The article showed that rich people don't care about long-term consequences. That is probably a fact. I don't believe the experiment cited actually demonstrated what they said it did though but that is irrelevant and posted about already.
During a recession, rich people lose far more money than poor people. Economists think that matters but it doesn't. Bill Gates could lose 95% of his $50 billion and not change a single thing about his daily life. A pensioner can lose $95/month and have to begin making choices about whether to buy food or medicine. Those choices change his life. In addition, they are multiplied by however many thousands of pensioners are affected and their lack of spending means others lose jobs, too.
We need to theory of economics/politics that identifies where losses force a lifestyle change, essentially, where continuousness suddenly collapses into a binary choice (such as when you finally open the box hiding Schrodinger's cat).
One reason govt is inefficient is because every new administration and congress adds new laws and new goals without ever removing any.
However, the MAIN reason for inefficiency is the voter's demands for accountability. That seems like a good goal but it runs into the inventory conundrum--how much money do you want to spend tracking pencils?
Consider a billion-dollar (or euro) program. If you wish to track where each million goes, you end up with a thousand-line report. But if you want to track where each thousand goes--more accountability--then you end up with a million-line report, something that requires more time to produce by existing workers and also requires the oversight group to staff an entire new department. If the cost of the new department is less than the cost of the fraud uncovered, then it is cost-effective. Unfortunately, we hardly ever worry about effectiveness in government, we only worry about the appearance of being effective.
A rational business man knows it is cheaper to let employees 'steal' 3% of the pencils than it is to spend even 4% stopping the theft. A religious, moral, political person worried more about appearances believes it is more important to make a stand and spend whatever it takes to ensure no one steals. Consider the drug laws for instance. When I say legalize everything, some yutz says 'You wouldn't say that if your daughter was addicted to meth." And the truth is maybe I wouldn't. But the socio-political truth is that my daughter is addicted to meth under the laws and regime we currently have so that ain't fixing the problem.
Voters prefer costly action to no action and they prefer to vote for folks who will do something instead of the do-nothing pols. Effectiveness is not the goal. After 9/11, all the US govt had to do was tell people that the rule of not interfering with hijackers that we've been using for 40 years (Cuba hijackings) is no longer effective and that passengers ought to fight will all means possible to save their lives. That actually is what has happened in real life. The 4th plane that crashed in Pennsylvania and every single attempted terrorist activity on a plane since then has been prevented by other passengers.
But that isn't an acceptable solution to moralistic or impatient voters.
The milankovitch cycle does not explain that there will 'eventually be another ice age." The cycle perfectly explains the historical ice ages but also notice that the cycle was in effect before the ice ages also.
The M-cycle creates ice ages when the Earth's mean temperature is at the low end. When it is at the high end, the M-cycle is irrelevant and changes nothing about climate.
Let's tax each transaction. Given the immense amount of money traded every day, I suspect a.0001% tax on each transactions, merger, CDO sale would provide all the money the Feds need to operate. Taxing may also slow down the speed of trading somewhat which would help resist bubbles and the popping of them.
You sell the tax to Wall Street and the International Community by stating it is payment for using the American Legal System to enforce your contracts. The other thing it does is force the government to pay attention to economic activity, not income.
Originally, many of the merit badges applied directly to job skills, especially for sailors and farmers. Nowadays, knot-tying and welding are specialties.
OTOH, as a US soldier, you can spend all day in a bunker in Nevada remote-piloting a drone in Afghanistan that can shoot rockets at Taliban leaders or innocent civilians. First person-shooter training is perfect for this new type of soldier.
Let's get into outer space first and try living there, inside a hollowed asteroid or a manufactured self-supporting space station. Once we figure out how to do that and have the actual colony successful enough to spawn a new colony, we may realize planets are where space-faring races are born, but not where they live.
I like the idea of testing new processes. Put your managers around a table permanently and give the developers the private offices and see how much -company- productivity increases. Then switch.
How often do managers have to talk to each?
How often do developers?
Private offices for developers and others who need to think and open collaborative offices for those who have to push paper and meet seems to do the job better.
Jobs was completely accurate. You just have to realize he defines 'porn' as any non-Apple item. It's part of his reality distortion field. Same one that causes him to come up with a logo that says: Bite me.
