It would probably require a major re-thinking in how people live, yeah. Rather than everyone wanting to have a $300K house and drive their $20K car to work, perhaps more people would just live in the city where they work and save even more than they would by removing interest from their lives.
Banks probably wouldn't exist at all - or at least, nowhere near their current form. Perhaps as a guarded vault room where you store your cash.
That is - they wouldn't be able to get "fun new toys" immediately because companies would be less likely to hand out cash if they couldn't earn interest on it. In case that wasn't clear..
How about legislation banning the loaning of money to other people for the purposes of collecting interest? That would take care of 4 out of 5 of your points - maybe even all 5. On top of that, it would save everyone a whole mess of cash - no more interest to pay. The only downside is that people wouldn't be able to get "fun new toys" immediately.
Rather than continuing to promote specialization over those 200 years, I'd like to see people branch out in to new fields.
Specialization is one of the top problems with jobs here - we have people who are on unemployment who complain about not being able to find a job in their field, who don't even look outside their field. Unions are also a problem here - they seem to work under the idea that people will have the same jobs their entire lives. 30-40 years is already a long time - 200 years is approaching insanity.
If I start getting direct marketing from Transmeta, I will be seriously pissed. I get enough direct marketing every day already, I don't need more junk stuffed in my mailbox or telemarketers on my phone, not to mention spam in my e-mail.
"I'll buy it. Where do I send the check? OK, and when can I expect the CD with the source in question? Oh, okay - well, can you tell me where exactly on my machine the source is? No? What am I paying for?"
Indeed. I cannot admit to coming up with the original thought, but it is something I'd like to see each of the candidates address. Of course, I am not a California resident any longer, so that may reduce my post's value (and karma).
Gray Davis was re-elected by the populace less than a year ago. What will you, Georgy Russell, do with your 10-11 months in office? Is it worth the expense and time and effort required to run for governor? Can you accomplish all of your goals in under a year?
You're right - people are failing to administer their machines properly and are getting them hijacked. Regardless of who actually did it, the computer is a problem, and should be taken offline (preferably by the ISP, but most ISPs will never do this).
The right people would be targeted, but not ALL of the right people.
SCO HAS already come out a winner in this. Long-term, even. SCO is a company made up of people - people with stock. They've all won already. Once they're done dumping their shares, SCO Corp will just be a shell, but the people - that which actually makes up the company - have won.
Are drives with fewer platters generally more reliable? Often the big push for more storage involves just slapping on a couple more platters and calling it good.
I've had a hard drive show up as dead, non-bootable. I replaced the logic board on it (with one with a slightly newer firmware; lucky for me it worked) and was able to boot.
Some of the data was unavailable. I think the old logic board must have marked some boot blocks as defects so the entire disk was useless as-was, and the new logic board had a different set of defects in places where some of the actual data was.
All in all, it saved us a ton of hassle. Since the drive itself was old, and we had a similar old drive hanging around, it was really no loss to us - we weren't going to use either drive ever again for important stuff. And the best part is - this customer has given us access to run periodic backups for him! Hooray. Everyone wins.
FYI: There are services out there that charge thousands of dollars for just this very thing.
I think it's possible, too. And ya know, I think if there's a way to offload some of that processing to the user's PC somehow, I think they'd be willing to do it. I know the ideal is to have spam cost the end-user zero (in terms of cost and resources), but if they have to do some text processing to see no spam, I think they'll be fine with it.
I do not want my ISP deciding what is and what isn't spam for me. Others may be comfortable with that however. At most, ISPs could offer it as an option.
Let's officially proclaim Monday No Spam Filter day, so people can better see the problem when they're most bitter - having to show up after a fun weekend to sit around in the office and delete spam!
Ah, well, that's a different matter. You see, the US government has really big guns (read: WMD), so they get to do whatever they want (right or wrong).
How can SCO get away with charging $699 for a license to code that they claim is on your computer, when they have offered no proof that it is on your computer?
Then again, if you paid the fee, they'd have to give you their part of the Linux kernel, outlining what you're paying for right? Like on the receipt or something.
Definitely. Windows programmers like to *enforce* multitasking by way of focus. So you can be in 1st place in a race, doing really well after trying 5 or 10 times (Midnight Club II, heh, just happened to me), and then all of a sudden the whole thing goes away to pop up an IM window.
Slashdot Mirror
It would probably require a major re-thinking in how people live, yeah. Rather than everyone wanting to have a $300K house and drive their $20K car to work, perhaps more people would just live in the city where they work and save even more than they would by removing interest from their lives.
Banks probably wouldn't exist at all - or at least, nowhere near their current form. Perhaps as a guarded vault room where you store your cash.
That is - they wouldn't be able to get "fun new toys" immediately because companies would be less likely to hand out cash if they couldn't earn interest on it. In case that wasn't clear..
