It's easy to jump in the boat of the oncoming juggernaut.
MS was cool when it was taking over from Evil Big Blue.
Hate the evil, bloated phone company? Use the local service offered by the cable company. Oh, and since you hate the evil, bloated cable company, switch cable TV service to the phone company.
If AOL does pop out a new Netscape/AOL client that amounts to a virtual machine, complete with folderized access to the filesystem and decent Java office suite, they can indeed take over from Microsoft. If you have the choice of two products, one which does A, and the other which does all of A, but offers AIM, buffed and professional online content, massive chat rooms, etc., who are you going to go with?
Of course, the real solution is to dilute the government of the power to make improper laws, but I wouldn't expect too many at opensecrets.org to take that viewpoint.
> AOL/TW will be the new hated corporation around here.
And if Linux ruled the lands, you people would be bitching about how this arrogant corporation was jamming a hard-to-install OS down your throat. What? I have to whuu, compile stuff? Huh? Can you believe that! I have to track down drivers. What's a driver?
Maybe if Linux came with an AOL install/connect icon on the desktop for easy install of an internet connection and drivers for any modem known to Man, Linux would make a little more headway.
Stantz: " I liked the University. They gave us money, they gave us the facilities and we didn't have to produce anything! I've worked in the private sector. They expect results. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there."
I upgraded AOL on a BYOA account/computer (cable modem.) Now when I start AOL I get a login dialog from dial up networking. I click cancel, and it logs me in. Nice job, AOL.
You've forgotten the cool factor of your own car, which is making headway among the youth (thank god) in Europe, too.
It's called freedom. People want cars, get out of the way. Make sure they don't pollute too much, but that's the only concern you have with other people's stuff.
Yes, public transport is cheaper, but it is not a perfect mach for cars in other ways. I have to walk farther from dropoff terminals. I have to assume there are dropoff terminals near where I want to go (and the US is a hell of a lot larger than crammed Europe.)
And chicks are more likely to go with you when you say "Let's hop in my car and go to the beach" than "Can I buy you a bus pass?"
Ahh, the evils of socialism and environmentalism gone awry, all promoted, wrapped up in a couple of sentences. It's concise, if nothing else.
Where to start?
Oh, yeah. America had mandatory catalytic converters on their cars for a quarter of a century years before Europe even thought about it. A hundred "person-killing" Americans, each in their own car, did less damage than one overstuffed articulated bus in Europe did, by an order of magnitude, and three or four orders of magnitude over 25 Euro-cars, each stuffed with 4 happy little socialist worker bees.
Oh, you can upgrade your car to pure LPG for about a thousand dollars, but then they slap an enormous annual tax on you such that you have to drive 20kkm per year to break even over even the hideously overtaxed, $4.50 per gallon gasoline. Not much incentive there, good socialist design.
And I find it hideous that Europe (tho the US does this too) would offer uncongested lanes for the "special folk" rather than simply building bigger roads. You are only pushing off solving this problem by a few years anyway. (The cruel but true law of pointless environmental conservation.)
Don't worry, the US will keep inventing better technology to compensate for your silly ways.
Exactly. It's not proper to single out one type of worker to dilute the supply of that type of worker while not letting in other workers because they are larger voting blocks.
If you're going to be honest (and politicians aren't) then you open the borders to any worker, not just some.
Of course, overseas software houses, especially India, are exploding. Supply and demand, it's cheaper over there, go over there.
> It is not progress for poor people living on
> table scraps from the tables of the rich when
> the rich get richer and leave more scraps.
Actually, that is EXACTLY how all poor countries claw their way out of 3rd world status. That is how 1st world countries themselved did it via the industrial revolution, which in turn was just an accelerated time period of productivity increase.
It's all supply and demand, and all these people in "sweat shops" in "poor countries" are all there by choice, which is to say, it's a lot better than sitting in a hut out in the desert somewhere. Their choice, they lift themselves. Get out of the way. They don't need your "help".