Problem I see is that people _already_ do this from purely anecdotal info and prejudice. "He's a bad egg." Adding data and analysis will either prove it true or not.
But right now, we self-fulfill naturally which I don't believe is any better.
The Moon is NOT a stepping stone into space; neither is Mars. Both are in gravity wells. Once we got a couple hundred miles high, we're in Space. When we land on a planet or a large moon, we are not in space any longer, we are merely off the Earth.
Note that once people learn to live in Space (two asteroids tied together and twirling like a bolo for gravity) and figure out how to live off what we mine from the inside, I suspect living at the bottom of a deep gravity well will not look so enticing anymore.
Just put a gun to the guy's head while you use his phone ONCE and hand it back.A few weeks of that and folks will get used to handing their phone to anyone who asks.
Actually, there is a weed lobby. They are against legalization. Last month the growers of Humboldt county, California gathered to protest the upcoming legalization initiative on the State ballot because it would disrupt their business and put people out of work.
The problem with password rules, unlike rules passed by city councils or congress, is that we can use computers to completely enforce them.
That immediately points out exactly how useful real-life rulez are, too but I won't get into that except to say that civilization creates laws, laws do not create civilization. As proof, look at any political revolution.
Getting back to passwords, the rules have very little to do with desired goals--no break-ins.
Seriously, how many accounts are hacked by guessing passwords? Brute force guessing is stopped by a 3 and out system rule for bad pwds.
Continued access from a compromised pwd is a serious issue but 1) the account first has to be hacked and 2) continual access from different machines can be monitored by the sys admins without user involvement.
Just a modicum of analysis shows that if you implement no reuse and a 45-day timeout, then each user has to come up with 8-10 hard-to-remember passwords each year. FOR EACH ACCOUNT.
The rule is as silly as Citibank's warning on the envelope they send me that a paper trail is an identity thief's best friend. How many of those crimes occur via paper and how many occur electronically? They just want to make their jobs easier and more cost-effective.
The real problem with democracy is that it makes people think that if enough people think the same way, then that is the way the world ought to work.
Economics obscures the fact that we live because of food and shelter and when that gets scarce, nothing else matters.
Democracy would work beautifully if we could vote on making corn grow or air pollution magically disappear without cost.
The history of war and revolution is presented as based on ideas, but those are only what groups rally around. The reason they end up fighting is because the resources run out (bad weather leads to crop failure, good weather leads to more people which requires more resources). Technology changes the amount of resources available so it is hard to pick out but plotting history by population/resources against weather shows more correlation than plotting it by which king married which queen.
They don't call them libraries any more, the are media centers. The word 'library' is too book-centered. Modern films tell stories in as good a way as many books do. Games will probably be the next big media for learning. (Games are now at the level of the early silent films).
Media centers provide access and instructions for accessing media, some of which contains valuable knowledge but most of which is garbage, kind of like the world wide web and the meat-space civilization it stands for.
USDA with 100,000 employees (US Dept of Agriculture) rolled out a new Time and Attendance system last year. On the dropdown box of time categories in the first pic, there were 20 painfully precise categories such as WorkType:Sunday:2nd shift (and 3rd and non-sunday...). The slider on the side looked really small so I estimated there were at least 400 different categories of type of pay spread over all the Agencies and Programs that make up USDA.
Delivering a product is a requirement, but how long do you think it takes to find out there are even 400 different categories of pay? I'll bet the guys who bought the first pass didn't know.
The basic rule of bureaucracy is that if you have a billion dollar program and wish to track where each million dollars goes, you will need a thousand line report. OTOH, if you want to track where each thousand dollars goes, you end up with a million different lines which requires a staff and overhead and yadda yadda yadda.
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The article showed that rich people don't care about long-term consequences. That is probably a fact. I don't believe the experiment cited actually demonstrated what they said it did though but that is irrelevant and posted about already.
During a recession, rich people lose far more money than poor people. Economists think that matters but it doesn't. Bill Gates could lose 95% of his $50 billion and not change a single thing about his daily life. A pensioner can lose $95/month and have to begin making choices about whether to buy food or medicine. Those choices change his life. In addition, they are multiplied by however many thousands of pensioners are affected and their lack of spending means others lose jobs, too.
