Wouldn't you supply your employees with free food?
Depends on the employees. If you mostly employee geeks who work on salary and whose lives begin and end with technology, then yeah, you can certainly squeeze some extra work out of them by keeping them onsite with free meals and other such services. But I have to wonder how healthy this work-is-life philosophy is in the long run.
Incidentally, one way Google keeps its people onsite is by providing a free laundramat. I find the idea of my co-workers (not to mention the occasional visiting celebrity) seeing my literal dirty laundry deeply disturbing.
Except that it's not true. General audiences are oversaturated with Star Trek, and have been Since Voyager's early days. But Trekkies can never get enough. Bookstore still stock dozens of new Star Trek paperbacks (uniformly gawdawful), the gigabytes of fanfiction on the web, the cons, the people who literally live in their costumes... Trek has even spawned a mass suicide cult. This is major obsession.
The sad thing is that this mania seems to affect even decent writers who happen to be Trekkies. The Reeves-Stevens, for example, have done some decent non-Trek SF -- but their collective IQ seems to drop about 30 points whenever they do a Star Trek script.
If they could lock these idiots out of the process and hire some real writers, you could maybe come up with a decent Star Trek series. But that's not possible. For one thing, thestudio can't seem to resist all the free material. (Rick Berman is usually blamed for this, but in fact it goes back to Gene Roddenbery, who was notorious for ripping off material whereever he could.) For another, this mania is the only reason Star Trek didn't die a natural death years ago.
Here's what's going to happen. Paramount will continue to push the franchise wherever it can. Mostly this will be in the form of paperbacks, because there will always be enough manic trekkies to make this profitable. Every once in a while, they'll make another pathetic stab at a movie or TV show. These will always have bad scripts and fail horribly. Despite these failures, Trekkie mania will keep the franchise alive for the foreseeable future. Those of us who used to love Star Trek but were never into the religious aspects will do our best to blot the whole miserable thing out of our minds.
You're posting on/. because you expect to get someone to admit you made them change their minds?... You're new here, right?
No, just a dreamer.
I'm not going to respond to most of your arguments, because I didn't set out to start a train-versus-cars argument. (That's one where I know I'm not going to change any minds.) I was just responding to a guy who insisted that the TGV was an evil waste of the French taxpayer's money. My only point was that a car-based system isn't free either. When I talk about how much you spend on your car and where the money goes, all I'm trying to convince you is cars have their own cost. Whether it's worth the cost is for you to decide.
Though I do want to mention this reply to my TGV post, which asserts that the TGV system is completely self-sustaining, and has even paid back its development costs. I don't think the U.S. highway system can make that claim.
One point I have to reply to, because it's the only issue you raise that bears on my original argument:
Three, if I want to take a midnight trip out to BFE then I can jump into my car and drive. How does a train compare to that? How many transfer's and how far do I have to walk to get to Krispy Kreme? Will some homeless guy be sleep masturbating in the carriage? Do I need that hassle?
Basically, you're saying that you have to have your car because mass transit doesn't meet your needs. I'm not denying that. I'm not even offering the suggestion that we could have a better system. I'm just talking about how we got where we are, and why riding public transit means wasted time and creepy co-passengers.
But rather than repeat myself, I'll just point you back at my my original post. Read it if you care enough.
Isn't anybody going to downmod this? My self-image as a persecuted visionary is at risk here! Come on, I'm criticizing cars for crisake. That's blasphemy! Worse, it's un-American!
Even if the software supported that feature, it would be a mistake to use it on most systems. DVD burning is something you have to do all at once, unless you're short of coasters. Running a lot of CPU intensive processes, such as recording and TV show and encoding it to DVD format, has a high liklihood of causing a fatal interruption. Maybe you could do it on a high-end system -- but a consumer DVD recorder is a lot cheaper.
Dude, first: the US population is still spread out, despite a population of 290 Million much of the US is friggin empty compared to the population densities of most European countries.
True, and that explains why there are no high-speed trains in Kansas. Doesn't explain why there are no high-speed-trains in areas where the population is dense.
Anyway, the point I was making (I'll repeat it one more time, then accept that you're just going to ignore it) was that cars helped spread the population out.
Second: the US has been an industrial nation for at least a century.
Simply not true, at least if you define "industrial nation" as one where most people are connected to the industrial economy. A century ago, there was plenty of industry, but a good majority of Americans lived either on farms or in small towns that were the centers of the agricultural economy. That remained true up until World War II. Look it up.
Congratulations, you've just described the suburb, something that's been popular in the US for 50 years and didn't require $3 in taxes added to gasoline to fund.
