All examples of companies that have become large and powerful by being deceptive.
Yeah, and all these companies are in the shit-can because they were deceptive. They have all lost power. This is good. This is the way it is supposed to work.
People are running around crying about how awful capitalism is because this happened. This sort of thing is exactly what should happen. You fuck-up an lie, and your company is screwed. Good.
If morals meant profits, capitalism would be the garden of Eden.
Hey, this story is proof that capitalism works. Here is a company with a CEO that commited fraud and the market hasn't wasted any time in punishing them. Capitalism doesn't promise a garden of Eden.
Now compare this with Amtrak that has spent the past 20 years losing money and is now asking congress for another $200 million.
The best reason to build it yourself is to find that optimal combination of price/performance FOR YOUR APPLICATION.
Often times, retail systems are built to be well-rounded, balanced machines. This isn't always what's best for you.
Here is a real-life example: An in-law of mine asked me what kind of machine was best for manipulating/processing/storing images. She wanted to create a digital archive of touched-up photographs, etc. She also was unwilling to spend more than about $1200 if I remember correctly.
I told her that the best combination would be something like:
Min 384 MB RAM to store several full-color 8.5 x 11 inch images in memory for manipulation.
A fast 7200 rpm hard drive so that images can be quickly moved to and from disk.
Fast CD Burner.
And with the rest of the money, get a processor, motherboard, etc.
For her application, big MHz didn't mean much. A fat hard drive was less important than a fast drive.
The point of course is to emphasize those components that are most important to what you do.
Of course, she ended up getting a machine with a large but slow drive, insufficient memory (128MB) and wondered why she spent all day waiting for images to get processed by her top-of-the-line CPU. The reason of course is that the machine spent all its time paging.
Computers are patentable machines just like anything else, but software does not describe the operation of a computer, it is data which is input into the computer.
I didn't say software described the operation of a computer. I said software was part of the description of a machine. The parts of the machine include the processor, memory, etc of a computer, and those other physical, real, tangible elements that work with the computer to implement the machine. It might be bits of charge or strips of aluminum in a circlular pattern on a plastic disk with holes burned in them.
Patenting software is equivalent to patenting the words cut into a printing press roll.
Exactly right, which is why software isn't patented. Machine's whose description include software are. There is a difference. Just like lines and circles and sketches aren't patentable, neither is software, but that doesn't stop people of including them in their descriptions of their inventions.
Programmers create programs by taking a specification and translating it into machine-readable code. It's not a mechanical process, but there are well-known techniques and it's usually pretty straightforward. There is no invention going on here--any competent programmer could write any program given sufficient time.
The entire history of software engineering runs counter to what you just wrote. Its just not that simple. Programmers are constantly inventing ways to solve certain problems. There's a big gap between specification and machine code.
How's this for a specification: write a program that will determine if a program will halt on a given input.
This is the halting problem and it is known to be unsolvable.
CD pit patterns aren't patentable, they aren't an invention, they're data and they have copyrights.
You say they're data. I say they're holes in a disk of aluminum. We're both right. Whether or not they represent data doesn't matter. The strips of aluminum with their holes are still part of a real, physical machine. If I wish, I can just describe the position and length of each strip of aluminum and submit a giant description to the USPTO along with the rest of my machine. Better would be to provide source code and save everyone a lot of time.
Software isn't patentable. What is patentable are inventions that can be implemented using a general purpose computing machine, configured to perform as described by software.
Software is merely part of the description of a machine in the same way drawings and diagrams are part of the descriptions of other machines. A software engineer uses programming languages to describe his machines while other types of engineers use lines, points, and measurements.
What makes it difficult to see that programming is machine building is the scale at which the parts are manipulated. People don't see bits of charge getting put into memories. A computer before and after it's been programmed look the same.
On the other hand, if I hand you a diagram of a tinker-toy computer showing you how the parts go together, etc, its pretty obvious that this describes a real machine. When such machines are patented, we don't call them drawing patents just because they are described using abstract things such as lines, circles, and polygons. There are no shouts of "lines can't be patented!" because its obvious that the drawings are describing a machine, and its the machine that patented.
