If you are open to allowing market principles, communities are free to get together and decide not to buy from dollar stores which in the end results in their shutdown or lack of desire to expand in those communities. If enough individuals still shop there, the market will know. However, using legislation to determine who can sell in a community would not be market driven result.
Now, if you live in an Open Market, there is quite a bit of incentive for Mr. Bigbucks to hire lawyers to push laws as he pleases. Now, if some of these laws end up closing the Open Market and converting the society slightly into a Regulated Market, was it the fault of the lawyers? Or were they just fulfilling their roles as pens-for-hire (and sues-for-hire) in the very same holy Open Market they are being paid to undermine?
Yes. FTR, I am the one of the two people that "certified" his collection for Guinness. And I know Ariel since we were both kids. When he first told me about this project of his, I just snickered. Until... Well, I started realizing he is really into it, and has nontrivial knowledge (operative, historical, social, even technical) about the evolution of such an important kind of software, instrumental for the universalizaiton of computer use in the office. Let me tell you, I spent eight hours counting boxes, finding some absolute gems, determining whether an item was "valid" according to the Guinness rules... And, all in all, I even/enjoyed/ it! And, even after knowing the guy for so many years, I was pleasantly surprised by him taking such an interest for this piece of history.
Right - Moving the hands off the keyboard is what kills me. I had a quite acute back pain. It went away during a couple of weeks I worked at my laptop - So, I said, why not? I shopped and bought a desktop keyboard with a trackpad. Mind you, I got a quite bad one (Adesso), but it still helped me tremendously. Many years later, I got a Thinkpad as my main laptop. Loved the keyboard. And, when time came to retire the Adesso, I got a Thinkpad keyboard (with trackpad) for my desktop (I wrote about the experience, you can go to https://gwolf.org/node/4127 and https://gwolf.org/node/4130 for further details). I just love them.
...If the majority of workers of this important area of economy feel unionizing (that means *standing together* and *fighting for your collective rights*) is the same as becoming lazy bums unable to care about the job they produce, then the system has won. Welcome to the Stalinist States of America. You won't oppose the system, because the system already owns you. The only thing that saves individual persons from losing their work conditions, their freedom, their right to have a family and actually get to spend some time with them... Is standing together and stopping abusive bosses from demanding to put the company ahead of their own life and health.
Universities have maximum capacities per program. If 30% of the population wants to enter Liberal Arts, 90% from them will be rejected. Again, speaking of my university: It currently has 350,000 enrolled students (close to 100,000 of them for university-operated high school). Every year, there is demand for close to 140,000 new students, but only around 10% get to enter the university — Because there is not enough capacity for all of them. Many will go to other universities (public or private). Many will not enter university. A 10% threshold is very high — But that's what our budget allows for. Of course, the pressure for entering high demand careers (i.e. Medicine) is much higher than 10%, while some more theoretical ones (Mathematics, Liberal Arts,...) are easier to get.
I know this is not a popular alternative in this circle. But we cannot judge the value of a universitary degree just based on the individual: When a student devotes four to ten years of his life to pursuing an academic degree, it's not only that student that receives a change in life. The whole society wins from having a qualified professional, in whatever specialization area this person chose. It is only logical, then, that the society as a whole absorbs all (or, at least, a good chunk) of the university's costs should be payed by the society. Many countries work precisely like this. I live in Mexico, and have worked at a public University for 17 years. Yes, this is not a rich country - but public universities strongly help the balance. Students indebted for a couple of years of professional salary is... Absolutely unthinkable and inexcusable.
Not only you gain when you get the STEM degree you mention - The society as a whole gains. That's why, in the countries mentioned by GP, the society is taxed, and professors are paid from the taxes paid by the society as a whole. Where did I get this idea? Well, I have worked at a public university for 17 years of my life in Mexico. For BSc degrees, tuition is basically free; for posgraduate studies, students not only don't have to pay for their studies, but receive a stipend comparable to a small-but-livable salary. Of course, when I studied my MEng, I took the choice of not getting this stipend.
