If you ever do any side work again, double your rates. I have NEVER had someone ask me about my degrees when doing tech support work for them. If they kvetch about $40 -$60 an hour (my rates vary depending on how well I know you and how busy I am), I tell them I don't charge if I can't fix it. That ALWAYS settles them right down. Of course, since this is just a sideline for me, I don't advertise, and get all my customers through reccommendations. Your qualifications probably become more important if you do it as an advertised business.
if a jock overhears this then that's different to me seeking him out and saying to to his face. i.e. i would expect protection in that case.
Actually, assuming police were present, they would protect you in either case. As long as you don't threaten someone w/ violence, you can say whatever you like to them, and they do not have a legal right to physically attack you. You can even go up to a police officer and insult him, his mother, and his religion, and he can't arrest you -- for that. Now, police in the US have a lot of personal discretion, so most likely, you will get arrested if you piss off a cop. However, the arresting complaint will never say "He insulted me"; it will be more along the lines of "He threatened me" or even "I found this small bag of cocaine in his pocket after searching him for looking suspicious", which is a completely different topic.
His definition stated force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies
Note that the force (or threat) is to individuals or property, but the goal is to coerce governments or societies. A mugger is only attempting to coerce the individual the threat is against. If I say "I will kill you if you don't do what I want", I am not a terrorist. If I publish a video of you bound and hooded, and say "I will kill this person if the US government doesn't do what I want", most people call that terrorism. The only real difference is in what I want, which determines who I have to coerce. If I want your wallet, I only have to coerce you. If I want American troops off of Saudi soil, I have to coerce Uncle Sam.
Hmmm, it still feels wrong to me to suggest that b/c I lied about paying Killer, I should not be held accountable. What if, instead of paying Killer money, I promise to tell him a secret he desperately wants to know? Then, I have done nothing from beginning to end but talk, and yet I have effectively hired and paid a contract killer.
And why the distinction between saying something and writing it? Because writing leaves evidence? What if our supposed killer recorded me saying I would pay him? Or do you consider writing an act, whereas speaking is not? What about sign-language?
I agree with you that actions are more substantial than speech, but I don't think that makes all speech automatically right, and something that should therefore be legal. Words can still have a tremendous amount of power, and power can always be used for evil ends.
Speech is speech. Action is something else altogether.
I agree with your general sentiment of individuals being held responsible for their actions, but I think the speech/action divide is a little more gray than you say. For instance, what if I say "I will pay anyone $1 million to kill iminplaya", someone kills you, and I refuse to pay. I have done nothing but speak (I never paid), so by your definition, I have done nothing but exercise my rights to free speech. I think we need to have some limits on speech, it is just a question of where to draw the limits in order to maximize total freedoms.
If "citizens" were subject to being ripped out of their homes or jobs and suddenly deported without benefit of trial, wouldn't you consider those citizens to be oppressed?
Citizens have the right to live in this country; illegal immigrants don't. I imagine that before anyone is deported, that individual has an opportunity to prove his/her citizenship. If they can, they are not deported. If they can not, they are. Same with stolen property. If I claim you stole something from me, and can prove it is mine, the cops give it back to me. Without a trial. You then go to trial for theft (this is based on my own experiences). Are you suggesting that instead of simply deporting illegal immigrants, we should hold them for trial for violating immigration laws, fine them and throw them in jail? That seems rather harsh, not to mention unworkable.
If companies and/or landlords could demand that "citizens" put up with almost any kind of unsafe work conditions or outrageous financial terms, since complaining would cause an "anonymous" caller to tell the government where to find the complainer, who would then be subject to the sudden deportation as described above, wouldn't you consider that citizen to be oppressed?
Not a bit. I'm not saying this is ethically correct, but I'll admit I wouldn't have much sympathy. If I commit a crime, and you know about it, and use that knowledge to blackmail me into doing something I would prefer not to, well, you suck, but I always have the option to take the legal consequences of my actions if I don't like the consequences you impose. And in the case of immigrants, I assume the whole reason they came to this country in the first place is to work that very job you find oppressive. If they would rather work that job (that YOU find oppressive) than go home, well, I can't imagine they dislike the job terribly much.
The final question is: why does not being a citizen mean that person is not being "oppressed"?