If its still hard to see this, you're not alone. It isn't obvious to most people (even programmers) that software fullfills the same role for electronic computing machines as drawings do for other machines. Patent-wise, the situation has been quite unfair to programmers until recently and it took a long time for the USPTO to come around.
If you still need convincing, ask yourself this: can a machine the consists of a circuit be patented? Can it include transistors? If yes, then software must be allowed in patents for practical reasons, otherwise patents would become enormous collections of huge diagrams showing the placement of charges in capacitors, or magnetic domains on a disk, or pits burned in a CD read by laser. A software description of these patterns is much more economical.
One percent of America's population holds 40% of the wealth.
This is a poor response to a statement about income, since it is not the same as wealth.
I hope you are not suggesting that it is unfair to have that one percent of the population pay 40% of the taxes.
It is unfair. Does the government provide them with proportionately more services? Do they create greater strains on government? Do they get to cast more votes in November to decide how this money will be spent since they provide most of it? Of course not.
They pay because other people vote to make them pay. Its a form of slavery by vote.
And if you're young and working, its happening to you too in the form of social security. You think that money is being saved? Hah! Its going to retires right now and they're making you pay. The AARP is over 30 million strong. You think they're going to vote for someone who is going to stop taking your money and giving it to them?
Wow, another person that doesn't recognize the intrinsic link between fame and fortune.
If it were so damn instrinsic, then people wouldn't say "fame AND fortune" they would just say "fame".
Serial killers do this all the time by writing books
Exaggeration.
If an Author gives away the first few books he may be poor then, but if those first two books are good, then when he charges for his second book people are willing to pay for it because he's GOOD.
Provided people must pay to read the second book. Otherwise, if they can copy it, they will and the author gets nothing.
"I ask them, 'What have you done last week?' They may say they wrote a paper on this or that. So I tell them, 'Oh, you wrote a paper, and you got an A? Would it bother you if somebody could just take that paper and get an A too?'"
That would be an accurate comparison if people were copying music and then selling them for profit, rather than giving them away for free.
The point of the statement is that people are enjoying the benefit of the 'A' paper without doing the work. They don't have to sell it to enjoy the benefit of it. The listening is the benefit.
She should have replied: "Would it bother you if somebody could just take that paper and show it to all their friends as an example of what they think is good writing?" To which I'd reply: Hell, yes. Anything that gets more people to read my columns, articles or books is a good thing for me as an author.
Of course, if everyone is reading copies of your columns, articles, and books, you get... nothing. And that's the point.
What about Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman? Some guy puts a wrapper around their invention and suddenly he's the inventor -- R,S, and A don't even get a mention.
It's time the governments of the world realize a free market doesn't work everywhere.
What planet are you on? Governments of the past several centuries have been doing everything in their power to crush the free-market. Ever hear of the Soviet Union? How about all the little Socialist dictatorships in South America? What about the cultural revolution in China?
It's only been recently that governments have been waking up to the fact that the free-market is generally better than state-control. The free-market economic changes in Russia, India, China, and places like Chile in the past 10 years or so are nothing short of astounding. LOOK BEYOND YOUR OWN BORDERS. The U.S. isn't the whole world.
Empirically, free economies work better than state-controlled economies. That may hurt your ideological feelings, but it's true.
I know it would be fun if all us smart slashdotter's just got together and told the rest of the economy and businesses what to do.
The truth is that everyone of us over-estimates his own ability. The market works because no-one decides before hand who is going to be in charge. If someone buys what you sell, good. If they don't, you're doing something wrong.
The market is the messenger. Don't kill the messenger. Listen to what it has to say and face the facts without self-deception.
"What, do you want rich states to leave annex themselves out of the country if they choose to? No. I don't think many would want states to have unlimited power. "
I see. They're just here to be tools of the Federal Government. While you're at it, why not just ship whats left of the Berlin wall over here. We need to stop the rich from taking themselves and their money out-of-the-country. They might get away!
