"My best guess [and I am not trying to be facetious] is that unless you were in on kernel development in the very early days [so that you had some hope of learning it when it was still tractable], then the thing has gotten so big now [what is it - like 20,000 files which get compiled in the basic kernel?], and the learning curve has gotten so steep, that no new developers have any realistic hope of grokking it anymore. "
One of my problems with Linus Torvald's "Linux Rules Everything" goal was that this is precisely what would happen. The Linux kernel, in trying to make it all things to all people, would become huge, bloated, and lose the performance edge it once had. The problem with making Linux a desktop kernel AND a server kernel AND an embedded kernel AND... hell, whatever other job you want to throw it at... is that it becomes a big, bloated jack of all trades, and master of none.
In addition, Linux was born in an era where Unix was super expensive... well beyond the means of a home user... and so was revolutionary if you wanted a powerful, other-than-Microsoft OS. Now Apple has largely stolen whatever thunder desktop Linux was building in the early 2000's. By the time OS X 10.2 rolled around, I saw as many iBooks and Powerbooks at Linux gatherings as I did Linux itself. Apple really IS desktop Unix now, not Linux. There's a lot of money in Apple products and services. Apple is also cooler to an audience that's more broad. Doing Apple software... for the Mac, iPhone, whatever... is something that rings with both geeks and the general gadget using public. Linux? Outside of a LUG, people are going to go "What?". When OS X went big, Linux lost whatever chance it had in gaining general mindshare.
And you'd be wrong, because the vast majority of the population aren't Slashdot geeks, and thus the majority is indifferent to copyright law. The status quo is just fine with them. That means they're uninterested, not that democracy is broken. Convincing them to care is YOUR job, not some judges.
"The majority of the Senate voted to block funds necessary to transfer detainees. The Republicans then made a huge deal about it and turned into a political nightmare. Obama has pressed forward with preparing facilities in the US and on trials, regardless."
Barack Obama could effectively close Gitmo right now if he wanted to, with the stroke of a pen. He could sign an executive order and move those terrorists anywhere he wanted today. That doesn't require an act of Congress. What he wants is credit for doing it only if Congress gives him cover. In other words, he wants to do it if it's safe politically.
I think you are confusing the First World War with the Second World War. There were no Nazis involved in the first war (I really shouldn't have to explain this). Allied propaganda aside, the Germans were no better or worse than the allied powers.
I'm a patriotic military vet, a stickler for honoring the sacrifices of our troops from all wars... I just got back from a ceremony honoring WW II veterans in fact.
And I've come to completely agree with you about WW I. The more I look at it, the harder it is to see the Germans as particularly evil. They didn't start the war, that's for sure. And Britain and France didn't have a moral advantage over them in any way. The whole thing was one big great powers pissing match, and Woodrow Wilson should have kept his promise to keep the US out of it. Further, and it pains me to say this, but the allied powers are directly responsible for the rise of Hitler. The brutal conditions imposed on Germany after the war made his rise possible. And you can be sure that leaders of the US in WW II knew that as well, which is why they took a completely different approach to Germany after victory. Instead of making them wallow in suffering, rebuild the country to democratic standards and market prosperity. Because the communists were waiting for their opportunity of we did not.
How the banks advertise it: "Use your own money to shop online!" What it actually means: "Expose the cash you need to live on to fraud."
The banks like it because you're putting your money at risk, not theirs.
Which is why I've used AMEX for my daily expenses for close to ten years now. It's a charge card, not a credit card, so you don't get deep in the debt hole... you have to pay the balance at month's end. But it has all of the standard protections of full credit cards. Someone, probably a clerk at a store somewhere, used my number for fraudulent purposes, and as soon as I noticed it on my bill, AMEX froze the charge, and launched and investigation immediately. They kept me up to date the whole time. Also, if "suspicious" activity occurs on your account,,,, say, an all-night Ebay binge... they'll temporarily freeze the account and call you just to be safe.
What is their agenda? (other than to promote lung health, which no reasonable person could criticize)
When their agenda includes banning a legal product because they think it sends the wrong message, then they've crossed the line. They've done noble work over the years, but they're becoming as bad as those fools from the Center For Science In The Public Interest. If you want to convince someone to change habits, more power to them. If you're trying to ban a legal product because, well, you just know what's good for them, then ALA can go pound sand.
Note: I don't even smoke. Never have. But ALA is just being a nannying busybody here.
I just pooped myself a little. It is awkward at work.
Why? What has Whedon done to make you think he'll get this movie right?
