Wine is an implementation of the Windows Win32 and Win16 APIs on top of X and Unix. Think of Wine as a Windows compatibility layer. Wine provides both a development toolkit (Winelib) for porting Windows sources to Unix and a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows 3.x/95/98/ME/NT/W2K/XP binaries to run under Intel Unixes. Wine works on most popular Intel Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris.
I wonder what Cringely has been smoking? Despite what he says, "Even today, you can still get to a C: prompt under Windows XP, which means a disk operating system is hiding there no matter what Microsoft wants us to believe," the XP prompt is NT based (and so more OS/2-like than the MS-DOS under Windows 98).
Anyway, I don't see that as necessarily the same thing as we're seeing here. Cringely is saying that MS should make Windows a Window Manager package and compete with Motif, Gnome, and KDE. Lessen Windows, rather than broaden the reach of a PL to be an OS.
I guess my point is that Apple is sitting on a crazy killer OS platform that at it's core is extremely portable, and they should be exploiting it to it's fullest extent. Their software tools are what defines them.
Problem is, Steve remembers NeXT. Been there, done that, failed.
If you raise taxes from 15 to 30%, they may be motivated to work 50 hours per week just to hold on to what they already have. If you shoot it up to 60%, rather than working 80 hours per week, they might just say screw it, and get a smaller house, or even say I might as well live on welfare
Problem is, this motivation thing you're talking about is "supply-side" economics, or more accurately "trickle-down" economics. It's not "trickle up" economics. The reality is that those who pay the most taxes are not motivated to make less money by higher taxes, they are motivated to hide more money by higher taxes.
If the government makes it less profitable for me to distribute my resources to create wealth, I'll be less likely to distribute my resources.
This works when it comes to the government shifting the tax burden from one area to another: say by lowering capital gains taxes and raising property taxes, one would encourage more investment in non-real property. But it doesn't really have as much relevance to how much people are "motivated" to earn, as you put it at first.
I might make that bet. If the government is going to take half of my profits, I'd be less likely to make that bet, and instead I might just sit on my money.
But most investments don't work like that. And let's remember, that the kind of "making money" you're talking about here is merely redistribution, with as far as the government is concerned is irrelevant to the overall size of the economy. The government wants to see the money circulate as much as possible, and in some ways it is better for it not to circulate through the accounts of the big rollers (who are likely to sit on a lot of it: how much money is Bill Gates sitting on right now?) if it can circulate through 8 or 9 other people's accounts instead.
You think someone who probably has PhD in the field and is a leading researcher in his/her subject needs someone else to be saying that. The point of the book is that it's the author's expert view of the subject on what is important and should be emphasized, how it should be presented and what order it should be presented.
Most Ph.D.s cannot communicate their ideas in writing. God knows how they (or, more to the point, their doctoral committees) got through their dissertations. Please note that I am not talking ex ano here, but from experience.
A professor I know got his word.doc manuscript rejected and had to be typed in Tex. Every book in science that has formulas and diagrams would make sense to be required to be submitted in Tex.
Who was the publisher, University Presses of America? One example does not a rule make. One of my professors had a publisher fail to send her book to the proofreader (a glitch); but her second book was perfectly typeset.
Most publishers will reset a book. The cheap ones only accept camera ready copy. Some do require TeX, but I wouldn't publish with them.
Developmental editing (telling the author "this is the sort of thing you need to be discussing here," "this really isn't necessary here"), production editing (everything people complain about on Slashdot: "you don't know the difference between a plural and a singular, do you?" to "this is actually a condition contrary to fact, so you should use the subjunctive in the protasis and the indicative in the apodosis" to "I know they use single quotes in England, but we follow the Chicago Manual"), imprint (this book is good enough to be called an Oxford University Press book), and marketing.
First of all, they demand that the textbook be submitted in Tex (so all typesetting is done).
Most publishers don't do that. Sure, some of the fly by nighters do, and some in the sciences, but most commercial publishers don't.
Second, a preliminary copy of the book would have been used in a professor's class (so it would have 99% of the mistakes weeded out).
Yeah, my Calc professor did a great job with that... he couldn't even spell the title of the textbook right. And it was his text book. No, I won't say the title, but it was two words one would think any mathematician could spell.
