We're about halfway down that list. But it seems spot-on.
You can certainly get prototype parts made on high-end machines from a variety of workshops. 3D-printing for hire is happening right now to make engineering prototypes for a variety of reasons. I've been given prototype housings for electrical actuators so that I could develop firmware. (The electronics were still conventional board fabrications.) It was simply limited in power output, but it could get me through most of the development without waiting for the final metal parts.
So this isn't exactly the local Staples store; that is the big question if that market for consumers will arrive. Will consumers wait for specialized items to be rendered, vs. buying something already in stock? Not everything can or should be 3D-printed. But eventually, there will be some killer apps. It would have to be something that is scarce or customized, and for some reason not worth shipping from a remote fabrication facility. It would resemble the business model for film development. In the old days, you mailed your roll of film to Kodak. Then the local development labs, and finally the 1-Hour photo shops arrived. Now people do the whole process at home digitally.
According to that link, Russia's gun laws are much stricter than most states in the USA, except maybe New York. Only some US states have magazine limits or universal background checks. And no state is tracking the number of (unrestricted) long guns owned in order to impose a limit.
Correction: there do not appear to be published numbers for gun homicide rate in Russia, just total homicide rate in Russia (which is still higher than USA total homicide rate.)
"The US is tops of the list of gun violence for any country with a stable government." Yes, we all have heard this statistic. Basically, it is cherry-picking by various ambiguous qualifiers: "stable", "developed", etc. Usually these are just keywords for "..as compared primarily to the UK, Western Europe, and Canada.."
Russia and Mexico both have stable governments. They also have strict gun control (at least according to the written laws.) Guess what, both have a much higher gun homicide rate compared to the USA.
Don't get me wrong, the homicide rate in the USA is embarrassingly high. There are many honest discussions to be had. But for now, both sides continue to dig in and not look for any real solutions that would fit with the culture and political setting of the USA.
The zero-tolerance stance used in school administration is the bigger concern. It deadens the entire concept of teaching common sense in kids, and enforces robotic black and white thinking if it disagrees with the ideologues in charge of the school. IMHO the exact opposite reason we send our kids to school.
Whatever happened to "hey billy, this isn't the right place for playing cops and robbers on the school playground, please save that for when you go home." Instead kids are suspended for minor mistakes which presented no actual danger.
I want to look up the list of countries who are worse off in terms of gun violence, can you post a link?
That's another arm of the anti-gun agenda: make it a 'health' issue (because that presumes a zero-tolerance for acceptable risk.) It should be an evaluation of risk issue just like owning a swimming-pool, trampoline, or automobile. Honestly, I would prefer getting the anti-gun lecture from my life insurance agent since he is trained to make those evaluations of risk.
I completely agree that leaving kids ignorant will not help. Hollywood teaches kids every incorrect way to handle a weapon as long as it looks cool. And people don't die as long as they are needed in the sequel.
So true. There is essentially no such thing as "true capitalism." Socialism, communism, capitalism, etc. all depend on a government to enforce them. The case of capitalism or "free market", is especially an antithesis. In other words, they only exist because of governmental framework creates environment: property, contracts, copyrights, central banking, roadways, educated workforce, etc.
Dye your hair to look younger, get some type of product to cover the crow's feet. But don't fake your resume or dodge when you went to school. That is pretty much a deal-breaker if it looks like you are being less than forthcoming with your past. Age on paper looks okay, maybe? Age in the visual sense will play into the interviewer's subconscious bias.
Depends on the industry. Latest flavor of the day apps or websites; sure, young and hip is great. The guy that maintains the code used in critical systems...
Exactly, I laughed (out loud) when I read the summary. Why bother wasting the typesetting on the word 'foreign'? Given the revelations to date, let's just assume that everything including recordings of domestic calls going back to 1956 exist someplace. If the feds want our trust back, they need to earn it through transparency.
I would take up the challenge to this economist's theory that 'contribution == pay' like this:
Economists rely on the idea that markets have perfect information. But it is sort of an asymptote/limit that the economists assume reality would converge upon in theory.
