Don't you think this is a just *slightly* distorted historical account? Sure the Taliban might have eliminated opium poppy cultivation. But Knuckles, the also were putting any male WITHOUT A BEARD IN JAIL until his beard grew out. And other minor things like eliminating school for females and beating any woman not wearing a BURKA. You should try wearing a burka for a day, Knuckles...preferably in Arizona in July...like Kandahar in July (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kandahar#Climate)
Suggesting that the Taliban were a good government for Afghanistan is little like any one of the following. You pick:
Mussolini brought civilization to Ethiopia (using mustard gas even....)
Hitler prevented people from being taken advantage of by Jewish business people...(A tour of Auschwitz might be in order)
Stalin made everyone equal....(Look up the word Kulak....)
There is a problem with your reading materials being used in a criminal case against you as evidence you actually planned a crime. This kind of circumstantial evidence can be used to convict ANYONE. Check out this case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Hettrick_murder_case) where there wasn't ANY direct evidence available that pointed to the suspect. Violent writings, drawings, some porn and a knife collection were used to convict a high school sophomore of the murder of a 37 year old woman, 11 years after the crime. DNA evidence and indications of unethical conduct by the police and prosecution were used to free the guy after 9 YEARS IN JAIL. If you think this is just an isolated incident, maybe you should look at this: http://wrongful-convictions.blogspot.com./
This isn't insightful, it's naive. Do you really think that the actions you take when interacting with the screeners who actually do the scans and searches will have ANY EFFECT on those who make policy? Do you really think the policy makers even talk to the rank and file? The policy makers concern is to be visibly doing something, so that when (not if) there is another air terrorism event, they can point to things full body scans as evidence that they are doing everything than can to prevent such events./p>
It's not a matter of cowardice, it's a matter of picking battles that matter. This is like being nasty to a waitress because you don't like the prices or the menu. The only way things will change if people take your "stance" is if enough of you get treated really badly to make news or some TSA screener goes postal and shoots you, causing an outcry.
The next time someone is nasty to you because of something your employer did, which you had no connection to, remember your "stance.
Regarding the 4th Amendment, it remains to be seen whether a full body scan required to participate in a voluntary activity (traveling on a plane) is unreasonable. If you stop someone on the street and subject them to a full body scan, then it is unreasonable. If someone chooses to do something where a full body scan is required to participate, then maybe it isn't. Maybe we should be asking TSA to prove that fully body scans make flying safer.
I agree that American is meant to be a free country, rather than a safe country, but forget the Texan with a pistol. Remember Flight 93.
Before 9/11, the accepted way for passengers to deal with a hijacking in the U.S. was to do nothing, because historically that had resulted in the fewest people getting hurt. Post 9/11, the accepted way for passengers to deal with hijackers is to take them down, regardless of the cost.
Ironically, before 9/11, there was a spate of news articles about flight attendants' concerns about unruly passengers and "air rage". Post 9/11, anyone who starts acting up is likely to find the flight attendant has lots of volunteer deputies. Look at this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rage and note the dates of the referenced news accounts.
Except it doesn't prove the parent's point...Here's why:
With the exception of Mitt Romney, Fox now has deals with every major potential Republican presidential candidate not currently in elected office. In other words, they work for him...
Murdoch has contributed 1.25 million dollars to the Republican governor's assocation, and 1 million the the U.S. "Chamber of Commerce". All this money is going into campaign contributions to buy influence.
Anyone in their right mind should be concerned about the impact of donations of this size on the right OR the left. When donors give this much money, they have undue influence on the recipients of their donations. Even if you don't mind that Murdoch gives this much money to the candidates he gives it to, you might not be as happy when George Soros does the same. Or vice-versa.
Garrett,
Socialism and communism are not the same thing, not even close. Communist countries have a secret police and political prisioners. Socialist countries may or may not. Capitalist countries may or may not.
"Those crazy libertarians" run which country? You might read "Coventry" by Robert Heinlein.
This wouldn't have been set up by a government. It would have been set up by VOTERS, probably including this guy. People who don't pay their fire protection fee tend to vote against having it be part of the taxes that they HAVE to pay.
This thing was pretty hard to find....It's interesting to me that the PRESS RELEASE (which doesn't reflect the report very well) generated 290 comments. Here's a link to download the actual report:
But Sparky, the restaurants, theaters and shops you patronize ALL pay a portion of their gross revenue to the state to support highways, education, courts and prisons, state parks, etc. Microsoft has basically claimed that all that software you build is being manufactured and sold from Nevada because Nevada's tax structure is more advantageous than Washington's for this particular activity. Living in western Washington is part of the Microsoft employment package - how would you feel if everything at work was the same, but you were located in Elko or Tonopah, Nevada? No ocean, no rainforest, mostly no trees, hardly any water, no skiing, and very sparse entertainment possibilities (besides possibly gambling away your salary). Oh, and legalized prostitution....
