> The fact that people are forced to do things like this to get broadband access is why we need government intervention.
The cause of all this is that the government,
in the form of city, county, and state utility
regulators, makes it extremely difficult for competing utilities to enter a market.
For example, where I live in Colorado Springs,
the city made a deal with two new cable
TV (and thus, Internet) providers to allow them
to come into city and compete with the
entrench Adelphia cable company. However, even
thouhg it was put to a city wide vote, the
city insisted that each new provider provide
city-wide access. In other words, it was not
permissable to start out in one neighborhood and
uild up, the way virtually every free enterprise
starts out (small). So one cable company said,
forget it, and another is on the verge of
bankrupticy. Meanwhile, Adelphia has hiked its
basic cable rates again.
Yes gov't intervention is needed, in
the form of federal gov't intervention to completely remove the power of states and municipalities to prevent telecommunications competition.
It is the fault of federal gov't that Ma Bell ---> USWEST ---> QWEST has a monopoly to begin with.
It is the fault of the Colorado state gov't
and it's municipalities that the monopoly
persists.
Here's what I remember from Zubrin's "Case for
Mars". I recommend reading it... it's fun
reading.
Mars is the most easily colonized extra-terrestial rock in the Solar System.. If we can't do it
there, then we probably can't do it anywhere.
Another issue is that we will eventually,
100s of years perhaps, dilute the mineral
wealth on Earth to the point where it becomes
cost effective to mine certain, but necessary,
substances from asteroids
rather than recycling them from the Earth.
It's easy to send stuff from the asteroids
to Earth, but due to Earth's powerful
gravity well, it is bloody expensive to
get ships, equiopment, and workers to
the asteroids. Tito paid what, $20M
for a joy ride to orbit?
Thus, we need Mars. The Moon has an even gentler
gravity well, but it will be harder to
develop a self-sustaining colony there since
it has far less oxygen, water, etc (Mars
has lots of oxygen locked up in CO2).
Also, I beleive Zubrin worked it out that it
is actually cheaper or similar in cost
to get stuff (not people) from the Earth to Mars
than to the Moon, and also cheaper to get people
and stuff from Marse to the asteroids.
Zubrin envisions a tri-lateral interplanetary
economy:
Earth supplies certain finished goods to
Mars.
Mars provides supplies to the asteroid mines.
The asteroids provide minerals to the Earth.
I beleive Zubrin also made the case that
fusion is inevitable due to the increasing
energy appetite of the Earth. The developed
part of the Earth is gobbling watts faster
that its population is growing. The developing
world is gobbling even faster. Fossil
fuels and solar energy won't do it, and
Zubrin makes some technical arguments why
solar mirrors and microwave beaming from
orbital solar energy stations won't be
practical.
I beleive Zubrin said that Mars's deuterium
is relatively more plentiful than on Earth
or the Moon, so Mars will be the supplier of
choice for fusion fuel.
Zubrin makes an analogy between the Old
World and New World. Once the European
powers started to exploit the New World,
they found that they could do without it.
The New World provided technology and materials
and wealth that raised the standard of
living in Europse, so that even after
the colonies gain independence, Europe still
needed (and still does) the New World.
So in a sense, Mars exploration/colonization
becomes a self full filling prophecy.
Alternatively, every couple on Earth can be
limited to one child to reduce population
as per-capita energy and resource needs
go up. Fat chance.
There's "pointless intrusion on the private affairs of labor and commerce" and then there's fair labor relations, or would you like to go back to the days of the Triangle Factory fire?
I think I remember the
TV movie about that one. It was the
one where mostly female workers in a
garment factory worked under horrendous safety
conditions leading to a very high fatality rate
when the inevitable fire struck.
There's big difference between the
safety of workers, and giving employers
and employees sufficient notice of termination
don't you think?
Don't you also think that customers and
suppliers also deserve as much protection as
employees when it comes to saftey in
business establishment? I do, and so others,
which is why the topic safety issues you bring up
are covered by the Fire Department and other
agencies with the power to shut a factory,
office,
diner, store, etc. down.
I don't see how two weeks
notice on either side is that much of a hinderance
Well let's say your wife, sister, or daughter
is being harrassed by a male superior. She
may or may not sue the SOB and his outfit,
but meanwhile isn't it easier to simply
quit with zero notice, rather than risk being
a victim of assault or worse?
There are lots of reasons why an employee might
need to leave without notice. Rather than
waste energy trying to codify the exceptions
(and of course, give the employer no
exceptions right?), isn't better to keep it, fair
and
simple and allow each party to give zero
notice?
If the relationship has been cordial, 9 times out
of 10, two weeks notice will be given by
either side as a matter of courtesy.
Legislating for the exceptions seems like
a pointless intrusion on the private affairs of
labor and commerce.
Anyway, I fail to see the corolation. How does the ability to fire someone with no reason equate to lower unemployment?
If you can fire at will, you have less risk
in hiring someone. Otherwise, if you have to
give several days, weeks, or months of
notice, you have to build those costs into
your budgets. Which means either paying
less money (fat chance, as the countries
that restrict "at will" employment will
tend to have higher minimum wages and/or
more collective bargaining arrangements), or
hiring fewer people. Automation and/or out
sourcing, especially to other countries, if
not relocation of the job itself, begins
to look attractive.
