agreed. As soon as I saw this was an IT department of one, I could tell the exact amount of care that management has on getting things like this corrected. These things are in place because management does not want to provide what is needed. If they only want to pay for band-aids, that is all they will have.
This isn't necessarily the case though. I have a friend who took over IT at a small business. When he walked in they were using pirated software and their IT was a complete mess. After he put in hours to get it fixed up (with personal support from the owner), they ended up offering him an executive position with a massive pay increase. Some small shops with one IT guy really just don't know what they are doing, and haven't had a person in the job to tell them what is being done wrong. Your advice is still good though. A person in that situation needs to test whether they have management support to do things better. If so, it can turn into a career making opportunity to turn things around. If you can't get the management on your side though, it very well could be time to start looking for another job with more supportive management.
So just down 20 cups of coffee before taking the test. When you yourself are caffeine speeded, shivering in cold sweat and not able to tell up from down, the machine will have a very difficult job assessing your truthfulness.
And that will come up as a fail. They are trying to get you to try to fool the machine. That's what makes it work.
Americans don't really have ways to participate in organizations that will stop this sort of thing from happening.
This very attitude is what strips us of our power. In the United States, the people only have power so long as we exercise it. I'll grant you that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have shown much interest in responsible government. That said, we have a weak party system in the US. The parties CAN'T control who gets selected as their nominees, we pick them in primaries. If neither party will put forward decent candidates, we simply adopt an "anti-incumbent" position until someone comes along who will listen. In November, I have every intention of voting against any sitting representative. Until someone comes along who we can actually support, we should just boot every incumbent. Eventually, someone will want to serve a second term and will listen to what the voters want long enough to get re-elected.
Most large monopolies only get that way through government coercion, or at the very least cooperation. The large railways were chosen by exclusive government contracts. The large telcos also held exclusive government contracts. Microsoft gained its power by ignoring government rules. The problem is that the "owning class" will always evade or control any rules placed on the market. The "little guy" lacks the resources to do so. Patant law is a good example of this. It is designed to prevent corporations from stealing ideas from the little guy so that he will bring them to market. In reality, they have ended up as a weapon used to prevent the little guy from competing. Government SHOULD prevent fraud and coercion. When it tries to do more though, it often ends up as just the weapon of the owning class against the little guys. A corporation can never force me to pay for their product if I don't want it. Only government can do that. A tax on blank CDs is about as blatant as this can get. The little guy doesn't benefit from imposed fees like that, only the large producer's who benefit whether we want their product or not. Who do you think benefits from the complexity of our tax code? It isn't the little guy. Complexity benefits those who have more money to buy experts. That's who is normally helped by big government.
The "typical Wikipedia author" is anyone who feels like making a change. This includes people who are deliberately engaging in graffiti, those with a personal agenda, or just those who are ignorant. If wikipedia wasn't able to handle bad edits it would be useless already. These journalism students are being required to document everything they say carefully, in a way that should make it easy for editors to validate what they are writing.
I'd also like to see the "value based on resources" applied to real estate.
A house built with identical labor, energy, and raw materials at the side of a lake is worth more than one in a valley. I wonder how they rectify this situation, or if they just fall back to the "what people pay for it" explanation.
What they do is just leave the house built in the valley vacant until all superior sites have sold. The valley home can't be sold for less money, unless the cost of the inputs was lower (such as if the property purchase was less). This means that if you want to sell a house with higher craftsmanship for more money, you have to use more expensive raw materials to justify the increase. If you make a poor quality house with expensive materials / labor costs, you can NEVER sell it because you can't undercut those who made a better house for similar costs. The economics of a "cost plus" model aren't QUITE as broken as most free market advocates believe, but they do make it impossible to sell things at clearance prices or to charge more for finishing quickly or at higher quality.
Can we please stop regarding Google's saccharine "Don't Be Evil" claptrap for anymore than what it always was: branding.
The only reason branding exists is to make an implied promise to the consumer. McDonald's brand promises fast burgers following a similar recipe in a fairly consistent eating environment. Google's brand is supposed to represent easy to use, highly effective, and non-evil. If they at least appear to practice this brand, they sell more stuff. If they don't, they lose the brand value. Regardless of WHY they want to appear non-evil, the results are what should be judged by the market.
You have no idea how politics works. People opposed to the Republican Party in the U.S. have been doing that for 10 years, however that only works if your opponents have shame, which people in politics typically lack.
That's at least in part because both sides are doing the same thing. Democrats in the US now run the Congress and the Presidency, and do you see any shame from them about being "partial, biased, and at the same time abjectly failing to do their jobs"? Too many voters will vote a party ticket no matter what is being done by their party, and neither party can be trusted to do what they say they will do. I'd like to see some debates held before a grand jury so that outright lies by the politicians could have legal consequences. Both parties do it constantly, and so long as deception carries no consequences they will continue to do so.
This is already evident in that the terrorists have resorted to being terrorists because they do not have the resources to fight in a more traditional way on a field of battle.
Terrorism is NOT the same as guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare targets militarily significant targets in an attempt to make it difficult for an enemy to mobilize force. Assuming a "just cause" targeting enemy combatants, generals, leaders, and support staff are all potentially legitimate ways to impact an adversaries ability to fight. Because of this, I wouldn't call the attack on the Pentagon a "terrorist" attack. It was a military strike which killed some civilians as collateral damage. The attacks on US forces around the world are similarly not "terrorist" in nature. They may be for an illegitimate cause (which I firmly believe), but they are not terrorist.
