To argue that occupational licensure is incumbent wage protection is to ignore the fact that any qualified person can apply for and be issued a license.
Better yet you gave some crappy examples:
I would hire a licensed plumber or electrician because he is recognized by the state as being familiar with local codes pertaining to plumbing / electrical wiring.
I would use a licensed pharmacist because he is certified by the state to have the educational requirements to safely dispense medication to the public.
I would use a licensed lawyer because he is certified by the state to have the educational requirements to practice law instead of someone who pretends to know about law on slashdot.
Occupational licensing is one method your state and local government uses to protect consumers from "fly-by-night" operations.
To be fair. The 2.4.x kernel was supported for a very long time, and I don't see 2.6.x kernel being abandoned anytime soon. I hear rumors that there won't be any backports to 2.6.x kernel, but I put it in the bullshit category since people like me can't leave the 2.6.x series because we have to support the PC104 standard which uses ISA. I plan on continuing to maintain the board support packages for this kernel series, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
So in reality, the linux supports my old hardware "battle cry" still holds true. If there was really such a thing.
I hope that Linux is a solution, my dealings with Geeks of Color in emerging markets is that they tend to find creative ways around software bottlenecks.
Just stick with the 2.6.x kernels and you should fine. Don't expect the world including Linux kernel 3.x to keep supporting your older hardware.
earlier this week, I had to switched to chrome in order for video to play smoothly in a browser on my netbook. FF 4 sucked for media playback because it was taking too much resources on my netbook. The whole premise of my comments on slashdot defending firefox was that it was stable and worked with more websites that I have to deal with for work.
This shortened lifespan for each version release pretty much negated the stable portion of my argument. If I have to put up with rolling releases then I'll do it with Chrome since (1) they've been doing it longer, (2) haven't bit the hand that supported them yet (well at least on the browser), and (3) it works better now on a netbook than firefox. Now if only chrome would render my employer's timecard system correctly...
I don't think anybody on a tech website should comment on a medical doctor's salary. There are a lot of tech jobs that pay comparable to the doctor's salary and the doctor had to not only pay more for his/her education but spend more time in the educational system. I'm sure we'll see a downward pressure on their salary anyway, but the upfront costs needs to be addressed. Mostly by looking at the artificial scarcity of available seats in medical schools, and how much those institutions are allowed to charge for education. Oh wait... See what happens when you try to meddle with the cost structure? We introduce more governmental intervention. We get less governmental intervention if we eliminate all the redundant governmental medical insurance providers and consolidate them into a single universal care system where the only things the government do are pay claims and encourage preventative medicine.
How do you explain that? It seems like the idea of increased preventive treatment under universal coverage eventually saving money is complete bullshit.
All I see in your 6 points is that hospitals should eat the costs for America's health care. That is the only complete bullshit that I saw in your post. You haven't came close to bringing universal coverage in your arguement. Your logic appears to be "hospitals could save some of their loses by providing free preventative care but they don't" equates to "universal coverage won't save medical costs". Those have very little to do with each other. Most hospitals are not a government agency and are owned and operated by a trust or investors. They should not be tasked as the provider of free health care to those who can't afford it. That is the government's job. The government is tasked with providing for the general welfare of the american people in section 8 of the constitution.
Intel, the evil conglomerate who will stop at nothing to screw you over for profit vs AMD, who are just bitter about the fact that they've been playing catch-up ever since the Core2s were released.
Are you kidding? Hospitals already massively inflate the cost of medical services to provide their own form of "insurance" -- make the people who can pay, pay and pay dearly.
I kid you not!
I don't see your point. If your commenting on the blogger's second hand account, I think it leaves out quite a few details. Also the blogger assumes that hospitals operate solely for good will. Even the non-profit hospitals have to pay the salaries of the doctors, nurses, technicians, pharmacists, accountants, clerical workers, and security to name a few. They also have utilities and malpractice insurance. They have a growing amount of shrinkage from patients that are not able to pay their bill. They have to make up for these expenses and they do it with higher costs. They are also limited by how much the insurance network allows them to bill their providers and pretty much have to stay in line with the accepted "Usual and Customary Charges" for medical care in the region. Hospitals do not fully recover their expenses.
So if your point is that medical care at the hospital is expensive and will only get worse then I completely agree.
