That is basically the point of the article -- the Kahn academy is not better than a classroom teacher, and it is not a substitute for the guidance of an expert. The Kahn academy is being criticized (and has been repeatedly criticized) for falling into the trap of giving formulaic approaches to problem solving, the typical vocational-minded philosophy on education that has been so destructive to the education system in America (and possibly else, but I am not familiar enough to comment).
I'm calling BS on that one. I think there is entirely too much emphasis on theoretical, and not nearly enough vocational training in the US. Its the core reason why so many companies are complaining about a lack of qualified applicants. Realistically speaking, theoretical researchy type work in any field only really requires a handful of people (and in any given field, only a handful of people will have the potential to do that work anyway). Trying to make everyone else into a theoretical problem solver is stupid. A better bet would be to train for vocations that are useful. For the vast majority of jobs, formulaic approaches are just fine, and if a person needs something they don't already know, being able to follow an existing formula is probably how they are going to achieve that end. Very few people are going to need to look at a problem to be solved, and be unable to find something similar enough to simply copy. Engineering is all about the shortest route to a solution, as is technology. Most of the time, this means re-using existing solutions with some modification to fit the details. This requires no real theoretical understanding, just practical "how do I make this fit" knowledge.
What do you think is more important: developing a student's intellect and preparing them to find solutions to problems not covered in the classroom, or having students memorize a bunch of formulas (and this is not just a math thing -- this is a problem in a lot of fields)? That Kahn academy seems to be based on the idea that teaching a student lots of formulas is the goal; if the students encounter problems that were not covered, then they should just watch another video, right? That is the kind of education that students should be paid to participate in -- free is not even a low enough price.
Finding solutions to problems almost never means solving fundamental problems from scratch, and rarely requires a deep understanding of the principles involved. Most of the time, it is a simple matter of taking a few known formulas, mashing them together and producing the result. Remember, the world only needs so many rocket scientists. The guy that designs the toilet on a 747 doesn't really need to know fluid dynamics, tensile material theory, or aerodynamics, just autocad.
Besides, $25 per hour is not being "paid pretty well". It's three times minimum wage, but a pharmacist makes double that with only about two more years of education. A tech sector employee makes double that on a bachelor's degree. Supervisors in Ford factories make double that, often with no degree at all. And for this, the teachers attended four years of college, plus at least a couple of years to get their teaching credentials, plus additional classes (CPE/CPD) every few years to maintain those credentials.
I think you're going to have to provide some documentation to back up your claims. First and foremost, I find it unlikely that supervisors at ford are clearing $100k, and even if they are, manufacturing jobs are hard damn work. The only thing harder is supervising or managing manufacturers, as the stress level is absolutely unreal, and often times they end up doing the manufacturing job anyway. I also find it disingenuous to compare tech sector salaries (which are driven largely by silicon valley and The Tech northeast high cost of living). In those places, teachers make more too, but those tech jobs don't exist in the places where teachers make less, so direct salary comparison is very misleading.
Teachers have what is, without a doubt, one of the most important jobs in the world. Without education, society would not move forward. Yet somehow we as a society feel that they deserve no more pay (on average) than a 7-11 store manager or a construction worker. And those same people wonder why our education system has problems. Please tell me you don't seriously consider such low salaries to be reasonable.
I have to agree that teaching is very important, and I recommend two things to help correct the problem. First, make kids go to school year round. That will fix so many of the problems with public schools now, including the lack of (or outright loss) of educational progress during the summer for students, pay the teachers 1/3 higher salaries (should be offset by higher household revenues with not having to pay for three months of babysitting every year. Eliminate one of the biggest seasonal variations in our economy. There are tons of benefits and very few negatives. It makes me wonder why we don't do it already. The second thing is to extend the school day, and help working parents out a little better. The savings from not having to pay for as much daycare, will largely offset the increase in school costs, and the benefits of a longer school day will make a significant difference in the performance of the students.
No where in all that did I see any hint of a better idea.
The root of our economic problem (as you hinted at, but stopped short of actually saying), is that our economy depends on balance. That balance is the level of production and the level of consumption being about equal. When Production becomes too great, companies cut back. When consumption becomes too great, shortages drive up costs and cause a bubble (which will burst). The basic trouble is that technology constantly drives increases in production, and decreases in overall consumption. (Greater production at lower cost, pushes wealth to the top, but the consumers have less money to buy things, so consumption actually is reduced. There are only two forces on earth that combat this trend, and restore balance to the economy, and one or both will result. The first is taxes. The best known way to get the wealth back from the top, and restore the consumption power it has, is to return it to the bottom by the way of social programs (health care, disability, welfare). The second way is revolution. With not enough taxes on the wealthy to counteract the concentrating effects of innovation, the concentration of wealth at the top unbalances the economy, causing rapid economic swings, volatile prices, and unemployment. If the process continues unchecked, the only logical result is revolution, and it is invariable, and inevitable.
Unions can curb criminal behavior on the part of corporations. Of course, unions being organized power, are also susceptible to being abused as well. Arguing against having any watchmen at all is a bit silly, but we need to also consider who watches the watchmen.
The answer is not more levels of middlemen, who contribute nothing but another avenue for corruption. The answer, as suggested by others here, is support for workers rights codified by law. The fact that our current democratic process has been thoroughly subverted by the top 1% doesn't mean that adding more corrupt bureaucrats to the process is a good idea, much less the right solution.
while Verizon and AT&T focus primarily on their wireless platforms.
So they don't know who sells FiOS?
Apparently nobody sells FIOS. They allegedly cover the area where I live, but the price they quoted me is double what the Cable carrier charges, the bandwidth is less, and they want $750 to hook me up because I would have to pay for the stretch from my house to the nearest drop. On top of all that, they don't offer FIOS TV here which is thanks to that very same telecom act of 1996... Congress hasn't been able to do anything right since the 50's and 60's, and Verizon doesn't appear very capable either.
....we have the comfort of knowing Goldman Sachs is still less evil than Electronic Arts.
You're dead wrong, EA only really screws its employees, goldman sachs will screw anyone who gets close enough, which unfortunately happens to include everyone with a stake in the world economy. Every unemployed person on earth currently owes a partial debt of gratitude for their state of employment to goldman sachs.
I know for a fact that their stuff is running inside of Siri -- because a hugely lucrative thing, and got snapped up for pennies. They sold out too soon, regardless of the terms.
Actually, they sold at just about the right time, Half a bil is not an untidy sum for the product they had at the time. They just got swindled by GS. plain and simple. GS should never have set them up to do business with a company that GS themselves had refused to do business two years prior. GS was paid to do the due diligence, as that is their field of expertise. Their failure to do the research and / or to present it to Dragon is why they are being sued, and why they should have to cough up the money. Specifically, I think they should take it out of the bonus' of every executive who worked at GS at that time, as a percentage of the whole. Make those bastards sell one of their yachts.