There are reasons why Canadian firms like
Nortel, Toronto Dominion, Royal Bak, Canadian
Pacific, etc. have large and growing presences in
the USA.
My relatives in Canada are shocked when I tell
them that as an "exempt" employee (exempt
from being paid overtime for more than
40 hours/week or working holdidays), that my
employer has the right to make me work any
day, more than 40 hours, weekends, evenings,
etc, and my only resource is to resign.
Yet I can count on one hand the number of times in the
last 17 years that has happened that I've
been forced into sweat shop mode. The free
market works in this case.
Why wife once had a non-exempt position,
and asked to work 4 ten hour days a week,
instead of 5 eight horu days, and she was
officially denied because the state laws
would require time and half overtime
for the two "extra" hours each day.
Unofficially, she of coruse worked her
4 day a week schedule.
Labor laws can be insane.
Re:This has been going on for 30 years
on
Morals and Layoffs
·
· Score: 1
You seem to be implying that renting is more expensive than borrowing + real estate taxes + house insurance + maintainence, which is hard to believe.
So you believe that all rental property owners take a loss?
Many do take negative cash flow on their
properties in hopes of making it up when
the property appreciates, or when they've
paid off the loans they've secured to buy
the property. There are a few landlords who
have managed to purchase property with
"little or no money down", and hence manage to squeeze
positive cash flow.
However, land lords are in a much more
advantageous situation tax wise than home owners.
The mortage interest tax deduction, the real
estate tax deduction, and the state income tax
deduction are now limited on Schedule B of
the 1040 long form, whereas landlords,
who operate a business, can fully deduct these
costs against the rents they take in. Landlords
also don't have to pay social security and
medicare taxes. Landlords can also deduct
the cost of insurance, of repairing and maintaining their
properties, whereas the homeowner, who
also has these costs cannot. The landlord can even
buy heatlh insurance for himself as an employee
of his corporation, another cost that is
deneid the wage earner, whether he owns his
residence or not.
The landlord can probably deduct his
home office against is home residences expensive
(or simply have his corporation pay him rent
for the office space), whereas the home office
deduction is denied to most wage earners.
The landlord can depreciate the value of the
dwellings he is renting out, whereas the
home owner cannot.
Finally, the landlord who incorporates, pays lower
corporate income taxes than the wage earner's
personal income taxes, whether he rents or not.
Indeed, if you consult a tax accountant, he
might tell you that it makes more sense
to rent out the house you own, than to
occupy it.
So with all these advantages, landlords can
charge rents that are very competitive
with the costs of owning a home.
> Compare the unemployment rates of the U.S. to countries that ban at will policies.
like here [oecd.org]? The US figures are
not bad, but several countries are doing
better.
But not most countries, and not the ones with the bulk of
population. Looking at OECD-Europe, EU-15, and Europe zone
figures from the OECD report, and you see that the USA's
unemployment rates are about half that of Europe as a
whole.
[Sigh, why is it that slashdotters always mod up the left
wing views, which are often base don incomplete
information?]
Looking at the unemployment rates, only Austria, Ireland,
Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal have lower rates
(within the OECD) than the USA. Now see the OECD's
tax statistics".
Looking at the tax rates on married, single earner couples
with 2 kids, we see that of those countries with lower
unemployment than the USA, all but two have lower tax rates than the
USA. [BTW, did you know that the EU has been pressuring
Ireland, with its much lower tax rates than the EU (and the
USA), to "harmonize" its rates?]. Of the two exceptions:
Norway has about the same, taxes, and
the Netherlands, is the lone exception with sky high taxes,
and probably (though I don't know), restrictive labor laws.
So I don't think two exceptions makes my assertion that
countries that discourage "at will" employment arrangements
have higher unemployment rates. There are always
exceptions to rules, and often the exceptions prove
the rules. For example, the Netherlands is home to
several multinational corporations with large
presences in the USA (e.g. Shell Oil, Unilever). Is it
possible, that if the Netherlands has restrictive
labor laws, that they leverage the USAs less
restrictive laws so as to produce most of
the layoffs in the USA? Just theorizing.
Of course this does not consider (1) the
substantial USA prison population, and (2)
Worst case that adds 1% to the unemployment total in the
USA, so you are still comparing 5.5% to about 9% for
Europe. Since many of those people are literate and in for
victimless crimes like drug possession, I suspect they'd be
gainfully employed if we didn't have the stupid war on drugs.
Also, many prison workers do perform labor for the
economy.
the fact that many people that would be honestly
unemployed in Europe, hold low-value jobs like hamburger
flipping in quiet desperation ("working poor").
I've seen ads in fast food joints paying upwards of
$10-$15/hour for hamburger flippers, albeit last year when
the dotcom hype economy was still in fully swing.
Re:This has been going on for 30 years
on
Morals and Layoffs
·
· Score: 1
Isn't better to have unreliable jobs for 95% of the workers, than reliable jobs for 90%?
Not necessarily. I'm currently employed by a company that's planning to cash in on the new-new-economy. Even though I make enough to get a mortgage I'm afraid to take one. Things are so volatile these days that I
no longer want to make any finnancial commitments that go beyond what I can payoff right away in case the sky falls down. Perhaps I'm paranoid but I've seen shit happen to people who bought homes and were
subsequently laid off and lost not only their homes but also all the savings they put in the downpayment.
