Not at all. My point is that slashdot has taken a very conservative turn in the past 5-10 or so years.
Slashdot is not "conservative". It has remained fairly laissez-faire economically and socially liberal, a position that is represented poorly by both parties. You seem to be confusing opposition to the Democrats with support for the Republicans or conservatism.
That, and when the republicans had all the power (it could be argued that hasn't ended), we blamed all the economic problems on the democrats.
Both Republicans and Democrats are robbing tax payers blind in order to pay off constituencies that vote for them or support them in other ways, and both are trying to extend federal power further and further. And this mutual demonization and the social hotbutton issues are just a political charade to distract you from that reality.
Stop identifying with one party or the other and stop falling for the demonization. Become an independent. Support candidates who work against this b.s. in either party, and there are such candidates in both parties.
In principle, penetration testing is a useful service. However, they need to keep you informed, because if they don't, you can't distinguish an actual attack from their penetration testing. There also need to be clear procedures spelled out for what they do if they succeed and what the consequences are.
If there is no contractual basis for them to do this, they are likely breaking the law.
This is on the front page because Fisker is linked to Democrats, and the failure of this company makes them look bad.
Pretty much all economic failures between 2008 and 2016 are "linked to the Democrats", because they are currently in power. Are you suggesting we just suspend reporting altogether until a Republican president gets elected again?
Right now we've subsidizes trillions of dollars on the road system, when that taxpayer money could have gone into a far more efficient rail system.
The road system is more than paid for through taxes on fuel, user fees, cars, and other user-related taxes.
And as someone who has commuted by rail in Europe and Asia, let me tell you: rail systems are not "efficient" transportation. They are expensive and almost always slower than a car even when everything goes right. When there are accidents or delays, it's a nightmare. Even in terms of fuel efficiency, they are only about 30% better than current cars on the road in the US (and with the upcoming CAFE standards, trains will probably be worse than cars).
"The company [Tesla Motors] announced in early August 2009 that it had achieved overall corporate profitability for the month of July 2009
Tesla is making a subsidized and fashionable luxury product for Silicon Valley types. They aren't going to make a dent in mass market transport or US dependence on foreign oil.
but doing nothing until after oil hits $500 a barrel would be far worse.
If people anticipate that oil goes up that high, they'll invest in companies that address the issue in an effective way. No subsidies needed.
Advancing new basic technology with great strategic potential for reducing US dependency
What may reduce US dependence on foreign oil are fracking and nuclear. But, of course, many of the same people who want to shove billions of public money in the direction of "green manufacturers" oppose these technologies.
The original PARCTAB, basically the first computer to roughly look and work like a modern touch screen device, used networking based on ceiling-mounted LEDs. A paper describing the system is here. Many systems used IrDA communications after that. Of course, it's probably been a lot of engineering work increasing the speed of the system, but it's not a fundamentally new idea, just the evolution of old technology.
The basis for this appears to be pure speculation. There is no actual data (big or otherwise) showing the validity of the assumptions on which this is based.
And don't fucking talk to me about having myself to blame or needing help with financial planning
You choose to live in one of the most expensive and desirable areas in the US. Median income for men with bachelor degrees in Ventura county is around $75k, so your job achievement is far below median. By all rights, you have no reasonable expectation of owning a home based on your choices and performance.
And yet, you actually can afford a home. Whether you make $40k or $50k/year, you can spend around $200k, and there are plenty of homes for under $200k in Oxnard and all around the Bay Area (Oakland, Hayward, Fremont, etc.).
And apparently that's true, from your own statistics, of almost half the people my age. A 30 year old man still living like a kid in someone else's spare bedroom would be a laughing stock in 1960, but he's just about average today apparently.
51% of 30-something heads of households own, most of the rest rent, by choice. Buying a home only makes financial sense if you plan on staying there for about five years or more. Home ownership today is higher than in the 1960's, so more people can afford homes today than they used to be able to and your complaints are unfounded.
which is looking more and more like a futile prospect unless I move to Bumfuck Idaho
Making $50000/year, you can afford a $200000 home (a $1000 monthly mortgage), and for that kind of money, you can easily get something decent (1000+ sqft, 2br, 1ba) within commuting distance of any metropolitan area.
