There's a big difference between unplayable ("may not work on your PC") and hard/pointless/unfun ("may require insanely complicated, one-shot-only sequences").
It's just a technicality. From the user's POV he can't progress. I've seen games that crash half-way. In fact Far Cry 2 on my PS3 failed just this way last time I played it. You come to a hut, expect three guards, see two. Take the two out - the door is still locked (because one guard is MIA.) Do whatever you may (comb the territory, come later, replay from a previous checkpoint) - the door won't open and you can't progress. This is a known bug, and the only known solution is to start a new game from scratch. The bug is random, so you just hope that it won't bite you again.
If you ask for a review of FC2, the game is great, by the way - great grass, lots of terrain, lots of replay value. However how many reviewers of a new game will clock enough game time to catch a bug like this?
but does all the value of a game disappear because you disliked a part of it?
A good deal of it disappears because you can't proceed, and you can't complete the game. The game is not played incrementally, it is one continuous experience. For example, in that FC2 you gathered tons of diamonds (which is laborious in itself) and bought tons of advanced weapons. Then for some reason you can't proceed. Wouldn't you feel cheated? All your efforts to build up your armory went to nothing. It's like reading a fascinating book, reaching 2/3 and then finding out that the rest of the story is not readable. Who would like to be left hanging like that?
I would be very hard-pressed to name even one person that I personally know who has never downloaded a movie, a song, or a game that they did not buy.
What if the movie, the song or the game were so awfully bad that the pirate wasn't even able (or willing) to consume the material? Why should he buy it?
A close analogy is a book store. You walk in, pick a book and start reading. If after a few pages you discover that a hard sci-fi that you were after is, in reality, a pink romance that some other reader put onto the wrong shelf... you just put the book back on the shelf and walk away. The store won't charge you for the book or even for a part of it. The charge comes only if you decide to keep the book.
One may argue that in some traditional sales one the content is sold it won't be taken back (you buy a movie ticket, and that's it - even if you hated the movie.) But in many other traditional sales the content will be taken back - books and games are certainly in this class, movies are available for sampling through trailers, and songs can be heard on radio and in stores before you buy them.
There is also a situation with games when you buy a game and it is unplayable for one reason or another. It may not work on your PC, or it may require dexterity of a 5 y/o child on the PS3, or (like some GTA games) it may require insanely complicated, one-shot-only sequences (everyone raise your hands who remember the RC helicopter with demolition charges) that take 30 minutes to play through with no save and with thousand ways to screw up. If the game was downloaded for free it can be justly tossed, and the developer shouldn't be entitled to any money for producing such a horrible episode without a way to skip it. The dance sequence in GTA San Andreas is another example; was Rockstar totally insane by insisting that only people with a kind of a musical talent should be allowed to proceed through the game?
Can I ask you something? Why would I want to be part of the gene pool? How would it benefit me personally?
You are supposed to evaluate this question emotionally, not logically. Because logic says that there is no good reason for any of us to exist. The classical need for children died along with the patriarchal peasant family. Today you are much better off having none of that, as long as you don't feel the urge to multiply.
I'm not quite sure why a 2000 page decision is needed in a trial of this kind, either.
There are probably hundreds of people involved; some of them need to be exonerated, other will be guilty of something... it's not too much to ask for 20 pages of plain text to jail someone for 10 years.
Besides, the judge can't just say "guilty" and be done with it. He needs to explain *why* the accused is guilty. For that he may need quotes from the law and from other cases (if precedents are relevant in.pt.) Also consider that legal documents aren't printed all that densely.
If you buy a home, you owe a wealthy person for this privilege
If I, your neighbor, borrow a lawnmower from you, I also owe you that lawnmower. I will even fill it up before returning. Is it in some way wrong? Should I take your lawnmower and not return, or return it broken? Or perhaps I should take it and not even say thanks? Or maybe there should be a law that I can take your lawnmower whenever I please, without owing anything to anyone? I'm not sure what you are trying to say here.
If I borrow something, be it money or goods, I expect to be required to return the borrowed item, and on top of that I should compensate the owner for his inconvenience. While the lawnmower is used by me, you can't use it yourself. And if I nick the blade on a stone it will not cut your grass very well when you get it back. This is a very natural contract between two people, you can trace it back to the earliest human records.
All a person needs is air to breath, water to drink, food to eat, shelter to keep warm, people to have sex with, and things to keep their mind busy, in that order. Needs are not as subjective as you claim.
If you are a dictator, your subjects would be crawling in dirt, having sex with each other, and probably drinking alcohol "to keep their mind busy." They'd be less than animals. I don't see any drivers for the social progress in your list of needs. Obviously, in real life humans have a few more needs that you haven't listed.
The fact that a true communist society has not been achieved does not refute the communist philosophy. Its more a matter of greed and power lust of the ruling class...
Ah, the old standby argument - "they didn't do it right":-) There is a URL next to my username, look at it (or better click at it.) I know plenty about the most famous attempt to build the communism on Earth.
