While I agree that this would be a great way to get some of the dial-up, low-use types to use broadband, I don't see how low-use customers have any right to a lower rate. The capacity must be there to cover them when they do use, after all.
You do raise an interesting point, though. A three tier rate structure would be great, though the extra hassle of accounting might not be worth it to some providers. Plus, how do you set the tiers? Cap speed after a certain amount of transfered data? Keep speed constant, but charge more for data after certain limit? Some combination of the two?
Maybe I'm missing something, but why shouldn't a provider charge more to those who use significantly more? They "cost" more in that capacity must be added sooner that would otherwise be the case for a given subscriber base. That increases capital costs with no corresponding increase in revenue. IOW, it reduces profits.
The obvious solution is to charge the high use costomers more. That will either offset the cost of increased capacity or discourage the additional use, reducing the need for extra capacity.
Of course, IMHO the additional charge for high use costomers should be balanced to not overly discourage them, as they are exactly the users who will drive new, more compelling content, which will bring more users to see the Internet as an important resource (whether for entertainment or other uses), driving up the total user base.
Eventually the threshold for what defines "high use" will be foreced up as the average user requires a consistantly high bandwidth connection. By that time , the current high use customers will have funded (and driven) the development of a system that can supply that bandwidth. There will of course be those who, because of new uses, require more than the current "average" bandwidth, continuing the cycle.
redsherrif is a spyware applet, not part of the J2SDK.
A two fucking second search on google would have given you that much info. For the record, running strings on all the bins and libs in the j2sdk1.4 showed neither imrworldwide nor redsherrif.
I know this is hard stuff, using google an all, so click here to save yourself the trouble.
I know that 7.3 has been called Skipjack all along during development, but I've recently been hearing the name Hampton thrown around. Anybody able to lend a clue here? Obviously not very important, but I'm amused by things like this.
5.0 looks great. Lots of nice goodies to bring FreeBSD back up to snuff with Linux (feature wise). I have one question though: what about firewire/iLink/IEEE-1394, especially with SBP2 support? The Linux support is pretty decent, and I depend upon it for my CDRW drive, as USB for storage is a joke and my Vaio 505 came with a IEEE-1394 port anyway. So, any BSDers out there know what's up with firewire on FreeBSD? I know some dude in Japan had basic firewire working for use with digital video and such, but I want my Serial Bus Protocol 2 support, dammit! (grin)
In principle there's nothing wrong with this. I could end up being a good thing for those who use Microsoft products. Having the luxury of 19 working days to spend on cleaning up bugs and refactoring w/o having new features piled on your plate sounds great to me.
Granted, coding new features is usually much more interesting than fixing bugs and cleaning up code, but sometimes it feels good to "clean out the garage". The benefits can be startling. If they refactor while bug fixing, they could really get alot of cleanup done, at a local scope.
Additionally, if I were steering the ship, I'd have all my archetects at work planning staged efforts at rearchetecting at a more global scope. The issues that come up during the bug scrub would be fed back through the design process so the organization could learn from its mistakes and know what the next realistic steps might be.
Through stepwise refinement and refactoring, it is possible to turn a crock into pretty respectable code. Granted, if the basic archetecture is severey flawed, some of the steps may be large and scary. But it can be done. With the amount of legacy code that Microsoft has, I don't see any other way for them to get from here to there, assuming that the "there" that Bill wants them to get to is really more reliable, stable, secure, trustable code.
I don't really think there's very much of a chance that it'll work, even if they really mean it. And I'm not very convinced that this is anything more than a publicity stunt. OTOH, they do have a history of turning the U.S.S. Microsoft on a dime, so who knows.
Re:What if the patch spans more subsystems?
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Of course there will be patches that span subsystems. The point is that they should be very rare.
In practice, most (though certainly not all) patches that span subsystems mean that either the patch is not well done, and should be rethought before being accepted, or that the modularization of the subsystems needs to be rethought.
Re:Linus is, as is often the case, right
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Well, yes there is a problem. The problem, however, is not that Linus is dropping patches from his designated maintainers on the floor. That is the symptoom.
The problem is that Linus is getting lots of other patches as well. Not enough filtering is going on.