The attacks on civilians in hotels are terrorist attacks. Intentionally bombing schools, public transit, and marketplaces is terrorist. The intent of a terrorist attack is NOT to reduce the enemies ability to fight, but to reduce their will to fight by attacking those who are not directly involved in the conflict. The attack on the trade center was a terrorist attack. Arguably the atom bombs dropped on Japan were terrorist, the main question being whether the "primary" target was military complexes or civilian populations. We can discuss further whether "terrorism" is a valid approach, but it is definitely a significantly different act than the kind of guerrilla warfare practiced during the US war for independence.
On the other hand, if nobody is being abused why would we NEED a court to make a finding on the case? Does it matter whether it is legal for police officers to throw chickens at suspects if none ever has? What is more, the court finding was that it was never legal to place the GPS units without a warrant, meaning that even though the court had never ruled on it previously the behavior should already have been avoided by those familiar with existing law and precedent. In fact, in any case where we DO want to make a law against something nobody has done, we can do so using the legislative system rather than the court system. That way if you want to pass a law banning police officers throwing chickens in the direction of suspects, you can do so even if no police officer has ever considered taking that action.
Seven times the minimum salary isn't an "arbitrary limit", the owner of the company I mentioned spent quite a bit of time figuring out that amount. At the time I met the owner of that company he was making $350k and the janitor was making $50k. If the janitor wasn't worth $50k, he would fire him, it's that simple. He told me that the janitor was very good at his job, and had been working for him for many years.
What happens when that janitor retires, and new janitorial staff is needed? Does the firm now need to find another janitor worth $50,000, reduce the pay of all their top staff (who are doing excellent work and increasing the profitability of the company), or do without a janitor (forcing people making $100,000 doing highly profitable engineering to take time from their work to clean the bathrooms)? I fully intend to be a business owner in the future, and absolutely plan to tie my employees compensation to their performance and to the company's success. However, an arbitrary tie between the amount I pay my key innovators I would have a hard time replacing and the amount I pay someone to come in and clean the lobby isn't logical.
Pay should be based on the value of the contribution, the difficulty of replacement, and the demands of the person you want to do the job. If I'm not happy with what I'm being paid, I start looking for a new position. I feel no loyalty to my employer to work for them if they aren't willing to compensate me adequately, just as they feel no loyalty to me if I don't produce enough value for them. If I like my employer, I'll let them know I'd like a raise before quitting or give 2 weeks notice (as a courtesy). If I don't like them, I'll just notify them I won't be working for them starting tomorrow because they aren't paying me enough (I have no long term contract). If they like me, they will tell me areas they'd like me to improve or how they need me to redirect my work from a non-profitable section of the company to something more useful. If they don't care about me (and most companies don't), they'll just let me know they no longer think they need me not to show up the next day.
Honestly, I really don't understand this attitude of "corporate loyalty" people seem to have. It's like you're a medieval peasant with loyalty to your local noble. The attitude of "noblese oblige" where the upper class acts as father and protector to their people is long dead, if indeed it ever even existed. Workers today have power like never before in history. If you reward good employers with your work and punish bad employers by leaving, the bad employers will go out of business. If you can't find a good employer, save your money and start your own business. If the big CEOs are really as useless as you think, surely you can do better?
As for the company, the quality of the product went to shit, people quit buying, they are a very small company now. Very few of the original people still survive there. Even the china production is very small now.
The dilemma for me is when I am out buying tools for my latest job, or when I am buying electronics, I picture whats going on in china and it makes me sick. But I go to the store and look around, and I no longer have the choice to buy from a country that respects the workers a little bit. Even if there were lots of American, Canadian, British, etc, keyboards around, I doubt I could afford them with my paycheck from the new career... so the house of cards continues to crumble.
A company cannot afford to produce products at a quality their customers cannot pay. Your story demonstrates this nicely, since the move had a negative effect on the quality of their product. Had the purchasing public wanted to and been able to afford the higher quality offered by US manufactured keyboards, your company would not have been able to offshore. The public was NOT willing or able to pay this (just as you are not able to pay it), resulting in the company having to choose to offer the buying public what it wants (cheap keyboards) or not selling anything (going out of business). Just like the craftsmen who were replaced by factories, you have been replaced by a more effective way of producing what the public demands. If you want to continue to have a standard of living better than 99% of the world, find a way to be more productive in creating what the public wants than 99% of the world. "Being an American" doesn't make you inherently better than those workers in China who desperately want a way to improve their standard of living.
The 40 hour work week as mandated by the US government did not SHORTEN working hours, it lengthened them. Average length of work week decreased consistently from 1840 until the 1930s when the US government mandated a minimum work week as part of its response to the Great Depression. As a result, the modern worker has been forced to work longer hours than would likely be common had this law not been passed: http://www.preservenet.com/studies/WorkHours.html
As wikipedia states: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#United_States "Beginning in 1950, under the Truman Administration, and continuing with all administrations since, the United States became the first known industrialized nation to explicitly (albeit secretly) and permanently forswear a reduction of working time. Given the military-industrial requirements of the Cold War, the authors of the then secret National Security Council Document 68 [8] proposed the US government undertake a massive permanent national economic expansion which would allow it to "siphon off" a part of the economic activity produced to support an ongoing military buildup to contain the Soviet Union"
Arguably, this was a valid course of action, but the laws mandating a 40 hour work week were not for worker protection, but to force workers to be more productive than they might have otherwise chosen to be. It was a deliberate action to cause us to become a superpower. Average work hours DO naturally drop as average productivity increases, and any economic textbook will validate this.
