The downside to this approach is that lots of people simply are dumb. Should they be unable to retire as a result of being born of average or below-average intelligence? Keep in mind that half of the people alive fit this description.
Retirement in general needs a lot more regulation - and better regulation (which means being upfront about what it really costs and not promising something the government can't deliver). Either that, or we need to do something to make the elderly more employable.
Back in the Enron days it was typical that companies would match 401k contributions with company stock, and employees were not free to reallocate this money until they neared retirement age.
So, that means that your employer ended up being about half of your 401k by default if you didn't buy a dime of their stock voluntarily.
In the case of Enron the value of the stock went up with the bubble so that what started out as half of the value of account could easily become 90%+ of it.
Since Enron was an accounting scam, the reality is that most of that 401k value never really existed at all except on paper. The day of the collapse was just the day that everybody realized it.
Part of me thinks that retirement benefits in general need a lot more regulation. Companies promise pensions/etc to employees, but from time to time they fail to deliver on that promise. The employee can't take back the years of faithful service - companies shouldn't be able to go back on their end of the bargain. Companies shouldn't be allowed to manage pension funds - they should have to put it in a fund that the employee has complete control over. The valuation of these contributions should also be regulated, so that a company can't promise an employee 50% of their salary during retirement if they only are putting in enough money to realistically cover 20%.
That's pretty much how I work internally as well. I'm trying to push more towards board-like for general collaboration and will be making an emphasis on this on a project I'm leading next year (we'll see how it goes).
Email makes it easy to share info with lots of people, the problem is that this feature becomes email's own worst enemy. Once people get copied into an email thread it is hard to extricate them without getting stale replies back into the thread.
Also, when people say that email is a problem, I think the underlying issue is a lack of empowered workers. The reason 50 people get copied into email chains is because everybody wants the right to veto every decision and that means that if you don't copy somebody in on a decision early you risk churn after a decision is made. In a consensus-based world where any of 50 people can put a halt to a plan you need to copy 50 people on everything.
Now, if the company could just appoint 5 people and trust them to make decisions and involve others as they see fit, then you'd have a lot less of this sort of thing.
1. The two GSM carriers don't have deals that are nearly as nice. The non-GSM carriers are much more limited for device support.
2. No family plans - where you have a shared pool of minutes between multiple phones.
3. Few plans offer unlimited text messaging.
I am buying a family plan with 4 phones, two of which use data, and two of which use an incredible volume of text messages (teenagers).
The best deal I can see is T-Mobile, requiring spending $60/mo on one data plan, $50/mo on the other, $30 on one phone that isn't text-heavy, and $50 on the other which is. That adds up to $190/month, which is more than I'm spending now under contract (though it does give us more minutes that we are using now, not that we need them). So, I'd spend more per month, and I have to pay unsubsidized rates on the hardware.
I could go with a CDMA carrier like Virgin Mobile, but then you basically have to buy the phone from them and are locked in anyway. Actually, with GSM it isn't much better if you want 3G+ data - there are only two carriers in the US and phones only work on one or the other.
The only way to really make mobile service competitive is to regulate standards such that things really are interoperable, and I'd go a step further and require carriers to divest themselves of their towers and then the towers provide bandwidth to any carrier at the same cost for all.
China finds plenty to do within its own borders. They are just constrained by their means at the moment from stepping outside. The Chinese government also finds its own laws somewhat less restricting than the US, and hence has no need to circumvent them.
Hey, I'll be the first to denounce the things you mention in the US, however most of the ground the US government is covering has been passed over long ago by those in power in China.
My employer retains emails for a few months. They auto-delete anything in a few folders, but you're expected to delete everything else manually and the quotas are incredibly low. PST files are also scanned for. Official policy is that if you need something longer it should be re-typed as a memo or document and issued in that manner.
The reality is that everybody and their uncle ignores the policy and works around it in various ways.
Ugh. So now I have to interpret speech recognition bugs as well?