Microsoft is gaming the rules in a way very similar those who move their investment money to Switzerland in order to avoid paying income taxes. It's dishonest. Microsoft has this wonderful Windows Genuine Advantage (sic) program to keep me playing by their rules, but they don't want to play by mine (I WAS a Washington resident)? I don't think so. How can a business legitimately argue against software piracy when it cheats on it's taxes.
Oh, and to provide full disclosure, I've been a Microsoft stockholder for 20+ years. How much longer is questionable....
Grishnakh, I know something about business. I worked for Boeing for 11 years. And I had software development and contracting businesses in Washington for 6 years. You would think that what you're saying would be true, but it didn't seem like it in Washington. You see, Washington doesn't have an income tax on corporations OR individuals. They have sales taxes, but not that much more than Oregon and certainly less than California. They have property taxes too, but lots less than in Texas or California. The thing you didn't mention about profit taxes is what a windfalll it is for accountants who get to classify this or that boondoggle as "expenses". A gross revenue tax at a reasonable rate is simple (although there are some deductions) and it works for Washington. Are you really arguing for more dependence on the U.S. Federal Tax Code? Most states piggyback of the feds and then make their own modifications. Have you ever (if you had a business, owned business property or sold investments) been absolutely positive that your federal income tax return was absolutely correct? If so, you're in the minority. Look at the size of the section for accountants in the Yellow Pages for proof.
You obviously know nothing about Washington's B&O Tax. The rate is different BY INDUSTRY. You pay a different rate if you create software than if you build airplanes and yet another rate if you grow lentils or make wine. And if you don't think Boeing has influence on the rate it pays, you're smoking something. Here is a list of the rates: http://dor.wa.gov/Content/FindTaxesAndRates/BAndOTax/BandOrates.aspx. Please notice the manufacturing rate of.00484 and the "Manufacturing of Commercial Airplanes, Components, or Aerospace Tooling" rate of.002904. In the list, I count 4 classifications specific to Boeing business and 1 specific to PACCAR (Kenworth, Peterbuilt, etc).
The fact that this post is marked up to 4 as "Insightful" is scary. Leave perpetual growth out of this. Your assumptions about resources are bogus. Suppose you and I sit outside together (on the ground) on a sunny day. Suppose that I can teach you any skill that I have in an hour and I'm willing to do it for $150. (If that's uncomfortable, let's suppose it's 100 hours and $15000). During the time I'm being paid to teach you, I can teach you to make mud pies like my sister or to play the piano like Van Cliburn. According to you, the value of both of those is the same, or is related to the difference in value between the mud and the use of the piano. Most people don't think they are.
Suppose I could teach you how you could cut your home heating costs by 25% by spending $1000 OR I could teach you how you could cut your home heating costs by 50% by spending $1000. According to you, my hour of labor is worth the same amount in both cases. It's worth more if you hire me to save you 50% for the same cost. When you get this, you can become a management consultant.
And by the way, if the guy with the $150 traded it to the other guy for an hour's labor, they were both better off. If you don't think so, you haven't ever looked for a reputable plumber when your pipes were broken.
Mike, I think you have some wrong information. The legal environment in places like China is a lot fuzzier than in the U.S. The difference has to do with corruption and lack of worker protection. In China, if you kill a couple of workers or permanently maim them, there may be NO consequences, depending on the connections of the factory owner. The People's Liberation Army is one of the biggest business owners in China, so if they hold a stake in the factory, probably no consequences. If the factory owner has paid off the local authorities (also quite common), then probably no consequences. You have to kill a lot of people in China AND it needs to be publicized, before you're held accountable. Like the factory that dumped so much pollution into a river that a city of 1 million people had to have all their drinking water trucked in for several weeks or the construction company that bribed the inspectors to pass substandard concrete on school building and high rise apartments in an earthquake zone. Some of those guys were held accountable, but only because victims relatives made waves (and suffered the consequences).
I found an 2006 article online from Business Week suggesting that a labor shortage was increasing factory wages in China. At that time, the work week was 12 hours/day, 7 days per week, with housing provided in dorms with 8 to a room for a wage of $160 per month. The United States hasn't been that "business-friendly" since the days of company towns and Pinkertons who shot anyone who whispered anything about unions or trying to change labor conditions. Maybe you'd like to try working under those conditions....
There aren't any UAW workers making MULTIPLES of what Honda pays. You need to ask for specific details. Further, the only way someone working for the UAW makes more than the senior software engineers you work with is if the UAW guys are working an awful lot of overtime, at night and on weekends. I'm a senior software engineer with 26 years experience, and I make more than the guys in the car factories do in general, I think.
