And of course, many of the victims of religion were killed not in wars, but by the zealots in their own nations. From the Spanish Inquisition to the Salem witch trials, religion has been effective at persecuting or slaughtering the innocent within a society, quite apart from any wars between religions or sects.
And of course this is just as true (if not more so) with the modern atheistic regimes. I would wager that Stalin's terror famine and various purges and show trials killed far more people (both in terms of percentage of population and in absolute numbers) than the inquisition and certainly far, far more than the Salem witch trials. For comparison the Salem witch trials claimed about two dozen victims and was almost immediately considered an outrage and the court dissolved by the Colonial Governor. Stalin's great terror on the other hand saw 4.5 - 5.5 million arrested and 800,000 - 900,000 sentenced to death on top of about 11 million dead as a result of the "dekulakization", collectivization and the associated "terror famine" and continues today to have it's ardent defenders as an unpleasant but necessary policy on the road to the worker's paradise.
Why not tax Arnold, Warren Buffet and all these other California billionares? They arent going anywhere, they have movie contracts, remember the movie industry is all liberals right? Thats what the conservatives love to hype.
Fine you can tax the very few hyper-rich guys into oblivion and they *might* not move out but even if you did tax the those very few you wouldn't get enough to balance your budget. Warren Bugget by the way is the "sage of Omaha" I don't think he's a CA resident (I could be wrong though).
And you're only assuming they wont move because they like high taxes *in theory* In their own lives they are just as motivated to do anything they can to cut their own taxes (remember the Clintons writing off their old underwear as donations to the salvation army?) If Warren Buffet and the Hollywood elite *really* believed they should be taxed at a higher rate there is nothing stopping them from donating that money to the government - yet they don't. Hypocrisy is great ain't it?
So your arguement also applies to outsourcing, unless America becomes completely tax free all of our businesses will leave and stop hiring American workers, our economy is doomed.
There are costs associated with outsourcing to Bangladesh which don't exist when outsourcing to Arizona. And yes, the higher we tax ourselves the more we offset those costs and we *could* doom our economy by excessive taxation.
I never said we should hike taxes for the long term, just long enough to fix the budget.
But the economic problems in California are *already* suffering from the diminishing returns of long-term high taxation. Any "temporary" tax to meet the current budget crisis will only make things worse. At best you would get a temporary spike in revenues that would itself be insufficient to close the budget gap this year only to be rewarded with an even larger budget crisis next year (and the next decade for that matter).
When I say tax the Rich I'm talking Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, Arnold, George Lucus and whoever else has over 100 million dollars.
Well taxing Bill Gates and Warren Buffet won't do much for you in California. But to be fair California has 90 people in it on the Forbes list with a combined net worth of $139 Billion - of course that is their total worth tied up in businesses and real property that they own NOT their annual income, if you took enough money to cover the $35 BILLION dollar budget shortfall just from them you would end up with the state owning many of their business and homes. Sure nobody would cry for them but next year when you have the exact same budget crisis half of them would be legal residents of another state and those that remain would have a LOT less money (since you took a sizeable percentage of it the year before). You'd also have significant economic problems from the disruption caused by liquidating those businesses to pay the state or by mismanagement of those businesses by the state if it chooses to run them itself without liquidating them for cold cash. The state does a lousy job of the things it's *supposed* to do, I doubt it could profitably run a software business or movie studio.
Lowering taxes will not create jobs and will not fix the deficit... The solution is to allow normal people to start businesses by taking the tax burden off them, allowingt them to buy more property and collect more wealth.
The reply to these contradictory statements are trivial and left as an excersize for the reader.
We keep hearing about the bad uses for RFID technology, but do people know of any good uses that don't invade on our privacy?
This is a silly question, not your fault you're just the victim of hysterical FUD. Do you know of any actual uses that ARE used to invade anyones privacy? Sure there is potential there and it is something that needs to be watched but it's not what these things are *for* nor has anyone anounced any plans to use these in any way that invades anyones privacy.
The idea behind these things is to allow physical objects to be identified by computers for all sorts of uses. To bring the kind of efficiencies and automation that computers are currently able to apply to binary information to bear on the physical objects in the real world. They were invented by researchers at MIT that were involved in robotics to solve the old problem of robots being able to sense what was around them... instead of a visual & touch based system with pattern matching far beyond our capabilities just have RFID tags tell the robot what the object is. Of course having computers able to identify physical objects in the real world has uses other than their physical manipulation by robots. The first and most obvious uses are to manage inventory to know exactly how many and exactly where every item in your warehouse or store is and even your entire supply chain is. That use alone could revolutionize the supply chain making it spectacularly more efficient. Of course at the retail end the part you could see (but by no means the most important) you could get rid of cashiers, just walk through an RFID reader without unloading your cart and swipe your card - done! And that is only the immediately obvious use, like the internet this is a foundational technology which will enable all sorts of other technologies and uses.
The protests over speculative abuses of this new technology are *exactly* the same as if people had protested the internet in the mid 90's when it started to emerge as a popular technology. "Think of all the privacy abuses if we networked all the computers together... Does anyone know of any good uses that don't invade our privacy. No of course not, I'm going down to picket my local ISP they're robbing us of our freedom!" Yes a global network of computers *IS* a threat to our privacy (and in ways even more obvious than RFID tags) and yet I suspect that most/.ers hysterical over RFID tags wouldn't want to abolish the internet though given their rhetoric they might have protested it when it first got started.
This technology has the potential to be as significant and beneficial as the internet. Most corporations that deal with the global supply chain think it will be MORE significant.
No you dont, you cut taxes when the rich leave, to stimulate growth, when new people become rich you raise taxes and repeat.
If that is the case CA is in the position where it should cut taxes to stimulate growth. They have already chased away more than enough money and jobs. Still I think better than fluctuating tax rates that go up and down depressing and then stimulating the economy perhaps government should focus on finding the sweet spot that maximizes economic growth and thus tax revenues.
If their businesses move, new local businesses will form to fill the market, let them leave.
Only if there is a rich guy that thinks it's still worthwhile to invest the money when any profits he would have seen from the investement will just be taken by government. Besides in many if not most cases the market is still filled... That business that moved to AZ still kept all their clients in CA (those that didn't move to AZ too), they're just taking the profits out of CA and enjoying them at a low tax rate in AZ. The business that *tries* to start up to fill the market in CA now has to compete with a guy that can undercut him on price every time because he takes home more after taxes even though he's making less - and his business isn't burdened with crazy labor laws or an insane energy bill.
I'm not saying 100%,
I'm being facetious to point out that your reasoning assumes a static model when the impact of taxes are dynamic. Raising taxes does not necessarily result in greater revenues. In the obvious example of raising the taxes to 100% the revenues from that tax would spike and then fall to absolutely nothing. The taxes in CA are already too high and are suffering from the law of diminishing returns, a further tax hike would just cause revenues to fall.
Also getting big business out of the community helps local businesses who want to expand, so I'm all for taxing out the rich to help the small businesses and the poor, the small businesses will eventuslly become big businesses and become rich themselves.
