If I had met any pharmaceutical researchers or civil engineers or software developers and seen what they do at work every day, I might have found it more interesting.
Possibly, although from what I recall of my CS studies most of the women, those few who chose the major anyway, lost interest before completing enough pre-requisite courses to advance into the upper division classes. There were only a handful of women in my graduating class and I only knew one of them personally (she was French incidentally). It seemed like most of the smart girls ended up in chemistry or pre-med rather than engineering or computer science.
Why is it that some people who are not as talented, obtain success? Are they smarter? Stronger? No. They're simply more evil.
Dr. Evil: You're not quite evil enough. You're semi-evil. You're quasi-evil. You're the margarine of evil. You're the Diet Coke of evil, just one calorie, not evil enough.
It would be nice on these sorts of systems to have recurring, perhaps low priority, jobs issued by worthy outside distributed computing projects. Depending upon how busy the system is with other jobs it could make regular contributions to drug research and especially to AIDS research. To have complete and accurate pre-computed models of all steps in the protein folding process for all possible mutations of the AIDS virus, for example, would be a technological triumph and of potentially great benefit to humanity in the development of new drugs and possibly even an effective vaccine.
But don't try to operate a business facilitating public transportation without the appropriate licenses.
Why should there be special additional restrictions on transporting the public as long as the driver has the appropriate license for the vehicle that he would be driving anyway? How is the public interest served by restricting this? Taxi cab regulations are really classic examples of a privileged minority, those with taxi cab medallions, keeping prices artificially high by lobbying the government to heavily regulate their business and create barriers to entry. The restrictive licensing of cosmetologists is another similar case of highly restrictive licensing of a relatively low risk business. I am not advocating for NO licensing, but clearly some businesses and professional organizations lobby for and get licensing that is more restrictive than it has to be merely to create barriers to entry and preserve artificially high profits to the detriment of those in need of public transportation who pay a higher price for the service than they otherwise would in the absence of onerous regulations.
The house, the car, and the retirement account all presumably belonged to the husband who is himself an idiot for allowing his gullible wife to have access to the finances. In answer to your question, the amount of money that one is able to accumulate, both in the United States and elsewhere in the world, appears to more closely track dishonesty, chutzpah, and greed than it does intelligence. Unfortunately, being smart does not guarantee wealth and sometimes it takes a less bright individual, who is able to take a wild risk without thinking too much about it, to make a fortune.
Once you bring in carriers into the mix, "open" goes out the window because it gives people the ability to step around your nickel and diming.
Yes, but T-Mobile is better than most other US Carriers in this regard. They use GSM phones so just about any phone that takes GSM should work on their network. They don't play games like Verizon does with bluetooth connectivity and ringtones and they gave me the unlock code for my phone three (3) months into the contract. My only real complaints are that their coverage is not as good as Verizon and the prices on their data services are a bit higher, but with all of the restrictions that other US Carriers place on their "unlimited" data plans you have to wonder whether there really is a difference in price relative to what you get.
While it is true that fines may not be effective deterrents by themselves, it is also true that such cartel like behaviors, particularly in manufactured goods which do not have other limiting factors (as natural resources like oil do), inevitably break down over time as the incentives to cheat and produce more units than agreed or suddenly drop prices to gain a momentary advantage become ever greater until one of the cartel members does one or both and effectively dissolves the agreement. You might face high prices in the meantime as a consumer, but it also costs money to investigate and bust cartels (which tend to bust themselves eventually anyway) and a flat screen TV isn't exactly a necessity. If you didn't like the prices then wait and buy one when the prices improve. If the consumer is persistent and refuses to pay an inflated price then the prices will eventually come down anyway, cartel or not, provided that consumer is willing to tough it out and play hardball with the manufacturers.
Throw that in with the fact that roughly half of the programmers reading that are going to be below average, and there you go.
That is what comes of outsourcing and offshoring especially, but there are still managers out there who refuse to acknowledge what I like to call the Iron Law of Software Development or more generally the Project Triangle (good, fast, cheap...pick two).
Yes, but the monster cable is thickly shielded and sheathed in gold so it sounds more than 4000 times better in my hand-built analog vacuum tube audiophile stereo hooked up to my platinum geared diamond tip turn-table with unobtanium static shielding and isolated in my special "listening room". Really, I can tell the difference...smirk.
It wouldn't surprise me if that were true. Even Sony, which is a much larger company, is having problems with monetizing the Blu-Ray format. These examples should serve as an example to all that physical disc formats, and particularly proprietary ones, are now irrelevant money pits. The content itself and online distribution are what matters (iTunes, XBox Live, Steam, etc...).
