I know for a fact that 300VDC causes involuntary muscle contraction, because I've deliberately shocked myself with it once or twice, and accidentally more times than I can count. Try it yourself sometime... crack open a disposable camera, charge up the flash, and touch the capacitor with a couple paperclips or something. You'll throw the camera across the room. I've even blacked out or lost my eyesight or something for a fraction of a second. It was kind of confusing. I just remember seeing the camera bounce off the floor...
Any bets on when the usual highly-paid "think tanks" will issue a report on how letting foreigners get their grubby little fingers into the next version of Windows is a grave threat to national security?
Since when does the FCC have jurisdiction over non-broadcast technology like cable TV? Just one more example of a government agency overstepping the bounds of its intended purpose.
Seems like a new Florida story comes out every week. If they're not tinkering with voting machines or the voter rolls, they're shuffling underperforming kids from school to school so their standardized test scores won't count toward the statewide average. Is anything in Florida on the level anymore?
Yeah. But as much as I favor gun ownership, I don't really have much taste for violence. The main purpose for owning guns is to threaten corrupt politicians and businessmen. Before I actually kill anyone, I'm going to push for independent local politicians to raise militias and enforce Federal income tax immunity.
"If you're not willing to help fix it then you shouldn't complain about it"
Definitely a problem. Why don't developers appreciate feedback from regular users? Heck, I've submitted detailled bug reports including steps to reproduce, and been told to fix it myself. Hey, assholes, I'm not learning an entire programming language just to fix a bug in your program! You're welcome for nothin'.
And even if I do know the language, it's not efficient for me to dissect an entire project and figure out the "correct" place to change its behavior. Last time I did that, it was a patch to rioutil... which was graciously rejected. At least the developers acknowledged it and made a real fix in place of my crude hack.
"More choice is always better"
Good point. The #1 reason Linux hasn't taken off on the desktop is that there's too much choice. Ever tried to distribute a binary for Linux? Good luck supporting 50 different distros. Distributing source is only marginally better; ten to one, your users won't have the libraries they need to build it.
Linux needs a desktop-oriented distro created and supported by somebody big enough to make its particular collection of libraries and utilities the de-facto standard. I was holding out hope for RedHat to achieve this, but they punted with Fedora...
It's ridiculous to suppose that the maintainer of a project would accept contributions without reviewing them and understanding what they do. Green Hills wants you to believe that good intentions are the only thing preventing people from trojaning major Open-Source projects.
Bad UIs are not a problem puculiar to OSS. Good UIs are very rare across the board. From military accounting and maintenance software, to expensive commercial point-of-sale systems, to Fuji and Kodak digital print kiosks, UIs almost universally suck.
We need a Governor to declare that, in determining whom it recognizes as its next President, his state will not count the electoral college votes of any state in which paperless verifiable electronic voting machines were used.
Similar to BMW's Z8... it's sort of like a Z3 with a M5 engine. Or at least that's the implication.
OTOH, there is absolutely no logic behind the U.S. market designations of Canon's mid-range SLR bodies. They went from the Elan, to the Elan II, to the Elan 7, to the Elan 7N.
it's one of the reasons why we have one of the best economies in the world.
By whose definition of "best?" The American working class suffers a greater disparity of incomes, and puts in more hours for less compensation and fewer benefits, than the workers of any other industrialized Western nation.
99% of shareholders don't get a paycheck from their shares
I'm not arguing that point. However, that doesn't change the fact that dividends are being paid. What you don't seem to understand is that there are two broad classes of stock: common and preferred. Common stock is what you seem to be thinking of; it conveys partial ownership of a corporation, often including voting rights, and may be bought and sold at will. But preferred stock (which normally doesn't include any kind of voting rights) is where the profits go. Preferred stock does pay dividends. In fact, the charters of most corporations specify that if they fail to pay dividends, voting control will revert to the preferred stockholders.
