I don't want to pretend that American has the same level of cultural diversity that Europe does (because of the long history that it took to form those distinct cultures compared to America's youth), but I think America is seen as far more uniform by the rest of the world than it actually is, especially as it concerns the various local cultures.
What has happened in the last 20-30 years is pretty simple. In no particular order:
1. The internet has really hurt print media, and the decline of the newspaper industry alone has shrunk the amount of 'on the ground' journalists everywhere. 2. The concentration of media ownership: very few people now control wide swaths of newspaper, tv, and radio outlets. I hopefully don't need to explain why that is a bad thing. 3. Ever since "60 Minutes" aired and began to make a lot of money, corporate media realized that their news branches could also make money. Which created a nice downward spiral from what used to be seen as a public good, to news as a money making business. And of course, given that politicians were just as much in the pockets of those with money as the advertisement-dependent media owners, very little was done to preserve the "public good" part of being allowed to own a part of the public commons: the airwaves.
"Linux adds some of the stability to the bulk hardware, but the bulk hardware is simply not as good"
We've been moving away from Solaris / HP-UX 'big' servers to lots of VMWare clustered linux servers for a long time now. Uptime is identical if not better, and it is way cheaper. Physical servers basically start to be seen as hot swappable. The apps don't care if one dies or is moved.
The only people I know who are still using Solaris or HP-UX are those that can't move off those platforms because of specific apps that have no linux equivalents.
Well, and it isn't just VMWARE. There have been other strategies and virtualization techniques allowing for the use of low cost linux boxes in highly available environments for quite a long time now.
I don't know anyone, who has the choice software-wise, staying with Solaris or HP-UX nowadays.
That is because most of Europe recognizes that certain institutions that provide services that benefit society over time, do not function well in the 'for profit' free-market model.
I guess the US has to hit rock bottom before we can realize that fact of life.
"There was a day when a College education was affordable, and an enterprising student could work their way through college on a part time job. Then the government got involved providing federally guaranteed student loans. "
So I assume you would agree with the solution that most modern nations use: heavily subsidized higher education, with mandated very low or zero cost tuition?
"The US massively subsidizes education. The price of education rises far beyond the rate of inflation."
What makes the US so special? Every single other western country in the world has figured out how to subsidize a desired institution without raising the costs of using that institution's services.
Why is the US the only modern western country in the world who can't figure out how to support a desired institution with public money without having the costs go up?
I think the only hope is that it gets so obviously bad and corrupt that a grass roots movement takes hold in the States and they call a constitutional convention.
I think (hope) that the person you responded to is talking about real campaign finance reform. You know, the kind that will never be allowed to happen..
For instance: 1. Repeal citizens united. Constitutional amendment is needed. 2. Make PACS illegal. 3. Any candidate that can get X signatures can run for an office. 4. Candidates are given X public dollars to spend and are given Y air time and all of them have to participate in Z debates. 5. Small donations are allowed, ~50 dollars per person or so. That is for flyers, staffing, limited ads, only coming officially from the campaign. 6. Private funded 'issue' political advertising is made illegal. Yes this against the first amendment. It would require modifying the constitution. 7. Election season is short, say 2-3 months top. 8. Changes to libel and slander laws allowing for actual prosecution and jail time for people speaking blatantly falsehoods concerning issues or political candidates. This would include the ability to prosecute 'news' agencies. A jury would decide. 9. Term limits for all congress critters. 10. A much longer duration of time after leaving office where you cannot become a lobbyist. 11. Start revoking corporate charters (again) for corporations that violate laws repeatedly. http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history-corporations-us/ 12. Require that the board of directors include regular employees. (Like Germany).
That is why author's in the future are going to do more self-publishing and editing, just like some musicians like Radio Head are cutting out all those other costs. Perhaps getting together to share the cost of a ebook site, or just offering their books on their own websites.
I agree with your sentiments but disagree with how clear you think the 4th amendment is given past case law.
General mass meta data searches have been ruled to be constitutional time and time again. And it doesn't matter how you happen to read the 4th amendment, it matters how the courts read it.
You can be mad at the President for breaking what you feel the spirit of the 4th amendment is all about, but you can't claim he did anything illegal. Courts decide what is legal or illegal.
