As opposed to how long the computers will be good (what 3-4 years ???) - or the wireless access points will still function (who knows). All of these tech toys sure seem like a bunch of frivolous waste to me - Frankly I'd rather allow people the choice of buying beer, saving for their education, or anything that THEY believe will add value to their life rather than the government finding things to do with the money that it takes from its citizens
It's the kind of shortsightedness that you display that makes my point. You can't understand that the point is the content, not the delivery medium. If the wireless access points and computers help people in their research, studies, and personal fulfillment today, it will benefit the community for years to come. If they help kids do better in school, then the benefit from that disposable tech will last for lifetimes. If it helps a poor kid get access to the Internet, it could change his life. If it helps someone compose a better resume, it could be a turning point in their career.
The Pentium IIs with Windows 95 on them that the library bought 6 years ago is going to benefit the community for many more years???
How long did the reading lessens that you had in kindergarten and elementary school benefit you? How long did learning to type on a long-gone computer keyboard benefit you? How many years did you get a benefit from having read library books that are no longer on the library shelves?
How long will it benefit the community to have had a generation of kids with access to the Internet -- even ones whose parents' might have been unable/unwilling to have a PC at home?
Did you ever think that the benefit of having had an item can last many more years than the item itself?
And frankly - if you still have money left over, why not give it back to your taxpayers instead of finding random ways of spending it
Yeah. Then many of those taxpayers could spend the money on cigarettes, beer, and lottery tickets rather than having you try to buy something that could benefit the community for many years.
McDonalds, Taco Bell, Burgur King, Wall Mart are all monolithic corporations. The majority of Americans are employed by small businesses that we've never heard of.
The majority of minimum wage jobs are in the restaurant and retail sector -- a sector dominated by large corporations. Most small businesses rely on skilled and semi-skilled labor that costs much more than minimum wage.
Those are businesses with an already 90% failure rate, and they do indeed forgo basic mantainence if it costs too much and wage hikes do put them out of business.
If some business can't afford to pay workers a living wage, then they should go under. But most small businesses fail because of undercapitalization or a poor business plan, not because of wage pressure. In fact, most go under without ever hiring a minimum wage employee.
My example was not meant to provide evidence, but rather provide a personal view of how a hard working person gets screwed over by these laws and forced to break the law in order to escape from laws meant to protect him... this evidence isn't statistical it's moral.
You say that you were forced to do that. Couldn't you have moved to an area where jobs were more plentiful? Besides, that one person was harmed by a set of laws does not mean that the overall good that they do is outweighed by that harm.
And finally, I was refering to the "spend" part of the Republican party (although they have been raising taxes too, but giving high publicity cuts when it counts). The Repubs used to stand for "small government" way back when. Nowdays they preach that philosophy but in practice they have become another large government party.
Government shrank under Clinton. It has grown under Bush. The Bush administration has lowered taxes, but it's targeted lowering: The wealthy pay a lot less, the poor pay a little less, and the middle class pay more. It's just been tinkering with the tax rates in order to save people in the Bush/Cheney income brackets tens of thousands of dollars per year.
But you ignored the important points:
Economist Robert Solow, an MIT Nobel Laureate, wrote in a 1995 New York Times article that the "main thing about the research is that the evidence of the job loss is weak.... And the fact that the evidence is weak suggests the impact on jobs is small."...
The minimum wage has not gone up in nine years. It has not even been adjusted for inflation....
In 1968, the minimum wage was $7.18/hr. when adjusted to 2003 dollars. The minimum wage in 2003, was $5.15 per hour. Today, that same $5.15 is worth even less as inflation marches on. Why could businesses afford over $7/hour in 1968, but can't pay over $5 (both figures adjusted for inflation) now?...
All that a stagnant minimum wage has done is allow the executives to give themselves a bigger slice of the pie as minimum wages failed to keep pace with inflation.
If I hated poor people, then I'd want them to remain trapped in a cycle of welfare dependency, the way that the liberals do.
I'm a liberal and you don't speak for me.
I want the poor to have an opportunity to get out of poverty. They won't get out of poverty by not having enough money to buy clothes for a job interview. They won't get out of poverty by getting a minimum wage job that doesn't pay enough to allow them to buy for food, clothing, and shelter. They won't get out of poverty if taxpayer funding for job training programs is cut. They won't get out of poverty when proven programs like Head Start are cut. They won't get out of poverty when they are denied access to birth control education and, instead, get Republican-approved abstinence sermons.
President Roosevelt oversaw the creation of the national welfare system in the 1930's in response to the Great Depression and a desire to help the poor. Prior to that, many believed that those who couldn't take care of themselves were to blame for their own misfortunes. During the 19th century, local and state governments established institutions such as "poorhouses" and orphanages for destitute individuals and families. Conditions in these institutions were often deliberately harsh so that only the truly desperate would apply. Fortunately, that kind of stupidity and cruelty largely died off after the Great Depression. But now, that kind of thinking is becoming all too popular on right-wing talk radio shows aimed at the ignorant masses.
But, you refused to answer the main question:
So you're going to quit your job or not try to move up the career ladder because some small percentage of your income is paying for social programs for the less fortunate?
You said that tax funding of programs for the poor was a "a disincentive" to working people who paid taxes. That says to me that is something that discourages or deters someone from trying to get a better paying job. Does it? Do you find yourself actively avoiding pay increases and promotions because more of your money would go to help the less fortunate?
4) Absolutely not. Minimum wage work does not equate directly to unskilled work. Most unskilled work makes higher than minimum wage.
But it does set the scale for wages at low-skill jobs. That McDonalds in some high-wage area is willing to pay $.50 over minimum wage is only due to needing to compete with employers who are at the minimum.
Raising minimum wage forces employers to reduce the amount of available jobs because there are many things that an employer would be willing to do, but not if it costs him $10 an hour. Think sweeping parking lots, touching up paint, etc. Minimum wage eliminates these jobs completely which could otherwise be used to suppliment someones job in order to get ahead.
Economist Robert Solow, an MIT Nobel Laureate, wrote in a 1995 New York Times article that the "main thing about the research is that the evidence of the job loss is weak.... And the fact that the evidence is weak suggests the impact on jobs is small."
