Do *you* have health insurance not tied to your place of work?
No, but I can get it (as long as I act within a fairly short window after severing ties with my current place of work).
Do you have 100% assurance that the company from which you bought the insurance will still be there 70 years hence?
Close enough as makes no difference.
Have you negotiated rates that will be predictable, no matter what health conditions you develop?
As long as I keep my coverage current, yes. There's a cap, but it's high enough that hitting it would be indicative that the expense of keeping me alive outweighs the value of such. I'm under no delusion that I (or any other individual) should be kept alive at all costs.
Do you have money full set aside to pay the premiums for your full life span?
No, but I have enough money available (not "set aside", but reclaimable from other purposes, albiet at substantial expense in some cases) to provide for a few years of coverage. If I can't resume paying the premiums within a few years of losing my ability to do so, I have bigger problems.
If the answer to any of those questions is no, you have not planned for sudden health crisis.
Bullshit. That's like saying that without three data centers on every continent, one hasn't planned for network outages. My present safety net is Good Enough -- and I've just recently inched my way into middle class.
(It helps that my employer is in the medical field).
Even if it's the poorly-researched, factually-incorrect kind?
The grandparent's core argument ($1250/mo being insufficient to live on) is incorrect. Oh, sure, it's insufficient to live on for someone who doesn't own their own house and is living in an urban population center -- but if you're willing to retire out in Podunkville or you have the foresight and responsibility to have your mortgage paid off by the time you retire, it's plenty.
I don't know how someone can live with $1250 a month coming in.
It's entirely possible. There are the parts of the States where houses cost $30K or so and a mortgage payment is on the scale of $300/mo. Can't live anywhere popular, sure -- forget about big cities, for instance -- but it's entirely doable.
Want to live somewhere nicer? Well, if you've been responsible enough to own your own home and have your mortgage out of the way, $1250 is still quite enough.
he also nominally ran the largest communist country
Which is why the parent could say jokingly describe a newspaper as "to the left of Stalin" to emphasize its position.
I may say during the summer that the sidewalk outside is on par with the surface of the sun -- but that doesn't mean that I'm too uneducated to know the actual tempature; rather, it may well mean that I'm just applying a bit of hyperbole.
Remember, there's such a thing as risk-avoidance strategies... like buying insurance.
That said -- life is inherently unfair. Attempts to correct that, particularly through large-scale coercive action, tend to create situations where the cure is, on the whole, worse than the disease.
It would, after all, be their own fault, for failing to save properly for old age.
Damn straight, it would be -- and after seeing that happen, one would hope that the next generation would actually grow a bit of personal responsibility for their finances.
Being that the GIMP has been officially supported on Win32 ever since the 2.0 release, I haven't considered GTK/win32 support particularly deficient for a while now.
As a Linux user, I don't find that I particularly need any applications I don't have. (And WINE, not being an emulator, doesn't run at "half speed" -- there are documented cases where it's faster than Windows itself).
When I'm on Windows, though, I do miss Evolution. This is a useful move.
Someone else posted that firefox plugins aren't really code, but are instead scripts (like JavaScript)
Most of them are JavaScript (not just "something like" JavaScript but actual ECMAScript) -- just not all of them. The plugins you mention are examples of the latter; they're native code using XPCOM.
I agree that patents and copyrights were originally designed to protect the inventor/creator.
I disagree. I believe the Founding Fathers meant what they said when they said that the government was given the right to grant limited monopolies on works and inventions to promote the sciences and the useful arts. Not to protect the creator, but rather to enrich the sum set of knowledge available to the public. That the way this enrichment of the public is done happens to benefit authors and inventors is well and good -- but forgetting which is the goal and which is the pleasant side effect represents a lack of perspective.
I really see about zero market for someone developing EMP bombs, sp the technology will likely never be developed.
But the technology for building high-output single-use chemical energy storage mechanisms, OTOH, has plenty of potential market; potentially likewise for other components. Assembling them becomes an exercise involving vastly less expense.