However, some people (or entire industries) make _alot_ more money than they are worth. Why? Because they have better information about the market, they were able to take advantage of information, timing, or ignorance of others, etc. With a doctor, or lawyer, their performance is transparent and measurable: education, state license, records of cases, patient outcomes, etc.
With a CEO, it is much more of a 'buyer beware' environment. You probably don't have access to private records that could verify their value (contribution to society.) Why do CEOs negotiate highly favorable terms of their departure (golden parachute) before they even begin work? Clearly there are factors at play that are likely to be some type of circular justification of their worth. Most other people state their qualifications when seeking employment, they are usually hired with the expectation of performing to that level indefinitely with no extraordinary terms of separation.
Unrelated to the perfect information argument is just good old fashioned control of supply. i.e. why does a union worker make more money than a non-union employee doing the same work? Nothing against union workers, I commend your initiative. Economic forces are at play that do _not_ correlate societal contribution to pay.
So I think the 'contribution to society' correlating to pay is a circular argument, it may be true in general but it can also be a justification for unapologetic greed when it fails to actually correlate.
But I'll bet the people who took the shortcuts (leaving you this mess) were recognized for 'efficiency' while you get looked down upon for 'taking inordinate time' or 'thinking too much.'
Agreed, see my other responses. Didn't mean to be so generalized. But the point is the same about the extremes in the debate.
The eminent domain issue is generally avoided so long as people can sell their gear out-of-state (assuming you are talking about a state law.) NY SAFE act is an example. The Democrat majority in NYS passed this, but they are not so holy for doing this. They didn't collect the banned items, they just encourage people to modify or sell to other places. It essentially _is_ eminent domain where just compensation is provided by selling out of state or to a dealer. Obviously that is not a solution once there are no other jurisdictions to sell stuff to. And that does not take into account transaction costs, flooding the market when the law takes effect, etc. So in reality, people are taking real losses when they are forced to sell banned hardware or pay for modifications. But there isn't enough that any one person can contest by legal means easily.
I totally agree on the authoritarian thing. If you hang your hat on tolerance, be ready to tolerate things you don't like. I'm generally very tolerant and bite my tongue often.
The problem with the changes you suggest is always a matter of enforcement: the costs, checking individuals for compliance within the confines of civil rights, could the police be spending their time catching dangerous people instead... I see the real problem as the street crimes that involve weapons trafficking and violation of existing gun laws on a _daily_ basis.
I agree it is tragic when a kid finds an unsecured and loaded gun, same goes for trampolines, swimming pools, boxes of matches. Adult people need to be aware of their responsibilities. I honestly don't know how you will really fix that.
True enough; politics is all about telling half the truth, making strawman badguy arguments, etc. But I was paraphrasing actual people I know personally. i.e. co-workers, family, teachers I've had. Certainly not trying to generalize. The point is, moderate viewpoints become suspect when either side of the fence knows how extreme (some) of the other can be.
I agree, but I think 'gun nutjob' applies to both ends of the spectrum. A majority of Americans believe in the right to own _some_ guns. I assume you are pointing out the right-end of the spectrum. But among the left end, there is a double-speak that is equally counter-productive. Conservatives are aware of this, but most centrists don't realize it. i.e. News headlines and quotes from the left state things like "Common sense" gun laws. But conversations among liberals or progressives are decidedly 100% anti-gun. "Gather them all up and throw them away" This is part of the reason that seemingly reasonable people dig in their heels on any proposed gun laws.
I like to write my password on my active-id key fob (which, in turn, has it's pin number written on itself), and I hang the whole assemblage from my monitor. Screw the sysadmin's rules. Sysadmins just annoy me by pushing 'security updates' on my machine and reboot WHILE I'M WORKING at my computer.:p
But seriously, people have logins for about 2 dozen other websites, bank accounts, locker combinations, alarm system codes, birth-dates to remember, anniversaries... They aren't idiots, they just don't have much room left after trying to live their lives and still be good at their jobs.