A business is not going to forego basic maintenance in order to save $160/week ($10/hour - $6/hour * 40 hours). Walmart isn't going to leave standing water on the floor of the restrooms, trash in the parking lots, and paint peeling on the walls just because minimum wages went up to $10/hour.
The minimum wage has not gone up in nine years. It has not even been adjusted for inflation. Tell the CEO of McDonalds that you want to roll his salary back to what McDonalds paid the CEO in 1996 and see how he feels about it.
In 1968, the minimum wage was $7.18/hr. when adjusted to 2003 dollars. The minimum wage in 2003, was $5.15 per hour. Today, that same $5.15 is worth even less as inflation marches on. Why could businesses afford over $7/hour in 1968, but can't pay over $5 (bot figures adjusted for inflation) now?
All that a stagnant minimum wage has done is allow the executives to give themselves a bigger slice of the pie as minimum wages failed to keep pace with inflation. We've got companies like McDonalds where the total CEO annual compensation is about $2,000,000 and many of the full-time workers are getting under $12,000 per year. Sorry, but the CEO doesn't need 166:1 pay ratio compared to the people who are preparing and delivering the product. The CEO's salary has more than kept up with inflation. In fact, it's gone up by leaps and bounds even when adjusted for inflation. And it's done so on the backs of those minimum wage workers who can't even afford health insurance or an efficiency apartment.
Here's a personal example: {snip}
One personal anecdote does not make for statistically significant data. Every time that raising the minimum wage has been discussed, businesses and Republicans begin the cry about how it will put people out of work and cause businesses to go bankrupt. But it's been raised many times and none of the dire predictions has come true. McDonalds, Burger King, and Taco Bell continue to operate and expand -- despite raises in the minimum wage.
As for your final question, the Republican party has become economically more and more liberal over the years to keep up in the votes, which is why they control all 3 houses, NOT because the population has gotten more conservative (economically). I actually left the Republican party years ago over that and am now certifiably Libertarian.
Please show me some solid examples of efforts lead by Republicans to increase spending on Social Security, Welfare, and other social programs aimed at the poor. They are fiscally irresponsible, but not liberal. Liberals have long espoused a tax-and-spend philosophy while the Republicans have opted for the insane borrow-and-spend model.
That's half of the problem. The other half of the problem is that you cause a disincentive to the people who produced the money that is taken.
So you're going to quit your job or not try to move up the career ladder because some small percentage of your income is paying for social programs for the less fortunate? Wow! You must really hate poor people.
The issue is what is fundamentally wrong with taking money from those that can afford it and giving it to those who are less fortunate is that you are giving a financial incentive to people to be less fortunate.
Someone who has a middle-class job, home, etc. isn't going to look for some way to get on the welfare roles, receive food stamps, and live in rodent-infested subsidized housing. Being less well-off than you are is not many people's idea of a "financial incentive."
Contrast that to a society that only offers a moderate saftey net so that people don't starve on the street (they don't starve in the street in the US by the way... far from it). In such a society, where bare necessities but absolutely no luxuries are attainable for a non-working class, and the working class is allowed to keep most of their earnings, the incentive to be part of the working class is large.
You have just described the U.S. as it currently exists. That is our system. We have just about the lowest tax rate of any industrialized country -- probably too low given our national debt and deficit spending. With a few tweaks, the system could really work well:
1. Workfare: If you are able-bodied and want a check then you spend 40 hours/week job hunting, taking government-supplied job training, or doing labor for the government (e.g., cleaning up trash from parks, mowing grass on public property, etc.). That has the added benefit of showing the children of welfare recipients that you have to work to earn a living -- not just sit around watching talk shows and eating twinkies.
2. Child care for those in the workfare program (eliminating the 'I-can't-leave-my-baby' excuse).
3. Continued medical insurance coverage for families when the parent goes off of welfare to take a job. Do you realize that a mother who gets off of welfare to take a job at, say, Walmart, will lose all medical insurance for her and her child?
4. Raise the minimum wage. What incentive is there for someone to take a minimum wage job when it's not enough money to pay for food, clothing, and shelter? It's great to say that those jobs are to provide mall money for kids living with mommy and daddy, but just what other kind of work is the average welfare recipient qualified for? Not many of them jump from the welfare roles to being attorneys, CPAs, doctors, and engineers.
5. Provide classes on topics like household budgeting, nutrition, voice and diction, and appropriate business attire and manners. These classes would address the skills and knowledge that is often lacking and that stops many welfare recipients from turning their lives around.
As the population of the working class grows their votes in a representative republic grow and they have more power to demand even more compensation from the "more fortunate" working class, which cyclically creates a bigger disinsentive to be part of the working class and grows the ranks of the lower class.
Then how do you explain why the Republican Party controls both houses of Congress as well as the Presidency? If the ever-growing constituency of voters receiving government assistance holds so much sway, why aren't we seeing ever-more-liberal waves of elected representatives?
Helping the poor is fine. Looting the middle class for the ostensible purpose of helping the poor is not.
Why? What's so damned horrible about taking money from those who can afford it to help those who are less fortunate?
Let me guess: You'd prefer a system where people can opt out of helping the poor, yet still, themselves, get the full benefit of living in this society. If you let people opt out, then you are, in effect, giving them a monetary incentive to be greedy and self-centered. They can give $10,000 to help the poor or put that money towards that new Hummmer H2 that they've been eyeing.
Taxes spent on helping the poor is just setting the lower limit for participation in society. If you want to donate more, that's great, but you don't get to forsake the poor and get rewarded for doing so.
The problem is not and will not be the code; the problem is that the lack of good 3d models.
Why? Are computer artists too smart to give away their work? Gee, maybe some of the software engineers and wannabees on Slashdot could learn from those computer artists...
You do realize, don't you, that the graphics are not an indicator of the quality of the engine, but the quality of the artist?
Then you should do Quake III Arena quality graphics using the engine created for the original Duke Nukem 3D. The graphics are only as good as the weakest link, whether that's the graphics engine or the skill of the artist. I can't tell by looking at screenshots.
