It is theft for a very simple reason. It is requiring me, by law (under penalty of, ultimately, imprisonment or death) to give my personal property (my income) to another individual (through a complicated system of intermediaries) whether I wish to do so or not.
In other words, it is taking my personal property, and disposing of it without my permission and against my will.
This is actually the issue -- the heavy regulations are usually good for the existing companies, because it provides an excellent barrier to entry, creating limited or nonexistent competition, and thus higher costs, lower quality, and dreadful service.
But, most excellently, inflation is largely a tax on the willing -- since you can always choose to hold your assets in a competing currency or in non-monetary assets.
It is harder to get your income out of the inflationary currency, but at least once the money is yours, you can take it out.
For that matter, you can buy hedges, such as currency swap agreements, which could cover future income (for a fee, of course)
If you can't afford it, why do you feel that you deserve expensive treatment?
Somebody's got to pay for it, after all. If you've never done anything to create the wealth that you're consuming, why do you believe that you have a right to consume it?
Seems more fair to me that people who do the work get the benefits, rather than people get the benefits and only the dupes bother to work for it.
"Individualism, entrepreneurship and compassion have become the least "American" values in the world."
I'm not sure how that fits with the rest of your post, but whatever.
Anyway, exactly why do you feel that doctors have an obligation to treat you just because you're sick.
Just because something is deemed by someone to be "essential" does that mean that the providers no longer have a right to determine the price for their labor?
It is the very socializing of the medical care that creates the scarcity.
In a free market, so long as there were people who needed care and were willing/able to pay, there would be providers lined up to treat.
It is only in a socialized (or over-regulated, like in the US) market where there is etermal scarcity. There is no inherent reason why there can't be enough physicians and enough medical equipment to treat everybody.
You know, I don't think I'd like working with you.
You are way too focused on being "the best" programmer, and not on trying to make the best product.
You probably think I'm young and inexperienced... Compared to you I am... my 12 years' professional experience pales in comparison to your almost 40.
But I love working with young, inexperienced intelligent programmers. It is such an opportunity to help them grow. (It's hard. Sometimes they take a long time to "get it" and its really frustrating, because there are deadlines and stuff).
Now, as for "experienced" outsource types (regardless of where they came from)... Sometimes you are so completely right. But still, what kind of a developer are you that is all eager to watch things go down in flames? I'd hate being on your "team"
BUT, if the only difference between your C program and your C# program are a few symbols and "tidbits" then you are definitely using one of those languages in the wrong way. (Or you are writing things that are trivially small and simple, I suppose)
When I write C#, my code looks very different than it does when I write C.
The old joke was that you could write BASIC in any language. You can, but you really shouldn't.
I also wonder: how many people have malfunctioning cellphones that should be replaced under either warranty or insurance, but are tired of arguing with the warranty or insurance companies -- so they physically destroy the device, and then there's no argument about whether or not it is in need of replacement.
Certainly my laptop's damage and destruction insurance included the "accidents only" limitation.
Interestingly, it also specifically excluded laptops with obvious hammer-blow damage, even if I could prove somehow that the hammer blows were accidental.
Though it didn't specifically exclude other types of easy-to-inflict intentional damage (run through the dish washer, thrown out the window, shot with a gun, etc.) though it of course excludes all intentional and otherwise not-accidental damage.
I guess they just got tired of arguing over thousands of laptops that had been obviously deliberately destroyed through the repeated use of a hammer...
because it is much more likely that you waited for the 300GB to download because you wanted the data, rather than just to exercise your internet connection downloading the next 300GB from/dev/urandom.
Unless you can get a significant majority of internet traffic to actually *be* random noise with the appropriate statistical foibles to match your encryption scheme, this just isn't going to work.
CPI actually does take in to account increases in product quality. In certain limited areas for about 20 years, and for most categories beginning in 1998, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
These adjustments (called hedonic quality adjustment) only go one direction, though -- product quality can increase in the model, but it can not decrease. The BLS says that this is mostly irrelevant, however, since outside of the shelter and apparel categories, hedonic adjustment alters the overall CPI by about 0.005% per year, which is rather trivial.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics claim that overall, the changes made to CPI calculations over the last 30 years impact the CPI by approximately 0.5% per year. They claim that this makes the new CPI more accurate, but even if it does not, 0.5% is small potatoes.
