How does money work? I give you some money, you put it in the bank, it earns you interest. If you don't need to spend it you keep it, because it'll be worth more in the long run.
Who decided it should be that way? There are hundreds of examples from the last few hundred years of communities and regions implementing an alternative currency - one with a state imposed depreciation rate. I give you $10 in August, its worth $9 in September, and $5 by new year. I'll bet you spend it in August!
Why does that help? Because it keeps the markets liquid. It no longer pays for the rich to save their money - they have to spend it. And on the whole that creates wealth in the economy - it is not the amount of money in a country that matters - its the amount of money MOVING in the market that matters.
Do this and political bribes will still exist - but wealth accruel will be a lesser driver. Bill Gates will still be a rich fucker for the rest of his life - but the rest of us will see more of his money more quickly.
If eBay started a similar currency who's to stop them?
A robot has taught itself the principles of flying -- learning in just three hours what evolution took millions of years to achieve
Well. Assuming the birds were TRYING to fly, knew what lift was, and already had the equipment (i.e. wings) to achieve this.
This brings an image of stupid birds sitting around flapping randomly thinking "FUCK - I'm SURE this should fucking WORK! - Bastards - OOps, I just fell over to the left - does that mean my right wing was flapped right???? - Hey - John! WHAT DID I DO THEN????"
JESUS! It never fails to amaze me how little geek guys know about women!
Every single woman I've ever been out with went week at the knees at the sight of me refusing to eat at a restaurant because of poor practice, avoiding a brand for poor ethics, or cycling to work to live 'carbon neutral'.
If you care about this stuff - and your women doesn't I dont care how nice her tits are or how often she gets them out for you - DUMP HER. She'd sure as hell get rid of you if the tables were turned, and theres another one out there with BETTER tits who shares your ethics, and cooks a better omlette - you just have to find her.
If you can shelve your ethics for sex - they weren't your ethics in the first place.
Be as purist as you like, but most businesses I have dealt with in the last 15 years have a pretty shitty attitude towards the disabled. And most apply those attitudes to people who use 'wierd' browsers.
If you can deliver your service to 90% of your potential audience for £100K, or 100% of your potential audience for £500K it doesn't take a genius to figure that you prove the 90% want the thing before investing the additional £400K.
The reason being that its easy. Most clients of web companies use PCs with the latest version of XP and IE installed - why?
Because its easy. IE has its flaws, but its pretty much universal and good enough. With.NET you can actually SMELL the IE bias as soon as you start building a page. This keep development costs down and delivery schedules easy to estimate.
By building for IE and offering to 'do a mac version if you get complaints / lose customers' most web houses cover their arse while keeping it simple. And the carrot? 'Its cheap as chips to do in IE, but a bitch to do cross browser - so it'll costs lots more - it'll be cheaper in the long run to do two versions, and you probably wont need the second version anyway!'
There is no commercial upside, it would essentially be a large charitable contribution where you don't even get a tax write-off.
Which, sadly, is the end of the story for Linux. Unless there is a compelling reason, be it technical, ethical or financial (are there any other reasons??) for the best developers to adopt a platform it wont happen.
If Linux had kick ass libraries and stability and development tools which created a dream environment for developers to... develop then the technical side would begin to be compelling IF that environment was many times better than on Windows.
The market for Linux games, or games on any non Windows / PS2 platform is going to be tough.
The only thing that makes people want to play a game on an OS is the game. If Linux has Doom 4 before windows, or even INSTEAD of windows then te market for Linux as a gaming platform will burst forth.
To have the choice of the windows of linux is, as you say, not advancing linux as a platform as the total sales are likely to be the same.
Linux needs some advantage to become a serious games platform - and new versions of pong and tetris are not that advantage!
Surely the future of TV decoding is in Software, not hardware.
Even my laptop is quite up to the job of decoding a DVD glitch free without a funky card on board.
Sell me a licence to a bit of software that I can install on any hardware, that will allow me to watch certain channels. When I want to upgrade just send me a patch, so I can watch more football.
Soon it will be cheaper to bundle the hardware with a DVD player, or CD plater, or the TV, or you kettle - so why persist in trying to get people to buy boxes. People are scared of wasting money on black boxes.
