And if it is the only restaurant in town, or perhaps one of three which immediately copy each other's menus? TANSTAAFM - there ain't no such thing as a free market. Alternatives dwindle, choices become one or two, and you just have to take what is given. The nature of business is to kill off competition and lock in customers and prices. Markets are manipulated creatures - they are not free - they are created and maintained by men who know how to play games that you can not influence, for they design them that way. If the "market" did what people wanted, there would be no "real name" requirement. This is being shoved down our throats because they want to monetize our identities. We are the product, being sold to advertisers and PR firms. We are not the customers.
Yes. We should just take what we are given by our free market lords. We should never complain or criticize, for they are the way and the light, for ever and ever, amen. Consumer feedback is so early-20th-century.
You were NOT required to be in the phone book. Unlisted number - are you too young to remember? We NEVER had to give up our privacy until recently. This was a choice we let be made for us.
The systems are not "under strain". They are lying. They've more than enough profit to build out any bandwidth we need. They simply don't want to, because it costs money and reduces profit. And they want to kill Netflix.
Hell, in the 90s, we GAVE them billions to build out high-speed internet to our homes as Federal tax cuts as a deal for insuring the future. They reneged and stole the money as profit, most likely to buy up competitors.
Revelations was a political tract railing against Emperor Nero. It was a capital crime to dis the emperor, so they wrote in code - seven hills, three heads, yadda yadda. The "Beast" was Nero. The "Whore of Babylon" was Rome. It was a political/religious pamphlet.
Any sufficiently nebulous set of metaphors can "predict" anything, if you want it to. What would impress me? St. John of Patmos saying, "In 2011, Interpol sets up an international ID card system." If you can see the future, there is no reason to obfuscate.
The usual majority laugh at privacy and point at illegal immigrants and drug traffickers. "You have nothing to worry about unless you're doing something wrong", they giggle. They watch as the world police state clicks on. We're all safe behind the police walls, they agree.
Then the masks drop and our real bosses appear, and they ain't governments. And there is no where to hide. Forever.
Reporting news is fair use. And reporting his actual words is not a political attack. Any damage done to him is done by his own mouth, not by the reportage. He said he was barely capable of surviving on his salary and benefits, which easily top 200K a year. He wants to cut the pay and compensation of teachers, who make 50-60K a year at most, calling them overpaid spendthrifts and cheats. That is NEWS. He is a blatant hypocrite by word and deed. And a destructive one - he is directly responsible for the destruction of Wisconsin's unions.
Once the idea of intellectual "property" is accepted, and the idea that Prohibition 3: The Final Chapter is the solution to the "crime" of "stealing" non-existent objects (along with the completely locked down police state to enforce it), then what's the big deal about making up thousands more little lies to bolster the idiocy? We gave up the right to intellectual honesty once we gave in on the big lies. Prepare for a century of madness and armored police kicking your door in, shooting your dogs, and feeling up your womenfolk after they handcuff your prostrate household. We accept the madness for our drug war, we will accept it for the new war against idea thieves.
When does the possession of a song in your head become a crime? Not an idle notion. fMRI will continue evolving, and sensing a pilfered tune in your grey matter may become possible. What's next, filters on the auditory nerves? Licenses for holding x number of songs in your head for y number of years? Why not? Stealing is stealing.
Phone calls: monitored and possibly recorded. Internet surfing: recorded. Texts: recorded. GPS location on phone: recorded. eBook purchases: recorded. Credit card activity: recorded. Purchases: recorded. Music purchases and listening habits: recorded. MAC addresses/IP addresses: recorded. Visible activity: recorded. Political beliefs: recorded if you protest. Library checkouts: recorded. Train usage: recorded. Bus usage: recorded. Plane usage: duh. The last thing left to do: car tracking. Every damned thing you do, say, listen to or read, and everywhere you go, recorded, now or very soon.
The people who are doing this? Not recorded. Bush's White House staff emails from the 9/11 period are gone, baby, gone. Amazing, ain't it.
Professor William Cronon is having his every electronic posting subpoenaed soon as retaliation for an article he wrote summarizing Governor Walker of Wisconsin's transgressions. And the Republican Party will probably get every communication he's ever made, digging for dirt to destroy him. That's what this all means.
Told you so, ten years ago. Endgame.
