Broward county teachers who have a bachelor's degree average $41,000 salary for the nine-month school year. Summer school and professional development like code.org are options to make extra money.
For those who don't feel like clicking on the linked documents, they aren't talking about teacher salaries, what they earn teaching. The pay also isn't set by code.org.
When a Chicago teacher spends a couple of hours doing professional development (taking a class or seminar), Chicago pays their teachers $38/hour for the time they spend at the seminar or wwhatever professional development they choose to do. Boward pays their teachers $15/hour for professional development. Those rates are for time doing prof dev, NOT teaching students, and it doesn't have squat to do with code.org - the districts pay for prof dev is the same for any class the teacher wants to take. (Of course it needs to be approved as professional development, a skydiving class probably wouldn't be approved for payment.)
That's the claim from some on the democrats. Probably some of the same democrats who filibustered the civil rights act. In fact, over the last 20 years, there have been three major anti-porn laws, all eventually struck down by the Supreme Court. All three were signed by Bill Clinton.
Not only do the liberals pander to to the extremist feminists by going after porn, they keep at it, never giving up when the Supreme Court tells them over and over again "no, you can't do that. You're violating the first amendment". That's the fact. For more information, Google "CDA", "CDA II", etc.
If you want more confirmation, see any of the message boards dedicated to the affected industries. There you'll find the victims discussing what to do.
In some of these industries, like porn, one closure affects many, many people. All those free porn sites are financed by the ads they run for a comparatively small number of large pay site networks. Many of them don't expect to get paid this month because their sponsor's account has been shut down in the last few days. The affect is similar to, but not as big, as shutting down PayPal's accounts - it affects not only PayPal, but anyone who relies on PayPal for their business. There are also hosting companies and other service providers who make their living providing services to all the smaller sites. When the sponsor can't pay the small sites, the small sites can't pay their hosting bill. Anything that affects a couple of the large sponsors ripples through the industry.
Many sites probably would have defaulted to lower privacy than some would like, but the DNT standard is NOT about what sites do. DNT allows the user to say "I opt in to customization", "I opt out", or neither. What sites do when the user doesn't choose, or when they do choose, is not part of the standard. The standard only specifies HOW the user can communicate their preference - not what affect that preference has.
Agreed. Patching a major security hole isn't the same thing as continuing to provide regular support.
My company does something similar. We offer an option at purchase where you can choose to forego any direct support and save a few dollars. We've still contacted those customers in the rare case of a significant security update.
On April 2, 1987, Surface Transportation and Uniform Relocation Assistance Act SET the speed limit at 65 MPH.
You are probably thinking of the 1995 National Highway System Designation Act, which gave states much more freedom. Still, in 2001 Houston was negotiating with the feds over speed limits, which were hen being indirectly set by the EPA.
> Do I want to constantly see ads for XYZ just because I once searched for XYZ or once visited the XYZ website?
I understand that point. For me, if I search for X a lot, I'd actually rather see ads for X than for fungal cream, but that's personal preference. Let me ask you about something else, though. You said:
> anyone else talking about a "personalized web-browsing experience"
Suppose an interactive site like Slashdot or Yahoo Mail is rolling out a new design. By default, they send people to the new version of the site *cough beta cough*, but they have a button labeled "screw this, show me the classic version". You click on the button. Ten minutes later, you load the site again. Which should the site do:
A) Take you back to beta, even though a few minutes ago you clicked the "fuck beta" button. B) Set a "NoBeta" cookie that lasts 60 days, so you won't see beta again for at least 60 days.
That's a bit tougher. That may be a case where a "personalized web-browsing experience" makes the site a lot better. What do you think?
> the consensus is that opt-in is the correct choice in pretty much all cases. By default, users should always be opted out of things that infringe their privacy.
You might be right about that*. That's a different topic than the DNT RFC, though. The DNT header tells which preference the user specifically asked for. DNT does NOT specify anything about what a site should do - what cookies they should set or not set, etc. Let me quote from the DNT RFC for you "this document does not define site behavior for complying with a user's expressed tracking preference".