"As for fuel consumption, let's look first at a short trip, from New York to Boston and back again. This flight is slightly under an hour in each direction. A typical aircraft on such a route, an Airbus A320, will consume somewhere around 10,000 pounds or 1,500 gallons of jet fuel over the course of the round trip. Assuming 140 passengers, that's 71 pounds of fuel, or just over 10 gallons per person. A lone occupant making the same trip by car would consume twice those amounts."
I'm assuming that Mr. Smith as a professional airline pilot has got his numbers right. So where's your backup for your "insanely inefficient" claim?
You are comparing a form of mass transit to a single occupant car. Nobody would claim that a single occupant car was fuel efficient. Replace your single occupant car with two to four people, and the fuel usage drops to equal or half as much as an airplane. Put the people in a plane on an appropriately sized bus, and the fuel per person would drop even more. Use a train which has a dedicated path and moves at a constant speed (again, appropriately sized), and fuel usage would drop further.
In today's transportation, energy efficiency is basically a non-issue. People value convenience and speed far, far more than energy usage. When energy costs rise as oil depletion nears, this will change. More money will be pumped into creating new energy sources and people will travel both less and more efficiently. Most office workers don't REALLY need to travel as often as they do. Most drivers don't REALLY need a large heavy vehicle for most of their transportation. Even public transportation in the US is vastly energy inefficient due to low usage patterns. The only crisis will come if oil prices impair the ability to produce and distribute food before alternatives are found. Everything else will scale back if and when it becomes necessary.
Credit cards are the most secure way to purchase
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I don't ever worry about the waiter stealing my card number. Why? Because the few times I HAVE had invalid purchases all it took was one call to the credit card company, and I never had to worry about it again. I have always instantly had the amount put back on my card, and once I had to sign a letter they sent with a self-addressed envelope saying that the charges listed were not mine. After my wife had surgery and was on heavy duty painkillers, she was duped into giving her card number to someone by phone. We immediately told the credit card company and they took care of it. I would FAR rather have my credit card stolen than cash, and I've heard many stories from friends about problems getting banks to fix errors in checking accounts. All around, I love getting 5% cash back on groceries, gas, and drug store purchases with the security of knowing that money CANNOT be stolen from me. I do hate the habit of the entire financial industry of using identifiers as secret tokens, but then I've chosen a bank that doesn't and check all my accounts every few days. The modern day convenience really isn't costing me anything but my privacy.
Overall, I like the conversion to a 22 season television series. I think there are some key elements from the saga you are missing though that should be included.
Season 1: Should focus on the corruption of the senate and the deadlock of the Jedi. The focus should be built on the fact that neither the senate nor the Jedi counsel are actively enforcing law and order. The attack on Naboo will only by the final deterioration of galactic order, following years of increasing disorder across the galaxy that neither the Senate nor the Council will address. The Jedi have a conflict between Qui Gon's belief that the force should be used to actively protect those in need and Yoda's position that emotion needs to be stripped from the Jedi way of life, and that their power should be used exclusively to protect the peace. Yoda controls the Council and keep Qui Gon's allies off it. Palpatine is sympathetically portrayed as someone who fights corruption in the Senate and campaigns for the rebuilding of the fleet and army to protect the people. Main characters are Qui Gon, Obi Wan, Yoda, and Palpatine.
Season 2: Palpatine is revealed to be secretly learning the ways of the Sith, with the intent of being able to force the Senate to establish order. Using the Force, he begins building popular support galaxy wide, but realizes that until the disorder becomes personal to him that his support will be limited. As a result, he creates the persona of Darth Sideous to foster an attack on his own homeworld of Naboo. His belief is that this final act of aggression will allow him to take control of the Senate and help those in need. He also forms a secret alliance (as Sideous) with Count Dooku, a former Jedi who also feels that the Republic is too corrupt and is building the groundwork for a revolution. Qui Gon is clearly losing his influence with the Council, despite being at a point in his career where he should BE a member of the Council. Perhaps he is specifically passed up for the role by a more junior Jedi.
Season 3: The trade federation is lured into attacking Naboo, and Palpatine manipulates this action into a vote of no confidence for the chancellor, a well meaning but politically weak leader. His platform, to fight the corruption in the Senate and oppose the violence growing throughout the galaxy. This is the fall of Palpatine, as he overcomes his doubts about commanding an attack on his homeworld believing it is for the greater good. Before now, Sideous was the false identity and Palpatine the real, increasingly that reverses in this season. Yoda is greatly weakened politically due to his failure to foresee the return of the Sith (Darth Maul), believed extinct for 1000 years. Many of Qui Gon's followers in the order suspect that Qui Gon was deliberately sent to his death by the Council, and the Council allow Anakin into the order as a placatory move to prevent a complete schism. Obi Wan insists that Anakin skip the "pre-apprentice" stage that is taught by Yoda, both because Anakin is technically too old for it and because he has questions regarding Yoda's fitness to lead.
Season 4: Focuses on the growth of Anakin as a Jedi. He is for the most part ignored by the Council, who fear he will be the end of the Jedi Order. Palpatine takes special note of Anakin's immense strength in the force though, and mentors him wherever possible. Palpatine focuses on the great injustices taking place in the galaxy, and how these could be addressed with a stronger central government. Obi Wan grows as champion of Qui Gon's faction arguing that protecting the Republic is the primary goal of the Jedi, and Yoda continues to lose power politically. Sideous continues to grow in power, and maintains a focus on blinding and confusing Yoda. He is aware that Yoda is his most dangerous opponent (due to his prophetic abilities), and makes special effort to reduce the respect of the order for him. Yoda is uncertain why he is no longer able to view the future, and fears he may be too old to lead effectively.