Now, if you could come up with some alternative financing for the developmental and production editing, and for the acquisitions editing, so that the everything but the marketing could be done in an open manner (free as in freedom), I'd be for that.
I think you have a misunderstanding of supply side economics. It's not a matter of wealth creation, it's a matter of motivation.
Good posting, but... Look, here's the problem. Are you saying that I'm less motivated to make $1M/year if I'm taxed 20% than I am if I'm taxed 15%? But if I want to maintain the same lifestyle, isn't my motivation in both cases to clear $800K? And so am I not actually BETTER motivated to earn that $1M a year if the taxes are higher?
Saying that either raising or lowering taxes will always result in more revenue is naive.
Couldn't agree more. That's my point here, that lowering taxes is no guarantee of an improvment in the economy. I think we're just barely on either side of this issue, with my own views leaning a hair to the left of yours.
what does the technology level of dublin (or ireland) have anything to do with ivy league universities in the united states?
The point is, there's no reason for someone to be overawed by Harvard's reputation simply because he's from Ireland.
Hell, for undergrad CS or Engineering, Harvard's probably the THIRD best university in Boston, let alone the world. MIT, BU, both have better undergrad CS programs, I suspect. This is not to denigrate Northeastern, by the way; I worked with a Northeastern grad who was pretty impressive.
For grad, on the other hand, it is probably second to MIT (in Boston; I would expect Stanford and Caltech to be ahead of it nationally, too, and probably a lot of other places mentioned here). The thing is, Harvard is a lousy environment for undergrads: most of the faculty and resources that make it such a superb institution aren't really available to undergrads. Once you're in the graduate programs, though, in most disciplines (don't know about CS), you're dealing with the people who are tops in their fields.
What Harvard has is cachet with the outside world. It's also a great place to go if you're talented but really don't know what you want to do with your life. MIT's good for fields outside the technical fields, but it is spotty, while Harvard is at least a bit strong in almost everything.
If I could go back and do my work anywhere I wanted, I'd pick Cambridge (UK, not Mass). Based on what I've seen in my field, that's nirvana. Trinity would be worth considering, too.
You should try studying your American history once in a while. The U.S. federal government operated without a personal income tax just fine for over 130 years.
Typical AC stupidity. What was the population of the US at that time? How big was the military? What kind of infrastructure did we have? I'll tell you what: we'll create a microcosm of 1920s America for you, a few towns surrounded by a wall, and throw a massive depression, a violent World War, a Cold War, racial tensions, drug problems, and all the other ills of the past 80+ years at you, and see how you cope with them without an income tax.
It's also worth pointing out that there were other sources of income which are lower now: for instance, tarriffs were much higher back then.
I think even licencing spammers has potential to pass legal muster. We licence tv stations - even mandate a certain number of hours of "civil" programming etc. Of course the air waves are viewed as public space, while the internet still has a private enterprise quality to it
Interesting point; basically, the reason the government has a compelling state interest in licensing broadcasters is because the spectrum is a limited resource. But so is the infrastructure of the Internet: there is a theoretical limit to how much bandwidth it can handle, and the spammers are doing their part to reduce the available bandwidth. Too bad it would be, as others have pointed out, unenforceable: that would be a tax we could all live with.
While Republican want to decrease these social programs, Democrats want to increase them.
No, most Democrats want to keep them at about the same size, but reform them so that they work better.
Also Democrats like big govt. running everything while both Republicans and Libertarians feel less govt. is better.
Yeah, sure. Right. Like the DoD budget: every Democrat I know just LOVES that part of big government. And they all want Ashcroft running things.
Ultimately the difference between Democrats and Republicans is this: 1. Democrats cater to the poor and pander to the middle class, Republicans cater to the poor and pay lip service to the middle class. Democrats are tax and spend, and Republicans are borrow and spend and don't pay back. Killing Social Security means "don't repay the money we borrowed from all those folks who've been paying Social Security taxes for the past 40+ years and haven't had an opportunity to collect yet." And you think that's an "entitlement?"
If the goverment takes more of our money, that doesn't help the economy recover -- it hurts it. When taxes are lower people have more money to put back into the companies that power the economy.