Would it be possible to trade privacy for guaranteed freedoms? Such a thing might require a constitutional amendment, but hypothetically, suppose in exchange for your privacy you were given certain guarantees.
What limits would you place on the use of the information?
Of course, for many, privacy maybe a way to limit embarassment over certain things. Suppose EVERTHING were out-in-the-open. Would certain socially embarassing things become more acceptable? Would this give everyone a truer picture of human behavior?
Heh. This reminded me of the old Timex/Sinclair's of the 80's.
There was no video controller chip.
The Z80 had to generate all the video addresses. It would run what it thought was a program full of NOPs while the generated addresses were used as an index to a character ROM.
This is actually a good thing for those wanting to experiment. Think about being able to alter the software driving these things. What might be done? Might alternate coding schemes be used? How about your own encryption method?
I've known several people who worked for the gov't and from their stories I certainly wouldn't leave my job.
Everyone who works in gov't jobs wants you to think everything is terrible. Don't believe it for a second. The pay may not be spectacular, but it is very difficult to get fired from a gov't job and this allows for a less than vigorous approach to your task.
In addition, the retirement benefits blow away anything any private company can offer. You just have to stick with the gov't for a long enough period (not much of a problem -- see above).
Compare:
Private firm -- must get money from people willing to pay or go out of business, no guaranteed source of revenue.
Government -- gets money from people whether they want to give it or not, almost sure money.
Private firm -- you have little say over who your boss is.
Government -- employees are voters too. Make things to hard (use words like efficient) and you suffer the political consequences.
Private firm -- fire a employee for anti-semitic remarks
Government -- if he is a professor, he tell's you have no choice but to keep him, otherwise you're violating "academic freedom." So he sits getting paid while he is on administrative leave. Instead of being a servant of the people of the state of Florida, he insists that they be forced to continue paying him, despite that fact that a vast majority disagree with his positions. Who works for who?
The relationship between employer and employee is fundamentally different when in comes to government jobs and the employees know it. They bitch and moan to the 'outsiders' because they don't want to admit how easy they have it. The fact is, you have to bust your hump in the private sector. Government jobs are easy street.
I have worked in both situations and work in a gov't position now. It makes my blood boil when I hear all these slackers bitch about not getting a raise this year while people I know are getting kicked to the curb (they don't count the cost of living increase they got as a raise, btw). The sense of entitlement is astounding.
The number of government workers is really its own class and they live off the sweat of the private sector.
The "industrial revolution," at least in the United States, was fueled primarily from within.
"I would disagree. You're correct that in the first stage of the industrial revolution (early 1800s to early 1900s) there was little to no offshore manufacturing. However, vast amounts of resource and labor were extracted from other parts of the world (sometimes in the form of immigrants)."
Immigrants were extracted? Why did you choose to use such a loaded word? You are intensionally trying to sneak in a negative value judgement.
Immigrants weren't extracted. Immigrants wanted to come and we let them. They helped fuel industrialization, and also enjoyed the benefits of it.
And yes. The industrial revolution in the U.S. was primarily fueled from within.
Further, why do you think off-shore manufacturing is bad for the third world? Off-shore manufacturing is one of the third-worlds only ways of earning money.
"Where pray tell did the vast majority of raw materials and cheap (e.g. slave) labor that powered the industreal revolution come from? Hmmm... the third wold. "
Vast majority? You have proof? Aren't you just guessing?
In the U.S., most natural resources came from the US. Most of the labor was done in the U.S. Most of the food was grown in the U.S. Most of the energy in the form of oil and coal came from the U.S.
To say that the industrial revolution was largely powered by the third world is a myth. Why do you believe it? Better question -- why do you want to believe it?
Your sig indicates you are a lawyer. How do you feel about lawyers gouging people? What about the restrictions placed on who can provide legal services? Aren't you effectively part of a cartel?
You're bitching about a damn $15 CD whose purpose is to provide entertainment. People can decide to go without the CD if they have to. But when legal issues are involved, people rarely have any choice but to use a lawyer. Its amazing that you think $15 is gouging when lawyers, through their own fee's, make justice unaffordable to so many.
