I definitely think so especially in an age where many people associate arrest w/ wrongdoing regardless of the outcome of a trial. A false rape accusation can ruin someone's reputation/livelihood even if the case gets dropped due to lack of evidence. The way I see it is that unless people stop assuming some level of guilt upon being arrested, this problem wont go away. Furthermore, people have to realize that being found guilty or not guilty by a jury of 12 peers doesn't necessarily say that this person did or did not commit a crime. Notice the wording used when someone is convicted, it does not say X commited this crime but that s/he was found guilty/convicted.
This is a social issue but sadly because of the way the world views things perhaps arrest records shouldn't be made so public. Making them private is ridiculous though even though it would solve this problem it would cause others (such as intentional wrongful arrests not being published).
Too lazy to think for myself != does not have the knowledge to make the decision. No one can be expected to be an expert in everything. I drive a car, do I know how it works? No. Do I know how to use it and what features in it I want, yes although I'm sure there's stuff I'd like that I'm not aware of. Should I be expected to know how it works? No and thus I shouldn't have to make decisions that would require that. I want it to perform a certain way and not break. That's what most people want with their operating system. Just like most people don't personally add stuff onto their cars, most people aren't going to touch their operating system. Yet, cars everyday are sold pre-made to certain standards (with certain packages available).
By your logic, because you want the ability to basically "make your own car", I should have to know how a car works to pick the best one for me. That's ridiculous. If I want my computer to work with my printer/digital camera/word process/email/browser/ssh client/and a few other small things, I shouldn't be expected to decide what style of multi-thread handling I want.
People want choices. But they want choices when they can understand the differences and don't want to have to spend days learning about silicon chips to decide if they'd prefer AMD over Intel.
Last but not least, hiding some decisions from users does not mean that YOU can't make them if you're knowledgable about them. You can custom order cars and you can customize your linux distro. The point is, if you want it to become mainstream, you need to hide the options that most users don't know enough about to make a good educated decision.
As to your, they need something that meets their requirements comment, odds are their requirements are rather non-technical and which ever text editor is easiest to use is probably fine. The person would much prefer the decision made for them so that they don't have to spend more time learning. Having defaults for an option, does not mean removing other choices, it means not requiring an initial decision to be made by a user who might not know enough to really make one.
It's economically proven (as much as one thing can be) that specialization increases efficiency. If instead of 100 people each making 1 whole car, they each take 1/100 of the car, things move faster and work better. Our brains work better when we have less things to remember/think about.
On the political note, there are several problems with a pure democracy. First is the efficiency issue. Secondly, a problem which the founders of the USA realized, is that you don't want a good portion of the people making important decisions. I personally agree, I wouldn't even want myself making a lot of political decisions, I don't feel like I understand the consequences of any one decision well enough. For that reason, many people shouldn't be voting on issues, hence we have the democratic republic. Where people pick candidates who are supposedly more knowledgable about certain areas to make the decisions for them.
The problem is this doesn't affect most people and most people have no knowledge of this whatsoever (most people do not read/.). The general public doesn't care because the general public has no knowledge of it and thus doesn't see the problem. Congress is not going to be concerned about something unless they personally care, the general public cares, whoever donates to their campaign cares. My question is, what can I do, caring about something the general public doesn't give a shit about, that isn't a key issue (I care more about the economy than patent reform) to sway my politician to look into something? Or is the answer (as I fear it is) nothing, until the NY Times prints some articles about it and it affects the general public.
"If I don't wanna watch it, why should I have to pay for it."
While I don't necessarily disagree with that argument, that line of thinking leads to such things as, if I don't want social security (I'll provide for my own retirement) why should I have to pay for it. In fact why should I have to pay taxes to support anything I don't want. The answer ends up being because other people want it and we have decided it should be available to anyone who wants it. While that is arbitrary and unfair to you, it's the only practical way for some people to get this benefit. If people could opt out of social security, we probably couldn't fund it for those who want it, it's an all or nothing system.
There are plenty of arguments for and against subsidizing things that only a minority want but the biggest one for that I can think of off the top of my head is, why shouldn't I have access to something I desire simply because my desires are in the minority. One of the problems with free market systems such as this, is that things only get done if enough people care about it strongly.
Governments support museums because they consider artwork to be something that should be available to everyone even if it doesn't have the support to be around. Why should niche cable stations be different? People can't have it both ways, either you get what you want along w/ a ton of shit you don't want, or you get what you want chosen from a list of things that most people want (and thus probably miss out on a lot of what you want).
Point of my post: If you make every station individually subscribed, niche stations will most likely go under. For those of you who don't want them this is fine, for those who do this is horrible. And no one will pay $1000 a month because only 500 people want this programming that costs $500k a month (making numbers up obviously). While in the case of cable tv, it's not such a travesty if somethings aren't supported due to lack of interest, but in other things it would be a bad idea to not support them simply because there aren't enough people who want it. Just because the majority doesn't want it, doesn't make it less valuable/important to the people who do.
The problem with democracy is that the majority makes the rules. What about small minorities, are their opinions/desires/values less important because less people care about them?
I don't have a solution for this, just ranting, slightly offtopic.
This basically says every man for themself screw those who get help somehow. Shouldn't my parents, by working hard, be able to provide me with extra benefits that I wouldn't normally have? Or shouldn't I, by working hard, be able to give advantages to my loved ones after my death.
