It is an uncomfortable truth, quite incompatible with any moral basis for meritocracy, that our fate is at worst sealed before we are born, and at best with the support of half a dozen early years of good nutrition and parenting. None of us really deserve our lot: the hardest worker will always be constrained by his mental limitations, while the genius can achieve very much with little effort.
Why don't passenger planes have parachutes under every seat?
Answers along the lines of "because laypeople are stupid hurr" need not apply. Is there good reason which doesn't invoke an argument by authority, point out that 30k feet is too high, or remark that there probably won't be enough time for everyone to get out this way?
True. Microsoft tried to get you to use Microsoft's platform-specific extensions to standard Java specifications, locking you in to the Microsoft platform, while Google requires you to use Google's.
The solution is to reduce the working week. Especially since ploughing women into the workplace has hugely increased the proportion of the population in the workforce.
For some reason, people are increasing their hours again.
LOL, the West is starting to fall so far behind now.
If your idea of quality of life is sitting at your computer playing WoW all day in a cramped apartment, yes.
First you guys lost all of your industry to Asia.
Outsourced - bad, but nowhere near as bad as "lost" may imply. As quickly as tax stops favouring outsourcing and workers abroad start getting treated like human beings, it'll come back onshore.
Most of your university-level STEM students are foreigners.
There are more people living outside the US than inside. Everyone wants to study in the US. So there are more foreigners in US universities.
The United States has had a particularly bad flare-up of religious stupidity over the past few decades.
No, it hasn't. Religious influence on law and culture has been rampant throughout the life of North America. But enclaves of religious stupidity have received an inordinate amount of airtime recently - partly as a neat distraction from important stuff, and partly because it makes the strange new breed of Fanatical Atheist feel better about himself.
The American Dollar is devaluing extremely quickly.
Compared to which other period of fluctuation?
Now you can't even get Internet access that's comparable to what some Asian nations had a decade ago!
Oh no! And twenty years ago hardly anyone could get the Internet at all. We must have been as neanderthals.
That's weird. My Psion Series 3a with its beautiful physical keyboard has no fan, weeks of battery life and weighs less than any tablet I've ever used. Its screen is fairly small, but visibility under various light conditions is excellent.
The British economy has reached the stage where real work done is inverse to amount of disposable income. We're a land dominated by clown management consultants with stupid toys which would never be suitable for any real productivity.
I assume the US is going the same way: as far as our relationship goes, we either lead or follow y'all.
Would you rather be in charge of valuing the things you trade for, or would you rather a majority of other people evaluate that?
Well, even if there was "small government" (in itself impossible: power will always fill a vacuum), I wouldn't be in charge of valuing the things I trade for: the person I'm trading with would get a say. His perception of value would depend on the wider society in which he sits.
What's up for debate is how the buyer determines the value of something he wants. It could be influenced according to centrally perceived need. It could be influenced according to labour value, such as through labourers controlling their means of labour. It could be influenced by regulatory models which optimise competition. It could be influenced by the ability of individuals to hoard the means and fruit of production. In every case it's determined by the buyer's relationship with and understanding of wider society. IOW, "How much do I need that and how else could I reasonably get it?" The only individual input from the buyer comes from his inability to be perfectly knowledgeable and rational. Otherwise, all we have is a function of the buyer's role in society. Society determines value.
If you want to make a "great place to work" in the sense that those you work with are more than resources to exploit, build a cooperative, partnership or mutual.
If you want to throw bones to your more easily won over employees, safe in the knowledge that you can fire them whenever necessary, pontificate on the importance of eating lunch with them.
You arbitrarily say that she can have sex with whoever she likes,
I didn't say that at all. Re-read to find out what I actually said.
I say rape is bad even if society condones it.
That's fine, but it's society's general opinion on rape which counts. And you're onto a winner with this one.
I also think that deciding a trade of one resource (money) for another (a good or service) is a right,
But with this one you're pretty much in a minority. Very few societies regard unrestricted trade as a "right". More fundamentally, few societies agree with the assumption you're making: that you have a right to exclusive control of the money / the good / the service in first place. Society gave you so much to allow you to get to the point of making the trade and is offering you protection while you perform the trade; it will protect your enjoyment after the trade. You will be allowed some benefit from the trade if you trade well because your actions benefit society, but any "right" is reserved to society for its own good.
you can not defend looking at somebody's reward, deciding it is too much, and taking the rest. That line of thinking is dangerously stupid and selfish and smacks of jealousy.