A couple of months ago, I went through a fairly decent search through the keyboardspace to find a replacement one for my desktop. After a decent search for a desktop keyboard with a trackpad, I went for the Lenovo Thinkpad SK-8845 keyboard. I love it — Even though my mind still has to adjust every now and then to some not-so-minor layout changes (since the X230 I carry with me to everywhere-that's-not-my-desktop has the newer Thinkpad layout, while the SK-8845 has the classical one). I just love Thinkpad keyboards:-)
As I said, I am an university worker. Yes, that's the case for us. But it's also the case for *many* private companies — And my aergument here is that it _would_ be better, both for the company and for the workers, not to lose so much time + effort over each of the staff's hiring compensation.
In my case... Yes. I expect to be paid exactly the same as any other "Técnico Académico Titular A" who gets a "D" level in their (triennial or quinquennial) productivity stimulus level. If you are ready to be promoted to Titular B, then _after_ you get promoted you will have a (quite modest) raise. Same as the stimulus level; when I was C, I got C's pay until the day my D got ratified. Of course, the difference between adjacenct levels is basically minimal (within 10%).
Possibly. Yet, this system is what fuels research in the highest ranked universities in all geographies. Maybe it's a different mindset - Maybe what differentiates university people from industry people is that cash is not our main motivation.
Yes, even so. If you are a newcomer and enter level X with responsabilites Y, which match mine with my ten years on board, maybe you won't have the small extra percentage (in my case, ~7% after 13 years) for "longevity with us". But we do the same job, we are worth the same.
I work at a public university, as (mostly) technical staff (plus a bit of teaching). I consider it a very good point of our work that the income of each of my colleagues is basically public knowledge - Not to the exact sum, but to a general ballpark (as there are too many small variations, but they don't alter the result by >20%).
Each person negotiating their work terms seems to me like a terrible use of time. I know which category I fit in when I was hired; I might have stayed equal or improved (it's _very_ hard to be demoted). I know there are important extras, such as (publicly known) stimulus levels. I have never had to think about negotiating my income level over the last 13 years I have worked there; only once I have requested reclassification (jumped to a higher bracket).
Just the opposite. The issue with Iztapalapa is the region got inhabited with no planning nor authorization following a series of crises in the 1980s; there was never planning for two million people to go live in that borough, that 30 years ago was still mostly agricultural. Water pipes weren't laid before people built their houses (in some places, they haven't been set up as of yet). Our local government has a quite decent, given the comparison, infrastructure system in most of the city. I live in a middle-class neighborhood, and have no problems drinking tap water; we have had some shortages in the last few years, but the situation is absolutely different from Iztapalapa's. Cities that have turned the water distribution to private companies are in a much, much worse mess. Bringing the water to people should not follow economic incentives. It should basically just follow the needs of the population. Yes, Iztapalapa badly needs their water distribution system to be set up. And then, fixed where it exists and is broken. But we don't need private companies managing it.
The figure I have is ~600mm a year, and that's quite a lot. However, the distribution is quite far from homogeneous. Six months of daily rains, sometimes very heavy. Six months of draught. It can be worked with, in the regions of the city that have the infrastructure. The region in question for this article was built hastily and irregularly, so it doesn't.
I guess you are also a local, based on your alias.
Rooftop collection systems are basically of very little use, as we have a long (~6mo) rainy season, during which there is little point in storing water (try storing it for months, you won't want to drink it ever, besides, good luck finding where to put it!), and a long (~6mo, of course) dry season, that's when the poorer regions of the city face the worst droughts. Rooftop collection can be useful, but only for a handful of use cases.
