That depends on what sort of secure pages the people in the organization are accessing.
There is a slim-but-not-zero chance that the organization is using an internal website with SSL to distribute something they consider confidential.
If this is true, and if the admin's claims about caching were true (apparently they're not), then the admin might have identified a valid security concern. But it sounds like he just doesn't want to deal with alternate browsers, and used something he remembered reading somewhere in the hopes of defusing those who want them.
As someone pointed out, "the computer" is not comparable to "the television". A TV is a pretty single-purpose device. You turn it on, and watch it. A VCR or DVD player can widen the watching options, and a game console can provide some level of interactivity. But it's all the same. You sit down, and let the damned thing entertain you.
"The computer" is a wildly different beast, because it's so versatile. If a child is locked in his room on the computer, he could be doing anything from homework, to talking with friends, to writing a novel, to starting an open source project, to downloading bomb schematics and instructions for cooking meth. You just don't know.
Since most all TV-related activity can be classified as "entertainment," tossing all the TVs in the house is a straightforward proposition. But tossing all the computers would mean denying a child a lot of positive, self-improving activities as well.
Still, the amounts of time the original questioner describes are unhealthy, so don't think I'm suggesting that he do nothing.
Thank you for providing an "in" for one of my longwinded rants.
It's certainly obvious that there is some estrangement between this guy and his teens, and it's possible that some of the blame is his, but I think you're a little quick to place the blame.
Kids in our society are messed up. Not surprising, since this messing up has been the goal of many elements in our society for years. Look at the TV kids are watching, and the way the corporate powers seek to advertise to them. The adult world is portrayed as stale and boring. Adults are hapless morons of varying levels of vindictiveness, while kids are smart, powerful, and hip.
The corporate message is, "By using our products to define your identity, you can become cool and save yourself from the small-minded rules of your adult oppressors." Real power and independence comes from hard work, healthy living, and deep knowledge of important subjects. But if the advertisers have their way (and they do), kids are raised believing it comes from owning the latest and greatest, by mastering expensive but trivial pursuits like Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh, and by defying authority for no good reason.
Having been browbeaten with these messages practically since birth, what chance does a teenager have of becoming someone who is good company for an adult?
I think adults have a responsibility to maintain a good relationship with their kids. They should be interested in our lives and we should be interested in theirs. Reducing the amount of "trivial" media that children consume shields them from a lot of messages which can erode their interest in the adult world and their respect for their parents.
When you're done with that (you'll probably need the whole book), here are a few further hints:
1) If a person is working on games for Gnome, it doesn't mean he thinks everything should be free.
2) If a person dislikes intrusive DRM systems, it does mean he thinks everything should be free.
3) The grandparent didn't say it was a shame that WoW was charging money for their game. He was complaining that the costs are excessive and badly structured. Blizzard should be able to make plenty of money just off subscriptions.
4) Good grammar makes for happy readers.
5) Gratuitous insults make for unpersuaded readers.
1) Check here to see if your country is "industrialized" or "transitioning".
2) "Emissions" means the release of greenhouse gases and/or their precursors into the atmosphere over a specified area and period of time. [source]
3) The six gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulphur hexafluoride) were presumably chosen because they make up the bulk of human-produced greenhouse gases.
4,5) Because having a quantifiable goal is nice. The choice of the year 1990 makes sense because the further back you go, the less the numbers bear any resemblance to the situation of the country today. If you go back too far, there aren't even useful numbers to work with. 1990 says, in effect, "You were performing at this level fairly recently. Try to shoot for that."
Why that particular percentage was chosen is a mystery, except that every country that signed Kyoto believed it was attainable. Will it be enough? Doubtful. But we have to start somewhere.
Shock! Outrage! The population of Russia wasn't unanimous in support of ratification!
"Even with Russia's ratification, 75 per cent of the world's CO2 is emitted by, 68 per cent of the world's GDP is produced in, and 89 per cent of the world's population live in countries that are not handcuffed by Kyoto's restrictions."
