I own a Hitachi HD widescreen RPTV and a Sony HS20 HD Front Projector. I have both OTA and DirecTV STBs; here are the channels available in my area:
Broadcast OTA:
WGBH-DT PBS 2-1 SDTV and 2-2 HD channel WBZ-DT CBS 4-1 HD WLVI-DT ABC 5-1 HD WCVB-DT NBC 7-1 HD WFXT-DT FOX 25-1 Widescreen SDTV WSBK-DT UPN 38-1 HDTV (Enterprise is in HD, for what little that's worth) WLVI-DT WB 56-1 HDTV (Smallville is in HD, for what little that's worth)
Over DirecTV Sat:
76 Discovery HD 78 HDNET Movies (lame movies no one remembers, in HD) 79 HDNET (some interesting stuff like quality reporting, some lame stuff like old Charlie's Angel's and Hogan's Hero's repeats, in HD) 85 Pay Per View in HD 88 HBO-HD 91 Showtime-HD
-------
Boston is a good area for OTA HD. Also, the local cable company Comcast has finally gone HD and will rent an HD box for $7/mo. If you only have an HD ready set and want a cheap STB, Comcast is definitely the way to go (I went Sat before Comcast rolled HD out). You can also pick up a cheap OTA STB these days for about $200. The Sat STBs are, IMO, not really worth it. If I were buying today, I would go cable or OTA only. Note that HD TIVO has recently been released and should be on store shelves now or very soon.
HD is broadcast in most major metropolitan markets now. And don't forget the advantage a widescreen TV offers for DVDs. It really is worth the money, IMO.
In this situation your retort nullifies my argument, but not in the general case. In the US congress we see this sort of political gamesmanship regularly; I assume EU parliaments throughout the various member states are little different. BTW: thanks for your factual reply. --M
Isn't it amazing how these guys just keep re-introducing the same (or worse) legislation over and over again without regard to the voiced desire of the citizenry? How many times must we mail letters to our representatives again and again on the same issue? How many times will companies and those affiliated with the WTO continue to introduce the same legislation, maybe hidden as a rider here, maybe out in the open there, each time with the hope that citizens will tire of voicing their opposition over the same issue again and again. Un-fuck'n-believable. Except it's just one of the many ways they game the system.... --M
Why do we always just listen and never send? It seems we're afraid of actually making contact. What if the aliens are also being prudent and just listening? We could be listening to each other's silence for millenia.
Two valid reasons:
1) Point the antenna/laser where? Since we don't know of anyone else sending, we don't know where to send. And broadcasting directed EM in any random direction is highly unlikely to hit pay dirt.
2) Announcements are a poor survival strategy when in a new and unfamiliar environment. If intelligent life is teeming throughout our galaxy (big if), we would be damn fools to announce our locataion thusly. It's like walking into a new jungle alone and without weapons while screaming our location to all the nearby predators. I prefer prudence to recklessness. JMO
Actually, Ford's licensing their technology because Toyota managed to get a broad enough patent that the stuff Ford came up with (on their own) fell under the patent.
Which only proves the previous poster's point. Toyota spent the research money to design and build hybrid technology first, and as a result they were properly rewarded by a patent on their technology. Now Ford must license this technology in order to build and sell hybrid cars. Here is an example of patent law working properly. --M
Never - I repeat NEVER - verbally promise a free service at a loss to local law enforcement, because if you do and run out of money, they will lock you up! The guy should have simply declared bankruptcy and let the lawyers wrangle the mess out, but because he requested to renegotiate for one of those strange and unheard of contracts where services were exchanged for money he wound up in the clink. Wouldn't every business enjoy having such power over their employees and contractors... Un-fucking-believeable. I really hope the judge throws out those criminal charges ASAP and the guy's lawyer files a wrongful arrest suit immediately afterward. I used to donate to the FOP - but after seeing the horrible way some cops treat perfectly lawful citizens, and how the department backs them up without regard to their behavior, I'll never give the FOP a dime again. This is just plain disgusting. --M
...is because the author and those he quotes equivicate by saying nothing specific. He writes that "virus experts suggest", "it appears", and the author "may have", and in so doing the "expert" says nothing at all. The author implies that a "linux war" exists, that a "linux fan" is likely responsible for the worm, and that the worm is a "weapon" used to wage that war. This is in the title and the first four paragraphs. The rest of the article is concerned with factual statements about the worm, how it works, how many hosts are infected, etc etc etc. I have no complaint with the factual portion of the article. But the lead paragraphs and title present a completely biased view of what's happening, and all without offering any facts or making any assertions whatsoever. Is that really "news"? --M
The author, Jeordan Legon, stated that 'virus experts' suggested that a 'Linux fan' was responsible for the creation of the myDoom worm. The title of the article clearly implies both that a 'linux war' exists, and that the worm is somehow a direct weapon of that war. Yet the only attributed quote to back up this assertion is from Chris Belthoff, who says, "The MyDoom worm takes the Linux Wars to a new intensity" and "It appears that the author of MyDoom may have taken the war of words from the courtrooms and Internet message boards to a new level by unleashing this worm which attacks SCO's Web site."
