How much of Microsoft's software did the state of Washington write?
There are plenty of places to do business where you don't have to pay a huge tribute to satisfy the greed of the local warlords. Some of them are even in the United States.
The State of Washington should try being less greedy. They should do less and ask the dependent class to do more for themselves.
As always, my first suggestion is for anyone on government housing assistance to be required to live with a roommate to share housing expenses. It's good enough for college students, it should be good enough for welfare recipients.
Sure that's possible. But it's ignorant to consider it likely.
Criminals (and also basically every other person) are opportunists. When someone wants to break into a house and they see an alarm sticker, they just go on to the next house. They don't spend a month studying the alarm and the floor plan and figure a way to defeat the alarm.
In a child abduction where the child has a tracking device, the abductor will get caught 10000 times for every time he decides to chop off the kid's arm. That should be obvious.
Countermeasures don't have to be perfect to be effective. Often, they don't even have to be real. A good way to end vandalism is to install fake surveillance cameras, for example.
Yeah, California is the land where individual rights and freedoms are forgotten.
You really have only a few choices left under such a regime: - Escape while you still can, - Live there as a criminal, - Get a government position and be above the law, - Or just learn to do what you're told.
But they have lots of time to force you to buy more expensive TVs in order to save a couple of watts of electricity.
Maybe Californians (who are not part of the elite, effete ruling class) should consider getting out while they still have something left to bring with them.
No one actually gets "fired". You just get put on the wrong list when it's time for layoffs. Or you get a bad review and everyone gets a bonus except for you. Etc.
We had a bad IT group. That's what I'm saying. We tried everything to get them to improve. And they actually did improve a little over a long period of time.
Simple answers (like complaining and taking up helpdesk time until someone sees it's more efficient to fix the underlying problem than to keep servicing it) only work in fundamentally good (or at least mediocre) situations.
What a load of crap. In instance number 1. support is not doing their job...
Yeah. Tell me about it.
in instance number 2. your suggesting that a support bitch, or even their manager has control over the hiring process?
No, a guy's manager has control of hiring and bonuses, not "support"? What good is a guy who can't get his work done? What good is a guy who always has one excuse or another why he didn't get his work done?
We just worked around IT and complained. See above where I pointed out that users circumvent security that keeps them from getting their work done.
(Also, this very specific thing with the passwords didn't happen to us. But similar things did with similar IT responses.)
... The guys that aren't good enough to contibute in any meaningful way... their jobs is free up the the real IT talent to do their job.
After how long? A year? You're theoretically correct though.
What if the forgetful user just happens to be a core part of the sales team? Or a director?
Our directors had issues on this level. Bitter complaints resulted. IT meetings happened. "You can login now, what are you complaining about? Just put in a trouble ticket. We try to be pretty responsive on the tickets."
or
"We don't have that problem at headquarters."
or (my fucking favorite)
"That problem won't happen after we switch to the new system." And stuff they didn't say unless you really pressed them: "... No, we don't have any schedule for switching over. Sometime after the first of the year.... No, we can't narrow it down to a quarter.... No, we haven't purchased it yet, we're still qualifying it.... No, there's no interim fix. Put in a trouble ticket.... Etc."
It got to the point where I'd laugh every time I heard a "When...?" question related to IT.
Four years of this. It was maddening. Especially because I had a background in what IT was doing and could have just fixed a lot of the problems if I were allowed to.
Half the time people can't get work done because 1st and 2nd level support don't know what they are doing.
1. Take a variable amount of time and then change the password for you. Continue to do it. Over and over and over and over. Act clueless when ask why they don't just fix the underlying problem. You can login now, what are you complaining about?
or
2. Ignore you.
You can't get your work done? Stop forgetting your password or we'll hire someone with a better memory.
Educating your users is useful. You'll probably do a good job. Tell them not to download and install anything "fun" for Windows.