And if an EMP bomb were known to disable all legal, non-police-owned handguns, I'd expect that that would provide plenty of market alone.
Criminals aren't a bunch of genius technologists experimenting with EMP weapons like in a comic book (at least not the ones robbing banks at gunpoint).
Technologies don't stay experimental forever.
And it doesn't mean it won't be exactly the same size five years from now. Electronics shrink because of process improvements. Shrinking something like an EMP generator would be far harder since you rely on energy storage, large coils, etc.
This is an area where single-use, high-output chemical energy storage mechanisms would come into play. There's been a lot of research done on those -- mostly military, but technologies do filter down. But sure, let's say it's the same five years from now. Will it still be the same in ten years? Fifteen? Laws don't go away easily.
...
BTW, if you haven't figured it out already, I've been playing devil's advocate these last several posts. I think this is an excellent technology, and will quite likely purchase such a weapon after they're commercially available, presuming my more serious objections (below) are resolved. My genuine concern, which the engineers working on this system no doubt share, is wrt more usual failure modes (a legitimate user's grip changing under stress or due to injury, for instance). Guns are necessarily devices where high reliability is necessary -- on the rare occasions where the use of one is needed (beyond threat value), operational failure is likely extremely negative side-effects for the user. Changes that add new failure-cases thus have every reason to be treated with extreme skepticism until they're proven themselves thoroughly.
My other objection is not to the technology itself, but to laws which mandate its use; this is primarily philosophical. If the technology were widely available, an intelligent gun owner (not wishing their weapon to be used by unauthorized individuals) would purchase weapons so equipped anyhow. If they choose not to (and, arguably, in doing so increase the risk to themselves and their family) -- why's that anyone's lookout but their own?
Yah, so criminals are going to drag out the massive vehicle mounted EMP generating device to disable peoples guns.
Vehicle-mounted is portable -- vehicles, by definition, can be made to move. If I were planning a heist, and I had knowledge that my opponents' guns could be disabled through such a means, I'd seriously consider it (presuming, of course, that there weren't something easier -- bribery or such).
That said -- just because something is vehicle-mounted today doesn't mean it won't be suitcase-sized five years from now. Laws change much more slowly than technology, so they need to be carefully crafted to be future-proof.
If an EMP would disable every legal gun, I wouldn't be suprised if criminals started making use of them. And yes, such devices exist (in vehicle-mounted form) and are available to civilians -- garage-built devices for stalling cars' electronics have been covered here, for instance.
That said, I agree that this is relatively unlikely as opposed to more conventional failure modes (such as grip patterns becoming unrecognizably different due to stress).
None the less properly made electronic equiptment almost never crashes, I haven't ever had my microwave crash.
Your microwave can be described as a trivial state machine. A biometric authentication system -- that's an entirely different ballpark.
And it doesn't take a "crash" to return a wrong answer, either. A change in one's grip under pressure (or when acting in a hurry rather than ideal/training conditions) could do it.
The legal standard is substantial noninfringing use. Not "primarily noninfringing use", substantial. If you want to use your own standard, fine -- but I think the one encoded in current US case law works quite well, thank you.
I agree inasmuch as the fact that laws are being broken on a regular basis indicates that there is indeed a problem somewhere -- but it doesn't mean that the problem is with the technology used to break the laws. Whether it's related to the behaviour of the people who break the laws, the economic models which encourage individuals to break said laws, the laws themselves, or other factors is well beyond the scope of this discussion.
Finally, coming back to topic: Having distributed failover for BitTorrent trackers is a Good Thing! If I'm providing a massive download (say, a patch to my game) to a number of users and someone runs a DDOS on my server, I'd really quite prefer that the download still stays up.
Not all options carry risk. I've been paid in options with nominal (fraction-of-a-cent) strike price, for instance. Might as well have been a grant, except for the tax implications.
