The iPod can handle very high quality compressed files, and also lossless compressed files. I use mine at my desk all the time with the dock, a headphone amp, and my Sennheiser HD-495s. Beats anything you'll be playing out a sound card powered by your PC's power supply any day.
(BTW, the HD-497s that they replaced the 495s with are an excelent deal. My 495s sounded great when I bought them compared to the other headphones in the $150 range, and the new ones sound even better and are only $60. The only thing I don't like about the 497s is that they changed the single-wire construction. Just as a warning though, good headphones will make you hate your soundcard because you'll hear all the noise).
The problem is that the complaints of lack of bass response on the iPod mostly stem from users who are used to using "bass-boost" types of things on their crappy music. Since you can't bass-boost on the iPod (but almost certainly can on a sony mini-disc player), well...
The complaints are really about the puny headphone amp in the iPod anyway. Audiophiles are using a good headphone amp on the dock connector's line out... Right?
There is still a centralized server to connect to the network.
Expect the publicity they've managed to recieve to cause eXeem to cease to exist within a few months. I'm sure that MPAA lawyers are waiting with an ambush the day this is released publically and the first movie is posted.
Note that I didn't say $9k when you are 15, I said $9k over three years, starting at 15.
Yeah, I know.. I just used $9k all at once because it made the math easier, and because it made for a more conservative estimate of how much money you could have at age 30.
As for your ability to save $9k before college, I think you were considerably more lucky than you realize. I also came from a middle class family, and was provided with a vehicle to drive (In fact, for a little while I drove a brown 1978 Ford LTD Station wagon....) Sure, I had jobs in High School (three at once at one point), and I certainly saved over $9k since it was all disposable income... But then I went to college, and that $9k was consumed over four years by the cost of text books, room, and board. On top of that I built up a tidy sum of $27,000 in debt. Perhaps you were lucky to come from a wealthy enough family to shield you from these expenses, but most people aren't.
I'd like to add, BTW, that I don't regret building all that debt in order to pursue an education. I had those four years to explore a lot of ideas that I wouldn't have had time for were I working full time, and the social networking landed me jobs that have given me experience most people my age could only dream of having. I'm only 26 years old now, and since graduating I've managed to pay most of my debt and save well over $60,000. I'm much better off now than if I had saved all the money I made in high school instead of spending it on an education.
Say you take the whole $9k and invest it at age 15... Compound continuously at 10% for 15 years...
You'll have $40,355 and change by the time you're 30.
So, really instead of investing $9000 when you're 15 (which is practically impossible for the vast majority of people), really all you need to do is have invested $40,000 by the time you're 30. Saving $40,000 during you're 20's isn't so hard. Saving $9,000 in your early teens is impractical.
The moral of the story? You can't afford not to put money away when you are young.
I agree with your moral. I disagree with your definition of "young".
You can't get an off-the-shelf mini-itx board of comprable performance for any price much less for under $500. Ever used a 1.2ghx Via C3? They don't perform well compared to a 400mhz G4, much less a 1400mhz one.
You also wouldn't get a slot loading drive, an operating system, etc... All to save $26? You probably wouldn't even save $26 after you paid for shipping.
Your conclusion seems to be that privatizing social security is a good idea because it makes retirement more financially secure.
Not really. I guess we both did some speculation on each other's position...
I think things need to be restructured, but you don't need to privatize it to do that. Just because we transition from a system where the people paying in now are subsidizing people who have stopped paying to one where we save money in advance doesn't mean we have to transition from a system that is managed and underwritten by the government to one that is based on private investment. I don't have a plan or a magic bullet really, mostly because I don't have the time to sit down and do the math, but ignoring the situation (which is exactly what this New York Times article seems to advocate for the most part) is probably not the best idea.
As far as Social Security is concerned, the only real mistake on the table...
It would be a mistake for our generation to not pay for our own retirement and remove the burden from our children if we have the means, and we *do* have the means. There is no reason for us to put the same burden on the next generation as our parents and grandparents left for us. Not only that, but if we make such a change, our generation and future generations will have even more financial security in their later years....is Bush's attempt to privatize it.
There are many ways we could change the system to be more secure in the future. Just because you don't like the one that is on the table at the moment isn't a good reason to be opposed to change entirely.
Social security is a social contract to take care of your elders and provide many of them with an income that enables them to live in something other than abject poverty. The right mentality is to pay it - not break the contract because you just KNOW someone will do it later when you are old.