Whether you can trust the BLS numbers on how these changes effect the CPI is a different question, one on which I don't currently have a strong opinion.
[In general] Management's inability to determine which programmers are 10x more productive leads them to be unable to demand those most-productive workers.
If management were able to realize that some programmers were 10x more productive, and were also able to figure out which ones were that 10x more productive, in many cases management would begin to insist upon hiring only those which were at the top end of the spectrum. The tendency for some organizations to actively seek this and other organizations to not seek it would tend to separate the industry, moving a larger fraction of those top-tier programmers to places where they are valued higher, and leaving the companies that don't apparently care one way or the other with fewer top-tier programmers.
This in itself would make the disparity more obvious, since those shops that sought top-tier talent would be drastically more productive now that there were relatively few top-tier programmers to "bail out" the shops that weren't picky.
You probably still wouldn't see 10x, but it would start to spread more than it is now.
Myself, I won't hire anybody that I don't think is in the top-tier category. I won't (and currently don't have to) pay 10x as much. But since I could snag top talent for only about 10-20% more, I'm all over it -- when I can identify it.
I'm not a PhD. I'm not a climate scientist of any sort. I took a couple of courses in undergrad, so I know just the smallest bit more than the typical lay person.
And I don't believe.
That is to say that I am not at this time convinced that there is a significant trend of global surface temperature increase that is directly attributable to human-caused emissions of CO2 and other gasses into the atmosphere that is, failing activity to greatly curtail these emissions, will continue apace long into the future, with devastating consequences to humanity including massive flooding in low-lying areas and massive, unending drought in other areas.
That is more-or-less the thesis of the "consensus viewpoint" on climate change, is it not?
I won't dispute at all that the last 10-15 years were hotter on average than the 10-20 years prior. I won't even dispute that the record appears to indicate a general increase in temperatures over the last 50 years that is at a faster pace than temperature increases over the 80-90 years prior.
I have a few issues with the big thesis, though. And because there is so much stupid on "my" side (that is, among the "skeptics"), the debate has devolved to the point that little if any actual data is getting out. I don't know which side started the stupid, but there is so much stupid now on both sides that there's just nothing going on anymore.
I have seen pretty charts and graphs showing proxies for global mean temperature going back a few hundred years, a few thousand years, and one (ice cores, I think) going back like 500,000 years. These charts are often made for what I'll call political effect, and so have the last 500,000 years of data using one model, but the most recent 50 years or so using actual live temperatures.
That's disingenuous. What I really want to see are the following:
Graphs of all of these proxies that begin only at the earliest period for which we have consistent data and end sometime in the last 5 years, with each proxy either on a separate graph or as a clearly separate dataset within a single graph. The last 150 years of actual temperature data may appear on this graph, but only as a separate dataset, NOT appended onto the end of any of the proxy sets.
Then, I want to see another set of graphs. On each of these graphs, I want to see exactly two datasets: the last 150-200 years of data using one of the proxies, ending no more than 5 years ago as one dataset, and the actual recorded temperatures as the other dataset.
I don't want to see any data-smoothing or other wonkiness in the graphs. And I want the graphs to be put together honestly, with the raw data and their sources available upon request.
If I saw those things, I could draw some conclusions from them. They are not everything... all that these graphs would do is illustrate whether or not the last 50 years of warming is or is not a statistically significant outlier.
If those graphs would in fact show that the temperature is rising much more rapidly in the past 50 years than any similar experience over the last 500,000 years, then that is saying something quite significant. It still doesn't speak to CO2, of course... and I would want to see some additional data regarding the amount of CO2 humans emit, the amounts of carbon and CO2 moving through various phases of the "carbon cycle" each year (are we emitting.0001% of the annual cycle? 99.9999% of the annual cycle, or somewhere in between?)
All of these things are reasonable to ask to see. I can't draw conclusive proof from any of it. But I could become more informed. I don't have to know all of the details: how to collect the proxy data, how to analyze the data, what it all means... I won't be able to be absolutely certain... but then, that's not the point.
I just want honest science.
