If their programs suck or if I don't like the "guerilla ads" then I will simply tune them out. I can live just fine without the constant barrage of pop-culture bullshit that television has become in recent years. If they make it unwatchable and say, "take it or leave it," then I will vote with my feet and my off switch.
The argument that you have put forward in favor of ads (i.e no ads then no content) is a common one among marketers and other people in the advertising business, but my response to them is and will always be, "Welcome to the free market". If people really want your content then they will buy a subscription. The government does not and cannot protect everyone from the rigors of competition. I have to compete everyday with software engineers in India and China who are getting better all of the time and work for much cheaper than I am able to. My message to you and all of the others who complain when the rules of the game change is, "Get used to it...adapt or die and let your competition step over your corpse". The world does not owe you a living and if technology changes or allows people to break your business model then tough. The world got along fine for generations before marketing and advertising, and it will be fine, indeed much better, without it. I use adblock to block everything that I don't want to see all of the time and I have absolutely no qualms about doing it. You may ask where my sense of sympathy or mercy went, well all I can say is that it was beaten out of my during long months of unemployment following the dot-com bust. I have no illusions now and neither should anyone else.
They say that the wheels of the justice train grind slowly, but grind they do and surely SCO will not escape its fate on the wrong side of the tracks. It may take years, but IBM has plenty of time and money and, having emerged as the saviors of open source (an irony to be sure), it could be argued that positive publicity that IBM receives for smashing SCO alone is worth the price of admission for them.
Give me a way to protect myself from your creative destruction.
Perhaps you should move to a cave in a remote location so that you can stick your head in the sand and just ignore the rest of us...the world isn't going to change itself for you and you seem to be desperately unhappy with the life that you are currently living.
That is a subsidy. It's a waste of taxpayer money when a simple duel of honor between the disputing CEOs would settle the matter nicely.
Sigh...I really shouldn't feed the trolls, but here goes...The reason that the 'duel of honor' as you put it was phased out of our present legal system is because it has the unfortunate side effect that one must be willing to stake life and limb on the outcome of the dispute and there are plenty of things that while important do not merit risking life and limb. Thus, the 'duel of honor', is at best inefficient and at worst a barbaric anachronism...a reminder of those times when the strong took what they wanted from the weak at sword point and that is precisely the type of coercion that libertarians seek to avoid.
In a truly free market by libertarian standards, you're not supposed to NEED a judicial branch of government- the free market takes care of disputes on it's own.
You are attempting a Reductio ad absurdum but with statements like that it is clear that what you are in fact doing is Argumentum ad nauseam. The free market cannot exist without government protection from threat of violent force. If you want to dispute the libertarian position then you must at least get your facts straight about what that position entails. The government exists to defend the people from external aggression, enforce contracts, and resolve disputes without people picking up the sword or the gun. The free market does not and cannot stand against threat of violence which is why the government exists to suppress the use of coercive force, because most reasonable people (you are obviously not one of them) agree that we would rather live in a civil society where people don't beat their neighbor over the head because they have a dispute.
Ah, but that is the true function of capitalism- without that you don't have a free market.
Nope, wrong...the true function of capitalism is to achieve a fair and just society for everyone and to provide the highest possible standard of living to each individual member of that society. Capitalism is not just for the rich, but also for the poor and everyone else. Marx was wrong and so are you, but at least Marx could reasonably argue that he didn't completely understand the consequences of his theories (since they hadn't yet been tried when he wrote them) whereas you have had the benefit of history and have still failed to heed the lessons of the twentieth century.
You can't have it both ways- either the government allows incorporation for the good of society and ACTIVELY destroys corporations that don't follow the rules
The government enforces the rules of the game...the rules that we all agreed to play by when we put down the guns and tried to form a decent society. There is nothing wrong with that.
or you have a free market where the corporations (the strong) can take what they want from consumers (the weak)
what a load of bullox...nobody is forcing you to buy their products and the government prevents them from taking your money through violence. If you don't like them then DON'T BUY THEIR PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. It is really that simple.
but the result is that the corporations take over the government with "campaign contributions" (in a democracy) or outright bribery (in other forms of government)
Government is necessary and democracy is the least bad of all of the alternatives which have been tried. Nobody said the world is perfect, but having a government is better than nihilism and anarchy so we make the best of an imperfect situation. The situation that you describe, with "campaign contributions" corrupting the system, is precisely why libertarians argue for reduced government (i.e. necessary functions only) so that there will be less incentive to engage in political games.
What level of respect do teachers deserve, and in what manner should we as a society ensure they get that respect?
They get what level of respect that their collective performance in the classroom dictates. They have made it impossible to distinguish individual outstanding teachers and dismal underachievers so we are forced to judge them as a group and that judgment, as you say, has been harsh indeed, although not entirely undeserved. There is really nothing that we as a society can do, under the current system that is, to encourage the teachers and their union to make the kinds of changes that would merit an increased level of performance and by extension respect. This is precisely why the system as it stands now is completely broken to the point where it cannot be fixed without changes that the entrenched interests are not prepared to accept.
