Here's my overview:
Option A, Obama and the Democrats:
Leaves people to somewhat free social choices, but not enough to upset the masses (drugs still illegal, etc.)
Big spending on the little people who contribute a small percentage to the GDP while the people contributing a large percentage to the GDP foot the bill
kinda "meh" about the war
kinda "meh" about religion
kinda "meh" about people shouldering personal responsibility for success and subsistence
Since we messed with the economy for the last many years and broke it, we should fix it by messing with it even more (?!)
Option B, Plain, er.. McCain and the Republicans:
God doesn't really want you to be gay or abort fetuses, but eternal damnation isn't enough of a deterrent - it should be illegal as well
Big spending on, well, nothing specific. Decent bit on war, decent bit on little people, decent bit on propping up businesses that shouldn't exist anymore...
Kinda "yay!" about the war
"WOOHOO" about religion
People should be responsible for themselves more than the democrats think, but the govt should back them up less, and God should instead.
Yeah, the economy is a bit messed up... Maybe we'll use it as an excuse for a good bit of random spending while it fixes itself up.
The bottom line is that the President is really a face for the country and appoints judges. I think Obama's fresh perspective will make the rest of the world happier (important for our trade relationships, etc.) and his likely choice to leave God out of the courtroom and put Man there instead will be our best bet.
We have a fairly massive organization with a large Exchange cluster and 24/7 staffing, etc. Our issue is that, if we host our e-mail solution, our users believe we can (and ask us to) do anything and everything. If we had a hosted solution, it would be much easier for the support group to say "nah, our e-mail provider can't do that; sorry!".
The things users ask for are usually not critical to the business, but put the solution in jeopardy from the necessary futzing to accomplish it.
We are a medium-sized University, btw, and the users asking for things are Faculty, thus why the top doesn't just say "hush; get back to work".
If you don't have an account, the pictures others post and tag as you have as much weight as if someone snapped a picture of you in the grocery store (perfectly legal) and attached your name to it (they saw it on your business card you dropped from your wallet in the check-out line) and uploaded it to a blog. It's just a random, un-indexed string of characters that happen to be your non-unique identifier.
OK; and I'll write a e-mail to the boss telling him that he's an asshole but preface it by saying "using this information to terminate, or demote or deny employment or other opportunities may result in legal action."
How about aesthetics? Put up several hot-or-not comparisons, asking the user to select amongst several different pictures, some hideously ugly, one beautiful. Yeah, yeah, some people think the fat lady with a hairy mole is more beautiful than the fake skinny girl with big boobs, so put text that says "select from the following pictures which image society at large would find most visually attractive".
With extremely varied composition (profile shots, portraits, etc.) you could mix things up to the point where computers couldn't figure it out. Microsoft and many other companies already have license-free picture repositories for use for this (flikr and the like). It would be faster than reading the weird image, as "who is prettier" is an extremely quick, intuitive decision for most. "Training" would be done by asking the user to do an additional comparison that didn't have an "answer" yet, only using it as a valid test when you have a statistically-significant margin.
I can't understand why I'd want a daily-driver that can go 225 mph, but I value the technological pursuits of Formula 1 teams to come up with things that make normal cars lighter, faster, more efficient in a scale I can actually appreciate on a day-to-day basis.
So, why do we allow this principle to override our own, desires of what can and can not be done to our houses and other properties?
For the same reason you get a ticket if you don't wear your seat-belt? Wear a helmet when riding your motorcycle?
Failing to follow building codes in your own home should be something that must be revealed to any potential buyers of your home. Other than that, externalities are nill (provided you are held responsible if you catch your house on fire because you didn't wire it properly and it catches your neighbors house on fire, duh).
I hesitate to post this, because I know some looters with mod points troll about, but this is exactly what Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are partially about.
New construction methods (Fountainhead) and new technologies (Reardon Steel in Atlas Shrugged) that would make cheaper products of higher quality for the consumer at the cost of cash in the pocketbook of the union builder or factory-owner.
Please read those books; I would read Atlas Shrugged if I was only inclined to read one, but Fountainhead first if planning to read both. Trust me.