His first few Buffy seasons were legendary, but the quality dropped off soon afterwards. Same thing for Angel... interesting concept that quickly became stale. Firefly? Very overhyped. Same for Dollhouse. Did you read his run on X-Men? Another Buffy-Angel-Spike love triangle, only with uniforms this time.
His artistic raison d'etre... the strong dominating female character... isn't going to work very well with the male-dominated Avengers, unless suddenly the Scarlett Witch becomes the central character. And it wouldn't be the Avengers, then. In the X-Men, the White Queen took front and center as the most dominating character, with the strongest personality.
That's true. Given their recent editorial bias, they certainly qualify as a news organization.
Yup. I have no problem with advocacy journalism. That's the way they do it in the UK, and they still have good reporting from both right and left. I think you're being honest if you admit up front where your sympathies are. But Wikileaks gives names to their stuff like "Collateral Murder", and they still want to be considered non-partisan. Sorry, doesn't work that way. If you put a spin on the story, you're taking sides. Again, that's fine... but be honest about it up front.
Please tell me how to make the all-powerful free market fix this.
Leave.
The problem here is your "community", not your consumer choices. Either get a lawyer, or move. Because the "community" is what is impeding your choice, not the cable company. If your fellow condo owners tell you "we forbid you from getting satellite", how is that Comcast's fault?
"Just because you disagree with an opinion doesn't nake it a troll."
That's true. But he was still trolling. "Stop invading tanks"? Come on.
"Not if you rent; if the landlord doesn't a dish, you have no choice but cable."
Yes you do. Move out. As I pointed out to another poster, if the problem restricting your choice is your landlord or home owner's association, why is that Comcast's fault? Get a lawyer, or move. Comcast isn't the one stopping you from putting up that dish.
"my local government should be serving cable TV and high speed internet"
Then emigrate to Cuba, because in free market countries, governments don't monopolize communications.
"I think I have a right to salmonella-free food."
Do you have a right to pick what you'll pay for that food? Do you have a right to tell providers how they'll deliver it transport it?
In the United States, you have the right to life, liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness, not the guarantee of it. You're on your own in getting it. No one owes you a damned thing.
'cause the free market fixes everything. the invisible hand of the market will even stop invading tanks as long as you wish it hard enough
If you'll permit me to interupt your trolling for just a moment, I'd like to point out that cable companies are not monopolies. You DO have a choice. It's called satellite, and it's similarly priced. Things like DirecTV are available in places where even cable is not. Cable is just a medium for delivering the service. The service is enhanced television.
So if Comcast does something you think is unworthy of your dollars, take your dollars elsewhere.
I'm not a Libertarian, but I'm sympathetic to some of their ideas, and they're generally correct in stating that markets tend to be better off without overbearing regulation. You're always going to have regulation of some kind. A sales tax can be viewed as a form of regulation. But what Libertarians are justified in fearing are people like you telling the government "make this company give me everything I want at the price I specifiy!".
Why would anyone want to run a business in that kind of environment? And more to the point, when did you gain a right to Comcast's products and services, let alone the right to tell them HOW to offer those services? What else will you demand the government make them do, and for how much? Can you please point out to me where in the law you have a right to Cable TV? Cable/Satellite is a luxury. It's non-essential. It's not like a hospital where they HAVE to serve you.
If you think they suck, fine. You've probably even got some legitimate points. But it's a private business. If you don't like them, do business elsewhere. Or don't do it all.
"Am I the only one perceiving Oracle as more, so to speak, "evil" than IBM ?"
You're not alone, but that just means that you're not alone in being wrong. First, define "evil" in a company? Unless you're producing Zyklon B for Nazis or something, "good" and "evil" for a company is a rather useless term, because it depends completely on perception. What makes a company good or bad? Personally I'd say that a good company is one that makes money, keeps growing, and keeps its investors happy. If they do all those things, then likely they're also providing jobs and being a productive part of the economy.
Others define "good" differently, but if you're looking to a company as a moral center, I'd say you're going to be disappointed. Google's whole thing was "don't be evil", but in many respects, they've violated that according to the denizens of Slashdot. If you want good and evil, go to church or go crusade for something.
As for IBM being "less evil" than Oracle... no. They've just done a better job of massaging the PR machine. They're another company. That's pretty much the size of it.
"Like it or not, there's no such thing as a school that couldn't do a better job educating kids with more money. It does take money to teach kids. The more the better."
That's absolutely farcical, and further, is demonstrably untrue. And the argument about public vs. private here doesn't wash, because the rankings for school spending and test scores don't even take private schools into account. The rankings for dollar per kid are for public schools only.
