You'd think we'd learn from other countries failures too, but we don't AT ALL. Half the political viewpoints expressed on Slashdot have been proven to be disastrous because other countries have tried them repeatedly, yet we ignore that and expect it to work.
Examples:
Communist Russia was one of the poorest countries, and failed. Now, fully embracing capitalism, Russia is a success story (in the context of global recession.) So in the US, we've decided to try moving further toward communism. Another example is "gun control". Straight gun laws ALWAYS result in a noticeable increase in comment crime. England banned guns and violent crime DOUBLED. So now the many in the US want to try the same thing?
As suspicious as this is, don't think Obama won't do it, because they've done it before. Clinton's "balanced" budget, for example, consisted of writing a half-trillion dollar IOU to the social security trust fund. In effect, he printed a $500 billion bill, then traded that for $500 billion in real money, which he spent, and called that balanced.
If you newline loans have no value, don't get one, and pay no interest. If it has no value TO YOU, you don't buy it and don't pay for it. Easy, huh?
For someone who wants to build a factory, or a ship, a bakery or practically anything else useful, a loan DOES have value. The banana you had for breakfast didn't swim here, it was carried on a ship, built with a loan. No loans means no ships which means no bananas, no sugar, no coffee, etc. if YOU don't find a loan useful, though, don't get one. Simple as that.
Ps - are you also angry at lingerie makers, because you personally don't have a use for lingerie?
Look at your own chart. Home values in Australia more than doubled immediately when a huge change was made to the way they are taxed, in 1999.
Other than that one jump from the tax change, home prices vs. incomes have been pretty flat. The fact that the best you can do, looking at all the
countries in world, is to find one country with a single spike in prices due to huge tax change proves one thing - in any but the most unusual situations,
you're simply wrong. Smart people become smart by learning - by opening their eyes to when they are wrong and learning what the correct facts are.
Stupid people continue to defend their mistaken ideas no matter how clear it is that those ideas are wrong.
"Can a tablet print to a network printer?", you asked. For my HP printer, the Windows, Linux and OSX machines all need a 50MB driver package set up, so I was happily suprised that the Android device needed only a xxKB apk with zero setup. It automatically detected the printer.
You have those figures precisely backwards. Currently, the average cost of a home is $119,600. Average income, $46,326. The average house is 2,700 square feet. So a 2700 sq foot house costs 2 1/2 times income today.
In 19040, average income was $1,368, average home cost $3,920.00, or 3 times income. That average house was 1,100 square feet - less tan half the size of the average house today. Certainly it's possible that YOUR grandparents were more hardworking than you are personally, choosing to accomplish things rather than post excuses on slashdot, but in general people today can more easily afford a home than people 70 years ago, and their homes are twice as big.
To compare the same size house, an 1,100 sq ft house today is about 1.8 years of average income, compared to 3 years of average income in 1940.
So if you're not doing as well as your grandparents, it's not the country, it's YOU.
But federal agents who knowingly and INTENTIONALLY sell guns illegally to mexican drug cartels are.
It's one thing to know that a product COULD be used illegally. It's quite another to design the product specifically for a purpose that's illegal, and to know that a specific partner/customer is almost certainly using it exclusively for illegal purposes.
I wrote bulk mailing software. I'm 100% certain that none of my customers use it for spamming because I'm responsible about how I market it and who I sell it to.
Since I'm arrogant like that guy and sometimes write less than beautiful code, I bet what works on me would work on him. He won't change radically overnight, but you can affect change without drama.
Work with, not against, his personality. He thinks he's the smartest guy around. So go with that. He's your new mentor. A few times a week, ask him about YOUR code.
Say something like:
Can you look at this function I'm writing, please? Linus Torvalds says that
"Functions should be short and sweet, and do just one thing, and they should have more than 5-7 local variables."
The Microsoft guidelines say.... . D you think I should break this function into two, maybe buildSpreadsheet() and saveSpreadSheet()?
