The higher pay and less taxes mean nothing because even simple medical procedures or healthcare can bankrupt us.
I had a meniscus repair in my knee last year. My health insurance sent me a nice itemized letter saying that, were I not insured, I'd have had to pay another $43K out of pocket for my surgery. I walked into the hospital at 5:30 AM and left at 11:00 AM the same day.
A few years back I had to get a root canal and crown for a tooth I broke. Out of pocket cost for the procedure, with insurance, was a hair over a thousand dollars.
The median household income in this country is $48K. Most Americans simply cannot afford what healthcare costs here, with or without insurance.
Verhoeven's Starship Troopers adaption was a brilliant parody of the original material and made a pointed joke of everything Heinlein claimed to stand for.
If you consider the original novel to be profound I can't imagine you would have the sense of self-awareness required to enjoy the film, anyway.
"Latino" or "Hispanic" are markers of cultural background, not race.
That Slashdot posters don't know this and keep confusing this shows us how little 18-34 year old white males with no children (per Alexa) understand the politics of race in America.
(FYI, 69% of Mexico self-identifies as white or mixed-white per 2012 demographic info.)
The police dispatcher told him not to follow because Zimmerman was known to the Sanford PD, having made calls to them forty-six times since the beginning of 2011, for everything from a pothole to the presence of a black child, age seven to nine years of age.
The dispatcher said not to follow because the police dispatcher likely knew he was a lunatic who self-appointed himself the "neighborhood watch" (Zimmerman was not a member of any such sanctioned organization; his authority was the same as if I were to call myself the Queen of Spain), and had a history of violence.
Considering an unarmed boy who was out to buy skittles and iced tea is dead now, the dispatcher was correct.
Regulation is almost always written by industry representatives to be as beneficial as possible to that industry, see healthcare,mortgage, and automotive industry regulation.
We're willing to yell at some poor uneducated asshole who is homeless because he took on an investment he couldn't afford (apparently he is omniscient)
BUT
When industrialists fuck up in a fashion that may directly impact the health and safety of millions (let alone their finances), you "see no fault with them."
Doctors are protected by the AMA, which keeps the number of medical schools and doctors in practice limited. No matter what motivation you assign to doing so, it helps protect the income of members.
If you can't figure out why I chose a post where you assume your profession has the most intelligent people (while mocking more social people) and chose it as an example of why engineers are terrible human beings, I don't know what to tell you.
We hire experts in various fields when our knowledge is not sufficient for the task at hand.
Medical problems? Call a doctor.
Legal problems? Call a lawyer.
Tax problems? Call an accountant.
Don't understand how mortgages work? Call your local bank/mortgage broker.
What, the nice mortgage broker tells you that you can afford a mortgage far above what makes sense to you? Well, he IS the expert and he's on your side! He works for your bank, after all...
Of course, he may get a commission on pushing through as many mortgages as possible and he may be falsifying paperwork and credit scores out of whole cloth at the urging of the lending institution, which is selling these bad mortgages up the chain, but hey... He IS the expert.
Expecting a home buyer to understand the purposely-obfuscated home buying process is as stupid as expecting him to understand why chemo may be necessary. Banks took advantage of the trust of their customers and cheated them, end of story.
You could be a great driver and habitually speed 5-10 mph above the limit. That is not, in of itself, a sign of sociopathic behavior.
Actually, it is.
Speed limits are set by people smarter than you are about the subject at hand. To sit there and say that you know better and that you will drive above the speed limit because you know better is pretty sociopathic in and of itself.
Most people think they're "above average" drivers. Any trucker will tell you how few driver actually are above average, and it has less to do with reflexes and more to do with courtesy.
If all of these decisions were made according to market realities, Little Timmy would still be putting in sixteen hours a day in the coal mine and farms would still be worked by human chattel.
People who follow this sort of hypercapitalist, "The Free Market Solves All!" mindset like to see themselves as Randesque supermen. Any sort of contact with the real world will disabuse one of that ridiculous notion in short order.
If we don't want our allies showing our technology to other nations, we probably shouldn't be using it in unsanctioned murder missions within their borders.
One case of a rich individual being cheated by the relatively poor, as opposed to the situation our economy is founded on, the many poor being cheated by the rich.
We're all worried about smartphone CPUs that can decode 1080p video when none of them have screens that can display it.
Stop and think about it for a minute.
Marketspeak has totally infiltrated discussion about display resolutions and I am branded as an idiot when I bring up that 720p involves a lot more than 720 vertical pixels, and that progressive scan doesn't mean shit on LCDs to begin with.
I would love to be proven wrong here, but I have no idea why progressive v. interlaced is even brought up anymore. It's an artifact of the CRT age of displays and needs to die. I had a look at the Wikipedia page on display resolutions the other day and it listed 230*200 and similar as "interlaced" and others as "progressive." It makes no sense anymore. Let it die.
Slashdot Mirror
Hopefully it's self-aware enough to toss itself in the trash where it belongs.
It's called a Macbook Air.
If you don't like OSX, Linux installs just fine.
The higher pay and less taxes mean nothing because even simple medical procedures or healthcare can bankrupt us.
I had a meniscus repair in my knee last year. My health insurance sent me a nice itemized letter saying that, were I not insured, I'd have had to pay another $43K out of pocket for my surgery. I walked into the hospital at 5:30 AM and left at 11:00 AM the same day.
A few years back I had to get a root canal and crown for a tooth I broke. Out of pocket cost for the procedure, with insurance, was a hair over a thousand dollars.
