"The cost of a service should be born by those who use it."
Oh really?
Ok, so let's do the following. First and foremost, REPEAL ALL TAXES OF ANY KIND. Second, we'll have to install toll booths on every road in the nation, near every intersection, and certainly and the beginning and end - just to make sure only the users of any given stretch of road have to pay for its upkeep. Then, we'll have to figure out how to bill for thinks like street lights, public toilets (remember the pay-toilets of the 1970's?)... let's also get rid of all federal funding for schools and make them all private. That way, only the students who go there have to pay for it.
All makes perfect sense to me...
The question that needs to be answered about municipal broadband is whether internet access can be lumped in the same class of services with water, trash removal, and sewer. Right now, I think the answer to that question is an unequivocal NO. However, that is changing slowly as more and more services absolutely require internet access. My prediction is that, in one more generation, Internet access will be handled ONLY by municipalities and governments as it will be a required component of public services - and people will need it just to survive as more and more life services become Internet-only.
I've replied to one of the other charges of fallacy here... I wasn't condoning spam at all, however. I wasn't making any implications at all regarding spam's effects on overall employment. I don't see how that conclusion could be definitively reached without more research. However, what I was saying was that there is a new industry that would not otherwise be there, and that industry contributes to the economy. It would be great if there were no spam, wonderful in fact. However, pointing out a positive effect of an otherwise negative condition is neither fallacious nor is it an endorsement. It's merely an observation of fact.
You certainly do have a point... but I don't think it invalidates my argument all that much. The same argument can be made for just about any industry, good or bad. The point is, people working is better than people not working. Even if 50% of the work is toward a nefarious end and 50% is negating that, it's better than no work being done at all. In the latter case, people aren't thinking, innovating, problem solving, or developing themselves. Sure, spammers are a bunch of dickheads that deserve to be beaten, but what we're talking about here is unwanted email. Unwanted email - data on a hard disk... it's about as far from terrorism as you can get.
Viruses, backdoors, and cybercrime are a different issue and CAN be compared to terrorism because the intent is malicious. Spam is there to sell you stuff you don't want, not to destroy your data or take over your computer.
I used to get easily 50 or more spams every day at one of my accounts... I implemented spamlist.org and now it's more like 5 or 10. Spamassassin on top of that cuts it to 1 to 5.
They say that spam accounts for so much lost productivity, but they fail to mention that spam has spawned a whole new race of products and services that keep people employed. The Anti-Spam industry is thriving and contributing to world economic growth. As with everything, spam may be a nuisance, but it does have its benefits. As usual, regular users are caught in the crossfire.
True, but it does get to the point of ridicule sometimes. For example, I drove a 1994 nissan pathfinder for the longest time. In 2003, I bought a brand new one... I noticed several "cost reductions" in the newer model. The most annoying? The absence of a lock cylinder in the passenger side door. What the hell? There's a cylinder in the driver's door and in the rear liftgate. Why not in the passenger's door? God it's annoying!!
Why do I get the feeling we work for the same company?
I work for a GARGANTUAN multinational - 100K plus employees in just about every country on the Globe.. I can come to work whenever I want... leave whenever I want... as long as I get my work done on time, they don't care how long it takes me to do it. "We pay for results, not work," is the mantra.
For such a huge company, I think they take care of their employees very well. They match what I put into my 401(k), they pay for 85% of my health insurance and all of my life insurance; I have a pretty damn fat pension, they pay me above average salary for my line of work, and my job is really a ton of fun and I work with great people. I couldn't have it any better. I even get comp time in lieu of O/T pay iff I want it that way.
I quite frankly don't understand the "big corporations are evil" mentality, either. We give MILLIONS to charities every year... MILLIONS... I think our charitable giving last year was on the order of nearly 50 million. Plus, the company unconditionally matches private contributions to charities by its employees. We donate old computers to local underfunded schools, we host a big local science fair every year, and again, the list goes on.
Well, just remember the motivation behind the school's banning of the flags.. that motivation is the fact that SOMEONE is always whining about SOMETHING to the school... they will look at you as just another whiner.
The way to fix schools is not to complain, but to get reasonable people onto school boards. School boards all too often are local folks with too much time on their hands that neither know the value of their freedom nor are willing to defend it. Consequently, they won't go out of their way to defend your younger brother's freedom to wear an American flag.
Getting people on school boards who have the nads to tell the whiners to shut up and put up will do a lot to get rid of the idealogue of intolerance that is the problem in the schools. By the way, guess which end of the political spectrum is in control of schools?