The problem with this thinking is that "the rich" that are most effected by tax hikes *are* the small businessmen. Big corporations have a few rich executives and millions of middle class stockholders, they are large and stable and can afford the slings and arrows of adverse legislation and are probably already headquartered in AZ anyway without it affecting their ability to compete with their smaller and more burdened local competitors. It is the little guy making six figures in profits from a 4 or 5 million dollar outfit employing a dozen guys just a year or two out of his garage that doesn't have the resources to deal with excessive regulation and really notices when his taxes go up.
A big part of California's economic problems are caused by their high tax rate (and energy bills, and excessive regulation). Raising taxes will only make things worse at this point.
Thats because California is over populated, and also california is the biggest state so of course they will have a big out population or whatever you want to call it, either way it doesnt matter.
You're missing the point. All the wealthy people are leaving, mostly because of high taxes and they are being replaced by poorer mexican immigrants. It is the ONLY state in the region that is losing population rather than gaining it from domestic migration. If it weren't for illegal aliens it would be losing population.
My point is, in Cali people will pay higher taxes, not everyone will move, some will but not everyone, and if they do move who cares?
Anyone trying to balance the budget should care. If you have fewer rich people to tax to get the same amount you have to raise the taxes on them even more, which cause more to leave, so you have to tax those that remain even more, which causes more to leave, wash, rinse, repeat.
When rich people leave they tend to take jobs with them. In the best case it's just a few domestic servents that will now be unemployed and the government will now have to pay their benefits. Often though it will be entire businesses leaving that employ dozens or hundreds who will now be unemployed and the government with the government picking up the tab. So by chasing one rich guy out you not only lose the taxes he *would* have paid but you also get hit for even more money that you now have to pay out to his newly unemployed former employees. SO... you raise the taxes on those rich people that haven't moved out yet starting the cycle over again.
Even for those rich guys that DON'T move out you still have problems. Take you're typical rich guy... he's the owner of a thriving software start-up, or a Pakistani that owns the local Quiki Mart (to indulge in some steriotyping) He's making money and is thinking of expanding his business, hiring a bunch of people and investing in new equipment, more space etc. If he does so a few people move off unemplyment benefits not only because of his own new hires but in conjunction with dozens of others like him because of the money he spent that profits the equipment manufacturers and construction companies that build out the new space. Instead though the money he would have invested in growing his business is taken by the government, and even if he would invest what is left the government would take such a large percentage of the return on that investment as to make it no longer worth it. Might as well just spend what money is left on some new toys.
By your simplistic static reasoning you might as well just tax the rich people at 100% - think of all the money you would get to balance the budget! Now think about it a little more.
I can not comment on the system for certification, since I don't know it. But 115 candidates seems excessive.
The story we are commenting on is about the California recall election there are 115 certified candidates out of 247 that wanted to be candidates. You're stated goal was to remove money as a barrier to entry to electoral politics if you were successful a mere 115 candidates out of a population of 35 million would probably be a small number, especially since becoming a candidate would have no cost to you and no matter how tiny your support you would be on a level playing field with everyone else - why not run?
Neither do I know the motivations/justifications/arguments of your founding fathers or what kinds of free speech your are reffering too.
The motivation for free speech was to ensure open political debate and to prevent one party in power from silencing the opposition. Anyone can advocate & promote any position. Free speech is a good thing in and of itself BUT it is also a means of ensuring political freedoms and preventing the formation of a tyranny. Unfortunately campaign finance reforms are undermining this by actually making political speech (the only kind that the founders really cared about) the MOST subject to government regulation. During the founding you could say anything you wanted about a politician or politics but you might be barred from talking dirty. Now you can cuss all you want but not about a politician within 30 days of an election - that would be "negative campaigning" and "bad".
My lousy english should have told you that I am not american.
I took it as proof positive that you *were* an American;) my mistake.
Sure you can make ads, can you also make one for the KKK? Or for the Nazi-party? Or for the Apartheids-regime?
Yes, you can
Or one in support of Saddam?
Probably if you are careful in how you do it. Plenty of peace activist advertising was probably pretty close to this
Or one that says that all arabs should commit acts of terror in or against the USA?
Probably as long as it wasn't explicit
What you do with your money is your own matter.
That is my point. If I can't use my own money to express my own opinion that Joe Shmoe is the better candidate out of all others then I don't have free speech
If the only way you can distance yourself from your opponents is by spending more money, then more then ever do I pity your democracy. If spending money is the only way to get elected, pfff...
It simply takes money to communicate your message to millions of people. Right now a joke candidate like Gary Coleman has no supporters, so he has no money, so he is a non-entitity in the election. A serious candidate that has real support from a broad coalition of supporters will be given money by those supporters that he will use to advocate his position and candidacy. It simply isn't the case that a few rich people can fund campaigns and control things... no individual can give more than $2000. No group formed to advocate various positions by funding candidates (a PAC) can give more than $10,000 and a PAC requires a certain number of members before it can be formed to give that amount to any campaign. Sure it's going to be fairly rich people that give that kind of money to a campaign but it takes a LOT of them, a LOT of support from a LOT of people to get the money with which to "buy" the election. And it's not just rich people, many, many, many people donate small amounts that add up to fund the candidate that "buys" the election. The presense of money indicates the degree of support among the people and their myriad interests. Sure it's messy, and people with narrow self-interested motivations tend to fund campaigns to a greater degree than those with altruistic broad motivations (though the difference is in the eye of the beholder) but any system that cleans it up is a danger t
That is where I can not understand complaining guys like you. On one hand they complain that there are too much similar apps on Linux, and on the other hand complain that there is only one.
Looks like empty bitching to me.
You're missing the point. There are too many similar apps on Linux in one sphere (PHP content managers for instance) and none, or very very few in other spheres (accounting software for instance) If we want to see linux move forward on the desktop we need to start developing for the desktop.
*Your* applications still are not there. That's not here or to Linux you have to complain, that is to Adobe, Corel, etc. That is *their* fault, not Linux'.
But he doesn't want to use Adobe, Corel etc. he wants a choice of Open Source projects to replace them.
I also thought that was a very insightful comment on his part. Of course when you're the one suffering from the lack it doesn't take that much insight to notice it.
Open source is all about "scratching an itch" but the only itches being scratched are those that developers have themselves. What would be interesting would be if a group of companies committed to open source could be brought together to fund the development of open source projects for these general business needs. If each one kicked in a little (maybe no more than what they pay for commercial licenses) they could kickstart some really good projects. Maybe the project site should have a "suggested donation" pop-up when you download a binary. (OK we all hate pop-ups but you get the idea). Open source developers could get (at least some) compensation for their work and businesses get the software they need without being tied into commercial licenses that treat them like crap. With a good general open source projects particular business with idiosycratic needs have a good foundation to build custom software on top of. It seems like a win-win-win for everyone except for the closed source competitors.
You think everyone would move to Arizona? I disagree.