> [European nationals in the US] usually come back
> home after a couple years because they
> miss a number of benefits and protections (like
> workers' protections
What protections? They sit on their ass in front of a computer screen all day, then probably go home and do it again all night surfing. Internet is much cheaper here, too.
>...health insurance
Umm, any job worth its salt, which includes programming, has very good insurance, thanks, and a medical system second to none. If Ringworld-style autodocs are invented, I wouldn't bet on Europe too much to develop it.
>...30 days' holiday instead of 10 [and usually
> none the first year in the US]
Ok, you've won on this issue. It's conscious tradeoff between leisure time and productivity. Ironically, and perhaps undeservedly, Europe (and other heavily socialized areas) benefit from the faster technological growth of the more productive nations, so the US is like a prostitute in that sense, giving up their stuff to people who don't appreciate the lifestyle that gives it up. (I hereby copyright that clever thought.)
>...good beer
Granted again. German beer gardens, complete with sausages and mustard, r00l. England's warm beer can take a hike tho.
>...and a sensible government system not yet
> owned by corporations, to name a few).
Well, they're owned instead by power-hungry folks pontificating childlike platitudes to uneducated masses of morons in fields they don't understand, causing slower technological growth, far worse recessions, backbreaking taxes on the relatively few people who do work hard (all the while being defined as evil by those very same government officials they help keep the economy afloat for).
That month, I worked over 350 hours, and turned in a timesheet for well over 450 hours for that month because it included the last week of the previous month.
I am willing to put in lots of hours still (married, or shortly to be) but I'd prefer to do some of them at home.
Also, to the guy about AI, it's true that there aren't tons of AI jobs out there, but there are some.
AI is a field that has yet to explode, largely because no one has yet come up with anything that remotely can "think for itself" in a useful way. Where's the general purpose artificial brain to drive my car, or my own personal cheap VTOL, for that matter?
Once it appears even an inkling that the human race is about to cross that threshold (which could be from 1-50 years away) AI jobs will explode.
To a libertarian, Rush is a little kooky, but in the big picture, he's better to have than not, much like a grappling hook churning away in someone's gut, it's not pretty, but it shifts things steadily.
The big insight to "leave the wheel" is to recognize that both the "left" and the "right" (also noted in that Nolan chart) both just pick and choose the items to harp about to the masses, hoping to stir up enough rage in them to increase government control over xyz, which in turn is synonymous with those particular politicians gaining power, which is the "evolutionary" goal in the world of politics.
For some reason, it seems to be a lot easier for the "right" to give up on their desire for social control and become libertarian than it is for the "left" to give up on massive economic controls.
That, in turn, is probably due to religion as guide for social policy giving way to religion as quaint, anachronistic, harmless "life belief", whereas, psychologically, heavy-handed socialism and it's rhetoric is believed by the "left" with true religious fervor. It's politically incorrect to jam your religious views down people's throats in law, but it's still OK to jam "economic religious" views (supported by public arguments as childish and unproveable as any religion) down people's throats. An honest, leftist skeptic might break free, but even then...
"Does this problem actually exist?"
"Is this actually a problem?"
"Is this actually a serious problem, so serious massive freedom should be given up?"
"Is it moral to control others and impose my command-and-control solution, which explicitly excludes 'leaving people alone' who do not want to participate in it?"
"I have picked my position like anyone else, but why do I really believe this position?"
"Do I list pros and cons for the purpose of buttressing my rhetoric and argument, or do I use them to actually re-evaluate my position?"
I think the English departments of this country, teaching the thesis, antithesis, synthesis methods to freshman are doing one of the most dishonest things I have ever seen. To support an argument for one reason, while playing up other reasons just because they help your side win may be good rhetoric, in a fire-fights-fire sort of way (or a Sean Connery "You want to get serious? They put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue." sort of way) but it is intellectually dishonest in the extreme.
