" Not sure what year you are living in. US national debt clock [brillig.com]. I hate to admit it but it is a lot higher than 4.4 trillion. But it is still only around 62% of the GDP."
He isn't including the money that has been "borrowed" from social security. The 4.4 trillion is what is owed to third parties. The 7 plus trillion includes the 3 or 4 trillion that we owe social security and will need to start paying back towards social security payments in less than ten years when social security taxes don't bring in enough to cover benefits. So in when that happens income taxes will be subsidizing social security and will not be available for other purposes.
It's a decision that can only be made when looking at the entire NASA budget (which Slashdot posts never do).
So here you go: http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/
It's far more important to determine how agencies will make better use of their reduced funding... like deciding if the Hubble should be repaired or if the money should be spent on something else.
Or not at all, don't forget that most important option. It is not like this money is sitting in some big pile and will go to waste if we don't use it. We are borrowing from social security and foreign institutions in order to pay for a 400 billion dollar yearly deficit, so it is not just a matter of what to spend money on, it is also a question of whether the money should be spent at all.
" Hey, at least they are redirecting their hoarde of gold back at the people who generated it instead of the execs."
That brings up another thought... people keep saying here that employees are just going to retire after making a couple million bucks, but that goes against our experience with other highly paid people. Sure some could take their money and run, but so too could a CEO or other executive just take his millions of dollars a year salary and stock options and retire in a couple years and be comfortable someplace. It is the same in other areas, you will have your one hit wonders that will be satisified with what they have done, and then you will have your real superstars that keep producing. The ones who stay hungry for continued success are the ones you probably want to keep anyway.
"If you don't think of the passbook of a Swiss numbered bank account as being a form of ID, then I'm sure you'll disagree with me."
And that Swiss numbered bank account is usually linked to identifying information about you. The Swiss have largely done away with anonymity because of pressure from foreign governments over money laundering and tax evasion.
IOW, not making laws that discriminate between different sects.
There are several meanings here and they are all equally valid. "respecting" is used to both mean to give respect to and also to mean 'regarding' Meaning Congress won't give particular respect to one "establishment of religion" and it won't make laws regarding a particular establishment of religion, so that it will not interfere with church law, practice or doctrine which is particular to religion. And of course Congress won't establish a religion, but that follows logically from meanings of the statement and is not directly stated.
Unless you refuse to believe, as a matter of ignorance, that respecting also means 'regarding' then the meaning and succinctly clear.
"Why would you consider the Newton a failure when all that went wrong is that it came too soon for there to even be a market for it?"
I had a Newton and I thought it was very cool, but it erks me whenever someone says it came "too soon". It was not too soon but rather too big and heavy. Newton was closer in size to a modern tablet PC than a Palm Pilot, it failed to gain wider sales and acceptance because of that. The too soon part was that the technology at the time probably couldn't be made any smaller, so the real mistake was that Apple came to market before the technology was mature enough. Portable things should either be pocket sized , bag sized (not hand bag sized or else you will only sell to women)or able to worn as jewelry and it must be as light as possible. Otherwise, what you are selling is probably going to end up a niche product.
"Perhaps there's a need for a neutral ground, some sort of arbiter that can interpret the results in a way the public can understand (since no-one seems to take science these days), but *that*'s open to *easy* abuse as well."
I can interpret the results in an easy to understand way... Look forward to a slightly warmer planet.
"I guess this woman doesn't realize that sickness also trims the population?"
To a corporate state sick adults represent a loss of investment, but people that die as infants or fetus' represent very little loss to the state. Ideally people would be kept healthy at a minimum of cost until they reach an age at which they are no longer useful, then they would die quickly. Much like the cells of your body, dead cells can often be reabsorbed, but damaged cells continue on taking up space, using your body's resources and not doing their part.
Keeping your slaves... workers healthy is an important part of "socialism".
"Although I am not a proponent of government breaking up companies, I must say there are times it is actually good for the companies."
What says government has to be the one to break up companies? I did very well as a stockholder when Sears spun off Dean Witter, Discover Card and Allstate Insurance. More companies should take that lead and spin off big or unrelated business units. Sure the CEOs might end up with less power under one roof, but that can ultimately be the best thing for investors. GE and GM might be good candidates for that type of thing, especially GE. And everyone following technology knows that Xerox missed out big time by not wanting to introduce new technology to compete with itself.
