Yup, the US has been lying about the constant cyber attacks. Those defense contractors too.
Oh, and Google too. Those emails relating to those pesky Chinese dissidents? Hacked by the US or Israel, and not the nation that throws its own people behind the Great Firewall.
The US absolutely participates in cyber espionage, and we don't exactly hide it. We have the NSA. We also are known to have used a software bug to blow up a pipeline in Russia during the Cold War (the US knew that Russia was trying to steal said source code). And that was before it was cool.
There's something to be said about a healthy amount of skepticism, but having worked at places where this is a serious issue, I can say without a shred of doubt that you are wrong. You are the dumbest person that I have read on the internet today. Congratulations, and enjoy the Chinese propaganda machine.
And just how long do you think those missile batteries would survive in an aerial campaign against any Western forces?
An invasion of Iraq might be an interesting tactic to divert attention, but we also still have large numbers of troops in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and, of course, Iraq.
The only credible threat that Iran provides is one of terrorism. Any military action they take would be crushed. However, it is hard to stop their association with Hezzbollah and the-like, where they can just feed them rockets that they will continue to use from residential areas to avoid or delay retaliation.
The DOD has much different requirements than the civilian GPS industry. In fact, as you probably know, the DOD has an entirely different service that provides a much more accurate level of detail called the Precise Positioning Service, whereas civilians have access to the explicitly degraded Standard Positioning Service (SPS). It's hard to say explicitly what LightSquared is talking about because they made no attempt to reference it beyond naming a standard that does not make any such explicit statements that they claim. If there was such a reference, then they would have produced it and silenced the entire industry. Instead, they are pointing at a technical document and hoping to confuse people.
I am no GPS signal expert, but I did track down the referenced DOD, GPS standard here, published in 2008. It's hard to say what they are referencing with regards to the guard band, considering they conveniently did not provide any references beyond the long, technical document, but it's obvious that they wanted the obfuscation. Have a look at the document, and you'll see why they don't reference anything specifically.
In reality, the FCC screwed the pooch here, and LightSquared is backtracking looking for a way to have their cake and eat it too. There is no legitimate way that someone can look at this entire process and say that is has been clean, or even reasonable. The public was given the opportunity to comment over the week of Thanksgiving. Really?
Acting like this is all because people failed to follow a relatively new standard (2008) is a bigger joke. Whether or not the GPS industry should be doing a better job at filtering the signal is not really my concern at this point. Pointing the finger at everyone else, when the most corrupt person in the room is you, is both scary and pathetic. I hope each one of these corrupt cockroaches is thrown in prison where they belong, and that includes people within the FCC.
Good to know that you can see the forest for the trees.
The number of politicians that should be on that list should exceed the number that are not on it, from both sides. That does not mean that people in positions of power that are generally up-to-no-good are incapable of doing something that you agree with.
It may just mean that their--or their bribers (in the case of the corrupt), or their constituents--interests happen to align with your own this time. Do you always agree with your favorite politician? It's the same thing, but in reverse.
Everything about this deal with the FCC and LightSquared sounds corrupt, so I am more than happy to have anyone looking into it.
I think that you are generally right about bribing and the whole system being corrupt, but the idea of political donations is not inherently flawed.
If I were to give $5 to any Presidential candidate, on either side of the aisle, it would not be because I expected them to vote the way I wanted them too because of my donation. I would be donating because I expect them to vote that way regardless of my donation, and more importantly, I expect the other guy to vote the other way. As a business, it makes perfect sense that one would donate money to a candidate that was likely to vote your way. By doing so, you are giving them a better shot at winning, which means that you will likely get votes that go your way. It's only corrupt when your donation has strings attached, and if that person follows them, which seems to be pretty common (hence my opening statement).
This doesn't necessarily represent any evil business, or a bribe. It just means that I disagree with the way that the other guy votes, so I want you to win. I don't expect you to vote one way because I donated you money. I want you to win so that you vote the way that I think you will on your own--in agreement with my principles. When you stop agreeing with them, then I'll move onto the next candidate.
What if the other candidate was running to shutdown the brick business, and you're a brick business? It's your interest to donate to the other guy. Not because you are demanding that he vote the other way, but because the other candidate is crazy. That's obviously not a realistic example, but it's not that far off in some cases.
The expectation should be the same regardless of the amount donated. Obviously that is not always the case, but that is because of the individuals involved and not the process. It is perfectly reasonable to say that someone can take money and only use it to fund his/her campaign, as well as continuing to vote their conscience.
This is why I want term limits, so that politicians can't be in office long enough to be bought. A few years of the do-gooder attitude that brought them into the system should be enough to get stuff done, and then it's off to a higher office, or time to go back to doing real work. These positions are for volunteers, and not for a job. Too many people seem to forget that these days, which is why we have so many lifetime politicians (e.g., Charlie Rangel and John McCain to give examples on both sides).
