Full disclosure: I'm a graduate of a fairly prestigious 4-year college, and am pulling in more than enough to make ends meet. I haven't been on the receiving end of what I called a scam.
I've worked with grads from these sorts of schools. Some of them were sharp self-taught people who needed credentials. A lot more were folks who weren't that sharp but were trying to increase their earnings potential and failing because software development and web design was a lot harder than their 2-year colleges ever let on.
It's not that they explicitly promise you a good job. But watch the TV ads, look at the billboards, and you'll notice that the dream of a good white-collar job is definitely what they're selling.
I meant to say that 15% unemployment for software developers is great for Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs, and lousy for software developers, while having 2% unemployment for software developers leads to the opposite situation.
If I'm, say, a software developer, having 15% unemployment among software developers is fantastic for me.
And which is better for the overall economy? That's a tougher question, because low unemployment is easily correlated to more GDP growth but causation definitely hasn't been proven.
Thanks for your correction: that's a pretty important difference. I've often wondered at those who call very corporate-friendly policies (e.g. big bank giveaways) as "socialism" when they are in fact fascism.
Particularly the private 2-year degree mills (ITT Tech, Phoenix, DeVry, etc) - I actually wanted to check out whether her school was one of those, because those guys deserve to get sued for false advertising. The reason I dislike those schools immensely is because they basically advertise a lie: They tell working class people that if they work hard and pay them a tuition that is typically between community college rates and private university rates, they'll become one of the minority of people in the US who are white-collar workers. The reality is that less than half of their graduates get jobs in what they paid good money to learn how to do, and those that do get jobs in those fields have far less chance of advancement beyond those jobs then graduates of 4-year degree programs.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that 2% unemployment is more healthy than 15% unemployment, because it means more people are being productive, so more wealth is being created than in the society with 15% unemployment (e.g. Detroit, MI). Also, assuming the companies paying "increasingly ridiculous" salaries are reasonably sane, they will only pay those salaries if it will help them increase their revenue or reduce their costs at least as much as the cost of the salary, so there's a limit to how much they are willing to pay.
Also, if you go from the assumption that a society in which people have good salaries, a good amount of time off, good health care, and so forth is better than a society where people work 60 or 70 hours a week for minimum wage and no benefits, you prefer the 2% unemployed society to the 15% unemployed society. It's a question of whether you think that people exist for the economy, or the economy exists for the people.
This latest effort starts with the rise of open source software, to the point where the lay public often thinks of open source software as a Good Thing (thanks in particular to Mozilla's work, which is probably the most consumer-visible OSS project out there). This leads to such convoluted efforts as Office Open XML, which conveniently sounds like a format that just might have come out of, say, the OpenOffice project.
Trouble is that these folks who don't stop for red lights are at least equally likely to eliminate someone other than themselves from the gene pool. One idiot runs a red light, and some Nobel-winning physicist might pay the price.
The day came that they decided I wasn't necessary.
And this is why most technologists will resist doing the work necessary to maintain order should they get hit by a bus: it also makes them liable to be fired and replaced with someone cheaper.
For the lawsuit, all you'd need to prove is that they willfully misrepresented what they sold you. The damages would be the difference between what you paid and what you would have paid had you known the real terms of the agreement.
In other words, you don't need to wait for DRM to fail to bring this sort of action.
It may not be induce criminal liability, but I'd think it's grounds for a lawsuit (probably a class-action in this case): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misrepresentation (probably fraudulent misrepresentation)
The misrepresentation in this case is that the product is sold as the legal right to listen to the electronic recording of a piece of music along with a copy of said electronic recording, and failed to properly represent the clause "until we decide to take it away without notice of any kind". Alternate legal arguments for damages might be a violation of the implied warranty of merchantability (that is that the product is at least approximately what the seller said it was).
Basically, the idea that party A can sell a widget to party B, and then take it away from party A at any time without notice either in the original purchase agreement or at the time of retaking, is pretty obviously something that should land you in legal hot water.
NYCL or the EFF could probably have a field day with this sort of thing. I, on the other hand, am not a lawyer, and this does not constitute legal advice.
Yeah, you're right. You'd think I'd know that given how much hiking I've done in the Appalachians (mostly in New England, but also some in N Carolina).
The other thing authors like Michael Pollan have been busy pointing out is that we don't know all the micro-nutrients in whole foods, so we actually can't know whether the contents of, say, organic lettuce, actually matches the contents of a conventionally grown lettuce because we simply don't know what all to look for. And those micro-nutrients make a big difference, as well as making the food taste much better.
I'm not a signatory of that treaty: I'm a non-government actor engaging in joke terrorism*. And to answer your question, the spammer who read it would die laughing, thus helping to solve the problem.
* Dear NSA: yes, I'm just kidding around, and am actually a pacifist.
Having lived near Boston, and the creator of a simple formula to describe traffic in New England (The average rudeness of drivers is inversely proportional to your distance from Boston), way more than 40% drive like jerks once you get within Rt 128.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey now, don't leave out anti-hippie backlash and anti-Mexican racism, both of which are major reasons why pot is illegal while tobacco is fine.
Full disclosure: I'm a graduate of a fairly prestigious 4-year college, and am pulling in more than enough to make ends meet. I haven't been on the receiving end of what I called a scam.
I've worked with grads from these sorts of schools. Some of them were sharp self-taught people who needed credentials. A lot more were folks who weren't that sharp but were trying to increase their earnings potential and failing because software development and web design was a lot harder than their 2-year colleges ever let on.
