because most people can't afford to keep cars of that age on the road at all
If we assume the average new car is $20,000 today, it works out to close to $450/month over four years. I don't know too many people with older cars that are having to spend anywhere near that much on maintenance.
Yeah, we get the idea, but the problem is that they need a lot more Daraprim for testing than a dozen patients could provide. Also, finding a doctor willing to risk his license and potential jail time to write the replacement scripts might be problematic.
There's no such thing as "exclusive rights" on a drug that's off patent.
Yeah, there is, in the U.S. at least. The FDA's Unapproved Drug Initiative, among other things, grants pharmaceutical manufacturers the exclusive right to sell the drugs they test under the program. It's the reason that colchicine, which had been around for hundreds of years and was cheap and common prior to the program, is no longer available as a generic. Another screwed-up situation is that of albuterol, which was also cheap and widely available. In that case, mandated changes to the drug's delivery system to remove CFCs (even though using CFCs was otherwise legal in this application) allowed manufacturers to patent new delivery systems, and albuterol is no longer available as a generic even though the drug itself is not patented.
In both cases, it was administrative action by the FDA that was solely responsible for forcing drastically increased drug prices on people.
And bars on the windows if you're already going to that much trouble. Rose bushes immediately underneath the windows are a nice touch too. It's amazing to see so many houses that are built with full-length windows on either side of the front door nowadays. You might as well not even lock your door if you have those.
I'm a concealed weapons permit instructor. I'm all in favor of defending your life, and firearms are the best tools for that. But don't ever think that it's a good outcome. Killing an intruder is a better outcome than being killed by one, but it's still very bad.
Very wise post, and as a CCW holder myself I couldn't agree more. There's an old saying, "every bullet that leaves your gun has a lawyer attached to it". Except for range time, of course, which anyone that carries should be getting plenty of.
FTA: Rogers said, "I don't think we have fundamentally destroyed the public's trust. Some feel that way, but we are accountable to the citizens of the nation, and the nation is counting on us. The nation needs the insights we generate and our computer expertise."
No, you're not accountable to the citizens of the nation, Mr. Rogers. If you were, many of you would be in jail right now. Was James Clapper "held accountable" for the felony crime of lying to Congress?
Once you understand that you're not above the law, and once you truly become accountable to those you ostensibly "serve", then the cynicism will die down. Until then, you're continuing to reinforce that cynicism on your own by your actions, your attempts to hide them, and your willingness to lie about them. You have no one else to blame for it other than yourself.
It's not just a dodge to make citizens feel like corporations are paying their fair share, as it is in the US.
Corporate taxes in general get rolled into the purchase price of the item. You and I are de facto paying the taxes, regardless of what the legalities are, and the same is true for any other taxes or fees that are assessed prior to the sale of the finished item to the ultimate customer.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.
Patent law (in the U.S. anyway) covers more than what you might believe.
No, the cases were usually hand-made by either the owner or whoever they bought the board from. There were only a couple hundred of the Apple Is made, so while it was an important machine historically, it wasn't that instrumental to the company's success. Mike Markkula probably had more to do with the early success of Apple than either Woz or Jobs. Woz provided the technical know-how, Jobs was the salesman, but Markkula wrote the checks and provided the business knowledge.
If anything, the only open question would be is if Jobs had any role in the case design of the Apple I or II, though they weren't so fabulous that credit would really matter...
The Apple I was a bare board, with no case or keyboard, and only half of a power supply.
Yes, Win95 offered fully preemptive multitasking and a private address space per process for 32-bit programs. 16-bit software was multitasked cooperatively under 95, since all 16-bit programs shared a single address space and the 16-bit API code was not reentrant.
Well, the customer base at Fashion Square Mall (also here in Orlando) is extremely thin.
Florida and Fashion Square aren't anywhere near comparable, though. Florida Mall is clearly visible to visiting tourists from 528, and is quite easy to get to. To get to Fashion Square Mall from the airport, you have to drive north on Semoran for a few miles through some increasingly rough parts of town, then west on Colonial for another mile or two, assuming you even know the mall is there to begin with. If you're coming down Colonial from the west off of I-4, you run a good chance of becoming suicidal because of the traffic. For about 10 years, I lived just north of MCO, and even from there, Florida Mall was still my first choice - it's a better mall, and it was easier to get there than any of the others.
In short, Florida Mall and Mall of Millennia are doing well because of location, location, location. Fashion Square doesn't have that luxury, and a hotel isn't going to change that or the fact that it's in a declining part of town.
