Ok, I've got karma to burn, and I'm getting kind of tired of the anti-immigrant flavour here on/., so I present for your reading pleasure a few points:
1) Illegal immigrants, in general, would prefer to be legal immigrants, pay taxes, etc. They are not allowed that option. It is very difficult to volutarily become a citizen, much more so than it was for the immigrant ancestors of the majority of the respondents, I would wager... My ancestors came over on the Mayflower, and fought in the Revolutionary War, and they had no problem letting the rest of y'all in. It wasn't too good for the native americans, but it was a very good deal for US. If you really have a problem with illegal immigration, MAKE IMMIGRATION LEGAL.
2) The problem faced by emergency rooms and hospitals having to pay for the care of illegal immigrants is not confined to the illegal immigrant population. It's not like the illegal immigrants get indigent care and the native indigents don't. The real problem is that most immigrants (illegal and legal) are fairly poor, and thus require indigent care. If we had a bunch of rich illegal immigrants coming in, I don't think people would be complaining. But of course, you are going to bitch about how much money that drains from our economy. Well, how much do your kids contribute towards their medical care? Nothing until they grow up. Well, in a few generations when the immigrant populations grow up, you'll see plenty of contributions. Ask the Irish, Italians, Polish, etc. You know, the relative newcomers.
3) The prichardson post which was modded to oblivion had a number of factual errors in it, however he was right in spirit. Illegal immigrants contribute much. However, they have many problems (drugs, crime, etc) which are associated with both poverty and a shadowy legal status. The shadowy legal status can be fixed by opening up immigration. Poverty will have to be worked out of, the same as most immigrant groups have done. Question: how many of your ancestors were illegal immigrants? How many would have been if today's immigration laws were in effect in 1800?
Looking forward to getting flames from all over, in the name of maybe changing some minds, krysith
Whether you agree with the posters statement that the ACLU is an equivalent to the EFF or CBDLF, it certainly is germane to a discussion in which donations are suggested to the two organizations mentioned. Just because you disagree with a poster doesn't make the post offtopic. Instead, reply with a rebuttal, please.
I believe the charts are mislabeled. They say nanoseconds at the bottom, but the clear 60 hz signal on the cheap ION one would be correct if the units were microseconds.
Browsing college bookstores and then buying the selections for the courses somewhere else certainly saves money. But here's what I do (speaking as a collector/reader/addict):
1) Dover books! Cheap books by the authors that count! Dover See for example "Atomic Physics" by Max Born for $15!
2) The best place to look for books in a college bookstore is usually not on the shelves. There is often a place where they have discontinued or otherwise "unsellable" books, and you can pick them up for a song. I picked up a great stellar nucleosynthesis textbook for $3 once.
3) If you are looking for Tech-Oprah, most scientific societies (APS,ACM,IEEE,etc) have book reviews et. al. in their little magazines. These are brand new, so hence expensive. However, if you really need to know what good books are coming out in your field, they are there. Every once in a while, that $150 book is exactly the one you need...
I have been having thoughts similar to the grandparent post for awhile. I believe that it is incorrect to say that this does not make economic sense. That is only true if the content would be generated regardless of whether it is purchased.
To show how it would work: A content producer (e.g. The Changelings, my favorite indy group) wants to make a CD. They put out a notice, letting fans know that they are working on a new CD. They say that they will release it to the public when contributions from the fans reach, say $35,000 (I have no idea how much they make total from a CD). If enough fans buy in, the CD is released and everyone can download and listen as much as they want. If not enough people put in, then obviously the band has put their price too high and ought to lower it. This model results in the content producer getting paid and the content being freely available. It also enables bargaining between the content producer and the fans. Effectively, that collective bargaining between fans and producers has been managed (usually greedily) by the content distributors (record companies) in the past. Now that distribution is nearly free, that model no longer works.
