Yes I have heard of them. But I didn't hear that Microsoft is now one of them, nor did I hear that they're now levying armies.
To bring this closer to home, look at private prisons. Are any going out and arresting citizens and throwing them in jail? No! Why not? Because they're under contract to a GOVERNMENT, and only a GOVERNMENT gives them authority to incarcerate citizens.
I know this may sound as a shock to you Slashdot readers, but no matter how private prisons Microsoft buys, they can't start throwing Linux users in jail. Likewise, they're not going to invade Norway. Sorry to burst your religious bubble.
Fair market value will be given to the citizens, who will then be moved to nearby countries.
In other news, that's exactly what we've been doing in Iraq...
We've been moving Iraqi citizens to nearby countries?!?! Would that be Syria? Afghanistan? Kuwait? Iran? You would think news this big would hit the New York Times at least!
p.s. Okay, a *few* Iraqis have been moved to a country near the US, but such cases are for enemy combatants. While we may agree that this type of incarceration is unacceptable (no due process), it's wholly unrelated from the forcible emmigration you suggest. You're not going to persuade anyone towards your political views by engaging in ridiculous hyperbole.
Except that, contrary to Slashdot rumour, only governments can have armies. So while Microsoft may be able to hire a bunch of security guards, Norway trumps them by having an actual army and navy.
Microsoft has to make its way in the world by providing a service that people want. They cannot compel purchasing of their products. They cannot make you use Windows or Internet Explorer or Office. On the other hand, Norway simply taxes its citizens. Its revenues are compelled. That its citizens to no object to the taxation is beside the point, as they do not have any choice to not pay.
As one tyrant once remarked, power comes from the barrel of a gun. Microsoft doesn't have guns, and must thus use persuasion to get what it wants. But Norway does. The MPAA may have managed to snag Johansen, but ONLY because they first persuaded Norway to use its guns to arrest him.
Right decision for today, but unfortunately it doesn't correct a HUGE mistake make years ago by local governments. The only reason this is a problem is because cable companies are government mandated monopolies. The government owned the roads and thus decided that only one cable company could own the lines. So companies bid for the exclusive monopolistic privilege of being the sole cable company in your town. Today, even where you legally have the right to choose another company, you are not able too because the governmetn put in barriers to competition years ago.
This wasn't the feds or even the states. This was your local city council. Yes, the same petty tyrants that worship at the alter of eminent domain, are the same petty tyrants that foisted this monopoly on you. We're definitely in a mess now, but the solution isn't to layer another level of government on the problem. We got rid of the telco monopoly with new technology (cell phones), and we're going to have to do the same with cable (satellite, wifi, etc).
My circuit was first purchased under Best, which is no longer in business. The actual circuit belongs to Covad. But I was transferred, along with the circuit, to Verio, and then subsequently to Earthlink. Don't expect to get the same class of service from Earthlink today. They just don't care about people like you and me.
But you CAN get similar service from Speakeasy, and smaller local providers like Meer.net. I've been thinking of switching away from Earthlink (because they shit on you if you're not a Windows user) and have priced out similar service from $60 to $90.
Get a different DSL provider than, because my experience has been the opposite. My DSL circuit is considered "telecommute/soho" class, and doesn't have any gamers on it. The rate isn't limited and they aren't crowding the dslam. On the other hand, my friends with cable have moderately faster download speeds, but truly nasty latencies.
I liked Firefly. I've got the boxed set, and I feel it's the best scifi since B5. I like the stories, the characters, etc. But that doesn't mean I worship the ground Joss Whedon walks on.
Unlike most Firefly fans I know. It seems you're not allowed to like Firefly without liking Buffy as well. But I hate Buffy. I don't like Angel either, and that upsets some people. I even had one friend shocked when I refused to attend a Kerry fundraiser held by Joss Whedon. That fact that I wouldn't vote for a candidate that Joss endorsed was outside of his comprehension range.
Show me where the average developer salary is $100,000?
I pulled that number out of my ass because that happens to be a rough approximation of what all my employed software developer friends are making. Two friends of mine got $125,000 jobs within the last few months, and I'm starting to think maybe it's time to jump ship for a salary like that.
The teacher comes into play merely as a comparison. I could compare programmers to physicians instead, but programmers don't need anything anywhere near the kind of education and training a physician needs.
As a *group* programmers are overpaid. The market is in the midst of correcting this, but shifting many lower skilled programming jobs overseas. Would this outsourcing have been so trendy if the average developer salary was only $50,000 instead of $100,000?