If society decided that it made a mistake then it is able to correct its mistakes and should do so. It would be dangerously stupid to not correct its mistakes out of some pathological stubbornness.
Also, please look up "envy" and "jealousy". The libertarian idiots who like to argue along your lines rarely know the meaning of the words they employ.
Hordes of stupid people of a specific school of thought (such as creationists, racists, birthers, and fascists) do not become right when they have enough numbers.
We're not discussing disputes over facts which can be determined by some scientific method. We're discussing how rights, being temporary privileges protected through force, are defined. You think that you get to define them. I think that society defines them.
Your fundamental argument of society knows best is complete bullshit and you know it.
"And you know it"? Your rhetorical style is poor and you should stick to presenting your argument.
All progress is based on reversing failures of society at large by a minority of brilliant people.
It sounds like you secretly dream to be a world-renowned titan. A precondition of your fantasy is that you convince yourself of the myth that our progress depends on a few shining lights in an ocean of obscurity. Grow up. All progress by some man depends on the sum of man's achievements before and alongside him, the right environment, and a certain amount of pot luck. Understanding the importance of context (vs quasi-religious superheroes who achieve something out of nothing) is a fundamental principle of any historical analysis.
You're advocating pillaging the brilliant for the benefit of society because society knows best.
Any man who stands out only continues to exist because society allows him to, whether that man stands out because he is particularly talented or because, like you, he goes around impotently condemning everyone as a stupid failure. The fact that you continue to exist while speaking as you do serves to destroy your own argument. And even if you're a coward who only argues like this behind a computer screen, the fact that society has created a system which allows you to express yourself so obnoxiously so anonymously counters your argument.
I bet more than 50% of the people you see are the same people you wouldn't want to be making decisions for you.
They do make decisions which affect me all the time. Even if I didn't want them to, they still would. Same applies to you. What are you trying to say?
Oh, by the way we all got together and decided your wife was too hot for you, so we gang banged her.
I realise that the free market in early southern USA was left to decide who counted as a person and who counted as a slave, but "my wife" is not "for me", not being in any sense my property. I have neither the right nor the physical power to control who she has sex with, nor am I not her bodyguard.
She isn't gang banged by you because (i) she doesn't want to be; (ii) society has decided that rape is not a good thing for society, and society at large has more power than your fantasy libertarian rape gang.
There's something simplistically technocratic about assuming that what is now is better than what has been.
Buy X! It's newer, thus better, than Y!
Because the economy's like a religion and set up so people lose their jobs and their homes if you don't needlessly produce and consume nothing of value.
Property ownership is a social construction, ownership of fiat money doubly so.
He has all that money because society has granted him the privilege as reward for whatever he is supposed to have done to benefit society. If society considers the reward excessive, it will take some of it away - or simply stop protecting him.
If you don't like this, you can live in an alternative reality where humans are slaves who have no choice but to live by your principles - principles which seem to be based on the childish notion that any man who objects to the super-rich, especially the super-rich who got their break selling to government, is simply "an envious whiner". Until then, stop preaching and start accepting a world where society reflects the will of a sufficiently numerous and powerful group, and the best we can do is stop any single subset of special interests getting too powerful.
It makes sense in the context of Clive the Northerner. Most of these kids won't have done a days' manual labour - which might go some way to explaining why they're so impressed by routine kit - and the idea of actually building something tangible will be quaint entertainment. "I remember learning in modern history class," they'll guffaw over their tofu frappuccino, "that Americans once made a living building the stuff we rely on. 's'at true, Rodney?"
Rodney will smile. He's OK - retirement soon and a generous wage from Google to play the museum piece. But unlike the new cadre of kids he's now teaching, younger guys with his skills will never be so lucky.
Do you actually know how "tax brackets" work? I see so many arguments like this on/. and I can only conclude that many posters haven't ever had a full-time job.
Hence company-provided laptops, smart phones, gym memberships, ping-pong tables, daycare, spa memberships, massages, and even cars.
Are these all legitimate tax-free expenses in your jurisdiction? They're certainly not in mine. You can't just find out what employees want and buy it for them as a way of avoiding income/payroll/social security tax.
and the government will get less.