I agree. If a job candidate doesn't like the questions, I would expect them to react in a way that I could tolerate if I had to work with them. It is actually a good thing to pull a Kobayashi Maru in most cases as long as it seems like something that would be feasible. It is okay in the real-world to have a critical opinion as long as it is polite and constructive in the long-run.
I've been on the asking side of these questions several times now. (Not questions quite as silly as the examples in the article, but nonetheless...) HR said "pick 4 questions from this book and score according to this answer key." Obviously, the whole thing is highly subjective and the scoring is more about how a person reacts. Some of the questions are way too vague to be useful, but usually they allow you to gauge the behavior of a person. You basically want to find out how a person handles typical adverse situations that arise in a work environment. i.e. professional disagreements, impossible goals, annoying customers, etc. I've seen many different reactions. It's okay if a person declines to answer maybe 1 out of the 4, but in some cases, people have claimed they never had an adverse situation. Not a good answer. Most people just try to answer the questions in a bland way with the 'expected' answer. So I need to hear something that tells me a person really cares, either by re-engineering the question, or having a really specific answer that would be hard to fabricate on the spot.
So you can be critical of these questions, but consider being in the shoes of an employer. You try writing questions for an interview that are not too vague, and can cut through peoples' BS'ing.
That closed-source company may _want_ to stand on their reputation. But they can be ordered to backdoor the software against their will and in secrecy. This is no longer a hypothetical argument, and it _is_ harming the reputation of businesses.
This is a great time for competitors of US tech companies.
I agree with the AC, the NSA snooping is fundamentally different (in the negative direction.)
The justification for Iraq was flimsy. Our healthcare system is what it is, and economic bubbles have been problematic. But these are just big fuzzy issues with many competing players. Basic human conflict.
Civilized society is fundamentally based at some point on a basic level of trust and openness. The USA is founded on the ability of the people to supervise and object to the actions of the governing people and agencies. Keeping the NSA snooping as a secret has violated a basic contract of trust that the people bestow upon individuals who operate the government.
How can the American people oversee the activities of big agencies if such agencies can lie to, conceal from, and even intimidate the people?
The NSA has been caught in one lie after another as new documents are revealed. People and corporations have been forced into silence.
I understand that confidentiality must exist when pursuing suspects, but that is completely different.
Why the secrecy? Was it really about tipping off the subjects of investigations, or was it simply knowing this behavior was unjust and thus had to be kept out of the light of scrutiny? This is what children do when they know their parents will say 'no.'
We cannot have a functional society if these basic tenets of civility are violated as a matter of routine.
1) make law to ban guns 2) average upstanding citizens obey and turns in guns 3) ???? 4) no guns on the streets in the hands of violent people
Responsible gun owners want to see step 4. The dialog is so broken in the USA between the pro-gun and anti-gun crowds that it is hard to see how this can be achieved.
The Colt AR-15 as it is generally known is basically the civilian version of the M16. This means semi-auto only, not fully automatic or burst mode. By exact definition, "assault rifles" are fully automatic rifles such as the M16, which are generally not obtainable by most US citizens. Therefore, not an assault rifle.
Furthermore, the "AR-15" by name is typically banned in state-level "assault weapons" bans, including Connecticut. However, many different manufacturers make similar rifles often with interchangeable parts. Since these are sold under different model names, they are not explicitly covered in these bans. The shooter in this case had an XM-15 made by Bushmaster, which actually is more like the military M4 rifle. http://www.jud.ct.gov/JI/criminal/glossary/assaultweapon.htm
On the highway, I especially don't need that tailgating idiot to zoom around on my right instead of just waiting for me to safely return to the the middle or right lane. Does he understand the counter productivity of that, or just not care? I promise I'm smart enough to not hog up the passing lane. This happens a lot when I'm in an interchange lane that merges from the left. I would love to get out of the left lane but I'm blocked by people passing on the right at 20MPH over the limit.
If I'm driving at the speed limit and someone tailgates me on a surface street, I just slow down more. I make up for his lack of judgement in stopping distance.
Slashdot Mirror
We're about halfway down that list. But it seems spot-on.