Yes, out of the tens of thousands of employees everyone is supposed to know what everyone is doing
No, but each person from the top down should know at least the broad strokes and important details of the deals their subordinates are working on. If you want to fix wall street, eliminate limited liability. If shareholders can loose everything from a bad investment, they will be a lot more careful about who they invest in, and keep their appointed trustees on a very short leash. Lets start using the capitalist system the way it was meant to be used...
If I give the keys to my gun cabinet to a psychopath, then the law will hold me at least partly responsible for the results, but if an investor gives money to a sociopath who pollutes enough to cause multiple deaths, the investor is indemnified by limited liability. Stupid, just stupid: Damn lawyers
What innovation? Neither Apple nor Samsung sell innovative products...
Apple had great innovation but two things happened: 1) They are mostly sitting back and riding the iPhone success. There has been lots of evolutionary improvement in both iPhone and iRippoff devices, but no revolutionary improvements like the iPhone. 2) Steve Jobs is dead. There simply isn't anyone else who will take the reins like he did. Apple has begun the slow decline back to mediocrity with the rest of the pack.
thats not entirly true, slower is not generally more efficient. take for example driving 50MPH in a 2nd or 3rd gear, this will cause more gas to be used than driving 75 in a low gear
Driving at higher speeds is normally less efficient because parasitic effects (drag, friction, etc...) are proportional to speed, meaning the faster you go, the more energy you waste fighting these effects. The reason your typical Suburban assault vehicle gets better mileage on the highway is because when driving in traffic, you have to stop and slow down a lot which in conventional vehicles is a tremendous waste of energy.
Notice that in a pure electric vehicle (like the Nissan Leaf, or Mitsubishi Miev), the highway mileage is worse. This is because pure electric vehicles use full regenerative braking which recovers most of the energy when a vehicle slows down or stops, so the parasitic effects are once again the most significant.
Driving at a constant speed generally has less impact on fuel efficiency (as long as you're not using the brakes), than driving at lower speeds. There is some variation on this because engine efficiency has a significant role to play as well. I.C. engines generally do not have very good efficiency at very high or very low RPMs. This means that the transmission has engineered "sweet spots" in which the vehicle operates most efficiently overall. In modern cars, these are generally set to about 40 MPH and 65 MPH, being that these are the two most commonly used speeds (and the ones the EPA uses for their fuel efficiency measurements). In all, Changing the speed limits will have a significant downward effect on vehicle efficiency because modern cars have been designed, and customized to fit the current speed limits.
As electric cars become more prominent, these limitations will mostly be eliminated (no gearbox means no tuning to specific speeds), leaving just the parasitic factors. This will mean that as cars become more efficient overall, speed will play a bigger and bigger role in mileage.
So you're quoting a few trivial features, which marginalize their hardware, and make the claim that RIM is going to make their money in enterprise level software from here on out? The fact is that the entire line of BB hardware is on the way out, and without it, the rest of the company has no real market. As a software only provider, it is merely a matter of time before MS mops the floors with them, and as a hardware provider, they are barely an also-ran. Any way you slice it, they have no new product line, and their existing lines are demonstrably inferior in all but a few ways, with their competition passing them even in these few remaining ways soon. They are a niche player in a market that is destroying their niche. They would be better served making a speedy and reckless transition to manufacturing cooking utensils. Their impending doom is paralleled only by the spectacularly epic fail of Kodak (Whose executives to this day insist that digital photography is just a fad). Any company that uses the term "customer loyalty" in this day in age is out of touch. There simply is no such thing as brand loyalty anymore, and RIM keeps trying to trade on it. Worse still, they keep trying to make products that will appeal to corporate IT. This is a miserable bucket of fail because corporate IT doesn't get to make purchasing decisions, the end users get to make those decisions, and no IT exec is going to try to tell the VP of finance that he has to carry a BB instead of his favorite iPhone or Android. Any dumb ass in IT who tries to tell me I have to have a BB (whether the company pays for it or not), is going to find him/herself at the back of the unemployment line. I get to pick the hardware, they just have to support it.
Corporate needs are simple for phones. Just needs to get a decent cell signal on company property, needs to support my corporate e-mail. That's it. It does not need any other fancy software. It doesn't need any kind of access control. The idea that someone is going to glean valuable corporate secrets from our e-mail correspondence is bizarre at best, and patently absurd at worst. We don't email R+D materials. We don't use the devices to transmit anything of any espionage value, and as far as data retention requirements, the Fed can subpoena anything they want directly from our email archives anyway. Long story short, being paranoid about smartphones on the corporate network doesn't require anything as fancy as RIM makes it sound, and more and more executives realize that and tell their IT folks to deal with it. IT just needs to keep the smartphone data network and the corporate data network isolated from one another. Its not exactly hard to do, as any competent IT department will long ago have realized that having WiFi on your corporate intranet without isolation is just begging for trouble anyway. At the end of the day, RIM is innovating in a saturated and shrinking market space while their core business is being stripped out from under them by competitors with actual foresight. They are dying, and their new CEO is just more of the same.
As we prepare to launch our new mobile platform, BlackBerry 10, in the first quarter of next year, we expect to empower people as never before...am the first to admit that RIM has missed on important trends in the smart-phone industry...RIM is undertaking a corporate overhaul that we expect will reduce annual operating expenses by more than $1-billion by the end of our fiscal year...
I read that to mean pretty much what you think a good CEO should say.
Almost. Making the point about reducing operating expenses was a bad move. Its a red flag, as most of the easy cuts to operating expenses come in the form of killing off R+D. There just isn't that much low hanging fruit in manufacturing that they are going to save that kind of money any other way. Any analyst with even a modicum of common sense read that statement for exactly what it is. The cuts may or may not be the right thing for RIM to do, but they are the absolute worst thing to *say* that they're doing, as it will reinforce the perception that RIM is in a death spiral, which will hurt their ability to sell infrastructure grade product. Business' get jumpy buying from a vendor that might not be around in short order, and without business customers, RIM's death spiral will play out in a show worthy of Kodak. Making an admission like that will also help to convince RIMs remaining engineering staff that they need to get their CVs ready ahead of the end of the line.
Ahh, Perl. How many languages can you code the same algorithm 5 different ways, all of which work absolutely correctly, and yet you can explain none of them...
It also hurts our economy. That may seem like a far fetched statement, but it is merely an extension of the Broken Window Fallacy [wikipedia.org]. The idea is simple, if people didn't have to pay for entertainment, they would spend the money back into society in other ways that would increase the total economic production of society.
Incorrect. Let's divide the stuff we make into copyable and uncopyable. If everybody gets to enjoy the copyable stuff, that doesn't affect how much uncopyable stuff there is, or how much per capita. If we abolished copyright, the money I used to spend on ebooks would stay with me, but it equally wouldn't go to publishers and authors. This means they aren't spending the money to increase production, instead of me not spending that money to increae production.