Classic statement of supply-side economics. The classic criticism described it as voodoo economics: there is never enough money in the economy for the money saved from tax rates to be made up by increased taxable economic activity (think about it: if you're making 100K a year, and you're taxed at 15%, you're paying 15K a year in taxes. Now your tax rate drops to 10%. You're paying 10K a year in taxes. That puts 5K a year into the economy that wasn't there before. So whoever you give that money to instead pays 10% taxes on it, resulting in -- low and behold! -- an additional 500 in tax income, for a total difference in tax revenue of -4500.
There are only two ways to create genuine wealth: value-added work, and the exploitation (to use the word in a morally neutral sense) of natural resources. All other activities that "create" money actually are either redistributive (don't create, but merely redistribute, wealth; for instance, interest on a loan redistributes the wealth created by the value-added work of the borrower to the lender) or inflationary (don't create wealth, but simply change the value of the markers used to count wealth; commodoties speculation is an example of this). While lowering taxation might have some effect on wealth creation, allowing marginally more people to be employed and thus allowing more people to add value to the economy, it is merely a second-order effect (if I'm using this mathematical term correctly; IANAM nor an economist): that trickle never can grow bigger than the flood it replaced!
In the end, the economy changes not because of changes in tax structure or monetary policy, but because of changes in the business cycle and in consumer confidence. Sometimes people are afraid and hoard money, other times they are confident and spend it. Sometimes businessness make good investments in people and resources, other times they don't.
All that said, it is true that lower taxes are better if one can get the same quality of services for them. So don't imagine that I'm saying that there's no such thing as too much taxes. Only that the notion that lowering taxes always improves the economy is - as the President's father knew so well before the Dark Times, before he joined the Emperor, Darth Reagan - nothing but voodoo.
While it is true that the government is the biggest "company" in the country, it is also one of the most inefficient and wasteful.
Another classic misunderstanding on the part of conservatives. The purpose of a business is to maximize investor value. The purpose of a government is to maximize consumer value. When looking at a government as a company, one should not see the voters as stockholders, but as customers; the stockholders are - surprise, surprise - the politicians. Understanding this might help to explain why politicians are so willing to take major cuts in salary and spend millions of dollars to do an annoying job. The dividends - we call them campaign contributions at best - are worth it.
Perhaps the states should learn how to use their existing funds better, rather than forcing people to give them more money.
It is the nature of taxes that there will always be calls for reduction. Let me ask those of you who agree with Travis - a bright, if misguided (imho) fellow, what you would consider to be the right tax rate? At what tax rate would you promise never to complain?
Can't think of one, can you? The fact of the matter is, even a perfectly efficient government would still have to tax its citizen. And there would still be a large percentage of people who would complain about those taxes. Look at Massachusetts: a large minority of voters indicated that they favored eliminating the income tax. What would this have done? Pretty much wiped out the state government. Not cut, eliminate.
Take the pledge: whenever you argue against taxes, include your estimate of how much you would consider to be a reasonable tax rate.
Holt's article argues that Ada, "had a shaky command of elementary algebra," failed to grasp trigonometry, and was at a loss when it came to calculus. According to both Holt and Woolley, Ada was a "hysteria-prone and often opium-addled" compulsive gambler, a "lusty coquette," and an unbalanced eccentric who "got swept up in the craze for mesmerism and phrenology."
In the 19th century, "hysteria-prone" was used of practically any woman who was not meek. "Lusty coquette," too, was used to denigrate women. So unbalanced. Mesmerism and phrenology were unfortunately popular even with so-called scientists; and one geek culture hero, Arthur Conan Doyle, was besotten with them. None of this, except the claims of poor math skills, is relevant to her programming knowledge. And the fact that it is the first thing introduced (perhaps the interviewee introduces them first, I don't know) suggests that either the interviewer or the interviewee considers them highly relevant in the evaluation of a programmer. I would respectfully suggest that they are not.
Finally, the reason I said "one of the first programmers" was to hedge on the question of whether she really was the first programmer. It seems like very few would deny that she wrote at least some of the example algorithms.
good, informative post, though; and yes, for the most part the TechTV story is pretty balanced. Thanks for your comments.
Of those four, two were brilliant (and one was attractive too), and the other two got Cs.
I don't know about you, man, but I'd hate to think the women in my classes (way back when) were saying "of the six guys in our class, two were brilliant (and one of them was good looking, even.)" Might be true, but I sill would hate to think it.
Gee, Sara, you should count yourself lucky the guy even knew what a traceroute was...
