The more they try to make college "affordable" via loans, scholarships, etc. the more the colleges and universities will raise their prices until it is just barely affordable by all participants. They want to maximize their income -- as any business does.
Not true--at least, not for all of them. I sat on the finance committee of a top-tier graduate or professional school for three years. Our task was not to maximize income--it was to propose a budget, keeping expenses and the tuition increase low. If our goal had been to maximize income, we could easily have doubled tuition and would still have filled our classrooms.
Could you have the tuition increase lower with more motivation? Sure, you could probably knock 1% off of tuition by implementing some pretty major cutbacks. But even if you knocked off 2% (which would be amazing, and you would make a LOT of enemies), it wouldn't solve the systemic problem. Schools compete for students and faculty by spending money (on anything from scholarships to amazing professors to expensive recycling waste stations), and expenses increase every year. The schools with big endowments (E.g. Princeton, Yale, Williams) effectively never run out of money and can improve forever, and everyone else has to spend to stay competitive with their peer schools.
It's like capitalism, but where the goal is smart and excellent people rather than money.
As a result of this competition, schools generally are delivering more than they were ten or twenty years ago. There are more programs available, there are more amazing opportunities, there is a better program. Not in everything--certainly the quality of a lot of higher education leaves much to be desired--but the program is generally better. I can think of massive improvements at both my undergrad and grad/professional schools that simply did not exist ten years ago, even though they were good schools then. (Both in terms of programs and facilities).
On the other hand, if we were to cut off student loans and scholarships you can bet that the prices would plummet and they'd stop building fancy buildings named after themselves. (Some universities have exercise areas that are reminiscent of spas and exclusive health resorts than a university.) It is amazing that our parents and grandparents were able to do things like send men to the moon without plush padded seating and nicely carpeted hallways at their universities. Even so, they could still afford to get an education.
First, you can't do that--that would be private money you're interfering with. Second, if you cut off government loans--and I am just guessing--the practical effect at the good schools would be an increase in tuition and a corresponding increase in financial aid (i.e. more redistribution from the rich), and at the normal and below-normal schools more people unable to attend (anyone who couldn't qualify for private loans or enough financial aid). Third, if you are paying thirty or forty thousand dollars a year to sit in a classroom, are you sure you want to sit on a $12 chair that hurts after the first half-hour? Fourth, Universities generally name fancy buildings after donors--that's how they pay for part of the building. They don't name them after themselves unless they're idiots, with maybe one or two exceptions. Fifth, yeah, some schools are pretty ridiculous and splurge where they shouldn't and could use better cost accountability--but a hell of a lot of them are working to contain costs every year. It's not like they sit there saying, "How can I ruin Suzie First-Year's Day? Twelve percent tuition increase... mwah-ha-ha..."
... some of the participants didn't even adhere to the instructions for their group, i.e., they surfed and screwed around when they weren't supposed to. And then did poorly on a quiz. Gee, who saw that coming?
Sit in the back of a big law school class. You will usually find at least 20% of the girls looking at clothes and 20% of the guys looking at sports. And probably closer to 90% of the class is checking email or facebook during the class.
anti-trust laws and specific legislation prevent hospitals and doctors for sharing price information (aka Sherman Anti Trust Act [wikipedia.org])
Bullshit. Nothing prevents them from sharing price information and from setting prices in a competitive market. What they are not allowed to do is *conspire to set prices a certain way if they're competitors*, at least not without an act of Congress or (possibly) approval of the courts. Certainly every insurance company and hospital could be transparent--set prices for everything and post them on their web sites. Adjust them periodically to make them more competitive. That's perfectly legal.
They just can't agree amongst themselves not to set the price for X no lower than value Y.
In fact, if prices were transparent, they would have a more competitive market. That would not be in restraint of trade, but would promote trade, and I'd be willing to argue that in any court in the country.
Hourly billing penalizes efficiency, improvements and outcome. Do you really want a doctor that spends an hour on your colonoscopy if a better process can get better results in 2 minutes with less discomfort? With time based billing, the doctor taking an hour gets paid more than the one taking 2 minutes, yet the patients experience would be improved with the shorter duration.