Unless Papermaster has assets or other property interests in the State of New York or is a resident of that state then he could probably just ignore the orders of the NY court since this is not a criminal matter, but an issue of differing state contract laws (IANAL). Apple, on the other hand, has a very nice store in downtown Manhattan and probably has other business and financial interests in New York as well (NYSE for example). I am not sure what the repercussions of that might be, but it probably is important because it means that the State of New York, at least theoretically, has some leverage over Apple (i.e. do what our courts say or we will have to play bad cop and close the store in Manhattan and pressure NYSE to drop your listing). In terms of the relative power of states, New York probably has more power than most because of their financial capital status among other things. This probably also explains why crusading NY attorney generals, like Elliot "The Don" Spitzer and his successors, tend to get their way despite their apparent lack of actual juris-my-diction.
but we do ostensibly select our best and brightest to "rule."
Then how was Bush the younger ever selected to "rule"?
You're going to have to be more specific here.
Lets go with your technology example, on the one hand you believe that it has made things better but some things, probably connected with technology, are arguably still worse or have been made worse. If philosophy is a necessary, although perhaps not a sufficient, condition for modern technology AND modern technology does not always make things better, even in the aggregate, then how can philosophy always make everything better?
since even if they paid, anyone else would now be able to completely replicate their drink, and it would no longer be covered by Trade Secret protection.
Don't be so sure. It is sort of an open secret that the secret "ingredient X" that makes up less than 1% of the Coca Cola formula is actually spent Coca leaves or, more precisely, the crushed leaves of the Coca plant (the same as used to manufacture cocaine) after the active cocaine alkaloids have been removed. These spent leaves are used to create the flavoring extract that is used in the present Coca Cola formula. However, even if this became official public knowledge the DEA has special agreements with the Coca Cola corporation and the pharmaceutical company (Stephen Company, Maywood New Jersey) licensed to perform the extraction. So even if you read the patent and wanted to duplicate Coke you could not legally import the ingredients required or even the finished drink since it would still contain trace amounts of cocaine (the Coca Cola company is presumably exempt under their special existing agreements with the DEA). The Coca Cola trade marks would still be in place also, so you could not call your product "Coca Cola" either.
What I'm trying to say without sounding too self-absorbed is that philosophy makes everything better!
and I refute it thus: If philosophy makes everything better then where are the philosopher kings that Plato spoke of and if they are not here yet then how have things gotten any better since the time of Plato?
I find it almost impossible to see how decades of "winner take all" economics ISN'T creating a massive, permanent, underclass. Economic conditions suggest this is so already.
In fact, that is not really a controversial statement. The fact that income inequality and wealth disparity exist in our society is almost without exception not disputed. The real discussion and disagreements are taking place over whether or not that is meaningful and what, if anything, should be done about it.
I have never heard of a single case where somebody was refused a prescription by an employee of a pharmacy citing this law, the news media would be all over it if it ever did happen. It is probably a non-factor.
There are no shortages of pharmacies here in the U.S. run by corporations that would be happy to fill whatever presecription you have provided that you can pay for it. Laws like that are quaint relics of a simpler time when pharmacies were privately owned businesses and not chains owned by corporations and pharmacists where upstanding and important members of the small town religious community. There is no reason for anyone to bother enforcing them (most laws are not enforced because nobody with political clout cares, there is no money in it for the police through asset forfeiture laws, and no public official wants to be accused of wasting taxpayer money enforcing silly laws). I am certain that if you have money and a prescription then you can find a pharmacy in your area willing to fill it or at the absolute worst you could have the prescription delivered mail order from one of the corporate chain pharmacies. One thing that you can be certain of however, is that a corporation will not allow the misguided morals of a few tedious sermonizers to stand in the way of a profit opportunity (yes, capitalsim does have some redeeming qualities after all).
The treatments are expensive, and even worse, enough people see HIV/AIDS as some sort of punishment for promiscuity that some people are denied treatments intermittently because people don't feel comfortable giving it to them.
They can indeed be expensive, but I have never heard of anyone with money being turned away or denied treatment. Money talks and if you have it and want treatment then someone will be happy to provide it regardless of any misguided notions about punishment or qualms that other people might have about you receiving it. If money can buy illegal drugs then it can buy aids treatments too morals, rules, and ethics be damned.