Seriously, this is a chicken and the egg problem. The reason for problems like Sara is having is also the result of problems like Sara is having. If there were more women in IT, the guys in IT would treat the women in the field better, because they'd have more contact with women who knew what they were talking about and wouldn't automatically assume that woman != knowledgable. So it's going to have to be women like Sara who fix the problem; god knows we guys are too hopeless to fix ourselves!
All dialects, including those who developed in England, are incorrect. Most dialectic differences were develloped by illiterate people. There is a correct way to use plurals in English which is well-documented, and it does not matter where you are from.
This is misinformation. All dialects are correct, in that all dialects are self consistent with their own sytaxes and vocabularies. One can speak of the standard dialects, for instance, Received Standard Southern British, which is the canonical British dialect for public discourse, and Standard American English, which is the canonical American dialect for public discourse, or . Another widely used dialect in the United States is African-American Vernacular English, which is sometimes called by linguists Standard African American English, and politically sometimes called "ebonics" and distinguished as a different language by well-meaning idiots who have no background in linguistics.
If one wishes to take part in public discourse, particularly in print, and especially "learned" discourse, it is necessary to learn one of the standard dialects, and it is helpful to learn more than one (e.g., both the American and British standard dialects). If one wishes to converse with persons from other regions that speak English and be sure to understand them, it is helpful to know something about the non-standard dialects which we all use (for instance, The Jargon File is in part a dictionary of a particular non-standard dialect used by self-identified "hackers," and like all dialects, its use is part of that process of self-identification).
One's speech can be incorrect with reference to a particular dialect; for example, one who speaks of a cracker as a "hacker" is not speaking in correct hacker dialect, and is thus identifying himself (or herself) as a poser (i.e., is unintentionally emphasizing an false affectation). Thus one can, in the schools (one of whose primary purposes is the teaching of the local standard dialect), speak of right or wrong use of plurals, in reference to that standard dialect. But one cannot apply the rules from one dialect to others and necessarily identify what are right or wrong uses correctly. Indeed, this is a case in which the American and British standard dialects differ; if one says "Apple is," one is identifying oneself as an American or a wannabee; if one says "Apple are," one is identifying oneself as a Brit/Canadian/etc. (I think this is the usage in the various Commonwealth countries) or a Brit wannabee.
Here's an excellent thread on a linguists list that talks a little bit about prestige or canonical dialects and standards.
I leave the enumeration of the number of different dialects intentionally used in this posting as an exercise to the reader, though I point out that it is an exercise intended to show how shifts in dialect can change one's sense of the "identity" of a writer/speaker.
At some point, even branch points based upon previous work, innovative thinking or novel synthesis of information *must* occur to move concepts and products forward.
Exactly. While practically no one innovates ex nihilo (after all, all knowledge is based upon some common epistemological necessities), some are more innovative than others. The point being that MS is never at the branch point, but always jumps in as second or third to market when they think the market is mature enough to them. Powerpoint, Excel, Word, MSDOS, Windows, you name it. To be just, though, there are a few exceptions: they're playing first to market with the video player, and are introducing the tablet before the market is mature. The tablet I have more confidence in than the video player or the watch.
Apple, on the other hand, hasn't innovated much, either, in the sense of wholly new products. Instead, they've concentrated on providing a much better experience for existing product types. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, but rather the first MP3 player to get it right. If the MS video player has a 3 inch screen, and Apple comes out with one with an 8 inch screen, who's likely to get more sales?
As for the watch, it has already been pointed out that someone (Seiko) has tried this before and failed. And I for one don't see Microsoft (after all, it's Microsoft, not Microhard) as a device vendor. I think they're stretching the market too much. It looks like they'd rather have Apple's vertical setup, but with Windows' market penetration.
Slashdot Mirror
My god, it's almost enough to make me vote Republican. Almost.
If this is true, kudos to GWB. I suppose it took Nixon to go to China, and maybe it will take George W. to take us to Mars.
I'm pretty sure this would violate the constitution's rules about retroactive enforcement. But IANAL.
Death+15 or minimum of 50 years, whichever comes last. Same basic formula as they have now, but more reasonable terms.
I think you mean Billion Dollar Duck.
A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later you're talking about real money.
Yep, he said that.
Although I wonder why nobody else made a library that implements the Win32 API as a library.
Isn't that what Wine is?
