It is still more dangerous to cross a busy city street than fly. You have to keep in mind that millions of people fly every day in perfect safety. Unless terrorists start downing planes weekly it will still be safer to fly than drive a car. People should relax. The chance of being harmed by a terrorist attack is so small it isn't worth worrying about for the average person. Governments should be tracking terrorists down, implementing security procedures, etc... As far as I can tell, some governments are using these attacks as an excuse to expand their powers.
No matter how careful you are you can lose track of your kid at a public space. You only have to turn your your head for a second for a kid to wonder off and out of sight. Kids are short and easy to lose track of. They also have no clue about the danger of wondering off, no matter how many times you lecture them. Every good parent tries to keep track of their young children, but even the best parent can lose track of their kid, especially in a crowd.
Inventory has been computerized forever at Mcdonalds. But in practise most managers found that if you sent in your real inventory you never got enough sent to the store so most managers manually "adjusted" the inventory to lower numbers.
While I agree that CEO's pay is way higher than it should be, I can't agree that all jobs are equally important and all jobs should pay "enough to live on".
Back in the day that a janitors job did pay enough to live on the standard of living was much lower for poor people. They lived in housing that likely breaks hundreds of new laws. They had one pair shoes, no home electronics, no car, etc... The good old days were not that good for a lot of people.
Some jobs pay very little because they take very little skill and lots of people are willing to do the job. That is how capitalism and the free market works. These low skill jobs should be stepping stones in a career - not a career.
The law is not complicated to make lawyers rich - it is complicted in an effort to be fair.
Most of the procedural rules came about because someone tried to game the system and they had to write a new rule to prevent it. It takes so long because both sides get many chances to "have a say" in an effort to be fair. Written and fixed procedures also help things be fair as this also makes each case follow the same rules.
The system can still be abused, and is abused by rich people and corporations. While the USA doesn't have a "user pays" system by default, in egregious cases the courts can in fact award costs. Theses costs may not be your full costs as they are based on both your actual costs and "normal" costs.
That said, the RIAAA and MPAAA lawsuits seem like scattershot SLAPP suits to me.
What makes you think he was arrested for anything done in connection with this conference? There is a good chance he was arrested for something done in his line of work previous to this conference.
Microsft is an incorporated limit liability company. Bill has no need to "hide" his money as his money is not at risk. The whole point of incorporating is that the only assets at risk is the companies assets, NOT the investors private assets. You only risk what you invest. Your home and other non-invested assets can not be touched by creditors.
"Surplus value"? I isn't surplus value, it is a fair return on all the capital the owner invested in the business. The magic factory fairy didn't build the factory.
Workers work for wages that they get even if the factory doesn't make a profit that month. They work for a wage they accept by mutual agreement with the owner. The owner makes his money by investing large amounts of capital to build the factory then takes whatever profit htere is after expenses are paid. No profit, no money for the owner.
This is a simplification, and owners of factories have been known to abuse their power when there is a labour surplus. If you want to get all shirty look at the cozy club of CEO's and board members. Their salaries have risen to obscene heights in the USA over the last twenty years.
The world is still better for first worlders than it has ever been in history (except for those 18 months in the fifties).
My neighbors are not trying to kill me. I eat fresh fruit allyear around. I have meat every day. I'm educated and can read and write. None of my kids died before age 5 from a common disease (this was the fate of about 50% of children until about 200 years ago), I will not die from infection if a get a bad cut, I have a refrigerator, indoor plumbing and central heating, I can travel halfwar around the world in a day, the law is written down and fairly applied without regard to my social class, etc...
There is still room for improvement, but we have it good.
We no longer have a production problem. The first world produces way more than it needs. It has so much excess production capacity that we can use a large percentage of our productive capacity to make luxury items. The biggest problem facing large corporations is not production - it is convincing people that they want/need the lastest gadget. Think about it, if one, or even half, of the worlds car manufacturers just stopped making cars would their be a car shortage? At worst the price of new cars would go up a bit.
If fact, in rich societies marketing departments spend most of their time inventing "new" things or new reasons for people to buy more crap they don't need because all the neccessities are so cheap there is very little profit to be made. Look at all those new "swifter" products (new fangles brooms and mops with lots of disposable parts that need replaced often). A broom works fine and lasts for 10 to 20 years. But they have invented the "swifter" so you can run out and buy those nifty sheets of paper refills it uses.
"The current group of fanatics" did not reside in Iraq before the USA invaded Iraq. The fanatics moved to Iraq to take advantage of the chaos following the botched occupation and to kill Americans without the hassle of sneaking into the USA.
Actually, the USA spends more per capita on healthcare than Canada. So why aren't you all living long lives?