"Contract" implies mutual agreement. The right mentality is to come up with a system that is fair to all those who participate. That in no way implies throwing people who depend on social security into poverty.
I understand that it's the youger generation's responsibility to pay for the mistakes of the previous generations, but there is no reason to do so while making the same mistakes all over again. Do you really want to burden the next generation with the care of your generation simply because you didn't plan ahead, or because you made a "social contract" with them before they could even participate in the debate? Do you trust them to pour money into the system the same way you do today?
Social Security has existed for 70 years. One could make a fine statistical argument that the odds are in favor of it still existing in another 30 years.
Sure you could, if you disregard all the other statistics and rely only on the fact that it hasn't gone away yet. Besides, I'm not interested in what the chances are that it will go away. I need a sure thing. I don't want to work my ass off my whole life to find I can't even afford to live in a trailer when I turn 80. At least if I put some money in an annuity and some in the bank I'll have some truly guaranteed income in the future.
Therefore if you are under 35, or any age for that matter, you should plan responsibly for retirement without relying on SS.
Nobody said anything about relying on social security. It's not that I'm not saving for my own retirement, it's that I have to save even more because what I should recieve from social security probably won't be there, and that the money I'm paying into social security is likely to be money poured down the drain.
SS is a social safety net and 2/3 of the people on it are dependents and invalids. It has nothing to do with reitrement at all. Which renders your entire argument moot.
Social security is indeed supposed to be a base income for retirement. A guaranteed minimum. Just because we've started using it to pay out as disability insurance doesn't make that right. This is especially ture since a large percentage of people collecting social security disability are perfectly capable for working and earning money, just not in the field they were working in when they became disabled. If you have a moderatly good lawyer, you can start collecting disability simply because you were prescribed an anti-depressant. It sucks that I'm paying for that.
If the past has taught us anything though, that 2% increase to "save social security" will go into a general appropriations fund and congress will just spend it.
The retirement age hasn't kept pace with advances in life expectancy. But it's not politically savy to tell people you can retire at 65...no wait, make that 67...oops hang on, better make that 70...or maybe 72.
I have long maintained that the retirement age should be tied to the average life expectancy. Too bad such a position is political suicide, given that people who are at or near retirement age are so much more likely to vote than younger people. I wish more young people could be convinced to vote. I'm 26, and typically none of my friends that are my age vote. It's frustrating.
I see no reason why they should enjoy a separate tax system designed to shield their gains
Arguably, the system isn't designed to shield their gains, but designed so that the rich aren't subsidizing the retirement of the poor. Everybody pays in and collects pretty much equally. Whether or not this is how the system should work is an entirely different philosophical discussion.
It's always the same. Every "debate" or discussion about the numbers behind social security and they never talk about the numbers that matter. For people under 35, the most important number is the number of dollars in an employee's pocket on payday after deductions. As things stand right now, there's at least 30 years - at least seven presidential terms - between now and when those people start collecting. Chances are some politician is going to wreck social security between now and then even if the gloom and doom predictions don't come true. That means on top of the hefty deductions from your weekly paycheck, if you're under 35, you also have to assume social security won't be there for you and you have to put that much more money away personally. That is the number that matters.
As for this article... Solving the social security budget gap by adding 2% to the payroll tax sounds great... Tax the corporations! Well, it would be great, but corporations take the payroll tax into account when they determin how much you cost them as an employee. As far as they're concerned, the payroll tax is part of the employee's compensation package... Raise the tax, and you're going to see a corresponding drop in salaries or a corresponding rise in unemployment over the long term.
I can't believe you lost the chance to work somewhere with nerf gun fights.
I have yet to work somewhere where there weren't nerf gun fights. Hell, even at IBM we had nerf gun fights. They get old. If you don't love what you're doing for a living, shooting people with foam rubber isn't going to make your job not suck.
in-depth coverage of gaming trends and the ideas that games produce, and less obsession with technology
I don't think more tact could have helped you there. They're paid to obscess over hardware and technology. If they don't, they won't get access to the latest stuff to review and they won't get readers. Gameing journalism isn't about being accurate, or talking about what's good and what isn't. It's about making money.