Unless Mr. Belthoff is a witness to the crime, or has other direct knowledge of the criminal and his/her activities, his 'expert opinion' on this matter is no more informative than what any random person taken off the street might have to say - which is. not informative at all.
No one knows who wrote the worm, what his or her intentions were, nor what relationship - if any - the worm author has with Linux or the Open Source community. Of course, Mr. Legon doesn't assert such a relationship in his article, he only implies it, leaving factual statements about the worm and how it works several paragraphs down from the top.
Mr Legon, may I ask you: Just what is the job of a reporter? Is it to report facts or spread gossip in the form of irrelevant and nonfactual 'expert opinion'? Because, if your job is to report facts, than may I say that in my 'non-expert opinion' you badly missed the mark with this article.
"They're welcome to think anything they want," he said. "As has been demonstrated, I don't reveal my sources."
At least he's consistent in enabling criminals.
Actually, no he is not. As reported by Eric Boehlert in today's Salon feature article on the abuse of unnamed sources by journalists - and a judicial backlash in the making as a result - it turns out that Novak has released a source in the past:
"One option is voluntarily outing the source. Press advocates argue that's career suicide. But just three years ago Novak himself publicly revealed a confidential source: FBI agent Robert Hanssen. After Hanssen was arrested for espionage, Novak wrote that "in order to be honest to my readers, I must reveal" that Hanssen had been an unnamed source in prior Novak columns. Novak feels no such necessity today to reveal the identity of the sources who unmasked a CIA operative's undercover status."
So here we have Novak claiming that his journalistic ethics prevents him from revealing an anonymous administration source, even when it's clear that by so doing he is not only engaging in obstruction of justice but also protecting himself from potential felony prosecution. Yet, when it's to his advantage (or at least not to his disadvantage) he is just as willing to release another anonymous source. I would like to see how the Poynter Institute would defend those "journalistic ethics".
Novak has a clear bias due to his close ties with the Republican Party and personal relationship with Karl Rove. Nobody should take what he has to say at face value, however, we should all expect him to behave within the confines of the law. While it's unclear just where his obligations to his source vs. obligations to society lay, it is also just as clear that his editors and publishers should have at the least censured him in the extreme for this action. Actually, I would have preferred he be fired from the Washington Post and CNN. But that's JMO.
The article is about an Ultra 5 being resurrected, not a traditional sparc 5. Just so we're clear, the sparc 5 was among the Sun 4m CPU class while the Ultra 5 was a Sun 4u class CPU. The Sparc 5 is a 32 bit arch while the Ultra 5 is 64 bit. The Sparc 5 uses SBUS expansion cards, MBUS CPU expansion bay, has onboard 10mbit ethernet, standard SCSI II support, and usually shipped with a CG6 8 bit color card (not always). The Ultra 5 has a built in Sun IIi CPU, 100Mbit ethernet, PCI bus support, and IDE instead of SCSI disks. It also has an onboard 8bit ATI graphics adapter.
