One thing I've really liked about iPhone is its ability to "clone" itself. I've replaced two iPhones now with newer models: we replaced my original iPhone with a 3GS, and my wife's 3G with a 4. In both cases I've plugged in the old phone for one last sync, then plugged in the new phone and had it take the "identity" of the old phone. The result in both cases has been a completely identical phone just with more power and capabilities. Literally everything transfers: apps, settings, obviously stuff like contacts and calendar entries... It's a complete clone. Saves a ton of time setting up a new device. For security reasons saved passwords are the only thing that don't transfer (which I consider more a feature than a problem). I set up my wife's new 4 last weekend (it was her Christmas present), and five minutes after I started it looked and acted just like her 3G.
So yeah, the ecosystem point is definitely valid, and while there are some disadvantages to having to plug your iPhone in for syncing/activation there are also some nice advantages.
Contrary to some opinions on Slashdot, not every question has just one right answer. In your situation it may make sense to have a land line. I always had one when I live in New Orleans (though to be fair a sufficient amount of destruction takes out land lines too, nothing worked after Katrina). My situation is different. There are few natural disasters likely to hit me which will result in prolonged power outages or prolonged cell outages, and as I said, I live quite close to a payphone.
At some point I plan to move to Boston... I think I'll get a land line again there. The snow can be quite evil from what I understand.
No one is say that the Ogg Vorbis people are hiding patents under a rug waiting for someone to fall into their clever trap. What is considerably more likely is that someone, somewhere has patent on something that looks vaguely like Ogg Vorbis, and either hasn't realized it yet or hasn't yet found a juicy enough target to shoot a lawsuit at.
Example: Android. Open Source and and unencumbered by any patents from its inventor, Google. Google can, and has, guaranteed that they have left Android as free as possible for others to make use of. Unfortunately Oracle thinks they have some patents applicable to the technology that is the base of Android. So Oracle is suing both Google *and* the phone manufacturers. Google can't guarantee that their technology is unencumbered by other people's patents, no more can Ogg Vorbis.
I think you're making an overly broad and general statement about a very situation specific topic. For *many* businesses *much* of the time, a service like Google Documents and Skype provides adequate levels of QOS, and may be considerably better than that same company could do on its own. If you have a ten or twenty person business with a relatively small IT budget, Google Docs is likely better than what you could do for yourself. By the time you pay a specialist IT guy, buy servers, buy backup solutions, buy an office suite ( you could save this cost by using Open Source, but frankly office suites are one area that I'd rather just pay for it. I've never cared much for OO.org or whatever they call themselves now that they forked) for every workstation... You're talking a huge investment. Google will do it cheaper, likely better, and if you have to deal with the occasional outage, well it's not likely to destroy your business if it's down for a couple hours. Anyway it's just as likely that your local file server might go down for a few hours (or even a few days if you paid for the cheap support package).
Now if you're the sort of business where any downtime is costing you a fortune, then you're in a different boat and Google may not be the best choice. If you've already made the infrastructure investment, then a lot of the reason for using Google goes away. If you've got the in house expertise to handle this stuff for minimal expense, then maybe Google isn't a good idea. If you're a big enough operation that you can develop your own economies of scale, it may make more sense for you to do so... There's lots of reasons to not use Google, but just to globally say that anyone who ever suggests it should be made a janitor is quite foolish as well.
As a side note, if you're the kind of business where any down time will cost you a fortune, and you haven't paid for redundant *everything* (Internet connection, mail server, file server, web server, power, HVAC... and on and on), you're fooling yourself thinking that you avoid outages by not using Google.
It's an interesting theory, but I'm not sure how useful it is in practice. Currently there are three ways I can contact people in the event of an emergency. One is the VOIP phone (which is battery backed up against power failures), one is my cell phone, and one is walking down to the corner where there's still an honest to goodness pay phone. Realistically if I'm in a position where all three of these methods are unavailable, there's a good chance that either land line telephone will have been cut as well, or that I'm so completely screwed that it probably doesn't matter.
And what possible motivation does anyone have to compete here exactly? A new start-up wold have to lay their own cable. That's an insane level of upfront cost for the chance to compete with an entrenched incumbent who don't have to worry about paying off their infrastructure and can thus always charge *slightly* less, give *slightly* higher levels of service, and still make more profit than you until you're squeezed out. Then they can return to the status quo.
The other big carriers could afford the infrastructure, but why? Even for them it's a big expense, and again all they get for their investment is a chance to compete with an entrenched incumbent. They'd have to, at least temporarily, offer extremely low profit or perhaps even loss leader service in order to compete and pull away an initial customer base. Much better to remain in the markets where you *are* the entrenched incumbent and keep pulling huge profits in.
In Louisiana some of the local utilities are laying their own fiber and trying to compete, and that seems to work. On the down side, they get sued by the entrenched incumbents (who know they have no case, but are just trying to throw delays and expenses into the process), and they can only do it at reasonable cost because they already have their own conduit laid in. Plus they're a government backed utility, which by some people's definition is even worse than a regulate monopoly. It's also a completely untested model. None of them has yet gotten to the self sustaining point so we don't know if they'll be able to compete or if they'll be any better in the end.