The difficulty with this model is: who is going to pay? Why should I pay when someone else might pay for me? This reasoning seems good, but ignores the time value of content. It also ignores the fact that people will and do support content creators which make stuff they like. And it ignores the fact that it benefits a musician, artist, or author to have more people see their work EVEN if they get nothing from that particular work, as it increases the value of their future work. If I heard that the Changelings had a CD coming out, and needed some money towards it, I'd buy in, even if you might not. I wouldn't even need to hear samples (their last 4 albums have convinced me), although some people would want to.
I have trouble thinking of a better model which addresses the troubles we are having with the current system. Anyone on/. have any better ideas? We have all seen the fracas which is resulting from the unenforceablity of current copyright laws. No one wants to see the artists not get paid, but no one wants to throw college kids in jail for copying CDs either. A new business model is needed. Isn't that what we've been saying?
It's nice to see someone linking to Fravia+'s. I've always enjoyed that site. A lot of the info on it should be old hat to many/.ers, but it is good to learn from and has occasional truly juicy tidbits.
Interesting results. I wonder if it looks the same to everyone else out there as it does to me. Whenever I change my sig, the post updates to the new sig.
I was trying to post with a sig under 120 characters, containing more than 50 carriage returns. Just to see what would happen. I didn't expect to have the sig update every time I changed it. FYI, from my point of view, the sig appeared in the post without the carriage returns, although it appeared correctly on my preferences page. Saving the preferences page would clip the sig to the 120 character max length.
Of course, if I were serious about this, I could take a glance at the slashcode. But this was just for fun, and I don't feel like downloading the tarball to look at the docs.
Are you that GiMP who lives in the box? You know, the one from "Pulp Fiction"? Wow! First Will Wheaton, now the Gimp! You meet the most interesting people on slashdot!
"If it were a perfectly fair society, you could hire a lower cost Indian that does better work to replace yourself and make the profit. Instead, only your company can do that now."
In a perfectly fair society, you could *start* a business, and hire some of those people who are complaining about how they have no jobs. So go hire some Indians already!
Not that our society is even remotely fair, but the point stands nonetheless...
Probably the guy with the Videocamera and the P2P connection. I figure that may be what the ballpark is really worried about. A corporate ISP can be told to crack down on illegal prodcasts, but I'm not so sure they would trust PTP to. Or maybe it's just typical management fear of loss of control.
However, a ~real~ baseball fan would bring a wireless-equipped PDA to look up statistics and stuff, so she can tell her friends, "That's the fifth home run Jose Canseco has hit since he's gotten out of jail!".
The USA is a democratic republic, not a democracy. It is actually heading more in the direction of a democracy (note the recent increase in referrenda and trivial constitutional amendments), but is still nevertheless a republic. If you read the history of ancient republics (e.g. Rome) you will note that "being bought" was not just a problem, but THE problem. In Rome's case, it eventually led to the creation of the Roman Empire, which was just the Republic in a "fully bought" state.
What do you think would happen if only one person bought off most of the Congresscritters? I bet you would say, "A revolution". If you think that is what would save us, perhaps you ought to read up on Marius and Sulla, and what happened after their nice little civil war.
Ancient Democracy on the other hand, has much more in common with what we in America might call "Local Politics". Which makes sense when you realize that very few of the ancient democratic city-states had a population of over 100,000. (Sorry, that's a guess; no time to check the numbers today).
I think everyone, even the Congresscritters themselves, realize that we need to make a system that can't be bought. The question is how. I believe that a more direct democracy is the answer. While direct democracy has it's problems (esp. in a nation where WWF has higher ratings than CSPAN), it is a lot harder to buy the loyalty of 280 million people than 535...
I do wonder how many incidents of "RF Interference" have really been incidents of "I can't find the cause, so it must be RF Interference". Software bugs often cause hard-to-find problems. I have been a product manager for an RF device used in hospitals, and occasionally we run into problems for which we can't find the cause. The problem happens, then the problem goes away. I think most troubleshooters have experienced something like that. Well, we always figure it must be "RF Interference" or a "Software Bug". But frankly, we don't really know, because we can't reproduce it. I wonder exactly how reproducible these incidents of RF interference are. I bet if there was a navigational problem which went away when you turned off Joe Businesstraveller's laptop, that the flight crew isn't going to turn it back on to verify that it actually is the source of the problem.
