The Constitution certainly doesn't support that logic.
On the other hand, Public Health is certainly a legitimate function of the government. We don't educate our citizens because they have a RIGHT to an education. We educate them because we ALL benefit from living in a society full of educated citizens. Likewise, we would ALL benefit from living in a society full of HEALTHY individuals. It benefits us, because the people that would otherwise be Unhealthy, will be a cost-burden on the health system, they are not productive, taxpaying workers, and with regard to communicable diseases, can even pose a threat to the rest of us.
To me, this is a no-brainer.
Personally, I can't wait until the neoconservatives dismantle Social Security, Public Education, and all the rest. We'll find out how brainless this line of thinking is, when we suddenly wake up one morning, and realize we're living in a third-world shithole, and Americans are illegally crossing the border to get into Mexico. Not today, maybe not even 5 years from now. But it will happen if this agenda keeps moving forward.
The REAL problem is Intel's dominance of the CPU market.
AMD/Transmeta aside, the dominance of Windows on the desktop, and the x86 platform in general, has translated into a Monopolists' inability to innovate. They've dominated for so long, and have not had a real need to innovate for so long, that the technology has stagnated. This has somewhat affected other players, as they've been starved for demand, which flowed unnaturally uphill towards Intel.
The other players, however, are starting to gain traction as Intel's failures are beginning to chip away at their image. Itanium, PIV, etc. IBM's jettison of their PC division tells me that Power may soon become a serious player on the desktop. Not just in the Eternal Niche Mac market either.
Come on, the deaths caused by Communism were a result of Religious Fervor. The folks who participated didn't have a religion, so they substituted "Humanism" as their bailywick, and justification to slaughter.
People want to slaughter. It's in their nature. Religion often provides a reasonable excuse for it, but so does racism, or any ideology. (Including Capitalism).
Honestly, the best "rehabilitation" program I've ever heard of was forced military service.
Wow. If we think just a few "Bad Apples" can cause a lot of damage of the "Abu Ghraib" sort, just think what will happen when we start sending criminals en masse into the Military.
Al Qaeda's goal is the complete annihilation of Americans,
Al Qaeda's STATED GOALS include; 1. Influencing America's policy of support for Israel and it's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
2. Elimination of US troops from Saudi Arabia (ACCOMPLISHED! Thanks to Bush).
3. To broaden recruitment, and start a religious war of Islam vs. Infidels (ACCOMPLISHED! Thanks to Bush)
4. Establishment of a new Caliphate (presumably with bin Laden as the Caliph), comprised of all current Muslim nations, creating an empire similar to the old Ottoman Empire, capable of economically competing with the EU, Russian Federation, and the US, and adopting traditional Arab Sharia (not to be confused with Islamic Law, they're two very different things) as it's basis of a legal system.
. ..and by wanting to extend them rights that they don't have under our constitution, you demonstrate a grave lack of thoughtfulness into this.
The Declaration of Independence states that these rights are granted to ALL men by Divine Providence (ie. God) (it's really the ONLY place where God is conspicuously mentioned in our Founding Fathers' documents). That's regardless of US Citizenship.
The reason why these rights are extended to ALL men, is due to a belief in Reason. That when bad people are allowed to speak their minds, in an open and public forum, where their ideas can be discredited openly in fair debate (because bad ideas always lose), that we all benefit. The powers of logic and reasoning will always allow good ideas to triumph. People who do not believe in this principle, will seek to hide truths, or close off debate, establish authoritarian means of governing to prevent having to answer to the Consent of the Governed. Closed trials, are the hallmark of fascism and tyranny.
Ramsi Yousef, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind had a fair and open trial. He is in jail.
Of the thousands of "detainees" in our current "War on Terror" - given the suspension of Civil Liberties, Habeus Corpus, and everthing our Founding Fathers stood for, this Administration has accomplished exactly ZERO convictions. Every single one has been thrown out due to flimsy evidence, or procedural violations. Probably one reason why the Administration now wants to hold the detainees indefinately, that is to say, sentance them to LIFE IMPRISONMENT without establishing guilt in a trial EVEN A CLOSED MILITARY TRIBUNAL, without even formally charging them with a crime.