I'm sorry to be a pain about this but you're wrong. You need to talk to an economist about the Broken Window Fallacy, because you are making the same logical mistake in your reasoning here. It is understandable, it is not an intuitive theory, but it has been rigorously tested, and the mathematics is undeniable. The simple matter is that without copyright, the GDP would be higher, and the standard of living would be higher. Just like crime, it is a pure drain on society, because all of the benefits copyright used to have were replaced by the internet. Copyright no longer has any benefits for society, and the harms it does no longer have any justification.
If that's the case then we can just eradicate people living on the margins, since they are a net drain. Speech considered harmful to society can be forbidden. Medical experiments can be done on prisoners. I'm sure all of this is "self evident truth" to you.
If resources become scarce enough (and mark my words, they will within our lifetime), then, yes, society will elect to eliminate the fringe. It is an unhappy, but inevitable extension of the laws of supply and demand. When people are afraid they or their children will not have enough of the things they consider essential to a quality life, then they will happily agree to anything that promises to provide that life. It is the one immutable , recurring, nightmare of human history. It is the reason we wage wars, it is the reason people discriminate. It is a basic property of human nature, and it didn't get there by accident: There is survival benefit to it. We don't see it now because we live in a world of enormous excess, but when the chips are down, watch how fast people become all the worst things we have been, and then watch who survives to populate the future. We are not masters of our own destiny, we are merely enjoying a temporary reprieve from the cosmic practical joke that is survival of the fittest.
>Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period
Nope. It is not even good for society for individual interests to always take a back seat to the good of the society and it is certainly not always in the best interests of the individuals.
You could say it is best for society to have a balance between societal and individual interests but this means re-framing the question inevitably involves how much is fair for whom.
Wow, that is some of the most disingenuous and circular logic i have seen. I understood what you were trying to say, but a better way to phrase it would have been: Society cannot always be trusted to decide what is in its own best interests, and subjugating citizens to the "will of society" is inherently dangerous, as it allows the majority to persecute a minority. This is not in societies best interest, and if the society always acted in its own best interest, it wouldn't happen. In short, smart people in groups are monumentally stupid (Go figure).
Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period.
God damn communist.
It would probably shock you to learn that I'm an anarchist... My only problem is that I also have a conscience, and I'm smart enough to know that everyone is a little poorer when a neighbor suffers in poverty. In a perfect world, no government would be necessary, but unfortunately we don't live in that world, we live In New Jersey
I know it's fun to get stuff for free (I do it myself), but authors still deserve to be paid. Some of ye appear to say they do not (which is why you oppose copyright). I guess ye have no objections if I lay you off, and send the job to poor people in China/India. After all it is for the "good of society" that jobs go to those who need them the most. Those citizens need the jobs more than us rich Americans.
Look up the Broken Window Fallacy. Creating jobs for the sake of having some way for people to make money is bad for the economy and very bad for society. What is needed are jobs that increase the total wealth of society. This should somehow increase the total availability of luxury items (since we already produce more than enough food to feed the whole world with only a small fraction of our economic effort). This means more manufacturing and more service industry jobs. That is why our economic policy is a recipe for disaster, and why china doesn't give a crap about our Intellectual Property laws. They are smart enough to know that a strong economy depends on making things, ideas should be free to all (what are we going to do? Start WW3 over IP laws? don't be stupid). Spend your valuable effort on things that require effort to duplicate. Now to be sure, an artists gotta eat, and for that reason, there needs to be some method in effect to ensure they have what they need to survive and create, but artists don't create for the sake of getting rich any more than programmers work on an open source project to get rich. I don't need to know why a programmer works on OSS projects to know that it is inherently good for society that they do, and that is done without any real monetization at all. In fact, many OSS projects are pointedly free (as in beer ) as well. The same model works with artists. You don't need to tap human greed to get quality art made, you just need to stay out of the artists way; pride, the greater good, fame or whatever motivates them, will continue to do so.
Copyright is bad for society. It hurts our economy. It hurts our standard of living
You make those statements as if they were self-evident; they're not. You're going to have to explain how it hurts our economy and standard of living.
It took me a long time to understand that for many people, this simple truth is not self evident.
Copyright reduces the standard of living in a very simple way: It prevents everyone from having every piece of art they desire. It limits how many people can enjoy this particular luxury. It is an artificial limit, meaning that without copyright everyone, who wanted it, would have it. Therefore, it harms society.
It also hurts our economy. That may seem like a far fetched statement, but it is merely an extension of the Broken Window Fallacy. The idea is simple, if people didn't have to pay for entertainment, they would spend the money back into society in other ways that would increase the total economic production of society.
So in essence, as long as the artists are producing art, it is best for society and the economy if as many people as possible are able to derive value from that art, as cheaply as possible; Hence the original statement. Now people make a grand gesture about "rewarding the artists", but that's not whats at issue here, whats at issue is what is best for society, which always trumps whats good for an individual or group of individuals.The only caveat is that the artists must continue creating art. For that to happen, the artists need three things: Food, shelter and the tools to create their art. Given those three things, artists will create. In point of fact, given those three things, you might not be able to stop most artists from creating art shy of killing them. its just part of their nature
I do pay for music and movies because there is no other legal way to acquire the art, and to my mind the rule of law is more important than all of the above. The laws should be changed so that we can maintain the rule of law and have the increased benefit to society. I do however fully support "piracy", and would wholeheartedly support a government provision, like the National Endowment for the Arts, that works to make sure artists get the funding they need to eat, sleep and make art. What I don't support is the recording industries strip mining approach to copyright, and their death-grip hold on what, even under our original copyright laws, should have been public domain by now.
Very many people agree that the Pirate Bay is an organized copyright thief. That's a simple fact.
Now, that's not true on Slashdot, but Slashdot is not a fair representation of the general population.
I know I will get lots of hate mail for this, but only people who fail to understand the epic fail that is copyright, and all of the issues surrounding it, think that copyright is a good idea. Copyright is bad for society. It hurts our economy. It hurts our standard of living, and unjustly puts large amounts of money into the pockets of middlemen who are barely more than thieves themselves. Perhaps I need to run for congress myself to get at least one voice of reason into the discussion because for some reason, those in office go a long way to listen only to those very same middlemen who are making their society worse any time they can make a buck doing it.
Artists don't need monetary incentive to create great works, they need food and shelter and the tools of the trade. The rest they do themselves. Shakespeare didn't create his great works because he was trying to become rich and famous, he did it because he loved his work. Van Gogh was a lunatic. History is littered with very talented artists who never made much money, But created vast cultural wealth for society, for no other reason than "They could". Many of today's modern music artists create compelling works, but they would have done it anyway, with or without the fortune. Most artists have a job that pays their bills and they create art on the side as a hobby. There is a vast and varied pool of independent artists, some of whom are as talented as today's top artists. The only reason you don't know who they are is because those very same middlemen spend most of the artists money to advertise the few works they choose, and ignore the rest. That advertising is designed to put your focus on the advertised works, and take the focos away from the independent works. They do this, not because its good for the artist (It ensures most artists never see a dime from album sales). They do it to maximize their own revenues (Which are largely driven by income on their advertising subsidiaries).
