People like you never seem to understand that a lot of voters chose Trump by default. They felt that, awful as he is in many ways, he was vastly better than Hillary Clinton - who seemed very likely to get us all killed (and indeed sometimes sounded as if that was her only aim in life).
I find it sad that, after half an hour, no one has challenged this:
If all these people are so smart, the "best and brightest", then why are their home countries a gigantic cesspool of filth, poverty, illiteracy, crime, violence and general misery?
Neither the article nor the intro says anything about which countries are not sending so many students to the USA. Which forces me to conclude that the AC believes that the entire world beyond the USA is "a gigantic cesspool of filth, poverty, illiteracy, crime, violence and general misery".
Unfortunately, all too many US citizens seem to agree. But it really isn't true. I live in England, which - while of course far inferior to Scotland - is a pretty decent country apart from its politicians. (And even they aren't nearly as bad as their American equivalents). Most of Europe is quite pleasant to live in (again, of course, were it not for the politicians and the ever-spreading blight of US corporations).
If you would take the trouble to read up on modern China, or Japan, or Singapore, or Russia, or Iran, or Brazil, or Mexico, or many other places, you would find that standards of living are soaring and people have a far more optimistic view of life than most in the USA.
By and large, the only countries that could accurately be described as "gigantic cesspools of filth, poverty, illiteracy, crime, violence and general misery" are those that the USA has attacked and completely, or partially, destroyed.
I would of course never lie to a potential employer.
Yah. Very nice. But how will that potential employer see the information that you published and that they paid good money for, if it turns out to be untrue?
They'll say, "Well this guy is obviously a habitual liar. Who's the next candidate?"
It's not a crime - not in any sense, and not by a long chalk.
Classical economics assumes (with a wave of the arm) that everyone participating in the economy has full information, and shares it at the same time.
Really! I'm not kidding here. They might as well add that the sky is green and the Sun is made of Gorgonzola, but that would be a bit too obvious. In the real world, of course, as we all know - or as we find out pretty soon, the hard way - "business" consists very largely of a battle to hide information, or at least delay it getting out.
Now consider this specific case. The point at issue is that employers are getting, not just publicly available information about potential employees, but all their private information too.
So what information do the potential employees get about the employers in return? Pretty much zip. Basically what those employers choose to publish, which is mostly self-serving propaganda - and which is not checked for accuracy or even truth by anyone. Even items of obviously great importance to potential employees - such as salary data - are kept a closely guarded secret.
Open sharing of information is a great idea - but only if it is reciprocal.
1. Money (still) talks. Them that has the gold makes the rules.
2. Democracy is a dead facade (at least in Muenchen).
But after all - if the government of Germany acts in the interests of a foreign country (for whatever inexplicable reasons), why not the government of Muenchen?
All over the world, though, people whose destiny is not controlled by businesspeople hungry for money and power can do as seems best to them.
The very first three posts illustrate the dangers of having an agenda. One comment blames Microsoft. The next one blames nationalized healthcare. Neither comment gives any evidence for linking the reported problems with their favourite culprits.
The way I see it, your most valuable data and services are more or less equally insecure in the hands of government, Microsoft, or other corporations. Namely, not very.
People keep making the same old mistakes, and one of the commonest mistakes is "either/or". If not this, then that. The truth, folks, is that all systems that involve human beings are insecure. Largely because other people do not have your interests at heart. Not even Democrat politicians. Or even Republican politicians. And certainly not business leaders, who are emotionally - if not legally - dedicated to making the biggest possible profits in the shortest possible time, with an acceptable risk of going to prison.
That statement is incorrectly distributed. It would be more or less true to say that
"Some scientists are in it for the money (and in many cases the prestige)".
There are still a lot of scientists who are in it mostly because they are interested in their subjects of study, or because they honestly want to add to the human race's knowledge.
"Those scales do not tip to the right or the left; they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status".
Ha ha, very funny. Of course they don't! The rich, powerful, and politically connected always get EXACTLY the same treatment as the poor from the justice system.
Being on good social term with the judge, the DA, or the Attorney General could never do an accused person the slightest good. And the prosecution would be just as likely to frame up a wealthy, influential political donor as the lowest miscreant.
Yes, folks, thank goodness it's a government of laws, not persons!
All very true. Probably because evolutionary change is quite slow - or, to put it another way, our individual lifespan is very short. Too short to learn enough.
If girls prefer big, strong, muscular men with good reflexes, fighting skills - and perhaps some clever repartee thrown in for good measure - it's because those were the qualities a male partner needed for hundreds of thousands of years.