I find that IT people get security wrong far more often than users, though I'm used to working with sophisticated users. IT people setup security that's needlessly inconvenient. The users then spend their time circumventing that security to get their work done. Users do things like writing their password down on a post-it, using skype, setting up logmein.com on their PC, or posting a document on a public site. They do this because IT forces elaborate password schemes and won't support remote logins or other external communications.
IT needs to be responsive to user needs for security to work right in an organization.
Secondly, yes. Families with unfit parents should be "broken up". If they can't pay their bills, and if they can't get anyone to help them, they need to face reality and find a solution to have their children taken care of. There's a long tradition of sending children to a relative (an aunt, or a grandmother -- as in President Obama's story) when parents are having financial trouble. It's part of being a responsible person.
If families can't work this out, then someone in a community can take care of the child.
This is the way these things have been handled throughout human history. This is a surprise to you?
Now, on to your questions:
1. There's an almost infinite amount of charity available for sick children. If some sick child needs charity and hasn't received it, it's only because people aren't asking.
2. Children aren't free because they're children. They're not responsible adults.
You're the one who made up the scenario that required government force. My option applies it to the fewest people -- only the unfit parents. This could be done on the local or state level. No unconstitutional federal bureaucracy would be needed.
My questions:
Are you really saying we should put the IRS in charge of health care billing so we don't have to ask parents to care for their own children?
What do you have against asking parents to care for their own children anyway?
Do you really think children are better off in poverty and living off the government than living with responsible adoptive parents? You think government dependency is a good life lesson for children?
Yes, the old are the wealthiest segment of the population. See this census publication, page 11.
Old folks should pay more of their own expenses. Everyone should pay more of their own expenses and take less money from their neighbors (by force, against their neighbors' will).
The stuff you said about inflation is wrong and bizarre. The world can consume a lot (like we did during World War Two) or it can save for future consumption or it can borrow against future production.
None of that has anything to do with inflation. Inflation is caused by (essentially) printing money, which is simply a choice.
Good question. The one you cite asks doctors to choose between 3 theoretical plans, two extreme and one in between. Doctors (63%) picked the one in between.
The one I cite asked specifically about Obama's plan. Doctors (65%) were opposed.
So it's fair to conclude that doctors support something moderate, but not Obama's plan.
This is why people get so upset about Social Security and Medicare: they fail to realize that this huge "transfer" of wealth is essentially from themselves (in their productive years), to themselves (in their later years, when their economic output is below their survival needs). What it really amounts to, for the most part, is forced savings.
You are completely wrong about this. There is no savings. Social security and Medicare will be bankrupt decades before anyone who is "young" gets old enough to use it.
You would be right if we lived in some theoretical world. But in the actual world, the money will be long spent.
Also, the old are the richest segment of the population and the young are the poorest. Obammacare will only further impoverish the young.
If insurance rates are to vary between people, they should vary due to choices by the insured. There is no economic utility to incentivizing people for things beyond their control, such as their age, or birth defects, or whatever.
The actual economic incentives are for the young to move to a less punitive country or to violate the law and/or game the system.
The old are the richest segment of society and the young are the poorest. We already have a lot of government wealth transfers from the young to the old. We don't need any more.
In your scenario, you've decided some government force is necessary. Why not force the parents to take care of their children? If the parents refuse or fail to care for their children, the children can be put up for adoption (using due process, of course). Perhaps a family member could adopt them, or perhaps it could be someone else in society who is willing to care for them.
In this situation, everyone is free except the unfit parent. Why would you rather take freedom away from everyone?
There's no utopia where every possible problem disappears.
I guess you missed Pres. Obama's address - the plan to remove consideration of pre-existing conditions is coupled with a mandate for everybody to carry health insurance, for exactly this reason.
And that's why Obamacare insurance premiums are going to be astronomically expensive. Everyone will be paying the same amount. That means that young healthy people will be subsidizing old unhealthy people.
It's an enormous de facto tax on young people. But they'll call it "premiums", even though you're forced to pay them against your will.