Companies that become too big have more to lose so they often become risk averse, which is why it is important to find the right balance.
"They don't want to have to jump through hoops to send and receive email - just click, type, click. If it's not that easy, it won't be used."
Forget "they" I'm not going to add a layer of security unless its as easy as typing an s on the end of http or as easy as clicking an extra checkbox on the email if I want it encrypted. This is just basic UI design. If you think people will want to use a feature then make it easy for them to do so. If you think people should use a feature, then make it easy for them to do so.
You are right, just like PGP this will be a flop unless it is made easy by default, just like any other software feature.
Also, how the universe works is still wrapped up in a lot of hypothesis, dark matter etc. That doesn't mean that we aren't real, well maybe you, but I'm pretty sure I'm real.
- formal requirements - explicit deliverables (see requirements above) - formal acceptance test to ensure that the software actually meets requirements
They probably outsourced all the people that could do the above effectively.
I'm serious, all too often it isn't the code monkeys that are the real expense that companies want to outsource. It is the architects, managers and higher level people, the very ones that are capable of putting together the detailed formal requirements and doing the type of acceptance testing that is required for successfully outsourced projects. Those are the ones with the big salaries that CEOs want to trim.
That is why I think outsourcing is doomed in all but the largest software projects and companies, the overhead in terms of people that you need to keep on your side to make a project successful just doesn't justify the savings of getting rid of a few developers. I think the math would only potentially work when you get rid of dozens of programmers but retain your project management and the people that can write a good formal specification.
Unless, of course outsourcing is really a political excuse to get rid of an underperforming Engineering group which is always a management problem, so it does no good to keep the managers in that case.
Thank you for the link, but it only serves my point. Over the last 50 years income grew about 20%, but that was largely over the first half of those 50 years. If wages grow ahead of inflation at the rate they did during the 50s and 60s, then I grant you that there will be no problem with social security.
Perhaps real wages did grow that quickly in the first half of the 20th century or the later half of the 19th, but that can also be related to rapid increases in population and technological advancement.
We don't have 75 years, to grow ourselves out of this mess. Social security will start going into the red in the next decade, at which point we are going to have to start "paying back" all the money we "borrowed" from social security in order to keep the federal government spending. So, not only do we have to think about cutting benefits to social security, but we need to start thinking about cutting other federal spending to make up the difference.
I think the basic point is that sure a lot of things could happen to mean that nothing needs to be done. Heck an epidemic could eliminate this problem, by eliminating the elderly. We could advance technologically to the point that we will easily serve the needs of our elders. There are many possibilities, but I believe it is foolish to hope for more than 20-30% real wage growth over the next 40 year. And chances are we could see another period of stagnation or inflation that would exacerbate the problems rather than alleviating them.
The wise government is one that plans for a rainy day, not one that counts on perpetual sunshine.
You already pay more taxes and have lower wages to support children.
But I was thinking more along the lines of reducing the barriers to entry to the various professions. Possibly, eliminating state supported licensing and other trade restrictions. Making Phds a customary mid life achievement rather than just another step that you take in your twenties if you hope to pursue a University Career. Pushing the customary working/university age to 16. I'm sure that there are many other things that could be done that don't mean that people are subsidizing the lives of other people that decide to raise children. But if we do nothing, the middle class will continue to erode and we will continue to find our most successful people at odds with their own biology.
"It will if those two people put as much into the system as the current 3.3 people (or whatever) per beneficiary today do. Wages usually trend upward over time, y'know?"
The suggestion being that since wages grow over time that two people would eventually be able to support the same level of benefit that 3.3 people do today. But inflation is expected to accelerate because of American deficits, so it would have to be a increase in wages considering inflation, that would mean that for us to provide the same level of benefit to elderly without raising taxes or decreasing benefits, that we will have to be making on average 65% more in real wages than we are today.
Historically I think your statement that wages tend to increase faster than inflation is not correct. Or at least not enough to mean a 65% increase relative to inflation.