Where I wish people would direct their anger is the process by which a lot of these court decisions get made. The chief justice appoints judges to a secret court, a court which then hears an arguments from one side only (the government spy agencies), who then make a secret ruling allowing for who knows what....
That whole secret court process needs to be challenged.
"Glyphosate doesn't end up on our dinner plates in any significant quantities, so it's not a problem."
Like overuse of antibiotics, overuse and especially non-targeted use of Round-up is now producing Glyphosate resistant weeds. It is going to end up being a chemical arms race.
I think informed people understand that GMO foods are not dangerous in and of themselves, but rather the agricultural practices that commercial farms are using are often not sustainable, often hurt rivers / fish with run off, etc...
If we could combine good land management with good GMO use, it would be acceptable to a lot more people.
The size of our armed forces is not a response to threats around the world. It is more a jobs and contract program for the various districts of congress.
Courts decide is something is constitutional. A court did decide that what the NSA was doing was OK. Now, it happened to be a secret court, who's judges are appointed by one unelected person, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. You can argue that the secret court is itself the problem, but you really can't argue that what the NSA did was unconstitutional.
There are many factors at work that make US healthcare cost more. Doctor pay is just one of them, but I'd argue that is more of a symptom rather than a cause.
The cause is 'for profit'. All levels of health care and health insurance are trying to make a profit. Of course it is going to cost more.
For instance, Hospital A and Hospital B want to open a neurosurgery centers. Both compete and try to recruit top talent. The hospital that gets the best doctors is going to see the most revenue from monopolizing the neurosurgery market in that area. Doctor takes the job with whichever hospital offered him the most. The doctor is in the game to make money, the hospital is in the game to make money, etc...
Bottom line is that now the patient is paying for a surgery based on a doctors salary that was artificially jacked up because of a battle between two for profit hospitals.
Take the 'for profit' out of health care, and costs all along the supply chain will drop. Let a single entity do the bargaining, and costs will be driven down even further.
Single-payer just makes sense when the customer can't bargain or shop for the product.
Obamacare was passed with Dems having a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and having control of the House.
Except you can't count the few 'blue dog' democrats. Liberman and other dems would not have voted for single-payer. In effect, there never was a filibuster proof Senate because of those blue dogs.
I guess it depends what sort of IT you do. For the last 15 years I've held titles that always end with 'analyst'. The current title being web analyst. If you work in IT and it requires you to be something of a jack of all trades, the job never feels old.
I've always worked for places who's primary purpose isn't IT solutions though. I could see myself getting burned out if all I ever did was produce software in some programming shop, or only built desktops to sell to other companies.
I think a bigger issue than 'hot or invisible', is that the two (geek or whatever) people that would probably work well together, are both likely to avoid many social interactions, so how in the world will they ever meet?
That is a failure of a specific union to negotiate enough flexibility into their member benefits, not a failure of the Union as a concept that has proven itself to be a net benefit to society overall.
"Unions were good in the 1920s and 1930s. Now, they've priced the American worker out of the global labor market."
"source?"
Your source shows that union membership is at an all time low. That is a given. I'd be more interested in a source claiming that union labor wages is what has priced the American worker out of the global market.
Germany produces twice the amount of cars we do, while paying their workers 50 dollars per hour compared to our 33 dollars an hour. Apparently Germany didn't get the memo that all worker wages must race to the bottom in order to remain competitive in a global market.
And yet, union membership is at a all time low, wages have been stagnant for most American's for the last 15 years, income inequality is at an all time high, etc..
Of course there are some counter-productive aspects of unions, but overall the benefits outweigh the harms.
Unfortunately, the Muslim Brotherhood government did not come to the table, was not inclusive, and rammed a constitution declaring Sharia law through with only 20% of the population voting. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/03/opinion/egypt-morsy-khaled-fahmy/?hpt=hp_c2
That kinda ticked some people off.
The thing I do not understand, is that people (like the author in the cnn article above), claim that they thought both candidates were kinda bad. Lesser of two evils type race. How does a population end up with 2 bad candidates after (somewhat) violently overthrowing the last government? I suppose that is something you could blame the military for, since they ran things 'temporarily' between governments.
Slashdot Mirror
How has the battery range held up?