Washington D.C. spends more per pupil than any other major city, and far more money than most states. And yet they have arguably the worst school system in the nation. And if you look around the country, you'll see that in terms of dollars-per-child, most of the worst performing systems are those with the highest average spending. Money will not fix schools. Period. If you're spending enough for books, teachers, and keeping the lights on, then the success of your students depends overwhelmingly on factors completely unrelated to cash. While DC spends more for less results, Utah public schools spend less than anyone per pupil, and yet has test scores and graduation rates well above the national average. So D.C. spends money comparable to many fine private schools, and they still stink, while Utah public schools spend a pittance. Again, money is not the problem here.
And BTW, it's not like the US is skimping on education spending when compared to our competitors, either. The US is third globally in spending-per-pupil, far ahead of other countries that regularly beat us in math and science scores, like Germany and Japan. Only Austria and Switzerland spend more per child, so again, the notion that "more education money = always better" is just flat wrong.
"Anybody who parrots the right-wing talking point that the problem is teachers unions has never taught in both public and private schools."
Unions by themselves are not the only problem, but they are a big one. And I come from a family of teachers in both public and private schools. Go to a unionized public school and take a private survey. Ask how many teachers send their kids to non-unionized private schools. You're going to be surprised just how many do. Many teachers join the union because they basically have to do so to get a job at a public school. Further, every boneheaded "reform" of the last 50 years... new math, whole language instruction, bussing students, etc, were all firmly backed by the teachers unions. Any real reform... pay for performance, charter schools, making it easier to fire bad teachers, etc, have all been fought with a scorched earth campaign by the same unions.
" She went to public schools here in Chicago and got a first-rate education (she's in grad school now). "
What a shock. The daughter of a professional academic does well in school wherever she is. No one saw that one coming. I mean, it had nothing to do with parents that expected her to perform, right?
"The problems are many, but at the top are funding,"
Again, bull.
"shitty parenting"
We agree on something
"a growing socially and economically-impoverished underclass (thank you Ronald Reagan)"
We've always had an underclass. We always WILL have an underclass. That's humanity. That's never going to change. And yet we never had the systematic problems in school with that underclass that we have now until the 1960's. I look forward to your explanation of how Ronald Reagan is responsible for that, or how he caused black kids to decide that academic success is "acting white", or how despite the fact there is more opportunity to better yourself than in any time in history... more colleges, weaker entrance requirements, more pell grants available... some kids just don't give a ****.
Isn't Sun's ridiculously overpriced and underpowered hardware the reason they went bankrupt?
Um, one, they never went bankrupt. They had billions in cash just sitting in the bank, in fact. Next, hardware wasn't why they declined. Hardware sales were keeping them afloat. There are three reasons they were declining:
1 - Software is one reason they declined... specifically, Linux software, as it did much of what Solaris did at no or lower cost. Windows was also cheaper when you considered the cost of the hardware it ran on.
2 - Leadership was non-existant, and the sales strategy was all over the place like an ADHD kid bouncing off the walls. "We'll push Java! It'll make us rich! No, we'll push network computers, it's the wave of the future! No, we'll compete at the low end by GPL'ing and giving away our software! No, we'll spend a billion dollars on a free database system, and then give THAT away! Riches will follow!"
3 - With this lack of focus, IBM attacked them from the top, and Microsoft from the bottom, squeezing them out of former markets
Larry Ellison has made what I think is a prudent decision; stick to the expensive, profitable high end, and quit giving your software away. Pump money into your hardware, as your latest CPU offerings compete very well on the high end with lots of servers, especially on performance per watt costs.
They seriously need to stop trying to be like America...it's hazardous to their well-being:/
It's the other way around. American should stop trying to be like Britain, with a crippling welfare state and a political system with fewer checks and balances in the government.
BTW, why is this being laid at the feet of the Tories in the article summary? Isn't Labour the ruling party right now? If they don't want it, then this doesn't pass.
"That's a ridiculous generalization. You speak of Europe like it's a homogenous entity."
With the creation of the European Union, and creeping loss of sovereignty of the member nations, you don't think Western Europe is becoming more homoginzed?
"In reality, only a handful of countries are even thinking about what you're suggesting, and most of those are just simple corruption and greed "
Of course it's corruption and greed, but not for money... corruption of power, and the greed for more of it. Because that's what large government entities lust after; ever more amounts of power.
You're right in that there's definitely a difference in attitudes between East and West Europe. In the East, memories are still fresh of the Soviet boot. But in the West, the trend is clear; ever more nannying by their governments for "the public good", through technological and other means. Surveillance cameras in British trashcans, anyone?
"We're so screwed. All politicians are so technologically ignorant they can't tell when a lobbyist is lying to them, and even if they could tell many wouldn't care."