I could not quickly find a source with clear methodologies, but if you scroll to the end of the link below you will find that this analysis shows a relative decrease in wages versus inflation over the last 30 years:
http://reagan.webteamone.com/wages_vs_inflation. ht ml
I wasn't quoting Ben Franklin. I was stating my own opinion.
The basis of the ruling in this case was that people (which includes police) have no expectation of privacy on public ways, so that the information gleaned from electronic tagging of cars is in no way a violation of a persons right to privacy.
It seems the court held that the manner in which the information was collected wasn't relevant. Though I disagree with the ruling, since it seems that the violation of right here is seizure of property without a warrant during an investigation
But if this is upheld and if the police are not required to obtain warrants to place devices on other people's cars, the point is that, much like I can place a flyer on your windshield in a public place, then why wouldn't I be allowed to place a tracking device on your car. The police weren't arguing public safety, they could not observe a crime being commited. If there is no right being violated, then wouldn't anyone be able to do this to anyone else? Including me tagging a cop car or you or some pretty girl down the street. Why would there be no legal protection for this?
Or does this fall under the 'police are above the law' argument?
Since we cannot make great changes to our biology. It would seem that we should working to create a society which allows people of both sexes to succeed in a competitive framework while allowing for child bearing and rearing at a reasonably younger age, say the early to mid twenties. (Obviously without pressuring people to do so, thanks mom) Otherwise, those that don't bear and raise children or put it off until after their biologies are best suited to, will be the most successful. Seems that in this case, the system that society has formed works against our collective best interest in this regard.
Not sure what could or should be made different, but it seems that making it more possible for young families to get started without as great a sacrifice should be the goal. Perhaps society is just still adjusting to the rapid social changes of the last half century with some people, professions, norms and economics still trying to catch up.
Aside from the annoyance of being checked out by the cops, any "good law-abiding citizen" would have nothing to fear from speed traps or dui checkpoints (provided they weren't speeding or driving drunk).
Annoyance? Annoyance? Listen to yourself, you've bought into the newspeak of "inconvenience" and "annoyance". I'm certain that if I stopped you by the side of the road at gunpoint, or ordered you to take off your shoes, or to the point of this thread; put a tracking device on your car... I think you would call it something different than an "annoyance". Have a little dignity.
Police aren't "they" or "them" they are us.
People who would sacrifice the liberty of others for their own perceived security should be shot.
"Yes, TFA says that, but it's wrong. Being the owner of the copyright of something DOES NOT give you the right to demand someone who legally has a copy (as Yahoo obviously does) to hand it over to you, even if as here that is the only copy left."
Only the sent mail would be the deceased copyright. The emails in his inbox would be the copyright of the senders.
"But would it be legal for Joe Citizen to put a tracking bug like this on a cop car?"
Logically yes.
"It could certainly make for an interesting legal situation if a person were to go up to a cop, say `I'm going to put this tracking bug on your car', and then proceed to do so. The cop would probably say `you can't do that', then arrest him when he tries to do so anyways..."
The point of the ruling would seem to be that we wouldn't have too. Like putting a flyer on the windsheild of the car, or a tracking device underneath....no real legal difference right... ummm right?.
I've thought for a while now that this would be a good business idea... to give people a website to track the current location of police cars. Not to help criminals, but to help good law abiding citizens avoid trouble spots... A real money maker, thanks to this court's decision this would be a lot more economical than just tailing cops a having people report their positions.
Probably though, this would become yet another one of the growing examples where government agents get exempted from the application of a new law that applies to you and me.
I think I'm going to recycle my tin foil hat and get myself something a little stronger.
Slashdot Mirror
" Not sure what year you are living in. US national debt clock [brillig.com]. I hate to admit it but it is a lot higher than 4.4 trillion. But it is still only around 62% of the GDP."
He isn't including the money that has been "borrowed" from social security. The 4.4 trillion is what is owed to third parties. The 7 plus trillion includes the 3 or 4 trillion that we owe social security and will need to start paying back towards social security payments in less than ten years when social security taxes don't bring in enough to cover benefits. So in when that happens income taxes will be subsidizing social security and will not be available for other purposes.