It leaves them with the choice of being a business based in the US or doing business helping China censor. It would likely mean that they would be unable to do business in China unless they first moved their charter to a foreign country.
The Open Source Software Community may not want the law to favor automatically granting a reasonable attorney's fee to copyright defendants. Imagine trying to enforce the GPL if the courts are highly likely to impose $50,000+ in reasonable attorney's fees on the OSS coders trying to enforce their rights if the suit fails. The OSS Community really should really support leaving much of the decision to the discretion of the district court judges.
If the Open Source Software Community files frivolous lawsuits with insufficient evidence, they OUGHT to pay "reasonable attorney's fees". The fact that the bad rules can be abused by both sides is no justification for leaving the rules as they are. Just stop filing lawsuits that you can't actually win. Lawsuits should be filed when you have strong evidence that you have been wronged, not when you want to go on a fishing expedition to find out if someone might be cheating you.
Every year, thousands of executives venture to Bentonville, Arkansas, hoping to get their products onto the shelves of the world's biggest retailer. But Jim Wier wanted Wal-Mart to stop selling his Snapper mowers.
I fully agree with Red Flayer that anyone doing business with Wal-Mart is choosing their own fate. I happen to think that Wal-Mart is worth most of the prices that it demands; it really has reduced costs for many living essentials, which is why so many people shop there. However, if you don't want to be squeezed by Wal-Mart on price, you shouldn't sell there to begin with. Music is currently mostly sold in only a few venues:
In third place iTunes captured a 9.8 percent share of total music sales, ahead of Amazon, Target, Borders, Circuit City, Virgin Megastores and others. The only retailers to outpace iTunes are Wal-Mart in first place with 15.8 percent and Best Buy with 13.8 percent.
That's 39.4% of all sales from three companies. Between the three of them, I think music prices might be dropping soon...
Terrorism is deliberately targeting civilians with the intent of breaking the will of the people. It is a matter of intent. If the intent is to destroy a military target, even high collateral damage does not make the attack "terrorist". The attack on the Pentagon was NOT a terrorist attack, because they targeted a military building. Attacks aimed at US forces in the Middle East are not "terrorist" either for that reason. Those who target civilians ARE terrorist, as were the attacks on the trade towers. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki might well be considered terrorist acts by the US, but I am unaware of any other military actions we have taken more recently that would qualify. I am uncertain whether terror tactics are ever valid, but they are definitely NOT valid in a situation where a quick end to hostilities cannot be achieved. Note that non-terrorist attacks for invalid reasons are still immoral, they just aren't intended to "terrify".
I don't see how FOSS is like communism at all actually. Does the government strictly control the creation and supply of software? Does the government provide an income to the limited few software suppliers allowed? Do you get your software license coupons each month and have to stand in line to get software? Does it eliminate value judgments and class? (No, actually, it's highly competitive and the best software "wins".) Does it preclude everyone from ever selling their programming labour? I'm just missing the connection, I guess.
You are confusing communism for the failed attempts to implement communism that have happened at national scales. Communism claims that eventually all parties will voluntarily contribute their best for the common good, and that the fruits of these labors will benefit all. The problem that has historically been encountered is motivating the laborers to work without a profit motive. In the open source world, many developers are willing to contribute for reasons other than a profit motive. A complete conversion to communism in this field would indeed result in nobody selling their labor, but rather getting their groceries from the nearest "food torrent" node. If the market would work this way for all essential commodities (people voluntarily contributed food to the common store, fuel to the common gas station, etc), communism would work. Unfortunately, communism only works in fields where people LIKE what they are doing. This is why it is far easier to find people willing to write an open source kernel than an open source GUI. There has to be SOME way to get people to work as garbage men and waste water treaters, and capitalism gives us that method though paying them to do the job.
FOSS 'creates' wealth for everyone, in the direct form of the benefits you get from using the software, and in the indirect form of lowering the cost of production of other products (e.g. a retailer using Linux as PoS can offer cheaper products).
This is where the article seems meaningless. Wealth is the production of desirable goods and services. To the extent that free software produces junk nobody wants to use, it is a waste of often valuable skillsets of the designers. To the extent that it produces code people like and use though, it has added wealth to the market. The fact that the creator of this wealth gets no monetary reward is what makes it "communistic". That said, if the creator is happy having bettered the world, why should anyone criticize his willingness to work without pay.
Even better, the newer employees who dream of climbing the corporate ladder also understand our philosophy of serving the top dog, since the top dogs we work with are very fair with bonuses, commendations, and raises when the company is profitable. I won't work for a company that doesn't pass the savings, and profits, on to the employees who got them there.
This seems like a great way to do business, but also a difficult one. What kind of review of corporate policy does it take to satisfy you that they treat their employees in a manner acceptable to your consulting business, and what kinds of behavior would it take for you to sever a business relationship? Do you hold your customers to such high reasons for moral reasons (you don't want to work with someone you feel fails to reward their employees properly) or practical reasons (you don't believe that such a company will be successful or profitable to do business with long term)?
The law is getting so intricate that few people understand exactly what it entails anymore. Ideally, the law should be easily understood; written in the vernacular. We shouldn't need lawyers to translate it for us.
The operating systems are getting so intricate that few people understand exactly what they entail anymore. Ideally, the computer languages should be easily understood; written in the vernacular. We shouldn't need programmers to write code for us.