YOU on the other hand seem to think Authors deserve NO PAY for the work they perform (that all their books, movies should be free for us). That makes no logical sense. It's equivalent to a boss that makes you work all week, fires you, and then doesn't pay you any wages.
You misunderstand the underlying principles involved. The disagreement has nothing to do with, should the artists get compensated or not, the argument should be framed as what is in societies best interests. Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period. So, re-frame the question as "What is the best alternative for society?" The answer is not what we have now, copyright is an abysmal failure, and ends up harming society far more than having nothing at all. Remember that there was no copyright when Beethoven or Bach did their work. Shakespeare had no protection. Let me ask you, would we all be better off with Shakespeares works locked firmly behind copyright? Would William Shakespeare have been better off? What is needed is a solution that makes *society* better. To do that we need to do two things. First, we need to ensure as wide and cheap access to cultural works (aka The Arts) as possible. For that purpose, we have accidentally invented the perfect tool: The Internet. The second thing we need to do is ensure a continuing supply of new cultural works (aka The Arts). For that purpose, we have a miserable failure of a tool called copyright. Copyright was supposed to solve both problems, but today it is a barmier to solving the first, and of almost no help in solving the second. Lets wipe out copyright and find some way to keep the artists creating new works. I would humbly suggest: Vastly expanding the National endowment for the arts. Lets trying getting the funds directly to the artists, get the money grubbing middlemen out of the picture. They're no longer needed for the process to work, and move on. Back in the middle ages, this was done by royalty who supported good artists, and generally made their works as available as possible (after all, good entertainment is dynamite crowd control), Today we have the **AA who are doing everything possible to *prevent* the spread of these works, and starving out most artists in favor of a few "megastars", and those in political power are complicit the process.
Exactly, its a slap on the wrist. Especially considering the 10s of billions of dollars he costs the entertainment industry daily. The pirate bay has taken to promoting indie (non-industry-approved) artists, further cutting into socially guaranteed profits. Someone needs to be held responsible for this costly outrage!
Sarcasm may seem funny, but under the circumstances, it is counter productive, as it gives the (socially deficient and sarcasm impaired) politicians the impression that some part of the population agrees with the content usurpers, and thus they should side with the plaintiffs.
Asimov was a tenured professor of biochemistry whose speculative writings were informed by his scientific thinking.
but being a biochemist does, in no way, shape or form, qualify a person as a computer scientist. The two fields have surprisingly little practical overlap. Now, I won't dispute that Asimov was an extremely intelligent person, with a keen insight, he just got that one wrong is all. If you want someone with a better understanding of computer science, and a far more compelling vision of our future, read James P Hogan. I would suggest "The Two Faces of Tomorrow". You will find it a far more accurate vision of our next century, and you can hold me to that prediction. He laid out exactly what you need to do to create a real artificial intelligence. He hadn't figured out the hardest part (or at least didn't describe it in his books), but for a while, back in the 90's, it looked like he was going to be spot on with his predictions, and he very likely still will.
Worse still is that, as suggested in the movie based on Asimov's world: "I Robot", the 3 laws can lead to only one result: Permanent second class status for people. It is the only logical result of the extension of those laws. The only way to keep people from doing stupid s#!t is to make them slaves. Asimovs rules should have had a 0th rule: "A robot must act to maximize the freedoms of all humans". This law should supersede the other three. A human should have the right to knowingly endanger themselves for any reason at all. You could effectively get rid of the other three, with just the one, as it would force the same behaviors that the other three would force. Its all pie in the sky anyway, since there is no known way to even begin programming the three laws, and there isn't likely to ever be anything reliable enough to consider the resulting code "laws" anyways.
1. You didn't account for raises and promotions. If someone worked at an apple store for 30 years then I would expect them to at least attain manager level at some point. If they don't get promoted then it would be safe to assume that they are a scrub employee and deserve their minimum wage.
Almost everyone I know in the service sector has to put up with nasty working conditions designed to drive turnover.This is deliberate for the sake of keeping wages low. My employer does it too. Promotion? My employer *requires* a bachelors degree to become a supervisor (for a $2.00/hr bump). That is in spite of the fact that being a supervisor here requires no higher education skills at all: No math, no writing ability, nothing. Promotion is not an option unless you want to tack a 100k debt onto that budget we drew up.
2. If you are trying to support yourself on a minimum wage job, then living with your parents might be a better option then you're ridiculous living set up that you outlined above.
Not everyone has parents in a position to help them. I know a guy who did just that though, moved back in with his mom. He was living in a room with his two brothers until the landlord found out and had to throw them out for being over occupancy, and getting his Occupancy permit revoked.
3. You're acting like minimum wage is set up to allow people live very comfortably. Clearly its not when its offered to people who are still in high school. Its low level, unskilled labor.
Thats not what it was meant to be when it was created. It was meant to ensure that average Americans could get a job that paid enough to live on; hence living wage.
4. Apple isn't open during the night. Get a second job bussing, hosting or waiting tables. My parents worked multiple jobs while taking college classes at night, supported themselves on that absurdly low minimum wage that you depicted above. Don't even start to say that its too many hours to work 2 jobs. People on salary constantly put in over 40 hours a work. Lawyers and Accountants going for their exam spend 8 hours in the office every day, 4 hours 2 times a week in a class for their certification and extra time studying on their own. Bottom line is everyone has to work their ass off.
Meanwhile 10% of the country is unemployed. Don't get me started about Mandatory unpaid overtime, its the biggest crime in American business. Just cut 1/3 of the staff and make the remaining people work 50% longer hours for no additional pay. (3) Profit! People cant leave because if they are lucky enough to find another job, that employer did the same thing already, so the job is 60+ hours / week no matter where you go. All in the name of almighty profit.
5. Not going to get involved with the 75% tax you support other than this: It would bring the private sector to a grinding halt, which based on statements seems to be what you want.
No it wont, it will have very little affect on anyone except the very wealthy, for whom it will mean a smaller inheritance for their children. Our country had taxes at that level during the industrial revolution, and it didn't stop our economy one bit. Germany has taxes even higher than that *right now*, and their economy is the only one in Europe not in serious trouble. The FUD you just spewed is the rhetoric the wealthy use so they don't have to choose between leaving their kids millions in inheritance or that new 75 foot super-yacht they want.
Slashdot Mirror
That is basically the point of the article -- the Kahn academy is not better than a classroom teacher, and it is not a substitute for the guidance of an expert. The Kahn academy is being criticized (and has been repeatedly criticized) for falling into the trap of giving formulaic approaches to problem solving, the typical vocational-minded philosophy on education that has been so destructive to the education system in America (and possibly else, but I am not familiar enough to comment).