Sure, you can "make" money more easily by stealing ideas instead of putting the effort into coming up with them on your own, but if we all subscribe to that moral concept, everyone will be stealing and no one will come up with things on their own, thus we will run out of ideas to steal, hence that is a broken moral concept.
In order for a moral concept to be valid, it has to work for everyone if everyone subscribes to it. It so happens that being as productive as personally possible and not stealing property or ideas from others is something that works (to a greater or lesser degree, yes) for everyone. Otherwise, it's a pyramid scheme where the thieves profit and the producers get shit on for their ideas.
What? You're saying scientists would have no way of making a living without IP protections? Dumbass. So a group of scientists in the States spend a few years testing formulas for the best spray paint adhesion, wash-abilitiy, fade resistance, etc., and when the first can goes to market someone from an emerging economy takes a couple weeks to reverse-engineer it and bring it to market, how is the first group of scientists who actually did the work going to make money?
The first group has years of overhead to recuperate, the thieving group has a couple weeks.
Remember...the workers generate wealth while the organizers skim off the top. The organizers aren't doing anything to generate the wealth, right?
Those workers who were all doing other things would have just spontaneously found this empty building to all put their stuff in, organize themselves into semi-functional work teams, and accomplish the generation of wealth? Hrm...
I am "turned on" in a broader psychological sense by watching James Bond movies (elevated heart rate, galvanic skin response, increased brain activity, breathing rate, all the standard measurable things), but I would never consider leaving my cube to blow up Russians, jump from airplanes, sink submarines with me inside, etc.
The trick, in this case, is to hire University researchers to wait tables.
To put it in more slashdotty terms, it's what happens when senior managers and directors get their hands in first-line support. Extremely patient, well-researched, instantly followed-up support results.
It simply doesn't scale to have senior management waiting tables.
They will make unlimited the quotas of users who are nowhere near the quota. Then as a user nears the existing quota, they will be again found in the "not yet unlimited" group;)
This cracks me up, because I actually have a Backstreet Boys song as my ringer right now. It sounds pretty good though, which is the only thing not fully retro about it;)
I was reading this going WOW! I need one of these things! I'm going to read down and see if people are already using them. Then I read your comment first, and realized the reason I was so excited about it was because I am typing this post on a Dvorak keyboard. A Finger Works (RIP) Touchstream LP, in fact. So I said "Oh. Heh." ;)
Slashdot Mirror
Option A, Obama and the Democrats:
Option B, Plain, er.. McCain and the Republicans:
The bottom line is that the President is really a face for the country and appoints judges. I think Obama's fresh perspective will make the rest of the world happier (important for our trade relationships, etc.) and his likely choice to leave God out of the courtroom and put Man there instead will be our best bet.
Government requests be damned! Verizon charges everybody 10 bucks / month for GPS tracking; even the new debt clock can't handle that much!
We have a fairly massive organization with a large Exchange cluster and 24/7 staffing, etc. Our issue is that, if we host our e-mail solution, our users believe we can (and ask us to) do anything and everything. If we had a hosted solution, it would be much easier for the support group to say "nah, our e-mail provider can't do that; sorry!".
The things users ask for are usually not critical to the business, but put the solution in jeopardy from the necessary futzing to accomplish it.
We are a medium-sized University, btw, and the users asking for things are Faculty, thus why the top doesn't just say "hush; get back to work".
If you don't have an account, the pictures others post and tag as you have as much weight as if someone snapped a picture of you in the grocery store (perfectly legal) and attached your name to it (they saw it on your business card you dropped from your wallet in the check-out line) and uploaded it to a blog. It's just a random, un-indexed string of characters that happen to be your non-unique identifier.
OK; and I'll write a e-mail to the boss telling him that he's an asshole but preface it by saying "using this information to terminate, or demote or deny employment or other opportunities may result in legal action."
How about aesthetics? Put up several hot-or-not comparisons, asking the user to select amongst several different pictures, some hideously ugly, one beautiful. Yeah, yeah, some people think the fat lady with a hairy mole is more beautiful than the fake skinny girl with big boobs, so put text that says "select from the following pictures which image society at large would find most visually attractive".
