As compared to producing similar power from other methods, especially coal? Yes. Over the lifetime of the average power source (coal-fired plant, nuclear plant, wind turbine, etc), how much pollution of all forms will it generate from inception, through building, through useful life, to cleanup, per unit of power (say, per TJ)? I would guess here that coal would be among the worst for nearly, if not actually, all forms of pollution. Forms that are espoused as "environmentally friendly" do not produce enough power reliably usually, so they're only marginally interesting.
Of course, anything that can be done to improve any form of power generation overcome their risks/pollution is also interesting. For example, better nuclear designs that make the likelihood of a radiation leak reduced, or better scrubbers for fossil-fuel-based plants, or methods to reduce the bird-kill from wind turbines, or better efficiencies on solar power.
If Fukushima were using Candu reactors, would there have been a radiation leak?
Better yet, have that someone else not only carry around your phone, but also commit the crime. Then you get charged, having invoked your right to a lawyer without saying a thing. During the trial, whip out a third-party CCTV recording of you actually somewhere else, with a witness or two, and explain how you lost your phone on the train. Wham! Not guilty. And, if you're American, you get protected by double jeopardy.
Of course, the other guy better toss the phone shortly afterward, and you have to cancel your phone asap after being charged (not before, as you didn't even realise it was missing prior to that).
Maybe too sticky to work IRL. But it'd make a pretty predictable thriller movie!:-)
There's no reason why SSO needs to be a SPOF. At work, our SSO is done via LDAP/LDAPS (the former by idjuts too stupid to realise, the latter by those who actually read corporate guidelines). That LDAP server can be distributed. The database back end can use High Availability tools (whether it's IBM TSA with DB2 or it's an Oracle shared-everything cluster or whatever) to ensure that it remains on-line through a failure.
OpenID solutions do likewise - first off you have highly-available OpenID providers, like Google, which would use both highly-available web servers and highly-available databases. Second, you can (usually) link more than one OpenID to your account, giving you the flexibility to use one of a number of providers depending on how paranoid you are about SPOFs.
SSO probably can be implemented poorly. But it's not a requirement. SPOF should not be an issue if the business deems it "critical infrastructure". And it doesn't need to be expensive, either - a second $800 box will likely suffice for production use.
Just like there are genes that predispose people to be fat, I'm sure there are genes that predispose people away from being straight. That doesn't mean there's no choice. It merely makes it harder to lose the weight for the former group, and harder to have fulfilling, sexually intimate relationships with the opposite gender for the latter group.
If there were no choice about it, then I don't see how my identical-twin cousins could have one turn out gay and one turn out straight.
Those who claim that it's just the way people are born actually do the gay community a disservice at times. The identical twin who is straight obviously feels very threatened that he might "become" gay, which is preposterous. But he believes the bullshit, knows that he's an identical twin, and gets the concept that he and his (now-deceased) brother have identical genes. The reality is that they both handled their mother's departure differently - and that was influenced by their friends. And if I could convince my cousin that homosexuality was a choice rather than genetic, he'd probably not be as physically defensive about his sexuality, and might even be able to relax around gay people. But, as it is, being thoroughly brainwashed that this is genetic, it would not surprise me much if he was eventually charged with a hate crime for criminal assault on a gay man, which would be a bad outcome for two people.
Most of the major charities who deal with this are non-religious which is a world of difference away from atheist: we may disagree on theology, but we all agree that help is needed, and we want to be a part of it. And that has nothing to do with GP's point of wanting scum like this to burn in hell.
I think that's GP's point. When you narrowly redefine "free" as in "gratis" to exclude hidden methods of payment (taxes), you're doing the entire discussion a disservice. It's similar to the argument in favour of a carbon tax: so that the clean-up costs are no longer hidden from the consumption of fossil fuels. However, this is even more concrete, because it's a pure-cash scenario that is easily quanitifiable, whereas carbon taxes would be merely an estimate of future clean-up costs (and, like all taxes, likely to grow to be more than that).
