The NextGen program has had several high-profile failures. The implementation of new routes in Phoenix resulted in a large number of complaints and lawsuits against the FAA. The more recent changes in the SF Bay Area including routing a much higher number of aircraft over Palo Alto and lower elevations in the Santa Cruz Mountains, both of which have angered a great many residents.
Jet traffic brings noise pollution and air pollution to the corridors they travel, resulting in health impacts (though difficult to measure) and sometimes significant reductions in property value. The previous corridors have been used for decades and the impact is well-understood by residents in those areas; the change was not well-communicated before being implemented and residents were mostly caught unawares.
The benefits of these changes include a higher volume of traffic to airports, increasing airport profits; more efficient routes for airlines, increasing airline profits; and potentially cheaper fares for customers resulting from the first two changes. Speaking personally, I would rather keep my home value and quieter skies.
There's one advantage to using the rsync protocol like this; you can provide file access without creating a user account on the system. Even if you secure that user account (e.g. by using an ssh key and limiting commands init, by setting the shell to/sbin/nologin, using chroots, etc) it's still an account with access on the system. Using rsync in this way is analogous to putting some files on a web server behind Basic Auth. And like using a web server, it should never be used for files that contain sensitive information!
Events like this are what keep sysadmins employed. If you're not paying someone to protect your technology infrastructure, including a layered backup strategy, an effective security policy, and regular audits, this is going to happen to you too.
San Francisco has implemented a school lottery. Siblings get first priority, followed by kids from low-income neighborhoods, followed by actual local residents. Almost everyone I know who had kids while living in S.F. either paid for private school ($25k/year and up) or moved out of town, because they didn't get into a good school.
Yes, housing is expensive and public transit is inferior and the crime rate is undesirable and there aren't enough public parks. Most people I know would tolerate all of that if they could get their kids into a good school. Instead you can get a better house, a better school, a better crime rate, great big parks, possibly even a better public transit system by simply moving 30 minutes drive away. It means giving up the big city life and anyone I know would do that happily to give their kids a better shot at a good education.
One of the first things you learn as a new driver is not to watch the car immediately in front of you, but rather to watch several cars ahead (and behind). This gives you more time to react to traffic changes, and you still see the actions of the nearest vehicle anyway.
Sure, Tesla's Autopilot will have a much faster reaction time. That will help, but it's not good enough - it only allows Autopilot to react to conditions that the nearest vehicle also reacts to. A deer running toward the road, looking to jump in front of you? A kid chasing a ball toward the street? The vehicle in front of you swerving out of the way of an object in the road? Autopilot doesn't handle any of them, and can't as long as it lacks the ability to see more of the environment around it.
Autopilot is dangerous to Tesla drivers and others because it removes the attention of the driver from the road. It's basically like asking a nearly blind friend with fast reflexes to take the wheel while you read a book or play games on your phone. If it's not legal for a nearly blind driver to take the wheel, Autopilot shouldn't be legal either.
Well, I'm sure they really would have taken them, but the customs paperwork is just SO unpleasant, you know? And there is the matter of the 17% import duty on livestock, and there needs to be proof that someone will feed and house the chickens so that they don't become a burden on society. We can't have foreign chickens just coming into the country whenever they want.
Racism is making judgements and assumptions about a person based on their race (or apparent race). It's not racist to be aware of race or use it as an adjective. Ignoring those characteristics is called "color blindness" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness_(race)_in_the_United_States) and is rather controversial. You might not like the adjective ("Black" vs "African American"), and that's valid. Just use a different adjective for the same characteristic.
Per that article, 'Martin Luther King, Jr.'s central hope was that people would someday be judged by "the content of their character" rather than "the color of their skin".' He's not saying people shouldn't recognize the color of their skin; just that they should not be judged by it.
In fact, studies have shown that children raised in a "color blind" environment develop their own judgements about their schoolmates, including juvenile observations about race, gender, height, weight, etc that are shockingly biased because they simply haven't been shown anything different. This is especially true in communities that aren't very diverse, where there might only be one or two minority kids available to base those judgements on.
For example, go ask someone who lives in Japan what they think of black people in America.
Use the appropriate adjectives to describe what you're thinking of, and don't make judgements about people simply because they exhibit some of the characteristics described by those adjectives.
To be fair, most of the water in India is about as likely to get you sick as the unwashed hand that precedes it. Give some credit to a culture of people that recognize this, and try to use just one hand so that the other one is still clean for eating, etc. Saves an enormous amount of water, too.
Reed Hastings is trying to say that Netflix can only do business by playing by the rules that the TV networks and content producers write. Those groups want to maximize their profit, and so does Reed. If they refuse to do business with Netflix without geographically-limited licensing, Netflix can either say goodbye to customers or agree to do it.
As the head of a public company, Reed doesn't have a choice. I would at least hope that Netflix itself only licenses on a global basis and doesn't engage in geographic limitations.