That is all true -- corporations are legal bodies to prevent holding the officers accountable for the corporation's transgressions. It's a quick and dirty way (a legal hack) to get companies to be bound by laws that apply to people. Can you imagine a CEO being held accountable for the myriad minor tax violations, regulatory violations, speeding tickets of drivers, etc. that his major corporation is responsible for on a daily basis?
However, that doesn't mean an individual who performed the physical law-breaking act can't be held accountable instead. IANAL, but a corporation couldn't go murder the executives of a rival corporation and not expect the killer and those who ordered it be able to get away because "the corporation" did it. (Nevermind the legal difference between company and corporation, much less the legal status of a Russian company in US terms.)
> No different than if he came to this country and
> sold crack.
Actually, it's no different than if he stayed in his own country and heaved crack over the border into the US. Manuel Noriega, anyone? Just because you are outside the US when you do something TO the US, doesn't mean you can't legally be held responsible.
Of course, last time I checked, no one in this country signed a wavier giving others the right to decide what drugs they may or may not take, unlike this IP issue, which derives from living in a civilized society where people can't just go take other people's stuff.
If you actively put information about, say, the Homolka case in Canada, or what the IRA says in England, onto web sites, computers, whatever, that physically reside inside their countries, then went there, they would indeed arrest you. And it would be wrong, still.
Slashdot Mirror
"Hmmmm, I'll just lif up poor Mr. Cecil here and flip him over..."
cruncraaaaack
"Stop! STOP! You forgot to take off his restraining harness! Oh my god! Oh god OH GOD AHHHHHHH"
> Not a fourteen year old here, I know cars need
> oil, but I would prefer breathable air.
I'd rather wear a gas mask and drive my car than not have one and use "public transportation".
Of course, all this grants far, far more truth to environmental hysterics than is rational.
It's easy to jump in the boat of the oncoming juggernaut.
MS was cool when it was taking over from Evil Big Blue.
Hate the evil, bloated phone company? Use the local service offered by the cable company. Oh, and since you hate the evil, bloated cable company, switch cable TV service to the phone company.
If AOL does pop out a new Netscape/AOL client that amounts to a virtual machine, complete with folderized access to the filesystem and decent Java office suite, they can indeed take over from Microsoft. If you have the choice of two products, one which does A, and the other which does all of A, but offers AIM, buffed and professional online content, massive chat rooms, etc., who are you going to go with?
Of course, the real solution is to dilute the government of the power to make improper laws, but I wouldn't expect too many at opensecrets.org to take that viewpoint.
> AOL/TW will be the new hated corporation around here.
And if Linux ruled the lands, you people would be bitching about how this arrogant corporation was jamming a hard-to-install OS down your throat. What? I have to whuu, compile stuff? Huh? Can you believe that! I have to track down drivers. What's a driver?
Bah.
Maybe if Linux came with an AOL install/connect icon on the desktop for easy install of an internet connection and drivers for any modem known to Man, Linux would make a little more headway.
> lame cable modem
Lame? Ehehehe, come out to the real world.
Stantz: " I liked the University. They gave us money, they gave us the facilities and we didn't have to produce anything! I've worked in the private sector. They expect results. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there."
I upgraded AOL on a BYOA account/computer (cable modem.) Now when I start AOL I get a login dialog from dial up networking. I click cancel, and it logs me in. Nice job, AOL.
You've forgotten the cool factor of your own car, which is making headway among the youth (thank god) in Europe, too.
It's called freedom. People want cars, get out of the way. Make sure they don't pollute too much, but that's the only concern you have with other people's stuff.
Yes, public transport is cheaper, but it is not a perfect mach for cars in other ways. I have to walk farther from dropoff terminals. I have to assume there are dropoff terminals near where I want to go (and the US is a hell of a lot larger than crammed Europe.)
And chicks are more likely to go with you when you say "Let's hop in my car and go to the beach" than "Can I buy you a bus pass?"
Ahh, the evils of socialism and environmentalism gone awry, all promoted, wrapped up in a couple of sentences. It's concise, if nothing else.