Now I'm living in a rented apartment making my shady landlord richer while I'm no better off than I was five years ago as most of my savings are consumed by my landlord. This way I'll stay poor for the forseeable future
while my landlord will most likely increase his wealth quite a bit more during this period. It's a vicious circle that many young people such as myself are cought up in.
And having a guaranteed 6 months notice would
convince you to take out a mortgage?
I also don't understand your comment about
most of your savings being consumed by your landlord. Isn't this going to be even more
so if you get a mortgage? You seem to be
implying that renting is more expensive than
borrowing + real estate taxes + house
insurance + maintainence, which is hard to
believe.
Is it better to give your savings to a land lord
or risk them on a down payment on a home
purchase?
Seems to me that you are better off saving
enough month to give you 6 months of
living expenses, and then taking the mortgage
plunge if that's what you really
want.
BTW, in some states, such
as California, your liability for the mortgage
ends at the land and dwelling the mortage is
for. I.e. you don't have to declare personal
bankruptcy if you default.
Re:This has been going on for 30 years
on
Morals and Layoffs
·
· Score: 1
Of course, in the '70;s it was blue collar workers like steel and auto workers.
In the early 90's it was mid level managers.
The 1980s had its share of worker layoffs: AT&T divestiture lead to 100s of the thousands, and airline deregulation (remember Republic, Western, or Ozark airlines?) killed lots of airlines.
If Katz wants companies to give employees several months notice, then isn't fair for employees to provide the same notice when they want to quit? That's called indentured servitude. I don't need the government forcing more crap on me that limits my liberty.
The USA's flexible labor laws (or lack thereof), permit the US economy to more quickly adapt to changes that technology must inevitably apply to society. So through the 1980s and 1990s we've have several extended permits of under 5% unemployment.
Isn't better to have unreliable jobs for 95% of the workers, than reliable jobs for 90%?
Sure it sounds good on paper, but ask yourself, would you REALLY do any work if you were sitting at home all day. Be honest now. I, sure wouldn't. I'd be playing video games all day. You can spout off all you want
about how telecommuting saves time, gas, and cuts pollution, but when it comes down to it, if you don't have a boss breathing down your neck, you're simply not going to be as productive. Plus, there are too many
distractions at home. I'd be to tempted to post to Slashdot, or play video games when I'm supposed to be working. Telecommuting, like unions, promotes laziness among workers.
Why is the above modded up to a 2?
Any self respecting telecommuter (or
a boss of one) knows that
the above is flame bait and/or typicaly
knee jerk reaction from a manager who
honed his skills in 1950. The moderators
seem to be a as clueless as the submitter.
If you are the type who requires a boss
to breath down his neck to be a productive
programmer or other IT worker, then I
think you and your boss deserve each other.
What discipline is your doctorate in any way?
When I attended university, I didn't
have professors breathing down my
neck.. I either performed or failed.
That's how working in job above ditch
digging, or serving burgers should be.
I telecommute to a job 900 miles away.
My productivity motivation is the view of
the Rockies from my home office. Anyone who
is telecommuting to escape hellish
cost of living has all the motivation
necessary: a nicer habitat.
BTW, the best way to convince your boss to
let you do is to become a valuable employee,
the once that gets high ratings during
periodic performance reviews. That the
economy is in the crapper can actually work
to your advantage. As a valuable employee,
your boss is motivated to retain you, but
because of the economy, less able to entice
you financially with raises. If you
are inclined enough (or your company
may have a such a policy), you can
volunteer to accept a lower pay scale
that reflects the presumably lower cost
of IT talent in your target area. This
isn't necessarily no gain for you. Average
salaries in the Silicon Valley for instance,
while higher than say Kansas City, are
not in proportion to the cost of living. I.e.
( SV salary / KC salary ) less than ( SV cost of living / KC cost of living )
The biggest productivity boost
comes from not dealing with the day to day
bull shitting that goes on. When I
return to the head quarters, I'm stunned how
little I get done during the day as people
walk into my cube wasting time with
small talk, office gossip, and then the
stupid all hands meetings to deliver
information that can be done with email.
When I first broached the topic of telecommuting
with my boss, I put her in touch with
several other successful telecommuters to
deal with her fears. After my experience,
she hired another telecommuter in a heart beat.
[Note a slightly different version of this letter was
emailed to Senator Hollings on 2001-09-08]
I was dismayed to find out that Congress is considering the
SSSCA act. This act would make it a crime to create a
personal computer that does not have digital rights
management built in.
As I understand it, the purpose of SSSCA is to prevent the
illegal copying of copyrighted materials. With mandated
digital rights management technology in each computer, the
SSSCA will raise the cost of each computer all because a
subset of PC owners violate copyright laws. This is unfair
to the American consumer. Instead, we already have laws on
the books for enforcing copyright law, and these laws
should be enforced.
I am also concerned about the chilling effect this act will
have on innovation. Effective digital rights management
technology can only work if it is closely held. If the
"blueprints" for such technology are widely known, then it
will be easy to circumvent it, and be of no effect. By
limiting who can license the technology, SSSCA will raise
the bar on who is allowed to invent.
Today, the market for small computers and other digital
devices benefits from the "Open Source" phenomenon.