Meanwhile, a college-educated middle-class man my age in 1960 would be married with kids and living in a real family house,
You only have yourself to blame; you can afford owning a home. Home ownership rates among 30-35 heads-of-household are about 52% (rising to 80% among 60-75 year old), so obviously many people with median income can afford homes.
In addition, since in the 1960's less than 10% of Americans were college graduates, while today it's around 35%. Chances are good you wouldn't even have gotten a college degree in the 1960's.
Meanwhile, real substantial living conditions like the ability to live alone or support a family are drastically diminished.
You should seek out some help with financial planning.
For copying data on a network which was open, onto a laptop which was placed an an open room with open access to everyone, the charges are not at all reasonable at all.
That's absolutely wrong. The MIT wired network is not "open" and the MIT campus is a private campus with "No Trespassing" signs everywhere. And Swartz knew that what he was doing was wrong because he tried to conceal the laptop, tried to conceal his face, and fled from campus police.
Because it has become the status quot to stack charges until something sticks does not make it correct to do.
The prosecutor already didn't charge him with all the federal laws he violated.
There is indeed a problem with having too many federal laws and too many criminal cases, but that is the fault of Congress; the prosecutor should enforce federal law. And ironically, many of the people who get all upset about this case have absolutely no problem creating more and more federal laws and regulations when it suits their own political purposes. Don't unload this political b.s. on the head of a federal prosecutor. And maybe people like you will see the light and change their ways when it comes to calling for more federal laws (although I won't hold my breath).
No, I'm not speculating, I looked at the indictment and the federal sentencing guidelines. It's you who is ignorant of the case and who is speculating.
The prosecutor beefed up charges to present both him and the courts with a charges allowing a sentence of 35 years.
The prosecutor charged Swartz with four things: wire fraud, computer fraud, unauthorized access, and computer damage, a reasonable set of charges given what Swartz did. She then proposed a plea bargain with six months in minimum security prison, again a reasonable proposal and indicative of a modest estimate of actual damages. The idea that she "beefed up charges" is not just speculation on your part, it is clearly and obviously wrong given the facts.
The "35 year" figure is a theoretical maximum that the prosecutor didn't ask for and that the court couldn't have imposed. People like you took that theoretical maximum and then blamed the prosecutor for charging Swartz with multiple charges that theoretically added up to this, completely ignoring what she was actually asking for.
I'm not claiming the Swartz was innocent of a crime mind you, I'm claiming that the prosecutions handling was absolutely wrong.
The prosecution did exactly what they were supposed to do, and they were pretty lenient about it: they charged him with only a subset of what they could have charged him with, assumed modest damage figures, and offered a plea bargain based on those modest damage figures.
If the prosecution had wanted to beef up charges, they could have charged Swartz with numerous other crimes (including criminal copyright violation, which he wasn't charged with), and inflated the damage figures into the millions (fairly easy to do given what he actually had done) and negotiated about plea bargains of several years in prison.
Or perhaps the premise is wrong. Perhaps what really matters isn't what you think you "love doing", but about contributing something that's needed by others and that you are actually good at. But creating a society of increasing leisure and infinite choice isn't going to make that happen.
Unfortunately, many scientists probably use commercial tools in hopes that their libraries will be picked up by the company and they will earn some money from it.
There are people in all branches of academia who have finished PhDs and are not finding meaningful employment.
If 100% of the population of the US had Ph.D.'s, someone would still need to drive cabs, clean toilets, and water lawns. And given that IQ is normally distributed, a lot of those Ph.D.'s would be pretty dumb (and not just in the academic sense).
Politicians looked at the correlation between degrees and higher salaries, and erroneously concluded that degrees cause higher salaries. They then went on to subsidize degrees (cheered on in many ways by various interests groups who benefit from such additional funding), creating an oversupply of people with degrees for which there is no market demand. And remember that while you are "underemployed" with your literature Ph.D. that you're still paying taxes to subsidize the creation of the next generation of people who get degrees they don't need.