You are correct that by and large the proletariat was exploited by "professional revolutionaries" (Lenin in Russia, Castro in Cuba, etc.) Those revolutionaries became the masters of the domain. But what next? They were already gods. Stalin certainly had reasons to think so. What happened next is that they honestly (more or less) tried to build socialism. Nobody was building communism, it can't be built because it is the last phase of a developed socialism. There is no government or money under communism, for example.
These attempts failed - everywhere - for one simple reason. Socialism requires a new type of man. This man will be honest. He will work 8 hours and get paid for 8 hours. This is where the first crack started - people tend to work 6 hours but get paid for 10 hours. Since there is no way to put an overseer to every worker, economy faltered. There are many more reasons why low motivation of workers killed the idea, but the largest problem is that there is no solution to the tragedy of commons. And in socialism commons are everywhere.
Furthermore, I am not a communist anyway. [...] I'm simply stating an observation that extreme-wealth != fair.
That's fairly close to what communists in 1917 believed in, when they combed towns and put "capitalists" against the wall.
But you still don't acknowledge what I implied. Rich people don't sit on their money. They give it to other people who need it. Do you think it antisocial? If you need a loan, would it be better to get one (if you accept the terms) or not even have such an option? There were no loans in USSR, if you want to know. If a child is born and the family needs a larger place to live in... too bad, you can't borrow and buy it.
In America, in 2010, there's a waiting list to work at McDonald's. Is that what makes McDonald's a great employer?
If there are employers without such a waiting list (and with open positions) then the answer has to be "yes." It's not even a matter of my or your opinion; it's the results of voting done by job seekers.
I'd rather kill some of them than let them decide what conditions we would work under.
Considering the population of China, you will have to kill far more than was killed in two last World Wars. But on the other hand, your name will be in history books forever.
Aside from that, you, the US citizen, think that you are in control, but you aren't. The planet-wide industrial market outperformed you. While you were busy fighting for more money for the same work, the work escaped through the back door, hopped onto the ship and steamed to Asia. You, the US worker, are still doing OK in some high-tech areas, but there is no hope in view that you will ever be able to stitch a T-shirt for $0.50 or build a complete computer (from scratch!) for $200. To become competitive you have to drop your salary down to 1% of what it once was. Today this is simply illegal.
There is still an option to close the borders to foreign goods. This won't be well received by the rest of the world, but by that time you wouldn't care. Once done, you will realize that your salary dropped (or prices increased) just as it would happen in the other scenario. Nobody is going to give you 10 cheeseburgers with fries in exchange for you sitting in the office and staring at Slashdot for one hour. In that new USA you will have to really work for just one cheeseburger. This is what the rest of the world is doing, and always did. And the USA was in the same boat until after the World War II.
Perhaps US workers think they are more valuable than they really are (so they erect laws to "enforce" that value).
There is an easy test for that. An electrician in the USA charges $85/hr. An iPhone 4 costs $200. Is it a fair exchange of an iPhone for 2.5 hours of pulling crude wires through crude conduits?
What I am saying is there is absolutely NO reason for 1 person to have billions of dollars in their own personal assets.
What I'm saying is that you are not a billionaire. Neither am I, but at least I know that billionaires (or even millionaires) do not store gold bars in basements of their homes. Most of the money that rich people have is loaned to other people. There is even a market or two for such loans, even in this very country!
You can own several fully furnished houses, a collection of sports cars, hell even race horses with twenty million. However, you cannot argue that even one person on this planet needs even this.
You have to define the word "need" first, and have everyone agree with this definition. I'm sure Diogenes's needs were strikingly different from ones of the Sun King.
It is pointless to go against the tide and try to grow "a new kind of people" what wouldn't be greedy or lazy or violent. USSR tried, it didn't work. Cuba tried, it didn't work. NK tried, and it still doesn't work. Humans are the fixed part of this equation; this is something that Karl Marx didn't fully understand.
I would imagine anything remotely close to the surface will have been well-and-truly fried, frozen, refried, then altered in isotopes.
I'm sure our neighbors from the Vega star system think the same about us. We live in an ocean of oxygen, which is a deadly poison to any known [to them] kind of life.
I agree, that we shouldn't be hammering every kid into the same mold
Good morning, The Worm, Your Honour,
The Crown will plainly show,
The prisoner who now stands before you,
Was caught red-handed showing feelings.
Showing feelings of an almost human nature.
This will not do.
Call the schoolmaster!
(Here is the link, if anyone dares to confess that he needs it:-)
So tell me again why learning empathy, understanding how to infer things, picking up on and interpreting nonverbal cues, and so on aren't skills that can be taught in books where "Implied inferences rule"?
Perhaps because such a book would be called a movie? The book is limited to direct and indirect verbal communication. That Martin can steal a look at Kate, and you can do your best to write about it, but it will never be the same as seeing it, or being part of the live scene. Books work the best when the reader is sufficiently associating himself with the act. I can write a book about trepnung of amilatsies on the 5th planet of Proxima Centauri, but you will not get any entertainment or social skills from reading it - it would be meaningless (unless you an amilatsi yourself:-)
The post I was responding to was saying, "Don't read Shakespeare, learn how to be a better mechanic"
Those Slashdot comments, they tend to branch and the discussion sometimes flows in all directions. I do not support the theory of "skipping things that are "non-essential" to the trade we've decided a kid has the most aptitude for" for many obvious reasons. But sometimes that "not skipping" transforms into "force-feeding", and that is bad, IMO. My opinion is based on my own experiences, and I do not pretend to speak for everyone. But I'm sure I'm not alone in the world with such an opinion.