Where to start?
Oh, yeah. America had mandatory catalytic converters on their cars for a quarter of a century years before Europe even thought about it. A hundred "person-killing" Americans, each in their own car, did less damage than one overstuffed articulated bus in Europe did, by an order of magnitude, and three or four orders of magnitude over 25 Euro-cars, each stuffed with 4 happy little socialist worker bees.
Oh, you can upgrade your car to pure LPG for about a thousand dollars, but then they slap an enormous annual tax on you such that you have to drive 20kkm per year to break even over even the hideously overtaxed, $4.50 per gallon gasoline. Not much incentive there, good socialist design.
And I find it hideous that Europe (tho the US does this too) would offer uncongested lanes for the "special folk" rather than simply building bigger roads. You are only pushing off solving this problem by a few years anyway. (The cruel but true law of pointless environmental conservation.)
Don't worry, the US will keep inventing better technology to compensate for your silly ways.
Exactly. It's not proper to single out one type of worker to dilute the supply of that type of worker while not letting in other workers because they are larger voting blocks.
If you're going to be honest (and politicians aren't) then you open the borders to any worker, not just some.
Of course, overseas software houses, especially India, are exploding. Supply and demand, it's cheaper over there, go over there.
> It is not progress for poor people living on
> table scraps from the tables of the rich when
> the rich get richer and leave more scraps.
Actually, that is EXACTLY how all poor countries claw their way out of 3rd world status. That is how 1st world countries themselved did it via the industrial revolution, which in turn was just an accelerated time period of productivity increase.
It's all supply and demand, and all these people in "sweat shops" in "poor countries" are all there by choice, which is to say, it's a lot better than sitting in a hut out in the desert somewhere. Their choice, they lift themselves. Get out of the way. They don't need your "help".
> [European nationals in the US] usually come back
...health insurance
...30 days' holiday instead of 10 [and usually
...good beer
...and a sensible government system not yet
> home after a couple years because they
> miss a number of benefits and protections (like
> workers' protections
What protections? They sit on their ass in front of a computer screen all day, then probably go home and do it again all night surfing. Internet is much cheaper here, too.
>
Umm, any job worth its salt, which includes programming, has very good insurance, thanks, and a medical system second to none. If Ringworld-style autodocs are invented, I wouldn't bet on Europe too much to develop it.
>
> none the first year in the US]
Ok, you've won on this issue. It's conscious tradeoff between leisure time and productivity. Ironically, and perhaps undeservedly, Europe (and other heavily socialized areas) benefit from the faster technological growth of the more productive nations, so the US is like a prostitute in that sense, giving up their stuff to people who don't appreciate the lifestyle that gives it up. (I hereby copyright that clever thought.)
>
Granted again. German beer gardens, complete with sausages and mustard, r00l. England's warm beer can take a hike tho.
>
> owned by corporations, to name a few).
Well, they're owned instead by power-hungry folks pontificating childlike platitudes to uneducated masses of morons in fields they don't understand, causing slower technological growth, far worse recessions, backbreaking taxes on the relatively few people who do work hard (all the while being defined as evil by those very same government officials they help keep the economy afloat for).
You do, however, have much better pr0n.
I actually put in a 133 hour week once.
During that week I had a 33 hour "day".
That month, I worked over 350 hours, and turned in a timesheet for well over 450 hours for that month because it included the last week of the previous month.
I am willing to put in lots of hours still (married, or shortly to be) but I'd prefer to do some of them at home.
Also, to the guy about AI, it's true that there aren't tons of AI jobs out there, but there are some.
AI is a field that has yet to explode, largely because no one has yet come up with anything that remotely can "think for itself" in a useful way. Where's the general purpose artificial brain to drive my car, or my own personal cheap VTOL, for that matter?
Once it appears even an inkling that the human race is about to cross that threshold (which could be from 1-50 years away) AI jobs will explode.