It doesn't. But enforcing the law against criminals, regardless of their citizenship status, is not oppression, assuming the laws are just. I personally think the US as a country has every right to determine whether or not to allow foreign born persons access to our country. I understand that these people's lives were rather shoddy where they were born. I sympathize with that, and think we as a more fortunate people have a humanitarian obligation to help them. However, I also think that we as humans have a right to determine when and how we extend this aid. Coming to this country against the wishes of the populace as expressed by law, and then pretending that somehow this act of presumption places an obligation on me offends me. I will gladly help those less fortunate; I will also defend myself against extortion.
I have no interest in fixing blame, because that doesn't fix problems. Feel free to continue somehow believing that people that commit horrific acts are justified because someone else committed a horrific act.
I don't think the statement "Failed foreign policy is the root of terrorism." in any way implies that horrific terroristic acts are somehow justified by this. I agree 100% with your philosophy of personal accountability.
However, given the obvious fact that there are people out there willing to commit acts you and I (and lots of others) find reprehensible, discovering what motivates these people is much more than an attempt to fix blame. Generally, discovering the root cause of a problem is the best way to fix it. Maybe failed foreign policy is NOT the root cause; but we are better off exploring this as a possible cause than ignoring it as a possibility because some people think it gives the terrorist an acceptable excuse.
I am not an accountant, but my experiences w/ corporate taxes leads me to believe that it goes something like this:
Production_Company produces Big_Blockbuster_Movie. Total sales are $1 billion Costs are: $100 million payroll, $100 million equipment, $100 million production costs (licenses, permits, bribes, whatever), $200 million "studio rental fees", $200 million "management costs", $200 million "distribution costs". Big_Blockbuster_Movie only netted $100 million, your 5% comes out of that.
Of course, the $200 million "studio rental fees" were paid to Parent_Corporation of Production_Company, as were the "management costs" and "distribution costs". So all of this profit is earned by Parent_Corporation, which of course shows this as a profit on its tax statements, and pays taxes. However, Poor_Schmuck doesn't have a contract w/ Parent_Corporation, he has a contract w/ Production_Company, who can clearly show him the books that state Production_Company paid $900 million to produce the movie, leaving only $100 million for the profit sharing. And of course, Poor_Schmuck doesn't know/can't do a damn thing about the fact that the $200 million in "management costs" was written into the subcontract AFTER Parent_Corporation had some idea of how much Big_Blockbuster_Movie was going to earn...
is that companies are ALREADY selling their products for the lowest amount possible.
That is true in a few very highly competitive markets, but for the most part, companies sell their products for the HIGHEST amount possible. This means the price point where raising the price loses them money due to lost sales. Name brand recognition plays a huge factor in a lot of people's willingness to purchase. A lot of people will gladly pay $75 for a shirt with a cool logo on it, but will never purchase the identical shirt for $25 w/o the logo. Of course, clothing in an extreme example of this particular phenomenon, but it exists in a watered down version in a lot of different product markets.
As for graduate school, get real. You pay through the nose while going, you're shackled to debt for 10 years, and, assuming if you haven't been downsized out of your chosen field, you might reap the rewards of an advanced degree before you retire.
I guess it depends. I got a masters from a highly-ranked public university. I picked up a job as a graduate research assistant, which meant my tuition was payed for, plus a small stipend that helped with the bills each month. I came out with about $10,000 in debt (half of which I took out to refinance credit card debt with cheap student loans). My first job involved a 215% pay increase. Ignoring the greater job satisfaction, personal satisfaction I get from education, and all other "intangibles", I recouped my financial losses in less than 3 years, and should spend the next thirty years in a higher earnings bracket than I could have w/o getting an advanced degree.
Obviously, YMMV, but this can actually be a VERY BAD idea. By the time I finished my BS degree, I was pretty burned out on school, and took a few years to "recharge" my batteries before going back to get a master's. I also know a guy who went straight to grad school, spent 1.5 semesters in, then dropped out b/c he was burned out. Of course, I also know a guy that went straight to law school, got his JD, went straight to library school, got his MLS, and is now a Law Librarian (after not quite a decade of straight schooling, including summers), which is what he wanted to do since before graduating high-school. And of course, there is the guy that "took a year off" before his senior (or maybe junior, I forget) year who is now a career bartender.
So, yeah, different strokes for different folks and all that.