It doesn't help things that many of the largest American corporations are run by people who think that management doesn't require knowledge of the business, only of "management science" or by accountants or finance guys who think that what the balance sheet says is more important than what's coming out of the factory or the condition of a company's plant and equipment. Don't blame it all on workers at the bottom. There are plenty of recent college graduates in finance, investment banking or with an MBA that EXPECT the salary of a UAW guy with 20 years on the factory floor FROM THEIR FIRST JOB OUT OF COLLEGE (not including bonuses, of course). It doesn't work that way at Honda or Toyota, maybe, but check out what investment bankers get...
Something else you might think about. The largest corporations in the U.S. are bigger than many countries. Wal-Mart, the largest U.S. corporation had gross sales of 378 billion dollars. According to the CIA World Fact Book, Greece, the worlds 28th largest economy, had a GDP of 373 billion dollars. Greece may have a socialist government, but Wal-Mart (and Exxon-Mobile, Conoco, GM et al) are all CENTRALLY PLANNED ECONOMIES. Money is allocated at the top for all spending down to the department level. If it doesn't work for governments this size, how can anyone argue that it works for corporations with inefficiency, bad decisions, corruption, etc.?
It's Iraq, not Afghanistan, but these are both insurgencies. No front lines. Did you think that everyone in the military who doesn't shoot is a REMF? Don't think doctors qualify.
It didn't sound like whining to me, but maybe I'm just more sensitive to self-righteousness.
So, McCloskey, why should someone serving his country be satisfied with worse delivery and customer service than YOU DO, you arrogant, self-righteous, judgemental know-it-all.
How do you know what soldiers did in previous wars? It's very clear you've never served. You might find that the average veteran didn't do any of the things you mentioned. Some of the soldiers who wrote things down may have. Some of the soldiers who talked to correspondents may have. But you really don't know.
Recreational toy? Really? How do you know that he isn't buying it because the govt issued one is broken and is likely to take 6 weeks to be replaced. Or that his wife is pregnant and he wants to be able to talk to her with the illusion of privacy via Skype. Or email. Or that he wants to read the news, electronic books or play games. YOU DON'T KNOW. You're just letting you're prejudices speak.
Your last comments are equally clueless. Ruggedized laptops are significantly more expensive for what you get. If you're carrying the thing in the field maybe, in a base, it's unnecessary expense. "Forward operating post"....in Afghanistan? Yes, there are places like that but without net connections, where you don't get to carry anything extra. But just how long do you think people spend in such places? In any case, I would be willing to bet that people have been killed withing 500 yards of the guy's bunk.
A couple of books for you. The Proud Tower, by Barbara Tuchman. Seven Roads to Hell, Donald R. Burgett. Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, Nagl and Schoomaker.
As far as ad hominem attacks go, I'd say that after making one, you deserve what you get.
Re:Dynamic typing is idiotic
on
Beyond Java
·
· Score: 1
Coward,
What's a large system to you. Using PHP as the definitive dynamic language suggests that you might be the clueless one. Dynamic languages can let you deliver a lot more business value and change it a lot faster than the alternative. Depending on the language, the tools and the practices involved, the product doesn't need to be of lower quality than something produced with a statically typed language. For the same amount of money, you can frequently get something that is higher quality.
I've done both, on systems involving more than 50 man-years (each) to develop and enhance, and the dynamically typed software systems held up their end quality-wise and delivered more busines value than the statically typed systems.
Things I learned. You CAN write FORTRAN in any language. (I had a friend who had written it in 4 or 5). You CAN write bad code in any language and projects using any language can fail. In my experience, the likelihood of project failure is directly proportional to the number of developers required to build it, the cost in dollars (in large companies, the number of managers involved).
You should READ THE BOOK, rather than offering an opinion based on your prejudices and preconceptions. The controversial numbers in the book say that, for a very small Java system - 2 man-months of effort, 3000 lines of Java, 1100 lines of non-Jave (XML, etc) and 62 classes with 550 methods, the equivalent using Ruby on Rails took 20 hours, 1100 lines of Ruby, 113 lines of non-Ruby and include 55 classes and 125 methods. Further, the Ruby system ran faster, out of the box than the Java system. (Beyond Java, p. 123) Not bad.
To be fair to Java,
The same people had written the same system twice, with Ruby having the advantage of going second
This isn't that big
This is just one example
It still suggests however, that there might be something valuable here.
You SHOULD read the book before deciding that the author is the one that doesn't have a clue.
Just crank the arrogance slider down 2 notches for me, ok? And sign your posts. Doing otherwise, unless it puts you job in jeopardy or your life in danger, just discredits you and/or your ideas.
Well, you're lucky to have all these choices. But you may not have so many soon.