Entrepreneurs can incorporate technology from Linux,
FreeBSD, GNU, and myriad other free forms of computer
source code into their products without paying license fees
to convicted, and heretofore, unpunished monopolists like
Microsoft. I believe that the effect of SSSCA will be to
outlaw open source and thus force new ventures to pay
exorbitant license fees to an increasingly smaller number
of operating systems vendors (only a few days ago,
Hewlett-Packard and Compaq agreed to a merger, reducing the
number of independent vendors by one). My reasoning is as
follows. Even if the open source is modified to
incorporate digital rights management, it will be very
simple for individuals to remove such technology. Versions
of such software will quickly appear on the global internet
on web servers outside the USA's borders. Therefore, the
most practical way (and even then, I suspect that it would
be no more practical than say the attempts to prohibit
trafficking in alcohol in the early 20th century) to enable
an effective SSSCA would be to ban open source code.
Think of what this would mean: the free exchange of
computer source code, which Judge Patel in San Francisco
has ruled is free speech, would be banned, or strictly
controlled. People who write computer source code would
have to be registered, their actions closely monitored, and
software vendors would similarly have to be controlled or
licensed like liquor establishments. The effect will be
that the art of computer programming will be strictly
regulated much in the same manner that the nuclear power
industry is.
There are excellent safety, national, and international
security reasons for regulating nuclear technology. Do we
really want to infringe on the right of digital expression
just so that motion picture and recording music companies
can have their profits ensured? Where are the life and
death stakes here? The entertainment industries are not
required to use digital formats. No doubt they claim that
unless they can take advantage of digital formats, they
will wither. Yet why should the computer industry be
required to spend resources, and infringe constitutional
rights to ensure the entertainment industry's profits? Why
is an industry, invented about 100 years ago, more
important than computer and digital device industry which
has a much larger impact on the economy than entertainment,
and has higher growth rates? Why, especially during an
economic slow down, with demand for PCs slowing, does it
make sense to make PCs more expensive and less attractive
to consumers?
It may very well be the case that in the digital age, the
entertainment industries will have to adapt their business
models or die. If so, so what? Progress has eliminated
countless industries. For example if there were laws
protecting the live theater industry when motion pictures
were invented, such laws were in vain. So today, more
people go to motion picture houses than live action
theaters. Nonetheless, live theater remains a part of our
culture. Similarly, the advent of the automobile did not
mean that horses, and the industries around them did not
completely die off, otherwise millions of people wouldn't
tune in every spring to watch the Kentucky Derby. Just as
more people got to enjoy performances by the finest actors
in world due to motion picture technology, more people got
to enjoy the convenience of transportation thanks to
automobiles. The cost per performance/viewing decreased
with motion pictures and cost per mile of transportation
decreased thanks to the automobile. Where would the
unfettered digital age leave the entertainment industry? I
cannot predict that no more than my ancestors would have
predicted the marvels and plenty of the 20th and 21st
centuries. I do believe that people will want to listen to
music and watch some form of drama and comedy on some form
of screen or stage, and thus I leave it to the existing
players in the entertainment industry to figure out how to
make money from that demand. If they cannot, then someone
will. This is what competition, free markets, and
capitalism are all about.
Of course, it is possible consumers will rebel if the costs
of professional entertainment rise as a result of
artificial causes like SSSCA. Perhaps they will find other
forms of entertainment. It would not be first time that
entertainment tastes have shifted.
Technological advances will nearly always be economically
detrimental to some industries; this is one of the prices
of progress. But compare the standard of living today in
the United States, with that 100 years, and it is obvious
that society as a whole is better off.
Finally, I should point out that the combination of the
DMCA act with the SSSCA act will inevitably result in weak
digital rights management technology that won't offer real
protection. The DVD copy controls were trivially broken
with the DeCSS code. The SDMI copy controls for digital
music were defeated. The copy controls for electronic books
were defeated. In all cases, rather than result in better
copy controls (and in the case of SDMI, the attacks were an
academic research exercise, which despite DMCA purported
provisions to the contrary, did in fact result in attempts
to squelch public scientific discourse on the subject),
instead the copyright holders took legal action in an
attempt to put the genie back into the bottle. Thus, I
suggest that if you still want to pursue a digital rights
management law, you must also amend DMCA to allow
scientists and engineers to openly research the topic, and
where flaws are found in existing technologies, openly
publish them. Today, the situation is analogous to banning
Consumer Reports from publishing flaws in automobiles.
Imagine a periodical targeted at say musicians that warned
of flaws in the music industry's copy control or digital
right management standards. Shouldn't the ultimate stakes
holders be allowed to know? Instead, the DMCA act forces
the truth to be hidden, and shoddy technology to spread,
instead of allowing the free market, and free speech to
advance progress.
Bring in your laptop with a CD and try to play the CD. Once you show him that it doesn't work, put one in that works and show him that it's not a problem with your cd player. (by the way if you don't have a laptop try to
borrow one from a friend)
Even then that may not work. Best thing is
to always buy CDs from a local (in the same state or
within 100 miles of your home) merchant
with credit card. If the merchant
refuses to refund, then inform your
credit card company of the issue and
to deduct the charge from your next bill.
The credit card company is legally
required to do so if the charge exceeds
$50. If the card company is going to
stand on ceremony with respect to the
$50 floor, you could buy several copies of
same CD in the same purchase. If one works on
your PC, don't unwrap the others, and return them
(making sure that unwrapped CDs are
returnable under your merchants return
policy)
If they all fail, then return them all.
