an extreme case a billionaire may apply for social security benefits (he has no income) though if he wants he can have a million dollars delivered to him on a moment's notice. As I see it, there is no income until you get the money [usually.] For example, our billionaire can have all his capital held in shares of Microsoft, and until he sells some he'd be legally poor as church's mouse.
What I'm saying is, I can't do it and be productive - and I'm also saying that I don't think anyone else can either.
There are people who require complete silence to think. You are one of them, as it seems, and so am I. However there are people who perform best in a loud, noisy environment. I do not know why it is so, but some of my coworkers are such people - if they are at their desks they have headphones on. I guess that would be an interesting question for scientists.
I personally find the music a distraction when I'm trying to design things. On the other hand, if I'm doing a repetitive, non-creative work (like assembling a PCB) then music helps me a lot. A job of soldering of a handful of 0805 capacitors requires exactly zero creativity and almost zero brain power - my hands do the work on autopilot. The brain is free to listen to the music.
I tried your suggestion, but the rat kept running away, pausing the music.
You obviously listen to wrong music.
Mrs. Quilt-at-Home would be served best by Ubuntu that dual boots into Win7 for her game-playing kid.
On top of inconvenience of dual-booting, what is again the reason to have Ubuntu if she also has to buy Windows 7?
Mom and Dad users now believe annual subscriptions to Norton and McAfee are part of owning a computer.
Norton and McAfee will be selling Linux versions of their products to those very Mom and Dad users.
Have you ever got a useful response out of the support infrastructure that comes with Windows? Me neither.
Not so fast, please. IT people at work made many long phone calls to Dell when they installed a bunch of servers, domain controllers and tape drives. And when they installed a RH server they made a support call to RedHat (IIRC, something about joining the domain.)
But most people want a machine that will let them email/browse. If it kept working for ten years, they'd be happy to continue using it.
The box came with some Windows, XP probably, and it's still in good shape, support-wise, if the box is only used for simple tasks. There is no need to load Linux onto that old box - the original OS is fine. Also don't forget the original email and browser software, the users need to migrate their email archives and bookmarks.
you'd understand why most Mom and Dad users (and corporate users for that matter) would be a lot better off with Linux.
A /.ter would be better off with Linux. But Mom and Dad would be better off with what they know how to use. Besides, every household is bound to have one or more programs that won't work under Wine. There are just too many Windows apps, most of them small and irrelevant, written by small teams years ago and no longer supported. Maybe it's an ancient Quicken, maybe it's AutoCAD R12 (DOS, by the way) maybe it's something else. These programs won't run on Linux and their data will be lost. Who wants that?
There is some cost to Windows. But that cost usually gets paid up front, when you buy the box, and is amortized over the life of the computer. It's not like you need to buy new Windows CD every year or two. The cost is also not that high - I saw numbers around $50 to Dell and other high volume OEMs. If a replacement is needed what do you think should Mom and Dad choose - to pay extra $50 for a new Windows box and have all their data and software migrated automatically, or save that $50 and risk their data and their software that they purchased years ago for far more than that? It may be a difficult decision for a child, but an adult won't even think twice.
I migrated my parents to Linux three years ago for my own sanity.
Great if it works in your situation. But I'm sure before you migrated them you did all the IT work that I mentioned - checked that their Webcam works with whatever IM they need to talk to their relatives, and checked that their Paint Shop Pro is working under Wine or has an acceptable replacement, and that their financial software is moved over, etc. etc. This is some work, and it's good that you chose to do it. But regular people, not blessed/cursed with a Linux aficionado child, would have to do that how?
Why shouldn't middle-aged workers be able to enroll in a college, university, or vocational program just like a younger person?
They are able to do that, no problem. However once they graduate they will have a snowball's chance in hell of getting a job. I think this applies to any job, not just programmers. Today it was announced that unemployment in CA exceeds 12%. Everyone is spending as little as possible and businesses continue to reduce the workforce. The economy is in hibernation mode.
the government ought to provide an income replacement program for people out of work
The only jobs the government can offer are paid by taxpayers, and I don't think there are many vacancies. CA government is not exactly having a huge budget surplus these days...
That is probably true, but a lot of US economy depends on that fallacy. Jobless, middle-aged PG&E workers can't become DSP programmers overnight (or ever.)
I have a storage water heater (with a 40 gal tank) and it is electrical. However the tank is exceptionally well insulated, so much that the temperature rise in the closet is only a couple of degrees. I think the power leakage does not exceed 20 Watts, judging by comparable power release from electronic equipment in a comparable enclosed volume.
Those 20W of power will add up to (20*24*30/1000) = 14.4 kWh per month. At $0.10/kWh that would cost you $1.44. If you use hot water then that costs extra; the $1.44 number above is only the cost of keeping the water hot.
But a modern TV can draw 60-100W when off. So a single TV will definitely cost more than an idling water heater. Even if you draw lots of hot water the TV can't be ignored.
3(a) A local powerplant is closed, 100 jobs are lost.
3(b) PG&E receives so little revenue that it has to fire 25% of the line crews. Not only lobs are lost, the grid becomes more vulnerable to damage during winter since not enough people are available to maintain and repair the wires.
I think the #2 is most important here. Windows is just too big to be fully understood. I'm sure there are tons of security-critical bugs in the code that is rarely used. It is very difficult to review and sanitize that code, especially if it "just works" and changes are likely to add bugs, not to reduce them. Additionally, more and more (percentage-wise) malware is distributed through social engineering, running .scr attachments, etc. - and that path is hard to close without going iPhone all the way.
In any case, the technical side of things is handled by one department and the legal side of things is handled by another department. I see no reason to pit them against each other. There are complaints about technical faults of the OS, but they should be addressed only to the development side of the house.