Common folk hold common stock; the rich hold preferred stock. This is the perpetual debt that cannot be repaid. Dividends are the primary mechanism by which the rich get richer -- at the direct expense of a corporation's infrastucture, its workers, and its customers. Many a healthy corporation has been strangled, the economy of its community shattered, by the preferred stockholders' ceaseless demand for profits. Of course, it's normally in the shareholders' best interest to keep the company alive. But then along comes a recession, the dividends stop flowing, the preferred stockholders get control, and one day they see an opportunity to liquidate their assets and put them into something that will pay dividends. So what if it means laying off 600 factory workers in a town of 3000? No skin off their backs!
Have you ever seen the bureaucratic mess that our government creates on a daily basis?
Yes. Case in point: when I was stationed at NAS Atlanta, the base accepted bids for the construction of a new guard house and gate. While nearby Army Corps of Engineers units sat idle, a private contractor took six months and two million dollars to erect what amounted to a cinder-block outhouse and an ornamental wrought-iron fence on rollerskates.
Do you know why the government hires private businesses to make things work for them?
Not because the government is inherently inefficient, as you seem to think. The problem is that it's massively entangled with profit-driven private industry. In the case of the NAS Atlanta gate, most of the contractors in the area were accustomed to getting fat military contracts and bid accordingly. Many of them are run by retired military officers with friends on the inside. Hell, the CO of my unit was also the CEO of a local construction company! (Though not the one that got the gate contract.) The same stuff goes on in Washington on a daily basis. Two words: Dick Cheney. 'Nuff said.
A private indivudual saw a need, dreamed up an idea, and got other private investors to help them build a telecom network.
And then the private individual lost control of his creation. And now something as essential as a communications network thrives on competing standards and generates enormous profits at the expense of consumers. Whereas in a non-profit-driven economy, the network would be operated by hundreds or even thousands of local telcos, all using open, standardized protocols to communicate with one another. Thank Allah the Internet was invented by the government and not some private consortium!
I can't help but point out how ignorant your argument sounds. You're making wild statements but can't back them up . ..
You're suggesting that people take on risk, but are not allowed to profit from it beyond repayment of the principal.
Nothing of the sort. The investors can profit any amount that's mutually agreed upon and supported by the market. They can charge 100% annual interest if somebody's willing to pay it. But the key thing is, they will eventually be paid back and have to reinvest the money. That does two things for the economy: first, it allows another new business to be created; and second, it allows the old business to reduce its costs, increase its wages, invest in its own infrastructure, and give back to the community.
You think the government should make these industries happen?
The government only becomes inefficient when corporations get their grubby little fingers into it. Things like municipal utilities, communications, health care... these kinds of things need to be heavily regulated by the government. Historically, deregulation and privatization has only increased costs and hurt consumers.
Government mandated redistribution of wealth didn't really work all that well for the Russians and Chinese, do you think we can pull it off any better?
People always try to equate what I'm saying with some kind of redistribution scheme. It's not. I'm not talking about seizing private corporations and arbitrarily disenfranchising their investors. I'm simply talking about regulating how investments are made. Perpetual indebtedness of corporations to their investors is not a sustainable economy. Treating investments as permanent entitlements instead of loans is the primary cause of the periodic stagnation and instability of our economy.
when an entrepreneur starts a business, who generally takes on the majority share of the risk?
The employees, the customers, and most of all, the community as a whole bear the greatest risk. They're the ones who suffer when times are hard, and get left holding the bag when the company folds. And if the company doesn't fold, the investor continues to demand a share of profits long after the initial investment is repaid. Both of these outcomes are ethical quagmires.
This is why I favor making all corporations non-profit, responsible only to the law and the community. You can still make a shitload of money investing in a non-profit. But when the investment is repaid, you have to keep reinvesting the money if you want to continue making a living by sitting on your ass. As a bonus, this will force capital back into small business. It the American dream, nigga!
Sure you can. Even if it were invested at low risk just to keep pace with inflation, a million dollars would maintain my current standard of living for over 65 years. Considering that I'm 27, that's basically forever.
And that's not even taking into account that there are cheaper places to live than Indiana. (Warmer, too...)
What a repulsively ignorant attitude. America's rich don't work; they profit from the work of others. Nobody works harder than the people who have to work two (or three) jobs just to feed their kids.
You're disgusting. But your own opinions will eventually get the best of you. Keep trying to make a living through honest work, and you and your heirs will wind up in poverty like the rest of us. Then you'll come around.
