Taking care of people today is counter-productive and can destroy opportunities in the future.
Computers don't make opportunities. Teachers don't make opportunities. Public funding of projects, businesses and markets doesn't make opportunities. Opportunities come when a given community finds that is can accomplish something that others in a market want.
South Africa started a very innovative housing project a few years ago. They couldn't afford to construct the hundreds of thousands of homes that were needed and the people who needed them couldn't remotely dream of being able to afford anything even close to what you or I would refer to as a "house." In order to get those people to become productive, they, quite obviously, needed some basic level of living conditions. Catch-22.
So, being a pragmatic lot, they granted the land, poured foundations and dropped off bricks. So, you get a house...provided you build it. Really, quite an ingenious idea. But, but, but! Those poor investors who were deprived of income by gifting that land! What of their plight!! Well, now they have a labor force that is farm more willing and able to contribute to production. Damned good investment, IMHO, and I'd dare say, it produced many, many opportunities.
That's the problem with this man-as-island all-or-nothing thinking. Sometimes, people do need help, whether it is feeding them, getting them into school or putting a roof over their heads. Seems to me, from this corner of the world, people's self-righteous pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps attitudes usuall stem from a willful disregard for all of the charity that has been bestowed on them, but damn it, I'm "self-made!" Baloney.
"First, while some opposed the new registry agreement because of the terms of the "renewal" clause, in truth, the renewal clause in the new agreement is little changed from the 2001.COM agreement. In 2001, ICANN agreed to give VeriSign a presumptive right of renewal for.COM in return for VeriSign's agreement to give up the right to operate.ORG and to agree to a competitive bidding process for the renewal of.NET. ICANN made that decision because it believed that it was very unlikely and not necessarily desirable that the.COM registry operator would change, absent very extreme circumstances, and thus conceding that point (in return for concessions by VeriSign that were viewed as having real value) was conceding very little as a practical matter. The new agreement, again as a practical matter, merely clarifies this point, and does not, in our judgment, make any substantive change. Thus, this is not a reason to oppose this new agreement."
This cult of personality crap with ICANN is just exhausting. Say something like "Vint Cerf Sell Out!" and heads nod everywhre, but if you were to say the same thing about, say Amadeu Abril i Abril, Nii Quaynor or Masanobu Katoh they wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about, but would happily drone on about how it's all a conspiracy of U.S. control blah blah blah blah blah.
I did a search on falun gong, first on images, which was interestnig. Then just "web search." Result:
China: action affected bureau chief china chinese civil cult denouncing education engineer evil experts falun gong gong's hijacking leading movie news ni professor programs radio related report said satellite sept signals special television transmission tv xinhua xinhuanet
United States: 1999 according april article articles body ccp china chinese communist considered crackdown cultivation dafa dharma edit fa falun free gong government health high hongzhi human incident law li million mind new party people persecution police practice practitioners public published qigong religious reports seen state states times torture united wikipedia years...
As the government won't be going away anytime soon, not voting gives a competetive advantage to those who do. While you may disagree with everything about the government, it is strategically foolish not to use the tools you have available to affect how it behaves as a government that is serving you 1% to your liking is far better than one that is serving you 100% to your horror.
...software engineering is quite similar to mechanical engineering. If I designed something that took a million lines of code to produce and can't patent it, while "dippy drinking bird" gets one...
I agree, software patents are way out of control, but if "propeller hat" should be protected... oy vey.
"Educated people" think these things are in their interest.
No matter how idiotic one side seems to be on an issue, it's counter-productive to boil it down to ignorance vs. education, intelligence vs. stupidity, because often, you're arguing with educated, intelligent people who have different values and interests. How many times has the argument about state-sponsored [X] come down to: only stupid people find anything of value in socialism and only an ignorant person would think that socialism is inherently bad. So, then we move on to good vs. evil and all that non-sense.