The DNT header is a way for the user to communicate their preferences to the server. What the server does by default, in the absence of any instructions from the user, is a separate issue entirely. It's not what DNT is about. Perhaps the following discussion will make it more clear.
* About defaults, what a site should do when a user doesn't express a preference (and when they do). It's my opinion that the default behavior, when the user hasn't made any selection, should normally be somewhere in the giant middle area between the two extremes. Here's an example or two.
Case1 - No preference chosen:
There are a lot of things that a site should NOT do by default. Let's just call one example "long-term advertising tracking". For our purposes today, there's no need to define exactly what that means.
There are some things the site SHOULD set a cookie for, or otherwise remember. Suppose I load Slashdot and I'm shown Beta. I click on the "Fuck Beta, give me the classic interface" button. Ten minutes later, I load Slashdot again. I'd prefer that Slashdot not give me beta again, by setting a "beta=no" cookie. Maybe that cookie will expire in a day, a week, or a month, but it would be good for Slashdot to recognize that "whoever this is, he doesn't like beta". So they track that preference, and I'm happy.
So by default, Slashdot could reasonably track some things and not others.
Case 2 - User specifically requested DNT:
If I've specifically requested privacy, the site should act similarly to the way the browser does in "incognito mode" - pretty much don't set any cookies, for example. Slashdot should NOT set a cookie to remember that you hate beta, if you ask them not to remember anything. On sites like Youtube and Craigslist with a "safe search" or "possible adult content" confirmation page SHOULD keep popping up that warning. That user has explicitly requested that the site not remember that they want safe search off.
Case 3 - User specifically requests "a customized experience" (DNT off)
If the user specifically says they want maximum customization, the site SHOULD remember that I hate beta and not show it to me again. Safesearch should default to whatever I set it too - I've asked the site to remember my preferences. Ebay.com should, since I requested it, show me good deals on items I've been searching for recently.
The key here is that the best thing for a site to do is different between case 1 and case 2. If explicitly you ask that Slashdot NOT set any cookies, it should not set a "NoBeta" cookie. If you haven't expressed any preference, setting a "NoBeta" cookie is probably a good thing. Lying, saying that the user has explicitly requested no tracking when they haven't done so, means you can't respect the user's wishes. If you honor IE's bogus DNT header, everybody keeps getting sent to beta. If you disregard it, people who have actually set DNT get tracked after they've asked not to be. Nothing that the site can do with IE DNT would be right, because the site don't know whether the user actually wants their expressed preferences forgotten or not.
> That's not lieing anymore than telling the server that you've opted in when you haven't.
Both of those would be a lie, which is why neither are allowed under the standard. The standard says that the browser "must not send a tracking preference expression if a tracking preference is not enabled. This means that no expression is sent for each of the following cases:... the user has not yet made a choice for a specific preference".
The proposal you linked to was voted down several years ago. The last call standard is:
Key to that notion of expression is that the signal sent must reflect the user's preference, not the choice of some vendor, institution, site, or network-imposed mechanism.. A user agent must have a default tracking preference of unset (not enabled)
That's interesting, and separate issue. What you describe is that someone SELLING advertising space must sell to either party non-discriminately. We have a weak form of that here.
What GP is advocating is that you wouldn't be allowed to publish the unemployment numbers because they show that Obama isn't doing great. Publishing costs money, so publishing economic facts is spending money in a way that shows the failures of the current leadership. That would be illegal if GP had their way.
Probably bbecause the Sherman Antitrust Act begins its primary list of prohibitions with "Every person who shall monopolize..." can't do the following things.
Section 1 has some restraint of trade stuff, but mostly it is about a) abusing monopoly power and b) improper actions in pursuit of monopoly power.
You might wish the law were different, but the law is in fact "every person who shall monopolize...".