The FCC is releasing the telcos from having to sell the last mile to your house to others. So far, they're offering contracts, but for how long ?
The telephone industry AND the cable industry are consolidating. MCI anyone ? Adelphia ? Pretty soon you're gonna have 2 choices. Then where's the competition.
Municipal networks don't necessarily mean municipal ISPs. Think about an open municipal network that's open to Joe's Internet as well as Verizon, SBC and Comcast.
There's an article in Foreign Affairs that you should look at. It talks about how Japan jumped past us in terms of deployment of high-speed internet. It's not about municipal networks, but the Japanese government did a lot to guide competition in ways that the Bush FCC could learn from.
My choices are 26.4K dialup and satellite. There's no cable where I live AND my phone company has 8.5 billion dollars to buy another company but not what it takes to put DSL in for the 750 families in my valley. Municipal broadband looks pretty good from here - it probably wouldn't take much taxpayer money either....
You know, things are a bit different outside of big cities. In small communities, the government is not as separate from the community as it is in big cities. Mayors, council members and county commissioners have to buy milk from the same refrigerator in THE (only) grocery store as everyone else, and they can't do it anonymously. Mistakes by elected officials in smaller places result in a change on administration much more frequently than in bigger place.
I live in a place where there are 2 kinds of internet available. The first is dialup......at 28.8K bps. The second is satellite, which works great if you don't want to do anything that would be adversely affected by an extra.5 second delay on every round trip to the server - like VOIP, VPN, using a database, games. I've been trying to get my local telecom to provide service for 18 months so far - and I have a list of 70 neighbors who are also interested. The main one not interested is the telecom.....
An unfair marketplace you say ? And what is it when the only game in town is a former Baby Bell that built it's (very old) infrastructure using rates that were set to include a GUARANTEED profit percentage. A company that won't tell you anything but WILL change the rules or do something to mess you up if you try to do something yourself. If you want to see what a nightmare it is, check out http://rric.net. This is a community, not municipal entity that was forced to become a CLEC and post a 1 million dollar insurance bond before they could connect up to telephone company equipment.
These bills are being pushed by the Baby Bells and cable companies. Do you really think they compete in a fair marketplace ? Before you can ding municipalities for using tax money, maybe you should look at how much Corporate Welfare these companies get, what their executives get paid, how many of their current or former executives are under indictment or serving time in jail and how many people they laid off last year. As a former Baby Bell stockholder, I remember the jobs eliminated count as a perennial feature of the annual report. There is NO free market as defined by microeconomics in the telecommunications industry due to history, regulation, barriers to entry etc. so your post makes sense theoretically, but not practically. Sorry
You see, an algorithm is math. It's pure thought-- an idea of how to do something, not a method.
NO
Integral Calculus is math, numerical methods for integration are algorithms, and people buy or download libraries to get implementations of the algorithms that work for all of the corner cases. If "an algorithm is math" then implementations are just SMOP and no one would buy them or pay to have them developed for use across scientific domains. Ask an engineer.
If you don't think that there's a difference between a plain description of a mathematical idea and an algorithm to implement it, you haven't been doing scientific or engineering computing.
I agree with your comments about Bill Gates' effect on the computer industry (making computers available for the masses, etc). And you're right about his charitable contributions....
But. Windows did not get the internet "out of the little Telnet, Gopher and FTP land that it used to be." The changes you're talking about were caused by the invention of HTML and HTTP (at a Swiss research institute) and the development of NCSA Mosaic and NCSA httpd (at a U.S. research institute, funded by taxpayer dollars).
At first, Microsoft didn't get it at all. The only way that they managed to beat Netscape in the browser market was by illegally bundling a free product into their monopoly and by using lawyers and mountains of cash to prevent others from stopping them. In the web server market, Apache (an NCSA httpd descendant) and some of its descendants like Websphere and IPlanet are more important than Microsoft's IIS.
Some people take any opportunity to diss Bill Gates. Others seem to want to fawn.....
Most of this stuff isn't new. The first general refactoring tool I ever saw was the RefactoringBrowser built by John Brant and Don Roberts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It uses Smalltalk parse trees to analyze code, perform refactorings, lint checks and code rewrites. It's free and has been incorporated into VisualWorks Smalltalk, Dolphin Smalltalk and Squeak, and is available as an add-on for VisualAge Smalltalk. To see the kinds of refactorings supported, check out: http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/~brant/RefactoringBrowse r/Refactorings.html
To see the lint checks available, look at: http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/~brant/RefactoringB rowse r/Lint.html
And to see the parse tree based rewrite tool, go to: http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/~brant/RefactoringBrowse r/Rewrite.html
To see how long this has been available and something of it's evolution, check out the HyperNews page at http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/HyperNews/get/Refactorin gBrowser.html and look at the dates. People use this free tool set every day.