There are a lot of people here giving a hard time to the skeptics. In science, scepticism is a virtue. Theories need to be tested. Theories need experimental support. People who make claims need to back them up. Proper science is all about this back and forth between various claims and theories.
Its also unfair to suppose that every skeptic is motivated by some base political, or economic consideration. It is dangerous conceit to assume that one's own views are pure while dismissing those who disagree as letting prejudice influence them.
Consider this letter to The Economist by Jeffrey Harvey of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology -- one of the major critics of The Sceptical Evironmentalist and ask yourself how someone who claims to be a scientist can compare Nature and Scientific American to the Bible and the Koran. Also see the excellent reply by Charles Korsmo.
SIR -- As co-author of the review of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" in Nature and of a critique of its chapter on biodiversity published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, I must be one of the green heretics you refer to in your one-sided leader ("Defending science", February 2nd).
You are smearing the vast majority of the scientific community. You say that the four senior scientists who attacked Bjorn Lomborg's polemic in Scientific American were "weak on substance". To show you how absurd this is, Professor Tom Lovejoy, who wrote the piece on biodiversity, is a senior ecologist and biodiversity adviser with the World Bank, and a leading authority on tropical ecology. Your attempt to discredit him is sordid and reflects your conservative ideological agenda.
I have not the space here to debunk the vast amounts of disinformation in Mr Lomborg's book. Its fatal flaw is to ignore the connection between environmental indicators and the condition of the underlying ecosystems upon which our survival (and that of all life) depends. Mr Lomborg says nothing about the fraying of marine and terrestrial food webs, the extent, loss and chemical alteration of wetlands, the effects of invasive species, etc.
I will conclude with a quotation from an article that appeared in Jyllands-Posten, a Danish Sunday paper:
"Ove Nathan, former president of the University of Copenhagen, thinks it totally unlikely that such a thing as a scientific conspiracy against Bjorn Lomborg should exist. 'There is no scientific periodical that outshines or is more critically edited than Nature, Science, and Scientific American. In science they speak with almost the same authority as the Bible of Christianity and the Koran of Islam. If all three periodicals pass the same severe judgment upon Lomborg, I personally would take it for gospel truth.'"
Jeffrey Harvey Netherlands Institute of Ecology Heteren, Netherlands
~~
SIR - Jeffrey Harvey's letter (February 16th), in response to your article on Bjorn Lomborg, is among the most remarkable and disturbing I have ever read. He attempts to demonstrate the "absurdity" of your claim that Tom Lovejoy's Scientific American article was "weak on substance", not by reference to the substance of Mr Lovejoy's article but by recounting his rank and position. He then one-ups himself by quoting approvingly an article comparing Nature to the Bible and Scientific American to the Koran, and ascribing to them the power of gospel truth.
While notions of unquestioned authority and infallible oracles have long been shunned outside fundamentalist religious circles, apparently they have found a comfortable home among some scientists. You must have been shaking your head in disbelief at such an egregious example of the kind of person against whom science must be defended. Men such as Mr Harvey do not deserve to call themselves scientists.
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Enron, Tyco, ImClone, Worldcom...
All examples of companies that have become large and powerful by being deceptive.
Yeah, and all these companies are in the shit-can because they were deceptive. They have all lost power. This is good. This is the way it is supposed to work.
People are running around crying about how awful capitalism is because this happened. This sort of thing is exactly what should happen. You fuck-up an lie, and your company is screwed. Good.
If morals meant profits, capitalism would be the garden of Eden.
Hey, this story is proof that capitalism works. Here is a company with a CEO that commited fraud and the market hasn't wasted any time in punishing them. Capitalism doesn't promise a garden of Eden.
Now compare this with Amtrak that has spent the past 20 years losing money and is now asking congress for another $200 million.
The best reason to build it yourself is to find that optimal combination of price/performance FOR YOUR APPLICATION.
Often times, retail systems are built to be well-rounded, balanced machines. This isn't always what's best for you.