Gods yes, I do.
First, not all colonoscopies are created equal, nor are all surgeries or surgeons. If you pay the same amount for a procedure regardless of the time, then it discourages doctors from performing thorough procedures, and when you're dealing with cancer, you would rather have the thorough procedure.
Doctors are busy enough that they aren't going to start overbooking time just because they're paid hourly. And I would be willing to trade slightly higher costs for transparent costs. Going to a doctor now is like going to a restaurant with no prices on the menu, where the waiters can guess at the prices but your chef will tell you what they actually billed you a few months later, and nobody will be able to tell you what is actually in the food.
The Dean has been fiddling with the budget again (he's really, really bad at budgeting) and has approved about 33% of our capital budget. He says he'll see if there's more money once the FY starts. Well if not, we are just going to have to make it clear what they don't get to have. Toner will be a big one, we spend almost a third of the budget...
1) Why why WHY is toner part of a *capital* budget? That is like putting pencils in a capital budget. It's a basic office supply. Move it out of the capital budget, in the next budget cycle if you can't do it before. Because it's in capital, people will be much more inclined to believe that they can cut it or delay the expenditure, and it will be measured against the capital improvements (Rather than supplies) of other departments, and it will get more scrutiny.
2) If you haven't already, it's obviously worth standardizing to very few models of printers and finding toner from someplace reliable other than the manufacturer.
A good part of the consumer wealth in this country is invested on wall street. As a result, when the market contracts, people become more worried about their retirement and become less willing to spend money.
Shortly after BoA bought Merrill Lynch, I happened to be in Sears buying two ovens. I was the only one in the store. I also bought a car a few days later, at the end of the quarter, and was able to get a great deal because nobody was buying.
What happens on Wall Street does a huge amount to shape the willingness of people to spend money--including the willingness of endowed institutions to spend money. That makes it important to the economy.
Firms which have to have consumer confidence in order to attract business will respond differently to a simulation where the goal is to keep the market alive than they will to an actual emergency where the goal is not to lose all their money.
Complete and total nonsense designed to trick non-technical people. Why is this drivel making it to slashdot?
When you use complete and total nonsense to trick Congressmen into believing the nerd-related stuff you are paying/lobbying them to fund is useful, that is news for nerds.
That is, my point is that men, in general, tend to have a larger diversity - a wider distribution - than women do, in almost any area of skill.
This is impossible to parse. I am guessing you mean a wider distribution of skill level in any area of skill? As in women are more clustered around certain norms of achievement and men tend to be more divergent in both good and bad ways?
I feel like I've heard that's true for some areas (e.g. math), but I'd be very hesitant to draw that kind of across-the-board statement without massive amounts of data. Are you sure men aren't just more bombastic, both when idiots and when geniuses, so it's more obvious that they have divergent skill levels?
So rights are a privilege now to be dictated by loose wording and interpretation...fuck. that. shit....oh wait...should be old news in light of all the other bullshittery USDOJ spews.
This has always been the case, and it has far more to do with individual state police forces and prosecutors than with the DOJ.
A cop on the street is not spending his time thinking "I want to maximize bad guy X's rights." He is thinking "X is a bad guy, so I want to find out about the crime and throw him away."
All that rights do is they give the cop a script he has to follow if he wants a conviction. If he does not follow the script, or if there is something missing that he needs for the script and he is unwilling to lie, then the case can be thrown out, and bad guy X is on the street. It's like giving a scientist a lab protocol.
So it's far better than not having rights, because (1) it regiments police behavior to some degree (2) it slightly reduces the consequences of abuse of power and (3) you can learn the script and how to use it to minimize harm. But that doesn't mean it makes sense, just that it's a lot better than it is in many places in the world.
Of course, cops lie. That's a part of their job. And juries tend to believe cops more than criminals. Which is stupid but true. So it's a pretty terrible system, but rights can still be useful.
Yup. File a lawsuit. That's the answer for everything today. How DARE that surveyor not notice that something was buried on the property 400 years ago? The sad fact is that people like you think of solutions like that, and would have no trouble whatsoever in finding a sleazbag lawyer willing to take the case (for a percentage).