I don't actually mean that the individual developers are to blame for this. It's damned hard to ask for only $50,000 when everyone else is getting $100,000. But at the same time, domestic developers should be upset when tens of thousands of foreign developers offer to do the same job for only $20,000.
KDE teaming up with history's rudest online community is not a good decision. We're talking about Wikipedia here, whose motto is "edit it yourself you fuckwit!"
If you want justice, then stop paying starting engineers straight out of junior college three times the salary of teachers with thirty or more years of experience. Stop demanding it for yourself.
Too bad if you try to do this in the United States without enough money for complete financial security and independance, one of the bigger guys will come and offer to buy out your company. If you refuse, your safe full of company secrets will myseriously disappear to a fire. If you persist in continuing to threaten the big guy's business, his thugs will come and offer to blow out your brains.
What a shitty fantasy world you live in. Fortunately this does NOT happen in the United States. Sometimes there are legal pressures, but no ones brains have been blown out. Sleepycat Software is still in business despite the billions that Larry Ellison has in his wallet. My brother works for a startup company with fifty employees that directly competes with my company employing over 100,000. Yet no one there worries about their brains being blown out. That little lady with her boutique on the corner is still in business despite the billions in the Walmart coffers. And only a nutjob like yourself would tell Linus Torvalds to get more life insurance because someone from Redmond is coming to blow his brains out.
I guess I missed IBM's announcement they were lowering prices.
I missed it too. But I ALSO missed their announcement that they had to jack up prices to afford raises for overpaid engineers.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we've done this to ourselves. When a starting software developer with a 2.0 grade average straight out of junior college can grab a job paying more than a teacher with thirty years experience, we're asking too much. The pressure to outsource to India would be far far less if we weren't costing the company so damned much more for the same skillset as what's offered in Bangalore.
A mechanical, a hydraulic engineer, and a software engineer were driving along a narrow mountain road, when the brakes fail, the car goes out of control, and crashes into a tree. They are a hundred miles from home, and it's starting to rain.
The mechanical engineer examines the brake shoes and see that they have multiple stress fractures, and need to be replaced. The hydraulic engineer examines the brake lines and sees that the pressure is way below minimum, and that they need more brake fluid. The software engineer looks at the the other two engineers and says:
"It's just a crash. Help me push me push it back out to the road and we'll try it again."
Guess the evil conservatives out there aren't as crazy as we thought.
I never thought they were crazy. For years now I've been telling liberals to stop fighting conservatives and start fighting individual policies. Attacking the person is easy, you don't have to think, you only have to call them names. But when you attack the person as a whole, you're also attacking everything that is good about them.
That in and of itself is the problem. It shouldn't be selling its services (power) on the open market. Big corporations wouldn't be able to buy the coercive force of the police, if the coercive force of the police wasn't up for sale.
I'm bitching about the government because it is the real problem. All power ultimately comes from the people. When we the people GIVE more and more of that power to the government, why do act surprised when that power comes back to subjugate us? Making the government bigger and stronger so it can put big business "in its place" is only aggravating the problem.
I can take care of big business all by myself. If I don't like Microsoft, I don't have to use Windows. Problem solved. If I don't like Walmart I can shop somewhere else, or even forego the opportunity completely. Problem solved. If I don't like Big Oil(tm) I can get a bicycle, if I don't like Big Tobacco(tm) I can quit smoking. It's not about boycotting, it's about being sovereign and not beholden to anyone else. It's about being a free man.
But I cannot do that with government. I have no choice. THEY are the ones with armed police forces. THEY are the ones with armies and navies. THEY are the ones arbitrarily deciding what I can or cannot do with my life. The government may be necessary, but we should never forget that ultimately they are the enemy.
Either way you take the analogy, it's still the government that has the machine gun and the combination to all the safes. That part of the analogy is spot on.
Regardless of who's the pusher, we wouldn't be in the problem if the government didn't whore itself out to the highest bidder. No, that's not right either. It's *OUR* fault for electing whores in the first place.
Wrong. Browser-centric sites, no matter how free the browser in question may be, are the problem. It was wrong when Netscape was a monopoly, it is still wrong now that IE is the monopoly, and it will be wrong in the future if Firefox/Mozilla ever gets to be a monopoly.
The essence of HTML is that it is content, not layout. This means that every browser will render the page differently. As long as website are targeted towards a specific browser to the detriment of other browsers, we have a problem. This is true even if standards are used, because there are always dark corners in every standard, especially when it's something like HTML/CSS that changes every couple of years.