22% of that 75% comes directly from the U.S.A. If we'd signed on, these numbers wouldn't be nearly as impressive. I'm also of the opinion that our refusal to sign the treaty isn't going to cause millions of jobs to relocate from Russia to the U.S.
I would also point out that the author of the article you cited said that a warm climate would be better for human health than a cold one. As evidence, he points out that we often take vacations to warm, sunny spots. Then in the most stunning excuse for logic I've seen since... well, the last thing he said, he goes on to suggest that those who are concerned about global warming move to Siberia or admit that they're hypocrites.
This guy is an idiot, and I simply don't see how a country voluntarily reducing CO2 emissions is an attack on basic human freedoms.
I don't see where I suggested any such thing. What I'm suggesting is threefold:
1) That people use mass transit within major metropolitan areas, and mass transit be upgraded to cope effectively with the demand.
2) That people use mass transit between major metropolitan areas.
3) That people, whenever possible, organize their lives in such a way that car ownership isn't necessary. That means not living fifty miles from your work, or three hundred miles from a person you want to see every week.
I think it's odd to live that far away from your girlfriend, but if the things keeping you and her together and the things keeping the two of you in your respective locales are strong enough, fine. Own a car. On the other hand, if your girlfriend was the only reason for owning a car, renting might be an option.
But I digress. My main point was that I never said mass transit could fulfill everyone's needs, or that trying to make it so would be worthwhile.
Here's a potential solution: Require autonomous vehicles in a few downtown areas, and maybe replace the carpool lane with a "self-driving" lane. At first, the cars will all have the option to not be autonomous, so they can be used even where they're not wired into the network.
I'm guessing that eventually even a non-networked car will be able to handle limited situations like cruising an interstate, but for traffic-flow purposes it might be better to have some sort of overall coordination.
As for the speeding question, the designers might want to add some option to the network where a person can request priority, and request an even higher priority in an emergency. Abusing the former might result in a small fine if you go over your quota, while abusing the latter would be akin to making prank phone calls to 911.
Let's set aside the question of whether it makes sense for people to live twelve miles from their primary occupation. Not everyone finds the idea as silly as I do, and I respect that.
The problem with your post is, you're comparing the convenience of a car to that of the current mass transit system, not the sort of mass transit system we could have if, say, one person in ten could give up their cars altogether and put that money into a serious system. For the purposes of this discussion, a "serious system" is one in which the buses run more often than every half hour, and don't stop running altogether after 7PM. In short, one not at all like the one in Salt Lake City.
I'm not imagining shiny new things like, say, an intercity monorail to replace the bus you take to Boston. I think the current systems, but faster, cleaner, and more efficient, would be more than adequate for the needs of most urban dwellers.
Regarding your trip to your parents' house, I think you make it sound worse than it is. Say you're spending 8 hours in the car rather than 11 hours on mass transit. But if you assume that half that time can be spent in productive ways that a car doesn't allow (reading, etc) then suddenly mass transit is competitive again. It could also be argued that you're ignoring the time and effort spent actually earning money to pay for, insure, maintain, gas up, wash, park, and store the car.
Finally, in a fit of anti-American, self-loathing pique, I would point out that we as a society would be spending a heck of a lot less on transportation if our suburbanized ancestors had stayed and dealt with urban problems instead of fleeing like rats off a sinking ship.
I think part of the reason is that, with mathematics, you either know something or you don't. There are many laypeople who would jump at the chance to remedy a perceived inaccuracy in a biography of Alexander Hamilton, but would be intimidated at the idea of trying to muck around with the article on asymmetric encryption algorithms. There is also a higher probability that a given editor will have a computer or science background than a history background. Liberal arts people seem to fear computers for some reason.
What the hell? How does this have anything to do with evolution? Things aren't happening by mere chance over in Wikipedia, but entirely because of the aggregate choices of numerous intelligent agents. Whatever the merits or drawbacks of the Wikipedia system, saying that the quality and accuracy of Wikipedia has anything to do with the evolution/creation debate is absurd.