This is better, in that if say Tower Records
finds themselves frequently eating $50 worth of
unsellable (is that a word?) CDs, they'll
soon get the hint and either require cash
for the copy protected CDs (your hint that
to not buy them), provide a warning, or stop
selling them.
Re:eBay is and old idea on new Tech, not so with N
on
eBay Beats DMCA
·
· Score: 1
On the other hand, Napster, P2P, and mp3's are all relatively new technologies that judges don't know the first thing about, and are not comfortable with at all
Untrue, Patel knew precisely what Napster was about, it had no real purpose other than copyright infringement and its creators had no intention of discouraging piracy. No amount of/. sophistry changes that.
I basically agree, but the point is that the
eBay decision
would seem to provide the parameters for
establishing a successful (where
successful is one that achieves the goal of
allowing virtually unlimited sharing) P2P site that that passes DMCA
muster. If the P2P site has
a reactive policy for copyright
enforcement, rather than the proactive
one that Patel is forcing on Napster (which
is technically very difficult, if not
impossible), and makes the policy available
up front to its users, then the P2P site
should be legally protected. This means that
even if the P2P sie responds to every
infreingement complaint, because there are
more users than employees at the P2P site or
the copyright holders, the users will always
be 100 steps ahead.
Thus
record companies are toast;
or at least their business models that charge
more for a title in digital format what they
charge for analog are toast.
If the record companies had
developed a business model that charged
pennies for songs in MP3 format, and
then provided coupon points for each
song purpose good toward a discount on
actual CDs (or some CD-quality format),
they'd be sitting on a pile of cash now.
I think that's the model where we are
headed, but there will be much
needless bloodshed in the form of
record company red ink before we get there.
My question is, if I can get my hands on the solaris 8 source code, can I use the symbols and headers in it to cross-compile a gcc to support the
64-bit symbols and functions I need?
The Solaris 8 source media kit includes the
Sun compiler (binary only) for SPARC or x86,
depending whether you order SPARC or x86 (the
source code has both x86 and SPARC, but the
binaries for the compiler, OS, and other
collateral or either x86 or SPARC, but not both)
I haven't bothered to try the compiler
CD. The paper insert in the package implies
that a separate license is required for
the compiler (Workshop 5.0), but the the license might be free.
this particular $75 program was not very
popular because it only included a small
portion of Solaris (basically just the source
code for a bunch of the userland utilities;
no kernel or device driver code at all).
You are incorrect; the source code includes most of
the SunOS code, incluyding kernel, libraries, and
utilities. My criticism of it is that it included
nothing outside SunOS, i.e. no CDE, OpenWindows,
etc. But at
$75 for the CD (free if you download) it is good value.
Slashdot Mirror
> The fact that people are forced to do things like this to get broadband access is why we need government intervention.
The cause of all this is that the government, in the form of city, county, and state utility regulators, makes it extremely difficult for competing utilities to enter a market.
For example, where I live in Colorado Springs, the city made a deal with two new cable TV (and thus, Internet) providers to allow them to come into city and compete with the entrench Adelphia cable company. However, even thouhg it was put to a city wide vote, the city insisted that each new provider provide city-wide access. In other words, it was not permissable to start out in one neighborhood and uild up, the way virtually every free enterprise starts out (small). So one cable company said, forget it, and another is on the verge of bankrupticy. Meanwhile, Adelphia has hiked its basic cable rates again.
Yes gov't intervention is needed, in the form of federal gov't intervention to completely remove the power of states and municipalities to prevent telecommunications competition.
It is the fault of federal gov't that Ma Bell ---> USWEST ---> QWEST has a monopoly to begin with. It is the fault of the Colorado state gov't and it's municipalities that the monopoly persists.
> Heck, I wrote a paper [time-travellers.org] about it. It's a bit old, and doesn't cover NFSv4.
Old? It's ancient. Virtually every point
you have in your little paper is nonsense,
at least when it comes to commericial grade
NFS implementations.
Here's what I remember from Zubrin's "Case for Mars". I recommend reading it ... it's fun
reading.
Mars is the most easily colonized extra-terrestial rock in the Solar System.. If we can't do it there, then we probably can't do it anywhere.
Another issue is that we will eventually, 100s of years perhaps, dilute the mineral wealth on Earth to the point where it becomes cost effective to mine certain, but necessary, substances from asteroids rather than recycling them from the Earth.
It's easy to send stuff from the asteroids to Earth, but due to Earth's powerful gravity well, it is bloody expensive to get ships, equiopment, and workers to the asteroids. Tito paid what, $20M for a joy ride to orbit?
Thus, we need Mars. The Moon has an even gentler gravity well, but it will be harder to develop a self-sustaining colony there since it has far less oxygen, water, etc (Mars has lots of oxygen locked up in CO2). Also, I beleive Zubrin worked it out that it is actually cheaper or similar in cost to get stuff (not people) from the Earth to Mars than to the Moon, and also cheaper to get people and stuff from Marse to the asteroids.
Zubrin envisions a tri-lateral interplanetary economy:
Earth supplies certain finished goods to Mars.
Mars provides supplies to the asteroid mines.