Wine is an implementation of the Windows Win32 and Win16 APIs on top of X and Unix. Think of Wine as a Windows compatibility layer. Wine provides both a development toolkit (Winelib) for porting Windows sources to Unix and a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows 3.x/95/98/ME/NT/W2K/XP binaries to run under Intel Unixes. Wine works on most popular Intel Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris.
I wonder what Cringely has been smoking? Despite what he says, "Even today, you can still get to a C: prompt under Windows XP, which means a disk operating system is hiding there no matter what Microsoft wants us to believe," the XP prompt is NT based (and so more OS/2-like than the MS-DOS under Windows 98).
Anyway, I don't see that as necessarily the same thing as we're seeing here. Cringely is saying that MS should make Windows a Window Manager package and compete with Motif, Gnome, and KDE. Lessen Windows, rather than broaden the reach of a PL to be an OS.
I guess my point is that Apple is sitting on a crazy killer OS platform that at it's core is extremely portable, and they should be exploiting it to it's fullest extent. Their software tools are what defines them.
Problem is, Steve remembers NeXT. Been there, done that, failed.
If you raise taxes from 15 to 30%, they may be motivated to work 50 hours per week just to hold on to what they already have. If you shoot it up to 60%, rather than working 80 hours per week, they might just say screw it, and get a smaller house, or even say I might as well live on welfare
Problem is, this motivation thing you're talking about is "supply-side" economics, or more accurately "trickle-down" economics. It's not "trickle up" economics. The reality is that those who pay the most taxes are not motivated to make less money by higher taxes, they are motivated to hide more money by higher taxes.
If the government makes it less profitable for me to distribute my resources to create wealth, I'll be less likely to distribute my resources.
This works when it comes to the government shifting the tax burden from one area to another: say by lowering capital gains taxes and raising property taxes, one would encourage more investment in non-real property. But it doesn't really have as much relevance to how much people are "motivated" to earn, as you put it at first.
I might make that bet. If the government is going to take half of my profits, I'd be less likely to make that bet, and instead I might just sit on my money.
But most investments don't work like that. And let's remember, that the kind of "making money" you're talking about here is merely redistribution, with as far as the government is concerned is irrelevant to the overall size of the economy. The government wants to see the money circulate as much as possible, and in some ways it is better for it not to circulate through the accounts of the big rollers (who are likely to sit on a lot of it: how much money is Bill Gates sitting on right now?) if it can circulate through 8 or 9 other people's accounts instead.
You think someone who probably has PhD in the field and is a leading researcher in his/her subject needs someone else to be saying that. The point of the book is that it's the author's expert view of the subject on what is important and should be emphasized, how it should be presented and what order it should be presented.
Most Ph.D.s cannot communicate their ideas in writing. God knows how they (or, more to the point, their doctoral committees) got through their dissertations. Please note that I am not talking ex ano here, but from experience.
A professor I know got his word .doc manuscript rejected and had to be typed in Tex. Every book in science that has formulas and diagrams would make sense to be required to be submitted in Tex.
Who was the publisher, University Presses of America? One example does not a rule make. One of my professors had a publisher fail to send her book to the proofreader (a glitch); but her second book was perfectly typeset.
Most publishers will reset a book. The cheap ones only accept camera ready copy. Some do require TeX, but I wouldn't publish with them.
And, what do the editors do?
Developmental editing (telling the author "this is the sort of thing you need to be discussing here," "this really isn't necessary here"), production editing (everything people complain about on Slashdot: "you don't know the difference between a plural and a singular, do you?" to "this is actually a condition contrary to fact, so you should use the subjunctive in the protasis and the indicative in the apodosis" to "I know they use single quotes in England, but we follow the Chicago Manual"), imprint (this book is good enough to be called an Oxford University Press book), and marketing.
First of all, they demand that the textbook be submitted in Tex (so all typesetting is done).
Most publishers don't do that. Sure, some of the fly by nighters do, and some in the sciences, but most commercial publishers don't.
Second, a preliminary copy of the book would have been used in a professor's class (so it would have 99% of the mistakes weeded out).
Yeah, my Calc professor did a great job with that... he couldn't even spell the title of the textbook right. And it was his text book. No, I won't say the title, but it was two words one would think any mathematician could spell.
Now, if you could come up with some alternative financing for the developmental and production editing, and for the acquisitions editing, so that the everything but the marketing could be done in an open manner (free as in freedom), I'd be for that.