I think that is precisely ~because~ nothing ever breaks. When you can't break your opponent, you try to tip it over. Of course, then everyone switched to wedges which operate just as well upside down, and so matches are decided upon by a points system. So basically, you win now by getting points for aggressive driving... and so we return full circle to NASCAR...
While the Great Depression of 1929 was certainly caused in large part by gov't intervention (the low interest rates of the late twenties which you cite, and the Smoot-Hawley tarrifs), you should note that when we had a laissez faire banking system, things were even worse. Most people have grandparents who remember the Depression of the 30's, so they know about it. However, we also had significant depressions and bank runs in 1893 and 1907, which were ~why~ the Federal Reserve system was set up. Remember that old story about J.P. Morgan locking all the big players in a room until they bailed out the stock market ? (pdf) See a quick summary here . The fact is that the business cycle has never been repealed, no matter how many times (1920's, 1990's) it has been predicted to be.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, I've got karma to burn, and I'm getting kind of tired of the anti-immigrant flavour here on /., so I present for your reading pleasure a few points:
1) Illegal immigrants, in general, would prefer to be legal immigrants, pay taxes, etc. They are not allowed that option. It is very difficult to volutarily become a citizen, much more so than it was for the immigrant ancestors of the majority of the respondents, I would wager... My ancestors came over on the Mayflower, and fought in the Revolutionary War, and they had no problem letting the rest of y'all in. It wasn't too good for the native americans, but it was a very good deal for US. If you really have a problem with illegal immigration, MAKE IMMIGRATION LEGAL.
2) The problem faced by emergency rooms and hospitals having to pay for the care of illegal immigrants is not confined to the illegal immigrant population. It's not like the illegal immigrants get indigent care and the native indigents don't. The real problem is that most immigrants (illegal and legal) are fairly poor, and thus require indigent care. If we had a bunch of rich illegal immigrants coming in, I don't think people would be complaining. But of course, you are going to bitch about how much money that drains from our economy. Well, how much do your kids contribute towards their medical care? Nothing until they grow up. Well, in a few generations when the immigrant populations grow up, you'll see plenty of contributions. Ask the Irish, Italians, Polish, etc. You know, the relative newcomers.
3) The prichardson post which was modded to oblivion had a number of factual errors in it, however he was right in spirit. Illegal immigrants contribute much. However, they have many problems (drugs, crime, etc) which are associated with both poverty and a shadowy legal status. The shadowy legal status can be fixed by opening up immigration. Poverty will have to be worked out of, the same as most immigrant groups have done. Question: how many of your ancestors were illegal immigrants? How many would have been if today's immigration laws were in effect in 1800?
Looking forward to getting flames from all over, in the name of maybe changing some minds,
krysith
Dear Moderators,
Why is this currently modded 0, Offtopic?
Whether you agree with the posters statement that the ACLU is an equivalent to the EFF or CBDLF, it certainly is germane to a discussion in which donations are suggested to the two organizations mentioned. Just because you disagree with a poster doesn't make the post offtopic. Instead, reply with a rebuttal, please.
Too bad the original post wasn't by Mr. andersen! ;)
I believe the charts are mislabeled. They say nanoseconds at the bottom, but the clear 60 hz signal on the cheap ION one would be correct if the units were microseconds.
Thanks for the link.
;)
I'm tempted to send one of those "Viral Marketing doesn't work. Tell everyone you know." shirts to my old friend Tim Draper.
I remember that too. Apparently it is now legendary...