While complicated systems are generally undesirable, precision is almost as important in law as it is in computer languages. A "vernacular" law would be as imprecise as a "vernacular" computer language. As outsiders, you and I could be undervaluing the importance of the terms used and the precision that they imply. The differences between things like "beyond a reasonable doubt" and "preponderance of the evidence" are infinitely important, and need strict legal definitions. That said, our current law code [i]seems[/i] to be becoming a centuries old collection of spaghetti code, impossible to maintain effectively and yet impossible to replace completely without possibly causing business critical outages and permanent loss of data or functionality. I'm sure that it will be gutted and replaced about the same time that all COBOL code is purged from the world though (meaning likely never).
The entire point of insurance is that everyone pays a more-or-less baseline amount and some people don't realize any of that value and some people realize more than they put in.
The point of insurance is to cover unexpected catastrophes. I buy insurance on my car because if I get into an accident I could be facing huge costs. I don't use that insurance to cover the costs of fuel, oil changes, or car washes. True "insurance" has a premium based on actuarial tables which predict the likelihood of a payout having to be made, and is cheaper if you are unlikely to need a payout. For example, if I am statistically more likely to get into an accident, I pay more for car insurance. This is how "insurance" works. On the other hand, "Socialism" provides benefits to everyone regardless of their ability to pay, and doesn't charge more for higher risk users. Socialism is different from insurance in that insurance seeks to maximize profit, while socialism simply seeks to distribute costs. Simple distribution of costs is NOT insurance.
The other is that even the teachers who do know something are hog-tied by the regulations. The instructor must follow the curriculum and must make sure all students pass standardized testing.
My mother in law is a Biology teacher with a background in Microbiology and Genetics. She has been asked to leave both private and public schools for the crime of failing honors students who don't learn the material. I've never sat in her class, but the criticism has never been that she is a poor teacher. Rather, it is that she will not lower her standards enough. She will allow any student to retake any test, with the provision that the new grade completely replaces the old. You can retake test one 5 times, until you have it completely memorized. Still, students fail.
Is the proposed solution to provide additional tutoring (she stays late after school every day willing to tutor kids who need it)? Is it encouraging only people willing to do their homework to take honors classes? No, the proposed solution is to reduce standards on the top level classes so kids with dreams of becoming a doctor do not feel discouraged. When parents and administrators value grades above learning, everyone loses. My mother in law will be looking for a new job at a school that will not expect her to pass people who are not willing to learn the material.
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agreed. As soon as I saw this was an IT department of one, I could tell the exact amount of care that management has on getting things like this corrected. These things are in place because management does not want to provide what is needed. If they only want to pay for band-aids, that is all they will have.
This isn't necessarily the case though. I have a friend who took over IT at a small business. When he walked in they were using pirated software and their IT was a complete mess. After he put in hours to get it fixed up (with personal support from the owner), they ended up offering him an executive position with a massive pay increase. Some small shops with one IT guy really just don't know what they are doing, and haven't had a person in the job to tell them what is being done wrong. Your advice is still good though. A person in that situation needs to test whether they have management support to do things better. If so, it can turn into a career making opportunity to turn things around. If you can't get the management on your side though, it very well could be time to start looking for another job with more supportive management.
And that will come up as a fail. They are trying to get you to try to fool the machine. That's what makes it work.
This very attitude is what strips us of our power. In the United States, the people only have power so long as we exercise it. I'll grant you that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have shown much interest in responsible government. That said, we have a weak party system in the US. The parties CAN'T control who gets selected as their nominees, we pick them in primaries. If neither party will put forward decent candidates, we simply adopt an "anti-incumbent" position until someone comes along who will listen. In November, I have every intention of voting against any sitting representative. Until someone comes along who we can actually support, we should just boot every incumbent. Eventually, someone will want to serve a second term and will listen to what the voters want long enough to get re-elected.
Most large monopolies only get that way through government coercion, or at the very least cooperation. The large railways were chosen by exclusive government contracts. The large telcos also held exclusive government contracts. Microsoft gained its power by ignoring government rules. The problem is that the "owning class" will always evade or control any rules placed on the market. The "little guy" lacks the resources to do so. Patant law is a good example of this. It is designed to prevent corporations from stealing ideas from the little guy so that he will bring them to market. In reality, they have ended up as a weapon used to prevent the little guy from competing. Government SHOULD prevent fraud and coercion. When it tries to do more though, it often ends up as just the weapon of the owning class against the little guys. A corporation can never force me to pay for their product if I don't want it. Only government can do that. A tax on blank CDs is about as blatant as this can get. The little guy doesn't benefit from imposed fees like that, only the large producer's who benefit whether we want their product or not. Who do you think benefits from the complexity of our tax code? It isn't the little guy. Complexity benefits those who have more money to buy experts. That's who is normally helped by big government.
The "typical Wikipedia author" is anyone who feels like making a change. This includes people who are deliberately engaging in graffiti, those with a personal agenda, or just those who are ignorant. If wikipedia wasn't able to handle bad edits it would be useless already. These journalism students are being required to document everything they say carefully, in a way that should make it easy for editors to validate what they are writing.
What they do is just leave the house built in the valley vacant until all superior sites have sold. The valley home can't be sold for less money, unless the cost of the inputs was lower (such as if the property purchase was less). This means that if you want to sell a house with higher craftsmanship for more money, you have to use more expensive raw materials to justify the increase. If you make a poor quality house with expensive materials / labor costs, you can NEVER sell it because you can't undercut those who made a better house for similar costs. The economics of a "cost plus" model aren't QUITE as broken as most free market advocates believe, but they do make it impossible to sell things at clearance prices or to charge more for finishing quickly or at higher quality.