"Otherwise it should be sold for scrap/ditched."
Sell the whole thing on ebay. $4.99 for the Hubble and $2 Billion shipping and handling.
It's a decision that can only be made when looking at the entire NASA budget (which Slashdot posts never do).
So here you go: http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/
It's far more important to determine how agencies will make better use of their reduced funding... like deciding if the Hubble should be repaired or if the money should be spent on something else.
Or not at all, don't forget that most important option. It is not like this money is sitting in some big pile and will go to waste if we don't use it. We are borrowing from social security and foreign institutions in order to pay for a 400 billion dollar yearly deficit, so it is not just a matter of what to spend money on, it is also a question of whether the money should be spent at all.
" Hey, at least they are redirecting their hoarde of gold back at the people who generated it instead of the execs."
That brings up another thought... people keep saying here that employees are just going to retire after making a couple million bucks, but that goes against our experience with other highly paid people. Sure some could take their money and run, but so too could a CEO or other executive just take his millions of dollars a year salary and stock options and retire in a couple years and be comfortable someplace. It is the same in other areas, you will have your one hit wonders that will be satisified with what they have done, and then you will have your real superstars that keep producing. The ones who stay hungry for continued success are the ones you probably want to keep anyway.
"If you don't think of the passbook of a Swiss numbered bank account as being a form of ID, then I'm sure you'll disagree with me."
And that Swiss numbered bank account is usually linked to identifying information about you. The Swiss have largely done away with anonymity because of pressure from foreign governments over money laundering and tax evasion.
"respecting an establishment of religion..."
IOW, not making laws that discriminate between different sects.
There are several meanings here and they are all equally valid. "respecting" is used to both mean to give respect to and also to mean 'regarding' Meaning Congress won't give particular respect to one "establishment of religion" and it won't make laws regarding a particular establishment of religion, so that it will not interfere with church law, practice or doctrine which is particular to religion. And of course Congress won't establish a religion, but that follows logically from meanings of the statement and is not directly stated.
Unless you refuse to believe, as a matter of ignorance, that respecting also means 'regarding' then the meaning and succinctly clear.
"Why would you consider the Newton a failure when all that went wrong is that it came too soon for there to even be a market for it?"
I had a Newton and I thought it was very cool, but it erks me whenever someone says it came "too soon". It was not too soon but rather too big and heavy. Newton was closer in size to a modern tablet PC than a Palm Pilot, it failed to gain wider sales and acceptance because of that. The too soon part was that the technology at the time probably couldn't be made any smaller, so the real mistake was that Apple came to market before the technology was mature enough. Portable things should either be pocket sized , bag sized (not hand bag sized or else you will only sell to women)or able to worn as jewelry and it must be as light as possible. Otherwise, what you are selling is probably going to end up a niche product.
Anyone remember this mouse? The one with the human ear growing on the back...
h uman/ph oto/zoom_03.html
This is old news:
http://tlc.discovery.com/convergence/super
"Perhaps there's a need for a neutral ground, some sort of arbiter that can interpret the results in a way the public can understand (since no-one seems to take science these days), but *that*'s open to *easy* abuse as well."
I can interpret the results in an easy to understand way... Look forward to a slightly warmer planet.
"I guess this woman doesn't realize that sickness also trims the population?"
To a corporate state sick adults represent a loss of investment, but people that die as infants or fetus' represent very little loss to the state. Ideally people would be kept healthy at a minimum of cost until they reach an age at which they are no longer useful, then they would die quickly. Much like the cells of your body, dead cells can often be reabsorbed, but damaged cells continue on taking up space, using your body's resources and not doing their part.
Keeping your slaves... workers healthy is an important part of "socialism".
"Although I am not a proponent of government breaking up companies, I must say there are times it is actually good for the companies."
What says government has to be the one to break up companies? I did very well as a stockholder when Sears spun off Dean Witter, Discover Card and Allstate Insurance. More companies should take that lead and spin off big or unrelated business units. Sure the CEOs might end up with less power under one roof, but that can ultimately be the best thing for investors. GE and GM might be good candidates for that type of thing, especially GE. And everyone following technology knows that Xerox missed out big time by not wanting to introduce new technology to compete with itself.