Suppoes I'm the sole income-earner in my family, i might purchase life insurance to ensure that my family can survive without drastic changes if I were to die. Should this not be allowed? Why shouldn't my work which provides for my family while I'm alive, still be able to provide for them if I were to die? Families exist in many different formats and many of them aren't well-equipped if the main income earner dies (hence life insurance) or other sorts, why should his wife have to suddenly have her life uprooted a nd twisted around simply because the law doesn't let her earn money she would have earned (yes technically he earned it but in many cases income is shared in a marriage) had he still been alive.
"Let the political class and those who like politics play their game. All I ask is that you don't screw up the economy for the rest of us so we can enjoy our family and community. The pols just don't seem to get that little fact."
You're going to get some ugly responses to that but in all honesty, for the most part, I agree with you. I don't consider myself particularly informed with world events and honestly, I'm one of those horrible people who isn't that interested in much of it. I'm much more interested in how I'm going to get a job in the next couple of years, that people my age aren't sent off to fight pointless wars and killed (I'm 19) and that certain human rights that I care strongly about are protected for me and my friends and family (yes I do care about the world as a whole but practically, I care more about how things are for me than for people I've never met and never will meet - call me a horrible person but that's how it is).
I hate politics. As someone who's rather interested in game theory, I tend to focus on what behavior in any given system maximizes one's benefit. It seems to me that a politician's goal is to get elected, and sadly doing a good job or being the best person for a position doesn't get one elected, telling people what they want to hear, paying for advertisements does. While this goes against the whole free speech thing, I'd be in favor of a system that has no campaigning beyond stating positions on issues and what you plan to focus on in your term (I'm not saying there's a good way to implement this I just hate how easily people are brainwashed - take the 2000 election and the confusion over whether or not McCain was pro-choice, or Jay-Walking on Jay Leno and how many people don't know our vice-president's name despite having voted for Bush/Cheney.)
N.B. I don't like the current copyright system and I think it's ridiculous.
Why shouldn't a man's wife (or woman's husband) and/or family be able to benefit from their work simply because s/he is dead? That's ridiculous. That's almost like saying if I make a wise investment that earns a lot of money per year they should lose the future returns from this investment because I don't benefit anymore. Yes I realize this is an exageration but I don't understand why his name and work should have to immediately pass into the public domain upon death. We're not talking about someone whose great-great-great-grandchildren hold the copyright on their work but someone whose wife does.
While making video games might be considered art, selling video games is a business. If you're in the business of selling video games, generally your main goal is to reduce risk. While one could argue the main goal is to increase profits, increased profits w/ increased risk isn't necessarily desirable. In the business world, a sure $50 will generally be preferred over a 50% chance of $100 w/ 50% chance of $0 even though mathematically spekaing, both have the same expected value. If I'm a company selling games and I can either make a rather predictable amount of money or possibly the same amount by doing something new and exciting but possibly a lot less, I'd have to be crazy to take that risk. People who create new revolutionary games aren't doing it solely for money because it doesn't make economic sense to deviate from what you know works unless you have brilliant foresight. Unless people stop buying these sequels in massive numbers, they will still be created no matter how much the hard-core gamers hate them, they are not the ones driving the industry's profits (despite the fact that they are probably the most vocal).
Economically speaking, a known technique for evaluating investments is to use the Sharp index (and creating a game you intend to sell is an investment, your return being generated from sales of that game) which basically boils down to the return premium (that over the risk-free rate, something like T-bills which are pretty stable in terms of payout) divided by the deviation in payout (the risk). So you'd pick the investment that gives you the most return per unit of risk.
One of my friends is in a sociology class involving creativity and ingenuity and one thing that they are currently reading about is how it's essential that companies reduce the penalties for failure if they want to encourage creativity. what you said is a prime example.
I have 2 options, I can take a risk w/ project A that has a 25% chance of failing but will be great if it works, or I can take no risk and use project B which will definitely work decently enough.
If companies would refrain from punishing failure so harshly (hindsight is 20/20) maybe IT staff might decide to take a risk and we'll get improvements in business efficiency/better products and everyone will benefit.
While the traffic ticket argument may have merits, doesn't earning more income entitle people to some benefits that others don't have? By this sentiment, one could say well food should represent x% of your budget, so if you make more money food should be the same burden and cost more which is clearly ridiculous sounding. And should a traffic ticket actually be a life-changing event by shattering a significant portion of your income?
And sadly, fines don't make something unprofitable. As anyone who's seen fight club 8000 times knows, if the cost of repairing a product defect is more than the expected settlements for letting the damage happen and people die, they don't do it. I fully agree that some fines (in this case punitive damage in clearly negligent lawsuits) should be massive. But should this be the case always? Such as fines for anti-competitive behavior which is not life-threatening. And I personally think 1% is a siginificant enough chunk to have an impact on a company. Microsoft should not be punished worse than any other company just because it's a good business and has tons of cash (good as in profitable, not good as in the opposite of evil).
I didn't mean to insult you. Most often drummed in comment here, correlation != causation. I'm not saying you're not smart because you're on salary, as you pointed out you are in a different position than those who aren't. I was agreeing with you.
I don't have a better solution than the jury system, sadly, but I also don't find it fair that the current system is a financial burden for many people to participate in it.