The DNT standard specifies what should be sent under three conditions: a) The user expresses that they DO want customization b) The user expresses that they do NOT want customization c) The user doesn't express any preference
IE 10 lies and says b when the truth is c. That makes it impossible to know who actually chose DNT. The whole thing is useless now that it doesn't to indicate the user's stated preference.
> But the user clearly does not want a personalised web-browsing experience.
Until MSIE started lying about the user's preferences. The standard specifies what should be sent if the user has not expressed a preference. IE 10 lies and says the user requested a uncustomized version when they didn't. That makes the whole thing useless when browsers lie about what preferences the user expressed.
Clinton spent 12 years in the White House and this is where we ended up. No thanks. I hear that another Bush may be running - I think I'll pass on the too.
As to CU, so your proposal is that citizens can speak orally, as long as they don't use amicrophone, but cannot make Xerox copies of anything or make a web site, signs, etc. without prior government approval, correct? If you had a blog and paid $35 / for hosting, that would be money, not speech, right? CU was making videos. The government claimed that because they bought supplies to make the videos (which cost money), it's not free speech.
Understand, your proposal (no spending money on free speech), Martin Luther King's speech "I have a dream" would be illegal - the stage he stood on and the sound system costs money.
You've mentioned most of variables that go into calculating a "fair" lease payment. Sure, you can calculate a payment that way. Isn't it interesting that after all of those calculations, over half of all lease customers end up with a payment of $X99 / month. That's sure odd, isn't it.
Why all of these leases at $X99 / month? Do you really think all (or most, or even 20%) of lease contracts start with the customer and dealer negotiating the cash value of the car? No, they start with the "value" of the car being full MSRP plus $800 for dealer rust spray and $400 floormats. That's step 1 of screwing the customer.
Could it be that the average American doesn't know what a good money factor is? Maybe someone, somewhere, doesn't know how to compare a given mileage penalty to a straight purchase? Ever wondered why leasing companies, and only leasing companies, use ALG values, not NADA, KBB or anything else any US consumer would recognize?
> $50k loan and only make payments on $25k of it. That is, I pay interest on the full amount, and just make payments until the principle is down to the residual value.
That, plus the billion dollars per year FMC makes borrowing the $50K and leasing it to you. You ever wondered why the auto companies push leases? Because they make a shitload of money on them, that's why. I prefer to be the one on the receiving end of that deal. I do hope you enjoy that car 20 times as much as I enjoy mine, because inthe end, you're paying 20 times as much.
> For a purchase, you make payments on a $50K loan. > For a lease, you make payments on a $25K loan, and at then end you either buy the car for $25K, or return it.
Not so much. For a lease, there is often a leasing company that makes the payments on the loan, collects the payments from the driver, and has a 35%-40% gross profit. In other words, the driver is paying 35%-40% more by leasing.
For a purchase, you make payments on a $50K loan. For a lease, you make payments similar to a $35K loan, and at then end you either buy the car for $35K, or return it and pay mileage and other charges.
Meanwhile, I just paid $12K cash for a 2011 model. While you're paying $700 / month to appear wealthy, I'm investing that $700 / month to be wealthy.
Who thought it was a good idea for Washington to dictate a national speed limit in the first place? Are traffic conditions in the Mojave desert the same as an urban freeway?
There are parts of Texas and Nevada where you can drive for an hour, in a straight line, without seeing another car. Is that anything like the northeast ? Why should the speed limits be the same?
Because he's DOCTOR Daniel J. Bernstein, PhD. The PhD means he's the only person with a clue, that he knows much better than everyone else who has ever lived. Therefore, qmail stores its config files in/var.
DJB IS a smart guy - just not half as smart as he thinks he is.
Sometimes, DJB is right, I'll give him that. More frequently, I think, he simply doesn't like following any standards, customs, or conventions. In the US, he'd come up with an argument of why driving on the left side of the road is better. If the same discussion occurred in the UK, he'd come up with an equally good argument why people should drive on the right side of the road - whatever position is contrarian, he'll take it. That's fine, it helps avoid groupthink and the like. The problem is, he doesn't just argue it - he then goes right on ahead and actually drives on the wrong side of the road. Left or right probably doesn't matter, but going head-on against all of the traffic is obviously a very bad idea, and that's what he does.