You can certainly get prototype parts made on high-end machines from a variety of workshops. 3D-printing for hire is happening right now to make engineering prototypes for a variety of reasons. I've been given prototype housings for electrical actuators so that I could develop firmware. (The electronics were still conventional board fabrications.) It was simply limited in power output, but it could get me through most of the development without waiting for the final metal parts.
So this isn't exactly the local Staples store; that is the big question if that market for consumers will arrive. Will consumers wait for specialized items to be rendered, vs. buying something already in stock? Not everything can or should be 3D-printed. But eventually, there will be some killer apps. It would have to be something that is scarce or customized, and for some reason not worth shipping from a remote fabrication facility. It would resemble the business model for film development. In the old days, you mailed your roll of film to Kodak. Then the local development labs, and finally the 1-Hour photo shops arrived. Now people do the whole process at home digitally.
According to that link, Russia's gun laws are much stricter than most states in the USA, except maybe New York. Only some US states have magazine limits or universal background checks. And no state is tracking the number of (unrestricted) long guns owned in order to impose a limit.
Correction: there do not appear to be published numbers for gun homicide rate in Russia, just total homicide rate in Russia (which is still higher than USA total homicide rate.)
"The US is tops of the list of gun violence for any country with a stable government."
Yes, we all have heard this statistic. Basically, it is cherry-picking by various ambiguous qualifiers: "stable", "developed", etc. Usually these are just keywords for "..as compared primarily to the UK, Western Europe, and Canada.."
Russia and Mexico both have stable governments. They also have strict gun control (at least according to the written laws.) Guess what, both have a much higher gun homicide rate compared to the USA.
Don't get me wrong, the homicide rate in the USA is embarrassingly high. There are many honest discussions to be had. But for now, both sides continue to dig in and not look for any real solutions that would fit with the culture and political setting of the USA.
The zero-tolerance stance used in school administration is the bigger concern. It deadens the entire concept of teaching common sense in kids, and enforces robotic black and white thinking if it disagrees with the ideologues in charge of the school. IMHO the exact opposite reason we send our kids to school.
Whatever happened to "hey billy, this isn't the right place for playing cops and robbers on the school playground, please save that for when you go home." Instead kids are suspended for minor mistakes which presented no actual danger.
I want to look up the list of countries who are worse off in terms of gun violence, can you post a link?
That's another arm of the anti-gun agenda: make it a 'health' issue (because that presumes a zero-tolerance for acceptable risk.) It should be an evaluation of risk issue just like owning a swimming-pool, trampoline, or automobile. Honestly, I would prefer getting the anti-gun lecture from my life insurance agent since he is trained to make those evaluations of risk.
I completely agree that leaving kids ignorant will not help. Hollywood teaches kids every incorrect way to handle a weapon as long as it looks cool. And people don't die as long as they are needed in the sequel.
So true. There is essentially no such thing as "true capitalism." Socialism, communism, capitalism, etc. all depend on a government to enforce them. The case of capitalism or "free market", is especially an antithesis. In other words, they only exist because of governmental framework creates environment: property, contracts, copyrights, central banking, roadways, educated workforce, etc.
Who's property is the cable residing on: power company poles, roadside easements, individual agreements with every house on the street?
Dye your hair to look younger, get some type of product to cover the crow's feet. But don't fake your resume or dodge when you went to school. That is pretty much a deal-breaker if it looks like you are being less than forthcoming with your past. Age on paper looks okay, maybe? Age in the visual sense will play into the interviewer's subconscious bias.
Depends on the industry. Latest flavor of the day apps or websites; sure, young and hip is great. The guy that maintains the code used in critical systems...
Exactly, I laughed (out loud) when I read the summary. Why bother wasting the typesetting on the word 'foreign'? Given the revelations to date, let's just assume that everything including recordings of domestic calls going back to 1956 exist someplace. If the feds want our trust back, they need to earn it through transparency.
I would take up the challenge to this economist's theory that 'contribution == pay' like this:
Economists rely on the idea that markets have perfect information. But it is sort of an asymptote/limit that the economists assume reality would converge upon in theory.