It seems to me that the real problem is that many if not most universities don't have a real distinction between "Computer Science", which is really the study and analysis of algorithms; and "Software Engineering", which is the application of algorithms in the design and building of applications. "Computer Engineering" is usually a separate hardware "micro electrical engineer" program. I'm not saying every University is like this, but it seems typical. "Computer Science" *should* be the theoretical scientific research arm, and "Software Engineering" should be the practical application side. They should exist in the same sort of symbiotic relationship that Physics and Chemistry have with EE, ME, or CE.
As it stand right now, if you go to a highly theoretically focused university and study "Computer Science" you're likely to come out with BS that actually taught you very little of Software Engineering type skills most employers expect CS grads to have. If you went to a highly practical university ad studied CS, you likely got a BS that was extremely light on the kind of algorithm study and analysis that will server you well in an academic career. Obviously in a perfect world student know enough to chose a university that suites their desires, but his isn't a perfect world. Having essentially two different (though related) disciplines taught under the same name isn't very helpful.
There's a movement to encourage girls to take more technology focused classes in a lot of school districts. My guess is the submitter was encouraged to take these courses by a counselor or adviser on the theory that it would prepare her to go on to a college CS program. Once she actually went on to the college CS program and realized what a crock of shit her high school courses were she felt kind of betrayed. From the sounds of things she's doing OK and has adjusted, but not everyone would have, and she knows that even now that same teacher or counselor is encouraging another generation of girls to take these same classes and get screwed the same way.
The overarching problems exists no more or less for boys or girls, but her particular experience is as a girl. Probably a girl who had some proverbial perfume blown up her proverbial skirt by either a well meaning but misguided adult or an administrator looking to make a name for themselves by getting young women into "technology".
Frankly I think King fits American Literature more than typing fits CS. Learning typing in a CS class is more like showing up for your first day of American Lit and finding that teacher intends to start with teaching you to read. It's a fallacy in two ways. First of all typing is ancillary to computers, we need to type to use them, but only because no one has yet discovered a better input method. In theory you could just as easily talk to them, use an eye based virtual keyboard like they make for paraplegics, or even interface directly with them neurally. As it happens, a keyboard is the best universal access method now, but that hardly makes typing a part of computer science. Secondly, if we accept that typing is, for now, a useful ancillary skill for computer scientists to posses, it's an incredibly basic one. It's at best a prerequisite, not a part of the subject.
Similarly, reading is ancillary to American literature. Reading the stories is certainly the most effective way for most people to absorb literature, but one could listen to them being read or read them in braille and still be able to intelligently discuss them. If we accept that reading is, for now, a useful ancillary skill for studying literature, it's an incredibly basic one. It's a prerequisite, not a part of the subject.
You don't expect to be taught to read in a literature class, you shouldn't expect to be taught to type in a CS class. Application use classes aren't much better.
Sorry, more to the point of the original comment, the opinions of farmer or other shorebound are largely unknown. No one asked them, they didn't really write, and the official policy of the church (for anyone that cared) was that the Earth was round.
The people who mattered: sailors, navigators, the merchants and nobles who sponsored their voyages; they all knew the world was round. People with an education knew, because it had been a known fact for centuries (The Greeks proved it in their heyday). Sailor and navigators knew because it was (and still is) observable on the oceans. Ships leaving port or sailing away from each other on a clear day could observe it. Objects in the distance didn't just fade away, they sunk into the horizon like you would expect with a curve. Even the Church never questioned this particular idea.
The opinions of farmers or other shorebound were largely irrelevant to the journey. They weren't on the boats, and they had no say in the financing of the expeditions. The whole idea that Columbus was some sort of visionary who saw what others didn't and knew what others hadn't realized was largely an invention of late 19th and early 20th century "history as civics". They wanted to make the hero more heroic. It's been known to pretty much be bunk since before it's invention. My bachelors is in History, and we specifically looked at this case study in Historiography.
If you read the entire post (why is it so hard to read two paragraphs? I get more replies to the first or second sentence of a post that never seem to read any farther...) you'd see:
Now of course everything that the NSA protects isn't that valuable, and much of it is probably protected with precisely the theory you promote.
Which seems to imply that I agree and don't think *all* the information the NSA protects is valuable. Some of it, however, is beyond price. That's the stuff they are most interested in protecting.
Actually they never really thought that. It's kind of an urban legend created by elementary and high school textbooks, but in general your point still stands (We can substitute, "They used to think the Earth was the center of the Universe"). Columbus was actually sailing on an invalid assumption and his detractors were right. Both knew the world was round, but Columbus thought it was considerably smaller than it actually was. He expected to reach Asia in relatively short order. How else would a reasonably skill navigator think he'd gotten to India after such a short trip? He knew knew roughly how far he'd gone; but he had no idea how far he still needed to go.