And they're going to call you every other day to make sure that you do too, while they try to pitch every service that they sell and weasel to other people within your group or company to do the exact same thing.
Oracle makes a pretty spiffy database, but they have been about the worst company that I have ever dealt with.
Based on the people, or more frequently the groups of students I saw cheating, then I'd say it does catch up to them, but they just cheat more. Ironically, they probably learn to become better cheaters over time to compensate rather than learning the material.
Intelligence definitely does not correlate to morality.
I suspect the two groups have different reasoning for cheating. The "smarter" students--which I question them being that smart if they have to cheat, as it brings into question everything that they have done--are cheating to keep their GPA high, and give the idea that they are smart. The "dumber" students are probably cheating to turn their D into a C.
This is absolutely not true. I have never reasonably considered cheating, even in a particular Physics class where the grade was curved based on how well everyone did--and a large percentage of the class was already cheating, thus pushing me down.
There is a bit of moral and ethical patheticness here. If you have this feeling, then it's not a matter of sharing this ideal thought--it's that you are too stupid to actually know the material, plain and simple.
If you can't handle the heat, then stay out of the kitchen. People willing to cheat on tests are just as willing to plagiarize, as well as steal work from others. As such, I would never agree to knowingly work with someone that accepted cheating as an inevitability, nor if they saw it as downright okay.
As a developer that forks over the source code upon each release of a product to our customers, my only thought is that maybe they should try finishing it before they release it onto people's devices?
I think you have that quite a bit backwards. For starters, the Obama administration has strong ties to Google, as well as even stronger ties to GE, which is a company that paid no taxes on similar amounts of money. On top of that, the head of GE is leading the charge to "correct" the tax code. Yeah, I feel reassured. GE claims to be paying a tax bill now, but I imagine this has a lot more to do with PR than reality because otherwise that would have been their initial claim, and not a backpedaled one. I doubt that we will ever know how much they truly paid, and whether it really was taxes paid for now, or simply pre-paying future taxes that they'll get some sort of refund on, while calling it payment for back taxes.
I do not care about Republicans because politicians pull the same tricks regardless of their party, and I am conservative--not a Republican. But, people talking about avoiding tax hikes "on the rich" are talking about it for people that are not committing ethical fraud by evading taxes, even if it is legally.
It's not our money to take, nor is it right to ask someone to give up something simply because they have been successful, or even ultra-successful. It is fair to expect people to pay their legally obligated share, and not abuse loopholes so ridiculously that there is no justification, like with some people and particularly many companies.
The reason so many companies do not pay even larger tax amounts is because they keep their money off shore, and a lot of them do this for reasonable reasons: they get taxed at somewhere around 35% if they try to bring the money back into the US. For legitimately made money--money simply made in another country--this means that it is taxed twice, and the second time is pretty heftily. A lot of companies are willing to bring their money back into the US, if that tax rate is lowered, which is win-win for everyone involved because the government gets a cut, and the company gets it back in the US to play with. There are also a lot fighting for no entry-tax, which I would not be opposed to as long as their were no loopholes to escape the initial tax (for companies like Google, Microsoft, and many others that never actually have most of their money taxed in the US, even when it should be).
I tend to agree that it would be beneficial to would-be buyers, but I do not think that it would always be beneficial to would-be sellers because it would likely serve to artificially drive prices down for them at a much faster rate than might be otherwise warranted.
I do think that the government (all public organizations really) should do this for two reasons:
1. Outsiders could possibly tip them off that a better rate is available. 2. Outsiders and other public entities could benefit from a pre-negotiated rate by their other public bodies (e.g., if the Navy is buying from IBM, and they look over to see what the Army did with IBM for a similar task or product, then they could use that to start with; the same could be said for defense contractors afterward as well, and then it would trickle down).
In terms of private businesses, I see a lot to gain from this being there as a buyer, but even then it could be a competitive advantage to hide some deals because they may be more about sharing rather than one-way discounts. As a seller, I see a lot of negatives to everyone having all of the cards, forcing you to reject discounts for some parties because they do not apply, which makes your product appear more expensive than maybe it reasonably should. It's a finicky, tricky game of who is being honest, but I think that just mandating it for government contracts would go a long way toward a nice risk/reward curve.
Still, I think this all has less to do with the case than it seems. The reason Oracle has to disclose its discounts is because they signed a contract that stated that the US government would never pay more than anyone else. Oracle played all sorts of games to get around that and get people cheaper licenses while avoiding the reduction of the licensing costs charged to the US government.
So the need to show discounts is really a byproduct of other contractual obligations.
Honestly, I wish Oracle had been charged a number in the billions of dollars as punishment. From what it sounds like, we may have merely recouped our losses rather than truly punished them as well as sent a clear shot to others that may think this is a valid approach to business--subversion of contractual obligations.
