That makes you really atypical — pensions are really unpopular with employers these days. If you get a chance to cash it out, you should seriously consider it, because a lot of employers are looking at ways to renege on their pension obligations. So far it's only companies in trouble, but I wouldn't count on any company not finding a way.
Besides, I'm absolutely paranoid about the Stock market.
Hello! What do you think your pension fund does with your contributions? It invests them in stocks and bonds. If you're that paranoid about the market, you should cash out now, never mind what kind of hit you take. But I don't think you need to be that paranoid.
Anyway, I'll repeat what I said in my previous post: saving money does not necessarily mean playing the stock or bond markets. That's an option, but if you want extreme safety, you buy a CD from a bank or credit union. These institutions do fail, but if you have no more than $100K with any one institution, you're compensated by federal insurance.
(There's also pension guarantee insurance, but that's not as well-funded as deposit insurance. United Airlines employee are looking at 30 cents on the dollar if their employer's pension default stands.)
And even if you don't need to save for retirement, you should be putting something by for life's little contingencies.
And I have to say that your reponse to the top post in this thread looks lamer and lamer. The dude was talking about people's inability to save. Nothing you've said seriously refutes his point.
So you are basically proposing that instead of paying stuff off, we should dump money into what is essentially a baby boomer lottery.
I agree that it's wise to pay off your debts as soon as you can. But if you're refraining from saving because you want to pay off your mortgage and college loans early, you're pretty untypical. More common is the yuppie who just makes the minimum payments on their debts and doesn't even think about trying to save for the future.
And saving is not nearly as speculative as you seem to think. Ever hear of CDs? They won't make you rich, but they're still better than inflation.
It's obvious that most yuppies who don't save are suffering from short attention spans, not an absence of cash or fear of marketplace whimsy. When companies make their employees fill out a lot of forms and choose investment options to get their 401Ks, typically 10% go through the trouble. But when companies tell their employees, "We're going to open a 401K in your name, and put 10% of your pay into it, unless you you tell us not to," as many as 90% shrug and say, "That's cool."
Oh yeah, and the money you put into a 401K reduces your income tax. You like paying taxes?
If every nation has its own root servers, than every nation effectively has its own domain registry. You think domain hijacking is a pain now? Imagine being able to seize ownership of a domain country by country, either by horswoggling local judges or bribing local officials.
I can see how simplifies your life to assume that a particular book has all the answers, and that you can end any discussion by citing the right passage. Some of us, however, consider it fairly lazy to reduce everything to an appeal to authority.
Technologists from the classical era did a lot of stuff that's never been reproduced. For example, reports of Alexander the Great's funeral claim that vehicle carrying his body had fairly good shock absorbers. Nothing special by today's standards — but a modern engineer has much better materials to work with. How were they able to build such an item with the materials available in 323 BC? Nobody knows.
This, of course, is where the "Gods From Space" crowd chimes in. Works on TV, but in real life, there's a much more satisfying answer: people are damned fucking clever.
What sort of moron would piece together "eBay buys Verisign" from the news reports?!
Not a moron, just ignorant. Which describes a lot of people around here. And also sloppy/lazy, which lately seems to describe all the Slashdot editors.
The amusing part is that the headline makes it sound as if eBay is going to take Verisign's best-known subsidiary, Network Solutions, and make them a department of PayPal. Yeah, that makes sense!
Pfff. You obviously don't even know what books George Orwell wrote, much less what was in them. For your information, he wrote precisely one book about a totalitarian state that spies on its citizens. That's 1984, and any invasions of privacy or personal libery you've suffered are tiny by comparison with what he describes.
It's pathetic how "Orwellian" has become a cliche used by people who have no idea who George Orwell was or what he stood for. It's particularly irritating to see him referred to by right-wingers who selectively quote his anti-Communist writings, completely forgeting that he was a non-Marxist socialist and an advocate of the welfare state.