Satisfaction of stubbornness, I suppose. Gotta keep in mind, I was both young and a gearhead at the time.
Well, you are supposed to be smart about your educational choices. Who else is supposed to choose a good vs a bad program for you?
From eHow:
When you're comparing AAS programs in automotive technology, look for schools that are certified by organizations, such as the National Automobile Technicians Education Foundation (NATEF), as well as a program that will offer you the opportunity to earn ASE (Automotive Service Excellence) certification.
Also, compare programs' job-placement rates, and check to see if a program offers internships with area dealerships and repair shops that will help you get hands-on experience and networking opportunities before you graduate.
Capitalism is really Feudalism, but with a much better PR department
No "feudalism" involved in your particular problem; you made a bad choice and it cost you a lot of time and money. That's the way it's supposed to work. And by giving your time and money to a school that offered a useless degree, you kept it in business, meaning others may be tempted to make the same mistake. What alternative approach do you think would have worked better?
Productivity increases mean we can provide for everyone with fewer people needed.
The real world doesn't work that way. You can live a decent 1960's middle-class lifestyle on an income around the poverty line today, but people don't want that, they want all the gadgets, comforts, cars, square feet, and travel that you can get if you work your ass off in the 2010's.
challenges to stimulate individuals to unleash the native curiosity and creativity most of us are born with
Both the US and Europe have large populations that live basically at the tax payer's expense and have tons of time to explore their "curiosity and creativity"; there doesn't seem to be a great deal of creating and inventing coming out of those populations. People become creative in response to need and pressure, not leisure.
This focus on income brackets in these discussions is stupid. Making $500k doesn't make you "rich"; it may not even make you a multi-millionaire. Many people who make that kind of money are often two-income professional households that happen to have a particularly good year and need to save aggressively in order to be able to retire reasonably well and pay for college for their kids.
You're rich if you actually own a lot of stuff; you don't become a billionaire by saving a salary and the rich, as a rule, don't work or don't make big salaries if they do (because they don't have to; just look at Jobs or Ellison with their $1 salaries). And you can't tax that kind of wealth because it doesn't show up anywhere and it never actually gets spent. If you try to tax it, people will just move it into some asset class that governments don't account for.
Income tax never gets at "the rich"; it mostly just penalizes the upper middle class and professionals. And the truly rich you can never tax or reach no matter what you do.
Congress decided to make these offenses a felony, Swartz clearly violated the law, and the prosecutor charged him accordingly. So what are you getting at?
He trespassed on the MIT campus, went into a wiring closet, connected a laptop to MIT's wired network that he did not have legitimate access to, and concealed the laptop there.
He had valid access to the system. The civil contract said that he shouldn't script access and he did, but that isn't breaking in.
He didn't have "valid access" to MIT's wired network. That's what he was charged with breaking into. Read the indictment.
Wow, I just didn't expect anybody could be as lazy and ignorant as you. Since you are evidently incapable of doing a simple Google search, here's the story:
Consider GNU Objective C. NeXT initially wanted to make this front end proprietary; they proposed to release it as.o files, and let users link them with the rest of GCC, thinking this might be a way around the GPL's requirements. But our lawyer said that this would not evade the requirements, that it was not allowed. And so they made the Objective C front end free software.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot is not "conservative". It has remained fairly laissez-faire economically and socially liberal, a position that is represented poorly by both parties. You seem to be confusing opposition to the Democrats with support for the Republicans or conservatism.
Both Republicans and Democrats are robbing tax payers blind in order to pay off constituencies that vote for them or support them in other ways, and both are trying to extend federal power further and further. And this mutual demonization and the social hotbutton issues are just a political charade to distract you from that reality.
Stop identifying with one party or the other and stop falling for the demonization. Become an independent. Support candidates who work against this b.s. in either party, and there are such candidates in both parties.
In principle, penetration testing is a useful service. However, they need to keep you informed, because if they don't, you can't distinguish an actual attack from their penetration testing. There also need to be clear procedures spelled out for what they do if they succeed and what the consequences are.
If there is no contractual basis for them to do this, they are likely breaking the law.