We need to theory of economics/politics that identifies where losses force a lifestyle change, essentially, where continuousness suddenly collapses into a binary choice (such as when you finally open the box hiding Schrodinger's cat).
One reason govt is inefficient is because every new administration and congress adds new laws and new goals without ever removing any.
However, the MAIN reason for inefficiency is the voter's demands for accountability. That seems like a good goal but it runs into the inventory conundrum--how much money do you want to spend tracking pencils?
Consider a billion-dollar (or euro) program. If you wish to track where each million goes, you end up with a thousand-line report. But if you want to track where each thousand goes--more accountability--then you end up with a million-line report, something that requires more time to produce by existing workers and also requires the oversight group to staff an entire new department. If the cost of the new department is less than the cost of the fraud uncovered, then it is cost-effective. Unfortunately, we hardly ever worry about effectiveness in government, we only worry about the appearance of being effective.
A rational business man knows it is cheaper to let employees 'steal' 3% of the pencils than it is to spend even 4% stopping the theft. A religious, moral, political person worried more about appearances believes it is more important to make a stand and spend whatever it takes to ensure no one steals. Consider the drug laws for instance. When I say legalize everything, some yutz says 'You wouldn't say that if your daughter was addicted to meth." And the truth is maybe I wouldn't. But the socio-political truth is that my daughter is addicted to meth under the laws and regime we currently have so that ain't fixing the problem.
Voters prefer costly action to no action and they prefer to vote for folks who will do something instead of the do-nothing pols. Effectiveness is not the goal. After 9/11, all the US govt had to do was tell people that the rule of not interfering with hijackers that we've been using for 40 years (Cuba hijackings) is no longer effective and that passengers ought to fight will all means possible to save their lives. That actually is what has happened in real life. The 4th plane that crashed in Pennsylvania and every single attempted terrorist activity on a plane since then has been prevented by other passengers.
But that isn't an acceptable solution to moralistic or impatient voters.
The milankovitch cycle does not explain that there will 'eventually be another ice age." The cycle perfectly explains the historical ice ages but also notice that the cycle was in effect before the ice ages also.
The M-cycle creates ice ages when the Earth's mean temperature is at the low end. When it is at the high end, the M-cycle is irrelevant and changes nothing about climate.
Let's tax each transaction. Given the immense amount of money traded every day, I suspect a .0001% tax on each transactions, merger, CDO sale would provide all the money the Feds need to operate. Taxing may also slow down the speed of trading somewhat which would help resist bubbles and the popping of them.
You sell the tax to Wall Street and the International Community by stating it is payment for using the American Legal System to enforce your contracts. The other thing it does is force the government to pay attention to economic activity, not income.
Democracy is worth giving up some rights for. One of the best quotes in GTA IV
Originally, many of the merit badges applied directly to job skills, especially for sailors and farmers. Nowadays, knot-tying and welding are specialties. OTOH, as a US soldier, you can spend all day in a bunker in Nevada remote-piloting a drone in Afghanistan that can shoot rockets at Taliban leaders or innocent civilians. First person-shooter training is perfect for this new type of soldier.
Let's get into outer space first and try living there, inside a hollowed asteroid or a manufactured self-supporting space station. Once we figure out how to do that and have the actual colony successful enough to spawn a new colony, we may realize planets are where space-faring races are born, but not where they live.
Gravity wells just add cost without benefit.
Clean air is a hoax, just like global warming ;-)
I like the idea of testing new processes. Put your managers around a table permanently and give the developers the private offices and see how much -company- productivity increases. Then switch. How often do managers have to talk to each? How often do developers? Private offices for developers and others who need to think and open collaborative offices for those who have to push paper and meet seems to do the job better.
Jobs was completely accurate. You just have to realize he defines 'porn' as any non-Apple item. It's part of his reality distortion field. Same one that causes him to come up with a logo that says: Bite me.
Problem I see is that people _already_ do this from purely anecdotal info and prejudice. "He's a bad egg." Adding data and analysis will either prove it true or not.
But right now, we self-fulfill naturally which I don't believe is any better.