Donated once to the EFF and the ACLU at different times. The incredible volume of spam mail, junk mail, and phone calls that I received from these two organizations convinced me to never contribute to them again, as well as likely costing them more than my donation.
My advice: Donate to a local organization, not a national or international one. They are less likely to have hordes of administrative flunkies to bother you later (and consume donation money), and you'll be helping the community you live in. There are good causes in every community in America.
Just look at screen resolution - laptops 4-5 years ago reached the peak resolution of what average machines were coming with. Low-end models were usually 1280x800 with many models offering 1440x900 resolution for a modest increase in price.
Now nearly every single laptop made offers only a 1366x768 screen, which is less vertical pixels than people were getting affordably 5 years ago. Those laptops that do offer higher resolution go straight up to 1920x1080, which many people find too small, and at a significant cost increase. And both of these are 16:9 screens, reducing even further the valuable vertical resolution that is additionally consumed by menu bars, system trays, and application launchers.
The simple fact is that there is only a single hardware manufacturer still making laptops with 16:10 screens, and it's Apple. Everyone else is producing small expensive portable televisions with computers attached.
Nobody I know wants to upgrade because it means sacrificing the graphical experience they want.
In more general terms, the important thing is to have priorities. Don't put new cars, cable, computers and clothes above family, time to yourself and enough sleep unless it really means more to you than those things. Does making money matter more to you than quality of life? How do you feel about sacrificing personal time to impress your employer and climb the ladder?
I'm a sysadmin, and I love it. I work long hours usually (hourly, fortunately - any computer professional in California paid less than $41/hour is not exempt from earning overtime), but I get to administer thousands of BSD and Linux machines. At the end of the day, I have good coworkers, a good employer, and still time to spend with my wife and with friends. I get to improve my skills, learn new ones, meet cool people. And that's worth it, to me.
Walking around with your head crunched over onto your shoulder to squeeze the phone there, getting an ache in your ear from flattening it, and having to hold a cellular/cordless phone close to your head for hours-long conference calls all look very retarded to me. Having a quality headset (like those from Plantronics) and being able to use two hands, walk upright and avoid ear/headaches looks very smart.
Of course, if you meant that wearing a stupid-looking headset looks retarded, you're absolutely right - just look at the enormous contraptions that Britney Spears, Garth Brooks, and all those other stage performers have to put up with. But regular users just wanting to have a conversation have a wide range of options, if they're willing to spend some money. Even Radio Shack has some decent choices.
Personally, I like the trend toward USB headsets with built-in sound chips. It makes more sense to put the audio D/A hardware in the actual output device than in the computer, these days - keep it digital for as long as possible, preventing noise and cable mess.
What's the big deal? If you make the choice to let your child have unfiltered access to email and the Internet, you should be prepared to explain things she doesn't understand. And although it may seem otherwise to most people, the concept of racism and the concept of painful anal sex are both undoubtedly difficult for a 5-year old to understand. Both deserve explaining if the child encounters them. So also do the ideas of tolerance, religious freedom, and free speech deserve to be explained to young people, but rarely does anyone complain about them not being understood.
Obviously, you should try to avoid exposing your children to things they can't understand or that they shouldn't try to emulate. But if they do encounter them, what's so tough about simply explaining that some people like to watch other people being hurt? Or that the people in the graphic are having sex in a way that usually hurts, but that sometimes people like doing anyway? Or just that it was a couple of people doing something and sending pictures out on the Internet because they want everyone else to see it? Or whatever explanation makes the most sense to you and your family values?
It's stuff like this that gets ridiculous laws passed. Spam is not a scourge because sometimes a child receives offensive material, or because my mail server gets hundreds of messages a day of pure garbage. The original poster was entirely correct to point out that making fun of people who take things too seriously _IS_ a valid form of commentary.
I like being able to send and receive anything I want in my email. I like that nobody is responsible for censoring it. I like that I don't have to pay for every one that I send as part of some tax to fund a government agency to police the Internet. And I see the UCE/Spam problem as a technical and social one - I have good filters and detectors to eliminate it, and people who email me aren't trying to sell me something, so their emails stand out enough to not be detected. As long as spam continues to come from people trying to make money, detecting it will be easy enough. I wonder how succesful a spam campaign to _give away_ money would be...
I agree with a lot of what you and the parent poster (bluesnowmonkey) said - we certainly shouldn't have a society that makes being unemployed more attractive than working for a living. And taxation is definitely bad! I don't see it going away any time soon, though, so I'm suggesting better ways to spend the money.
The National Endowment for the Arts is a good example of what I'd like to see - taxpayer money going to produce works of art that are in the public domain and anyone can enjoy. Music, poetry, murals, sculpture, etc and all of it available for free (or at the cost of the media) as a direct return on your tax dollars. The NEA is much smaller, and generally just produces art that gets put into museums or public buildings, but it's a start.
