It is in the form of property tax (and to a lesser extend real-estate transfer tax). If your house is worth more, you pay more tax.
Income tax is in the realm of state government. When I used to live in Philidelphia it was a mixture (of property, income, and sales taxes), but the income tax was about 2/3's of the total, so it did not leave much room for adjustment on desirability (property value).
But micro payments may work as a form of "micro patronage" (which I think is the wave of the future).
It worked for Penny-Arcade during burst 1.0, so I expect it is somewhat viable.
Since artistic content is essentially free to redistribute, and readily available via P2P, any purchase at all is a form of patronage (yeah yeah, we like an album ect, but what I really here most often is "support the artist".
If I could pay a site I liked $.50 and they got $.48 cents of it, we are on our way. Currently the $.50 gets the site something like $.30, makes it a far less viable option.
There are probably plenty of sites in that range, though it isn't totally scalable (I doubt enough from users of Google could be done for example).
Windows is more than an OS though. It is also a desktop environment. There are some things in Vista that make it worth the money IMO (not necessarily the other problems though).
If Windows 7 is just a Vista as it "should have been" then it is good. The new start button, the window preview thumbnails, the new explorer, improved copying (assuming it is not super slow any more), the searching start button, and snapshotting of files will make it well worth it. As long as it doesn't feel a non-responsive. Some feature such as continuing a copy/move even when a conflict arises are things I haven't experienced in any other OSes (that I've noticed), the integrated snapshotting in-place of files is a feature that has significant value, and the new start-button and explorer app are great. Sure perhaps all of these are available as stand alone applications (probably not task-bar thumbnails though), but at that point your faster XP probably won't be. Additionally non-privileged admin accounts are a nice touch.
Already Areo is becoming superior to software rendering even on low-end systems (not only letting things work smoother, but also taking the drawing task away from the CPU).
Maybe you don't have interested in the advancements in computing since XP have out, but I do, and I imagine many others do too (of course that's why I use Linux, generally I get these things as they become practical at no cost).
My point was that evangelical Linux fans do not help the cause by saying things such as
...AND that most of their existing software, including games, will still work, they'll switch.
As user exclusively of Linux at home for a while now, and spending most of the last 10 years using it as my primary desktop system, I would love to see more people using it. I don't think spreading lies is the way to do so though.
Looking at WineHQ there are a few things that work well, a lot that works decently if you either pirate parts of Windows, or have a Windows license, and a bunch that sort of kind of works.
It is unfortunate that the reviewers use gold when silver is more appropriate (see fallout 3). Additionally the stuff that "works" with wine gives mixed results too. Wine is great of you are geek who wants to futz around to play some games in your spare time (it's kind of like using DOS and getting games to work), or if that must-have app is supported through it (or variant).
The road to Linux adoption IMO is not lies, but instead more nuanced approaches like what you said above (though the emphasis on does is a little much). Linux is good because it allows hardware from the Win98 and ME era to become a modern Internet machine. It additionally has a VAST amount of free/Free software that is easy to search and install. The easy working with video (Devede is the easiest DVD authoring software ever for example). The fantastic music players, file/picture browsers, and built in games sets.
For those with friends scattered about the world, the international DVD support is nice, and the DVD ripping is pretty solid too.
The fact that there is a trusted source for pretty much anything you want, and it can be searched and installed for free (e.g. no more $20 solitaire packs) is the selling point. Using existing software is setting people up for a bad impression.
Most of their software including games will NOT continue to work.
Please don't spread such ridiculousness, it gives people who make the change the wrong impression, and sends them running back.
Saying that there are "good enough" Free replacements for most software (excluding games) and a few games that will still work is much more honest, and in the long run a better strategy.
Actually I am pretty sure there is no risk of my wife being out competed. Higher teacher pay would not do anything but benefit us.
What I have concern about is some of her colleagues are fantastic teachers, who understand the struggles that average (and less than average) students go though. They would almost certainly lose on paper against anybody who went in for the money if teaching was a very high pay job. These are people that know the subject way better than the 6-8th graders, and additionally know first hand the stumbling blocks to learning it.
A lot of "well qualified" teachers have trouble teaching to anyone but "gifted" children. It is these teachers that were average students, but love teaching, and have a gift for it that I think need to be in schools, and could easily be left out of a highly competitive market.
Just look at how clueless a lot of "well qualified" people in the education system are (principals can be terribly out of tune with the needs of the school).