Poor people dying from preventable disease they can't afford to treat that are not "emergencies", poor pre-natal care, high infant morality rate amoung the poor, lots of spending by the rich on tests to avoid lawsuits, and profit driven hospitals that gouge the rich. Look up the difference in price some hospitals charge insurance companies compared to private people - it can be double in some cases.
The Canadian government also does a good job of keeping drug prices low by buying bulk, only funding generic cheap drugs when they do the job instead of some new fancy drug, and no profit skimming at hospitals. USA drug companies are doing a very good job at keeping drug prices sky high within the USA, they are very effective at lobbying.
The down side is that some common, but not life threatening, surgeries have waiting lists of over a year. It isn't a perfect system and we are looking for ways to improve it, but overall it seems to cost less and help more people than private medicine.
Personally, I think it is very wierd that a major, rich, first world country does not have universal healthcare. Your roads and schools are socialized (among many things)- why not medicine?
Did you read the article? The rotating wing lets one craft operate efficiently at sub-sonic speeds, like when you are dropping bombs, and at supersonic speeds, like when you are going to where you want to drop bombs. Fixed wings either suck at low or high speed. By suck I mean they are not very effiecent. The new design will not waste fuel pushing a wing through the air at supersonic speeds that is a compramise so the craft doesn't fall out of the sky at low speeds. It has nothing to do with avoiding sonic booms.
You have heard the term "fair weather friend"? That is a friend who is only there when things are good. A true friend is there to support you in good times and bad - even bad times you brought on yourself. Of course this doesn't mean helping your friend continue their bad behaviour, but it does mean being supportive during bad times and encouraging better behaviour if your friend has been bad.
Commerce and money are not good or bad. They are tools. Only people can be good or bad, and the main thing making people good or bad is their goals and how they try to reach them.
Wanting nice but unneccessary things very, very much, can lead to a very shallow life spent making money at the expense of time actually enjoying life. Companies have to make a profit to stay in business, but too many companies think that their only goal should be to maximize profit in the short term at the expense of all other possible goals (like long term profit). When you think making a profit is a noble goal you get Enron.
I have a good job that lets me and my family live a comfortable life. I could work harder, do overtime, climb that corportate ladder, and earn enough to live in a house instead of an apartment, buy a new mini-van instead of a 10 year old one, take a fancy vacation every year instead of every 3 or 4 years. But what would it cost me? I wouldn't be taking 4 weeks off every August to spend time with my children and friends. I wouldn't be home for dinner on time every day. I wouldn't spend time on my hobbies (painting, writing, music, sports, model trains), I would not know my children as well as I do.
Too many people have the idea that newer, better "things" will make them happy. It won't. Once you can meet all the requirements of living and afford a few luxuries then anything extra only gives you a thrill for a few hours or days, but then you have to go back to depending on actually having an enjoyable life for your happiness.
I highly reccommend canceling your cable tv. You still spend too much time in front of the TV (movies, games, I get 2 channels on bunnie ears), but you are not bombarded with consumerism propoganda. The kids sure ask for less junk.
In Vancouver we are also having large numbers of people move into the city, but Vancouver forces developers to build "mixed developments". This means about 10% of new housing is subsidized for low income people (social housing). This social housing is mixed in here and there with middle and high income housing - no ghettos. Zoning also encourages residential and commercial development on the same block, and same building for large buildings. Many people are seeing the city as a good place to raise families. You live in a nice condo and the local park is your back-yard.
Realestate prices have skyrocketed in the last 5 years, a continueation of a real-estate booom fueled by Hong Kong's return to China in 1997.
Vancouver has NO freeway running through it. Makes commutting a nightmare, but it certainly encourages people to live close to work. All new developments include bike lanes, and the city is trying to build bike lanes on existing roads. Large investments in mass transit are being made, but this is mainly to move people from suburb to suburb to city. Regular buses, bikes and cars are used for short trips. Many neighborhoods streets are a maze of dead ends to force people to use the main streets, and only use small residential streets to get home. This really cuts down on traffic in your neighborhood. Some experiments fail, for example council tried to turn a whole car lane on a major bridge into a bike line. That only lasted one day.
My point is that a forward thinky civic government can encourage the development of a city that is people friendly. but you have to live somewhere were making a profit is not considered a noble goal, but just a requirement of staying in business.
Batteries are the real problem with electric cars, not the motors and controls.
The current batteries are expensive, heavy, have to be replaced every 3 or so years, and are slow to charge. As soon as there are batteries that let your drive 450Km ona charge in a car that seats 4 and has a trunk, I think electric cars will become very popular. I also expect charging to be done at home. We ALL have electricity at home.
Yes you can buy a bucket, but if you carry milk instead of water you have to pay double for your bucket. And I won't sell you a bucket at all if you want to carry maple syrop because I sell that.
That is a good list of languages to learn, but just as important are some underlying theory that good programmers should know.