The only reason branding exists is to make an implied promise to the consumer. McDonald's brand promises fast burgers following a similar recipe in a fairly consistent eating environment. Google's brand is supposed to represent easy to use, highly effective, and non-evil. If they at least appear to practice this brand, they sell more stuff. If they don't, they lose the brand value. Regardless of WHY they want to appear non-evil, the results are what should be judged by the market.
That's at least in part because both sides are doing the same thing. Democrats in the US now run the Congress and the Presidency, and do you see any shame from them about being "partial, biased, and at the same time abjectly failing to do their jobs"? Too many voters will vote a party ticket no matter what is being done by their party, and neither party can be trusted to do what they say they will do. I'd like to see some debates held before a grand jury so that outright lies by the politicians could have legal consequences. Both parties do it constantly, and so long as deception carries no consequences they will continue to do so.
Terrorism is NOT the same as guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare targets militarily significant targets in an attempt to make it difficult for an enemy to mobilize force. Assuming a "just cause" targeting enemy combatants, generals, leaders, and support staff are all potentially legitimate ways to impact an adversaries ability to fight. Because of this, I wouldn't call the attack on the Pentagon a "terrorist" attack. It was a military strike which killed some civilians as collateral damage. The attacks on US forces around the world are similarly not "terrorist" in nature. They may be for an illegitimate cause (which I firmly believe), but they are not terrorist.
The attacks on civilians in hotels are terrorist attacks. Intentionally bombing schools, public transit, and marketplaces is terrorist. The intent of a terrorist attack is NOT to reduce the enemies ability to fight, but to reduce their will to fight by attacking those who are not directly involved in the conflict. The attack on the trade center was a terrorist attack. Arguably the atom bombs dropped on Japan were terrorist, the main question being whether the "primary" target was military complexes or civilian populations. We can discuss further whether "terrorism" is a valid approach, but it is definitely a significantly different act than the kind of guerrilla warfare practiced during the US war for independence.
On the other hand, if nobody is being abused why would we NEED a court to make a finding on the case? Does it matter whether it is legal for police officers to throw chickens at suspects if none ever has? What is more, the court finding was that it was never legal to place the GPS units without a warrant, meaning that even though the court had never ruled on it previously the behavior should already have been avoided by those familiar with existing law and precedent. In fact, in any case where we DO want to make a law against something nobody has done, we can do so using the legislative system rather than the court system. That way if you want to pass a law banning police officers throwing chickens in the direction of suspects, you can do so even if no police officer has ever considered taking that action.
What happens when that janitor retires, and new janitorial staff is needed? Does the firm now need to find another janitor worth $50,000, reduce the pay of all their top staff (who are doing excellent work and increasing the profitability of the company), or do without a janitor (forcing people making $100,000 doing highly profitable engineering to take time from their work to clean the bathrooms)? I fully intend to be a business owner in the future, and absolutely plan to tie my employees compensation to their performance and to the company's success. However, an arbitrary tie between the amount I pay my key innovators I would have a hard time replacing and the amount I pay someone to come in and clean the lobby isn't logical.
Pay should be based on the value of the contribution, the difficulty of replacement, and the demands of the person you want to do the job. If I'm not happy with what I'm being paid, I start looking for a new position. I feel no loyalty to my employer to work for them if they aren't willing to compensate me adequately, just as they feel no loyalty to me if I don't produce enough value for them. If I like my employer, I'll let them know I'd like a raise before quitting or give 2 weeks notice (as a courtesy). If I don't like them, I'll just notify them I won't be working for them starting tomorrow because they aren't paying me enough (I have no long term contract). If they like me, they will tell me areas they'd like me to improve or how they need me to redirect my work from a non-profitable section of the company to something more useful. If they don't care about me (and most companies don't), they'll just let me know they no longer think they need me not to show up the next day.
Honestly, I really don't understand this attitude of "corporate loyalty" people seem to have. It's like you're a medieval peasant with loyalty to your local noble. The attitude of "noblese oblige" where the upper class acts as father and protector to their people is long dead, if indeed it ever even existed. Workers today have power like never before in history. If you reward good employers with your work and punish bad employers by leaving, the bad employers will go out of business. If you can't find a good employer, save your money and start your own business. If the big CEOs are really as useless as you think, surely you can do better?
A company cannot afford to produce products at a quality their customers cannot pay. Your story demonstrates this nicely, since the move had a negative effect on the quality of their product. Had the purchasing public wanted to and been able to afford the higher quality offered by US manufactured keyboards, your company would not have been able to offshore. The public was NOT willing or able to pay this (just as you are not able to pay it), resulting in the company having to choose to offer the buying public what it wants (cheap keyboards) or not selling anything (going out of business). Just like the craftsmen who were replaced by factories, you have been replaced by a more effective way of producing what the public demands. If you want to continue to have a standard of living better than 99% of the world, find a way to be more productive in creating what the public wants than 99% of the world. "Being an American" doesn't make you inherently better than those workers in China who desperately want a way to improve their standard of living.
The 40 hour work week as mandated by the US government did not SHORTEN working hours, it lengthened them. Average length of work week decreased consistently from 1840 until the 1930s when the US government mandated a minimum work week as part of its response to the Great Depression. As a result, the modern worker has been forced to work longer hours than would likely be common had this law not been passed:
http://www.preservenet.com/studies/WorkHours.html
As wikipedia states:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#United_States
"Beginning in 1950, under the Truman Administration, and continuing with all administrations since, the United States became the first known industrialized nation to explicitly (albeit secretly) and permanently forswear a reduction of working time. Given the military-industrial requirements of the Cold War, the authors of the then secret National Security Council Document 68 [8] proposed the US government undertake a massive permanent national economic expansion which would allow it to "siphon off" a part of the economic activity produced to support an ongoing military buildup to contain the Soviet Union"
Arguably, this was a valid course of action, but the laws mandating a 40 hour work week were not for worker protection, but to force workers to be more productive than they might have otherwise chosen to be. It was a deliberate action to cause us to become a superpower. Average work hours DO naturally drop as average productivity increases, and any economic textbook will validate this.