I am one of these professors you're talking about. We are paid for nine months of work. If I want to get paid for the summer months I have to bring in grant money or contract work. (And the University skims off 52% of whatever I bring in.)
Aside from how I made it sound, I am actually not attacking your profession as a research position or as a teaching one, or even the length of time that you work/do not work.
However, I am saying that when comparing a 9 month salary to something else, the pay rate does need to be looked at. That's particularly because whenever "low pay" comes up when referring to professors (more for K-12 teachers though), it's conveniently viewed through a year, yet when proportionately "high pay" is brought up by people like me--noting the general 9-month cycle (particularly for one-class chumps like I mostly describing in my other post)--it is conveniently noted as you mention it. Put another way: it's easy to dodge the point by suggesting that you're simply not paid for the three months, and you, specifically, may not be one of the overpaid individuals that I am about to describe, but when you point out that someone is paid a huge sum of money for a 9-month period of time where they already do very little (again, might not be you), then one really needs to compare to what others make in 9 months of regular work.
Considering the fact that you also get a cut of your grant money, I am far less forgiving, frankly; in most cases, this is adding to an already proportionately high salary. It's unfortunate that you likely have to bid higher knowing that your institution will get the majority stake in the grant in order to cover the cost of the research, but the institution also provides you with a--hopefully--fair salary and work environment to do the research to begin with, alongside your teaching duties. Compared to most private companies that do not share anything beyond your salary, that's still a valuable proposition.
In what little you said, you seem passionate about it, which I will assume means that you are probably dedicated to what you do. I can all-but guarantee that you can look around your institution, unless it's one of the few at the top, and see a lot of free loaders making more than you, while doing far less work than most people in and outside of your field. And at least some of them are not even good at bringing it grant money anymore.
Just to add a little more detail to myself. In addition to working at a campus computer store, I have also been a TA for classes, as well as a GTA for classes. I know what the work load of teachers/professors are for a regular class.
Construction work at a public University is almost never paid for from the University's budget. New buildings are capital investments paid for by the state, typically through a bond initiative.
Something that is still part of the true school budget, even if it is conveniently fudged out of it through tricks of the trade.
Do you understand how government contracting works?
Yes, this is exactly why I said, "this is a fundamental flaw in our government." It absolutely should be changed. Too damn bad if it's a massive one. It's the worst snowball effect in government, and it is the primary driver in wasteful spending by the government right beside corruption.
Making the amount paid for 9 months of work even more amazing.
To put it into the worst light that really showed it off to me: we had a temporary chair of the CS department (a single semester) that did very little research--but still some--with little merits teaching C and Assembly (same class) and that's all. He taught one class each semester and he did not work the summers, and he was one of the worst teachers that I have ever had; he knew very little of what he was actually teaching. He was only the chair for the current semester, and I do not know what his salary for that year was (there was a rolling lag for the public reports), but his salary for the prior year with everything, except being chairman, the same was exactly $100,000. That's a pretty sweet gig, if you can get it.
In short Research professors are a net benefit to a university why Teaching professors are a net drain.
Research professors should be paid in part for the kind of research they bring in, which would hopefully lead more people into more useful fields naturally, anyway (rather than all top ones being paid equally, the more important fields, such as engineering and science would drive up their salaries). I have no problem with them existing, nor do I fault them for getting big bucks when they bring in big bucks. But, the fact is, universities are huge because of their undergraduate bases. Without the influx of undergraduate students, these schools would be nothing. To suggest teaching-oriented professors are somehow a drain simply puzzles me because most of the best professors are the teaching-only kind, and they are the ones that teach people well enough to get to their Master's or PhD's in things other that near-worthless business degrees. Not to mention that they are paid far less, which should be easily covered by tuition alone, even without the trickle down from any grants.
Furthermore, as I partially mentioned in my last post, I worked at the campus computer store while getting my undergraduate degree (CS). Almost all of the grants that did come through at my university had very strict spending requirements and they did not trickle down nearly as much as 50%, even with purchasing supplies and the departmental overhead. One other interesting thing that I noticed was that in many cases the professors have setup third party companies to get a little deeper cut of the money themselves. I watched it happen first-hand, and I am not sure that I necessarily blame them for doing it, I do question the ethical nature of it all.
Public institutions are not for profit organizations. By law there are rules on what money can be spent on what stuff and if surpluses can continue on to the next year.
I know. That's why I said, "This is a fundamental flaw in our government" leading into it. Fix that system and they will not have nearly as many problems.
I can tell by your arguments that you have only every been a undergrad if you even attended college. Try going to grad school in the sciences. Then you will really learn how the sausage is made.
Actually, I am wrapping up my Master's in Computer Science at a not-online, top university, although it is a private institution. You can stay off of your high horse because I will be following it up with a PhD once I choose which school to accept.