My attitude is "fuck them" because their group has killed thousands of my countrymen, civilian and military, and if given the chance, would do the same to me.
All the more reason you should want to see justice done. How do you know that these detainees aren't innocent? And if they are - then where are the guilty ones? Are they still roaming free? (Osama bin Laden sure as hell is). A fair and open trial means that the people whom you are trusting to protect you, have to PROVE that they've caught the right guys. If they don't, then they haven't earned their positions, and you'll never know if you're safe. You have to take them at their word. I for one, don't take this lying administration at it's word. For all of your tax dollars they've spent, how do you know they've done their jobs right? All the Patriot Act does, is allow these guys to spend your money, lock up suspects, and they don't have to prove to you that they're actually protecting you. It's called a "Protection Racket". It's the reason the Magna Carta was written in the first place.
I guess those who failed to learn history are doomed to repeat it.
How about 5 years probation, 1,000 hours of community service and maybe $5,000-$10,000 in fines? IMO, that would send the same message without breaking up this guys family.
Regardless of the punishment, or even the outcome of the trial, if I were his wife, his family would be broken up already.
I'm curious. Would you feel any different if he had blinded the pilot of the plane carrying your mother, thus causing it to crash into the ground, burn, and spread little bits of charred gristle that were formerly parts of your mother over an area of about 5 square miles?
Or maybe you'd feel differently if you were a professional pilot, blinded by the laser, landed successfully, but were never able to work again for the rest of your life?
This was not a simple, harmless prank. Perhaps this calls for tighter regulation and licensing of more powerful lasers. (FCC? egad!). But let's at least start with protecting the public from this fucktard.
God is only ONE possible explanation for the phenomenon that's called Intelligent Design. It could be aliens. It could be the Bavarian Illuminati. It could be anything.
The fact that it could be a Supreme Being doesn't even necessarily prove the existence of the Judeo-Christian God either.
I am nearly finished with Cryptonomicon. It's every bit as great as I was told here, by other slashdotters, about two months ago, when I started.
His style is really hard to describe, but I think I've figured it out, and I understand why it bothers me.
He writes like a Dungeon Master/GM. It's partially the Present Tense he uses, but also, the narration of scenarios. This is the part of his prose I don't like. Some of the ridiculous scenarios. He managed to avoid it through most of Diamond Age. Which is why I really liked that book. The other half of his writing is well researched, brilliant stuff. The redeeming qualities of Snow Crash were the bits about ancient Babylonian mythology, and how it was the driving force in the plotline. I'm in the part in Cryptonimicon where he gives Greek mythology the same treatment. I think I first read something like this back in High School - the parts of The Vampire Lestat that I thought were really great. Similar stuff in Umberto Eco, and Thomas Pynchon, and even Robert Aston Wilson. This is the kind of stuff that, when I read it, I think, "man, I could NEVER write something like this" - just imagining not only the sheer amount of research, but the depth of understanding, to the point where a totally unique point of view on the subject emerges, and is woven into the story.
Truly great stuff. Thanks to all who recommended it.
On the same token, a bunch of CRAP was involved in the debunking, that was mainly ignored by the debunkers - these were widely accepted as givens, disproven, but still accepted; 1. the fact that there was NO kerning at all in the memos (which means that forgery was never conclusively proven) - Variable Spaced type was conclusively proven, but by no means, was superimposition with a Microsoft Word document a 100% perfect match. With or without Kerning enabled. 2. the fact that there was ZERO evidence connecting the origin of the memo to any Democratic Party operative.
What never DID occur, that in my mind, was necessary to prove that these memos were forged, was that nobody tracked down the exact model of typewriter that supposedly has the capability of variable-spaced type, and show that the messages could have (or could NOT have) been typed in 1972 with a typewriter posessed by the TANG at that time. That question remains unanswered.
In my opinion, it's possible that these documents might actually have been legitimate. Occam's Razor says it's more likely they weren't. But there's a reasonable doubt there, that was never disproven.
