Well, there are a few laws that certain religions are excluded from following. Native American peyote use is one example, and Rastafarian pot use to a limited extent in the US and legal in other countries like Italy. Both exclusions were likely granted because they Judge considered the crime victimless.
This copying right would make an interesting court challenge if the defendants could prove that their actions were victimless (maybe saying that they have no intention of ever buying something, therefore, no possible sale was lost) and part of worship.
This scenario is especially prevalent in academia. Academic freedom is important, but all too often it spills over into areas that it really doesn't belong.
Actually, the real problem is corporate attitudes spilling over into academia. Maybe an insurance company or a sprocket manufacturer can lock-down its network to run only the handful of services that an obedient little cubicle-dweller at needs - but part of the point of academia is to experiment and investigate, so that system is really not fit for purpose.
Like I said in my post, Academic Freedom is important, but it too often spills over into areas that it doesn't belong. Some health care administrator installing a server is one of those areas. Operations wouldn't let the academic dentistry department experiment with the building wiring, nor would the security officers allow the nursing academy to experiment with investigating crimes and detaining people.
That aside, despite the many problems that arise when people homebrew solutions, the one that is immediately obvious is support. What happens when that academic leaves, his co-workers are now dependent on his custom system. Is it now IT's responsibility to support it? The ideal solution in the Academic world is a flexible, cooperative, intelligent IT department, and an academic staff that has clear direction on how to approach IT, start a project, and develop a solution together.
I'm sure that there are some IT departments out there that aren't flexible, or understaffed and unable to meet the needs of every academic they serve, but over time, dealing with everyone's custom solutions really becomes a support nightmare, further hurting IT's chances of providing good services.
You'll note that I didn't stress security concerns. A properly designed network should greatly minimize the chances that any rogue device could cause damage. What custom solutions do more often, is create support issues, often are less valuable solutions than if they had consulted with IT experts, and in general, are an inefficient use of employee time.
Why even bother setting up a server with all the excellent online calendar applications? For instance, many schools use Google apps for education or MS Live.
That aside, going rogue, not talking to IT, and making a custom solution just for your one area, is one of the things that makes working in IT so frustrating at times. Among the many, many problems that implementing your own solution can create, just think about one: what happens if you change jobs? I can personally attest to getting calls from random new department heads saying "Joe Smith (former department head) set up system xyz to do abc for us and now he's gone, I expect IT to now support system xyz".
This scenario is especially prevalent in academia. Academic freedom is important, but all too often it spills over into areas that it really doesn't belong.
Why even bother setting up a server with the numerous excellent online calendars? A little company called Google comes to mind. Many schools have already moved their users over to google apps for education.
I wonder how much of our science decline has to do with the consolidation of media ownership by a handful of profit driven corporations, which has a wide range of negative effects, from who we elect, to how issues are perceived.
The country seems to be run by ideology now, and facts seem to be largely irrelevant to any decision making. Just look at how many of the new Republican house members discount evolution.
One (of many) interesting points, is that school districts without strong teachers unions tend to have lower test scores than those that do. And if you look at other wealthy countries, many of them have strong teachers' unions, and are ahead of us in science/math scores. Take Germany for example.
One of the key differences between us and other western European countries, is the level of social safety nets and support that pushes the bottom up. Good teachers try to instill as much knowledge as possible, and to do so, they have to try to teach to the average intelligence/capability of the class. The US allows families to fall down way further than other countries, and it creates a cycle of poverty and ignorance.
You also have to keep in mind, that while yes, teachers' unions make it harder to fire bad teachers, they are also the ones that push for smaller class sizes, more resources for students, bonds to get increased school funding, etc..
I wouldn't mind seeing some sort of system to rank and judge teachers. I bet the results would show that there is only a very tiny percent of teachers who are bad at their jobs. Who goes into teaching without wanting to teach? It certainly isn't for the pay, nor for the working conditions. I think if we really looked at the issue, we'd find that there are dozens of factors involved in a class being poorly educated, and that the majority of those factors are not something that the individual teacher can control.
I doubt that countries like China are going to self-impose stricter regulations as their populations gains wealth. Unless their society allows public market forces to punish companies, politicians, and their top leadership for bad decisions, there won't be any incentive to regulate.
Until a regular person in China can sue a company or the government for polluting drinking water, or vote out a politician that isn't protecting public health, nothing will change.
Giving the time it takes to approve and build a nuke plant, surely in that same time we could at least make some big inroads into upgrading the power grid and start putting additional infrastructure in place for power storage.
Higher up in the thread someone made a really good point about this issue.