The thing is many of them already have and more are following. To quote the U.S. Census:
California has experienced increasing rates of net domestic outmigration since 1990. Its 1993 to 1994 net domestic outmigration rate reached 1.4 percent, the highest of any State, and represented a net loss of 426,000 migrants to other States. Only its high rates of net international migration and natural increase are allowing California a modest growth rate.
The same report notes the rapid population growth of the other western states. Nevada and Arizona (and Idaho) are the states that gained the most from domestic migration while CA is the only state in the region that lost population due to domestic migration. And it's not just wealthy individuals it's entirebusinesses fleeing a hostile government.
The rich in Cali are usually liberal and like paying taxes
Sure they're liberal but remember Conquest's first law of politics "Everyone is conservative about what he knows best". For instance Katherine Graham the owner of the Washington Post was very liberal and in the abstract (and likely with her vote) supported pro-labor policies. But as a business owner she crushed the unions at the Post. The business owners, media moguls, software company executives etc. that make up the wealthiest Californians are no different -they'll vote for politicians that will raise their taxes "for the children" and then move themselves and their business to NV or AZ to avoid the taxes they (by proxy) voted for. Doesn't make any sense but that's life.
If the government gives every candidate the same amount of money, and at the same time forbid the acceptance of contributions or use of personal money. Than every person - poor or rich - has the same means to get elected.
A couple of objections:
1) In this current race for instance would you give the same government funds to all 115 certified candidates? To all 247 that tried to get certified? Would a "serious" candidate like Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamente get more than a joke candidate like Gary Coleman? If so how would government decide who was "serious" and who was not? Who's views are "acceptable" and who isn't. Under such government financing of elections to government office it seem the government would be effectively controlling the elections. Views unnacceptable to the beuracracy would be dissallowed or underfunded.
2) You have also to all intents and purposes done away with the freedom of political speech. (Which if you remember you're history was exactly the kind of speech that the principle of "free speech" is supposed to protect) If I can't pay for advertising that says "vote for Georgy" I don't have free speech. If I can't pay for it directly perhaps I'll publish a paper that will say it for me in the editorial page so you'll have to make that illegal as well, perhaps I just give ONE candidate a forum on my popular website without giveing an identical forum to all 115 other certified candidates - do you really want to make editorial decisions like the one the/. editors made to interview Georgy illegal? If not how will you stop the flow of political money into such "editorial" rather than direct advertising venues. Or even if you succeed how do you avoid a situation where the television stations and major newspapers would essentially coronate their chosen candidates?
3) As a practical matter how do you stop this from becoming a complete lock on the elections by the incumbant? They already have all the name recongition, their legitimate activities already get them into legitimate news (free publicity). Add on top of that that their challengers get no more money than they do and so can't buy themselves a hearing. Also their challengers will be diluted by being fragmented, dozens of challengers all with the same amount of money and the same ability to be heard with no chance for one to eclipse the others by spending more.
I dont think the majority of poor people in cali would care if the billionare and millionares pay more taxes. Just shift the taxes to people who can afford to pay them and leave taxes for the majority of the people the same, suddenly the deficit gets paid.
That would do wonders for the local economy, unfortunately for California the local economy it would do wonders for is in Arizona.
If I break the GPL on one "product" I do not have a license to distribute it and I am violating the copyright on that product and no longer have permission to distribute and modify.
This does not mean I lose my license to distribute other products also licensed under the GPL.
Yes, but it might still be doable or at least worthwhile. The SAMBA team sends SCO a Cease and Desist from using unlicensed code on the basis that SCO has stated their to the court that the consider the GPL that *would* have given them rights to SAMBA code is invalid. They are incapable of agreeing to the license that they argue is invalid and can have no rights to use any such code under any such license.
But here is the beautiful part... they have stuck SCO into the position of defending the GPL. Even if the SAMBA team themselves consider their own claims to be hogwash they would be enough to force SCO to either cease using SAMBA or to go into court to defend their rights under the GPL a fact which could then be brought to bear into any other legal disputes that they are a party to. At worst the court upholds the SAMBA teams argument which is in effect: "you can't benefit from a license you have stated you consider invalid. If you consider it invalid, for you it *IS* invalid and you are stuck with whatever rights to the copyrighted material you had before, which is to say - none."
Wired had a story a while back about one of these groups of card counters from MIT. The way the story described their method was to do it as a team so that no one player was playing a pattern that could be recognized as counting cards. One player (the "spotter") would be sitting at the table making small bets counting cards, or the girl at someones shoulder was doing the counting (a "back spotter") and when the cards turned to to the players favor a high roller who always makes large bets (the "gorilla") would move to the table to clean up the winnings. A team would have spotters at several tables steering the gorilla (or more than one) to the tables that are winning.
The key is that people take a whole lot more pictures with digital cameras, thus taking pictures they never would with a film camera, and any picture you take is MUCH better than the picture you didn't. And, the more pictures you take, the higher your chances of snapping a gem by sheer luck (I know skill plays no part in my photography).
This is so true and to some extant simply taking A LOT of pictures is one of the essential "secrets" of professional photographers. When I took photography courses at art school I would use one or maybe two shots per roll, sure I'd be paying attention to things like composition in every shot I took but simply taking a LOT of pictures is how you get that ONE picture that is really good. Using digital cameras gets any consumer to take pictures with that same attitude since there is no film cost, the camera can take hundreds of pictures per "roll" and you can delete the obvious duds right then and there.
One of the problem when talking about this is that a 35mm camera is using an analog technology so it's really apples and oranges. In ideal circumstances with good lighting, good focus, the camera on a tripod, etc. the resolution of a 35mm camera can be spectacularly high which is why you always hear photo people lamenting the low resolutions of digital and how they haven't "caught up" with the lowly 35mm (never mind 4x5 or better). But for most uses, for anyone other than professionals, the practical resolution of the 35mm isn't anything near it's theoretical maximum, the lighting isn't that great, the focus isn't that great, your hand was shaking and the resulting loss of detail brings the 35mm picture way back down to where the digital camera's are. Even among professionals the 35mm photo is usually going to end up digitized to a resolution that could have been produced by a digital camera.
I have a beige G3 and have experimented with OS X on it, aside from simply being and old and slow computer the big drawback for me is the lack of support for peripherals. It uses ADB and Serial bus instead of USB, SCSI instead of FireWire (though that probably is less of a problem) . Since it is the ONLY model to both support OS X and use these older standards nobody is ever going to bother writing drivers for anything that uses them. My serial printer isn't supported, my ADB Wacom tablet, etc.
Try reading it again. He recommends macs to computer illiterate people because in his experience they can figure a Mac out on their own and won't call him with tech support questions the way windows users do. I'd assume that he himself is a Unix user which is why he doesn't use either Mac or Windows himself (though, now that the Mac *is* Unix perhaps he should look into them for himself)
Get real. The Mac will be replaced by whatever Apple fanatics think "looks cool" after 2 years, max.