Allowing maintainers to check in their own patches will not happen as long as Linus is interested in Linux. The buck stops with him. Rightly or wrongly he prefers not to have to back out patches (roll back checkins, if you prefer). At least that is where we stand, now. I would love it if Linus would eventually trust a small group of people enough to allow a CVS system to be usefull.
Re:Linus is, as is often the case, right
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Sigh. You didn't read the original post by Linus about his vision for kernel dev, did you?
The "hierarchy" goes exactly one level deep. Hardly worth talking about.
The maintainers that "report" directly to Linus are the second level of that hierarchy. From there on, the "levels" begin to blur, as many of the "lower" levels of maintainers would probably eventually be in the circle of trust of more than one other maintainer.
In effect, this method becomes a web, not a tree. Well, it could be argued, I suppose, that the web looks pretty damn tree like in parts. Or that the tree has large portions that are quite web-like.
Whatever.
The main things, as s Linus originally pointed out here is to:
Lack of dependencies on a source level. This is Linus's job, with the help of his trusted luitenant.
Lack of people who have to follow everythin This is where the web comes in.
Linus is, as is often the case, right
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Linus's vision of the kernel dev process is really the right answer. Why can't more people see that? By using a non-hierarchial network of maintainers, the kernel effort can scale indefinately.
The basic premise he makes is one that many developers seem to miss. To quote Linus:
Basic premise: development is done by humans
From that, he goes on to point out that people tend to have a small group of people they work well with and trust; perhaps 5 - 10 people. So, in essence, if Linus appoints 5 - 10 maintainers of major subsystems (which he has), and each of them has 5 - 10 people the trust to maintain specific aspects of their subsystem, then there is no problem.
We're not there yet. But that is the only direction I can see that will work, long term. It just takes time for the appropriate people to move into their spots; trust takes time to build, and the structure has taken time to modularize enough to allow this to work.
And, though I would prefer to see it in use just to make the maintainers' jobs easier, CVS will do nothing to solve the problem. It is a tool, not a process. We need a process. Actually we have a process, it just isn't fully implemented yet.
No, strike that. We have two processes. The first, used by the bulk of the kernel hackers, is not fully implemented yet. The second, used by a minority of the kernel hackers and a large part of the pretenders, is simple: whine alot, and, when that doesn't work, whine some more.
Linus says it much better, and in his own unique... er...
I hope that the OEMs take this and run with it. I'd be in line in a hearbeat. In fact, right this very minute I'd be breaking out the meth to feed my laptop, as my battery just let me know it's tired now.
<sigh>
I guess any karma generating comments will have to come later, after I get to work!
I'd pay with a smile for the right games
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Many moons ago I was an avid RPG player and DM. C&S, D&D, TFT:ITL... these TLAs were just as important to me then as IRQ, NMI and BCD. Eventually, though, a time came where the hassle of getting together was greater than the payoff of playing. My getting a life and a career also may have had an impact, of course.;)
I see the potential of MMRPGs to be the perfect way for me to be able to spend time doing somthing I really enjoy: role playing. The beauty is that in a properly designed game system I could enter and leave the world as my meat-space life permits; even an hour here or there would be worth while.
If the game system were well done, my characters wold go about their daily life whithout me; jobs, leisure, etc. Best would be if I could script their actions while I'm gone and get periodic updates via email or, optionally, some sort of IM system.
Of course, if I were in the middle of an adventure of some sort, I'd best take care that my characters wellfare was provided for; Hiding, backing off to a safer area, or abandoning the current quest until I have more time. I think that would rock all over just saving and restoring when I came back. Hell, that would rock even for a non-multiplayer game; just leave it running in the background all the time.
Having a game system flexible enough to allow for human DMs to participate as well would be an added bonus, of course. The story telling aspect of gaming was always one of my favorite parts. A system where basic NPC behavior could be programmed and most traps and wandering monster type occurances were automagically handled would really free a person up to do some amazing DMinig. I would want the ability to overide any automatic mechanisms though; nothing messes up a well planned adventure than a poorly placed wandering monster encounter! Being able to step in and "possess" any NPC as necessary would be another necessary part of such a system.