You can get a TiVo for DirecTV for $29.99 if you wait for a rebate deal. With a DirecTiVo, 40 hours of recording space is 40 hours of recording space, and everything is at full quality. Also, the monthly fee is only $4 a month instead of $12.99, and DirecTV is pretty much universally cheaper than cable.
Oh, and they have dual tuners, and you can upgrade it to 140 hours for $70-80. With something like that out there, a DIY box can't come close to competing on cost.
If they gave them to him, he's off the hook as it's no longer a Trade Secret and the ones who gave it out are in trouble.
A case could easily be made for conspiracy if it can be shown that he knew what was revealed to him was a trade secret. And clearly he was aware; he practically brags about it. You can't get off the hook as easily as you are saying.
Is the guy guilty of anything by collecting information given by others? To me it's very different from obtaining the information yourself. THAT would be espionage.
So, did he have an informant, or did he camp outside the apple offices with a scope and spy camera and just say he had an informant? You can't give somebody legal protections because of something they claim. If he's not the one guilty of leaking the secret, he should give up the name of the one who is.
Otherwise, Apple could as well sue slashdot for publishing information on a site reporting that Apple is going to release something new. And endlessly...sue the one that reported that Slashdot reported that...
Theoretically they could, but they'd have a hard time proving that anybody but the person at the top of the chain was actually the cause of any material damages. Plus, once they collected damages from the person who revealed the secret, it would no longer have trade secret protection. It would be common knowledge.
Unless you americans really lost the right for free speech and publishing
In the US at least, there have always been exceptions to the freedoms of speech and of the press. Trade secret law is nothing new.
would slashdot be [g]uilty if i posted my own trade secrets on slashdot?
If you divulge your own trade secret it is no longer a trade secret. If you divulge somebody else's trade secret you've broken the law. This entire situation is dependant on the assumption that the informant who sent the trade secret to Think Secret was not authorized to divulge the information. If that isn't the case, neither the informant nor Think Secret has done anything wrong. It would be pretty hard to prove either way...
Slashdot Mirror
The iPod can handle very high quality compressed files, and also lossless compressed files. I use mine at my desk all the time with the dock, a headphone amp, and my Sennheiser HD-495s. Beats anything you'll be playing out a sound card powered by your PC's power supply any day.
(BTW, the HD-497s that they replaced the 495s with are an excelent deal. My 495s sounded great when I bought them compared to the other headphones in the $150 range, and the new ones sound even better and are only $60. The only thing I don't like about the 497s is that they changed the single-wire construction. Just as a warning though, good headphones will make you hate your soundcard because you'll hear all the noise).
The problem is that the complaints of lack of bass response on the iPod mostly stem from users who are used to using "bass-boost" types of things on their crappy music. Since you can't bass-boost on the iPod (but almost certainly can on a sony mini-disc player), well...
The complaints are really about the puny headphone amp in the iPod anyway. Audiophiles are using a good headphone amp on the dock connector's line out... Right?
There is still a centralized server to connect to the network.
Expect the publicity they've managed to recieve to cause eXeem to cease to exist within a few months. I'm sure that MPAA lawyers are waiting with an ambush the day this is released publically and the first movie is posted.
Note that I didn't say $9k when you are 15, I said $9k over three years, starting at 15.
Yeah, I know.. I just used $9k all at once because it made the math easier, and because it made for a more conservative estimate of how much money you could have at age 30.
As for your ability to save $9k before college, I think you were considerably more lucky than you realize. I also came from a middle class family, and was provided with a vehicle to drive (In fact, for a little while I drove a brown 1978 Ford LTD Station wagon....) Sure, I had jobs in High School (three at once at one point), and I certainly saved over $9k since it was all disposable income... But then I went to college, and that $9k was consumed over four years by the cost of text books, room, and board. On top of that I built up a tidy sum of $27,000 in debt. Perhaps you were lucky to come from a wealthy enough family to shield you from these expenses, but most people aren't.
I'd like to add, BTW, that I don't regret building all that debt in order to pursue an education. I had those four years to explore a lot of ideas that I wouldn't have had time for were I working full time, and the social networking landed me jobs that have given me experience most people my age could only dream of having. I'm only 26 years old now, and since graduating I've managed to pay most of my debt and save well over $60,000. I'm much better off now than if I had saved all the money I made in high school instead of spending it on an education.
Say you take the whole $9k and invest it at age 15... Compound continuously at 10% for 15 years...
You'll have $40,355 and change by the time you're 30.