The only thing that can be said is that, over time, Wikipedia "evolves" to become more pleasing to the people editing Wikipedia. Not a promising thought, if you think about it, but it's the only way to relate Wikipedia and evolution.
You say the purpose of an encyclopedia "is to present information factually and to be explicitly aware of their own limitations." Anyone who knows even a bit about how Wikipedia works knows the pitfalls of trusting it as a perfectly authoritative source of information. Those that don't know anything about it might still see the "edit" button.
All "knowledge" comes with the explicit and implicit biases of the author, the editor, and whatever else enters into the process of bringing facts to a reader. Wikipedia is superior to traditional encyclopediae precisely because the process is open and the readers cannot help but be aware of the opportunity for fraud and bias.
Okay, I'm looking at the Karl Rove article. Few of the facts presented put him in a good light, but which ones are actually incorrect? What accomplishments has the article failed to mention that might take the edge off his reputation as an aggressive political campaigner and right Machiavellian bastard?
The simple truth is, when all the facts are presented about the life of a given person, the balance may be justifiably tip in one direction. It would be too much to ask that an article on Hitler be more balanced by making a big deal of the fact that he liked classical music, was a strict vegetarian, and was very kind to Eva.
Rove is no Hitler. But the push-polling he devised in South Carolina to discredit John McCain says everything about the man's character, and none of it good. Insofar as the bias in the Wikipedia article represents the fact that Rove has done a number of underhanded things in his life, that bias should stand.
The same goes for everything you experience in "real life" as well. The signals your eyeballs pour through your optic nerves and into your brain are actually highly limited representations that symbolize the light hitting your eyes. The signal goes through an extensive preprocessing phase before it gets to your brain. Your brain takes this new datastream, and turns it into symbols that can be associated with other symbols.
So the life we experience is virtual when compared to the really real reality we're missing.
However, the representation isn't arbitrary, and I don't think the representation of a world in an online game is arbitrary either. The amount of gold in your pouch is very objectively less than the amount in the pouch of the person next to you. If, according to the rules of the game, you cannot shoot an arrow more than fifty yards, then an enemy standing 55 yards away cannot be hit, regardless of your own "arbitrary" interpretation of the situation.
Yes, we know full well that such a rule is enforced not by the sorts of "physical space" we inhabit, but by a quick mathematical calculation. But the point is, the rule is being enforced, and there is nothing you can do within the world to change the rule. You cannot move faster, go further, or do more than the rules allow.
The system is arbitrary from the point of the designer of the game. But those who try to manipulate the world from within run headlong into the non-arbitrary aspects of the world.
As an intellectual exercise, try imagining the real world is inside the computer, and that your client into the game is merely translating it into something familiar.
It's perfectly common for the government to require certain information be made available to consumers. Every package of food comes with a listing of nutritional information, because it should be easy for consumers to make healthy choices. New cars are sold with information about what percentage of the car was built domestically, because it should be easy to "buy American".
Have either of these practices vastly increased the cost of the food or automotive industries? No. It's not a huge burden to make information available to consumers.
People shouldn't have to support exploitative labor practices with their dollars, but under the current system it's damned near impossible for a consumer to figure out what sort of labor practices a given manufacturer is using. Without some sort of regulatory system, those who want to support good manufacturers have to look up every single product they use, which is difficult, error prone, and adds absurd costs to every transaction.
The reason companies are afraid of such a policy is simple, and has nothing to do with burdensome regulations: they don't want to gain a reputation for using the sort of practices they're using.
So, what is the nature of your disapproval? Are you some libertarian nut-job who can't comprehend the idea that the government might be uniquely able to positively influence the market? Or are you afraid that such an initiative might hurt your Wal-Mart stock?
S.B. 89 has never gotten out of committee, so Democrats could never have voted for it.
H.R 163 was defeated 402-2, so even if both "for" votes were cast by Democrats, that's about 1% of all the mules in the House. To say "it was Democrats who voted for it" is misleading.
John Kerry's plan didn't call for mandatory military service. Instead, it provided incentives like college tuition. Republicans were quick to mischaracterize the term "national service", even though much of the plan was simply meant to increase volunteerism. Read more.
