FOSS too. The pricing scheme of getting people to "work for software" gets way too much advertising on Slashdot. Hey, I occasionally like FOSS software and I do get annoyed by Bitcoin evangelism. But a scheme is a scheme. And this one does involve computers. So I find it hard to complain.
I think you are giving gp too much credit. He thinks knowing what can be learned in 2 minutes is a skill, while writing a thesis which shows something heretofore unknown is nothing to brag about. You know what else people working for him can probably expect? Awkward moments after an original idea gets rejected with an argument "I've never heard of this before"; expectation that researching something means googling it; silent treatments after you reduce some of the stuff he wrote by half and speed it up by a factor of 100 all while simply fixing his crashes. The difference between someone who's done actual research and someone who just hacks code is that researchers don't just always follow the nose. While those who just hack some code throw more people at a problem in the hopes that the ever-expanding and at-some-point-unreadable code base can be made to do what it needs to do if only more people are thrown at it.
Wow! Well, at least it's good to see who these numb-nuts are thinking. I am talking about you, by the way -- not your candidates. Yes, I took a programming job after getting a PhD in math. No, most of the other kids in the place who became "project managers" didn't know what the hell they were doing when they wrote code. It was unreadable and unmaintainable. The code they wrote was only good for demos. It had to rewritten from scratch to be turned into a working product. The sheer degrees of magnitude (not magnitude -- degrees of magnitude) of what they didn't know and assumed that they did know was staggering. Looking down at a programmer because he doesn't know what is a CSV file is somewhat akin to disqualifying a professional marathon runner because he doesn't know what to do with Velcro sneakers (because he is Nigerian and he is used to running in sneakers with shoelaces). Hint: you, numbnuts, will not produce anything useful for the next 5 years. Do you know why? Because all you know how to do is code. That was a good skill to have 10 years ago. Today that's a bit like expecting to get a political writing job because you've mastered grammar. Oh, and that job which I got and which I quit even before I found a new job... I heard people there actually make the argument that I good because I knew how to "code". That's pathetic. That was my least valuable skill (my understanding of the business was more valuable as far as I am concerned). I am seriously getting to the point where I don't want to do any business with millennial. They all think that what they know is the most important thing in the world. They fail to recognize people who are smarter than they are. And not because they don't know how, but because they can't fathom the possibility.
BS! I've been exactly that mathematician. The problem with your description is that I did have 5 years of programming experience before going back to doing math. You don't want a professional programmer teaching people who never did any programming. I did the most reasonable thing possible: I told the students that they could only learn to program by programming. So 60% of their grade came from the projects. When I took my 1st programming class in college (yes, in the US; no, not half a century ago or even quarter of a century ago), submitting a project which didn't compile meant an automatic F. If I had 1 student whose projects compiled, they would already be smarter than everyone else in the class and had to be given an 'A'. No, you can't fail the entire class. Your students are not required to have any programming experience. They are just not the brightest bunch. If they were arrogant and gutsy, they wouldn't be trying to learn to program. They would be trying to become doctors.... unless they love to program and those students who love to program wouldn't be in any need of such a class. So an introductory programming class in a non-top university is not full of "nerds". It's full of low-esteem rejects who think that a 'B' is a passing grade. It's not, by the way. If you get a B in an introductory class which ends up being just a notch above baby-sitting, don't bother taking the follow up class.
More like, "would you trust a translator who never spoke the language from which he is translating until he got to college?" Not everything is learnable at every age.
What makes you think we have no problem with it? Most Americans hate their local roads, but have bought into the idea that government ownership of the roads is a necessary evil.
Japan's currency is strong because 20 years ago Japan still had no debt. And Japan's education system is not ad hoc. It's very much structured. The result of the structured education system is ease of cooperation between educated people (due to having a common idiom and a common vocabulary). The "medium" that allows for their development is the interoperability of wetware -- not interoperability of hardware.
Most of them nowadays don't have adequate high education. So they end up "catching up" in college. But certain subjects can be studied at a young age much more effectively than at a later age. The idea that someone can master high school curriculum and college curriculum while in college after not being able to adequately master high school while in high school usually doesn't work out so well. There are, of course, exceptions which prove the rule, but they don't tell much about how to improve the education system. Those exceptions would do well with or without the system.
Collecting trash is not an elective service. Internet is. I, for one, do not have cable tv. I can tell you that I would be quite annoyed if cable was part of my taxes. The same applies to the Internet.