However, some people (or entire industries) make _alot_ more money than they are worth. Why? Because they have better information about the market, they were able to take advantage of information, timing, or ignorance of others, etc. With a doctor, or lawyer, their performance is transparent and measurable: education, state license, records of cases, patient outcomes, etc.
With a CEO, it is much more of a 'buyer beware' environment. You probably don't have access to private records that could verify their value (contribution to society.) Why do CEOs negotiate highly favorable terms of their departure (golden parachute) before they even begin work? Clearly there are factors at play that are likely to be some type of circular justification of their worth. Most other people state their qualifications when seeking employment, they are usually hired with the expectation of performing to that level indefinitely with no extraordinary terms of separation.
Unrelated to the perfect information argument is just good old fashioned control of supply. i.e. why does a union worker make more money than a non-union employee doing the same work? Nothing against union workers, I commend your initiative. Economic forces are at play that do _not_ correlate societal contribution to pay.
So I think the 'contribution to society' correlating to pay is a circular argument, it may be true in general but it can also be a justification for unapologetic greed when it fails to actually correlate.
That's me.
But I'll bet the people who took the shortcuts (leaving you this mess) were recognized for 'efficiency' while you get looked down upon for 'taking inordinate time' or 'thinking too much.'
Agreed, see my other responses. Didn't mean to be so generalized. But the point is the same about the extremes in the debate.
The eminent domain issue is generally avoided so long as people can sell their gear out-of-state (assuming you are talking about a state law.) NY SAFE act is an example. The Democrat majority in NYS passed this, but they are not so holy for doing this. They didn't collect the banned items, they just encourage people to modify or sell to other places. It essentially _is_ eminent domain where just compensation is provided by selling out of state or to a dealer. Obviously that is not a solution once there are no other jurisdictions to sell stuff to. And that does not take into account transaction costs, flooding the market when the law takes effect, etc. So in reality, people are taking real losses when they are forced to sell banned hardware or pay for modifications. But there isn't enough that any one person can contest by legal means easily.
I totally agree on the authoritarian thing. If you hang your hat on tolerance, be ready to tolerate things you don't like. I'm generally very tolerant and bite my tongue often.
The problem with the changes you suggest is always a matter of enforcement: the costs, checking individuals for compliance within the confines of civil rights, could the police be spending their time catching dangerous people instead... I see the real problem as the street crimes that involve weapons trafficking and violation of existing gun laws on a _daily_ basis.
I agree it is tragic when a kid finds an unsecured and loaded gun, same goes for trampolines, swimming pools, boxes of matches. Adult people need to be aware of their responsibilities. I honestly don't know how you will really fix that.
You are correct. I meant to say "But [some] conversations among liberals or progressives [that I have personally witnessed] are 100% anti-gun..."
True enough; politics is all about telling half the truth, making strawman badguy arguments, etc. But I was paraphrasing actual people I know personally. i.e. co-workers, family, teachers I've had. Certainly not trying to generalize. The point is, moderate viewpoints become suspect when either side of the fence knows how extreme (some) of the other can be.
I agree, but I think 'gun nutjob' applies to both ends of the spectrum. A majority of Americans believe in the right to own _some_ guns. I assume you are pointing out the right-end of the spectrum. But among the left end, there is a double-speak that is equally counter-productive. Conservatives are aware of this, but most centrists don't realize it. i.e. News headlines and quotes from the left state things like "Common sense" gun laws. But conversations among liberals or progressives are decidedly 100% anti-gun. "Gather them all up and throw them away" This is part of the reason that seemingly reasonable people dig in their heels on any proposed gun laws.
I like to write my password on my active-id key fob (which, in turn, has it's pin number written on itself), and I hang the whole assemblage from my monitor. Screw the sysadmin's rules. Sysadmins just annoy me by pushing 'security updates' on my machine and reboot WHILE I'M WORKING at my computer. :p
But seriously, people have logins for about 2 dozen other websites, bank accounts, locker combinations, alarm system codes, birth-dates to remember, anniversaries... They aren't idiots, they just don't have much room left after trying to live their lives and still be good at their jobs.