Was India Eastern Block or Western then (if not third world it must have been 1).
Interestingly the 1st world also has priorities higher than getting everyone a laptop (proven by the fact that many don't have laptops in the 1st world, and it largely goes ignored).
We should do the same thing to Doctors, unfortunately the AMA makes sure it doesn't happen.
Even though we have fewer Doctors in the US than pretty much every other developed country, the AMA still limits the number significantly. If there was anything resembling a market for medical practice, Doctors would indeed be paid less. America is fairly unique in its incredibly high-pay doctors.
I know less about it, but I am willing to be the bar association does a similar thing to keep lawyers over-paid.
I'm willing to bet the balance on engineers is about right, it's not the type of thing broad ranges of people want to be.
In my area a teacher with a masters (first year) is right about at the median household income for the area (or the top third for the country, in what is actually not too expensive a place to live).
This is not great pay, but it is not bad, and comes to a pretty high daily pay.
I'm sure that if you truly want to teach you will end up there later in life, with more life experience, I know that many of my best teachers made that choice once their children were through college.
But yes, if you have a job that is generally sought after and enjoyable you should get paid less than a similar job that is shitty.
In every industry the better jobs of similar skill pay less, for example, night shifts pay more than day shifts. I personally find that fair, but maybe you don't.
If you are trying to roll teaching into the industry that teachers were trained in, rather than as it's own industry, it would be on the desirable side.
My wife chose her teaching job over Academics (voluntary withdraw from a U-Penn PHD program after achieving a MA, and being invited to continue), Non-Profit Management (she was Assistant Director of a medium sized (3-4 million budget) non-profit, and Data Management (she was one of 2 people maintaining a temporal student database at Drexel College of Medicine), these were all careers with significantly more pay than k-12 teaching, and yet she was drawn to it for a host of reasons. Probably in any of them she would out-earn any teacher (in our area) within 5-10 years, and Drexel had employer contributions to 401K to make it better than even the state pension she is eligible for as a teacher.
I think teachers should be paid decently, and I certainly think the bad ones should be held accountable, but paying enough that teaching attracts profiteers is dangerous.
What I think needs to happen for better teachers is not more pay, but more help getting successful people to move into the field with some experience. We ended up moving 50 miles to find somewhere that did this (to a state that paid for the schooling, and let you start teaching quickly at full pay).
Paying enough that it will attract the same types as lawyers will lead to a disaster.
I agree with your points 2 and 3, but there is serious risk of raising salaries too much. Especially at the younger levels.
The desire to teach is a HUGE positive in a teacher, and currently most teachers could be making more money. This means they are taking a portion of their pay in job satisfaction (don't let them fool you, it is a great job that makes you feel good).
Paying enough that teaching appeals to people in it for the money is risky.
Also, teachers with a good education make decent money, certainly as much as any other entry level job for someone with a liberal arts degree. I don't know what people make with science backgrounds though, but I bet it is more.
The facts as I see them are: 1) google employees, through the organisation, gave almost 1 million USD to Obama.
2) days after being sworn in, whitehouse.gov changes policy to allow google to track it's visitors. Because they want to ebmbed videos from only google into their pages.
The fair solutions (as I see them) would be to either: 1) allow all embeded media to track, not only your donors
2) host your own damned media, and don't track.
3) eliminate the no tracking policy at all.
The solution that gives me concern was: 1) specifically allow one of your largest contributors to track viewers to whitehouse.gov
He ran a company that turns out crap (doing more harm than good to many computers).
The software is anti-consumer in it's behavior (e.g. deceptive un-install)
I bet there was some weird deal though. After the special exception to allow google to track visitors to the website (at a cost of $750,000 it appears), I pretty much assume he is wrapped up in similar (though hopefully not as bad) politics as other Illinois politicians.
The presence of another party that shares views is irrelevent, if you are not a partisan Libertarian, but share liberalist ideas, then you are liberalist, not a Libertarian.
I always read the negative reviews. See what the those disappointed have to say. Sometimes it is stuff I already new, sometimes it is people who were not the target, sometimes they just wine, or sometimes I learn something new.
I heard about it in the radio (assuming it was the same research, I heard it about 2 weeks ago), and what I found interesting was the caloric intake for different foods was dramatically different for different people (based on stomach biology).
I guess it amounts to: 1) they will not count any non-gpl plug-in as existing for their purposes 2) they can say that in their interpretation distributing a plug-in that is non-gpl is a violation of the gpl (this can influence behavior, but I would think that if they are totally separate than there is nothing FSF can do).