If given the choice I would take the Sparc 5 simply for it's greater I/O bandwidth alone. Actually, give me an Ultra 1 or 2, or a Sparc 20. Frankly, the Ultra 5 was a hunk of junk even on release. I wouldn't pay a dime for one of those. JMO. --M
1) To further humiliate the businesses, Livingston posts all the court documents and letters he sends, in which he typically demands a standard $500 fine, or $1,500 if the fax was sent knowingly. In all, he says he's collected about $6,000 in three years.
2)"What's happened is there's a whole cadre of lawyers who want easy money," says Wolfe & Wyman attorney Stuart Wolfe, whose Irvine, Calif., firm is defending several clients accused of sending junk faxes.
Given the limited $500/fax fines, and the admitted total of $6000 over three years of work earned by Livingston, just what business (even legal) would attempt to exploit such tiny earnings potential? I mean, who is Wolfe (and the reporter) kidding? You want to argue free speech rights for fax and email spammers, fine - fight it out in the Supreme Court and let the chips fall. But that argument is so ridiculous that I can't believe the reporter included it with a straight face. Never mind the fact enforcing financial penalties against civil wrongdoing is how tort law is supposed to work.
(shakes head in astonishment at the absurdity of it all)
Is this the BSA? Or is this the RIAA? Is this the MPAA? I thought it was the USA! Or just another country....
Would that be a slant reference to lyrics in Existential Blues by Tom 'T-Bone' Stankus?
[...]
Some girl with psychic power, she said, "T-Bone, what's your sign?" I blink and answer, "Neon!" I thought I'd blow her mind. She's reading Moby Dick by some fruitcake named Herman, She's chomping on a knockwurst, was the duchess really German? You ask so many questions, what answers should I choose? Is this really Butte, Montana, or just existential blues?
Really Butte, Montana? Is this Plato's heebie-jeebies? Is this schizoid paranoia?
Yeah, the age discrimination in this field is simply unbelievable. I'm trying to get out by buying rental property in the hope that I can retire in my forties and go to grad school for something else. I wish you good luck in your new job, and hope that you won't have to go through that again. --M
So don't live in a major metropolitan area. When I lost my job, I didn't move to New York City. I moved to Trenton, New Jersey.
No disrespect, but I think you're confusing employability with base survivable wages. Suppose an minimum wage cost of living index sets New York city at $10.50/hour while setting Cincinnati, OH at $6.50 (just numbers I pulled out of my ass as an example). This wouldn't make New York any more livable than Cincinnati, nor would it push wages up across the board for all - it would simply set a sustainable floor.
Two points:
A) As for arguing that people should simply move if they can't afford to live in a location, what does a family do if their children are in school? What does a family do if one member is employed while another is not? I think you're extrapolating your personal experience in the dot.bomb bust with the vast majority of low wage poor familys. And further, you likely earned far more in your position than what any minimum wage earner could hope to expect. You had no expectation of continuing white collar employment.
B) As for the argument that this policy would promote an influx of people moving to the best cities, I argue that if this happened regional unemployment in those areas would increase to offset that effect. Just because a local minimum wage is meets survivability for the poor, doesn't mean that there are enough jobs to meet the entire regional population. I simply argue that what jobs are available ought to provide enough in wages so that the poor don't starve while working full time.
Abolish minimum wage laws entirely and recalculate the minimum wage for a job daily, based on whatever the employer is willing to pay and the employee is willing to accept?
Tackhead,
The problem here is that we fundamentally disagree on core principals, not economic theory. You and I both agree that local housing, food, and other prices are set by local markets. We both agree that a single minimum wage set without regard to local cost of living sets the stage for regional disparity even when both groups of people earn the same wage.
So the fundamental question I ask you is this: Do you consider it appropriate for the government to set an earnings floor so companies can't use employee gluts and other leverage to push wages down below what is survivable? Is it the job of government to regulate a living wage for its citizens? I think this regulation is appropriate. It appears you do not.
True, but that argument is used equally well right here in the United States. The descrepancy between the cheapest and most expensive places to live domestically is about as much as the descrepancy between here and abroad.
That's certainly correct and worthy of consideration within rural areas of the United States as well. But in the major metropolitan areas the prevailing minimum wage simply doesn't come close to providing a bare minimum poverty subsistance. Which is why a minimum wage indexed to local cost of living and inflation might serve service industry and blue collar workers better than the current system. And implementing it across the board with our WTO and NAFTA trading partners would help create a level playing field for wages. That was the point I was trying to make.