Sell them a bit of software on the otherhand - and give them a free box with it - and away you go. They then know that when the software or the hardware start to limit their fun they can upgrade without having to throw the lot away.
That sounds like exactly what I was saying when the first Starbucks arrived in Scotland. Everyone thought that it was pretty cool that a coffee could come in so many different ways - and that biscuits had italian sounding names!
But pretty soon they had ousted most of the indiginous coffee places, and even quite a few other minority species like good record shops, and cheap wineries.
Now all you see for miles around is shops with silver chairs and tables out the front and streets littered with empty 4 gallon coffee cups.
I drive over the cups whenever I see them, which I take to be their eggs or young. And I refuse to give them the money they need to survive. Some day I am sure they will suffocate us. There are no food shops within a mile of my home now, but there are 4 starbucks. My how things change...
Yep. Do something you enjoy - and it it happens to pay well then great. My pet peev at the moment is teachers and nurses whining about not getting enough money for doing the job they 'love'.
Well if they love it that goddamn much then that should be, to a degree, its own reward. Where does it say that every public servant should have a yacht?
That's the opposite side of the 'yeah I get paid £60K but, you know, this job just feels kinda empty'. I'm crying for that dude!
I feel sorry for those dumb fucks who can't do anything but work checkouts at supermarkets! Or sweep the floor in warehouses.
RIGHT DOWN THE CENTER OF YOUR NOW OPEN TOOTH (yes I did go through that). HOLY FUCK THAT HURT. I can't feel anything now.
That brought my own similar experience flooding back - you bastard. Indeed - the nerve is the problem. Somewhere along the lines of a 'simple 5 minute procedure' the fucker caught a shard of enamel straight into my nerve AYAYAYAYAYAFUUUUUUUUUUKKKKAYAYAYAYAYAYYA... and then proceeded to take about 3 HOURS to scoop the little thing out IWANTMYMOOOOOMMMIIIIEEE (well - a couple of minutes)
But hey - maybe the laser would just vapourise your nerve! What are nerves in your TEETH for anyway???
Every economy needs a wealthy core population which is happy to spend its money on over priced luxury items - from plates of soup to Mercedes.
Lawyers were getting bored with chasing ambulances, and many were considering getting out of the business and starting a small organic farm in Provence.
Now they just need to dust down their 'media rights 101' material and find an abuse - preferably where the accused can afford to defend - as the case will last longer and therefore cost more money.
Yes. If you took one of the clocks and left it absolutely stationary in space until we did a lap of the galaxy there would be more than a few billionths of a second difference.
If you sneeze on a train the boogers leave your nose at a fair old speed! It's not too fast compared to the speed of the train, or the speed of rotation of the earth etc.... but the guy oposite will still get pretty pissed if you hit him!
All I said, was that a degree doesn't help you do special things. ALL your examples are about fulfilling existing requirements through acquiring existing knowledge in a structured manner.
Now, I don't dispute the value of that but the question is WHATS SO SPECIAL ABOUT THAT???
I have a degree. I did pretty well. I learned a shit-load of stuff. But it in no way makes me more likely to CREATE something NEW.
Think outside the box. The whole point of life is not to create neat code, or to effectively manage coders, or do draw shapes. Sometimes people create something new, like Escher, and in doing so they dont just fall back on stuff learned at 'Creating 301'.
I'm not putting down degrees - even tho they let any old chimp on a degree course nowadays!
If you must know I have an Honours degree in Chemistry. I loved my time at Uni, it set me up for life - but the time spent drinking beer and playing cricket was as important as the time spent in the labs.
I've had a few jobs, and currently work for myself producing niche software for a small number of clients - its nothing ground breaking but it pays the bills.
I don't think I have the ideal life - but it suits me. Being a doctor or lawyer or whatever is too restrictive for me - there is a strict code of conduct, a stricter pecking order, and a defined 'career path' to be followed.
I have never been asked if I had a degree, and I've never volunteered the information to any potential employer or client. I never said medicine wasn't a respectable profession - I simply said its nothing special in most cases.
The original poster didn't say 'wish I had a respectable job without a degree' he said 'wish I could do something important with my life without a degree'.
The coolest job I know of is a guy who builds hedges - he started from scratch without a qualification to his name - but he is changing the landscape around here! By making traditional hedges a possibility at a reasonable cost he is changing the way the place works. He's WAY more important, and more interesting than 99.9% of doctors.
