Sorry, but the idea that LPNs and PAs are practicing under the guidance of doctors is mostly a legal ideal. They are under their guidance no more than they are under the guidance of any other peer.
If you think they are working with complete autonomy you are mistaken. Furthermore they are in no way a peer to the doctors. They are a subordinate both in rank and in capability.
Honestly, the difference between PAs and MDs is blurring very rapidly.
No it really isn't. The differences in training between the two is vast. Doctors have a MINIMUM of 11 years of post high school education (4y undergrad + 4y med school + min3y residency) and the intensity of their training is far higher. It's not even a comparison. Functionally they aren't close either. Sure you can teach a PA to do some of the more routine, highly repeatable activities and they can do it quite competently in many cases. That doesn't even come close to "blurring the line" between them. It's like the difference between a taxi driver and a formula one driver. They both can drive competently but you can't drop a taxi driver into a formula one car and expect good results.
That said, I would be the first to agree that we can and should use PAs to help reduce costs and improve care where practical and appropriate.
People need to stop idolizing physicians as if no one else can independently provide care.
Beyond a certain complexity of disease no one else besides doctors can competently provide care. You don't go to a doctor because you have a routine case of the sniffles. You see a doctor for when that routine case of the sniffles happens to actually be something more serious. You don't go to a doctor because you have a mole, you go because only a doctor is going to know that it isn't actually a mole but is melanoma. Doctors are trusted with care because they are the ones who have the training to deal with the unusual corner cases. They are the ones you need when a patient is coding on the table.
This is a bit tangential, but not entirely, because my guess is eventually robots will be just as skilled--probably more skilled--than surgeons.
Baring a miraculous technological breakthrough that won't happen in your lifetime or mine in all likelihood.
And not too long ago, you needed to be a doctor to give out doctorly advice, write prescriptions, etc. Now LPN and PAs do it for routine tasks under the guidance of doctors.
The key words there are "under the guidance of doctors". It's no different than a medical student being allowed to do a procedure under the supervision of an attending. Did you know that much of the surgery done in teaching hospitals is done by less qualified staff? The surgeon is required to be present for the key parts of the procedure but once that is done the closing up is done by support staff. This is nothing new.
But I could see trained medical professionals who may not be full fledged surgeons doing routine procedures.
Under the supervision of a surgeon. The value of a surgeon isn't in the routine things. The value of a surgeon is for the weird things. When things go horribly wrong. THAT is when a surgeon earns their pay. Their value hockey sticks when the shit hits the fan. With a little coaching you or I could do an appendectomy. But if the patient codes on the table (which is a thing that happens) we're not the people you want in the room.
Robots May Soon Put Surgery Into the Hands of Non-Surgeons
No it won't. No way, no how. Not in my lifetime. The liability concerns alone mean it won't happen. Yes the technology is getting better but that's not remotely the same thing as letting non-surgeons cut people.
One new robot is so easy to use that even med students can achieve proficiency with a few tries, according to Umamaheswar Duvvuri, director of head and neck surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Wow, smart people training to be surgeons get proficient at basic surgery quickly. How astonishing.... [/sarcasm]
Paris Hilton earns millions annually through TV, product endorsements, and her own brands. She has a net worth of over $100 million. Less than $5M of that came from her inheritance.
Presuming that is true then good for her doing so well prostituting herself. I find it amazing that anyone gives a damn about anything she is involved in but good for her for making something of her opportunities.
She manages and invests her money well.
No, she has people that manage her money well for her. I guaran-damn-tee you she isn't managing her money herself. She as agents, investment advisers, family connections, etc.
I don't think she is as dumb as you think she is.
I don't think she is some brilliant business woman either. She comes from a family with money. Along with that tends to come some really smart advisers.
Stats is 'memorize and regurgitate'/'plug and chug' before calculus.
Only if you aren't paying the slightest bit of attention. If you don't know how to explain Bayes Theorem in a real-world useful way without invoking integrals then you don't really understand it sufficiently. I've personally taken over 15 statistics heavy courses when I was in college (both undergrad and grad school) and I think we actually got into integration in maybe 2 of them. The notion that you need calculus to understand or do useful things with statistics is demonstrably nonsense. It helps but it's not remotely a requirement for comprehension.