Yep, the town can't compete on price. But that's no different from what already exists. The argument for municipal broadband is not to improve prices. It's to improve availability. And this DOES still allow them to compete on availability (provide service in the towns and neighborhood where a private company would not).
The business has to change? Love the name by the way. Generation Z is brilliant. Just add 2 more ZZ's. How about the generation ZZZ has to grow up? No young people of any generation were ever trusted with anything until they earned the trust. This generation is no different.
What you are saying makes no sense. They wouldn't have to dismantle anything. They would only have to raise the prices to match the private businesses' prices. So private businesses would still have to compete.
Government is not a landlord. That is not of the land you own, anyway. Government does own some land. But it doesn't rent it in some perpetual rents. It only leases it out in time-limited manner.
Yes, the tax cuts is what did it. We should return the government spending to the level which kept the Great Depression going. This way we'll have great infrastructure.
In all you anti-Bush fever, you forget that government has coercive powers. You think cutting off people who too much bandwidth is bad? Try a town which decided to raise revenue by sending tickets to people who use too much bandwidth. "No one would do that," you say? Sure. Just like NYC would never double parking tickets simply to increase revenues (as opposed to ensure public safety). It would never happen 5 years ago. Nor would your Internet connection be cut off because of a union negotiation.... it is a public service after all. I must be fear mongering because there is no examples of this actually happening to other public services. Never mind that the bill simply disallows undercutting private businesses by using tax money. It DOESN'T ban towns from setting up the services where none exist (read the summary again). This article summary is a prime example of a certain propaganda mechanism propaganda at work. Use some key terms that people don't like (eg, "limit choices") to describe something that actually serves the people. It does limit choices -- bad choices, destructive choices. By using the emotionally-charged terms, you get people to respond emotionally. At that point the reality doesn't matter anymore. Vast majority of the people have already made their knee jerk decision and have become emotionally invested in it. Well, given that this is news for geeks, how bout doing what geeks do: examine the details.
Not getting why a community can't build their own broadband, and at the same time allow private companies to compete on the same fiber (or add their own fiber).
does that? Even the slashdot summary doesn't say that. They can still do it. They just can't use tax-payers' money to cut throat the prices to the point where a private company can't compete.
Are you nuts? Government services are subsidized by taxpayers. Do you seriously want all your consumer choices to be controlled by an entity you pick once in 4 years?
So should the internet division have its own revenue collection department and its own call center rather than adding a line item to the existing tax bill? That's adding inefficiency... why?
For the same reason a water company sends its bill to you instead of your town. It's a service to an individual household rather than a community at large. They aren't maintaining street lights. This isn't commons. This is a service which they would provide because a private service is missing. It's no more inefficient than getting a cable bill instead of having cable added to your property taxes is inefficient. It adds to granularity of choices and transparency of expenses. Or do you want one vote that you cast once in 4 years to control all your domestic consumer choices for the next 4 years?
The municipalities would be able to use tax money to undercut private businesses without this. That's all the bill stops really. It doesn't ban anything. It just doesn't allow use of public resources to bankrupt private companies providing the same services. The slashdot summary is retarded. Nothing would stop a town which has no private service from setting up a public one (at least not under this bill).
Where in the bill does it say that it's purpose is to realign the interests so as to make them compliant with the Constitution? Sounds to me they are just trying to make sure tax money isn't used to undercut private companies.
That's absurd. It makes it unaffordable for them to set up the public broadband but disallowing them to undercut the private ones? That makes no sense.
But the bill doesn't ban it. The/. summary is misleading. It say "limit" when in fact it mostly only puts restrictions on using tax payer money to compete. Yes, that's a limitation, but it's not the kind of limitation which would ban a town from providing a service, as you concluded.
The bill doesn't limit anything. It just doesn't put the tax payers on the hook for municipalities' possible mismanagement. They can still do it. They just need to make sure it's what the taxpayers of the town (who would be responsible for paying off these bonds) actually want it. The only possible problem might be the line that says they have to offer it at market prices, but if all that means is that someone's land taxes won't be used to undercut competing broadband services of their neighbor, then it's not a problem. Of course, it could create a situation where the muni's service is sooo efficient that it could profitably offer a better service than private competition, but in that case the bill would just force them to be more profitable than the competition by offering the service at the same price as the competition.... presumably, the private one would eventually compete with them by offering a lower price. Which would also lower the "market" price. Really, don't see why the slashdot is knee jerking against this. Sounds like a bill which would allow the private providers to keep operating without having to compete with tax-subsidized services.