I think what he means is that it's more than a sizeable chunk in the bank. It's the freedom to walk out on a hellish job, give the double deuce to an incompetent or corrupt group of managers, the ability to say "no" when they ask you to do something illegal.
In short, it's the power to live life on your own terms. You can't put a price on that.
But I did snicker at your response. Amusingly literal-minded. I hope that was your intent.:P
They revamped the CC licenses a little while ago because there appeared to be so little demand for "No attribution necessary." I think it was a mistake, but they seem to think that it makes the whole licensing system more user friendly.
The expectation is that you're being paid to do a job. If you have to work 12-14 hours a day every day to reach whatever deadlines, you're not doing a job. You're doing two. Possibly three. I'm a little fuzzy on the math, but the point stands.
I'm going into this field because I like to be creative and solve problems. If "insane hours" are standard for the industry, then what is a sane person--or at least someone who doesn't have that particular insanity--supposed to do?
That's what really surprised me about this story. The whole programmer abuse angle is pretty well publicized. But I'm having trouble believing that incrementing a given EA sports game takes more than running a small shell script.
Seriously, what are they doing over there? Scrapping the game engine for every release? More likely, they're running around like sailors on a sinking ship, throwing together kludges to minimize the kludginess of the huge ball of kludges left over from the last death march.
OK, EA guys, here's the plan. Half way through the next death march, you all quit and go form your own game company. If there are any sane managers, take them with you. Make sure you've stashed about a year's worth of salary to tide you over.
I think there have been studies showing that adding to the length of prison sentence doesn't really act as a deterrent for most criminals. We can also take a cue from illegal file swapping: Simply being accused can lead to utter financial burnination, but the odds of getting caught are so low that people simply don't think about it.
Slashdot Mirror
That depends on what sort of secure pages the people in the organization are accessing.
There is a slim-but-not-zero chance that the organization is using an internal website with SSL to distribute something they consider confidential.
If this is true, and if the admin's claims about caching were true (apparently they're not), then the admin might have identified a valid security concern. But it sounds like he just doesn't want to deal with alternate browsers, and used something he remembered reading somewhere in the hopes of defusing those who want them.
As someone pointed out, "the computer" is not comparable to "the television". A TV is a pretty single-purpose device. You turn it on, and watch it. A VCR or DVD player can widen the watching options, and a game console can provide some level of interactivity. But it's all the same. You sit down, and let the damned thing entertain you.
"The computer" is a wildly different beast, because it's so versatile. If a child is locked in his room on the computer, he could be doing anything from homework, to talking with friends, to writing a novel, to starting an open source project, to downloading bomb schematics and instructions for cooking meth. You just don't know.
Since most all TV-related activity can be classified as "entertainment," tossing all the TVs in the house is a straightforward proposition. But tossing all the computers would mean denying a child a lot of positive, self-improving activities as well.
Still, the amounts of time the original questioner describes are unhealthy, so don't think I'm suggesting that he do nothing.
Thank you for providing an "in" for one of my longwinded rants.
It's certainly obvious that there is some estrangement between this guy and his teens, and it's possible that some of the blame is his, but I think you're a little quick to place the blame.
Kids in our society are messed up. Not surprising, since this messing up has been the goal of many elements in our society for years. Look at the TV kids are watching, and the way the corporate powers seek to advertise to them. The adult world is portrayed as stale and boring. Adults are hapless morons of varying levels of vindictiveness, while kids are smart, powerful, and hip.
The corporate message is, "By using our products to define your identity, you can become cool and save yourself from the small-minded rules of your adult oppressors." Real power and independence comes from hard work, healthy living, and deep knowledge of important subjects. But if the advertisers have their way (and they do), kids are raised believing it comes from owning the latest and greatest, by mastering expensive but trivial pursuits like Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh, and by defying authority for no good reason.
Having been browbeaten with these messages practically since birth, what chance does a teenager have of becoming someone who is good company for an adult?