The asteroids provide minerals to the Earth.
I beleive Zubrin also made the case that fusion is inevitable due to the increasing energy appetite of the Earth. The developed part of the Earth is gobbling watts faster that its population is growing. The developing world is gobbling even faster. Fossil fuels and solar energy won't do it, and Zubrin makes some technical arguments why solar mirrors and microwave beaming from orbital solar energy stations won't be practical.
I beleive Zubrin said that Mars's deuterium is relatively more plentiful than on Earth or the Moon, so Mars will be the supplier of choice for fusion fuel.
Zubrin makes an analogy between the Old World and New World. Once the European powers started to exploit the New World, they found that they could do without it. The New World provided technology and materials and wealth that raised the standard of living in Europse, so that even after the colonies gain independence, Europe still needed (and still does) the New World.
So in a sense, Mars exploration/colonization becomes a self full filling prophecy.
Alternatively, every couple on Earth can be limited to one child to reduce population as per-capita energy and resource needs go up. Fat chance.
There's big difference between the safety of workers, and giving employers and employees sufficient notice of termination don't you think?
Don't you also think that customers and suppliers also deserve as much protection as employees when it comes to saftey in business establishment? I do, and so others, which is why the topic safety issues you bring up are covered by the Fire Department and other agencies with the power to shut a factory, office, diner, store, etc. down.
There are lots of reasons why an employee might need to leave without notice. Rather than waste energy trying to codify the exceptions (and of course, give the employer no exceptions right?), isn't better to keep it, fair and simple and allow each party to give zero notice?
If the relationship has been cordial, 9 times out of 10, two weeks notice will be given by either side as a matter of courtesy. Legislating for the exceptions seems like a pointless intrusion on the private affairs of labor and commerce.
There are reasons why Canadian firms like Nortel, Toronto Dominion, Royal Bak, Canadian Pacific, etc. have large and growing presences in the USA.
My relatives in Canada are shocked when I tell them that as an "exempt" employee (exempt from being paid overtime for more than 40 hours/week or working holdidays), that my employer has the right to make me work any day, more than 40 hours, weekends, evenings, etc, and my only resource is to resign.
Yet I can count on one hand the number of times in the last 17 years that has happened that I've been forced into sweat shop mode. The free market works in this case.
Why wife once had a non-exempt position, and asked to work 4 ten hour days a week, instead of 5 eight horu days, and she was officially denied because the state laws would require time and half overtime for the two "extra" hours each day. Unofficially, she of coruse worked her 4 day a week schedule.
Labor laws can be insane.
However, land lords are in a much more advantageous situation tax wise than home owners. The mortage interest tax deduction, the real estate tax deduction, and the state income tax deduction are now limited on Schedule B of the 1040 long form, whereas landlords, who operate a business, can fully deduct these costs against the rents they take in. Landlords also don't have to pay social security and medicare taxes. Landlords can also deduct the cost of insurance, of repairing and maintaining their properties, whereas the homeowner, who also has these costs cannot. The landlord can even buy heatlh insurance for himself as an employee of his corporation, another cost that is deneid the wage earner, whether he owns his residence or not. The landlord can probably deduct his home office against is home residences expensive (or simply have his corporation pay him rent for the office space), whereas the home office deduction is denied to most wage earners.
The landlord can depreciate the value of the dwellings he is renting out, whereas the home owner cannot.
Finally, the landlord who incorporates, pays lower corporate income taxes than the wage earner's personal income taxes, whether he rents or not.
Indeed, if you consult a tax accountant, he might tell you that it makes more sense to rent out the house you own, than to occupy it.
So with all these advantages, landlords can charge rents that are very competitive with the costs of owning a home.
[Sigh, why is it that slashdotters always mod up the left wing views, which are often base don incomplete information?]
Looking at the unemployment rates, only Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal have lower rates (within the OECD) than the USA. Now see the OECD's tax statistics".
Looking at the tax rates on married, single earner couples with 2 kids, we see that of those countries with lower unemployment than the USA, all but two have lower tax rates than the USA. [BTW, did you know that the EU has been pressuring Ireland, with its much lower tax rates than the EU (and the USA), to "harmonize" its rates?]. Of the two exceptions: Norway has about the same, taxes, and the Netherlands, is the lone exception with sky high taxes, and probably (though I don't know), restrictive labor laws.
So I don't think two exceptions makes my assertion that countries that discourage "at will" employment arrangements have higher unemployment rates. There are always exceptions to rules, and often the exceptions prove the rules. For example, the Netherlands is home to several multinational corporations with large presences in the USA (e.g. Shell Oil, Unilever). Is it possible, that if the Netherlands has restrictive labor laws, that they leverage the USAs less restrictive laws so as to produce most of the layoffs in the USA? Just theorizing.
Worst case that adds 1% to the unemployment total in the USA, so you are still comparing 5.5% to about 9% for Europe. Since many of those people are literate and in for victimless crimes like drug possession, I suspect they'd be gainfully employed if we didn't have the stupid war on drugs. Also, many prison workers do perform labor for the economy. I've seen ads in fast food joints paying upwards of $10-$15/hour for hamburger flippers, albeit last year when the dotcom hype economy was still in fully swing.And having a guaranteed 6 months notice would convince you to take out a mortgage?