What about HL7? That's a standard, so are several of the other clinical, demographic and billing formats for electronic transmission.
HL7 is very unwieldy for communicating between systems. It also does not scale very well. As for these other formats, you hit the nail on the head w/ "several". Take billing codes - ICD-9 is a standard, but it is revised every year or so. CPT covers the same procedure, but is a completely different standard. For Emergency Departments, you have DEEDS. There are too many "standards" and no actual standard format.
I tried to illustrate the absurdity of the people who jump all over the Bush administration for global warming.
Blame Bush for global warming? Wow, that really is the height of absurdity. The people I know tend to simply jump all over Bush for his policy of denying global warming, or denying that it is caused by humans. Those that criticize him for this policy do so in the belief that this policy is fueled more by an unwillingness to face negative economic consequences than any actual belief. To put it another way: if I thought that Bush honestly felt that humans were in no way responsible for, nor could affect, global warming, I would simply disagree with him. If I thought that he simply cared more about certain special interest groups' multi-billion dollar profits than he did about the future well-being of everyone on the planet, I would despise him.
But yeah, blaming the Administration for causing global warming, rather than blaming it for refusing to help reduce the trend for purely selfish reasons, is rather silly.
Except it is not completely analagous. In a supermarket, I wander around, and the products sit there, hoping to attract my attention. On the Internet, I pay money to bring what I want to me at a speed I want. Actually, now that I think about it, it is not analagous at all. I hope BadAnalogyGuy doesn't read this thread, or we are all in for an infringement suit...
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If you ever do any side work again, double your rates. I have NEVER had someone ask me about my degrees when doing tech support work for them. If they kvetch about $40 -$60 an hour (my rates vary depending on how well I know you and how busy I am), I tell them I don't charge if I can't fix it. That ALWAYS settles them right down. Of course, since this is just a sideline for me, I don't advertise, and get all my customers through reccommendations. Your qualifications probably become more important if you do it as an advertised business.
"ohhh! Furious George what have they done to your beautiful face"
if a jock overhears this then that's different to me seeking him out and saying to to his face. i.e. i would expect protection in that case.
Actually, assuming police were present, they would protect you in either case. As long as you don't threaten someone w/ violence, you can say whatever you like to them, and they do not have a legal right to physically attack you. You can even go up to a police officer and insult him, his mother, and his religion, and he can't arrest you -- for that. Now, police in the US have a lot of personal discretion, so most likely, you will get arrested if you piss off a cop. However, the arresting complaint will never say "He insulted me"; it will be more along the lines of "He threatened me" or even "I found this small bag of cocaine in his pocket after searching him for looking suspicious", which is a completely different topic.
but since when did I commission Google to tell me what I should hear and what I shouldn't hear?
When you decided to use their news service?
His definition stated force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies
Note that the force (or threat) is to individuals or property, but the goal is to coerce governments or societies. A mugger is only attempting to coerce the individual the threat is against. If I say "I will kill you if you don't do what I want", I am not a terrorist. If I publish a video of you bound and hooded, and say "I will kill this person if the US government doesn't do what I want", most people call that terrorism. The only real difference is in what I want, which determines who I have to coerce. If I want your wallet, I only have to coerce you. If I want American troops off of Saudi soil, I have to coerce Uncle Sam.
So, if I kill myself, do I get the money?
I'm afraid I can only answer that question via telephone.
Hmmm, it still feels wrong to me to suggest that b/c I lied about paying Killer, I should not be held accountable. What if, instead of paying Killer money, I promise to tell him a secret he desperately wants to know? Then, I have done nothing from beginning to end but talk, and yet I have effectively hired and paid a contract killer.
And why the distinction between saying something and writing it? Because writing leaves evidence? What if our supposed killer recorded me saying I would pay him? Or do you consider writing an act, whereas speaking is not? What about sign-language?
I agree with you that actions are more substantial than speech, but I don't think that makes all speech automatically right, and something that should therefore be legal. Words can still have a tremendous amount of power, and power can always be used for evil ends.
Speech is speech. Action is something else altogether.
I agree with your general sentiment of individuals being held responsible for their actions, but I think the speech/action divide is a little more gray than you say. For instance, what if I say "I will pay anyone $1 million to kill iminplaya", someone kills you, and I refuse to pay. I have done nothing but speak (I never paid), so by your definition, I have done nothing but exercise my rights to free speech. I think we need to have some limits on speech, it is just a question of where to draw the limits in order to maximize total freedoms.