I agree that it's great news (if true), but I think "acknowledgment" is the least of our issues. I don't think there's that much resistance to acknowledging that a condition can be psychiatric. If anything, I think people (especially MDs who are having trouble pinning down a diagnosis with cognitive or behavioral symptoms) are too quick to label disorders with a convenient psychiatric labels. After all, concepts like "anxiety", "depression" and "attention deficit" (to name three of the most common labels) are pretty vague. Plus, they name issues that everybody has — some people just have them more than others.
In theory, there are neurochemical abnormalities behind all the above conditions. Which is probably true (at least for most people with these labels), but which is almost never verified in clinical practice. What they do now is "rule out" alternative non-psychiatric conditions, and then when they're stumped, they label it psychiatric. Which I guess works most of the time — but every once in a while you get somebody diagnosed with "depression" when they actually suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning, or some other toxicity the primary physician forgot to check for.
(A side note about terminology: to most people "depression" means, "extremely sad". But to psychiatrists, "depression" means "depressed mental function". The two kind of go together, but "clinical depression" is not a fancy way of saying "you need to cheer up." And of course "depressed mental function" is a symptom of a lot of conditions!)
I once knew a psychiatrist who thought that every diagnosis of "depression" should be verified with a PET scan. Fiendishly expensive, but nothing compared to the huge costs of antidepressant prescriptions and talk therapy. But the idea is unlikely to catch on. Indeed a lot of "depression" doesn't even get a proper psychiatric diagnosis. Instead some internist whose HMO only lets him have 15 minutes per patient says, "Well, you say you don't feel good, but I can't find anything wrong with you. Maybe you're depressed? Let's try some Zoloft and see how you do." Having a simple chemical test would make things a tad more rigorous.
It would also help mental illness get proper insurance coverage. Insurance companies don't like covering it, because it doesn't fit in their bureaucratic model. A simple, inexpensive test would make a lot of difference there.
The XBOX 360 plays HD just fine - as MOST Studios have already backed and plan to distribute HD DVD Content on regular DVDs using WMV format, just like the "T2 Extreme Edition" that was released two years or more ago.
That makes no sense. By that logic, you can claim that a VCR can play DVDs, or a cassette can play CDs. After all, the contents the same...
I seem to be saying this a lot lately: you make some good arguments, but they don't apply to the post you're replying to. The dude didn't say that his religious rights were being abridged. He simply accused the FSMer of mocking his religious beliefs, Which, in fact, he was.
Now, making fun of somebody's beliefs is indeed protected free speech. And using deprecating humor (also known as satire) to make a serious point is a time-honored rhetorical device. But it's also a tad rude and offensive. Sometimes you have to be rude and offensive to make a point, but when you do, you shouldn't be suprised when the object of your mocking takes offense. Religious tolerance, or lack of it, has nothing to do with the conversation.
Here's my new theory: both stories are true, but neither is the whole story. Philips initially tried to collect license fees from manufacturers for making cassettes. Some big manufacturers, such as Sony, balked. This made Phillips realize that they wouldn't get much money from licensing, and all their profits would come from manufacturing. So they let their competitors license the new technology, because they'd sell more cassettes if the new format became a standard.
I have no factual basis for this theory, but it does make sense. Neither Philips nor Sony are lying about what happened, they're just selecting the facts that make them look good.
An interesting link. My understanding about the history of the cassette may be wrong. Or the Sony version of history might be self-serving bullshit. Hard to say.
Dude, when you reply to a post, please reply to what the poster actually said. It's a short post, and it's not that hard to see that he didn't say, "The U.S. is just as bad as China!" (Which would, I agree, be a stupid thing to say.) What he did say is that a majority of Americans are tolerant of encroachments on their civil liberties. Which you can argue with — if you care to address what he actually said.
Remember, Apple can do no wrong. If this statement feels odd to you, please report to your local Apple Store for re-indoctrination ASAP!
I agree that Apple customers are a tad, uh, fervid. But a screen that scratches easily hardly rates as design blunders go. Wander through the electronics aisles of your local big-box store, and tell me how many items you see that are sturdy enough for their intended use, or don't have glaring design flaws.