I also don't understand your comment about most of your savings being consumed by your landlord. Isn't this going to be even more so if you get a mortgage? You seem to be implying that renting is more expensive than borrowing + real estate taxes + house insurance + maintainence, which is hard to believe.
Is it better to give your savings to a land lord or risk them on a down payment on a home purchase?
Seems to me that you are better off saving enough month to give you 6 months of living expenses, and then taking the mortgage plunge if that's what you really want.
BTW, in some states, such as California, your liability for the mortgage ends at the land and dwelling the mortage is for. I.e. you don't have to declare personal bankruptcy if you default.
The 1980s had its share of worker layoffs: AT&T divestiture lead to 100s of the thousands, and airline deregulation (remember Republic, Western, or Ozark airlines?) killed lots of airlines.
If Katz wants companies to give employees several months notice, then isn't fair for employees to provide the same notice when they want to quit? That's called indentured servitude. I don't need the government forcing more crap on me that limits my liberty.
The USA's flexible labor laws (or lack thereof), permit the US economy to more quickly adapt to changes that technology must inevitably apply to society. So through the 1980s and 1990s we've have several extended permits of under 5% unemployment.
Isn't better to have unreliable jobs for 95% of the workers, than reliable jobs for 90%?
> For the life of me, I can't understand the rationale of the 'at will' agreement, and how it has managed to stand for so long.
Compare the unemployment rates of the U.S. to countries that ban at will policies.
Why is the above modded up to a 2? Any self respecting telecommuter (or a boss of one) knows that the above is flame bait and/or typicaly knee jerk reaction from a manager who honed his skills in 1950. The moderators seem to be a as clueless as the submitter.
If you are the type who requires a boss to breath down his neck to be a productive programmer or other IT worker, then I think you and your boss deserve each other. What discipline is your doctorate in any way? When I attended university, I didn't have professors breathing down my neck .. I either performed or failed.
That's how working in job above ditch
digging, or serving burgers should be.
I telecommute to a job 900 miles away. My productivity motivation is the view of the Rockies from my home office. Anyone who is telecommuting to escape hellish cost of living has all the motivation necessary: a nicer habitat.
BTW, the best way to convince your boss to let you do is to become a valuable employee, the once that gets high ratings during periodic performance reviews. That the economy is in the crapper can actually work to your advantage. As a valuable employee, your boss is motivated to retain you, but because of the economy, less able to entice you financially with raises. If you are inclined enough (or your company may have a such a policy), you can volunteer to accept a lower pay scale that reflects the presumably lower cost of IT talent in your target area. This isn't necessarily no gain for you. Average salaries in the Silicon Valley for instance, while higher than say Kansas City, are not in proportion to the cost of living. I.e.
The biggest productivity boost comes from not dealing with the day to day bull shitting that goes on. When I return to the head quarters, I'm stunned how little I get done during the day as people walk into my cube wasting time with small talk, office gossip, and then the stupid all hands meetings to deliver information that can be done with email.
When I first broached the topic of telecommuting with my boss, I put her in touch with several other successful telecommuters to deal with her fears. After my experience, she hired another telecommuter in a heart beat.
[Note a slightly different version of this letter was
emailed to Senator Hollings on 2001-09-08]
I was dismayed to find out that Congress is considering the
SSSCA act. This act would make it a crime to create a
personal computer that does not have digital rights
management built in.
As I understand it, the purpose of SSSCA is to prevent the
illegal copying of copyrighted materials. With mandated
digital rights management technology in each computer, the
SSSCA will raise the cost of each computer all because a
subset of PC owners violate copyright laws. This is unfair
to the American consumer. Instead, we already have laws on
the books for enforcing copyright law, and these laws
should be enforced.
I am also concerned about the chilling effect this act will
have on innovation. Effective digital rights management
technology can only work if it is closely held. If the
"blueprints" for such technology are widely known, then it
will be easy to circumvent it, and be of no effect. By
limiting who can license the technology, SSSCA will raise
the bar on who is allowed to invent.
Today, the market for small computers and other digital
devices benefits from the "Open Source" phenomenon.
Entrepreneurs can incorporate technology from Linux,
FreeBSD, GNU, and myriad other free forms of computer
source code into their products without paying license fees
to convicted, and heretofore, unpunished monopolists like
Microsoft. I believe that the effect of SSSCA will be to
outlaw open source and thus force new ventures to pay
exorbitant license fees to an increasingly smaller number
of operating systems vendors (only a few days ago,
Hewlett-Packard and Compaq agreed to a merger, reducing the
number of independent vendors by one). My reasoning is as
follows. Even if the open source is modified to
incorporate digital rights management, it will be very
simple for individuals to remove such technology. Versions
of such software will quickly appear on the global internet
on web servers outside the USA's borders. Therefore, the
most practical way (and even then, I suspect that it would
be no more practical than say the attempts to prohibit
trafficking in alcohol in the early 20th century) to enable
an effective SSSCA would be to ban open source code.
Think of what this would mean: the free exchange of
computer source code, which Judge Patel in San Francisco
has ruled is free speech, would be banned, or strictly
controlled. People who write computer source code would
have to be registered, their actions closely monitored, and
software vendors would similarly have to be controlled or
licensed like liquor establishments. The effect will be
that the art of computer programming will be strictly
regulated much in the same manner that the nuclear power
industry is.