This may be a silly question, but if a cable company's internet access is classified as an information service, do they have more responsibility regarding the information provided ?
Slashdot Mirror
Don't you think this is a just *slightly* distorted historical account? Sure the Taliban might have eliminated opium poppy cultivation. But Knuckles, the also were putting any male WITHOUT A BEARD IN JAIL until his beard grew out. And other minor things like eliminating school for females and beating any woman not wearing a BURKA. You should try wearing a burka for a day, Knuckles...preferably in Arizona in July...like Kandahar in July (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kandahar#Climate)
Suggesting that the Taliban were a good government for Afghanistan is little like any one of the following. You pick:
There is a problem with your reading materials being used in a criminal case against you as evidence you actually planned a crime. This kind of circumstantial evidence can be used to convict ANYONE. Check out this case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Hettrick_murder_case) where there wasn't ANY direct evidence available that pointed to the suspect. Violent writings, drawings, some porn and a knife collection were used to convict a high school sophomore of the murder of a 37 year old woman, 11 years after the crime. DNA evidence and indications of unethical conduct by the police and prosecution were used to free the guy after 9 YEARS IN JAIL. If you think this is just an isolated incident, maybe you should look at this: http://wrongful-convictions.blogspot.com./
And check out dgatewood's post below as well.
This isn't insightful, it's naive. Do you really think that the actions you take when interacting with the screeners who actually do the scans and searches will have ANY EFFECT on those who make policy? Do you really think the policy makers even talk to the rank and file? The policy makers concern is to be visibly doing something, so that when (not if) there is another air terrorism event, they can point to things full body scans as evidence that they are doing everything than can to prevent such events./p>
It's not a matter of cowardice, it's a matter of picking battles that matter. This is like being nasty to a waitress because you don't like the prices or the menu. The only way things will change if people take your "stance" is if enough of you get treated really badly to make news or some TSA screener goes postal and shoots you, causing an outcry.
The next time someone is nasty to you because of something your employer did, which you had no connection to, remember your "stance.
Regarding the 4th Amendment, it remains to be seen whether a full body scan required to participate in a voluntary activity (traveling on a plane) is unreasonable. If you stop someone on the street and subject them to a full body scan, then it is unreasonable. If someone chooses to do something where a full body scan is required to participate, then maybe it isn't. Maybe we should be asking TSA to prove that fully body scans make flying safer.
I agree that American is meant to be a free country, rather than a safe country, but forget the Texan with a pistol. Remember Flight 93.
Before 9/11, the accepted way for passengers to deal with a hijacking in the U.S. was to do nothing, because historically that had resulted in the fewest people getting hurt. Post 9/11, the accepted way for passengers to deal with hijackers is to take them down, regardless of the cost.
Ironically, before 9/11, there was a spate of news articles about flight attendants' concerns about unruly passengers and "air rage". Post 9/11, anyone who starts acting up is likely to find the flight attendant has lots of volunteer deputies. Look at this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rage and note the dates of the referenced news accounts.
Except it doesn't prove the parent's point...Here's why:
With the exception of Mitt Romney, Fox now has deals with every major potential Republican presidential candidate not currently in elected office. In other words, they work for him...
Murdoch has contributed 1.25 million dollars to the Republican governor's assocation, and 1 million the the U.S. "Chamber of Commerce". All this money is going into campaign contributions to buy influence.
Anyone in their right mind should be concerned about the impact of donations of this size on the right OR the left. When donors give this much money, they have undue influence on the recipients of their donations. Even if you don't mind that Murdoch gives this much money to the candidates he gives it to, you might not be as happy when George Soros does the same. Or vice-versa.
Not an irrational concern at all, IMO
Garrett, Socialism and communism are not the same thing, not even close. Communist countries have a secret police and political prisioners. Socialist countries may or may not. Capitalist countries may or may not. "Those crazy libertarians" run which country? You might read "Coventry" by Robert Heinlein.
This wouldn't have been set up by a government. It would have been set up by VOTERS, probably including this guy. People who don't pay their fire protection fee tend to vote against having it be part of the taxes that they HAVE to pay.
This thing was pretty hard to find....It's interesting to me that the PRESS RELEASE (which doesn't reflect the report very well) generated 290 comments. Here's a link to download the actual report:
Rebound: unintended consequences of transport policy and technology innovations
But Sparky, the restaurants, theaters and shops you patronize ALL pay a portion of their gross revenue to the state to support highways, education, courts and prisons, state parks, etc. Microsoft has basically claimed that all that software you build is being manufactured and sold from Nevada because Nevada's tax structure is more advantageous than Washington's for this particular activity. Living in western Washington is part of the Microsoft employment package - how would you feel if everything at work was the same, but you were located in Elko or Tonopah, Nevada? No ocean, no rainforest, mostly no trees, hardly any water, no skiing, and very sparse entertainment possibilities (besides possibly gambling away your salary). Oh, and legalized prostitution....