It's not that they explicitly promise you a good job. But watch the TV ads, look at the billboards, and you'll notice that the dream of a good white-collar job is definitely what they're selling.
Typing too quickly, is your answer.
I meant to say that 15% unemployment for software developers is great for Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs, and lousy for software developers, while having 2% unemployment for software developers leads to the opposite situation.
Better for whom?
If I'm, say, a software developer, having 15% unemployment among software developers is fantastic for me.
And which is better for the overall economy? That's a tougher question, because low unemployment is easily correlated to more GDP growth but causation definitely hasn't been proven.
Well, in that case I pity the foo' who can't spell right.
Thanks for your correction: that's a pretty important difference. I've often wondered at those who call very corporate-friendly policies (e.g. big bank giveaways) as "socialism" when they are in fact fascism.
Particularly the private 2-year degree mills (ITT Tech, Phoenix, DeVry, etc) - I actually wanted to check out whether her school was one of those, because those guys deserve to get sued for false advertising. The reason I dislike those schools immensely is because they basically advertise a lie: They tell working class people that if they work hard and pay them a tuition that is typically between community college rates and private university rates, they'll become one of the minority of people in the US who are white-collar workers. The reality is that less than half of their graduates get jobs in what they paid good money to learn how to do, and those that do get jobs in those fields have far less chance of advancement beyond those jobs then graduates of 4-year degree programs.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that 2% unemployment is more healthy than 15% unemployment, because it means more people are being productive, so more wealth is being created than in the society with 15% unemployment (e.g. Detroit, MI). Also, assuming the companies paying "increasingly ridiculous" salaries are reasonably sane, they will only pay those salaries if it will help them increase their revenue or reduce their costs at least as much as the cost of the salary, so there's a limit to how much they are willing to pay.
Also, if you go from the assumption that a society in which people have good salaries, a good amount of time off, good health care, and so forth is better than a society where people work 60 or 70 hours a week for minimum wage and no benefits, you prefer the 2% unemployed society to the 15% unemployed society. It's a question of whether you think that people exist for the economy, or the economy exists for the people.
free spirits => free beer => free speech?
"The Shack". Otherwise they'd have to pay big licensing fees to Shaquille O'Neil.
This latest effort starts with the rise of open source software, to the point where the lay public often thinks of open source software as a Good Thing (thanks in particular to Mozilla's work, which is probably the most consumer-visible OSS project out there). This leads to such convoluted efforts as Office Open XML, which conveniently sounds like a format that just might have come out of, say, the OpenOffice project.
Trouble is that these folks who don't stop for red lights are at least equally likely to eliminate someone other than themselves from the gene pool. One idiot runs a red light, and some Nobel-winning physicist might pay the price.
The day came that they decided I wasn't necessary.
And this is why most technologists will resist doing the work necessary to maintain order should they get hit by a bus: it also makes them liable to be fired and replaced with someone cheaper.
For the lawsuit, all you'd need to prove is that they willfully misrepresented what they sold you. The damages would be the difference between what you paid and what you would have paid had you known the real terms of the agreement.
In other words, you don't need to wait for DRM to fail to bring this sort of action.
They can also control the size of government in California, where a lot of this "starve the beast" nonsense started.
Micronutrients aren't some woogidy-magical idea, they're well accepted science:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronutrients
The debate is more on whether those matter to humans, have we figured them all out, and so forth.
Please spare NYCL, Lawrence Lessig, and any others fighting the good fight, please.
It may not be induce criminal liability, but I'd think it's grounds for a lawsuit (probably a class-action in this case):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misrepresentation (probably fraudulent misrepresentation)
The misrepresentation in this case is that the product is sold as the legal right to listen to the electronic recording of a piece of music along with a copy of said electronic recording, and failed to properly represent the clause "until we decide to take it away without notice of any kind". Alternate legal arguments for damages might be a violation of the implied warranty of merchantability (that is that the product is at least approximately what the seller said it was).
Basically, the idea that party A can sell a widget to party B, and then take it away from party A at any time without notice either in the original purchase agreement or at the time of retaking, is pretty obviously something that should land you in legal hot water.
NYCL or the EFF could probably have a field day with this sort of thing. I, on the other hand, am not a lawyer, and this does not constitute legal advice.
Come on, man. Haven't you seen the Gandhi 2 trailer?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfvLcozLwtE
Yeah, you're right. You'd think I'd know that given how much hiking I've done in the Appalachians (mostly in New England, but also some in N Carolina).
Has anyone checked to see if he's hiking in the Applachians?
(fixed spelling)
Well, given that he's a computer geek, I think it's safe to say he's not spending time with his Argentinian mistress.
The other thing authors like Michael Pollan have been busy pointing out is that we don't know all the micro-nutrients in whole foods, so we actually can't know whether the contents of, say, organic lettuce, actually matches the contents of a conventionally grown lettuce because we simply don't know what all to look for. And those micro-nutrients make a big difference, as well as making the food taste much better.
I think you missed a few:
(X) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical.
I'm not a signatory of that treaty: I'm a non-government actor engaging in joke terrorism*. And to answer your question, the spammer who read it would die laughing, thus helping to solve the problem.
* Dear NSA: yes, I'm just kidding around, and am actually a pacifist.
Having lived near Boston, and the creator of a simple formula to describe traffic in New England (The average rudeness of drivers is inversely proportional to your distance from Boston), way more than 40% drive like jerks once you get within Rt 128.