Get real yourself, my biege G3 is still good enough thank you. It's the 7100/75 that I had to replace last year (though it's still running fine). I've got a Plus running too but to be fair it's just a conversation piece.
How does a homeschooled kid deal with this raw assault when he/she grows up?
My experience with homeschooled kids is that being less peer-dependant and secure in their identity and relationships they are less vulnerable to bullies. More importantly they are less likely themselves to *become* the bullies. You may view that as a liablity in fields that tend to be "dog eat dog". However, my personal experience with homeschooled kids is that the confidence that comes from being raised in a nurturing rather than a "lord of the flies" environment is a sufficient compensation for the lack of harsh lessons in early childhood.
In addition to being vulnerable to abuse from the adult bullies, I suspect a homeschooled kid will not be able to deal compassionately with the less fortunate (money, IQ, whatever...) kids.
This is an area where I think you are actually contradicting yourself. Being hardened by a "lord of the flies" environment may make you less vulnerable to "raw assaults" but it is unlikely to make you any more sensitive to the suffering of others. In fact the hardness necessary for your own survival in a harsh environment is quite likely to make you a great deal LESS sensitive to the suffering of others. Besides which I think the vast majority homeschooling parents would view compassion as one of the healthy ways that they are teaching their children to respond to others. Which scenario is more likely to produce a compassionate adult 1) Being part of a clique in Jr. High and in your own insecurity going along with the crowd that picks on the funny looking kid and reinforces that attitude with their laughter and acceptance? 2) Being the kid that is picked on and harrassed on every side? or 3) Having a parent nearby that immediately punishes you for displaying such cruelty towards your siblings or friends and protects you from the same?
Perhaps it is a result of the fact that a large percentage of homeschoolers are motivated by religious convictions but I get the feeling that homeschoolers are more involved with charity and ministries than is the norm. We take our kids to volunteer at a shelter and they spend one day a week cleaning their great-grandmothers house for her. Our oldest helps her get ready every morning. That's just us but most of our homeschooling friends seem to have similar family traditions.
When I went to school I had friends from two grades up and I don't see why this should be any different these day
Umm... actually the fact that you think that kids only two years older than you were not *essentially* the same age as you basically makes my point. Sure there are friendships which form between peers that are going through the same things and are at about the same level of development but I am often astounded at the level of awkwardness and discomfort of kids (particularly teenagers) when they have to deal with adults. Homeschooled kids of my aquaintance don't seem to have this peer-dependant hang up. They are are perfectly happy to talk with the adults, or play with the toddlers or hang out with each other.
The problem that I see with home schooling is that done wrongly, it doesn't prepare the kids to deal with different people.
I mean I did go to public school and I had to deal with smart kids, stupid kids, social kids, anti-social and outright aggressive kids, kids from rich families and kids from welfare families. Exactly like it will be in the real world.
As a homeschooling parent I have to disagree on two counts. 1) While there is a lot of diversity among the students in a public school classroom I never saw much evidence that the kids learned to deal *in a healthy way* with those that were different from them. Just go into (or think back to) a junior high classroom, all the bullying, cliques, hostility between different groups. Sure some kids learned to bridge the gaps or to accept those that were different but it is the exception rather than the rule and often being friendly to the "wrong" kid could put your own position with you peers at risk. I hesitate to say it but I suspect those kids most able to trancend the petty differences that divide school kids were those that had the kind of healthy relationships with their parents that homeschoolers tend to have. I hate to say it but rather than a nirvana of healthy diversity public schools often seem to have more in common with Lord of the Flies
2) Another aspect of public school classrooms is the extreme degree of segregation by age. All your friends (and enemies, and those to whom you are merely indifferent) are ALL your age. All your interaction is with kids the same age, your teachers are generally distant authority figures, even kids relationships with their parents becomes increasingly alienated. These kids are intensely peer dependant. Who cares what my parents or teachers think? Who cares what *I* think? What really matters is what my little clique thinks, to loose their approval is to suffer tragedy. (all of which is feeding into my first point)
Homeschooled kids tend to be dealing with siblings of different ages and friends of different ages as well as dealing with adults (their parents and friends parents). And the parents (who presumably are more mature in their own socialization) are more actively guiding the childrens socialization in healthy ways. I don't know any homeschooling parent that would tolerate the kind of nastiness that is wearily tolerated or not even noticed by the teachers in your typical Jr. High. Even when it reaches a level or is done in plain sight where a teacher must act since the children are so peer dependant the poor opinion and disciplinary actions of the teacher for beating up the funny looking kid is insignificant next to the approval of your peers egging you on.
In my experience homeschooled kids are far better socialized & capable of dealing with peoples differences than their public school peers. As an adult I have never experienced the kind of sullen or insecure silence from a teenager that I commonly experience from public school kids. The homeschooled kids are perfectly comfortable interacting with an adult. Most public school kids are completely out of their element having to deal with someone like myself that is 15 years older. Sure there are homeschooled kids and families that really do poorly interacting with others but I doubt those same kids would do any better in a public school and I suspect they would do a great deal worse since their initial social failings would be compounded by the harrassment of their immature peers.
It's called product placement. We had people wear shoes we'd never heard of because the company coughed up $5k.
Sure some of the Macs you see in TV and movies are because of paid product placements. But a lot of them are there just because Macs look cool and perhaps just as importantly because Macs are what the creative types like filmmakers, designers and photographers use themselves and will just have hanging around. I have often seen Macs used on TV in such a way that they were not obviously macs, had the logo obscurred or were older models that Apple wouldn't be paying to place (I noticed a bunch of old "anniversary model" macs on a spy show not long ago - seen from behind but still looking cool)
In print I have many times seen PC ads(!) with a poorly disguised mac as the "PC" with the Apple logo photoshopped out and a windows screenshot photoshopped in. if the particular photo was stock photography you can often confirm your suspicion by finding the uneditted original at picturequest.com. Even microsoft has done this and to their embarassment had it mentioned on/.
If these companies were to execute such a strategy, would they not be guilty of criminal conspiracy to engage in anticompetitive practices in the first degree? (collusion to put a specific company out of business?) Isn't this just as illegal as what Microsoft has been charged with?
I don't know that they have to really collude with one another to do this. Individual company's could just decide that if Microsoft is going to compete with them they will stop bankrolling Microsoft be ceasing to use their products. Besides there is no law requiring you to use your competitors products. I'm pretty sure you won't find a Coke machine in the Pepsi or Royal Crown's break rooms - even though many "independent, impartial" observers may consider Coke to be the "superior product" or Coke may provide flavors that those companies don't. It's ludicrous to suggest that there is anything criminal about that absense.
Also there is a difference between "anticompetitive" practices and competing. Microsoft is a monopoly and so is burdened with additional rules that non-monopolies don't have. A lot of Microsoft's illegal practices WOULD be legal (if perhaps still unethical) if they weren't a monopoly. They were probably perfectly legal when Microsoft started using them but became "anticompetitive" and illegal once Microsoft crossed a threshold to be judged a monopoly.