Mexico City inhabitant here. The water that is delivered to our city comes partly from underground deposits, but mostly from a river system ~400Km away. The problem with Iztapalapa and similar regions is that our city is sinking - We are actually built on top of a lake. Seismic movements, natural mud compaction, and related issues can lead to pipes getting crushed and water distribution being inefficient. Of course, a point to be considered is that Iztapalapa was never planned - Most of it was quite hastily populated, following a series of crisis we had in the 1980s (countryside impoverishment, a big earthquake displacing many people from the center of our city). It is the poorest borough in the city, and rather than planification, it has slowly seen consolidation. So, many parts of it plainly never had any water pipes, because they never had an authorization for building. Should be noted - Ours is not such a lost, third-world, depressed city as some points make it sound like. It is a very depressed region, in a relatively rich and lively (and _huge_) city.
Does losing up to ~30% of your chip's speed mean more or less damage to you, to your usual workload, to the threat model you feel as better applying to your person?
To show that this is a valid approach to decode the document they have to be able to decode larger parts of the text to something that make sense. That of course doesn't mean that it isn't a valid approach, there may have been deliberate misspellings by the writer before encryption and similar things.
Doesn't Hebrew have those Tetragramm thing where they leave out vowels
The Tetragram means literally the Four Letters, that's how in the scriptures the name of God is written - And yes, as is the *usual practice* in Hebrew, vowels are left out. From those four letters, the naming "Jehova" is derived, although it could be read in several different ways.
But, again, in Hebrew we do not write (most) vowels except when writing for children, or in several cases (such as bibles, prayer books and such) where the exact pronunciation is deemed required. Vowels can be identified (by a well-versed speaker) by context, even if two different words are written the same way.
Nobody wants to use a currency that may be worth 20% more, or 20% less the next day.
Inhabitants of many Latin American countries have clear memories of the country's currency plummetting overnight to ~60% of its previous value. In my lifetime, it has happened at least three times (and losing 10% overnight? Oh, too many to count).
Of course, nobody wants to save in national currencies then... But it's not like we have much of a choice!
Slashdot Mirror
Give me a Raspberry with 16GB RAM, please, or at least with the ability to add DIMMs and then we will be able to talk...
You beat me to the nerdy joke :-|
.... And that's precisely where Libertarian Utopia meets Communist Utopia!
If you are open to allowing market principles, communities are free to get together and decide not to buy from dollar stores which in the end results in their shutdown or lack of desire to expand in those communities. If enough individuals still shop there, the market will know. However, using legislation to determine who can sell in a community would not be market driven result.
Now, if you live in an Open Market, there is quite a bit of incentive for Mr. Bigbucks to hire lawyers to push laws as he pleases. Now, if some of these laws end up closing the Open Market and converting the society slightly into a Regulated Market, was it the fault of the lawyers? Or were they just fulfilling their roles as pens-for-hire (and sues-for-hire) in the very same holy Open Market they are being paid to undermine?
Yes. FTR, I am the one of the two people that "certified" his collection for Guinness. And I know Ariel since we were both kids. When he first told me about this project of his, I just snickered. Until... Well, I started realizing he is really into it, and has nontrivial knowledge (operative, historical, social, even technical) about the evolution of such an important kind of software, instrumental for the universalizaiton of computer use in the office. /enjoyed/ it!
Let me tell you, I spent eight hours counting boxes, finding some absolute gems, determining whether an item was "valid" according to the Guinness rules... And, all in all, I even
And, even after knowing the guy for so many years, I was pleasantly surprised by him taking such an interest for this piece of history.
Right - Moving the hands off the keyboard is what kills me. I had a quite acute back pain. It went away during a couple of weeks I worked at my laptop - So, I said, why not? I shopped and bought a desktop keyboard with a trackpad. Mind you, I got a quite bad one (Adesso), but it still helped me tremendously. Many years later, I got a Thinkpad as my main laptop. Loved the keyboard. And, when time came to retire the Adesso, I got a Thinkpad keyboard (with trackpad) for my desktop (I wrote about the experience, you can go to https://gwolf.org/node/4127 and https://gwolf.org/node/4130 for further details).
I just love them.