Sure, they may still need guidance, but a 15, 16, 17, 18 year old high schooler is capable of handling "difficult" topics
I was 16 when I graduated from high school (after 10 years there, 8+2.) When I was 18 I was in a university already, pretty well understanding [at that time] technical electrodynamics and some quantum effects within certain microwave devices. I simply don't comprehend why in the USA anyone is still in school after 16. But sure, if you keep your "children" in school until their beards turn grey then indeed they can be taught a lot.
That reminds me of a good scene in one book, where 35 years old children petition for their emancipation.
Shit, 5 year olds play cops and robbers all the time, and invent all kinds of imaginary games and scenarios.
They certainly do that; however nobody judges them on accuracy of their act. Literature studies do.
It's called imagination, or empathy. You may not get it right, but you'd be surprised at how much a student *can* get right.
These are not qualities that all people are equally and plentifully endowed with. Kirk and Spock, for example. You, when in school, may be able to jump over a plank at 10 feet, but I can't jump over anything. However I can devise a complicated Rube Goldberg machine to raise me over Mount Everest if I want to. People are different, and it hurts when a teacher tries to hammer a square peg into a round hole.
Forcing a child to not study something is just as bad as forcing him to study it. Traditionally it was one of teacher's responsibilities to discover what the child has leaning toward. But the 20th century adopted the conveyor belt education system. Teachers are just operators who speak their part, verify responses against the government-approved standard, and calculate scores. You can't sing? "YOU VILL SING, WE WILL MAKE YOU." You can't catch a ball? FAIL. You can shoot a fly at 50 yards with a.22LR? OMG, VERBOTEN!!1! I'm not sure if such an educational machine is much better than the one you warn against.
You actually have great examples. They show that short-sighted policies destroy the business. Where is that Enron today? How is that new tobacco business going?
A company that ignores or alienates their own customer base (like RIAA) will only dig itself deeper into the hole. RIAA can afford a pretty deep hole, but they can't see the future from down there.
Only companies that respect their partners (supplies, workforce and customers) can survive in long term.
I believe the GP was saying that nobody should be forced to study things that go against the grain of his nature. That rarely helps.
Why should mechanics read Shakespeare? Because communication is important
I don't know what Shakespeare or other classics you were reading, but art of clear communication is not exactly the primary goal of fiction literature. Quite opposite, a lot of writing depends on things that are not said, on things that the reader completes in his head and acts out internally, as if he were one of the actors in that scene. Fiction books are written not to educate (that would be textbooks) - fiction is written first & foremost to entertain. Very few authors want write clearly (like Mark Twain; and compare to his well known critique of Cooper.)
And here comes another problem - the age of the reader. Shakespeare wrote his plays for adult audiences. Leo Tolstoy wrote his "War and Peace" for an adult, even bilingual audience. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote his "Crime and Punishment" for an [initially] sane, adult reader. I'm sure you can add tons of books like that that are part of school courses in various countries. Invariably these books are far more complex than what a 12- or 14-year old student is ready for. This causes boredom and other problems.
When I was in school (which was quite a while ago) I hated literature classes the most. Not "language" classes as such - those were easy; but classes that asked you to read a book and then answer questions that are not answered in the book. For example let's take that "War and Peace." A general walks the field before the battle. Then he comes close to a tree and stands still for 10-15 minutes. Question: what did he think about during this time? I don't recall what was the officially blessed answer to that, but my answer would have been simply "Insufficient data." You can answer this question (probably incorrectly anyway) only by trying to relive these hours *as* the protagonist. But a school student can't relive a life of a 40-year old man who was a filthy rich, married aristocrat, with friends and enemies in high places.
Are there books that are more suitable for children? Most certainly so. Just to name a big name, Andre Norton has quite a few books written specifically for children, and even more in the genre of fiction. Children can associate themselves with protagonists of those books. Good and evil are easy to see, and often the hero is a young boy (or a girl, in Norton's case.) But those books are not studied. Instead, some heavyweight adult fiction that can easily hurt an adult's head is selected. (Dostoevsky is a great example in this department.)
So you were saying something about communication? There is precious little of that in those books. Implied inferences rule. "Martin's hand accidentally touched Kate's, and both felt a spark of electricity." I say, get proper antistatic gear before you put your hands where they don't belong:-) This is not the stuff that a school student should be personally familiar with, and that's just a fictitious example. In real books (like "Anna Karenina") the action unfolds about the marital conflict in a family of an aristocrat. Yes, that's the stuff a 14-year old pimple-faced boy knows all about, especially the part where the man *doesn't want* the woman.
Secrets have little protection once exposed. [...] That level of certainty is not even required in a criminal court. This is a civil matter with a far lower burden of proof."
Any CEO or ex-CEO can be abducted in a parking lot, pumped full of Sodium Pentothal and forced to spill each and every secret he ever knew. This has 100% probability if someone really wants to have the information. Does this mean that every CEO must be terminated every night before leaving secure premises?