I think you have a misunderstanding of supply side economics. It's not a matter of wealth creation, it's a matter of motivation.
Good posting, but... Look, here's the problem. Are you saying that I'm less motivated to make $1M/year if I'm taxed 20% than I am if I'm taxed 15%? But if I want to maintain the same lifestyle, isn't my motivation in both cases to clear $800K? And so am I not actually BETTER motivated to earn that $1M a year if the taxes are higher?
Saying that either raising or lowering taxes will always result in more revenue is naive.
Couldn't agree more. That's my point here, that lowering taxes is no guarantee of an improvment in the economy. I think we're just barely on either side of this issue, with my own views leaning a hair to the left of yours.
Excellent response.
The government is supposed to be trying to maximize citizen value. In then end, though, they tend to maximize stockholder/politician value.
How much money does the government need to operate?
Depends. What do you need your government to do?
what does the technology level of dublin (or ireland) have anything to do with ivy league universities in the united states?
The point is, there's no reason for someone to be overawed by Harvard's reputation simply because he's from Ireland.
Hell, for undergrad CS or Engineering, Harvard's probably the THIRD best university in Boston, let alone the world. MIT, BU, both have better undergrad CS programs, I suspect. This is not to denigrate Northeastern, by the way; I worked with a Northeastern grad who was pretty impressive.
For grad, on the other hand, it is probably second to MIT (in Boston; I would expect Stanford and Caltech to be ahead of it nationally, too, and probably a lot of other places mentioned here). The thing is, Harvard is a lousy environment for undergrads: most of the faculty and resources that make it such a superb institution aren't really available to undergrads. Once you're in the graduate programs, though, in most disciplines (don't know about CS), you're dealing with the people who are tops in their fields.
What Harvard has is cachet with the outside world. It's also a great place to go if you're talented but really don't know what you want to do with your life. MIT's good for fields outside the technical fields, but it is spotty, while Harvard is at least a bit strong in almost everything.
If I could go back and do my work anywhere I wanted, I'd pick Cambridge (UK, not Mass). Based on what I've seen in my field, that's nirvana. Trinity would be worth considering, too.
You should try studying your American history once in a while. The U.S. federal government operated without a personal income tax just fine for over 130 years.
Typical AC stupidity. What was the population of the US at that time? How big was the military? What kind of infrastructure did we have? I'll tell you what: we'll create a microcosm of 1920s America for you, a few towns surrounded by a wall, and throw a massive depression, a violent World War, a Cold War, racial tensions, drug problems, and all the other ills of the past 80+ years at you, and see how you cope with them without an income tax.
It's also worth pointing out that there were other sources of income which are lower now: for instance, tarriffs were much higher back then.
I think even licencing spammers has potential to pass legal muster. We licence tv stations - even mandate a certain number of hours of "civil" programming etc. Of course the air waves are viewed as public space, while the internet still has a private enterprise quality to it
Interesting point; basically, the reason the government has a compelling state interest in licensing broadcasters is because the spectrum is a limited resource. But so is the infrastructure of the Internet: there is a theoretical limit to how much bandwidth it can handle, and the spammers are doing their part to reduce the available bandwidth. Too bad it would be, as others have pointed out, unenforceable: that would be a tax we could all live with.
While Republican want to decrease these social programs, Democrats want to increase them.
No, most Democrats want to keep them at about the same size, but reform them so that they work better.
Also Democrats like big govt. running everything while both Republicans and Libertarians feel less govt. is better.
Yeah, sure. Right. Like the DoD budget: every Democrat I know just LOVES that part of big government. And they all want Ashcroft running things.
Ultimately the difference between Democrats and Republicans is this: 1. Democrats cater to the poor and pander to the middle class, Republicans cater to the poor and pay lip service to the middle class. Democrats are tax and spend, and Republicans are borrow and spend and don't pay back. Killing Social Security means "don't repay the money we borrowed from all those folks who've been paying Social Security taxes for the past 40+ years and haven't had an opportunity to collect yet." And you think that's an "entitlement?"
Fiscally reponsible indeed.
If the goverment takes more of our money, that doesn't help the economy recover -- it hurts it. When taxes are lower people have more money to put back into the companies that power the economy.