Sometimes it is overt, as you have said with 51% direct ownership by the government, while other times it is more covert, in the form of companies or businesses which are owned, wholly or partly, by the Chinese army or by a Chinese citizen who is politically well connected but otherwise doesn't contribute much to the venture, the proverbial son of the boss. This seems to be getting better with time as Chinese businessmen and entrepreneurs with greater business acumen displace less competent political favorites despite being handicapped by government corruption.
Because far too often at least one of the parties doesn't really want to be there.
Hence the purpose of regulation. In certain counties of Nevada, for example, whore houses are regulated and legal businesses with employment applications, W-2's, on-site security, medical staff, and every thing else that one might expect in a professional, legal, and regulated business. Those who choose to operate outside that system are still busted, even in those counties. This sort of arrangement removes the coercion from the profession. Now, before you say, "no women would willing chose that profession" remember that these women are earning thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars a month for basically unskilled labor. The fact that some people might not choose to do a job if they weren't paid doesn't mean that the job should be outlawed for being exploitative (someone has to work all of those McJobs after all).
So society has decided there are a few things you just can't sell, because it leads to extreme exploitation/harm. So, you can't sell your organs or sex.
Which it really has no right to do. There is no worse tyranny than to remove from adults the sovereign ability to have control, even choices that you might disagree with, over their own bodies. The state doesn't own your body, it belongs to you and you alone.
Does this -really- bother you? If so, you are in the distinct minority.
The Constitution was designed to protect the rights of the minority, the majority generally looks after itself.
but if you are going to legalize prostitution, how are you going to keep 'survival sex' illegal?
There simply need to be fines large enough to prevent under the table competition to the official legalized venues. The system is already up and running in parts of Nevada. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to legalize, regulate, and tax prostitution.
Because I don't believe society should put people into a position where they only consent to sex to survive.
How is that different from someone taking any other job that you find undesirable (ala Dirty Jobs) to survive? Should society ban people from shoveling hog manure or cleaning up pigeon poop because you think the job is dirty and nasty and nobody should be "forced" to do it to survive?
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If I had met any pharmaceutical researchers or civil engineers or software developers and seen what they do at work every day, I might have found it more interesting.
Possibly, although from what I recall of my CS studies most of the women, those few who chose the major anyway, lost interest before completing enough pre-requisite courses to advance into the upper division classes. There were only a handful of women in my graduating class and I only knew one of them personally (she was French incidentally). It seemed like most of the smart girls ended up in chemistry or pre-med rather than engineering or computer science.
Why is it that some people who are not as talented, obtain success? Are they smarter? Stronger? No. They're simply more evil.
Dr. Evil: You're not quite evil enough. You're semi-evil. You're quasi-evil. You're the margarine of evil. You're the Diet Coke of evil, just one calorie, not evil enough.
It would be nice on these sorts of systems to have recurring, perhaps low priority, jobs issued by worthy outside distributed computing projects. Depending upon how busy the system is with other jobs it could make regular contributions to drug research and especially to AIDS research. To have complete and accurate pre-computed models of all steps in the protein folding process for all possible mutations of the AIDS virus, for example, would be a technological triumph and of potentially great benefit to humanity in the development of new drugs and possibly even an effective vaccine.
Do you need special permission to request ALL of the processors for your job?
But don't try to operate a business facilitating public transportation without the appropriate licenses.
Why should there be special additional restrictions on transporting the public as long as the driver has the appropriate license for the vehicle that he would be driving anyway? How is the public interest served by restricting this? Taxi cab regulations are really classic examples of a privileged minority, those with taxi cab medallions, keeping prices artificially high by lobbying the government to heavily regulate their business and create barriers to entry. The restrictive licensing of cosmetologists is another similar case of highly restrictive licensing of a relatively low risk business. I am not advocating for NO licensing, but clearly some businesses and professional organizations lobby for and get licensing that is more restrictive than it has to be merely to create barriers to entry and preserve artificially high profits to the detriment of those in need of public transportation who pay a higher price for the service than they otherwise would in the absence of onerous regulations.
How does someone so stupid have so much money?
The house, the car, and the retirement account all presumably belonged to the husband who is himself an idiot for allowing his gullible wife to have access to the finances. In answer to your question, the amount of money that one is able to accumulate, both in the United States and elsewhere in the world, appears to more closely track dishonesty, chutzpah, and greed than it does intelligence. Unfortunately, being smart does not guarantee wealth and sometimes it takes a less bright individual, who is able to take a wild risk without thinking too much about it, to make a fortune.