Of course for most people who are destined to never pass real calculus, all math is 'memorize and regurgitate'.
That is not unique to math classes. Our entire academic system rewards people who are good at memorize and regurgitate. Actual analytical ability is routinely discouraged both directly and indirectly. I know plenty of people who did pass calculus who were very good at memorization but not so awesome at logically reasoning their way through problems. Medical schools are positively loaded with them. Skill at memorization is hugely rewarded there. It is FAR easier to get good grades by being good at memorizing while having modest analytical abilities than it is to be great analytically but pedestrian at memorizing.
This is tying people to the lowest rung of understanding
Ridiculous. Teaching intro stats before calculus does nothing of the sort.
Perfectly fine if you want a nation of data consumers who believe what you feed them instead of analyzing it themselves
We already have that. Frankly statistics is not given nearly as much attention in our schools as it should be. Requiring an intro level stats course could not possibly make it worse. All you get by requiring calc before stats is more people with a poor grasp of statistics because relatively few will ever take calculus. I don't know that we should dump Algebra for stats but I have no problem with requiring most students to take a basic stats course.
What comes next, people griping that nobody should be allowed to use higher math because it is too hard for them to understand?
Forget algebra, how can you teach stats to someone with zero exposure to calculus?
You can do a basic stats class for people who haven't had calculus. I know because I have taught and tutored people in stats who haven't had calculus. You will find very few stats classes that will require you to actually have a deep understanding of calculus. Sure, if you do know calc you can go deeper into stats but it isn't vital to start with. You can teach Bayes theorem, conditional probability, and lots more without ever doing a derivative or integral. I made my living doing statistical simulations and none of it required me to actually do any calculus to get useful answers.
Probability theory can't be described without limits and infinite summations, i.e. you can't comprehend it without calculus.
Not true, at least at the introductory level. Most people can understand a bell curve just fine without ever having taken a calculus class. Just because they can't derive the formula for the curve doesn't mean they can't understand the concept it represents. It's no different than intro physics in that regard. Plenty of people take intro physics prior to or concurrently with calculus. It's when you want to go deeper that you might need to understand some calculus but most people will never get there.
Problem is, that tactic doesn't really work much anymore.
Like hell it doesn't. That tactic is why we have things like the Patriot Act. It's why we ended up in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's why we have this absurd and wasteful War on Drugs and the largest prison population in the world. (Hint, if our prison population is larger than China's then we are doing something wrong)
Sorry but accusations of being soft on crime are extremely effective as a political tactic. The public demonstrably falls for them each and every time and there is no evidence to the contrary.
I can't speak for most ABP users, but I wonder what percentage of/. users disable advertising. I'm eligible to disable it but never have.
I would imagine not many but mostly because they are already using ad blocking software. Nothing gained by having slashdot block the ads when one is already doing it by default though third party software. I'd be happy to subscribe to slashdot if they would bother to offer it AND offer some value added features. Just blocking ads provides no value because I can already do that without spending a penny.
There are clearly times when we *want* ads. I want to know about new, exciting things that might benefit me.
"We want ads"? Speak for yourself. If you are actually interested in them I have no quarrel with that but I very definitely do NOT want ads. They provide me nothing of value aside from maybe a subsidy on some content. If something really is new and exciting I'll hear about it in other ways. I could live with ads in a newspaper despite the fact that they are wasteful because they were a subsidy of a sort. But on the internet there is a super creepy tracking/targeting component to the whole thing which I am NOT ok with. Not to mention the bandwidth consumption and malware vectoring. As far as I'm concerned online ads as they currently exist can die in a fire.
If you get something from your employer, they get to monitor it. If it's something you yourself provided, then you call the shots. What's so technical about it?
There is a third option. You provide the device but want to access the employer's network with it. No sane employer would permit you to attach a device they didn't buy, approve or at least have the ability to monitor. You don't have to provide them access to the device but then you can't attach your device to their network either.
Why would someone let your employer monitor YOUR iphone?