I agree that secrets have no protection once they are revealed. People who illegally spill secrets will be sued and found guilty. However it still requires proof. If the accusation comes before the act it requires not just "a" proof, but "THE" proof - something that is unassailable, something that can't be denied. I can't think of any such proof here. Furthermore, Oracle may have specifically setup his duties in such a way that his "insider knowledge" will be not used. I'm sure HP doesn't know about any such arrangements; nobody does today except few people at Oracle, and HP's lawsuit looks like a kneejerk reaction - fast and completely automatic.
Let's say that you lose 90% of that to taxes... that's still $4M. That would be enough for me to buy my house, my car, my parents' houses, fund my child's education, fund graduate degrees for me and my wife in any field I cared about, build my own archery range, and so forth.
Let's see. Your house is valued at $4M, and your parents' house is valued at $4M. This is nothing out of the ordinary in California. Property taxes on $8M will be about 1% of that, or $80K/yr. If you don't intend to die soon - but instead want to live, say, 50 years more - then you need $0.08M * 50 = $4M to only pay the state. Your original $4M are gone, and that didn't include any necessities like food, water, utilities or hobbies (you'd go mad in 50 years without hobbies.)
Of course if you get $4M and live in an apartment in the inner city, then sure, this money will last you a while. Not that you will enjoy life this way, of course.
It's pretty damned close to "never work again" for anyone that would spend it frugally
As the numbers show, even if you live off grid and eat fruits of your own land it still will not be enough. The state will want a piece of your pie; all of it, actually, in 50 years. By investing it wisely you may postpone the inevitable, but to be completely secure you need to spend about 2-3% of your capital per year, then you can live off of fixed income instruments. If the guy needs $100K/yr to pay his bills, the needed capital is $3-5M. The drawback is that all the money is tied up, and if you need a medical treatment you may be unable to raise the money fast enough, and then you die.
In Hurd's case, though, $100M before taxes is still plenty of dough after the taxes - maybe $65M. So he is not one of those "poor millionaires." I simply wanted to illustrate that with large incomes come large expenses. Good luck selling that $4M house in CA today; you'd be lucky to get 50 cents on the dollar.
he's the one who got caught with his hand in the till though.
Reports indicate that the total sum paid to Jodie Fisher over 2 years is only $20K, and she did the work. You may want to argue how necessary she was, but that is not something you fire for - it's a legitimate disagreement about the best way to run the business. If an employee abuses his pre-authorized expenses they are (in the worst case) reduced or removed, and that's it. In CEO case, the CFO can just tell him "I was checking expenses, and I think I can't justify $this and $that - you may need to amend the report and pay it out of your pocket." I think a multi-millionaire CEO can afford that, and in the future he will be more careful.
Hurd was fired because of the lawsuit filed by Jodie Fisher. The HP board wanted none of that, and decided that it is easier to drop Hurd. Well, perhaps that wasn't easier, after all. But we aren't accusing the HP board of being smart; they probably don't know what the word means.
what the hell secrets does he know besides who's in bed with who
That in itself is not worthless. However executives also know what markets the company is planning to go after, what new products just started in development, what companies may be acquired and why and for how much, and so on. This stuff is far more valuable than a schematic of a "new" inkjet.
If he hasn't signed a specific contract, where HP pays him for not working for competitors, HP can't do anything. I think this is just an intimidation tactic, which will have zero effect on Oracle. It's not like Oracle lawyers weren't consulted about hiring a major executive from a major competitor. I'm sure Hurd's lawyers and Oracle lawyers spent many hours together sorting it out before anything became public.
I have about 25 lights, and I replaced only one or two batteries so far, and it was an "infant death" - failed right out of the box. Some lights need replacement for other reasons - such as the plastic that they are made from gradually loses transparency (this is caused by cheap, non-UV-stable material.) The first batch of LED lights was bought 2 years ago, and the batteries in them still are fine. Your 6 to 12 months goal is not a problem.
In my experience, it is far more important to install them where they get enough sunlight to charge. Then the battery is good enough to power the LED for most of the night.
The house had a legacy 12V incandescent landscape lighting. I never used it, and with today's energy prices I probably can't even afford it. The cable to those lights is still in place, and it's probably damaged in many places.
For some lights I still plan to use DC power, though - these will be the lights that are largely hidden. But they will be screwed to the deck's railing, so the power wires will not be a problem. And these will be LED lights, so they won't take too much energy. Per my electric bill, it is worth it to use energy-efficient lights and other equipment.
Perhaps someone with diabetes could get a running count on their blood sugar, rather then having to prick their finger ever so often.
You can power the implanted sensor with magnetic field from the reader. This is what RFID uses (or most electrical toothbrushes.) A more difficult problem is to keep the sensor clean, since the blood tends to clot.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a big difference between unplayable ("may not work on your PC") and hard/pointless/unfun ("may require insanely complicated, one-shot-only sequences").