It isn't faith we have in scientists, it is trust. But not just in them or one particular theory.
It is a well deserved trust of the methodology, peer review, and most importantly, our visual confirmation of their repeatable results. Science is all around us, everyday. You step on that plane, not because you have faith in the science theories that engineers used to construct the plane, but because planes fly everyday without crashing.
An reasonable person should trust the explanatory power of the Theory(ies) of Evolution, not because of faith in evolution as a whole, but because the theory was developed using the scientific method. The same method which produces 'miracles' of technology all the time, which repeat like clockwork on a daily basis.. Medicine, machines, etc...
That doesn't mean you have to do the same, but maybe it means that you shouldn't dismiss faith as "magical thinking" that can't exist in the same mind as critical observation.
Obviously magical thinking and/or faith can exist in the same mind as critical observation. It has been well studied and explanations abound for how this is possible. (google 'hold two contradictory beliefs in mind' or other phrasing). That says nothing about the validity of each approach, nor whether a conflict would actually arise if said faith had doctrine in it that contradicted an aspect of a scientists research.
How far would Mendel have gotten if his faith of choice happened to forbid cross pollinating plants, or was specific enough in its doctrine to already provide explanation for genetics.? Just because faith, sometimes, when properly contained in a faith-container in the brain, doesn't interfere with being able to critically observe the natural world, does not mean that that faith is safe from the label "magical thoughts".
It is a bit more serious than 800,000 people not getting paid (although.... I kinda consider that fairly serious).
* Medicare: Some 400,000 newly eligible Medicare recipients were delayed in applying for the program.
* Social Security: Claims from 112,000 new Social Security applicants were not processed. 212,000 new or replacement Social Security cards were not issued. 360,000 office visits were denied. 800,000 toll-free calls for information were not answered.
* Healthcare: New patients were not accepted into clinical research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) clinical center. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ceased disease surveillance and hotline calls to NIH concerning diseases were not answered.
* Environment: Toxic waste clean-up work at 609 sites stopped as 2,400 Superfund workers were sent home.
* Law Enforcement and Public Safety: Delays occurred in the processing of alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives applications by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; work on more than 3,500 bankruptcy cases reportedly was suspended; cancellation of the recruitment and testing of federal law enforcement officials reportedly occurred, including the hiring of 400 border patrol agents; and delinquent child-support cases were delayed.
* US Veterans: Multiple veterans' services were curtailed, ranging from health and welfare to finance and travel.
* Travel: 80,000 passport applications were delayed. 80,000 visas were delayed. The resulting postponement or cancellation of travel cost U.S. tourist industries and airlines millions of dollars.
* National Parks: 2 million visitors were turned away from the nation's national parks resulting in the loss of millions in revenue.
* Government-backed Loans: FHA mortgage loans worth more than $800 million to more than 10,000 low-and-moderate-income working families were delayed.
* Social Security: Benefit checks would probably keep coming, but no new applications would be accepted or processed.
* Income Tax: The IRS will probably stop processing paper tax returns and refunds.
* Border Patrol: Customs and Border Patrol functions will probably continue.
* Welfare: Again, the checks would probably continue, but new applications for Food Stamps might not be processed.
* Mail: The U.S. Postal Service supports itself, so mail deliveries would continue as usual.
* National Defense: All active duty members of all branches of all armed services would continue duty as usual, but might not get paid on time. More than half of the Defense Department's 860,000+ civilian employees would also work, the others sent home.
* Justice System: Federal courts should remain open. Criminals will still be chased, caught, prosecuted and thrown in federal prisons, which would still be operating.
* Farms/USDA: Food safety inspections will probably continue, but rural development, and farm credit and loan programs will probably close down.
* Transportation: Air traffic control, TSA security personnel, and the Coast Guard will remain on the job. Applications for passports and visas may not be processed.
* National Parks/Tourism: Parks and forests will probably close and visitors told to leave. Visitor and interpretive centers will be closed. Non-volunteer rescue and fire control services might be shut down. National monuments and most historic sites will probably be closed. Parks police will probably continue their patrols.
Leaving aside all the other issues with the fabricated 'budget crisis', when I start looking at the numbers, I'm even further baffled/angry.
They are squabbling over 33-40 billion dollars, and the deficit is over a trillion.....
I haven't heard one single mainstream news source call anyone out on this absurdity. The republicans want to cut some social programs, home heating oil help, early education, family planning, basically anything that helps the poor or elderly, but the cuts are a drop in the budget bucket.