Lawsuits exist for when there is a legitimate dispute between two people or organizations, because it's better than "finders, keepers." Here, a surveyor's is probably going to win any lawsuit unless he really should have known that something was buried there 400 years ago, like there was a giant "X" marking the spot with a headstone on it.
The only real problem is when the transaction costs of the lawsuit are too high for it to be worth defending. That's a price we pay for having a system better than "finders, keepers." And it is somewhat mitigated by insurance.
It's Okay, SCOTUS said we could. They wrote an opinion a few centuries back saying "People say this is really immoral, it probably is really immoral, but we can't say it's really immoral, because the courts of the conqueror are the courts of the conqueror."
"On information and belief" means something entirely different, and is mostly used when filing an affidavit or complaint and there is some fact of which one is reasonably sure but lacks direct knowledge.
You are interpreting his statement to have one meaning, but he was not clear enough to be certain that it is the correct one. "I am unable to affirm those details [of molecular biology] on my own knowledge or even my belief" can be read as implying that he does not believe them, as it is very unusual for an opinion to say something like that about a statement of facts, even in a technical area. In any event, that is how many people are considering it, and I have heard a number of people suggest that it is one of the "stupidest" concurrences they have ever read. As I said, I think these people are being anti-Scalia as opposed to really critiquing the opinion, but without more exposition it can definitely be read as anti-science, since it is saying "I'm not sure about all these decades of established science."
Some of us just think it's a bad idea when the NSA can pick a random person on the street and know whether they're cheating on their spouse within two minutes.
Mostly Unanimous. Justice Scalia wrote a brief concurrence that, depending on how it read, suggests he doesn't believe in molecular biology. I am giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming he is just trying to say that SCOTUS should avoid pronouncing scientific facts in binding legal opinions.
JUSTICE SCALIA, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. I join the judgment of the Court, and all of its opinion except Part I–A and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology. I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. It suffices for me to affirm, having studied the opinions below and the expert briefs presented here, that the portion of DNA isolated from its natural state sought to be patented is identical to that portion of the DNA in its natural state; and that complementary DNA (cDNA) is a synthetic creation not normally present in nature.
It's a clear implication of the post. Are retarded or just being intentional dense?
(1) Not at all, it is indicated the report is biased and less reliable than an unbiased report. Whether it is accurate is an entirely different question than whether it is biased. An alleged murderer may have his mother testify that he was home with her at the time of the murder, for example, and her testimony is biased and therefore less reliable regardless of whether it is accurate.
Of course Canada is doing it; of course the United States is doing it; Every country that can figure out how is probably doing it. It's like sex. Everyone is doing it or trying to do it.
They should just charge a $5 fee and mail it to you if you don't want it destroyed.
It is kind of silly, though. Post 911, nobody can take over a plane with a few knives. The only reason to not allow them is that they can result in more injuries on a plane, but that seems so unlikely as to not be terribly persuasive.
I once walked into a secure federal building with a knife by accident; the guards thought about it and then didn't care. Which is really the right result.
The study only looked at elective surgery, not urgent surgery.
Good, since those are the ones we can best change the outcome of by rescheduling them.
Complications can arise during recovery, especially after a complicated surgery or if the hospital isn't perfect. If complications arise on a weekend, the doctors and staff who could not get the time off are the ones working, and the staff are less willing to call the doctors. (These are generalizations, and of course vary from hospital to hospital.)
This is the exact reason why you NEVER schedule elective surgery on major holidays or between Christmas and New Years.
Slashdot Mirror
The more they try to make college "affordable" via loans, scholarships, etc. the more the colleges and universities will raise their prices until it is just barely affordable by all participants. They want to maximize their income -- as any business does.
Not true--at least, not for all of them. I sat on the finance committee of a top-tier graduate or professional school for three years. Our task was not to maximize income--it was to propose a budget, keeping expenses and the tuition increase low. If our goal had been to maximize income, we could easily have doubled tuition and would still have filled our classrooms.