Well you see it's like this... As a former soldier I'd have been a bit miffed to be say, escorting a convoy, only to discover that bad people with guns knew my route, numbers of troops, and level of armament. It really ruins your day when bad people show up in precisely the right place with way more troops and guns than you have. Especially if they set up explosives. That takes things to whole new level of "ruined day". And before you comment on my simplistic view of "bad people", please understand that my overall opinion of you shifts dramatically toward "bad" when you start shooting at me. As far as I am concerned anyone who shoots at me is by definition a "bad person", no matter what their initial motivation may have been.
The problem is that the NSA has, or at least it believes it has and other believe it has, information whose value is essentially beyond price. Therefore they feel reasonable expecting that other parties will pay nearly any cost for access. The whole dynamic of "make it more expensive to get than it's worth to have" goes out the window when what it's worth to have is essentially infinite. Then it becomes "protect it as much as possibly can and hope it's enough".
Don't get me wrong, I typically agree with you, and I've posted that very thing quite recently in response to something else recently. It's just that the theory kinda goes out the window when you have bad actors with the resources of an entire nation behind them as your most likely threat vector. Now of course everything that the NSA protects isn't that valuable, and much of it is probably protected with precisely the theory you promote. The rest is just protected with every possible resource they can think of.
I would seriously hesitate to put the French Revolution and the Maoist in that list. The French Revolution was followed by the Reign of Terror, which was so bad that it lasted only a few years before Napoleon overthrew it, and the Maoists instituted some of the bloodiest purges in the history of world. The so called "Cultural Revolution" resulted in the deaths of at least hundreds of thousands more likely millions (it's really hard to tell, because so many records were destroyed), the persecutions of tens of millions perhaps even hundreds of millions, destruction of a huge swathe of China's cultural and religious heritage, and general bad stuffs.
It's arguable that both worked out OK in the end (if you want to consider China's current regime "OK". It's certainly better than it was in the early years of the Communist party), but not because of the efforts of the revolutionaries themselves. Mostly the revolutionaries were followed by cooler heads who experienced both the previous regime and the revolutionary's zeal, saw the problems with both, and took a middle ground ten, twenty, or thirty years after the fact. The revolutions themselves almost invariably made things temporarily worse.
Personally I'd throw in the US War for Independence, and the Indian Independence Movement. I'm sure there have been a few other examples of a rag tag group of rebels winning the war and *not* proceeding to make things much worse, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
He didn't say stupid. He said followers. Most people are followers. It's a reasonably well established fact of the pack dynamic. Under the right circumstances nearly anyone becomes a follower. Have you ever noticed that most groups, no matter how loosely organized, have leaders? From a gang of kids, to a raid group in an MMO, to a multibillion dollar company, if there's no one in charge, we put someone in charge. Depending on their personal charisma and the institutional nature of the group in question they may answer to rest of the group to one extent or another, but they're still "in charge". Even when the group rises up against the leader, the usual result isn't "no leader" it's a new leader.
We're hard wired to want someone in charge. Some of us want to be in charge, and some don't, but we all feel better if there is some one who is in charge. Of course we're all different, we want to have have various relationships with authority (possessing it, being close to it, being ignored by it, etc), and a very few of us would actually prefer to live completely outside of it, but in general its existence makes the vast majority of us happy.
The Chinese have had moderate, but by no means total success in in regulating the Internet via means that most Western Nations would find both technically difficult and legally impossible. first you have to have a population that is largely unwilling to do things that the government thinks are bad, which, all jokes about the nanny state aside, most western countries don't have. There are always a few million people here or a few hundred thousand there that will literally do something only *because* the government said it was bad. Then you have to firewall every pipe into the country, which is a Hell of a lot easier when you do it early like China did than now. Australia is kinda "lucky" in that regard, because the continent is so isolated that there's a pretty limited number of pipes in. Finally you'd have to make laws which would be First Amendment violations here and violate lots of Human Rights Charters elsewhere.
Even with all of that, most reports out of China are that other than a few high profile "Look we're enforcing this, really!" raids, most people in China who have a desire to get around the rules can do so trivially, and mostly untraceably. I mean, if i really wanted to do bad stuff on the Internet, all I'd do is use a randomly generated spoofed MAC address on the free wireless at Starbucks (after paying cash for my coffee of course), then use an anonymous proxy. Rotate through places with free wireless and you'd be electronically untraceable. If they really wanted you I suppose they could get tapes from the stores, but that would probably require them realizing that it was the same person at each shop. Pretty unlikely.
Could I come up with $20,000, cash, if I really had to? Sure. Could I get a loan for $20,000 fairly easily? Most likely. Would it have a significant impact on my financial well being to have to do it very often? You bet. My Grandfather is dead and has been for years, but my wife's grandfather has been in for multi-day hospital stays and minor surgeries several times in the last 5 years. All of them were 20K or more. I couldn't do that on my own for sure.
Regardless, I wasn't really talking about me. Like I said, I make pretty good money. Something like 75% of the population makes less than me though. Something like 50% of the population makes a *lot* less than me. Something like 20% of the population would lose (as I said) a year or more of income on this 20K pacemaker. Call me crazy, but I don't support policy based entirely on whether or not I can personally afford the result.