Add up: a) the price you actually paid for your education, plus b) the amount of the taxes you will pay for the rest of your life to support the education system (whatever percentage that will be), and then you will get your true cost of education.
Hiding the costs in future taxes does a disservice to those who enter university, college, whatever, in that they feel like they're getting a free ride. Maybe I can't find citations, I merely remember a 60-minutes episode from many many years ago (likely late 80s, before they were first invaded) showing the "free" university in Kuwait, and the huge drop-out rates they had compared to the US. Their claim was that it was due to the "free" price. This isn't unique to university - anything that people have no investment in will be necessarily considered to be lower value (on average) than anything they have a significant investment in. It's like holding millions of Microsoft shares and no shares in Nokia, while being the CEO of Nokia.
I'm wondering if it'd be better for everyone if a) the government gave no money to post-secondary schools (other than research grants), b) the government made it much easier to apply for loans, and c) the government then used the same tax money they were giving to post-secondary schools instead to "repay" loans based on certain criteria, perhaps based on things like staying in the country (e.g., each year in the US would get you $5000 paid off), living in a location desirable for your skills (e.g., rural general-practitioners might get another $2000 or $3000 paid per year), etc. Local states could get in on the action by encouraging grads to stay near: if you get some of your loan from Ohio, for example, they may pitch in another few grand per year you continue to live in Ohio (and pay taxes) after graduation. If an employer wants to grab a new hire from OSU (I assume) to live in Silicon Valley, they'd have to compete with that extra few grand that the new hire would be giving up for moving.
All 350 of us have 10 desktops apiece. That's easily 3500 users. One is for regular day-to-day use, one is for running my webbrowser in a clean state to reduce tracking, while the other 8 are for testing hangs, crashes, and other bugs, with clean.kde directories.
(I keed... I love my KDE SC 4.6.1 environment. And my wife and four-year-old daughter don't mind 4.5.5 on their machine.)
Actually, the justification for the crusades was some non-religious leader (i.e., non-practicising of any faith) decided to destroy a Christian church, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and massacre Christian pilgrims. A quick google for "cause of crusades" turns up some interesting perspectives.
Sure, one of the many justifications for the Crusades was religious. But it's far from the only one. Seeing as Islam controlled the territory that Jesus walked on and died on, there would obviously be some conflict, though at first, the Muslims were more than happy to allow Christian pilgrims through because it brought in tourism moneys. Later, a less-enlightened leader (it looks like it was Turkish) decided to annoy the Christians for I-don't-know-what reason. Now that their Holy Site was threatened, it was trivial to make up a bunch of reasons to get people who might otherwise not care to go on a Crusade to restore pilgrim access to those Holy Sites. And, of course, some of those reasons were hinged on the old reason to go there: religion. Of course, once the participants forget about the original reason (restoring access), it becomes easier to extend the extra reasons: if it's religious, then obviously other religions need converting (and converting away from Islam is a capital offense, so obviously some Muslims would need killing).
I'm not attempting to justify the bloodshed. Only point out that it's far more complicated than popularly held.
What gives you any idea that stolen property is inadmissible?
The only requirements and limitations are on the government. The police or people acting under police direction. Others can do illegal things to gain evidence, as long as the cops don't ask them to do so or even give any sort of impression that they want anyone to do so. That does not always immunise the second criminal (Anonymous) from any consequences for crimes perpetrated against the first criminal (HBGary). But it doesn't make anything inadmissible.
As for credibility of the evidence, that's up to the jury to decide.
If a cop gets an anonymous letter detailing key evidence in a crime, they are still allowed to use it. Especially to gather more evidence. And, under inevitability rules, once the police have all this evidence, getting a subpoena to request the evidence again from HBGary would inevitably gain the same evidence again, so would be admissible.