Or perhaps they understand that government shoudn't be micromanaging ISP's.
"I am moving the hell out of this country ASAP. Day after day its just worse news. "
No you're not. Like the people that screamed about how they'd move to Canada or New Zealand in 2004 if Bush won re-election, you're going to stay right where you are and bitch some more on the Internet.
"US is going to have some massive brain drain soon, I predict."
I'll take that bet. Where's all this talent going to go? Bastions of Internet freedom like... China? How about Europe, where governments are increasingly using technology to snoop on every aspect of the lives of their citizens and subjects? But hey, lets leave America because Comcast is throttling bandwidth when we're downloading illegal movie torrents. See ya. The airline ticket counter is that way.
... would be "The government's policy suffered a setback today". Not everyone agrees on what Net Neutrality even is, whether or not to support it as envisioned.
Soviet boats have had reactor failures, but the US boats were doomed by other causes. The Scorpion was likely sunk by either a torpedo malfunction, or trash disposal device malfunction which caused massive flooding. In the Thresher's case, it was faulty welds on piping which caused flooding and shorted out the electrical system. With the loss of electrical power, the reactor shut down... as designed... to prevent a nuclear accident. Ironically, this is what doomed the crew. With no power, they couldn't surface. But in the cases of both US boats, the reactors operated precisely as planned in both accidents. They aren't "nuclear accidents". In neither boat was the reactor a cause.
"thanks to the Manhattan project, we now have devices lying around that are designed to split atoms."
Except that it's still not that easy. Its very likely that the mechanisms surrounding the radioactive cores were damaged during the drops, so most will be unusable anyway. Even if they're perfectly preserved, you still have to find them... and considering that the combined efforts of the Air Force and Navy couldn't do so with advanced diving and search technology, good luck with some terrorist group doing so a hundred miles off the coast. And even if they had the unbelievable fortune of finding a device, they'd still have to recover it, and arm it.
... while "nuclear weapons accident" sounds scary, it almost always involves a malfunction or mistake that can't set off a detonation. It's pretty hard to split an atom, which is why we poured billions into learning how during the Manhattan Project. Tom Clancy's book The Sum of All Fears had a scenario where terrorists acquired an Israeli warhead lost in the desert during the 1973 war. But almost all of the "lost" warheads from USAF are in the ocean, where they can do no harm.
Aside from my reluctance to take financial wisdom seriously from someone who uses "payed" instead of "paid"
I typed i pretty quickly, and I'll just have to beg the court's mercy for the typo.
you seem to be forgetting the huge number of corporations who _aren't_ listed on the stock exchange, and who don't pay dividends.
And why is that different? Instead of shareholders, you have owners. And they're still doubly taxed, as the profits that flow to them are still taxed again as personal income.
Lowering corporate tax rates would take a huge chunk of income away from the US, and do little to encourage companies to move back from... say.. Ireland, with its 12.5% rate.
Apparently it wouldn't, as the subject of the story is tax shelters that help such companies avoid high US taxes. The whole point of my proposal was "take away the tax shelters, and in exchange lower domestic corporate rates". If a company is paying the equivalent of Irelands' rate in the US, isn't that better than a lower sum via tax shelters?
Oh, and the way most companies avoid paying taxes? They expand. Got 10 million in profit you don't want to pay taxes on? Open some new locations. Do R&D. Hire some more people. Basically incur expenses.
Uh, we already tried such foolishness once before. FDR's Undistributed Profits Tax did much of what you're suggesting, with predictably disastrous results. And when you get right down to it, don't people go into business to profit? You're essentially suggesting that they escape higher taxes by never taking home the profit they make, or at least a lot less of it.
That 40% tax rate you disparage so offhandedly is responsible for influencing decisions that generally lead to more jobs.
Where do higher taxation rates equal more jobs, especially in the long run? Higher rates are job killers. Even the Europeans have accepted that. The only thing higher tax rates get you is a bigger government payroll, a sector that grows no wealth in the economy.
If you tax them, they move to India. Shareholders don't care.
Maybe the goverment should try spending less for a change.
They should, but lets get back to the tax rates issue. I'd be happy to ban these overseas shenanigans if we would simply lower US corporate rates. Our rates are nearly the highest in the world, second only to Japan.
Fine, eliminate the loopholes, but cut the rates. Think about where corporate profits are going; if they're not being sank right back into the company, then they're being payed out in dividends to shareholders.... where they're taxed again as personal income.
While there's no real excuse for these kind of slight of hand tax dodges, neither is there a justification for a tax rate near 40 percent on companies.
Slashdot Mirror
The Napster/Grokster lawsuits spawned BitTorrent. Killing suprnova caused a bloom of (better) torrent aggregator sites.