Some key theory that I found useful in real life programming:
Data Structures
arrays
lists
heaps
hashs
trees
Algorithms
Searching
sorting
Relational Databases (should know what a hierarchical DB is too)
Depending on the field you go into math may be important:
trig
coordinate systems (cartesian, polar)
discrete math
linear algrebra
Once you get the syntax of a couple of languages under your belt you will find it isn't that hard to pick up new languages. It more important to know how to apply those languages using math and CS skills to the problem at hand.
Also learn at least a little about the hardware - just enough to know why some code runs so much faster than other code for some problems.
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It is still more dangerous to cross a busy city street than fly. You have to keep in mind that millions of people fly every day in perfect safety. Unless terrorists start downing planes weekly it will still be safer to fly than drive a car. People should relax. The chance of being harmed by a terrorist attack is so small it isn't worth worrying about for the average person. Governments should be tracking terrorists down, implementing security procedures, etc... As far as I can tell, some governments are using these attacks as an excuse to expand their powers.
I thought they only wanted to control all parts of the world that were ever previously under Muslim control, eg Spain to the middle east.
No matter how careful you are you can lose track of your kid at a public space. You only have to turn your your head for a second for a kid to wonder off and out of sight. Kids are short and easy to lose track of. They also have no clue about the danger of wondering off, no matter how many times you lecture them. Every good parent tries to keep track of their young children, but even the best parent can lose track of their kid, especially in a crowd.
The problem with many religions is NOT that they search for the truth, but that they proclaim the truth.
You can't get outside the universe, as far as we know, so asking what is outside it is meaningless.
Back in the day that a janitors job did pay enough to live on the standard of living was much lower for poor people. They lived in housing that likely breaks hundreds of new laws. They had one pair shoes, no home electronics, no car, etc... The good old days were not that good for a lot of people.
Some jobs pay very little because they take very little skill and lots of people are willing to do the job. That is how capitalism and the free market works. These low skill jobs should be stepping stones in a career - not a career.
Most of the procedural rules came about because someone tried to game the system and they had to write a new rule to prevent it. It takes so long because both sides get many chances to "have a say" in an effort to be fair. Written and fixed procedures also help things be fair as this also makes each case follow the same rules.
The system can still be abused, and is abused by rich people and corporations. While the USA doesn't have a "user pays" system by default, in egregious cases the courts can in fact award costs. Theses costs may not be your full costs as they are based on both your actual costs and "normal" costs.
That said, the RIAAA and MPAAA lawsuits seem like scattershot SLAPP suits to me.
What makes you think he was arrested for anything done in connection with this conference? There is a good chance he was arrested for something done in his line of work previous to this conference.
Microsft is an incorporated limit liability company. Bill has no need to "hide" his money as his money is not at risk. The whole point of incorporating is that the only assets at risk is the companies assets, NOT the investors private assets. You only risk what you invest. Your home and other non-invested assets can not be touched by creditors.
Workers work for wages that they get even if the factory doesn't make a profit that month. They work for a wage they accept by mutual agreement with the owner. The owner makes his money by investing large amounts of capital to build the factory then takes whatever profit htere is after expenses are paid. No profit, no money for the owner.
This is a simplification, and owners of factories have been known to abuse their power when there is a labour surplus. If you want to get all shirty look at the cozy club of CEO's and board members. Their salaries have risen to obscene heights in the USA over the last twenty years.
If the RIAA had to pay the losers legal fees everytime they lost they would be a lot more careful about who they are suing.
Tort reform does not stop the little guy from suing the big guy. It stops the big guy from using the courts as a weapon.
My neighbors are not trying to kill me. I eat fresh fruit allyear around. I have meat every day. I'm educated and can read and write. None of my kids died before age 5 from a common disease (this was the fate of about 50% of children until about 200 years ago), I will not die from infection if a get a bad cut, I have a refrigerator, indoor plumbing and central heating, I can travel halfwar around the world in a day, the law is written down and fairly applied without regard to my social class, etc...
There is still room for improvement, but we have it good.
We no longer have a production problem. The first world produces way more than it needs. It has so much excess production capacity that we can use a large percentage of our productive capacity to make luxury items. The biggest problem facing large corporations is not production - it is convincing people that they want/need the lastest gadget. Think about it, if one, or even half, of the worlds car manufacturers just stopped making cars would their be a car shortage? At worst the price of new cars would go up a bit.
If fact, in rich societies marketing departments spend most of their time inventing "new" things or new reasons for people to buy more crap they don't need because all the neccessities are so cheap there is very little profit to be made. Look at all those new "swifter" products (new fangles brooms and mops with lots of disposable parts that need replaced often). A broom works fine and lasts for 10 to 20 years. But they have invented the "swifter" so you can run out and buy those nifty sheets of paper refills it uses.