The only difference between "AAAAURGH ASTEROID!!!!" and "AAAURGHHG COFFEE GIVES YOU CANCER" is that the Asteroid story was leaked by NASA who want a bigger budget - and the coffee story was leaked by a company with a new 'CANCER FREE' brand launching, well, as it happens, TODAY!!
Okay - you want to be a doctor, you have to work for a health authority, you need a degree.
You want to be an architect, wow - guess what - you need a degree. Lawyers too? No shit sherlock!
All these are professions which are exclusive and involve working wither for a boss or for the Man. These do not constitute doing something for yourself, creating something new, bringing a fresh view to the world. These involve TAKING A JOB. I dont think the original poster was talking about simply getting a job - he was talking about doing something special.
If you think being a architect or doctor is something special, I'd have to disagree - there are plenty more of THEM out there - who gives a fuck if you turn into another?
Personally, I can hardly tell the difference between MP3 and CD and my old vinyl. When I play something on CD, then MP3, then CD and listen carefully for the 'crappy bits' I can hear them - but they don't bother me in the slightest when listening to them.
Are my ears just a bit shite? Are most of you guys able to tell the difference - or are the audiophiles just more vocal?
Degrees are handy if you want to work for others, as it makes it easier for them to believe you when you say "Im worth hiring". But makes not one ounce of difference when you want to do things for yourself.
Just get out there and do what you want, measure your own success by your own values - not by the size of your car - and you'll be happy.
Forget all societal measures of your worth - they mean nothing. Except karma of course - anything less than excellent and your a twat!
Slashdot Mirror
How does money work? I give you some money, you put it in the bank, it earns you interest. If you don't need to spend it you keep it, because it'll be worth more in the long run.
Who decided it should be that way? There are hundreds of examples from the last few hundred years of communities and regions implementing an alternative currency - one with a state imposed depreciation rate. I give you $10 in August, its worth $9 in September, and $5 by new year. I'll bet you spend it in August!
Why does that help? Because it keeps the markets liquid. It no longer pays for the rich to save their money - they have to spend it. And on the whole that creates wealth in the economy - it is not the amount of money in a country that matters - its the amount of money MOVING in the market that matters.
Do this and political bribes will still exist - but wealth accruel will be a lesser driver. Bill Gates will still be a rich fucker for the rest of his life - but the rest of us will see more of his money more quickly.
If eBay started a similar currency who's to stop them?
A robot has taught itself the principles of flying -- learning in just three hours what evolution took millions of years to achieve
Well. Assuming the birds were TRYING to fly, knew what lift was, and already had the equipment (i.e. wings) to achieve this.
This brings an image of stupid birds sitting around flapping randomly thinking "FUCK - I'm SURE this should fucking WORK! - Bastards - OOps, I just fell over to the left - does that mean my right wing was flapped right???? - Hey - John! WHAT DID I DO THEN????"
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/images/large/02 pd1167.jpg
And can you beleive how BIG those pics are! Jesus!
this is a gift for her, not you
JESUS! It never fails to amaze me how little geek guys know about women!
Every single woman I've ever been out with went week at the knees at the sight of me refusing to eat at a restaurant because of poor practice, avoiding a brand for poor ethics, or cycling to work to live 'carbon neutral'.
If you care about this stuff - and your women doesn't I dont care how nice her tits are or how often she gets them out for you - DUMP HER. She'd sure as hell get rid of you if the tables were turned, and theres another one out there with BETTER tits who shares your ethics, and cooks a better omlette - you just have to find her.
If you can shelve your ethics for sex - they weren't your ethics in the first place.
Be as purist as you like, but most businesses I have dealt with in the last 15 years have a pretty shitty attitude towards the disabled. And most apply those attitudes to people who use 'wierd' browsers.
If you can deliver your service to 90% of your potential audience for £100K, or 100% of your potential audience for £500K it doesn't take a genius to figure that you prove the 90% want the thing before investing the additional £400K.
The reason being that its easy. Most clients of web companies use PCs with the latest version of XP and IE installed - why?
.NET you can actually SMELL the IE bias as soon as you start building a page. This keep development costs down and delivery schedules easy to estimate.