...If the majority of workers of this important area of economy feel unionizing (that means *standing together* and *fighting for your collective rights*) is the same as becoming lazy bums unable to care about the job they produce, then the system has won. Welcome to the Stalinist States of America. You won't oppose the system, because the system already owns you.
The only thing that saves individual persons from losing their work conditions, their freedom, their right to have a family and actually get to spend some time with them... Is standing together and stopping abusive bosses from demanding to put the company ahead of their own life and health.
Universities have maximum capacities per program. If 30% of the population wants to enter Liberal Arts, 90% from them will be rejected. ...) are easier to get.
Again, speaking of my university: It currently has 350,000 enrolled students (close to 100,000 of them for university-operated high school). Every year, there is demand for close to 140,000 new students, but only around 10% get to enter the university — Because there is not enough capacity for all of them. Many will go to other universities (public or private). Many will not enter university. A 10% threshold is very high — But that's what our budget allows for. Of course, the pressure for entering high demand careers (i.e. Medicine) is much higher than 10%, while some more theoretical ones (Mathematics, Liberal Arts,
I know this is not a popular alternative in this circle. But we cannot judge the value of a universitary degree just based on the individual: When a student devotes four to ten years of his life to pursuing an academic degree, it's not only that student that receives a change in life. The whole society wins from having a qualified professional, in whatever specialization area this person chose.
It is only logical, then, that the society as a whole absorbs all (or, at least, a good chunk) of the university's costs should be payed by the society.
Many countries work precisely like this. I live in Mexico, and have worked at a public University for 17 years. Yes, this is not a rich country - but public universities strongly help the balance. Students indebted for a couple of years of professional salary is... Absolutely unthinkable and inexcusable.
Not only you gain when you get the STEM degree you mention - The society as a whole gains. That's why, in the countries mentioned by GP, the society is taxed, and professors are paid from the taxes paid by the society as a whole.
Where did I get this idea? Well, I have worked at a public university for 17 years of my life in Mexico. For BSc degrees, tuition is basically free; for posgraduate studies, students not only don't have to pay for their studies, but receive a stipend comparable to a small-but-livable salary. Of course, when I studied my MEng, I took the choice of not getting this stipend.
A couple of months ago, I went through a fairly decent search through the keyboardspace to find a replacement one for my desktop. After a decent search for a desktop keyboard with a trackpad, I went for the Lenovo Thinkpad SK-8845 keyboard. I love it — Even though my mind still has to adjust every now and then to some not-so-minor layout changes (since the X230 I carry with me to everywhere-that's-not-my-desktop has the newer Thinkpad layout, while the SK-8845 has the classical one). :-)
I just love Thinkpad keyboards
As I said, I am an university worker. Yes, that's the case for us. But it's also the case for *many* private companies — And my aergument here is that it _would_ be better, both for the company and for the workers, not to lose so much time + effort over each of the staff's hiring compensation.
In my case... Yes. I expect to be paid exactly the same as any other "Técnico Académico Titular A" who gets a "D" level in their (triennial or quinquennial) productivity stimulus level.
If you are ready to be promoted to Titular B, then _after_ you get promoted you will have a (quite modest) raise. Same as the stimulus level; when I was C, I got C's pay until the day my D got ratified.
Of course, the difference between adjacenct levels is basically minimal (within 10%).
It's not that important that we know it - It's important that it's set according to a criteria set organization-wide, applied equally to all of us.
Possibly. Yet, this system is what fuels research in the highest ranked universities in all geographies. Maybe it's a different mindset - Maybe what differentiates university people from industry people is that cash is not our main motivation.
Yes, even so. If you are a newcomer and enter level X with responsabilites Y, which match mine with my ten years on board, maybe you won't have the small extra percentage (in my case, ~7% after 13 years) for "longevity with us". But we do the same job, we are worth the same.
This.
I work at a public university, as (mostly) technical staff (plus a bit of teaching). I consider it a very good point of our work that the income of each of my colleagues is basically public knowledge - Not to the exact sum, but to a general ballpark (as there are too many small variations, but they don't alter the result by >20%).