I looked at other shots there, and it really doesn't look half bad. Could be very fun to play around with.
I, of course, picked a shot which I thought best supported my position. I agree that some of the graphics look pretty good and that the game might be quite enjoyable. But I don't think that it's of the quality where ID Software and the big names have to worry.
My whole point in all of this is that Slashdot is filled with people who swear that the best of all possible software is open source and that open source is the best model for software development. Yet the same people get all excited when an end-of-life video game's previously-closed-source code is put under the GPL. Well, if open source leads to better software, then why isn't there a better game (or at least engine) already out there that was developed from the ground up as open source?
That's because we don't have Carmack, Duh!!! He's a God, didn't you know that?
Neither do the folks who did the Unreal series -- and UT2004 is every bit as good a game as Quake III Arena.
One thing you forget, is that Video Games take a lot of resources to create. Also it takes focus, dedication and good planning. Most of that is indeed lacking from many people doing video game development in the open source world, mainly because they don't have the threat of the Pink Slip over their heads; they're doing it out of their free time.
I didn't miss that at all. It's just another reason why closed source continues to dominate. And I don't agree that it's the "threat of the Pink Slip" that keeps most people working. It's getting compensated for their labor, something that doesn't happen often in the open source development world.
What's with the harsh tone? Do you not like it when people do things for fun, and in their spare time?
I have no problem with people dabbling in things for fun. I'm dabbling in photography and don't expect to be the next Ansel Adams. But neither do I claim that screwing around in your spare time is the best way to create professional quality photos. The only thing that annoys me is the constant bellowing from some of the strident open source proponents about how open source is the best software development model. It's usually not. Where would OpenOffice be without Sun's involvement? Where would Mozilla be had it not had funded development from AOL?
To get a "viable open source FPS that competes with, and exceeds, the big-boys" the first thing you need to do is convince professional artists and level-designers to work really hard for free. Good luck with that.
Professional artists and level designers are too smart to undermine their income by giving away their labor for free. Maybe software engineers could learn from them.
1: Q3A had a linux port pretty quickly (maybe not at release, I don't remember)
It was a closed source release done by the publisher. I have the metal-cased Linux version which I bought for $2.88 from MicroCenter with a sticker saying you could convert it to a Windows version with a download -- because Linux users wouldn't buy "evil" closed source software.
2: That doesn't apply so much to games, the distributed development model is less effective since you need a coherent structure. Also budding game developers tend to mod on commercial engines (e.g. Counter-Strike on Half-Life), for the installed base and because they can re-use game assets.
Then let's leave the "budding" newbies out of this. How many experienced game developers have come up with open source games that rival the quality of Quake III?
3: For the amazing stuff people have done with the Quake 2 engine Nexuiz, which has ~quake 3 model/level quality and ~doom 3 effects (and system requirements, sadly). It's entirely "viable", as in I've joined servers full of people and had fun playing. I don't think it's popular compared to the big commercial games - but it's had zero media exposure and isn't sold in game stores, and still had 250000 downloads! I wouldn't say it puts Quake 3 to shame, but it's worthy competition.
It is an interesting derivative, but it's not exactly an all-new game. Nor would I say that it has Quake III level graphics. They are good, but not that good. And why has it had "zero media exposure"? It's not like open source projects are shunned by the media. We've seen no small amount of attention paid to Firefox, Mozilla, Linux, OpenOffice.org, Apache, etc. Congrats to them for their efforts and thanks on behalf of those who enjoy playing it, but let's see a viable open source FPS that competes with, and exceeds, the big-boys. And I mean one developed from the ground up as open source.
When Quake III was released, it was a closed source game that ran on Microsoft Windows.
I thought that the general Slashdot consensus was that GPL-licensed, open source development under Linux yields better quality products. If that's so, where are the open-source, first-person shooters that must already put Quake III to shame?
Prediction: Quake III will be released under the GPL, just like the previous ones, and a bunch of open source fanatics will slave over it, never really understanding how it all works. They will make trivial changes to it before losing interest and no viable, popular products will ever come of their efforts.
It amazes me when open source fanatics are so arrogant as to suggest that anyone preferring a closed source product must either be stupid or receiving bribes from Microsoft. However, that's what happens any time that there's a Slashdot story where an organization chooses a Microsoft product over an open source product.
I have both OpenOffice and Microsoft Office on my systems at home. I have found OpenOffice to be a really competent package that I heartily recommend to many home users. On the other hand, there are things about MS Office (such as the spreadsheet graphing capabilities) which are superior. I've also found the subtle formatting differences that cause widows, orphans, and page break problems when switching between the two packages. I can easily envision a department, agency, etc. regretting a switch to OpenOffice if they exchage documents with others using MS Office.
Historical Background of the _harms_ [junkscience.com]
I provide quotes from peer-reviewed scientific studies in reputable journals and you provided a link to a discredited, right-wing advocacy site that has no scientific peer review.
Influential organizations such as the Norwegian Development Agency, the Swedish International Development Agency, the Swedish Aid Agency, and USAID -- the sorts of groups from whom some poor nations such as Belize, Mozambique, and Madagascar receive the majority of their public health money -- continue to insist that DDT be left out of malaria-control efforts.
That's simply untrue. USAID has recently funded DDT spraying in developing countries. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria finances DDT spraying in Somalia and Uganda. In many cases where aid organizations won't fund DDT spraying, it's because the mosquitos have become resistant to DDT.
The WHO estimates that malathion, the cheapest alternative to DDT, costs more than twice as much as DDT and must be sprayed twice as often
Yet malathion is what the WHO sent to Sri Lanka after the tsumani because the mosquitos in Sri Lanka were now DDT-resistant. It doesn't matter how cheap DDT is if it doesn't work.
My conclusion is that DDT was banned in many areas in the early 70's at the behest of environmentalists relying on flawed science. A large number of people who would currently be alive are dead due to bans in various countries that still suffered malaria. Using DDT for regular agriculture instead of just anti-malarial spraying is probably a bad idea due to the possibility of mosquitos developing resistance.