IMHO the problem is idealism in general. The Left (in the USA) has become LESS idealistic than it used to be--which is actually a GOOD thing, in theory--while The Right has become outright militant in its idealism. Unfortunately, it's rather hard to fight popular, militant idealism with pragmatism...but that may change as people tire of these fights and simply want things to be functional. We may see that as early as November.
Frankly, I think the most significant thing undergraduate degrees teach people in preparing to enter nearly any field is how to deal with a hostile, overbearing, inefficient bureaucracy infested with sadistically egotistical ladder-climbing prats and their gaggles of sniveling sycophants.
In that sense, there is some worth to going to one of the cushier schools, since they are usually the worst cases and you're likely to come out with a nearly superhuman ability to navigate mountains of b.s. that would suffocate a mere mortal.
"It was about people making targets of themselves."
Methinks it was more about people targeting them.
I mean, if a raging horde of violent heterosexual male rapists burst through the doors of the local YWCA, I doubt it would fly to say "well, honestly, if they didn't so blatantly advertise that there was nothing but women in there. I mean, that's just inciting this kind of thing."
..."efficiency" isn't about cheap. I just find it funny that people spend so much energy thinking about where else they can shove some more A/V equipment, rather than think about broader aesthetics.
The integrated house always comes down to "lots of televisions, audio and remote controls."
I always wonder why people don't shoot for hi-tech that is truly integrated, mostly hidden and mostly about efficiency, not bling. Say, smart, zoned HVAC, super-efficient insulation and windows (say, even the LCD dimmable variety)--and to that effect, just a general attention to using advanced materials, design and techniques in the construction of the building itself, not just more gizmos in a standard sheetrocked McMansion.
$85 at the bar. Just in beer. Cheap, lousy, low-quality Pennsylvania beer. You know, I could get an equal volume of higher quality suds for 1/5th the price if I stayed at home... but, uhm, I'd be at home.
...the graphics in Second Life weren't oh-so-1995--and yeah, everyone is making stuff. Well, that's just great. Kind of like the last time I was at a county fair and realized the same thing...and not only didn't want any of it, but wanted to get as far away from it as humanly possible.
In Washington, DC, as in everywhere else I've lived in this country, the electric rates are scaled:
Minimum of $2.96 for 30kwh. 60kwh=$5.74 (1.93x of 30) 120kwh=$11.28 (1.96x of 60) 240kwh=$22.39 (1.98x of 120) 480kwh=$53.52 (2.39x of 240) 960kwh=$151.48 (2.83x of 480) 1920kwh=$347.40 (2.29x of 960)..and it continues to level off at that point, but they _do_ make it much more painful as you approach 1000kwh, which is effectively running 1388 watts 24/7 -- basically, an airconditioner, a lamp, a television and a computer or something. I had two roommates who did this, running up electric bills in the $250 range. After they left, my next month's bill was $6.97. After that, the only thing I leave running now is my server. I got the message from that pricing model...loud and clear.
Or it could be that their customers are sick of paying for service and maintenance contracts, ARE using SuSE, but have just downloaded it and wandered off giving Novell the finger. Before, you HAD to purchase licenses, maintenance or not. Now, you only have to purchase if you want service and support and I gather that the big players who are required to purchase those contracts aren't using SuSE and the others just see little benefit, so they just take the free stuff and leave.
...and this is what is wrong with the whole blogging routine.
ONE source--and that source is something as blatantly downright tawdry as Wonkette. She occasionally digs up something mildly amusing, but she's basically a Washington barfly...and they are legion, at least at the bars I hang around on a daily basis in this town. I suppose I should start up a website and "blog" from my barstool too...it'd have as much credibility.
Now, I now we all need to pay for our precious little websites somehow, but if the real estate is 90% advertising and 10% "original content" -- and a one-page article is spread across five, I stop reading...well, lately I don't even start. The advertisements wouldn't bother me as much if people would just keep the article all on one page. You know, we do have these things called "scroll bars," so we don't have to load the same 1MB of crap five times just to find out what happened to sister Debbie's "11lb pencil."
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Taking care of people today is counter-productive and can destroy opportunities in the future.