Here is a real-life example: An in-law of mine asked me what kind of machine was best for manipulating/processing/storing images. She wanted to create a digital archive of touched-up photographs, etc. She also was unwilling to spend more than about $1200 if I remember correctly.
I told her that the best combination would be something like:
Min 384 MB RAM to store several full-color 8.5 x 11 inch images in memory for manipulation.
A fast 7200 rpm hard drive so that images can be quickly moved to and from disk.
Fast CD Burner.
And with the rest of the money, get a processor, motherboard, etc.
For her application, big MHz didn't mean much. A fat hard drive was less important than a fast drive.
The point of course is to emphasize those components that are most important to what you do.
Of course, she ended up getting a machine with a large but slow drive, insufficient memory (128MB) and wondered why she spent all day waiting for images to get processed by her top-of-the-line CPU. The reason of course is that the machine spent all its time paging.
Computers are patentable machines just like anything else, but software does not describe the operation of a computer, it is data which is input into the computer.
I didn't say software described the operation of a computer. I said software was part of the description of a machine. The parts of the machine include the processor, memory, etc of a computer, and those other physical, real, tangible elements that work with the computer to implement the machine. It might be bits of charge or strips of aluminum in a circlular pattern on a plastic disk with holes burned in them.
Patenting software is equivalent to patenting the words cut into a printing press roll.
Exactly right, which is why software isn't patented. Machine's whose description include software are. There is a difference. Just like lines and circles and sketches aren't patentable, neither is software, but that doesn't stop people of including them in their descriptions of their inventions.
Programmers create programs by taking a specification and translating it into machine-readable code. It's not a mechanical process, but there are well-known techniques and it's usually pretty straightforward. There is no invention going on here--any competent programmer could write any program given sufficient time.
The entire history of software engineering runs counter to what you just wrote. Its just not that simple. Programmers are constantly inventing ways to solve certain problems. There's a big gap between specification and machine code.
How's this for a specification: write a program that will determine if a program will halt on a given input.
This is the halting problem and it is known to be unsolvable.
CD pit patterns aren't patentable, they aren't an invention, they're data and they have copyrights.
You say they're data. I say they're holes in a disk of aluminum. We're both right. Whether or not they represent data doesn't matter. The strips of aluminum with their holes are still part of a real, physical machine. If I wish, I can just describe the position and length of each strip of aluminum and submit a giant description to the USPTO along with the rest of my machine. Better would be to provide source code and save everyone a lot of time.
Software isn't patentable. What is patentable are inventions that can be implemented using a general purpose computing machine, configured to perform as described by software.
Software is merely part of the description of a machine in the same way drawings and diagrams are part of the descriptions of other machines. A software engineer uses programming languages to describe his machines while other types of engineers use lines, points, and measurements.
What makes it difficult to see that programming is machine building is the scale at which the parts are manipulated. People don't see bits of charge getting put into memories. A computer before and after it's been programmed look the same.
On the other hand, if I hand you a diagram of a tinker-toy computer showing you how the parts go together, etc, its pretty obvious that this describes a real machine. When such machines are patented, we don't call them drawing patents just because they are described using abstract things such as lines, circles, and polygons. There are no shouts of "lines can't be patented!" because its obvious that the drawings are describing a machine, and its the machine that patented.
If its still hard to see this, you're not alone. It isn't obvious to most people (even programmers) that software fullfills the same role for electronic computing machines as drawings do for other machines. Patent-wise, the situation has been quite unfair to programmers until recently and it took a long time for the USPTO to come around.
If you still need convincing, ask yourself this: can a machine the consists of a circuit be patented? Can it include transistors? If yes, then software must be allowed in patents for practical reasons, otherwise patents would become enormous collections of huge diagrams showing the placement of charges in capacitors, or magnetic domains on a disk, or pits burned in a CD read by laser. A software description of these patterns is much more economical.
If I use Napster or Kazaa or any other file-trading software to download digital versions of music I already own on CDs it's not theft.
If you already own the CD, why not make the MP3 yourself? People trade music for music they don't already own, plain and simple.