If "citizens" were subject to being ripped out of their homes or jobs and suddenly deported without benefit of trial, wouldn't you consider those citizens to be oppressed?
Citizens have the right to live in this country; illegal immigrants don't. I imagine that before anyone is deported, that individual has an opportunity to prove his/her citizenship. If they can, they are not deported. If they can not, they are. Same with stolen property. If I claim you stole something from me, and can prove it is mine, the cops give it back to me. Without a trial. You then go to trial for theft (this is based on my own experiences). Are you suggesting that instead of simply deporting illegal immigrants, we should hold them for trial for violating immigration laws, fine them and throw them in jail? That seems rather harsh, not to mention unworkable.
If companies and/or landlords could demand that "citizens" put up with almost any kind of unsafe work conditions or outrageous financial terms, since complaining would cause an "anonymous" caller to tell the government where to find the complainer, who would then be subject to the sudden deportation as described above, wouldn't you consider that citizen to be oppressed?
Not a bit. I'm not saying this is ethically correct, but I'll admit I wouldn't have much sympathy. If I commit a crime, and you know about it, and use that knowledge to blackmail me into doing something I would prefer not to, well, you suck, but I always have the option to take the legal consequences of my actions if I don't like the consequences you impose. And in the case of immigrants, I assume the whole reason they came to this country in the first place is to work that very job you find oppressive. If they would rather work that job (that YOU find oppressive) than go home, well, I can't imagine they dislike the job terribly much.
The final question is: why does not being a citizen mean that person is not being "oppressed"?
It doesn't. But enforcing the law against criminals, regardless of their citizenship status, is not oppression, assuming the laws are just. I personally think the US as a country has every right to determine whether or not to allow foreign born persons access to our country. I understand that these people's lives were rather shoddy where they were born. I sympathize with that, and think we as a more fortunate people have a humanitarian obligation to help them. However, I also think that we as humans have a right to determine when and how we extend this aid. Coming to this country against the wishes of the populace as expressed by law, and then pretending that somehow this act of presumption places an obligation on me offends me. I will gladly help those less fortunate; I will also defend myself against extortion.
Oppressed people _anywhere_ have a "right" to fight for a better life, regardless of their citizenship status.
Out of curiosity, how exactly are the undocumented residents in this country being oppressed?
I have no interest in fixing blame, because that doesn't fix problems. Feel free to continue somehow believing that people that commit horrific acts are justified because someone else committed a horrific act.
I don't think the statement "Failed foreign policy is the root of terrorism." in any way implies that horrific terroristic acts are somehow justified by this. I agree 100% with your philosophy of personal accountability.
However, given the obvious fact that there are people out there willing to commit acts you and I (and lots of others) find reprehensible, discovering what motivates these people is much more than an attempt to fix blame. Generally, discovering the root cause of a problem is the best way to fix it. Maybe failed foreign policy is NOT the root cause; but we are better off exploring this as a possible cause than ignoring it as a possibility because some people think it gives the terrorist an acceptable excuse.
I am not an accountant, but my experiences w/ corporate taxes leads me to believe that it goes something like this:
Production_Company produces Big_Blockbuster_Movie. Total sales are $1 billion
Costs are: $100 million payroll, $100 million equipment, $100 million production costs (licenses, permits, bribes, whatever), $200 million "studio rental fees", $200 million "management costs", $200 million "distribution costs". Big_Blockbuster_Movie only netted $100 million, your 5% comes out of that.
Of course, the $200 million "studio rental fees" were paid to Parent_Corporation of Production_Company, as were the "management costs" and "distribution costs". So all of this profit is earned by Parent_Corporation, which of course shows this as a profit on its tax statements, and pays taxes. However, Poor_Schmuck doesn't have a contract w/ Parent_Corporation, he has a contract w/ Production_Company, who can clearly show him the books that state Production_Company paid $900 million to produce the movie, leaving only $100 million for the profit sharing. And of course, Poor_Schmuck doesn't know/can't do a damn thing about the fact that the $200 million in "management costs" was written into the subcontract AFTER Parent_Corporation had some idea of how much Big_Blockbuster_Movie was going to earn...
is that companies are ALREADY selling their products for the lowest amount possible.