Pretty much all economic failures between 2008 and 2016 are "linked to the Democrats", because they are currently in power. Are you suggesting we just suspend reporting altogether until a Republican president gets elected again?
They're called B456 now after bankruptcy. I kid you not.
The road system is more than paid for through taxes on fuel, user fees, cars, and other user-related taxes.
And as someone who has commuted by rail in Europe and Asia, let me tell you: rail systems are not "efficient" transportation. They are expensive and almost always slower than a car even when everything goes right. When there are accidents or delays, it's a nightmare. Even in terms of fuel efficiency, they are only about 30% better than current cars on the road in the US (and with the upcoming CAFE standards, trains will probably be worse than cars).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transportation
Tesla is making a subsidized and fashionable luxury product for Silicon Valley types. They aren't going to make a dent in mass market transport or US dependence on foreign oil.
If people anticipate that oil goes up that high, they'll invest in companies that address the issue in an effective way. No subsidies needed.
What may reduce US dependence on foreign oil are fracking and nuclear. But, of course, many of the same people who want to shove billions of public money in the direction of "green manufacturers" oppose these technologies.
The original PARCTAB, basically the first computer to roughly look and work like a modern touch screen device, used networking based on ceiling-mounted LEDs. A paper describing the system is here. Many systems used IrDA communications after that. Of course, it's probably been a lot of engineering work increasing the speed of the system, but it's not a fundamentally new idea, just the evolution of old technology.
The basis for this appears to be pure speculation. There is no actual data (big or otherwise) showing the validity of the assumptions on which this is based.
You choose to live in one of the most expensive and desirable areas in the US. Median income for men with bachelor degrees in Ventura county is around $75k, so your job achievement is far below median. By all rights, you have no reasonable expectation of owning a home based on your choices and performance.
And yet, you actually can afford a home. Whether you make $40k or $50k/year, you can spend around $200k, and there are plenty of homes for under $200k in Oxnard and all around the Bay Area (Oakland, Hayward, Fremont, etc.).
51% of 30-something heads of households own, most of the rest rent, by choice. Buying a home only makes financial sense if you plan on staying there for about five years or more. Home ownership today is higher than in the 1960's, so more people can afford homes today than they used to be able to and your complaints are unfounded.
Making $50000/year, you can afford a $200000 home (a $1000 monthly mortgage), and for that kind of money, you can easily get something decent (1000+ sqft, 2br, 1ba) within commuting distance of any metropolitan area.
You only have yourself to blame; you can afford owning a home. Home ownership rates among 30-35 heads-of-household are about 52% (rising to 80% among 60-75 year old), so obviously many people with median income can afford homes.
In addition, since in the 1960's less than 10% of Americans were college graduates, while today it's around 35%. Chances are good you wouldn't even have gotten a college degree in the 1960's.
You should seek out some help with financial planning.
That's absolutely wrong. The MIT wired network is not "open" and the MIT campus is a private campus with "No Trespassing" signs everywhere. And Swartz knew that what he was doing was wrong because he tried to conceal the laptop, tried to conceal his face, and fled from campus police.
The prosecutor already didn't charge him with all the federal laws he violated.
There is indeed a problem with having too many federal laws and too many criminal cases, but that is the fault of Congress; the prosecutor should enforce federal law. And ironically, many of the people who get all upset about this case have absolutely no problem creating more and more federal laws and regulations when it suits their own political purposes. Don't unload this political b.s. on the head of a federal prosecutor. And maybe people like you will see the light and change their ways when it comes to calling for more federal laws (although I won't hold my breath).
No, I'm not speculating, I looked at the indictment and the federal sentencing guidelines. It's you who is ignorant of the case and who is speculating.
The prosecutor charged Swartz with four things: wire fraud, computer fraud, unauthorized access, and computer damage, a reasonable set of charges given what Swartz did. She then proposed a plea bargain with six months in minimum security prison, again a reasonable proposal and indicative of a modest estimate of actual damages. The idea that she "beefed up charges" is not just speculation on your part, it is clearly and obviously wrong given the facts.