There is a job to be done, a job some would consider a somewhat sacred task: Ensuring that an entire generation can learn and grow in the best way we know how to do it. That is not an easy task.
The free market has provided goods and services that are equally difficult to produce in great abundance and there is every reason to expect that market forces can provide for the creation of institutions that will effectively educate our children provided that there exists the political will to unleash those forces for the benefit of society.
We currently have a very limited number of people put into that formal role, and they collectively are not doing what we would consider an acceptable job at it. What should our response be? If our response is to punish and cut resources from that role in general one way or another, then we will be left with even fewer people to fill that role, and those that are left will have an even harder job to do.
Our response, as parents, should be to take back control of the education of our children and that means taking back control of the money that we pay in taxes for this purpose. Who is better motivated to seek out the best education possible, voucher in hand, for their child if not the parents? If we were serious about fixing education then we would put the money in the hands of the parents and let them decide who is and is not fit to teach their children via the marketplace.
More than that, the level of respect for these teachers will continue to fall. This isn't such a bad thing, if collapse of such a system is an acceptable result, except that there will be much of an entire generation of children in the lurch.
If there was money to be earned via the voucher system then I can assure you that there would be plenty of private firms offering to provide a high quality of education immediately to willing parents in exchange for those vouchers (i.e. cash on the barrel head). It would really blow the whole system wide open and massively improve quality and efficiency in our educational system.
The recent response to this issue is to push for very strict testing as a way to punish the teachers with the weakest 'performance'. That does improve the measured response, but it has also changed the way we measure the result. I would assert that by doing this, we have left behind the idea that we are trying to truly teach a generation the best way we can, but instead have minimized what we teach in order to assure high scores on a system we invent for ourselves, all in an effort to find someone to punish.
There would be no need for such rigorous measuring and enforcement if the marketplace was providing the education because if a particular institution was failing to provide a quality education then their competitors would step in and do it for them. There could even be private organizations handling the testing like the Educational Testing Service which administers the SAT exam for college admissions. The competitive pressures of the marketplace are what keep everyone, from the test administrators to the educational providers, honest and the end result is a high quality education for our children...or at least it would be if we were sincere about fixing the system.
In that case, would you agree that incorporation papers are a government subsidy that should be eliminated outright?
There is no suggestion of subsidy simply because the government provides formal recognition of the legal corporate entity for the purposes of adjudicating disputes. This is a necessary and proper function of government (there are some after all) in that paperwork is required to properly conduct the affairs of the judicial branch of government. There is nothing wrong with the government collecting taxes to fund the legitimate functions of government, which minimal though they may be, are necessary to ensure the coercion is not employed to beat, literally sometimes, the market into submission (i.e. the strong taking what they want and when they want from the weak without recourse).
I say we should be disbanding any corportion that doesn't have, as a part of it's charter, a duty to support the citizens of the country that is granting it incorporation papers.
Then it is a good thing that such decisions are not left up to you and your Marxist friends. The corporation exists to benefit and enrich the shareholders (hopefully) and other than compliance with laws that are designed to mitigate negative externalities and prevent outright fraud there is no obligation to the public at large in the manner that you suggest nor, in my opinion, should there be. This video sums it up nicely, albeit in a somewhat corny fashion.
It may be corny, and especially so when Ballmer says it, but it is true that a major reason for the popularity of Windows and Microsoft products in general is the large and well supported Microsoft Developer Network (with articles, documentation, and sample code), Visual Studio, and the ability to produce and sell software without getting explicit permission from Microsoft. Now, I know that such things are available on other operating systems, especially Linux, but it seems like Apple gives much shorter shrift to their developers than Microsoft. The apple website has the developer info buried a few levels down and the tools and libraries seem to be much less well known and publicised and more black art like than the corresponding tools and documentation available with Windows or your favorite Linux disto. If Apple wants to win back the desktop then they have to be more open to and supportive of third party developers. So perhaps in this instance Ballmer was right...developers, developers, developers...yeah.
It doesn't even have to be a mock-up of the "real" BestBuy website, especially when one considers that the prices are loaded from the database and displayed dynamically when the pages are served to the browsers. It would not be difficult for the BestBuy.com website to employ the same cloaking techniques used by the search engine optimizers to display one set of content to visitors from the public Internet and a different set of content to visitors from the BestBuy intranet (i.e. in-store computers at any of their locations). There is no need to maintain a completely separate "secret" website.
In that case, nobody should ever know about selfless giving, since telling someone about it could imply that they're looking for acceptance.
That depends upon one's point of view...
"1 Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. 2 Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
Most people donate, volenteer for something because they know it will benifit them in the end
This is what economists call utility whereby actions that result in no clear economic gain for those giving of their resources are explained in that they increase the giver's amount of utility. This is really just a fancy way of saying that people give of their resources (up to a point), despite the fact that they do not directly benefit, because it makes them happy or they derive enjoyment equal to the value of the resources given away in return.