If these young people could just buy insurance without a ton of government interference, they could get it really cheap. I recently bought temporary insurance recently for about $50 per month.
I'll take freedom and the risk of having to pay for freeloaders over the alternative of government control of every facet of my life.
At least I'd have the choice "to forego treatment and die of a curable illness" instead of a government bureaucrat deciding that for me based on how much money happens to be left in his budget.
It's not insurance. You're also apparently confused. Insurance covers loss from a fire. This is a voluntary fee to pay for a fire department.
Why would you rent from a landlord who hadn't paid his fire department fee? And if you decided to rent anyway, why wouldn't you pay the fee for him?
Well, guess what? If were free, you could choose. And if the fire department was charging too much, you could choose not to pay. Because you're free, you could choose.
I bet they were happy to insure you against the risk of future illness when they found out they weren't being treated like a charity.
You apparently have the fire department confused with fire insurance, but...
There are plenty of places with private fire departments. You pay their annual fee, then they'll put your house fire out. If you haven't paid, they come out to your house but they don't put out the fire unless it threatens the neighbors who paid.
It's a great, voluntary system of free people engaged in helping their neighbors and communities. There's no politics involved and no one is forced to pay against his will.
To some of us who value freedom, that's a feature.
Slashdot Mirror
How much of Microsoft's software did the state of Washington write?
There are plenty of places to do business where you don't have to pay a huge tribute to satisfy the greed of the local warlords. Some of them are even in the United States.
The State of Washington should try being less greedy. They should do less and ask the dependent class to do more for themselves.
As always, my first suggestion is for anyone on government housing assistance to be required to live with a roommate to share housing expenses. It's good enough for college students, it should be good enough for welfare recipients.
Sure that's possible. But it's ignorant to consider it likely.
Criminals (and also basically every other person) are opportunists. When someone wants to break into a house and they see an alarm sticker, they just go on to the next house. They don't spend a month studying the alarm and the floor plan and figure a way to defeat the alarm.
In a child abduction where the child has a tracking device, the abductor will get caught 10000 times for every time he decides to chop off the kid's arm. That should be obvious.
Countermeasures don't have to be perfect to be effective. Often, they don't even have to be real. A good way to end vandalism is to install fake surveillance cameras, for example.
So I take it you can't argue the point because you're losing and need to change the subject?
Yeah, California is the land where individual rights and freedoms are forgotten.
You really have only a few choices left under such a regime:
- Escape while you still can,
- Live there as a criminal,
- Get a government position and be above the law,
- Or just learn to do what you're told.
While the California government overlords spend their people's time and money worrying about a few watts of electricity, the unemployment rate in California hit 12.2% and continues to rise. The San Joaquin valley continues to suffer under a drought, but the water that would normally be used to irrigate the crops is being used to protect an endangered minnow. This has resulted in nearly 40% unemployment in some agricultural communities and will lead to higher food prices for produce across the US -- yet another burden heaped on poor and middle class families.
But they have lots of time to force you to buy more expensive TVs in order to save a couple of watts of electricity.
Maybe Californians (who are not part of the elite, effete ruling class) should consider getting out while they still have something left to bring with them.
People need to get their work done. Windows allows it.
You seem to be advocating a scheme that has an agenda that's not primarily "people get their work done". That makes you part of the problem.
Any scheme you design has to cater to the people and their ability to get their work done. Even if they're lusers. Even if ... anything.
No one actually gets "fired". You just get put on the wrong list when it's time for layoffs. Or you get a bad review and everyone gets a bonus except for you. Etc.
We had a bad IT group. That's what I'm saying. We tried everything to get them to improve. And they actually did improve a little over a long period of time.
Simple answers (like complaining and taking up helpdesk time until someone sees it's more efficient to fix the underlying problem than to keep servicing it) only work in fundamentally good (or at least mediocre) situations.
What a load of crap. In instance number 1. support is not doing their job...