You seem to emphasise that goal. Are you suggesting tax avoidance as a sensible way of protesting certain levels/forms of taxation? Because I'd say that was the worst approach possible, guaranteed to favour the large corporation - which can afford complex structures and expensive accountants - over the small business and the worker.
Google sponsor a few interesting external projects which then end up having their name slapped on them to the point that people assume it was their work (driverless car, etc.), but they produce fuck all of this sort themselves. The reason, to me, is pretty clear: a creative genius would not want to work there. They're a glorified ad broker which has spent 13 years resting on the laurels of a better-than-average search algorithm.
The rare lone inventor hero can and does prototype in his own garage; the man needing the support of modern technology and the input of his peers has academia. Those who have high talent and the single-minded technical enthusiasm to plough themselves into secretive efforts in a budget-unconstrained environment will get work directly for the government, enjoying all the privilege and security which no profit-directed corporation will ever give you. The more routine individuals with a sound past or promising future have established research arms anywhere from IBM to Microsoft, all having decades of experience actually ploughing out new inventions and papers.
Google's a cult of big kids. Combining the accessible populism of GWB with the more sophisticated charisma of Obama, it reaches the top without being very remarkable. Its success - like the success of Windows - says more about the disinterest and/or ineptitude of the competition than anything.
Slashdot Mirror
It is an uncomfortable truth, quite incompatible with any moral basis for meritocracy, that our fate is at worst sealed before we are born, and at best with the support of half a dozen early years of good nutrition and parenting. None of us really deserve our lot: the hardest worker will always be constrained by his mental limitations, while the genius can achieve very much with little effort.
Why don't passenger planes have parachutes under every seat?
Answers along the lines of "because laypeople are stupid hurr" need not apply. Is there good reason which doesn't invoke an argument by authority, point out that 30k feet is too high, or remark that there probably won't be enough time for everyone to get out this way?
I "got" a Compaq TC1000 about 7 years ago. Way more usable and useful than an iPad. But I sold it.
I still have my 3a.
True. Microsoft tried to get you to use Microsoft's platform-specific extensions to standard Java specifications, locking you in to the Microsoft platform, while Google requires you to use Google's.
The solution is to reduce the working week. Especially since ploughing women into the workplace has hugely increased the proportion of the population in the workforce.
For some reason, people are increasing their hours again.
...and the NeXTSTEP API was something allowing portability across systems.
Moving from a position managing a room full of loudmouth self-aggrandisers with an inflated sense of their own technical ability to...
So why is it so common to read "would of" but rare to read any of: ...?
- would huff
- wood of
- wood have
- woo dove
LOL, the West is starting to fall so far behind now.
If your idea of quality of life is sitting at your computer playing WoW all day in a cramped apartment, yes.
First you guys lost all of your industry to Asia.
Outsourced - bad, but nowhere near as bad as "lost" may imply. As quickly as tax stops favouring outsourcing and workers abroad start getting treated like human beings, it'll come back onshore.
Most of your university-level STEM students are foreigners.
There are more people living outside the US than inside. Everyone wants to study in the US. So there are more foreigners in US universities.
The United States has had a particularly bad flare-up of religious stupidity over the past few decades.
No, it hasn't. Religious influence on law and culture has been rampant throughout the life of North America. But enclaves of religious stupidity have received an inordinate amount of airtime recently - partly as a neat distraction from important stuff, and partly because it makes the strange new breed of Fanatical Atheist feel better about himself.
The American Dollar is devaluing extremely quickly.
Compared to which other period of fluctuation?
Now you can't even get Internet access that's comparable to what some Asian nations had a decade ago!
Oh no! And twenty years ago hardly anyone could get the Internet at all. We must have been as neanderthals.
That's weird. My Psion Series 3a with its beautiful physical keyboard has no fan, weeks of battery life and weighs less than any tablet I've ever used. Its screen is fairly small, but visibility under various light conditions is excellent.
The British economy has reached the stage where real work done is inverse to amount of disposable income. We're a land dominated by clown management consultants with stupid toys which would never be suitable for any real productivity.
I assume the US is going the same way: as far as our relationship goes, we either lead or follow y'all.
-- Sun --
Imagine a box of Smalltalk.