Prop 13 is meant to (and does) protect homeowners. It may seem strange and bizarre to you tax and spend types, but you have to look back before Prop 13 went into effect. People were LOSING THEIR HOMES because their taxes kept going up and up and up. Retirees and fixed incomes were LOSING THEIR HOMES because their home values were rising faster than they could collect aluminum cans.
Being able to afford to live in the home you've already purchased does not make one a member of the "landed class". Is it hard for teachers to live in Palo Alto and Beverly Hills? Of course it is! But Prop 13 has nothing to do with that because new home tax rates would still be the same.
The answer to inequitable taxes isn't to raise them all to the highest rate, but to lower them instead. That may sound regressive to those of you in New Haven Connecticut, but it's a damned site better than throwing elderly grandmothers out of their home because they can't pay their taxes.
No, both sides lost. The winner is the government. If a shopping mall brings in more tax revenue than a millionaire's home, just evict him and build the shopping mall!
It used to be (before today) that the rich in the country had to earn their wealth in the market. They had to provide goods or services that people wanted. Even Bill Gates couldn't have made his billions without the voluntary purchase of DOS, Windows, Office, etc. by willing consumers.
But that balance has now changed. In the future the wealthy will only be those with political connections to the Politburo. They may still own the factories, but only because the government gave them the factories in the first place.
Still don't get it? In the future if Bill Gates gets tired of multimillionaire Scott McNealy making fun of his haircut, all he has to do is convince someone on the Palo Alto city council that a Microsoft building would bring in more tax revenue than a Sun building. It's no longer about competing in the marketplace, it's about competing with lawyers and bribes.
They might get thrown out in New London Connecticut, but people just like them infest every city council. Including yours. Coast to coast neighborhood busybodies are cracking open the champagne and celebrating their victory.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes I have heard of them. But I didn't hear that Microsoft is now one of them, nor did I hear that they're now levying armies.
To bring this closer to home, look at private prisons. Are any going out and arresting citizens and throwing them in jail? No! Why not? Because they're under contract to a GOVERNMENT, and only a GOVERNMENT gives them authority to incarcerate citizens.
I know this may sound as a shock to you Slashdot readers, but no matter how private prisons Microsoft buys, they can't start throwing Linux users in jail. Likewise, they're not going to invade Norway. Sorry to burst your religious bubble.
You're right of course. We are forcibly emigrating the entire Iraq population to Guantanamo Bay. Thanks for clearing that up.
Fair market value will be given to the citizens, who will then be moved to nearby countries.
In other news, that's exactly what we've been doing in Iraq...
We've been moving Iraqi citizens to nearby countries?!?! Would that be Syria? Afghanistan? Kuwait? Iran? You would think news this big would hit the New York Times at least!
p.s. Okay, a *few* Iraqis have been moved to a country near the US, but such cases are for enemy combatants. While we may agree that this type of incarceration is unacceptable (no due process), it's wholly unrelated from the forcible emmigration you suggest. You're not going to persuade anyone towards your political views by engaging in ridiculous hyperbole.
Except that, contrary to Slashdot rumour, only governments can have armies. So while Microsoft may be able to hire a bunch of security guards, Norway trumps them by having an actual army and navy.
Microsoft has to make its way in the world by providing a service that people want. They cannot compel purchasing of their products. They cannot make you use Windows or Internet Explorer or Office. On the other hand, Norway simply taxes its citizens. Its revenues are compelled. That its citizens to no object to the taxation is beside the point, as they do not have any choice to not pay.
As one tyrant once remarked, power comes from the barrel of a gun. Microsoft doesn't have guns, and must thus use persuasion to get what it wants. But Norway does. The MPAA may have managed to snag Johansen, but ONLY because they first persuaded Norway to use its guns to arrest him.
Right decision for today, but unfortunately it doesn't correct a HUGE mistake make years ago by local governments. The only reason this is a problem is because cable companies are government mandated monopolies. The government owned the roads and thus decided that only one cable company could own the lines. So companies bid for the exclusive monopolistic privilege of being the sole cable company in your town. Today, even where you legally have the right to choose another company, you are not able too because the governmetn put in barriers to competition years ago.
This wasn't the feds or even the states. This was your local city council. Yes, the same petty tyrants that worship at the alter of eminent domain, are the same petty tyrants that foisted this monopoly on you. We're definitely in a mess now, but the solution isn't to layer another level of government on the problem. We got rid of the telco monopoly with new technology (cell phones), and we're going to have to do the same with cable (satellite, wifi, etc).