The employer may require it as a condition of letting you attach your device to their network. You don't have to let them monitor your phone but they don't have to let you access their network with it either.
I'd look at ads if the advertiser paid me to. Maybe
I suspect most people would if you paid them enough. I certainly would though my hourly rate would be considered absurdly high by any reasonable advertiser. I consider my time to be a precious resource and charge accordingly.
Except that people don't block these ads. Most ABP users allow "acceptable ads," including me.
Let's be frank. The ONLY reason for that is because most ABP users don't know they can block even more ads by digging for their hidden little check box and the don't exactly make it convenient or obvious. It should be opt-in, not opt-out. ABP is doing a form of extortion but since the advertisers have behaved SOOO badly I don't really care in this case.
Assumptions that I'm going to be ok with any form of advertising by default are going to be met by me with hostility. I run several ad blockers, I watch pretty much all TV with a DVR, and I charge an hourly rate for my time if people want my attention for commercial purposes. I don't allow even "acceptable" ads because my definition of acceptable differs from ABP.
I'm perfectly happy to pay a reasonable subscription fee to website I find valuable. I currently pay for several of them. If they want me to view ads then they need to start paying me in cash money at a rate I find agreeable because my price for my time and attention is considerable higher than the value to me of any content they are likely to provide. I have a price but it isn't cheap.
He described the practice of charging companies to be whitelisted as a 'modern day protection racket', and said: "Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist
That's EXACTLY the point. I didn't agree to view advertising in exchange for the content. Nobody contacted me about the arrangement to find out how I felt about it. If their business model depends on annoying me in a way that I have the power to stop then it should surprise no one when I go ahead and stop them from bothering me. Their stupid business model is not my problem.
FBI must be desperate, trying to lump people who believe in security with terrorists...
Not desperate. Just self interested and politically savvy. Accusing someone you oppose politically of being soft on or aligned with crime/terrorism is one of the oldest plays in politics. It's how we end up with absurd things like mandatory minimum and three strikes laws that do nothing to prevent crime. It's how we end up with a prison camp in Cuba, extraordinary rendition, torture, etc and the government doing nothing about it. Speak out against those things and you just feed ammo to your political enemies.
The FBI wants their job to be as easy as possible. They'll pay lip service to observing the constitution but at the end of the day they'll take making their job easier over your civil rights every time.
There is always the fact the Windows security is abysmal.
Which again is something people clearly don't care much about. Certainly not enough to switch to linux. And it's not as if the security on linux devices is universally bullet proof. It's better than Windows in many ways (talk about damning with faint praise...) but there are still plenty of security issues. Outside of certain security conscious organizations (like the DoD), security is a second or third order consideration.
The DoD has been replacing Windows for mission critical systems for some years now.
I could point out plenty of organizations that have found linux to be a better solution for their particular needs than Windows. Wall street is making pretty heavy use of linux too. That said, Windows still has somewhere around 90%+ of the desktop market and somewhere around 30% of the server market and those numbers have held steady for quite some time. Anecdotal stories of particular organizations (even large ones) switching doesn't tell us anything very useful. I'm not trying to downplay the importance of linux. Merely pointing out that it simply isn't going to win the fight on the desktop against Windows and that Windows isn't capturing meaningful market share from linux on servers.
No, you CANNOT be forced to testify against somebody else. You can only be forced to describe the truth as it is known to you.
A distinction without a difference depending on who is doing the questioning. Furthermore testimony is routinely not truth and even when it is it may not end up as your version of the truth. Any lawyer worth his diploma can frame the questions and twist your answers to suit his narrative of "the truth".
I'll presume you are being serious. Most people are familiar enough with Windows that anything other than a completely revolutionary gotta-have-it huge improvement isn't going to matter. If they haven't done it in 20 years I don't think we should reasonably expect it any time soon. Furthermore any such improvement could likely be easily copied by Microsoft in short order.
As for privacy, people clearly aren't too concerned with that. If you need evidence I refer you to Facebook as exhibit A. A few people care greatly about it but they are a tiny tiny minority. Most people don't care much about privacy as an abstract concept.