Well, the difference is that your gas and your clothes were pre-paid. The price was visible, and you couldn't consume until you've paid for it.
If you're filling up the car after using it (as the parent described), that's not true.
There's no excuse for the kind of irresponsibility this article reflects -- and yes, part of being responsible is being aware of future responsibilities which one is incurring on oneself.
Stop, go back, and read what you wrote. Yes, there are plenty of teenagers in the commercial world, at least if one goes by attitude rather than age -- you're acting one yourself.
Let the kiddies make their silly claims -- by painting everyone remotely related to them with the same brush and making sweeping unbacked generalizations, you're exhibiting behaviour on the same level as those you criticize.
And anyhow, he's right. Programming talent isn't a commodity that can be applied to any kind of problem. The commercial software company I'm currently employed by[1] has some folks who are better at UI work, folks who are better at integration work, folks who are better at writing database backends, and so forth. Assigning someone who's mastered writing screen scrapers to writing database backends is a waste; likewise, assigning someone who could be working on a new memory management algorithm (for instance) to doing security audits would be stupid when folks who are better at security are also the ones who are more likely to actually be doing it.
[1] - Yes, this commercial sofware company pays me to do open source work from time to time when it's in their best interests to do so.
On the other hand, a lot of the information you get in school comes from experience and from the experiences of the people you work with and are taught by. Sure you can get all that knowledge on your own, but almost certainly not as quickly, and you'd have to be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.
That's true in school as well as out of it.
There are only about two or three computer science professors I actually learned substantially from (as opposed to sitting in lecture listening to regurgitated facts that I either already knew or could look up as-needed). One of them retired the year after I took his class (on systems architecture), replaced with someone not nearly as competant. Two of the others I could easily have not taken any classes with at all. I was, as you say, lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
I learned vastly more during my internship (at a big-name embedded Linux shop) than during my formal education itself. I wouldn't have had that internship if I hadn't happened to meet and impress one of the near-ground-floor employees (who started out as employee #7, their first intern ever) at a LUG meeting. Right place, right time.
Yes, I did the formal education bit, and yes, it's done me a great deal of good -- certainly, it improves one's chances of being in the right place, unless one knows the right people to start off with (which I didn't).
In the right environment you should be able to avoid the rat holes that can slow down your learning process because somebody with experience is looking over your shoulder just enough to keep you on the right path.
In my experience, that kind of guidance is easier to get in a quality work environment than anywhere else. Getting to that quality work environment without formal education -- that's a bit harder, but it's doable. (One of my coworkers was a minor who had been hired as a full engineer before completing high school; he was also maintainer of the MIPS and SH Linux kernel ports. He'd initially learned C from another friend of mine, and was otherwise self-taught).
Sure? "Among other customers" is, arguably, a rather key phrase, and implies strongly that the government offices are only a subset of those who will be connecting.
Slashdot Mirror
Do *you* have health insurance not tied to your place of work?
No, but I can get it (as long as I act within a fairly short window after severing ties with my current place of work).
Do you have 100% assurance that the company from which you bought the insurance will still be there 70 years hence?
Close enough as makes no difference.
Have you negotiated rates that will be predictable, no matter what health conditions you develop?
As long as I keep my coverage current, yes. There's a cap, but it's high enough that hitting it would be indicative that the expense of keeping me alive outweighs the value of such. I'm under no delusion that I (or any other individual) should be kept alive at all costs.
Do you have money full set aside to pay the premiums for your full life span?
No, but I have enough money available (not "set aside", but reclaimable from other purposes, albiet at substantial expense in some cases) to provide for a few years of coverage. If I can't resume paying the premiums within a few years of losing my ability to do so, I have bigger problems.
If the answer to any of those questions is no, you have not planned for sudden health crisis.
Bullshit. That's like saying that without three data centers on every continent, one hasn't planned for network outages. My present safety net is Good Enough -- and I've just recently inched my way into middle class.
(It helps that my employer is in the medical field).