But isn't it supposed to be? Especially if it is a BS degree. Yeah, a BA degree means you have a well rounded liberal arts education and are theoretically trained in how to learn stuff and how to read Voltaire. But a BS degree, at least in every other field besides CS, means you are at least nominally ready to go. A trained engineer, a trained scientist, a trained nursing supervisor. Etc.
Um, what gives you the misguided idea that, upon graduation, any of these are "ready to go"? Having got my degree in Electrical Engineering, I knew lots of theory, and even a bit about application, but little to nothing about the real world, especially any laws that might apply to this field. I also say "knew" because I didn't actually follow through with the degree and get a job doing that stuff. I remember little to nothing about it now, having spend the 13.5 years since graduation in software development.
I highly doubt that "scientists" would be well-prepared for their day-to-day duties, either, which may include filling out grant-based funding paperwork, or, if it's in industry, the details of the equipment they're using, which may be far more up to date than what they were used to in university, or may be far older, depending on the corporation in question. Or some of it may be highly specific to that field if inquiry.
As for training a supervisor, I again highly doubt that anyone gets "training" for interpersonal skills in university.
Most of the best skills are learned on-the-job. Thus residency for med students, co-op/internships for engineers and computer scientists, articling for lawyers, etc. It's often this experience that makes the biggest difference. I often point out that I graduated 50th in a class of 99, yet was among the first to have a full-time job offer in my class, largely due to the co-op experience I had (I really lucked out with some really good experience). And it wasn't even in the field I got my degree in (Electrical Eng vs Software Dev). But it was the field I got my co-op experience in. And that made most of the difference.
This is yet another example of why programmers especially, but really all tech workers, would benefit from a union, but crony capitalist propaganda keeps people convinced that a union would lower their pay and benefits, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, workers get better pay and working conditions in a unionized environment.
Careful of what you wish for. In Alberta, Canada, despite the budget for education increasing by 4.6%, there will be layoffs. And while you may think I'm about to blame the unions, it's not quite that simple - somehow education boards have racked up a savings account (how, I don't understand), and, in the last couple of years, they've tapped that savings to keep steady on their expenditures. This year, they'll largely all run out, some earlier than others. I'm sure the unions negotiating with education boards who get their budgets set by politicians is part of the issue (negotiating with a group that really has no ability to get more money for you, instead of negotiating with the government directly). However, what I'm about to complain about isn't that.
Because it's union, the boards cannot simply lay off the least productive/worst teachers. They have to lay off the ones with the least seniority. Now, don't get me wrong - I like my own seniority at my job. However, I have that seniority because I am valuable to my employer (and not invaluable). Not because they can't get rid of me if I'm dragging down the team.
I don't see how that would improve morale. I mean, the threat of dismissal, regardless of seniority, may demoralise some, but usually those are the people you're going to get rid of anyway. (I have had one employee who got scared of being laid off during the first round of layoffs after she was hired, but I explained to her that despite the people being laid off having had years of experience more than her, she was more productive than they were, and she calmed down a lot.) For the rest of us, the threat of being able to get rid of the underperformers is a godsend.
Having to work with incompetents is bad enough working condition. Not having recourse to get rid of incompetents would not be better working conditions.
You know how when there's a problem with your car, any part of it, that engine light comes on? And then you can't figure out what the hell is really wrong, because all you got is the engine light? And then you start second guessing every little noise or bump, in your rush to get it to a garage to get it resolved, only to find out three hours later and $500, that a screw was loose?
I give my Social Insurance Number (Canada) only to people who have to deal with tax-related things concerning me. That is: my employer (only AFTER job offer is accepted), my life insurance company, and my financial advisor (RRSPs, TFSA, and normal investments).
Credit card applications, cell carriers, and the like, simply do not get it. I usually cross out the section to indicate I looked at it and refused to fill it in.
In Canada, we have health care numbers in addition to the SIN, unrelated to the SIN, by virtue that the SIN is federal and health care is provincial. So that's what Doctors get. No one providing me a good or service that is not health-care-related gets that number. And not everyone who does provide health-care related services get it (e.g., physician and dentist get it, pharmicist does not).