The only final judgement came from Dan Rather himself, when CBS dug into the sourcing of the documents, and found that they were not properly vetted, and he issued a public retraction. The stuff that went on on the blogs, ultimately, was of no consequence, other than forcing CBS to be honest about their fact checking procedure in that case.
There are blogs being written by Iraqis that offer a perspective into Iraq that you would never get anywhere else.
Iraq the Model was funded by the RNC. http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/manipulation -of-bl ogging-world-on-iraq.html
Blogs offer a level of immediacy that the media does not. Rather than allowing a few selected gatekeepers to control the flow of news, blogs offer a wide range of views in a system that acts as a kind of meritocracy.
I agree, blogs have a POTENTIAL to provide an important counter-balance to the highly controlled, over-consolidated newsmedia in the US today. But there's also a huge potential for abuse in the form of astroturfing (as described in the Juan Cole article). The main problem with the Mainstream Media today, is that the people watching it, seem to have forgotten the first rule; "don't believe everything you read." The same applies to blogs. Where basic Source Evaluation skills are absent in the audience, the same kind of manipulation of Truth is easily possible.
There are two kinds of people in the Computer Industry.
1. People who see computers as neat and useful tools, which can be adapted for nearly any purpose. Software or Products which give people additional ways to use their computers - especially tools that improve productivity, either personal, or at work, are generally going to succeed in the market place. The way to sell such products is often referred to as "Pull" Marketing.
2. People who see computers as neat and useful ways of getting consumers to spend money on stuff they wouldn't have otherwise spent it. This is accomplished by pushing crippleware that looks neat on the surface, but is essentially useless to a user until they pay more money to unlock the useful features, or basically, the software ends up being a complicated scam to get someone to sign up for some service with a monthly fee. These products ultimately fail. This kind of marketing is referred to as "PUSH" Marketing.
At the end of the day, #1 is the correct way of looking at computers, and there are a couple of tennants of business and innovation that prove it:
"Built it, and they will come." and "Invent a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."
Unfortunately, High Tech Marketing is full of people who want the world to beat a path to their door, without all that costly and complicated mousetrap-inventing stuff. They spend so much effort trying to find innovative ways to get people to spend more money, rather than innovated ways to make computers more useful tools for people to buy, because their lives are improved.
TRaSh-80, in Junior High. Our Science Teacher cajoled the school into buying one. I think it had 16k of RAM. A few kids took an interest, and we learned BASIC. The whole language reference was in the computer's operator's manual.
But that wasn't even good enough for some of us, so we mastered Z-80 assembler. I, along with a freind, coded a faux Operating System, which fooled the teacher for about 3 hours, into thinking he was running the system, but it would misbehave, lose lines he'd type in, etc. He wised up and hit the reset button, which blew our evil code out of RAM, and reloaded the real OS.
Two years later, in HS, the school outfitted a lab with a dozen TRS-80 Model 3's running DOS, with 5 1/4" floppy drives.
I totally agree, that it's a LOT harder for a kid to get started in programming these days.
I started my kids off by giving them used iMacs, bought from eBay, running OS X. I started them with a little shell scripting. My 11 year old is starting Java on Blue J, using a downloaded copy of Eckles' Thinking In Java, and a lot of help from Dad.
Example: At my workplace, we have a loser who is significantly less productive than his counterparts. He pisses his day away looking at the Internet, talking at the water cooler, forwarding unfunny internet apocrypha and jokes to everyone, and eating 15 meals a day.
The REAL problem here, is your management, who apparently don't have an effective way of measuring employee productivity, and applying it to employee hiring/retention/compensation practices.
If you have a slacking co-worker, you're right to be pissed off. But you should direct your ire at your slacking manager, who is permitting your co-worker to slack off.
Ideally, a competent manager has the knowhow, and the tools, to apply metrics and process to his workers, to adequately measure productivity. Incompetent managers deserve far more to be fired than slacking workers.
Like any Technology, it has it's Good uses, and it's Evil uses.
I don't mind my boss watching me to make sure I'm doing my work. As long as someone's watching my boss, making sure he/she's doing his/her work.