To me, it is pretty obvious that this is just all show, at the expense of the American public again. The tea party side of the Republicans just wants a shut down for ideological reasons, reality be damned. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/mike-pence-shut-er-down-video.php
The republicans have been in control of the house for quite a while now, and so far we've seen nothing but abortion law proposals and other useless wastes of time that have no chance of ever passing the senate.
They've done nothing to help jobs in their time in congress, and this budget issue has nothing to do with differences of opinion between the democrats and republicans, but everything to do with the tea party base cheering "shut it down, shut it down" anytime the subject comes up.
The republicans want the government shutdown to maintain their tea party inspired "no compromise" image. Just like every single bill that has passed the house so far (for example, take this very professionally titled bill "Repealing the Job Killing Health Care Law Act"), this is only for show.
I'm equally critical of the democrats when they deserve it, but this particular bunch of republicans isn't even trying to pretend they are doing anything beneficial for the country. And unless you believe that the non-partisan congressional budget office is wrong or biased, the republican proposed budget is going to cause job loss and hurt the country. I honestly can't understand, even from a conservative ideological based point of view, how anyone can take this particular set of republican congressmen/women seriously.
Does anyone here remember what teenagers did before mobile phones? Did you all have unmissable, action-packed adolescences or something? I can remember being a teenager and hanging out with other teenagers. They were among the most mind numbingly boring experiences of my life. I can vividly recall spending entire days "hanging out" with groups in towns. Let me give you a typical "fun time".
I'm pretty sure that your type of teen life is in the minority. At least I hope so. Every teen I knew, and even the groups of teens in middle school/hs that I didn't know, were constantly doing all sorts of things. This was the time when CPU's were around 20mhz and computers were not yet in every home.
We were constantly eventing crazy stuff to do.
Age 13: group of us making it a mission to see some scary movie, and riding our bikes from vid store to vid store trying to find a clerk that would let us rent it, then scarying the crap out of ourselves when we watched it hehe. Age 14: walked down to a river on the edge of town, waded across it to an island in the middle, and built a tree fort over a few weeks, and hung out cooking/making spears, etc.. Age 14: Bomb making phase. We'd save up firecrackers over the summer, and then empty them out into pipes, bottles, and other containers trying to get the biggest boom. Age 15: Planning some big school prank for weeks, and then carrying it out in the dead of night, all covert opt style with walkie talkies. Age 16: Car time! Camping, hiking, driving to out of the way places and exploring abandoned houses. One particular one house had a bunch of mystic symbols drawn all over the walls. That was a fun research project. Turned out to be a bunch of losers pretending to be satanists and drawing random 'evil' symbols.
I don't know. It just sounds like maybe your friends weren't very imaginative.
Did you have to take any appreciable amounts of philosophy, art, anthro/socio ? I'm guess you didn't, because I agree with mangu, but not just for MBA or management. I feel that I was much more creative and a much better problem solver, right out of college in my first 'system analyst' position (which amounted to being the main programmer for web and desktops apps for a hospital, dba, web server admin, all in one type position), than some of the people with computer or science degrees.
If you have to make program/application design decisions that require you to understand people, and the way they use data, as well as looking past what they are saying and being able to read their true needs, having a good chunk of liberal arts is really helpful. I ended up with an Anthro major, but was very close to a chemistry major also, so I may have been benefiting from the best of both class types. Of course, it took me a while to get up to speed on the language used by the workplace at the time (foxpro hehe), and then some time to learn newer languages, server environments, dba stuff, etc... but all of that knowledge wouldn't matter at all if in implementing it, I had made the wrong initial decisions about the user needs, the organizations structure, etc...
I remember joking with friends that application design starts with putting on my Indiana Jones Anthro hat. Each department was basically a different tribe, with a different language. I had to learn rituals, and which could be broken, and how to do so. I had to sometimes ask business logic questions that had nothing to do with the project at hand, because I suspected that some other underlying business process was broken, and the tribal chiefs were leading me in the wrong direction.
My math, chemistry, and physics courses in college didn't feel nearly as creative to me. We did some original research, and some tests were actually fairly creative. I had good professors who would sometimes give us tests that were completely different than the book. It did, at times, really stretch our brains. But much of that was definitely "in the box" of conventional science. Take any two chemistry majors from two different schools, and they will likely approach a chemistry problem in nearly identical ways. Now take any two liberal arts majors from two different schools and ask them to, say, streamline an office process, or design a workflow, or redo the budget process, and I'm fairly confident that the approaches, and likely the solutions, will be different.
In addition to making you think about things that you will likely never hear about in your 'real life' or work later in life (I studied a things like walking marriage in China, so odd), the very fact that liberal arts programs are so NOT standardized, is almost always guaranteed to produce an original thinker. Tack on programming or other skills later, and it ends up being a pretty solid problem solving set imo.