Excessive use of antibiotics just gets you antibiotic resistant strains.
Interesting that you compare piracy to disease. Freudian slip?
"My best guess [and I am not trying to be facetious] is that unless you were in on kernel development in the very early days [so that you had some hope of learning it when it was still tractable], then the thing has gotten so big now [what is it - like 20,000 files which get compiled in the basic kernel?], and the learning curve has gotten so steep, that no new developers have any realistic hope of grokking it anymore. "
One of my problems with Linus Torvald's "Linux Rules Everything" goal was that this is precisely what would happen. The Linux kernel, in trying to make it all things to all people, would become huge, bloated, and lose the performance edge it once had. The problem with making Linux a desktop kernel AND a server kernel AND an embedded kernel AND... hell, whatever other job you want to throw it at... is that it becomes a big, bloated jack of all trades, and master of none.
In addition, Linux was born in an era where Unix was super expensive... well beyond the means of a home user... and so was revolutionary if you wanted a powerful, other-than-Microsoft OS. Now Apple has largely stolen whatever thunder desktop Linux was building in the early 2000's. By the time OS X 10.2 rolled around, I saw as many iBooks and Powerbooks at Linux gatherings as I did Linux itself. Apple really IS desktop Unix now, not Linux. There's a lot of money in Apple products and services. Apple is also cooler to an audience that's more broad. Doing Apple software... for the Mac, iPhone, whatever... is something that rings with both geeks and the general gadget using public. Linux? Outside of a LUG, people are going to go "What?". When OS X went big, Linux lost whatever chance it had in gaining general mindshare.
"You could say the democracy is broken."
And you'd be wrong, because the vast majority of the population aren't Slashdot geeks, and thus the majority is indifferent to copyright law. The status quo is just fine with them. That means they're uninterested, not that democracy is broken. Convincing them to care is YOUR job, not some judges.
"The majority of the Senate voted to block funds necessary to transfer detainees. The Republicans then made a huge deal about it and turned into a political nightmare. Obama has pressed forward with preparing facilities in the US and on trials, regardless."
Barack Obama could effectively close Gitmo right now if he wanted to, with the stroke of a pen. He could sign an executive order and move those terrorists anywhere he wanted today. That doesn't require an act of Congress. What he wants is credit for doing it only if Congress gives him cover. In other words, he wants to do it if it's safe politically.
I'm a patriotic military vet, a stickler for honoring the sacrifices of our troops from all wars... I just got back from a ceremony honoring WW II veterans in fact.
And I've come to completely agree with you about WW I. The more I look at it, the harder it is to see the Germans as particularly evil. They didn't start the war, that's for sure. And Britain and France didn't have a moral advantage over them in any way. The whole thing was one big great powers pissing match, and Woodrow Wilson should have kept his promise to keep the US out of it. Further, and it pains me to say this, but the allied powers are directly responsible for the rise of Hitler. The brutal conditions imposed on Germany after the war made his rise possible. And you can be sure that leaders of the US in WW II knew that as well, which is why they took a completely different approach to Germany after victory. Instead of making them wallow in suffering, rebuild the country to democratic standards and market prosperity. Because the communists were waiting for their opportunity of we did not.
How the banks advertise it: "Use your own money to shop online!"
What it actually means: "Expose the cash you need to live on to fraud."
The banks like it because you're putting your money at risk, not theirs.
Which is why I've used AMEX for my daily expenses for close to ten years now. It's a charge card, not a credit card, so you don't get deep in the debt hole... you have to pay the balance at month's end. But it has all of the standard protections of full credit cards. Someone, probably a clerk at a store somewhere, used my number for fraudulent purposes, and as soon as I noticed it on my bill, AMEX froze the charge, and launched and investigation immediately. They kept me up to date the whole time. Also, if "suspicious" activity occurs on your account,,,, say, an all-night Ebay binge... they'll temporarily freeze the account and call you just to be safe.
What is their agenda? (other than to promote lung health, which no reasonable person could criticize)
When their agenda includes banning a legal product because they think it sends the wrong message, then they've crossed the line. They've done noble work over the years, but they're becoming as bad as those fools from the Center For Science In The Public Interest. If you want to convince someone to change habits, more power to them. If you're trying to ban a legal product because, well, you just know what's good for them, then ALA can go pound sand.
Note: I don't even smoke. Never have. But ALA is just being a nannying busybody here.
I just pooped myself a little. It is awkward at work.
Why? What has Whedon done to make you think he'll get this movie right?