When somebody sends me a problem in email they have to take the time to organize their thoughts, then they realize they don't have enough info on something and they spend an hour researching it or whatever before finishing their email and they hit send. Or, if they don't do this I can skim their email, and reply asking them for that info.
When they reach out to me via phone, I get to sit and listen to them ramble on incoherently while they go through the same process, except they are wasting both of our time the whole time.
IM tends to fall somewhere in-between - I get interrupted while the other side gets their act together, but it is still easier to multitask then listening to somebody else breathe into a telephone and type and mumble.
By all means use more advanced collaboration software like discussions forums or CRM or whatever when appropriate, but please don't make me sit on the phone all day.
Yup, at work I get a chuckle. One day you get an email from the legal/records-retention/data-storage types that talk about all the problems that electronic communications causes and that you should try to communicate more face-to-face since that is more effective anyway.
Then the next day you get an email from the travel/expense/collaboration types that talk about all the costs associated with in-person meetings and that we have all these electronic communication tools that people should better utilize since it is so much cheaper and just as effective if not more.
But, what do those packages actually do? How many "meta-packages" exist that create differences between the two installs beyond simply installing the traditional gnome vs kde upstream packages?
I guess the concern I've heard raised was that the quality level in kubuntu in general wasn't up to the same standards as gnome-based ubuntu. However, I've heard that from ubuntu users and I can't really vouch for it firsthand. Perhaps the situation has improved recently.
Keep in mind that even if Android sells as many tablets as Apple did this year, and Apple doesn't sell a single tablet, then Apple will have at least 50% market share. Right now they're probably at 95%+ - and those tablets won't magically disappear.
Going from 0-33% in one year is a big improvement - it would require at least matching Apple's sales next year. If they do that and have a lower price point then chances are they'll have a similar experience as with the phone market - starting out at 0% and being poised to capture 50%+ in 2 years. The main difference from the phone market is the absence of any other significant players at the moment.
I think Google's main problem right now is trying to compete at the same price point as Apple. For whatever reason people are willing to pay a premium for Apple, but I can't see a newcomer easily getting in on that kind of action. When Apple sells a laptop for $1200 that you can get for $800 from anybody else it results in them having 10% market share. Anybody else trying to do the same would end up at 0% market share. For whatever reason Apple is perceived as the "easy to use" option - having used both I can't really see how either is much easier - just different (plus, I just find the color scheme in iOS ugly, but that is aesthetics).
I've been using them for years and like them. Their DNS service is very good for something that is free (for domains hosted there) - they support dynamic DNS and you can edit just about all the zone records.
Most major distros have a bias towards one desktop environment or another. You can often install a different one, but you may find varying levels of support for your configuration. A distro that is desktop-agnostic has the advantage that if any application doesn't have a desktop icon show up for any desktop environment it is a bug, and not a "you aren't using it right."
Running a text editor or terminal from one DE in another is pretty trivial. I think the issue is more around trying to run KDE or a more exotic DE/WM on something like Ubuntu. Sure, there is Kubuntu, but that sort-of illustrates the point - it is painful enough that they more-or-less forked the distro internally just to do it.
The rest of the world uses computers simply as a tool, not as a hobby.
The rest of the world uses windows or OS X.
I find it odd that FOSS advocates are willing to reject much of what they find useful with desktop enviornments to make them more appealing to people who will likely never use them...
At this point, NASA shouldn't be spending a single dime on launch technology. Any such spending only detracts from their scientific goals.
Well, there is no harm in them spending money on true blue-sky research - the sort of thing that is less likely to get done by a commercial entity. Of course, you can do that with small rockets/etc - you don't need to build huge rockets to test a concept. If they figure out how to get payloads to orbit for $1M or something then maybe they can build a proof-of-concept, though at that price I suspect that private industry would be more than willing to test it out unproven.
However, I agree that there is no value in having NASA churn out current-technology launch vehicles - it is far cheaper to do that elsewhere.
Was signing the declaration of independence an act of civil disobedience? And yet, the founders didn't turn themselves in to be hung.
I don't think that one has to turn themselves in to commit civil disobedience. Certainly punishment is a likely consequence of civil disobedience, but it is not necessary for it to be such.