It's only in the last 10,000 years - and, in most parts of the world, far less time - that cheating, lying, deception and salesmanship have become survival characteristics. In the earlier world of hunter-gatherers, anyone who regularly cheated, lied and deceived would be lucky if the other members of his clan merely shunned him. More likely he would "fall off a cliff" or foolishly eat some old meat, or the wrong kind of mushroom.
Expensive things very often cost quite a bit less than cheap things.
Go to the hardware store and buy the cheapest socket wrench they have, and do it against every time it breaks. Or buy the cheapest garden hose, then some duct tape for the leaks, then curse at it a bit, then eventually buy another decent one.
I understand there are legitimate times in which the best solution is a a worse one. IKEA desk/dresser for a college apartment that is necessarily temporary and it doesn't make sense to buy a nice one. I would think that a municipal office is not that case.
If that is the sum total of your argument, I shall be delighted to sell you a Linux system for as much money as you think will help to make it reliable.
Is that really so surprising? Everybody knows buying cheap can be morr expensive... you buy the reliable Japanese car over the Ford that needs to be in the shop regularly. You buy the LaserJet over the deskjet that needs ink refills constantly.
People always have such terrible difficulty finding suitable analogies for software. Hardware products such as cars and printers are certainly not commensurable with software.
Just assuming we accept your parallel with cars - which would you say is the "reliable Japanese car", Windows or Linux? Which is the American product that continually needs new patches and fixes?
And if Linux "needs refills constantly" I have yet to hear of it. Although my Linux systems do seem to receive a steady flow of improvements, of which a proportion are security-related.
TCO is a fundamental aspect of any business investment, the fact you don't understand that simply means you should never ever be advising anyone on what to purchase.
How ironic it is, then, that I have earned such a lot of money over the past 35 years by advising large organizations on the TCO of software. In particular, I have often earned their gratitude by demonstrating the surprisingly high TCO of Microsoft's products - particularly if an organization is unwise enough to let itself be locked in to them.
The real corruption has already occurred at this point. M$ does whatever it has to do to get it's shitty system into the schoolroom. If students were using Linux throughout their schooling the training cost would be $0 as well in this situation.
Very true. This is substantially what I was driving at, although I didn't put it quite as bluntly.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems as though you are suggesting that there is never any situation in which the cost of switching can be taken into account.
You are right to consider the possibility that I did not mean to say that! I was trying to keep my post short, crisp and to the point. If one starts out by trying to rebut any possible counter-arguments, before you know it you have written a book.
Obviously the cost of switching is a significant factor. But it seems to me unlikely that it can swamp the very large cost of the software itself. I strongly suspect that the waters have been thoroughly muddied by, for example, confidential offers of very deep discounts by Microsoft. (Which would certainly look like a very good investment on its part, in view of the huge amount of business at stake worldwide).
The endemic problem of Western civilization, to which I referred, is the immense and almost unlimited power of money. It turns out that money is the universal solvent when it comes to morality and the rule of law. We have now reached a stage where it has become almost impossible to trust anyone in government or corporate office.
By the way, I have earned a substantial part of my income for the past 35 years by advising organizations (including governments and multi-billion dollar corporations) about the TCO of software.
This story encapsulates, with startling economy and elegance, everything that is wrong with our alleged Western "civilization". (The thing that Gandhi, when asked, said he thought "would be a very good idea").
Apparently expensive software costs less than free software. That's the basic truth here. Of course it is all dressed up with frills and furbelows: maintenance costs, training costs, blah di blah di blah.
But the fundamental assertion is that expensive software costs less than free software. And people believe that! Not so surprising, perhaps, in a world dominated by marketing, advertising, and political campaigning.
In a world where the authorities can utter such a startling piece of imbecility, "experts" can be found to support it with an impressive array of "facts" and "figures", and credulous multitudes can be found to believe it... how can you ever hope to accomplish anything honest?
"Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden".
Since Mr Putin has ordered that all Russian government systems, at least, should be moved off American software as soon as possible, I don't think your second scenario is at all likely.
And there is no need to worry that the stupid Russians won't be able to provide their own software:
"In a study of hundreds of thousands of programmers, China and Russia were found to produce the best software developers" https://www.sott.net/article/3...
Slashdot Mirror
People like you never seem to understand that a lot of voters chose Trump by default. They felt that, awful as he is in many ways, he was vastly better than Hillary Clinton - who seemed very likely to get us all killed (and indeed sometimes sounded as if that was her only aim in life).
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/...
I find it sad that, after half an hour, no one has challenged this:
If all these people are so smart, the "best and brightest", then why are their home countries a gigantic cesspool of filth, poverty, illiteracy, crime, violence and general misery?