Sony effectively pressured Philips into not charging a license for the use of the Compact Cassette patents in exchange for their support.
Where did you get that? I've read that Philips simply decided that they'd make more money off cassette technology if they let everybody use it for free — more profits to be made in sharing a large market than in dominating a limited market. Of course, I could have that wrong, but I'd be skeptical of an alternate story without a source.
That's painfully stupid and bigoted. A "grade-inflated nursery school" wouldn't have given him the academic skills to get a B- average in a serious engineering program. And his big issue is lower-division classes taught by grad students with no teaching skills. Which has been been a scandal with Big Name universities as long as I can remember. These acquire their prestige mainly from how much research they do, and undergraduate education becomes a secondary priority, especially for freshman and sophomore classes.
That's not just my opinion — ask any faculty member at such a school. If you can get them off the publish-or-perish treadmill long enough. Academia have agreed that there are basic problems with undergrad education since forever. What they can't agree on is what to do about it.
This guy made two big mistakes. First, he picked a field for which he has little aptitude because he wanted a "skill" — as if university were just a high-end vocational school. But he still might have made it through if he'd chosen his school by the quality of its instruction rather than by its reputation.
Make satirical and/or deprecatory remarks about all the kneejerk "Global warning is a crock!" and "No it's not!" comments. For this discussion, the first kind of kneejerkism seems to dominate. It's as if just putting up a satellite to study global warming is a sign of tree-hugging moronity. Hey people, that's how science works: you form a hypothesis, and look for experiments to confirm or deny it. If you think the hypothesis is lame, suggest your own experiments — and spare us the brainless name-calling.
Yes, you do get troll-moded. Since your "humor" basically assumes that anybody who takes global warming at all seriously is an idiot. Simply sneering at people who disagree with you is not satire, it's arrogant stupidity.
No shit. Space debris, or anything punctured by it, is extremely valuable. Don't ask me why, but there are collectors who will pay good money for it. If you go out to start your car, and there's a weird vertical hole drilled straight through it, do not get it repaired!
Slashdot Mirror
Hah! You were poised to flame me for confusing the solar eclipses with lunar eclipses, weren't you? Admit it!
Anyway, I'll repeat what I said in my previous post: saving money does not necessarily mean playing the stock or bond markets. That's an option, but if you want extreme safety, you buy a CD from a bank or credit union. These institutions do fail, but if you have no more than $100K with any one institution, you're compensated by federal insurance.
(There's also pension guarantee insurance, but that's not as well-funded as deposit insurance. United Airlines employee are looking at 30 cents on the dollar if their employer's pension default stands.)
And even if you don't need to save for retirement, you should be putting something by for life's little contingencies.
And I have to say that your reponse to the top post in this thread looks lamer and lamer. The dude was talking about people's inability to save. Nothing you've said seriously refutes his point.
When you get your first blizzard, you'll sing another tune!
Be reasonable. If you find a stray python, don't you want to know who to return it to?
And saving is not nearly as speculative as you seem to think. Ever hear of CDs? They won't make you rich, but they're still better than inflation.
It's obvious that most yuppies who don't save are suffering from short attention spans, not an absence of cash or fear of marketplace whimsy. When companies make their employees fill out a lot of forms and choose investment options to get their 401Ks, typically 10% go through the trouble. But when companies tell their employees, "We're going to open a 401K in your name, and put 10% of your pay into it, unless you you tell us not to," as many as 90% shrug and say, "That's cool."
Oh yeah, and the money you put into a 401K reduces your income tax. You like paying taxes?
If every nation has its own root servers, than every nation effectively has its own domain registry. You think domain hijacking is a pain now? Imagine being able to seize ownership of a domain country by country, either by horswoggling local judges or bribing local officials.
I can see how simplifies your life to assume that a particular book has all the answers, and that you can end any discussion by citing the right passage. Some of us, however, consider it fairly lazy to reduce everything to an appeal to authority.