It's just a technicality. From the user's POV he can't progress. I've seen games that crash half-way. In fact Far Cry 2 on my PS3 failed just this way last time I played it. You come to a hut, expect three guards, see two. Take the two out - the door is still locked (because one guard is MIA.) Do whatever you may (comb the territory, come later, replay from a previous checkpoint) - the door won't open and you can't progress. This is a known bug, and the only known solution is to start a new game from scratch. The bug is random, so you just hope that it won't bite you again.
If you ask for a review of FC2, the game is great, by the way - great grass, lots of terrain, lots of replay value. However how many reviewers of a new game will clock enough game time to catch a bug like this?
but does all the value of a game disappear because you disliked a part of it?
A good deal of it disappears because you can't proceed, and you can't complete the game. The game is not played incrementally, it is one continuous experience. For example, in that FC2 you gathered tons of diamonds (which is laborious in itself) and bought tons of advanced weapons. Then for some reason you can't proceed. Wouldn't you feel cheated? All your efforts to build up your armory went to nothing. It's like reading a fascinating book, reaching 2/3 and then finding out that the rest of the story is not readable. Who would like to be left hanging like that?
I would be very hard-pressed to name even one person that I personally know who has never downloaded a movie, a song, or a game that they did not buy.
What if the movie, the song or the game were so awfully bad that the pirate wasn't even able (or willing) to consume the material? Why should he buy it?
A close analogy is a book store. You walk in, pick a book and start reading. If after a few pages you discover that a hard sci-fi that you were after is, in reality, a pink romance that some other reader put onto the wrong shelf ... you just put the book back on the shelf and walk away. The store won't charge you for the book or even for a part of it. The charge comes only if you decide to keep the book.
One may argue that in some traditional sales one the content is sold it won't be taken back (you buy a movie ticket, and that's it - even if you hated the movie.) But in many other traditional sales the content will be taken back - books and games are certainly in this class, movies are available for sampling through trailers, and songs can be heard on radio and in stores before you buy them.
There is also a situation with games when you buy a game and it is unplayable for one reason or another. It may not work on your PC, or it may require dexterity of a 5 y/o child on the PS3, or (like some GTA games) it may require insanely complicated, one-shot-only sequences (everyone raise your hands who remember the RC helicopter with demolition charges) that take 30 minutes to play through with no save and with thousand ways to screw up. If the game was downloaded for free it can be justly tossed, and the developer shouldn't be entitled to any money for producing such a horrible episode without a way to skip it. The dance sequence in GTA San Andreas is another example; was Rockstar totally insane by insisting that only people with a kind of a musical talent should be allowed to proceed through the game?
Can I ask you something? Why would I want to be part of the gene pool? How would it benefit me personally?
You are supposed to evaluate this question emotionally, not logically. Because logic says that there is no good reason for any of us to exist. The classical need for children died along with the patriarchal peasant family. Today you are much better off having none of that, as long as you don't feel the urge to multiply.
I'm not quite sure why a 2000 page decision is needed in a trial of this kind, either.
There are probably hundreds of people involved; some of them need to be exonerated, other will be guilty of something... it's not too much to ask for 20 pages of plain text to jail someone for 10 years.
Besides, the judge can't just say "guilty" and be done with it. He needs to explain *why* the accused is guilty. For that he may need quotes from the law and from other cases (if precedents are relevant in .pt.) Also consider that legal documents aren't printed all that densely.
If you buy a home, you owe a wealthy person for this privilege
If I, your neighbor, borrow a lawnmower from you, I also owe you that lawnmower. I will even fill it up before returning. Is it in some way wrong? Should I take your lawnmower and not return, or return it broken? Or perhaps I should take it and not even say thanks? Or maybe there should be a law that I can take your lawnmower whenever I please, without owing anything to anyone? I'm not sure what you are trying to say here.
If I borrow something, be it money or goods, I expect to be required to return the borrowed item, and on top of that I should compensate the owner for his inconvenience. While the lawnmower is used by me, you can't use it yourself. And if I nick the blade on a stone it will not cut your grass very well when you get it back. This is a very natural contract between two people, you can trace it back to the earliest human records.
All a person needs is air to breath, water to drink, food to eat, shelter to keep warm, people to have sex with, and things to keep their mind busy, in that order. Needs are not as subjective as you claim.
If you are a dictator, your subjects would be crawling in dirt, having sex with each other, and probably drinking alcohol "to keep their mind busy." They'd be less than animals. I don't see any drivers for the social progress in your list of needs. Obviously, in real life humans have a few more needs that you haven't listed.
The fact that a true communist society has not been achieved does not refute the communist philosophy. Its more a matter of greed and power lust of the ruling class...
Ah, the old standby argument - "they didn't do it right" :-) There is a URL next to my username, look at it (or better click at it.) I know plenty about the most famous attempt to build the communism on Earth.
You are correct that by and large the proletariat was exploited by "professional revolutionaries" (Lenin in Russia, Castro in Cuba, etc.) Those revolutionaries became the masters of the domain. But what next? They were already gods. Stalin certainly had reasons to think so. What happened next is that they honestly (more or less) tried to build socialism. Nobody was building communism, it can't be built because it is the last phase of a developed socialism. There is no government or money under communism, for example.