How about legislation banning the loaning of money to other people for the purposes of collecting interest? That would take care of 4 out of 5 of your points - maybe even all 5. On top of that, it would save everyone a whole mess of cash - no more interest to pay. The only downside is that people wouldn't be able to get "fun new toys" immediately.
Really, I think it's the best solution.
Rather than continuing to promote specialization over those 200 years, I'd like to see people branch out in to new fields.
Specialization is one of the top problems with jobs here - we have people who are on unemployment who complain about not being able to find a job in their field, who don't even look outside their field. Unions are also a problem here - they seem to work under the idea that people will have the same jobs their entire lives. 30-40 years is already a long time - 200 years is approaching insanity.
If I start getting direct marketing from Transmeta, I will be seriously pissed. I get enough direct marketing every day already, I don't need more junk stuffed in my mailbox or telemarketers on my phone, not to mention spam in my e-mail.
Which of the Fed's patents did Microsoft violate, exactly? I was under the impression it was an anti-trust case.
"I'll buy it. Where do I send the check? OK, and when can I expect the CD with the source in question? Oh, okay - well, can you tell me where exactly on my machine the source is? No? What am I paying for?"
Indeed. I cannot admit to coming up with the original thought, but it is something I'd like to see each of the candidates address. Of course, I am not a California resident any longer, so that may reduce my post's value (and karma).
Good question.
Should also ask:
Gray Davis was re-elected by the populace less than a year ago. What will you, Georgy Russell, do with your 10-11 months in office? Is it worth the expense and time and effort required to run for governor? Can you accomplish all of your goals in under a year?
You're right - people are failing to administer their machines properly and are getting them hijacked. Regardless of who actually did it, the computer is a problem, and should be taken offline (preferably by the ISP, but most ISPs will never do this).
The right people would be targeted, but not ALL of the right people.
SCO HAS already come out a winner in this. Long-term, even. SCO is a company made up of people - people with stock. They've all won already. Once they're done dumping their shares, SCO Corp will just be a shell, but the people - that which actually makes up the company - have won.
Here's what I'm wondering about this -
Are drives with fewer platters generally more reliable? Often the big push for more storage involves just slapping on a couple more platters and calling it good.
I've had a hard drive show up as dead, non-bootable. I replaced the logic board on it (with one with a slightly newer firmware; lucky for me it worked) and was able to boot.
Some of the data was unavailable. I think the old logic board must have marked some boot blocks as defects so the entire disk was useless as-was, and the new logic board had a different set of defects in places where some of the actual data was.
All in all, it saved us a ton of hassle. Since the drive itself was old, and we had a similar old drive hanging around, it was really no loss to us - we weren't going to use either drive ever again for important stuff. And the best part is - this customer has given us access to run periodic backups for him! Hooray. Everyone wins.
FYI: There are services out there that charge thousands of dollars for just this very thing.
Overture used to list prices per click at $5+!
Not to mention that there've been what, 5 James Bonds so far?
I think it's possible, too. And ya know, I think if there's a way to offload some of that processing to the user's PC somehow, I think they'd be willing to do it. I know the ideal is to have spam cost the end-user zero (in terms of cost and resources), but if they have to do some text processing to see no spam, I think they'll be fine with it.
I do not want my ISP deciding what is and what isn't spam for me. Others may be comfortable with that however. At most, ISPs could offer it as an option.
Let's officially proclaim Monday No Spam Filter day, so people can better see the problem when they're most bitter - having to show up after a fun weekend to sit around in the office and delete spam!
The best thing about the patent articles on /. is that you can disable them in your preferences if you don't want to see them.
Well, it may not be so refreshing when you realize that SCO has already won. Just look at their stock price and the executive dumping records.
SCO could go entirely bankrupt, and they'd still win.
Ah, well, that's a different matter. You see, the US government has really big guns (read: WMD), so they get to do whatever they want (right or wrong).
How can SCO get away with charging $699 for a license to code that they claim is on your computer, when they have offered no proof that it is on your computer?
Then again, if you paid the fee, they'd have to give you their part of the Linux kernel, outlining what you're paying for right? Like on the receipt or something.
Eh, it's not just IM clients. It's every single Windows program out there, apparently. They all want your attention, and damned whatever you're doing.
I've seen it happen with UNIX-based apps, but it's incredibly rare.
Billy: "Mommy, why are you so one-dimensional that the only thing you can do is write songs?"
Mommy: "Drugs. And I'm lazy. And retarded."
Definitely. Windows programmers like to *enforce* multitasking by way of focus. So you can be in 1st place in a race, doing really well after trying 5 or 10 times (Midnight Club II, heh, just happened to me), and then all of a sudden the whole thing goes away to pop up an IM window.
;)
Why do Windows folk put up with this?
Appropriately timed article it seems
'linux init=/bin/emerge' I win. ;)