Classic statement of supply-side economics. The classic criticism described it as voodoo economics: there is never enough money in the economy for the money saved from tax rates to be made up by increased taxable economic activity (think about it: if you're making 100K a year, and you're taxed at 15%, you're paying 15K a year in taxes. Now your tax rate drops to 10%. You're paying 10K a year in taxes. That puts 5K a year into the economy that wasn't there before. So whoever you give that money to instead pays 10% taxes on it, resulting in -- low and behold! -- an additional 500 in tax income, for a total difference in tax revenue of -4500.
There are only two ways to create genuine wealth: value-added work, and the exploitation (to use the word in a morally neutral sense) of natural resources. All other activities that "create" money actually are either redistributive (don't create, but merely redistribute, wealth; for instance, interest on a loan redistributes the wealth created by the value-added work of the borrower to the lender) or inflationary (don't create wealth, but simply change the value of the markers used to count wealth; commodoties speculation is an example of this). While lowering taxation might have some effect on wealth creation, allowing marginally more people to be employed and thus allowing more people to add value to the economy, it is merely a second-order effect (if I'm using this mathematical term correctly; IANAM nor an economist): that trickle never can grow bigger than the flood it replaced!
In the end, the economy changes not because of changes in tax structure or monetary policy, but because of changes in the business cycle and in consumer confidence. Sometimes people are afraid and hoard money, other times they are confident and spend it. Sometimes businessness make good investments in people and resources, other times they don't.
All that said, it is true that lower taxes are better if one can get the same quality of services for them. So don't imagine that I'm saying that there's no such thing as too much taxes. Only that the notion that lowering taxes always improves the economy is - as the President's father knew so well before the Dark Times, before he joined the Emperor, Darth Reagan - nothing but voodoo.
While it is true that the government is the biggest "company" in the country, it is also one of the most inefficient and wasteful.
Another classic misunderstanding on the part of conservatives. The purpose of a business is to maximize investor value. The purpose of a government is to maximize consumer value. When looking at a government as a company, one should not see the voters as stockholders, but as customers; the stockholders are - surprise, surprise - the politicians. Understanding this might help to explain why politicians are so willing to take major cuts in salary and spend millions of dollars to do an annoying job. The dividends - we call them campaign contributions at best - are worth it.
Perhaps the states should learn how to use their existing funds better, rather than forcing people to give them more money.
It is the nature of taxes that there will always be calls for reduction. Let me ask those of you who agree with Travis - a bright, if misguided (imho) fellow, what you would consider to be the right tax rate? At what tax rate would you promise never to complain?
Can't think of one, can you? The fact of the matter is, even a perfectly efficient government would still have to tax its citizen. And there would still be a large percentage of people who would complain about those taxes. Look at Massachusetts: a large minority of voters indicated that they favored eliminating the income tax. What would this have done? Pretty much wiped out the state government. Not cut, eliminate.
Take the pledge: whenever you argue against taxes, include your estimate of how much you would consider to be a reasonable tax rate.
Holt's article argues that Ada, "had a shaky command of elementary algebra," failed to grasp trigonometry, and was at a loss when it came to calculus. According to both Holt and Woolley, Ada was a "hysteria-prone and often opium-addled" compulsive gambler, a "lusty coquette," and an unbalanced eccentric who "got swept up in the craze for mesmerism and phrenology."
In the 19th century, "hysteria-prone" was used of practically any woman who was not meek. "Lusty coquette," too, was used to denigrate women. So unbalanced. Mesmerism and phrenology were unfortunately popular even with so-called scientists; and one geek culture hero, Arthur Conan Doyle, was besotten with them. None of this, except the claims of poor math skills, is relevant to her programming knowledge. And the fact that it is the first thing introduced (perhaps the interviewee introduces them first, I don't know) suggests that either the interviewer or the interviewee considers them highly relevant in the evaluation of a programmer. I would respectfully suggest that they are not.
Finally, the reason I said "one of the first programmers" was to hedge on the question of whether she really was the first programmer. It seems like very few would deny that she wrote at least some of the example algorithms.
good, informative post, though; and yes, for the most part the TechTV story is pretty balanced. Thanks for your comments.
Of those four, two were brilliant (and one was attractive too), and the other two got Cs.
I don't know about you, man, but I'd hate to think the women in my classes (way back when) were saying "of the six guys in our class, two were brilliant (and one of them was good looking, even.)" Might be true, but I sill would hate to think it.