These attempts failed - everywhere - for one simple reason. Socialism requires a new type of man. This man will be honest. He will work 8 hours and get paid for 8 hours. This is where the first crack started - people tend to work 6 hours but get paid for 10 hours. Since there is no way to put an overseer to every worker, economy faltered. There are many more reasons why low motivation of workers killed the idea, but the largest problem is that there is no solution to the tragedy of commons. And in socialism commons are everywhere.
Furthermore, I am not a communist anyway. [...] I'm simply stating an observation that extreme-wealth != fair.
That's fairly close to what communists in 1917 believed in, when they combed towns and put "capitalists" against the wall.
But you still don't acknowledge what I implied. Rich people don't sit on their money. They give it to other people who need it. Do you think it antisocial? If you need a loan, would it be better to get one (if you accept the terms) or not even have such an option? There were no loans in USSR, if you want to know. If a child is born and the family needs a larger place to live in ... too bad, you can't borrow and buy it.
In America, in 2010, there's a waiting list to work at McDonald's. Is that what makes McDonald's a great employer?
If there are employers without such a waiting list (and with open positions) then the answer has to be "yes." It's not even a matter of my or your opinion; it's the results of voting done by job seekers.
Add in the fact that teens have a disproportionate number of suicides
Young adults (maybe even teens) are probably the majority of the work force at Foxconn. So your own facts work against your thesis.
I'd rather kill some of them than let them decide what conditions we would work under.
Considering the population of China, you will have to kill far more than was killed in two last World Wars. But on the other hand, your name will be in history books forever.
Aside from that, you, the US citizen, think that you are in control, but you aren't. The planet-wide industrial market outperformed you. While you were busy fighting for more money for the same work, the work escaped through the back door, hopped onto the ship and steamed to Asia. You, the US worker, are still doing OK in some high-tech areas, but there is no hope in view that you will ever be able to stitch a T-shirt for $0.50 or build a complete computer (from scratch!) for $200. To become competitive you have to drop your salary down to 1% of what it once was. Today this is simply illegal.
There is still an option to close the borders to foreign goods. This won't be well received by the rest of the world, but by that time you wouldn't care. Once done, you will realize that your salary dropped (or prices increased) just as it would happen in the other scenario. Nobody is going to give you 10 cheeseburgers with fries in exchange for you sitting in the office and staring at Slashdot for one hour. In that new USA you will have to really work for just one cheeseburger. This is what the rest of the world is doing, and always did. And the USA was in the same boat until after the World War II.
Perhaps US workers think they are more valuable than they really are (so they erect laws to "enforce" that value).
There is an easy test for that. An electrician in the USA charges $85/hr. An iPhone 4 costs $200. Is it a fair exchange of an iPhone for 2.5 hours of pulling crude wires through crude conduits?
What I am saying is there is absolutely NO reason for 1 person to have billions of dollars in their own personal assets.
What I'm saying is that you are not a billionaire. Neither am I, but at least I know that billionaires (or even millionaires) do not store gold bars in basements of their homes. Most of the money that rich people have is loaned to other people. There is even a market or two for such loans, even in this very country!
You can own several fully furnished houses, a collection of sports cars, hell even race horses with twenty million. However, you cannot argue that even one person on this planet needs even this.
You have to define the word "need" first, and have everyone agree with this definition. I'm sure Diogenes's needs were strikingly different from ones of the Sun King.
It is pointless to go against the tide and try to grow "a new kind of people" what wouldn't be greedy or lazy or violent. USSR tried, it didn't work. Cuba tried, it didn't work. NK tried, and it still doesn't work. Humans are the fixed part of this equation; this is something that Karl Marx didn't fully understand.
I would imagine anything remotely close to the surface will have been well-and-truly fried, frozen, refried, then altered in isotopes.
I'm sure our neighbors from the Vega star system think the same about us. We live in an ocean of oxygen, which is a deadly poison to any known [to them] kind of life.
I agree, that we shouldn't be hammering every kid into the same mold
Good morning, The Worm, Your Honour,
The Crown will plainly show,
The prisoner who now stands before you,
Was caught red-handed showing feelings.
Showing feelings of an almost human nature.
This will not do.
Call the schoolmaster!
(Here is the link, if anyone dares to confess that he needs it :-)
So tell me again why learning empathy, understanding how to infer things, picking up on and interpreting nonverbal cues, and so on aren't skills that can be taught in books where "Implied inferences rule"?
Perhaps because such a book would be called a movie? The book is limited to direct and indirect verbal communication. That Martin can steal a look at Kate, and you can do your best to write about it, but it will never be the same as seeing it, or being part of the live scene. Books work the best when the reader is sufficiently associating himself with the act. I can write a book about trepnung of amilatsies on the 5th planet of Proxima Centauri, but you will not get any entertainment or social skills from reading it - it would be meaningless (unless you an amilatsi yourself :-)
The post I was responding to was saying, "Don't read Shakespeare, learn how to be a better mechanic"
Those Slashdot comments, they tend to branch and the discussion sometimes flows in all directions. I do not support the theory of "skipping things that are "non-essential" to the trade we've decided a kid has the most aptitude for" for many obvious reasons. But sometimes that "not skipping" transforms into "force-feeding", and that is bad, IMO. My opinion is based on my own experiences, and I do not pretend to speak for everyone. But I'm sure I'm not alone in the world with such an opinion.