With extremely varied composition (profile shots, portraits, etc.) you could mix things up to the point where computers couldn't figure it out. Microsoft and many other companies already have license-free picture repositories for use for this (flikr and the like). It would be faster than reading the weird image, as "who is prettier" is an extremely quick, intuitive decision for most. "Training" would be done by asking the user to do an additional comparison that didn't have an "answer" yet, only using it as a valid test when you have a statistically-significant margin.
I can't understand why I'd want a daily-driver that can go 225 mph, but I value the technological pursuits of Formula 1 teams to come up with things that make normal cars lighter, faster, more efficient in a scale I can actually appreciate on a day-to-day basis.
Ah! A car metaphor! I didn't even plan that.
So, why do we allow this principle to override our own, desires of what can and can not be done to our houses and other properties?
For the same reason you get a ticket if you don't wear your seat-belt? Wear a helmet when riding your motorcycle?
Failing to follow building codes in your own home should be something that must be revealed to any potential buyers of your home. Other than that, externalities are nill (provided you are held responsible if you catch your house on fire because you didn't wire it properly and it catches your neighbors house on fire, duh).
I hesitate to post this, because I know some looters with mod points troll about, but this is exactly what Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are partially about.
New construction methods (Fountainhead) and new technologies (Reardon Steel in Atlas Shrugged) that would make cheaper products of higher quality for the consumer at the cost of cash in the pocketbook of the union builder or factory-owner.
Please read those books; I would read Atlas Shrugged if I was only inclined to read one, but Fountainhead first if planning to read both. Trust me.
Sure, the libertarian types tend to yell the loudest, but the libertarian types yell the loudest everywhere.
I've never heard Libertarian points argued as loud as the anti-abortion sect or the environmental crazies far on the other side.
...is what the brew-ha-ha is all about.
LOL how in the world did this get moderated "Interesting" ?! Funny, perhaps!
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSHER25778420080612
Sure, you can "make" money more easily by stealing ideas instead of putting the effort into coming up with them on your own, but if we all subscribe to that moral concept, everyone will be stealing and no one will come up with things on their own, thus we will run out of ideas to steal, hence that is a broken moral concept.
In order for a moral concept to be valid, it has to work for everyone if everyone subscribes to it. It so happens that being as productive as personally possible and not stealing property or ideas from others is something that works (to a greater or lesser degree, yes) for everyone. Otherwise, it's a pyramid scheme where the thieves profit and the producers get shit on for their ideas.
The first group has years of overhead to recuperate, the thieving group has a couple weeks.
Heh; how fitting you post that as A/C ;)
Those workers who were all doing other things would have just spontaneously found this empty building to all put their stuff in, organize themselves into semi-functional work teams, and accomplish the generation of wealth? Hrm...
Um... Russians? Better subs than ours? etc.
I am "turned on" in a broader psychological sense by watching James Bond movies (elevated heart rate, galvanic skin response, increased brain activity, breathing rate, all the standard measurable things), but I would never consider leaving my cube to blow up Russians, jump from airplanes, sink submarines with me inside, etc.
Maybe slashdot will run an article on the top 10 used cars and I could sell that too ;)
The trick, in this case, is to hire University researchers to wait tables.
To put it in more slashdotty terms, it's what happens when senior managers and directors get their hands in first-line support. Extremely patient, well-researched, instantly followed-up support results.
It simply doesn't scale to have senior management waiting tables.
They will make unlimited the quotas of users who are nowhere near the quota. Then as a user nears the existing quota, they will be again found in the "not yet unlimited" group ;)
This cracks me up, because I actually have a Backstreet Boys song as my ringer right now. It sounds pretty good though, which is the only thing not fully retro about it ;)
I was reading this going WOW! I need one of these things! I'm going to read down and see if people are already using them. Then I read your comment first, and realized the reason I was so excited about it was because I am typing this post on a Dvorak keyboard. A Finger Works (RIP) Touchstream LP, in fact. So I said "Oh. Heh."
;)