The EPA ban on DDT was for agricultural spraying. The EPA did not ban its use for disease control and, in fact, specifically exempted such use from the ban.
Some contries who've substituted more expensive and/or less effective anti-malarial programs for widespread anti-malarial uses of DDT may not have as good of results as those who still use DDT widely have had, so it's better to be conservative on the numbers.
Most modern insecticides are much more effective than DDT. Again, mosquitos have developed a resistance to DDT in most of the world. In the U.S. DDT spraying had been on a decline from 1959 until its ban in 1972. The decline was because insects had evolved a resistance to DDT. Industries would not go to a more expensive insecticide unless it was cost-effective.
Finally, that hotbed of right-wing extremists, the British Medical journal states that "The Persistent Organic Pollutants Treaty aims to completely phase out global use of dicophane (DDT), while many donor agencies will not fund any malaria control programmes that use this insecticide.
The DDT provisions of POP include the goal of ultimate elimination, limiting use to disease vector (i.e. malaria) control in accordance with World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. The treaty calls for research, development and implementation of safe, effective and affordable alternatives to DDT. It does not, in any way, ban the use of DDT for malaria control.
So it's fine and good to say "oops, the environmentalists screwed up and should stop pressuring people not to save lives with DDT", but what about all the people who are now dead because of the false claims that have been made about DDT in the past?
The ban on DDT was for agricultural use -- because it was (and is) felt to be dangerous to humans and animals when it is ingested in the amounts that would be present in foodstuffs sprayed with it. It has continued to be used throughout the world for malaria control, though in declining amounts due to mosquito resistance to DDT.
Is there any real debate left over whether most of the claims made in the late 60's/early 70's about DDT were simply untrue?
No, most of the claims have not proven to be untrue. In fact, many have been borne out in long-term studies. DDT's stability, its persistence (as
You consider "the mere mention of a female orgasm" to be news?
Had the blood not rushed from your brain at seeing the words "female orgasm", you could have read on and recognized that the "news" aspect of it was that it was linking to an article published just yesterday. The article referred to the 1966 Howell Masters and Virginia Johnson book Human Sexual Response and the author's premise that video games should be modeled after the four stages of female sexual response: excitement, plateau, orgasm and resolution described in that book. But I guess that the phrase "female orgasm" was just too much for you to get past.
The best PDA for college is one which sucks for games, has a slow CPU, has no wireless capability, and can't play audio or video content. Something like a base-model Palm comes to mind.
It does what you need without tempting you to waste time with things unrelated to your school work. You can keep to-do lists on it, a calendar for class schedules, assignment due-dates, exam schedules, and college functions. You can use it to track school-related expenses. You can keep a contact list on it. You can get calculators, unit converters, spreadsheets, and other math-related apps for it.
There's a reason why the medical profession -- busy professionals -- standardized on PalmOS: It does what a PDA should without trying to be a notebook computer, video game system, and multimedia content player. It's small, rugged, lightweight, and inexpensive.
That's ridiculous reasoning. Why don't you just admit that you're chosing your arguments because you like unauthorised wireless usage and don't like spam? I find it very unlikey that the slashdotters' opinions are so conveniently the only ones which can be justified logically, as if Slashdot was the haven for intelligence and reason.
Logically debate your points or bow out, but don't resort to ad-hominem attacks and insults. I've got better things to do with my time than engage in that.
I don't "like unauthorised wireless usage." I think that broad WiFi coverage benefits society and I don't want people scared to use an open WiFi connection that I, a business, or another individual chooses to make available. Since WiFi is so easily secured against casual usage, it's easy to close down WiFi if you don't want to share. Thus I believe that the assumption should be that an open WiFi connection is defacto authorization for law-abiding usage (e.g., no using it to send death threats, trade kiddie porn, fileshare copyrighted material, etc.).
If it was equally easy for a e-mail user to refuse all spam at connection time, then you would have an analogous situation. But you don't. There are no magic settings that an e-mail user, or even e-mail administrator, can set in order to block all spam without interfering with non-spam e-mail.
As for the inbox/table analogy, a wireless server is as much in your computer as a mail server.
Huh? Most wireless access points are hardware-based routers that aren't "in" the owner's computer.
I wasn't talking about secured wireless networks but default settings.
I'm talking about what people have easy control of. With a WiFi router you have the ability to easily secure it with a few clicks of a mouse.
If you're default mail setting is to accept all mail from everyone, you're no better than someone with a wireless connection set to receive everyone.
My mail server refuses mail from Argentina, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Turkey. It refuses email from dynamic IP addresses (dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net). It rejects mail from spammers and exploited systems listed on sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org. It refuses e-mail from wanadoo-fr because of the barrage of viruses, spam, and the unresponsive abuse department there. It refuses mail purporting to be from multiple domains used by spammers. It rejects mail from servers with no PTR (reverse DNS record). It refuses e-mail when an SPF record indicates that the sending system is not authorized to send on behalf of the purported sender's domain. It refuses e-mail when the sender address is on a non-existent domain. You want to lecture me some more on locking down mail servers? I've blocked just about everything that I can without interfering with the receipt of non-spam e-mail.
That some scumball spammer still occasionally gets a message through after 50-some rejected attempts doesn't mean that he should go unpunished for it.
Correct. You put it online making it available to the public for people to send you messages.
No, I put it online so that parties I explicitly invited to contact me could do so.
So you have solved your problem of spam?
No, I have greatly reduced it.
That's all well and good, but did you put it in a locked filing cabinet, in a disused lavatory, in the basement? - oh, and include the 'beware of the lepard' sign as well - because both have equal chance of being read.
The notice is prominently placed on the homepage in large letters. I did my due diligence and posted it in the most logical and traditional place. You remind me of someone who says "I was looking at my feet, so your no-trespassing sign at eye-level doesn't apply to me."