IMO, it should be made illegal to ask for these numbers, or even any part of them, other than for dealing with the appropriate level of government on a client's behalf (e.g., employer, accountant, financial advisor, etc.). That would do wonders for reducing identity theft. By getting people used to only giving out these things to appropriate people, maybe they'll be more careful.
Riiight... so you're saying we're better off using younger software than more mature software because, let me see if I got this right, your theory is that the new software has fewer bugs than the mature software?
Now, if you find PowerDNS has more features, easier to set up, what have you, that's fine - that's the purpose of new software attempting to displace old and not the topic here. It's not often that new software has fewer bugs (including security holes) than more mature software.
You're looking at the wrong guy. I'm more in line with Rush than Obama. But neither one should have their medical records splashed in public. I'm not a Jobs fan, but he's still a human being and deserves his privacy for things that are not meant to be public, e.g., health, family.
Things that might need to be made public might include Obama's birth record, to prove his citizenship (damnit, people, OF COURSE he was born in the US, you don't think that's about the first thing the Secret Service is going to check when running for President?). But if someone is suffering due to a stroke, let him be. Though, again, with anyone in power, a temporary reassignment of that power might be in order, but details of the disease/condition do not need to be made public. "Jobs suffered a medical condition, and has withdrawn from day-to-day operations" is already lots of information. No more is needed. Similarly, if the President were to suffer a medical condition, announcing that his VP was taking over temporarily (or permanently if it becomes required) is all that needs to be said. Leave the human being behind the title alone. Seriously.
You'd be one of the few to learn that fact. It seems like most of the people in my municipality don't understand the concept. I'm assuming most of them got a public education.
Which vendor has a 90% share of the auto market? Oh, that's right, NONE.
Sorry, this is not that difficult. I'm not a Windows user - I've ended up in the situation espoused by one of the posters above: I use linux at home, and linux at work, and don't do Windows. I don't boot into Windows for games as most games don't appeal to me, not because Linux is a superb gaming platform. And having two (soon to be three) kids under 5 leaves me little time for games anyway. However, that doesn't make me deluded that, in a market where the #1 choice has 90% share, that is a de facto single-source market. The little guys add up to one for every 9 of the big guy (I expect that, among gamers, which is going to be the sub-market that Valve cares about, it's more lopsided than 1:9). To improve Valve's profitability, should they a) try to mop up the rest of that 90%, or target one of the little guys that make up the other 10%? I don't think this is even a close call.
Would I like to see more top-quality games on Linux? Sure. It'd be great to be able to show people how even the gamers can start moving out of Microsoft's lock-in. But I'm not going to begrudge those game producers who target only Windows their easiest chance to make a profit. From what I understand, that's no guarantee anyway, so they need to go after their best chance.
I've read a few times that a healthy competitive industry has the #2 guy selling no less than half of the #1 guy. Similarly, #3 selling no less than half of the #2 guy. The more players, the less that each company can have of the overall market. This keeps all competitors on their toes.
Solely based on this definition, the car industry is far healthier than the OS industry. That one vendor has 90% of the market means the market is competitively unhealthy, and, by induction, that the other players have been relegated to irrelevancy. Since the auto industry is (relatively) healthy, there will be many relevant manufacturers, and few, if any, irrelevant ones.
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As compared to producing similar power from other methods, especially coal? Yes. Over the lifetime of the average power source (coal-fired plant, nuclear plant, wind turbine, etc), how much pollution of all forms will it generate from inception, through building, through useful life, to cleanup, per unit of power (say, per TJ)? I would guess here that coal would be among the worst for nearly, if not actually, all forms of pollution. Forms that are espoused as "environmentally friendly" do not produce enough power reliably usually, so they're only marginally interesting.