I don't want to pretend that American has the same level of cultural diversity that Europe does (because of the long history that it took to form those distinct cultures compared to America's youth), but I think America is seen as far more uniform by the rest of the world than it actually is, especially as it concerns the various local cultures.
What has happened in the last 20-30 years is pretty simple. In no particular order:
1. The internet has really hurt print media, and the decline of the newspaper industry alone has shrunk the amount of 'on the ground' journalists everywhere.
2. The concentration of media ownership: very few people now control wide swaths of newspaper, tv, and radio outlets. I hopefully don't need to explain why that is a bad thing.
3. Ever since "60 Minutes" aired and began to make a lot of money, corporate media realized that their news branches could also make money. Which created a nice downward spiral from what used to be seen as a public good, to news as a money making business. And of course, given that politicians were just as much in the pockets of those with money as the advertisement-dependent media owners, very little was done to preserve the "public good" part of being allowed to own a part of the public commons: the airwaves.
"Linux adds some of the stability to the bulk hardware, but the bulk hardware is simply not as good"
We've been moving away from Solaris / HP-UX 'big' servers to lots of VMWare clustered linux servers for a long time now. Uptime is identical if not better, and it is way cheaper. Physical servers basically start to be seen as hot swappable. The apps don't care if one dies or is moved.
The only people I know who are still using Solaris or HP-UX are those that can't move off those platforms because of specific apps that have no linux equivalents.
Well, and it isn't just VMWARE. There have been other strategies and virtualization techniques allowing for the use of low cost linux boxes in highly available environments for quite a long time now.
I don't know anyone, who has the choice software-wise, staying with Solaris or HP-UX nowadays.
That is because most of Europe recognizes that certain institutions that provide services that benefit society over time, do not function well in the 'for profit' free-market model.
I guess the US has to hit rock bottom before we can realize that fact of life.
"There was a day when a College education was affordable, and an enterprising student could work their way through college on a part time job. Then the government got involved providing federally guaranteed student loans. "
So I assume you would agree with the solution that most modern nations use: heavily subsidized higher education, with mandated very low or zero cost tuition?
"The US massively subsidizes education. The price of education rises far beyond the rate of inflation."
What makes the US so special? Every single other western country in the world has figured out how to subsidize a desired institution without raising the costs of using that institution's services.
Why is the US the only modern western country in the world who can't figure out how to support a desired institution with public money without having the costs go up?
http://www.businessinsider.com/tuition-costs-by-country-college-higher-education-2012-6?op=1
I think the only hope is that it gets so obviously bad and corrupt that a grass roots movement takes hold in the States and they call a constitutional convention.
I think (hope) that the person you responded to is talking about real campaign finance reform. You know, the kind that will never be allowed to happen..
For instance:
1. Repeal citizens united. Constitutional amendment is needed.
2. Make PACS illegal.
3. Any candidate that can get X signatures can run for an office.
4. Candidates are given X public dollars to spend and are given Y air time and all of them have to participate in Z debates.
5. Small donations are allowed, ~50 dollars per person or so. That is for flyers, staffing, limited ads, only coming officially from the campaign.
6. Private funded 'issue' political advertising is made illegal. Yes this against the first amendment. It would require modifying the constitution.
7. Election season is short, say 2-3 months top.
8. Changes to libel and slander laws allowing for actual prosecution and jail time for people speaking blatantly falsehoods concerning issues or political candidates. This would include the ability to prosecute 'news' agencies. A jury would decide.
9. Term limits for all congress critters.
10. A much longer duration of time after leaving office where you cannot become a lobbyist.
11. Start revoking corporate charters (again) for corporations that violate laws repeatedly. http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history-corporations-us/
12. Require that the board of directors include regular employees. (Like Germany).
That is why author's in the future are going to do more self-publishing and editing, just like some musicians like Radio Head are cutting out all those other costs. Perhaps getting together to share the cost of a ebook site, or just offering their books on their own websites.
I agree with your sentiments but disagree with how clear you think the 4th amendment is given past case law.
General mass meta data searches have been ruled to be constitutional time and time again. And it doesn't matter how you happen to read the 4th amendment, it matters how the courts read it.
You can be mad at the President for breaking what you feel the spirit of the 4th amendment is all about, but you can't claim he did anything illegal. Courts decide what is legal or illegal.