Would that be better, it terms of "Functions should be short and sweet, and do just one thing", do you think?
Two days later you ask him to look at your variable names and tell you if he can tell what each is for, or if he thinks you should rename any of them to make it more clear. He's helping you to make sure your code is readable and clear.
Ask him if you should make the thingRetriever a separate object from the stuffDisplay in your code. He'll likely eat it right up and never realize that he's actually getting a two minute lecture on a different aspect of code quality each day. If he starts out the day thinking about these things, he'll soon notice when he's writing garbage and his ego won't let him keep putting out garbage for long once he's aware of it.
If, after a month, you see zero improvement in his new code, then ask polite, direct questions about his code as needed. "I'm working on Foo(), what is the "bob" variable?" "Hey John, what does is this function called tp() supposed to do?" (My predecessor actually used "bob" as the name of at least one variable in each project.) Those questions make it explicitly clear that his code is unreadable, so do this only after you've kissed his butt in step #1 for best results.
Sure Google has contributed a lot of code, bit none of it makes Linux DEPENDANT on Google. Google could vanish tomorrow and my Linux machines wouldn't notice.
Why don't they lower the prices, you asked. You then mentioned they do lower the prices, especially on Tuesday. Weekdays cost less than weekend nights. A movie without popcorn costs a lot less than one with popcorn. Their web site has coupons. You can spend $5 going to the movie, or $25.
Theatres are very good at letting you spend as much or as little as you want. Some people will spend $25 or more for Saturday night ticket, candy, and large soda. The theatres have pricing where they'll accept that $25 from those people. They ALSO sell to the $5 crowd, on weekdays.
You mentioned EOLAS as a patent that I guess you think covers something with no utility. Clearly most people think browser plugins have utility. The problem with the EOLAS patent wasn't that plugins aren't useful. The problem was that they sat on their "rights" for years, then launched a sneak attack. In the landlord-tenant analogy several types of estoppel would have prevented that. You're probably familiar with "squatters rights". In that case, Microsoft was the squatter on EOLAS claimed property. Perhaps they should have had squatters' rights.
You also mention bad patents - companies patenting methods or inventions they didn't invent. That would compare to a false "landowner" demanding rent for land they don't rightfully own.
None of that in any way supports the assertion that patented inventions hold no utility for the user. I'm utilizing patented technology to write this, so clearly Google's R&D had some utility to me, the user.
You could probably make several reasonable arguments about patents - that the patent office should be far more strict about patents they grant, about patent trolls vs. inventors, etc. The problem is, all these arguments are all mixed up in your head, so you don't seem to know which argument you're making at any given time. Your zealotry even seems to have you so confused that you'll believe, and argue, anything that seems vaguely anti-patent. I bet you'd argue that patents are unconstitutional, simply because you'd like them to be. There are plenty of good arguments about patent trolls. Slow down, read them carefully, and THINK about them.
A large chunk of the GUI systems you see on modern Linux distributions, as well as things like the Red Hat cluster suite, were developed by or in conjuction with paid distros like Red Hat. Are they completely incompatible with open source? Red Hat isn't free as in beer, but it's GPL. Someone has to buy it before they can distribute it under GPL. Seems to be working just fine.
Software patents are nothing like actually collecting rent because they provide no utility to the one paying.
If it has no utility for you, you wouldn't license it and wouldn't be missing out on anything, right? Of course there's some benefit being conveyed to the licensee (user). Specifically, the useful result of someone's research and development efforts. If it weren't beneficial, you'd have no interest in it and not care if it were patented or not.
The problem isn't that things patented aren't useful, the problem is that inter-operability standards should avoid patented methods so that implementations can be compliant without paying license fees.
I don't know of very many similarities between scientology, a con game started by a science fiction writer, and the Church of Latter Day Saints, a significant religious denomination whose members perform millions of hours of community service and give generously to communities around the globe. That's like asking "what's the diference between the Red Cross and the mafia?"