Once you bring in carriers into the mix, "open" goes out the window because it gives people the ability to step around your nickel and diming.
Yes, but T-Mobile is better than most other US Carriers in this regard. They use GSM phones so just about any phone that takes GSM should work on their network. They don't play games like Verizon does with bluetooth connectivity and ringtones and they gave me the unlock code for my phone three (3) months into the contract. My only real complaints are that their coverage is not as good as Verizon and the prices on their data services are a bit higher, but with all of the restrictions that other US Carriers place on their "unlimited" data plans you have to wonder whether there really is a difference in price relative to what you get.
While it is true that fines may not be effective deterrents by themselves, it is also true that such cartel like behaviors, particularly in manufactured goods which do not have other limiting factors (as natural resources like oil do), inevitably break down over time as the incentives to cheat and produce more units than agreed or suddenly drop prices to gain a momentary advantage become ever greater until one of the cartel members does one or both and effectively dissolves the agreement. You might face high prices in the meantime as a consumer, but it also costs money to investigate and bust cartels (which tend to bust themselves eventually anyway) and a flat screen TV isn't exactly a necessity. If you didn't like the prices then wait and buy one when the prices improve. If the consumer is persistent and refuses to pay an inflated price then the prices will eventually come down anyway, cartel or not, provided that consumer is willing to tough it out and play hardball with the manufacturers.
Throw that in with the fact that roughly half of the programmers reading that are going to be below average, and there you go.
That is what comes of outsourcing and offshoring especially, but there are still managers out there who refuse to acknowledge what I like to call the Iron Law of Software Development or more generally the Project Triangle (good, fast, cheap...pick two).
Yes, but the monster cable is thickly shielded and sheathed in gold so it sounds more than 4000 times better in my hand-built analog vacuum tube audiophile stereo hooked up to my platinum geared diamond tip turn-table with unobtanium static shielding and isolated in my special "listening room". Really, I can tell the difference...smirk.
It wouldn't surprise me if that were true. Even Sony, which is a much larger company, is having problems with monetizing the Blu-Ray format. These examples should serve as an example to all that physical disc formats, and particularly proprietary ones, are now irrelevant money pits. The content itself and online distribution are what matters (iTunes, XBox Live, Steam, etc...).
Who says that IBM doesn't play dirty when it suits them? It wasn't so long ago when they were the Microsoft of their day after all.
Unless Papermaster has assets or other property interests in the State of New York or is a resident of that state then he could probably just ignore the orders of the NY court since this is not a criminal matter, but an issue of differing state contract laws (IANAL). Apple, on the other hand, has a very nice store in downtown Manhattan and probably has other business and financial interests in New York as well (NYSE for example). I am not sure what the repercussions of that might be, but it probably is important because it means that the State of New York, at least theoretically, has some leverage over Apple (i.e. do what our courts say or we will have to play bad cop and close the store in Manhattan and pressure NYSE to drop your listing). In terms of the relative power of states, New York probably has more power than most because of their financial capital status among other things. This probably also explains why crusading NY attorney generals, like Elliot "The Don" Spitzer and his successors, tend to get their way despite their apparent lack of actual juris-my-diction.
but we do ostensibly select our best and brightest to "rule."
Then how was Bush the younger ever selected to "rule"?
You're going to have to be more specific here.
Lets go with your technology example, on the one hand you believe that it has made things better but some things, probably connected with technology, are arguably still worse or have been made worse. If philosophy is a necessary, although perhaps not a sufficient, condition for modern technology AND modern technology does not always make things better, even in the aggregate, then how can philosophy always make everything better?
since even if they paid, anyone else would now be able to completely replicate their drink, and it would no longer be covered by Trade Secret protection.
Don't be so sure. It is sort of an open secret that the secret "ingredient X" that makes up less than 1% of the Coca Cola formula is actually spent Coca leaves or, more precisely, the crushed leaves of the Coca plant (the same as used to manufacture cocaine) after the active cocaine alkaloids have been removed. These spent leaves are used to create the flavoring extract that is used in the present Coca Cola formula. However, even if this became official public knowledge the DEA has special agreements with the Coca Cola corporation and the pharmaceutical company (Stephen Company, Maywood New Jersey) licensed to perform the extraction. So even if you read the patent and wanted to duplicate Coke you could not legally import the ingredients required or even the finished drink since it would still contain trace amounts of cocaine (the Coca Cola company is presumably exempt under their special existing agreements with the DEA). The Coca Cola trade marks would still be in place also, so you could not call your product "Coca Cola" either.