One percent of America's population holds 40% of the wealth.
This is a poor response to a statement about income, since it is not the same as wealth.
I hope you are not suggesting that it is unfair to have that one percent of the population pay 40% of the taxes.
It is unfair. Does the government provide them with proportionately more services? Do they create greater strains on government? Do they get to cast more votes in November to decide how this money will be spent since they provide most of it? Of course not.
They pay because other people vote to make them pay. Its a form of slavery by vote.
And if you're young and working, its happening to you too in the form of social security. You think that money is being saved? Hah! Its going to retires right now and they're making you pay. The AARP is over 30 million strong. You think they're going to vote for someone who is going to stop taking your money and giving it to them?
None of those things can be disproven by science anyway... Belief and science are not completely contrary to each other.
To say that belief and science are or are not completely contrary whould be to make a meaningless statement.
What is thought to be true -- belief -- is different from a set of standards for what ought to be believed -- science.
I think what you really meant is that there beliefs that you hold that can't be scientifically supported.
Wow, another person that doesn't recognize the intrinsic link between fame and fortune.
If it were so damn instrinsic, then people wouldn't say "fame AND fortune" they would just say "fame".
Serial killers do this all the time by writing books
Exaggeration.
If an Author gives away the first few books he may be poor then, but if those first two books are good, then when he charges for his second book people are willing to pay for it because he's GOOD.
Provided people must pay to read the second book. Otherwise, if they can copy it, they will and the author gets nothing.
"I ask them, 'What have you done last week?' They may say they wrote a paper on this or that. So I tell them, 'Oh, you wrote a paper, and you got an A? Would it bother you if somebody could just take that paper and get an A too?'"
... nothing. And that's the point.
That would be an accurate comparison if people were copying music and then selling them for profit, rather than giving them away for free.
The point of the statement is that people are enjoying the benefit of the 'A' paper without doing the work. They don't have to sell it to enjoy the benefit of it. The listening is the benefit.
She should have replied: "Would it bother you if somebody could just take that paper and show it to all their friends as an example of what they think is good writing?" To which I'd reply: Hell, yes. Anything that gets more people to read my columns, articles or books is a good thing for me as an author.
Of course, if everyone is reading copies of your columns, articles, and books, you get
You've become a famous, but hungry, author.
"PGP inventor Phil Zimmermann says PGP.. "
What about Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman? Some guy puts a wrapper around their invention and suddenly he's the inventor -- R,S, and A don't even get a mention.
"Thanks for the technology...now get lost."
It's time the governments of the world realize a free market doesn't work everywhere.
What planet are you on? Governments of the past several centuries have been doing everything in their power to crush the free-market. Ever hear of the Soviet Union? How about all the little Socialist dictatorships in South America? What about the cultural revolution in China?
It's only been recently that governments have been waking up to the fact that the free-market is generally better than state-control. The free-market economic changes in Russia, India, China, and places like Chile in the past 10 years or so are nothing short of astounding. LOOK BEYOND YOUR OWN BORDERS. The U.S. isn't the whole world.
Empirically, free economies work better than state-controlled economies. That may hurt your ideological feelings, but it's true.
I know it would be fun if all us smart slashdotter's just got together and told the rest of the economy and businesses what to do.
The truth is that everyone of us over-estimates his own ability. The market works because no-one decides before hand who is going to be in charge. If someone buys what you sell, good. If they don't, you're doing something wrong.
The market is the messenger. Don't kill the messenger. Listen to what it has to say and face the facts without self-deception.
I love Ben Franklin. If you haven't read his autobiography yet, do it.
My question is, how does reducing privacy sacrifice liberty? Is it possible to be both free and less-private?
Might we be less afraid of each-other if we had less privacy and knew more about each-other? How many laws are inspired by fear of the unknown?
I do know that I would prefer freedom to privacy. Secure the first, and you won't have to worry about the second.
At the moment, I'm glad many don't have these sorts of arms. If they did, you'd be on your way to living in a Socialist "paradise" right now.