There are also some special clauses in the license for gcc, I guess those may be alterable somehow.
I will agree to a point, except every KDE4 app I have used I have loved (have not used Amarok 2).
The way that QT4 handles interfaces is unmatched IMO. Try out Eric IDE for an example of what I mean.
I also find Oxygen theme (icons toolbars, not window decorations) to be nice (but way too big, kcalc for KDE4 is ridiculous in wasted space).
I can't wait for Amarok 2 t get stable, and feature complete, or for the new koffice to be ready, but until Plasma and the new Kwin mature some more I will almost certainly continue using them in gnome.
I like Plasma in principal too, but yuck on performance, and stability (speaking from 4.0 and 4.1 usage).
My largest problem with plasma is that my folder view widget scrolls very slowly, and I would actually like some more dolphiness in it too, for example, switch view mode to details, or use it as a file browser, but have a "home" button that goes to the folder it is set too.
Also, it feels like there are a lot of features offered that are not yet finished (e.g. I have NEVER had an OSX widget even sort of work, I tried 5 or 6). The OSX widget thing was quite shocking, because all I read about was how they were supported, and then I couldn't get them to actually work.
I think at if the rate of improvement between 4.0 and 4.1 continues, 4.2 will be usable, and 4.3 will be something beyond 3.5, though maybe not for lower end machines, though the fact that handhelds are a target, I hope it works on something with 512, or even 256 MB of RAM, less would obviously be better even.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, because the XP, Vista, and Vista legacy classic all look and feel the same.
Especially when I use Office 2007 and Office 2003.
By comparison, I have a plain default Ubuntu 8.10 install.
My Kernel is 2.4 MB (This is zipped I think though?)
my /lib/modules/2.6.27.14/* is 11.8 MB
So even by default it isn't too bad.
In my area we have that system.
It is in the form of property tax (and to a lesser extend real-estate transfer tax). If your house is worth more, you pay more tax.
Income tax is in the realm of state government. When I used to live in Philidelphia it was a mixture (of property, income, and sales taxes), but the income tax was about 2/3's of the total, so it did not leave much room for adjustment on desirability (property value).
It's funny, because in my state they are selling it as a tourist attraction for the beaches.
Of course in an area of primarily home-owners I guess that is a bad thing.
But micro payments may work as a form of "micro patronage" (which I think is the wave of the future).
It worked for Penny-Arcade during burst 1.0, so I expect it is somewhat viable.
Since artistic content is essentially free to redistribute, and readily available via P2P, any purchase at all is a form of patronage (yeah yeah, we like an album ect, but what I really here most often is "support the artist".
If I could pay a site I liked $.50 and they got $.48 cents of it, we are on our way. Currently the $.50 gets the site something like $.30, makes it a far less viable option.
There are probably plenty of sites in that range, though it isn't totally scalable (I doubt enough from users of Google could be done for example).
Windows is more than an OS though. It is also a desktop environment. There are some things in Vista that make it worth the money IMO (not necessarily the other problems though).
If Windows 7 is just a Vista as it "should have been" then it is good. The new start button, the window preview thumbnails, the new explorer, improved copying (assuming it is not super slow any more), the searching start button, and snapshotting of files will make it well worth it. As long as it doesn't feel a non-responsive. Some feature such as continuing a copy/move even when a conflict arises are things I haven't experienced in any other OSes (that I've noticed), the integrated snapshotting in-place of files is a feature that has significant value, and the new start-button and explorer app are great. Sure perhaps all of these are available as stand alone applications (probably not task-bar thumbnails though), but at that point your faster XP probably won't be. Additionally non-privileged admin accounts are a nice touch.
Already Areo is becoming superior to software rendering even on low-end systems (not only letting things work smoother, but also taking the drawing task away from the CPU).
Maybe you don't have interested in the advancements in computing since XP have out, but I do, and I imagine many others do too (of course that's why I use Linux, generally I get these things as they become practical at no cost).
My point was that evangelical Linux fans do not help the cause by saying things such as
...AND that most of their existing software, including games, will still work, they'll switch.
As user exclusively of Linux at home for a while now, and spending most of the last 10 years using it as my primary desktop system, I would love to see more people using it. I don't think spreading lies is the way to do so though.
Looking at WineHQ there are a few things that work well, a lot that works decently if you either pirate parts of Windows, or have a Windows license, and a bunch that sort of kind of works.