I agree. If a job candidate doesn't like the questions, I would expect them to react in a way that I could tolerate if I had to work with them. It is actually a good thing to pull a Kobayashi Maru in most cases as long as it seems like something that would be feasible. It is okay in the real-world to have a critical opinion as long as it is polite and constructive in the long-run.
I've been on the asking side of these questions several times now. (Not questions quite as silly as the examples in the article, but nonetheless...) HR said "pick 4 questions from this book and score according to this answer key." Obviously, the whole thing is highly subjective and the scoring is more about how a person reacts. Some of the questions are way too vague to be useful, but usually they allow you to gauge the behavior of a person. You basically want to find out how a person handles typical adverse situations that arise in a work environment. i.e. professional disagreements, impossible goals, annoying customers, etc.
I've seen many different reactions. It's okay if a person declines to answer maybe 1 out of the 4, but in some cases, people have claimed they never had an adverse situation. Not a good answer. Most people just try to answer the questions in a bland way with the 'expected' answer. So I need to hear something that tells me a person really cares, either by re-engineering the question, or having a really specific answer that would be hard to fabricate on the spot.
So you can be critical of these questions, but consider being in the shoes of an employer. You try writing questions for an interview that are not too vague, and can cut through peoples' BS'ing.
That closed-source company may _want_ to stand on their reputation. But they can be ordered to backdoor the software against their will and in secrecy. This is no longer a hypothetical argument, and it _is_ harming the reputation of businesses.
This is a great time for competitors of US tech companies.
I agree with the AC, the NSA snooping is fundamentally different (in the negative direction.)
The justification for Iraq was flimsy. Our healthcare system is what it is, and economic bubbles have been problematic. But these are just big fuzzy issues with many competing players. Basic human conflict.
Civilized society is fundamentally based at some point on a basic level of trust and openness. The USA is founded on the ability of the people to supervise and object to the actions of the governing people and agencies. Keeping the NSA snooping as a secret has violated a basic contract of trust that the people bestow upon individuals who operate the government.
How can the American people oversee the activities of big agencies if such agencies can lie to, conceal from, and even intimidate the people?
The NSA has been caught in one lie after another as new documents are revealed. People and corporations have been forced into silence.
I understand that confidentiality must exist when pursuing suspects, but that is completely different.
Why the secrecy? Was it really about tipping off the subjects of investigations, or was it simply knowing this behavior was unjust and thus had to be kept out of the light of scrutiny? This is what children do when they know their parents will say 'no.'
We cannot have a functional society if these basic tenets of civility are violated as a matter of routine.
1) make law to ban guns
2) average upstanding citizens obey and turns in guns
3) ????
4) no guns on the streets in the hands of violent people
Responsible gun owners want to see step 4. The dialog is so broken in the USA between the pro-gun and anti-gun crowds that it is hard to see how this can be achieved.
The Colt AR-15 as it is generally known is basically the civilian version of the M16. This means semi-auto only, not fully automatic or burst mode. By exact definition, "assault rifles" are fully automatic rifles such as the M16, which are generally not obtainable by most US citizens. Therefore, not an assault rifle.
Furthermore, the "AR-15" by name is typically banned in state-level "assault weapons" bans, including Connecticut. However, many different manufacturers make similar rifles often with interchangeable parts. Since these are sold under different model names, they are not explicitly covered in these bans. The shooter in this case had an XM-15 made by Bushmaster, which actually is more like the military M4 rifle.
http://www.jud.ct.gov/JI/criminal/glossary/assaultweapon.htm
On the highway, I especially don't need that tailgating idiot to zoom around on my right instead of just waiting for me to safely return to the the middle or right lane. Does he understand the counter productivity of that, or just not care? I promise I'm smart enough to not hog up the passing lane. This happens a lot when I'm in an interchange lane that merges from the left. I would love to get out of the left lane but I'm blocked by people passing on the right at 20MPH over the limit.
If I'm driving at the speed limit and someone tailgates me on a surface street, I just slow down more. I make up for his lack of judgement in stopping distance.