I think adults have a responsibility to maintain a good relationship with their kids. They should be interested in our lives and we should be interested in theirs. Reducing the amount of "trivial" media that children consume shields them from a lot of messages which can erode their interest in the adult world and their respect for their parents.
Wow. You really need this.
When you're done with that (you'll probably need the whole book), here are a few further hints:
1) If a person is working on games for Gnome, it doesn't mean he thinks everything should be free.
2) If a person dislikes intrusive DRM systems, it does mean he thinks everything should be free.
3) The grandparent didn't say it was a shame that WoW was charging money for their game. He was complaining that the costs are excessive and badly structured. Blizzard should be able to make plenty of money just off subscriptions.
4) Good grammar makes for happy readers.
5) Gratuitous insults make for unpersuaded readers.
6) Caffeine and ritalin don't mix.
Another quality offering from our favorite game publisher.
Buy your copy today, while supplies last.
1) Check here to see if your country is "industrialized" or "transitioning".
2) "Emissions" means the release of greenhouse gases and/or their precursors into the atmosphere over a specified area and period of time. [source]
3) The six gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulphur hexafluoride) were presumably chosen because they make up the bulk of human-produced greenhouse gases.
4,5) Because having a quantifiable goal is nice. The choice of the year 1990 makes sense because the further back you go, the less the numbers bear any resemblance to the situation of the country today. If you go back too far, there aren't even useful numbers to work with. 1990 says, in effect, "You were performing at this level fairly recently. Try to shoot for that."
Why that particular percentage was chosen is a mystery, except that every country that signed Kyoto believed it was attainable. Will it be enough? Doubtful. But we have to start somewhere.
22% of that 75% comes directly from the U.S.A. If we'd signed on, these numbers wouldn't be nearly as impressive. I'm also of the opinion that our refusal to sign the treaty isn't going to cause millions of jobs to relocate from Russia to the U.S.
I would also point out that the author of the article you cited said that a warm climate would be better for human health than a cold one. As evidence, he points out that we often take vacations to warm, sunny spots. Then in the most stunning excuse for logic I've seen since... well, the last thing he said, he goes on to suggest that those who are concerned about global warming move to Siberia or admit that they're hypocrites.
This guy is an idiot, and I simply don't see how a country voluntarily reducing CO2 emissions is an attack on basic human freedoms.
In light of your response, I propose that your house be submerged under fifteen feet of water when the sea levels rise.
Hey, don't blame me. You're the one who brought the discourse down to this level.
I don't see where I suggested any such thing. What I'm suggesting is threefold:
1) That people use mass transit within major metropolitan areas, and mass transit be upgraded to cope effectively with the demand.
2) That people use mass transit between major metropolitan areas.
3) That people, whenever possible, organize their lives in such a way that car ownership isn't necessary. That means not living fifty miles from your work, or three hundred miles from a person you want to see every week.
I think it's odd to live that far away from your girlfriend, but if the things keeping you and her together and the things keeping the two of you in your respective locales are strong enough, fine. Own a car. On the other hand, if your girlfriend was the only reason for owning a car, renting might be an option.
But I digress. My main point was that I never said mass transit could fulfill everyone's needs, or that trying to make it so would be worthwhile.
Yeah, but think of the design difficulties in coordinating a link between two separate snooze buttons.
The solution to your problem.
Here's a potential solution: Require autonomous vehicles in a few downtown areas, and maybe replace the carpool lane with a "self-driving" lane. At first, the cars will all have the option to not be autonomous, so they can be used even where they're not wired into the network.
I'm guessing that eventually even a non-networked car will be able to handle limited situations like cruising an interstate, but for traffic-flow purposes it might be better to have some sort of overall coordination.
As for the speeding question, the designers might want to add some option to the network where a person can request priority, and request an even higher priority in an emergency. Abusing the former might result in a small fine if you go over your quota, while abusing the latter would be akin to making prank phone calls to 911.
Let's set aside the question of whether it makes sense for people to live twelve miles from their primary occupation. Not everyone finds the idea as silly as I do, and I respect that.