Everything you said is of course true, but I think you're both missing the point. Any company given the power of the original AT&T would be just as bad. There are no such things as "good companies" or "bad companies" - just good and bad people. About the only time you'll see a big company run by the former is if they are the founder, or their hand-picked replacement.
I could care less - as long as they sell it to somebody who doesn't already operate a large mobile network in the US. They'd have every incentive to continue to improve the operation, and DT has every incentive to make TMo look good for sale.
If you think the handling of OWS was bad just look at Kent State or civil rights protests out of the 60s. People with power invariably use it to try to control everybody else, usually with the full support of the average homeowner...
95% of people don't own guns. If they decide to kick down doors they aren't going to send one sheriff to each house that has one. They'll send a letter and some substantial portion of the gun-owning population will simply comply. Then when push comes to shove they'll pick one town at a time and do the raids.
If you're living alone in defiance of the law then chances are nobody will notice them coming until they kick down your door at 2AM and you have guns in your face before you can do much about it.
If you live in some kind of armed compound then they'll simply surround you and you're stuck defending a fixed position - always a losing proposition.
About the only way you're going to hold out is if you go on the run and form some kind of insurgency. Chances are you'll have trouble winning hearts and minds there as the average suburbanite is going to call the police when they see you unloading RPGs from your truck. The us-vs-them mentality probably won't form in the US the way it did in Iraq.
As long as people still get cable TV and are able to afford music on itunes they'll have better things to do than fight in somebody else's civil war.
Now, if SOPA leads to the loss of TV or $5 songs on iTunes, you might very well see a revolution. I doubt the powers that be would let it come to that.
...the Supreme Court is the recognized final authority on what is constitutional and what isn't.
Sort of. In theory they're also the final authority over whether 5+3=9 since if you get sued and there is a disagreement over the math of the settlement they're the last appeal you get. However, it seems a bit silly to say that their ruling in itself makes a mathematical statement true or untrue. They're the judges of constitutionality, but the fact of constitutionality is what it is regardless of what any individual believes.
Also - they're just have one of many roles in the system of checks and balances. I'd say that the executive branch has more power in reality to determine whether something is constitutional, since they're the ones with the guns. They can choose to not uphold a constitutional law, or just quietly break a constitutional one.
Ultimately the whole system only works if everybody is aligned on the basic principles of democracy and liberty. If you have that then the rest is just process. If you don't have that, then the process really is just about how people get oppressed.
It turns out that most (although perhaps not all) employees job requirements "fit" with the contractor IT model.
Sounds great, boss. You tell me what you want done and I'll go ahead and write up a task order and give you a quote. Oh, you need it done a few days sooner - no problem, I'll go ahead and write up a change order for you and the deadline will be measured from whenever you get me the new PO.
Oh, your boss asked for a couple of words to be tweaked? No issue at all - I'll get another change order out on that right away.
You want somebody at your beck and call - hire an employee. You want to pay fee for service, great, I'm happy to be your contractor.
One danger to watch for, courtesy of my company's policy - I can put my iPhone on the network, but it requires allowing them to modify (and wipe!) the device whenever they like, including any backups.
That's assuming the API does what they think it does. Considering that the source code to half of the smartphones out there is available to everybody, there are no guarantees there.
Gentoo is a bit unique in this regard. Gentoo tends to distribute source tarballs unmodified, and does any patching on the user's machine. That allows it to operate under more restrictive licenses. Then, if there is no license at all then we can use mirror or fetch restricting. The former prevents the file from being mirrored so that the user gets it straight from upstream. If upstream puts it behind some kind of click-to-agree page then it uses fetch restricting, which means the user is told where to go and what to download and where to put it. Gentoo still checks the hash to make sure the user gets the right thing.
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The downside to this approach is that lots of people simply are dumb. Should they be unable to retire as a result of being born of average or below-average intelligence? Keep in mind that half of the people alive fit this description.