Microsoft is gaming the rules in a way very similar those who move their investment money to Switzerland in order to avoid paying income taxes. It's dishonest. Microsoft has this wonderful Windows Genuine Advantage (sic) program to keep me playing by their rules, but they don't want to play by mine (I WAS a Washington resident)? I don't think so. How can a business legitimately argue against software piracy when it cheats on it's taxes.
Oh, and to provide full disclosure, I've been a Microsoft stockholder for 20+ years. How much longer is questionable....
Grishnakh, I know something about business. I worked for Boeing for 11 years. And I had software development and contracting businesses in Washington for 6 years. You would think that what you're saying would be true, but it didn't seem like it in Washington. You see, Washington doesn't have an income tax on corporations OR individuals. They have sales taxes, but not that much more than Oregon and certainly less than California. They have property taxes too, but lots less than in Texas or California. The thing you didn't mention about profit taxes is what a windfalll it is for accountants who get to classify this or that boondoggle as "expenses". A gross revenue tax at a reasonable rate is simple (although there are some deductions) and it works for Washington. Are you really arguing for more dependence on the U.S. Federal Tax Code? Most states piggyback of the feds and then make their own modifications. Have you ever (if you had a business, owned business property or sold investments) been absolutely positive that your federal income tax return was absolutely correct? If so, you're in the minority. Look at the size of the section for accountants in the Yellow Pages for proof.
You obviously know nothing about Washington's B&O Tax. The rate is different BY INDUSTRY. You pay a different rate if you create software than if you build airplanes and yet another rate if you grow lentils or make wine. And if you don't think Boeing has influence on the rate it pays, you're smoking something. Here is a list of the rates: http://dor.wa.gov/Content/FindTaxesAndRates/BAndOTax/BandOrates.aspx. Please notice the manufacturing rate of .00484 and the "Manufacturing of Commercial Airplanes, Components, or Aerospace Tooling" rate of .002904. In the list, I count 4 classifications specific to Boeing business and 1 specific to PACCAR (Kenworth, Peterbuilt, etc).
The fact that this post is marked up to 4 as "Insightful" is scary. Leave perpetual growth out of this. Your assumptions about resources are bogus. Suppose you and I sit outside together (on the ground) on a sunny day. Suppose that I can teach you any skill that I have in an hour and I'm willing to do it for $150. (If that's uncomfortable, let's suppose it's 100 hours and $15000). During the time I'm being paid to teach you, I can teach you to make mud pies like my sister or to play the piano like Van Cliburn. According to you, the value of both of those is the same, or is related to the difference in value between the mud and the use of the piano. Most people don't think they are.
Suppose I could teach you how you could cut your home heating costs by 25% by spending $1000 OR I could teach you how you could cut your home heating costs by 50% by spending $1000. According to you, my hour of labor is worth the same amount in both cases. It's worth more if you hire me to save you 50% for the same cost. When you get this, you can become a management consultant.
And by the way, if the guy with the $150 traded it to the other guy for an hour's labor, they were both better off. If you don't think so, you haven't ever looked for a reputable plumber when your pipes were broken.
Mike, I think you have some wrong information. The legal environment in places like China is a lot fuzzier than in the U.S. The difference has to do with corruption and lack of worker protection. In China, if you kill a couple of workers or permanently maim them, there may be NO consequences, depending on the connections of the factory owner. The People's Liberation Army is one of the biggest business owners in China, so if they hold a stake in the factory, probably no consequences. If the factory owner has paid off the local authorities (also quite common), then probably no consequences. You have to kill a lot of people in China AND it needs to be publicized, before you're held accountable. Like the factory that dumped so much pollution into a river that a city of 1 million people had to have all their drinking water trucked in for several weeks or the construction company that bribed the inspectors to pass substandard concrete on school building and high rise apartments in an earthquake zone. Some of those guys were held accountable, but only because victims relatives made waves (and suffered the consequences).
I found an 2006 article online from Business Week suggesting that a labor shortage was increasing factory wages in China. At that time, the work week was 12 hours/day, 7 days per week, with housing provided in dorms with 8 to a room for a wage of $160 per month. The United States hasn't been that "business-friendly" since the days of company towns and Pinkertons who shot anyone who whispered anything about unions or trying to change labor conditions. Maybe you'd like to try working under those conditions....
There aren't any UAW workers making MULTIPLES of what Honda pays. You need to ask for specific details. Further, the only way someone working for the UAW makes more than the senior software engineers you work with is if the UAW guys are working an awful lot of overtime, at night and on weekends. I'm a senior software engineer with 26 years experience, and I make more than the guys in the car factories do in general, I think.