To a libertarian, Rush is a little kooky, but in the big picture, he's better to have than not, much like a grappling hook churning away in someone's gut, it's not pretty, but it shifts things steadily.
The big insight to "leave the wheel" is to recognize that both the "left" and the "right" (also noted in that Nolan chart) both just pick and choose the items to harp about to the masses, hoping to stir up enough rage in them to increase government control over xyz, which in turn is synonymous with those particular politicians gaining power, which is the "evolutionary" goal in the world of politics.
For some reason, it seems to be a lot easier for the "right" to give up on their desire for social control and become libertarian than it is for the "left" to give up on massive economic controls.
That, in turn, is probably due to religion as guide for social policy giving way to religion as quaint, anachronistic, harmless "life belief", whereas, psychologically, heavy-handed socialism and it's rhetoric is believed by the "left" with true religious fervor. It's politically incorrect to jam your religious views down people's throats in law, but it's still OK to jam "economic religious" views (supported by public arguments as childish and unproveable as any religion) down people's throats. An honest, leftist skeptic might break free, but even then...
"Does this problem actually exist?"
"Is this actually a problem?"
"Is this actually a serious problem, so serious massive freedom should be given up?"
"Is it moral to control others and impose my command-and-control solution, which explicitly excludes 'leaving people alone' who do not want to participate in it?"
"I have picked my position like anyone else, but why do I really believe this position?"
"Do I list pros and cons for the purpose of buttressing my rhetoric and argument, or do I use them to actually re-evaluate my position?"
I think the English departments of this country, teaching the thesis, antithesis, synthesis methods to freshman are doing one of the most dishonest things I have ever seen. To support an argument for one reason, while playing up other reasons just because they help your side win may be good rhetoric, in a fire-fights-fire sort of way (or a Sean Connery "You want to get serious? They put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue." sort of way) but it is intellectually dishonest in the extreme.
This is boring. Let's talk about much more interesting questions, like was Captain Janeway secretely in love with 7 of 9?
> Also I think it's more fun to try to put the
> ships in a stable orbit than to try to fly and
> shoot.
I thought that, too.
What we need is a link to a Java Moon Lander-type game.
> Fantasy factor- you could pretend you were in a > spaceship instead of pretending you were on a > tennis court
Yep, sad but true for males. It would not be cool to fantasize about being on a tennis court until about the year 2000.
How do you cheat at Tic Tac Toe? Maybe adding extra x's, or moving around the x's and o's, but both of those would be rather obvious.
Don't laugh. You develop software that kills someone, and the bug is traced to the nonconforming mouse, you are in a world of hurt.
Sure, it's unlikely, but high liability software houses will throw you out the door if you install anything other than the approved corporate load.
That is all true -- corporations are legal bodies to prevent holding the officers accountable for the corporation's transgressions. It's a quick and dirty way (a legal hack) to get companies to be bound by laws that apply to people. Can you imagine a CEO being held accountable for the myriad minor tax violations, regulatory violations, speeding tickets of drivers, etc. that his major corporation is responsible for on a daily basis?
However, that doesn't mean an individual who performed the physical law-breaking act can't be held accountable instead. IANAL, but a corporation couldn't go murder the executives of a rival corporation and not expect the killer and those who ordered it be able to get away because "the corporation" did it. (Nevermind the legal difference between company and corporation, much less the legal status of a Russian company in US terms.)
> No different than if he came to this country and
> sold crack.
Actually, it's no different than if he stayed in his own country and heaved crack over the border into the US. Manuel Noriega, anyone? Just because you are outside the US when you do something TO the US, doesn't mean you can't legally be held responsible.
Of course, last time I checked, no one in this country signed a wavier giving others the right to decide what drugs they may or may not take, unlike this IP issue, which derives from living in a civilized society where people can't just go take other people's stuff.
If you actively put information about, say, the Homolka case in Canada, or what the IRA says in England, onto web sites, computers, whatever, that physically reside inside their countries, then went there, they would indeed arrest you. And it would be wrong, still.