The median household income in this country is $48K. Most Americans simply cannot afford what healthcare costs here, with or without insurance.
Verhoeven's Starship Troopers adaption was a brilliant parody of the original material and made a pointed joke of everything Heinlein claimed to stand for.
If you consider the original novel to be profound I can't imagine you would have the sense of self-awareness required to enjoy the film, anyway.
I guess The US will be innovative and environmentally responsible now when they bomb weddings and murder children.
"Latino" or "Hispanic" are markers of cultural background, not race.
That Slashdot posters don't know this and keep confusing this shows us how little 18-34 year old white males with no children (per Alexa) understand the politics of race in America.
(FYI, 69% of Mexico self-identifies as white or mixed-white per 2012 demographic info.)
The police dispatcher told him not to follow because Zimmerman was known to the Sanford PD, having made calls to them forty-six times since the beginning of 2011, for everything from a pothole to the presence of a black child, age seven to nine years of age.
The dispatcher said not to follow because the police dispatcher likely knew he was a lunatic who self-appointed himself the "neighborhood watch" (Zimmerman was not a member of any such sanctioned organization; his authority was the same as if I were to call myself the Queen of Spain), and had a history of violence.
Considering an unarmed boy who was out to buy skittles and iced tea is dead now, the dispatcher was correct.
Regulation is almost always written by industry representatives to be as beneficial as possible to that industry, see healthcare,mortgage, and automotive industry regulation.
We're willing to yell at some poor uneducated asshole who is homeless because he took on an investment he couldn't afford (apparently he is omniscient)
BUT
When industrialists fuck up in a fashion that may directly impact the health and safety of millions (let alone their finances), you "see no fault with them."
You're a horrible human being, eat shit.
If you need to work overtime to provide for your family, you aren't middle class. Sorry .
You're working poor, just like the rest of us.
Doctors are protected by the AMA, which keeps the number of medical schools and doctors in practice limited. No matter what motivation you assign to doing so, it helps protect the income of members.
Young lawyers, on the other hand, are screwed.
http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/03/01/1021123/young-lawyers-scrape-to-find-work.html
"I'm an internet athlete!"
*farts, scratches bedsores, inhales entire bag of Cheetos*
If you can't figure out why I chose a post where you assume your profession has the most intelligent people (while mocking more social people) and chose it as an example of why engineers are terrible human beings, I don't know what to tell you.
America has entire industries devoted to obfuscating and flat-out lying about shit you initial.
We hire experts in various fields when our knowledge is not sufficient for the task at hand.
Medical problems? Call a doctor.
Legal problems? Call a lawyer.
Tax problems? Call an accountant.
Don't understand how mortgages work? Call your local bank/mortgage broker.
What, the nice mortgage broker tells you that you can afford a mortgage far above what makes sense to you? Well, he IS the expert and he's on your side! He works for your bank, after all...
Of course, he may get a commission on pushing through as many mortgages as possible and he may be falsifying paperwork and credit scores out of whole cloth at the urging of the lending institution, which is selling these bad mortgages up the chain, but hey... He IS the expert.
Expecting a home buyer to understand the purposely-obfuscated home buying process is as stupid as expecting him to understand why chemo may be necessary. Banks took advantage of the trust of their customers and cheated them, end of story.
If anything I have Libertarian leanings.
Way to immediately discount yourself as a mental child.
You could be a great driver and habitually speed 5-10 mph above the limit. That is not, in of itself, a sign of sociopathic behavior.
Actually, it is.
Speed limits are set by people smarter than you are about the subject at hand. To sit there and say that you know better and that you will drive above the speed limit because you know better is pretty sociopathic in and of itself.
Most people think they're "above average" drivers. Any trucker will tell you how few driver actually are above average, and it has less to do with reflexes and more to do with courtesy.
This is why engineers are usually terrible human beings.
Socialize your children and let them take a few arts classes, don't let them turn out like this.
Camels were the freight trains of the era. "Fitting a freight train through a keyhole" sounds just as silly, doesn't it?
Do you have a reputable source for this?
No?
I didn't think so.
"I don't use it so it must be worthless" is the Slashdot marching song
Yet you still all wonder why everyone hates the help desk and computer janitors in general.
If all of these decisions were made according to market realities, Little Timmy would still be putting in sixteen hours a day in the coal mine and farms would still be worked by human chattel.
People who follow this sort of hypercapitalist, "The Free Market Solves All!" mindset like to see themselves as Randesque supermen. Any sort of contact with the real world will disabuse one of that ridiculous notion in short order.
If we don't want our allies showing our technology to other nations, we probably shouldn't be using it in unsanctioned murder missions within their borders.
Just saying.
One case of a rich individual being cheated by the relatively poor, as opposed to the situation our economy is founded on, the many poor being cheated by the rich.
What a shame.
We're all worried about smartphone CPUs that can decode 1080p video when none of them have screens that can display it.
Stop and think about it for a minute.
Marketspeak has totally infiltrated discussion about display resolutions and I am branded as an idiot when I bring up that 720p involves a lot more than 720 vertical pixels, and that progressive scan doesn't mean shit on LCDs to begin with.
I would love to be proven wrong here, but I have no idea why progressive v. interlaced is even brought up anymore. It's an artifact of the CRT age of displays and needs to die. I had a look at the Wikipedia page on display resolutions the other day and it listed 230*200 and similar as "interlaced" and others as "progressive." It makes no sense anymore. Let it die.