Jeez, I was explaining how the TGV contributes to denser population nodes, that's all. But if you want you want to talk about getting gouged, let me remind you that the government ain't the only power capable of doing that. Look at how much you spend on your car, in the form of buying the damn thing, insuring it, gassing it up, and paying all the taxes for the gigantic infrastructure that supports it. Not to mention fighting lots of nasty wars to protect those oil sources we need so badly. Even if the French taxpayer is getting ripped off, he not that much worse off than you are. The only difference his his taxes are mostly being spent in France. A good chunk of your car costs are going into the pockets of the Saudi elite.
I don't disagree with any of your arguments for an improved rail system. But your Subj: is way off the mark. Politicians are only anti-train because voters are pro-car.
Not least because a 50-year-old car can do the job it was designed for, with a little maintenance. Or a hundred-year-old car for that matter. We throw out old hardware because we're infatuated with the latest and greatest, not because the old hardware is worthless.
Yeah, most of the U.S. is too thinly populated to support high-speed trains. But there are plenty of regions that can support them -- and still rely mostly on cars.
Also, population density is as much an effect as cause. A century ago, the U.S. was spread out because it was a mostly agricultural country, populated by individualist farmers that didn't like to be dependent on central transporation systems. Now we're an industrial country, but we still think like those 19th century farmers. So we invest in highways and cars instead of in rail systems. That supports huge suburban complexes that couldn't be served by mass transit even if that was a priority. So we build more spawl, which means more cars and highways, which means more sprawl, and so on.
By contrast, Europeans find it more natural to tax themselves to build humungous train systems like the French TGV. That particular system doesn't just serve established population centers -- it creates new ones. I'm told that millions of French people now commute to city jobs, living in remote locations that were almost unpopulated before the TGV came.
Before everybody sneers at contorted lawyers logic, note that "GTA confusion" was not the defense of the guy on trial. His defense was that his passenger interfered with his driving. Supposedly he did so while drunkenly imitating a GTA move, but his reasons for doing what he did was not relevent, since his guilt or innocence was not at issue.
One reason the U.S. has such an outdated rail system: it's been 140 years since a major war was fought on our turf. Living in a battlezone is a drag -- but it does destroy all your rail infrastructure, forcing you to rebuild with modern equipment. Whatever his other faults, Adolf Hitler was a blessing to the European rail system.
The other problem is plain old ideology. Or maybe culture is a better word. I'm not sure you can separate the two concepts when it comes to American transportation. Which means cars. Cars are our symbols of individuality, our favorite hobby, our main form of self-expression. Cars are the ultimate anti-socialist hyper-libertarian thing: they allow you to go where you want, when you want. None of those commie-fascist train schedules!
So no transportation system that would take money away from cars has a chance of more than token funding. Too bad the cost of this is obscene: freeways that cost millions per mile, traffic casualties that make a world war look like a stubbed toe, and huge payments to overseas oil vendors that are destroying our currency. Not to mention that a good chunk of that oil money gets diverted to the very terrorists we spend billions fighting.
I don't expect these facts to change, or ever for a lot of people to admit that we have a problem. (Car addicts, like any other, are good at denial.) I just couldn't resist a chance to point out that we do have a problem.
Those aren't your only choices. A lot of community colleges have really good IT programs -- and are a lot cheaper than private trade schools. Plus while you're there, you can pick up some liberal arts courses that will be very handy if you decide to transfer to a 4-year school -- or realize the dangers of a too-narrow education.
The only problem is that CCs vary a lot in what they offer, and you might have to look pretty far afield to find one with that suits your needs. I took some IT courses once at College of Marin in Novato (very well taught, but too Microsoft-centric) and discovered that some of my classmates were coming from as far away as San Leandro. A serious commute!
... I just find banks advising me to tear them up, which seems like more an inconvenience to a thief than a real preventative measure.
Don't underestimate inconvenience. An effective security measure is not one that absolutely guarantees security. (Unless you define "security" as "the illusion of perfect safety" -- which seems to be an all-too-common definition!) An effective security measure simply raises the cost of penetrating security until it's unacceptable to the potential thief, terrorist, or whatever.
Now, consider what's on your bank statement. Can the thief learn enough just by looking at your statements to pose at you? Obviously not. He can certainly use the statments to find out things you'd rather people not know. (Which is why it bothers some people that federal officials can browse online bank statements without a warrant.) And with a bit of work, he can use bank statements and other sources to assemble enough information about you to pose as you. Any inconvenience you add to the process, no matter how trivial, makes you slightly less vulnerable. The question is, how much effort should you expend to add inconvenience? To answer that, you have to consider just how much you have to protect.
I have to admit that I throw my bank statements in the trash without even tearing them up -- I have such a bad credit rating no sane person would want to steal my identity. If I were slightly better off, I would tear the statements up. If I were a lot better off, I'd buy a good shredder. And if I were really rolling in cash, I'd hire a document disposal service to convert my paper records to pulp before disposal.