Slashdot Mirror
As opposed to how long the computers will be good (what 3-4 years ???) - or the wireless access points will still function (who knows). All of these tech toys sure seem like a bunch of frivolous waste to me - Frankly I'd rather allow people the choice of buying beer, saving for their education, or anything that THEY believe will add value to their life rather than the government finding things to do with the money that it takes from its citizens
It's the kind of shortsightedness that you display that makes my point. You can't understand that the point is the content, not the delivery medium. If the wireless access points and computers help people in their research, studies, and personal fulfillment today, it will benefit the community for years to come. If they help kids do better in school, then the benefit from that disposable tech will last for lifetimes. If it helps a poor kid get access to the Internet, it could change his life. If it helps someone compose a better resume, it could be a turning point in their career.
Go back to swilling your beer.
The Pentium IIs with Windows 95 on them that the library bought 6 years ago is going to benefit the community for many more years???
How long did the reading lessens that you had in kindergarten and elementary school benefit you? How long did learning to type on a long-gone computer keyboard benefit you? How many years did you get a benefit from having read library books that are no longer on the library shelves?
How long will it benefit the community to have had a generation of kids with access to the Internet -- even ones whose parents' might have been unable/unwilling to have a PC at home?
Did you ever think that the benefit of having had an item can last many more years than the item itself?
And frankly - if you still have money left over, why not give it back to your taxpayers instead of finding random ways of spending it
Yeah. Then many of those taxpayers could spend the money on cigarettes, beer, and lottery tickets rather than having you try to buy something that could benefit the community for many years.
McDonalds, Taco Bell, Burgur King, Wall Mart are all monolithic corporations. The majority of Americans are employed by small businesses that we've never heard of.
...
...
...
The majority of minimum wage jobs are in the restaurant and retail sector -- a sector dominated by large corporations. Most small businesses rely on skilled and semi-skilled labor that costs much more than minimum wage.
Those are businesses with an already 90% failure rate, and they do indeed forgo basic mantainence if it costs too much and wage hikes do put them out of business.
If some business can't afford to pay workers a living wage, then they should go under. But most small businesses fail because of undercapitalization or a poor business plan, not because of wage pressure. In fact, most go under without ever hiring a minimum wage employee.
My example was not meant to provide evidence, but rather provide a personal view of how a hard working person gets screwed over by these laws and forced to break the law in order to escape from laws meant to protect him... this evidence isn't statistical it's moral.
You say that you were forced to do that. Couldn't you have moved to an area where jobs were more plentiful? Besides, that one person was harmed by a set of laws does not mean that the overall good that they do is outweighed by that harm.
And finally, I was refering to the "spend" part of the Republican party (although they have been raising taxes too, but giving high publicity cuts when it counts). The Repubs used to stand for "small government" way back when. Nowdays they preach that philosophy but in practice they have become another large government party.
Government shrank under Clinton. It has grown under Bush. The Bush administration has lowered taxes, but it's targeted lowering: The wealthy pay a lot less, the poor pay a little less, and the middle class pay more. It's just been tinkering with the tax rates in order to save people in the Bush/Cheney income brackets tens of thousands of dollars per year.
But you ignored the important points:
Economist Robert Solow, an MIT Nobel Laureate, wrote in a 1995 New York Times article that the "main thing about the research is that the evidence of the job loss is weak.... And the fact that the evidence is weak suggests the impact on jobs is small."
The minimum wage has not gone up in nine years. It has not even been adjusted for inflation.
In 1968, the minimum wage was $7.18/hr. when adjusted to 2003 dollars. The minimum wage in 2003, was $5.15 per hour. Today, that same $5.15 is worth even less as inflation marches on. Why could businesses afford over $7/hour in 1968, but can't pay over $5 (both figures adjusted for inflation) now?
All that a stagnant minimum wage has done is allow the executives to give themselves a bigger slice of the pie as minimum wages failed to keep pace with inflation.
If I hated poor people, then I'd want them to remain trapped in a cycle of welfare dependency, the way that the liberals do.
I'm a liberal and you don't speak for me.
I want the poor to have an opportunity to get out of poverty. They won't get out of poverty by not having enough money to buy clothes for a job interview. They won't get out of poverty by getting a minimum wage job that doesn't pay enough to allow them to buy for food, clothing, and shelter. They won't get out of poverty if taxpayer funding for job training programs is cut. They won't get out of poverty when proven programs like Head Start are cut. They won't get out of poverty when they are denied access to birth control education and, instead, get Republican-approved abstinence sermons.
President Roosevelt oversaw the creation of the national welfare system in the 1930's in response to the Great Depression and a desire to help the poor. Prior to that, many believed that those who couldn't take care of themselves were to blame for their own misfortunes. During the 19th century, local and state governments established institutions such as "poorhouses" and orphanages for destitute individuals and families. Conditions in these institutions were often deliberately harsh so that only the truly desperate would apply. Fortunately, that kind of stupidity and cruelty largely died off after the Great Depression. But now, that kind of thinking is becoming all too popular on right-wing talk radio shows aimed at the ignorant masses.
But, you refused to answer the main question:
So you're going to quit your job or not try to move up the career ladder because some small percentage of your income is paying for social programs for the less fortunate?
You said that tax funding of programs for the poor was a "a disincentive" to working people who paid taxes. That says to me that is something that discourages or deters someone from trying to get a better paying job. Does it? Do you find yourself actively avoiding pay increases and promotions because more of your money would go to help the less fortunate?
4) Absolutely not. Minimum wage work does not equate directly to unskilled work. Most unskilled work makes higher than minimum wage.
But it does set the scale for wages at low-skill jobs. That McDonalds in some high-wage area is willing to pay $.50 over minimum wage is only due to needing to compete with employers who are at the minimum.
Raising minimum wage forces employers to reduce the amount of available jobs because there are many things that an employer would be willing to do, but not if it costs him $10 an hour. Think sweeping parking lots, touching up paint, etc. Minimum wage eliminates these jobs completely which could otherwise be used to suppliment someones job in order to get ahead.
Economist Robert Solow, an MIT Nobel Laureate, wrote in a 1995 New York Times article that the "main thing about the research is that the evidence of the job loss is weak.... And the fact that the evidence is weak suggests the impact on jobs is small."