So, really instead of investing $9000 when you're 15 (which is practically impossible for the vast majority of people), really all you need to do is have invested $40,000 by the time you're 30. Saving $40,000 during you're 20's isn't so hard. Saving $9,000 in your early teens is impractical.
The moral of the story? You can't afford not to put money away when you are young.
I agree with your moral. I disagree with your definition of "young".
You can't get an off-the-shelf mini-itx board of comprable performance for any price much less for under $500. Ever used a 1.2ghx Via C3? They don't perform well compared to a 400mhz G4, much less a 1400mhz one.
You also wouldn't get a slot loading drive, an operating system, etc... All to save $26? You probably wouldn't even save $26 after you paid for shipping.
Your conclusion seems to be that privatizing social security is a good idea because it makes retirement more financially secure.
Not really. I guess we both did some speculation on each other's position...
I think things need to be restructured, but you don't need to privatize it to do that. Just because we transition from a system where the people paying in now are subsidizing people who have stopped paying to one where we save money in advance doesn't mean we have to transition from a system that is managed and underwritten by the government to one that is based on private investment. I don't have a plan or a magic bullet really, mostly because I don't have the time to sit down and do the math, but ignoring the situation (which is exactly what this New York Times article seems to advocate for the most part) is probably not the best idea.
As far as Social Security is concerned, the only real mistake on the table...
...is Bush's attempt to privatize it.
It would be a mistake for our generation to not pay for our own retirement and remove the burden from our children if we have the means, and we *do* have the means. There is no reason for us to put the same burden on the next generation as our parents and grandparents left for us. Not only that, but if we make such a change, our generation and future generations will have even more financial security in their later years.
There are many ways we could change the system to be more secure in the future. Just because you don't like the one that is on the table at the moment isn't a good reason to be opposed to change entirely.
Social security is a social contract to take care of your elders and provide many of them with an income that enables them to live in something other than abject poverty. The right mentality is to pay it - not break the contract because you just KNOW someone will do it later when you are old.
"Contract" implies mutual agreement. The right mentality is to come up with a system that is fair to all those who participate. That in no way implies throwing people who depend on social security into poverty.
I understand that it's the youger generation's responsibility to pay for the mistakes of the previous generations, but there is no reason to do so while making the same mistakes all over again. Do you really want to burden the next generation with the care of your generation simply because you didn't plan ahead, or because you made a "social contract" with them before they could even participate in the debate? Do you trust them to pour money into the system the same way you do today?
Social Security has existed for 70 years. One could make a fine statistical argument that the odds are in favor of it still existing in another 30 years.
Sure you could, if you disregard all the other statistics and rely only on the fact that it hasn't gone away yet. Besides, I'm not interested in what the chances are that it will go away. I need a sure thing. I don't want to work my ass off my whole life to find I can't even afford to live in a trailer when I turn 80. At least if I put some money in an annuity and some in the bank I'll have some truly guaranteed income in the future.
Therefore if you are under 35, or any age for that matter, you should plan responsibly for retirement without relying on SS.
Nobody said anything about relying on social security. It's not that I'm not saving for my own retirement, it's that I have to save even more because what I should recieve from social security probably won't be there, and that the money I'm paying into social security is likely to be money poured down the drain.
SS is a social safety net and 2/3 of the people on it are dependents and invalids. It has nothing to do with reitrement at all. Which renders your entire argument moot.
Social security is indeed supposed to be a base income for retirement. A guaranteed minimum. Just because we've started using it to pay out as disability insurance doesn't make that right. This is especially ture since a large percentage of people collecting social security disability are perfectly capable for working and earning money, just not in the field they were working in when they became disabled. If you have a moderatly good lawyer, you can start collecting disability simply because you were prescribed an anti-depressant. It sucks that I'm paying for that.
That would be suicide for the politician. One of the biggest lobby group is AARP. Old people vote and have lots of time to waste.
No problem... Just disguise it as a "fix" for social security. Or, exempt old people from the changes.
If the past has taught us anything though, that 2% increase to "save social security" will go into a general appropriations fund and congress will just spend it.
The retirement age hasn't kept pace with advances in life expectancy. But it's not politically savy to tell people you can retire at 65...no wait, make that 67...oops hang on, better make that 70...or maybe 72.