Each person negotiating their work terms seems to me like a terrible use of time. I know which category I fit in when I was hired; I might have stayed equal or improved (it's _very_ hard to be demoted). I know there are important extras, such as (publicly known) stimulus levels. I have never had to think about negotiating my income level over the last 13 years I have worked there; only once I have requested reclassification (jumped to a higher bracket).
Just the opposite. The issue with Iztapalapa is the region got inhabited with no planning nor authorization following a series of crises in the 1980s; there was never planning for two million people to go live in that borough, that 30 years ago was still mostly agricultural. Water pipes weren't laid before people built their houses (in some places, they haven't been set up as of yet).
Our local government has a quite decent, given the comparison, infrastructure system in most of the city. I live in a middle-class neighborhood, and have no problems drinking tap water; we have had some shortages in the last few years, but the situation is absolutely different from Iztapalapa's.
Cities that have turned the water distribution to private companies are in a much, much worse mess. Bringing the water to people should not follow economic incentives. It should basically just follow the needs of the population.
Yes, Iztapalapa badly needs their water distribution system to be set up. And then, fixed where it exists and is broken. But we don't need private companies managing it.
The figure I have is ~600mm a year, and that's quite a lot. However, the distribution is quite far from homogeneous. Six months of daily rains, sometimes very heavy. Six months of draught. It can be worked with, in the regions of the city that have the infrastructure. The region in question for this article was built hastily and irregularly, so it doesn't.
I guess you are also a local, based on your alias.
Rooftop collection systems are basically of very little use, as we have a long (~6mo) rainy season, during which there is little point in storing water (try storing it for months, you won't want to drink it ever, besides, good luck finding where to put it!), and a long (~6mo, of course) dry season, that's when the poorer regions of the city face the worst droughts. Rooftop collection can be useful, but only for a handful of use cases.
I'm sorry - your participation here sounds as nonsensical as could be expected from a 2nd-amendtist.
Mexico City inhabitant here.
The water that is delivered to our city comes partly from underground deposits, but mostly from a river system ~400Km away. The problem with Iztapalapa and similar regions is that our city is sinking - We are actually built on top of a lake. Seismic movements, natural mud compaction, and related issues can lead to pipes getting crushed and water distribution being inefficient.
Of course, a point to be considered is that Iztapalapa was never planned - Most of it was quite hastily populated, following a series of crisis we had in the 1980s (countryside impoverishment, a big earthquake displacing many people from the center of our city). It is the poorest borough in the city, and rather than planification, it has slowly seen consolidation. So, many parts of it plainly never had any water pipes, because they never had an authorization for building.
Should be noted - Ours is not such a lost, third-world, depressed city as some points make it sound like. It is a very depressed region, in a relatively rich and lively (and _huge_) city.
Does losing up to ~30% of your chip's speed mean more or less damage to you, to your usual workload, to the threat model you feel as better applying to your person?
To show that this is a valid approach to decode the document they have to be able to decode larger parts of the text to something that make sense.
That of course doesn't mean that it isn't a valid approach, there may have been deliberate misspellings by the writer before encryption and similar things.
Doesn't Hebrew have those Tetragramm thing where they leave out vowels
The Tetragram means literally the Four Letters, that's how in the scriptures the name of God is written - And yes, as is the *usual practice* in Hebrew, vowels are left out. From those four letters, the naming "Jehova" is derived, although it could be read in several different ways.
But, again, in Hebrew we do not write (most) vowels except when writing for children, or in several cases (such as bibles, prayer books and such) where the exact pronunciation is deemed required. Vowels can be identified (by a well-versed speaker) by context, even if two different words are written the same way.
Inhabitants of many Latin American countries have clear memories of the country's currency plummetting overnight to ~60% of its previous value. In my lifetime, it has happened at least three times (and losing 10% overnight? Oh, too many to count).
Of course, nobody wants to save in national currencies then... But it's not like we have much of a choice!