Companies that become too big have more to lose so they often become risk averse, which is why it is important to find the right balance.
"They don't want to have to jump through hoops to send and receive email - just click, type, click. If it's not that easy, it won't be used."
Forget "they" I'm not going to add a layer of security unless its as easy as typing an s on the end of http or as easy as clicking an extra checkbox on the email if I want it encrypted. This is just basic UI design. If you think people will want to use a feature then make it easy for them to do so. If you think people should use a feature, then make it easy for them to do so.
You are right, just like PGP this will be a flop unless it is made easy by default, just like any other software feature.
Also, how the universe works is still wrapped up in a lot of hypothesis, dark matter etc. That doesn't mean that we aren't real, well maybe you, but I'm pretty sure I'm real.
Good luck. Next time remember
- formal requirements
- explicit deliverables (see requirements above)
- formal acceptance test to ensure that the software actually meets requirements
They probably outsourced all the people that could do the above effectively.
I'm serious, all too often it isn't the code monkeys that are the real expense that companies want to outsource. It is the architects, managers and higher level people, the very ones that are capable of putting together the detailed formal requirements and doing the type of acceptance testing that is required for successfully outsourced projects. Those are the ones with the big salaries that CEOs want to trim.
That is why I think outsourcing is doomed in all but the largest software projects and companies, the overhead in terms of people that you need to keep on your side to make a project successful just doesn't justify the savings of getting rid of a few developers. I think the math would only potentially work when you get rid of dozens of programmers but retain your project management and the people that can write a good formal specification.
Unless, of course outsourcing is really a political excuse to get rid of an underperforming Engineering group which is always a management problem, so it does no good to keep the managers in that case.
Thank you for the link, but it only serves my point. Over the last 50 years income grew about 20%, but that was largely over the first half of those 50 years. If wages grow ahead of inflation at the rate they did during the 50s and 60s, then I grant you that there will be no problem with social security.
Perhaps real wages did grow that quickly in the first half of the 20th century or the later half of the 19th, but that can also be related to rapid increases in population and technological advancement.
We don't have 75 years, to grow ourselves out of this mess. Social security will start going into the red in the next decade, at which point we are going to have to start "paying back" all the money we "borrowed" from social security in order to keep the federal government spending. So, not only do we have to think about cutting benefits to social security, but we need to start thinking about cutting other federal spending to make up the difference.
I think the basic point is that sure a lot of things could happen to mean that nothing needs to be done. Heck an epidemic could eliminate this problem, by eliminating the elderly. We could advance technologically to the point that we will easily serve the needs of our elders. There are many possibilities, but I believe it is foolish to hope for more than 20-30% real wage growth over the next 40 year. And chances are we could see another period of stagnation or inflation that would exacerbate the problems rather than alleviating them.
The wise government is one that plans for a rainy day, not one that counts on perpetual sunshine.
You already pay more taxes and have lower wages to support children.
But I was thinking more along the lines of reducing the barriers to entry to the various professions. Possibly, eliminating state supported licensing and other trade restrictions. Making Phds a customary mid life achievement rather than just another step that you take in your twenties if you hope to pursue a University Career. Pushing the customary working/university age to 16. I'm sure that there are many other things that could be done that don't mean that people are subsidizing the lives of other people that decide to raise children. But if we do nothing, the middle class will continue to erode and we will continue to find our most successful people at odds with their own biology.
I believe the proper question at this point isn't "can we" it's "Should we"
What's with this "we" shit? Speak for yourself.
The full statement that I was replying to was:
. ht ml
i .t xt
"It will if those two people put as much into the system as the current 3.3 people (or whatever) per beneficiary today do. Wages usually trend upward over time, y'know?"
The suggestion being that since wages grow over time that two people would eventually be able to support the same level of benefit that 3.3 people do today. But inflation is expected to accelerate because of American deficits, so it would have to be a increase in wages considering inflation, that would mean that for us to provide the same level of benefit to elderly without raising taxes or decreasing benefits, that we will have to be making on average 65% more in real wages than we are today.