Because its easy. IE has its flaws, but its pretty much universal and good enough. With
By building for IE and offering to 'do a mac version if you get complaints / lose customers' most web houses cover their arse while keeping it simple. And the carrot? 'Its cheap as chips to do in IE, but a bitch to do cross browser - so it'll costs lots more - it'll be cheaper in the long run to do two versions, and you probably wont need the second version anyway!'
IE is here to stay.
There is no commercial upside, it would essentially be a large charitable contribution where you don't even get a tax write-off.
... develop then the technical side would begin to be compelling IF that environment was many times better than on Windows.
Which, sadly, is the end of the story for Linux. Unless there is a compelling reason, be it technical, ethical or financial (are there any other reasons??) for the best developers to adopt a platform it wont happen.
If Linux had kick ass libraries and stability and development tools which created a dream environment for developers to
That aint gonna happen. Sadly.
What. Like bean-roaches?
The market for Linux games, or games on any non Windows / PS2 platform is going to be tough.
The only thing that makes people want to play a game on an OS is the game. If Linux has Doom 4 before windows, or even INSTEAD of windows then te market for Linux as a gaming platform will burst forth.
To have the choice of the windows of linux is, as you say, not advancing linux as a platform as the total sales are likely to be the same.
Linux needs some advantage to become a serious games platform - and new versions of pong and tetris are not that advantage!
Surely the future of TV decoding is in Software, not hardware.
Even my laptop is quite up to the job of decoding a DVD glitch free without a funky card on board.
Sell me a licence to a bit of software that I can install on any hardware, that will allow me to watch certain channels. When I want to upgrade just send me a patch, so I can watch more football.
Soon it will be cheaper to bundle the hardware with a DVD player, or CD plater, or the TV, or you kettle - so why persist in trying to get people to buy boxes. People are scared of wasting money on black boxes.
Sell them a bit of software on the otherhand - and give them a free box with it - and away you go. They then know that when the software or the hardware start to limit their fun they can upgrade without having to throw the lot away.
Apart from when we're dealing with Cold Fusion, or Levitation devices. Those are real, but they can be a BITCH to replicate!
That sounds like exactly what I was saying when the first Starbucks arrived in Scotland. Everyone thought that it was pretty cool that a coffee could come in so many different ways - and that biscuits had italian sounding names!
But pretty soon they had ousted most of the indiginous coffee places, and even quite a few other minority species like good record shops, and cheap wineries.
Now all you see for miles around is shops with silver chairs and tables out the front and streets littered with empty 4 gallon coffee cups.
I drive over the cups whenever I see them, which I take to be their eggs or young. And I refuse to give them the money they need to survive. Some day I am sure they will suffocate us. There are no food shops within a mile of my home now, but there are 4 starbucks. My how things change...
Yep. Do something you enjoy - and it it happens to pay well then great. My pet peev at the moment is teachers and nurses whining about not getting enough money for doing the job they 'love'.
Well if they love it that goddamn much then that should be, to a degree, its own reward. Where does it say that every public servant should have a yacht?
That's the opposite side of the 'yeah I get paid £60K but, you know, this job just feels kinda empty'. I'm crying for that dude!
I feel sorry for those dumb fucks who can't do anything but work checkouts at supermarkets! Or sweep the floor in warehouses.
That James Bond had a good job!
RIGHT DOWN THE CENTER OF YOUR NOW OPEN TOOTH (yes I did go through that). HOLY FUCK THAT HURT. I can't feel anything now.
That brought my own similar experience flooding back - you bastard. Indeed - the nerve is the problem. Somewhere along the lines of a 'simple 5 minute procedure' the fucker caught a shard of enamel straight into my nerve AYAYAYAYAYAFUUUUUUUUUUKKKKAYAYAYAYAYAYYA... and then proceeded to take about 3 HOURS to scoop the little thing out IWANTMYMOOOOOMMMIIIIEEE (well - a couple of minutes)
But hey - maybe the laser would just vapourise your nerve! What are nerves in your TEETH for anyway???
Just look at your neighbours. Watch the post van looking out for 3 small letters - Q V and C.
If you see one of those going into a house you can be sure that the dwellers have fully submitted - they even watch channels that ONLY run ads!