This doesn't mean that its any less noble in the end.
That is a subjective opinion, but most people would look more favorably upon truly selfless giving rather than giving in an attempt to get *something* in return whether that be public approval, loyalty, or future expectation of favor(s).
If I remember correctly from my civics classes then any citizen, including the President of course, can write a bill for introduction into Congress. The key is getting a congressman to take the bill that you have written and introduce it into the appropriate committee where it can start working its way through the process. In fact, the various lobbying firms in DC do precisely that when they try and convince congressmen to introduce bills that they have written. Theoretically the same channels are open to the average citizen, but realistically who has time to write the bill properly (requires lawyer like legal skills), organize the paper work, present it to the right congressman, and do the lobbying to get the bill introduced. The answer of course is nobody which is why there are a lot of really horrible bills floating around because many of them get written by special interest lobby groups whose own interest is almost certainly not the same as the public interest.
Isn't there a way to set the caller ID options on your cell account to 'unblock or I won't take your call' similar to the ones available on land line phones? That way the caller can either chose to 'disable caller ID blocking for this call only' (or future calls to this number if the options are that advanced) OR abandon the call. They could still spoof the caller ID I suppose, but at least they have to present *some* form of identification which is probably better than nothing or 'private call'. This way you can chose to either 'decline the call' OR 'accept the call' if they unblock AND a caller ID is shown with the options 'this time only' OR 'always allow this caller ID from now on' OR 'always block this caller ID from now on'. This would be nice, but most cell providers probably do not offer this type of advanced caller ID filtering or at least they want to charge you out the ying yang for it.
I was working in the Exchange Server group during my internship, which was seven years ago now (a lifetime given how often Microsoft reorganizes their product divisions), and I was never asked to work late, although I did on a few occasions in order to show solidarity with the Software Design Engineers and to get their last minute bug fixes tested before the ship deadline. It was probably not as critical for me for a couple of reasons: I was an intern and most people at Microsoft tried to be nice to the interns because they were like free temporary employees for the groups that are lucky enough to get them (didn't count against their headcount budgets), none of the small bits of code that I wrote were critical to the core functionality of the product, and finally I was only there for a few months so by the time most people were aware of me and my abilities I was already back in school and they couldn't use me again until next summer (by which time the groups had been reshuffled again anyway). The Office, Visual Studio, and Windows groups are probably the ones with the most crunch time anyway because those groups, with the possible exception of Visual Studio which contributes indirectly, constitute the majority of the yearly revenue at Microsoft. So what you say may be true, but it is probably not representative of the usual pattern for most full time employees at Redmond.
I have worked for Microsoft in the past, though only as a summer intern, and although my own experience of the culture at Redmond is somewhat limited I will say that I got the impression that Microsoft is a tough, but fair place to work. The expectations are high and the competition can be intense, but the pay and benefits were very competitive and the work keeps your skills sharp. I will also say that some of the smartest people I have ever met in the workplace worked at Microsoft. The 80 hour mythical work week at Microsoft is mostly bogus too. If you meet your project deadlines and plan your time well then you can be in at eight and out at five most of the time. Of course there is always crunch time, but realistically you will get some of that no matter where you work.
No more than any other ongoing costs, depending upon the business of course, which are necessary to the continued survival of the company in a competitive environment. The classification of certain areas of the business as "cost centers" and others as "profit centers" is crude in that it does not take into account the interdependence of the business units and their ability to increase profits or reduce losses in seemingly unrelated units. It is sometimes instructive to ask, "What would be the result of eliminating this function of the business entirely?" or perhaps the less drastic, "What would be the result of outsourcing this part of the business?" You may find that eliminating or outsourcing your "cost centers" instead of working to improve efficiency actually facilitates and accelerates the transformation of remaining "profit centers" into "cost centers". The information technology department is a favorite target of non-it business people, but remember that pulling out the loose threads may unwind the entire tapestry of your business and allow an opening that shrewd competitors will exploit.
So we should allow the highest bidder to choke off the bandwidth from their less wealthy competitors?
Yes, we should allow the owners of the networks to determine who will receive access at what price and let the free market decide the winners and losers through competition. If you claim to respect the rights of private property, your own for instance, then you must also respect the rights of other private property owners, including the people and corporations that own the networks. Everyone should be, as Milton Friedman said, "free to chose" what transactions to engage in at what prices and terms are agreeable to them. In the end everyone will benefit from a free market in network traffic: The investors will have an incentive to invest in more bandwidth, the market will be well supplied at the equilibrium prices, and the consumer will have access to higher speeds at better rates then he does today. The public interest is large amounts of bandwidth at the best possible prices and the best way to ensure that is to let the market forces do their work.
How can one be so dense as to trust a completely random, badly worded, illarticulated e-mail full of spelling mistakes from someone you don't know to make informed decisions about what stock they should buy?