Sure, they may still need guidance, but a 15, 16, 17, 18 year old high schooler is capable of handling "difficult" topics
I was 16 when I graduated from high school (after 10 years there, 8+2.) When I was 18 I was in a university already, pretty well understanding [at that time] technical electrodynamics and some quantum effects within certain microwave devices. I simply don't comprehend why in the USA anyone is still in school after 16. But sure, if you keep your "children" in school until their beards turn grey then indeed they can be taught a lot.
That reminds me of a good scene in one book, where 35 years old children petition for their emancipation.
Shit, 5 year olds play cops and robbers all the time, and invent all kinds of imaginary games and scenarios.
They certainly do that; however nobody judges them on accuracy of their act. Literature studies do.
It's called imagination, or empathy. You may not get it right, but you'd be surprised at how much a student *can* get right.
These are not qualities that all people are equally and plentifully endowed with. Kirk and Spock, for example. You, when in school, may be able to jump over a plank at 10 feet, but I can't jump over anything. However I can devise a complicated Rube Goldberg machine to raise me over Mount Everest if I want to. People are different, and it hurts when a teacher tries to hammer a square peg into a round hole.
Forcing a child to not study something is just as bad as forcing him to study it. Traditionally it was one of teacher's responsibilities to discover what the child has leaning toward. But the 20th century adopted the conveyor belt education system. Teachers are just operators who speak their part, verify responses against the government-approved standard, and calculate scores. You can't sing? "YOU VILL SING, WE WILL MAKE YOU." You can't catch a ball? FAIL. You can shoot a fly at 50 yards with a .22LR? OMG, VERBOTEN!!1! I'm not sure if such an educational machine is much better than the one you warn against.
You actually have great examples. They show that short-sighted policies destroy the business. Where is that Enron today? How is that new tobacco business going?
A company that ignores or alienates their own customer base (like RIAA) will only dig itself deeper into the hole. RIAA can afford a pretty deep hole, but they can't see the future from down there.
Only companies that respect their partners (supplies, workforce and customers) can survive in long term.
I believe the GP was saying that nobody should be forced to study things that go against the grain of his nature. That rarely helps.
Why should mechanics read Shakespeare? Because communication is important
I don't know what Shakespeare or other classics you were reading, but art of clear communication is not exactly the primary goal of fiction literature. Quite opposite, a lot of writing depends on things that are not said, on things that the reader completes in his head and acts out internally, as if he were one of the actors in that scene. Fiction books are written not to educate (that would be textbooks) - fiction is written first & foremost to entertain. Very few authors want write clearly (like Mark Twain; and compare to his well known critique of Cooper.)
And here comes another problem - the age of the reader. Shakespeare wrote his plays for adult audiences. Leo Tolstoy wrote his "War and Peace" for an adult, even bilingual audience. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote his "Crime and Punishment" for an [initially] sane, adult reader. I'm sure you can add tons of books like that that are part of school courses in various countries. Invariably these books are far more complex than what a 12- or 14-year old student is ready for. This causes boredom and other problems.
When I was in school (which was quite a while ago) I hated literature classes the most. Not "language" classes as such - those were easy; but classes that asked you to read a book and then answer questions that are not answered in the book. For example let's take that "War and Peace." A general walks the field before the battle. Then he comes close to a tree and stands still for 10-15 minutes. Question: what did he think about during this time? I don't recall what was the officially blessed answer to that, but my answer would have been simply "Insufficient data." You can answer this question (probably incorrectly anyway) only by trying to relive these hours *as* the protagonist. But a school student can't relive a life of a 40-year old man who was a filthy rich, married aristocrat, with friends and enemies in high places.
Are there books that are more suitable for children? Most certainly so. Just to name a big name, Andre Norton has quite a few books written specifically for children, and even more in the genre of fiction. Children can associate themselves with protagonists of those books. Good and evil are easy to see, and often the hero is a young boy (or a girl, in Norton's case.) But those books are not studied. Instead, some heavyweight adult fiction that can easily hurt an adult's head is selected. (Dostoevsky is a great example in this department.)
So you were saying something about communication? There is precious little of that in those books. Implied inferences rule. "Martin's hand accidentally touched Kate's, and both felt a spark of electricity." I say, get proper antistatic gear before you put your hands where they don't belong :-) This is not the stuff that a school student should be personally familiar with, and that's just a fictitious example. In real books (like "Anna Karenina") the action unfolds about the marital conflict in a family of an aristocrat. Yes, that's the stuff a 14-year old pimple-faced boy knows all about, especially the part where the man *doesn't want* the woman.
Secrets have little protection once exposed. [...] That level of certainty is not even required in a criminal court. This is a civil matter with a far lower burden of proof."
Any CEO or ex-CEO can be abducted in a parking lot, pumped full of Sodium Pentothal and forced to spill each and every secret he ever knew. This has 100% probability if someone really wants to have the information. Does this mean that every CEO must be terminated every night before leaving secure premises?