You do both realize that one of the first "programmers" was a woman, right?
Gee, Sara, you should count yourself lucky the guy even knew what a traceroute was ...
Seriously, this is a chicken and the egg problem. The reason for problems like Sara is having is also the result of problems like Sara is having. If there were more women in IT, the guys in IT would treat the women in the field better, because they'd have more contact with women who knew what they were talking about and wouldn't automatically assume that woman != knowledgable. So it's going to have to be women like Sara who fix the problem; god knows we guys are too hopeless to fix ourselves!
All dialects, including those who developed in England, are incorrect. Most dialectic differences were develloped by illiterate people. There is a correct way to use plurals in English which is well-documented, and it does not matter where you are from.
This is misinformation. All dialects are correct, in that all dialects are self consistent with their own sytaxes and vocabularies. One can speak of the standard dialects, for instance, Received Standard Southern British, which is the canonical British dialect for public discourse, and Standard American English, which is the canonical American dialect for public discourse, or . Another widely used dialect in the United States is African-American Vernacular English, which is sometimes called by linguists Standard African American English, and politically sometimes called "ebonics" and distinguished as a different language by well-meaning idiots who have no background in linguistics.
If one wishes to take part in public discourse, particularly in print, and especially "learned" discourse, it is necessary to learn one of the standard dialects, and it is helpful to learn more than one (e.g., both the American and British standard dialects). If one wishes to converse with persons from other regions that speak English and be sure to understand them, it is helpful to know something about the non-standard dialects which we all use (for instance, The Jargon File is in part a dictionary of a particular non-standard dialect used by self-identified "hackers," and like all dialects, its use is part of that process of self-identification).
One's speech can be incorrect with reference to a particular dialect; for example, one who speaks of a cracker as a "hacker" is not speaking in correct hacker dialect, and is thus identifying himself (or herself) as a poser (i.e., is unintentionally emphasizing an false affectation). Thus one can, in the schools (one of whose primary purposes is the teaching of the local standard dialect), speak of right or wrong use of plurals, in reference to that standard dialect. But one cannot apply the rules from one dialect to others and necessarily identify what are right or wrong uses correctly. Indeed, this is a case in which the American and British standard dialects differ; if one says "Apple is," one is identifying oneself as an American or a wannabee; if one says "Apple are," one is identifying oneself as a Brit/Canadian/etc. (I think this is the usage in the various Commonwealth countries) or a Brit wannabee.
Here's an excellent thread on a linguists list that talks a little bit about prestige or canonical dialects and standards.
I leave the enumeration of the number of different dialects intentionally used in this posting as an exercise to the reader, though I point out that it is an exercise intended to show how shifts in dialect can change one's sense of the "identity" of a writer/speaker.
At some point, even branch points based upon previous work, innovative thinking or novel synthesis of information *must* occur to move concepts and products forward.
Exactly. While practically no one innovates ex nihilo (after all, all knowledge is based upon some common epistemological necessities), some are more innovative than others. The point being that MS is never at the branch point, but always jumps in as second or third to market when they think the market is mature enough to them. Powerpoint, Excel, Word, MSDOS, Windows, you name it. To be just, though, there are a few exceptions: they're playing first to market with the video player, and are introducing the tablet before the market is mature. The tablet I have more confidence in than the video player or the watch.
Apple, on the other hand, hasn't innovated much, either, in the sense of wholly new products. Instead, they've concentrated on providing a much better experience for existing product types. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, but rather the first MP3 player to get it right. If the MS video player has a 3 inch screen, and Apple comes out with one with an 8 inch screen, who's likely to get more sales?
As for the watch, it has already been pointed out that someone (Seiko) has tried this before and failed. And I for one don't see Microsoft (after all, it's Microsoft, not Microhard) as a device vendor. I think they're stretching the market too much. It looks like they'd rather have Apple's vertical setup, but with Windows' market penetration.
The 12" ibook is still a great option for folks that want to save $800 or so.
Or can't guarantee that their laptop won't be bumped around quite a bit (I'm clumsy as all hell myself).
Have you looked under the View menu? Or hit Command-\ ?
Thanks, Coretti. Yeah, I noticed that last night after I posted this, and felt like an idiot. It's more configurable than I thought it is.