[...]but it makes just as much sense to lower the minimum wage here as to raise it there.
The point is not to raise or lower the minimum wage in any one location, but to meet the original intent of the minimum wage by setting a survivable floor appropriate to local conditions. This intent was never met by the original minimum wage laws here in the US as many urban poor can attest. Of course, the poor in countries without any minimum wage protection suffer even worse.
...have no problem finding work. This has been the worst tech contractions I've witnessed. I know a top grade programmer who has been unemployed for two years in the Boston area, and (I believe) primarily because he is nearing fifty. He doesn't think he'll ever work in tech again. He may be right... --M
... A sliding scale minimum wage based on various cost of living factors and indexed to inflation could work pretty well. That would resolve the regional differences in housing, food, health care, and consumables while providing for a fair balance between exploiting overseas workers and fair trade economics. It would have to be recalculated on a regular basis, say yearly. But this is certainly better than enforcing a single minimum wage, unlivable in any major metropolitan area and much too high in the poorest rural areas of the world. JMO. --M
Who knows? I was voted up by voice, which doesn't record who voted which way. Good luck finding out who to vote against next election year. That's representation for ya! --M
Actually, Rob & Co. are doing a pretty good job controlling the trolls around here. The S/N is still pretty poor at low thresholds, the editors still aren't too careful about dupes and grammaical errors, and trolls still hang on in the trenches, but the community has only gained in strength since the rbtl troll wipeout last year. It's K5 that seems to be having trouble these days... --M
Sorry about the previous confusing post, hit return instead of shift by accident. Anyway, I was going to mod you up but instead chose to add to your post by offering a quick link to the Cromemco Dazzler, the S-100 card(s) of which you speak. Great card for its time. If I remember correctly it offered 128x128 pixel resolution with eight color support, and output to a normal television using a standard RF modulator. I remember a pretty cool Trek game for use with the dazzler that ran on most 8080/Z80 S-100 systems under CP/M. Played it a bunch as a kid. But I have to admit that Star Raiders on the Atari 800 absolutely blew me away in comparison. The Dazzler, while an amazing early adopter card, just didn't have enough market penetration to supprt a game market like the Apple II, Atari 400/800 and TRS-80 systems did (and yes, the TRS-80 - even with its clunky 128x48 B/W graphics - did have some pretty cool games. Anyone remember Crushg Crumble and Chomp!?!?! Or any of the Big Five games for that matter...) Oh well, thats enough of memory lane for now...:) --M
My father first bought a TRS-80 model I in 1977, back before they released the Expansion Interface and Level II BASIC. It came with 4KB of RAM, a B & W monitor, and a cassette tape drive. He quickly upgraded the RAM to 16KB, and bought an expansion interface and SSSD Shugart floppy disk drive (5 1/4") as soon as they were released by Radio Shack. We then proceeded to purchase sixteen 4116 300ns RAM chips on the open market and upgrade the expansion interface with an additional 32KB, for a full 48KB of RAM in the system. He paid over $300 for those 16 chips.