Computers don't make opportunities. Teachers don't make opportunities. Public funding of projects, businesses and markets doesn't make opportunities. Opportunities come when a given community finds that is can accomplish something that others in a market want.
South Africa started a very innovative housing project a few years ago. They couldn't afford to construct the hundreds of thousands of homes that were needed and the people who needed them couldn't remotely dream of being able to afford anything even close to what you or I would refer to as a "house." In order to get those people to become productive, they, quite obviously, needed some basic level of living conditions. Catch-22.
So, being a pragmatic lot, they granted the land, poured foundations and dropped off bricks. So, you get a house...provided you build it. Really, quite an ingenious idea. But, but, but! Those poor investors who were deprived of income by gifting that land! What of their plight!! Well, now they have a labor force that is farm more willing and able to contribute to production. Damned good investment, IMHO, and I'd dare say, it produced many, many opportunities.
That's the problem with this man-as-island all-or-nothing thinking. Sometimes, people do need help, whether it is feeding them, getting them into school or putting a roof over their heads. Seems to me, from this corner of the world, people's self-righteous pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps attitudes usuall stem from a willful disregard for all of the charity that has been bestowed on them, but damn it, I'm "self-made!" Baloney.
http://www.icann.org/topics/vrsn-settlement/board
"First, while some opposed the new registry agreement because of the terms of the "renewal" clause, in truth, the renewal clause in the new agreement is little changed from the 2001
Greed?
...I was mainsly saying that doesn't make any sense to single out Vint Cerf.
There are 21 people on the board of directors.
This cult of personality crap with ICANN is just exhausting. Say something like "Vint Cerf Sell Out!" and heads nod everywhre, but if you were to say the same thing about, say Amadeu Abril i Abril, Nii Quaynor or Masanobu Katoh they wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about, but would happily drone on about how it's all a conspiracy of U.S. control blah blah blah blah blah.
...after one comment. :/
I did a search on falun gong, first on images, which was interestnig. Then just "web search." Result:
...
China:
action affected bureau chief china chinese civil cult denouncing education engineer evil experts falun gong gong's hijacking leading movie news ni professor programs radio related report said satellite sept signals special television transmission tv xinhua xinhuanet
United States:
1999 according april article articles body ccp china chinese communist considered crackdown cultivation dafa dharma edit fa falun free gong government health high hongzhi human incident law li million mind new party people persecution police practice practitioners public published qigong religious reports seen state states times torture united wikipedia years
WTF?
You either like something or you're terrified of it? Man, restaurants must be traumatic.
As the government won't be going away anytime soon, not voting gives a competetive advantage to those who do. While you may disagree with everything about the government, it is strategically foolish not to use the tools you have available to affect how it behaves as a government that is serving you 1% to your liking is far better than one that is serving you 100% to your horror.
...software engineering is quite similar to mechanical engineering. If I designed something that took a million lines of code to produce and can't patent it, while "dippy drinking bird" gets one...
I agree, software patents are way out of control, but if "propeller hat" should be protected... oy vey.
"Educated people" think these things are in their interest.
No matter how idiotic one side seems to be on an issue, it's counter-productive to boil it down to ignorance vs. education, intelligence vs. stupidity, because often, you're arguing with educated, intelligent people who have different values and interests. How many times has the argument about state-sponsored [X] come down to: only stupid people find anything of value in socialism and only an ignorant person would think that socialism is inherently bad. So, then we move on to good vs. evil and all that non-sense.
IMHO the problem is idealism in general. The Left (in the USA) has become LESS idealistic than it used to be--which is actually a GOOD thing, in theory--while The Right has become outright militant in its idealism. Unfortunately, it's rather hard to fight popular, militant idealism with pragmatism...but that may change as people tire of these fights and simply want things to be functional. We may see that as early as November.
Frankly, I think the most significant thing undergraduate degrees teach people in preparing to enter nearly any field is how to deal with a hostile, overbearing, inefficient bureaucracy infested with sadistically egotistical ladder-climbing prats and their gaggles of sniveling sycophants.