Retirement in general needs a lot more regulation - and better regulation (which means being upfront about what it really costs and not promising something the government can't deliver). Either that, or we need to do something to make the elderly more employable.
Back in the Enron days it was typical that companies would match 401k contributions with company stock, and employees were not free to reallocate this money until they neared retirement age.
So, that means that your employer ended up being about half of your 401k by default if you didn't buy a dime of their stock voluntarily.
In the case of Enron the value of the stock went up with the bubble so that what started out as half of the value of account could easily become 90%+ of it.
Since Enron was an accounting scam, the reality is that most of that 401k value never really existed at all except on paper. The day of the collapse was just the day that everybody realized it.
Part of me thinks that retirement benefits in general need a lot more regulation. Companies promise pensions/etc to employees, but from time to time they fail to deliver on that promise. The employee can't take back the years of faithful service - companies shouldn't be able to go back on their end of the bargain. Companies shouldn't be allowed to manage pension funds - they should have to put it in a fund that the employee has complete control over. The valuation of these contributions should also be regulated, so that a company can't promise an employee 50% of their salary during retirement if they only are putting in enough money to realistically cover 20%.
That's pretty much how I work internally as well. I'm trying to push more towards board-like for general collaboration and will be making an emphasis on this on a project I'm leading next year (we'll see how it goes).
Email makes it easy to share info with lots of people, the problem is that this feature becomes email's own worst enemy. Once people get copied into an email thread it is hard to extricate them without getting stale replies back into the thread.
Also, when people say that email is a problem, I think the underlying issue is a lack of empowered workers. The reason 50 people get copied into email chains is because everybody wants the right to veto every decision and that means that if you don't copy somebody in on a decision early you risk churn after a decision is made. In a consensus-based world where any of 50 people can put a halt to a plan you need to copy 50 people on everything.
Now, if the company could just appoint 5 people and trust them to make decisions and involve others as they see fit, then you'd have a lot less of this sort of thing.
Some issues with pre-paid:
1. The two GSM carriers don't have deals that are nearly as nice. The non-GSM carriers are much more limited for device support.
2. No family plans - where you have a shared pool of minutes between multiple phones.
3. Few plans offer unlimited text messaging.
I am buying a family plan with 4 phones, two of which use data, and two of which use an incredible volume of text messages (teenagers).
The best deal I can see is T-Mobile, requiring spending $60/mo on one data plan, $50/mo on the other, $30 on one phone that isn't text-heavy, and $50 on the other which is. That adds up to $190/month, which is more than I'm spending now under contract (though it does give us more minutes that we are using now, not that we need them). So, I'd spend more per month, and I have to pay unsubsidized rates on the hardware.
I could go with a CDMA carrier like Virgin Mobile, but then you basically have to buy the phone from them and are locked in anyway. Actually, with GSM it isn't much better if you want 3G+ data - there are only two carriers in the US and phones only work on one or the other.
The only way to really make mobile service competitive is to regulate standards such that things really are interoperable, and I'd go a step further and require carriers to divest themselves of their towers and then the towers provide bandwidth to any carrier at the same cost for all.
China finds plenty to do within its own borders. They are just constrained by their means at the moment from stepping outside. The Chinese government also finds its own laws somewhat less restricting than the US, and hence has no need to circumvent them.
Hey, I'll be the first to denounce the things you mention in the US, however most of the ground the US government is covering has been passed over long ago by those in power in China.
My employer retains emails for a few months. They auto-delete anything in a few folders, but you're expected to delete everything else manually and the quotas are incredibly low. PST files are also scanned for. Official policy is that if you need something longer it should be re-typed as a memo or document and issued in that manner.
The reality is that everybody and their uncle ignores the policy and works around it in various ways.
Ugh. So now I have to interpret speech recognition bugs as well?
When somebody sends me a problem in email they have to take the time to organize their thoughts, then they realize they don't have enough info on something and they spend an hour researching it or whatever before finishing their email and they hit send. Or, if they don't do this I can skim their email, and reply asking them for that info.
When they reach out to me via phone, I get to sit and listen to them ramble on incoherently while they go through the same process, except they are wasting both of our time the whole time.