This is a load of bull. The state school's are bleeding money because they have no idea how to budget properly.
Paying professors high salaries working for 9 months of work (most professors do not teach during the summer, like teachers) is an easy path to the poor house. That's not to say that some professors are not awesome, even if they only work 9 months, and that some professors do not do research or otherwise work for most of the year, such as performing department-related duties while being the Chair. But, it is to say that a lot of them are vastly overpaid (mostly the research kind that are terrible teachers anyway) while the actual teacher ones that take on the brunt of the course load get paid very little.
Add this with every college campus that I have been to in the last three years seemingly doing massive [re]construction, and it's no wonder why they have trouble making ends meet.
Finally, combine it with the fact that every state school blows their budget at the end of the fiscal year dreaming of an even bigger, otherwise unwarranted budget the next year and it paints a pretty clear picture. This is a fundamental flaw in our government, where if you don't spend it then you get your budget cut (though, frankly, it should be cut because you did not need it!), while those that do spend it--even when it was ethically and morally questionable purchases at the end of the fiscal year (like five iPod touches and a pink Dell laptop)--get their budget at least maintained, and usually increased. But this is the final nail in their coffins. There is never any money left for the next term because they simply spend it regardless of the actual need, and thus the cycle perpetuates itself every year.
If they did not spend the money unnecessarily, then the money could roll over back into the system for the next year and it would actually be there when places legitimately needed a bigger budget unexpectedly. I know, I know. I am thinking too logically and outside of the box for institutions of "higher" education.
Let me quote the part of the sentence that lead me to reply:
some
Are you too dumb to actually parse what you're reading, or are you too stupid to provide any solution at all while jumping on others simply trying to provide ideas?
About a year ago a friend gave me a floppy disk and asked if I could get the data off of it with a floppy drive I had laying around. I tried the obvious approach: drag the files off using whatever file browser I was using. This failed because of at least one bad sector, and so I lost one file of about seven.
I attempted to work around this by writing my own file copier that attempted to read the file in question in byte segments. This was not effective (though it narrowed down the bad bytes), nor was it acceptable for the file format, and there were too many missing to guess the pattern, so I tried to read in smaller and smaller segments until one night I just let it read it byte by byte, which was an incredibly slow process. Unfortunately, that did not work either, and it really did not work much better than just reading in small-ish segments of bytes.
While it did not work for me, as I was working with an old, proprietary binary file, it may work pretty well if it only mashes up some of your words in a word document or even a flat text file.
Hacking into police departments and releasing their officers personal details without reason or regard to whom is actually being targeted is absolutely a threat to both local and national security.
People have been extremely ignorant of the serious problems that Anonymous is causing and, more importantly, that it has shown that it is both capable of, and willing to cause. Just like Lulz Sec, it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt, or a business gets crushed.
It's important to have people reminding us that security is not done. It's also important for those people to be honest, and good people, which is something that both Anonymous and Lulz Sec have proven to not be. Releasing people's personal details, particularly with the prevalence of identity theft is not okay. Releasing it of people in an area of the country where there is a real and present danger to their lives is even more egregious.
Nothing is stopping them from escalating to the FBI, Congress, White House, or the Secret Service. It's unlikely that there is not some insecurity in those organizations. Fixing those issues is just as important as stopping people that will flagrantly abuse that access.
Did you intentionally link to a health insurance company, in a country with an existing single payer system?
Sure, it's still a private company. But you failed the latter portion of his point simply because the company itself is an insurance company, and it is not even in the US.
You know what's the best thing about that link? It shows that capitalism works in health care.
"Disagreeing viewpoint? Must not read! Must only talk to individuals with the exact same mindset, allowing me to sound more intelligent!"
It just goes to show that your anecdotal evidence from your Canadian friends were from like minded individuals. What they say very well may be true, but I am far less likely to believe it coming from a person not even willing to read about--let alone discuss--the alternative.
The poster that you responded to had a very good, clear point. Corruption is the problem here, and not capitalism. It is very likely that regulation and a cartel are maintaining costs at their current levels, and increasing them.
In the computer world, this is analogous to the problem that faced RAM in the past couple of years. Break up the cartel(s) that almost certainly existent, and prices will plummet due to competition--at least as far as regulations will allow them to fall.
The fact of the matter is, it is very likely because of the corruption in the government that prices are this way to begin with. Their hand is just as much in the cookie jar as these companies, and the fact that nothing has been done about it shows that a shakeup is necessary on both sides to remind them that they are capitalists, and that the government is supposed to represent the watchdogs.
At what point did people decide that the watchdogs should become the providers as well? In what situation does that lead to better performance? There is absolutely no incentive to improve at that point, and that's the problem.
The government, as the watchdogs, should be protecting people from corruption and anti-consumer practices. They have clearly failed at their job. Now, you want to give them the job of those they are supposed to be watching even before correcting their current job?