Yeah. Tell me about it.
in instance number 2. your suggesting that a support bitch, or even their manager has control over the hiring process?
No, a guy's manager has control of hiring and bonuses, not "support"? What good is a guy who can't get his work done? What good is a guy who always has one excuse or another why he didn't get his work done?
We just worked around IT and complained. See above where I pointed out that users circumvent security that keeps them from getting their work done.
(Also, this very specific thing with the passwords didn't happen to us. But similar things did with similar IT responses.)
... The guys that aren't good enough to contibute in any meaningful way... their jobs is free up the the real IT talent to do their job.
After how long? A year? You're theoretically correct though.
What if the forgetful user just happens to be a core part of the sales team? Or a director?
Our directors had issues on this level. Bitter complaints resulted. IT meetings happened. "You can login now, what are you complaining about? Just put in a trouble ticket. We try to be pretty responsive on the tickets."
or
"We don't have that problem at headquarters."
or (my fucking favorite)
"That problem won't happen after we switch to the new system." And stuff they didn't say unless you really pressed them: " ... No, we don't have any schedule for switching over. Sometime after the first of the year. ... No, we can't narrow it down to a quarter. ... No, we haven't purchased it yet, we're still qualifying it. ... No, there's no interim fix. Put in a trouble ticket. ... Etc."
It got to the point where I'd laugh every time I heard a "When...?" question related to IT.
Four years of this. It was maddening. Especially because I had a background in what IT was doing and could have just fixed a lot of the problems if I were allowed to.
Half the time people can't get work done because 1st and 2nd level support don't know what they are doing.
We got ours done by working around them.
not "invariably"
Our managers asked for security. I sincerely doubt they asked for specifically inconvenient security.
Our IT would handle this in two ways:
1. Take a variable amount of time and then change the password for you. Continue to do it. Over and over and over and over. Act clueless when ask why they don't just fix the underlying problem. You can login now, what are you complaining about?
or
2. Ignore you.
You can't get your work done? Stop forgetting your password or we'll hire someone with a better memory.
Educating your users is useful. You'll probably do a good job. Tell them not to download and install anything "fun" for Windows.
I find that IT people get security wrong far more often than users, though I'm used to working with sophisticated users. IT people setup security that's needlessly inconvenient. The users then spend their time circumventing that security to get their work done. Users do things like writing their password down on a post-it, using skype, setting up logmein.com on their PC, or posting a document on a public site. They do this because IT forces elaborate password schemes and won't support remote logins or other external communications.
IT needs to be responsive to user needs for security to work right in an organization.
To start with, it's a huge tax.
Secondly, yes. Families with unfit parents should be "broken up". If they can't pay their bills, and if they can't get anyone to help them, they need to face reality and find a solution to have their children taken care of. There's a long tradition of sending children to a relative (an aunt, or a grandmother -- as in President Obama's story) when parents are having financial trouble. It's part of being a responsible person.
If families can't work this out, then someone in a community can take care of the child.
This is the way these things have been handled throughout human history. This is a surprise to you?
Now, on to your questions:
1. There's an almost infinite amount of charity available for sick children. If some sick child needs charity and hasn't received it, it's only because people aren't asking.
2. Children aren't free because they're children. They're not responsible adults.
You're the one who made up the scenario that required government force. My option applies it to the fewest people -- only the unfit parents. This could be done on the local or state level. No unconstitutional federal bureaucracy would be needed.
My questions:
Are you really saying we should put the IRS in charge of health care billing so we don't have to ask parents to care for their own children?
What do you have against asking parents to care for their own children anyway?
Do you really think children are better off in poverty and living off the government than living with responsible adoptive parents? You think government dependency is a good life lesson for children?
Yes, the old are the wealthiest segment of the population. See this census publication, page 11.
Old folks should pay more of their own expenses. Everyone should pay more of their own expenses and take less money from their neighbors (by force, against their neighbors' will).