Every economy needs a wealthy core population which is happy to spend its money on over priced luxury items - from plates of soup to Mercedes.
Lawyers were getting bored with chasing ambulances, and many were considering getting out of the business and starting a small organic farm in Provence.
Now they just need to dust down their 'media rights 101' material and find an abuse - preferably where the accused can afford to defend - as the case will last longer and therefore cost more money.
Too cynical?
Seriously dude. Even when you're about to walk from the place you didn't have the balls to be unappreciative without a cup????
Wuss!
Yes. If you took one of the clocks and left it absolutely stationary in space until we did a lap of the galaxy there would be more than a few billionths of a second difference.
If you sneeze on a train the boogers leave your nose at a fair old speed! It's not too fast compared to the speed of the train, or the speed of rotation of the earth etc.... but the guy oposite will still get pretty pissed if you hit him!
Jesus! How far out of context can I be taken!!!
All I said, was that a degree doesn't help you do special things. ALL your examples are about fulfilling existing requirements through acquiring existing knowledge in a structured manner.
Now, I don't dispute the value of that but the question is WHATS SO SPECIAL ABOUT THAT???
I have a degree. I did pretty well. I learned a shit-load of stuff. But it in no way makes me more likely to CREATE something NEW.
Think outside the box. The whole point of life is not to create neat code, or to effectively manage coders, or do draw shapes. Sometimes people create something new, like Escher, and in doing so they dont just fall back on stuff learned at 'Creating 301'.
I'm not putting down degrees - even tho they let any old chimp on a degree course nowadays!
If you must know I have an Honours degree in Chemistry. I loved my time at Uni, it set me up for life - but the time spent drinking beer and playing cricket was as important as the time spent in the labs.
I've had a few jobs, and currently work for myself producing niche software for a small number of clients - its nothing ground breaking but it pays the bills.
I don't think I have the ideal life - but it suits me. Being a doctor or lawyer or whatever is too restrictive for me - there is a strict code of conduct, a stricter pecking order, and a defined 'career path' to be followed.
I have never been asked if I had a degree, and I've never volunteered the information to any potential employer or client. I never said medicine wasn't a respectable profession - I simply said its nothing special in most cases.
The original poster didn't say 'wish I had a respectable job without a degree' he said 'wish I could do something important with my life without a degree'.
The coolest job I know of is a guy who builds hedges - he started from scratch without a qualification to his name - but he is changing the landscape around here! By making traditional hedges a possibility at a reasonable cost he is changing the way the place works. He's WAY more important, and more interesting than 99.9% of doctors.
I see no contradiction!!
On a more personal note, I'll take vinyl over the alternatives any day of the week!
;-)
Ahhh - respect! You must be pretty knowledgeable to chose the oldest format as your favourite...
The only difference between "AAAAURGH ASTEROID!!!!" and "AAAURGHHG COFFEE GIVES YOU CANCER" is that the Asteroid story was leaked by NASA who want a bigger budget - and the coffee story was leaked by a company with a new 'CANCER FREE' brand launching, well, as it happens, TODAY!!
Okay - you want to be a doctor, you have to work for a health authority, you need a degree.
You want to be an architect, wow - guess what - you need a degree. Lawyers too? No shit sherlock!
All these are professions which are exclusive and involve working wither for a boss or for the Man. These do not constitute doing something for yourself, creating something new, bringing a fresh view to the world. These involve TAKING A JOB. I dont think the original poster was talking about simply getting a job - he was talking about doing something special.
If you think being a architect or doctor is something special, I'd have to disagree - there are plenty more of THEM out there - who gives a fuck if you turn into another?
Personally, I can hardly tell the difference between MP3 and CD and my old vinyl. When I play something on CD, then MP3, then CD and listen carefully for the 'crappy bits' I can hear them - but they don't bother me in the slightest when listening to them.
Are my ears just a bit shite? Are most of you guys able to tell the difference - or are the audiophiles just more vocal?
Degrees are handy if you want to work for others, as it makes it easier for them to believe you when you say "Im worth hiring". But makes not one ounce of difference when you want to do things for yourself.
Just get out there and do what you want, measure your own success by your own values - not by the size of your car - and you'll be happy.
Forget all societal measures of your worth - they mean nothing. Except karma of course - anything less than excellent and your a twat!