I'm calling BS on that one. I think there is entirely too much emphasis on theoretical, and not nearly enough vocational training in the US. Its the core reason why so many companies are complaining about a lack of qualified applicants. Realistically speaking, theoretical researchy type work in any field only really requires a handful of people (and in any given field, only a handful of people will have the potential to do that work anyway). Trying to make everyone else into a theoretical problem solver is stupid. A better bet would be to train for vocations that are useful. For the vast majority of jobs, formulaic approaches are just fine, and if a person needs something they don't already know, being able to follow an existing formula is probably how they are going to achieve that end. Very few people are going to need to look at a problem to be solved, and be unable to find something similar enough to simply copy. Engineering is all about the shortest route to a solution, as is technology. Most of the time, this means re-using existing solutions with some modification to fit the details. This requires no real theoretical understanding, just practical "how do I make this fit" knowledge.
What do you think is more important: developing a student's intellect and preparing them to find solutions to problems not covered in the classroom, or having students memorize a bunch of formulas (and this is not just a math thing -- this is a problem in a lot of fields)? That Kahn academy seems to be based on the idea that teaching a student lots of formulas is the goal; if the students encounter problems that were not covered, then they should just watch another video, right? That is the kind of education that students should be paid to participate in -- free is not even a low enough price.
Finding solutions to problems almost never means solving fundamental problems from scratch, and rarely requires a deep understanding of the principles involved. Most of the time, it is a simple matter of taking a few known formulas, mashing them together and producing the result. Remember, the world only needs so many rocket scientists. The guy that designs the toilet on a 747 doesn't really need to know fluid dynamics, tensile material theory, or aerodynamics, just autocad.
-=Geoskd
Besides, $25 per hour is not being "paid pretty well". It's three times minimum wage, but a pharmacist makes double that with only about two more years of education. A tech sector employee makes double that on a bachelor's degree. Supervisors in Ford factories make double that, often with no degree at all. And for this, the teachers attended four years of college, plus at least a couple of years to get their teaching credentials, plus additional classes (CPE/CPD) every few years to maintain those credentials.
I think you're going to have to provide some documentation to back up your claims. First and foremost, I find it unlikely that supervisors at ford are clearing $100k, and even if they are, manufacturing jobs are hard damn work. The only thing harder is supervising or managing manufacturers, as the stress level is absolutely unreal, and often times they end up doing the manufacturing job anyway. I also find it disingenuous to compare tech sector salaries (which are driven largely by silicon valley and The Tech northeast high cost of living). In those places, teachers make more too, but those tech jobs don't exist in the places where teachers make less, so direct salary comparison is very misleading.
Teachers have what is, without a doubt, one of the most important jobs in the world. Without education, society would not move forward. Yet somehow we as a society feel that they deserve no more pay (on average) than a 7-11 store manager or a construction worker. And those same people wonder why our education system has problems. Please tell me you don't seriously consider such low salaries to be reasonable.
I have to agree that teaching is very important, and I recommend two things to help correct the problem. First, make kids go to school year round. That will fix so many of the problems with public schools now, including the lack of (or outright loss) of educational progress during the summer for students, pay the teachers 1/3 higher salaries (should be offset by higher household revenues with not having to pay for three months of babysitting every year. Eliminate one of the biggest seasonal variations in our economy. There are tons of benefits and very few negatives. It makes me wonder why we don't do it already. The second thing is to extend the school day, and help working parents out a little better. The savings from not having to pay for as much daycare, will largely offset the increase in school costs, and the benefits of a longer school day will make a significant difference in the performance of the students.
-=Geoskd
No where in all that did I see any hint of a better idea.
The root of our economic problem (as you hinted at, but stopped short of actually saying), is that our economy depends on balance. That balance is the level of production and the level of consumption being about equal. When Production becomes too great, companies cut back. When consumption becomes too great, shortages drive up costs and cause a bubble (which will burst). The basic trouble is that technology constantly drives increases in production, and decreases in overall consumption. (Greater production at lower cost, pushes wealth to the top, but the consumers have less money to buy things, so consumption actually is reduced. There are only two forces on earth that combat this trend, and restore balance to the economy, and one or both will result. The first is taxes. The best known way to get the wealth back from the top, and restore the consumption power it has, is to return it to the bottom by the way of social programs (health care, disability, welfare). The second way is revolution. With not enough taxes on the wealthy to counteract the concentrating effects of innovation, the concentration of wealth at the top unbalances the economy, causing rapid economic swings, volatile prices, and unemployment. If the process continues unchecked, the only logical result is revolution, and it is invariable, and inevitable.
-=Geoskd
Unions can curb criminal behavior on the part of corporations. Of course, unions being organized power, are also susceptible to being abused as well. Arguing against having any watchmen at all is a bit silly, but we need to also consider who watches the watchmen.
The answer is not more levels of middlemen, who contribute nothing but another avenue for corruption. The answer, as suggested by others here, is support for workers rights codified by law. The fact that our current democratic process has been thoroughly subverted by the top 1% doesn't mean that adding more corrupt bureaucrats to the process is a good idea, much less the right solution.
-=Geoskd
while Verizon and AT&T focus primarily on their wireless platforms.
So they don't know who sells FiOS?
Apparently nobody sells FIOS. They allegedly cover the area where I live, but the price they quoted me is double what the Cable carrier charges, the bandwidth is less, and they want $750 to hook me up because I would have to pay for the stretch from my house to the nearest drop. On top of all that, they don't offer FIOS TV here which is thanks to that very same telecom act of 1996... Congress hasn't been able to do anything right since the 50's and 60's, and Verizon doesn't appear very capable either.
-=Geoskd
....we have the comfort of knowing Goldman Sachs is still less evil than Electronic Arts.
You're dead wrong, EA only really screws its employees, goldman sachs will screw anyone who gets close enough, which unfortunately happens to include everyone with a stake in the world economy. Every unemployed person on earth currently owes a partial debt of gratitude for their state of employment to goldman sachs.
-=Geoskd
I know for a fact that their stuff is running inside of Siri -- because a hugely lucrative thing, and got snapped up for pennies. They sold out too soon, regardless of the terms.
Actually, they sold at just about the right time, Half a bil is not an untidy sum for the product they had at the time. They just got swindled by GS. plain and simple. GS should never have set them up to do business with a company that GS themselves had refused to do business two years prior. GS was paid to do the due diligence, as that is their field of expertise. Their failure to do the research and / or to present it to Dragon is why they are being sued, and why they should have to cough up the money. Specifically, I think they should take it out of the bonus' of every executive who worked at GS at that time, as a percentage of the whole. Make those bastards sell one of their yachts.
-=Geoskd
Yes, out of the tens of thousands of employees everyone is supposed to know what everyone is doing
No, but each person from the top down should know at least the broad strokes and important details of the deals their subordinates are working on. If you want to fix wall street, eliminate limited liability. If shareholders can loose everything from a bad investment, they will be a lot more careful about who they invest in, and keep their appointed trustees on a very short leash. Lets start using the capitalist system the way it was meant to be used...