Just in gas, it typically costs me $7800/yr in gas. So add in wear and tear plus insurance savings, its likely a break even at worst. For most people, working from home saves money for both the employee and the employer.
7800/12=650
You spend 650 dollars a month on fuel? Are you driving a M1 Abrams to work or something?
I've never seen a development environment where that was the case. What type of work do you do?
*car analogy ahead*
It would be like me bringing a car to an autoshop, and the mechanic telling me that in order to fix my car, I have to buy him some tools....
I guess if you work with very unusual software tools, I could see a client providing that software for you, but Adobe products? Anyone web design or graphic design shop that doesn't have a few versions of common software tools like Photoshop lying around probably isn't a very professional organization.
Piracy is just the new socially acceptable temper tantrum..
I agree with most of what you said, given the current state of our media outlets. But I don't think this is some 'new' tantrum. The internet and streaming content has been around for quite a while now, yet content producers are intentionally not keeping up with the times.
Of course copyright holders have the right to control how copies of their product are released. The problem is when you combine that right with the broken IP laws in the US. Take blade runner for example. A 29 year old movie that you still can't find online except in one form on netflix. The zune market place on xbox doesn't even have the 4 year old final cut. And heck, even the physical disc, 4 years later, is 14 dollars amazon. I know it is the copyright holder's right, but the IP laws allowing copyright to be basically forever is crap, and everyone knows it.
For me, it isn't about cost so much as convenience. Magazine producers know full well that putting their magazines right at the checkout line pays off. Why 20 year+ old content isn't available instantly, even for cost, is frankly baffling for people that have grown up with the internet. It isn't a new tantrum, it is the new reality, and producers, like always, will drag their feet making the change.
I just wish our country could pick a direction and start moving toward it (even nuclear). The country changing its mind every 4-8 years isn't very conducive to upgrading the power grid to be 'smarter', store power (pumped storage, etc...), transfer more efficiently at longer distances, etc.. when many of these projects could take 20+ years.
Not to mention, that as a percent of total wealth, the wealthy spend a fraction of a percent that the average household does. Any tax based on consumption/spending is inherently regressive.
A corporation will always sell its product for the highest possible amount that the market will accept. Taxes only marginally influence that price.
The real falsehood is believing that cutting a corporation's tax 10% is going to lead to that amount of money being used to hire more workers, or expand operations, or better wages and benefits for its employees. Sure, some of that 10% may be used to do those things (stimulate the economy), but history has shown that it is a very bad return on the money.
I'm not sure of the relative weight of factors that create inequality (tax vs federal reserve vs looser regulation vs allowed monopolies, etc..), but taxes surely must be one of them. marginal tax rate vs profit of top earners Notice every dip in taxes corresponds neatly to a higher percent of total income going to the top earners.
Your pdf mentions that since the 70's, nearly all regulation and tax structures have been based on 'trickle down'. Well, we know how well that works (not at all).
This is a good article that lists other factors that create inequality. list of factors (middle of the page) The factors: 1. regressive tax policy 2. decline of labor unions 3. min. wage not keeping up 4. globalization 5. lax regulation
Although on-demand streaming isn't available yet, Time Warner said it will be added later. As well as recording.
I'm not so sure it is about the subscription fee. More likely it is lack of Nielsen ratings combined with the inability to compete for time slots if customers can on-demand their popular shows.
Like others have said above, it basically boils down to a revenue model that is not evolving quickly enough to match modern technology. Nielsen should be fed stats from streaming, dvr's, hulu, etc.., enforced in contract between any content producer any content delivery service.
That would at least help advertisers and content delivery people to bargain fairly for ad price per show per time. The remaining issue, in the minds of the networks, would be that there wouldn't be a way to compete over a time slot. TV show vs TV show competition is a major aspect of the current model. But I think that is one of the things that will just need to die off. Total viewers should be the only stat they care about, and Nielsen and other ratings agencies need to evolve away from time slot competition.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, there are a few laws that certain religions are excluded from following. Native American peyote use is one example, and Rastafarian pot use to a limited extent in the US and legal in other countries like Italy. Both exclusions were likely granted because they Judge considered the crime victimless.
This copying right would make an interesting court challenge if the defendants could prove that their actions were victimless (maybe saying that they have no intention of ever buying something, therefore, no possible sale was lost) and part of worship.
This scenario is especially prevalent in academia. Academic freedom is important, but all too often it spills over into areas that it really doesn't belong.