Unforch, for this sort of gaiming to be really ideal, and for it to be profitable, it would be accessable to the widest possible audiance. Everquest looks interesting, but I run Linux on all but my wife's machine, which is Win98 right now. Shortly we'll be moving her to an iBook or Powerbook Ti running OSX. That leaves me (and thousands like me) out in the cold.
If it could be done, allowing console gamers into the system would be good as well (though problematic from a user interface POV unless the machine can take a keyboard).
Anyway, to bring this back on topic, if a game system like the one I've drawn a thumbnail sketch of here were available to me today, I'd break out my credit card in a heartbeat.
I'll skip the vitriol of calling you a full of bullshit ignorant moron troll. Pity you couldn't extend me the same courtesy. Do you start conversations that way in realtime?
Yeah, unforch I do come off like an ass occasionally, even in meat-space. That was indeed uncalled for. I stand by my opinion of your statements as bullshit, however.
As for the "working class hero garbage", I certainly didn't represent myself as such. Working class, yes. Having worked my way up into being a profesional, yes. Hero? Pah! My point was the opposite. If I can do it, I'd think many others can as well.
I am sick of living with sheep. (Take that one and run with it if you are clever.)
pass.
I would like to find a way to make sheep into people.
Hey! We share a dream! There is nothing I'd like better than to see the sheeple rise up onto their hind hooves... er, feet, and show those that have been fleecing them the door. That would rock.
This Pat Schroeder twit needs a kick in the ass. Public (and private) libraries are part of what allowed me with my paltry 2 years of college to learn as much as I have. Well, that and my spending money I perhaps shouldn't have on books, books and more books, as well as crappy used computer equipment to hack on. I contribute to our local library system because of that. I don't know where you get that I want he "swarming prole maggots" to be "kept at bay". Fuck that. I want them to do well, dammit. They have to earn it, but hell yeah I want them to do well. I want all of us to do well.
No, I don't see your point, whether it's because of my hubris or your vitriolic ranting I don't know. What is your point? I do think it's good to invest in education, but not blindly and not without demanding to see return on the investment. As for "fair treatment", fraud, abuse and assault should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Beyond that, I'm not seeing what is "unfair". Does it suck to be born into poverty? I would assume so. Does stealing money from someone not so burdened and giving it to the poor serve any purpose beyond being a disincentive for the well off to create more wealth and for the poor to learn to create value of their own? Now if that rich person were to, of their own volition, grant a scholarship to the poor person... well that would be cool. Obviously the person giving the grant felt they were getting fair value for their money, or they wouldn't have made the grant.
Say, you don't suppose those folks in Detroit or Shreveport could get together and form carpools to spread the burden of shuttling their kids to better schools if the local ones suck, do you? Naw... that'd never work.
Well, since I'll never see your point anyway, I won't waste more electrons on this argument. To damn bad that I agree that screwing others over isn't a good thing. Or that I agree that it would rock if people would be willing to turn off Ally McBeal and fucking do something to improve themselves. It must really piss you off that we agree on so much. I suppose that my atitude in the previous post helped fan the flames, regardless of whether or not it was trigered by your orginal comments. My fault there; again, that was an uncalled for and pointless expression of my frustration with this topic.
I sympathize. I've spent way to much time on this thread today myself. It has given me food for thought, however. I don't hold my views blindly, regardless of how I may come off. I have no problem questioning my own views, changing them if I'm convinced I had something wrong. Heck,
we even seem to agree on some counts. However, there seems to be a major difference in point of view, unless I'm misunderstanding you terribly.
Absolutely. More fire to my argument that the way things are going right now, if they continue on their current path (i.e., the Wal-Marting and McDonaldizing of the world), it will eventually have to collapse. It's just not sustainable.
Intentionally or not, you make it seem like you think it's Wall-Mart and McDonalds that are doing the damage. I disagree. I think it's the consumers who are bringing damage upon themselves. No one holds a gun to their heads and marches them up the street from Joe's Hardware or Ed's Tires and Auto to the Wal-Mart to buy the stuff they need. Likewise, last I checked, McDonalds doesn't have a standing army going into Eggie's Diner to march the patrons down to the local arches for a "nutritious" breakfast.