In 1980 he bought me an ELF II from an unknown company named Neutronics. It had a 20 key Hex keypad, 256 byes of RAM, a run toggle switch, two 7 segment LEDs and one LED lamp for the 1802 Q bit. I wound up expanding that thing with a cassette and serial I/O and Rom monitor board, an extra 8KB of static RAM (which ran a bundle) and an old VT52 terminal before dad bought an IBM XT and gave me his trash 80. Heh, that was fun too. Ran a BBS from 1982 to 1986 on that trash 80 with an old package called TBBS. Excellent BBS software and plenty of fun times for a teenage kid.:)
Seriously, if you're not willing to pay tax dollars for rail infrastsructure, why also pay for roads and bridges? And while you're at it, why not dismantle the education system and courts as well? When private enterprise performs all of these civic functions, will "freedom" have been expanded or will we simply have seen a net transfer of power away from voters into private hands? Just asking. --M
Slashdot Mirror
I own a Hitachi HD widescreen RPTV and a Sony HS20 HD Front Projector. I have both OTA and DirecTV STBs; here are the channels available in my area:
Broadcast OTA:
WGBH-DT PBS 2-1 SDTV and 2-2 HD channel
WBZ-DT CBS 4-1 HD
WLVI-DT ABC 5-1 HD
WCVB-DT NBC 7-1 HD
WFXT-DT FOX 25-1 Widescreen SDTV
WSBK-DT UPN 38-1 HDTV (Enterprise is in HD, for what little that's worth)
WLVI-DT WB 56-1 HDTV (Smallville is in HD, for what little that's worth)
Over DirecTV Sat:
76 Discovery HD
78 HDNET Movies (lame movies no one remembers, in HD)
79 HDNET (some interesting stuff like quality reporting, some lame stuff like old Charlie's Angel's and Hogan's Hero's repeats, in HD)
85 Pay Per View in HD
88 HBO-HD
91 Showtime-HD
-------
Boston is a good area for OTA HD. Also, the local cable company Comcast has finally gone HD and will rent an HD box for $7/mo. If you only have an HD ready set and want a cheap STB, Comcast is definitely the way to go (I went Sat before Comcast rolled HD out). You can also pick up a cheap OTA STB these days for about $200. The Sat STBs are, IMO, not really worth it. If I were buying today, I would go cable or OTA only. Note that HD TIVO has recently been released and should be on store shelves now or very soon.
HD is broadcast in most major metropolitan markets now. And don't forget the advantage a widescreen TV offers for DVDs. It really is worth the money, IMO.
Cheers,
--Maynard
In this situation your retort nullifies my argument, but not in the general case. In the US congress we see this sort of political gamesmanship regularly; I assume EU parliaments throughout the various member states are little different. BTW: thanks for your factual reply. --M
Isn't it amazing how these guys just keep re-introducing the same (or worse) legislation over and over again without regard to the voiced desire of the citizenry? How many times must we mail letters to our representatives again and again on the same issue? How many times will companies and those affiliated with the WTO continue to introduce the same legislation, maybe hidden as a rider here, maybe out in the open there, each time with the hope that citizens will tire of voicing their opposition over the same issue again and again. Un-fuck'n-believable. Except it's just one of the many ways they game the system.... --M
Why do we always just listen and never send? It seems we're afraid of actually making contact. What if the aliens are also being prudent and just listening? We could be listening to each other's silence for millenia.
Two valid reasons:
1) Point the antenna/laser where? Since we don't know of anyone else sending, we don't know where to send. And broadcasting directed EM in any random direction is highly unlikely to hit pay dirt.
2) Announcements are a poor survival strategy when in a new and unfamiliar environment. If intelligent life is teeming throughout our galaxy (big if), we would be damn fools to announce our locataion thusly. It's like walking into a new jungle alone and without weapons while screaming our location to all the nearby predators. I prefer prudence to recklessness. JMO
Cheers,
--Maynard
Actually, Ford's licensing their technology because Toyota managed to get a broad enough patent that the stuff Ford came up with (on their own) fell under the patent.
Which only proves the previous poster's point. Toyota spent the research money to design and build hybrid technology first, and as a result they were properly rewarded by a patent on their technology. Now Ford must license this technology in order to build and sell hybrid cars. Here is an example of patent law working properly. --M
Never - I repeat NEVER - verbally promise a free service at a loss to local law enforcement, because if you do and run out of money, they will lock you up! The guy should have simply declared bankruptcy and let the lawyers wrangle the mess out, but because he requested to renegotiate for one of those strange and unheard of contracts where services were exchanged for money he wound up in the clink. Wouldn't every business enjoy having such power over their employees and contractors... Un-fucking-believeable. I really hope the judge throws out those criminal charges ASAP and the guy's lawyer files a wrongful arrest suit immediately afterward. I used to donate to the FOP - but after seeing the horrible way some cops treat perfectly lawful citizens, and how the department backs them up without regard to their behavior, I'll never give the FOP a dime again. This is just plain disgusting. --M
...is because the author and those he quotes equivicate by saying nothing specific. He writes that "virus experts suggest", "it appears", and the author "may have", and in so doing the "expert" says nothing at all. The author implies that a "linux war" exists, that a "linux fan" is likely responsible for the worm, and that the worm is a "weapon" used to wage that war. This is in the title and the first four paragraphs. The rest of the article is concerned with factual statements about the worm, how it works, how many hosts are infected, etc etc etc. I have no complaint with the factual portion of the article. But the lead paragraphs and title present a completely biased view of what's happening, and all without offering any facts or making any assertions whatsoever. Is that really "news"? --M
Regarding the CNN.com article: "Experts: Vicious worm 'Linux war' weapon" found here:
o om .spread/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/01/27/myd
The author, Jeordan Legon, stated that 'virus experts' suggested that a 'Linux fan' was responsible for the creation of the myDoom worm. The title of the article clearly implies both that a 'linux war' exists, and that the worm is somehow a direct weapon of that war. Yet the only attributed quote to back up this assertion is from Chris Belthoff, who says, "The MyDoom worm takes the Linux Wars to a new intensity" and "It appears that the author of MyDoom may have taken the war of words from the courtrooms and Internet message boards to a new level by unleashing this worm which attacks SCO's Web site."