Neither of those things is going to cause people to switch who weren't already strongly inclined to switch anyway. The desktop PC battle is over and Microsoft won. However look at tablets and phones and Linux has a real opportunity there through Android. Tablets are making a huge dent in desktop PC sales and Android tablets are a big part of that.
The first problem is that Linux is making no inroads into the desktop/workstation market.
Nothing new there. It's going to be virtually impossible to push Windows out of this desktop market. It's simple network effects. Linux would have to offer something that isn't available on Windows that people care strongly about for people to switch. Unlikely that is going to happen. The only thing that linux has that Windows doesn't is that it is available for free. But until the applications they use are also available on linux AND it is installed from day 1 they aren't going to switch en-mass.
Worse, Linux is becoming questioned as a server OS.
Not really. Yes it has problems but that's nothing new and none of them are so awful that it's going to change the landscape. People that use Windows servers will mostly continue to do so and people that use linux servers will mostly continue to do so. There really aren't any other serious options for most use cases. BSD isn't really terribly different (porting software between them is trivial) and OS X isn't really used for servers.
While the Linux kernel does see widespread use in mobile devices through Android, it's critical to note that it's well hidden, with little use made of GNU or other open source software.
So what? That's nothing new either. Whether or not people are aware they are using linux is mostly not very important. Most people don't care so long as it does what they want. Whether or not they know it is open source is similarly immaterial. It's important that it be open source but awareness of it is a peripheral concern.
I made a killing shorting their stock about 10 years ago when they first sued IBM. Too bad they aren't still around to do more stupid things I could make money from.
You can't be forced to testify in court. How is this not the same thing?
You can't be forced to testify AGAINST YOURSELF. You absolutely can be forced to testify against someone else in most cases. The 5th amendment does not apply to evidence obtained legally. If your phone contains evidence of a crime you committed and the police can obtain this evidence through approved legal processes then it can (and will) be used against you. They can't force the defendant to reveal the password but if they obtain it some other legal way then the evidence can be used. The 5th amendment doesn't apply here and it certainly doesn't apply at all to Apple in relation to this case.
Its weird to me that they could compel someone from a corp to open a safety deposit box but write a few lines of code would be a no-go.
The two things are not remotely comparable in this case. What is being asked of Apple is equivalent to creating a master key to open all existing safety deposit boxes in perpetuity. To my mind that is a huge overreach by the government. If the government with its own resources can crack the encryption then so be it but I see no reason why Apple should be compelled to assist them in harming their own product and the privacy of millions in the process. If Apple could just open the one and no others then it's kind of a non-issue but that clearly is not the case here.
Established commodity company? Government contractor? Off to the golf course... machine runs better without you around messing with it.
"Established commodity company"? What like a steel manufacturer? If you think those executives aren't involved you've not met too many of them. While I have no doubt you could find some lazy CEOs out there for the most part the job doesn't lend itself to kicking back and relaxing. I don't know if you've ever actually worked with government contractors but I have. I spent some time with working at Boeing and some of my current customers are government contractors and I've met their CEOs. They don't remotely fit your description of them. You seem to think that big companies are these things that run themselves with little direction needed from the top. Couldn't be further from the truth in most cases. Not if they want to remain in business anyway.
Janitor, on the other hand, has to clock in and clock out just right or get fired by the assistant assistant manager's assistant who's responsible for his department.
Boy, clocking in and out on time. What a tough thing to do. So hard doing the absolute minimum required of you... Really, you're going to argue that punching a time clock somehow means they are unfairly burdened?
Oh, and budget cut time? Who's gonna feel the pain?
Which has what exactly to do with who works harder and longer? Yeah it's tough at the bottom of the food chain, no doubt. There also is usually a reason they are at the bottom of the ladder. I've employed more than a few janitors over the years. Nice enough people for the most part but generally not terribly bright or particularly hard working.
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I am interested in this 1 and 1.5 year time for PA and MD programs.
Doesn't exist in the US. Medical school in the US is 4 years, almost without exception for an MD. Nobody graduates in 1.5 years with an MD or a DO.