Pay... cash... $20,000... What planet do you live on? There's a reason I don't drive a new car. The old one is paid for and $20,000 is a bit out of my current budget. I make good money and one or two little doctor visits like that in a five year period would completely decimate me.
The average income for a family of four in this country is $50,000 a year before taxes. Assuming that your Libertarian paradise lowers taxes to say 10%, that leave $45,000 as a median net income. So one $20,000 medical bill is approximately half of that. One serious medical problem in a family of four people could instantly and immediately take half of their income away. And that's for people with median income. 20% of the population make 20K or less a year. One serious illness just totally takes out their ENTIRE ANNUAL INCOME.
"Freedom of Choice is preferable to being treated like a child too dumb to make his/her own decisions"
That a pure platitude. It doesn't answer the question. It doesn't even address the question. Your "solution" would work for the top 5 or 10% of the wage earning public, and even for many of them it would be painful as Hell. When I make $150,000 a year I might be *able* to afford a $20K doctor's bill, but even then it would hurt.
Sorry, yes, I'll grant you that and I agree, I was looking for a "Libertarian acceptable" solution from a Libertarian. I would have preferred a single payer system, but realistically know it won't happen any time soon.
"Buy hospital insurance or... well there is no other choice."
OK, I've seen this Libertarian objection to the new Health Care law before, and I have a question about it. What do you consider the viable alternative? Before you answer, let me lay out the facts and assumptions that frame the question as I see it:
1) People get sick or injured. Often out of the blue, and occasionally seriously. The risk is lower for younger people, but even there it's not zero. I work with a guy who got cancer at 27. Thankfully he's insured. I knew a guy in college who had a stroke, again, thankfully insured. The older you get, the more likely and common these occurrence become. This a fact, i don't think there's any arguing it.
2) Our society will not countenance a system of "if you can't afford to pay for treatment or get insurance, you just die." As evidence for this fact I present a right wing invention: The Death Panel. We were told that if "Obamacare" passed our oldest and least able people would face the horrors of a "Death Panel" deciding who should and should not be treated. People were outraged, and it was the single most effective anti-healthcare argument out there. It was also complete bullshit, but hey. So again, our society will not actually tolerate a completely market driven Healthcare system. As soon as the old and infirm start dying for lack of care, something will have to change. This speaks well of our society, by the way. This is obviously an assumption, but I think you'd have a hard time countering it.
3) Care cost money. Particularity, the older and/or sicker you are, the more it costs. *Someone* has to pay for the care of those who can't pay for themselves, at least assuming that we accept my assumption "2" above. The options are: the patient (who obviously can't or they wouldn't be in this position), the Hospital (who will quickly go out of business in this model), or the Government (who usually wind up footing the bill one way or the other). Charities are an option, but they can only do so much. Unlike the government, they can't compel donations. This is a fact.
Given the three facts/assumptions above, what is the better option than compulsory health insurance? The current model is "People who can afford it, and want it, pay for insurance. Everyone else doesn't pay for insurance and either government insures them (medicare or medicaid), or when they do get sick they go to the hospital and build up phenomenal and unplayable debts that are eventually either forgiven by relief (bankruptcy) or just never paid." So either the hospital (through unpaid bills), the government (through Medicare/caid) or the patient (through insurance) pays for the care. This model has seen health care cost increase significantly faster than any other cost in modern life.
Forcing everyone to get insurance put people in the position of (mostly) paying for their own care, with the government chipping in to cover some of the bill for the poor. The end result is that people are getting care, they are primarily paying for it themselves, the government has a predictable expenditure structure, and hospitals always get paid. It's taking a choice away from you, true, you have to get insurance, but before when you had that choice you risked someone elves choices everyday. Because if you don't have insurance, and you get sick, someone is going to have to pay for it. And it probably won't be you.
No, I get my e-mail everywhere. I have webmail and IMAP. What's that got to do with anything? Web mail is part of the "cloud"? Man, I've been using the cloud since like 1997. SquirrelMail was really ahead of their time.
Yes my home *data* is completely backed up. I plugged in a USB drive and the computer said: "Do you want me to use this thing for backups?" I said, "yes". It said: "Coolin, I'll store a full backup once a week with incrementals every night. I'll keep old files for as long as I can given the size of this hard drive. Does that work for you?" I said, "yes". Now I have full backups.
Restores are easy too. You open up the backup application, browse to where the file is in your regular file system, and click restore. If you want to restore an older copy, you right click and pick a backup date. By the way I've yet to encounter a cloud service for consumers that allows to you restore form an older version of a file rather than simply making sure you don't lose the current version.
No, it's not easier in Linux. In Linux you have to do it all with tar, and scripts. It's not particularly hard, but it's certainly harder.
As to millions of people not doing it, well, those millions of people are also not likely to buy a ChromeOS device. They aren't typically part of the "very clueful computer user" demographic are they?