Slashdot Mirror
No. Was it a rip-off of the Dr. Who episode where they extract the latent image from a dead guy's retina?
I know for a fact that 300VDC causes involuntary muscle contraction, because I've deliberately shocked myself with it once or twice, and accidentally more times than I can count. Try it yourself sometime... crack open a disposable camera, charge up the flash, and touch the capacitor with a couple paperclips or something. You'll throw the camera across the room. I've even blacked out or lost my eyesight or something for a fraction of a second. It was kind of confusing. I just remember seeing the camera bounce off the floor...
My money's on never.
Since when does the FCC have jurisdiction over non-broadcast technology like cable TV? Just one more example of a government agency overstepping the bounds of its intended purpose.
What if it plugs a hole, but breaks something else?"
If something is that "mission critical," then the sysadmin should have plugged the hole already. Duh.
Seems like a new Florida story comes out every week. If they're not tinkering with voting machines or the voter rolls, they're shuffling underperforming kids from school to school so their standardized test scores won't count toward the statewide average. Is anything in Florida on the level anymore?
Yeah. But as much as I favor gun ownership, I don't really have much taste for violence. The main purpose for owning guns is to threaten corrupt politicians and businessmen. Before I actually kill anyone, I'm going to push for independent local politicians to raise militias and enforce Federal income tax immunity.
Definitely a problem. Why don't developers appreciate feedback from regular users? Heck, I've submitted detailled bug reports including steps to reproduce, and been told to fix it myself. Hey, assholes, I'm not learning an entire programming language just to fix a bug in your program! You're welcome for nothin'.
And even if I do know the language, it's not efficient for me to dissect an entire project and figure out the "correct" place to change its behavior. Last time I did that, it was a patch to rioutil... which was graciously rejected. At least the developers acknowledged it and made a real fix in place of my crude hack.
"More choice is always better"
Good point. The #1 reason Linux hasn't taken off on the desktop is that there's too much choice. Ever tried to distribute a binary for Linux? Good luck supporting 50 different distros. Distributing source is only marginally better; ten to one, your users won't have the libraries they need to build it.
Linux needs a desktop-oriented distro created and supported by somebody big enough to make its particular collection of libraries and utilities the de-facto standard. I was holding out hope for RedHat to achieve this, but they punted with Fedora...
PLEASE, IBM... DON'T LET IT BE MICROSOFT!!!
It's ridiculous to suppose that the maintainer of a project would accept contributions without reviewing them and understanding what they do. Green Hills wants you to believe that good intentions are the only thing preventing people from trojaning major Open-Source projects.
Well, with any luck, Bush won't renew the ban on assault weapons...
No. No, it wouldn't. And you need to get in somebody's face about that.
Eggs and shotguns. And that's all I've got to say about that.
Bad UIs are not a problem puculiar to OSS. Good UIs are very rare across the board. From military accounting and maintenance software, to expensive commercial point-of-sale systems, to Fuji and Kodak digital print kiosks, UIs almost universally suck.
Argh, that was supposed to be "paperless, non-voter-verifiable".
Hey, Arnold!
Now they can go war-sailing!
Er, I mean... peace-sailing.
Big money elects Congress. If it weren't so, regular folks from around the block would represent us at all levels of government.
OTOH, there is absolutely no logic behind the U.S. market designations of Canon's mid-range SLR bodies. They went from the Elan, to the Elan II, to the Elan 7, to the Elan 7N.
it's one of the reasons why we have one of the best economies in the world.
By whose definition of "best?" The American working class suffers a greater disparity of incomes, and puts in more hours for less compensation and fewer benefits, than the workers of any other industrialized Western nation.
99% of shareholders don't get a paycheck from their shares
I'm not arguing that point. However, that doesn't change the fact that dividends are being paid. What you don't seem to understand is that there are two broad classes of stock: common and preferred. Common stock is what you seem to be thinking of; it conveys partial ownership of a corporation, often including voting rights, and may be bought and sold at will. But preferred stock (which normally doesn't include any kind of voting rights) is where the profits go. Preferred stock does pay dividends. In fact, the charters of most corporations specify that if they fail to pay dividends, voting control will revert to the preferred stockholders.