The September that never ended
Browsing college bookstores and then buying the selections for the courses somewhere else certainly saves money. But here's what I do (speaking as a collector/reader/addict):
1) Dover books! Cheap books by the authors that count! Dover
See for example "Atomic Physics" by Max Born for $15!
2) The best place to look for books in a college bookstore is usually not on the shelves. There is often a place where they have discontinued or otherwise "unsellable" books, and you can pick them up for a song. I picked up a great stellar nucleosynthesis textbook for $3 once.
3) If you are looking for Tech-Oprah, most scientific societies (APS,ACM,IEEE,etc) have book reviews et. al. in their little magazines. These are brand new, so hence expensive. However, if you really need to know what good books are coming out in your field, they are there. Every once in a while, that $150 book is exactly the one you need...
Cheers,
krysith
"Can anyone give any advice on how to get their attention?"
Um, post on Slashdot and get modded up to +5 Interesting?
I'll direct my graphic artist friends to your site. Good luck. I hope you don't mind if it ends up looking like something out of Farscape...
I have been having thoughts similar to the grandparent post for awhile. I believe that it is incorrect to say that this does not make economic sense. That is only true if the content would be generated regardless of whether it is purchased.
/. have any better ideas? We have all seen the fracas which is resulting from the unenforceablity of current copyright laws. No one wants to see the artists not get paid, but no one wants to throw college kids in jail for copying CDs either. A new business model is needed. Isn't that what we've been saying?
To show how it would work: A content producer (e.g. The Changelings, my favorite indy group) wants to make a CD. They put out a notice, letting fans know that they are working on a new CD. They say that they will release it to the public when contributions from the fans reach, say $35,000 (I have no idea how much they make total from a CD). If enough fans buy in, the CD is released and everyone can download and listen as much as they want. If not enough people put in, then obviously the band has put their price too high and ought to lower it. This model results in the content producer getting paid and the content being freely available. It also enables bargaining between the content producer and the fans. Effectively, that collective bargaining between fans and producers has been managed (usually greedily) by the content distributors (record companies) in the past. Now that distribution is nearly free, that model no longer works.
The difficulty with this model is: who is going to pay? Why should I pay when someone else might pay for me? This reasoning seems good, but ignores the time value of content. It also ignores the fact that people will and do support content creators which make stuff they like. And it ignores the fact that it benefits a musician, artist, or author to have more people see their work EVEN if they get nothing from that particular work, as it increases the value of their future work. If I heard that the Changelings had a CD coming out, and needed some money towards it, I'd buy in, even if you might not. I wouldn't even need to hear samples (their last 4 albums have convinced me), although some people would want to.
I have trouble thinking of a better model which addresses the troubles we are having with the current system. Anyone on
It's nice to see someone linking to Fravia+'s. I've always enjoyed that site. A lot of the info on it should be old hat to many /.ers, but it is good to learn from and has occasional truly juicy tidbits.
Interesting results. I wonder if it looks the same to everyone else out there as it does to me. Whenever I change my sig, the post updates to the new sig.
I was trying to post with a sig under 120 characters, containing more than 50 carriage returns. Just to see what would happen. I didn't expect to have the sig update every time I changed it. FYI, from my point of view, the sig appeared in the post without the carriage returns, although it appeared correctly on my preferences page. Saving the preferences page would clip the sig to the 120 character max length.
Of course, if I were serious about this, I could take a glance at the slashcode. But this was just for fun, and I don't feel like downloading the tarball to look at the docs.
Attempted sig hack!
Let's see if it works.
Sorry for any annoyance this may cause...
Are you that GiMP who lives in the box? You know, the one from "Pulp Fiction"? Wow! First Will Wheaton, now the Gimp! You meet the most interesting people on slashdot!
"Bring out the Gimp" - Pulp Fiction
"If it were a perfectly fair society, you could hire a lower cost Indian that does better work to replace yourself and make the profit. Instead, only your company can do that now."
In a perfectly fair society, you could *start* a business, and hire some of those people who are complaining about how they have no jobs. So go hire some Indians already!