I disagree. I don't think IBM would go off on a fishing expedition against a seemingly uninvolved party. My hunch is that IBM knows Intel has stabbed them in the back wrt SCO and wants to find out just how bad the damage is.
Remember, IBM turned the table on Intel back in the mid 90's by decided to manufacture several competing x86 products (some of them even branded IBM).. remember the Cyrix processors?
If Intel was in possession of some priveleged communication from IBM regarding SCO and Linux, and just happened to erroneously send them to SCO, that might be a bad thing for IBM...
You mean it's in your car that was made in Tennessee?:)
Incidentally, I had sort of an epiphany today when I realized that outsourcing and the falling dollar are tightly coupled. Labor is the most expensive component of any product or service, so by outsourcing, you are exporting the largest economic driver that exists. The dollar is falling against foreign currency because we're sending all of our dollars to pay overseas labor. We're basically just flooding the world with labor dollars...
Granted, I just pulled this idea out of my ass, but I'd rather sit around pulling things out of my ass than expend a ton of effort training my Indian replacements they just brought over on restriction-free L-1 visas...
Every time one of these "catastrophic" reports come out, the only thing I can do is sigh in frustration. It is quite clear that these folks just want to kill cars.. and kill the US...because the US is rich, and US Citizens can afford luxury cars...
They are conveniently ignoring the fact that 6 Billion human beings BREATHING emit more CO2 in one year than all of the fossil fuels that have been combusted since they were first extracted from the ground.
Add to the 6 Billion humans all of the livestock that is required to feed them (cows and chickens, mainly) and there's that much more CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases on top of it.
The only solution to the CO2 problem is to emit less CO2 or increase the amount of CO2 that the environment can naturally convert. The only way to really reduce the amount of emitted CO2 is to significantly reduce the population - but of course this is impractical because of "reproductive freedom," and the fact that you can't just go around exterminating people.
Population control is a problem that nobody will talk about - families having 19 kids either because they don't believe in birth control or because they want their particuar racial group to eventually become a majority in politics - it's just irresponsible. At this point, we have to start thinking of real solutions - not political ones.
Population control is very undesirable on the part of government, particularly the US government, because the social security and medicare ponzi schemes depend on an ever-growing population base to pay the ever-growing bill. Because the program takes in more than it puts out, it must necessarily have a growing income.
Let's face it folks, we can blame our problems on cars, coal, oil, and forest burning all we want, but until we admit that these are not the problem, we'll never solve anything.
It is just ironic that life will be its own end - but this is also part of the natural order of things - the equilibrium. Too much life - more than the planet can sustain - will somehow cause the reduction in life to a level the planet CAN sustain. It's just the way nature works, and the Earth is way to grand a scale for us to have any direct and immediate control over...
Our doom was sealed the moment we figured out how to beat each other to death with a bone, so to speak...
A little from column A and a little from column B... ~5-6 years ago when Britney's first video came out, I was pretty amazed at how sexually graphic it was... today, when I see that video, it strikes me as something that could be a commercial for the Bible... so yeah, culture is definitely becoming more overtly sexual and profane, and as the reaction to that change, indecency enforcement is becoming more strict...
I don't know whether it's too late to un-do all the damage he has done to Amateur Radio by coating BPL with teflon and ramming it through - but hopefully common sense will prevail and BPL will be shelved...
Of course, the only thing this will lead to is the cessation of spam reporting, followed by a change in behavior that will be that spamees sue spammers in lieu of going through current spam reporting channels. This will be great for lawyers.. on both sides...
What else do you expect from a "self-taught" biologist who is said to be "genius" and a "little nuts?" Basically, someone with no credentials and a big, utopian fantasy complex..
To say that someone lacks natural ability in something is not to say that they are naturally bad at something. Lacking natural ability does not mean being incapable. *sigh*
I don't have an innate, natural ability to play the lute. That does not mean I am bad at playing the lute, nor that I can't be better at playing the lute than someone who has "natural ability."
Similarly, Joe has some natural ability to play the lute. This does not mean that Joe can even play the lute, let alone that he is good at it.
Slashdot Mirror
"The cost of a service should be born by those who use it."
Oh really?
Ok, so let's do the following. First and foremost, REPEAL ALL TAXES OF ANY KIND. Second, we'll have to install toll booths on every road in the nation, near every intersection, and certainly and the beginning and end - just to make sure only the users of any given stretch of road have to pay for its upkeep. Then, we'll have to figure out how to bill for thinks like street lights, public toilets (remember the pay-toilets of the 1970's?)... let's also get rid of all federal funding for schools and make them all private. That way, only the students who go there have to pay for it.