A business is not going to forego basic maintenance in order to save $160/week ($10/hour - $6/hour * 40 hours). Walmart isn't going to leave standing water on the floor of the restrooms, trash in the parking lots, and paint peeling on the walls just because minimum wages went up to $10/hour.
The minimum wage has not gone up in nine years. It has not even been adjusted for inflation. Tell the CEO of McDonalds that you want to roll his salary back to what McDonalds paid the CEO in 1996 and see how he feels about it.
In 1968, the minimum wage was $7.18/hr. when adjusted to 2003 dollars. The minimum wage in 2003, was $5.15 per hour. Today, that same $5.15 is worth even less as inflation marches on. Why could businesses afford over $7/hour in 1968, but can't pay over $5 (bot figures adjusted for inflation) now?
All that a stagnant minimum wage has done is allow the executives to give themselves a bigger slice of the pie as minimum wages failed to keep pace with inflation. We've got companies like McDonalds where the total CEO annual compensation is about $2,000,000 and many of the full-time workers are getting under $12,000 per year. Sorry, but the CEO doesn't need 166:1 pay ratio compared to the people who are preparing and delivering the product. The CEO's salary has more than kept up with inflation. In fact, it's gone up by leaps and bounds even when adjusted for inflation. And it's done so on the backs of those minimum wage workers who can't even afford health insurance or an efficiency apartment.
Here's a personal example: {snip}
One personal anecdote does not make for statistically significant data. Every time that raising the minimum wage has been discussed, businesses and Republicans begin the cry about how it will put people out of work and cause businesses to go bankrupt. But it's been raised many times and none of the dire predictions has come true. McDonalds, Burger King, and Taco Bell continue to operate and expand -- despite raises in the minimum wage.
As for your final question, the Republican party has become economically more and more liberal over the years to keep up in the votes, which is why they control all 3 houses, NOT because the population has gotten more conservative (economically). I actually left the Republican party years ago over that and am now certifiably Libertarian.
Please show me some solid examples of efforts lead by Republicans to increase spending on Social Security, Welfare, and other social programs aimed at the poor. They are fiscally irresponsible, but not liberal. Liberals have long espoused a tax-and-spend philosophy while the Republicans have opted for the insane borrow-and-spend model.
That's half of the problem. The other half of the problem is that you cause a disincentive to the people who produced the money that is taken.
So you're going to quit your job or not try to move up the career ladder because some small percentage of your income is paying for social programs for the less fortunate? Wow! You must really hate poor people.
The issue is what is fundamentally wrong with taking money from those that can afford it and giving it to those who are less fortunate is that you are giving a financial incentive to people to be less fortunate.
Someone who has a middle-class job, home, etc. isn't going to look for some way to get on the welfare roles, receive food stamps, and live in rodent-infested subsidized housing. Being less well-off than you are is not many people's idea of a "financial incentive."
Contrast that to a society that only offers a moderate saftey net so that people don't starve on the street (they don't starve in the street in the US by the way... far from it). In such a society, where bare necessities but absolutely no luxuries are attainable for a non-working class, and the working class is allowed to keep most of their earnings, the incentive to be part of the working class is large.
You have just described the U.S. as it currently exists. That is our system. We have just about the lowest tax rate of any industrialized country -- probably too low given our national debt and deficit spending. With a few tweaks, the system could really work well:
1. Workfare: If you are able-bodied and want a check then you spend 40 hours/week job hunting, taking government-supplied job training, or doing labor for the government (e.g., cleaning up trash from parks, mowing grass on public property, etc.). That has the added benefit of showing the children of welfare recipients that you have to work to earn a living -- not just sit around watching talk shows and eating twinkies.
2. Child care for those in the workfare program (eliminating the 'I-can't-leave-my-baby' excuse).
3. Continued medical insurance coverage for families when the parent goes off of welfare to take a job. Do you realize that a mother who gets off of welfare to take a job at, say, Walmart, will lose all medical insurance for her and her child?
4. Raise the minimum wage. What incentive is there for someone to take a minimum wage job when it's not enough money to pay for food, clothing, and shelter? It's great to say that those jobs are to provide mall money for kids living with mommy and daddy, but just what other kind of work is the average welfare recipient qualified for? Not many of them jump from the welfare roles to being attorneys, CPAs, doctors, and engineers.
5. Provide classes on topics like household budgeting, nutrition, voice and diction, and appropriate business attire and manners. These classes would address the skills and knowledge that is often lacking and that stops many welfare recipients from turning their lives around.
As the population of the working class grows their votes in a representative republic grow and they have more power to demand even more compensation from the "more fortunate" working class, which cyclically creates a bigger disinsentive to be part of the working class and grows the ranks of the lower class.
Then how do you explain why the Republican Party controls both houses of Congress as well as the Presidency? If the ever-growing constituency of voters receiving government assistance holds so much sway, why aren't we seeing ever-more-liberal waves of elected representatives?
Helping the poor is fine. Looting the middle class for the ostensible purpose of helping the poor is not.
Why? What's so damned horrible about taking money from those who can afford it to help those who are less fortunate?
Let me guess: You'd prefer a system where people can opt out of helping the poor, yet still, themselves, get the full benefit of living in this society. If you let people opt out, then you are, in effect, giving them a monetary incentive to be greedy and self-centered. They can give $10,000 to help the poor or put that money towards that new Hummmer H2 that they've been eyeing.
Taxes spent on helping the poor is just setting the lower limit for participation in society. If you want to donate more, that's great, but you don't get to forsake the poor and get rewarded for doing so.
The problem is not and will not be the code; the problem is that the lack of good 3d models.
Why? Are computer artists too smart to give away their work? Gee, maybe some of the software engineers and wannabees on Slashdot could learn from those computer artists...
You do realize, don't you, that the graphics are not an indicator of the quality of the engine, but the quality of the artist?
Then you should do Quake III Arena quality graphics using the engine created for the original Duke Nukem 3D. The graphics are only as good as the weakest link, whether that's the graphics engine or the skill of the artist. I can't tell by looking at screenshots.
I looked at other shots there, and it really doesn't look half bad. Could be very fun to play around with.