Nasa is another good example - your tax dollars could be used to pay scientists to research things that improve all our lives. It doesn't have to be a trip to the moon, either - if a government-funded horticulturalist developed a black rose, you could go buy one and plant it for only the cost of other 'public domain' roses. That would benefit everyone, although certainly some individuals could care less about it.
Allow me to put forth another idea related to taxation - if you work for the government providing your skills to those in need, you are free from having to pay taxes on your income. That income, of course, is also limited - but you have made your finances simpler, you still make enough to live, and you're working for the betterment of our entire society. Is that type of employment for everyone? No, certianly not - likewise not every doctor is willing to volunteer at a Red Cross facility or a homeless shelter. But for those who do wish to do so, there should be some kind of benefit. I have seen far too many professionals who spend much of their extra time and money helping others and still face the same tax burden as others.
Our way of life, being profit and wealth driven, is rooted in the laws our government enforces. Change must begin there if we are to reward ethical behavior and a social conscience - until it becomes at least as rewarding to help others as to help yourself, we will not live in a society where "paying the poet voluntarily" happens.
So, to answer your post, I would like to see the money that is being taken from me at implied gunpoint put to a use I approve of, one that benefits society as a whole. Not putting pot-smokers in prison, paying private contractors to rape prisoners in other countries, creating a security force to harass and delay travellers while providing no actual protection, giving away telephone and electric infrastructures to private companies and investing in technology for poor schools that is left to rot in a warehouse somewhere. I'd rather be enslaved to a poet than enslaved to _THAT_.
I've noticed that too, about the number of avowed capitalists who post regularly on Slashdot...
It's true that my post had many flaws, and I've enjoyed reading the responses, even the ones that made fun of me.;-) Yours was the best so far because it brings up a couple of direct points - one being that the public domain is no longer a domain but more of a dusty corner, and the other being that communism (and to an extent, socialism) doesn't work. Whatever a government does to provide for citizens who cannot support themselves, it must not be more attractive than actually working for a wage. This is where better minds than mine are needed - I think that all of society would benefit if anyone had the option to live 'for free' on the government and produce something intangible, but only as long as there was some reason for _everyone_ not to do that.
In other words, I'd like to see the government hire artists of all types for the purpose of entertaining us all. A platinum-selling musician doesn't actually make all that much money ($40-50k/year is excellent from what I understand), so it seems feasible to me. Simply giving the NEA more money would accomplish this.
I have no idea how to solve the greed problem, though. I just wish the idea of 'reasonable compensation' applied to every form of payment - nobody needs to make $4 million a year to play a sport. And when a musician has made more than a reasonable amount from something they've created, it should enter the public domain where everyone can benefit.
Yeah, yeah, I know, to most of you I'm just a commie bum and only want to steal everyone's hard-earned wealth. But there must be _something_ better than what we've got now.
There's a good statement to be made here about the implied social contract that a representative government makes with it's citizens. As the US population continues to grow, the percentage of people with no marketable skills will likewise continue to increase. And if our society is going to support the idea that we can keep producing more people despite the fact that there are less resources available for them, we need to find a way to keep everyone happy and feeling productive, without overburdening the government or creating a negative social status (welfare).
Put simply, the government needs to be able to support people who want to be artists, writers, musicians, hobbyists, explorers, naturalists, scientists, inventors, or any other interest that involves individual dedication and creativity. The product of the work those people do would be public domain, benefitting everyone, without consuming many resources or putting taxpayer's money to poor use. Meanwhile, anyone with a line on a normal form of employment or who wished to retain ownership of their works would follow the normal, self-supported way of life we all try to have today. Anybody could choose which path to take, and the cost of the system is not as high as you think - it doesn't take much money to pay someone a basic income to relax at home and write poetry. And by supporting people's interests we would be encouraging people to follow them, rather than paying based on the number of children a welfare family can crank out, as we do today.
Until recently, Oxford, Cambridge and other universities in the UK were completely free for citizens to attend. Graduates of those institutions could go on to hold a post with the government, researching various things for a moderate income for all their lives. This is the way things should be, not requiring students to pay hundreds of thousand of dollars to feed the over-inflated salaries of university administrators and who then must accept positions that often encourage them to bend their ethics for the purposes of a greedy individual or corporation.
The government _SHOULD_ be "wasting" millions of dollars paying people to do things like develop a space program. It has benefited us all and cost us much less than the 'war on terror', which has left us only with degraded individual freedoms, dead men and women from mostly lower-income families and more millions into the bank accounts of the businessmen who engineered the whole thing. Thank you, Cheney.
Who cares about 'charts' and where a record is on it? Does anyone even know someone who purchases music based on where on a 'chart' it is? Sure, retail stores make buying decisions based on an album's climb in the charts, but that's their business - overestimate and they have excess stock to sell at a discount eventually.
US media outlets are participating in a great big scam over popularity, in everything from politics to the music industry. Commercial radio, cable and television companies aren't interested in what they play or where on a chart an album is - they're just interested in how much they can charge for a minute of air time.