There are excellent safety, national, and international
security reasons for regulating nuclear technology. Do we
really want to infringe on the right of digital expression
just so that motion picture and recording music companies
can have their profits ensured? Where are the life and
death stakes here? The entertainment industries are not
required to use digital formats. No doubt they claim that
unless they can take advantage of digital formats, they
will wither. Yet why should the computer industry be
required to spend resources, and infringe constitutional
rights to ensure the entertainment industry's profits? Why
is an industry, invented about 100 years ago, more
important than computer and digital device industry which
has a much larger impact on the economy than entertainment,
and has higher growth rates? Why, especially during an
economic slow down, with demand for PCs slowing, does it
make sense to make PCs more expensive and less attractive
to consumers?
It may very well be the case that in the digital age, the
entertainment industries will have to adapt their business
models or die. If so, so what? Progress has eliminated
countless industries. For example if there were laws
protecting the live theater industry when motion pictures
were invented, such laws were in vain. So today, more
people go to motion picture houses than live action
theaters. Nonetheless, live theater remains a part of our
culture. Similarly, the advent of the automobile did not
mean that horses, and the industries around them did not
completely die off, otherwise millions of people wouldn't
tune in every spring to watch the Kentucky Derby. Just as
more people got to enjoy performances by the finest actors
in world due to motion picture technology, more people got
to enjoy the convenience of transportation thanks to
automobiles. The cost per performance/viewing decreased
with motion pictures and cost per mile of transportation
decreased thanks to the automobile. Where would the
unfettered digital age leave the entertainment industry? I
cannot predict that no more than my ancestors would have
predicted the marvels and plenty of the 20th and 21st
centuries. I do believe that people will want to listen to
music and watch some form of drama and comedy on some form
of screen or stage, and thus I leave it to the existing
players in the entertainment industry to figure out how to
make money from that demand. If they cannot, then someone
will. This is what competition, free markets, and
capitalism are all about.
Of course, it is possible consumers will rebel if the costs
of professional entertainment rise as a result of
artificial causes like SSSCA. Perhaps they will find other
forms of entertainment. It would not be first time that
entertainment tastes have shifted.
Technological advances will nearly always be economically
detrimental to some industries; this is one of the prices
of progress. But compare the standard of living today in
the United States, with that 100 years, and it is obvious
that society as a whole is better off.
Finally, I should point out that the combination of the
DMCA act with the SSSCA act will inevitably result in weak
digital rights management technology that won't offer real
protection. The DVD copy controls were trivially broken
with the DeCSS code. The SDMI copy controls for digital
music were defeated. The copy controls for electronic books
were defeated. In all cases, rather than result in better
copy controls (and in the case of SDMI, the attacks were an
academic research exercise, which despite DMCA purported
provisions to the contrary, did in fact result in attempts
to squelch public scientific discourse on the subject),
instead the copyright holders took legal action in an
attempt to put the genie back into the bottle. Thus, I
suggest that if you still want to pursue a digital rights
management law, you must also amend DMCA to allow
scientists and engineers to openly research the topic, and
where flaws are found in existing technologies, openly
publish them. Today, the situation is analogous to banning
Consumer Reports from publishing flaws in automobiles.
Imagine a periodical targeted at say musicians that warned
of flaws in the music industry's copy control or digital
right management standards. Shouldn't the ultimate stakes
holders be allowed to know? Instead, the DMCA act forces
the truth to be hidden, and shoddy technology to spread,
instead of allowing the free market, and free speech to
advance progress.
Even then that may not work. Best thing is to always buy CDs from a local (in the same state or within 100 miles of your home) merchant with credit card. If the merchant refuses to refund, then inform your credit card company of the issue and to deduct the charge from your next bill. The credit card company is legally required to do so if the charge exceeds $50. If the card company is going to stand on ceremony with respect to the $50 floor, you could buy several copies of same CD in the same purchase. If one works on your PC, don't unwrap the others, and return them (making sure that unwrapped CDs are returnable under your merchants return policy)
If they all fail, then return them all. This is better, in that if say Tower Records finds themselves frequently eating $50 worth of unsellable (is that a word?) CDs, they'll soon get the hint and either require cash for the copy protected CDs (your hint that to not buy them), provide a warning, or stop selling them.
I basically agree, but the point is that the eBay decision would seem to provide the parameters for establishing a successful (where successful is one that achieves the goal of allowing virtually unlimited sharing) P2P site that that passes DMCA muster. If the P2P site has a reactive policy for copyright enforcement, rather than the proactive one that Patel is forcing on Napster (which is technically very difficult, if not impossible), and makes the policy available up front to its users, then the P2P site should be legally protected. This means that even if the P2P sie responds to every infreingement complaint, because there are more users than employees at the P2P site or the copyright holders, the users will always be 100 steps ahead.
Thus record companies are toast; or at least their business models that charge more for a title in digital format what they charge for analog are toast.
If the record companies had developed a business model that charged pennies for songs in MP3 format, and then provided coupon points for each song purpose good toward a discount on actual CDs (or some CD-quality format), they'd be sitting on a pile of cash now. I think that's the model where we are headed, but there will be much needless bloodshed in the form of record company red ink before we get there.
> Maybe some melding of ssh and nfs? you can get commercial pc/nfs clients that use crpto for authentication and privacy. hummingbird for example.