Where I wish people would direct their anger is the process by which a lot of these court decisions get made. The chief justice appoints judges to a secret court, a court which then hears an arguments from one side only (the government spy agencies), who then make a secret ruling allowing for who knows what....
That whole secret court process needs to be challenged.
CAFO's still provide the bulk of the meat consumed in the US.
"Glyphosate doesn't end up on our dinner plates in any significant quantities, so it's not a problem."
Like overuse of antibiotics, overuse and especially non-targeted use of Round-up is now producing Glyphosate resistant weeds. It is going to end up being a chemical arms race.
I think informed people understand that GMO foods are not dangerous in and of themselves, but rather the agricultural practices that commercial farms are using are often not sustainable, often hurt rivers / fish with run off, etc...
If we could combine good land management with good GMO use, it would be acceptable to a lot more people.
The size of our armed forces is not a response to threats around the world. It is more a jobs and contract program for the various districts of congress.
Courts decide is something is constitutional. A court did decide that what the NSA was doing was OK. Now, it happened to be a secret court, who's judges are appointed by one unelected person, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. You can argue that the secret court is itself the problem, but you really can't argue that what the NSA did was unconstitutional.
There are many factors at work that make US healthcare cost more. Doctor pay is just one of them, but I'd argue that is more of a symptom rather than a cause.
The cause is 'for profit'. All levels of health care and health insurance are trying to make a profit. Of course it is going to cost more.
For instance, Hospital A and Hospital B want to open a neurosurgery centers. Both compete and try to recruit top talent. The hospital that gets the best doctors is going to see the most revenue from monopolizing the neurosurgery market in that area. Doctor takes the job with whichever hospital offered him the most. The doctor is in the game to make money, the hospital is in the game to make money, etc...
Bottom line is that now the patient is paying for a surgery based on a doctors salary that was artificially jacked up because of a battle between two for profit hospitals.
Take the 'for profit' out of health care, and costs all along the supply chain will drop. Let a single entity do the bargaining, and costs will be driven down even further.
Single-payer just makes sense when the customer can't bargain or shop for the product.
Obamacare was passed with Dems having a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and having control of the House.
Except you can't count the few 'blue dog' democrats. Liberman and other dems would not have voted for single-payer. In effect, there never was a filibuster proof Senate because of those blue dogs.
I guess it depends what sort of IT you do. For the last 15 years I've held titles that always end with 'analyst'. The current title being web analyst. If you work in IT and it requires you to be something of a jack of all trades, the job never feels old.
I've always worked for places who's primary purpose isn't IT solutions though. I could see myself getting burned out if all I ever did was produce software in some programming shop, or only built desktops to sell to other companies.
I think a bigger issue than 'hot or invisible', is that the two (geek or whatever) people that would probably work well together, are both likely to avoid many social interactions, so how in the world will they ever meet?
That is a failure of a specific union to negotiate enough flexibility into their member benefits, not a failure of the Union as a concept that has proven itself to be a net benefit to society overall.
"Unions were good in the 1920s and 1930s. Now, they've priced the American worker out of the global labor market."
"source?"
Your source shows that union membership is at an all time low. That is a given. I'd be more interested in a source claiming that union labor wages is what has priced the American worker out of the global market.
Germany produces twice the amount of cars we do, while paying their workers 50 dollars per hour compared to our 33 dollars an hour. Apparently Germany didn't get the memo that all worker wages must race to the bottom in order to remain competitive in a global market.
And yet, union membership is at a all time low, wages have been stagnant for most American's for the last 15 years, income inequality is at an all time high, etc..
Of course there are some counter-productive aspects of unions, but overall the benefits outweigh the harms.
Unfortunately, the Muslim Brotherhood government did not come to the table, was not inclusive, and rammed a constitution declaring Sharia law through with only 20% of the population voting. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/03/opinion/egypt-morsy-khaled-fahmy/?hpt=hp_c2
That kinda ticked some people off.
The thing I do not understand, is that people (like the author in the cnn article above), claim that they thought both candidates were kinda bad. Lesser of two evils type race. How does a population end up with 2 bad candidates after (somewhat) violently overthrowing the last government? I suppose that is something you could blame the military for, since they ran things 'temporarily' between governments.