Of course, the first thing they would do is take away all the arms. Who would want to rise up against a socialist "utopia?"
"What, do you want rich states to leave annex themselves out of the country if they choose to? No. I don't think many would want states to have unlimited power. "
I see. They're just here to be tools of the Federal Government. While you're at it, why not just ship whats left of the Berlin wall over here. We need to stop the rich from taking themselves and their money out-of-the-country. They might get away!
On the issue of privacy:
Would it be possible to trade privacy for guaranteed freedoms? Such a thing might require a constitutional amendment, but hypothetically, suppose in exchange for your privacy you were given certain guarantees.
What limits would you place on the use of the information?
Of course, for many, privacy maybe a way to limit embarassment over certain things. Suppose EVERTHING were out-in-the-open. Would certain socially embarassing things become more acceptable? Would this give everyone a truer picture of human behavior?
Heh. This reminded me of the old Timex/Sinclair's of the 80's.
There was no video controller chip.
The Z80 had to generate all the video addresses. It would run what it thought was a program full of NOPs while the generated addresses were used as an index to a character ROM.
Some technical information is at http://www.howell1964.freeserve.co.uk/ZX81/ZX_Tec
This is actually a good thing for those wanting to experiment. Think about being able to alter the software driving these things. What might be done? Might alternate coding schemes be used? How about your own encryption method?
I've known several people who worked for the gov't and from their stories I certainly wouldn't leave my job.
Everyone who works in gov't jobs wants you to think everything is terrible. Don't believe it for a second. The pay may not be spectacular, but it is very difficult to get fired from a gov't job and this allows for a less than vigorous approach to your task.
In addition, the retirement benefits blow away anything any private company can offer. You just have to stick with the gov't for a long enough period (not much of a problem -- see above).
Compare:
Private firm -- must get money from people willing to pay or go out of business, no guaranteed source of revenue.
Government -- gets money from people whether they want to give it or not, almost sure money.
Private firm -- you have little say over who your boss is.
Government -- employees are voters too. Make things to hard (use words like efficient) and you suffer the political consequences.
Private firm -- fire a employee for anti-semitic remarks
Government -- if he is a professor, he tell's you have no choice but to keep him, otherwise you're violating "academic freedom." So he sits getting paid while he is on administrative leave. Instead of being a servant of the people of the state of Florida, he insists that they be forced to continue paying him, despite that fact that a vast majority disagree with his positions. Who works for who?
The relationship between employer and employee is fundamentally different when in comes to government jobs and the employees know it. They bitch and moan to the 'outsiders' because they don't want to admit how easy they have it. The fact is, you have to bust your hump in the private sector. Government jobs are easy street.
I have worked in both situations and work in a gov't position now. It makes my blood boil when I hear all these slackers bitch about not getting a raise this year while people I know are getting kicked to the curb (they don't count the cost of living increase they got as a raise, btw). The sense of entitlement is astounding.
The number of government workers is really its own class and they live off the sweat of the private sector.
"everyone creates culture, in that we all contribute to it"
Wrong. Very few make a real contribution. Most are followers.
Got that?
"It's our culture that they own..."
OUR culture? Some create culture, others just use it.
The "industrial revolution," at least in the United States, was fueled primarily from within.
"I would disagree. You're correct that in the first stage of the industrial revolution (early 1800s to early 1900s) there was little to no offshore manufacturing. However, vast amounts of resource and labor were extracted from other parts of the world (sometimes in the form of immigrants)."
Immigrants were extracted? Why did you choose to use such a loaded word? You are intensionally trying to sneak in a negative value judgement.
Immigrants weren't extracted. Immigrants wanted to come and we let them. They helped fuel industrialization, and also enjoyed the benefits of it.
And yes. The industrial revolution in the U.S. was primarily fueled from within.
Further, why do you think off-shore manufacturing is bad for the third world? Off-shore manufacturing is one of the third-worlds only ways of earning money.
"Where pray tell did the vast majority of raw materials and cheap (e.g. slave) labor that powered the industreal revolution come from? Hmmm... the third wold. "
Vast majority? You have proof? Aren't you just guessing?