Actually, the real problem is corporate attitudes spilling over into academia. Maybe an insurance company or a sprocket manufacturer can lock-down its network to run only the handful of services that an obedient little cubicle-dweller at needs - but part of the point of academia is to experiment and investigate, so that system is really not fit for purpose.
Like I said in my post, Academic Freedom is important, but it too often spills over into areas that it doesn't belong. Some health care administrator installing a server is one of those areas. Operations wouldn't let the academic dentistry department experiment with the building wiring, nor would the security officers allow the nursing academy to experiment with investigating crimes and detaining people.
That aside, despite the many problems that arise when people homebrew solutions, the one that is immediately obvious is support. What happens when that academic leaves, his co-workers are now dependent on his custom system. Is it now IT's responsibility to support it? The ideal solution in the Academic world is a flexible, cooperative, intelligent IT department, and an academic staff that has clear direction on how to approach IT, start a project, and develop a solution together.
I'm sure that there are some IT departments out there that aren't flexible, or understaffed and unable to meet the needs of every academic they serve, but over time, dealing with everyone's custom solutions really becomes a support nightmare, further hurting IT's chances of providing good services.
You'll note that I didn't stress security concerns. A properly designed network should greatly minimize the chances that any rogue device could cause damage. What custom solutions do more often, is create support issues, often are less valuable solutions than if they had consulted with IT experts, and in general, are an inefficient use of employee time.
Why even bother setting up a server with all the excellent online calendar applications? For instance, many schools use Google apps for education or MS Live.
That aside, going rogue, not talking to IT, and making a custom solution just for your one area, is one of the things that makes working in IT so frustrating at times. Among the many, many problems that implementing your own solution can create, just think about one: what happens if you change jobs? I can personally attest to getting calls from random new department heads saying "Joe Smith (former department head) set up system xyz to do abc for us and now he's gone, I expect IT to now support system xyz".
This scenario is especially prevalent in academia. Academic freedom is important, but all too often it spills over into areas that it really doesn't belong.
Why even bother setting up a server with the numerous excellent online calendars? A little company called Google comes to mind. Many schools have already moved their users over to google apps for education.
I wonder how much of our science decline has to do with the consolidation of media ownership by a handful of profit driven corporations, which has a wide range of negative effects, from who we elect, to how issues are perceived.
The country seems to be run by ideology now, and facts seem to be largely irrelevant to any decision making. Just look at how many of the new Republican house members discount evolution.
I don't think it is so clear that teachers' unions are to blame.
Really interesting debate.
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/index.php/past-debates/dont-blame-teachers-unions-for-our-failing-schools/
One (of many) interesting points, is that school districts without strong teachers unions tend to have lower test scores than those that do. And if you look at other wealthy countries, many of them have strong teachers' unions, and are ahead of us in science/math scores. Take Germany for example.
One of the key differences between us and other western European countries, is the level of social safety nets and support that pushes the bottom up. Good teachers try to instill as much knowledge as possible, and to do so, they have to try to teach to the average intelligence/capability of the class. The US allows families to fall down way further than other countries, and it creates a cycle of poverty and ignorance.
You also have to keep in mind, that while yes, teachers' unions make it harder to fire bad teachers, they are also the ones that push for smaller class sizes, more resources for students, bonds to get increased school funding, etc..
I wouldn't mind seeing some sort of system to rank and judge teachers. I bet the results would show that there is only a very tiny percent of teachers who are bad at their jobs. Who goes into teaching without wanting to teach? It certainly isn't for the pay, nor for the working conditions. I think if we really looked at the issue, we'd find that there are dozens of factors involved in a class being poorly educated, and that the majority of those factors are not something that the individual teacher can control.
I doubt that countries like China are going to self-impose stricter regulations as their populations gains wealth. Unless their society allows public market forces to punish companies, politicians, and their top leadership for bad decisions, there won't be any incentive to regulate.
Until a regular person in China can sue a company or the government for polluting drinking water, or vote out a politician that isn't protecting public health, nothing will change.
I am not sure why, assuming a long term plan, renewables are automatically assumed to be incapable of meeting baseload.
Study on renewables as baseload in North Carolina
Brief paper on baseload and renewables
Giving the time it takes to approve and build a nuke plant, surely in that same time we could at least make some big inroads into upgrading the power grid and start putting additional infrastructure in place for power storage.
Higher up in the thread someone made a really good point about this issue.
It isn't faith we have in scientists, it is trust. But not just in them or one particular theory.