My circuit was first purchased under Best, which is no longer in business. The actual circuit belongs to Covad. But I was transferred, along with the circuit, to Verio, and then subsequently to Earthlink. Don't expect to get the same class of service from Earthlink today. They just don't care about people like you and me.
But you CAN get similar service from Speakeasy, and smaller local providers like Meer.net. I've been thinking of switching away from Earthlink (because they shit on you if you're not a Windows user) and have priced out similar service from $60 to $90.
Get a different DSL provider than, because my experience has been the opposite. My DSL circuit is considered "telecommute/soho" class, and doesn't have any gamers on it. The rate isn't limited and they aren't crowding the dslam. On the other hand, my friends with cable have moderately faster download speeds, but truly nasty latencies.
I liked Firefly. I've got the boxed set, and I feel it's the best scifi since B5. I like the stories, the characters, etc. But that doesn't mean I worship the ground Joss Whedon walks on.
Unlike most Firefly fans I know. It seems you're not allowed to like Firefly without liking Buffy as well. But I hate Buffy. I don't like Angel either, and that upsets some people. I even had one friend shocked when I refused to attend a Kerry fundraiser held by Joss Whedon. That fact that I wouldn't vote for a candidate that Joss endorsed was outside of his comprehension range.
Just be glad we don't have endings as sappy happy as Bollywood endings :-)
What do you guys do, come here in pairs? One guy posts that FreeBSD is crap, and the second with a link to Dragonfly? Give me a break!
Show me where the average developer salary is $100,000?
I pulled that number out of my ass because that happens to be a rough approximation of what all my employed software developer friends are making. Two friends of mine got $125,000 jobs within the last few months, and I'm starting to think maybe it's time to jump ship for a salary like that.
KDE (and virtually every other Open Source project)...
User: I found a bug.
Developer: Great, log it in Bugzilla!
Wikipedia...
User: I found an error.
Editor: You fuckwit, why didn't you fix it yourself!
Do you see the difference?
The teacher comes into play merely as a comparison. I could compare programmers to physicians instead, but programmers don't need anything anywhere near the kind of education and training a physician needs.
As a *group* programmers are overpaid. The market is in the midst of correcting this, but shifting many lower skilled programming jobs overseas. Would this outsourcing have been so trendy if the average developer salary was only $50,000 instead of $100,000?
I don't actually mean that the individual developers are to blame for this. It's damned hard to ask for only $50,000 when everyone else is getting $100,000. But at the same time, domestic developers should be upset when tens of thousands of foreign developers offer to do the same job for only $20,000.
KDE teaming up with history's rudest online community is not a good decision. We're talking about Wikipedia here, whose motto is "edit it yourself you fuckwit!"
JUSTICE
If you want justice, then stop paying starting engineers straight out of junior college three times the salary of teachers with thirty or more years of experience. Stop demanding it for yourself.
Too bad if you try to do this in the United States without enough money for complete financial security and independance, one of the bigger guys will come and offer to buy out your company. If you refuse, your safe full of company secrets will myseriously disappear to a fire. If you persist in continuing to threaten the big guy's business, his thugs will come and offer to blow out your brains.
What a shitty fantasy world you live in. Fortunately this does NOT happen in the United States. Sometimes there are legal pressures, but no ones brains have been blown out. Sleepycat Software is still in business despite the billions that Larry Ellison has in his wallet. My brother works for a startup company with fifty employees that directly competes with my company employing over 100,000. Yet no one there worries about their brains being blown out. That little lady with her boutique on the corner is still in business despite the billions in the Walmart coffers. And only a nutjob like yourself would tell Linus Torvalds to get more life insurance because someone from Redmond is coming to blow his brains out.
Get a clue!
I guess I missed IBM's announcement they were lowering prices.
I missed it too. But I ALSO missed their announcement that they had to jack up prices to afford raises for overpaid engineers.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we've done this to ourselves. When a starting software developer with a 2.0 grade average straight out of junior college can grab a job paying more than a teacher with thirty years experience, we're asking too much. The pressure to outsource to India would be far far less if we weren't costing the company so damned much more for the same skillset as what's offered in Bangalore.
A mechanical, a hydraulic engineer, and a software engineer were driving along a narrow mountain road, when the brakes fail, the car goes out of control, and crashes into a tree. They are a hundred miles from home, and it's starting to rain.