Greed can be a powerful motivator for some people, enough to overwhelm their sense, what little they have anyway, of logic and reason which tells them that this is a scam or that an investment promise is too good to be true. Why do people play the Lottery when they know or should know that they have a better chance of being struck by lightning on their way out of the liquor store? The appeal to greed is among the oldest in the charlatan's bag of tricks, it has worked for thousands of years and it will continue to work as long as there are humans on this planet to be duped. They know that spam is spam, but they want millions of dollars too and so they continue to get burned.
You are free to spend your own money as you wish, but I would not, for example, purchase shares in solar cell manufacturers for my investment portfolios nor would I spend money on a residential solar cell installation at current or expected (my expectation of) future prices. I have no problem with people legally spending their own money as they wish, its a free country after all. It is obvious that we disagree, perhaps you derive extra utility in a non-monetary fashion from solar cells and environmentalism, but for me this is strictly a money issue. It is my considered opinion that you will not come out ahead monetarily on your solar power investment, especially when compared to the upfront risk of making such a large long-term bet, but I suppose that time will tell.
My objection comes when the intellectual elites on the left attempt to remove more money from my pocket through taxes and political lobbying so that they can advance a secular progressive agenda which I would not chose to support if that money were spent at my discretion. I would not support, for example, increased taxation so that the government could provide subsidies for solar cell installations. There is a presumption among the elitist intellectuals that they know how to spend MY money better than I do and that is what really irks me. Too much government power to regulate and control the lives of the citizens and too high taxes makes slaves of men and that is not the world that I wish to live in.
So you're saying the ONLY reason to switch is to save money? What about other reasons? Saving the environment? Being a good steward to the Earth? Being an ubergeek?
This is a non-starter. The only people that would do something like this are limousine liberals who already have more than enough trust fund money to meet their basic financial needs and are doing it more for publicity, entertainment value, or cool factor. Environmental quality is a luxury good in that people care about it more the more well off they are. It is like Keynes said, "In the long run we are all dead," and if polluting now and not losing massive amounts of money, which most people don't have anyway, puts food on the family table NOW and pays the mortgage NOW in the short run then that is what people will do. I don't trash the environment just for the hell of it, but neither will I invest MY money in a loser investment because it improves environmental quality, which is not only a luxury good, but also a public good subject to the free-rider problem.
Mind you, once you've bought the equipment, there are only the maintenance costs over that 25 years, where as the price of energy will undoubtedly continue to increase.
Perhaps, but betting on future energy prices has always been associated with substantial amounts of risk to principle, just ask any commodities trader about how risky future bets on energy prices can be.
And the price of solar cells is dropping, so the cost may go lower than $100,000. I for one would love to have solar.
You might not be so enthusiastic after running the numbers on the various costs and benefits that you are likely to accrue over the lifetime of a solar cell investment. The price of solar cells is dropping yes, but at the same time demand is rising due to the falling costs of production due to technology being reflected in the prices. It is more likely that the cost savings realized through production efficiencies will be mostly or fully balanced out by increases in demand for solar cell installations. The producers will capture most of that surplus for themselves and very little of that savings will make it back to the consumer. The end result will probably be longer term prices stable at current levels or fluctuating in a very narrow and shallow downward range about the current price levels.
Not having to pay for electricity, being able to run my Christmas lights 365 days a year, and not losing my power in a blackout
There is no free lunch as the economists say. You DID pay for the electricity to run that Christmas tree, the only difference is that you paid up front in the form of solar cells instead of paying over time for power from the grid. In effect you are betting that the Present Value of a future stream of payments (i.e. electric bills) is greater than the upfront cost of your solar cell installation which, at current electricity prices, is almost certainly not the case.
Also, if you generate excess electricity, you can sell it to the utility companies, and actually make a buck when you have excess power.
This is true and it would factor into the present value calculation, but unless you live in a very sunny part of the United States, you will probably not realize significant savings by selling power back to the grid. Remember that you are limited by the same state government laws which fix the price of electricity at artificially low levels as the regulated power monopolies. If you think that your extra power will reap a substantial windfall then you may be disappointed. The best you can probably hope for is to offset some of your regular power bills which you will still be paying for on those cloudy days.
People go with solar for different reasons, some of them not financial, but from a purely practical investment standpoint it is very difficult to justify the cost residential solar cells compared to the grid in most parts of the United States (the parts that you would want to live in anyway).
If there is, as you say, a significant security risk when this feature is enabled then it is probably best for HP to continue shipping the disabled BIOS as standard equipment while providing the firmware updates to those who want them and are savvy enough to download, install, and configure them. This should satisfy the few hundred HP laptop Xen users out there while at the same time limiting exposure for other 99% of HP laptop owners who have no idea what VT is and wouldn't use it anyway.