It is a well deserved trust of the methodology, peer review, and most importantly, our visual confirmation of their repeatable results. Science is all around us, everyday. You step on that plane, not because you have faith in the science theories that engineers used to construct the plane, but because planes fly everyday without crashing.
An reasonable person should trust the explanatory power of the Theory(ies) of Evolution, not because of faith in evolution as a whole, but because the theory was developed using the scientific method. The same method which produces 'miracles' of technology all the time, which repeat like clockwork on a daily basis.. Medicine, machines, etc...
That doesn't mean you have to do the same, but maybe it means that you shouldn't dismiss faith as "magical thinking" that can't exist in the same mind as critical observation.
Obviously magical thinking and/or faith can exist in the same mind as critical observation. It has been well studied and explanations abound for how this is possible. (google 'hold two contradictory beliefs in mind' or other phrasing). That says nothing about the validity of each approach, nor whether a conflict would actually arise if said faith had doctrine in it that contradicted an aspect of a scientists research.
How far would Mendel have gotten if his faith of choice happened to forbid cross pollinating plants, or was specific enough in its doctrine to already provide explanation for genetics.? Just because faith, sometimes, when properly contained in a faith-container in the brain, doesn't interfere with being able to critically observe the natural world, does not mean that that faith is safe from the label "magical thoughts".
It is a bit more serious than 800,000 people not getting paid (although.... I kinda consider that fairly serious).
* Medicare: Some 400,000 newly eligible Medicare recipients were delayed in applying for the program.
* Social Security: Claims from 112,000 new Social Security applicants were not processed. 212,000 new or replacement Social Security cards were not issued. 360,000 office visits were denied. 800,000 toll-free calls for information were not answered.
* Healthcare: New patients were not accepted into clinical research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) clinical center. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ceased disease surveillance and hotline calls to NIH concerning diseases were not answered.
* Environment: Toxic waste clean-up work at 609 sites stopped as 2,400 Superfund workers were sent home.
* Law Enforcement and Public Safety: Delays occurred in the processing of alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives applications by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; work on more than 3,500 bankruptcy cases reportedly was suspended; cancellation of the recruitment and testing of federal law enforcement officials reportedly occurred, including the hiring of 400 border patrol agents; and delinquent child-support cases were delayed.
* US Veterans: Multiple veterans' services were curtailed, ranging from health and welfare to finance and travel.
* Travel: 80,000 passport applications were delayed. 80,000 visas were delayed. The resulting postponement or cancellation of travel cost U.S. tourist industries and airlines millions of dollars.
* National Parks: 2 million visitors were turned away from the nation's national parks resulting in the loss of millions in revenue.
* Government-backed Loans: FHA mortgage loans worth more than $800 million to more than 10,000 low-and-moderate-income working families were delayed.
* Social Security: Benefit checks would probably keep coming, but no new applications would be accepted or processed.
* Income Tax: The IRS will probably stop processing paper tax returns and refunds.
* Border Patrol: Customs and Border Patrol functions will probably continue.
* Welfare: Again, the checks would probably continue, but new applications for Food Stamps might not be processed.
* Mail: The U.S. Postal Service supports itself, so mail deliveries would continue as usual.
* National Defense: All active duty members of all branches of all armed services would continue duty as usual, but might not get paid on time. More than half of the Defense Department's 860,000+ civilian employees would also work, the others sent home.
* Justice System: Federal courts should remain open. Criminals will still be chased, caught, prosecuted and thrown in federal prisons, which would still be operating.
* Farms/USDA: Food safety inspections will probably continue, but rural development, and farm credit and loan programs will probably close down.
* Transportation: Air traffic control, TSA security personnel, and the Coast Guard will remain on the job. Applications for passports and visas may not be processed.
* National Parks/Tourism: Parks and forests will probably close and visitors told to leave. Visitor and interpretive centers will be closed. Non-volunteer rescue and fire control services might be shut down. National monuments and most historic sites will probably be closed. Parks police will probably continue their patrols.
Leaving aside all the other issues with the fabricated 'budget crisis', when I start looking at the numbers, I'm even further baffled/angry.
They are squabbling over 33-40 billion dollars, and the deficit is over a trillion.....
I haven't heard one single mainstream news source call anyone out on this absurdity. The republicans want to cut some social programs, home heating oil help, early education, family planning, basically anything that helps the poor or elderly, but the cuts are a drop in the budget bucket.
To me, it is pretty obvious that this is just all show, at the expense of the American public again. The tea party side of the Republicans just wants a shut down for ideological reasons, reality be damned. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/mike-pence-shut-er-down-video.php
The republicans have been in control of the house for quite a while now, and so far we've seen nothing but abortion law proposals and other useless wastes of time that have no chance of ever passing the senate.