Lack of salary != entrepreneurship. To use my dad as an example again, he is guaranteed a certain salary and then gets a certain percentage of the work he does and a certain percentage of the work he brings in. If he doesn't work, he isn't screwed, he has some steady income, but he also makes more money if he works and thus isn't on a plain salary.
Ok, that's great for you (who's salaried) but what about people who aren't on a salary (both my parents). If they don't work, they don't get paid (well my dad does somewhat because he's an equity partner but he makes less if he works less). Also, in my mom's case - because she works for herself, if she isn't around to take jobs, her clients will start looking elsewhere and she might lose some clients because they found someone else.
Jury Duty = financial burden for anyone who's not a salaried employee.
There's a correlation between smart people and non-salaried positions (or even if a position has a salary, a position with enough responsibility that missing work is still detrimental) and thus many smart people will not want to serve on a jury for $40 a day or whatever the current compensation is.
how hard is it to have a system that when person A votes for Candidate X, increments X's vote-count by 1? How can something as simple as basic counting fail. How bad are the programmers for this e-voting stuff?
> The staff of universities are full of people in > the lower 70% with 8+ years degrees.
Average person with a doctorate degree makes $72k per year. Using the correlation that many educated people have educated spouses, i'd say it's pretty safe to say, the average person w/ a doctorate's household makes over $100,000 which I doubt is in the lower 70% based on the fact that average annual pay is $27,900 (Average high school grad - 27,038).
I'm not saying they don't exist or that people FROM the lower 70% don't get degrees, but I feel like most people who's current income (from jobs/investments/inherited money) is in the lower 70% do not have a Bachelor's degree from a 4-year institution (average salary for someone w/ a Bachelor's degree $44.5k).
Data comes from a micro-econ class at Princeton University. Data is from 1995-1996. Yes I know this are average figures which means there are lower cases and higher cases but still I feel like there's not a large chunk of people earning in the lower 70% (if the numbers I see are correct about how low that actually is) who have 4-year bachelor's degrees from well-known and accredited institutions.
"A politician who proposed leveling SS taxes would get my vote immediately and without reservation."
In order for this to be fair, we'd have to level out what "richer" people get out of social security. My grandfather, for example (whose the classic rags to riches story), cannot survive on what he gets from social security. Even though he paid a lower percentage of his total income than poorer people did, he gets a lower percentage of his total income now than they do. If you want to argue that everyone should pay equal amounts of their wealth to SS then everyone should get equal amounts of their "yearly retirement money" from SS, which would drop the system to shit.
Secondly, " baffles me is that people keep voting for government by, of, and for millionares...". Any idea how much money the top 1% actually makes? Compared with the overall average family income of $51,300, the top 1% of all families averaged $295,300. That hardly sounds like a millionaire to me. Not even close in fact. And furthermore, most of that income comes from employment (not INHERITED money invested somewhere). Lastly, a million dollars is NOT very much to live on alone (this does not mean 1mil / year). A million dollars at 6% interest (which is rather difficult to get risk-free) is only $60,000 a year (slightly above the national average). Earning the historical average for the stock market, it'd get around $90,000-$100,000 after being adjusted for inflation. Yes this is more than the national average, but it's not an insane amount more. It wouldn't even put the person in the top 1%.
In regards to seeing one person in the federal government in the lower 70%, I'm going to generalize for a second. Many decisions the government has to make, require a substantial amount of knowlegde/education to be made well. Now I'm not arguing that the government does this but economic matters for instance, are extremely complicated. There is a correlation between income and education (else why pay for higher education). I'd be interested to know how many people in the lower 70% have 4-year degrees from well-known and respected institutions. I, personally, have no desire to see an un-educated person in government simply to represent the "lower 70%".
Random tax cut comment: The top 1% pays about 10 times more in income tax than the bottom 50%. Those of you who felt the tax cut should've gone to the poor, there's not much to cut and give back. There's a lot more to give back to those who paid the taxes.
Neither of my parents ever want to serve on a jury. Because serving on a jury means they're not working and that means they're not making money. My mom works for herself and does not get paid if she doesn't work, and my dad is a *gasp* lawyer (not the litigating kind, the corporate kind) who makes money based on how much work he does (he's an equity partner). While some cases are no big deal, it's only a couple days, longer cases can be a huge hassle. Especially when it means turning down new work/not being able to meet deadlines because you're not working. For someone who doesn't make any money when they're not working (as opposed to a salaried employee who's employer's are required by law to pay them during jury duty), jury duty = lost income. Therefore, while I'd say it's ridiculous to say that the typical jury is dumb, I do think it's fair to say the typical jury is not a white-collar business person.
Furthermore, my uncle (who is a trial lawyer - i know, look at my family it's sad) generally does not like intelligent jurors because it means that they might see through holes in his case more easily and generally (in his experience) smarter jurors are usually rather good at convincing the other jurors to vote along w/ them. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's how it is. So if lawyers w/out a clear-cut case don't like smart people on the jury, and people who aren't on salary don't like being on juries*, I'd say it's pretty safe to generalize the juries aren't the smartest group assembled.
Yes I'm generalizing, I know this isn't always true, and that there are definitely exceptions, that all salaried people aren't stupid, etc. etc. etc.