His first few Buffy seasons were legendary, but the quality dropped off soon afterwards. Same thing for Angel... interesting concept that quickly became stale. Firefly? Very overhyped. Same for Dollhouse. Did you read his run on X-Men? Another Buffy-Angel-Spike love triangle, only with uniforms this time.
His artistic raison d'etre... the strong dominating female character... isn't going to work very well with the male-dominated Avengers, unless suddenly the Scarlett Witch becomes the central character. And it wouldn't be the Avengers, then. In the X-Men, the White Queen took front and center as the most dominating character, with the strongest personality.
That's true. Given their recent editorial bias, they certainly qualify as a news organization.
Yup. I have no problem with advocacy journalism. That's the way they do it in the UK, and they still have good reporting from both right and left. I think you're being honest if you admit up front where your sympathies are. But Wikileaks gives names to their stuff like "Collateral Murder", and they still want to be considered non-partisan. Sorry, doesn't work that way. If you put a spin on the story, you're taking sides. Again, that's fine... but be honest about it up front.
Please tell me how to make the all-powerful free market fix this.
Leave.
The problem here is your "community", not your consumer choices. Either get a lawyer, or move. Because the "community" is what is impeding your choice, not the cable company. If your fellow condo owners tell you "we forbid you from getting satellite", how is that Comcast's fault?
"Just because you disagree with an opinion doesn't nake it a troll."
That's true. But he was still trolling. "Stop invading tanks"? Come on.
"Not if you rent; if the landlord doesn't a dish, you have no choice but cable."
Yes you do. Move out. As I pointed out to another poster, if the problem restricting your choice is your landlord or home owner's association, why is that Comcast's fault? Get a lawyer, or move. Comcast isn't the one stopping you from putting up that dish.
"my local government should be serving cable TV and high speed internet"
Then emigrate to Cuba, because in free market countries, governments don't monopolize communications.
"I think I have a right to salmonella-free food."
Do you have a right to pick what you'll pay for that food? Do you have a right to tell providers how they'll deliver it transport it?
In the United States, you have the right to life, liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness, not the guarantee of it. You're on your own in getting it. No one owes you a damned thing.
'cause the free market fixes everything. the invisible hand of the market will even stop invading tanks as long as you wish it hard enough
If you'll permit me to interupt your trolling for just a moment, I'd like to point out that cable companies are not monopolies. You DO have a choice. It's called satellite, and it's similarly priced. Things like DirecTV are available in places where even cable is not. Cable is just a medium for delivering the service. The service is enhanced television.
So if Comcast does something you think is unworthy of your dollars, take your dollars elsewhere.
I'm not a Libertarian, but I'm sympathetic to some of their ideas, and they're generally correct in stating that markets tend to be better off without overbearing regulation. You're always going to have regulation of some kind. A sales tax can be viewed as a form of regulation. But what Libertarians are justified in fearing are people like you telling the government "make this company give me everything I want at the price I specifiy!".
Why would anyone want to run a business in that kind of environment? And more to the point, when did you gain a right to Comcast's products and services, let alone the right to tell them HOW to offer those services? What else will you demand the government make them do, and for how much? Can you please point out to me where in the law you have a right to Cable TV? Cable/Satellite is a luxury. It's non-essential. It's not like a hospital where they HAVE to serve you.
If you think they suck, fine. You've probably even got some legitimate points. But it's a private business. If you don't like them, do business elsewhere. Or don't do it all.
"Am I the only one perceiving Oracle as more, so to speak, "evil" than IBM ?"
You're not alone, but that just means that you're not alone in being wrong. First, define "evil" in a company? Unless you're producing Zyklon B for Nazis or something, "good" and "evil" for a company is a rather useless term, because it depends completely on perception. What makes a company good or bad? Personally I'd say that a good company is one that makes money, keeps growing, and keeps its investors happy. If they do all those things, then likely they're also providing jobs and being a productive part of the economy.
Others define "good" differently, but if you're looking to a company as a moral center, I'd say you're going to be disappointed. Google's whole thing was "don't be evil", but in many respects, they've violated that according to the denizens of Slashdot. If you want good and evil, go to church or go crusade for something.
As for IBM being "less evil" than Oracle... no. They've just done a better job of massaging the PR machine. They're another company. That's pretty much the size of it.
"Like it or not, there's no such thing as a school that couldn't do a better job educating kids with more money. It does take money to teach kids. The more the better."
That's absolutely farcical, and further, is demonstrably untrue. And the argument about public vs. private here doesn't wash, because the rankings for school spending and test scores don't even take private schools into account. The rankings for dollar per kid are for public schools only.