It doesn't help things that many of the largest American corporations are run by people who think that management doesn't require knowledge of the business, only of "management science" or by accountants or finance guys who think that what the balance sheet says is more important than what's coming out of the factory or the condition of a company's plant and equipment. Don't blame it all on workers at the bottom. There are plenty of recent college graduates in finance, investment banking or with an MBA that EXPECT the salary of a UAW guy with 20 years on the factory floor FROM THEIR FIRST JOB OUT OF COLLEGE (not including bonuses, of course). It doesn't work that way at Honda or Toyota, maybe, but check out what investment bankers get...
Something else you might think about. The largest corporations in the U.S. are bigger than many countries. Wal-Mart, the largest U.S. corporation had gross sales of 378 billion dollars. According to the CIA World Fact Book, Greece, the worlds 28th largest economy, had a GDP of 373 billion dollars. Greece may have a socialist government, but Wal-Mart (and Exxon-Mobile, Conoco, GM et al) are all CENTRALLY PLANNED ECONOMIES. Money is allocated at the top for all spending down to the department level. If it doesn't work for governments this size, how can anyone argue that it works for corporations with inefficiency, bad decisions, corruption, etc.?
McCloskey....note...laptop...forward operating base
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/02/AR2008120202942.html
It's Iraq, not Afghanistan, but these are both insurgencies. No front lines. Did you think that everyone in the military who doesn't shoot is a REMF? Don't think doctors qualify.
It didn't sound like whining to me, but maybe I'm just more sensitive to self-righteousness.
So, McCloskey, why should someone serving his country be satisfied with worse delivery and customer service than YOU DO, you arrogant, self-righteous, judgemental know-it-all.
How do you know what soldiers did in previous wars? It's very clear you've never served. You might find that the average veteran didn't do any of the things you mentioned. Some of the soldiers who wrote things down may have. Some of the soldiers who talked to correspondents may have. But you really don't know.
Recreational toy? Really? How do you know that he isn't buying it because the govt issued one is broken and is likely to take 6 weeks to be replaced. Or that his wife is pregnant and he wants to be able to talk to her with the illusion of privacy via Skype. Or email. Or that he wants to read the news, electronic books or play games. YOU DON'T KNOW. You're just letting you're prejudices speak.
Your last comments are equally clueless. Ruggedized laptops are significantly more expensive for what you get. If you're carrying the thing in the field maybe, in a base, it's unnecessary expense. "Forward operating post"....in Afghanistan? Yes, there are places like that but without net connections, where you don't get to carry anything extra. But just how long do you think people spend in such places? In any case, I would be willing to bet that people have been killed withing 500 yards of the guy's bunk.
A couple of books for you. The Proud Tower, by Barbara Tuchman. Seven Roads to Hell, Donald R. Burgett. Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, Nagl and Schoomaker.
As far as ad hominem attacks go, I'd say that after making one, you deserve what you get.
What's a large system to you. Using PHP as the definitive dynamic language suggests that you might be the clueless one. Dynamic languages can let you deliver a lot more business value and change it a lot faster than the alternative. Depending on the language, the tools and the practices involved, the product doesn't need to be of lower quality than something produced with a statically typed language. For the same amount of money, you can frequently get something that is higher quality.
I've done both, on systems involving more than 50 man-years (each) to develop and enhance, and the dynamically typed software systems held up their end quality-wise and delivered more busines value than the statically typed systems.
Things I learned. You CAN write FORTRAN in any language. (I had a friend who had written it in 4 or 5). You CAN write bad code in any language and projects using any language can fail. In my experience, the likelihood of project failure is directly proportional to the number of developers required to build it, the cost in dollars (in large companies, the number of managers involved).
You should READ THE BOOK, rather than offering an opinion based on your prejudices and preconceptions. The controversial numbers in the book say that, for a very small Java system - 2 man-months of effort, 3000 lines of Java, 1100 lines of non-Jave (XML, etc) and 62 classes with 550 methods, the equivalent using Ruby on Rails took 20 hours, 1100 lines of Ruby, 113 lines of non-Ruby and include 55 classes and 125 methods. Further, the Ruby system ran faster, out of the box than the Java system. (Beyond Java, p. 123) Not bad.
To be fair to Java,
It still suggests however, that there might be something valuable here.
You SHOULD read the book before deciding that the author is the one that doesn't have a clue.
Just crank the arrogance slider down 2 notches for me, ok? And sign your posts. Doing otherwise, unless it puts you job in jeopardy or your life in danger, just discredits you and/or your ideas.
Well, you're lucky to have all these choices. But you may not have so many soon.
The FCC is releasing the telcos from having to sell the last mile to your house to others. So far, they're offering contracts, but for how long ?