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If their programs suck or if I don't like the "guerilla ads" then I will simply tune them out. I can live just fine without the constant barrage of pop-culture bullshit that television has become in recent years. If they make it unwatchable and say, "take it or leave it," then I will vote with my feet and my off switch.
The argument that you have put forward in favor of ads (i.e no ads then no content) is a common one among marketers and other people in the advertising business, but my response to them is and will always be, "Welcome to the free market". If people really want your content then they will buy a subscription. The government does not and cannot protect everyone from the rigors of competition. I have to compete everyday with software engineers in India and China who are getting better all of the time and work for much cheaper than I am able to. My message to you and all of the others who complain when the rules of the game change is, "Get used to it...adapt or die and let your competition step over your corpse". The world does not owe you a living and if technology changes or allows people to break your business model then tough. The world got along fine for generations before marketing and advertising, and it will be fine, indeed much better, without it. I use adblock to block everything that I don't want to see all of the time and I have absolutely no qualms about doing it. You may ask where my sense of sympathy or mercy went, well all I can say is that it was beaten out of my during long months of unemployment following the dot-com bust. I have no illusions now and neither should anyone else.
They say that the wheels of the justice train grind slowly, but grind they do and surely SCO will not escape its fate on the wrong side of the tracks. It may take years, but IBM has plenty of time and money and, having emerged as the saviors of open source (an irony to be sure), it could be argued that positive publicity that IBM receives for smashing SCO alone is worth the price of admission for them.
Give me a way to protect myself from your creative destruction.
Perhaps you should move to a cave in a remote location so that you can stick your head in the sand and just ignore the rest of us...the world isn't going to change itself for you and you seem to be desperately unhappy with the life that you are currently living.
That is a subsidy. It's a waste of taxpayer money when a simple duel of honor between the disputing CEOs would settle the matter nicely.
Sigh...I really shouldn't feed the trolls, but here goes...The reason that the 'duel of honor' as you put it was phased out of our present legal system is because it has the unfortunate side effect that one must be willing to stake life and limb on the outcome of the dispute and there are plenty of things that while important do not merit risking life and limb. Thus, the 'duel of honor', is at best inefficient and at worst a barbaric anachronism...a reminder of those times when the strong took what they wanted from the weak at sword point and that is precisely the type of coercion that libertarians seek to avoid.
In a truly free market by libertarian standards, you're not supposed to NEED a judicial branch of government- the free market takes care of disputes on it's own.
You are attempting a Reductio ad absurdum but with statements like that it is clear that what you are in fact doing is Argumentum ad nauseam. The free market cannot exist without government protection from threat of violent force. If you want to dispute the libertarian position then you must at least get your facts straight about what that position entails. The government exists to defend the people from external aggression, enforce contracts, and resolve disputes without people picking up the sword or the gun. The free market does not and cannot stand against threat of violence which is why the government exists to suppress the use of coercive force, because most reasonable people (you are obviously not one of them) agree that we would rather live in a civil society where people don't beat their neighbor over the head because they have a dispute.
Ah, but that is the true function of capitalism- without that you don't have a free market.
Nope, wrong...the true function of capitalism is to achieve a fair and just society for everyone and to provide the highest possible standard of living to each individual member of that society. Capitalism is not just for the rich, but also for the poor and everyone else. Marx was wrong and so are you, but at least Marx could reasonably argue that he didn't completely understand the consequences of his theories (since they hadn't yet been tried when he wrote them) whereas you have had the benefit of history and have still failed to heed the lessons of the twentieth century.
You can't have it both ways- either the government allows incorporation for the good of society and ACTIVELY destroys corporations that don't follow the rules
The government enforces the rules of the game...the rules that we all agreed to play by when we put down the guns and tried to form a decent society. There is nothing wrong with that.
or you have a free market where the corporations (the strong) can take what they want from consumers (the weak)
what a load of bullox...nobody is forcing you to buy their products and the government prevents them from taking your money through violence. If you don't like them then DON'T BUY THEIR PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. It is really that simple.
but the result is that the corporations take over the government with "campaign contributions" (in a democracy) or outright bribery (in other forms of government)
Government is necessary and democracy is the least bad of all of the alternatives which have been tried. Nobody said the world is perfect, but having a government is better than nihilism and anarchy so we make the best of an imperfect situation. The situation that you describe, with "campaign contributions" corrupting the system, is precisely why libertarians argue for reduced government (i.e. necessary functions only) so that there will be less incentive to engage in political games.
but this tim
What level of respect do teachers deserve, and in what manner should we as a society ensure they get that respect?
They get what level of respect that their collective performance in the classroom dictates. They have made it impossible to distinguish individual outstanding teachers and dismal underachievers so we are forced to judge them as a group and that judgment, as you say, has been harsh indeed, although not entirely undeserved. There is really nothing that we as a society can do, under the current system that is, to encourage the teachers and their union to make the kinds of changes that would merit an increased level of performance and by extension respect. This is precisely why the system as it stands now is completely broken to the point where it cannot be fixed without changes that the entrenched interests are not prepared to accept.