And right now, I have seen very little real data that wasn't obviously manipulate
Not everybody who hasn't studied in your field is also incapable of understanding the basic concept that some things are complex and can't be explained in detail in 5 minutes.
Please don't paint all of us with that brush.
We're not all clueless about the world just because we are also not experts in your field.
By the way, the answer the question in the invariable response is "...since you asked that question, yes. I do think you are not smart."
predicting weather 7 days out isn't that relevant to overall global climate trends, but:
where do you live that 7-days are accurate? That's an honest question, not bait. I live in southern california, and for most of the year, the forecasts are terrible.
During the summer, even I can predict the weather here with reasonable accuracy. If I say "clear skies, with 70s to near 80 at the beaches, upper 80s to low 90s inland, 90s in the valley" I'll be right about 80% of the time from July 4th to October 1st... but apart from that, around here the forecasts are awful.
On Friday, the forecast was for rain Saturday and Sunday, and then again Tuesday, Wednesday, and the following weekend.
On Saturday, they pushed the forecast back a day. On Sunday, they pushed it back another 12 hours (with rain now Sunday night/Monday morning, clear and dry now by Tuesday and Wednesday, with rain Thursday, and then again Saturday-Sunday).
Now it's Thursday. It rained all day Monday, starting just before daybreak (though only about an inch), was dry and clear Tuesday, Wednesday, and as of 6PM Thursday there is nary a cloud in the sky. The forecast is now rain Friday, and again Sunday-Monday.
Knowing that it will rain at some point over the next 10 days with no accuracy on which days or how many of them isn't so great. So far with this "storm"*, they've been somewhat close when looking out 24 hours, but even the 3-days are pretty terrible.
The various online sources (even the raw stuff that I get from the local airport) often miss-guess a day's high temp by as much as 10 degrees. And they update the forecast only the night before. They're only looking out about 12-14 hours, and they're still often very wrong. They won't even show the high temp after 12PM anymore because they are so often wrong.
* 1.26 inches of rain over 14 hours is hardly a storm, but that's another story.
Building on those hills and then being surprised that being burned out is a possibility... that is stupid.
There are things that can be done to mitigate the risk: getting rid of the tinder near your property, keeping your own grass-or-whatever alive and not dried out, buying sufficient fire insurance, having plans on what to do if you have to leave in a hurry...
My family lives right in the middle of one of 2008s burn areas. Our house didn't go up, but several nearby did. California burns every year (typically twice), but most individual areas only burn every 50 years or so.
If you are sufficiently prepared, the risk can be acceptable. A 2% chance each year that your property will be part of the Fire Lottery... if you're sure you can protect the people, have reasonable protections, and some means of recouping the financial loss... you're fine. (Some areas burn more often. Living there and then being surprised... that's stupid)
The hate is there because on any remotely controversial topic, Wikipedia has an unofficial official viewpoint and all edits (even those properly cited with mountains of evidence) which disagree, or merely point out that there are intelligent people on the other side, are reverted nearly instantaneously, in order to preserve the official viewpoint.
When you click links in google search it most definitely keeps a log of that fact. You can even see which results you clicked in your web searches on the web history dashboard thingy.
What happens when I pause the service, remove items, or delete the Web History service?
You can choose to stop storing your web activity in Web History either temporarily or permanently, or remove items, as described in Web History Help. If you remove items, they will be removed from the service and will not be used to improve your search experience. As is common practice in the industry, Google also maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users. For example, we use this information to audit our ads systems, understand which features are most popular to users, improve the quality of our search results, and help us combat vulnerabilities such as denial of service attacks.
Here's the trouble. Even if there is no personally identifying info, just the raw data (your search history, your clicks, etc.) is enough generally to reconstruct the identity information. And not just because people often search for themselves "just to see"
It takes some processing power, and it's not completely foolproof, but it can be done and has been done.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I'll bite on that first part.
It is theft for a very simple reason. It is requiring me, by law (under penalty of, ultimately, imprisonment or death) to give my personal property (my income) to another individual (through a complicated system of intermediaries) whether I wish to do so or not.
In other words, it is taking my personal property, and disposing of it without my permission and against my will.
In other words, it is theft.