You are comparing a form of mass transit to a single occupant car. Nobody would claim that a single occupant car was fuel efficient. Replace your single occupant car with two to four people, and the fuel usage drops to equal or half as much as an airplane. Put the people in a plane on an appropriately sized bus, and the fuel per person would drop even more. Use a train which has a dedicated path and moves at a constant speed (again, appropriately sized), and fuel usage would drop further.
In today's transportation, energy efficiency is basically a non-issue. People value convenience and speed far, far more than energy usage. When energy costs rise as oil depletion nears, this will change. More money will be pumped into creating new energy sources and people will travel both less and more efficiently. Most office workers don't REALLY need to travel as often as they do. Most drivers don't REALLY need a large heavy vehicle for most of their transportation. Even public transportation in the US is vastly energy inefficient due to low usage patterns. The only crisis will come if oil prices impair the ability to produce and distribute food before alternatives are found. Everything else will scale back if and when it becomes necessary.
I don't ever worry about the waiter stealing my card number. Why? Because the few times I HAVE had invalid purchases all it took was one call to the credit card company, and I never had to worry about it again. I have always instantly had the amount put back on my card, and once I had to sign a letter they sent with a self-addressed envelope saying that the charges listed were not mine. After my wife had surgery and was on heavy duty painkillers, she was duped into giving her card number to someone by phone. We immediately told the credit card company and they took care of it. I would FAR rather have my credit card stolen than cash, and I've heard many stories from friends about problems getting banks to fix errors in checking accounts. All around, I love getting 5% cash back on groceries, gas, and drug store purchases with the security of knowing that money CANNOT be stolen from me. I do hate the habit of the entire financial industry of using identifiers as secret tokens, but then I've chosen a bank that doesn't and check all my accounts every few days. The modern day convenience really isn't costing me anything but my privacy.
Overall, I like the conversion to a 22 season television series. I think there are some key elements from the saga you are missing though that should be included.
Season 1: Should focus on the corruption of the senate and the deadlock of the Jedi. The focus should be built on the fact that neither the senate nor the Jedi counsel are actively enforcing law and order. The attack on Naboo will only by the final deterioration of galactic order, following years of increasing disorder across the galaxy that neither the Senate nor the Council will address. The Jedi have a conflict between Qui Gon's belief that the force should be used to actively protect those in need and Yoda's position that emotion needs to be stripped from the Jedi way of life, and that their power should be used exclusively to protect the peace. Yoda controls the Council and keep Qui Gon's allies off it. Palpatine is sympathetically portrayed as someone who fights corruption in the Senate and campaigns for the rebuilding of the fleet and army to protect the people. Main characters are Qui Gon, Obi Wan, Yoda, and Palpatine.
Season 2: Palpatine is revealed to be secretly learning the ways of the Sith, with the intent of being able to force the Senate to establish order. Using the Force, he begins building popular support galaxy wide, but realizes that until the disorder becomes personal to him that his support will be limited. As a result, he creates the persona of Darth Sideous to foster an attack on his own homeworld of Naboo. His belief is that this final act of aggression will allow him to take control of the Senate and help those in need. He also forms a secret alliance (as Sideous) with Count Dooku, a former Jedi who also feels that the Republic is too corrupt and is building the groundwork for a revolution. Qui Gon is clearly losing his influence with the Council, despite being at a point in his career where he should BE a member of the Council. Perhaps he is specifically passed up for the role by a more junior Jedi.
Season 3: The trade federation is lured into attacking Naboo, and Palpatine manipulates this action into a vote of no confidence for the chancellor, a well meaning but politically weak leader. His platform, to fight the corruption in the Senate and oppose the violence growing throughout the galaxy. This is the fall of Palpatine, as he overcomes his doubts about commanding an attack on his homeworld believing it is for the greater good. Before now, Sideous was the false identity and Palpatine the real, increasingly that reverses in this season. Yoda is greatly weakened politically due to his failure to foresee the return of the Sith (Darth Maul), believed extinct for 1000 years. Many of Qui Gon's followers in the order suspect that Qui Gon was deliberately sent to his death by the Council, and the Council allow Anakin into the order as a placatory move to prevent a complete schism. Obi Wan insists that Anakin skip the "pre-apprentice" stage that is taught by Yoda, both because Anakin is technically too old for it and because he has questions regarding Yoda's fitness to lead.
Season 4: Focuses on the growth of Anakin as a Jedi. He is for the most part ignored by the Council, who fear he will be the end of the Jedi Order. Palpatine takes special note of Anakin's immense strength in the force though, and mentors him wherever possible. Palpatine focuses on the great injustices taking place in the galaxy, and how these could be addressed with a stronger central government. Obi Wan grows as champion of Qui Gon's faction arguing that protecting the Republic is the primary goal of the Jedi, and Yoda continues to lose power politically. Sideous continues to grow in power, and maintains a focus on blinding and confusing Yoda. He is aware that Yoda is his most dangerous opponent (due to his prophetic abilities), and makes special effort to reduce the respect of the order for him. Yoda is uncertain why he is no longer able to view the future, and fears he may be too old to lead effectively.
Season 5: Dooku's rebellion b
It leaves them with the choice of being a business based in the US or doing business helping China censor. It would likely mean that they would be unable to do business in China unless they first moved their charter to a foreign country.