And oh yeah: raise your damned taxes to pay for the roads. EVERY damned shortfall is being used as an excuse to cut spending for the weak or poor, or to further extend the police state to endgame. Instead, just pay taxes, cheapskates. Life costs.
A university education will cost you about a quarter million now. And since student loans have been turned into yet another private profit center, the interest rates are enormous for a new graduate. And the tuition is skyrocketing. Republicans in many states are going to turn public universities into private hands, so don't look there too long for a bargain.
If everyone gets a university education, the banks get rich, true. But wages and salaries go down, by inexorable laws of supply and demand. Flood the market with degreed workers, and expect your ability to pay off your loan to diminish. Which is precisely what has happened - they shipped degreed workers in from overpopulated countries and gave them depressed wages, and now, well, do I have to keep pointing out the obvious?
I have a degree, and like fifty million others here, I am barely staying out of the serve-rich-people-food industry. And more degrees won't help. THEY WON'T HIRE YOU. It's against their interest, ie money.
I'm a science education fanatic, and I am agreeing with you. Very few people need to know algebra->calc. We grind our kids' heads through excruciatingly complex lessons for a decade, and they bloody hate it. And they are right to - the years they've wasted could have been spent on a broad education in appreciating science, art and engineering. Math isn't necessary to understand most of it. And the pain they've learned will make them run at speed from anything resembling science for the rest of their lives. They associate invention and knowledge with boredom and frustration. Let those who like math go on to the higher courses. Let the other learn to work with their hands, and immerse themselves in history and politics, and so many other things. We need a country with a memory and political awareness, and we do not have that. We keep wandering into economic and military disasters because we are collectively stupid on those subjects.
That 31,900 is an average, not a median. And we don't live in India. We live here, where that 31,900 is taken by the rent and the car we have to own to reach the suburbs where the gated communities and the jobs are. The rest gets eaten by doctors and insurance companies.
What pies are they buying? Mercedes? Condos in France?
The idea is that an everyday person can buy a pie. Not just a few buying all the pies and distributing a few to the beggars off the balcony of their villa/gated community.
A country without a middle class is a corporate feudal state. The line of deterioration will continue until there isn't any damned pie left if you weren't to the manor born. And that was the idea from the start. The return of the Guilded Age.
Cheap pies for whom? Not everybody - owners. They get rich. We become waiters. They can bring in airplanes of indentured servants from overpopulated countries that can't negotiate and can't quit, not if they don't want to be deported.
I can't state the case any more plainly. This isn't about cheap pie. This is about a few million rich people taking everyone else's god-damned pie.
And the dev had better become a manager or an owner by age 35, or a new graduate or H1B takes his place. When the market can print new employees, your usefulness is about a dozen years or so. The youth culture in IT doesn't help, either.
Well. I at least don't feel so alone anymore. Ten years ago I saw this coming and left the IT world. I've spent ten years trying to explain all this to my friends and family - now I don't have to. Everyone I used to know, the hotshots, are trying to find Java maintence positions and busing tables when they can't.
This could have been avoided if we had not flooded the market with H1Bs. The job shortage is artificial. We needed to take care of our country first, and not the corporate owners who wanted to become oh, so so so rich by getting rid of the well-paid IT staff. Same with all the other professions. We cannot compete with overpopulated nations on wages. And it should stop.
Where were you when Reagan and Bush ran up 11 trillion in debt in the last 31 years? Bush alone ran up 8 trillion, not counting the wars he started.
The entire plan was to lower taxes, increase spending, give the spending to corporations, and ultimately and suddenly discover "the debt" when a sucker Democratic president took power, then demand the New Deal be dismantled and government turned over to private hands. While cutting taxes to corporations, of course.
#&^$#@ you Republicans. Thieves, liars, and destroyers, all of you.
Slashdot Mirror
And if it is the only restaurant in town, or perhaps one of three which immediately copy each other's menus? TANSTAAFM - there ain't no such thing as a free market. Alternatives dwindle, choices become one or two, and you just have to take what is given. The nature of business is to kill off competition and lock in customers and prices. Markets are manipulated creatures - they are not free - they are created and maintained by men who know how to play games that you can not influence, for they design them that way. If the "market" did what people wanted, there would be no "real name" requirement. This is being shoved down our throats because they want to monetize our identities. We are the product, being sold to advertisers and PR firms. We are not the customers.