Yup, and I also remember having to have Trumpet Winsock to get connected at all. Fun times playing with the configuration to get it to handshake with the terminal adapter and get a SLIP/PPP session started.
Before that, if an application or a desktop accessory didn't use WaitNextEvent(), the entire system ground to a halt, requiring a hardware reset.
Win 3.x was pretty much the same way - it used cooperative multitasking just like the Mac, and if you took too long processing a given message you could lock your system right up. Two of the biggest things that Win95 brought to the table (that NT already had) were true preemptive multitasking and a per-process message queue, so if you still managed to be sloppy with your message handling, it just locked up that process instead of the whole machine.
The problem was plug and play and under DOS. Each manufacturer had their own proprietary PnP configuration utility and they were often mutually exclusive.
The *real* fun under later versions of DOS was playing the equivalent of Tetris trying to get as much crap in the UMA/HMA as you could so you had enough conventional memory left to do something useful.
They will jerk you around forever. T-mobile consistently makes "errors" in billing backed with totally untrained staff that allows the company not be he held liable. You will receive a forever circle jerk from them trying to fix their billing "errors".
Big time. It took forever to A.) get them to recognize that I'd returned a Sony Experia, B.) stop billing me for it, and C.) return the money they'd already improperly collected for it. I had the proof that they'd received the returned phone *and* the email from them stating as such, yet each rep would attempt to put me through the 2-week procedure to verify the phone had been returned. I didn't see any real action on it until I told them that if it wasn't fixed before my next billing date, I was going to stop dealing with them and let the state attorney general and the FTC handle it. They were already on the FTC's shit list for cramming just last year.
On top of that, their coverage maps are "wildly optimistic" at best, and out and out fraudulent IMO. I can reliably get dropped calls *every day* on the way to and from work, in the same places on two different major highways.
Frankly I loved all the computers of the late 70s early 80s.
Yeah, me too. All of them were very distinctive, with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. Compatibility? We don' need no steenkin' compatibility!
I don't think the relationship should be linear - 2.5x the work for 2.5x the hours..
I think it should be more myself, which is why I said "at least 2.5x". That's a starting point - under that, no one's going to be interested in even talking to you about that kind of gig.
If it really is, the team that "gives their all" should be getting more than "attaboys" in return.
This is the real problem. Employment is supposed to be a business transaction involving an exchange of value between equal partners. If you're taking all my time, you're either going to compensate me fairly for what I've given, or you're going to have to find some other sucker to fleece. I had this conversation with my boss a few months back - she was chastising me for not putting in 60-hour weeks like some of the other folks, and I explained that when we agreed on a compensation package, it was with the understanding that it was based on a 40-hour week:
Mgr: "Well, you're on salary, so that means you put in whatever hours it takes to get it done." Me: "Okay, so that also means that if I get all of my work done in 20 hours in a given week, I can go home for the week, right?"
Mgr: "Um, no, that's not how it works."
Me: "Uh, yeah, that's exactly how 'salary' is supposed to work."
Mgr: [crickets]
I'm often labeled as having a "bad attitude" because I refuse to let management disrespect my time like that, but I'm still working after 25 years in the game, so I don't really care.
That isn't why we're having trouble. We, of course, don't mention that.
You don't have to - word gets around. If your coders are being expected to regularly put in 2.5 times the "normal" hours per week, the company should be expected to be paying them at least 2.5 times what the going rate is. Offer that deal, and you might see more interest from competent people.
But I have not seen any serious top company officials go to jail for anything. Not for causing oil rig explosion that killed people, oil spills, coal ash wash outs, nearly destroying the global financial system, lying about the company prospects.
Sure you have. Just from the MCI/Worldcom case:
Bernie Ebbers, CEO - 25 years (he'll probably die in prison)
Scott Sullivan, CFO - 5 years
David Myers, controller - 1 year
Buford Yates, director of accounting - 1 year
Betty Yates, accounting manager - 5 months + 5 months house arrest
That's not to say that there aren't dozens of other executives that should be making license plates too, but it's not unheard of for top executives to end up behind bars.
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because most people can't afford to keep cars of that age on the road at all
If we assume the average new car is $20,000 today, it works out to close to $450/month over four years. I don't know too many people with older cars that are having to spend anywhere near that much on maintenance.
I have no idea why so few people talk about this in the maker community.
Probably because so much is done with SMT components now. There are plenty of components that aren't even available in through-hole packages.