Sorry, but the idea that LPNs and PAs are practicing under the guidance of doctors is mostly a legal ideal. They are under their guidance no more than they are under the guidance of any other peer.
If you think they are working with complete autonomy you are mistaken. Furthermore they are in no way a peer to the doctors. They are a subordinate both in rank and in capability.
Honestly, the difference between PAs and MDs is blurring very rapidly.
No it really isn't. The differences in training between the two is vast. Doctors have a MINIMUM of 11 years of post high school education (4y undergrad + 4y med school + min3y residency) and the intensity of their training is far higher. It's not even a comparison. Functionally they aren't close either. Sure you can teach a PA to do some of the more routine, highly repeatable activities and they can do it quite competently in many cases. That doesn't even come close to "blurring the line" between them. It's like the difference between a taxi driver and a formula one driver. They both can drive competently but you can't drop a taxi driver into a formula one car and expect good results.
That said, I would be the first to agree that we can and should use PAs to help reduce costs and improve care where practical and appropriate.
People need to stop idolizing physicians as if no one else can independently provide care.
Beyond a certain complexity of disease no one else besides doctors can competently provide care. You don't go to a doctor because you have a routine case of the sniffles. You see a doctor for when that routine case of the sniffles happens to actually be something more serious. You don't go to a doctor because you have a mole, you go because only a doctor is going to know that it isn't actually a mole but is melanoma. Doctors are trusted with care because they are the ones who have the training to deal with the unusual corner cases. They are the ones you need when a patient is coding on the table.
This is a bit tangential, but not entirely, because my guess is eventually robots will be just as skilled--probably more skilled--than surgeons.
Baring a miraculous technological breakthrough that won't happen in your lifetime or mine in all likelihood.
And not too long ago, you needed to be a doctor to give out doctorly advice, write prescriptions, etc. Now LPN and PAs do it for routine tasks under the guidance of doctors.
The key words there are "under the guidance of doctors". It's no different than a medical student being allowed to do a procedure under the supervision of an attending. Did you know that much of the surgery done in teaching hospitals is done by less qualified staff? The surgeon is required to be present for the key parts of the procedure but once that is done the closing up is done by support staff. This is nothing new.
But I could see trained medical professionals who may not be full fledged surgeons doing routine procedures.
Under the supervision of a surgeon. The value of a surgeon isn't in the routine things. The value of a surgeon is for the weird things. When things go horribly wrong. THAT is when a surgeon earns their pay. Their value hockey sticks when the shit hits the fan. With a little coaching you or I could do an appendectomy. But if the patient codes on the table (which is a thing that happens) we're not the people you want in the room.
Robots May Soon Put Surgery Into the Hands of Non-Surgeons
No it won't. No way, no how. Not in my lifetime. The liability concerns alone mean it won't happen. Yes the technology is getting better but that's not remotely the same thing as letting non-surgeons cut people.
One new robot is so easy to use that even med students can achieve proficiency with a few tries, according to Umamaheswar Duvvuri, director of head and neck surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Wow, smart people training to be surgeons get proficient at basic surgery quickly. How astonishing.... [/sarcasm]
Paris Hilton earns millions annually through TV, product endorsements, and her own brands. She has a net worth of over $100 million. Less than $5M of that came from her inheritance.
Presuming that is true then good for her doing so well prostituting herself. I find it amazing that anyone gives a damn about anything she is involved in but good for her for making something of her opportunities.
She manages and invests her money well.
No, she has people that manage her money well for her. I guaran-damn-tee you she isn't managing her money herself. She as agents, investment advisers, family connections, etc.
I don't think she is as dumb as you think she is.
I don't think she is some brilliant business woman either. She comes from a family with money. Along with that tends to come some really smart advisers.
Stats is 'memorize and regurgitate'/'plug and chug' before calculus.
Only if you aren't paying the slightest bit of attention. If you don't know how to explain Bayes Theorem in a real-world useful way without invoking integrals then you don't really understand it sufficiently. I've personally taken over 15 statistics heavy courses when I was in college (both undergrad and grad school) and I think we actually got into integration in maybe 2 of them. The notion that you need calculus to understand or do useful things with statistics is demonstrably nonsense. It helps but it's not remotely a requirement for comprehension.