Slashdot Mirror
FOSS too. The pricing scheme of getting people to "work for software" gets way too much advertising on Slashdot. Hey, I occasionally like FOSS software and I do get annoyed by Bitcoin evangelism. But a scheme is a scheme. And this one does involve computers. So I find it hard to complain.
I think you are giving gp too much credit. He thinks knowing what can be learned in 2 minutes is a skill, while writing a thesis which shows something heretofore unknown is nothing to brag about. You know what else people working for him can probably expect? Awkward moments after an original idea gets rejected with an argument "I've never heard of this before"; expectation that researching something means googling it; silent treatments after you reduce some of the stuff he wrote by half and speed it up by a factor of 100 all while simply fixing his crashes. The difference between someone who's done actual research and someone who just hacks code is that researchers don't just always follow the nose. While those who just hack some code throw more people at a problem in the hopes that the ever-expanding and at-some-point-unreadable code base can be made to do what it needs to do if only more people are thrown at it.
Wow! Well, at least it's good to see who these numb-nuts are thinking. I am talking about you, by the way -- not your candidates. Yes, I took a programming job after getting a PhD in math. No, most of the other kids in the place who became "project managers" didn't know what the hell they were doing when they wrote code. It was unreadable and unmaintainable. The code they wrote was only good for demos. It had to rewritten from scratch to be turned into a working product. The sheer degrees of magnitude (not magnitude -- degrees of magnitude) of what they didn't know and assumed that they did know was staggering. Looking down at a programmer because he doesn't know what is a CSV file is somewhat akin to disqualifying a professional marathon runner because he doesn't know what to do with Velcro sneakers (because he is Nigerian and he is used to running in sneakers with shoelaces). Hint: you, numbnuts, will not produce anything useful for the next 5 years. Do you know why? Because all you know how to do is code. That was a good skill to have 10 years ago. Today that's a bit like expecting to get a political writing job because you've mastered grammar. Oh, and that job which I got and which I quit even before I found a new job... I heard people there actually make the argument that I good because I knew how to "code". That's pathetic. That was my least valuable skill (my understanding of the business was more valuable as far as I am concerned). I am seriously getting to the point where I don't want to do any business with millennial. They all think that what they know is the most important thing in the world. They fail to recognize people who are smarter than they are. And not because they don't know how, but because they can't fathom the possibility.
BS! I've been exactly that mathematician. The problem with your description is that I did have 5 years of programming experience before going back to doing math. You don't want a professional programmer teaching people who never did any programming. I did the most reasonable thing possible: I told the students that they could only learn to program by programming. So 60% of their grade came from the projects. When I took my 1st programming class in college (yes, in the US; no, not half a century ago or even quarter of a century ago), submitting a project which didn't compile meant an automatic F. If I had 1 student whose projects compiled, they would already be smarter than everyone else in the class and had to be given an 'A'. No, you can't fail the entire class. Your students are not required to have any programming experience. They are just not the brightest bunch. If they were arrogant and gutsy, they wouldn't be trying to learn to program. They would be trying to become doctors.... unless they love to program and those students who love to program wouldn't be in any need of such a class. So an introductory programming class in a non-top university is not full of "nerds". It's full of low-esteem rejects who think that a 'B' is a passing grade. It's not, by the way. If you get a B in an introductory class which ends up being just a notch above baby-sitting, don't bother taking the follow up class.
More like, "would you trust a translator who never spoke the language from which he is translating until he got to college?" Not everything is learnable at every age.
What makes you think we have no problem with it? Most Americans hate their local roads, but have bought into the idea that government ownership of the roads is a necessary evil.
Japan's currency is strong because 20 years ago Japan still had no debt. And Japan's education system is not ad hoc. It's very much structured. The result of the structured education system is ease of cooperation between educated people (due to having a common idiom and a common vocabulary). The "medium" that allows for their development is the interoperability of wetware -- not interoperability of hardware.
Most of them nowadays don't have adequate high education. So they end up "catching up" in college. But certain subjects can be studied at a young age much more effectively than at a later age. The idea that someone can master high school curriculum and college curriculum while in college after not being able to adequately master high school while in high school usually doesn't work out so well. There are, of course, exceptions which prove the rule, but they don't tell much about how to improve the education system. Those exceptions would do well with or without the system.
Collecting trash is not an elective service. Internet is. I, for one, do not have cable tv. I can tell you that I would be quite annoyed if cable was part of my taxes. The same applies to the Internet.