Yeah, we get the idea, but the problem is that they need a lot more Daraprim for testing than a dozen patients could provide. Also, finding a doctor willing to risk his license and potential jail time to write the replacement scripts might be problematic.
There's no such thing as "exclusive rights" on a drug that's off patent.
Yeah, there is, in the U.S. at least. The FDA's Unapproved Drug Initiative, among other things, grants pharmaceutical manufacturers the exclusive right to sell the drugs they test under the program. It's the reason that colchicine, which had been around for hundreds of years and was cheap and common prior to the program, is no longer available as a generic. Another screwed-up situation is that of albuterol, which was also cheap and widely available. In that case, mandated changes to the drug's delivery system to remove CFCs (even though using CFCs was otherwise legal in this application) allowed manufacturers to patent new delivery systems, and albuterol is no longer available as a generic even though the drug itself is not patented.
In both cases, it was administrative action by the FDA that was solely responsible for forcing drastically increased drug prices on people.
They have a nation wide exclusive on a half century old drug with the freedom to set any price they want??? Sanctioned by the Fda?
You think that's bad? How about a drug that's been around for more than a thousand years?
And bars on the windows if you're already going to that much trouble. Rose bushes immediately underneath the windows are a nice touch too. It's amazing to see so many houses that are built with full-length windows on either side of the front door nowadays. You might as well not even lock your door if you have those.
I'm a concealed weapons permit instructor. I'm all in favor of defending your life, and firearms are the best tools for that. But don't ever think that it's a good outcome. Killing an intruder is a better outcome than being killed by one, but it's still very bad.
Very wise post, and as a CCW holder myself I couldn't agree more. There's an old saying, "every bullet that leaves your gun has a lawyer attached to it". Except for range time, of course, which anyone that carries should be getting plenty of.
There is a bug in the 3.x kernel code that makes booting Linux on dogs fail
The Beaglebone not withstanding, of course.
Another issue with the date - it's already been observed as Space:1999 Day for years.
FTA: Rogers said, "I don't think we have fundamentally destroyed the public's trust. Some feel that way, but we are accountable to the citizens of the nation, and the nation is counting on us. The nation needs the insights we generate and our computer expertise."
No, you're not accountable to the citizens of the nation, Mr. Rogers. If you were, many of you would be in jail right now. Was James Clapper "held accountable" for the felony crime of lying to Congress?
Once you understand that you're not above the law, and once you truly become accountable to those you ostensibly "serve", then the cynicism will die down. Until then, you're continuing to reinforce that cynicism on your own by your actions, your attempts to hide them, and your willingness to lie about them. You have no one else to blame for it other than yourself.
It's not just a dodge to make citizens feel like corporations are paying their fair share, as it is in the US.
Corporate taxes in general get rolled into the purchase price of the item. You and I are de facto paying the taxes, regardless of what the legalities are, and the same is true for any other taxes or fees that are assessed prior to the sale of the finished item to the ultimate customer.
Patent law does not prevent you from arranging anything in any configuration you want. It only prevents you from selling the result.
Very first paragraph of 35 USC 271:
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.
Patent law (in the U.S. anyway) covers more than what you might believe.
No, the cases were usually hand-made by either the owner or whoever they bought the board from. There were only a couple hundred of the Apple Is made, so while it was an important machine historically, it wasn't that instrumental to the company's success. Mike Markkula probably had more to do with the early success of Apple than either Woz or Jobs. Woz provided the technical know-how, Jobs was the salesman, but Markkula wrote the checks and provided the business knowledge.
If anything, the only open question would be is if Jobs had any role in the case design of the Apple I or II, though they weren't so fabulous that credit would really matter...
The Apple I was a bare board, with no case or keyboard, and only half of a power supply.
And Michael Spindler as well.
Yes, Win95 offered fully preemptive multitasking and a private address space per process for 32-bit programs. 16-bit software was multitasked cooperatively under 95, since all 16-bit programs shared a single address space and the 16-bit API code was not reentrant.
Well, the customer base at Fashion Square Mall (also here in Orlando) is extremely thin.
Florida and Fashion Square aren't anywhere near comparable, though. Florida Mall is clearly visible to visiting tourists from 528, and is quite easy to get to. To get to Fashion Square Mall from the airport, you have to drive north on Semoran for a few miles through some increasingly rough parts of town, then west on Colonial for another mile or two, assuming you even know the mall is there to begin with. If you're coming down Colonial from the west off of I-4, you run a good chance of becoming suicidal because of the traffic. For about 10 years, I lived just north of MCO, and even from there, Florida Mall was still my first choice - it's a better mall, and it was easier to get there than any of the others.