If it costs more to sustain the child's life than any entity is willing to allocate -- well, as I said, life isn't fair.
Nice to see some conservatism here on Slashdot.
Even if it's the poorly-researched, factually-incorrect kind?
The grandparent's core argument ($1250/mo being insufficient to live on) is incorrect. Oh, sure, it's insufficient to live on for someone who doesn't own their own house and is living in an urban population center -- but if you're willing to retire out in Podunkville or you have the foresight and responsibility to have your mortgage paid off by the time you retire, it's plenty.
I don't know how someone can live with $1250 a month coming in.
It's entirely possible. There are the parts of the States where houses cost $30K or so and a mortgage payment is on the scale of $300/mo. Can't live anywhere popular, sure -- forget about big cities, for instance -- but it's entirely doable.
Want to live somewhere nicer? Well, if you've been responsible enough to own your own home and have your mortgage out of the way, $1250 is still quite enough.
he also nominally ran the largest communist country
Which is why the parent could say jokingly describe a newspaper as "to the left of Stalin" to emphasize its position.
I may say during the summer that the sidewalk outside is on par with the surface of the sun -- but that doesn't mean that I'm too uneducated to know the actual tempature; rather, it may well mean that I'm just applying a bit of hyperbole.
Remember, there's such a thing as risk-avoidance strategies... like buying insurance.
That said -- life is inherently unfair. Attempts to correct that, particularly through large-scale coercive action, tend to create situations where the cure is, on the whole, worse than the disease.
He's gonna feed some of those starving grandparents, isn't he?
At the point of a gun, right now, he is. Otherwise, the big bad evil Feds will come and lock him away for failing to pay his taxes.
Personally, I think this is a Bad Thing. Donating to charity should be a choice.
It would, after all, be their own fault, for failing to save properly for old age.
Damn straight, it would be -- and after seeing that happen, one would hope that the next generation would actually grow a bit of personal responsibility for their finances.
Being that the GIMP has been officially supported on Win32 ever since the 2.0 release, I haven't considered GTK/win32 support particularly deficient for a while now.
As a Linux user, I don't find that I particularly need any applications I don't have. (And WINE, not being an emulator, doesn't run at "half speed" -- there are documented cases where it's faster than Windows itself).
When I'm on Windows, though, I do miss Evolution. This is a useful move.
But the technology for building high-output single-use chemical energy storage mechanisms, OTOH, has plenty of potential market; potentially likewise for other components. Assembling them becomes an exercise involving vastly less expense.
And if an EMP bomb were known to disable all legal, non-police-owned handguns, I'd expect that that would provide plenty of market alone.
Previous "devils-advocate" disclaimer applies.
My other objection is not to the technology itself, but to laws which mandate its use; this is primarily philosophical. If the technology were widely available, an intelligent gun owner (not wishing their weapon to be used by unauthorized individuals) would purchase weapons so equipped anyhow. If they choose not to (and, arguably, in doing so increase the risk to themselves and their family) -- why's that anyone's lookout but their own?
Yah, so criminals are going to drag out the massive vehicle mounted EMP generating device to disable peoples guns.
Vehicle-mounted is portable -- vehicles, by definition, can be made to move. If I were planning a heist, and I had knowledge that my opponents' guns could be disabled through such a means, I'd seriously consider it (presuming, of course, that there weren't something easier -- bribery or such).
That said -- just because something is vehicle-mounted today doesn't mean it won't be suitcase-sized five years from now. Laws change much more slowly than technology, so they need to be carefully crafted to be future-proof.
If an EMP would disable every legal gun, I wouldn't be suprised if criminals started making use of them. And yes, such devices exist (in vehicle-mounted form) and are available to civilians -- garage-built devices for stalling cars' electronics have been covered here, for instance.
That said, I agree that this is relatively unlikely as opposed to more conventional failure modes (such as grip patterns becoming unrecognizably different due to stress).