IM tends to fall somewhere in-between - I get interrupted while the other side gets their act together, but it is still easier to multitask then listening to somebody else breathe into a telephone and type and mumble.
By all means use more advanced collaboration software like discussions forums or CRM or whatever when appropriate, but please don't make me sit on the phone all day.
Yup, at work I get a chuckle. One day you get an email from the legal/records-retention/data-storage types that talk about all the problems that electronic communications causes and that you should try to communicate more face-to-face since that is more effective anyway.
Then the next day you get an email from the travel/expense/collaboration types that talk about all the costs associated with in-person meetings and that we have all these electronic communication tools that people should better utilize since it is so much cheaper and just as effective if not more.
Ah, to work in a large company...
But, what do those packages actually do? How many "meta-packages" exist that create differences between the two installs beyond simply installing the traditional gnome vs kde upstream packages?
I guess the concern I've heard raised was that the quality level in kubuntu in general wasn't up to the same standards as gnome-based ubuntu. However, I've heard that from ubuntu users and I can't really vouch for it firsthand. Perhaps the situation has improved recently.
In any case, thanks for the info. :)
Keep in mind that even if Android sells as many tablets as Apple did this year, and Apple doesn't sell a single tablet, then Apple will have at least 50% market share. Right now they're probably at 95%+ - and those tablets won't magically disappear.
Going from 0-33% in one year is a big improvement - it would require at least matching Apple's sales next year. If they do that and have a lower price point then chances are they'll have a similar experience as with the phone market - starting out at 0% and being poised to capture 50%+ in 2 years. The main difference from the phone market is the absence of any other significant players at the moment.
I think Google's main problem right now is trying to compete at the same price point as Apple. For whatever reason people are willing to pay a premium for Apple, but I can't see a newcomer easily getting in on that kind of action. When Apple sells a laptop for $1200 that you can get for $800 from anybody else it results in them having 10% market share. Anybody else trying to do the same would end up at 0% market share. For whatever reason Apple is perceived as the "easy to use" option - having used both I can't really see how either is much easier - just different (plus, I just find the color scheme in iOS ugly, but that is aesthetics).
I've been using them for years and like them. Their DNS service is very good for something that is free (for domains hosted there) - they support dynamic DNS and you can edit just about all the zone records.
Most major distros have a bias towards one desktop environment or another. You can often install a different one, but you may find varying levels of support for your configuration. A distro that is desktop-agnostic has the advantage that if any application doesn't have a desktop icon show up for any desktop environment it is a bug, and not a "you aren't using it right."
Running a text editor or terminal from one DE in another is pretty trivial. I think the issue is more around trying to run KDE or a more exotic DE/WM on something like Ubuntu. Sure, there is Kubuntu, but that sort-of illustrates the point - it is painful enough that they more-or-less forked the distro internally just to do it.
Ugh - you can't get rid of the search field? What is the point in having a search button if the interface it triggers is displayed 24x7 anyway?
Hopefully cyanogenmod will clean that up...
The rest of the world uses computers simply as a tool, not as a hobby.
The rest of the world uses windows or OS X.
I find it odd that FOSS advocates are willing to reject much of what they find useful with desktop enviornments to make them more appealing to people who will likely never use them...
At this point, NASA shouldn't be spending a single dime on launch technology. Any such spending only detracts from their scientific goals.
Well, there is no harm in them spending money on true blue-sky research - the sort of thing that is less likely to get done by a commercial entity. Of course, you can do that with small rockets/etc - you don't need to build huge rockets to test a concept. If they figure out how to get payloads to orbit for $1M or something then maybe they can build a proof-of-concept, though at that price I suspect that private industry would be more than willing to test it out unproven.
However, I agree that there is no value in having NASA churn out current-technology launch vehicles - it is far cheaper to do that elsewhere.
Was signing the declaration of independence an act of civil disobedience? And yet, the founders didn't turn themselves in to be hung.