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, the US has been lying about the constant cyber attacks. Those defense contractors too.
Oh, and Google too. Those emails relating to those pesky Chinese dissidents? Hacked by the US or Israel, and not the nation that throws its own people behind the Great Firewall.
The US absolutely participates in cyber espionage, and we don't exactly hide it. We have the NSA. We also are known to have used a software bug to blow up a pipeline in Russia during the Cold War (the US knew that Russia was trying to steal said source code). And that was before it was cool.
There's something to be said about a healthy amount of skepticism, but having worked at places where this is a serious issue, I can say without a shred of doubt that you are wrong. You are the dumbest person that I have read on the internet today. Congratulations, and enjoy the Chinese propaganda machine.
PS: it's "lying."
And just how long do you think those missile batteries would survive in an aerial campaign against any Western forces?
An invasion of Iraq might be an interesting tactic to divert attention, but we also still have large numbers of troops in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and, of course, Iraq.
The only credible threat that Iran provides is one of terrorism. Any military action they take would be crushed. However, it is hard to stop their association with Hezzbollah and the-like, where they can just feed them rockets that they will continue to use from residential areas to avoid or delay retaliation.
The DOD has much different requirements than the civilian GPS industry. In fact, as you probably know, the DOD has an entirely different service that provides a much more accurate level of detail called the Precise Positioning Service, whereas civilians have access to the explicitly degraded Standard Positioning Service (SPS). It's hard to say explicitly what LightSquared is talking about because they made no attempt to reference it beyond naming a standard that does not make any such explicit statements that they claim. If there was such a reference, then they would have produced it and silenced the entire industry. Instead, they are pointing at a technical document and hoping to confuse people.
I am no GPS signal expert, but I did track down the referenced DOD, GPS standard here, published in 2008. It's hard to say what they are referencing with regards to the guard band, considering they conveniently did not provide any references beyond the long, technical document, but it's obvious that they wanted the obfuscation. Have a look at the document, and you'll see why they don't reference anything specifically.
In reality, the FCC screwed the pooch here, and LightSquared is backtracking looking for a way to have their cake and eat it too. There is no legitimate way that someone can look at this entire process and say that is has been clean, or even reasonable. The public was given the opportunity to comment over the week of Thanksgiving. Really?
Acting like this is all because people failed to follow a relatively new standard (2008) is a bigger joke. Whether or not the GPS industry should be doing a better job at filtering the signal is not really my concern at this point. Pointing the finger at everyone else, when the most corrupt person in the room is you, is both scary and pathetic. I hope each one of these corrupt cockroaches is thrown in prison where they belong, and that includes people within the FCC.
Good to know that you can see the forest for the trees.
The number of politicians that should be on that list should exceed the number that are not on it, from both sides. That does not mean that people in positions of power that are generally up-to-no-good are incapable of doing something that you agree with.
It may just mean that their--or their bribers (in the case of the corrupt), or their constituents--interests happen to align with your own this time. Do you always agree with your favorite politician? It's the same thing, but in reverse.
Everything about this deal with the FCC and LightSquared sounds corrupt, so I am more than happy to have anyone looking into it.
I think that you are generally right about bribing and the whole system being corrupt, but the idea of political donations is not inherently flawed.
If I were to give $5 to any Presidential candidate, on either side of the aisle, it would not be because I expected them to vote the way I wanted them too because of my donation. I would be donating because I expect them to vote that way regardless of my donation, and more importantly, I expect the other guy to vote the other way. As a business, it makes perfect sense that one would donate money to a candidate that was likely to vote your way. By doing so, you are giving them a better shot at winning, which means that you will likely get votes that go your way. It's only corrupt when your donation has strings attached, and if that person follows them, which seems to be pretty common (hence my opening statement).
This doesn't necessarily represent any evil business, or a bribe. It just means that I disagree with the way that the other guy votes, so I want you to win. I don't expect you to vote one way because I donated you money. I want you to win so that you vote the way that I think you will on your own--in agreement with my principles. When you stop agreeing with them, then I'll move onto the next candidate.
What if the other candidate was running to shutdown the brick business, and you're a brick business? It's your interest to donate to the other guy. Not because you are demanding that he vote the other way, but because the other candidate is crazy. That's obviously not a realistic example, but it's not that far off in some cases.
The expectation should be the same regardless of the amount donated. Obviously that is not always the case, but that is because of the individuals involved and not the process. It is perfectly reasonable to say that someone can take money and only use it to fund his/her campaign, as well as continuing to vote their conscience.
This is why I want term limits, so that politicians can't be in office long enough to be bought. A few years of the do-gooder attitude that brought them into the system should be enough to get stuff done, and then it's off to a higher office, or time to go back to doing real work. These positions are for volunteers, and not for a job. Too many people seem to forget that these days, which is why we have so many lifetime politicians (e.g., Charlie Rangel and John McCain to give examples on both sides).