The author starts with the premise that it's a shadowy, secret plot, evidenced by the fact he saw the promos for the workshop only WEEKS in advance. I know I always advertise MY secret plots weeks in advance of sitting down to discuss them. He then proceeds to say that the panel, including two representatives from the Free Software Foundation Europe, was a bunch of anti- Free Software shills. The FSF is against free software? Really? Triple tinfoil hat territory.
I'm glad we are able to be pool our resources to be represented by corporations like the Free Software Foundation, which had two representatives speaking at the workshop. I'm also glad the Mozilla Foundation Incorporated (Firefox) has a voice, as does kernel.org, a California corporation.
Given Red Hat Inc.'s investment of BIILIONS of dollars toward OSS investment, I think that corporation also deserves a voice. Why exactly should people who invest billions and hire thousands of people NOT be allowed to speak out about government policies that put all of those jobs at risk? Why should we NOT be allowed to express our views by donating to FSF and sending FSF representatives on our behalf?
"As for the touch being Unix..."
You mean the Macbook Air the GP said runs UNIX? Yeah, OSX is certified UNIX 3, the highest level of UNIX compliance.
After spending fifteen years using nothing but Linux, I recently was given a Mac desktop. From the command line, the Mac feels entirely comfortable. In some ways it's more Linux-like than FreeBSD.
There are a number of things to not like about Apple. Mainly the fact that an Apple machine is always THEIR machine, not the purchaser's. Apple is in charge, not the consumer. It is, however, absolutely UNIX. I even have admit it's done very "well", for Jobs' definition of what it should be.
Probably the very simplest is a network capable external drive like the Western Digital World Edition. Just plug it in and you have network storage. That just gives you a folder full of media files visible to the network, though.
A much nicer, searchable interface with playlists etc. can be had with XMBC, a media center for Windows, Linux, Mac and others (including some Android support).
For many disciplines, I might agree with you. After spending thousands of hours chasing down bugs like x= vs. x== , I'd rather hire a programer who is careful what they type.
More importantly, the resume and cover letter are written. Aside from the roughly one page of bullet points you write, how you write is all that that potential employers have to go on. It might not be most important information, but it's the only sample of your work that they have in front of them.
"Greedy corporations don't care about their employees" is a politically driven world view politicians feed you when they are trying to get your vote. It has no relevance to the real world, where most companies have tuition reimbursement, training programs, etc. The company I work for has an array of programs. Even the burger joint I started at, Sonic Drive-In, sent employees to the local community college to learn some math, reading and writing more clearly, etc. when needed.
Western Governor's University is an online school which is a state school in at least twenty states. So like University of Texas, UC, and other state schools, it's quite reputable and the cost is lower than private schools, if you're a resident of one of the sponsoring states. They offer several IT degrees.
I just spent a week in Choctaw. I didn't enter Walmart during that time. Meaning, I bought everything from their competitors, which you claim don't exist. YP.com gives 166 results for "groceries" in Choctaw. Some are bogus, I bet, but even if 75% are bogus, that's still 41 outlets other than Walmart.
Linus could take a lesson from Balmer. Balmer would have said "great job, now people will have a reason to upgrade when we fix it in Windows 12 ten years from now".
Seriously though, it's good to hear SOMEONE so insistent on not breaking things after waiting fifteen years for the same IE bug to be fixed. (Vary header bug breaks caching, saving files.)
Free healthcare in Australia? I thought most people on/. were WAY too smart to buy that BS. Of course the government healthcare doesn't pay for important things like say, ambulances, but it does cost the average family $8,800 per year in extra taxes. Almost nine thousand dollars for crap coverage and still some people are thankful because it's "free" (meaning the govt forces you to pay for it.)
After being forced to do it the govt way, Oz has worse healthcare than 46 other countries. (Based on availability of doctors, other metrics put Australia 25th through 70th, but always beneath some banana republics.)
Don't drink the Koolaid.