I, of course, picked a shot which I thought best supported my position. I agree that some of the graphics look pretty good and that the game might be quite enjoyable. But I don't think that it's of the quality where ID Software and the big names have to worry.
My whole point in all of this is that Slashdot is filled with people who swear that the best of all possible software is open source and that open source is the best model for software development. Yet the same people get all excited when an end-of-life video game's previously-closed-source code is put under the GPL. Well, if open source leads to better software, then why isn't there a better game (or at least engine) already out there that was developed from the ground up as open source?
That's because we don't have Carmack, Duh!!! He's a God, didn't you know that?
Neither do the folks who did the Unreal series -- and UT2004 is every bit as good a game as Quake III Arena.
One thing you forget, is that Video Games take a lot of resources to create. Also it takes focus, dedication and good planning. Most of that is indeed lacking from many people doing video game development in the open source world, mainly because they don't have the threat of the Pink Slip over their heads; they're doing it out of their free time.
I didn't miss that at all. It's just another reason why closed source continues to dominate. And I don't agree that it's the "threat of the Pink Slip" that keeps most people working. It's getting compensated for their labor, something that doesn't happen often in the open source development world.
What's with the harsh tone? Do you not like it when people do things for fun, and in their spare time?
I have no problem with people dabbling in things for fun. I'm dabbling in photography and don't expect to be the next Ansel Adams. But neither do I claim that screwing around in your spare time is the best way to create professional quality photos. The only thing that annoys me is the constant bellowing from some of the strident open source proponents about how open source is the best software development model. It's usually not. Where would OpenOffice be without Sun's involvement? Where would Mozilla be had it not had funded development from AOL?
Have you played with the cube engine lately?
With graphics like this, I'm sure that Carmack isn't "quaking" in his boots.
To get a "viable open source FPS that competes with, and exceeds, the big-boys" the first thing you need to do is convince professional artists and level-designers to work really hard for free. Good luck with that.
Professional artists and level designers are too smart to undermine their income by giving away their labor for free. Maybe software engineers could learn from them.
1: Q3A had a linux port pretty quickly (maybe not at release, I don't remember)
It was a closed source release done by the publisher. I have the metal-cased Linux version which I bought for $2.88 from MicroCenter with a sticker saying you could convert it to a Windows version with a download -- because Linux users wouldn't buy "evil" closed source software.
2: That doesn't apply so much to games, the distributed development model is less effective since you need a coherent structure. Also budding game developers tend to mod on commercial engines (e.g. Counter-Strike on Half-Life), for the installed base and because they can re-use game assets.
Then let's leave the "budding" newbies out of this. How many experienced game developers have come up with open source games that rival the quality of Quake III?
3: For the amazing stuff people have done with the Quake 2 engine Nexuiz, which has ~quake 3 model/level quality and ~doom 3 effects (and system requirements, sadly). It's entirely "viable", as in I've joined servers full of people and had fun playing. I don't think it's popular compared to the big commercial games - but it's had zero media exposure and isn't sold in game stores, and still had 250000 downloads! I wouldn't say it puts Quake 3 to shame, but it's worthy competition.
It is an interesting derivative, but it's not exactly an all-new game. Nor would I say that it has Quake III level graphics. They are good, but not that good. And why has it had "zero media exposure"? It's not like open source projects are shunned by the media. We've seen no small amount of attention paid to Firefox, Mozilla, Linux, OpenOffice.org, Apache, etc. Congrats to them for their efforts and thanks on behalf of those who enjoy playing it, but let's see a viable open source FPS that competes with, and exceeds, the big-boys. And I mean one developed from the ground up as open source.
When Quake III was released, it was a closed source game that ran on Microsoft Windows.
I thought that the general Slashdot consensus was that GPL-licensed, open source development under Linux yields better quality products. If that's so, where are the open-source, first-person shooters that must already put Quake III to shame?
Prediction: Quake III will be released under the GPL, just like the previous ones, and a bunch of open source fanatics will slave over it, never really understanding how it all works. They will make trivial changes to it before losing interest and no viable, popular products will ever come of their efforts.
It amazes me when open source fanatics are so arrogant as to suggest that anyone preferring a closed source product must either be stupid or receiving bribes from Microsoft. However, that's what happens any time that there's a Slashdot story where an organization chooses a Microsoft product over an open source product.
I have both OpenOffice and Microsoft Office on my systems at home. I have found OpenOffice to be a really competent package that I heartily recommend to many home users. On the other hand, there are things about MS Office (such as the spreadsheet graphing capabilities) which are superior. I've also found the subtle formatting differences that cause widows, orphans, and page break problems when switching between the two packages. I can easily envision a department, agency, etc. regretting a switch to OpenOffice if they exchage documents with others using MS Office.
Where there's a will to slack, there's a way.
I'm living proof of that. But I don't need additional temptations on those rare occasions when I'm not looking to slack.
Historical Background of the _harms_ [junkscience.com]
I provide quotes from peer-reviewed scientific studies in reputable journals and you provided a link to a discredited, right-wing advocacy site that has no scientific peer review.
Influential organizations such as the Norwegian Development Agency, the Swedish International Development Agency, the Swedish Aid Agency, and USAID -- the sorts of groups from whom some poor nations such as Belize, Mozambique, and Madagascar receive the majority of their public health money -- continue to insist that DDT be left out of malaria-control efforts.
That's simply untrue. USAID has recently funded DDT spraying in developing countries. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria finances DDT spraying in Somalia and Uganda. In many cases where aid organizations won't fund DDT spraying, it's because the mosquitos have become resistant to DDT.
The WHO estimates that malathion, the cheapest alternative to DDT, costs more than twice as much as DDT and must be sprayed twice as often
Yet malathion is what the WHO sent to Sri Lanka after the tsumani because the mosquitos in Sri Lanka were now DDT-resistant. It doesn't matter how cheap DDT is if it doesn't work.
My conclusion is that DDT was banned in many areas in the early 70's at the behest of environmentalists relying on flawed science. A large number of people who would currently be alive are dead due to bans in various countries that still suffered malaria. Using DDT for regular agriculture instead of just anti-malarial spraying is probably a bad idea due to the possibility of mosquitos developing resistance.