More often than not, this isn't the case, unfortunately.
Re:And for those who don't think this is so great.
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Trust me. One way or another, taxpayers are going to pay for this. Private business (mostly very large multinationals) will reap the benefits, at the expense of local small business.
Re:And for those who don't think this is so great.
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I used to live in Illinois, where the Toll Road is the State Bird.
I moved to California, where there's, I believe, one, toll road (recent).
Days when I stay at home, I still pay for the roads. On the days that I drive, I'm thankful that they're there. I'm doubly thankful that I don't have to sit in a 45-minute queue waiting for the privilege of paying fifty cents, burning hydrocarbons while my car idles.
EZ-Pass is a great mitigating technology for the HUGE transaction cost burden on the user of toll roads.
But in my opinion, we're all still FAR better-off when road are paid for by everyone, instead of just the user. Call me a commie. But a truly "Free Market" doesn't hide costs from the consumer. Free Market idealism is fine and dandy. But it's a dream of a fairy tale, and has little to do with how the real world works.
As far as toll roads go - I've lived in both worlds, and greatly prefer public-funded roads.
Re:And for those who don't think this is so great.
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Don't use it. It's going to be PRIVATELY financed.
Dream on.
This will be bailed out by taxpayers. Mark my words. First oil-price spike, and they'll be whining to their Uncle Sam for a handout. Then they'll lay off all the toll-collectors two weeks before Christmas.
minent domain laws were designed to allow a government to seize property for the benefit of it's constituents. These laws were not intended for the benefit of a few "shareholders".
All you have to do is twist your definition of "benefit" a little. They do this all the fucking time with Sports Stadiums. (In fact, our Prez. Bush "Benefitted" some poor slum dwellers in Texas by tearing up their homes and building a stadium for the Rangers. Taxpayers paid. Homeowners paid when their homes were condemned. Sports fans paid elevated ticket prices. Bush and his buddies walked away with millions.)
Private Tolls will sustain this? Bullshit. One bad quarter, caused by gasoline price spikes, caused by terrorism, caused by bad foreign policy, caused by a President who has close friends with a financial stake in the highway, and I GUAR-AN-FUCKING-TEE, that we'll see a multi-hundred-billion-dollar taxpayer-funded bailout of this misbegotten enterprise.
I went from a Beige G3 (upgraded to a 500MHz G4), ATI PCI card, USB/FW PCI card, gig of RAM, (more than what the machine was originally specced for) DVD Burner in the CD slot, PCI IDE adapter, (all 3 slots full), etc - a deep LOVE for hardware tinkering - to a dual 2 GHz G5 last year. I bought the Power Mac because I thought I wanted to be able to pop it open and mess with it. Aside from the obligatory RAM upgrade, I haven't popped the case once in the year and a half I've had it. I've got tons of USB and FW devices hanging off of it. But I haven't had to go inside the thing once.
The G5 Power Mac has made me completely re-think the way I use a computer. Even though I ran OS X on the Beige, it's not about the OS. I think USB and Firewire have just totally changed everything. Well, that, and the fact that Apple finally equipped their machine with an adequate system bus and CPU speed. I don't feel the need to overclock a Dual 2GHz G5, and I doubt I will 5 years down the road either.
I think a headless $500 Mac would definately cannibalize Power Mac sales.
On the other hand, I'm looking for an affordable way to outfit all my kids with decent low-end Macs so they can do homework, email, etc. Right now, the only way to do that is with used eMacs or G3 iMacs on eBay. Apple would win sales in that area with a $500 headless system. It's what we've all been waiting for since our jaws dropped at the Cube's price tag. I kept my Beige G3 for 2 years longer than I had to because of this.
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I wouldn't argue that Health Care is a Right.
The Constitution certainly doesn't support that logic.
On the other hand, Public Health is certainly a legitimate function of the government. We don't educate our citizens because they have a RIGHT to an education. We educate them because we ALL benefit from living in a society full of educated citizens. Likewise, we would ALL benefit from living in a society full of HEALTHY individuals. It benefits us, because the people that would otherwise be Unhealthy, will be a cost-burden on the health system, they are not productive, taxpaying workers, and with regard to communicable diseases, can even pose a threat to the rest of us.