In that sense, there is some worth to going to one of the cushier schools, since they are usually the worst cases and you're likely to come out with a nearly superhuman ability to navigate mountains of b.s. that would suffocate a mere mortal.
...the cost of entrance into that club is less and less having anything to do with possessing a degree from MIT or Stanford.
"It was about people making targets of themselves."
Methinks it was more about people targeting them.
I mean, if a raging horde of violent heterosexual male rapists burst through the doors of the local YWCA, I doubt it would fly to say "well, honestly, if they didn't so blatantly advertise that there was nothing but women in there. I mean, that's just inciting this kind of thing."
..."efficiency" isn't about cheap. I just find it funny that people spend so much energy thinking about where else they can shove some more A/V equipment, rather than think about broader aesthetics.
So, save the unfounded socioeconomic bluster.
The integrated house always comes down to "lots of televisions, audio and remote controls."
I always wonder why people don't shoot for hi-tech that is truly integrated, mostly hidden and mostly about efficiency, not bling. Say, smart, zoned HVAC, super-efficient insulation and windows (say, even the LCD dimmable variety)--and to that effect, just a general attention to using advanced materials, design and techniques in the construction of the building itself, not just more gizmos in a standard sheetrocked McMansion.
...because the players won't have them.
...underestimating the taste of the American public -- PT Barnum
$85 at the bar. Just in beer. Cheap, lousy, low-quality Pennsylvania beer. You know, I could get an equal volume of higher quality suds for 1/5th the price if I stayed at home... but, uhm, I'd be at home.
...the graphics in Second Life weren't oh-so-1995--and yeah, everyone is making stuff. Well, that's just great. Kind of like the last time I was at a county fair and realized the same thing...and not only didn't want any of it, but wanted to get as far away from it as humanly possible.
anncoulter.com appropriately returns anklebitingpundits.com and neowarmonger.blogspot.com.
100% accuracy. Bravo.
In Washington, DC, as in everywhere else I've lived in this country, the electric rates are scaled:
..and it continues to level off at that point, but they _do_ make it much more painful as you approach 1000kwh, which is effectively running 1388 watts 24/7 -- basically, an airconditioner, a lamp, a television and a computer or something. I had two roommates who did this, running up electric bills in the $250 range. After they left, my next month's bill was $6.97. After that, the only thing I leave running now is my server. I got the message from that pricing model...loud and clear.
Minimum of $2.96 for 30kwh.
60kwh=$5.74 (1.93x of 30)
120kwh=$11.28 (1.96x of 60)
240kwh=$22.39 (1.98x of 120)
480kwh=$53.52 (2.39x of 240)
960kwh=$151.48 (2.83x of 480)
1920kwh=$347.40 (2.29x of 960)
Or it could be that their customers are sick of paying for service and maintenance contracts, ARE using SuSE, but have just downloaded it and wandered off giving Novell the finger. Before, you HAD to purchase licenses, maintenance or not. Now, you only have to purchase if you want service and support and I gather that the big players who are required to purchase those contracts aren't using SuSE and the others just see little benefit, so they just take the free stuff and leave.
...and this is what is wrong with the whole blogging routine.
ONE source--and that source is something as blatantly downright tawdry as Wonkette. She occasionally digs up something mildly amusing, but she's basically a Washington barfly...and they are legion, at least at the bars I hang around on a daily basis in this town. I suppose I should start up a website and "blog" from my barstool too...it'd have as much credibility.
Link Whore.
Now, I now we all need to pay for our precious little websites somehow, but if the real estate is 90% advertising and 10% "original content" -- and a one-page article is spread across five, I stop reading...well, lately I don't even start. The advertisements wouldn't bother me as much if people would just keep the article all on one page. You know, we do have these things called "scroll bars," so we don't have to load the same 1MB of crap five times just to find out what happened to sister Debbie's "11lb pencil."
Honestly...
$100k/40=$2,500.
Whoopeeee. Color me underwhelmed with sticker yawn.