The Moon is NOT a stepping stone into space; neither is Mars. Both are in gravity wells. Once we got a couple hundred miles high, we're in Space. When we land on a planet or a large moon, we are not in space any longer, we are merely off the Earth.
Note that once people learn to live in Space (two asteroids tied together and twirling like a bolo for gravity) and figure out how to live off what we mine from the inside, I suspect living at the bottom of a deep gravity well will not look so enticing anymore.
Landing in gravity wells is not being in Space.
Just put a gun to the guy's head while you use his phone ONCE and hand it back.A few weeks of that and folks will get used to handing their phone to anyone who asks.
Actually, there is a weed lobby. They are against legalization. Last month the growers of Humboldt county, California gathered to protest the upcoming legalization initiative on the State ballot because it would disrupt their business and put people out of work.
The problem with password rules, unlike rules passed by city councils or congress, is that we can use computers to completely enforce them.
That immediately points out exactly how useful real-life rulez are, too but I won't get into that except to say that civilization creates laws, laws do not create civilization. As proof, look at any political revolution.
Getting back to passwords, the rules have very little to do with desired goals--no break-ins.
Seriously, how many accounts are hacked by guessing passwords? Brute force guessing is stopped by a 3 and out system rule for bad pwds. Continued access from a compromised pwd is a serious issue but 1) the account first has to be hacked and 2) continual access from different machines can be monitored by the sys admins without user involvement.
Just a modicum of analysis shows that if you implement no reuse and a 45-day timeout, then each user has to come up with 8-10 hard-to-remember passwords each year. FOR EACH ACCOUNT.
The rule is as silly as Citibank's warning on the envelope they send me that a paper trail is an identity thief's best friend. How many of those crimes occur via paper and how many occur electronically? They just want to make their jobs easier and more cost-effective.
Saying third party apps break the iPad/iPhone/iTouch sounds like something Bill Gates says about Windoze. Apple's logo says it all: Bite Me.
The real problem with democracy is that it makes people think that if enough people think the same way, then that is the way the world ought to work.
Economics obscures the fact that we live because of food and shelter and when that gets scarce, nothing else matters.
Democracy would work beautifully if we could vote on making corn grow or air pollution magically disappear without cost.
The history of war and revolution is presented as based on ideas, but those are only what groups rally around. The reason they end up fighting is because the resources run out (bad weather leads to crop failure, good weather leads to more people which requires more resources). Technology changes the amount of resources available so it is hard to pick out but plotting history by population/resources against weather shows more correlation than plotting it by which king married which queen.
They don't call them libraries any more, the are media centers. The word 'library' is too book-centered. Modern films tell stories in as good a way as many books do. Games will probably be the next big media for learning. (Games are now at the level of the early silent films).
Media centers provide access and instructions for accessing media, some of which contains valuable knowledge but most of which is garbage, kind of like the world wide web and the meat-space civilization it stands for.
That algorithm is correct but they fired the guy who wrote it and now don't have any clue how to fix it.
And consultants would charge waaaay too much.
USDA with 100,000 employees (US Dept of Agriculture) rolled out a new Time and Attendance system last year. On the dropdown box of time categories in the first pic, there were 20 painfully precise categories such as WorkType:Sunday:2nd shift (and 3rd and non-sunday...). The slider on the side looked really small so I estimated there were at least 400 different categories of type of pay spread over all the Agencies and Programs that make up USDA.
Delivering a product is a requirement, but how long do you think it takes to find out there are even 400 different categories of pay? I'll bet the guys who bought the first pass didn't know.
The basic rule of bureaucracy is that if you have a billion dollar program and wish to track where each million dollars goes, you will need a thousand line report. OTOH, if you want to track where each thousand dollars goes, you end up with a million different lines which requires a staff and overhead and yadda yadda yadda.
The difference in ethics by working at some big company paying you to sell over-priced home loans that eventually collapse the global economy is what?
Safety = Microsoft software in control of radioactive material.
Kind of funny how the 'free-est" country on Earth also has the most prisoners per capita.
Catholic priests need a place where they can play games with their altar boys on-line.
How much schooling do you need to remote-pilot those Predators in Afghanistan from a bunker in Las Vegas? Gamerz rule.