It is unfortunate that the reviewers use gold when silver is more appropriate (see fallout 3). Additionally the stuff that "works" with wine gives mixed results too. Wine is great of you are geek who wants to futz around to play some games in your spare time (it's kind of like using DOS and getting games to work), or if that must-have app is supported through it (or variant).
The road to Linux adoption IMO is not lies, but instead more nuanced approaches like what you said above (though the emphasis on does is a little much). Linux is good because it allows hardware from the Win98 and ME era to become a modern Internet machine. It additionally has a VAST amount of free/Free software that is easy to search and install. The easy working with video (Devede is the easiest DVD authoring software ever for example). The fantastic music players, file/picture browsers, and built in games sets.
For those with friends scattered about the world, the international DVD support is nice, and the DVD ripping is pretty solid too.
The fact that there is a trusted source for pretty much anything you want, and it can be searched and installed for free (e.g. no more $20 solitaire packs) is the selling point. Using existing software is setting people up for a bad impression.
Most of their software including games will NOT continue to work.
Please don't spread such ridiculousness, it gives people who make the change the wrong impression, and sends them running back.
Saying that there are "good enough" Free replacements for most software (excluding games) and a few games that will still work is much more honest, and in the long run a better strategy.
The updated file browser (assuming it used the same one as Vista)
It is the best non-Linux default file browser I've used.
There's probably a few other little built in things that make life better too, but for me that is the one I use every day and really appreciate.
Actually I am pretty sure there is no risk of my wife being out competed. Higher teacher pay would not do anything but benefit us.
What I have concern about is some of her colleagues are fantastic teachers, who understand the struggles that average (and less than average) students go though. They would almost certainly lose on paper against anybody who went in for the money if teaching was a very high pay job. These are people that know the subject way better than the 6-8th graders, and additionally know first hand the stumbling blocks to learning it.
A lot of "well qualified" teachers have trouble teaching to anyone but "gifted" children. It is these teachers that were average students, but love teaching, and have a gift for it that I think need to be in schools, and could easily be left out of a highly competitive market.
Just look at how clueless a lot of "well qualified" people in the education system are (principals can be terribly out of tune with the needs of the school).
Was India Eastern Block or Western then (if not third world it must have been 1).
Interestingly the 1st world also has priorities higher than getting everyone a laptop (proven by the fact that many don't have laptops in the 1st world, and it largely goes ignored).
We should do the same thing to Doctors, unfortunately the AMA makes sure it doesn't happen.
Even though we have fewer Doctors in the US than pretty much every other developed country, the AMA still limits the number significantly. If there was anything resembling a market for medical practice, Doctors would indeed be paid less. America is fairly unique in its incredibly high-pay doctors.
I know less about it, but I am willing to be the bar association does a similar thing to keep lawyers over-paid.
I'm willing to bet the balance on engineers is about right, it's not the type of thing broad ranges of people want to be.
In my area a teacher with a masters (first year) is right about at the median household income for the area (or the top third for the country, in what is actually not too expensive a place to live).
This is not great pay, but it is not bad, and comes to a pretty high daily pay.
I'm sure that if you truly want to teach you will end up there later in life, with more life experience, I know that many of my best teachers made that choice once their children were through college.
Sorry to offend.
But yes, if you have a job that is generally sought after and enjoyable you should get paid less than a similar job that is shitty.
In every industry the better jobs of similar skill pay less, for example, night shifts pay more than day shifts. I personally find that fair, but maybe you don't.
If you are trying to roll teaching into the industry that teachers were trained in, rather than as it's own industry, it would be on the desirable side.
My wife chose her teaching job over Academics (voluntary withdraw from a U-Penn PHD program after achieving a MA, and being invited to continue), Non-Profit Management (she was Assistant Director of a medium sized (3-4 million budget) non-profit, and Data Management (she was one of 2 people maintaining a temporal student database at Drexel College of Medicine), these were all careers with significantly more pay than k-12 teaching, and yet she was drawn to it for a host of reasons. Probably in any of them she would out-earn any teacher (in our area) within 5-10 years, and Drexel had employer contributions to 401K to make it better than even the state pension she is eligible for as a teacher.
I think teachers should be paid decently, and I certainly think the bad ones should be held accountable, but paying enough that teaching attracts profiteers is dangerous.
What I think needs to happen for better teachers is not more pay, but more help getting successful people to move into the field with some experience. We ended up moving 50 miles to find somewhere that did this (to a state that paid for the schooling, and let you start teaching quickly at full pay).