And they're going to call you every other day to make sure that you do too, while they try to pitch every service that they sell and weasel to other people within your group or company to do the exact same thing.
Oracle makes a pretty spiffy database, but they have been about the worst company that I have ever dealt with.
Based on the people, or more frequently the groups of students I saw cheating, then I'd say it does catch up to them, but they just cheat more. Ironically, they probably learn to become better cheaters over time to compensate rather than learning the material.
Intelligence definitely does not correlate to morality.
I suspect the two groups have different reasoning for cheating. The "smarter" students--which I question them being that smart if they have to cheat, as it brings into question everything that they have done--are cheating to keep their GPA high, and give the idea that they are smart. The "dumber" students are probably cheating to turn their D into a C.
This is absolutely not true. I have never reasonably considered cheating, even in a particular Physics class where the grade was curved based on how well everyone did--and a large percentage of the class was already cheating, thus pushing me down.
There is a bit of moral and ethical patheticness here. If you have this feeling, then it's not a matter of sharing this ideal thought--it's that you are too stupid to actually know the material, plain and simple.
If you can't handle the heat, then stay out of the kitchen. People willing to cheat on tests are just as willing to plagiarize, as well as steal work from others. As such, I would never agree to knowingly work with someone that accepted cheating as an inevitability, nor if they saw it as downright okay.
I don't think that the OP was suggesting that they can't make one. He was saying that they don't have one, yet.
Good point. The idea of an "alpha leader" has no relevancy to this discussion...
As a developer that forks over the source code upon each release of a product to our customers, my only thought is that maybe they should try finishing it before they release it onto people's devices?
I know. Crazy thought.
Anything else is just an excuse.
I think you have that quite a bit backwards. For starters, the Obama administration has strong ties to Google, as well as even stronger ties to GE, which is a company that paid no taxes on similar amounts of money. On top of that, the head of GE is leading the charge to "correct" the tax code. Yeah, I feel reassured. GE claims to be paying a tax bill now, but I imagine this has a lot more to do with PR than reality because otherwise that would have been their initial claim, and not a backpedaled one. I doubt that we will ever know how much they truly paid, and whether it really was taxes paid for now, or simply pre-paying future taxes that they'll get some sort of refund on, while calling it payment for back taxes.
I do not care about Republicans because politicians pull the same tricks regardless of their party, and I am conservative--not a Republican. But, people talking about avoiding tax hikes "on the rich" are talking about it for people that are not committing ethical fraud by evading taxes, even if it is legally.
It's not our money to take, nor is it right to ask someone to give up something simply because they have been successful, or even ultra-successful. It is fair to expect people to pay their legally obligated share, and not abuse loopholes so ridiculously that there is no justification, like with some people and particularly many companies.
The reason so many companies do not pay even larger tax amounts is because they keep their money off shore, and a lot of them do this for reasonable reasons: they get taxed at somewhere around 35% if they try to bring the money back into the US. For legitimately made money--money simply made in another country--this means that it is taxed twice, and the second time is pretty heftily. A lot of companies are willing to bring their money back into the US, if that tax rate is lowered, which is win-win for everyone involved because the government gets a cut, and the company gets it back in the US to play with. There are also a lot fighting for no entry-tax, which I would not be opposed to as long as their were no loopholes to escape the initial tax (for companies like Google, Microsoft, and many others that never actually have most of their money taxed in the US, even when it should be).
Although I realize it's not very cool to mention, reports would suggest otherwise: block rate.
Of course, the report uses Chrome 12, so it's about a week old.
I tend to agree that it would be beneficial to would-be buyers, but I do not think that it would always be beneficial to would-be sellers because it would likely serve to artificially drive prices down for them at a much faster rate than might be otherwise warranted.
I do think that the government (all public organizations really) should do this for two reasons:
1. Outsiders could possibly tip them off that a better rate is available.
2. Outsiders and other public entities could benefit from a pre-negotiated rate by their other public bodies (e.g., if the Navy is buying from IBM, and they look over to see what the Army did with IBM for a similar task or product, then they could use that to start with; the same could be said for defense contractors afterward as well, and then it would trickle down).
In terms of private businesses, I see a lot to gain from this being there as a buyer, but even then it could be a competitive advantage to hide some deals because they may be more about sharing rather than one-way discounts. As a seller, I see a lot of negatives to everyone having all of the cards, forcing you to reject discounts for some parties because they do not apply, which makes your product appear more expensive than maybe it reasonably should. It's a finicky, tricky game of who is being honest, but I think that just mandating it for government contracts would go a long way toward a nice risk/reward curve.