But all of these measures can be circumvented. Shredded documents can be reassembled with enough patience and computer time. Sidney Bristow can use her feminine wiles to infiltrate your disposal service. You can't absolutely guarantee that nobody will steal your private records -- you can only make it not worth their while.
Computers cheaper than the ones we already have can't be made commercially -- there's just no way to do it and make a profit. So the vendor has to be a charity. Now, if you're a charity and you think more poor Americans need to have computers, you're not going to subsidize the development of a new kind of computer. You just going to go out, buy standard computers, and sell them at a loss. Or (more likely) give them away. I believe some charities already do this.
If you read past the headlines, you see that point of these projects is not just to make cheap computers -- though cost is certainly a factor. It's to design new computers that are better suited to local conditions.
Well, if $200 is $100 too much for you to afford a computer, you probably can't afford $10/month for Internet access. There's other stuff you can do with a computer of course -- but for those purposes you can get a computer for $100, and a lot less, since so many old computers are floating around. If you can hook up with the right charity, you can get an old machine running Window 3.1 or Linux for free.
Slashdot Mirror
Silly me. I forgot that some people would rather sell their mothers to the slavers than register at a web site.
Incidentally, one way Google keeps its people onsite is by providing a free laundramat. I find the idea of my co-workers (not to mention the occasional visiting celebrity) seeing my literal dirty laundry deeply disturbing.
I've never known the Mercury servers to be Slashdotted. This post isn't "informative" --it's just a pain.
The sad thing is that this mania seems to affect even decent writers who happen to be Trekkies. The Reeves-Stevens, for example, have done some decent non-Trek SF -- but their collective IQ seems to drop about 30 points whenever they do a Star Trek script.
If they could lock these idiots out of the process and hire some real writers, you could maybe come up with a decent Star Trek series. But that's not possible. For one thing, thestudio can't seem to resist all the free material. (Rick Berman is usually blamed for this, but in fact it goes back to Gene Roddenbery, who was notorious for ripping off material whereever he could.) For another, this mania is the only reason Star Trek didn't die a natural death years ago.
Here's what's going to happen. Paramount will continue to push the franchise wherever it can. Mostly this will be in the form of paperbacks, because there will always be enough manic trekkies to make this profitable. Every once in a while, they'll make another pathetic stab at a movie or TV show. These will always have bad scripts and fail horribly. Despite these failures, Trekkie mania will keep the franchise alive for the foreseeable future. Those of us who used to love Star Trek but were never into the religious aspects will do our best to blot the whole miserable thing out of our minds.
I'm not going to respond to most of your arguments, because I didn't set out to start a train-versus-cars argument. (That's one where I know I'm not going to change any minds.) I was just responding to a guy who insisted that the TGV was an evil waste of the French taxpayer's money. My only point was that a car-based system isn't free either. When I talk about how much you spend on your car and where the money goes, all I'm trying to convince you is cars have their own cost. Whether it's worth the cost is for you to decide.
Though I do want to mention this reply to my TGV post, which asserts that the TGV system is completely self-sustaining, and has even paid back its development costs. I don't think the U.S. highway system can make that claim.
One point I have to reply to, because it's the only issue you raise that bears on my original argument:
Basically, you're saying that you have to have your car because mass transit doesn't meet your needs. I'm not denying that. I'm not even offering the suggestion that we could have a better system. I'm just talking about how we got where we are, and why riding public transit means wasted time and creepy co-passengers.But rather than repeat myself, I'll just point you back at my my original post. Read it if you care enough.
I stand corrected. But since I'm an anti-car hippie, my opinion doesn't really matter. You need to convince people like this guy.
Isn't anybody going to downmod this? My self-image as a persecuted visionary is at risk here! Come on, I'm criticizing cars for crisake. That's blasphemy! Worse, it's un-American!
Right, old cars are not as good as new cars -- I never said they were. But they do the job. And so does an old rocket booster.
Even if the software supported that feature, it would be a mistake to use it on most systems. DVD burning is something you have to do all at once, unless you're short of coasters. Running a lot of CPU intensive processes, such as recording and TV show and encoding it to DVD format, has a high liklihood of causing a fatal interruption. Maybe you could do it on a high-end system -- but a consumer DVD recorder is a lot cheaper.
Anyway, the point I was making (I'll repeat it one more time, then accept that you're just going to ignore it) was that cars helped spread the population out.