Who do you think benefits when businesses benefit? No one? The big giant millionaire man hell-bent on creating conspiracies to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. The people who work for that business benefit. The investors in that business benefit. As has been mentioned previously here on/., most stock of large corporations is held in pension funds, IRAs, 401(K) Plans, and from shares in mutual hunds held by individual investors. The owner/CEO of a business/corporation isn't the only one who benefits when a business/corporation does well.
Now I'm not going to argue that Bush's tax cut was a good idea (it wasn't, IMHO) or that Bush is good for the economy (he's not, IMHO) or am I going to argue against your initial statement (that the govt should do a better job of regulating personal data). I am going to say however that you made an insightful comment (govt should do a...) and followed it up w/ crud about how it's wasting it's time trying to help the wealthy - a completely separate argument.
I get very angry at all the hatred I see on/. for anyone who makes a lot of money. We have a progressive tax system in the U.S., meaning proportionally if you make more money, you pay more in taxes on the theory that it's less of a burden for the richer person to pay more to help support the poorer person. Why is it evil and conspiratorial if the government decides to give some money back to the people who are paying most of it (I think it was a stupid idea but that doesn't make it evil)
It's not just sheer boredom. It's a social outlet. Yes I'm generalizing and stereotyping, but your average script kiddie doesn't have a normal social life/real friends. His friends are people he's met online. He can be popular and "cool" if he has cool hacks to use and scripts to run or he can write the stuff himself. It's about as arbitrary as being popular and cool for being able to run fast and catch a ball. Yet one activity is detrimental to society and the other is not. Regardless, it's (IMO) a result of these kids having the rather universal desire to be cool in some way. Maybe they're not athletic so they can't be "cool" in the jock sense but if they can be part of this leet group, then they feel cool and important.
I personally don't think it's done out of solely boredom and a desire for publicity, I think there's more to it than that. While publicity might be desired because it leads to increasing one's uber-leetness factor among other script kiddies, I don't think the desire really stems beyond that.
Again, just my $.02, no facts to this, just opinions based on my limited life experiences.
Not to be extremely harsh but the point is that the particular knowledge/education for the tech positions being outsourced is no longer enough if you live in the U.S. Become educated in a new field (I know, requires time/money) or move to an area of tech that isn't outsourced. While this aren't great options, I think it's fairly clear that these jobs aren't coming back in huge masses and that one shouldn't rely on these areas for a job.
While not a perfect analogy, it's like suppose tons of people learned how to sew a particularly difficult and well-liked pattern and then a machine comes along that can do it for cheaper. We're going to use the machine and these people will be out of work until they find something new to do. These people who have knowledge/education in this area need to find a new area even if it's totally un-related to sewing.
Yes the government should help cushion the loss of these jobs, but the solution isn't to make U.S. companies hire these people and be at a disadvantage in the global market where they compete.
If our huge multinational corporations don't make money, our country is screwed (Note, I'm from the US). They employ an insane number of AMERICAN workers at all levels. And as was mentioned earlier, if you think they're the only ones making a profit, invest in their stocks, and then you'll make a profit. Just because the CEO of a large corporation will benefit a lot more than pretty much anyone else if a corporation does well, doesn't mean that no one else benefits. I personally have some money in a ROTH IRA in what's essentially an S&P 500 fund. If Coke makes money, I make money. Not as much had I invested solely in Coca-cola but why I have reasons for not doing that (namely diversifying decreases risk).
There is one sector who is hurt very badly by the outsourcing of tech jobs. People who lose those tech jobs. And while the government should do something to cushion the blow being sent to this sector, it doesn't mean that the outsourcing isn't good for the American economy AS A WHOLE. Protectionist policies hurt the consumer, whether that consumer is a small business, a large business, or your next-door-neighbor. While there is no way that this is good for the average person who does call center work and just lost a job, perhaps it's a sign that you need to change industries. There are benefits to globalization and there are drawbacks. One of the "drawbacks" is that people with jobs that can easily be reproduced elsewhere for cheaper, lose those jobs. While obviously not everyone can easily go and switch industries, the solution is education, and allowing people to have the knowledge to work in other industries, not protectionist policies that just hurt everyone and will get the rest of the world pissed off at us.
If what he did constitutes a felony, and then he contributed to a death, he could be charged with felony murder. We have specific laws for that. Like if I rob a liquor store at gunpoint and the owner has a heart attack (and arguably might've had one anyway had I not robbed the store), I can be charged with felony murder.
However, felony murder != terrorism. We need to get away from the attitude of, what this person did was wrong, as long as he goes to jail I'm happy. He needs to be punished for a law he violated, not simply because people don't like what he did. Being hated is not a crime and being stupid is not a valid justification for calling someone a terrorist.
I usually don't have the time or energy to devote huge blocks of time to most "popular" games. Generally, I will sit down and play a game for 10 minutes at a time, or play for 5 minutes in between questions on a Problem Set. Consequently, the games I play the most are games like Yahoo's text twist. Those games can still be very addicting and played for massive amounts of time but they also have that wonderful ability to be played in 5 minute blocks.
While I have no knowledge of the particular statistics, I can only imagine that if suddenly VoIP became hugely popular and many telephone companies went bankrupt, our economy would suffer greatly. Anyone who reads/. has seen a myriad of complaints in regards to the lack of jobs that pay well available to educated people. This will only make it worse.