However if your point is that the unfunded mandate that is EMTALA is somehow justified because hospitals are able to recoup their costs then you are mistaken. As I said before, the hospitals do not fully recover their costs from emergency care. Even if they did, eventually the cost structure will reach a tipping point where absolutely no one will be able to afford any care from the hospital and hospitals will close.
I find it enlightening that people who are against universal health care always point to EMTALA requiring hospitals to provide care despite the ability to pay. This literally translates to "I want a social health care safety net but I want someone else to pay for it." These same people scream bloody murder when the government passes an unfunded mandate that affects their or their employer's income.
That way, if I manage to evade the police, at least I can afford health care for one year before I would need to rob the bank again!
If your robbing a bank solely for health care then you probably won't be able to evade the police for long. You will have to seek medical care eventually unless you use the money to escape to another country with a better health care system.:P
1. When you're young, be on your parents policy or buy your own. It costs the same as an iPod. A young person without health insurance is making poor decisions.
Live off of parents.
2. When you're older, have a career. An older person without health insurance is making poor decisions.
Get a job. check. Just pray you don't lose it and have to compete with younger people for a new one.
3. When you're old, the government already provides.
You assume that the government hasn't "ended Medicare as we know it" when we reach the qualifying age. Also its not the best option and good luck getting an appointment with a doctor that accepts it.
Worst case, there are free clinics (there's one in my town open every Wednesday) and a hospital can't turn anyone away.
Yep nothing like the quality care you can get from that one day of the week clinic. As for the hospital, they can't turn anyone away with a medical emergency. You act like this is free. Guess what it's not. All the rule states is that they can't use the ability to pay as a condition for treatment. They can and will demand payment. But hey you're broke anyway what is one more delinquent bill? Just don't think about that potential new employer performing credit checks, your ability to get a loan when you need it, keeping your life savings or your home.
Oh what about the hospital? It will eat your expense along with everyone else's and eventually will just close their emergency room. Soon the only emergency room will be the one hospital that is owned and operated by the state university. Don't expect your treatment to start any sooner than 4 hours after you arrive, unless you are "fortunate" enough to have a condition serious enough to promote you up the triage list.
This whole article is a troll. Everyone I know has health care they're happy with and none of them want the federal government interfering with it.
You have no clue and your friends consist of only coworkers and others in your particular social and economic class.
Nope you disqualified second sale with " The only difference here is that I still maintain a copy of said good...". The idea of second sale is that you sell the disks to another person, transfer the license to the that person, forfeit your use of that license and destroy your copies of said good. To do otherwise is copyright infringement (aka piracy).
Section 8 of the US Constitution states that "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States".
The problem with this case is that the six states involved are suing the power companies that produce the green house gases outside of their jurisdiction and therefore makes it a federal matter. The federal government gave the power of enforcing environmental laws to the EPA. SCOTUS ruling makes perfect sense in this case.
Nothing prevents you from buying retail boxes of Windows from a wholesaler and reselling them at any price you want. I'm sure you'd want to make a profit so you'll need to sell it for more than you bought it for. Also you need to actually make a sale so you'll need to price it close to what everyone else is selling it for.
Oh wait... You already knew that. You were just making a lame attempt at justifying piracy.
I think you're being a little harsh on capitalism, though, by holding Microsoft up as its paragon.
Why not? Most readers on this website know Microsoft. Besides when a republican talks about the "free market" and justify cutting funds to agencies that enforce regulations on commerce in the name of a "free market", the best way to describe this free market is to lift up one of its champions which is Microsoft.
You do realize that IT will act under the advice of the legal department, well at least in all of the companies that I deal with. IT is strictly technical and they follow all the checkboxes that the legal department gives them.
I do enjoy the fallacy that IT is in the business of creating when in fact they are in the business of doing. They do what they are told.
I do like your examples, and am surprised I didn't see one that stated that "The company wanted software that would kill the first born son of all the households in a given zip code. Luckily the IT department understood the moral consequences of such software".
Anyway a competent IT department would be able to handle most of the examples by creating a solution that gives the company what it wants, not by burying its head in the sand and just say "no". The Nancy Reagan method for handling IT issues isn't a very good one.
By the way the last example you gave was exceedingly lame:
Example: Exec want to be able to use the latest and greatest toys. But they dont know the security risks associated with those services/devices. They expose the network to new, unknown, and unmonitored attack vectors.