Could you have the tuition increase lower with more motivation? Sure, you could probably knock 1% off of tuition by implementing some pretty major cutbacks. But even if you knocked off 2% (which would be amazing, and you would make a LOT of enemies), it wouldn't solve the systemic problem. Schools compete for students and faculty by spending money (on anything from scholarships to amazing professors to expensive recycling waste stations), and expenses increase every year. The schools with big endowments (E.g. Princeton, Yale, Williams) effectively never run out of money and can improve forever, and everyone else has to spend to stay competitive with their peer schools.
It's like capitalism, but where the goal is smart and excellent people rather than money.
As a result of this competition, schools generally are delivering more than they were ten or twenty years ago. There are more programs available, there are more amazing opportunities, there is a better program. Not in everything--certainly the quality of a lot of higher education leaves much to be desired--but the program is generally better. I can think of massive improvements at both my undergrad and grad/professional schools that simply did not exist ten years ago, even though they were good schools then. (Both in terms of programs and facilities).
On the other hand, if we were to cut off student loans and scholarships you can bet that the prices would plummet and they'd stop building fancy buildings named after themselves. (Some universities have exercise areas that are reminiscent of spas and exclusive health resorts than a university.) It is amazing that our parents and grandparents were able to do things like send men to the moon without plush padded seating and nicely carpeted hallways at their universities. Even so, they could still afford to get an education.
First, you can't do that--that would be private money you're interfering with. Second, if you cut off government loans--and I am just guessing--the practical effect at the good schools would be an increase in tuition and a corresponding increase in financial aid (i.e. more redistribution from the rich), and at the normal and below-normal schools more people unable to attend (anyone who couldn't qualify for private loans or enough financial aid). Third, if you are paying thirty or forty thousand dollars a year to sit in a classroom, are you sure you want to sit on a $12 chair that hurts after the first half-hour? Fourth, Universities generally name fancy buildings after donors--that's how they pay for part of the building. They don't name them after themselves unless they're idiots, with maybe one or two exceptions. Fifth, yeah, some schools are pretty ridiculous and splurge where they shouldn't and could use better cost accountability--but a hell of a lot of them are working to contain costs every year. It's not like they sit there saying, "How can I ruin Suzie First-Year's Day? Twelve percent tuition increase... mwah-ha-ha..."
... some of the participants didn't even adhere to the instructions for their group, i.e., they surfed and screwed around when they weren't supposed to. And then did poorly on a quiz. Gee, who saw that coming?
Sit in the back of a big law school class. You will usually find at least 20% of the girls looking at clothes and 20% of the guys looking at sports. And probably closer to 90% of the class is checking email or facebook during the class.
anti-trust laws and specific legislation prevent hospitals and doctors for sharing price information (aka Sherman Anti Trust Act [wikipedia.org])
Bullshit. Nothing prevents them from sharing price information and from setting prices in a competitive market. What they are not allowed to do is *conspire to set prices a certain way if they're competitors*, at least not without an act of Congress or (possibly) approval of the courts. Certainly every insurance company and hospital could be transparent--set prices for everything and post them on their web sites. Adjust them periodically to make them more competitive. That's perfectly legal.
They just can't agree amongst themselves not to set the price for X no lower than value Y.
In fact, if prices were transparent, they would have a more competitive market. That would not be in restraint of trade, but would promote trade, and I'd be willing to argue that in any court in the country.
Hourly billing penalizes efficiency, improvements and outcome. Do you really want a doctor that spends an hour on your colonoscopy if a better process can get better results in 2 minutes with less discomfort? With time based billing, the doctor taking an hour gets paid more than the one taking 2 minutes, yet the patients experience would be improved with the shorter duration.
Gods yes, I do.
First, not all colonoscopies are created equal, nor are all surgeries or surgeons. If you pay the same amount for a procedure regardless of the time, then it discourages doctors from performing thorough procedures, and when you're dealing with cancer, you would rather have the thorough procedure.
Doctors are busy enough that they aren't going to start overbooking time just because they're paid hourly. And I would be willing to trade slightly higher costs for transparent costs. Going to a doctor now is like going to a restaurant with no prices on the menu, where the waiters can guess at the prices but your chef will tell you what they actually billed you a few months later, and nobody will be able to tell you what is actually in the food.