I agree that secrets have no protection once they are revealed. People who illegally spill secrets will be sued and found guilty. However it still requires proof. If the accusation comes before the act it requires not just "a" proof, but "THE" proof - something that is unassailable, something that can't be denied. I can't think of any such proof here. Furthermore, Oracle may have specifically setup his duties in such a way that his "insider knowledge" will be not used. I'm sure HP doesn't know about any such arrangements; nobody does today except few people at Oracle, and HP's lawsuit looks like a kneejerk reaction - fast and completely automatic.
"monies" = multiple sums of money; different payments. This is a financial term, and it is used correctly here. Google it.
Let's say that you lose 90% of that to taxes ... that's still $4M. That would be enough for me to buy my house, my car, my parents' houses, fund my child's education, fund graduate degrees for me and my wife in any field I cared about, build my own archery range, and so forth.
Let's see. Your house is valued at $4M, and your parents' house is valued at $4M. This is nothing out of the ordinary in California. Property taxes on $8M will be about 1% of that, or $80K/yr. If you don't intend to die soon - but instead want to live, say, 50 years more - then you need $0.08M * 50 = $4M to only pay the state. Your original $4M are gone, and that didn't include any necessities like food, water, utilities or hobbies (you'd go mad in 50 years without hobbies.)
Of course if you get $4M and live in an apartment in the inner city, then sure, this money will last you a while. Not that you will enjoy life this way, of course.
It's pretty damned close to "never work again" for anyone that would spend it frugally
As the numbers show, even if you live off grid and eat fruits of your own land it still will not be enough. The state will want a piece of your pie; all of it, actually, in 50 years. By investing it wisely you may postpone the inevitable, but to be completely secure you need to spend about 2-3% of your capital per year, then you can live off of fixed income instruments. If the guy needs $100K/yr to pay his bills, the needed capital is $3-5M. The drawback is that all the money is tied up, and if you need a medical treatment you may be unable to raise the money fast enough, and then you die.
In Hurd's case, though, $100M before taxes is still plenty of dough after the taxes - maybe $65M. So he is not one of those "poor millionaires." I simply wanted to illustrate that with large incomes come large expenses. Good luck selling that $4M house in CA today; you'd be lucky to get 50 cents on the dollar.
he's the one who got caught with his hand in the till though.
Reports indicate that the total sum paid to Jodie Fisher over 2 years is only $20K, and she did the work. You may want to argue how necessary she was, but that is not something you fire for - it's a legitimate disagreement about the best way to run the business. If an employee abuses his pre-authorized expenses they are (in the worst case) reduced or removed, and that's it. In CEO case, the CFO can just tell him "I was checking expenses, and I think I can't justify $this and $that - you may need to amend the report and pay it out of your pocket." I think a multi-millionaire CEO can afford that, and in the future he will be more careful.
Hurd was fired because of the lawsuit filed by Jodie Fisher. The HP board wanted none of that, and decided that it is easier to drop Hurd. Well, perhaps that wasn't easier, after all. But we aren't accusing the HP board of being smart; they probably don't know what the word means.
And I bet she is good looking.
This is probably the least of his worries. Gold diggers are always plentiful.
what the hell secrets does he know besides who's in bed with who
That in itself is not worthless. However executives also know what markets the company is planning to go after, what new products just started in development, what companies may be acquired and why and for how much, and so on. This stuff is far more valuable than a schematic of a "new" inkjet.
If he hasn't signed a specific contract, where HP pays him for not working for competitors, HP can't do anything. I think this is just an intimidation tactic, which will have zero effect on Oracle. It's not like Oracle lawyers weren't consulted about hiring a major executive from a major competitor. I'm sure Hurd's lawyers and Oracle lawyers spent many hours together sorting it out before anything became public.
How often do you replace the batteries in them?
I have about 25 lights, and I replaced only one or two batteries so far, and it was an "infant death" - failed right out of the box. Some lights need replacement for other reasons - such as the plastic that they are made from gradually loses transparency (this is caused by cheap, non-UV-stable material.) The first batch of LED lights was bought 2 years ago, and the batteries in them still are fine. Your 6 to 12 months goal is not a problem.
In my experience, it is far more important to install them where they get enough sunlight to charge. Then the battery is good enough to power the LED for most of the night.
The house had a legacy 12V incandescent landscape lighting. I never used it, and with today's energy prices I probably can't even afford it. The cable to those lights is still in place, and it's probably damaged in many places.
For some lights I still plan to use DC power, though - these will be the lights that are largely hidden. But they will be screwed to the deck's railing, so the power wires will not be a problem. And these will be LED lights, so they won't take too much energy. Per my electric bill, it is worth it to use energy-efficient lights and other equipment.
Perhaps someone with diabetes could get a running count on their blood sugar, rather then having to prick their finger ever so often.
You can power the implanted sensor with magnetic field from the reader. This is what RFID uses (or most electrical toothbrushes.) A more difficult problem is to keep the sensor clean, since the blood tends to clot.
I use solar garden lights not because they are cheaper but because there is no cable.
If only the Mozilla Foundation had the balls to include an ad blocker which dealt with Google Adwords
Something like http://www.optimizegoogle.com/ ?