This is actually the issue -- the heavy regulations are usually good for the existing companies, because it provides an excellent barrier to entry, creating limited or nonexistent competition, and thus higher costs, lower quality, and dreadful service.
But, most excellently, inflation is largely a tax on the willing -- since you can always choose to hold your assets in a competing currency or in non-monetary assets.
It is harder to get your income out of the inflationary currency, but at least once the money is yours, you can take it out.
For that matter, you can buy hedges, such as currency swap agreements, which could cover future income (for a fee, of course)
Yes.
If you want the time and property belonging to others, you have to be willing and able to pay for them.
Otherwise, you really have no right to take those things from another.
The explanation of this one that I have heard is:
you can turn an egg into a mess by applying a small amount of energy.
there is no way to turn a mess into an egg using only the amount of energy it would take to turn an egg into a mess.
The service that they are providing is agreeing not to send the command that will brick your device so long as you keep paying.
That's why I will never buy one.
If you can't afford it, why do you feel that you deserve expensive treatment?
Somebody's got to pay for it, after all. If you've never done anything to create the wealth that you're consuming, why do you believe that you have a right to consume it?
Seems more fair to me that people who do the work get the benefits, rather than people get the benefits and only the dupes bother to work for it.
Want good things? Earn them. That simple.
"Individualism, entrepreneurship and compassion have become the least "American" values in the world."
I'm not sure how that fits with the rest of your post, but whatever.
Anyway, exactly why do you feel that doctors have an obligation to treat you just because you're sick.
Just because something is deemed by someone to be "essential" does that mean that the providers no longer have a right to determine the price for their labor?
It is the very socializing of the medical care that creates the scarcity.
In a free market, so long as there were people who needed care and were willing/able to pay, there would be providers lined up to treat.
It is only in a socialized (or over-regulated, like in the US) market where there is etermal scarcity. There is no inherent reason why there can't be enough physicians and enough medical equipment to treat everybody.
You know, I don't think I'd like working with you.
You are way too focused on being "the best" programmer, and not on trying to make the best product.
You probably think I'm young and inexperienced... Compared to you I am... my 12 years' professional experience pales in comparison to your almost 40.
But I love working with young, inexperienced intelligent programmers. It is such an opportunity to help them grow. (It's hard. Sometimes they take a long time to "get it" and its really frustrating, because there are deadlines and stuff).
Now, as for "experienced" outsource types (regardless of where they came from)... Sometimes you are so completely right. But still, what kind of a developer are you that is all eager to watch things go down in flames? I'd hate being on your "team"
I agree with what you are trying to say.
I say it often myself.
BUT, if the only difference between your C program and your C# program are a few symbols and "tidbits" then you are definitely using one of those languages in the wrong way. (Or you are writing things that are trivially small and simple, I suppose)
When I write C#, my code looks very different than it does when I write C.
The old joke was that you could write BASIC in any language. You can, but you really shouldn't.
I also wonder: how many people have malfunctioning cellphones that should be replaced under either warranty or insurance, but are tired of arguing with the warranty or insurance companies -- so they physically destroy the device, and then there's no argument about whether or not it is in need of replacement.
Certainly my laptop's damage and destruction insurance included the "accidents only" limitation.
Interestingly, it also specifically excluded laptops with obvious hammer-blow damage, even if I could prove somehow that the hammer blows were accidental.
Though it didn't specifically exclude other types of easy-to-inflict intentional damage (run through the dish washer, thrown out the window, shot with a gun, etc.) though it of course excludes all intentional and otherwise not-accidental damage.
I guess they just got tired of arguing over thousands of laptops that had been obviously deliberately destroyed through the repeated use of a hammer...
because it is much more likely that you waited for the 300GB to download because you wanted the data, rather than just to exercise your internet connection downloading the next 300GB from /dev/urandom.
Unless you can get a significant majority of internet traffic to actually *be* random noise with the appropriate statistical foibles to match your encryption scheme, this just isn't going to work.
I have.