To me, this is a no-brainer.
Personally, I can't wait until the neoconservatives dismantle Social Security, Public Education, and all the rest. We'll find out how brainless this line of thinking is, when we suddenly wake up one morning, and realize we're living in a third-world shithole, and Americans are illegally crossing the border to get into Mexico.
Not today, maybe not even 5 years from now. But it will happen if this agenda keeps moving forward.
If we can put people who abuse IP law in jail, (RIAA, MPAA, SCO, Rambus) in jail, then I'm all for it.
The REAL problem is Intel's dominance of the CPU market.
AMD/Transmeta aside, the dominance of Windows on the desktop, and the x86 platform in general, has translated into a Monopolists' inability to innovate. They've dominated for so long, and have not had a real need to innovate for so long, that the technology has stagnated. This has somewhat affected other players, as they've been starved for demand, which flowed unnaturally uphill towards Intel.
The other players, however, are starting to gain traction as Intel's failures are beginning to chip away at their image. Itanium, PIV, etc. IBM's jettison of their PC division tells me that Power may soon become a serious player on the desktop. Not just in the Eternal Niche Mac market either.
Come on, the deaths caused by Communism were a result of Religious Fervor. The folks who participated didn't have a religion, so they substituted "Humanism" as their bailywick, and justification to slaughter.
People want to slaughter. It's in their nature. Religion often provides a reasonable excuse for it, but so does racism, or any ideology. (Including Capitalism).
Honestly, the best "rehabilitation" program I've ever heard of was forced military service.
Wow. If we think just a few "Bad Apples" can cause a lot of damage of the "Abu Ghraib" sort, just think what will happen when we start sending criminals en masse into the Military.
Al Qaeda's goal is the complete annihilation of Americans,
.and by wanting to extend them rights that they don't have under our constitution, you demonstrate a grave lack of thoughtfulness into this.
Al Qaeda's STATED GOALS include;
1. Influencing America's policy of support for Israel and it's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
2. Elimination of US troops from Saudi Arabia (ACCOMPLISHED! Thanks to Bush).
3. To broaden recruitment, and start a religious war of Islam vs. Infidels (ACCOMPLISHED! Thanks to Bush)
4. Establishment of a new Caliphate (presumably with bin Laden as the Caliph), comprised of all current Muslim nations, creating an empire similar to the old Ottoman Empire, capable of economically competing with the EU, Russian Federation, and the US, and adopting traditional Arab Sharia (not to be confused with Islamic Law, they're two very different things) as it's basis of a legal system.
. .
The Declaration of Independence states that these rights are granted to ALL men by Divine Providence (ie. God) (it's really the ONLY place where God is conspicuously mentioned in our Founding Fathers' documents). That's regardless of US Citizenship.
The reason why these rights are extended to ALL men, is due to a belief in Reason. That when bad people are allowed to speak their minds, in an open and public forum, where their ideas can be discredited openly in fair debate (because bad ideas always lose), that we all benefit. The powers of logic and reasoning will always allow good ideas to triumph. People who do not believe in this principle, will seek to hide truths, or close off debate, establish authoritarian means of governing to prevent having to answer to the Consent of the Governed. Closed trials, are the hallmark of fascism and tyranny.
Ramsi Yousef, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind had a fair and open trial. He is in jail.
Of the thousands of "detainees" in our current "War on Terror" - given the suspension of Civil Liberties, Habeus Corpus, and everthing our Founding Fathers stood for, this Administration has accomplished exactly ZERO convictions. Every single one has been thrown out due to flimsy evidence, or procedural violations. Probably one reason why the Administration now wants to hold the detainees indefinately, that is to say, sentance them to LIFE IMPRISONMENT without establishing guilt in a trial EVEN A CLOSED MILITARY TRIBUNAL, without even formally charging them with a crime.
My attitude is "fuck them" because their group has killed thousands of my countrymen, civilian and military, and if given the chance, would do the same to me.