You're an intellectual. You're well educated. (I'm assuming these things - you seem to be both).
Well thank you. On the first count, I'm not certain what you mean by intellectual, but I suppose I meet some definitions of the word. As for the second count, again it depends upon definitions. I dropped out of community college after two years. That was 15 years ago. None the less, I consider myself fairly well educated. I'm a voracious reader (though a sucky speller... go figure) and willing to try new things as well as admit when I don't have a clue. Having to do the latter usually drives me pretty hard to fill in the weakness that was exposed. Regardless, it seems that my emplyer is quite satisfied with my "education". I recently decided to finish my degree. I'm not getting any younger, and as long as my employer is willing to pick up the cost, why pass up an opportunity for focused learning?
As for Joe Sixpack being "neither of these things", that's not necessarily true. But regardless, it's beside the point. Much of my family is part of that group. I've lived and worked with (doing the same job as) people in that group. The have a brain. The could (and often do) realize when they're "being taken advantage of". And they often do something about it. Of course, many of them do not "get it". I'm not suggesting that it's ok to defraud them. But a nany state is not the answer. It will only make the situation worse.
I'll not bother to question your 25% figure. It actually sounds about right to me. I don't accept the idea that they don't make enough to "get ahead", though. If they have income, they can get ahead. Will it be easy? Hell no. Do I wish they could get ahead easier? Sure, if it doesn't forcably take away from others, and if their incentive to earn their way isn't taken away. As for the examples of how they get screwed, all of those things can be avoided by all but the most "challanged", except for the normal loans. As for those, it's pretty obvious why they cannot borrow money, isn't it? Same reason why I'm only just now able to get reasonable credit. The creditors don't think they are a good risk. I don't see why that's an issue. Regarding the payday loans and rent-to-own scams, to the extent they are fraudulent (which many are) they should be illegal. But just being a bad deal is not illegal, nor should it be.
Finally, I'd like to briefly address your final paragraph. I was implying that you were suggesting using taxation to accomplish redistribution of wealth. It's the tried and not-so-true standard, and it sounded like what you were suggesting. You say that isn't what you are suggesting. I'm quite interested to hear what means you would suggest to move some of the cash to the less fortunate.
To answer your question, no, I am not in the upper-upper income bracket. Our (me and my wife's) household income is a frog's hair over $100k, so we aren't doing so bad, even considering our debt load. We do not own our home, though, so it's not as good as it looks. Frankly, though, I think it's a damn good thing if even the folks in the top bracket have incentive to do better. The generally do it by starting businesses or by investing, both of which help to create more wealth, only some of which they accrue. The rest is gained by others. If they choose not to invest, and choose not to give charatably (both damn rare) then I'll concede that their money does no one else any good. Tough. Their money, their choice.
It's amazing how all this "tough shit" talk completely ignores the things even a laissez-faire person should find abhorrent. Delayed checks? That is not capitalism, that is fraud. People have done work for you, you are refusing to pay them - what the hell is that?
Now that is a damn good point. And, though I am one of those taying "tough shit" about the money and the work, I think the company should get its ass kicked for delaying payment. Interest should be payed, and, if grossly delayed, the company should be liable for damages. As for fireing the workers for speaking up, that's hard to prove either way, the company should probably be fined. In general I think an employer should have pretty damn free reign on hiring and firing, but this sort of thing does bother me a bit.
Do you really think they're going to take cash and stuff pillows with it?
They *are* going to "spend" most of it. Either outright, or by investing it.
Those are the only three choices I can think of: spend, or hoard. I don't see there being much chance of any millionaire choosing door number three for any significant share of her wealth.
Option 1 - What's your idea of "stealing"? Would "stealing" be reducing the salaries from the CEOs, presidents, veeps and managers and redistributing those salaries to the workers?
Yes, that is my idea of stealing. As you put it "take that money and redistribute it fairly".
take
That implies by force. That's stealing.
I assume that you get to decide what a "fair" redistribution is?