Transparency rocks. Medicine is not transparent.
The Dean has been fiddling with the budget again (he's really, really bad at budgeting) and has approved about 33% of our capital budget. He says he'll see if there's more money once the FY starts. Well if not, we are just going to have to make it clear what they don't get to have. Toner will be a big one, we spend almost a third of the budget ...
1) Why why WHY is toner part of a *capital* budget? That is like putting pencils in a capital budget. It's a basic office supply. Move it out of the capital budget, in the next budget cycle if you can't do it before. Because it's in capital, people will be much more inclined to believe that they can cut it or delay the expenditure, and it will be measured against the capital improvements (Rather than supplies) of other departments, and it will get more scrutiny.
2) If you haven't already, it's obviously worth standardizing to very few models of printers and finding toner from someplace reliable other than the manufacturer.
A good part of the consumer wealth in this country is invested on wall street. As a result, when the market contracts, people become more worried about their retirement and become less willing to spend money.
Shortly after BoA bought Merrill Lynch, I happened to be in Sears buying two ovens. I was the only one in the store. I also bought a car a few days later, at the end of the quarter, and was able to get a great deal because nobody was buying.
What happens on Wall Street does a huge amount to shape the willingness of people to spend money--including the willingness of endowed institutions to spend money. That makes it important to the economy.
Firms which have to have consumer confidence in order to attract business will respond differently to a simulation where the goal is to keep the market alive than they will to an actual emergency where the goal is not to lose all their money.
There should be a way for any person to contact any domain owner or domain-owning company. Putting a service in to vet requests will make it harder.
This is bad. And less transparent. And less distributed. And more expensive.
Complete and total nonsense designed to trick non-technical people. Why is this drivel making it to slashdot?
When you use complete and total nonsense to trick Congressmen into believing the nerd-related stuff you are paying/lobbying them to fund is useful, that is news for nerds.
That is, my point is that men, in general, tend to have a larger diversity - a wider distribution - than women do, in almost any area of skill.
This is impossible to parse. I am guessing you mean a wider distribution of skill level in any area of skill? As in women are more clustered around certain norms of achievement and men tend to be more divergent in both good and bad ways?
I feel like I've heard that's true for some areas (e.g. math), but I'd be very hesitant to draw that kind of across-the-board statement without massive amounts of data. Are you sure men aren't just more bombastic, both when idiots and when geniuses, so it's more obvious that they have divergent skill levels?
So rights are a privilege now to be dictated by loose wording and interpretation...fuck. that. shit....oh wait...should be old news in light of all the other bullshittery USDOJ spews.
This has always been the case, and it has far more to do with individual state police forces and prosecutors than with the DOJ.
A cop on the street is not spending his time thinking "I want to maximize bad guy X's rights." He is thinking "X is a bad guy, so I want to find out about the crime and throw him away."
All that rights do is they give the cop a script he has to follow if he wants a conviction. If he does not follow the script, or if there is something missing that he needs for the script and he is unwilling to lie, then the case can be thrown out, and bad guy X is on the street. It's like giving a scientist a lab protocol.
So it's far better than not having rights, because (1) it regiments police behavior to some degree (2) it slightly reduces the consequences of abuse of power and (3) you can learn the script and how to use it to minimize harm. But that doesn't mean it makes sense, just that it's a lot better than it is in many places in the world.
Of course, cops lie. That's a part of their job. And juries tend to believe cops more than criminals. Which is stupid but true. So it's a pretty terrible system, but rights can still be useful.
Yup. File a lawsuit. That's the answer for everything today. How DARE that surveyor not notice that something was buried on the property 400 years ago? The sad fact is that people like you think of solutions like that, and would have no trouble whatsoever in finding a sleazbag lawyer willing to take the case (for a percentage).
Lawsuits exist for when there is a legitimate dispute between two people or organizations, because it's better than "finders, keepers." Here, a surveyor's is probably going to win any lawsuit unless he really should have known that something was buried there 400 years ago, like there was a giant "X" marking the spot with a headstone on it.