All the more reason you should want to see justice done. How do you know that these detainees aren't innocent? And if they are - then where are the guilty ones? Are they still roaming free? (Osama bin Laden sure as hell is). A fair and open trial means that the people whom you are trusting to protect you, have to PROVE that they've caught the right guys. If they don't, then they haven't earned their positions, and you'll never know if you're safe. You have to take them at their word. I for one, don't take this lying administration at it's word. For all of your tax dollars they've spent, how do you know they've done their jobs right? All the Patriot Act does, is allow these guys to spend your money, lock up suspects, and they don't have to prove to you that they're actually protecting you. It's called a "Protection Racket". It's the reason the Magna Carta was written in the first place.
I guess those who failed to learn history are doomed to repeat it.
How about 5 years probation, 1,000 hours of community service and maybe $5,000-$10,000 in fines? IMO, that would send the same message without breaking up this guys family.
Regardless of the punishment, or even the outcome of the trial, if I were his wife, his family would be broken up already.
I'm curious. Would you feel any different if he had blinded the pilot of the plane carrying your mother, thus causing it to crash into the ground, burn, and spread little bits of charred gristle that were formerly parts of your mother over an area of about 5 square miles?
Or maybe you'd feel differently if you were a professional pilot, blinded by the laser, landed successfully, but were never able to work again for the rest of your life?
This was not a simple, harmless prank.
Perhaps this calls for tighter regulation and licensing of more powerful lasers. (FCC? egad!). But let's at least start with protecting the public from this fucktard.
I suspect that there are biological causes (e.g. hormone levels in the mother, etc.),
What if the hormone levels in the mother are genetic?
Just sayin. . .
God is only ONE possible explanation for the phenomenon that's called Intelligent Design. It could be aliens. It could be the Bavarian Illuminati. It could be anything.
The fact that it could be a Supreme Being doesn't even necessarily prove the existence of the Judeo-Christian God either.
I am nearly finished with Cryptonomicon. It's every bit as great as I was told here, by other slashdotters, about two months ago, when I started.
His style is really hard to describe, but I think I've figured it out, and I understand why it bothers me.
He writes like a Dungeon Master/GM. It's partially the Present Tense he uses, but also, the narration of scenarios. This is the part of his prose I don't like. Some of the ridiculous scenarios. He managed to avoid it through most of Diamond Age. Which is why I really liked that book.
The other half of his writing is well researched, brilliant stuff. The redeeming qualities of Snow Crash were the bits about ancient Babylonian mythology, and how it was the driving force in the plotline. I'm in the part in Cryptonimicon where he gives Greek mythology the same treatment. I think I first read something like this back in High School - the parts of The Vampire Lestat that I thought were really great. Similar stuff in Umberto Eco, and Thomas Pynchon, and even Robert Aston Wilson. This is the kind of stuff that, when I read it, I think, "man, I could NEVER write something like this" - just imagining not only the sheer amount of research, but the depth of understanding, to the point where a totally unique point of view on the subject emerges, and is woven into the story.
Truly great stuff. Thanks to all who recommended it.
Blogs debunked the CBS Bush-ANG memos hoax
n -of-bl ogging-world-on-iraq.html
On the same token, a bunch of CRAP was involved in the debunking, that was mainly ignored by the debunkers - these were widely accepted as givens, disproven, but still accepted;
1. the fact that there was NO kerning at all in the memos (which means that forgery was never conclusively proven) - Variable Spaced type was conclusively proven, but by no means, was superimposition with a Microsoft Word document a 100% perfect match. With or without Kerning enabled.
2. the fact that there was ZERO evidence connecting the origin of the memo to any Democratic Party operative.
What never DID occur, that in my mind, was necessary to prove that these memos were forged, was that nobody tracked down the exact model of typewriter that supposedly has the capability of variable-spaced type, and show that the messages could have (or could NOT have) been typed in 1972 with a typewriter posessed by the TANG at that time. That question remains unanswered.