I certainly don't like the amount that execs get payed these days. It's a joke. But taking it from them is wrong. Reducing exec salaries, OTOH, is a fine idea. Not at gunpoint (which is exactly what taxation is), but because of pressure from shareholders who are convinced that the company would do better if so damn money wasn't pissed down a hole. Or because of emplyee pressure; if enough people really believe the salaries are to high, and are willing to either change jobs to a company that has a more reasonable diferential, or start their own companies, then the diferential will come down. Not tomorrow. Hell, probably not ever, because no way enough people will be willing to change jobs, strike or start their own company. That's to hard.
Regarding Option 2: less printers will be bought at $175 than at $150, most likely. So there would probably not be any "extra" money. Even then, what makes you think it would be redistributed any differently. As you rightly pointed out, it's not like companies aren't making enough to pay workers more, they just don't see any reason to.
Option three works just fine, if you are correct that there would be positive benefits from doing so. If there are enough positive benefits to justify higher wages, the thoughts that you say I'm thinking would be wrong. Of course, as WallMart shows over and over again, any noble thoughts of getting best quality or supporting the local merchant go right out the window when price is low enough.
I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by option 4. the "way Capitalism runs" is the way it runs. The effects do vary over time. As you pointed out, CEOs enjoy a record diferential in salary over average workers. There's no reason that can't change back the other way, given the right conditions. Why must everything be done at gunpoint? I guess I'm just all starry-eyed, but I just can't understand the "can't seem to climb out of it" mentality. No wait, I do understand the feeling; even "well off" folk like myself (yeah, right) feel it. Every time I look at how much of my check is taken out in taxes, and think about how much better off I'd be with even a 10% tax reduction, let alone what could be done if we really reformed the local, state and federal govt funtions.
I don't now. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I just don't feel that govt force is the way to distribute wealth. I've been up and I've been down, but even when I was up to my eyeballs in debt and making $6.00 an hour I managed to work my way back. What incentive do I have to continue to improve my lot, if a huge portion of my additional income will be taken from me?
What the fuck do you want? The reality is that some folks are currently less well off than others. I only see two alternatives that don't screw simply steal from someone else to sove the problem:
1. Work hard and probably move up the ladder as much as you can (nothing is certain).
2. Don't try to improve your lot, and stay at the bottom.
Did you have others?
Obviously "shit happens". A company may well get away with murder, figuratively or literally. But not forever. Likewise, a company might well fall prey to unfortunate circumstances outside, or mostly outside, their control. (cf. American airlines, both the company and the industry) Risk is a natural part of the market, is it not?
Slashdot Mirror
You do raise an interesting point, though. A three tier rate structure would be great, though the extra hassle of accounting might not be worth it to some providers. Plus, how do you set the tiers? Cap speed after a certain amount of transfered data? Keep speed constant, but charge more for data after certain limit? Some combination of the two?
The obvious solution is to charge the high use costomers more. That will either offset the cost of increased capacity or discourage the additional use, reducing the need for extra capacity.
Of course, IMHO the additional charge for high use costomers should be balanced to not overly discourage them, as they are exactly the users who will drive new, more compelling content, which will bring more users to see the Internet as an important resource (whether for entertainment or other uses), driving up the total user base.
Eventually the threshold for what defines "high use" will be foreced up as the average user requires a consistantly high bandwidth connection. By that time , the current high use customers will have funded (and driven) the development of a system that can supply that bandwidth. There will of course be those who, because of new uses, require more than the current "average" bandwidth, continuing the cycle.
Again, why exactly is this a bad thing?
Google shows the same damn results for yours vs. mine. What bloody difference does it make?
A two fucking second search on google would have given you that much info. For the record, running strings on all the bins and libs in the j2sdk1.4 showed neither imrworldwide nor redsherrif.
I know this is hard stuff, using google an all, so click here to save yourself the trouble.
s/whe/when/
s/Net/Neat/
The best part is whe they are on the "volcano" and the atmosphere gets "represurized".
Net trick, that.
I know that 7.3 has been called Skipjack all along during development, but I've recently been hearing the name Hampton thrown around. Anybody able to lend a clue here? Obviously not very important, but I'm amused by things like this.