This, of course, is where the "Gods From Space" crowd chimes in. Works on TV, but in real life, there's a much more satisfying answer: people are damned fucking clever.
The amusing part is that the headline makes it sound as if eBay is going to take Verisign's best-known subsidiary, Network Solutions, and make them a department of PayPal. Yeah, that makes sense!
It's pathetic how "Orwellian" has become a cliche used by people who have no idea who George Orwell was or what he stood for. It's particularly irritating to see him referred to by right-wingers who selectively quote his anti-Communist writings, completely forgeting that he was a non-Marxist socialist and an advocate of the welfare state.
In theory, there are neurochemical abnormalities behind all the above conditions. Which is probably true (at least for most people with these labels), but which is almost never verified in clinical practice. What they do now is "rule out" alternative non-psychiatric conditions, and then when they're stumped, they label it psychiatric. Which I guess works most of the time — but every once in a while you get somebody diagnosed with "depression" when they actually suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning, or some other toxicity the primary physician forgot to check for.
(A side note about terminology: to most people "depression" means, "extremely sad". But to psychiatrists, "depression" means "depressed mental function". The two kind of go together, but "clinical depression" is not a fancy way of saying "you need to cheer up." And of course "depressed mental function" is a symptom of a lot of conditions!)
I once knew a psychiatrist who thought that every diagnosis of "depression" should be verified with a PET scan. Fiendishly expensive, but nothing compared to the huge costs of antidepressant prescriptions and talk therapy. But the idea is unlikely to catch on. Indeed a lot of "depression" doesn't even get a proper psychiatric diagnosis. Instead some internist whose HMO only lets him have 15 minutes per patient says, "Well, you say you don't feel good, but I can't find anything wrong with you. Maybe you're depressed? Let's try some Zoloft and see how you do." Having a simple chemical test would make things a tad more rigorous.
It would also help mental illness get proper insurance coverage. Insurance companies don't like covering it, because it doesn't fit in their bureaucratic model. A simple, inexpensive test would make a lot of difference there.
Now, making fun of somebody's beliefs is indeed protected free speech. And using deprecating humor (also known as satire) to make a serious point is a time-honored rhetorical device. But it's also a tad rude and offensive. Sometimes you have to be rude and offensive to make a point, but when you do, you shouldn't be suprised when the object of your mocking takes offense. Religious tolerance, or lack of it, has nothing to do with the conversation.
I have no factual basis for this theory, but it does make sense. Neither Philips nor Sony are lying about what happened, they're just selecting the facts that make them look good.
An interesting link. My understanding about the history of the cassette may be wrong. Or the Sony version of history might be self-serving bullshit. Hard to say.
Dude, when you reply to a post, please reply to what the poster actually said. It's a short post, and it's not that hard to see that he didn't say, "The U.S. is just as bad as China!" (Which would, I agree, be a stupid thing to say.) What he did say is that a majority of Americans are tolerant of encroachments on their civil liberties. Which you can argue with — if you care to address what he actually said.
Yes, DAT was successful as a computer peripheral. I was talking about consumer acceptance.
I rest my case.
That's not just my opinion — ask any faculty member at such a school. If you can get them off the publish-or-perish treadmill long enough. Academia have agreed that there are basic problems with undergrad education since forever. What they can't agree on is what to do about it.
This guy made two big mistakes. First, he picked a field for which he has little aptitude because he wanted a "skill" — as if university were just a high-end vocational school. But he still might have made it through if he'd chosen his school by the quality of its instruction rather than by its reputation.
I can laugh at myself when somebody says something insightful and/or funny. "You're a twit" doesn't quite qualify.
Yes, you do get troll-moded. Since your "humor" basically assumes that anybody who takes global warming at all seriously is an idiot. Simply sneering at people who disagree with you is not satire, it's arrogant stupidity.
No shit. Space debris, or anything punctured by it, is extremely valuable. Don't ask me why, but there are collectors who will pay good money for it. If you go out to start your car, and there's a weird vertical hole drilled straight through it, do not get it repaired!