Slashdot Mirror
I definitely think so especially in an age where many people associate arrest w/ wrongdoing regardless of the outcome of a trial. A false rape accusation can ruin someone's reputation/livelihood even if the case gets dropped due to lack of evidence. The way I see it is that unless people stop assuming some level of guilt upon being arrested, this problem wont go away. Furthermore, people have to realize that being found guilty or not guilty by a jury of 12 peers doesn't necessarily say that this person did or did not commit a crime. Notice the wording used when someone is convicted, it does not say X commited this crime but that s/he was found guilty/convicted.
This is a social issue but sadly because of the way the world views things perhaps arrest records shouldn't be made so public. Making them private is ridiculous though even though it would solve this problem it would cause others (such as intentional wrongful arrests not being published).
Too lazy to think for myself != does not have the knowledge to make the decision. No one can be expected to be an expert in everything. I drive a car, do I know how it works? No. Do I know how to use it and what features in it I want, yes although I'm sure there's stuff I'd like that I'm not aware of. Should I be expected to know how it works? No and thus I shouldn't have to make decisions that would require that. I want it to perform a certain way and not break. That's what most people want with their operating system. Just like most people don't personally add stuff onto their cars, most people aren't going to touch their operating system. Yet, cars everyday are sold pre-made to certain standards (with certain packages available).
By your logic, because you want the ability to basically "make your own car", I should have to know how a car works to pick the best one for me. That's ridiculous. If I want my computer to work with my printer/digital camera/word process/email/browser/ssh client/and a few other small things, I shouldn't be expected to decide what style of multi-thread handling I want.
People want choices. But they want choices when they can understand the differences and don't want to have to spend days learning about silicon chips to decide if they'd prefer AMD over Intel.
Last but not least, hiding some decisions from users does not mean that YOU can't make them if you're knowledgable about them. You can custom order cars and you can customize your linux distro. The point is, if you want it to become mainstream, you need to hide the options that most users don't know enough about to make a good educated decision.
As to your, they need something that meets their requirements comment, odds are their requirements are rather non-technical and which ever text editor is easiest to use is probably fine. The person would much prefer the decision made for them so that they don't have to spend more time learning. Having defaults for an option, does not mean removing other choices, it means not requiring an initial decision to be made by a user who might not know enough to really make one.
It's economically proven (as much as one thing can be) that specialization increases efficiency. If instead of 100 people each making 1 whole car, they each take 1/100 of the car, things move faster and work better. Our brains work better when we have less things to remember/think about.
On the political note, there are several problems with a pure democracy. First is the efficiency issue. Secondly, a problem which the founders of the USA realized, is that you don't want a good portion of the people making important decisions. I personally agree, I wouldn't even want myself making a lot of political decisions, I don't feel like I understand the consequences of any one decision well enough. For that reason, many people shouldn't be voting on issues, hence we have the democratic republic. Where people pick candidates who are supposedly more knowledgable about certain areas to make the decisions for them.
The problem is this doesn't affect most people and most people have no knowledge of this whatsoever (most people do not read /.). The general public doesn't care because the general public has no knowledge of it and thus doesn't see the problem. Congress is not going to be concerned about something unless they personally care, the general public cares, whoever donates to their campaign cares. My question is, what can I do, caring about something the general public doesn't give a shit about, that isn't a key issue (I care more about the economy than patent reform) to sway my politician to look into something? Or is the answer (as I fear it is) nothing, until the NY Times prints some articles about it and it affects the general public.
"If I don't wanna watch it, why should I have to pay for it."
While I don't necessarily disagree with that argument, that line of thinking leads to such things as, if I don't want social security (I'll provide for my own retirement) why should I have to pay for it. In fact why should I have to pay taxes to support anything I don't want. The answer ends up being because other people want it and we have decided it should be available to anyone who wants it. While that is arbitrary and unfair to you, it's the only practical way for some people to get this benefit. If people could opt out of social security, we probably couldn't fund it for those who want it, it's an all or nothing system.
There are plenty of arguments for and against subsidizing things that only a minority want but the biggest one for that I can think of off the top of my head is, why shouldn't I have access to something I desire simply because my desires are in the minority. One of the problems with free market systems such as this, is that things only get done if enough people care about it strongly.
Governments support museums because they consider artwork to be something that should be available to everyone even if it doesn't have the support to be around. Why should niche cable stations be different? People can't have it both ways, either you get what you want along w/ a ton of shit you don't want, or you get what you want chosen from a list of things that most people want (and thus probably miss out on a lot of what you want).
Point of my post: If you make every station individually subscribed, niche stations will most likely go under. For those of you who don't want them this is fine, for those who do this is horrible. And no one will pay $1000 a month because only 500 people want this programming that costs $500k a month (making numbers up obviously). While in the case of cable tv, it's not such a travesty if somethings aren't supported due to lack of interest, but in other things it would be a bad idea to not support them simply because there aren't enough people who want it. Just because the majority doesn't want it, doesn't make it less valuable/important to the people who do.
The problem with democracy is that the majority makes the rules. What about small minorities, are their opinions/desires/values less important because less people care about them?
I don't have a solution for this, just ranting, slightly offtopic.
This basically says every man for themself screw those who get help somehow. Shouldn't my parents, by working hard, be able to provide me with extra benefits that I wouldn't normally have? Or shouldn't I, by working hard, be able to give advantages to my loved ones after my death.