Slashdot Mirror
You'd think we'd learn from other countries failures too, but we don't AT ALL. Half the political viewpoints expressed on Slashdot have been proven to be disastrous because other countries have tried them repeatedly, yet we ignore that and expect it to work.
Examples: Communist Russia was one of the poorest countries, and failed. Now, fully embracing capitalism, Russia is a success story (in the context of global recession.) So in the US, we've decided to try moving further toward communism. Another example is "gun control". Straight gun laws ALWAYS result in a noticeable increase in comment crime. England banned guns and violent crime DOUBLED. So now the many in the US want to try the same thing?
As suspicious as this is, don't think Obama won't do it, because they've done it before. Clinton's "balanced" budget, for example, consisted of writing a half-trillion dollar IOU to the social security trust fund. In effect, he printed a $500 billion bill, then traded that for $500 billion in real money, which he spent, and called that balanced.
If you newline loans have no value, don't get one, and pay no interest. If it has no value TO YOU, you don't buy it and don't pay for it. Easy, huh?
For someone who wants to build a factory, or a ship, a bakery or practically anything else useful, a loan DOES have value. The banana you had for breakfast didn't swim here, it was carried on a ship, built with a loan. No loans means no ships which means no bananas, no sugar, no coffee, etc. if YOU don't find a loan useful, though, don't get one. Simple as that.
Ps - are you also angry at lingerie makers, because you personally don't have a use for lingerie?
Look at your own chart. Home values in Australia more than doubled immediately when a huge change was made to the way they are taxed, in 1999. Other than that one jump from the tax change, home prices vs. incomes have been pretty flat. The fact that the best you can do, looking at all the countries in world, is to find one country with a single spike in prices due to huge tax change proves one thing - in any but the most unusual situations, you're simply wrong. Smart people become smart by learning - by opening their eyes to when they are wrong and learning what the correct facts are. Stupid people continue to defend their mistaken ideas no matter how clear it is that those ideas are wrong.
"Can a tablet print to a network printer?", you asked. For my HP printer, the Windows, Linux and OSX machines all need a 50MB driver package set up, so I was happily suprised that the Android device needed only a xxKB apk with zero setup. It automatically detected the printer.
You have those figures precisely backwards. Currently, the average cost of a home is $119,600. Average income, $46,326. The average house is 2,700 square feet. So a 2700 sq foot house costs 2 1/2 times income today.
In 19040, average income was $1,368, average home cost $3,920.00, or 3 times income. That average house was 1,100 square feet - less tan half the size of the average house today. Certainly it's possible that YOUR grandparents were more hardworking than you are personally, choosing to accomplish things rather than post excuses on slashdot, but in general people today can more easily afford a home than people 70 years ago, and their homes are twice as big.
To compare the same size house, an 1,100 sq ft house today is about 1.8 years of average income, compared to 3 years of average income in 1940.
So if you're not doing as well as your grandparents, it's not the country, it's YOU.
But federal agents who knowingly and INTENTIONALLY sell guns illegally to mexican drug cartels are.
It's one thing to know that a product COULD be used illegally. It's quite another to design the product specifically for a purpose that's illegal, and to know that a specific partner/customer is almost certainly using it exclusively for illegal purposes.
I wrote bulk mailing software. I'm 100% certain that none of my customers use it for spamming because I'm responsible about how I market it and who I sell it to.
Since I'm arrogant like that guy and sometimes write less than beautiful code, I bet what works on me would work on him. He won't change radically overnight, but you can affect change without drama. .... . D you think I should break this function into two, maybe buildSpreadsheet() and saveSpreadSheet()?
Would that be better, it terms of "Functions should be short and sweet, and do just one thing", do you think?
Two days later you ask him to look at your variable names and tell you if he can tell what each is for, or if he thinks you should rename any of them to make it more clear. He's helping you to make sure your code is readable and clear.