Of course for most people who are destined to never pass real calculus, all math is 'memorize and regurgitate'.
That is not unique to math classes. Our entire academic system rewards people who are good at memorize and regurgitate. Actual analytical ability is routinely discouraged both directly and indirectly. I know plenty of people who did pass calculus who were very good at memorization but not so awesome at logically reasoning their way through problems. Medical schools are positively loaded with them. Skill at memorization is hugely rewarded there. It is FAR easier to get good grades by being good at memorizing while having modest analytical abilities than it is to be great analytically but pedestrian at memorizing.
This is tying people to the lowest rung of understanding
Ridiculous. Teaching intro stats before calculus does nothing of the sort.
Perfectly fine if you want a nation of data consumers who believe what you feed them instead of analyzing it themselves
We already have that. Frankly statistics is not given nearly as much attention in our schools as it should be. Requiring an intro level stats course could not possibly make it worse. All you get by requiring calc before stats is more people with a poor grasp of statistics because relatively few will ever take calculus. I don't know that we should dump Algebra for stats but I have no problem with requiring most students to take a basic stats course.
What comes next, people griping that nobody should be allowed to use higher math because it is too hard for them to understand?
Got any more strawmen you'd like me to burn?
Forget algebra, how can you teach stats to someone with zero exposure to calculus?
You can do a basic stats class for people who haven't had calculus. I know because I have taught and tutored people in stats who haven't had calculus. You will find very few stats classes that will require you to actually have a deep understanding of calculus. Sure, if you do know calc you can go deeper into stats but it isn't vital to start with. You can teach Bayes theorem, conditional probability, and lots more without ever doing a derivative or integral. I made my living doing statistical simulations and none of it required me to actually do any calculus to get useful answers.
Probability theory can't be described without limits and infinite summations, i.e. you can't comprehend it without calculus.
Not true, at least at the introductory level. Most people can understand a bell curve just fine without ever having taken a calculus class. Just because they can't derive the formula for the curve doesn't mean they can't understand the concept it represents. It's no different than intro physics in that regard. Plenty of people take intro physics prior to or concurrently with calculus. It's when you want to go deeper that you might need to understand some calculus but most people will never get there.
Problem is, that tactic doesn't really work much anymore.
Like hell it doesn't. That tactic is why we have things like the Patriot Act. It's why we ended up in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's why we have this absurd and wasteful War on Drugs and the largest prison population in the world. (Hint, if our prison population is larger than China's then we are doing something wrong)
Sorry but accusations of being soft on crime are extremely effective as a political tactic. The public demonstrably falls for them each and every time and there is no evidence to the contrary.
Errrr....because the CIA doesn't want to be responsible for a million dead Iraqis?
They are already demonstrably responsible for 500,000 due to the pointless war they helped cause. Not sure why they would suddenly care now.
I can't speak for most ABP users, but I wonder what percentage of /. users disable advertising. I'm eligible to disable it but never have.
I would imagine not many but mostly because they are already using ad blocking software. Nothing gained by having slashdot block the ads when one is already doing it by default though third party software. I'd be happy to subscribe to slashdot if they would bother to offer it AND offer some value added features. Just blocking ads provides no value because I can already do that without spending a penny.
There are clearly times when we *want* ads. I want to know about new, exciting things that might benefit me.
"We want ads"? Speak for yourself. If you are actually interested in them I have no quarrel with that but I very definitely do NOT want ads. They provide me nothing of value aside from maybe a subsidy on some content. If something really is new and exciting I'll hear about it in other ways. I could live with ads in a newspaper despite the fact that they are wasteful because they were a subsidy of a sort. But on the internet there is a super creepy tracking/targeting component to the whole thing which I am NOT ok with. Not to mention the bandwidth consumption and malware vectoring. As far as I'm concerned online ads as they currently exist can die in a fire.
If you get something from your employer, they get to monitor it. If it's something you yourself provided, then you call the shots. What's so technical about it?