Suppoes I'm the sole income-earner in my family, i might purchase life insurance to ensure that my family can survive without drastic changes if I were to die. Should this not be allowed? Why shouldn't my work which provides for my family while I'm alive, still be able to provide for them if I were to die? Families exist in many different formats and many of them aren't well-equipped if the main income earner dies (hence life insurance) or other sorts, why should his wife have to suddenly have her life uprooted a nd twisted around simply because the law doesn't let her earn money she would have earned (yes technically he earned it but in many cases income is shared in a marriage) had he still been alive.
"Let the political class and those who like politics play their game. All I ask is that you don't screw up the economy for the rest of us so we can enjoy our family and community. The pols just don't seem to get that little fact."
You're going to get some ugly responses to that but in all honesty, for the most part, I agree with you. I don't consider myself particularly informed with world events and honestly, I'm one of those horrible people who isn't that interested in much of it. I'm much more interested in how I'm going to get a job in the next couple of years, that people my age aren't sent off to fight pointless wars and killed (I'm 19) and that certain human rights that I care strongly about are protected for me and my friends and family (yes I do care about the world as a whole but practically, I care more about how things are for me than for people I've never met and never will meet - call me a horrible person but that's how it is).
I hate politics. As someone who's rather interested in game theory, I tend to focus on what behavior in any given system maximizes one's benefit. It seems to me that a politician's goal is to get elected, and sadly doing a good job or being the best person for a position doesn't get one elected, telling people what they want to hear, paying for advertisements does. While this goes against the whole free speech thing, I'd be in favor of a system that has no campaigning beyond stating positions on issues and what you plan to focus on in your term (I'm not saying there's a good way to implement this I just hate how easily people are brainwashed - take the 2000 election and the confusion over whether or not McCain was pro-choice, or Jay-Walking on Jay Leno and how many people don't know our vice-president's name despite having voted for Bush/Cheney.)
N.B. I don't like the current copyright system and I think it's ridiculous.
Why shouldn't a man's wife (or woman's husband) and/or family be able to benefit from their work simply because s/he is dead? That's ridiculous. That's almost like saying if I make a wise investment that earns a lot of money per year they should lose the future returns from this investment because I don't benefit anymore. Yes I realize this is an exageration but I don't understand why his name and work should have to immediately pass into the public domain upon death. We're not talking about someone whose great-great-great-grandchildren hold the copyright on their work but someone whose wife does.
While making video games might be considered art, selling video games is a business. If you're in the business of selling video games, generally your main goal is to reduce risk. While one could argue the main goal is to increase profits, increased profits w/ increased risk isn't necessarily desirable. In the business world, a sure $50 will generally be preferred over a 50% chance of $100 w/ 50% chance of $0 even though mathematically spekaing, both have the same expected value. If I'm a company selling games and I can either make a rather predictable amount of money or possibly the same amount by doing something new and exciting but possibly a lot less, I'd have to be crazy to take that risk. People who create new revolutionary games aren't doing it solely for money because it doesn't make economic sense to deviate from what you know works unless you have brilliant foresight. Unless people stop buying these sequels in massive numbers, they will still be created no matter how much the hard-core gamers hate them, they are not the ones driving the industry's profits (despite the fact that they are probably the most vocal).
Economically speaking, a known technique for evaluating investments is to use the Sharp index (and creating a game you intend to sell is an investment, your return being generated from sales of that game) which basically boils down to the return premium (that over the risk-free rate, something like T-bills which are pretty stable in terms of payout) divided by the deviation in payout (the risk). So you'd pick the investment that gives you the most return per unit of risk.
One of my friends is in a sociology class involving creativity and ingenuity and one thing that they are currently reading about is how it's essential that companies reduce the penalties for failure if they want to encourage creativity. what you said is a prime example.
I have 2 options, I can take a risk w/ project A that has a 25% chance of failing but will be great if it works, or I can take no risk and use project B which will definitely work decently enough.
If companies would refrain from punishing failure so harshly (hindsight is 20/20) maybe IT staff might decide to take a risk and we'll get improvements in business efficiency/better products and everyone will benefit.
While the traffic ticket argument may have merits, doesn't earning more income entitle people to some benefits that others don't have? By this sentiment, one could say well food should represent x% of your budget, so if you make more money food should be the same burden and cost more which is clearly ridiculous sounding. And should a traffic ticket actually be a life-changing event by shattering a significant portion of your income?
And sadly, fines don't make something unprofitable. As anyone who's seen fight club 8000 times knows, if the cost of repairing a product defect is more than the expected settlements for letting the damage happen and people die, they don't do it. I fully agree that some fines (in this case punitive damage in clearly negligent lawsuits) should be massive. But should this be the case always? Such as fines for anti-competitive behavior which is not life-threatening. And I personally think 1% is a siginificant enough chunk to have an impact on a company. Microsoft should not be punished worse than any other company just because it's a good business and has tons of cash (good as in profitable, not good as in the opposite of evil).
I didn't mean to insult you. Most often drummed in comment here, correlation != causation. I'm not saying you're not smart because you're on salary, as you pointed out you are in a different position than those who aren't. I was agreeing with you.
I don't have a better solution than the jury system, sadly, but I also don't find it fair that the current system is a financial burden for many people to participate in it.