In short, Florida Mall and Mall of Millennia are doing well because of location, location, location. Fashion Square doesn't have that luxury, and a hotel isn't going to change that or the fact that it's in a declining part of town.
anyone remember NSCA Mosaic?
Yup, and I also remember having to have Trumpet Winsock to get connected at all. Fun times playing with the configuration to get it to handshake with the terminal adapter and get a SLIP/PPP session started.
Before that, if an application or a desktop accessory didn't use WaitNextEvent(), the entire system ground to a halt, requiring a hardware reset.
Win 3.x was pretty much the same way - it used cooperative multitasking just like the Mac, and if you took too long processing a given message you could lock your system right up. Two of the biggest things that Win95 brought to the table (that NT already had) were true preemptive multitasking and a per-process message queue, so if you still managed to be sloppy with your message handling, it just locked up that process instead of the whole machine.
The problem was plug and play and under DOS. Each manufacturer had their own proprietary PnP configuration utility and they were often mutually exclusive.
The *real* fun under later versions of DOS was playing the equivalent of Tetris trying to get as much crap in the UMA/HMA as you could so you had enough conventional memory left to do something useful.
They will jerk you around forever. T-mobile consistently makes "errors" in billing backed with totally untrained staff that allows the company not be he held liable. You will receive a forever circle jerk from them trying to fix their billing "errors".
Big time. It took forever to A.) get them to recognize that I'd returned a Sony Experia, B.) stop billing me for it, and C.) return the money they'd already improperly collected for it. I had the proof that they'd received the returned phone *and* the email from them stating as such, yet each rep would attempt to put me through the 2-week procedure to verify the phone had been returned. I didn't see any real action on it until I told them that if it wasn't fixed before my next billing date, I was going to stop dealing with them and let the state attorney general and the FTC handle it. They were already on the FTC's shit list for cramming just last year.
On top of that, their coverage maps are "wildly optimistic" at best, and out and out fraudulent IMO. I can reliably get dropped calls *every day* on the way to and from work, in the same places on two different major highways.
Frankly I loved all the computers of the late 70s early 80s.
Yeah, me too. All of them were very distinctive, with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. Compatibility? We don' need no steenkin' compatibility!
I don't think the relationship should be linear - 2.5x the work for 2.5x the hours..
I think it should be more myself, which is why I said "at least 2.5x". That's a starting point - under that, no one's going to be interested in even talking to you about that kind of gig.
If it really is, the team that "gives their all" should be getting more than "attaboys" in return.
This is the real problem. Employment is supposed to be a business transaction involving an exchange of value between equal partners. If you're taking all my time, you're either going to compensate me fairly for what I've given, or you're going to have to find some other sucker to fleece. I had this conversation with my boss a few months back - she was chastising me for not putting in 60-hour weeks like some of the other folks, and I explained that when we agreed on a compensation package, it was with the understanding that it was based on a 40-hour week:
Mgr: "Well, you're on salary, so that means you put in whatever hours it takes to get it done."
Me: "Okay, so that also means that if I get all of my work done in 20 hours in a given week, I can go home for the week, right?"
Mgr: "Um, no, that's not how it works."
Me: "Uh, yeah, that's exactly how 'salary' is supposed to work."
Mgr: [crickets]
I'm often labeled as having a "bad attitude" because I refuse to let management disrespect my time like that, but I'm still working after 25 years in the game, so I don't really care.
That isn't why we're having trouble. We, of course, don't mention that.
You don't have to - word gets around. If your coders are being expected to regularly put in 2.5 times the "normal" hours per week, the company should be expected to be paying them at least 2.5 times what the going rate is. Offer that deal, and you might see more interest from competent people.
But I have not seen any serious top company officials go to jail for anything. Not for causing oil rig explosion that killed people, oil spills, coal ash wash outs, nearly destroying the global financial system, lying about the company prospects.
Sure you have. Just from the MCI/Worldcom case:
Bernie Ebbers, CEO - 25 years (he'll probably die in prison)
Scott Sullivan, CFO - 5 years
David Myers, controller - 1 year
Buford Yates, director of accounting - 1 year
Betty Yates, accounting manager - 5 months + 5 months house arrest
That's not to say that there aren't dozens of other executives that should be making license plates too, but it's not unheard of for top executives to end up behind bars.