Still, I think this all has less to do with the case than it seems. The reason Oracle has to disclose its discounts is because they signed a contract that stated that the US government would never pay more than anyone else. Oracle played all sorts of games to get around that and get people cheaper licenses while avoiding the reduction of the licensing costs charged to the US government.
So the need to show discounts is really a byproduct of other contractual obligations.
Honestly, I wish Oracle had been charged a number in the billions of dollars as punishment. From what it sounds like, we may have merely recouped our losses rather than truly punished them as well as sent a clear shot to others that may think this is a valid approach to business--subversion of contractual obligations.
You need to reread the two companies in his quote.
Aside from how I made it sound, I am actually not attacking your profession as a research position or as a teaching one, or even the length of time that you work/do not work.
However, I am saying that when comparing a 9 month salary to something else, the pay rate does need to be looked at. That's particularly because whenever "low pay" comes up when referring to professors (more for K-12 teachers though), it's conveniently viewed through a year, yet when proportionately "high pay" is brought up by people like me--noting the general 9-month cycle (particularly for one-class chumps like I mostly describing in my other post)--it is conveniently noted as you mention it. Put another way: it's easy to dodge the point by suggesting that you're simply not paid for the three months, and you, specifically, may not be one of the overpaid individuals that I am about to describe, but when you point out that someone is paid a huge sum of money for a 9-month period of time where they already do very little (again, might not be you), then one really needs to compare to what others make in 9 months of regular work.
Considering the fact that you also get a cut of your grant money, I am far less forgiving, frankly; in most cases, this is adding to an already proportionately high salary. It's unfortunate that you likely have to bid higher knowing that your institution will get the majority stake in the grant in order to cover the cost of the research, but the institution also provides you with a--hopefully--fair salary and work environment to do the research to begin with, alongside your teaching duties. Compared to most private companies that do not share anything beyond your salary, that's still a valuable proposition.
In what little you said, you seem passionate about it, which I will assume means that you are probably dedicated to what you do. I can all-but guarantee that you can look around your institution, unless it's one of the few at the top, and see a lot of free loaders making more than you, while doing far less work than most people in and outside of your field. And at least some of them are not even good at bringing it grant money anymore.
Just to add a little more detail to myself. In addition to working at a campus computer store, I have also been a TA for classes, as well as a GTA for classes. I know what the work load of teachers/professors are for a regular class.
Something that is still part of the true school budget, even if it is conveniently fudged out of it through tricks of the trade.
Yes, this is exactly why I said, "this is a fundamental flaw in our government." It absolutely should be changed. Too damn bad if it's a massive one. It's the worst snowball effect in government, and it is the primary driver in wasteful spending by the government right beside corruption.
Making the amount paid for 9 months of work even more amazing.
To put it into the worst light that really showed it off to me: we had a temporary chair of the CS department (a single semester) that did very little research--but still some--with little merits teaching C and Assembly (same class) and that's all. He taught one class each semester and he did not work the summers, and he was one of the worst teachers that I have ever had; he knew very little of what he was actually teaching. He was only the chair for the current semester, and I do not know what his salary for that year was (there was a rolling lag for the public reports), but his salary for the prior year with everything, except being chairman, the same was exactly $100,000. That's a pretty sweet gig, if you can get it.
Research professors should be paid in part for the kind of research they bring in, which would hopefully lead more people into more useful fields naturally, anyway (rather than all top ones being paid equally, the more important fields, such as engineering and science would drive up their salaries). I have no problem with them existing, nor do I fault them for getting big bucks when they bring in big bucks. But, the fact is, universities are huge because of their undergraduate bases. Without the influx of undergraduate students, these schools would be nothing. To suggest teaching-oriented professors are somehow a drain simply puzzles me because most of the best professors are the teaching-only kind, and they are the ones that teach people well enough to get to their Master's or PhD's in things other that near-worthless business degrees. Not to mention that they are paid far less, which should be easily covered by tuition alone, even without the trickle down from any grants.
Furthermore, as I partially mentioned in my last post, I worked at the campus computer store while getting my undergraduate degree (CS). Almost all of the grants that did come through at my university had very strict spending requirements and they did not trickle down nearly as much as 50%, even with purchasing supplies and the departmental overhead. One other interesting thing that I noticed was that in many cases the professors have setup third party companies to get a little deeper cut of the money themselves. I watched it happen first-hand, and I am not sure that I necessarily blame them for doing it, I do question the ethical nature of it all.
I know. That's why I said, "This is a fundamental flaw in our government" leading into it. Fix that system and they will not have nearly as many problems.
Actually, I am wrapping up my Master's in Computer Science at a not-online, top university, although it is a private institution. You can stay off of your high horse because I will be following it up with a PhD once I choose which school to accept.
This is a load of bull. The state school's are bleeding money because they have no idea how to budget properly.