Neither the article nor the intro says anything about which countries are not sending so many students to the USA. Which forces me to conclude that the AC believes that the entire world beyond the USA is "a gigantic cesspool of filth, poverty, illiteracy, crime, violence and general misery".
Unfortunately, all too many US citizens seem to agree. But it really isn't true. I live in England, which - while of course far inferior to Scotland - is a pretty decent country apart from its politicians. (And even they aren't nearly as bad as their American equivalents). Most of Europe is quite pleasant to live in (again, of course, were it not for the politicians and the ever-spreading blight of US corporations).
If you would take the trouble to read up on modern China, or Japan, or Singapore, or Russia, or Iran, or Brazil, or Mexico, or many other places, you would find that standards of living are soaring and people have a far more optimistic view of life than most in the USA.
By and large, the only countries that could accurately be described as "gigantic cesspools of filth, poverty, illiteracy, crime, violence and general misery" are those that the USA has attacked and completely, or partially, destroyed.
I would of course never lie to a potential employer.
Yah. Very nice. But how will that potential employer see the information that you published and that they paid good money for, if it turns out to be untrue?
They'll say, "Well this guy is obviously a habitual liar. Who's the next candidate?"
It would be astonishing if they had to break the law to get what they want, since their money was largely responsible for making the law.
It's not a crime - not in any sense, and not by a long chalk.
Classical economics assumes (with a wave of the arm) that everyone participating in the economy has full information, and shares it at the same time.
Really! I'm not kidding here. They might as well add that the sky is green and the Sun is made of Gorgonzola, but that would be a bit too obvious. In the real world, of course, as we all know - or as we find out pretty soon, the hard way - "business" consists very largely of a battle to hide information, or at least delay it getting out.
Now consider this specific case. The point at issue is that employers are getting, not just publicly available information about potential employees, but all their private information too.
So what information do the potential employees get about the employers in return? Pretty much zip. Basically what those employers choose to publish, which is mostly self-serving propaganda - and which is not checked for accuracy or even truth by anyone. Even items of obviously great importance to potential employees - such as salary data - are kept a closely guarded secret.
Open sharing of information is a great idea - but only if it is reciprocal.
Come on, moderators! You have failed the troll test.
It's pretty clear that:
1. Money (still) talks. Them that has the gold makes the rules.
2. Democracy is a dead facade (at least in Muenchen).
But after all - if the government of Germany acts in the interests of a foreign country (for whatever inexplicable reasons), why not the government of Muenchen?
All over the world, though, people whose destiny is not controlled by businesspeople hungry for money and power can do as seems best to them.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/...
The very first three posts illustrate the dangers of having an agenda. One comment blames Microsoft. The next one blames nationalized healthcare. Neither comment gives any evidence for linking the reported problems with their favourite culprits.
The way I see it, your most valuable data and services are more or less equally insecure in the hands of government, Microsoft, or other corporations. Namely, not very.
People keep making the same old mistakes, and one of the commonest mistakes is "either/or". If not this, then that. The truth, folks, is that all systems that involve human beings are insecure. Largely because other people do not have your interests at heart. Not even Democrat politicians. Or even Republican politicians. And certainly not business leaders, who are emotionally - if not legally - dedicated to making the biggest possible profits in the shortest possible time, with an acceptable risk of going to prison.
Scientists are only in it for the money.
That statement is incorrectly distributed. It would be more or less true to say that
"Some scientists are in it for the money (and in many cases the prestige)".
There are still a lot of scientists who are in it mostly because they are interested in their subjects of study, or because they honestly want to add to the human race's knowledge.
"Those scales do not tip to the right or the left; they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status".
Ha ha, very funny. Of course they don't! The rich, powerful, and politically connected always get EXACTLY the same treatment as the poor from the justice system.
Being on good social term with the judge, the DA, or the Attorney General could never do an accused person the slightest good. And the prosecution would be just as likely to frame up a wealthy, influential political donor as the lowest miscreant.
Yes, folks, thank goodness it's a government of laws, not persons!
... if all studies were replicated at least twice by other teams in other institutions (and preferably funded by different sponsors).
cheating, lying, deception and salesmanship
Sorry about the tautology - written in haste.
All very true. Probably because evolutionary change is quite slow - or, to put it another way, our individual lifespan is very short. Too short to learn enough.
If girls prefer big, strong, muscular men with good reflexes, fighting skills - and perhaps some clever repartee thrown in for good measure - it's because those were the qualities a male partner needed for hundreds of thousands of years.