They've done nothing to help jobs in their time in congress, and this budget issue has nothing to do with differences of opinion between the democrats and republicans, but everything to do with the tea party base cheering "shut it down, shut it down" anytime the subject comes up.
The republicans want the government shutdown to maintain their tea party inspired "no compromise" image. Just like every single bill that has passed the house so far (for example, take this very professionally titled bill "Repealing the Job Killing Health Care Law Act"), this is only for show.
I'm equally critical of the democrats when they deserve it, but this particular bunch of republicans isn't even trying to pretend they are doing anything beneficial for the country. And unless you believe that the non-partisan congressional budget office is wrong or biased, the republican proposed budget is going to cause job loss and hurt the country. I honestly can't understand, even from a conservative ideological based point of view, how anyone can take this particular set of republican congressmen/women seriously.
Does anyone here remember what teenagers did before mobile phones? Did you all have unmissable, action-packed adolescences or something? I can remember being a teenager and hanging out with other teenagers. They were among the most mind numbingly boring experiences of my life. I can vividly recall spending entire days "hanging out" with groups in towns. Let me give you a typical "fun time".
I'm pretty sure that your type of teen life is in the minority. At least I hope so. Every teen I knew, and even the groups of teens in middle school/hs that I didn't know, were constantly doing all sorts of things. This was the time when CPU's were around 20mhz and computers were not yet in every home.
We were constantly eventing crazy stuff to do.
Age 13: group of us making it a mission to see some scary movie, and riding our bikes from vid store to vid store trying to find a clerk that would let us rent it, then scarying the crap out of ourselves when we watched it hehe.
Age 14: walked down to a river on the edge of town, waded across it to an island in the middle, and built a tree fort over a few weeks, and hung out cooking/making spears, etc..
Age 14: Bomb making phase. We'd save up firecrackers over the summer, and then empty them out into pipes, bottles, and other containers trying to get the biggest boom.
Age 15: Planning some big school prank for weeks, and then carrying it out in the dead of night, all covert opt style with walkie talkies.
Age 16: Car time! Camping, hiking, driving to out of the way places and exploring abandoned houses. One particular one house had a bunch of mystic symbols drawn all over the walls. That was a fun research project. Turned out to be a bunch of losers pretending to be satanists and drawing random 'evil' symbols.
I don't know. It just sounds like maybe your friends weren't very imaginative.
Wouldn't you agree though that two chemistry majors are more likely to approach a task in a more similar manner than two liberal arts majors?
Did you have to take any appreciable amounts of philosophy, art, anthro/socio ? I'm guess you didn't, because I agree with mangu, but not just for MBA or management. I feel that I was much more creative and a much better problem solver, right out of college in my first 'system analyst' position (which amounted to being the main programmer for web and desktops apps for a hospital, dba, web server admin, all in one type position), than some of the people with computer or science degrees.
If you have to make program/application design decisions that require you to understand people, and the way they use data, as well as looking past what they are saying and being able to read their true needs, having a good chunk of liberal arts is really helpful. I ended up with an Anthro major, but was very close to a chemistry major also, so I may have been benefiting from the best of both class types. Of course, it took me a while to get up to speed on the language used by the workplace at the time (foxpro hehe), and then some time to learn newer languages, server environments, dba stuff, etc... but all of that knowledge wouldn't matter at all if in implementing it, I had made the wrong initial decisions about the user needs, the organizations structure, etc...
I remember joking with friends that application design starts with putting on my Indiana Jones Anthro hat. Each department was basically a different tribe, with a different language. I had to learn rituals, and which could be broken, and how to do so. I had to sometimes ask business logic questions that had nothing to do with the project at hand, because I suspected that some other underlying business process was broken, and the tribal chiefs were leading me in the wrong direction.
My math, chemistry, and physics courses in college didn't feel nearly as creative to me. We did some original research, and some tests were actually fairly creative. I had good professors who would sometimes give us tests that were completely different than the book. It did, at times, really stretch our brains. But much of that was definitely "in the box" of conventional science. Take any two chemistry majors from two different schools, and they will likely approach a chemistry problem in nearly identical ways. Now take any two liberal arts majors from two different schools and ask them to, say, streamline an office process, or design a workflow, or redo the budget process, and I'm fairly confident that the approaches, and likely the solutions, will be different.
In addition to making you think about things that you will likely never hear about in your 'real life' or work later in life (I studied a things like walking marriage in China, so odd), the very fact that liberal arts programs are so NOT standardized, is almost always guaranteed to produce an original thinker. Tack on programming or other skills later, and it ends up being a pretty solid problem solving set imo.