5.0 looks great. Lots of nice goodies to bring FreeBSD back up to snuff with Linux (feature wise). I have one question though: what about firewire/iLink/IEEE-1394, especially with SBP2 support? The Linux support is pretty decent, and I depend upon it for my CDRW drive, as USB for storage is a joke and my Vaio 505 came with a IEEE-1394 port anyway. So, any BSDers out there know what's up with firewire on FreeBSD? I know some dude in Japan had basic firewire working for use with digital video and such, but I want my Serial Bus Protocol 2 support, dammit! (grin)
no need for it. the fw is acting as a *client* for syslog. syslog would be running on the log server.
Granted, coding new features is usually much more interesting than fixing bugs and cleaning up code, but sometimes it feels good to "clean out the garage". The benefits can be startling. If they refactor while bug fixing, they could really get alot of cleanup done, at a local scope.
Additionally, if I were steering the ship, I'd have all my archetects at work planning staged efforts at rearchetecting at a more global scope. The issues that come up during the bug scrub would be fed back through the design process so the organization could learn from its mistakes and know what the next realistic steps might be.
Through stepwise refinement and refactoring, it is possible to turn a crock into pretty respectable code. Granted, if the basic archetecture is severey flawed, some of the steps may be large and scary. But it can be done. With the amount of legacy code that Microsoft has, I don't see any other way for them to get from here to there, assuming that the "there" that Bill wants them to get to is really more reliable, stable, secure, trustable code.
I don't really think there's very much of a chance that it'll work, even if they really mean it. And I'm not very convinced that this is anything more than a publicity stunt. OTOH, they do have a history of turning the U.S.S. Microsoft on a dime, so who knows.
I'll go away now, before you taunt me again.
In practice, most (though certainly not all) patches that span subsystems mean that either the patch is not well done, and should be rethought before being accepted, or that the modularization of the subsystems needs to be rethought.
The problem is that Linus is getting lots of other patches as well. Not enough filtering is going on.
Allowing maintainers to check in their own patches will not happen as long as Linus is interested in Linux. The buck stops with him. Rightly or wrongly he prefers not to have to back out patches (roll back checkins, if you prefer). At least that is where we stand, now. I would love it if Linus would eventually trust a small group of people enough to allow a CVS system to be usefull.
The "hierarchy" goes exactly one level deep. Hardly worth talking about.
The maintainers that "report" directly to Linus are the second level of that hierarchy. From there on, the "levels" begin to blur, as many of the "lower" levels of maintainers would probably eventually be in the circle of trust of more than one other maintainer.
In effect, this method becomes a web, not a tree. Well, it could be argued, I suppose, that the web looks pretty damn tree like in parts. Or that the tree has large portions that are quite web-like.
Whatever.
The main things, as s Linus originally pointed out here is to:
The basic premise he makes is one that many developers seem to miss. To quote Linus:
From that, he goes on to point out that people tend to have a small group of people they work well with and trust; perhaps 5 - 10 people. So, in essence, if Linus appoints 5 - 10 maintainers of major subsystems (which he has), and each of them has 5 - 10 people the trust to maintain specific aspects of their subsystem, then there is no problem.We're not there yet. But that is the only direction I can see that will work, long term. It just takes time for the appropriate people to move into their spots; trust takes time to build, and the structure has taken time to modularize enough to allow this to work.
And, though I would prefer to see it in use just to make the maintainers' jobs easier, CVS will do nothing to solve the problem. It is a tool, not a process. We need a process. Actually we have a process, it just isn't fully implemented yet.
No, strike that. We have two processes. The first, used by the bulk of the kernel hackers, is not fully implemented yet. The second, used by a minority of the kernel hackers and a large part of the pretenders, is simple: whine alot, and, when that doesn't work, whine some more.
Linus says it much better, and in his own unique ... er ...
Idium, sir?
Yes, in his own, unique idium.
<sigh>
I guess any karma generating comments will have to come later, after I get to work!
I see the potential of MMRPGs to be the perfect way for me to be able to spend time doing somthing I really enjoy: role playing. The beauty is that in a properly designed game system I could enter and leave the world as my meat-space life permits; even an hour here or there would be worth while.