The EPA ban on DDT was for agricultural spraying. The EPA did not ban its use for disease control and, in fact, specifically exempted such use from the ban.
Some contries who've substituted more expensive and/or less effective anti-malarial programs for widespread anti-malarial uses of DDT may not have as good of results as those who still use DDT widely have had, so it's better to be conservative on the numbers.
Most modern insecticides are much more effective than DDT. Again, mosquitos have developed a resistance to DDT in most of the world. In the U.S. DDT spraying had been on a decline from 1959 until its ban in 1972. The decline was because insects had evolved a resistance to DDT. Industries would not go to a more expensive insecticide unless it was cost-effective.
Finally, that hotbed of right-wing extremists, the British Medical journal states that "The Persistent Organic Pollutants Treaty aims to completely phase out global use of dicophane (DDT), while many donor agencies will not fund any malaria control programmes that use this insecticide.
The DDT provisions of POP include the goal of ultimate elimination, limiting use to disease vector (i.e. malaria) control in accordance with World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. The treaty calls for research, development and implementation of safe, effective and affordable alternatives to DDT. It does not, in any way, ban the use of DDT for malaria control.
So it's fine and good to say "oops, the environmentalists screwed up and should stop pressuring people not to save lives with DDT", but what about all the people who are now dead because of the false claims that have been made about DDT in the past?
The ban on DDT was for agricultural use -- because it was (and is) felt to be dangerous to humans and animals when it is ingested in the amounts that would be present in foodstuffs sprayed with it. It has continued to be used throughout the world for malaria control, though in declining amounts due to mosquito resistance to DDT.
Is there any real debate left over whether most of the claims made in the late 60's/early 70's about DDT were simply untrue?
No, most of the claims have not proven to be untrue. In fact, many have been borne out in long-term studies. DDT's stability, its persistence (as
You consider "the mere mention of a female orgasm" to be news?
Had the blood not rushed from your brain at seeing the words "female orgasm", you could have read on and recognized that the "news" aspect of it was that it was linking to an article published just yesterday. The article referred to the 1966 Howell Masters and Virginia Johnson book Human Sexual Response and the author's premise that video games should be modeled after the four stages of female sexual response: excitement, plateau, orgasm and resolution described in that book. But I guess that the phrase "female orgasm" was just too much for you to get past.
The best PDA for college is one which sucks for games, has a slow CPU, has no wireless capability, and can't play audio or video content. Something like a base-model Palm comes to mind.
It does what you need without tempting you to waste time with things unrelated to your school work. You can keep to-do lists on it, a calendar for class schedules, assignment due-dates, exam schedules, and college functions. You can use it to track school-related expenses. You can keep a contact list on it. You can get calculators, unit converters, spreadsheets, and other math-related apps for it.
There's a reason why the medical profession -- busy professionals -- standardized on PalmOS: It does what a PDA should without trying to be a notebook computer, video game system, and multimedia content player. It's small, rugged, lightweight, and inexpensive.
If "Games Should Be Like Female Orgasms," why are the most popular games first person shooters?
I don't need this kind of garbage when I go to a place for TECH NEWS.
You consider the mere mention of a female orgasm to be "garbage"? You're going to be a real prize for some lucky lady, aren't you?
That's ridiculous reasoning. Why don't you just admit that you're chosing your arguments because you like unauthorised wireless usage and don't like spam? I find it very unlikey that the slashdotters' opinions are so conveniently the only ones which can be justified logically, as if Slashdot was the haven for intelligence and reason.
Logically debate your points or bow out, but don't resort to ad-hominem attacks and insults. I've got better things to do with my time than engage in that.
I don't "like unauthorised wireless usage." I think that broad WiFi coverage benefits society and I don't want people scared to use an open WiFi connection that I, a business, or another individual chooses to make available. Since WiFi is so easily secured against casual usage, it's easy to close down WiFi if you don't want to share. Thus I believe that the assumption should be that an open WiFi connection is defacto authorization for law-abiding usage (e.g., no using it to send death threats, trade kiddie porn, fileshare copyrighted material, etc.).
If it was equally easy for a e-mail user to refuse all spam at connection time, then you would have an analogous situation. But you don't. There are no magic settings that an e-mail user, or even e-mail administrator, can set in order to block all spam without interfering with non-spam e-mail.
As for the inbox/table analogy, a wireless server is as much in your computer as a mail server.
Huh? Most wireless access points are hardware-based routers that aren't "in" the owner's computer.
I wasn't talking about secured wireless networks but default settings.
I'm talking about what people have easy control of. With a WiFi router you have the ability to easily secure it with a few clicks of a mouse.
If you're default mail setting is to accept all mail from everyone, you're no better than someone with a wireless connection set to receive everyone.
My mail server refuses mail from Argentina, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Turkey. It refuses email from dynamic IP addresses (dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net). It rejects mail from spammers and exploited systems listed on sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org. It refuses e-mail from wanadoo-fr because of the barrage of viruses, spam, and the unresponsive abuse department there. It refuses mail purporting to be from multiple domains used by spammers. It rejects mail from servers with no PTR (reverse DNS record). It refuses e-mail when an SPF record indicates that the sending system is not authorized to send on behalf of the purported sender's domain. It refuses e-mail when the sender address is on a non-existent domain. You want to lecture me some more on locking down mail servers? I've blocked just about everything that I can without interfering with the receipt of non-spam e-mail.
That some scumball spammer still occasionally gets a message through after 50-some rejected attempts doesn't mean that he should go unpunished for it.
Correct. You put it online making it available to the public for people to send you messages.
No, I put it online so that parties I explicitly invited to contact me could do so.
So you have solved your problem of spam?
No, I have greatly reduced it.
That's all well and good, but did you put it in a locked filing cabinet, in a disused lavatory, in the basement? - oh, and include the 'beware of the lepard' sign as well - because both have equal chance of being read.
The notice is prominently placed on the homepage in large letters. I did my due diligence and posted it in the most logical and traditional place. You remind me of someone who says "I was looking at my feet, so your no-trespassing sign at eye-level doesn't apply to me."