The problem with your post is, you're comparing the convenience of a car to that of the current mass transit system, not the sort of mass transit system we could have if, say, one person in ten could give up their cars altogether and put that money into a serious system. For the purposes of this discussion, a "serious system" is one in which the buses run more often than every half hour, and don't stop running altogether after 7PM. In short, one not at all like the one in Salt Lake City.
I'm not imagining shiny new things like, say, an intercity monorail to replace the bus you take to Boston. I think the current systems, but faster, cleaner, and more efficient, would be more than adequate for the needs of most urban dwellers.
Regarding your trip to your parents' house, I think you make it sound worse than it is. Say you're spending 8 hours in the car rather than 11 hours on mass transit. But if you assume that half that time can be spent in productive ways that a car doesn't allow (reading, etc) then suddenly mass transit is competitive again. It could also be argued that you're ignoring the time and effort spent actually earning money to pay for, insure, maintain, gas up, wash, park, and store the car.
Finally, in a fit of anti-American, self-loathing pique, I would point out that we as a society would be spending a heck of a lot less on transportation if our suburbanized ancestors had stayed and dealt with urban problems instead of fleeing like rats off a sinking ship.
I think part of the reason is that, with mathematics, you either know something or you don't. There are many laypeople who would jump at the chance to remedy a perceived inaccuracy in a biography of Alexander Hamilton, but would be intimidated at the idea of trying to muck around with the article on asymmetric encryption algorithms. There is also a higher probability that a given editor will have a computer or science background than a history background. Liberal arts people seem to fear computers for some reason.
What the hell? How does this have anything to do with evolution? Things aren't happening by mere chance over in Wikipedia, but entirely because of the aggregate choices of numerous intelligent agents. Whatever the merits or drawbacks of the Wikipedia system, saying that the quality and accuracy of Wikipedia has anything to do with the evolution/creation debate is absurd.
The only thing that can be said is that, over time, Wikipedia "evolves" to become more pleasing to the people editing Wikipedia. Not a promising thought, if you think about it, but it's the only way to relate Wikipedia and evolution.
You say the purpose of an encyclopedia "is to present information factually and to be explicitly aware of their own limitations." Anyone who knows even a bit about how Wikipedia works knows the pitfalls of trusting it as a perfectly authoritative source of information. Those that don't know anything about it might still see the "edit" button.
Where in the Encyclopedia Britannica are you going to see the same sort of warning? I guess we don't need one, because Britannica is perfect. It's not like they would ever edit their articles to avoid harming the reputation of some powerful group.
All "knowledge" comes with the explicit and implicit biases of the author, the editor, and whatever else enters into the process of bringing facts to a reader. Wikipedia is superior to traditional encyclopediae precisely because the process is open and the readers cannot help but be aware of the opportunity for fraud and bias.
Okay, I'm looking at the Karl Rove article. Few of the facts presented put him in a good light, but which ones are actually incorrect? What accomplishments has the article failed to mention that might take the edge off his reputation as an aggressive political campaigner and right Machiavellian bastard?
The simple truth is, when all the facts are presented about the life of a given person, the balance may be justifiably tip in one direction. It would be too much to ask that an article on Hitler be more balanced by making a big deal of the fact that he liked classical music, was a strict vegetarian, and was very kind to Eva.
Rove is no Hitler. But the push-polling he devised in South Carolina to discredit John McCain says everything about the man's character, and none of it good. Insofar as the bias in the Wikipedia article represents the fact that Rove has done a number of underhanded things in his life, that bias should stand.
The same goes for everything you experience in "real life" as well. The signals your eyeballs pour through your optic nerves and into your brain are actually highly limited representations that symbolize the light hitting your eyes. The signal goes through an extensive preprocessing phase before it gets to your brain. Your brain takes this new datastream, and turns it into symbols that can be associated with other symbols.
So the life we experience is virtual when compared to the really real reality we're missing.