Historically I think your statement that wages tend to increase faster than inflation is not correct. Or at least not enough to mean a 65% increase relative to inflation.
I could not quickly find a source with clear methodologies, but if you scroll to the end of the link below you will find that this analysis shows a relative decrease in wages versus inflation over the last 30 years:
http://reagan.webteamone.com/wages_vs_inflation
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpia
If you have a better source that shows wages versus inflation to support your point I'd appreciate it.
Wages usually trend upward over time, y'know?
And so do costs, y'know?
I wasn't quoting Ben Franklin. I was stating my own opinion.
The basis of the ruling in this case was that people (which includes police) have no expectation of privacy on public ways, so that the information gleaned from electronic tagging of cars is in no way a violation of a persons right to privacy.
It seems the court held that the manner in which the information was collected wasn't relevant. Though I disagree with the ruling, since it seems that the violation of right here is seizure of property without a warrant during an investigation
But if this is upheld and if the police are not required to obtain warrants to place devices on other people's cars, the point is that, much like I can place a flyer on your windshield in a public place, then why wouldn't I be allowed to place a tracking device on your car. The police weren't arguing public safety, they could not observe a crime being commited. If there is no right being violated, then wouldn't anyone be able to do this to anyone else? Including me tagging a cop car or you or some pretty girl down the street. Why would there be no legal protection for this?
Or does this fall under the 'police are above the law' argument?
That was a well written response, thanks.
Since we cannot make great changes to our biology. It would seem that we should working to create a society which allows people of both sexes to succeed in a competitive framework while allowing for child bearing and rearing at a reasonably younger age, say the early to mid twenties. (Obviously without pressuring people to do so, thanks mom) Otherwise, those that don't bear and raise children or put it off until after their biologies are best suited to, will be the most successful. Seems that in this case, the system that society has formed works against our collective best interest in this regard.
Not sure what could or should be made different, but it seems that making it more possible for young families to get started without as great a sacrifice should be the goal. Perhaps society is just still adjusting to the rapid social changes of the last half century with some people, professions, norms and economics still trying to catch up.
Innocent until proven guilty? Hear of it?
Aside from the annoyance of being checked out by the cops, any "good law-abiding citizen" would have nothing to fear from speed traps or dui checkpoints (provided they weren't speeding or driving drunk).
Annoyance? Annoyance? Listen to yourself, you've bought into the newspeak of "inconvenience" and "annoyance". I'm certain that if I stopped you by the side of the road at gunpoint, or ordered you to take off your shoes, or to the point of this thread; put a tracking device on your car... I think you would call it something different than an "annoyance". Have a little dignity.
Police aren't "they" or "them" they are us.
People who would sacrifice the liberty of others for their own perceived security should be shot.
"Yes, TFA says that, but it's wrong. Being the owner of the copyright of something DOES NOT give you the right to demand someone who legally has a copy (as Yahoo obviously does) to hand it over to you, even if as here that is the only copy left."
Only the sent mail would be the deceased copyright. The emails in his inbox would be the copyright of the senders.
"But would it be legal for Joe Citizen to put a tracking bug like this on a cop car?"
..."
Logically yes.
"It could certainly make for an interesting legal situation if a person were to go up to a cop, say `I'm going to put this tracking bug on your car', and then proceed to do so. The cop would probably say `you can't do that', then arrest him when he tries to do so anyways
The point of the ruling would seem to be that we wouldn't have too. Like putting a flyer on the windsheild of the car, or a tracking device underneath....no real legal difference right... ummm right?.
I've thought for a while now that this would be a good business idea... to give people a website to track the current location of police cars. Not to help criminals, but to help good law abiding citizens avoid trouble spots... A real money maker, thanks to this court's decision this would be a lot more economical than just tailing cops a having people report their positions.
Probably though, this would become yet another one of the growing examples where government agents get exempted from the application of a new law that applies to you and me.
I think I'm going to recycle my tin foil hat and get myself something a little stronger.
"I will agree that my methods are not rewardable but they got the job done."
Let me guess, your father also beat you regularly telling you that once you could defend yourself you would be a real man.
What you say you did is not only "not rewardable" it is reprehensible. It is the problem, not the solution.