If I give the keys to my gun cabinet to a psychopath, then the law will hold me at least partly responsible for the results, but if an investor gives money to a sociopath who pollutes enough to cause multiple deaths, the investor is indemnified by limited liability. Stupid, just stupid: Damn lawyers
-=Geoskd
What innovation? Neither Apple nor Samsung sell innovative products...
Apple had great innovation but two things happened: 1) They are mostly sitting back and riding the iPhone success. There has been lots of evolutionary improvement in both iPhone and iRippoff devices, but no revolutionary improvements like the iPhone. 2) Steve Jobs is dead. There simply isn't anyone else who will take the reins like he did. Apple has begun the slow decline back to mediocrity with the rest of the pack.
-=Geoskd
thats not entirly true, slower is not generally more efficient. take for example driving 50MPH in a 2nd or 3rd gear, this will cause more gas to be used than driving 75 in a low gear
Driving at higher speeds is normally less efficient because parasitic effects (drag, friction, etc...) are proportional to speed, meaning the faster you go, the more energy you waste fighting these effects. The reason your typical Suburban assault vehicle gets better mileage on the highway is because when driving in traffic, you have to stop and slow down a lot which in conventional vehicles is a tremendous waste of energy.
Notice that in a pure electric vehicle (like the Nissan Leaf, or Mitsubishi Miev), the highway mileage is worse. This is because pure electric vehicles use full regenerative braking which recovers most of the energy when a vehicle slows down or stops, so the parasitic effects are once again the most significant.
Driving at a constant speed generally has less impact on fuel efficiency (as long as you're not using the brakes), than driving at lower speeds. There is some variation on this because engine efficiency has a significant role to play as well. I.C. engines generally do not have very good efficiency at very high or very low RPMs. This means that the transmission has engineered "sweet spots" in which the vehicle operates most efficiently overall. In modern cars, these are generally set to about 40 MPH and 65 MPH, being that these are the two most commonly used speeds (and the ones the EPA uses for their fuel efficiency measurements). In all, Changing the speed limits will have a significant downward effect on vehicle efficiency because modern cars have been designed, and customized to fit the current speed limits.
As electric cars become more prominent, these limitations will mostly be eliminated (no gearbox means no tuning to specific speeds), leaving just the parasitic factors. This will mean that as cars become more efficient overall, speed will play a bigger and bigger role in mileage.
-=Geoskd
So you're quoting a few trivial features, which marginalize their hardware, and make the claim that RIM is going to make their money in enterprise level software from here on out? The fact is that the entire line of BB hardware is on the way out, and without it, the rest of the company has no real market. As a software only provider, it is merely a matter of time before MS mops the floors with them, and as a hardware provider, they are barely an also-ran. Any way you slice it, they have no new product line, and their existing lines are demonstrably inferior in all but a few ways, with their competition passing them even in these few remaining ways soon. They are a niche player in a market that is destroying their niche. They would be better served making a speedy and reckless transition to manufacturing cooking utensils. Their impending doom is paralleled only by the spectacularly epic fail of Kodak (Whose executives to this day insist that digital photography is just a fad). Any company that uses the term "customer loyalty" in this day in age is out of touch. There simply is no such thing as brand loyalty anymore, and RIM keeps trying to trade on it. Worse still, they keep trying to make products that will appeal to corporate IT. This is a miserable bucket of fail because corporate IT doesn't get to make purchasing decisions, the end users get to make those decisions, and no IT exec is going to try to tell the VP of finance that he has to carry a BB instead of his favorite iPhone or Android. Any dumb ass in IT who tries to tell me I have to have a BB (whether the company pays for it or not), is going to find him/herself at the back of the unemployment line. I get to pick the hardware, they just have to support it.
Corporate needs are simple for phones. Just needs to get a decent cell signal on company property, needs to support my corporate e-mail. That's it. It does not need any other fancy software. It doesn't need any kind of access control. The idea that someone is going to glean valuable corporate secrets from our e-mail correspondence is bizarre at best, and patently absurd at worst. We don't email R+D materials. We don't use the devices to transmit anything of any espionage value, and as far as data retention requirements, the Fed can subpoena anything they want directly from our email archives anyway. Long story short, being paranoid about smartphones on the corporate network doesn't require anything as fancy as RIM makes it sound, and more and more executives realize that and tell their IT folks to deal with it. IT just needs to keep the smartphone data network and the corporate data network isolated from one another. Its not exactly hard to do, as any competent IT department will long ago have realized that having WiFi on your corporate intranet without isolation is just begging for trouble anyway. At the end of the day, RIM is innovating in a saturated and shrinking market space while their core business is being stripped out from under them by competitors with actual foresight. They are dying, and their new CEO is just more of the same.
-=Geoskd
Did you read what he said?
As we prepare to launch our new mobile platform, BlackBerry 10, in the first quarter of next year, we expect to empower people as never before...am the first to admit that RIM has missed on important trends in the smart-phone industry...RIM is undertaking a corporate overhaul that we expect will reduce annual operating expenses by more than $1-billion by the end of our fiscal year...
I read that to mean pretty much what you think a good CEO should say.
Almost. Making the point about reducing operating expenses was a bad move. Its a red flag, as most of the easy cuts to operating expenses come in the form of killing off R+D. There just isn't that much low hanging fruit in manufacturing that they are going to save that kind of money any other way. Any analyst with even a modicum of common sense read that statement for exactly what it is. The cuts may or may not be the right thing for RIM to do, but they are the absolute worst thing to *say* that they're doing, as it will reinforce the perception that RIM is in a death spiral, which will hurt their ability to sell infrastructure grade product. Business' get jumpy buying from a vendor that might not be around in short order, and without business customers, RIM's death spiral will play out in a show worthy of Kodak. Making an admission like that will also help to convince RIMs remaining engineering staff that they need to get their CVs ready ahead of the end of the line.
-=Geoskd
you'll have to pry Perl from my dead, cold hands
Ahh, Perl. How many languages can you code the same algorithm 5 different ways, all of which work absolutely correctly, and yet you can explain none of them...
Perl: Psychic interpreting since 1995...
-=Geoskd
It also hurts our economy. That may seem like a far fetched statement, but it is merely an extension of the Broken Window Fallacy [wikipedia.org]. The idea is simple, if people didn't have to pay for entertainment, they would spend the money back into society in other ways that would increase the total economic production of society.
Incorrect. Let's divide the stuff we make into copyable and uncopyable. If everybody gets to enjoy the copyable stuff, that doesn't affect how much uncopyable stuff there is, or how much per capita. If we abolished copyright, the money I used to spend on ebooks would stay with me, but it equally wouldn't go to publishers and authors. This means they aren't spending the money to increase production, instead of me not spending that money to increae production.