There is a job to be done, a job some would consider a somewhat sacred task: Ensuring that an entire generation can learn and grow in the best way we know how to do it. That is not an easy task.
The free market has provided goods and services that are equally difficult to produce in great abundance and there is every reason to expect that market forces can provide for the creation of institutions that will effectively educate our children provided that there exists the political will to unleash those forces for the benefit of society.
We currently have a very limited number of people put into that formal role, and they collectively are not doing what we would consider an acceptable job at it. What should our response be? If our response is to punish and cut resources from that role in general one way or another, then we will be left with even fewer people to fill that role, and those that are left will have an even harder job to do.
Our response, as parents, should be to take back control of the education of our children and that means taking back control of the money that we pay in taxes for this purpose. Who is better motivated to seek out the best education possible, voucher in hand, for their child if not the parents? If we were serious about fixing education then we would put the money in the hands of the parents and let them decide who is and is not fit to teach their children via the marketplace.
More than that, the level of respect for these teachers will continue to fall. This isn't such a bad thing, if collapse of such a system is an acceptable result, except that there will be much of an entire generation of children in the lurch.
If there was money to be earned via the voucher system then I can assure you that there would be plenty of private firms offering to provide a high quality of education immediately to willing parents in exchange for those vouchers (i.e. cash on the barrel head). It would really blow the whole system wide open and massively improve quality and efficiency in our educational system.
The recent response to this issue is to push for very strict testing as a way to punish the teachers with the weakest 'performance'. That does improve the measured response, but it has also changed the way we measure the result. I would assert that by doing this, we have left behind the idea that we are trying to truly teach a generation the best way we can, but instead have minimized what we teach in order to assure high scores on a system we invent for ourselves, all in an effort to find someone to punish.
There would be no need for such rigorous measuring and enforcement if the marketplace was providing the education because if a particular institution was failing to provide a quality education then their competitors would step in and do it for them. There could even be private organizations handling the testing like the Educational Testing Service which administers the SAT exam for college admissions. The competitive pressures of the marketplace are what keep everyone, from the test administrators to the educational providers, honest and the end result is a high quality education for our children...or at least it would be if we were sincere about fixing the system.
In that case, would you agree that incorporation papers are a government subsidy that should be eliminated outright?
There is no suggestion of subsidy simply because the government provides formal recognition of the legal corporate entity for the purposes of adjudicating disputes. This is a necessary and proper function of government (there are some after all) in that paperwork is required to properly conduct the affairs of the judicial branch of government. There is nothing wrong with the government collecting taxes to fund the legitimate functions of government, which minimal though they may be, are necessary to ensure the coercion is not employed to beat, literally sometimes, the market into submission (i.e. the strong taking what they want and when they want from the weak without recourse).
I say we should be disbanding any corportion that doesn't have, as a part of it's charter, a duty to support the citizens of the country that is granting it incorporation papers.
Then it is a good thing that such decisions are not left up to you and your Marxist friends. The corporation exists to benefit and enrich the shareholders (hopefully) and other than compliance with laws that are designed to mitigate negative externalities and prevent outright fraud there is no obligation to the public at large in the manner that you suggest nor, in my opinion, should there be. This video sums it up nicely, albeit in a somewhat corny fashion.
It may be corny, and especially so when Ballmer says it, but it is true that a major reason for the popularity of Windows and Microsoft products in general is the large and well supported Microsoft Developer Network (with articles, documentation, and sample code), Visual Studio, and the ability to produce and sell software without getting explicit permission from Microsoft. Now, I know that such things are available on other operating systems, especially Linux, but it seems like Apple gives much shorter shrift to their developers than Microsoft. The apple website has the developer info buried a few levels down and the tools and libraries seem to be much less well known and publicised and more black art like than the corresponding tools and documentation available with Windows or your favorite Linux disto. If Apple wants to win back the desktop then they have to be more open to and supportive of third party developers. So perhaps in this instance Ballmer was right...developers, developers, developers...yeah.
It doesn't even have to be a mock-up of the "real" BestBuy website, especially when one considers that the prices are loaded from the database and displayed dynamically when the pages are served to the browsers. It would not be difficult for the BestBuy.com website to employ the same cloaking techniques used by the search engine optimizers to display one set of content to visitors from the public Internet and a different set of content to visitors from the BestBuy intranet (i.e. in-store computers at any of their locations). There is no need to maintain a completely separate "secret" website.
That depends upon one's point of view...
"1 Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. 2 Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
Matthew 6:1-4You mean, ActiveX-based software, right?
They might be able to do something with that shiny new AJAX framework of theirs, ATLAS instead of using ActiveX.
Most people donate, volenteer for something because they know it will benifit them in the end
This is what economists call utility whereby actions that result in no clear economic gain for those giving of their resources are explained in that they increase the giver's amount of utility. This is really just a fancy way of saying that people give of their resources (up to a point), despite the fact that they do not directly benefit, because it makes them happy or they derive enjoyment equal to the value of the resources given away in return.