Imagine someone dropping that box in a festering pit of C. (Not all pits of C are festering. This one is.)
Redefine "API" as "buzzword implementation".
Extend according to what the competition's doing, rather than as may be technically appropriate.
-- Google --
Recall how Microsoft made Java incompatible and how nerds all hated it.
Recall that you are Google and all nerds love you.
Do the same thing.
Watch your market grow to Apple levels of hysteria.
Observe Hank Scorpio taking over Java.
Take out the flame retardant lawyers, and, in a scenario looking increasingly Monty Python, use them to teach judges Java. ...
Would you rather be in charge of valuing the things you trade for, or would you rather a majority of other people evaluate that?
Well, even if there was "small government" (in itself impossible: power will always fill a vacuum), I wouldn't be in charge of valuing the things I trade for: the person I'm trading with would get a say. His perception of value would depend on the wider society in which he sits.
What's up for debate is how the buyer determines the value of something he wants. It could be influenced according to centrally perceived need. It could be influenced according to labour value, such as through labourers controlling their means of labour. It could be influenced by regulatory models which optimise competition. It could be influenced by the ability of individuals to hoard the means and fruit of production. In every case it's determined by the buyer's relationship with and understanding of wider society. IOW, "How much do I need that and how else could I reasonably get it?" The only individual input from the buyer comes from his inability to be perfectly knowledgeable and rational. Otherwise, all we have is a function of the buyer's role in society. Society determines value.
So it's a place where people can pay... money for... bespoke services. That's novel.
Except that they take 5%, plus another 3-5% for Amazon payments, and there's a big list of rules.
No thanks.
If you want to make a "great place to work" in the sense that those you work with are more than resources to exploit, build a cooperative, partnership or mutual.
If you want to throw bones to your more easily won over employees, safe in the knowledge that you can fire them whenever necessary, pontificate on the importance of eating lunch with them.
You arbitrarily say that she can have sex with whoever she likes,
I didn't say that at all. Re-read to find out what I actually said.
I say rape is bad even if society condones it.
That's fine, but it's society's general opinion on rape which counts. And you're onto a winner with this one.
I also think that deciding a trade of one resource (money) for another (a good or service) is a right,
But with this one you're pretty much in a minority. Very few societies regard unrestricted trade as a "right". More fundamentally, few societies agree with the assumption you're making: that you have a right to exclusive control of the money / the good / the service in first place. Society gave you so much to allow you to get to the point of making the trade and is offering you protection while you perform the trade; it will protect your enjoyment after the trade. You will be allowed some benefit from the trade if you trade well because your actions benefit society, but any "right" is reserved to society for its own good.
you can not defend looking at somebody's reward, deciding it is too much, and taking the rest. That line of thinking is dangerously stupid and selfish and smacks of jealousy.
If society decided that it made a mistake then it is able to correct its mistakes and should do so. It would be dangerously stupid to not correct its mistakes out of some pathological stubbornness.
Also, please look up "envy" and "jealousy". The libertarian idiots who like to argue along your lines rarely know the meaning of the words they employ.
Hordes of stupid people of a specific school of thought (such as creationists, racists, birthers, and fascists) do not become right when they have enough numbers.
We're not discussing disputes over facts which can be determined by some scientific method. We're discussing how rights, being temporary privileges protected through force, are defined. You think that you get to define them. I think that society defines them.
Your fundamental argument of society knows best is complete bullshit and you know it.
"And you know it"? Your rhetorical style is poor and you should stick to presenting your argument.
All progress is based on reversing failures of society at large by a minority of brilliant people.
It sounds like you secretly dream to be a world-renowned titan. A precondition of your fantasy is that you convince yourself of the myth that our progress depends on a few shining lights in an ocean of obscurity. Grow up. All progress by some man depends on the sum of man's achievements before and alongside him, the right environment, and a certain amount of pot luck. Understanding the importance of context (vs quasi-religious superheroes who achieve something out of nothing) is a fundamental principle of any historical analysis.
You're advocating pillaging the brilliant for the benefit of society because society knows best.
Any man who stands out only continues to exist because society allows him to, whether that man stands out because he is particularly talented or because, like you, he goes around impotently condemning everyone as a stupid failure. The fact that you continue to exist while speaking as you do serves to destroy your own argument. And even if you're a coward who only argues like this behind a computer screen, the fact that society has created a system which allows you to express yourself so obnoxiously so anonymously counters your argument.