If the IT department can't handle the basic of all IT access requests then the employees need to seriously consider another line of work.
I find it extremely hard to believe that Microsoft would exist anywhere near its current dominant position if we actually did have capitalism.
I may have misunderstood your assertion, but Microsoft exists because of capitalism. Your quixotic view of intellectual property doesn't really apply to the origins of Microsoft. Microsoft is a product of being at the right place and at the right time. They understood the market and delivered what the customer wanted. Their market share reached critical mass and from it they were able to dominate the desktop market.
Momentum is what kept them dominant not governmental intervention. If you were a PC manufacturer which OS would you choose to put on your machine? Something obscure or something that is on the majority of machines on the market? Would you install an OS that had a thriving software market where people could purchased software off of the shelf or something that allowed you to download not quite ready for mass consumption freeware while being almost totally incompatible to the software that people want to purchase or may already have on their older machine? This is the dilemma that alternative OS manufacturers and enthusiasts have to deal with - not government intervention.
Also the lack of government intervention helped Microsoft gain even larger share of the software universe. Being the de facto OS gave them the ability to handicap other software vendors that wrote competing applications. This was capitalism at its finest.
Of course not. I know this is slashdot and people are binary here (ie One extreme case or the other), but believe me when I tell you that not all requests from management are ridiculous and not all IT departments are assholes.
I have ran into an IT department which seems to be staffed by assholes. They operate in the "not in my job description" mode. They like the fact that they currently have time to bullshit with each other most of the day and go home at 4:30 in the afternoon. They will not leave the status quo in fear that they may actually upset the balance that they walked into and may have a to actually perform some sort of work to fix any problems that crop up during the phasing in of a new program. I've seen these people get angry because someone asks them to place a visitor's laptop MAC address in the allow list on the wifi network designed for visitors.
You know these people exist. Coming up with counter examples only provides evidence that there are boobs in management that have no clue about technology. It doesn't discount the fact that there are tech school graduates pretending to be IT professionals.
The GP's position was that the IT department is like the legal department. The lawyers are suppose to keep the company from doing something illegal, while the IT guys are supposed to make sure the network infrastructure is never put at undue risk. This analogy doesn't quite fit because there is nothing wrong with a project needing to use technology in a "novel" way and requiring IT to find a way to make it safe. However there is something inherently wrong with asking the legal department to find a loop hole that allows something not quite legal to be not quite prosecutable.
My point is that if the IT department is ill equipped to handle the growing requirements of that company then management has no choice but to make changes that either give IT the resources it needs to keep up or new personnel that are better qualified to handle the task.
Slashdot Mirror
To argue that occupational licensure is incumbent wage protection is to ignore the fact that any qualified person can apply for and be issued a license.
Better yet you gave some crappy examples:
I would hire a licensed plumber or electrician because he is recognized by the state as being familiar with local codes pertaining to plumbing / electrical wiring.
I would use a licensed pharmacist because he is certified by the state to have the educational requirements to safely dispense medication to the public.
I would use a licensed lawyer because he is certified by the state to have the educational requirements to practice law instead of someone who pretends to know about law on slashdot.
Occupational licensing is one method your state and local government uses to protect consumers from "fly-by-night" operations.
lame
To be fair. The 2.4.x kernel was supported for a very long time, and I don't see 2.6.x kernel being abandoned anytime soon. I hear rumors that there won't be any backports to 2.6.x kernel, but I put it in the bullshit category since people like me can't leave the 2.6.x series because we have to support the PC104 standard which uses ISA. I plan on continuing to maintain the board support packages for this kernel series, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
So in reality, the linux supports my old hardware "battle cry" still holds true. If there was really such a thing.
Just stick with the 2.6.x kernels and you should fine. Don't expect the world including Linux kernel 3.x to keep supporting your older hardware.
Yep. Just like Linux wants people to upgrade from ISA when the 3.0 kernel is released.
Computer company considers old hardware obsolete. News at 11.
Or how about just not upgrading and wait until Apple addresses their concerns? The old final cut pro is still better than most editors out there.
I thought that was Telstra.
As of chrome 12.0.072, my issues with the timecard system appears to have been resolved. One more nail in firefox's coffin.
What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would still be trying to enforce environmental laws outside that state's jurisdiction.