There is a third option. You provide the device but want to access the employer's network with it. No sane employer would permit you to attach a device they didn't buy, approve or at least have the ability to monitor. You don't have to provide them access to the device but then you can't attach your device to their network either.
Why would someone let your employer monitor YOUR iphone?
The employer may require it as a condition of letting you attach your device to their network. You don't have to let them monitor your phone but they don't have to let you access their network with it either.
I'd look at ads if the advertiser paid me to. Maybe
I suspect most people would if you paid them enough. I certainly would though my hourly rate would be considered absurdly high by any reasonable advertiser. I consider my time to be a precious resource and charge accordingly.
Except that people don't block these ads. Most ABP users allow "acceptable ads," including me.
Let's be frank. The ONLY reason for that is because most ABP users don't know they can block even more ads by digging for their hidden little check box and the don't exactly make it convenient or obvious. It should be opt-in, not opt-out. ABP is doing a form of extortion but since the advertisers have behaved SOOO badly I don't really care in this case.
Assumptions that I'm going to be ok with any form of advertising by default are going to be met by me with hostility. I run several ad blockers, I watch pretty much all TV with a DVR, and I charge an hourly rate for my time if people want my attention for commercial purposes. I don't allow even "acceptable" ads because my definition of acceptable differs from ABP.
I'm perfectly happy to pay a reasonable subscription fee to website I find valuable. I currently pay for several of them. If they want me to view ads then they need to start paying me in cash money at a rate I find agreeable because my price for my time and attention is considerable higher than the value to me of any content they are likely to provide. I have a price but it isn't cheap.
He described the practice of charging companies to be whitelisted as a 'modern day protection racket', and said: "Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist
That's EXACTLY the point. I didn't agree to view advertising in exchange for the content. Nobody contacted me about the arrangement to find out how I felt about it. If their business model depends on annoying me in a way that I have the power to stop then it should surprise no one when I go ahead and stop them from bothering me. Their stupid business model is not my problem.
FBI must be desperate, trying to lump people who believe in security with terrorists...
Not desperate. Just self interested and politically savvy. Accusing someone you oppose politically of being soft on or aligned with crime/terrorism is one of the oldest plays in politics. It's how we end up with absurd things like mandatory minimum and three strikes laws that do nothing to prevent crime. It's how we end up with a prison camp in Cuba, extraordinary rendition, torture, etc and the government doing nothing about it. Speak out against those things and you just feed ammo to your political enemies.
The FBI wants their job to be as easy as possible. They'll pay lip service to observing the constitution but at the end of the day they'll take making their job easier over your civil rights every time.
There is always the fact the Windows security is abysmal.
Which again is something people clearly don't care much about. Certainly not enough to switch to linux. And it's not as if the security on linux devices is universally bullet proof. It's better than Windows in many ways (talk about damning with faint praise...) but there are still plenty of security issues. Outside of certain security conscious organizations (like the DoD), security is a second or third order consideration.
The DoD has been replacing Windows for mission critical systems for some years now.
I could point out plenty of organizations that have found linux to be a better solution for their particular needs than Windows. Wall street is making pretty heavy use of linux too. That said, Windows still has somewhere around 90%+ of the desktop market and somewhere around 30% of the server market and those numbers have held steady for quite some time. Anecdotal stories of particular organizations (even large ones) switching doesn't tell us anything very useful. I'm not trying to downplay the importance of linux. Merely pointing out that it simply isn't going to win the fight on the desktop against Windows and that Windows isn't capturing meaningful market share from linux on servers.
No, you CANNOT be forced to testify against somebody else. You can only be forced to describe the truth as it is known to you.
A distinction without a difference depending on who is doing the questioning. Furthermore testimony is routinely not truth and even when it is it may not end up as your version of the truth. Any lawyer worth his diploma can frame the questions and twist your answers to suit his narrative of "the truth".
Like a decent UI or privacy?
I'll presume you are being serious. Most people are familiar enough with Windows that anything other than a completely revolutionary gotta-have-it huge improvement isn't going to matter. If they haven't done it in 20 years I don't think we should reasonably expect it any time soon. Furthermore any such improvement could likely be easily copied by Microsoft in short order.