Not that our society is even remotely fair, but the point stands nonetheless...
Does anyone else think it's strange that the topic icon for this story is "Technology/IT", not our friendly little Tux ("Linux")?
Talking about him behind his back, eh?
How about using ROT-5? ;)
Probably the guy with the Videocamera and the P2P connection. I figure that may be what the ballpark is really worried about. A corporate ISP can be told to crack down on illegal prodcasts, but I'm not so sure they would trust PTP to. Or maybe it's just typical management fear of loss of control.
However, a ~real~ baseball fan would bring a wireless-equipped PDA to look up statistics and stuff, so she can tell her friends, "That's the fifth home run Jose Canseco has hit since he's gotten out of jail!".
The USA is a democratic republic, not a democracy. It is actually heading more in the direction of a democracy (note the recent increase in referrenda and trivial constitutional amendments), but is still nevertheless a republic. If you read the history of ancient republics (e.g. Rome) you will note that "being bought" was not just a problem, but THE problem. In Rome's case, it eventually led to the creation of the Roman Empire, which was just the Republic in a "fully bought" state.
What do you think would happen if only one person bought off most of the Congresscritters? I bet you would say, "A revolution". If you think that is what would save us, perhaps you ought to read up on Marius and Sulla, and what happened after their nice little civil war.
Ancient Democracy on the other hand, has much more in common with what we in America might call "Local Politics". Which makes sense when you realize that very few of the ancient democratic city-states had a population of over 100,000. (Sorry, that's a guess; no time to check the numbers today).
I think everyone, even the Congresscritters themselves, realize that we need to make a system that can't be bought. The question is how. I believe that a more direct democracy is the answer. While direct democracy has it's problems (esp. in a nation where WWF has higher ratings than CSPAN), it is a lot harder to buy the loyalty of 280 million people than 535...
From my experience, I'd have to say that at least in this part of America, "Liberal" means "what used to be called 'Moderates', before Bush's War".
;)
Greetings from sunny Florida.
Someone makes a Neal Stephenson reference on Slashdot and gets modded down? What's the world coming to? Didn't NEone read "Diamond Age"?
"Don't know the date
Don't know the time
The lab rats are insane
And I fear that I'll be next..."
-The Changelings "Parallax"
I do wonder how many incidents of "RF Interference" have really been incidents of "I can't find the cause, so it must be RF Interference". Software bugs often cause hard-to-find problems. I have been a product manager for an RF device used in hospitals, and occasionally we run into problems for which we can't find the cause. The problem happens, then the problem goes away. I think most troubleshooters have experienced something like that. Well, we always figure it must be "RF Interference" or a "Software Bug". But frankly, we don't really know, because we can't reproduce it.
I wonder exactly how reproducible these incidents of RF interference are. I bet if there was a navigational problem which went away when you turned off Joe Businesstraveller's laptop, that the flight crew isn't going to turn it back on to verify that it actually is the source of the problem.
I think that is precisely ~because~ nothing ever breaks. When you can't break your opponent, you try to tip it over. Of course, then everyone switched to wedges which operate just as well upside down, and so matches are decided upon by a points system. So basically, you win now by getting points for aggressive driving... and so we return full circle to NASCAR...
BTW, I LOVE the idea about balsa wood robot wars!
Not to mention George O. Smith
While the Great Depression of 1929 was certainly caused in large part by gov't intervention (the low interest rates of the late twenties which you cite, and the Smoot-Hawley tarrifs), you should note that when we had a laissez faire banking system, things were even worse. Most people have grandparents who remember the Depression of the 30's, so they know about it. However, we also had significant depressions and bank runs in 1893 and 1907, which were ~why~ the Federal Reserve system was set up. Remember that old story about J.P. Morgan locking all the big players in a room until they bailed out the stock market ? (pdf) See a quick summary here . The fact is that the business cycle has never been repealed, no matter how many times (1920's, 1990's) it has been predicted to be.