Washington D.C. spends more per pupil than any other major city, and far more money than most states. And yet they have arguably the worst school system in the nation. And if you look around the country, you'll see that in terms of dollars-per-child, most of the worst performing systems are those with the highest average spending. Money will not fix schools. Period. If you're spending enough for books, teachers, and keeping the lights on, then the success of your students depends overwhelmingly on factors completely unrelated to cash. While DC spends more for less results, Utah public schools spend less than anyone per pupil, and yet has test scores and graduation rates well above the national average. So D.C. spends money comparable to many fine private schools, and they still stink, while Utah public schools spend a pittance. Again, money is not the problem here.
And BTW, it's not like the US is skimping on education spending when compared to our competitors, either. The US is third globally in spending-per-pupil, far ahead of other countries that regularly beat us in math and science scores, like Germany and Japan. Only Austria and Switzerland spend more per child, so again, the notion that "more education money = always better" is just flat wrong.
"Anybody who parrots the right-wing talking point that the problem is teachers unions has never taught in both public and private schools."
Unions by themselves are not the only problem, but they are a big one. And I come from a family of teachers in both public and private schools. Go to a unionized public school and take a private survey. Ask how many teachers send their kids to non-unionized private schools. You're going to be surprised just how many do. Many teachers join the union because they basically have to do so to get a job at a public school. Further, every boneheaded "reform" of the last 50 years... new math, whole language instruction, bussing students, etc, were all firmly backed by the teachers unions. Any real reform... pay for performance, charter schools, making it easier to fire bad teachers, etc, have all been fought with a scorched earth campaign by the same unions.
" She went to public schools here in Chicago and got a first-rate education (she's in grad school now). "
What a shock. The daughter of a professional academic does well in school wherever she is. No one saw that one coming. I mean, it had nothing to do with parents that expected her to perform, right?
"The problems are many, but at the top are funding,"
Again, bull.
"shitty parenting"
We agree on something
"a growing socially and economically-impoverished underclass (thank you Ronald Reagan)"
We've always had an underclass. We always WILL have an underclass. That's humanity. That's never going to change. And yet we never had the systematic problems in school with that underclass that we have now until the 1960's. I look forward to your explanation of how Ronald Reagan is responsible for that, or how he caused black kids to decide that academic success is "acting white", or how despite the fact there is more opportunity to better yourself than in any time in history... more colleges, weaker entrance requirements, more pell grants available... some kids just don't give a ****.
"that is increasingly anti-educ
Isn't Sun's ridiculously overpriced and underpowered hardware the reason they went bankrupt?
Um, one, they never went bankrupt. They had billions in cash just sitting in the bank, in fact. Next, hardware wasn't why they declined. Hardware sales were keeping them afloat. There are three reasons they were declining:
1 - Software is one reason they declined... specifically, Linux software, as it did much of what Solaris did at no or lower cost. Windows was also cheaper when you considered the cost of the hardware it ran on.
2 - Leadership was non-existant, and the sales strategy was all over the place like an ADHD kid bouncing off the walls. "We'll push Java! It'll make us rich! No, we'll push network computers, it's the wave of the future! No, we'll compete at the low end by GPL'ing and giving away our software! No, we'll spend a billion dollars on a free database system, and then give THAT away! Riches will follow!"
3 - With this lack of focus, IBM attacked them from the top, and Microsoft from the bottom, squeezing them out of former markets
Larry Ellison has made what I think is a prudent decision; stick to the expensive, profitable high end, and quit giving your software away. Pump money into your hardware, as your latest CPU offerings compete very well on the high end with lots of servers, especially on performance per watt costs.
They seriously need to stop trying to be like America...it's hazardous to their well-being :/
It's the other way around. American should stop trying to be like Britain, with a crippling welfare state and a political system with fewer checks and balances in the government.
BTW, why is this being laid at the feet of the Tories in the article summary? Isn't Labour the ruling party right now? If they don't want it, then this doesn't pass.
"That's a ridiculous generalization. You speak of Europe like it's a homogenous entity."
With the creation of the European Union, and creeping loss of sovereignty of the member nations, you don't think Western Europe is becoming more homoginzed?
"In reality, only a handful of countries are even thinking about what you're suggesting, and most of those are just simple corruption and greed "
Of course it's corruption and greed, but not for money... corruption of power, and the greed for more of it. Because that's what large government entities lust after; ever more amounts of power.
You're right in that there's definitely a difference in attitudes between East and West Europe. In the East, memories are still fresh of the Soviet boot. But in the West, the trend is clear; ever more nannying by their governments for "the public good", through technological and other means. Surveillance cameras in British trashcans, anyone?
When did "regulate" become "micromanage"?