Work with, not against, his personality. He thinks he's the smartest guy around. So go with that. He's your new mentor. A few times a week, ask him about YOUR code. Say something like:
Can you look at this function I'm writing, please? Linus Torvalds says that "Functions should be short and sweet, and do just one thing, and they should have more than 5-7 local variables." The Microsoft guidelines say
Ask him if you should make the thingRetriever a separate object from the stuffDisplay in your code. He'll likely eat it right up and never realize that he's actually getting a two minute lecture on a different aspect of code quality each day. If he starts out the day thinking about these things, he'll soon notice when he's writing garbage and his ego won't let him keep putting out garbage for long once he's aware of it.
If, after a month, you see zero improvement in his new code, then ask polite, direct questions about his code as needed. "I'm working on Foo(), what is the "bob" variable?" "Hey John, what does is this function called tp() supposed to do?" (My predecessor actually used "bob" as the name of at least one variable in each project.) Those questions make it explicitly clear that his code is unreadable, so do this only after you've kissed his butt in step #1 for best results.
Sure Google has contributed a lot of code, bit none of it makes Linux DEPENDANT on Google. Google could vanish tomorrow and my Linux machines wouldn't notice.
Why don't they lower the prices, you asked. You then mentioned they do lower the prices, especially on Tuesday. Weekdays cost less than weekend nights. A movie without popcorn costs a lot less than one with popcorn. Their web site has coupons. You can spend $5 going to the movie, or $25.
Theatres are very good at letting you spend as much or as little as you want. Some people will spend $25 or more for Saturday night ticket, candy, and large soda. The theatres have pricing where they'll accept that $25 from those people. They ALSO sell to the $5 crowd, on weekdays.
You mentioned EOLAS as a patent that I guess you think covers something with no utility. Clearly most people think browser plugins have utility. The problem with the EOLAS patent wasn't that plugins aren't useful. The problem was that they sat on their "rights" for years, then launched a sneak attack. In the landlord-tenant analogy several types of estoppel would have prevented that. You're probably familiar with "squatters rights". In that case, Microsoft was the squatter on EOLAS claimed property. Perhaps they should have had squatters' rights.
You also mention bad patents - companies patenting methods or inventions they didn't invent. That would compare to a false "landowner" demanding rent for land they don't rightfully own.
None of that in any way supports the assertion that patented inventions hold no utility for the user. I'm utilizing patented technology to write this, so clearly Google's R&D had some utility to me, the user.
You could probably make several reasonable arguments about patents - that the patent office should be far more strict about patents they grant, about patent trolls vs. inventors, etc. The problem is, all these arguments are all mixed up in your head, so you don't seem to know which argument you're making at any given time. Your zealotry even seems to have you so confused that you'll believe, and argue, anything that seems vaguely anti-patent. I bet you'd argue that patents are unconstitutional, simply because you'd like them to be. There are plenty of good arguments about patent trolls. Slow down, read them carefully, and THINK about them.
A large chunk of the GUI systems you see on modern Linux distributions, as well as things like the Red Hat cluster suite, were developed by or in conjuction with paid distros like Red Hat. Are they completely incompatible with open source? Red Hat isn't free as in beer, but it's GPL. Someone has to buy it before they can distribute it under GPL. Seems to be working just fine.
Click on the list of presenters. It includes the founder of FSF E, a lawyer from FSF E, and representatives from open source projects.
Software patents are nothing like actually collecting rent because they provide no utility to the one paying.
If it has no utility for you, you wouldn't license it and wouldn't be missing out on anything, right? Of course there's some benefit being conveyed to the licensee (user). Specifically, the useful result of someone's research and development efforts. If it weren't beneficial, you'd have no interest in it and not care if it were patented or not.
The problem isn't that things patented aren't useful, the problem is that inter-operability standards should avoid patented methods so that implementations can be compliant without paying license fees.
I don't know of very many similarities between scientology, a con game started by a science fiction writer, and the Church of Latter Day Saints, a significant religious denomination whose members perform millions of hours of community service and give generously to communities around the globe. That's like asking "what's the diference between the Red Cross and the mafia?"