If the game system were well done, my characters wold go about their daily life whithout me; jobs, leisure, etc. Best would be if I could script their actions while I'm gone and get periodic updates via email or, optionally, some sort of IM system.
Of course, if I were in the middle of an adventure of some sort, I'd best take care that my characters wellfare was provided for; Hiding, backing off to a safer area, or abandoning the current quest until I have more time. I think that would rock all over just saving and restoring when I came back. Hell, that would rock even for a non-multiplayer game; just leave it running in the background all the time.
Having a game system flexible enough to allow for human DMs to participate as well would be an added bonus, of course. The story telling aspect of gaming was always one of my favorite parts. A system where basic NPC behavior could be programmed and most traps and wandering monster type occurances were automagically handled would really free a person up to do some amazing DMinig. I would want the ability to overide any automatic mechanisms though; nothing messes up a well planned adventure than a poorly placed wandering monster encounter! Being able to step in and "possess" any NPC as necessary would be another necessary part of such a system.
Unforch, for this sort of gaiming to be really ideal, and for it to be profitable, it would be accessable to the widest possible audiance. Everquest looks interesting, but I run Linux on all but my wife's machine, which is Win98 right now. Shortly we'll be moving her to an iBook or Powerbook Ti running OSX. That leaves me (and thousands like me) out in the cold.
If it could be done, allowing console gamers into the system would be good as well (though problematic from a user interface POV unless the machine can take a keyboard).
Anyway, to bring this back on topic, if a game system like the one I've drawn a thumbnail sketch of here were available to me today, I'd break out my credit card in a heartbeat.
TTBOMK, though, it's not. So I won't.
As for the "working class hero garbage", I certainly didn't represent myself as such. Working class, yes. Having worked my way up into being a profesional, yes. Hero? Pah! My point was the opposite. If I can do it, I'd think many others can as well.
pass. Hey! We share a dream! There is nothing I'd like better than to see the sheeple rise up onto their hind hoovesThis Pat Schroeder twit needs a kick in the ass. Public (and private) libraries are part of what allowed me with my paltry 2 years of college to learn as much as I have. Well, that and my spending money I perhaps shouldn't have on books, books and more books, as well as crappy used computer equipment to hack on. I contribute to our local library system because of that. I don't know where you get that I want he "swarming prole maggots" to be "kept at bay". Fuck that. I want them to do well, dammit. They have to earn it, but hell yeah I want them to do well. I want all of us to do well.
No, I don't see your point, whether it's because of my hubris or your vitriolic ranting I don't know. What is your point? I do think it's good to invest in education, but not blindly and not without demanding to see return on the investment. As for "fair treatment", fraud, abuse and assault should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Beyond that, I'm not seeing what is "unfair". Does it suck to be born into poverty? I would assume so. Does stealing money from someone not so burdened and giving it to the poor serve any purpose beyond being a disincentive for the well off to create more wealth and for the poor to learn to create value of their own? Now if that rich person were to, of their own volition, grant a scholarship to the poor person ... well that would be cool. Obviously the person giving the grant felt they were getting fair value for their money, or they wouldn't have made the grant.
Say, you don't suppose those folks in Detroit or Shreveport could get together and form carpools to spread the burden of shuttling their kids to better schools if the local ones suck, do you? Naw ... that'd never work.
Well, since I'll never see your point anyway, I won't waste more electrons on this argument. To damn bad that I agree that screwing others over isn't a good thing. Or that I agree that it would rock if people would be willing to turn off Ally McBeal and fucking do something to improve themselves. It must really piss you off that we agree on so much. I suppose that my atitude in the previous post helped fan the flames, regardless of whether or not it was trigered by your orginal comments. My fault there; again, that was an uncalled for and pointless expression of my frustration with this topic.
I'll not bother to question your 25% figure. It actually sounds about right to me. I don't accept the idea that they don't make enough to "get ahead", though. If they have income, they can get ahead. Will it be easy? Hell no. Do I wish they could get ahead easier? Sure, if it doesn't forcably take away from others, and if their incentive to earn their way isn't taken away. As for the examples of how they get screwed, all of those things can be avoided by all but the most "challanged", except for the normal loans. As for those, it's pretty obvious why they cannot borrow money, isn't it? Same reason why I'm only just now able to get reasonable credit. The creditors don't think they are a good risk. I don't see why that's an issue. Regarding the payday loans and rent-to-own scams, to the extent they are fraudulent (which many are) they should be illegal. But just being a bad deal is not illegal, nor should it be.