CPI actually does take in to account increases in product quality. In certain limited areas for about 20 years, and for most categories beginning in 1998, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
These adjustments (called hedonic quality adjustment) only go one direction, though -- product quality can increase in the model, but it can not decrease. The BLS says that this is mostly irrelevant, however, since outside of the shelter and apparel categories, hedonic adjustment alters the overall CPI by about 0.005% per year, which is rather trivial.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics claim that overall, the changes made to CPI calculations over the last 30 years impact the CPI by approximately 0.5% per year. They claim that this makes the new CPI more accurate, but even if it does not, 0.5% is small potatoes.
Whether you can trust the BLS numbers on how these changes effect the CPI is a different question, one on which I don't currently have a strong opinion.
[In general] Management's inability to determine which programmers are 10x more productive leads them to be unable to demand those most-productive workers.
If management were able to realize that some programmers were 10x more productive, and were also able to figure out which ones were that 10x more productive, in many cases management would begin to insist upon hiring only those which were at the top end of the spectrum. The tendency for some organizations to actively seek this and other organizations to not seek it would tend to separate the industry, moving a larger fraction of those top-tier programmers to places where they are valued higher, and leaving the companies that don't apparently care one way or the other with fewer top-tier programmers.
This in itself would make the disparity more obvious, since those shops that sought top-tier talent would be drastically more productive now that there were relatively few top-tier programmers to "bail out" the shops that weren't picky.
You probably still wouldn't see 10x, but it would start to spread more than it is now.
Myself, I won't hire anybody that I don't think is in the top-tier category. I won't (and currently don't have to) pay 10x as much. But since I could snag top talent for only about 10-20% more, I'm all over it -- when I can identify it.
I hate this debate.
The reason that I hate this debate is this:
I'm not a PhD. I'm not a climate scientist of any sort. I took a couple of courses in undergrad, so I know just the smallest bit more than the typical lay person.
And I don't believe.
That is to say that I am not at this time convinced that there is a significant trend of global surface temperature increase that is directly attributable to human-caused emissions of CO2 and other gasses into the atmosphere that is, failing activity to greatly curtail these emissions, will continue apace long into the future, with devastating consequences to humanity including massive flooding in low-lying areas and massive, unending drought in other areas.
That is more-or-less the thesis of the "consensus viewpoint" on climate change, is it not?
I won't dispute at all that the last 10-15 years were hotter on average than the 10-20 years prior. I won't even dispute that the record appears to indicate a general increase in temperatures over the last 50 years that is at a faster pace than temperature increases over the 80-90 years prior.
I have a few issues with the big thesis, though. And because there is so much stupid on "my" side (that is, among the "skeptics"), the debate has devolved to the point that little if any actual data is getting out. I don't know which side started the stupid, but there is so much stupid now on both sides that there's just nothing going on anymore.
I have seen pretty charts and graphs showing proxies for global mean temperature going back a few hundred years, a few thousand years, and one (ice cores, I think) going back like 500,000 years. These charts are often made for what I'll call political effect, and so have the last 500,000 years of data using one model, but the most recent 50 years or so using actual live temperatures.
That's disingenuous. What I really want to see are the following:
Graphs of all of these proxies that begin only at the earliest period for which we have consistent data and end sometime in the last 5 years, with each proxy either on a separate graph or as a clearly separate dataset within a single graph. The last 150 years of actual temperature data may appear on this graph, but only as a separate dataset, NOT appended onto the end of any of the proxy sets.
Then, I want to see another set of graphs. On each of these graphs, I want to see exactly two datasets: the last 150-200 years of data using one of the proxies, ending no more than 5 years ago as one dataset, and the actual recorded temperatures as the other dataset.
I don't want to see any data-smoothing or other wonkiness in the graphs. And I want the graphs to be put together honestly, with the raw data and their sources available upon request.
If I saw those things, I could draw some conclusions from them. They are not everything... all that these graphs would do is illustrate whether or not the last 50 years of warming is or is not a statistically significant outlier.
If those graphs would in fact show that the temperature is rising much more rapidly in the past 50 years than any similar experience over the last 500,000 years, then that is saying something quite significant. It still doesn't speak to CO2, of course... and I would want to see some additional data regarding the amount of CO2 humans emit, the amounts of carbon and CO2 moving through various phases of the "carbon cycle" each year (are we emitting .0001% of the annual cycle? 99.9999% of the annual cycle, or somewhere in between?)