The author starts with the premise that it's a shadowy, secret plot, evidenced by the fact he saw the promos for the workshop only WEEKS in advance. I know I always advertise MY secret plots weeks in advance of sitting down to discuss them. He then proceeds to say that the panel, including two representatives from the Free Software Foundation Europe, was a bunch of anti- Free Software shills. The FSF is against free software? Really? Triple tinfoil hat territory.
I'm glad we are able to be pool our resources to be represented by corporations like the Free Software Foundation, which had two representatives speaking at the workshop. I'm also glad the Mozilla Foundation Incorporated (Firefox) has a voice, as does kernel.org, a California corporation.
Given Red Hat Inc.'s investment of BIILIONS of dollars toward OSS investment, I think that corporation also deserves a voice. Why exactly should people who invest billions and hire thousands of people NOT be allowed to speak out about government policies that put all of those jobs at risk? Why should we NOT be allowed to express our views by donating to FSF and sending FSF representatives on our behalf?
"As for the touch being Unix..."
You mean the Macbook Air the GP said runs UNIX? Yeah, OSX is certified UNIX 3, the highest level of UNIX compliance. After spending fifteen years using nothing but Linux, I recently was given a Mac desktop. From the command line, the Mac feels entirely comfortable. In some ways it's more Linux-like than FreeBSD. There are a number of things to not like about Apple. Mainly the fact that an Apple machine is always THEIR machine, not the purchaser's. Apple is in charge, not the consumer. It is, however, absolutely UNIX. I even have admit it's done very "well", for Jobs' definition of what it should be.
Probably the very simplest is a network capable external drive like the Western Digital World Edition. Just plug it in and you have network storage. That just gives you a folder full of media files visible to the network, though. A much nicer, searchable interface with playlists etc. can be had with XMBC, a media center for Windows, Linux, Mac and others (including some Android support).
For many disciplines, I might agree with you. After spending thousands of hours chasing down bugs like x= vs. x== , I'd rather hire a programer who is careful what they type. More importantly, the resume and cover letter are written. Aside from the roughly one page of bullet points you write, how you write is all that that potential employers have to go on. It might not be most important information, but it's the only sample of your work that they have in front of them.
"Greedy corporations don't care about their employees" is a politically driven world view politicians feed you when they are trying to get your vote. It has no relevance to the real world, where most companies have tuition reimbursement, training programs, etc. The company I work for has an array of programs. Even the burger joint I started at, Sonic Drive-In, sent employees to the local community college to learn some math, reading and writing more clearly, etc. when needed.
Western Governor's University is an online school which is a state school in at least twenty states. So like University of Texas, UC, and other state schools, it's quite reputable and the cost is lower than private schools, if you're a resident of one of the sponsoring states. They offer several IT degrees.
I just spent a week in Choctaw. I didn't enter Walmart during that time. Meaning, I bought everything from their competitors, which you claim don't exist. YP.com gives 166 results for "groceries" in Choctaw. Some are bogus, I bet, but even if 75% are bogus, that's still 41 outlets other than Walmart.
Linus could take a lesson from Balmer. Balmer would have said "great job, now people will have a reason to upgrade when we fix it in Windows 12 ten years from now". Seriously though, it's good to hear SOMEONE so insistent on not breaking things after waiting fifteen years for the same IE bug to be fixed. (Vary header bug breaks caching, saving files.)
Free healthcare in Australia? I thought most people on /. were WAY too smart to buy that BS. Of course the government healthcare doesn't pay for important things like say, ambulances, but it does cost the average family $8,800 per year in extra taxes. Almost nine thousand dollars for crap coverage and still some people are thankful because it's "free" (meaning the govt forces you to pay for it.)
After being forced to do it the govt way, Oz has worse healthcare than 46 other countries. (Based on availability of doctors, other metrics put Australia 25th through 70th, but always beneath some banana republics.)
Don't drink the Koolaid.