Simply not true, at least if you define "industrial nation" as one where most people are connected to the industrial economy. A century ago, there was plenty of industry, but a good majority of Americans lived either on farms or in small towns that were the centers of the agricultural economy. That remained true up until World War II. Look it up. Jeez, I was explaining how the TGV contributes to denser population nodes, that's all. But if you want you want to talk about getting gouged, let me remind you that the government ain't the only power capable of doing that. Look at how much you spend on your car, in the form of buying the damn thing, insuring it, gassing it up, and paying all the taxes for the gigantic infrastructure that supports it. Not to mention fighting lots of nasty wars to protect those oil sources we need so badly. Even if the French taxpayer is getting ripped off, he not that much worse off than you are. The only difference his his taxes are mostly being spent in France. A good chunk of your car costs are going into the pockets of the Saudi elite.I don't disagree with any of your arguments for an improved rail system. But your Subj: is way off the mark. Politicians are only anti-train because voters are pro-car.
You're a wimp. I always mutter, "Gunsgunsguns" and maybe "bangbangbang".
Also, population density is as much an effect as cause. A century ago, the U.S. was spread out because it was a mostly agricultural country, populated by individualist farmers that didn't like to be dependent on central transporation systems. Now we're an industrial country, but we still think like those 19th century farmers. So we invest in highways and cars instead of in rail systems. That supports huge suburban complexes that couldn't be served by mass transit even if that was a priority. So we build more spawl, which means more cars and highways, which means more sprawl, and so on.
By contrast, Europeans find it more natural to tax themselves to build humungous train systems like the French TGV. That particular system doesn't just serve established population centers -- it creates new ones. I'm told that millions of French people now commute to city jobs, living in remote locations that were almost unpopulated before the TGV came.
Before everybody sneers at contorted lawyers logic, note that "GTA confusion" was not the defense of the guy on trial. His defense was that his passenger interfered with his driving. Supposedly he did so while drunkenly imitating a GTA move, but his reasons for doing what he did was not relevent, since his guilt or innocence was not at issue.
When cops see you doing these things, do they challenge you to a fistfight? If so, you definitely have GTA reality issues.
The other problem is plain old ideology. Or maybe culture is a better word. I'm not sure you can separate the two concepts when it comes to American transportation. Which means cars. Cars are our symbols of individuality, our favorite hobby, our main form of self-expression. Cars are the ultimate anti-socialist hyper-libertarian thing: they allow you to go where you want, when you want. None of those commie-fascist train schedules!
So no transportation system that would take money away from cars has a chance of more than token funding. Too bad the cost of this is obscene: freeways that cost millions per mile, traffic casualties that make a world war look like a stubbed toe, and huge payments to overseas oil vendors that are destroying our currency. Not to mention that a good chunk of that oil money gets diverted to the very terrorists we spend billions fighting.
I don't expect these facts to change, or ever for a lot of people to admit that we have a problem. (Car addicts, like any other, are good at denial.) I just couldn't resist a chance to point out that we do have a problem.
The only problem is that CCs vary a lot in what they offer, and you might have to look pretty far afield to find one with that suits your needs. I took some IT courses once at College of Marin in Novato (very well taught, but too Microsoft-centric) and discovered that some of my classmates were coming from as far away as San Leandro. A serious commute!
I believe the current term is "Human Performance"!
Good lord. I hope this is a scam. If EMP devices have already gone commercial, we're all in big trouble!
Now, consider what's on your bank statement. Can the thief learn enough just by looking at your statements to pose at you? Obviously not. He can certainly use the statments to find out things you'd rather people not know. (Which is why it bothers some people that federal officials can browse online bank statements without a warrant.) And with a bit of work, he can use bank statements and other sources to assemble enough information about you to pose as you. Any inconvenience you add to the process, no matter how trivial, makes you slightly less vulnerable. The question is, how much effort should you expend to add inconvenience? To answer that, you have to consider just how much you have to protect.
I have to admit that I throw my bank statements in the trash without even tearing them up -- I have such a bad credit rating no sane person would want to steal my identity. If I were slightly better off, I would tear the statements up. If I were a lot better off, I'd buy a good shredder. And if I were really rolling in cash, I'd hire a document disposal service to convert my paper records to pulp before disposal.
But all of these measures can be circumvented. Shredded documents can be reassembled with enough patience and computer time. Sidney Bristow can use her feminine wiles to infiltrate your disposal service. You can't absolutely guarantee that nobody will steal your private records -- you can only make it not worth their while.
All good examples, but you neglected one -- that old P133 box your neighbor gives you for free so he won't have to pay a recycling fee.
If you read past the headlines, you see that point of these projects is not just to make cheap computers -- though cost is certainly a factor. It's to design new computers that are better suited to local conditions.
Well, if $200 is $100 too much for you to afford a computer, you probably can't afford $10/month for Internet access. There's other stuff you can do with a computer of course -- but for those purposes you can get a computer for $100, and a lot less, since so many old computers are floating around. If you can hook up with the right charity, you can get an old machine running Window 3.1 or Linux for free.