The mechanical engineer examines the brake shoes and see that they have multiple stress fractures, and need to be replaced. The hydraulic engineer examines the brake lines and sees that the pressure is way below minimum, and that they need more brake fluid. The software engineer looks at the the other two engineers and says:
"It's just a crash. Help me push me push it back out to the road and we'll try it again."
Guess the evil conservatives out there aren't as crazy as we thought.
I never thought they were crazy. For years now I've been telling liberals to stop fighting conservatives and start fighting individual policies. Attacking the person is easy, you don't have to think, you only have to call them names. But when you attack the person as a whole, you're also attacking everything that is good about them.
The gouvernment is a service provider.
That in and of itself is the problem. It shouldn't be selling its services (power) on the open market. Big corporations wouldn't be able to buy the coercive force of the police, if the coercive force of the police wasn't up for sale.
I'm bitching about the government because it is the real problem. All power ultimately comes from the people. When we the people GIVE more and more of that power to the government, why do act surprised when that power comes back to subjugate us? Making the government bigger and stronger so it can put big business "in its place" is only aggravating the problem.
I can take care of big business all by myself. If I don't like Microsoft, I don't have to use Windows. Problem solved. If I don't like Walmart I can shop somewhere else, or even forego the opportunity completely. Problem solved. If I don't like Big Oil(tm) I can get a bicycle, if I don't like Big Tobacco(tm) I can quit smoking. It's not about boycotting, it's about being sovereign and not beholden to anyone else. It's about being a free man.
But I cannot do that with government. I have no choice. THEY are the ones with armed police forces. THEY are the ones with armies and navies. THEY are the ones arbitrarily deciding what I can or cannot do with my life. The government may be necessary, but we should never forget that ultimately they are the enemy.
Either way you take the analogy, it's still the government that has the machine gun and the combination to all the safes. That part of the analogy is spot on.
Regardless of who's the pusher, we wouldn't be in the problem if the government didn't whore itself out to the highest bidder. No, that's not right either. It's *OUR* fault for electing whores in the first place.
Exactly. IE is the problem.
Wrong. Browser-centric sites, no matter how free the browser in question may be, are the problem. It was wrong when Netscape was a monopoly, it is still wrong now that IE is the monopoly, and it will be wrong in the future if Firefox/Mozilla ever gets to be a monopoly.
The essence of HTML is that it is content, not layout. This means that every browser will render the page differently. As long as website are targeted towards a specific browser to the detriment of other browsers, we have a problem. This is true even if standards are used, because there are always dark corners in every standard, especially when it's something like HTML/CSS that changes every couple of years.
Prop 13 is meant to (and does) protect homeowners. It may seem strange and bizarre to you tax and spend types, but you have to look back before Prop 13 went into effect. People were LOSING THEIR HOMES because their taxes kept going up and up and up. Retirees and fixed incomes were LOSING THEIR HOMES because their home values were rising faster than they could collect aluminum cans.
Being able to afford to live in the home you've already purchased does not make one a member of the "landed class". Is it hard for teachers to live in Palo Alto and Beverly Hills? Of course it is! But Prop 13 has nothing to do with that because new home tax rates would still be the same.
The answer to inequitable taxes isn't to raise them all to the highest rate, but to lower them instead. That may sound regressive to those of you in New Haven Connecticut, but it's a damned site better than throwing elderly grandmothers out of their home because they can't pay their taxes.
No, both sides lost. The winner is the government. If a shopping mall brings in more tax revenue than a millionaire's home, just evict him and build the shopping mall!
It used to be (before today) that the rich in the country had to earn their wealth in the market. They had to provide goods or services that people wanted. Even Bill Gates couldn't have made his billions without the voluntary purchase of DOS, Windows, Office, etc. by willing consumers.
But that balance has now changed. In the future the wealthy will only be those with political connections to the Politburo. They may still own the factories, but only because the government gave them the factories in the first place.
Still don't get it? In the future if Bill Gates gets tired of multimillionaire Scott McNealy making fun of his haircut, all he has to do is convince someone on the Palo Alto city council that a Microsoft building would bring in more tax revenue than a Sun building. It's no longer about competing in the marketplace, it's about competing with lawyers and bribes.
They might get thrown out in New London Connecticut, but people just like them infest every city council. Including yours. Coast to coast neighborhood busybodies are cracking open the champagne and celebrating their victory.
Wong analogy. The government is the pusher, the businesses are the addicted crackhead.