Paying professors high salaries working for 9 months of work (most professors do not teach during the summer, like teachers) is an easy path to the poor house. That's not to say that some professors are not awesome, even if they only work 9 months, and that some professors do not do research or otherwise work for most of the year, such as performing department-related duties while being the Chair. But, it is to say that a lot of them are vastly overpaid (mostly the research kind that are terrible teachers anyway) while the actual teacher ones that take on the brunt of the course load get paid very little.
Add this with every college campus that I have been to in the last three years seemingly doing massive [re]construction, and it's no wonder why they have trouble making ends meet.
Finally, combine it with the fact that every state school blows their budget at the end of the fiscal year dreaming of an even bigger, otherwise unwarranted budget the next year and it paints a pretty clear picture. This is a fundamental flaw in our government, where if you don't spend it then you get your budget cut (though, frankly, it should be cut because you did not need it!), while those that do spend it--even when it was ethically and morally questionable purchases at the end of the fiscal year (like five iPod touches and a pink Dell laptop)--get their budget at least maintained, and usually increased. But this is the final nail in their coffins. There is never any money left for the next term because they simply spend it regardless of the actual need, and thus the cycle perpetuates itself every year.
If they did not spend the money unnecessarily, then the money could roll over back into the system for the next year and it would actually be there when places legitimately needed a bigger budget unexpectedly. I know, I know. I am thinking too logically and outside of the box for institutions of "higher" education.
I did cherry pick the some, but just because an area contains ZIP files does not mean that it's exclusively ZIP files.
Let me quote the part of the sentence that lead me to reply:
Are you too dumb to actually parse what you're reading, or are you too stupid to provide any solution at all while jumping on others simply trying to provide ideas?
About a year ago a friend gave me a floppy disk and asked if I could get the data off of it with a floppy drive I had laying around. I tried the obvious approach: drag the files off using whatever file browser I was using. This failed because of at least one bad sector, and so I lost one file of about seven.
I attempted to work around this by writing my own file copier that attempted to read the file in question in byte segments. This was not effective (though it narrowed down the bad bytes), nor was it acceptable for the file format, and there were too many missing to guess the pattern, so I tried to read in smaller and smaller segments until one night I just let it read it byte by byte, which was an incredibly slow process. Unfortunately, that did not work either, and it really did not work much better than just reading in small-ish segments of bytes.
While it did not work for me, as I was working with an old, proprietary binary file, it may work pretty well if it only mashes up some of your words in a word document or even a flat text file.
Hacking into police departments and releasing their officers personal details without reason or regard to whom is actually being targeted is absolutely a threat to both local and national security.
People have been extremely ignorant of the serious problems that Anonymous is causing and, more importantly, that it has shown that it is both capable of, and willing to cause. Just like Lulz Sec, it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt, or a business gets crushed.
It's important to have people reminding us that security is not done. It's also important for those people to be honest, and good people, which is something that both Anonymous and Lulz Sec have proven to not be. Releasing people's personal details, particularly with the prevalence of identity theft is not okay. Releasing it of people in an area of the country where there is a real and present danger to their lives is even more egregious.
Nothing is stopping them from escalating to the FBI, Congress, White House, or the Secret Service. It's unlikely that there is not some insecurity in those organizations. Fixing those issues is just as important as stopping people that will flagrantly abuse that access.
That's why the FBI is after them.
Did you intentionally link to a health insurance company, in a country with an existing single payer system?
Sure, it's still a private company. But you failed the latter portion of his point simply because the company itself is an insurance company, and it is not even in the US.
You know what's the best thing about that link? It shows that capitalism works in health care.
And that's why you're ignorant.
"Disagreeing viewpoint? Must not read! Must only talk to individuals with the exact same mindset, allowing me to sound more intelligent!"
It just goes to show that your anecdotal evidence from your Canadian friends were from like minded individuals. What they say very well may be true, but I am far less likely to believe it coming from a person not even willing to read about--let alone discuss--the alternative.
The poster that you responded to had a very good, clear point. Corruption is the problem here, and not capitalism. It is very likely that regulation and a cartel are maintaining costs at their current levels, and increasing them.
In the computer world, this is analogous to the problem that faced RAM in the past couple of years. Break up the cartel(s) that almost certainly existent, and prices will plummet due to competition--at least as far as regulations will allow them to fall.
The fact of the matter is, it is very likely because of the corruption in the government that prices are this way to begin with. Their hand is just as much in the cookie jar as these companies, and the fact that nothing has been done about it shows that a shakeup is necessary on both sides to remind them that they are capitalists, and that the government is supposed to represent the watchdogs.
At what point did people decide that the watchdogs should become the providers as well? In what situation does that lead to better performance? There is absolutely no incentive to improve at that point, and that's the problem.
The government, as the watchdogs, should be protecting people from corruption and anti-consumer practices. They have clearly failed at their job. Now, you want to give them the job of those they are supposed to be watching even before correcting their current job?