This shortened lifespan for each version release pretty much negated the stable portion of my argument. If I have to put up with rolling releases then I'll do it with Chrome since (1) they've been doing it longer, (2) haven't bit the hand that supported them yet (well at least on the browser), and (3) it works better now on a netbook than firefox. Now if only chrome would render my employer's timecard system correctly...
I don't think anybody on a tech website should comment on a medical doctor's salary. There are a lot of tech jobs that pay comparable to the doctor's salary and the doctor had to not only pay more for his/her education but spend more time in the educational system. I'm sure we'll see a downward pressure on their salary anyway, but the upfront costs needs to be addressed. Mostly by looking at the artificial scarcity of available seats in medical schools, and how much those institutions are allowed to charge for education. Oh wait... See what happens when you try to meddle with the cost structure? We introduce more governmental intervention. We get less governmental intervention if we eliminate all the redundant governmental medical insurance providers and consolidate them into a single universal care system where the only things the government do are pay claims and encourage preventative medicine.
All I see in your 6 points is that hospitals should eat the costs for America's health care. That is the only complete bullshit that I saw in your post. You haven't came close to bringing universal coverage in your arguement. Your logic appears to be "hospitals could save some of their loses by providing free preventative care but they don't" equates to "universal coverage won't save medical costs". Those have very little to do with each other. Most hospitals are not a government agency and are owned and operated by a trust or investors. They should not be tasked as the provider of free health care to those who can't afford it. That is the government's job. The government is tasked with providing for the general welfare of the american people in section 8 of the constitution.
I think it's more of:
Intel, the evil conglomerate who will stop at nothing to screw you over for profit vs AMD, who are just bitter about the fact that they've been playing catch-up ever since the Core2s were released.
I kid you not!
I don't see your point. If your commenting on the blogger's second hand account, I think it leaves out quite a few details. Also the blogger assumes that hospitals operate solely for good will. Even the non-profit hospitals have to pay the salaries of the doctors, nurses, technicians, pharmacists, accountants, clerical workers, and security to name a few. They also have utilities and malpractice insurance. They have a growing amount of shrinkage from patients that are not able to pay their bill. They have to make up for these expenses and they do it with higher costs. They are also limited by how much the insurance network allows them to bill their providers and pretty much have to stay in line with the accepted "Usual and Customary Charges" for medical care in the region. Hospitals do not fully recover their expenses.
So if your point is that medical care at the hospital is expensive and will only get worse then I completely agree.
However if your point is that the unfunded mandate that is EMTALA is somehow justified because hospitals are able to recoup their costs then you are mistaken. As I said before, the hospitals do not fully recover their costs from emergency care. Even if they did, eventually the cost structure will reach a tipping point where absolutely no one will be able to afford any care from the hospital and hospitals will close.
I find it enlightening that people who are against universal health care always point to EMTALA requiring hospitals to provide care despite the ability to pay. This literally translates to "I want a social health care safety net but I want someone else to pay for it." These same people scream bloody murder when the government passes an unfunded mandate that affects their or their employer's income.
If your robbing a bank solely for health care then you probably won't be able to evade the police for long. You will have to seek medical care eventually unless you use the money to escape to another country with a better health care system. :P
Live off of parents.
Get a job. check. Just pray you don't lose it and have to compete with younger people for a new one.
You assume that the government hasn't "ended Medicare as we know it" when we reach the qualifying age. Also its not the best option and good luck getting an appointment with a doctor that accepts it.
Yep nothing like the quality care you can get from that one day of the week clinic. As for the hospital, they can't turn anyone away with a medical emergency. You act like this is free. Guess what it's not. All the rule states is that they can't use the ability to pay as a condition for treatment. They can and will demand payment. But hey you're broke anyway what is one more delinquent bill? Just don't think about that potential new employer performing credit checks, your ability to get a loan when you need it, keeping your life savings or your home.
Oh what about the hospital? It will eat your expense along with everyone else's and eventually will just close their emergency room. Soon the only emergency room will be the one hospital that is owned and operated by the state university. Don't expect your treatment to start any sooner than 4 hours after you arrive, unless you are "fortunate" enough to have a condition serious enough to promote you up the triage list.
You have no clue and your friends consist of only coworkers and others in your particular social and economic class.
Well good thing the US founding fathers knew better and gave us a constitutional right to have intellectual property!
Funny sense of history you have. By your definition, Google was created from the theft of computer resources from Stanford.