Yes. We should just take what we are given by our free market lords. We should never complain or criticize, for they are the way and the light, for ever and ever, amen. Consumer feedback is so early-20th-century.
You were NOT required to be in the phone book. Unlisted number - are you too young to remember? We NEVER had to give up our privacy until recently. This was a choice we let be made for us.
They'll just decide. Unless you want to prove you are really "Qatz" with your driver's license, you'll stay deleted.
I feel like I'm missing the party. Can I have an invite as well?
Karma will reward - I'll invite someone else when I can.
catbeller (at) gmail dot com
The real content pirates are the Chinese tongs - and no one mentions them, not a one.
The systems are not "under strain". They are lying. They've more than enough profit to build out any bandwidth we need. They simply don't want to, because it costs money and reduces profit. And they want to kill Netflix.
Hell, in the 90s, we GAVE them billions to build out high-speed internet to our homes as Federal tax cuts as a deal for insuring the future. They reneged and stole the money as profit, most likely to buy up competitors.
We are paying far more than enough. We are paying the ISPs so much extra over cost that they are buying up their content suppliers and competing ISPs.
The pipes should be a public, regulated utility, like power and water. The model works.
Now we must, as a preventative measure, absolutely forbid the marketing of bandwidth as derivatives in the stock market.
"Be good to each other" takes one sentence. The rest is rubbish.
Revelations was a political tract railing against Emperor Nero. It was a capital crime to dis the emperor, so they wrote in code - seven hills, three heads, yadda yadda. The "Beast" was Nero. The "Whore of Babylon" was Rome. It was a political/religious pamphlet.
Any sufficiently nebulous set of metaphors can "predict" anything, if you want it to. What would impress me? St. John of Patmos saying, "In 2011, Interpol sets up an international ID card system." If you can see the future, there is no reason to obfuscate.
The usual majority laugh at privacy and point at illegal immigrants and drug traffickers. "You have nothing to worry about unless you're doing something wrong", they giggle. They watch as the world police state clicks on. We're all safe behind the police walls, they agree.
Then the masks drop and our real bosses appear, and they ain't governments. And there is no where to hide. Forever.
One world corporation. Interpol is a private company.
Or the way all contraband in the world, drugs and weapons and small frightened slaves, are shipped from country to country. "Lost" in the ocean.
A container doesn't just tumble off a stack into the water, either, but that's the only alternative explantion.
Fair use does not apply only to "news sites". Fair use is fair use, regardless.
Reporting news is fair use. And reporting his actual words is not a political attack. Any damage done to him is done by his own mouth, not by the reportage. He said he was barely capable of surviving on his salary and benefits, which easily top 200K a year. He wants to cut the pay and compensation of teachers, who make 50-60K a year at most, calling them overpaid spendthrifts and cheats. That is NEWS. He is a blatant hypocrite by word and deed. And a destructive one - he is directly responsible for the destruction of Wisconsin's unions.
Once the idea of intellectual "property" is accepted, and the idea that Prohibition 3: The Final Chapter is the solution to the "crime" of "stealing" non-existent objects (along with the completely locked down police state to enforce it), then what's the big deal about making up thousands more little lies to bolster the idiocy? We gave up the right to intellectual honesty once we gave in on the big lies. Prepare for a century of madness and armored police kicking your door in, shooting your dogs, and feeling up your womenfolk after they handcuff your prostrate household. We accept the madness for our drug war, we will accept it for the new war against idea thieves.
When does the possession of a song in your head become a crime? Not an idle notion. fMRI will continue evolving, and sensing a pilfered tune in your grey matter may become possible. What's next, filters on the auditory nerves? Licenses for holding x number of songs in your head for y number of years? Why not? Stealing is stealing.
Everyone is tracked. Endgame.
Phone calls: monitored and possibly recorded. Internet surfing: recorded. Texts: recorded. GPS location on phone: recorded. eBook purchases: recorded. Credit card activity: recorded. Purchases: recorded. Music purchases and listening habits: recorded. MAC addresses/IP addresses: recorded. Visible activity: recorded. Political beliefs: recorded if you protest. Library checkouts: recorded. Train usage: recorded. Bus usage: recorded. Plane usage: duh. The last thing left to do: car tracking. Every damned thing you do, say, listen to or read, and everywhere you go, recorded, now or very soon.