"We're so screwed. All politicians are so technologically ignorant they can't tell when a lobbyist is lying to them, and even if they could tell many wouldn't care."
Or perhaps they understand that government shoudn't be micromanaging ISP's.
"I am moving the hell out of this country ASAP. Day after day its just worse news. "
No you're not. Like the people that screamed about how they'd move to Canada or New Zealand in 2004 if Bush won re-election, you're going to stay right where you are and bitch some more on the Internet.
"US is going to have some massive brain drain soon, I predict."
I'll take that bet. Where's all this talent going to go? Bastions of Internet freedom like... China? How about Europe, where governments are increasingly using technology to snoop on every aspect of the lives of their citizens and subjects? But hey, lets leave America because Comcast is throttling bandwidth when we're downloading illegal movie torrents. See ya. The airline ticket counter is that way.
... would be "The government's policy suffered a setback today". Not everyone agrees on what Net Neutrality even is, whether or not to support it as envisioned.
Soviet boats have had reactor failures, but the US boats were doomed by other causes. The Scorpion was likely sunk by either a torpedo malfunction, or trash disposal device malfunction which caused massive flooding. In the Thresher's case, it was faulty welds on piping which caused flooding and shorted out the electrical system. With the loss of electrical power, the reactor shut down... as designed... to prevent a nuclear accident. Ironically, this is what doomed the crew. With no power, they couldn't surface. But in the cases of both US boats, the reactors operated precisely as planned in both accidents. They aren't "nuclear accidents". In neither boat was the reactor a cause.
"thanks to the Manhattan project, we now have devices lying around that are designed to split atoms."
Except that it's still not that easy. Its very likely that the mechanisms surrounding the radioactive cores were damaged during the drops, so most will be unusable anyway. Even if they're perfectly preserved, you still have to find them... and considering that the combined efforts of the Air Force and Navy couldn't do so with advanced diving and search technology, good luck with some terrorist group doing so a hundred miles off the coast. And even if they had the unbelievable fortune of finding a device, they'd still have to recover it, and arm it.
... while "nuclear weapons accident" sounds scary, it almost always involves a malfunction or mistake that can't set off a detonation. It's pretty hard to split an atom, which is why we poured billions into learning how during the Manhattan Project. Tom Clancy's book The Sum of All Fears had a scenario where terrorists acquired an Israeli warhead lost in the desert during the 1973 war. But almost all of the "lost" warheads from USAF are in the ocean, where they can do no harm.
Aside from my reluctance to take financial wisdom seriously from someone who uses "payed" instead of "paid"
I typed i pretty quickly, and I'll just have to beg the court's mercy for the typo.
you seem to be forgetting the huge number of corporations who _aren't_ listed on the stock exchange, and who don't pay dividends.
And why is that different? Instead of shareholders, you have owners. And they're still doubly taxed, as the profits that flow to them are still taxed again as personal income.
Lowering corporate tax rates would take a huge chunk of income away from the US, and do little to encourage companies to move back from... say.. Ireland, with its 12.5% rate.
Apparently it wouldn't, as the subject of the story is tax shelters that help such companies avoid high US taxes. The whole point of my proposal was "take away the tax shelters, and in exchange lower domestic corporate rates". If a company is paying the equivalent of Irelands' rate in the US, isn't that better than a lower sum via tax shelters?
Oh, and the way most companies avoid paying taxes? They expand. Got 10 million in profit you don't want to pay taxes on? Open some new locations. Do R&D. Hire some more people. Basically incur expenses.
Uh, we already tried such foolishness once before. FDR's Undistributed Profits Tax did much of what you're suggesting, with predictably disastrous results. And when you get right down to it, don't people go into business to profit? You're essentially suggesting that they escape higher taxes by never taking home the profit they make, or at least a lot less of it.
That 40% tax rate you disparage so offhandedly is responsible for influencing decisions that generally lead to more jobs.
Where do higher taxation rates equal more jobs, especially in the long run? Higher rates are job killers. Even the Europeans have accepted that. The only thing higher tax rates get you is a bigger government payroll, a sector that grows no wealth in the economy.
If you tax them, they move to India. Shareholders don't care.
Maybe the goverment should try spending less for a change.
They should, but lets get back to the tax rates issue. I'd be happy to ban these overseas shenanigans if we would simply lower US corporate rates. Our rates are nearly the highest in the world, second only to Japan.
Fine, eliminate the loopholes, but cut the rates. Think about where corporate profits are going; if they're not being sank right back into the company, then they're being payed out in dividends to shareholders.... where they're taxed again as personal income.
While there's no real excuse for these kind of slight of hand tax dodges, neither is there a justification for a tax rate near 40 percent on companies.