In my opinion, it's possible that these documents might actually have been legitimate. Occam's Razor says it's more likely they weren't. But there's a reasonable doubt there, that was never disproven.
The only final judgement came from Dan Rather himself, when CBS dug into the sourcing of the documents, and found that they were not properly vetted, and he issued a public retraction. The stuff that went on on the blogs, ultimately, was of no consequence, other than forcing CBS to be honest about their fact checking procedure in that case.
There are blogs being written by Iraqis that offer a perspective into Iraq that you would never get anywhere else.
Iraq the Model was funded by the RNC.
http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/manipulatio
Blogs offer a level of immediacy that the media does not. Rather than allowing a few selected gatekeepers to control the flow of news, blogs offer a wide range of views in a system that acts as a kind of meritocracy.
I agree, blogs have a POTENTIAL to provide an important counter-balance to the highly controlled, over-consolidated newsmedia in the US today. But there's also a huge potential for abuse in the form of astroturfing (as described in the Juan Cole article).
The main problem with the Mainstream Media today, is that the people watching it, seem to have forgotten the first rule; "don't believe everything you read."
The same applies to blogs. Where basic Source Evaluation skills are absent in the audience, the same kind of manipulation of Truth is easily possible.
There are two kinds of people in the Computer Industry.
1. People who see computers as neat and useful tools, which can be adapted for nearly any purpose. Software or Products which give people additional ways to use their computers - especially tools that improve productivity, either personal, or at work, are generally going to succeed in the market place. The way to sell such products is often referred to as "Pull" Marketing.
2. People who see computers as neat and useful ways of getting consumers to spend money on stuff they wouldn't have otherwise spent it. This is accomplished by pushing crippleware that looks neat on the surface, but is essentially useless to a user until they pay more money to unlock the useful features, or basically, the software ends up being a complicated scam to get someone to sign up for some service with a monthly fee.
These products ultimately fail. This kind of marketing is referred to as "PUSH" Marketing.
At the end of the day, #1 is the correct way of looking at computers, and there are a couple of tennants of business and innovation that prove it:
"Built it, and they will come."
and
"Invent a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."
Unfortunately, High Tech Marketing is full of people who want the world to beat a path to their door, without all that costly and complicated mousetrap-inventing stuff.
They spend so much effort trying to find innovative ways to get people to spend more money, rather than innovated ways to make computers more useful tools for people to buy, because their lives are improved.
TRaSh-80, in Junior High. Our Science Teacher cajoled the school into buying one. I think it had 16k of RAM. A few kids took an interest, and we learned BASIC. The whole language reference was in the computer's operator's manual.
But that wasn't even good enough for some of us, so we mastered Z-80 assembler. I, along with a freind, coded a faux Operating System, which fooled the teacher for about 3 hours, into thinking he was running the system, but it would misbehave, lose lines he'd type in, etc. He wised up and hit the reset button, which blew our evil code out of RAM, and reloaded the real OS.
Two years later, in HS, the school outfitted a lab with a dozen TRS-80 Model 3's running DOS, with 5 1/4" floppy drives.
I totally agree, that it's a LOT harder for a kid to get started in programming these days.
I started my kids off by giving them used iMacs, bought from eBay, running OS X. I started them with a little shell scripting. My 11 year old is starting Java on Blue J, using a downloaded copy of Eckles' Thinking In Java, and a lot of help from Dad.
Let's throw the Patriot Act, and the DMCA in a cage and let them fight.
Hopefully, Two Go In, NONE come out.
Example: At my workplace, we have a loser who is significantly less productive than his counterparts. He pisses his day away looking at the Internet, talking at the water cooler, forwarding unfunny internet apocrypha and jokes to everyone, and eating 15 meals a day.
The REAL problem here, is your management, who apparently don't have an effective way of measuring employee productivity, and applying it to employee hiring/retention/compensation practices.
If you have a slacking co-worker, you're right to be pissed off. But you should direct your ire at your slacking manager, who is permitting your co-worker to slack off.
Ideally, a competent manager has the knowhow, and the tools, to apply metrics and process to his workers, to adequately measure productivity. Incompetent managers deserve far more to be fired than slacking workers.