The only real problem is when the transaction costs of the lawsuit are too high for it to be worth defending. That's a price we pay for having a system better than "finders, keepers." And it is somewhat mitigated by insurance.
It's Okay, SCOTUS said we could. They wrote an opinion a few centuries back saying "People say this is really immoral, it probably is really immoral, but we can't say it's really immoral, because the courts of the conqueror are the courts of the conqueror."
"On information and belief" means something entirely different, and is mostly used when filing an affidavit or complaint and there is some fact of which one is reasonably sure but lacks direct knowledge.
You are interpreting his statement to have one meaning, but he was not clear enough to be certain that it is the correct one. "I am unable to affirm those details [of molecular biology] on my own knowledge or even my belief" can be read as implying that he does not believe them, as it is very unusual for an opinion to say something like that about a statement of facts, even in a technical area. In any event, that is how many people are considering it, and I have heard a number of people suggest that it is one of the "stupidest" concurrences they have ever read. As I said, I think these people are being anti-Scalia as opposed to really critiquing the opinion, but without more exposition it can definitely be read as anti-science, since it is saying "I'm not sure about all these decades of established science."
Some of us just think it's a bad idea when the NSA can pick a random person on the street and know whether they're cheating on their spouse within two minutes.
The NSA needs to be flooded with false positives.
Undead Osama, is that you? Phoenix666 was a bit obvious...
Mostly Unanimous. Justice Scalia wrote a brief concurrence that, depending on how it read, suggests he doesn't believe in molecular biology. I am giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming he is just trying to say that SCOTUS should avoid pronouncing scientific facts in binding legal opinions.
JUSTICE SCALIA, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. I join the judgment of the Court, and all of its opinion except Part I–A and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology. I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. It suffices for me to affirm, having studied the opinions below and the expert briefs presented here, that the portion of DNA isolated from its natural state sought to be patented is identical to that portion of the DNA in its natural state; and that complementary DNA (cDNA) is a synthetic creation not normally present in
nature.
It's a clear implication of the post. Are retarded or just being intentional dense?
(1) Not at all, it is indicated the report is biased and less reliable than an unbiased report. Whether it is accurate is an entirely different question than whether it is biased. An alleged murderer may have his mother testify that he was home with her at the time of the murder, for example, and her testimony is biased and therefore less reliable regardless of whether it is accurate.
(2) Ad hominem attacks are not nerdly.
Industry Group claims it is useful in own report, film at eleven.
The only exception where patents should be allowed are computer programs which replace a mechanical or electromagnetic component.
Congratulations. You have just created legislation which will create a mechanical algorithm implementation industry.
Of course Canada is doing it; of course the United States is doing it; Every country that can figure out how is probably doing it. It's like sex. Everyone is doing it or trying to do it.
They should just charge a $5 fee and mail it to you if you don't want it destroyed.
It is kind of silly, though. Post 911, nobody can take over a plane with a few knives. The only reason to not allow them is that they can result in more injuries on a plane, but that seems so unlikely as to not be terribly persuasive.
I once walked into a secure federal building with a knife by accident; the guards thought about it and then didn't care. Which is really the right result.
At least we're not Britain. I mean, seriously, what kind of permissions is 007 for a spy?
Plausible deniability?
Plausible!!
>cat .bash_history
chmod 007 F22-plans-really-secret
OK, like in UK, where surveillance cameras suddenly fail to operate when its convenient to the police.
That happens in the U.S. too, even in places where police brutality has gotten so bad that police are required to record all arrests.
The study only looked at elective surgery, not urgent surgery.
Good, since those are the ones we can best change the outcome of by rescheduling them.
Complications can arise during recovery, especially after a complicated surgery or if the hospital isn't perfect. If complications arise on a weekend, the doctors and staff who could not get the time off are the ones working, and the staff are less willing to call the doctors. (These are generalizations, and of course vary from hospital to hospital.)
This is the exact reason why you NEVER schedule elective surgery on major holidays or between Christmas and New Years.