I have long maintained that the retirement age should be tied to the average life expectancy. Too bad such a position is political suicide, given that people who are at or near retirement age are so much more likely to vote than younger people. I wish more young people could be convinced to vote. I'm 26, and typically none of my friends that are my age vote. It's frustrating.
I see no reason why they should enjoy a separate tax system designed to shield their gains
Arguably, the system isn't designed to shield their gains, but designed so that the rich aren't subsidizing the retirement of the poor. Everybody pays in and collects pretty much equally. Whether or not this is how the system should work is an entirely different philosophical discussion.
To whomever moderated this as troll, I hope you get metamoderated back to the stone age.
It's always the same. Every "debate" or discussion about the numbers behind social security and they never talk about the numbers that matter. For people under 35, the most important number is the number of dollars in an employee's pocket on payday after deductions. As things stand right now, there's at least 30 years - at least seven presidential terms - between now and when those people start collecting. Chances are some politician is going to wreck social security between now and then even if the gloom and doom predictions don't come true. That means on top of the hefty deductions from your weekly paycheck, if you're under 35, you also have to assume social security won't be there for you and you have to put that much more money away personally. That is the number that matters.
As for this article... Solving the social security budget gap by adding 2% to the payroll tax sounds great... Tax the corporations! Well, it would be great, but corporations take the payroll tax into account when they determin how much you cost them as an employee. As far as they're concerned, the payroll tax is part of the employee's compensation package... Raise the tax, and you're going to see a corresponding drop in salaries or a corresponding rise in unemployment over the long term.
...and there would no longer be a spelling error in there... :)
How sad that we can't trust anybody to be objective, and that we have to debate even the facts.
I can't believe you lost the chance to work somewhere with nerf gun fights.
I have yet to work somewhere where there weren't nerf gun fights. Hell, even at IBM we had nerf gun fights. They get old. If you don't love what you're doing for a living, shooting people with foam rubber isn't going to make your job not suck.
in-depth coverage of gaming trends and the ideas that games produce, and less obsession with technology
I don't think more tact could have helped you there. They're paid to obscess over hardware and technology. If they don't, they won't get access to the latest stuff to review and they won't get readers. Gameing journalism isn't about being accurate, or talking about what's good and what isn't. It's about making money.
You can get a TiVo for DirecTV for $29.99 if you wait for a rebate deal. With a DirecTiVo, 40 hours of recording space is 40 hours of recording space, and everything is at full quality. Also, the monthly fee is only $4 a month instead of $12.99, and DirecTV is pretty much universally cheaper than cable.
Oh, and they have dual tuners, and you can upgrade it to 140 hours for $70-80. With something like that out there, a DIY box can't come close to competing on cost.
Check out the footnotes at the bottom of Apple's iPod Shuffle page.
If they gave them to him, he's off the hook as it's no longer a Trade Secret and the ones who gave it out are in trouble.
A case could easily be made for conspiracy if it can be shown that he knew what was revealed to him was a trade secret. And clearly he was aware; he practically brags about it. You can't get off the hook as easily as you are saying.
Is the guy guilty of anything by collecting information given by others? To me it's very different from obtaining the information yourself. THAT would be espionage.
So, did he have an informant, or did he camp outside the apple offices with a scope and spy camera and just say he had an informant? You can't give somebody legal protections because of something they claim. If he's not the one guilty of leaking the secret, he should give up the name of the one who is.
Otherwise, Apple could as well sue slashdot for publishing information on a site reporting that Apple is going to release something new. And endlessly...sue the one that reported that Slashdot reported that...
Theoretically they could, but they'd have a hard time proving that anybody but the person at the top of the chain was actually the cause of any material damages. Plus, once they collected damages from the person who revealed the secret, it would no longer have trade secret protection. It would be common knowledge.
Unless you americans really lost the right for free speech and publishing
In the US at least, there have always been exceptions to the freedoms of speech and of the press. Trade secret law is nothing new.
would slashdot be [g]uilty if i posted my own trade secrets on slashdot?
If you divulge your own trade secret it is no longer a trade secret. If you divulge somebody else's trade secret you've broken the law. This entire situation is dependant on the assumption that the informant who sent the trade secret to Think Secret was not authorized to divulge the information. If that isn't the case, neither the informant nor Think Secret has done anything wrong. It would be pretty hard to prove either way...
He isn't the one violating any laws.
Actually, divulging trade secrets that were obtained illegally is itself illegal in many places. It's called "industrial espionage."