What makes me really sick is all the campaign money that gets spent in election years. Hundreds of millions of dollars is spent in a popularity contest between candidates, almost all of it going straight into the pockets of the media outlets, and only in those states deemed to be 'winnable' (battleground states). Candidates should be limited to some paltry sum of money and have to rely on free advertising or actual public appearances to garner support.
Far Cry is like almost all the things you described. There is not an actual companion who tells you what to do, although there is someone on the radio that helps occasionally. You can't throw any old item from your inventory, but you can pick up a rock at any time and toss it to distract enemies. You can pick up your binoculars and look around, and hear amplified sounds from wherever you're looking. And you can see for miles across the largest, richest terrain I have ever, ever seen in a game.
You can sneak around entire groups of enemies, too, if you want. You'll have to fight sometimes, of course, and the beginnings and ends of the levels are fixed. But it really is the most dynamic and flexible system I've ever played. I highly recommend trying it out if you want an FPS game that doesn't feel as linear as most.
Who cares if an advertisement is shown claiming that Windows has a lower TCO than Linux? Whether that is true or not depends so much on factors like the salary of sysadmins and minimum hardware specs that you can't possibly make a blanket statement that anyone in business would believe.
On the other hand, compare Microsoft Windows XP (or 2000 if you prefer) to Windows 98 and 95. Microsoft has made many improvements to their software to keep it competitive. Sure, they've added some features that I don't agree with and they tend to be a bit heavy-handed with it comes to privacy, but I am glad to see them trying! And without Windows to compete against, Linux development might suffer as well - even though they are competing, Windows, Mac OS and Linux developers are all contributing ideas to the global development effort - ideas that eventually influence everyone, if they're good. And we all benefit from that.
So don't support this boycott, go to Linux Today and read your news if you are so inclined. And click the Microsoft ad, read what they have to say - you might learn something interesting and you'll send some money to a site you like, in the process.
Me, I usually use a backpack-cooler combo back. It's the perfect size for my Powerbook, miniDV camera, digital camera, snacks, a jacket, sunscreen and anything else you might want to lug around. The cooler insulation makes great padding for the contents, it just looks like it's got peanut butter sandwhiches in it, and I can relax a lot easier than with my pricey computer bag.
For those who are interested, mine looks like one of the Roundabout coolers from this page:
The distinction from my point of view is whether a government is involved in a regulatory capacity. Credit card companies and banks are regulated by the government and face penalties for screwing with customers or not following the special laws that exist specifically for their industries.
Paypal is not regulated in such a way. When something bad happens, the only recourse of the consumer is to hope that Paypal reimburses them - failing that, they can only go to the courts and hope they can afford to fight it out.
Paypal is not the only instance of a new company wielding enormous unregulated power:
- Google controls the prosperity of tens of thousands of small businesses worldwide through it's decisions related to advertising and search result scoring. Overnight, some people are driven into bankruptcy and others find themselves wildly successful whenever Google changes something.
- Ebay facilitates the seemingly legitimate sale of vast numbers of stolen goods, most of which garner a much higher return than the traditional fencing methods. Scammers also proliferate their schemes with practically no protection for unaware buyers. Is "Caveat Emptor" all we need?
- Microsoft still nearly single-handedly decides digital rights and de-facto standards issues with software decisions that are pushed out to the huge market of Windows users.
- Slashdot brings massive bandwidth bills and costly server repairs to anyone who dares to publish news for nerds or stuff that matters.
Without a doubt, each of these companies has brought something incredible to our society, redefining the way we transact business, locate information, even the interface to technology and our files and data. When telephone service was first introduced and operated by a single company, it no doubt seemed incredibly advanced and was welcomed by the people at that time. But it was a monopoly and by nature would not have become the marvelous communication networks that we have today without the advantages of market competition. And the breakup that brought it all about was enforced by our government, who also created laws to govern that specific industry.
Until that happens, we'll just have more stories of people getting burned by big business, and politicians who take fat contributions to avoid doing anything about it. Corporate ethics are a critical - and missing - piece of the American business environment. And Paypal isn't any different.
If a clubber thinks a credit card is too bulky, there's no way they'd be carrying a keychain. Taxi, train, walk or hitch a ride, maybe.
The really cool thing about this is that maybe you can show your ID once and be verified, and never get carded again. So you'd never need to carry ID either, which would be kind of silly if you'd just gotten implanted to avoid having the credit card...
Sure, the girls make more, but you (the viewer) are only paying the cost of a drink or two, or a few bucks when a girl you like is dancing. There are more expensive clubs, and if you pay more you can get more attention, but it's really quite inexpensive normally.
Slashdot Mirror
The NextGen program has had several high-profile failures. The implementation of new routes in Phoenix resulted in a large number of complaints and lawsuits against the FAA. The more recent changes in the SF Bay Area including routing a much higher number of aircraft over Palo Alto and lower elevations in the Santa Cruz Mountains, both of which have angered a great many residents.