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Do you really think that running 1100 copies of MacOSX on 1100 hard drives is a reasonable way to run a compute cluster?
Umm... No. I'd imagine they would be usingNetBoot. It is built right in to MacOS X.
And of course, many of the victims of religion were killed not in wars, but by the zealots in their own nations. From the Spanish Inquisition to the Salem witch trials, religion has been effective at persecuting or slaughtering the innocent within a society, quite apart from any wars between religions or sects.
And of course this is just as true (if not more so) with the modern atheistic regimes. I would wager that Stalin's terror famine and various purges and show trials killed far more people (both in terms of percentage of population and in absolute numbers) than the inquisition and certainly far, far more than the Salem witch trials. For comparison the Salem witch trials claimed about two dozen victims and was almost immediately considered an outrage and the court dissolved by the Colonial Governor. Stalin's great terror on the other hand saw 4.5 - 5.5 million arrested and 800,000 - 900,000 sentenced to death on top of about 11 million dead as a result of the "dekulakization", collectivization and the associated "terror famine" and continues today to have it's ardent defenders as an unpleasant but necessary policy on the road to the worker's paradise.
That's ironic.
I said "Bugget" heh heh. - I really should have hit "preview"
Why not tax Arnold, Warren Buffet and all these other California billionares? They arent going anywhere, they have movie contracts, remember the movie industry is all liberals right? Thats what the conservatives love to hype.
Fine you can tax the very few hyper-rich guys into oblivion and they *might* not move out but even if you did tax the those very few you wouldn't get enough to balance your budget. Warren Bugget by the way is the "sage of Omaha" I don't think he's a CA resident (I could be wrong though).
And you're only assuming they wont move because they like high taxes *in theory* In their own lives they are just as motivated to do anything they can to cut their own taxes (remember the Clintons writing off their old underwear as donations to the salvation army?) If Warren Buffet and the Hollywood elite *really* believed they should be taxed at a higher rate there is nothing stopping them from donating that money to the government - yet they don't. Hypocrisy is great ain't it?
So your arguement also applies to outsourcing, unless America becomes completely tax free all of our businesses will leave and stop hiring American workers, our economy is doomed.
There are costs associated with outsourcing to Bangladesh which don't exist when outsourcing to Arizona. And yes, the higher we tax ourselves the more we offset those costs and we *could* doom our economy by excessive taxation.
I never said we should hike taxes for the long term, just long enough to fix the budget.
But the economic problems in California are *already* suffering from the diminishing returns of long-term high taxation. Any "temporary" tax to meet the current budget crisis will only make things worse. At best you would get a temporary spike in revenues that would itself be insufficient to close the budget gap this year only to be rewarded with an even larger budget crisis next year (and the next decade for that matter).
When I say tax the Rich I'm talking Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, Arnold, George Lucus and whoever else has over 100 million dollars.
Well taxing Bill Gates and Warren Buffet won't do much for you in California. But to be fair California has 90 people in it on the Forbes list with a combined net worth of $139 Billion - of course that is their total worth tied up in businesses and real property that they own NOT their annual income, if you took enough money to cover the $35 BILLION dollar budget shortfall just from them you would end up with the state owning many of their business and homes. Sure nobody would cry for them but next year when you have the exact same budget crisis half of them would be legal residents of another state and those that remain would have a LOT less money (since you took a sizeable percentage of it the year before). You'd also have significant economic problems from the disruption caused by liquidating those businesses to pay the state or by mismanagement of those businesses by the state if it chooses to run them itself without liquidating them for cold cash. The state does a lousy job of the things it's *supposed* to do, I doubt it could profitably run a software business or movie studio.
Lowering taxes will not create jobs and will not fix the deficit... The solution is to allow normal people to start businesses by taking the tax burden off them, allowingt them to buy more property and collect more wealth.
The reply to these contradictory statements are trivial and left as an excersize for the reader.
We keep hearing about the bad uses for RFID technology, but do people know of any good uses that don't invade on our privacy?
/.ers hysterical over RFID tags wouldn't want to abolish the internet though given their rhetoric they might have protested it when it first got started.
This is a silly question, not your fault you're just the victim of hysterical FUD. Do you know of any actual uses that ARE used to invade anyones privacy? Sure there is potential there and it is something that needs to be watched but it's not what these things are *for* nor has anyone anounced any plans to use these in any way that invades anyones privacy.
The idea behind these things is to allow physical objects to be identified by computers for all sorts of uses. To bring the kind of efficiencies and automation that computers are currently able to apply to binary information to bear on the physical objects in the real world. They were invented by researchers at MIT that were involved in robotics to solve the old problem of robots being able to sense what was around them... instead of a visual & touch based system with pattern matching far beyond our capabilities just have RFID tags tell the robot what the object is. Of course having computers able to identify physical objects in the real world has uses other than their physical manipulation by robots. The first and most obvious uses are to manage inventory to know exactly how many and exactly where every item in your warehouse or store is and even your entire supply chain is. That use alone could revolutionize the supply chain making it spectacularly more efficient. Of course at the retail end the part you could see (but by no means the most important) you could get rid of cashiers, just walk through an RFID reader without unloading your cart and swipe your card - done! And that is only the immediately obvious use, like the internet this is a foundational technology which will enable all sorts of other technologies and uses.
The protests over speculative abuses of this new technology are *exactly* the same as if people had protested the internet in the mid 90's when it started to emerge as a popular technology. "Think of all the privacy abuses if we networked all the computers together... Does anyone know of any good uses that don't invade our privacy. No of course not, I'm going down to picket my local ISP they're robbing us of our freedom!" Yes a global network of computers *IS* a threat to our privacy (and in ways even more obvious than RFID tags) and yet I suspect that most
This technology has the potential to be as significant and beneficial as the internet. Most corporations that deal with the global supply chain think it will be MORE significant.
No you dont, you cut taxes when the rich leave, to stimulate growth, when new people become rich you raise taxes and repeat.
If that is the case CA is in the position where it should cut taxes to stimulate growth. They have already chased away more than enough money and jobs. Still I think better than fluctuating tax rates that go up and down depressing and then stimulating the economy perhaps government should focus on finding the sweet spot that maximizes economic growth and thus tax revenues.
If their businesses move, new local businesses will form to fill the market, let them leave.
Only if there is a rich guy that thinks it's still worthwhile to invest the money when any profits he would have seen from the investement will just be taken by government. Besides in many if not most cases the market is still filled... That business that moved to AZ still kept all their clients in CA (those that didn't move to AZ too), they're just taking the profits out of CA and enjoying them at a low tax rate in AZ. The business that *tries* to start up to fill the market in CA now has to compete with a guy that can undercut him on price every time because he takes home more after taxes even though he's making less - and his business isn't burdened with crazy labor laws or an insane energy bill.