Just in gas, it typically costs me $7800/yr in gas. So add in wear and tear plus insurance savings, its likely a break even at worst. For most people, working from home saves money for both the employee and the employer.
7800/12=650
You spend 650 dollars a month on fuel? Are you driving a M1 Abrams to work or something?
I've never seen a development environment where that was the case. What type of work do you do?
*car analogy ahead*
It would be like me bringing a car to an autoshop, and the mechanic telling me that in order to fix my car, I have to buy him some tools....
I guess if you work with very unusual software tools, I could see a client providing that software for you, but Adobe products? Anyone web design or graphic design shop that doesn't have a few versions of common software tools like Photoshop lying around probably isn't a very professional organization.
Piracy is just the new socially acceptable temper tantrum..
I agree with most of what you said, given the current state of our media outlets. But I don't think this is some 'new' tantrum. The internet and streaming content has been around for quite a while now, yet content producers are intentionally not keeping up with the times.
Of course copyright holders have the right to control how copies of their product are released. The problem is when you combine that right with the broken IP laws in the US. Take blade runner for example. A 29 year old movie that you still can't find online except in one form on netflix. The zune market place on xbox doesn't even have the 4 year old final cut. And heck, even the physical disc, 4 years later, is 14 dollars amazon. I know it is the copyright holder's right, but the IP laws allowing copyright to be basically forever is crap, and everyone knows it.
For me, it isn't about cost so much as convenience. Magazine producers know full well that putting their magazines right at the checkout line pays off. Why 20 year+ old content isn't available instantly, even for cost, is frankly baffling for people that have grown up with the internet. It isn't a new tantrum, it is the new reality, and producers, like always, will drag their feet making the change.
I doubt batteries are the answer. However, I am not sure why renewables are automatically assumed to be incapable of meeting baseload.
Study on renewables as baseload in North Carolina
Brief paper on baseload and renewables
research paper on renewable baseload in Australia
Short paper from university of new south wales
I just wish our country could pick a direction and start moving toward it (even nuclear). The country changing its mind every 4-8 years isn't very conducive to upgrading the power grid to be 'smarter', store power (pumped storage, etc...), transfer more efficiently at longer distances, etc.. when many of these projects could take 20+ years.
I am not sure why, considering a 50 year plan, renewables are automatically assumed to be incapable of meeting baseload.
Study on renewables as baseload in North Carolina
Brief paper on baseload and renewables
Surely 50 years is enough time to upgrade the power grid and start putting additional infrastructure in place for power storage.
Not to mention, that as a percent of total wealth, the wealthy spend a fraction of a percent that the average household does. Any tax based on consumption/spending is inherently regressive.
A corporation will always sell its product for the highest possible amount that the market will accept. Taxes only marginally influence that price.
The real falsehood is believing that cutting a corporation's tax 10% is going to lead to that amount of money being used to hire more workers, or expand operations, or better wages and benefits for its employees. Sure, some of that 10% may be used to do those things (stimulate the economy), but history has shown that it is a very bad return on the money.
Interesting articles, thanks for sharing.
I'm not sure of the relative weight of factors that create inequality (tax vs federal reserve vs looser regulation vs allowed monopolies, etc..), but taxes surely must be one of them.
marginal tax rate vs profit of top earners
Notice every dip in taxes corresponds neatly to a higher percent of total income going to the top earners.
Your pdf mentions that since the 70's, nearly all regulation and tax structures have been based on 'trickle down'. Well, we know how well that works (not at all).
This is a good article that lists other factors that create inequality. list of factors (middle of the page)
The factors:
1. regressive tax policy
2. decline of labor unions
3. min. wage not keeping up
4. globalization
5. lax regulation
Although on-demand streaming isn't available yet, Time Warner said it will be added later. As well as recording.
I'm not so sure it is about the subscription fee. More likely it is lack of Nielsen ratings combined with the inability to compete for time slots if customers can on-demand their popular shows.
Like others have said above, it basically boils down to a revenue model that is not evolving quickly enough to match modern technology. Nielsen should be fed stats from streaming, dvr's, hulu, etc.., enforced in contract between any content producer any content delivery service.
That would at least help advertisers and content delivery people to bargain fairly for ad price per show per time. The remaining issue, in the minds of the networks, would be that there wouldn't be a way to compete over a time slot. TV show vs TV show competition is a major aspect of the current model. But I think that is one of the things that will just need to die off. Total viewers should be the only stat they care about, and Nielsen and other ratings agencies need to evolve away from time slot competition.