In the U.S., most natural resources came from the US. Most of the labor was done in the U.S. Most of the food was grown in the U.S. Most of the energy in the form of oil and coal came from the U.S.
To say that the industrial revolution was largely powered by the third world is a myth. Why do you believe it? Better question -- why do you want to believe it?
Your sig indicates you are a lawyer. How do you feel about lawyers gouging people? What about the restrictions placed on who can provide legal services? Aren't you effectively part of a cartel?
You're bitching about a damn $15 CD whose purpose is to provide entertainment. People can decide to go without the CD if they have to. But when legal issues are involved, people rarely have any choice but to use a lawyer. Its amazing that you think $15 is gouging when lawyers, through their own fee's, make justice unaffordable to so many.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
There are a lot of people here giving a hard time to the skeptics. In science, scepticism is a virtue. Theories need to be tested. Theories need experimental support. People who make claims need to back them up. Proper science is all about this back and forth between various claims and theories.
Its also unfair to suppose that every skeptic is motivated by some base political, or economic consideration. It is dangerous conceit to assume that one's own views are pure while dismissing those who disagree as letting prejudice influence them.
Consider this letter to The Economist by Jeffrey Harvey
of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology -- one of the major critics of The Sceptical Evironmentalist and ask yourself how someone who claims to be a scientist can compare Nature and Scientific American to the Bible and the Koran. Also see the excellent reply by Charles Korsmo.
SIR -- As co-author of the review of "The Skeptical
Environmentalist" in Nature and of a critique of its chapter on
biodiversity published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, I must be
one of the green heretics you refer to in your one-sided leader
("Defending science", February 2nd).
You are smearing the vast majority of the scientific community.
You say that the four senior scientists who attacked Bjorn Lomborg's
polemic in Scientific American were "weak on substance". To show you
how absurd this is, Professor Tom Lovejoy, who wrote the piece on
biodiversity, is a senior ecologist and biodiversity adviser with the
World Bank, and a leading authority on tropical ecology. Your attempt
to discredit him is sordid and reflects your conservative ideological
agenda.
I have not the space here to debunk the vast amounts of
disinformation in Mr Lomborg's book. Its fatal flaw is to ignore the
connection between environmental indicators and the condition of the
underlying ecosystems upon which our survival (and that of all life)
depends. Mr Lomborg says nothing about the fraying of marine and
terrestrial food webs, the extent, loss and chemical alteration of
wetlands, the effects of invasive species, etc.
I will conclude with a quotation from an article that appeared in
Jyllands-Posten, a Danish Sunday paper:
"Ove Nathan, former president of the University of Copenhagen,
thinks it totally unlikely that such a thing as a scientific
conspiracy against Bjorn Lomborg should exist. 'There is no scientific
periodical that outshines or is more critically edited than Nature,
Science, and Scientific American. In science they speak with almost
the same authority as the Bible of Christianity and the Koran of
Islam. If all three periodicals pass the same severe judgment upon
Lomborg, I personally would take it for gospel truth.'"
Jeffrey Harvey
Netherlands Institute of Ecology
Heteren, Netherlands
~~
SIR - Jeffrey Harvey's letter (February 16th), in response to your
article on Bjorn Lomborg, is among the most remarkable and disturbing
I have ever read. He attempts to demonstrate the "absurdity" of your
claim that Tom Lovejoy's Scientific American article was "weak on
substance", not by reference to the substance of Mr Lovejoy's article
but by recounting his rank and position. He then one-ups himself by
quoting approvingly an article comparing Nature to the Bible and
Scientific American to the Koran, and ascribing to them the power of
gospel truth.
While notions of unquestioned authority and infallible oracles
have long been shunned outside fundamentalist religious circles,
apparently they have found a comfortable home among some scientists.
You must have been shaking your head in disbelief at such an egregious
example of the kind of person against whom science must be defended.
Men such as Mr Harvey do not deserve to call themselves scientists.
Charles Korsmo
Washington, DC