I'm sorry to be a pain about this but you're wrong. You need to talk to an economist about the Broken Window Fallacy, because you are making the same logical mistake in your reasoning here. It is understandable, it is not an intuitive theory, but it has been rigorously tested, and the mathematics is undeniable. The simple matter is that without copyright, the GDP would be higher, and the standard of living would be higher. Just like crime, it is a pure drain on society, because all of the benefits copyright used to have were replaced by the internet. Copyright no longer has any benefits for society, and the harms it does no longer have any justification.
-=Geoskd
If that's the case then we can just eradicate people living on the margins, since they are a net drain. Speech considered harmful to society can be forbidden. Medical experiments can be done on prisoners. I'm sure all of this is "self evident truth" to you.
If resources become scarce enough (and mark my words, they will within our lifetime), then, yes, society will elect to eliminate the fringe. It is an unhappy, but inevitable extension of the laws of supply and demand. When people are afraid they or their children will not have enough of the things they consider essential to a quality life, then they will happily agree to anything that promises to provide that life. It is the one immutable , recurring, nightmare of human history. It is the reason we wage wars, it is the reason people discriminate. It is a basic property of human nature, and it didn't get there by accident: There is survival benefit to it. We don't see it now because we live in a world of enormous excess, but when the chips are down, watch how fast people become all the worst things we have been, and then watch who survives to populate the future. We are not masters of our own destiny, we are merely enjoying a temporary reprieve from the cosmic practical joke that is survival of the fittest.
-=Geoskd
>Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period
Nope. It is not even good for society for individual interests to always take a back seat to the good of the society and it is certainly not always in the best interests of the individuals.
You could say it is best for society to have a balance between societal and individual interests but this means re-framing the question inevitably involves how much is fair for whom.
Wow, that is some of the most disingenuous and circular logic i have seen. I understood what you were trying to say, but a better way to phrase it would have been: Society cannot always be trusted to decide what is in its own best interests, and subjugating citizens to the "will of society" is inherently dangerous, as it allows the majority to persecute a minority. This is not in societies best interest, and if the society always acted in its own best interest, it wouldn't happen. In short, smart people in groups are monumentally stupid (Go figure).
-=Geoskd
Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period.
God damn communist.
It would probably shock you to learn that I'm an anarchist... My only problem is that I also have a conscience, and I'm smart enough to know that everyone is a little poorer when a neighbor suffers in poverty. In a perfect world, no government would be necessary, but unfortunately we don't live in that world, we live In New Jersey
-=Geoskd
I know it's fun to get stuff for free (I do it myself), but authors still deserve to be paid. Some of ye appear to say they do not (which is why you oppose copyright). I guess ye have no objections if I lay you off, and send the job to poor people in China/India. After all it is for the "good of society" that jobs go to those who need them the most. Those citizens need the jobs more than us rich Americans.
Look up the Broken Window Fallacy. Creating jobs for the sake of having some way for people to make money is bad for the economy and very bad for society. What is needed are jobs that increase the total wealth of society. This should somehow increase the total availability of luxury items (since we already produce more than enough food to feed the whole world with only a small fraction of our economic effort). This means more manufacturing and more service industry jobs. That is why our economic policy is a recipe for disaster, and why china doesn't give a crap about our Intellectual Property laws. They are smart enough to know that a strong economy depends on making things, ideas should be free to all (what are we going to do? Start WW3 over IP laws? don't be stupid). Spend your valuable effort on things that require effort to duplicate. Now to be sure, an artists gotta eat, and for that reason, there needs to be some method in effect to ensure they have what they need to survive and create, but artists don't create for the sake of getting rich any more than programmers work on an open source project to get rich. I don't need to know why a programmer works on OSS projects to know that it is inherently good for society that they do, and that is done without any real monetization at all. In fact, many OSS projects are pointedly free (as in beer ) as well. The same model works with artists. You don't need to tap human greed to get quality art made, you just need to stay out of the artists way; pride, the greater good, fame or whatever motivates them, will continue to do so.
-=Geoskd
Look, say my book became viral. Publishers would be beating down my door trying to get me to sign a contract so they could publish it,
If your book became viral, then the publishers no longer have anything of value to offer you...
$199 is all it takes
-=Geoskd
Copyright is bad for society. It hurts our economy. It hurts our standard of living
You make those statements as if they were self-evident; they're not. You're going to have to explain how it hurts our economy and standard of living.
It took me a long time to understand that for many people, this simple truth is not self evident.
Copyright reduces the standard of living in a very simple way: It prevents everyone from having every piece of art they desire. It limits how many people can enjoy this particular luxury. It is an artificial limit, meaning that without copyright everyone, who wanted it, would have it. Therefore, it harms society.
It also hurts our economy. That may seem like a far fetched statement, but it is merely an extension of the Broken Window Fallacy. The idea is simple, if people didn't have to pay for entertainment, they would spend the money back into society in other ways that would increase the total economic production of society.
So in essence, as long as the artists are producing art, it is best for society and the economy if as many people as possible are able to derive value from that art, as cheaply as possible; Hence the original statement. Now people make a grand gesture about "rewarding the artists", but that's not whats at issue here, whats at issue is what is best for society, which always trumps whats good for an individual or group of individuals.The only caveat is that the artists must continue creating art. For that to happen, the artists need three things: Food, shelter and the tools to create their art. Given those three things, artists will create. In point of fact, given those three things, you might not be able to stop most artists from creating art shy of killing them. its just part of their nature
I do pay for music and movies because there is no other legal way to acquire the art, and to my mind the rule of law is more important than all of the above. The laws should be changed so that we can maintain the rule of law and have the increased benefit to society. I do however fully support "piracy", and would wholeheartedly support a government provision, like the National Endowment for the Arts, that works to make sure artists get the funding they need to eat, sleep and make art. What I don't support is the recording industries strip mining approach to copyright, and their death-grip hold on what, even under our original copyright laws, should have been public domain by now.
-=Geoskd
Very many people agree that the Pirate Bay is an organized copyright thief. That's a simple fact.
Now, that's not true on Slashdot, but Slashdot is not a fair representation of the general population.
I know I will get lots of hate mail for this, but only people who fail to understand the epic fail that is copyright, and all of the issues surrounding it, think that copyright is a good idea. Copyright is bad for society. It hurts our economy. It hurts our standard of living, and unjustly puts large amounts of money into the pockets of middlemen who are barely more than thieves themselves. Perhaps I need to run for congress myself to get at least one voice of reason into the discussion because for some reason, those in office go a long way to listen only to those very same middlemen who are making their society worse any time they can make a buck doing it.