The telephone industry AND the cable industry are consolidating. MCI anyone ? Adelphia ? Pretty soon you're gonna have 2 choices. Then where's the competition.
Municipal networks don't necessarily mean municipal ISPs. Think about an open municipal network that's open to Joe's Internet as well as Verizon, SBC and Comcast.
There's an article in Foreign Affairs that you should look at. It talks about how Japan jumped past us in terms of deployment of high-speed internet. It's not about municipal networks, but the Japanese government did a lot to guide competition in ways that the Bush FCC could learn from.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050501faessay8431My choices are 26.4K dialup and satellite. There's no cable where I live AND my phone company has 8.5 billion dollars to buy another company but not what it takes to put DSL in for the 750 families in my valley. Municipal broadband looks pretty good from here - it probably wouldn't take much taxpayer money either....
You know, things are a bit different outside of big cities. In small communities, the government is not as separate from the community as it is in big cities. Mayors, council members and county commissioners have to buy milk from the same refrigerator in THE (only) grocery store as everyone else, and they can't do it anonymously. Mistakes by elected officials in smaller places result in a change on administration much more frequently than in bigger place.
I live in a place where there are 2 kinds of internet available. The first is dialup......at 28.8K bps. The second is satellite, which works great if you don't want to do anything that would be adversely affected by an extra .5 second delay on every round trip to the server - like VOIP, VPN, using a database, games. I've been trying to get my local telecom to provide service for 18 months so far - and I have a list of 70 neighbors who are also interested. The main one not interested is the telecom.....
An unfair marketplace you say ? And what is it when the only game in town is a former Baby Bell that built it's (very old) infrastructure using rates that were set to include a GUARANTEED profit percentage. A company that won't tell you anything but WILL change the rules or do something to mess you up if you try to do something yourself. If you want to see what a nightmare it is, check out http://rric.net. This is a community, not municipal entity that was forced to become a CLEC and post a 1 million dollar insurance bond before they could connect up to telephone company equipment.
These bills are being pushed by the Baby Bells and cable companies. Do you really think they compete in a fair marketplace ? Before you can ding municipalities for using tax money, maybe you should look at how much Corporate Welfare these companies get, what their executives get paid, how many of their current or former executives are under indictment or serving time in jail and how many people they laid off last year. As a former Baby Bell stockholder, I remember the jobs eliminated count as a perennial feature of the annual report. There is NO free market as defined by microeconomics in the telecommunications industry due to history, regulation, barriers to entry etc. so your post makes sense theoretically, but not practically. Sorry
Maybe you should read the articles on the site before you try to smear someone on a topic not related to this thread
You see, an algorithm is math. It's pure thought-- an idea of how to do something, not a method.
NO
Integral Calculus is math, numerical methods for integration are algorithms, and people buy or download libraries to get implementations of the algorithms that work for all of the corner cases. If "an algorithm is math" then implementations are just SMOP and no one would buy them or pay to have them developed for use across scientific domains. Ask an engineer.
If you don't think that there's a difference between a plain description of a mathematical idea and an algorithm to implement it, you haven't been doing scientific or engineering computing.
But. Windows did not get the internet "out of the little Telnet, Gopher and FTP land that it used to be." The changes you're talking about were caused by the invention of HTML and HTTP (at a Swiss research institute) and the development of NCSA Mosaic and NCSA httpd (at a U.S. research institute, funded by taxpayer dollars).
At first, Microsoft didn't get it at all. The only way that they managed to beat Netscape in the browser market was by illegally bundling a free product into their monopoly and by using lawyers and mountains of cash to prevent others from stopping them. In the web server market, Apache (an NCSA httpd descendant) and some of its descendants like Websphere and IPlanet are more important than Microsoft's IIS.
Some people take any opportunity to diss Bill Gates. Others seem to want to fawn.....
Most of this stuff isn't new. The first general refactoring tool I ever saw was the RefactoringBrowser built by John Brant and Don Roberts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It uses Smalltalk parse trees to analyze code, perform refactorings, lint checks and code rewrites. It's free and has been incorporated into VisualWorks Smalltalk, Dolphin Smalltalk and Squeak, and is available as an add-on for VisualAge Smalltalk. To see the kinds of refactorings supported, check out: http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/~brant/RefactoringBrowse r/Refactorings.html
B rowse r/Lint.html
e r/Rewrite.html
n gBrowser.html and look at the dates. People use this free tool set every day.
To see the lint checks available, look at:
http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/~brant/Refactoring
And to see the parse tree based rewrite tool, go to: http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/~brant/RefactoringBrows
To see how long this has been available and something of it's evolution, check out the HyperNews page at http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/HyperNews/get/Refactori
This may be a silly question, but if a cable company's internet access is classified as an information service, do they have more responsibility regarding the information provided ?