Jet traffic brings noise pollution and air pollution to the corridors they travel, resulting in health impacts (though difficult to measure) and sometimes significant reductions in property value. The previous corridors have been used for decades and the impact is well-understood by residents in those areas; the change was not well-communicated before being implemented and residents were mostly caught unawares.
The benefits of these changes include a higher volume of traffic to airports, increasing airport profits; more efficient routes for airlines, increasing airline profits; and potentially cheaper fares for customers resulting from the first two changes. Speaking personally, I would rather keep my home value and quieter skies.
There's one advantage to using the rsync protocol like this; you can provide file access without creating a user account on the system. Even if you secure that user account (e.g. by using an ssh key and limiting commands init, by setting the shell to /sbin/nologin, using chroots, etc) it's still an account with access on the system. Using rsync in this way is analogous to putting some files on a web server behind Basic Auth. And like using a web server, it should never be used for files that contain sensitive information!
Events like this are what keep sysadmins employed. If you're not paying someone to protect your technology infrastructure, including a layered backup strategy, an effective security policy, and regular audits, this is going to happen to you too.
San Francisco has implemented a school lottery. Siblings get first priority, followed by kids from low-income neighborhoods, followed by actual local residents. Almost everyone I know who had kids while living in S.F. either paid for private school ($25k/year and up) or moved out of town, because they didn't get into a good school.
Yes, housing is expensive and public transit is inferior and the crime rate is undesirable and there aren't enough public parks. Most people I know would tolerate all of that if they could get their kids into a good school. Instead you can get a better house, a better school, a better crime rate, great big parks, possibly even a better public transit system by simply moving 30 minutes drive away. It means giving up the big city life and anyone I know would do that happily to give their kids a better shot at a good education.
One of the first things you learn as a new driver is not to watch the car immediately in front of you, but rather to watch several cars ahead (and behind). This gives you more time to react to traffic changes, and you still see the actions of the nearest vehicle anyway.
Sure, Tesla's Autopilot will have a much faster reaction time. That will help, but it's not good enough - it only allows Autopilot to react to conditions that the nearest vehicle also reacts to. A deer running toward the road, looking to jump in front of you? A kid chasing a ball toward the street? The vehicle in front of you swerving out of the way of an object in the road? Autopilot doesn't handle any of them, and can't as long as it lacks the ability to see more of the environment around it.
Autopilot is dangerous to Tesla drivers and others because it removes the attention of the driver from the road. It's basically like asking a nearly blind friend with fast reflexes to take the wheel while you read a book or play games on your phone. If it's not legal for a nearly blind driver to take the wheel, Autopilot shouldn't be legal either.
Well, I'm sure they really would have taken them, but the customs paperwork is just SO unpleasant, you know? And there is the matter of the 17% import duty on livestock, and there needs to be proof that someone will feed and house the chickens so that they don't become a burden on society. We can't have foreign chickens just coming into the country whenever they want.
Racism is making judgements and assumptions about a person based on their race (or apparent race). It's not racist to be aware of race or use it as an adjective. Ignoring those characteristics is called "color blindness" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness_(race)_in_the_United_States) and is rather controversial. You might not like the adjective ("Black" vs "African American"), and that's valid. Just use a different adjective for the same characteristic.
Per that article, 'Martin Luther King, Jr.'s central hope was that people would someday be judged by "the content of their character" rather than "the color of their skin".' He's not saying people shouldn't recognize the color of their skin; just that they should not be judged by it.
In fact, studies have shown that children raised in a "color blind" environment develop their own judgements about their schoolmates, including juvenile observations about race, gender, height, weight, etc that are shockingly biased because they simply haven't been shown anything different. This is especially true in communities that aren't very diverse, where there might only be one or two minority kids available to base those judgements on.
For example, go ask someone who lives in Japan what they think of black people in America.
Use the appropriate adjectives to describe what you're thinking of, and don't make judgements about people simply because they exhibit some of the characteristics described by those adjectives.
To be fair, most of the water in India is about as likely to get you sick as the unwashed hand that precedes it. Give some credit to a culture of people that recognize this, and try to use just one hand so that the other one is still clean for eating, etc. Saves an enormous amount of water, too.
Not surprising, since the website is badoinkvr.com (with an i). Typo domains suck.
Reed Hastings is trying to say that Netflix can only do business by playing by the rules that the TV networks and content producers write. Those groups want to maximize their profit, and so does Reed. If they refuse to do business with Netflix without geographically-limited licensing, Netflix can either say goodbye to customers or agree to do it.
As the head of a public company, Reed doesn't have a choice. I would at least hope that Netflix itself only licenses on a global basis and doesn't engage in geographic limitations.
Donated once to the EFF and the ACLU at different times. The incredible volume of spam mail, junk mail, and phone calls that I received from these two organizations convinced me to never contribute to them again, as well as likely costing them more than my donation.