Of course, anything that can be done to improve any form of power generation overcome their risks/pollution is also interesting. For example, better nuclear designs that make the likelihood of a radiation leak reduced, or better scrubbers for fossil-fuel-based plants, or methods to reduce the bird-kill from wind turbines, or better efficiencies on solar power.
If Fukushima were using Candu reactors, would there have been a radiation leak?
Damnit, MozeeToby, I now have a dozen unicorns trampling what little vegetation survived the winter in my back yard. STOP IT.
You are talking "technical", "fact based", and "appropriate as per technology." The GP is talking "legalese".
Which one do you think is going to make it through a court system?
Did you warn them? About Haiti and Japan? No? You asshole!
Better yet, have that someone else not only carry around your phone, but also commit the crime. Then you get charged, having invoked your right to a lawyer without saying a thing. During the trial, whip out a third-party CCTV recording of you actually somewhere else, with a witness or two, and explain how you lost your phone on the train. Wham! Not guilty. And, if you're American, you get protected by double jeopardy.
Of course, the other guy better toss the phone shortly afterward, and you have to cancel your phone asap after being charged (not before, as you didn't even realise it was missing prior to that).
Maybe too sticky to work IRL. But it'd make a pretty predictable thriller movie! :-)
There's no reason why SSO needs to be a SPOF. At work, our SSO is done via LDAP/LDAPS (the former by idjuts too stupid to realise, the latter by those who actually read corporate guidelines). That LDAP server can be distributed. The database back end can use High Availability tools (whether it's IBM TSA with DB2 or it's an Oracle shared-everything cluster or whatever) to ensure that it remains on-line through a failure.
OpenID solutions do likewise - first off you have highly-available OpenID providers, like Google, which would use both highly-available web servers and highly-available databases. Second, you can (usually) link more than one OpenID to your account, giving you the flexibility to use one of a number of providers depending on how paranoid you are about SPOFs.
SSO probably can be implemented poorly. But it's not a requirement. SPOF should not be an issue if the business deems it "critical infrastructure". And it doesn't need to be expensive, either - a second $800 box will likely suffice for production use.
Well, yes and no. One of the first steps in figuring out a fool-proof way to work around damage is to figure out what the damage is, or might be.
Gmail over Tor might work... assuming you can find any Tor peers that aren't yet blocked.
Just like there are genes that predispose people to be fat, I'm sure there are genes that predispose people away from being straight. That doesn't mean there's no choice. It merely makes it harder to lose the weight for the former group, and harder to have fulfilling, sexually intimate relationships with the opposite gender for the latter group.
If there were no choice about it, then I don't see how my identical-twin cousins could have one turn out gay and one turn out straight.
Those who claim that it's just the way people are born actually do the gay community a disservice at times. The identical twin who is straight obviously feels very threatened that he might "become" gay, which is preposterous. But he believes the bullshit, knows that he's an identical twin, and gets the concept that he and his (now-deceased) brother have identical genes. The reality is that they both handled their mother's departure differently - and that was influenced by their friends. And if I could convince my cousin that homosexuality was a choice rather than genetic, he'd probably not be as physically defensive about his sexuality, and might even be able to relax around gay people. But, as it is, being thoroughly brainwashed that this is genetic, it would not surprise me much if he was eventually charged with a hate crime for criminal assault on a gay man, which would be a bad outcome for two people.
Most of the major charities who deal with this are non-religious which is a world of difference away from atheist: we may disagree on theology, but we all agree that help is needed, and we want to be a part of it. And that has nothing to do with GP's point of wanting scum like this to burn in hell.
So, what you seem to be saying is that as if we let our Artificially Intelligent overlords read the ACs in /., they'll give up and turn themselves off?
Well, at least that eliminates the Skynet/Matrix dystopias. *phew*!
FYI, I'm not 'merican. I'm Canuckian.
And it's not been my experience that fellow Canuckians are generally aware of how our taxes work.