As for privacy, people clearly aren't too concerned with that. If you need evidence I refer you to Facebook as exhibit A. A few people care greatly about it but they are a tiny tiny minority. Most people don't care much about privacy as an abstract concept.
Neither of those things is going to cause people to switch who weren't already strongly inclined to switch anyway. The desktop PC battle is over and Microsoft won. However look at tablets and phones and Linux has a real opportunity there through Android. Tablets are making a huge dent in desktop PC sales and Android tablets are a big part of that.
The first problem is that Linux is making no inroads into the desktop/workstation market.
Nothing new there. It's going to be virtually impossible to push Windows out of this desktop market. It's simple network effects. Linux would have to offer something that isn't available on Windows that people care strongly about for people to switch. Unlikely that is going to happen. The only thing that linux has that Windows doesn't is that it is available for free. But until the applications they use are also available on linux AND it is installed from day 1 they aren't going to switch en-mass.
Worse, Linux is becoming questioned as a server OS.
Not really. Yes it has problems but that's nothing new and none of them are so awful that it's going to change the landscape. People that use Windows servers will mostly continue to do so and people that use linux servers will mostly continue to do so. There really aren't any other serious options for most use cases. BSD isn't really terribly different (porting software between them is trivial) and OS X isn't really used for servers.
While the Linux kernel does see widespread use in mobile devices through Android, it's critical to note that it's well hidden, with little use made of GNU or other open source software.
So what? That's nothing new either. Whether or not people are aware they are using linux is mostly not very important. Most people don't care so long as it does what they want. Whether or not they know it is open source is similarly immaterial. It's important that it be open source but awareness of it is a peripheral concern.
I made a killing shorting their stock about 10 years ago when they first sued IBM. Too bad they aren't still around to do more stupid things I could make money from.
You can't be forced to testify in court. How is this not the same thing?
You can't be forced to testify AGAINST YOURSELF. You absolutely can be forced to testify against someone else in most cases. The 5th amendment does not apply to evidence obtained legally. If your phone contains evidence of a crime you committed and the police can obtain this evidence through approved legal processes then it can (and will) be used against you. They can't force the defendant to reveal the password but if they obtain it some other legal way then the evidence can be used. The 5th amendment doesn't apply here and it certainly doesn't apply at all to Apple in relation to this case.
Its weird to me that they could compel someone from a corp to open a safety deposit box but write a few lines of code would be a no-go.
The two things are not remotely comparable in this case. What is being asked of Apple is equivalent to creating a master key to open all existing safety deposit boxes in perpetuity. To my mind that is a huge overreach by the government. If the government with its own resources can crack the encryption then so be it but I see no reason why Apple should be compelled to assist them in harming their own product and the privacy of millions in the process. If Apple could just open the one and no others then it's kind of a non-issue but that clearly is not the case here.
Established commodity company? Government contractor? Off to the golf course... machine runs better without you around messing with it.
"Established commodity company"? What like a steel manufacturer? If you think those executives aren't involved you've not met too many of them. While I have no doubt you could find some lazy CEOs out there for the most part the job doesn't lend itself to kicking back and relaxing. I don't know if you've ever actually worked with government contractors but I have. I spent some time with working at Boeing and some of my current customers are government contractors and I've met their CEOs. They don't remotely fit your description of them. You seem to think that big companies are these things that run themselves with little direction needed from the top. Couldn't be further from the truth in most cases. Not if they want to remain in business anyway.
Janitor, on the other hand, has to clock in and clock out just right or get fired by the assistant assistant manager's assistant who's responsible for his department.
Boy, clocking in and out on time. What a tough thing to do. So hard doing the absolute minimum required of you... Really, you're going to argue that punching a time clock somehow means they are unfairly burdened?
Oh, and budget cut time? Who's gonna feel the pain?
Which has what exactly to do with who works harder and longer? Yeah it's tough at the bottom of the food chain, no doubt. There also is usually a reason they are at the bottom of the ladder. I've employed more than a few janitors over the years. Nice enough people for the most part but generally not terribly bright or particularly hard working.