Unless Mr. Belthoff is a witness to the crime, or has other direct knowledge of the criminal and his/her activities, his 'expert opinion' on this matter is no more informative than what any random person taken off the street might have to say - which is. not informative at all.
No one knows who wrote the worm, what his or her intentions were, nor what relationship - if any - the worm author has with Linux or the Open Source community. Of course, Mr. Legon doesn't assert such a relationship in his article, he only implies it, leaving factual statements about the worm and how it works several paragraphs down from the top.
Mr Legon, may I ask you: Just what is the job of a reporter? Is it to report facts or spread gossip in the form of irrelevant and nonfactual 'expert opinion'? Because, if your job is to report facts, than may I say that in my 'non-expert opinion' you badly missed the mark with this article.
Thank You,
J. Maynard Gelinas
"One option is voluntarily outing the source. Press advocates argue that's career suicide. But just three years ago Novak himself publicly revealed a confidential source: FBI agent Robert Hanssen. After Hanssen was arrested for espionage, Novak wrote that "in order to be honest to my readers, I must reveal" that Hanssen had been an unnamed source in prior Novak columns. Novak feels no such necessity today to reveal the identity of the sources who unmasked a CIA operative's undercover status."
So here we have Novak claiming that his journalistic ethics prevents him from revealing an anonymous administration source, even when it's clear that by so doing he is not only engaging in obstruction of justice but also protecting himself from potential felony prosecution. Yet, when it's to his advantage (or at least not to his disadvantage) he is just as willing to release another anonymous source. I would like to see how the Poynter Institute would defend those "journalistic ethics".
Novak has a clear bias due to his close ties with the Republican Party and personal relationship with Karl Rove. Nobody should take what he has to say at face value, however, we should all expect him to behave within the confines of the law. While it's unclear just where his obligations to his source vs. obligations to society lay, it is also just as clear that his editors and publishers should have at the least censured him in the extreme for this action. Actually, I would have preferred he be fired from the Washington Post and CNN. But that's JMO.
--Maynard
The SS5 had a built in processor.
Absolutely right; I knew that. I've got an SS5, SS10, and SS20 and simply made a mistake in my post. Whoops. --M
The article is about an Ultra 5 being resurrected, not a traditional sparc 5. Just so we're clear, the sparc 5 was among the Sun 4m CPU class while the Ultra 5 was a Sun 4u class CPU. The Sparc 5 is a 32 bit arch while the Ultra 5 is 64 bit. The Sparc 5 uses SBUS expansion cards, MBUS CPU expansion bay, has onboard 10mbit ethernet, standard SCSI II support, and usually shipped with a CG6 8 bit color card (not always). The Ultra 5 has a built in Sun IIi CPU, 100Mbit ethernet, PCI bus support, and IDE instead of SCSI disks. It also has an onboard 8bit ATI graphics adapter.
If given the choice I would take the Sparc 5 simply for it's greater I/O bandwidth alone. Actually, give me an Ultra 1 or 2, or a Sparc 20. Frankly, the Ultra 5 was a hunk of junk even on release. I wouldn't pay a dime for one of those. JMO. --M
1) To further humiliate the businesses, Livingston posts all the court documents and letters he sends, in which he typically demands a standard $500 fine, or $1,500 if the fax was sent knowingly. In all, he says he's collected about $6,000 in three years.