Artists don't need monetary incentive to create great works, they need food and shelter and the tools of the trade. The rest they do themselves. Shakespeare didn't create his great works because he was trying to become rich and famous, he did it because he loved his work. Van Gogh was a lunatic. History is littered with very talented artists who never made much money, But created vast cultural wealth for society, for no other reason than "They could". Many of today's modern music artists create compelling works, but they would have done it anyway, with or without the fortune. Most artists have a job that pays their bills and they create art on the side as a hobby. There is a vast and varied pool of independent artists, some of whom are as talented as today's top artists. The only reason you don't know who they are is because those very same middlemen spend most of the artists money to advertise the few works they choose, and ignore the rest. That advertising is designed to put your focus on the advertised works, and take the focos away from the independent works. They do this, not because its good for the artist (It ensures most artists never see a dime from album sales). They do it to maximize their own revenues (Which are largely driven by income on their advertising subsidiaries).
-=Geoskd
YOU on the other hand seem to think Authors deserve NO PAY for the work they perform (that all their books, movies should be free for us). That makes no logical sense. It's equivalent to a boss that makes you work all week, fires you, and then doesn't pay you any wages.
You misunderstand the underlying principles involved. The disagreement has nothing to do with, should the artists get compensated or not, the argument should be framed as what is in societies best interests. Individual interests *must* take a back seat to the good of society. Period. So, re-frame the question as "What is the best alternative for society?" The answer is not what we have now, copyright is an abysmal failure, and ends up harming society far more than having nothing at all. Remember that there was no copyright when Beethoven or Bach did their work. Shakespeare had no protection. Let me ask you, would we all be better off with Shakespeares works locked firmly behind copyright? Would William Shakespeare have been better off? What is needed is a solution that makes *society* better. To do that we need to do two things. First, we need to ensure as wide and cheap access to cultural works (aka The Arts) as possible. For that purpose, we have accidentally invented the perfect tool: The Internet. The second thing we need to do is ensure a continuing supply of new cultural works (aka The Arts). For that purpose, we have a miserable failure of a tool called copyright. Copyright was supposed to solve both problems, but today it is a barmier to solving the first, and of almost no help in solving the second. Lets wipe out copyright and find some way to keep the artists creating new works. I would humbly suggest: Vastly expanding the National endowment for the arts. Lets trying getting the funds directly to the artists, get the money grubbing middlemen out of the picture. They're no longer needed for the process to work, and move on. Back in the middle ages, this was done by royalty who supported good artists, and generally made their works as available as possible (after all, good entertainment is dynamite crowd control), Today we have the **AA who are doing everything possible to *prevent* the spread of these works, and starving out most artists in favor of a few "megastars", and those in political power are complicit the process.
-=Geoskd
Exactly, its a slap on the wrist. Especially considering the 10s of billions of dollars he costs the entertainment industry daily. The pirate bay has taken to promoting indie (non-industry-approved) artists, further cutting into socially guaranteed profits. Someone needs to be held responsible for this costly outrage!
Sarcasm may seem funny, but under the circumstances, it is counter productive, as it gives the (socially deficient and sarcasm impaired) politicians the impression that some part of the population agrees with the content usurpers, and thus they should side with the plaintiffs.
-=Geoskd
Asimov was a tenured professor of biochemistry whose speculative writings were informed by his scientific thinking.
but being a biochemist does, in no way, shape or form, qualify a person as a computer scientist. The two fields have surprisingly little practical overlap. Now, I won't dispute that Asimov was an extremely intelligent person, with a keen insight, he just got that one wrong is all. If you want someone with a better understanding of computer science, and a far more compelling vision of our future, read James P Hogan. I would suggest "The Two Faces of Tomorrow". You will find it a far more accurate vision of our next century, and you can hold me to that prediction. He laid out exactly what you need to do to create a real artificial intelligence. He hadn't figured out the hardest part (or at least didn't describe it in his books), but for a while, back in the 90's, it looked like he was going to be spot on with his predictions, and he very likely still will.
Worse still is that, as suggested in the movie based on Asimov's world: "I Robot", the 3 laws can lead to only one result: Permanent second class status for people. It is the only logical result of the extension of those laws. The only way to keep people from doing stupid s#!t is to make them slaves. Asimovs rules should have had a 0th rule: "A robot must act to maximize the freedoms of all humans". This law should supersede the other three. A human should have the right to knowingly endanger themselves for any reason at all. You could effectively get rid of the other three, with just the one, as it would force the same behaviors that the other three would force. Its all pie in the sky anyway, since there is no known way to even begin programming the three laws, and there isn't likely to ever be anything reliable enough to consider the resulting code "laws" anyways.
-=Geoskd
1. You didn't account for raises and promotions. If someone worked at an apple store for 30 years then I would expect them to at least attain manager level at some point. If they don't get promoted then it would be safe to assume that they are a scrub employee and deserve their minimum wage.
Almost everyone I know in the service sector has to put up with nasty working conditions designed to drive turnover.This is deliberate for the sake of keeping wages low. My employer does it too. Promotion? My employer *requires* a bachelors degree to become a supervisor (for a $2.00 /hr bump). That is in spite of the fact that being a supervisor here requires no higher education skills at all: No math, no writing ability, nothing. Promotion is not an option unless you want to tack a 100k debt onto that budget we drew up.
2. If you are trying to support yourself on a minimum wage job, then living with your parents might be a better option then you're ridiculous living set up that you outlined above.
Not everyone has parents in a position to help them. I know a guy who did just that though, moved back in with his mom. He was living in a room with his two brothers until the landlord found out and had to throw them out for being over occupancy, and getting his Occupancy permit revoked.
3. You're acting like minimum wage is set up to allow people live very comfortably. Clearly its not when its offered to people who are still in high school. Its low level, unskilled labor.
Thats not what it was meant to be when it was created. It was meant to ensure that average Americans could get a job that paid enough to live on; hence living wage.
4. Apple isn't open during the night. Get a second job bussing, hosting or waiting tables. My parents worked multiple jobs while taking college classes at night, supported themselves on that absurdly low minimum wage that you depicted above. Don't even start to say that its too many hours to work 2 jobs. People on salary constantly put in over 40 hours a work. Lawyers and Accountants going for their exam spend 8 hours in the office every day, 4 hours 2 times a week in a class for their certification and extra time studying on their own. Bottom line is everyone has to work their ass off.
Meanwhile 10% of the country is unemployed. Don't get me started about Mandatory unpaid overtime, its the biggest crime in American business. Just cut 1/3 of the staff and make the remaining people work 50% longer hours for no additional pay. (3) Profit! People cant leave because if they are lucky enough to find another job, that employer did the same thing already, so the job is 60+ hours / week no matter where you go. All in the name of almighty profit.
5. Not going to get involved with the 75% tax you support other than this: It would bring the private sector to a grinding halt, which based on statements seems to be what you want.
No it wont, it will have very little affect on anyone except the very wealthy, for whom it will mean a smaller inheritance for their children. Our country had taxes at that level during the industrial revolution, and it didn't stop our economy one bit. Germany has taxes even higher than that *right now*, and their economy is the only one in Europe not in serious trouble. The FUD you just spewed is the rhetoric the wealthy use so they don't have to choose between leaving their kids millions in inheritance or that new 75 foot super-yacht they want.
-=Geoskd