I think that's GP's point. When you narrowly redefine "free" as in "gratis" to exclude hidden methods of payment (taxes), you're doing the entire discussion a disservice. It's similar to the argument in favour of a carbon tax: so that the clean-up costs are no longer hidden from the consumption of fossil fuels. However, this is even more concrete, because it's a pure-cash scenario that is easily quanitifiable, whereas carbon taxes would be merely an estimate of future clean-up costs (and, like all taxes, likely to grow to be more than that).
Add up: a) the price you actually paid for your education, plus b) the amount of the taxes you will pay for the rest of your life to support the education system (whatever percentage that will be), and then you will get your true cost of education.
Hiding the costs in future taxes does a disservice to those who enter university, college, whatever, in that they feel like they're getting a free ride. Maybe I can't find citations, I merely remember a 60-minutes episode from many many years ago (likely late 80s, before they were first invaded) showing the "free" university in Kuwait, and the huge drop-out rates they had compared to the US. Their claim was that it was due to the "free" price. This isn't unique to university - anything that people have no investment in will be necessarily considered to be lower value (on average) than anything they have a significant investment in. It's like holding millions of Microsoft shares and no shares in Nokia, while being the CEO of Nokia.
I'm wondering if it'd be better for everyone if a) the government gave no money to post-secondary schools (other than research grants), b) the government made it much easier to apply for loans, and c) the government then used the same tax money they were giving to post-secondary schools instead to "repay" loans based on certain criteria, perhaps based on things like staying in the country (e.g., each year in the US would get you $5000 paid off), living in a location desirable for your skills (e.g., rural general-practitioners might get another $2000 or $3000 paid per year), etc. Local states could get in on the action by encouraging grads to stay near: if you get some of your loan from Ohio, for example, they may pitch in another few grand per year you continue to live in Ohio (and pay taxes) after graduation. If an employer wants to grab a new hire from OSU (I assume) to live in Silicon Valley, they'd have to compete with that extra few grand that the new hire would be giving up for moving.
All 350 of us have 10 desktops apiece. That's easily 3500 users. One is for regular day-to-day use, one is for running my webbrowser in a clean state to reduce tracking, while the other 8 are for testing hangs, crashes, and other bugs, with clean .kde directories.
(I keed... I love my KDE SC 4.6.1 environment. And my wife and four-year-old daughter don't mind 4.5.5 on their machine.)
Actually, the justification for the crusades was some non-religious leader (i.e., non-practicising of any faith) decided to destroy a Christian church, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and massacre Christian pilgrims. A quick google for "cause of crusades" turns up some interesting perspectives.
Sure, one of the many justifications for the Crusades was religious. But it's far from the only one. Seeing as Islam controlled the territory that Jesus walked on and died on, there would obviously be some conflict, though at first, the Muslims were more than happy to allow Christian pilgrims through because it brought in tourism moneys. Later, a less-enlightened leader (it looks like it was Turkish) decided to annoy the Christians for I-don't-know-what reason. Now that their Holy Site was threatened, it was trivial to make up a bunch of reasons to get people who might otherwise not care to go on a Crusade to restore pilgrim access to those Holy Sites. And, of course, some of those reasons were hinged on the old reason to go there: religion. Of course, once the participants forget about the original reason (restoring access), it becomes easier to extend the extra reasons: if it's religious, then obviously other religions need converting (and converting away from Islam is a capital offense, so obviously some Muslims would need killing).
I'm not attempting to justify the bloodshed. Only point out that it's far more complicated than popularly held.
What gives you any idea that stolen property is inadmissible?
The only requirements and limitations are on the government. The police or people acting under police direction. Others can do illegal things to gain evidence, as long as the cops don't ask them to do so or even give any sort of impression that they want anyone to do so. That does not always immunise the second criminal (Anonymous) from any consequences for crimes perpetrated against the first criminal (HBGary). But it doesn't make anything inadmissible.
As for credibility of the evidence, that's up to the jury to decide.