None the less properly made electronic equiptment almost never crashes, I haven't ever had my microwave crash.
Your microwave can be described as a trivial state machine. A biometric authentication system -- that's an entirely different ballpark.
And it doesn't take a "crash" to return a wrong answer, either. A change in one's grip under pressure (or when acting in a hurry rather than ideal/training conditions) could do it.
The legal standard is substantial noninfringing use. Not "primarily noninfringing use", substantial. If you want to use your own standard, fine -- but I think the one encoded in current US case law works quite well, thank you.
I agree inasmuch as the fact that laws are being broken on a regular basis indicates that there is indeed a problem somewhere -- but it doesn't mean that the problem is with the technology used to break the laws. Whether it's related to the behaviour of the people who break the laws, the economic models which encourage individuals to break said laws, the laws themselves, or other factors is well beyond the scope of this discussion.
Finally, coming back to topic: Having distributed failover for BitTorrent trackers is a Good Thing! If I'm providing a massive download (say, a patch to my game) to a number of users and someone runs a DDOS on my server, I'd really quite prefer that the download still stays up.
Not all options carry risk. I've been paid in options with nominal (fraction-of-a-cent) strike price, for instance. Might as well have been a grant, except for the tax implications.
Well, the difference is that your gas and your clothes were pre-paid. The price was visible, and you couldn't consume until you've paid for it.
If you're filling up the car after using it (as the parent described), that's not true.
There's no excuse for the kind of irresponsibility this article reflects -- and yes, part of being responsible is being aware of future responsibilities which one is incurring on oneself.
My AT&T plan doesn't charge for incoming SMS, and I don't recall paying extra for that.
Stop, go back, and read what you wrote. Yes, there are plenty of teenagers in the commercial world, at least if one goes by attitude rather than age -- you're acting one yourself.
Let the kiddies make their silly claims -- by painting everyone remotely related to them with the same brush and making sweeping unbacked generalizations, you're exhibiting behaviour on the same level as those you criticize.
And anyhow, he's right. Programming talent isn't a commodity that can be applied to any kind of problem. The commercial software company I'm currently employed by[1] has some folks who are better at UI work, folks who are better at integration work, folks who are better at writing database backends, and so forth. Assigning someone who's mastered writing screen scrapers to writing database backends is a waste; likewise, assigning someone who could be working on a new memory management algorithm (for instance) to doing security audits would be stupid when folks who are better at security are also the ones who are more likely to actually be doing it.
[1] - Yes, this commercial sofware company pays me to do open source work from time to time when it's in their best interests to do so.
The grownups in the open source world are getting a little annoyed at the teenagers in both worlds bickering at each other. Jeesh.
- Some dude whose last 3 jobs have involved doing open source work professionally.
There are only about two or three computer science professors I actually learned substantially from (as opposed to sitting in lecture listening to regurgitated facts that I either already knew or could look up as-needed). One of them retired the year after I took his class (on systems architecture), replaced with someone not nearly as competant. Two of the others I could easily have not taken any classes with at all. I was, as you say, lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
I learned vastly more during my internship (at a big-name embedded Linux shop) than during my formal education itself. I wouldn't have had that internship if I hadn't happened to meet and impress one of the near-ground-floor employees (who started out as employee #7, their first intern ever) at a LUG meeting. Right place, right time.
Yes, I did the formal education bit, and yes, it's done me a great deal of good -- certainly, it improves one's chances of being in the right place, unless one knows the right people to start off with (which I didn't).
In my experience, that kind of guidance is easier to get in a quality work environment than anywhere else. Getting to that quality work environment without formal education -- that's a bit harder, but it's doable. (One of my coworkers was a minor who had been hired as a full engineer before completing high school; he was also maintainer of the MIPS and SH Linux kernel ports. He'd initially learned C from another friend of mine, and was otherwise self-taught).
Sure? "Among other customers" is, arguably, a rather key phrase, and implies strongly that the government offices are only a subset of those who will be connecting.