I'm not saying 100%,
I'm being facetious to point out that your reasoning assumes a static model when the impact of taxes are dynamic. Raising taxes does not necessarily result in greater revenues. In the obvious example of raising the taxes to 100% the revenues from that tax would spike and then fall to absolutely nothing. The taxes in CA are already too high and are suffering from the law of diminishing returns, a further tax hike would just cause revenues to fall.
Also getting big business out of the community helps local businesses who want to expand, so I'm all for taxing out the rich to help the small businesses and the poor, the small businesses will eventuslly become big businesses and become rich themselves.
The problem with this thinking is that "the rich" that are most effected by tax hikes *are* the small businessmen. Big corporations have a few rich executives and millions of middle class stockholders, they are large and stable and can afford the slings and arrows of adverse legislation and are probably already headquartered in AZ anyway without it affecting their ability to compete with their smaller and more burdened local competitors. It is the little guy making six figures in profits from a 4 or 5 million dollar outfit employing a dozen guys just a year or two out of his garage that doesn't have the resources to deal with excessive regulation and really notices when his taxes go up.
A big part of California's economic problems are caused by their high tax rate (and energy bills, and excessive regulation). Raising taxes will only make things worse at this point.
Thats because California is over populated, and also california is the biggest state so of course they will have a big out population or whatever you want to call it, either way it doesnt matter.
You're missing the point. All the wealthy people are leaving, mostly because of high taxes and they are being replaced by poorer mexican immigrants. It is the ONLY state in the region that is losing population rather than gaining it from domestic migration. If it weren't for illegal aliens it would be losing population.
My point is, in Cali people will pay higher taxes, not everyone will move, some will but not everyone, and if they do move who cares?
Anyone trying to balance the budget should care. If you have fewer rich people to tax to get the same amount you have to raise the taxes on them even more, which cause more to leave, so you have to tax those that remain even more, which causes more to leave, wash, rinse, repeat.
When rich people leave they tend to take jobs with them. In the best case it's just a few domestic servents that will now be unemployed and the government will now have to pay their benefits. Often though it will be entire businesses leaving that employ dozens or hundreds who will now be unemployed and the government with the government picking up the tab. So by chasing one rich guy out you not only lose the taxes he *would* have paid but you also get hit for even more money that you now have to pay out to his newly unemployed former employees. SO... you raise the taxes on those rich people that haven't moved out yet starting the cycle over again.
Even for those rich guys that DON'T move out you still have problems. Take you're typical rich guy... he's the owner of a thriving software start-up, or a Pakistani that owns the local Quiki Mart (to indulge in some steriotyping) He's making money and is thinking of expanding his business, hiring a bunch of people and investing in new equipment, more space etc. If he does so a few people move off unemplyment benefits not only because of his own new hires but in conjunction with dozens of others like him because of the money he spent that profits the equipment manufacturers and construction companies that build out the new space. Instead though the money he would have invested in growing his business is taken by the government, and even if he would invest what is left the government would take such a large percentage of the return on that investment as to make it no longer worth it. Might as well just spend what money is left on some new toys.
By your simplistic static reasoning you might as well just tax the rich people at 100% - think of all the money you would get to balance the budget! Now think about it a little more.
I can not comment on the system for certification, since I don't know it. But 115 candidates seems excessive.
;) my mistake.
The story we are commenting on is about the California recall election there are 115 certified candidates out of 247 that wanted to be candidates. You're stated goal was to remove money as a barrier to entry to electoral politics if you were successful a mere 115 candidates out of a population of 35 million would probably be a small number, especially since becoming a candidate would have no cost to you and no matter how tiny your support you would be on a level playing field with everyone else - why not run?
Neither do I know the motivations/justifications/arguments of your founding fathers or what kinds of free speech your are reffering too.
The motivation for free speech was to ensure open political debate and to prevent one party in power from silencing the opposition. Anyone can advocate & promote any position. Free speech is a good thing in and of itself BUT it is also a means of ensuring political freedoms and preventing the formation of a tyranny. Unfortunately campaign finance reforms are undermining this by actually making political speech (the only kind that the founders really cared about) the MOST subject to government regulation. During the founding you could say anything you wanted about a politician or politics but you might be barred from talking dirty. Now you can cuss all you want but not about a politician within 30 days of an election - that would be "negative campaigning" and "bad".
My lousy english should have told you that I am not american.
I took it as proof positive that you *were* an American
Sure you can make ads, can you also make one for the KKK? Or for the Nazi-party? Or for the Apartheids-regime?
Yes, you can
Or one in support of Saddam?
Probably if you are careful in how you do it. Plenty of peace activist advertising was probably pretty close to this
Or one that says that all arabs should commit acts of terror in or against the USA?
Probably as long as it wasn't explicit
What you do with your money is your own matter.
That is my point. If I can't use my own money to express my own opinion that Joe Shmoe is the better candidate out of all others then I don't have free speech
If the only way you can distance yourself from your opponents is by spending more money, then more then ever do I pity your democracy. If spending money is the only way to get elected, pfff...
It simply takes money to communicate your message to millions of people. Right now a joke candidate like Gary Coleman has no supporters, so he has no money, so he is a non-entitity in the election. A serious candidate that has real support from a broad coalition of supporters will be given money by those supporters that he will use to advocate his position and candidacy. It simply isn't the case that a few rich people can fund campaigns and control things... no individual can give more than $2000. No group formed to advocate various positions by funding candidates (a PAC) can give more than $10,000 and a PAC requires a certain number of members before it can be formed to give that amount to any campaign. Sure it's going to be fairly rich people that give that kind of money to a campaign but it takes a LOT of them, a LOT of support from a LOT of people to get the money with which to "buy" the election. And it's not just rich people, many, many, many people donate small amounts that add up to fund the candidate that "buys" the election. The presense of money indicates the degree of support among the people and their myriad interests. Sure it's messy, and people with narrow self-interested motivations tend to fund campaigns to a greater degree than those with altruistic broad motivations (though the difference is in the eye of the beholder) but any system that cleans it up is a danger t
That is where I can not understand complaining guys like you. On one hand they complain that there are too much similar apps on Linux, and on the other hand complain that there is only one. Looks like empty bitching to me.
You're missing the point. There are too many similar apps on Linux in one sphere (PHP content managers for instance) and none, or very very few in other spheres (accounting software for instance) If we want to see linux move forward on the desktop we need to start developing for the desktop.
*Your* applications still are not there. That's not here or to Linux you have to complain, that is to Adobe, Corel, etc. That is *their* fault, not Linux'.
But he doesn't want to use Adobe, Corel etc. he wants a choice of Open Source projects to replace them.
I also thought that was a very insightful comment on his part. Of course when you're the one suffering from the lack it doesn't take that much insight to notice it.
Open source is all about "scratching an itch" but the only itches being scratched are those that developers have themselves. What would be interesting would be if a group of companies committed to open source could be brought together to fund the development of open source projects for these general business needs. If each one kicked in a little (maybe no more than what they pay for commercial licenses) they could kickstart some really good projects. Maybe the project site should have a "suggested donation" pop-up when you download a binary. (OK we all hate pop-ups but you get the idea). Open source developers could get (at least some) compensation for their work and businesses get the software they need without being tied into commercial licenses that treat them like crap. With a good general open source projects particular business with idiosycratic needs have a good foundation to build custom software on top of. It seems like a win-win-win for everyone except for the closed source competitors.