2)"What's happened is there's a whole cadre of lawyers who want easy money," says Wolfe & Wyman attorney Stuart Wolfe, whose Irvine, Calif., firm is defending several clients accused of sending junk faxes.
Given the limited $500/fax fines, and the admitted total of $6000 over three years of work earned by Livingston, just what business (even legal) would attempt to exploit such tiny earnings potential? I mean, who is Wolfe (and the reporter) kidding? You want to argue free speech rights for fax and email spammers, fine - fight it out in the Supreme Court and let the chips fall. But that argument is so ridiculous that I can't believe the reporter included it with a straight face. Never mind the fact enforcing financial penalties against civil wrongdoing is how tort law is supposed to work.
(shakes head in astonishment at the absurdity of it all)
--Maynard
Is this the BSA? Or is this the RIAA? Is this the MPAA? I thought it was the USA! Or just another country....
Would that be a slant reference to lyrics in Existential Blues by Tom 'T-Bone' Stankus?
[...]
Some girl with psychic power, she said, "T-Bone, what's your sign?"
I blink and answer, "Neon!" I thought I'd blow her mind.
She's reading Moby Dick by some fruitcake named Herman,
She's chomping on a knockwurst, was the duchess really German?
You ask so many questions, what answers should I choose?
Is this really Butte, Montana, or just existential blues?
Really Butte, Montana?
Is this Plato's heebie-jeebies?
Is this schizoid paranoia?
(Star Trek-like sound effects)
Yeah, the age discrimination in this field is simply unbelievable. I'm trying to get out by buying rental property in the hope that I can retire in my forties and go to grad school for something else. I wish you good luck in your new job, and hope that you won't have to go through that again. --M
So don't live in a major metropolitan area. When I lost my job, I didn't move to New York City. I moved to Trenton, New Jersey.
No disrespect, but I think you're confusing employability with base survivable wages. Suppose an minimum wage cost of living index sets New York city at $10.50/hour while setting Cincinnati, OH at $6.50 (just numbers I pulled out of my ass as an example). This wouldn't make New York any more livable than Cincinnati, nor would it push wages up across the board for all - it would simply set a sustainable floor.
Two points:
A) As for arguing that people should simply move if they can't afford to live in a location, what does a family do if their children are in school? What does a family do if one member is employed while another is not? I think you're extrapolating your personal experience in the dot.bomb bust with the vast majority of low wage poor familys. And further, you likely earned far more in your position than what any minimum wage earner could hope to expect. You had no expectation of continuing white collar employment.
B) As for the argument that this policy would promote an influx of people moving to the best cities, I argue that if this happened regional unemployment in those areas would increase to offset that effect. Just because a local minimum wage is meets survivability for the poor, doesn't mean that there are enough jobs to meet the entire regional population. I simply argue that what jobs are available ought to provide enough in wages so that the poor don't starve while working full time.
Cheers,
--Maynard
Abolish minimum wage laws entirely and recalculate the minimum wage for a job daily, based on whatever the employer is willing to pay and the employee is willing to accept?
Tackhead,
The problem here is that we fundamentally disagree on core principals, not economic theory. You and I both agree that local housing, food, and other prices are set by local markets. We both agree that a single minimum wage set without regard to local cost of living sets the stage for regional disparity even when both groups of people earn the same wage.
So the fundamental question I ask you is this: Do you consider it appropriate for the government to set an earnings floor so companies can't use employee gluts and other leverage to push wages down below what is survivable? Is it the job of government to regulate a living wage for its citizens? I think this regulation is appropriate. It appears you do not.
Cheers,
--Maynard
True, but that argument is used equally well right here in the United States. The descrepancy between the cheapest and most expensive places to live domestically is about as much as the descrepancy between here and abroad.
That's certainly correct and worthy of consideration within rural areas of the United States as well. But in the major metropolitan areas the prevailing minimum wage simply doesn't come close to providing a bare minimum poverty subsistance. Which is why a minimum wage indexed to local cost of living and inflation might serve service industry and blue collar workers better than the current system. And implementing it across the board with our WTO and NAFTA trading partners would help create a level playing field for wages. That was the point I was trying to make.