The stuff you said about inflation is wrong and bizarre. The world can consume a lot (like we did during World War Two) or it can save for future consumption or it can borrow against future production.
None of that has anything to do with inflation. Inflation is caused by (essentially) printing money, which is simply a choice.
Good question. The one you cite asks doctors to choose between 3 theoretical plans, two extreme and one in between. Doctors (63%) picked the one in between.
The one I cite asked specifically about Obama's plan. Doctors (65%) were opposed.
So it's fair to conclude that doctors support something moderate, but not Obama's plan.
This is why people get so upset about Social Security and Medicare: they fail to realize that this huge "transfer" of wealth is essentially from themselves (in their productive years), to themselves (in their later years, when their economic output is below their survival needs). What it really amounts to, for the most part, is forced savings.
You are completely wrong about this. There is no savings. Social security and Medicare will be bankrupt decades before anyone who is "young" gets old enough to use it.
You would be right if we lived in some theoretical world. But in the actual world, the money will be long spent.
Also, the old are the richest segment of the population and the young are the poorest. Obammacare will only further impoverish the young.
If insurance rates are to vary between people, they should vary due to choices by the insured. There is no economic utility to incentivizing people for things beyond their control, such as their age, or birth defects, or whatever.
The actual economic incentives are for the young to move to a less punitive country or to violate the law and/or game the system.
The old are the richest segment of society and the young are the poorest. We already have a lot of government wealth transfers from the young to the old. We don't need any more.
So a scientific view that is considered the "settled" "consensus" view can change in the face of contrary evidence? That's good to know.
How timely! This article was just published a few minutes ago:
45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul
There are lots of options.
In your scenario, you've decided some government force is necessary. Why not force the parents to take care of their children? If the parents refuse or fail to care for their children, the children can be put up for adoption (using due process, of course). Perhaps a family member could adopt them, or perhaps it could be someone else in society who is willing to care for them.
In this situation, everyone is free except the unfit parent. Why would you rather take freedom away from everyone?
There's no utopia where every possible problem disappears.
I guess you missed Pres. Obama's address - the plan to remove consideration of pre-existing conditions is coupled with a mandate for everybody to carry health insurance, for exactly this reason.
And that's why Obamacare insurance premiums are going to be astronomically expensive. Everyone will be paying the same amount. That means that young healthy people will be subsidizing old unhealthy people.
It's an enormous de facto tax on young people. But they'll call it "premiums", even though you're forced to pay them against your will.
If these young people could just buy insurance without a ton of government interference, they could get it really cheap. I recently bought temporary insurance recently for about $50 per month.
President Obama didn't tell you that, did he?
No. I don't see your point at all. All they wanted was to be sure they weren't getting tricked into paying for an existing condition.
There's no utopia.
I'll take freedom and the risk of having to pay for freeloaders over the alternative of government control of every facet of my life.
At least I'd have the choice "to forego treatment and die of a curable illness" instead of a government bureaucrat deciding that for me based on how much money happens to be left in his budget.
It's not insurance. You're also apparently confused. Insurance covers loss from a fire. This is a voluntary fee to pay for a fire department.
Why would you rent from a landlord who hadn't paid his fire department fee? And if you decided to rent anyway, why wouldn't you pay the fee for him?
Well, guess what? If were free, you could choose. And if the fire department was charging too much, you could choose not to pay. Because you're free, you could choose.
Yeah. The US is a free country. Or at least it used to be.
I bet they were happy to insure you against the risk of future illness when they found out they weren't being treated like a charity.
You apparently have the fire department confused with fire insurance, but...
There are plenty of places with private fire departments. You pay their annual fee, then they'll put your house fire out. If you haven't paid, they come out to your house but they don't put out the fire unless it threatens the neighbors who paid.
It's a great, voluntary system of free people engaged in helping their neighbors and communities. There's no politics involved and no one is forced to pay against his will.
To some of us who value freedom, that's a feature.