My advice: Donate to a local organization, not a national or international one. They are less likely to have hordes of administrative flunkies to bother you later (and consume donation money), and you'll be helping the community you live in. There are good causes in every community in America.
Just look at screen resolution - laptops 4-5 years ago reached the peak resolution of what average machines were coming with. Low-end models were usually 1280x800 with many models offering 1440x900 resolution for a modest increase in price.
Now nearly every single laptop made offers only a 1366x768 screen, which is less vertical pixels than people were getting affordably 5 years ago. Those laptops that do offer higher resolution go straight up to 1920x1080, which many people find too small, and at a significant cost increase. And both of these are 16:9 screens, reducing even further the valuable vertical resolution that is additionally consumed by menu bars, system trays, and application launchers.
The simple fact is that there is only a single hardware manufacturer still making laptops with 16:10 screens, and it's Apple. Everyone else is producing small expensive portable televisions with computers attached.
Nobody I know wants to upgrade because it means sacrificing the graphical experience they want.
In more general terms, the important thing is to have priorities. Don't put new cars, cable, computers and clothes above family, time to yourself and enough sleep unless it really means more to you than those things. Does making money matter more to you than quality of life? How do you feel about sacrificing personal time to impress your employer and climb the ladder?
I'm a sysadmin, and I love it. I work long hours usually (hourly, fortunately - any computer professional in California paid less than $41/hour is not exempt from earning overtime), but I get to administer thousands of BSD and Linux machines. At the end of the day, I have good coworkers, a good employer, and still time to spend with my wife and with friends. I get to improve my skills, learn new ones, meet cool people. And that's worth it, to me.
-Elentar
Walking around with your head crunched over onto your shoulder to squeeze the phone there, getting an ache in your ear from flattening it, and having to hold a cellular/cordless phone close to your head for hours-long conference calls all look very retarded to me. Having a quality headset (like those from Plantronics) and being able to use two hands, walk upright and avoid ear/headaches looks very smart.
Of course, if you meant that wearing a stupid-looking headset looks retarded, you're absolutely right - just look at the enormous contraptions that Britney Spears, Garth Brooks, and all those other stage performers have to put up with. But regular users just wanting to have a conversation have a wide range of options, if they're willing to spend some money. Even Radio Shack has some decent choices.
Personally, I like the trend toward USB headsets with built-in sound chips. It makes more sense to put the audio D/A hardware in the actual output device than in the computer, these days - keep it digital for as long as possible, preventing noise and cable mess.
-Elentar
What's the big deal? If you make the choice to let your child have unfiltered access to email and the Internet, you should be prepared to explain things she doesn't understand. And although it may seem otherwise to most people, the concept of racism and the concept of painful anal sex are both undoubtedly difficult for a 5-year old to understand. Both deserve explaining if the child encounters them. So also do the ideas of tolerance, religious freedom, and free speech deserve to be explained to young people, but rarely does anyone complain about them not being understood.
Obviously, you should try to avoid exposing your children to things they can't understand or that they shouldn't try to emulate. But if they do encounter them, what's so tough about simply explaining that some people like to watch other people being hurt? Or that the people in the graphic are having sex in a way that usually hurts, but that sometimes people like doing anyway? Or just that it was a couple of people doing something and sending pictures out on the Internet because they want everyone else to see it? Or whatever explanation makes the most sense to you and your family values?
It's stuff like this that gets ridiculous laws passed. Spam is not a scourge because sometimes a child receives offensive material, or because my mail server gets hundreds of messages a day of pure garbage. The original poster was entirely correct to point out that making fun of people who take things too seriously _IS_ a valid form of commentary.
I like being able to send and receive anything I want in my email. I like that nobody is responsible for censoring it. I like that I don't have to pay for every one that I send as part of some tax to fund a government agency to police the Internet. And I see the UCE/Spam problem as a technical and social one - I have good filters and detectors to eliminate it, and people who email me aren't trying to sell me something, so their emails stand out enough to not be detected. As long as spam continues to come from people trying to make money, detecting it will be easy enough. I wonder how succesful a spam campaign to _give away_ money would be...
-Elentar
I agree with a lot of what you and the parent poster (bluesnowmonkey) said - we certainly shouldn't have a society that makes being unemployed more attractive than working for a living. And taxation is definitely bad! I don't see it going away any time soon, though, so I'm suggesting better ways to spend the money.
The National Endowment for the Arts is a good example of what I'd like to see - taxpayer money going to produce works of art that are in the public domain and anyone can enjoy. Music, poetry, murals, sculpture, etc and all of it available for free (or at the cost of the media) as a direct return on your tax dollars. The NEA is much smaller, and generally just produces art that gets put into museums or public buildings, but it's a start.