A well known example is of course the filesystem. The Linux Standards Base discussions covered a few options that each had minor benefits and drawbacks. It didn't really matter what LSB decided - the config files can be in/etc/ , in/config/, or in/why/cares/ - it doesn't matter as long as you know where they are so you can back them up, adjust them for a new instance of an image, etc. What matters most isn't where they are, but that they are in some standard location. DJB screws all that up. I suspect that half the time, the perverse pleasure of screwing up standards is actually his primary motivation for his decisions.
You don't see it listed under assets, but do see it under liabilities because no fund existed - all retirement and healthcare were unfunded liabilities (debt).
Again I'll say, having to make up a $32 billion liability in 10 years sucks. I understand that. It might have been reasonable to give them 20 years to catch up. (On the other hand, their revenue could dropped by 90% over 20 years 2006-2026, so maybe 20 years would be too long.)
If they have a 20-year-old working in 2014, and they promise that 20-year-old that he'll get some of his pay when he's 85 (65 years later), they do need to set aside a couple dollars from today's revenue to pay for work he did today. That IS 75 years from the time that Congress took action.
It's also exactly what my employer does - when today's young employees enroll in our retirement plan, each pay day money is invested into that plan. They'll collect some of it when they are 85 years old, but they're working for it today, generating revenue today, so we set the money aside today.
Now if Congress would just impose that same discipline on themselves - if they make a promise today, Congress should figure out how they'll pay for it - today.
Slashdot Mirror
Broward county teachers who have a bachelor's degree average $41,000 salary for the nine-month school year. Summer school and professional development like code.org are options to make extra money.
For those who don't feel like clicking on the linked documents, they aren't talking about teacher salaries, what they earn teaching. The pay also isn't set by code.org.
When a Chicago teacher spends a couple of hours doing professional development (taking a class or seminar), Chicago pays their teachers $38/hour for the time they spend at the seminar or wwhatever professional development they choose to do. Boward pays their teachers $15/hour for professional development. Those rates are for time doing prof dev, NOT teaching students, and it doesn't have squat to do with code.org - the districts pay for prof dev is the same for any class the teacher wants to take. (Of course it needs to be approved as professional development, a skydiving class probably wouldn't be approved for payment.)
That's the claim from some on the democrats. Probably some of the same democrats who filibustered the civil rights act. In fact, over the last 20 years, there have been three major anti-porn laws, all eventually struck down by the Supreme Court. All three were signed by Bill Clinton.
Not only do the liberals pander to to the extremist feminists by going after porn, they keep at it, never giving up when the Supreme Court tells them over and over again "no, you can't do that. You're violating the first amendment". That's the fact. For more information, Google "CDA", "CDA II", etc.
> How often have you ever called microsoft at work?
Why would I do that? Microsoft isn't allowed at work. We are an security company.
> It is for the security updates right?
Is that like calling Cheney for gun safety tips, and calling Obama for help with economics homework?
If you want more confirmation, see any of the message boards dedicated to the affected industries. There you'll find the victims discussing what to do.
In some of these industries, like porn, one closure affects many, many people. All those free porn sites are financed by the ads they run for a comparatively small number of large pay site networks. Many of them don't expect to get paid this month because their sponsor's account has been shut down in the last few days. The affect is similar to, but not as big, as shutting down PayPal's accounts - it affects not only PayPal, but anyone who relies on PayPal for their business. There are also hosting companies and other service providers who make their living providing services to all the smaller sites. When the sponsor can't pay the small sites, the small sites can't pay their hosting bill. Anything that affects a couple of the large sponsors ripples through the industry.