The thing is many of them already have and more are following. To quote the U.S. Census: The same report notes the rapid population growth of the other western states. Nevada and Arizona (and Idaho) are the states that gained the most from domestic migration while CA is the only state in the region that lost population due to domestic migration. And it's not just wealthy individuals it's entirebusinesses fleeing a hostile government.
The rich in Cali are usually liberal and like paying taxes
Sure they're liberal but remember Conquest's first law of politics "Everyone is conservative about what he knows best". For instance Katherine Graham the owner of the Washington Post was very liberal and in the abstract (and likely with her vote) supported pro-labor policies. But as a business owner she crushed the unions at the Post. The business owners, media moguls, software company executives etc. that make up the wealthiest Californians are no different -they'll vote for politicians that will raise their taxes "for the children" and then move themselves and their business to NV or AZ to avoid the taxes they (by proxy) voted for. Doesn't make any sense but that's life.
If the government gives every candidate the same amount of money, and at the same time forbid the acceptance of contributions or use of personal money. Than every person - poor or rich - has the same means to get elected.
/. editors made to interview Georgy illegal? If not how will you stop the flow of political money into such "editorial" rather than direct advertising venues. Or even if you succeed how do you avoid a situation where the television stations and major newspapers would essentially coronate their chosen candidates?
A couple of objections:
1) In this current race for instance would you give the same government funds to all 115 certified candidates? To all 247 that tried to get certified? Would a "serious" candidate like Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamente get more than a joke candidate like Gary Coleman? If so how would government decide who was "serious" and who was not? Who's views are "acceptable" and who isn't. Under such government financing of elections to government office it seem the government would be effectively controlling the elections. Views unnacceptable to the beuracracy would be dissallowed or underfunded.
2) You have also to all intents and purposes done away with the freedom of political speech. (Which if you remember you're history was exactly the kind of speech that the principle of "free speech" is supposed to protect) If I can't pay for advertising that says "vote for Georgy" I don't have free speech. If I can't pay for it directly perhaps I'll publish a paper that will say it for me in the editorial page so you'll have to make that illegal as well, perhaps I just give ONE candidate a forum on my popular website without giveing an identical forum to all 115 other certified candidates - do you really want to make editorial decisions like the one the
3) As a practical matter how do you stop this from becoming a complete lock on the elections by the incumbant? They already have all the name recongition, their legitimate activities already get them into legitimate news (free publicity). Add on top of that that their challengers get no more money than they do and so can't buy themselves a hearing. Also their challengers will be diluted by being fragmented, dozens of challengers all with the same amount of money and the same ability to be heard with no chance for one to eclipse the others by spending more.
I dont think the majority of poor people in cali would care if the billionare and millionares pay more taxes. Just shift the taxes to people who can afford to pay them and leave taxes for the majority of the people the same, suddenly the deficit gets paid.
That would do wonders for the local economy, unfortunately for California the local economy it would do wonders for is in Arizona.
If I break the GPL on one "product" I do not have a license to distribute it and I am violating the copyright on that product and no longer have permission to distribute and modify.
This does not mean I lose my license to distribute other products also licensed under the GPL.
Yes, but it might still be doable or at least worthwhile. The SAMBA team sends SCO a Cease and Desist from using unlicensed code on the basis that SCO has stated their to the court that the consider the GPL that *would* have given them rights to SAMBA code is invalid. They are incapable of agreeing to the license that they argue is invalid and can have no rights to use any such code under any such license.
But here is the beautiful part... they have stuck SCO into the position of defending the GPL. Even if the SAMBA team themselves consider their own claims to be hogwash they would be enough to force SCO to either cease using SAMBA or to go into court to defend their rights under the GPL a fact which could then be brought to bear into any other legal disputes that they are a party to. At worst the court upholds the SAMBA teams argument which is in effect: "you can't benefit from a license you have stated you consider invalid. If you consider it invalid, for you it *IS* invalid and you are stuck with whatever rights to the copyrighted material you had before, which is to say - none."
Wired had a story a while back about one of these groups of card counters from MIT. The way the story described their method was to do it as a team so that no one player was playing a pattern that could be recognized as counting cards. One player (the "spotter") would be sitting at the table making small bets counting cards, or the girl at someones shoulder was doing the counting (a "back spotter") and when the cards turned to to the players favor a high roller who always makes large bets (the "gorilla") would move to the table to clean up the winnings. A team would have spotters at several tables steering the gorilla (or more than one) to the tables that are winning.
The key is that people take a whole lot more pictures with digital cameras, thus taking pictures they never would with a film camera, and any picture you take is MUCH better than the picture you didn't. And, the more pictures you take, the higher your chances of snapping a gem by sheer luck (I know skill plays no part in my photography).
This is so true and to some extant simply taking A LOT of pictures is one of the essential "secrets" of professional photographers. When I took photography courses at art school I would use one or maybe two shots per roll, sure I'd be paying attention to things like composition in every shot I took but simply taking a LOT of pictures is how you get that ONE picture that is really good. Using digital cameras gets any consumer to take pictures with that same attitude since there is no film cost, the camera can take hundreds of pictures per "roll" and you can delete the obvious duds right then and there.
One of the problem when talking about this is that a 35mm camera is using an analog technology so it's really apples and oranges. In ideal circumstances with good lighting, good focus, the camera on a tripod, etc. the resolution of a 35mm camera can be spectacularly high which is why you always hear photo people lamenting the low resolutions of digital and how they haven't "caught up" with the lowly 35mm (never mind 4x5 or better). But for most uses, for anyone other than professionals, the practical resolution of the 35mm isn't anything near it's theoretical maximum, the lighting isn't that great, the focus isn't that great, your hand was shaking and the resulting loss of detail brings the 35mm picture way back down to where the digital camera's are. Even among professionals the 35mm photo is usually going to end up digitized to a resolution that could have been produced by a digital camera.
I have a beige G3 and have experimented with OS X on it, aside from simply being and old and slow computer the big drawback for me is the lack of support for peripherals. It uses ADB and Serial bus instead of USB, SCSI instead of FireWire (though that probably is less of a problem) . Since it is the ONLY model to both support OS X and use these older standards nobody is ever going to bother writing drivers for anything that uses them. My serial printer isn't supported, my ADB Wacom tablet, etc.
Try reading it again. He recommends macs to computer illiterate people because in his experience they can figure a Mac out on their own and won't call him with tech support questions the way windows users do. I'd assume that he himself is a Unix user which is why he doesn't use either Mac or Windows himself (though, now that the Mac *is* Unix perhaps he should look into them for himself)
Get real. The Mac will be replaced by whatever Apple fanatics think "looks cool" after 2 years, max.