This doesn't mean that its any less noble in the end.
That is a subjective opinion, but most people would look more favorably upon truly selfless giving rather than giving in an attempt to get *something* in return whether that be public approval, loyalty, or future expectation of favor(s).
If I remember correctly from my civics classes then any citizen, including the President of course, can write a bill for introduction into Congress. The key is getting a congressman to take the bill that you have written and introduce it into the appropriate committee where it can start working its way through the process. In fact, the various lobbying firms in DC do precisely that when they try and convince congressmen to introduce bills that they have written. Theoretically the same channels are open to the average citizen, but realistically who has time to write the bill properly (requires lawyer like legal skills), organize the paper work, present it to the right congressman, and do the lobbying to get the bill introduced. The answer of course is nobody which is why there are a lot of really horrible bills floating around because many of them get written by special interest lobby groups whose own interest is almost certainly not the same as the public interest.
Isn't there a way to set the caller ID options on your cell account to 'unblock or I won't take your call' similar to the ones available on land line phones? That way the caller can either chose to 'disable caller ID blocking for this call only' (or future calls to this number if the options are that advanced) OR abandon the call. They could still spoof the caller ID I suppose, but at least they have to present *some* form of identification which is probably better than nothing or 'private call'. This way you can chose to either 'decline the call' OR 'accept the call' if they unblock AND a caller ID is shown with the options 'this time only' OR 'always allow this caller ID from now on' OR 'always block this caller ID from now on'. This would be nice, but most cell providers probably do not offer this type of advanced caller ID filtering or at least they want to charge you out the ying yang for it.
I was working in the Exchange Server group during my internship, which was seven years ago now (a lifetime given how often Microsoft reorganizes their product divisions), and I was never asked to work late, although I did on a few occasions in order to show solidarity with the Software Design Engineers and to get their last minute bug fixes tested before the ship deadline. It was probably not as critical for me for a couple of reasons: I was an intern and most people at Microsoft tried to be nice to the interns because they were like free temporary employees for the groups that are lucky enough to get them (didn't count against their headcount budgets), none of the small bits of code that I wrote were critical to the core functionality of the product, and finally I was only there for a few months so by the time most people were aware of me and my abilities I was already back in school and they couldn't use me again until next summer (by which time the groups had been reshuffled again anyway). The Office, Visual Studio, and Windows groups are probably the ones with the most crunch time anyway because those groups, with the possible exception of Visual Studio which contributes indirectly, constitute the majority of the yearly revenue at Microsoft. So what you say may be true, but it is probably not representative of the usual pattern for most full time employees at Redmond.
I have worked for Microsoft in the past, though only as a summer intern, and although my own experience of the culture at Redmond is somewhat limited I will say that I got the impression that Microsoft is a tough, but fair place to work. The expectations are high and the competition can be intense, but the pay and benefits were very competitive and the work keeps your skills sharp. I will also say that some of the smartest people I have ever met in the workplace worked at Microsoft. The 80 hour mythical work week at Microsoft is mostly bogus too. If you meet your project deadlines and plan your time well then you can be in at eight and out at five most of the time. Of course there is always crunch time, but realistically you will get some of that no matter where you work.
Especially when they are armed with the lever-action "limited edition" red ryder BB guns (with compass built right into the stock!).
as IT, in most companies, is a cost center
No more than any other ongoing costs, depending upon the business of course, which are necessary to the continued survival of the company in a competitive environment. The classification of certain areas of the business as "cost centers" and others as "profit centers" is crude in that it does not take into account the interdependence of the business units and their ability to increase profits or reduce losses in seemingly unrelated units. It is sometimes instructive to ask, "What would be the result of eliminating this function of the business entirely?" or perhaps the less drastic, "What would be the result of outsourcing this part of the business?" You may find that eliminating or outsourcing your "cost centers" instead of working to improve efficiency actually facilitates and accelerates the transformation of remaining "profit centers" into "cost centers". The information technology department is a favorite target of non-it business people, but remember that pulling out the loose threads may unwind the entire tapestry of your business and allow an opening that shrewd competitors will exploit.
So we should allow the highest bidder to choke off the bandwidth from their less wealthy competitors?
Yes, we should allow the owners of the networks to determine who will receive access at what price and let the free market decide the winners and losers through competition. If you claim to respect the rights of private property, your own for instance, then you must also respect the rights of other private property owners, including the people and corporations that own the networks. Everyone should be, as Milton Friedman said, "free to chose" what transactions to engage in at what prices and terms are agreeable to them. In the end everyone will benefit from a free market in network traffic: The investors will have an incentive to invest in more bandwidth, the market will be well supplied at the equilibrium prices, and the consumer will have access to higher speeds at better rates then he does today. The public interest is large amounts of bandwidth at the best possible prices and the best way to ensure that is to let the market forces do their work.