However, the representation isn't arbitrary, and I don't think the representation of a world in an online game is arbitrary either. The amount of gold in your pouch is very objectively less than the amount in the pouch of the person next to you. If, according to the rules of the game, you cannot shoot an arrow more than fifty yards, then an enemy standing 55 yards away cannot be hit, regardless of your own "arbitrary" interpretation of the situation.
Yes, we know full well that such a rule is enforced not by the sorts of "physical space" we inhabit, but by a quick mathematical calculation. But the point is, the rule is being enforced, and there is nothing you can do within the world to change the rule. You cannot move faster, go further, or do more than the rules allow.
The system is arbitrary from the point of the designer of the game. But those who try to manipulate the world from within run headlong into the non-arbitrary aspects of the world.
As an intellectual exercise, try imagining the real world is inside the computer, and that your client into the game is merely translating it into something familiar.
Hmm. BobaFett is afraid of "fancy words."
It's perfectly common for the government to require certain information be made available to consumers. Every package of food comes with a listing of nutritional information, because it should be easy for consumers to make healthy choices. New cars are sold with information about what percentage of the car was built domestically, because it should be easy to "buy American".
Have either of these practices vastly increased the cost of the food or automotive industries? No. It's not a huge burden to make information available to consumers.
People shouldn't have to support exploitative labor practices with their dollars, but under the current system it's damned near impossible for a consumer to figure out what sort of labor practices a given manufacturer is using. Without some sort of regulatory system, those who want to support good manufacturers have to look up every single product they use, which is difficult, error prone, and adds absurd costs to every transaction.
The reason companies are afraid of such a policy is simple, and has nothing to do with burdensome regulations: they don't want to gain a reputation for using the sort of practices they're using.
So, what is the nature of your disapproval? Are you some libertarian nut-job who can't comprehend the idea that the government might be uniquely able to positively influence the market? Or are you afraid that such an initiative might hurt your Wal-Mart stock?
A few clarifications:
There are two draft bills, not one.
S.B. 89 has never gotten out of committee, so Democrats could never have voted for it.
H.R 163 was defeated 402-2, so even if both "for" votes were cast by Democrats, that's about 1% of all the mules in the House. To say "it was Democrats who voted for it" is misleading.
John Kerry's plan didn't call for mandatory military service. Instead, it provided incentives like college tuition. Republicans were quick to mischaracterize the term "national service", even though much of the plan was simply meant to increase volunteerism. Read more.
I think what he means is that it's more than a sizeable chunk in the bank. It's the freedom to walk out on a hellish job, give the double deuce to an incompetent or corrupt group of managers, the ability to say "no" when they ask you to do something illegal.
:P
In short, it's the power to live life on your own terms. You can't put a price on that.
But I did snicker at your response. Amusingly literal-minded. I hope that was your intent.
They revamped the CC licenses a little while ago because there appeared to be so little demand for "No attribution necessary." I think it was a mistake, but they seem to think that it makes the whole licensing system more user friendly.
The expectation is that you're being paid to do a job. If you have to work 12-14 hours a day every day to reach whatever deadlines, you're not doing a job. You're doing two. Possibly three. I'm a little fuzzy on the math, but the point stands.
I'm going into this field because I like to be creative and solve problems. If "insane hours" are standard for the industry, then what is a sane person--or at least someone who doesn't have that particular insanity--supposed to do?
That's what really surprised me about this story. The whole programmer abuse angle is pretty well publicized. But I'm having trouble believing that incrementing a given EA sports game takes more than running a small shell script.
Seriously, what are they doing over there? Scrapping the game engine for every release? More likely, they're running around like sailors on a sinking ship, throwing together kludges to minimize the kludginess of the huge ball of kludges left over from the last death march.
OK, EA guys, here's the plan. Half way through the next death march, you all quit and go form your own game company. If there are any sane managers, take them with you. Make sure you've stashed about a year's worth of salary to tide you over.
That'll learn 'em.
I think there have been studies showing that adding to the length of prison sentence doesn't really act as a deterrent for most criminals. We can also take a cue from illegal file swapping: Simply being accused can lead to utter financial burnination, but the odds of getting caught are so low that people simply don't think about it.