Lack of salary != entrepreneurship. To use my dad as an example again, he is guaranteed a certain salary and then gets a certain percentage of the work he does and a certain percentage of the work he brings in. If he doesn't work, he isn't screwed, he has some steady income, but he also makes more money if he works and thus isn't on a plain salary.
Ok, that's great for you (who's salaried) but what about people who aren't on a salary (both my parents). If they don't work, they don't get paid (well my dad does somewhat because he's an equity partner but he makes less if he works less). Also, in my mom's case - because she works for herself, if she isn't around to take jobs, her clients will start looking elsewhere and she might lose some clients because they found someone else.
Jury Duty = financial burden for anyone who's not a salaried employee.
There's a correlation between smart people and non-salaried positions (or even if a position has a salary, a position with enough responsibility that missing work is still detrimental) and thus many smart people will not want to serve on a jury for $40 a day or whatever the current compensation is.
how hard is it to have a system that when person A votes for Candidate X, increments X's vote-count by 1? How can something as simple as basic counting fail. How bad are the programmers for this e-voting stuff?
> The staff of universities are full of people in > the lower 70% with 8+ years degrees.
Average person with a doctorate degree makes $72k per year. Using the correlation that many educated people have educated spouses, i'd say it's pretty safe to say, the average person w/ a doctorate's household makes over $100,000 which I doubt is in the lower 70% based on the fact that average annual pay is $27,900 (Average high school grad - 27,038).
I'm not saying they don't exist or that people FROM the lower 70% don't get degrees, but I feel like most people who's current income (from jobs/investments/inherited money) is in the lower 70% do not have a Bachelor's degree from a 4-year institution (average salary for someone w/ a Bachelor's degree $44.5k).
Data comes from a micro-econ class at Princeton University. Data is from 1995-1996. Yes I know this are average figures which means there are lower cases and higher cases but still I feel like there's not a large chunk of people earning in the lower 70% (if the numbers I see are correct about how low that actually is) who have 4-year bachelor's degrees from well-known and accredited institutions.
"A politician who proposed leveling SS taxes would get my vote immediately and without reservation."
In order for this to be fair, we'd have to level out what "richer" people get out of social security. My grandfather, for example (whose the classic rags to riches story), cannot survive on what he gets from social security. Even though he paid a lower percentage of his total income than poorer people did, he gets a lower percentage of his total income now than they do. If you want to argue that everyone should pay equal amounts of their wealth to SS then everyone should get equal amounts of their "yearly retirement money" from SS, which would drop the system to shit.
Secondly, " baffles me is that people keep voting for government by, of, and for millionares...". Any idea how much money the top 1% actually makes? Compared with the overall average family income of $51,300, the top 1% of all families averaged $295,300. That hardly sounds like a millionaire to me. Not even close in fact. And furthermore, most of that income comes from employment (not INHERITED money invested somewhere). Lastly, a million dollars is NOT very much to live on alone (this does not mean 1mil / year). A million dollars at 6% interest (which is rather difficult to get risk-free) is only $60,000 a year (slightly above the national average). Earning the historical average for the stock market, it'd get around $90,000-$100,000 after being adjusted for inflation. Yes this is more than the national average, but it's not an insane amount more. It wouldn't even put the person in the top 1%.
In regards to seeing one person in the federal government in the lower 70%, I'm going to generalize for a second. Many decisions the government has to make, require a substantial amount of knowlegde/education to be made well. Now I'm not arguing that the government does this but economic matters for instance, are extremely complicated. There is a correlation between income and education (else why pay for higher education). I'd be interested to know how many people in the lower 70% have 4-year degrees from well-known and respected institutions. I, personally, have no desire to see an un-educated person in government simply to represent the "lower 70%".
Random tax cut comment: The top 1% pays about 10 times more in income tax than the bottom 50%. Those of you who felt the tax cut should've gone to the poor, there's not much to cut and give back. There's a lot more to give back to those who paid the taxes.
Neither of my parents ever want to serve on a jury. Because serving on a jury means they're not working and that means they're not making money. My mom works for herself and does not get paid if she doesn't work, and my dad is a *gasp* lawyer (not the litigating kind, the corporate kind) who makes money based on how much work he does (he's an equity partner). While some cases are no big deal, it's only a couple days, longer cases can be a huge hassle. Especially when it means turning down new work/not being able to meet deadlines because you're not working. For someone who doesn't make any money when they're not working (as opposed to a salaried employee who's employer's are required by law to pay them during jury duty), jury duty = lost income. Therefore, while I'd say it's ridiculous to say that the typical jury is dumb, I do think it's fair to say the typical jury is not a white-collar business person.
Furthermore, my uncle (who is a trial lawyer - i know, look at my family it's sad) generally does not like intelligent jurors because it means that they might see through holes in his case more easily and generally (in his experience) smarter jurors are usually rather good at convincing the other jurors to vote along w/ them. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's how it is. So if lawyers w/out a clear-cut case don't like smart people on the jury, and people who aren't on salary don't like being on juries*, I'd say it's pretty safe to generalize the juries aren't the smartest group assembled.
Yes I'm generalizing, I know this isn't always true, and that there are definitely exceptions, that all salaried people aren't stupid, etc. etc. etc.