All makes perfect sense to me...
The question that needs to be answered about municipal broadband is whether internet access can be lumped in the same class of services with water, trash removal, and sewer. Right now, I think the answer to that question is an unequivocal NO. However, that is changing slowly as more and more services absolutely require internet access. My prediction is that, in one more generation, Internet access will be handled ONLY by municipalities and governments as it will be a required component of public services - and people will need it just to survive as more and more life services become Internet-only.
I've replied to one of the other charges of fallacy here... I wasn't condoning spam at all, however. I wasn't making any implications at all regarding spam's effects on overall employment. I don't see how that conclusion could be definitively reached without more research. However, what I was saying was that there is a new industry that would not otherwise be there, and that industry contributes to the economy. It would be great if there were no spam, wonderful in fact. However, pointing out a positive effect of an otherwise negative condition is neither fallacious nor is it an endorsement. It's merely an observation of fact.
You certainly do have a point... but I don't think it invalidates my argument all that much. The same argument can be made for just about any industry, good or bad. The point is, people working is better than people not working. Even if 50% of the work is toward a nefarious end and 50% is negating that, it's better than no work being done at all. In the latter case, people aren't thinking, innovating, problem solving, or developing themselves. Sure, spammers are a bunch of dickheads that deserve to be beaten, but what we're talking about here is unwanted email. Unwanted email - data on a hard disk... it's about as far from terrorism as you can get.
Viruses, backdoors, and cybercrime are a different issue and CAN be compared to terrorism because the intent is malicious. Spam is there to sell you stuff you don't want, not to destroy your data or take over your computer.
I used to get easily 50 or more spams every day at one of my accounts... I implemented spamlist.org and now it's more like 5 or 10. Spamassassin on top of that cuts it to 1 to 5.
They say that spam accounts for so much lost productivity, but they fail to mention that spam has spawned a whole new race of products and services that keep people employed. The Anti-Spam industry is thriving and contributing to world economic growth. As with everything, spam may be a nuisance, but it does have its benefits. As usual, regular users are caught in the crossfire.
True, but it does get to the point of ridicule sometimes. For example, I drove a 1994 nissan pathfinder for the longest time. In 2003, I bought a brand new one... I noticed several "cost reductions" in the newer model. The most annoying? The absence of a lock cylinder in the passenger side door. What the hell? There's a cylinder in the driver's door and in the rear liftgate. Why not in the passenger's door? God it's annoying!!
Why do I get the feeling we work for the same company?
I work for a GARGANTUAN multinational - 100K plus employees in just about every country on the Globe.. I can come to work whenever I want... leave whenever I want... as long as I get my work done on time, they don't care how long it takes me to do it. "We pay for results, not work," is the mantra.
For such a huge company, I think they take care of their employees very well. They match what I put into my 401(k), they pay for 85% of my health insurance and all of my life insurance; I have a pretty damn fat pension, they pay me above average salary for my line of work, and my job is really a ton of fun and I work with great people. I couldn't have it any better. I even get comp time in lieu of O/T pay iff I want it that way.
I quite frankly don't understand the "big corporations are evil" mentality, either. We give MILLIONS to charities every year... MILLIONS... I think our charitable giving last year was on the order of nearly 50 million. Plus, the company unconditionally matches private contributions to charities by its employees. We donate old computers to local underfunded schools, we host a big local science fair every year, and again, the list goes on.
Yep, I work for a big evil corporation.
This is the funniest damn thing I've seen in a VERY long time!! I've been laughing for a solid 20 minutes now..
Well, just remember the motivation behind the school's banning of the flags.. that motivation is the fact that SOMEONE is always whining about SOMETHING to the school... they will look at you as just another whiner.
The way to fix schools is not to complain, but to get reasonable people onto school boards. School boards all too often are local folks with too much time on their hands that neither know the value of their freedom nor are willing to defend it. Consequently, they won't go out of their way to defend your younger brother's freedom to wear an American flag.
Getting people on school boards who have the nads to tell the whiners to shut up and put up will do a lot to get rid of the idealogue of intolerance that is the problem in the schools. By the way, guess which end of the political spectrum is in control of schools?
I disagree. I don't think IBM would go off on a fishing expedition against a seemingly uninvolved party. My hunch is that IBM knows Intel has stabbed them in the back wrt SCO and wants to find out just how bad the damage is.
Remember, IBM turned the table on Intel back in the mid 90's by decided to manufacture several competing x86 products (some of them even branded IBM).. remember the Cyrix processors?