I bet more than 50% of the people you see are the same people you wouldn't want to be making decisions for you.
They do make decisions which affect me all the time. Even if I didn't want them to, they still would. Same applies to you. What are you trying to say?
Oh, by the way we all got together and decided your wife was too hot for you, so we gang banged her.
I realise that the free market in early southern USA was left to decide who counted as a person and who counted as a slave, but "my wife" is not "for me", not being in any sense my property. I have neither the right nor the physical power to control who she has sex with, nor am I not her bodyguard.
She isn't gang banged by you because (i) she doesn't want to be; (ii) society has decided that rape is not a good thing for society, and society at large has more power than your fantasy libertarian rape gang.
There's something simplistically technocratic about assuming that what is now is better than what has been.
Buy X! It's newer, thus better, than Y!
Because the economy's like a religion and set up so people lose their jobs and their homes if you don't needlessly produce and consume nothing of value.
Property ownership is a social construction, ownership of fiat money doubly so.
He has all that money because society has granted him the privilege as reward for whatever he is supposed to have done to benefit society. If society considers the reward excessive, it will take some of it away - or simply stop protecting him.
If you don't like this, you can live in an alternative reality where humans are slaves who have no choice but to live by your principles - principles which seem to be based on the childish notion that any man who objects to the super-rich, especially the super-rich who got their break selling to government, is simply "an envious whiner". Until then, stop preaching and start accepting a world where society reflects the will of a sufficiently numerous and powerful group, and the best we can do is stop any single subset of special interests getting too powerful.
It makes sense in the context of Clive the Northerner. Most of these kids won't have done a days' manual labour - which might go some way to explaining why they're so impressed by routine kit - and the idea of actually building something tangible will be quaint entertainment. "I remember learning in modern history class," they'll guffaw over their tofu frappuccino, "that Americans once made a living building the stuff we rely on. 's'at true, Rodney?"
Rodney will smile. He's OK - retirement soon and a generous wage from Google to play the museum piece. But unlike the new cadre of kids he's now teaching, younger guys with his skills will never be so lucky.
and might even kick me into a higher tax bracket.
Do you actually know how "tax brackets" work? I see so many arguments like this on /. and I can only conclude that many posters haven't ever had a full-time job.
Hence company-provided laptops, smart phones, gym memberships, ping-pong tables, daycare, spa memberships, massages, and even cars.
Are these all legitimate tax-free expenses in your jurisdiction? They're certainly not in mine. You can't just find out what employees want and buy it for them as a way of avoiding income/payroll/social security tax.
and the government will get less.
You seem to emphasise that goal. Are you suggesting tax avoidance as a sensible way of protesting certain levels/forms of taxation? Because I'd say that was the worst approach possible, guaranteed to favour the large corporation - which can afford complex structures and expensive accountants - over the small business and the worker.
That's even more fanboyish than, "You don't have an iPad only because you can't afford one."
Technocracy: centralisation of government data with easy cross-referencing is harmless.
False premise: clouds increase reliability.
Maxim: one big basket comfortably holds all eggs.
Actual purpose of this exercise: corporate welfare for systems providers.
Google sponsor a few interesting external projects which then end up having their name slapped on them to the point that people assume it was their work (driverless car, etc.), but they produce fuck all of this sort themselves. The reason, to me, is pretty clear: a creative genius would not want to work there. They're a glorified ad broker which has spent 13 years resting on the laurels of a better-than-average search algorithm.
The rare lone inventor hero can and does prototype in his own garage; the man needing the support of modern technology and the input of his peers has academia. Those who have high talent and the single-minded technical enthusiasm to plough themselves into secretive efforts in a budget-unconstrained environment will get work directly for the government, enjoying all the privilege and security which no profit-directed corporation will ever give you. The more routine individuals with a sound past or promising future have established research arms anywhere from IBM to Microsoft, all having decades of experience actually ploughing out new inventions and papers.
Google's a cult of big kids. Combining the accessible populism of GWB with the more sophisticated charisma of Obama, it reaches the top without being very remarkable. Its success - like the success of Windows - says more about the disinterest and/or ineptitude of the competition than anything.
Why did you replace?
Why didn't you revert to Netware?