Nasa is another good example - your tax dollars could be used to pay scientists to research things that improve all our lives. It doesn't have to be a trip to the moon, either - if a government-funded horticulturalist developed a black rose, you could go buy one and plant it for only the cost of other 'public domain' roses. That would benefit everyone, although certainly some individuals could care less about it.
Allow me to put forth another idea related to taxation - if you work for the government providing your skills to those in need, you are free from having to pay taxes on your income. That income, of course, is also limited - but you have made your finances simpler, you still make enough to live, and you're working for the betterment of our entire society. Is that type of employment for everyone? No, certianly not - likewise not every doctor is willing to volunteer at a Red Cross facility or a homeless shelter. But for those who do wish to do so, there should be some kind of benefit. I have seen far too many professionals who spend much of their extra time and money helping others and still face the same tax burden as others.
Our way of life, being profit and wealth driven, is rooted in the laws our government enforces. Change must begin there if we are to reward ethical behavior and a social conscience - until it becomes at least as rewarding to help others as to help yourself, we will not live in a society where "paying the poet voluntarily" happens.
So, to answer your post, I would like to see the money that is being taken from me at implied gunpoint put to a use I approve of, one that benefits society as a whole. Not putting pot-smokers in prison, paying private contractors to rape prisoners in other countries, creating a security force to harass and delay travellers while providing no actual protection, giving away telephone and electric infrastructures to private companies and investing in technology for poor schools that is left to rot in a warehouse somewhere. I'd rather be enslaved to a poet than enslaved to _THAT_.
-Elentar
I've noticed that too, about the number of avowed capitalists who post regularly on Slashdot...
;-) Yours was the best so far because it brings up a couple of direct points - one being that the public domain is no longer a domain but more of a dusty corner, and the other being that communism (and to an extent, socialism) doesn't work. Whatever a government does to provide for citizens who cannot support themselves, it must not be more attractive than actually working for a wage. This is where better minds than mine are needed - I think that all of society would benefit if anyone had the option to live 'for free' on the government and produce something intangible, but only as long as there was some reason for _everyone_ not to do that.
It's true that my post had many flaws, and I've enjoyed reading the responses, even the ones that made fun of me.
In other words, I'd like to see the government hire artists of all types for the purpose of entertaining us all. A platinum-selling musician doesn't actually make all that much money ($40-50k/year is excellent from what I understand), so it seems feasible to me. Simply giving the NEA more money would accomplish this.
I have no idea how to solve the greed problem, though. I just wish the idea of 'reasonable compensation' applied to every form of payment - nobody needs to make $4 million a year to play a sport. And when a musician has made more than a reasonable amount from something they've created, it should enter the public domain where everyone can benefit.
Yeah, yeah, I know, to most of you I'm just a commie bum and only want to steal everyone's hard-earned wealth. But there must be _something_ better than what we've got now.
-Elentar
There's a good statement to be made here about the implied social contract that a representative government makes with it's citizens. As the US population continues to grow, the percentage of people with no marketable skills will likewise continue to increase. And if our society is going to support the idea that we can keep producing more people despite the fact that there are less resources available for them, we need to find a way to keep everyone happy and feeling productive, without overburdening the government or creating a negative social status (welfare).
Put simply, the government needs to be able to support people who want to be artists, writers, musicians, hobbyists, explorers, naturalists, scientists, inventors, or any other interest that involves individual dedication and creativity. The product of the work those people do would be public domain, benefitting everyone, without consuming many resources or putting taxpayer's money to poor use. Meanwhile, anyone with a line on a normal form of employment or who wished to retain ownership of their works would follow the normal, self-supported way of life we all try to have today. Anybody could choose which path to take, and the cost of the system is not as high as you think - it doesn't take much money to pay someone a basic income to relax at home and write poetry. And by supporting people's interests we would be encouraging people to follow them, rather than paying based on the number of children a welfare family can crank out, as we do today.
Until recently, Oxford, Cambridge and other universities in the UK were completely free for citizens to attend. Graduates of those institutions could go on to hold a post with the government, researching various things for a moderate income for all their lives. This is the way things should be, not requiring students to pay hundreds of thousand of dollars to feed the over-inflated salaries of university administrators and who then must accept positions that often encourage them to bend their ethics for the purposes of a greedy individual or corporation.
The government _SHOULD_ be "wasting" millions of dollars paying people to do things like develop a space program. It has benefited us all and cost us much less than the 'war on terror', which has left us only with degraded individual freedoms, dead men and women from mostly lower-income families and more millions into the bank accounts of the businessmen who engineered the whole thing. Thank you, Cheney.
-Elentar
Who cares about 'charts' and where a record is on it? Does anyone even know someone who purchases music based on where on a 'chart' it is? Sure, retail stores make buying decisions based on an album's climb in the charts, but that's their business - overestimate and they have excess stock to sell at a discount eventually.
US media outlets are participating in a great big scam over popularity, in everything from politics to the music industry. Commercial radio, cable and television companies aren't interested in what they play or where on a chart an album is - they're just interested in how much they can charge for a minute of air time.