Many sites probably would have defaulted to lower privacy than some would like, but the DNT standard is NOT about what sites do. DNT allows the user to say "I opt in to customization", "I opt out", or neither. What sites do when the user doesn't choose, or when they do choose, is not part of the standard. The standard only specifies HOW the user can communicate their preference - not what affect that preference has.
Agreed. Patching a major security hole isn't the same thing as continuing to provide regular support.
My company does something similar. We offer an option at purchase where you can choose to forego any direct support and save a few dollars. We've still contacted those customers in the rare case of a significant security update.
On April 2, 1987, Surface Transportation and Uniform Relocation Assistance Act SET the speed limit at 65 MPH.
You are probably thinking of the 1995 National Highway System Designation Act, which gave states much more freedom.
Still, in 2001 Houston was negotiating with the feds over speed limits, which were hen being indirectly set by the EPA.
> Do I want to constantly see ads for XYZ just because I once searched for XYZ or once visited the XYZ website?
I understand that point. For me, if I search for X a lot, I'd actually rather see ads for X than for fungal cream, but that's personal preference.
Let me ask you about something else, though. You said:
> anyone else talking about a "personalized web-browsing experience"
Suppose an interactive site like Slashdot or Yahoo Mail is rolling out a new design. By default, they send people to the new version of the site *cough beta cough*, but they have a button labeled "screw this, show me the classic version". You click on the button. Ten minutes later, you load the site again. Which should the site do:
A) Take you back to beta, even though a few minutes ago you clicked the "fuck beta" button.
B) Set a "NoBeta" cookie that lasts 60 days, so you won't see beta again for at least 60 days.
That's a bit tougher. That may be a case where a "personalized web-browsing experience" makes the site a lot better.
What do you think?
> the consensus is that opt-in is the correct choice in pretty much all cases. By default, users should always be opted out of things that infringe their privacy.
You might be right about that*. That's a different topic than the DNT RFC, though. The DNT header tells which preference the user specifically asked for. DNT does NOT specify anything about what a site should do - what cookies they should set or not set, etc. Let me quote from the DNT RFC for you "this document does not define site behavior for complying with a user's expressed tracking preference".
The DNT header is a way for the user to communicate their preferences to the server. What the server does by default, in the absence of any instructions from the user, is a separate issue entirely. It's not what DNT is about. Perhaps the following discussion will make it more clear.
* About defaults, what a site should do when a user doesn't express a preference (and when they do). It's my opinion that the default behavior, when the user hasn't made any selection, should normally be somewhere in the giant middle area between the two extremes. Here's an example or two.
Case1 - No preference chosen:
There are a lot of things that a site should NOT do by default. Let's just call one example "long-term advertising tracking". For our purposes today, there's no need to define exactly what that means.
There are some things the site SHOULD set a cookie for, or otherwise remember. Suppose I load Slashdot and I'm shown Beta. I click on the "Fuck Beta, give me the classic interface" button. Ten minutes later, I load Slashdot again. I'd prefer that Slashdot not give me beta again, by setting a "beta=no" cookie. Maybe that cookie will expire in a day, a week, or a month, but it would be good for Slashdot to recognize that "whoever this is, he doesn't like beta". So they track that preference, and I'm happy.
So by default, Slashdot could reasonably track some things and not others.
Case 2 - User specifically requested DNT:
If I've specifically requested privacy, the site should act similarly to the way the browser does in "incognito mode" - pretty much don't set any cookies, for example. Slashdot should NOT set a cookie to remember that you hate beta, if you ask them not to remember anything. On sites like Youtube and Craigslist with a "safe search" or "possible adult content" confirmation page SHOULD keep popping up that warning. That user has explicitly requested that the site not remember that they want safe search off.
Case 3 - User specifically requests "a customized experience" (DNT off)
If the user specifically says they want maximum customization, the site SHOULD remember that I hate beta and not show it to me again.
Safesearch should default to whatever I set it too - I've asked the site to remember my preferences. Ebay.com should, since I requested it, show me good deals on items I've been searching for recently.