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One thing I've really liked about iPhone is its ability to "clone" itself. I've replaced two iPhones now with newer models: we replaced my original iPhone with a 3GS, and my wife's 3G with a 4. In both cases I've plugged in the old phone for one last sync, then plugged in the new phone and had it take the "identity" of the old phone. The result in both cases has been a completely identical phone just with more power and capabilities. Literally everything transfers: apps, settings, obviously stuff like contacts and calendar entries... It's a complete clone. Saves a ton of time setting up a new device. For security reasons saved passwords are the only thing that don't transfer (which I consider more a feature than a problem). I set up my wife's new 4 last weekend (it was her Christmas present), and five minutes after I started it looked and acted just like her 3G.
So yeah, the ecosystem point is definitely valid, and while there are some disadvantages to having to plug your iPhone in for syncing/activation there are also some nice advantages.
Contrary to some opinions on Slashdot, not every question has just one right answer. In your situation it may make sense to have a land line. I always had one when I live in New Orleans (though to be fair a sufficient amount of destruction takes out land lines too, nothing worked after Katrina). My situation is different. There are few natural disasters likely to hit me which will result in prolonged power outages or prolonged cell outages, and as I said, I live quite close to a payphone.
At some point I plan to move to Boston... I think I'll get a land line again there. The snow can be quite evil from what I understand.
No one is say that the Ogg Vorbis people are hiding patents under a rug waiting for someone to fall into their clever trap. What is considerably more likely is that someone, somewhere has patent on something that looks vaguely like Ogg Vorbis, and either hasn't realized it yet or hasn't yet found a juicy enough target to shoot a lawsuit at.
Example: Android. Open Source and and unencumbered by any patents from its inventor, Google. Google can, and has, guaranteed that they have left Android as free as possible for others to make use of. Unfortunately Oracle thinks they have some patents applicable to the technology that is the base of Android. So Oracle is suing both Google *and* the phone manufacturers. Google can't guarantee that their technology is unencumbered by other people's patents, no more can Ogg Vorbis.
I think you're making an overly broad and general statement about a very situation specific topic. For *many* businesses *much* of the time, a service like Google Documents and Skype provides adequate levels of QOS, and may be considerably better than that same company could do on its own. If you have a ten or twenty person business with a relatively small IT budget, Google Docs is likely better than what you could do for yourself. By the time you pay a specialist IT guy, buy servers, buy backup solutions, buy an office suite ( you could save this cost by using Open Source, but frankly office suites are one area that I'd rather just pay for it. I've never cared much for OO.org or whatever they call themselves now that they forked) for every workstation... You're talking a huge investment. Google will do it cheaper, likely better, and if you have to deal with the occasional outage, well it's not likely to destroy your business if it's down for a couple hours. Anyway it's just as likely that your local file server might go down for a few hours (or even a few days if you paid for the cheap support package).
Now if you're the sort of business where any downtime is costing you a fortune, then you're in a different boat and Google may not be the best choice. If you've already made the infrastructure investment, then a lot of the reason for using Google goes away. If you've got the in house expertise to handle this stuff for minimal expense, then maybe Google isn't a good idea. If you're a big enough operation that you can develop your own economies of scale, it may make more sense for you to do so... There's lots of reasons to not use Google, but just to globally say that anyone who ever suggests it should be made a janitor is quite foolish as well.
As a side note, if you're the kind of business where any down time will cost you a fortune, and you haven't paid for redundant *everything* (Internet connection, mail server, file server, web server, power, HVAC... and on and on), you're fooling yourself thinking that you avoid outages by not using Google.
It's an interesting theory, but I'm not sure how useful it is in practice. Currently there are three ways I can contact people in the event of an emergency. One is the VOIP phone (which is battery backed up against power failures), one is my cell phone, and one is walking down to the corner where there's still an honest to goodness pay phone. Realistically if I'm in a position where all three of these methods are unavailable, there's a good chance that either land line telephone will have been cut as well, or that I'm so completely screwed that it probably doesn't matter.
And what possible motivation does anyone have to compete here exactly? A new start-up wold have to lay their own cable. That's an insane level of upfront cost for the chance to compete with an entrenched incumbent who don't have to worry about paying off their infrastructure and can thus always charge *slightly* less, give *slightly* higher levels of service, and still make more profit than you until you're squeezed out. Then they can return to the status quo.
The other big carriers could afford the infrastructure, but why? Even for them it's a big expense, and again all they get for their investment is a chance to compete with an entrenched incumbent. They'd have to, at least temporarily, offer extremely low profit or perhaps even loss leader service in order to compete and pull away an initial customer base. Much better to remain in the markets where you *are* the entrenched incumbent and keep pulling huge profits in.
In Louisiana some of the local utilities are laying their own fiber and trying to compete, and that seems to work. On the down side, they get sued by the entrenched incumbents (who know they have no case, but are just trying to throw delays and expenses into the process), and they can only do it at reasonable cost because they already have their own conduit laid in. Plus they're a government backed utility, which by some people's definition is even worse than a regulate monopoly. It's also a completely untested model. None of them has yet gotten to the self sustaining point so we don't know if they'll be able to compete or if they'll be any better in the end.