Nope you disqualified second sale with " The only difference here is that I still maintain a copy of said good...". The idea of second sale is that you sell the disks to another person, transfer the license to the that person, forfeit your use of that license and destroy your copies of said good. To do otherwise is copyright infringement (aka piracy).
Nice try.
Section 8 of the US Constitution states that "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States".
The problem with this case is that the six states involved are suing the power companies that produce the green house gases outside of their jurisdiction and therefore makes it a federal matter. The federal government gave the power of enforcing environmental laws to the EPA. SCOTUS ruling makes perfect sense in this case.
Nothing prevents you from buying retail boxes of Windows from a wholesaler and reselling them at any price you want. I'm sure you'd want to make a profit so you'll need to sell it for more than you bought it for. Also you need to actually make a sale so you'll need to price it close to what everyone else is selling it for.
Oh wait... You already knew that. You were just making a lame attempt at justifying piracy.
Why not? Most readers on this website know Microsoft. Besides when a republican talks about the "free market" and justify cutting funds to agencies that enforce regulations on commerce in the name of a "free market", the best way to describe this free market is to lift up one of its champions which is Microsoft.
You do realize that IT will act under the advice of the legal department, well at least in all of the companies that I deal with. IT is strictly technical and they follow all the checkboxes that the legal department gives them.
I do enjoy the fallacy that IT is in the business of creating when in fact they are in the business of doing. They do what they are told.
I do like your examples, and am surprised I didn't see one that stated that "The company wanted software that would kill the first born son of all the households in a given zip code. Luckily the IT department understood the moral consequences of such software".
Anyway a competent IT department would be able to handle most of the examples by creating a solution that gives the company what it wants, not by burying its head in the sand and just say "no". The Nancy Reagan method for handling IT issues isn't a very good one.
By the way the last example you gave was exceedingly lame:
If the IT department can't handle the basic of all IT access requests then the employees need to seriously consider another line of work.
I may have misunderstood your assertion, but Microsoft exists because of capitalism. Your quixotic view of intellectual property doesn't really apply to the origins of Microsoft. Microsoft is a product of being at the right place and at the right time. They understood the market and delivered what the customer wanted. Their market share reached critical mass and from it they were able to dominate the desktop market.
Momentum is what kept them dominant not governmental intervention. If you were a PC manufacturer which OS would you choose to put on your machine? Something obscure or something that is on the majority of machines on the market? Would you install an OS that had a thriving software market where people could purchased software off of the shelf or something that allowed you to download not quite ready for mass consumption freeware while being almost totally incompatible to the software that people want to purchase or may already have on their older machine? This is the dilemma that alternative OS manufacturers and enthusiasts have to deal with - not government intervention.
Also the lack of government intervention helped Microsoft gain even larger share of the software universe. Being the de facto OS gave them the ability to handicap other software vendors that wrote competing applications. This was capitalism at its finest.
Of course not. I know this is slashdot and people are binary here (ie One extreme case or the other), but believe me when I tell you that not all requests from management are ridiculous and not all IT departments are assholes.
I have ran into an IT department which seems to be staffed by assholes. They operate in the "not in my job description" mode. They like the fact that they currently have time to bullshit with each other most of the day and go home at 4:30 in the afternoon. They will not leave the status quo in fear that they may actually upset the balance that they walked into and may have a to actually perform some sort of work to fix any problems that crop up during the phasing in of a new program. I've seen these people get angry because someone asks them to place a visitor's laptop MAC address in the allow list on the wifi network designed for visitors.
You know these people exist. Coming up with counter examples only provides evidence that there are boobs in management that have no clue about technology. It doesn't discount the fact that there are tech school graduates pretending to be IT professionals.
You created a false dichotomy.
The GP's position was that the IT department is like the legal department. The lawyers are suppose to keep the company from doing something illegal, while the IT guys are supposed to make sure the network infrastructure is never put at undue risk. This analogy doesn't quite fit because there is nothing wrong with a project needing to use technology in a "novel" way and requiring IT to find a way to make it safe. However there is something inherently wrong with asking the legal department to find a loop hole that allows something not quite legal to be not quite prosecutable.
My point is that if the IT department is ill equipped to handle the growing requirements of that company then management has no choice but to make changes that either give IT the resources it needs to keep up or new personnel that are better qualified to handle the task.