Like any Technology, it has it's Good uses, and it's Evil uses.
I don't mind my boss watching me to make sure I'm doing my work. As long as someone's watching my boss, making sure he/she's doing his/her work.
More often than not, this isn't the case, unfortunately.
Trust me.
One way or another, taxpayers are going to pay for this. Private business (mostly very large multinationals) will reap the benefits, at the expense of local small business.
I used to live in Illinois, where the Toll Road is the State Bird.
I moved to California, where there's, I believe, one, toll road (recent).
Days when I stay at home, I still pay for the roads. On the days that I drive, I'm thankful that they're there. I'm doubly thankful that I don't have to sit in a 45-minute queue waiting for the privilege of paying fifty cents, burning hydrocarbons while my car idles.
EZ-Pass is a great mitigating technology for the HUGE transaction cost burden on the user of toll roads.
But in my opinion, we're all still FAR better-off when road are paid for by everyone, instead of just the user. Call me a commie. But a truly "Free Market" doesn't hide costs from the consumer. Free Market idealism is fine and dandy. But it's a dream of a fairy tale, and has little to do with how the real world works.
As far as toll roads go - I've lived in both worlds, and greatly prefer public-funded roads.
Don't use it. It's going to be PRIVATELY financed.
Dream on.
This will be bailed out by taxpayers. Mark my words. First oil-price spike, and they'll be whining to their Uncle Sam for a handout. Then they'll lay off all the toll-collectors two weeks before Christmas.
minent domain laws were designed to allow a government to seize property for the benefit of it's constituents. These laws were not intended for the benefit of a few "shareholders".
All you have to do is twist your definition of "benefit" a little. They do this all the fucking time with Sports Stadiums. (In fact, our Prez. Bush "Benefitted" some poor slum dwellers in Texas by tearing up their homes and building a stadium for the Rangers. Taxpayers paid. Homeowners paid when their homes were condemned. Sports fans paid elevated ticket prices. Bush and his buddies walked away with millions.)
BAH!
Private Tolls will sustain this? Bullshit. One bad quarter, caused by gasoline price spikes, caused by terrorism, caused by bad foreign policy, caused by a President who has close friends with a financial stake in the highway, and I GUAR-AN-FUCKING-TEE, that we'll see a multi-hundred-billion-dollar taxpayer-funded bailout of this misbegotten enterprise.
I guar-an-fucking-tee it.
What about WD-40?
I've heard all kinds of mythology about how WD-40 was invented.
It's first use was in protecting Atlas Boosters from corrosion.
http://www.wd40.com/AboutUs/our_history.html
I went from a Beige G3 (upgraded to a 500MHz G4), ATI PCI card, USB/FW PCI card, gig of RAM, (more than what the machine was originally specced for) DVD Burner in the CD slot, PCI IDE adapter, (all 3 slots full), etc - a deep LOVE for hardware tinkering - to a dual 2 GHz G5 last year. I bought the Power Mac because I thought I wanted to be able to pop it open and mess with it. Aside from the obligatory RAM upgrade, I haven't popped the case once in the year and a half I've had it. I've got tons of USB and FW devices hanging off of it. But I haven't had to go inside the thing once.
The G5 Power Mac has made me completely re-think the way I use a computer. Even though I ran OS X on the Beige, it's not about the OS. I think USB and Firewire have just totally changed everything. Well, that, and the fact that Apple finally equipped their machine with an adequate system bus and CPU speed. I don't feel the need to overclock a Dual 2GHz G5, and I doubt I will 5 years down the road either.
I think a headless $500 Mac would definately cannibalize Power Mac sales.
On the other hand, I'm looking for an affordable way to outfit all my kids with decent low-end Macs so they can do homework, email, etc. Right now, the only way to do that is with used eMacs or G3 iMacs on eBay. Apple would win sales in that area with a $500 headless system. It's what we've all been waiting for since our jaws dropped at the Cube's price tag. I kept my Beige G3 for 2 years longer than I had to because of this.
It's not a *new* idea. . .
(think Muybridge)