"The current group of fanatics" did not reside in Iraq before the USA invaded Iraq. The fanatics moved to Iraq to take advantage of the chaos following the botched occupation and to kill Americans without the hassle of sneaking into the USA.
So when are you going to war to prevent to 30k to 40k people killed by autombiles in the USA each year?
Poor people dying from preventable disease they can't afford to treat that are not "emergencies", poor pre-natal care, high infant morality rate amoung the poor, lots of spending by the rich on tests to avoid lawsuits, and profit driven hospitals that gouge the rich. Look up the difference in price some hospitals charge insurance companies compared to private people - it can be double in some cases.
The Canadian government also does a good job of keeping drug prices low by buying bulk, only funding generic cheap drugs when they do the job instead of some new fancy drug, and no profit skimming at hospitals. USA drug companies are doing a very good job at keeping drug prices sky high within the USA, they are very effective at lobbying.
The down side is that some common, but not life threatening, surgeries have waiting lists of over a year. It isn't a perfect system and we are looking for ways to improve it, but overall it seems to cost less and help more people than private medicine.
Personally, I think it is very wierd that a major, rich, first world country does not have universal healthcare. Your roads and schools are socialized (among many things)- why not medicine?
Did you read the article? The rotating wing lets one craft operate efficiently at sub-sonic speeds, like when you are dropping bombs, and at supersonic speeds, like when you are going to where you want to drop bombs. Fixed wings either suck at low or high speed. By suck I mean they are not very effiecent. The new design will not waste fuel pushing a wing through the air at supersonic speeds that is a compramise so the craft doesn't fall out of the sky at low speeds. It has nothing to do with avoiding sonic booms.
You have heard the term "fair weather friend"? That is a friend who is only there when things are good. A true friend is there to support you in good times and bad - even bad times you brought on yourself. Of course this doesn't mean helping your friend continue their bad behaviour, but it does mean being supportive during bad times and encouraging better behaviour if your friend has been bad.
Wanting nice but unneccessary things very, very much, can lead to a very shallow life spent making money at the expense of time actually enjoying life. Companies have to make a profit to stay in business, but too many companies think that their only goal should be to maximize profit in the short term at the expense of all other possible goals (like long term profit). When you think making a profit is a noble goal you get Enron.
I have a good job that lets me and my family live a comfortable life. I could work harder, do overtime, climb that corportate ladder, and earn enough to live in a house instead of an apartment, buy a new mini-van instead of a 10 year old one, take a fancy vacation every year instead of every 3 or 4 years. But what would it cost me? I wouldn't be taking 4 weeks off every August to spend time with my children and friends. I wouldn't be home for dinner on time every day. I wouldn't spend time on my hobbies (painting, writing, music, sports, model trains), I would not know my children as well as I do.
Too many people have the idea that newer, better "things" will make them happy. It won't. Once you can meet all the requirements of living and afford a few luxuries then anything extra only gives you a thrill for a few hours or days, but then you have to go back to depending on actually having an enjoyable life for your happiness.
I highly reccommend canceling your cable tv. You still spend too much time in front of the TV (movies, games, I get 2 channels on bunnie ears), but you are not bombarded with consumerism propoganda. The kids sure ask for less junk.
Realestate prices have skyrocketed in the last 5 years, a continueation of a real-estate booom fueled by Hong Kong's return to China in 1997.
Vancouver has NO freeway running through it. Makes commutting a nightmare, but it certainly encourages people to live close to work. All new developments include bike lanes, and the city is trying to build bike lanes on existing roads. Large investments in mass transit are being made, but this is mainly to move people from suburb to suburb to city. Regular buses, bikes and cars are used for short trips. Many neighborhoods streets are a maze of dead ends to force people to use the main streets, and only use small residential streets to get home. This really cuts down on traffic in your neighborhood. Some experiments fail, for example council tried to turn a whole car lane on a major bridge into a bike line. That only lasted one day.
My point is that a forward thinky civic government can encourage the development of a city that is people friendly. but you have to live somewhere were making a profit is not considered a noble goal, but just a requirement of staying in business.
The current batteries are expensive, heavy, have to be replaced every 3 or so years, and are slow to charge. As soon as there are batteries that let your drive 450Km ona charge in a car that seats 4 and has a trunk, I think electric cars will become very popular. I also expect charging to be done at home. We ALL have electricity at home.
Yes you can buy a bucket, but if you carry milk instead of water you have to pay double for your bucket. And I won't sell you a bucket at all if you want to carry maple syrop because I sell that.
Some key theory that I found useful in real life programming:
Depending on the field you go into math may be important:
Once you get the syntax of a couple of languages under your belt you will find it isn't that hard to pick up new languages. It more important to know how to apply those languages using math and CS skills to the problem at hand.
Also learn at least a little about the hardware - just enough to know why some code runs so much faster than other code for some problems.
I am not a consumer. I am a citizen.