Get real yourself, my biege G3 is still good enough thank you. It's the 7100/75 that I had to replace last year (though it's still running fine). I've got a Plus running too but to be fair it's just a conversation piece.
How does a homeschooled kid deal with this raw assault when he/she grows up?
My experience with homeschooled kids is that being less peer-dependant and secure in their identity and relationships they are less vulnerable to bullies. More importantly they are less likely themselves to *become* the bullies. You may view that as a liablity in fields that tend to be "dog eat dog". However, my personal experience with homeschooled kids is that the confidence that comes from being raised in a nurturing rather than a "lord of the flies" environment is a sufficient compensation for the lack of harsh lessons in early childhood.
In addition to being vulnerable to abuse from the adult bullies, I suspect a homeschooled kid will not be able to deal compassionately with the less fortunate (money, IQ, whatever...) kids.
This is an area where I think you are actually contradicting yourself. Being hardened by a "lord of the flies" environment may make you less vulnerable to "raw assaults" but it is unlikely to make you any more sensitive to the suffering of others. In fact the hardness necessary for your own survival in a harsh environment is quite likely to make you a great deal LESS sensitive to the suffering of others. Besides which I think the vast majority homeschooling parents would view compassion as one of the healthy ways that they are teaching their children to respond to others. Which scenario is more likely to produce a compassionate adult 1) Being part of a clique in Jr. High and in your own insecurity going along with the crowd that picks on the funny looking kid and reinforces that attitude with their laughter and acceptance? 2) Being the kid that is picked on and harrassed on every side? or 3) Having a parent nearby that immediately punishes you for displaying such cruelty towards your siblings or friends and protects you from the same?
Perhaps it is a result of the fact that a large percentage of homeschoolers are motivated by religious convictions but I get the feeling that homeschoolers are more involved with charity and ministries than is the norm. We take our kids to volunteer at a shelter and they spend one day a week cleaning their great-grandmothers house for her. Our oldest helps her get ready every morning. That's just us but most of our homeschooling friends seem to have similar family traditions.
When I went to school I had friends from two grades up and I don't see why this should be any different these day
Umm... actually the fact that you think that kids only two years older than you were not *essentially* the same age as you basically makes my point. Sure there are friendships which form between peers that are going through the same things and are at about the same level of development but I am often astounded at the level of awkwardness and discomfort of kids (particularly teenagers) when they have to deal with adults. Homeschooled kids of my aquaintance don't seem to have this peer-dependant hang up. They are are perfectly happy to talk with the adults, or play with the toddlers or hang out with each other.
The problem that I see with home schooling is that done wrongly, it doesn't prepare the kids to deal with different people.
I mean I did go to public school and I had to deal with smart kids, stupid kids, social kids, anti-social and outright aggressive kids, kids from rich families and kids from welfare families. Exactly like it will be in the real world.
As a homeschooling parent I have to disagree on two counts. 1) While there is a lot of diversity among the students in a public school classroom I never saw much evidence that the kids learned to deal *in a healthy way* with those that were different from them. Just go into (or think back to) a junior high classroom, all the bullying, cliques, hostility between different groups. Sure some kids learned to bridge the gaps or to accept those that were different but it is the exception rather than the rule and often being friendly to the "wrong" kid could put your own position with you peers at risk. I hesitate to say it but I suspect those kids most able to trancend the petty differences that divide school kids were those that had the kind of healthy relationships with their parents that homeschoolers tend to have. I hate to say it but rather than a nirvana of healthy diversity public schools often seem to have more in common with Lord of the Flies
2) Another aspect of public school classrooms is the extreme degree of segregation by age. All your friends (and enemies, and those to whom you are merely indifferent) are ALL your age. All your interaction is with kids the same age, your teachers are generally distant authority figures, even kids relationships with their parents becomes increasingly alienated. These kids are intensely peer dependant. Who cares what my parents or teachers think? Who cares what *I* think? What really matters is what my little clique thinks, to loose their approval is to suffer tragedy. (all of which is feeding into my first point)
Homeschooled kids tend to be dealing with siblings of different ages and friends of different ages as well as dealing with adults (their parents and friends parents). And the parents (who presumably are more mature in their own socialization) are more actively guiding the childrens socialization in healthy ways. I don't know any homeschooling parent that would tolerate the kind of nastiness that is wearily tolerated or not even noticed by the teachers in your typical Jr. High. Even when it reaches a level or is done in plain sight where a teacher must act since the children are so peer dependant the poor opinion and disciplinary actions of the teacher for beating up the funny looking kid is insignificant next to the approval of your peers egging you on.
In my experience homeschooled kids are far better socialized & capable of dealing with peoples differences than their public school peers. As an adult I have never experienced the kind of sullen or insecure silence from a teenager that I commonly experience from public school kids. The homeschooled kids are perfectly comfortable interacting with an adult. Most public school kids are completely out of their element having to deal with someone like myself that is 15 years older. Sure there are homeschooled kids and families that really do poorly interacting with others but I doubt those same kids would do any better in a public school and I suspect they would do a great deal worse since their initial social failings would be compounded by the harrassment of their immature peers.
It's called product placement. We had people wear shoes we'd never heard of because the company coughed up $5k.
/.
Sure some of the Macs you see in TV and movies are because of paid product placements. But a lot of them are there just because Macs look cool and perhaps just as importantly because Macs are what the creative types like filmmakers, designers and photographers use themselves and will just have hanging around. I have often seen Macs used on TV in such a way that they were not obviously macs, had the logo obscurred or were older models that Apple wouldn't be paying to place (I noticed a bunch of old "anniversary model" macs on a spy show not long ago - seen from behind but still looking cool)
In print I have many times seen PC ads(!) with a poorly disguised mac as the "PC" with the Apple logo photoshopped out and a windows screenshot photoshopped in. if the particular photo was stock photography you can often confirm your suspicion by finding the uneditted original at picturequest.com. Even microsoft has done this and to their embarassment had it mentioned on
If these companies were to execute such a strategy, would they not be guilty of criminal conspiracy to engage in anticompetitive practices in the first degree? (collusion to put a specific company out of business?) Isn't this just as illegal as what Microsoft has been charged with?
I don't know that they have to really collude with one another to do this. Individual company's could just decide that if Microsoft is going to compete with them they will stop bankrolling Microsoft be ceasing to use their products. Besides there is no law requiring you to use your competitors products. I'm pretty sure you won't find a Coke machine in the Pepsi or Royal Crown's break rooms - even though many "independent, impartial" observers may consider Coke to be the "superior product" or Coke may provide flavors that those companies don't. It's ludicrous to suggest that there is anything criminal about that absense.
Also there is a difference between "anticompetitive" practices and competing. Microsoft is a monopoly and so is burdened with additional rules that non-monopolies don't have. A lot of Microsoft's illegal practices WOULD be legal (if perhaps still unethical) if they weren't a monopoly. They were probably perfectly legal when Microsoft started using them but became "anticompetitive" and illegal once Microsoft crossed a threshold to be judged a monopoly.