If Intel was in possession of some priveleged communication from IBM regarding SCO and Linux, and just happened to erroneously send them to SCO, that might be a bad thing for IBM...
You mean it's in your car that was made in Tennessee? :)
Incidentally, I had sort of an epiphany today when I realized that outsourcing and the falling dollar are tightly coupled. Labor is the most expensive component of any product or service, so by outsourcing, you are exporting the largest economic driver that exists. The dollar is falling against foreign currency because we're sending all of our dollars to pay overseas labor. We're basically just flooding the world with labor dollars...
Granted, I just pulled this idea out of my ass, but I'd rather sit around pulling things out of my ass than expend a ton of effort training my Indian replacements they just brought over on restriction-free L-1 visas...
There is also a fine line between due diligence and reckless indifference.
Wow?
I wonder how much of those record profits were due to laying off American workers to hire cheap foreign labor...
Sounds just like my ex-girlfriend, the quintissential liberal Bryn Mawr graduate psych student.. sheesh...
haha...
You forget, the wacko leftists are not capable of logic because it quickly dispatches 99.9% of their emotionally-driven pseudo-arguments.
Every time one of these "catastrophic" reports come out, the only thing I can do is sigh in frustration. It is quite clear that these folks just want to kill cars.. and kill the US.. .because the US is rich, and US Citizens can afford luxury cars...
They are conveniently ignoring the fact that 6 Billion human beings BREATHING emit more CO2 in one year than all of the fossil fuels that have been combusted since they were first extracted from the ground.
Add to the 6 Billion humans all of the livestock that is required to feed them (cows and chickens, mainly) and there's that much more CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases on top of it.
The only solution to the CO2 problem is to emit less CO2 or increase the amount of CO2 that the environment can naturally convert. The only way to really reduce the amount of emitted CO2 is to significantly reduce the population - but of course this is impractical because of "reproductive freedom," and the fact that you can't just go around exterminating people.
Population control is a problem that nobody will talk about - families having 19 kids either because they don't believe in birth control or because they want their particuar racial group to eventually become a majority in politics - it's just irresponsible. At this point, we have to start thinking of real solutions - not political ones.
Population control is very undesirable on the part of government, particularly the US government, because the social security and medicare ponzi schemes depend on an ever-growing population base to pay the ever-growing bill. Because the program takes in more than it puts out, it must necessarily have a growing income.
Let's face it folks, we can blame our problems on cars, coal, oil, and forest burning all we want, but until we admit that these are not the problem, we'll never solve anything.
It is just ironic that life will be its own end - but this is also part of the natural order of things - the equilibrium. Too much life - more than the planet can sustain - will somehow cause the reduction in life to a level the planet CAN sustain. It's just the way nature works, and the Earth is way to grand a scale for us to have any direct and immediate control over...
Our doom was sealed the moment we figured out how to beat each other to death with a bone, so to speak...
A little from column A and a little from column B... ~5-6 years ago when Britney's first video came out, I was pretty amazed at how sexually graphic it was... today, when I see that video, it strikes me as something that could be a commercial for the Bible... so yeah, culture is definitely becoming more overtly sexual and profane, and as the reaction to that change, indecency enforcement is becoming more strict...
I don't know whether it's too late to un-do all the damage he has done to Amateur Radio by coating BPL with teflon and ramming it through - but hopefully common sense will prevail and BPL will be shelved...
I think *everybody* thought of the 5th element when they read this article... I even made my knee-jerk post before scrolling down... *whoops* hahah...
If I could print me one of those, I'd be a happy camper :)
Of course, the only thing this will lead to is the cessation of spam reporting, followed by a change in behavior that will be that spamees sue spammers in lieu of going through current spam reporting channels. This will be great for lawyers.. on both sides...
Of course, isn't everything?
What else do you expect from a "self-taught" biologist who is said to be "genius" and a "little nuts?" Basically, someone with no credentials and a big, utopian fantasy complex..
I think the more pressing question is, would you want your mother-IN-LAW to live forever?
To say that someone lacks natural ability in something is not to say that they are naturally bad at something. Lacking natural ability does not mean being incapable. *sigh*
I don't have an innate, natural ability to play the lute. That does not mean I am bad at playing the lute, nor that I can't be better at playing the lute than someone who has "natural ability."
Similarly, Joe has some natural ability to play the lute. This does not mean that Joe can even play the lute, let alone that he is good at it.
Well, ever since *BSD died, they need a new morbidity drone :)