Paying enough that it will attract the same types as lawyers will lead to a disaster.
Is it really that much worse to rip the discs you have?
I agree with your points 2 and 3, but there is serious risk of raising salaries too much. Especially at the younger levels.
The desire to teach is a HUGE positive in a teacher, and currently most teachers could be making more money. This means they are taking a portion of their pay in job satisfaction (don't let them fool you, it is a great job that makes you feel good).
Paying enough that teaching appeals to people in it for the money is risky.
Also, teachers with a good education make decent money, certainly as much as any other entry level job for someone with a liberal arts degree. I don't know what people make with science backgrounds though, but I bet it is more.
If the administration wrote special exceptions into long standing rules for the benefit of MS I would have similar concerns.
Do you think the most reasonable solution to problems using embedded media is to write a specific exception for one specific vendor?
And if one were choosing the vendor, is the right choice the one that is most likely to be able to match IP address at the moment to a name?
Money bundled by Google:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638
The facts as I see them are:
1) google employees, through the organisation, gave almost 1 million USD to Obama.
2) days after being sworn in, whitehouse.gov changes policy to allow google to track it's visitors. Because they want to ebmbed videos from only google into their pages.
The fair solutions (as I see them) would be to either:
1) allow all embeded media to track, not only your donors
2) host your own damned media, and don't track.
3) eliminate the no tracking policy at all.
The solution that gives me concern was:
1) specifically allow one of your largest contributors to track viewers to whitehouse.gov
Agreed, this guy fails on all counts.
He profiteered on scare scaremongering.
He ran a company that turns out crap (doing more harm than good to many computers).
The software is anti-consumer in it's behavior (e.g. deceptive un-install)
I bet there was some weird deal though. After the special exception to allow google to track visitors to the website (at a cost of $750,000 it appears), I pretty much assume he is wrapped up in similar (though hopefully not as bad) politics as other Illinois politicians.
Libertarian is a political party.
liberalism is an ideology.
The presence of another party that shares views is irrelevent, if you are not a partisan Libertarian, but share liberalist ideas, then you are liberalist, not a Libertarian.
They actually decided to give notebook the axe treatment instead.
I always read the negative reviews. See what the those disappointed have to say. Sometimes it is stuff I already new, sometimes it is people who were not the target, sometimes they just wine, or sometimes I learn something new.
I heard about it in the radio (assuming it was the same research, I heard it about 2 weeks ago), and what I found interesting was the caloric intake for different foods was dramatically different for different people (based on stomach biology).
I was thinking about this too.
I guess it amounts to:
1) they will not count any non-gpl plug-in as existing for their purposes
2) they can say that in their interpretation distributing a plug-in that is non-gpl is a violation of the gpl (this can influence behavior, but I would think that if they are totally separate than there is nothing FSF can do).
There are also some special clauses in the license for gcc, I guess those may be alterable somehow.
I will agree to a point, except every KDE4 app I have used I have loved (have not used Amarok 2).
The way that QT4 handles interfaces is unmatched IMO. Try out Eric IDE for an example of what I mean.
I also find Oxygen theme (icons toolbars, not window decorations) to be nice (but way too big, kcalc for KDE4 is ridiculous in wasted space).
I can't wait for Amarok 2 t get stable, and feature complete, or for the new koffice to be ready, but until Plasma and the new Kwin mature some more I will almost certainly continue using them in gnome.
I like Plasma in principal too, but yuck on performance, and stability (speaking from 4.0 and 4.1 usage).
My largest problem with plasma is that my folder view widget scrolls very slowly, and I would actually like some more dolphiness in it too, for example, switch view mode to details, or use it as a file browser, but have a "home" button that goes to the folder it is set too.
Also, it feels like there are a lot of features offered that are not yet finished (e.g. I have NEVER had an OSX widget even sort of work, I tried 5 or 6). The OSX widget thing was quite shocking, because all I read about was how they were supported, and then I couldn't get them to actually work.
I think at if the rate of improvement between 4.0 and 4.1 continues, 4.2 will be usable, and 4.3 will be something beyond 3.5, though maybe not for lower end machines, though the fact that handhelds are a target, I hope it works on something with 512, or even 256 MB of RAM, less would obviously be better even.
Your insesative post is putting it on my radar.
It was -1 and I didn't see it, except somebody had to post a reply with a 0, thanks.