If the Open Source Software Community files frivolous lawsuits with insufficient evidence, they OUGHT to pay "reasonable attorney's fees". The fact that the bad rules can be abused by both sides is no justification for leaving the rules as they are. Just stop filing lawsuits that you can't actually win. Lawsuits should be filed when you have strong evidence that you have been wronged, not when you want to go on a fishing expedition to find out if someone might be cheating you.
The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart
I fully agree with Red Flayer that anyone doing business with Wal-Mart is choosing their own fate. I happen to think that Wal-Mart is worth most of the prices that it demands; it really has reduced costs for many living essentials, which is why so many people shop there. However, if you don't want to be squeezed by Wal-Mart on price, you shouldn't sell there to begin with. Music is currently mostly sold in only a few venues:
That's 39.4% of all sales from three companies. Between the three of them, I think music prices might be dropping soon...
Terrorism is deliberately targeting civilians with the intent of breaking the will of the people. It is a matter of intent. If the intent is to destroy a military target, even high collateral damage does not make the attack "terrorist". The attack on the Pentagon was NOT a terrorist attack, because they targeted a military building. Attacks aimed at US forces in the Middle East are not "terrorist" either for that reason. Those who target civilians ARE terrorist, as were the attacks on the trade towers. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki might well be considered terrorist acts by the US, but I am unaware of any other military actions we have taken more recently that would qualify. I am uncertain whether terror tactics are ever valid, but they are definitely NOT valid in a situation where a quick end to hostilities cannot be achieved. Note that non-terrorist attacks for invalid reasons are still immoral, they just aren't intended to "terrify".
You are confusing communism for the failed attempts to implement communism that have happened at national scales. Communism claims that eventually all parties will voluntarily contribute their best for the common good, and that the fruits of these labors will benefit all. The problem that has historically been encountered is motivating the laborers to work without a profit motive. In the open source world, many developers are willing to contribute for reasons other than a profit motive. A complete conversion to communism in this field would indeed result in nobody selling their labor, but rather getting their groceries from the nearest "food torrent" node. If the market would work this way for all essential commodities (people voluntarily contributed food to the common store, fuel to the common gas station, etc), communism would work. Unfortunately, communism only works in fields where people LIKE what they are doing. This is why it is far easier to find people willing to write an open source kernel than an open source GUI. There has to be SOME way to get people to work as garbage men and waste water treaters, and capitalism gives us that method though paying them to do the job.
This is where the article seems meaningless. Wealth is the production of desirable goods and services. To the extent that free software produces junk nobody wants to use, it is a waste of often valuable skillsets of the designers. To the extent that it produces code people like and use though, it has added wealth to the market. The fact that the creator of this wealth gets no monetary reward is what makes it "communistic". That said, if the creator is happy having bettered the world, why should anyone criticize his willingness to work without pay.
This seems like a great way to do business, but also a difficult one. What kind of review of corporate policy does it take to satisfy you that they treat their employees in a manner acceptable to your consulting business, and what kinds of behavior would it take for you to sever a business relationship? Do you hold your customers to such high reasons for moral reasons (you don't want to work with someone you feel fails to reward their employees properly) or practical reasons (you don't believe that such a company will be successful or profitable to do business with long term)?
The operating systems are getting so intricate that few people understand exactly what they entail anymore. Ideally, the computer languages should be easily understood; written in the vernacular. We shouldn't need programmers to write code for us.
While complicated systems are generally undesirable, precision is almost as important in law as it is in computer languages. A "vernacular" law would be as imprecise as a "vernacular" computer language. As outsiders, you and I could be undervaluing the importance of the terms used and the precision that they imply. The differences between things like "beyond a reasonable doubt" and "preponderance of the evidence" are infinitely important, and need strict legal definitions. That said, our current law code [i]seems[/i] to be becoming a centuries old collection of spaghetti code, impossible to maintain effectively and yet impossible to replace completely without possibly causing business critical outages and permanent loss of data or functionality. I'm sure that it will be gutted and replaced about the same time that all COBOL code is purged from the world though (meaning likely never).
The point of insurance is to cover unexpected catastrophes. I buy insurance on my car because if I get into an accident I could be facing huge costs. I don't use that insurance to cover the costs of fuel, oil changes, or car washes. True "insurance" has a premium based on actuarial tables which predict the likelihood of a payout having to be made, and is cheaper if you are unlikely to need a payout. For example, if I am statistically more likely to get into an accident, I pay more for car insurance. This is how "insurance" works. On the other hand, "Socialism" provides benefits to everyone regardless of their ability to pay, and doesn't charge more for higher risk users. Socialism is different from insurance in that insurance seeks to maximize profit, while socialism simply seeks to distribute costs. Simple distribution of costs is NOT insurance.
My mother in law is a Biology teacher with a background in Microbiology and Genetics. She has been asked to leave both private and public schools for the crime of failing honors students who don't learn the material. I've never sat in her class, but the criticism has never been that she is a poor teacher. Rather, it is that she will not lower her standards enough. She will allow any student to retake any test, with the provision that the new grade completely replaces the old. You can retake test one 5 times, until you have it completely memorized. Still, students fail.
Is the proposed solution to provide additional tutoring (she stays late after school every day willing to tutor kids who need it)? Is it encouraging only people willing to do their homework to take honors classes? No, the proposed solution is to reduce standards on the top level classes so kids with dreams of becoming a doctor do not feel discouraged. When parents and administrators value grades above learning, everyone loses. My mother in law will be looking for a new job at a school that will not expect her to pass people who are not willing to learn the material.