Common folk hold common stock; the rich hold preferred stock. This is the perpetual debt that cannot be repaid. Dividends are the primary mechanism by which the rich get richer -- at the direct expense of a corporation's infrastucture, its workers, and its customers. Many a healthy corporation has been strangled, the economy of its community shattered, by the preferred stockholders' ceaseless demand for profits. Of course, it's normally in the shareholders' best interest to keep the company alive. But then along comes a recession, the dividends stop flowing, the preferred stockholders get control, and one day they see an opportunity to liquidate their assets and put them into something that will pay dividends. So what if it means laying off 600 factory workers in a town of 3000? No skin off their backs!
Have you ever seen the bureaucratic mess that our government creates on a daily basis?
Yes. Case in point: when I was stationed at NAS Atlanta, the base accepted bids for the construction of a new guard house and gate. While nearby Army Corps of Engineers units sat idle, a private contractor took six months and two million dollars to erect what amounted to a cinder-block outhouse and an ornamental wrought-iron fence on rollerskates.
Do you know why the government hires private businesses to make things work for them?
Not because the government is inherently inefficient, as you seem to think. The problem is that it's massively entangled with profit-driven private industry. In the case of the NAS Atlanta gate, most of the contractors in the area were accustomed to getting fat military contracts and bid accordingly. Many of them are run by retired military officers with friends on the inside. Hell, the CO of my unit was also the CEO of a local construction company! (Though not the one that got the gate contract.) The same stuff goes on in Washington on a daily basis. Two words: Dick Cheney. 'Nuff said.
A private indivudual saw a need, dreamed up an idea, and got other private investors to help them build a telecom network.
And then the private individual lost control of his creation. And now something as essential as a communications network thrives on competing standards and generates enormous profits at the expense of consumers. Whereas in a non-profit-driven economy, the network would be operated by hundreds or even thousands of local telcos, all using open, standardized protocols to communicate with one another. Thank Allah the Internet was invented by the government and not some private consortium!
I can't help but point out how ignorant your argument sounds. You're making wild statements but can't back them up . . .
Straight back atcha, buddy.
Screw that. The entire state needs a good Baghdading.
Nothing of the sort. The investors can profit any amount that's mutually agreed upon and supported by the market. They can charge 100% annual interest if somebody's willing to pay it. But the key thing is, they will eventually be paid back and have to reinvest the money. That does two things for the economy: first, it allows another new business to be created; and second, it allows the old business to reduce its costs, increase its wages, invest in its own infrastructure, and give back to the community.
You think the government should make these industries happen?
The government only becomes inefficient when corporations get their grubby little fingers into it. Things like municipal utilities, communications, health care... these kinds of things need to be heavily regulated by the government. Historically, deregulation and privatization has only increased costs and hurt consumers.
Government mandated redistribution of wealth didn't really work all that well for the Russians and Chinese, do you think we can pull it off any better?
People always try to equate what I'm saying with some kind of redistribution scheme. It's not. I'm not talking about seizing private corporations and arbitrarily disenfranchising their investors. I'm simply talking about regulating how investments are made. Perpetual indebtedness of corporations to their investors is not a sustainable economy. Treating investments as permanent entitlements instead of loans is the primary cause of the periodic stagnation and instability of our economy.
The employees, the customers, and most of all, the community as a whole bear the greatest risk. They're the ones who suffer when times are hard, and get left holding the bag when the company folds. And if the company doesn't fold, the investor continues to demand a share of profits long after the initial investment is repaid. Both of these outcomes are ethical quagmires.
This is why I favor making all corporations non-profit, responsible only to the law and the community. You can still make a shitload of money investing in a non-profit. But when the investment is repaid, you have to keep reinvesting the money if you want to continue making a living by sitting on your ass. As a bonus, this will force capital back into small business. It the American dream, nigga!
And that's not even taking into account that there are cheaper places to live than Indiana. (Warmer, too...)
AMERICA'S RICH: "Ahahahahahahaha!"
You're disgusting. But your own opinions will eventually get the best of you. Keep trying to make a living through honest work, and you and your heirs will wind up in poverty like the rest of us. Then you'll come around.
And you will join us in slaughtering the rich...