That is true in a few very highly competitive markets, but for the most part, companies sell their products for the HIGHEST amount possible. This means the price point where raising the price loses them money due to lost sales. Name brand recognition plays a huge factor in a lot of people's willingness to purchase. A lot of people will gladly pay $75 for a shirt with a cool logo on it, but will never purchase the identical shirt for $25 w/o the logo. Of course, clothing in an extreme example of this particular phenomenon, but it exists in a watered down version in a lot of different product markets.
As for graduate school, get real. You pay through the nose while going, you're shackled to debt for 10 years, and, assuming if you haven't been downsized out of your chosen field, you might reap the rewards of an advanced degree before you retire.
I guess it depends. I got a masters from a highly-ranked public university. I picked up a job as a graduate research assistant, which meant my tuition was payed for, plus a small stipend that helped with the bills each month. I came out with about $10,000 in debt (half of which I took out to refinance credit card debt with cheap student loans). My first job involved a 215% pay increase. Ignoring the greater job satisfaction, personal satisfaction I get from education, and all other "intangibles", I recouped my financial losses in less than 3 years, and should spend the next thirty years in a higher earnings bracket than I could have w/o getting an advanced degree.
Good think most of those services keep track of buddies/contact lists for you. I dont understand why cell phones don't do this yet.
Your cell phone doesn't keep a contacts list for you?
We are posterity. We would like the Earth you borrowed from us back, please.
Screw future generations. What have they ever done for me? (I kid, I kid).
Good health is merely the slowest rate at which one can die.
Rarely does my coworker dress up in pink and demand they be called Princess Dave.
Man, I need a job at your company! Actually, I don't mind calling him Princess Dave, it's the mandatory curtsying...
Hah! Wal*Mart "dings" you if you get an order wrong -- even if they change that order after you have already shipped.
Go to graduate school right out of undergrad.
Obviously, YMMV, but this can actually be a VERY BAD idea. By the time I finished my BS degree, I was pretty burned out on school, and took a few years to "recharge" my batteries before going back to get a master's. I also know a guy who went straight to grad school, spent 1.5 semesters in, then dropped out b/c he was burned out. Of course, I also know a guy that went straight to law school, got his JD, went straight to library school, got his MLS, and is now a Law Librarian (after not quite a decade of straight schooling, including summers), which is what he wanted to do since before graduating high-school. And of course, there is the guy that "took a year off" before his senior (or maybe junior, I forget) year who is now a career bartender.
So, yeah, different strokes for different folks and all that.
What about HL7? That's a standard, so are several of the other clinical, demographic and billing formats for electronic transmission.
HL7 is very unwieldy for communicating between systems. It also does not scale very well. As for these other formats, you hit the nail on the head w/ "several". Take billing codes - ICD-9 is a standard, but it is revised every year or so. CPT covers the same procedure, but is a completely different standard. For Emergency Departments, you have DEEDS. There are too many "standards" and no actual standard format.
We elected a man who cavorts with gay prositutes to satisfy our "pro-marriage" bigotry.
Are you referring to Bush?? Where did you get this from?
Lazy /.ers are the worst
Nah, lazy hookers are the worst.
I tried to illustrate the absurdity of the people who jump all over the Bush administration for global warming.
Blame Bush for global warming? Wow, that really is the height of absurdity. The people I know tend to simply jump all over Bush for his policy of denying global warming, or denying that it is caused by humans. Those that criticize him for this policy do so in the belief that this policy is fueled more by an unwillingness to face negative economic consequences than any actual belief. To put it another way: if I thought that Bush honestly felt that humans were in no way responsible for, nor could affect, global warming, I would simply disagree with him. If I thought that he simply cared more about certain special interest groups' multi-billion dollar profits than he did about the future well-being of everyone on the planet, I would despise him.
But yeah, blaming the Administration for causing global warming, rather than blaming it for refusing to help reduce the trend for purely selfish reasons, is rather silly.
Except it is not completely analagous. In a supermarket, I wander around, and the products sit there, hoping to attract my attention. On the Internet, I pay money to bring what I want to me at a speed I want. Actually, now that I think about it, it is not analagous at all. I hope BadAnalogyGuy doesn't read this thread, or we are all in for an infringement suit...