The key here is that the best thing for a site to do is different between case 1 and case 2. If explicitly you ask that Slashdot NOT set any cookies, it should not set a "NoBeta" cookie. If you haven't expressed any preference, setting a "NoBeta" cookie is probably a good thing. Lying, saying that the user has explicitly requested no tracking when they haven't done so, means you can't respect the user's wishes. If you honor IE's bogus DNT header, everybody keeps getting sent to beta. If you disregard it, people who have actually set DNT get tracked after they've asked not to be. Nothing that the site can do with IE DNT would be right, because the site don't know whether the user actually wants their expressed preferences forgotten or not.
> That's not lieing anymore than telling the server that you've opted in when you haven't.
Both of those would be a lie, which is why neither are allowed under the standard. ... the user has not yet made a choice for a specific preference".
The standard says that the browser "must not send a tracking preference expression if a tracking preference is not enabled. This means that no expression is sent for each of the following cases:
See:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-t...
The proposal you linked to was voted down several years ago. The last call standard is:
Key to that notion of expression is that the signal sent must reflect the user's preference, not the choice of some vendor, institution, site, or network-imposed mechanism ..
A user agent must have a default tracking preference of unset (not enabled)
See
That's interesting, and separate issue. What you describe is that someone SELLING advertising space must sell to either party non-discriminately. We have a weak form of that here.
What GP is advocating is that you wouldn't be allowed to publish the unemployment numbers because they show that Obama isn't doing great. Publishing costs money, so publishing economic facts is spending money in a way that shows the failures of the current leadership. That would be illegal if GP had their way.
Probably bbecause the Sherman Antitrust Act begins its primary list of prohibitions with ..." can't do the following things.
"Every person who shall monopolize
Section 1 has some restraint of trade stuff, but mostly it is about a) abusing monopoly power and b) improper actions in pursuit of monopoly power.
You might wish the law were different, but the law is in fact "every person who shall monopolize ...".
The DNT standard specifies what should be sent under three conditions:
a) The user expresses that they DO want customization
b) The user expresses that they do NOT want customization
c) The user doesn't express any preference
IE 10 lies and says b when the truth is c. That makes it impossible to know who actually chose DNT. The whole thing is useless now that it doesn't to indicate the user's stated preference.
> But the user clearly does not want a personalised web-browsing experience.
Until MSIE started lying about the user's preferences. The standard specifies what should be sent if the user has not expressed a preference. IE 10 lies and says the user requested a uncustomized version when they didn't. That makes the whole thing useless when browsers lie about what preferences the user expressed.
Clinton spent 12 years in the White House and this is where we ended up. No thanks. I hear that another Bush may be running - I think I'll pass on the too.
As to CU, so your proposal is that citizens can speak orally, as long as they don't use amicrophone, but cannot make Xerox copies of anything or make a web site, signs, etc. without prior government approval, correct? If you had a blog and paid $35 / for hosting, that would be money, not speech, right? CU was making videos. The government claimed that because they bought supplies to make the videos (which cost money), it's not free speech.
Understand, your proposal (no spending money on free speech), Martin Luther King's speech "I have a dream" would be illegal - the stage he stood on and the sound system costs money.
You've mentioned most of variables that go into calculating a "fair" lease payment. Sure, you can calculate a payment that way. Isn't it interesting that after all of those calculations, over half of all lease customers end up with a payment of $X99 / month. That's sure odd, isn't it.
Why all of these leases at $X99 / month? Do you really think all (or most, or even 20%) of lease contracts start with the customer and dealer negotiating the cash value of the car? No, they start with the "value" of the car being full MSRP plus $800 for dealer rust spray and $400 floormats. That's step 1 of screwing the customer.
Could it be that the average American doesn't know what a good money factor is? Maybe someone, somewhere, doesn't know how to compare a given mileage penalty to a straight purchase? Ever wondered why leasing companies, and only leasing companies, use ALG values, not NADA, KBB or anything else any US consumer would recognize?