The people who are doing this? Not recorded. Bush's White House staff emails from the 9/11 period are gone, baby, gone. Amazing, ain't it.
Professor William Cronon is having his every electronic posting subpoenaed soon as retaliation for an article he wrote summarizing Governor Walker of Wisconsin's transgressions. And the Republican Party will probably get every communication he's ever made, digging for dirt to destroy him. That's what this all means.
Told you so, ten years ago. Endgame.
And oh yeah: raise your damned taxes to pay for the roads. EVERY damned shortfall is being used as an excuse to cut spending for the weak or poor, or to further extend the police state to endgame. Instead, just pay taxes, cheapskates. Life costs.
A university education will cost you about a quarter million now. And since student loans have been turned into yet another private profit center, the interest rates are enormous for a new graduate. And the tuition is skyrocketing. Republicans in many states are going to turn public universities into private hands, so don't look there too long for a bargain.
If everyone gets a university education, the banks get rich, true. But wages and salaries go down, by inexorable laws of supply and demand. Flood the market with degreed workers, and expect your ability to pay off your loan to diminish. Which is precisely what has happened - they shipped degreed workers in from overpopulated countries and gave them depressed wages, and now, well, do I have to keep pointing out the obvious?
I have a degree, and like fifty million others here, I am barely staying out of the serve-rich-people-food industry. And more degrees won't help. THEY WON'T HIRE YOU. It's against their interest, ie money.
I'm a science education fanatic, and I am agreeing with you. Very few people need to know algebra->calc. We grind our kids' heads through excruciatingly complex lessons for a decade, and they bloody hate it. And they are right to - the years they've wasted could have been spent on a broad education in appreciating science, art and engineering. Math isn't necessary to understand most of it. And the pain they've learned will make them run at speed from anything resembling science for the rest of their lives. They associate invention and knowledge with boredom and frustration. Let those who like math go on to the higher courses. Let the other learn to work with their hands, and immerse themselves in history and politics, and so many other things. We need a country with a memory and political awareness, and we do not have that. We keep wandering into economic and military disasters because we are collectively stupid on those subjects.
That 31,900 is an average, not a median. And we don't live in India. We live here, where that 31,900 is taken by the rent and the car we have to own to reach the suburbs where the gated communities and the jobs are. The rest gets eaten by doctors and insurance companies.
What pies are they buying? Mercedes? Condos in France?
The idea is that an everyday person can buy a pie. Not just a few buying all the pies and distributing a few to the beggars off the balcony of their villa/gated community.
A country without a middle class is a corporate feudal state. The line of deterioration will continue until there isn't any damned pie left if you weren't to the manor born. And that was the idea from the start. The return of the Guilded Age.
Cheap pies for whom? Not everybody - owners. They get rich. We become waiters. They can bring in airplanes of indentured servants from overpopulated countries that can't negotiate and can't quit, not if they don't want to be deported.
I can't state the case any more plainly. This isn't about cheap pie. This is about a few million rich people taking everyone else's god-damned pie.
And the dev had better become a manager or an owner by age 35, or a new graduate or H1B takes his place. When the market can print new employees, your usefulness is about a dozen years or so. The youth culture in IT doesn't help, either.
Well. I at least don't feel so alone anymore. Ten years ago I saw this coming and left the IT world. I've spent ten years trying to explain all this to my friends and family - now I don't have to. Everyone I used to know, the hotshots, are trying to find Java maintence positions and busing tables when they can't.
This could have been avoided if we had not flooded the market with H1Bs. The job shortage is artificial. We needed to take care of our country first, and not the corporate owners who wanted to become oh, so so so rich by getting rid of the well-paid IT staff. Same with all the other professions. We cannot compete with overpopulated nations on wages. And it should stop.
Where were you when Reagan and Bush ran up 11 trillion in debt in the last 31 years? Bush alone ran up 8 trillion, not counting the wars he started.
The entire plan was to lower taxes, increase spending, give the spending to corporations, and ultimately and suddenly discover "the debt" when a sucker Democratic president took power, then demand the New Deal be dismantled and government turned over to private hands. While cutting taxes to corporations, of course.
#&^$#@ you Republicans. Thieves, liars, and destroyers, all of you.