How can one be so dense as to trust a completely random, badly worded, illarticulated e-mail full of spelling mistakes from someone you don't know to make informed decisions about what stock they should buy?
Greed can be a powerful motivator for some people, enough to overwhelm their sense, what little they have anyway, of logic and reason which tells them that this is a scam or that an investment promise is too good to be true. Why do people play the Lottery when they know or should know that they have a better chance of being struck by lightning on their way out of the liquor store? The appeal to greed is among the oldest in the charlatan's bag of tricks, it has worked for thousands of years and it will continue to work as long as there are humans on this planet to be duped. They know that spam is spam, but they want millions of dollars too and so they continue to get burned.
You are free to spend your own money as you wish, but I would not, for example, purchase shares in solar cell manufacturers for my investment portfolios nor would I spend money on a residential solar cell installation at current or expected (my expectation of) future prices. I have no problem with people legally spending their own money as they wish, its a free country after all. It is obvious that we disagree, perhaps you derive extra utility in a non-monetary fashion from solar cells and environmentalism, but for me this is strictly a money issue. It is my considered opinion that you will not come out ahead monetarily on your solar power investment, especially when compared to the upfront risk of making such a large long-term bet, but I suppose that time will tell.
My objection comes when the intellectual elites on the left attempt to remove more money from my pocket through taxes and political lobbying so that they can advance a secular progressive agenda which I would not chose to support if that money were spent at my discretion. I would not support, for example, increased taxation so that the government could provide subsidies for solar cell installations. There is a presumption among the elitist intellectuals that they know how to spend MY money better than I do and that is what really irks me. Too much government power to regulate and control the lives of the citizens and too high taxes makes slaves of men and that is not the world that I wish to live in.
So you're saying the ONLY reason to switch is to save money? What about other reasons? Saving the environment? Being a good steward to the Earth? Being an ubergeek?
This is a non-starter. The only people that would do something like this are limousine liberals who already have more than enough trust fund money to meet their basic financial needs and are doing it more for publicity, entertainment value, or cool factor. Environmental quality is a luxury good in that people care about it more the more well off they are. It is like Keynes said, "In the long run we are all dead," and if polluting now and not losing massive amounts of money, which most people don't have anyway, puts food on the family table NOW and pays the mortgage NOW in the short run then that is what people will do. I don't trash the environment just for the hell of it, but neither will I invest MY money in a loser investment because it improves environmental quality, which is not only a luxury good, but also a public good subject to the free-rider problem.
Mind you, once you've bought the equipment, there are only the maintenance costs over that 25 years, where as the price of energy will undoubtedly continue to increase.
Perhaps, but betting on future energy prices has always been associated with substantial amounts of risk to principle, just ask any commodities trader about how risky future bets on energy prices can be.
And the price of solar cells is dropping, so the cost may go lower than $100,000. I for one would love to have solar.
You might not be so enthusiastic after running the numbers on the various costs and benefits that you are likely to accrue over the lifetime of a solar cell investment. The price of solar cells is dropping yes, but at the same time demand is rising due to the falling costs of production due to technology being reflected in the prices. It is more likely that the cost savings realized through production efficiencies will be mostly or fully balanced out by increases in demand for solar cell installations. The producers will capture most of that surplus for themselves and very little of that savings will make it back to the consumer. The end result will probably be longer term prices stable at current levels or fluctuating in a very narrow and shallow downward range about the current price levels.
Not having to pay for electricity, being able to run my Christmas lights 365 days a year, and not losing my power in a blackout
There is no free lunch as the economists say. You DID pay for the electricity to run that Christmas tree, the only difference is that you paid up front in the form of solar cells instead of paying over time for power from the grid. In effect you are betting that the Present Value of a future stream of payments (i.e. electric bills) is greater than the upfront cost of your solar cell installation which, at current electricity prices, is almost certainly not the case.
Also, if you generate excess electricity, you can sell it to the utility companies, and actually make a buck when you have excess power.
This is true and it would factor into the present value calculation, but unless you live in a very sunny part of the United States, you will probably not realize significant savings by selling power back to the grid. Remember that you are limited by the same state government laws which fix the price of electricity at artificially low levels as the regulated power monopolies. If you think that your extra power will reap a substantial windfall then you may be disappointed. The best you can probably hope for is to offset some of your regular power bills which you will still be paying for on those cloudy days.
People go with solar for different reasons, some of them not financial, but from a purely practical investment standpoint it is very difficult to justify the cost residential solar cells compared to the grid in most parts of the United States (the parts that you would want to live in anyway).
If there is, as you say, a significant security risk when this feature is enabled then it is probably best for HP to continue shipping the disabled BIOS as standard equipment while providing the firmware updates to those who want them and are savvy enough to download, install, and configure them. This should satisfy the few hundred HP laptop Xen users out there while at the same time limiting exposure for other 99% of HP laptop owners who have no idea what VT is and wouldn't use it anyway.