> $50k loan and only make payments on $25k of it. That is, I pay interest on the full amount, and just make payments until the principle is down to the residual value.
That, plus the billion dollars per year FMC makes borrowing the $50K and leasing it to you.
You ever wondered why the auto companies push leases? Because they make a shitload of money on them, that's why.
I prefer to be the one on the receiving end of that deal. I do hope you enjoy that car 20 times as much as I enjoy mine, because inthe end, you're paying 20 times as much.
> For a purchase, you make payments on a $50K loan.
> For a lease, you make payments on a $25K loan, and at then end you either buy the car for $25K, or return it.
Not so much. For a lease, there is often a leasing company that makes the payments on the loan, collects the payments from the driver, and has a 35%-40% gross profit. In other words, the driver is paying 35%-40% more by leasing.
You can put actual numbers for a specific lease offer in this calculator to compare:
http://www.edmunds.com/calcula...
I think you'll find it's more like:
For a purchase, you make payments on a $50K loan.
For a lease, you make payments similar to a $35K loan, and at then end you either buy the car for $35K, or return it and pay mileage and other charges.
Meanwhile, I just paid $12K cash for a 2011 model. While you're paying $700 / month to appear wealthy, I'm investing that $700 / month to be wealthy.
Who thought it was a good idea for Washington to dictate a national speed limit in the first place? Are traffic conditions in the Mojave desert the same as an urban freeway?
There are parts of Texas and Nevada where you can drive for an hour, in a straight line, without seeing another car. Is that anything like the northeast ? Why should the speed limits be the same?
Because he's DOCTOR Daniel J. Bernstein, PhD. The PhD means he's the only person with a clue, that he knows much better than everyone else who has ever lived. Therefore, qmail stores its config files in /var.
DJB IS a smart guy - just not half as smart as he thinks he is.
I also don't feel the need to go over 50 mph.
So it YOU! If you're that guy, please, please get out of the fast lane! It's dangerous to have everybody switching to the slow lane to pass you. ;)
Sometimes, DJB is right, I'll give him that. More frequently, I think, he simply doesn't like following any standards, customs, or conventions. In the US, he'd come up with an argument of why driving on the left side of the road is better. If the same discussion occurred in the UK, he'd come up with an equally good argument why people should drive on the right side of the road - whatever position is contrarian, he'll take it. That's fine, it helps avoid groupthink and the like. The problem is, he doesn't just argue it - he then goes right on ahead and actually drives on the wrong side of the road. Left or right probably doesn't matter, but going head-on against all of the traffic is obviously a very bad idea, and that's what he does.
A well known example is of course the filesystem. The Linux Standards Base discussions covered a few options that each had minor benefits and drawbacks. It didn't really matter what LSB decided - the config files can be in /etc/ , in /config/, or in /why/cares/ - it doesn't matter as long as you know where they are so you can back them up, adjust them for a new instance of an image, etc. What matters most isn't where they are, but that they are in some standard location. DJB screws all that up. I suspect that half the time, the perverse pleasure of screwing up standards is actually his primary motivation for his decisions.
You don't see it listed under assets, but do see it under liabilities because no fund existed - all retirement and healthcare were unfunded liabilities (debt).
Again I'll say, having to make up a $32 billion liability in 10 years sucks. I understand that.
It might have been reasonable to give them 20 years to catch up. (On the other hand, their revenue could dropped by 90% over 20 years 2006-2026, so maybe 20 years would be too long.)
If they have a 20-year-old working in 2014, and they promise that 20-year-old that he'll get some of his pay when he's 85 (65 years later), they do need to set aside a couple dollars from today's revenue to pay for work he did today. That IS 75 years from the time that Congress took action.
It's also exactly what my employer does - when today's young employees enroll in our retirement plan, each pay day money is invested into that plan. They'll collect some of it when they are 85 years old, but they're working for it today, generating revenue today, so we set the money aside today.
Now if Congress would just impose that same discipline on themselves - if they make a promise today, Congress should figure out how they'll pay for it - today.