The "35 year" figure is a theoretical maximum that the prosecutor didn't ask for and that the court couldn't have imposed. People like you took that theoretical maximum and then blamed the prosecutor for charging Swartz with multiple charges that theoretically added up to this, completely ignoring what she was actually asking for.
The prosecution did exactly what they were supposed to do, and they were pretty lenient about it: they charged him with only a subset of what they could have charged him with, assumed modest damage figures, and offered a plea bargain based on those modest damage figures.
If the prosecution had wanted to beef up charges, they could have charged Swartz with numerous other crimes (including criminal copyright violation, which he wasn't charged with), and inflated the damage figures into the millions (fairly easy to do given what he actually had done) and negotiated about plea bargains of several years in prison.
Or perhaps the premise is wrong. Perhaps what really matters isn't what you think you "love doing", but about contributing something that's needed by others and that you are actually good at. But creating a society of increasing leisure and infinite choice isn't going to make that happen.
Unfortunately, many scientists probably use commercial tools in hopes that their libraries will be picked up by the company and they will earn some money from it.
If 100% of the population of the US had Ph.D.'s, someone would still need to drive cabs, clean toilets, and water lawns. And given that IQ is normally distributed, a lot of those Ph.D.'s would be pretty dumb (and not just in the academic sense).
Politicians looked at the correlation between degrees and higher salaries, and erroneously concluded that degrees cause higher salaries. They then went on to subsidize degrees (cheered on in many ways by various interests groups who benefit from such additional funding), creating an oversupply of people with degrees for which there is no market demand. And remember that while you are "underemployed" with your literature Ph.D. that you're still paying taxes to subsidize the creation of the next generation of people who get degrees they don't need.
I didn't know the world owed you that.
Well, you are supposed to be smart about your educational choices. Who else is supposed to choose a good vs a bad program for you?
From eHow:
http://www.ehow.com/about_6302018_associate-science-automotive-technology-program.html
No "feudalism" involved in your particular problem; you made a bad choice and it cost you a lot of time and money. That's the way it's supposed to work. And by giving your time and money to a school that offered a useless degree, you kept it in business, meaning others may be tempted to make the same mistake. What alternative approach do you think would have worked better?
The real world doesn't work that way. You can live a decent 1960's middle-class lifestyle on an income around the poverty line today, but people don't want that, they want all the gadgets, comforts, cars, square feet, and travel that you can get if you work your ass off in the 2010's.
Both the US and Europe have large populations that live basically at the tax payer's expense and have tons of time to explore their "curiosity and creativity"; there doesn't seem to be a great deal of creating and inventing coming out of those populations. People become creative in response to need and pressure, not leisure.
This focus on income brackets in these discussions is stupid. Making $500k doesn't make you "rich"; it may not even make you a multi-millionaire. Many people who make that kind of money are often two-income professional households that happen to have a particularly good year and need to save aggressively in order to be able to retire reasonably well and pay for college for their kids.
You're rich if you actually own a lot of stuff; you don't become a billionaire by saving a salary and the rich, as a rule, don't work or don't make big salaries if they do (because they don't have to; just look at Jobs or Ellison with their $1 salaries). And you can't tax that kind of wealth because it doesn't show up anywhere and it never actually gets spent. If you try to tax it, people will just move it into some asset class that governments don't account for.
Income tax never gets at "the rich"; it mostly just penalizes the upper middle class and professionals. And the truly rich you can never tax or reach no matter what you do.
You don't improve your lot in life by fighting, you improve your lot in life by creating something.
Congress decided to make these offenses a felony, Swartz clearly violated the law, and the prosecutor charged him accordingly. So what are you getting at?
Do you have any other candidates for "world's most famous film critic"?
Because federal sentencing guidelines don't allow it, and the judge is bound by those.
He trespassed on the MIT campus, went into a wiring closet, connected a laptop to MIT's wired network that he did not have legitimate access to, and concealed the laptop there.
He didn't have "valid access" to MIT's wired network. That's what he was charged with breaking into. Read the indictment.
Wow, I just didn't expect anybody could be as lazy and ignorant as you. Since you are evidently incapable of doing a simple Google search, here's the story:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html