I don't think that one has to turn themselves in to commit civil disobedience. Certainly punishment is a likely consequence of civil disobedience, but it is not necessary for it to be such.
Everything you said is of course true, but I think you're both missing the point. Any company given the power of the original AT&T would be just as bad. There are no such things as "good companies" or "bad companies" - just good and bad people. About the only time you'll see a big company run by the former is if they are the founder, or their hand-picked replacement.
I could care less - as long as they sell it to somebody who doesn't already operate a large mobile network in the US. They'd have every incentive to continue to improve the operation, and DT has every incentive to make TMo look good for sale.
If you think the handling of OWS was bad just look at Kent State or civil rights protests out of the 60s. People with power invariably use it to try to control everybody else, usually with the full support of the average homeowner...
95% of people don't own guns. If they decide to kick down doors they aren't going to send one sheriff to each house that has one. They'll send a letter and some substantial portion of the gun-owning population will simply comply. Then when push comes to shove they'll pick one town at a time and do the raids.
If you're living alone in defiance of the law then chances are nobody will notice them coming until they kick down your door at 2AM and you have guns in your face before you can do much about it.
If you live in some kind of armed compound then they'll simply surround you and you're stuck defending a fixed position - always a losing proposition.
About the only way you're going to hold out is if you go on the run and form some kind of insurgency. Chances are you'll have trouble winning hearts and minds there as the average suburbanite is going to call the police when they see you unloading RPGs from your truck. The us-vs-them mentality probably won't form in the US the way it did in Iraq.
As long as people still get cable TV and are able to afford music on itunes they'll have better things to do than fight in somebody else's civil war.
Now, if SOPA leads to the loss of TV or $5 songs on iTunes, you might very well see a revolution. I doubt the powers that be would let it come to that.
...the Supreme Court is the recognized final authority on what is constitutional and what isn't.
Sort of. In theory they're also the final authority over whether 5+3=9 since if you get sued and there is a disagreement over the math of the settlement they're the last appeal you get. However, it seems a bit silly to say that their ruling in itself makes a mathematical statement true or untrue. They're the judges of constitutionality, but the fact of constitutionality is what it is regardless of what any individual believes.
Also - they're just have one of many roles in the system of checks and balances. I'd say that the executive branch has more power in reality to determine whether something is constitutional, since they're the ones with the guns. They can choose to not uphold a constitutional law, or just quietly break a constitutional one.
Ultimately the whole system only works if everybody is aligned on the basic principles of democracy and liberty. If you have that then the rest is just process. If you don't have that, then the process really is just about how people get oppressed.
It turns out that most (although perhaps not all) employees job requirements "fit" with the contractor IT model.
Sounds great, boss. You tell me what you want done and I'll go ahead and write up a task order and give you a quote. Oh, you need it done a few days sooner - no problem, I'll go ahead and write up a change order for you and the deadline will be measured from whenever you get me the new PO.
Oh, your boss asked for a couple of words to be tweaked? No issue at all - I'll get another change order out on that right away.
You want somebody at your beck and call - hire an employee. You want to pay fee for service, great, I'm happy to be your contractor.
One danger to watch for, courtesy of my company's policy - I can put my iPhone on the network, but it requires allowing them to modify (and wipe!) the device whenever they like, including any backups.
That's assuming the API does what they think it does. Considering that the source code to half of the smartphones out there is available to everybody, there are no guarantees there.
Gentoo is a bit unique in this regard. Gentoo tends to distribute source tarballs unmodified, and does any patching on the user's machine. That allows it to operate under more restrictive licenses. Then, if there is no license at all then we can use mirror or fetch restricting. The former prevents the file from being mirrored so that the user gets it straight from upstream. If upstream puts it behind some kind of click-to-agree page then it uses fetch restricting, which means the user is told where to go and what to download and where to put it. Gentoo still checks the hash to make sure the user gets the right thing.
Most of the common NSAIDs are COX inhibitors. I couldn't find anything really contrasting them.
In any case, if you stuck ibuprofen in the drug I can't see how it would work any less well, aside from not causing liver toxicity.