If a cop gets an anonymous letter detailing key evidence in a crime, they are still allowed to use it. Especially to gather more evidence. And, under inevitability rules, once the police have all this evidence, getting a subpoena to request the evidence again from HBGary would inevitably gain the same evidence again, so would be admissible.
But isn't it supposed to be? Especially if it is a BS degree. Yeah, a BA degree means you have a well rounded liberal arts education and are theoretically trained in how to learn stuff and how to read Voltaire. But a BS degree, at least in every other field besides CS, means you are at least nominally ready to go. A trained engineer, a trained scientist, a trained nursing supervisor. Etc.
Um, what gives you the misguided idea that, upon graduation, any of these are "ready to go"? Having got my degree in Electrical Engineering, I knew lots of theory, and even a bit about application, but little to nothing about the real world, especially any laws that might apply to this field. I also say "knew" because I didn't actually follow through with the degree and get a job doing that stuff. I remember little to nothing about it now, having spend the 13.5 years since graduation in software development.
I highly doubt that "scientists" would be well-prepared for their day-to-day duties, either, which may include filling out grant-based funding paperwork, or, if it's in industry, the details of the equipment they're using, which may be far more up to date than what they were used to in university, or may be far older, depending on the corporation in question. Or some of it may be highly specific to that field if inquiry.
As for training a supervisor, I again highly doubt that anyone gets "training" for interpersonal skills in university.
Most of the best skills are learned on-the-job. Thus residency for med students, co-op/internships for engineers and computer scientists, articling for lawyers, etc. It's often this experience that makes the biggest difference. I often point out that I graduated 50th in a class of 99, yet was among the first to have a full-time job offer in my class, largely due to the co-op experience I had (I really lucked out with some really good experience). And it wasn't even in the field I got my degree in (Electrical Eng vs Software Dev). But it was the field I got my co-op experience in. And that made most of the difference.
This is yet another example of why programmers especially, but really all tech workers, would benefit from a union, but crony capitalist propaganda keeps people convinced that a union would lower their pay and benefits, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, workers get better pay and working conditions in a unionized environment.
Careful of what you wish for. In Alberta, Canada, despite the budget for education increasing by 4.6%, there will be layoffs. And while you may think I'm about to blame the unions, it's not quite that simple - somehow education boards have racked up a savings account (how, I don't understand), and, in the last couple of years, they've tapped that savings to keep steady on their expenditures. This year, they'll largely all run out, some earlier than others. I'm sure the unions negotiating with education boards who get their budgets set by politicians is part of the issue (negotiating with a group that really has no ability to get more money for you, instead of negotiating with the government directly). However, what I'm about to complain about isn't that.
Because it's union, the boards cannot simply lay off the least productive/worst teachers. They have to lay off the ones with the least seniority. Now, don't get me wrong - I like my own seniority at my job. However, I have that seniority because I am valuable to my employer (and not invaluable). Not because they can't get rid of me if I'm dragging down the team.
I don't see how that would improve morale. I mean, the threat of dismissal, regardless of seniority, may demoralise some, but usually those are the people you're going to get rid of anyway. (I have had one employee who got scared of being laid off during the first round of layoffs after she was hired, but I explained to her that despite the people being laid off having had years of experience more than her, she was more productive than they were, and she calmed down a lot.) For the rest of us, the threat of being able to get rid of the underperformers is a godsend.
Having to work with incompetents is bad enough working condition. Not having recourse to get rid of incompetents would not be better working conditions.
You know how when there's a problem with your car, any part of it, that engine light comes on? And then you can't figure out what the hell is really wrong, because all you got is the engine light? And then you start second guessing every little noise or bump, in your rush to get it to a garage to get it resolved, only to find out three hours later and $500, that a screw was loose?
That's a mind game.
I give my Social Insurance Number (Canada) only to people who have to deal with tax-related things concerning me. That is: my employer (only AFTER job offer is accepted), my life insurance company, and my financial advisor (RRSPs, TFSA, and normal investments).