[...]but it makes just as much sense to lower the minimum wage here as to raise it there.
The point is not to raise or lower the minimum wage in any one location, but to meet the original intent of the minimum wage by setting a survivable floor appropriate to local conditions. This intent was never met by the original minimum wage laws here in the US as many urban poor can attest. Of course, the poor in countries without any minimum wage protection suffer even worse.
Cheers,
--Maynard
...have no problem finding work. This has been the worst tech contractions I've witnessed. I know a top grade programmer who has been unemployed for two years in the Boston area, and (I believe) primarily because he is nearing fifty. He doesn't think he'll ever work in tech again. He may be right... --M
... A sliding scale minimum wage based on various cost of living factors and indexed to inflation could work pretty well. That would resolve the regional differences in housing, food, health care, and consumables while providing for a fair balance between exploiting overseas workers and fair trade economics. It would have to be recalculated on a regular basis, say yearly. But this is certainly better than enforcing a single minimum wage, unlivable in any major metropolitan area and much too high in the poorest rural areas of the world. JMO. --M
Who knows? I was voted up by voice, which doesn't record who voted which way. Good luck finding out who to vote against next election year. That's representation for ya! --M
Actually, Rob & Co. are doing a pretty good job controlling the trolls around here. The S/N is still pretty poor at low thresholds, the editors still aren't too careful about dupes and grammaical errors, and trolls still hang on in the trenches, but the community has only gained in strength since the rbtl troll wipeout last year. It's K5 that seems to be having trouble these days... --M
Sorry about the previous confusing post, hit return instead of shift by accident. Anyway, I was going to mod you up but instead chose to add to your post by offering a quick link to the Cromemco Dazzler, the S-100 card(s) of which you speak. Great card for its time. If I remember correctly it offered 128x128 pixel resolution with eight color support, and output to a normal television using a standard RF modulator. I remember a pretty cool Trek game for use with the dazzler that ran on most 8080/Z80 S-100 systems under CP/M. Played it a bunch as a kid. But I have to admit that Star Raiders on the Atari 800 absolutely blew me away in comparison. The Dazzler, while an amazing early adopter card, just didn't have enough market penetration to supprt a game market like the Apple II, Atari 400/800 and TRS-80 systems did (and yes, the TRS-80 - even with its clunky 128x48 B/W graphics - did have some pretty cool games. Anyone remember Crushg Crumble and Chomp!?!?! Or any of the Big Five games for that matter...) Oh well, thats enough of memory lane for now... :) --M
...but instead chose to a
My father first bought a TRS-80 model I in 1977, back before they released the Expansion Interface and Level II BASIC. It came with 4KB of RAM, a B & W monitor, and a cassette tape drive. He quickly upgraded the RAM to 16KB, and bought an expansion interface and SSSD Shugart floppy disk drive (5 1/4") as soon as they were released by Radio Shack. We then proceeded to purchase sixteen 4116 300ns RAM chips on the open market and upgrade the expansion interface with an additional 32KB, for a full 48KB of RAM in the system. He paid over $300 for those 16 chips.
:)
In 1980 he bought me an ELF II from an unknown company named Neutronics. It had a 20 key Hex keypad, 256 byes of RAM, a run toggle switch, two 7 segment LEDs and one LED lamp for the 1802 Q bit. I wound up expanding that thing with a cassette and serial I/O and Rom monitor board, an extra 8KB of static RAM (which ran a bundle) and an old VT52 terminal before dad bought an IBM XT and gave me his trash 80. Heh, that was fun too. Ran a BBS from 1982 to 1986 on that trash 80 with an old package called TBBS. Excellent BBS software and plenty of fun times for a teenage kid.
--M
Seriously, if you're not willing to pay tax dollars for rail infrastsructure, why also pay for roads and bridges? And while you're at it, why not dismantle the education system and courts as well? When private enterprise performs all of these civic functions, will "freedom" have been expanded or will we simply have seen a net transfer of power away from voters into private hands? Just asking. --M