Yep, the town can't compete on price. But that's no different from what already exists. The argument for municipal broadband is not to improve prices. It's to improve availability. And this DOES still allow them to compete on availability (provide service in the towns and neighborhood where a private company would not).
what comes after "Gen Z"
"Gen [", of course.
The business has to change? Love the name by the way. Generation Z is brilliant. Just add 2 more ZZ's. How about the generation ZZZ has to grow up? No young people of any generation were ever trusted with anything until they earned the trust. This generation is no different.
What you are saying makes no sense. They wouldn't have to dismantle anything. They would only have to raise the prices to match the private businesses' prices. So private businesses would still have to compete.
Government is not a landlord. That is not of the land you own, anyway. Government does own some land. But it doesn't rent it in some perpetual rents. It only leases it out in time-limited manner.
Yes, the tax cuts is what did it. We should return the government spending to the level which kept the Great Depression going. This way we'll have great infrastructure.
In all you anti-Bush fever, you forget that government has coercive powers. You think cutting off people who too much bandwidth is bad? Try a town which decided to raise revenue by sending tickets to people who use too much bandwidth. "No one would do that," you say? Sure. Just like NYC would never double parking tickets simply to increase revenues (as opposed to ensure public safety). It would never happen 5 years ago. Nor would your Internet connection be cut off because of a union negotiation.... it is a public service after all. I must be fear mongering because there is no examples of this actually happening to other public services. Never mind that the bill simply disallows undercutting private businesses by using tax money. It DOESN'T ban towns from setting up the services where none exist (read the summary again). This article summary is a prime example of a certain propaganda mechanism propaganda at work. Use some key terms that people don't like (eg, "limit choices") to describe something that actually serves the people. It does limit choices -- bad choices, destructive choices. By using the emotionally-charged terms, you get people to respond emotionally. At that point the reality doesn't matter anymore. Vast majority of the people have already made their knee jerk decision and have become emotionally invested in it. Well, given that this is news for geeks, how bout doing what geeks do: examine the details.
Not getting why a community can't build their own broadband, and at the same time allow private companies to compete on the same fiber (or add their own fiber).
does that? Even the slashdot summary doesn't say that. They can still do it. They just can't use tax-payers' money to cut throat the prices to the point where a private company can't compete.
Are you nuts? Government services are subsidized by taxpayers. Do you seriously want all your consumer choices to be controlled by an entity you pick once in 4 years?
So should the internet division have its own revenue collection department and its own call center rather than adding a line item to the existing tax bill? That's adding inefficiency... why?
For the same reason a water company sends its bill to you instead of your town. It's a service to an individual household rather than a community at large. They aren't maintaining street lights. This isn't commons. This is a service which they would provide because a private service is missing. It's no more inefficient than getting a cable bill instead of having cable added to your property taxes is inefficient. It adds to granularity of choices and transparency of expenses. Or do you want one vote that you cast once in 4 years to control all your domestic consumer choices for the next 4 years?
The municipalities would be able to use tax money to undercut private businesses without this. That's all the bill stops really. It doesn't ban anything. It just doesn't allow use of public resources to bankrupt private companies providing the same services. The slashdot summary is retarded. Nothing would stop a town which has no private service from setting up a public one (at least not under this bill).
I disagree.
Where in the bill does it say that it's purpose is to realign the interests so as to make them compliant with the Constitution? Sounds to me they are just trying to make sure tax money isn't used to undercut private companies.
That's absurd. It makes it unaffordable for them to set up the public broadband but disallowing them to undercut the private ones? That makes no sense.
But the bill doesn't ban it. The /. summary is misleading. It say "limit" when in fact it mostly only puts restrictions on using tax payer money to compete. Yes, that's a limitation, but it's not the kind of limitation which would ban a town from providing a service, as you concluded.
The bill doesn't limit anything. It just doesn't put the tax payers on the hook for municipalities' possible mismanagement. They can still do it. They just need to make sure it's what the taxpayers of the town (who would be responsible for paying off these bonds) actually want it. The only possible problem might be the line that says they have to offer it at market prices, but if all that means is that someone's land taxes won't be used to undercut competing broadband services of their neighbor, then it's not a problem. Of course, it could create a situation where the muni's service is sooo efficient that it could profitably offer a better service than private competition, but in that case the bill would just force them to be more profitable than the competition by offering the service at the same price as the competition.... presumably, the private one would eventually compete with them by offering a lower price. Which would also lower the "market" price. Really, don't see why the slashdot is knee jerking against this. Sounds like a bill which would allow the private providers to keep operating without having to compete with tax-subsidized services.