Credit card applications, cell carriers, and the like, simply do not get it. I usually cross out the section to indicate I looked at it and refused to fill it in.
In Canada, we have health care numbers in addition to the SIN, unrelated to the SIN, by virtue that the SIN is federal and health care is provincial. So that's what Doctors get. No one providing me a good or service that is not health-care-related gets that number. And not everyone who does provide health-care related services get it (e.g., physician and dentist get it, pharmicist does not).
IMO, it should be made illegal to ask for these numbers, or even any part of them, other than for dealing with the appropriate level of government on a client's behalf (e.g., employer, accountant, financial advisor, etc.). That would do wonders for reducing identity theft. By getting people used to only giving out these things to appropriate people, maybe they'll be more careful.
Riiight... so you're saying we're better off using younger software than more mature software because, let me see if I got this right, your theory is that the new software has fewer bugs than the mature software?
Now, if you find PowerDNS has more features, easier to set up, what have you, that's fine - that's the purpose of new software attempting to displace old and not the topic here. It's not often that new software has fewer bugs (including security holes) than more mature software.
Oh, I thought that it was Al Gore!
(And since he's such a polarising figure, I'll explain for mods on the wrong side of the political aisle from this joke: IT'S A JOKE.)
You're looking at the wrong guy. I'm more in line with Rush than Obama. But neither one should have their medical records splashed in public. I'm not a Jobs fan, but he's still a human being and deserves his privacy for things that are not meant to be public, e.g., health, family.
Things that might need to be made public might include Obama's birth record, to prove his citizenship (damnit, people, OF COURSE he was born in the US, you don't think that's about the first thing the Secret Service is going to check when running for President?). But if someone is suffering due to a stroke, let him be. Though, again, with anyone in power, a temporary reassignment of that power might be in order, but details of the disease/condition do not need to be made public. "Jobs suffered a medical condition, and has withdrawn from day-to-day operations" is already lots of information. No more is needed. Similarly, if the President were to suffer a medical condition, announcing that his VP was taking over temporarily (or permanently if it becomes required) is all that needs to be said. Leave the human being behind the title alone. Seriously.
You'd be one of the few to learn that fact. It seems like most of the people in my municipality don't understand the concept. I'm assuming most of them got a public education.
I'm not sure why this is marked troll. Seriously, let's keep peoples' private lives private, and only publicise public aspects of their lives.
Which vendor has a 90% share of the auto market? Oh, that's right, NONE.
Sorry, this is not that difficult. I'm not a Windows user - I've ended up in the situation espoused by one of the posters above: I use linux at home, and linux at work, and don't do Windows. I don't boot into Windows for games as most games don't appeal to me, not because Linux is a superb gaming platform. And having two (soon to be three) kids under 5 leaves me little time for games anyway. However, that doesn't make me deluded that, in a market where the #1 choice has 90% share, that is a de facto single-source market. The little guys add up to one for every 9 of the big guy (I expect that, among gamers, which is going to be the sub-market that Valve cares about, it's more lopsided than 1:9). To improve Valve's profitability, should they a) try to mop up the rest of that 90%, or target one of the little guys that make up the other 10%? I don't think this is even a close call.
Would I like to see more top-quality games on Linux? Sure. It'd be great to be able to show people how even the gamers can start moving out of Microsoft's lock-in. But I'm not going to begrudge those game producers who target only Windows their easiest chance to make a profit. From what I understand, that's no guarantee anyway, so they need to go after their best chance.
I've read a few times that a healthy competitive industry has the #2 guy selling no less than half of the #1 guy. Similarly, #3 selling no less than half of the #2 guy. The more players, the less that each company can have of the overall market. This keeps all competitors on their toes.
Solely based on this definition, the car industry is far healthier than the OS industry. That one vendor has 90% of the market means the market is competitively unhealthy, and, by induction, that the other players have been relegated to irrelevancy. Since the auto industry is (relatively) healthy, there will be many relevant manufacturers, and few, if any, irrelevant ones.