Who do you think benefits when businesses benefit? No one? The big giant millionaire man hell-bent on creating conspiracies to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. The people who work for that business benefit. The investors in that business benefit. As has been mentioned previously here on /., most stock of large corporations is held in pension funds, IRAs, 401(K) Plans, and from shares in mutual hunds held by individual investors. The owner/CEO of a business/corporation isn't the only one who benefits when a business/corporation does well.
/. for anyone who makes a lot of money. We have a progressive tax system in the U.S., meaning proportionally if you make more money, you pay more in taxes on the theory that it's less of a burden for the richer person to pay more to help support the poorer person. Why is it evil and conspiratorial if the government decides to give some money back to the people who are paying most of it (I think it was a stupid idea but that doesn't make it evil)
Now I'm not going to argue that Bush's tax cut was a good idea (it wasn't, IMHO) or that Bush is good for the economy (he's not, IMHO) or am I going to argue against your initial statement (that the govt should do a better job of regulating personal data). I am going to say however that you made an insightful comment (govt should do a...) and followed it up w/ crud about how it's wasting it's time trying to help the wealthy - a completely separate argument.
I get very angry at all the hatred I see on
It's not just sheer boredom. It's a social outlet. Yes I'm generalizing and stereotyping, but your average script kiddie doesn't have a normal social life/real friends. His friends are people he's met online. He can be popular and "cool" if he has cool hacks to use and scripts to run or he can write the stuff himself. It's about as arbitrary as being popular and cool for being able to run fast and catch a ball. Yet one activity is detrimental to society and the other is not. Regardless, it's (IMO) a result of these kids having the rather universal desire to be cool in some way. Maybe they're not athletic so they can't be "cool" in the jock sense but if they can be part of this leet group, then they feel cool and important.
I personally don't think it's done out of solely boredom and a desire for publicity, I think there's more to it than that. While publicity might be desired because it leads to increasing one's uber-leetness factor among other script kiddies, I don't think the desire really stems beyond that.
Again, just my $.02, no facts to this, just opinions based on my limited life experiences.
Not to be extremely harsh but the point is that the particular knowledge/education for the tech positions being outsourced is no longer enough if you live in the U.S. Become educated in a new field (I know, requires time/money) or move to an area of tech that isn't outsourced. While this aren't great options, I think it's fairly clear that these jobs aren't coming back in huge masses and that one shouldn't rely on these areas for a job.
While not a perfect analogy, it's like suppose tons of people learned how to sew a particularly difficult and well-liked pattern and then a machine comes along that can do it for cheaper. We're going to use the machine and these people will be out of work until they find something new to do. These people who have knowledge/education in this area need to find a new area even if it's totally un-related to sewing.
Yes the government should help cushion the loss of these jobs, but the solution isn't to make U.S. companies hire these people and be at a disadvantage in the global market where they compete.
If our huge multinational corporations don't make money, our country is screwed (Note, I'm from the US). They employ an insane number of AMERICAN workers at all levels. And as was mentioned earlier, if you think they're the only ones making a profit, invest in their stocks, and then you'll make a profit. Just because the CEO of a large corporation will benefit a lot more than pretty much anyone else if a corporation does well, doesn't mean that no one else benefits. I personally have some money in a ROTH IRA in what's essentially an S&P 500 fund. If Coke makes money, I make money. Not as much had I invested solely in Coca-cola but why I have reasons for not doing that (namely diversifying decreases risk).
There is one sector who is hurt very badly by the outsourcing of tech jobs. People who lose those tech jobs. And while the government should do something to cushion the blow being sent to this sector, it doesn't mean that the outsourcing isn't good for the American economy AS A WHOLE. Protectionist policies hurt the consumer, whether that consumer is a small business, a large business, or your next-door-neighbor. While there is no way that this is good for the average person who does call center work and just lost a job, perhaps it's a sign that you need to change industries. There are benefits to globalization and there are drawbacks. One of the "drawbacks" is that people with jobs that can easily be reproduced elsewhere for cheaper, lose those jobs. While obviously not everyone can easily go and switch industries, the solution is education, and allowing people to have the knowledge to work in other industries, not protectionist policies that just hurt everyone and will get the rest of the world pissed off at us.
If what he did constitutes a felony, and then he contributed to a death, he could be charged with felony murder. We have specific laws for that. Like if I rob a liquor store at gunpoint and the owner has a heart attack (and arguably might've had one anyway had I not robbed the store), I can be charged with felony murder.
However, felony murder != terrorism. We need to get away from the attitude of, what this person did was wrong, as long as he goes to jail I'm happy. He needs to be punished for a law he violated, not simply because people don't like what he did. Being hated is not a crime and being stupid is not a valid justification for calling someone a terrorist.
I usually don't have the time or energy to devote huge blocks of time to most "popular" games. Generally, I will sit down and play a game for 10 minutes at a time, or play for 5 minutes in between questions on a Problem Set. Consequently, the games I play the most are games like Yahoo's text twist. Those games can still be very addicting and played for massive amounts of time but they also have that wonderful ability to be played in 5 minute blocks.
While I have no knowledge of the particular statistics, I can only imagine that if suddenly VoIP became hugely popular and many telephone companies went bankrupt, our economy would suffer greatly. Anyone who reads /. has seen a myriad of complaints in regards to the lack of jobs that pay well available to educated people. This will only make it worse.