It seems to me that the real problem is that many if not most universities don't have a real distinction between "Computer Science", which is really the study and analysis of algorithms; and "Software Engineering", which is the application of algorithms in the design and building of applications. "Computer Engineering" is usually a separate hardware "micro electrical engineer" program. I'm not saying every University is like this, but it seems typical. "Computer Science" *should* be the theoretical scientific research arm, and "Software Engineering" should be the practical application side. They should exist in the same sort of symbiotic relationship that Physics and Chemistry have with EE, ME, or CE.
As it stand right now, if you go to a highly theoretically focused university and study "Computer Science" you're likely to come out with BS that actually taught you very little of Software Engineering type skills most employers expect CS grads to have. If you went to a highly practical university ad studied CS, you likely got a BS that was extremely light on the kind of algorithm study and analysis that will server you well in an academic career. Obviously in a perfect world student know enough to chose a university that suites their desires, but his isn't a perfect world. Having essentially two different (though related) disciplines taught under the same name isn't very helpful.
There's a movement to encourage girls to take more technology focused classes in a lot of school districts. My guess is the submitter was encouraged to take these courses by a counselor or adviser on the theory that it would prepare her to go on to a college CS program. Once she actually went on to the college CS program and realized what a crock of shit her high school courses were she felt kind of betrayed. From the sounds of things she's doing OK and has adjusted, but not everyone would have, and she knows that even now that same teacher or counselor is encouraging another generation of girls to take these same classes and get screwed the same way.
The overarching problems exists no more or less for boys or girls, but her particular experience is as a girl. Probably a girl who had some proverbial perfume blown up her proverbial skirt by either a well meaning but misguided adult or an administrator looking to make a name for themselves by getting young women into "technology".
Frankly I think King fits American Literature more than typing fits CS. Learning typing in a CS class is more like showing up for your first day of American Lit and finding that teacher intends to start with teaching you to read. It's a fallacy in two ways. First of all typing is ancillary to computers, we need to type to use them, but only because no one has yet discovered a better input method. In theory you could just as easily talk to them, use an eye based virtual keyboard like they make for paraplegics, or even interface directly with them neurally. As it happens, a keyboard is the best universal access method now, but that hardly makes typing a part of computer science. Secondly, if we accept that typing is, for now, a useful ancillary skill for computer scientists to posses, it's an incredibly basic one. It's at best a prerequisite, not a part of the subject.
Similarly, reading is ancillary to American literature. Reading the stories is certainly the most effective way for most people to absorb literature, but one could listen to them being read or read them in braille and still be able to intelligently discuss them. If we accept that reading is, for now, a useful ancillary skill for studying literature, it's an incredibly basic one. It's a prerequisite, not a part of the subject.
You don't expect to be taught to read in a literature class, you shouldn't expect to be taught to type in a CS class. Application use classes aren't much better.
Sorry, more to the point of the original comment, the opinions of farmer or other shorebound are largely unknown. No one asked them, they didn't really write, and the official policy of the church (for anyone that cared) was that the Earth was round.
The people who mattered: sailors, navigators, the merchants and nobles who sponsored their voyages; they all knew the world was round. People with an education knew, because it had been a known fact for centuries (The Greeks proved it in their heyday). Sailor and navigators knew because it was (and still is) observable on the oceans. Ships leaving port or sailing away from each other on a clear day could observe it. Objects in the distance didn't just fade away, they sunk into the horizon like you would expect with a curve. Even the Church never questioned this particular idea.
The opinions of farmers or other shorebound were largely irrelevant to the journey. They weren't on the boats, and they had no say in the financing of the expeditions. The whole idea that Columbus was some sort of visionary who saw what others didn't and knew what others hadn't realized was largely an invention of late 19th and early 20th century "history as civics". They wanted to make the hero more heroic. It's been known to pretty much be bunk since before it's invention. My bachelors is in History, and we specifically looked at this case study in Historiography.
If you read the entire post (why is it so hard to read two paragraphs? I get more replies to the first or second sentence of a post that never seem to read any farther...) you'd see:
Now of course everything that the NSA protects isn't that valuable, and much of it is probably protected with precisely the theory you promote.
Which seems to imply that I agree and don't think *all* the information the NSA protects is valuable. Some of it, however, is beyond price. That's the stuff they are most interested in protecting.
Actually they never really thought that. It's kind of an urban legend created by elementary and high school textbooks, but in general your point still stands (We can substitute, "They used to think the Earth was the center of the Universe"). Columbus was actually sailing on an invalid assumption and his detractors were right. Both knew the world was round, but Columbus thought it was considerably smaller than it actually was. He expected to reach Asia in relatively short order. How else would a reasonably skill navigator think he'd gotten to India after such a short trip? He knew knew roughly how far he'd gone; but he had no idea how far he still needed to go.