Finally, I'd like to briefly address your final paragraph. I was implying that you were suggesting using taxation to accomplish redistribution of wealth. It's the tried and not-so-true standard, and it sounded like what you were suggesting. You say that isn't what you are suggesting. I'm quite interested to hear what means you would suggest to move some of the cash to the less fortunate.
To answer your question, no, I am not in the upper-upper income bracket. Our (me and my wife's) household income is a frog's hair over $100k, so we aren't doing so bad, even considering our debt load. We do not own our home, though, so it's not as good as it looks. Frankly, though, I think it's a damn good thing if even the folks in the top bracket have incentive to do better. The generally do it by starting businesses or by investing, both of which help to create more wealth, only some of which they accrue. The rest is gained by others. If they choose not to invest, and choose not to give charatably (both damn rare) then I'll concede that their money does no one else any good. Tough. Their money, their choice.
They *are* going to "spend" most of it. Either outright, or by investing it.
Those are the only three choices I can think of: spend, or hoard. I don't see there being much chance of any millionaire choosing door number three for any significant share of her wealth.
take
That implies by force. That's stealing.
I assume that you get to decide what a "fair" redistribution is?
I certainly don't like the amount that execs get payed these days. It's a joke. But taking it from them is wrong. Reducing exec salaries, OTOH, is a fine idea. Not at gunpoint (which is exactly what taxation is), but because of pressure from shareholders who are convinced that the company would do better if so damn money wasn't pissed down a hole. Or because of emplyee pressure; if enough people really believe the salaries are to high, and are willing to either change jobs to a company that has a more reasonable diferential, or start their own companies, then the diferential will come down. Not tomorrow. Hell, probably not ever, because no way enough people will be willing to change jobs, strike or start their own company. That's to hard.
Regarding Option 2: less printers will be bought at $175 than at $150, most likely. So there would probably not be any "extra" money. Even then, what makes you think it would be redistributed any differently. As you rightly pointed out, it's not like companies aren't making enough to pay workers more, they just don't see any reason to.
Option three works just fine, if you are correct that there would be positive benefits from doing so. If there are enough positive benefits to justify higher wages, the thoughts that you say I'm thinking would be wrong. Of course, as WallMart shows over and over again, any noble thoughts of getting best quality or supporting the local merchant go right out the window when price is low enough.
I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by option 4. the "way Capitalism runs" is the way it runs. The effects do vary over time. As you pointed out, CEOs enjoy a record diferential in salary over average workers. There's no reason that can't change back the other way, given the right conditions. Why must everything be done at gunpoint? I guess I'm just all starry-eyed, but I just can't understand the "can't seem to climb out of it" mentality. No wait, I do understand the feeling; even "well off" folk like myself (yeah, right) feel it. Every time I look at how much of my check is taken out in taxes, and think about how much better off I'd be with even a 10% tax reduction, let alone what could be done if we really reformed the local, state and federal govt funtions.
I don't now. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I just don't feel that govt force is the way to distribute wealth. I've been up and I've been down, but even when I was up to my eyeballs in debt and making $6.00 an hour I managed to work my way back. What incentive do I have to continue to improve my lot, if a huge portion of my additional income will be taken from me?
What the fuck do you want? The reality is that some folks are currently less well off than others. I only see two alternatives that don't screw simply steal from someone else to sove the problem: 1. Work hard and probably move up the ladder as much as you can (nothing is certain). 2. Don't try to improve your lot, and stay at the bottom. Did you have others?
Obviously "shit happens". A company may well get away with murder, figuratively or literally. But not forever. Likewise, a company might well fall prey to unfortunate circumstances outside, or mostly outside, their control. (cf. American airlines, both the company and the industry) Risk is a natural part of the market, is it not?
I see.
Well then, since you obviously outclass me intellectually, I'll just go away now.
nevermind.