All of these things are reasonable to ask to see. I can't draw conclusive proof from any of it. But I could become more informed. I don't have to know all of the details: how to collect the proxy data, how to analyze the data, what it all means... I won't be able to be absolutely certain... but then, that's not the point.
I just want honest science.
And right now, I have seen very little real data that wasn't obviously manipulate
Not everybody who hasn't studied in your field is also incapable of understanding the basic concept that some things are complex and can't be explained in detail in 5 minutes.
Please don't paint all of us with that brush.
We're not all clueless about the world just because we are also not experts in your field.
By the way, the answer the question in the invariable response is "...since you asked that question, yes. I do think you are not smart."
predicting weather 7 days out isn't that relevant to overall global climate trends, but:
where do you live that 7-days are accurate? That's an honest question, not bait. I live in southern california, and for most of the year, the forecasts are terrible.
During the summer, even I can predict the weather here with reasonable accuracy. If I say "clear skies, with 70s to near 80 at the beaches, upper 80s to low 90s inland, 90s in the valley" I'll be right about 80% of the time from July 4th to October 1st... but apart from that, around here the forecasts are awful.
On Friday, the forecast was for rain Saturday and Sunday, and then again Tuesday, Wednesday, and the following weekend.
On Saturday, they pushed the forecast back a day. On Sunday, they pushed it back another 12 hours (with rain now Sunday night/Monday morning, clear and dry now by Tuesday and Wednesday, with rain Thursday, and then again Saturday-Sunday).
Now it's Thursday. It rained all day Monday, starting just before daybreak (though only about an inch), was dry and clear Tuesday, Wednesday, and as of 6PM Thursday there is nary a cloud in the sky. The forecast is now rain Friday, and again Sunday-Monday.
Knowing that it will rain at some point over the next 10 days with no accuracy on which days or how many of them isn't so great. So far with this "storm"*, they've been somewhat close when looking out 24 hours, but even the 3-days are pretty terrible.
The various online sources (even the raw stuff that I get from the local airport) often miss-guess a day's high temp by as much as 10 degrees. And they update the forecast only the night before. They're only looking out about 12-14 hours, and they're still often very wrong. They won't even show the high temp after 12PM anymore because they are so often wrong.
* 1.26 inches of rain over 14 hours is hardly a storm, but that's another story.
Not quite.
Building on those hills and then being surprised that being burned out is a possibility... that is stupid.
There are things that can be done to mitigate the risk: getting rid of the tinder near your property, keeping your own grass-or-whatever alive and not dried out, buying sufficient fire insurance, having plans on what to do if you have to leave in a hurry...
My family lives right in the middle of one of 2008s burn areas. Our house didn't go up, but several nearby did. California burns every year (typically twice), but most individual areas only burn every 50 years or so.
If you are sufficiently prepared, the risk can be acceptable. A 2% chance each year that your property will be part of the Fire Lottery... if you're sure you can protect the people, have reasonable protections, and some means of recouping the financial loss... you're fine. (Some areas burn more often. Living there and then being surprised... that's stupid)
The hate is there because on any remotely controversial topic, Wikipedia has an unofficial official viewpoint and all edits (even those properly cited with mountains of evidence) which disagree, or merely point out that there are intelligent people on the other side, are reverted nearly instantaneously, in order to preserve the official viewpoint.
When you click links in google search it most definitely keeps a log of that fact. You can even see which results you clicked in your web searches on the web history dashboard thingy.
From the Web History Privacy Policy FAQ:
What happens when I pause the service, remove items, or delete the Web History service?
You can choose to stop storing your web activity in Web History either temporarily or permanently, or remove items, as described in Web History Help. If you remove items, they will be removed from the service and will not be used to improve your search experience. As is common practice in the industry, Google also maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users. For example, we use this information to audit our ads systems, understand which features are most popular to users, improve the quality of our search results, and help us combat vulnerabilities such as denial of service attacks.
Here's the trouble. Even if there is no personally identifying info, just the raw data (your search history, your clicks, etc.) is enough generally to reconstruct the identity information. And not just because people often search for themselves "just to see"
It takes some processing power, and it's not completely foolproof, but it can be done and has been done.