Well you see it's like this... As a former soldier I'd have been a bit miffed to be say, escorting a convoy, only to discover that bad people with guns knew my route, numbers of troops, and level of armament. It really ruins your day when bad people show up in precisely the right place with way more troops and guns than you have. Especially if they set up explosives. That takes things to whole new level of "ruined day". And before you comment on my simplistic view of "bad people", please understand that my overall opinion of you shifts dramatically toward "bad" when you start shooting at me. As far as I am concerned anyone who shoots at me is by definition a "bad person", no matter what their initial motivation may have been.
The problem is that the NSA has, or at least it believes it has and other believe it has, information whose value is essentially beyond price. Therefore they feel reasonable expecting that other parties will pay nearly any cost for access. The whole dynamic of "make it more expensive to get than it's worth to have" goes out the window when what it's worth to have is essentially infinite. Then it becomes "protect it as much as possibly can and hope it's enough".
Don't get me wrong, I typically agree with you, and I've posted that very thing quite recently in response to something else recently. It's just that the theory kinda goes out the window when you have bad actors with the resources of an entire nation behind them as your most likely threat vector. Now of course everything that the NSA protects isn't that valuable, and much of it is probably protected with precisely the theory you promote. The rest is just protected with every possible resource they can think of.
I would seriously hesitate to put the French Revolution and the Maoist in that list. The French Revolution was followed by the Reign of Terror, which was so bad that it lasted only a few years before Napoleon overthrew it, and the Maoists instituted some of the bloodiest purges in the history of world. The so called "Cultural Revolution" resulted in the deaths of at least hundreds of thousands more likely millions (it's really hard to tell, because so many records were destroyed), the persecutions of tens of millions perhaps even hundreds of millions, destruction of a huge swathe of China's cultural and religious heritage, and general bad stuffs.
It's arguable that both worked out OK in the end (if you want to consider China's current regime "OK". It's certainly better than it was in the early years of the Communist party), but not because of the efforts of the revolutionaries themselves. Mostly the revolutionaries were followed by cooler heads who experienced both the previous regime and the revolutionary's zeal, saw the problems with both, and took a middle ground ten, twenty, or thirty years after the fact. The revolutions themselves almost invariably made things temporarily worse.
Personally I'd throw in the US War for Independence, and the Indian Independence Movement. I'm sure there have been a few other examples of a rag tag group of rebels winning the war and *not* proceeding to make things much worse, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
Yeah, and that's totally gonna get by the Supreme Court. Did you read the whole post or just the part you could make a smart-ass comment about?
He didn't say stupid. He said followers. Most people are followers. It's a reasonably well established fact of the pack dynamic. Under the right circumstances nearly anyone becomes a follower. Have you ever noticed that most groups, no matter how loosely organized, have leaders? From a gang of kids, to a raid group in an MMO, to a multibillion dollar company, if there's no one in charge, we put someone in charge. Depending on their personal charisma and the institutional nature of the group in question they may answer to rest of the group to one extent or another, but they're still "in charge". Even when the group rises up against the leader, the usual result isn't "no leader" it's a new leader.
We're hard wired to want someone in charge. Some of us want to be in charge, and some don't, but we all feel better if there is some one who is in charge. Of course we're all different, we want to have have various relationships with authority (possessing it, being close to it, being ignored by it, etc), and a very few of us would actually prefer to live completely outside of it, but in general its existence makes the vast majority of us happy.
The Chinese have had moderate, but by no means total success in in regulating the Internet via means that most Western Nations would find both technically difficult and legally impossible. first you have to have a population that is largely unwilling to do things that the government thinks are bad, which, all jokes about the nanny state aside, most western countries don't have. There are always a few million people here or a few hundred thousand there that will literally do something only *because* the government said it was bad. Then you have to firewall every pipe into the country, which is a Hell of a lot easier when you do it early like China did than now. Australia is kinda "lucky" in that regard, because the continent is so isolated that there's a pretty limited number of pipes in. Finally you'd have to make laws which would be First Amendment violations here and violate lots of Human Rights Charters elsewhere.
Even with all of that, most reports out of China are that other than a few high profile "Look we're enforcing this, really!" raids, most people in China who have a desire to get around the rules can do so trivially, and mostly untraceably. I mean, if i really wanted to do bad stuff on the Internet, all I'd do is use a randomly generated spoofed MAC address on the free wireless at Starbucks (after paying cash for my coffee of course), then use an anonymous proxy. Rotate through places with free wireless and you'd be electronically untraceable. If they really wanted you I suppose they could get tapes from the stores, but that would probably require them realizing that it was the same person at each shop. Pretty unlikely.
Could I come up with $20,000, cash, if I really had to? Sure. Could I get a loan for $20,000 fairly easily? Most likely. Would it have a significant impact on my financial well being to have to do it very often? You bet. My Grandfather is dead and has been for years, but my wife's grandfather has been in for multi-day hospital stays and minor surgeries several times in the last 5 years. All of them were 20K or more. I couldn't do that on my own for sure.
Regardless, I wasn't really talking about me. Like I said, I make pretty good money. Something like 75% of the population makes less than me though. Something like 50% of the population makes a *lot* less than me. Something like 20% of the population would lose (as I said) a year or more of income on this 20K pacemaker. Call me crazy, but I don't support policy based entirely on whether or not I can personally afford the result.