What I'm trying to say without sounding too self-absorbed is that philosophy makes everything better!
and I refute it thus: If philosophy makes everything better then where are the philosopher kings that Plato spoke of and if they are not here yet then how have things gotten any better since the time of Plato?
I find it almost impossible to see how decades of "winner take all" economics ISN'T creating a massive, permanent, underclass. Economic conditions suggest this is so already.
In fact, that is not really a controversial statement. The fact that income inequality and wealth disparity exist in our society is almost without exception not disputed. The real discussion and disagreements are taking place over whether or not that is meaningful and what, if anything, should be done about it.
If college students are not smart enough or savvy enough to spot the trap then they deserve to fall into it.
Well, bailouts are in fashion right now...
I have never heard of a single case where somebody was refused a prescription by an employee of a pharmacy citing this law, the news media would be all over it if it ever did happen. It is probably a non-factor.
There are no shortages of pharmacies here in the U.S. run by corporations that would be happy to fill whatever presecription you have provided that you can pay for it. Laws like that are quaint relics of a simpler time when pharmacies were privately owned businesses and not chains owned by corporations and pharmacists where upstanding and important members of the small town religious community. There is no reason for anyone to bother enforcing them (most laws are not enforced because nobody with political clout cares, there is no money in it for the police through asset forfeiture laws, and no public official wants to be accused of wasting taxpayer money enforcing silly laws). I am certain that if you have money and a prescription then you can find a pharmacy in your area willing to fill it or at the absolute worst you could have the prescription delivered mail order from one of the corporate chain pharmacies. One thing that you can be certain of however, is that a corporation will not allow the misguided morals of a few tedious sermonizers to stand in the way of a profit opportunity (yes, capitalsim does have some redeeming qualities after all).
The treatments are expensive, and even worse, enough people see HIV/AIDS as some sort of punishment for promiscuity that some people are denied treatments intermittently because people don't feel comfortable giving it to them.
They can indeed be expensive, but I have never heard of anyone with money being turned away or denied treatment. Money talks and if you have it and want treatment then someone will be happy to provide it regardless of any misguided notions about punishment or qualms that other people might have about you receiving it. If money can buy illegal drugs then it can buy aids treatments too morals, rules, and ethics be damned.
Sometimes it is overt, as you have said with 51% direct ownership by the government, while other times it is more covert, in the form of companies or businesses which are owned, wholly or partly, by the Chinese army or by a Chinese citizen who is politically well connected but otherwise doesn't contribute much to the venture, the proverbial son of the boss. This seems to be getting better with time as Chinese businessmen and entrepreneurs with greater business acumen displace less competent political favorites despite being handicapped by government corruption.
Why doesn't Google simply tell Italy to shove it? What are they going to do about it? Google is an American not an Italian company.
Because far too often at least one of the parties doesn't really want to be there.
Hence the purpose of regulation. In certain counties of Nevada, for example, whore houses are regulated and legal businesses with employment applications, W-2's, on-site security, medical staff, and every thing else that one might expect in a professional, legal, and regulated business. Those who choose to operate outside that system are still busted, even in those counties. This sort of arrangement removes the coercion from the profession. Now, before you say, "no women would willing chose that profession" remember that these women are earning thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars a month for basically unskilled labor. The fact that some people might not choose to do a job if they weren't paid doesn't mean that the job should be outlawed for being exploitative (someone has to work all of those McJobs after all).
So society has decided there are a few things you just can't sell, because it leads to extreme exploitation/harm. So, you can't sell your organs or sex.
Which it really has no right to do. There is no worse tyranny than to remove from adults the sovereign ability to have control, even choices that you might disagree with, over their own bodies. The state doesn't own your body, it belongs to you and you alone.
Does this -really- bother you? If so, you are in the distinct minority.
The Constitution was designed to protect the rights of the minority, the majority generally looks after itself.
but if you are going to legalize prostitution, how are you going to keep 'survival sex' illegal?
There simply need to be fines large enough to prevent under the table competition to the official legalized venues. The system is already up and running in parts of Nevada. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to legalize, regulate, and tax prostitution.
Because I don't believe society should put people into a position where they only consent to sex to survive.
How is that different from someone taking any other job that you find undesirable (ala Dirty Jobs) to survive? Should society ban people from shoveling hog manure or cleaning up pigeon poop because you think the job is dirty and nasty and nobody should be "forced" to do it to survive?