What makes me really sick is all the campaign money that gets spent in election years. Hundreds of millions of dollars is spent in a popularity contest between candidates, almost all of it going straight into the pockets of the media outlets, and only in those states deemed to be 'winnable' (battleground states). Candidates should be limited to some paltry sum of money and have to rely on free advertising or actual public appearances to garner support.
Bah.
-Elentar
Far Cry is like almost all the things you described. There is not an actual companion who tells you what to do, although there is someone on the radio that helps occasionally. You can't throw any old item from your inventory, but you can pick up a rock at any time and toss it to distract enemies. You can pick up your binoculars and look around, and hear amplified sounds from wherever you're looking. And you can see for miles across the largest, richest terrain I have ever, ever seen in a game.
You can sneak around entire groups of enemies, too, if you want. You'll have to fight sometimes, of course, and the beginnings and ends of the levels are fixed. But it really is the most dynamic and flexible system I've ever played. I highly recommend trying it out if you want an FPS game that doesn't feel as linear as most.
-Elentar
Who cares if an advertisement is shown claiming that Windows has a lower TCO than Linux? Whether that is true or not depends so much on factors like the salary of sysadmins and minimum hardware specs that you can't possibly make a blanket statement that anyone in business would believe.
On the other hand, compare Microsoft Windows XP (or 2000 if you prefer) to Windows 98 and 95. Microsoft has made many improvements to their software to keep it competitive. Sure, they've added some features that I don't agree with and they tend to be a bit heavy-handed with it comes to privacy, but I am glad to see them trying! And without Windows to compete against, Linux development might suffer as well - even though they are competing, Windows, Mac OS and Linux developers are all contributing ideas to the global development effort - ideas that eventually influence everyone, if they're good. And we all benefit from that.
So don't support this boycott, go to Linux Today and read your news if you are so inclined. And click the Microsoft ad, read what they have to say - you might learn something interesting and you'll send some money to a site you like, in the process.
-Elentar
Me, I usually use a backpack-cooler combo back. It's the perfect size for my Powerbook, miniDV camera, digital camera, snacks, a jacket, sunscreen and anything else you might want to lug around. The cooler insulation makes great padding for the contents, it just looks like it's got peanut butter sandwhiches in it, and I can relax a lot easier than with my pricey computer bag.
i d= 3&step=2
For those who are interested, mine looks like one of the Roundabout coolers from this page:
http://store.ca-innovations.com/merchant.ihtml?
I believe I picked it up at a Long's some time ago.
-Elentar
The distinction from my point of view is whether a government is involved in a regulatory capacity. Credit card companies and banks are regulated by the government and face penalties for screwing with customers or not following the special laws that exist specifically for their industries.
Paypal is not regulated in such a way. When something bad happens, the only recourse of the consumer is to hope that Paypal reimburses them - failing that, they can only go to the courts and hope they can afford to fight it out.
Paypal is not the only instance of a new company wielding enormous unregulated power:
- Google controls the prosperity of tens of thousands of small businesses worldwide through it's decisions related to advertising and search result scoring. Overnight, some people are driven into bankruptcy and others find themselves wildly successful whenever Google changes something.
- Ebay facilitates the seemingly legitimate sale of vast numbers of stolen goods, most of which garner a much higher return than the traditional fencing methods. Scammers also proliferate their schemes with practically no protection for unaware buyers. Is "Caveat Emptor" all we need?
- Microsoft still nearly single-handedly decides digital rights and de-facto standards issues with software decisions that are pushed out to the huge market of Windows users.
- Slashdot brings massive bandwidth bills and costly server repairs to anyone who dares to publish news for nerds or stuff that matters.
Without a doubt, each of these companies has brought something incredible to our society, redefining the way we transact business, locate information, even the interface to technology and our files and data. When telephone service was first introduced and operated by a single company, it no doubt seemed incredibly advanced and was welcomed by the people at that time. But it was a monopoly and by nature would not have become the marvelous communication networks that we have today without the advantages of market competition. And the breakup that brought it all about was enforced by our government, who also created laws to govern that specific industry.
Until that happens, we'll just have more stories of people getting burned by big business, and politicians who take fat contributions to avoid doing anything about it. Corporate ethics are a critical - and missing - piece of the American business environment. And Paypal isn't any different.
-Elentar
If a clubber thinks a credit card is too bulky, there's no way they'd be carrying a keychain. Taxi, train, walk or hitch a ride, maybe.
The really cool thing about this is that maybe you can show your ID once and be verified, and never get carded again. So you'd never need to carry ID either, which would be kind of silly if you'd just gotten implanted to avoid having the credit card...
-Elentar
Sure, the girls make more, but you (the viewer) are only paying the cost of a drink or two, or a few bucks when a girl you like is dancing. There are more expensive clubs, and if you pay more you can get more attention, but it's really quite inexpensive normally.
-Elentar