It's only in the last 10,000 years - and, in most parts of the world, far less time - that cheating, lying, deception and salesmanship have become survival characteristics. In the earlier world of hunter-gatherers, anyone who regularly cheated, lied and deceived would be lucky if the other members of his clan merely shunned him. More likely he would "fall off a cliff" or foolishly eat some old meat, or the wrong kind of mushroom.
Expensive things very often cost quite a bit less than cheap things.
Go to the hardware store and buy the cheapest socket wrench they have, and do it against every time it breaks. Or buy the cheapest garden hose, then some duct tape for the leaks, then curse at it a bit, then eventually buy another decent one.
I understand there are legitimate times in which the best solution is a a worse one. IKEA desk/dresser for a college apartment that is necessarily temporary and it doesn't make sense to buy a nice one. I would think that a municipal office is not that case.
If that is the sum total of your argument, I shall be delighted to sell you a Linux system for as much money as you think will help to make it reliable.
Is that really so surprising? Everybody knows buying cheap can be morr expensive... you buy the reliable Japanese car over the Ford that needs to be in the shop regularly. You buy the LaserJet over the deskjet that needs ink refills constantly.
People always have such terrible difficulty finding suitable analogies for software. Hardware products such as cars and printers are certainly not commensurable with software.
Just assuming we accept your parallel with cars - which would you say is the "reliable Japanese car", Windows or Linux? Which is the American product that continually needs new patches and fixes?
And if Linux "needs refills constantly" I have yet to hear of it. Although my Linux systems do seem to receive a steady flow of improvements, of which a proportion are security-related.
TCO is a fundamental aspect of any business investment, the fact you don't understand that simply means you should never ever be advising anyone on what to purchase.
How ironic it is, then, that I have earned such a lot of money over the past 35 years by advising large organizations on the TCO of software. In particular, I have often earned their gratitude by demonstrating the surprisingly high TCO of Microsoft's products - particularly if an organization is unwise enough to let itself be locked in to them.
The real corruption has already occurred at this point. M$ does whatever it has to do to get it's shitty system into the schoolroom. If students were using Linux throughout their schooling the training cost would be $0 as well in this situation.
Very true. This is substantially what I was driving at, although I didn't put it quite as bluntly.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems as though you are suggesting that there is never any situation in which the cost of switching can be taken into account.
You are right to consider the possibility that I did not mean to say that! I was trying to keep my post short, crisp and to the point. If one starts out by trying to rebut any possible counter-arguments, before you know it you have written a book.
Obviously the cost of switching is a significant factor. But it seems to me unlikely that it can swamp the very large cost of the software itself. I strongly suspect that the waters have been thoroughly muddied by, for example, confidential offers of very deep discounts by Microsoft. (Which would certainly look like a very good investment on its part, in view of the huge amount of business at stake worldwide).
The endemic problem of Western civilization, to which I referred, is the immense and almost unlimited power of money. It turns out that money is the universal solvent when it comes to morality and the rule of law. We have now reached a stage where it has become almost impossible to trust anyone in government or corporate office.
By the way, I have earned a substantial part of my income for the past 35 years by advising organizations (including governments and multi-billion dollar corporations) about the TCO of software.
This story encapsulates, with startling economy and elegance, everything that is wrong with our alleged Western "civilization". (The thing that Gandhi, when asked, said he thought "would be a very good idea").
Apparently expensive software costs less than free software. That's the basic truth here. Of course it is all dressed up with frills and furbelows: maintenance costs, training costs, blah di blah di blah.
But the fundamental assertion is that expensive software costs less than free software. And people believe that! Not so surprising, perhaps, in a world dominated by marketing, advertising, and political campaigning.
In a world where the authorities can utter such a startling piece of imbecility, "experts" can be found to support it with an impressive array of "facts" and "figures", and credulous multitudes can be found to believe it... how can you ever hope to accomplish anything honest?
"Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden".
"Today, in the era of fake news and Russian interference..."
Presumably this should read
"Today, in the era of fake news about Russian interference..."
Since Mr Putin has ordered that all Russian government systems, at least, should be moved off American software as soon as possible, I don't think your second scenario is at all likely.
"Amid U.S. effort to exclude Kaspersky, Putin backs plan to force out foreign software"
https://www.cyberscoop.com/rus...
And there is no need to worry that the stupid Russians won't be able to provide their own software:
"In a study of hundreds of thousands of programmers, China and Russia were found to produce the best software developers"
https://www.sott.net/article/3...
"Despite Sanctions, Russian Organisations Acquire Microsoft Software"
Why???
... US citizens might like to read this: https://www.lewrockwell.com/20...
In the USA, the state can confiscate cash (or pretty well anything else) without even accusing you of a crime.
Is that you, Wally??