Pay... cash... $20,000... What planet do you live on? There's a reason I don't drive a new car. The old one is paid for and $20,000 is a bit out of my current budget. I make good money and one or two little doctor visits like that in a five year period would completely decimate me.
The average income for a family of four in this country is $50,000 a year before taxes. Assuming that your Libertarian paradise lowers taxes to say 10%, that leave $45,000 as a median net income. So one $20,000 medical bill is approximately half of that. One serious medical problem in a family of four people could instantly and immediately take half of their income away. And that's for people with median income. 20% of the population make 20K or less a year. One serious illness just totally takes out their ENTIRE ANNUAL INCOME.
"Freedom of Choice is preferable to being treated like a child too dumb to make his/her own decisions"
That a pure platitude. It doesn't answer the question. It doesn't even address the question. Your "solution" would work for the top 5 or 10% of the wage earning public, and even for many of them it would be painful as Hell. When I make $150,000 a year I might be *able* to afford a $20K doctor's bill, but even then it would hurt.
Yeah, see above. I'd prefer a single payer system, but Libertarians hate those even more. i was looking for how a Libertarian would solve the problem.
Sorry, yes, I'll grant you that and I agree, I was looking for a "Libertarian acceptable" solution from a Libertarian. I would have preferred a single payer system, but realistically know it won't happen any time soon.
"Buy hospital insurance or... well there is no other choice."
OK, I've seen this Libertarian objection to the new Health Care law before, and I have a question about it. What do you consider the viable alternative? Before you answer, let me lay out the facts and assumptions that frame the question as I see it:
1) People get sick or injured. Often out of the blue, and occasionally seriously. The risk is lower for younger people, but even there it's not zero. I work with a guy who got cancer at 27. Thankfully he's insured. I knew a guy in college who had a stroke, again, thankfully insured. The older you get, the more likely and common these occurrence become. This a fact, i don't think there's any arguing it.
2) Our society will not countenance a system of "if you can't afford to pay for treatment or get insurance, you just die." As evidence for this fact I present a right wing invention: The Death Panel. We were told that if "Obamacare" passed our oldest and least able people would face the horrors of a "Death Panel" deciding who should and should not be treated. People were outraged, and it was the single most effective anti-healthcare argument out there. It was also complete bullshit, but hey. So again, our society will not actually tolerate a completely market driven Healthcare system. As soon as the old and infirm start dying for lack of care, something will have to change. This speaks well of our society, by the way. This is obviously an assumption, but I think you'd have a hard time countering it.
3) Care cost money. Particularity, the older and/or sicker you are, the more it costs. *Someone* has to pay for the care of those who can't pay for themselves, at least assuming that we accept my assumption "2" above. The options are: the patient (who obviously can't or they wouldn't be in this position), the Hospital (who will quickly go out of business in this model), or the Government (who usually wind up footing the bill one way or the other). Charities are an option, but they can only do so much. Unlike the government, they can't compel donations. This is a fact.
Given the three facts/assumptions above, what is the better option than compulsory health insurance? The current model is "People who can afford it, and want it, pay for insurance. Everyone else doesn't pay for insurance and either government insures them (medicare or medicaid), or when they do get sick they go to the hospital and build up phenomenal and unplayable debts that are eventually either forgiven by relief (bankruptcy) or just never paid." So either the hospital (through unpaid bills), the government (through Medicare/caid) or the patient (through insurance) pays for the care. This model has seen health care cost increase significantly faster than any other cost in modern life.
Forcing everyone to get insurance put people in the position of (mostly) paying for their own care, with the government chipping in to cover some of the bill for the poor. The end result is that people are getting care, they are primarily paying for it themselves, the government has a predictable expenditure structure, and hospitals always get paid. It's taking a choice away from you, true, you have to get insurance, but before when you had that choice you risked someone elves choices everyday. Because if you don't have insurance, and you get sick, someone is going to have to pay for it. And it probably won't be you.
No, I get my e-mail everywhere. I have webmail and IMAP. What's that got to do with anything? Web mail is part of the "cloud"? Man, I've been using the cloud since like 1997. SquirrelMail was really ahead of their time.
Yes my home *data* is completely backed up. I plugged in a USB drive and the computer said: "Do you want me to use this thing for backups?" I said, "yes". It said: "Coolin, I'll store a full backup once a week with incrementals every night. I'll keep old files for as long as I can given the size of this hard drive. Does that work for you?" I said, "yes". Now I have full backups.
Restores are easy too. You open up the backup application, browse to where the file is in your regular file system, and click restore. If you want to restore an older copy, you right click and pick a backup date. By the way I've yet to encounter a cloud service for consumers that allows to you restore form an older version of a file rather than simply making sure you don't lose the current version.
No, it's not easier in Linux. In Linux you have to do it all with tar, and scripts. It's not particularly hard, but it's certainly harder.
As to millions of people not doing it, well, those millions of people are also not likely to buy a ChromeOS device. They aren't typically part of the "very clueful computer user" demographic are they?