What we've got today is Corporatism, mixed with a few dashes of Socialism, with a "candy coated surface" giving the shiny appearance of Capitalism.
Truth is, China has more real Capitalism than we do here in the U.S. If you keep your head down and don't run afoul of the government there, you're basically free to do as you wish with a business. Hardly even much to worry about in the way of environmental or safety regulations..... (Why do you think so many businesses traditionally considered American have huge factories over there? The CEO of Coca Cola, not too long ago, declared he'd never be interested in any more company growth inside the U.S. borders. All the real opportunity is elsewhere.)
Jefferson truly was an expert in many ways, but his beliefs didn't always dictate the ultimate direction the nation went.... He wasn't a fan of Central Banking either.
“The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin." - Jefferson
I'm not sure the Founding Fathers really grasped the idea of today's multinational corporations in the first place? With the technology of the day, it wasn't nearly as feasible for a business to successfully grow that large. Regardless, I don't necessarily see a problem with an "impartial" government if one takes it to mean a government that doesn't allow itself to be bought by special interests, and which enforces the laws of the land in a fair manner. There are MORE than enough laws on the books to enforce "moral accountability" for corporations; environmental regulations, limits on the number of hours employees are allowed to work without receiving overtime pay, minimum wage laws, etc. etc.
Corporations are saying, "We're powerful and wealthy enough so we can use governments to our advantage!"
Government is still plenty big and powerful enough so corporate entities can't ignore it. Rather, corporations simply buy some govt. collusion so a preferred status is granted.
That's the "rub" with the whole system. Government is supposed to play the role of the impartial referee in the game of "Capitalism". But instead, the most successful "teams" keep paying them off.
I'd say it's more a matter of people being HUMAN. Humans have a whole range of emotions too, which often prove detrimental or at least reduce efficiency at attaining the desired outcome in a particular situation. Should we just eliminate all those pesky feelings too and become strictly logical?
I think we all realize we're going to die eventually one way or another. When it comes down to it, we're generally far more okay with it happening because we made a mistake while doing something we enjoy (or even something we felt was productive, necessary or just a good idea to do at the time) than because of something not at all under our control (machine error or malfunction). The risk of injury or even death is in some manner, part of what makes things worth doing for people. (Why do people enjoy thrill rides at the amusement park, or parachute jumping out of perfectly good airplanes? Or even for the more risk-adverse among us, why do some people like to gamble at the casino once in a while or follow the stock market?) Life without risk would be incredibly boring. Driving a car is one of those calculated risks people take all the time because the benefits (fast travel and freedom to get from point A to B when YOU want to leave) feel worthwhile. But passively sitting in some machine that takes a person there won't involve any of the joys of operating the vehicle anymore. That's going to be a big downside for people who went through the whole process of learning to drive, achieving a license to do so, and investing years in what they probably believe made them a better and more skilled driver with all the practice.
The fact is, most Linux users get interested in installing/using it because they've got (typically older) hardware in front of them that they'd like to make useful without spending more money on it.
The only Mac system users I've encountered who ran Linux were using very old "legacy" Macs that have long since been abandoned by Apple with software updates or support.
So generally, the use-cases for OS X or Linux just don't really cross much.
It's really too bad, IMO, because I get a lot of value out of Wikipedia. Regardless, the in-fighting over article submissions is totally unacceptable and will lead to its demise eventually, if something isn't done about it.
As an example, one of my good friends tried to submit a few articles to cover specific BBS "door games" from the 1980's -- only to have his articles flagged for removal as containing "irrelevant" information. (I can't remember the exact claim, but whoever moderates the submissions apparently felt the door games he discussed were too obscure for anyone to care? Funny, because a Facebook message group full of over 150 users from the BBS days were the ones who brought these door games up, and were frustrated to find nothing about them on Wiki.)
I agree with you completely -- but at the same time? What a lousy deal! 4 years of effort to make good grades in a costly college or university where you exit, saddled with student loan debt to pay down. And all that just so you can get past an H.R. worker who automatically filters resumes based on "4 year degree in...." as a line item.
I know I've definitely been rejected for quite a few jobs since I didn't have the degree, but I've always been able to find work in my field without it too. IMO, the companies who are that closed-minded (or just that inundated with applications) that they'd discard my resume automatically are probably places I'd be unhappy working at anyway.
I mean, a company where the manager takes the time to see what skills I claim to have and what I've previously done, and decides to at least talk to me (degree or no degree) is a company where the manager is putting some effort into the hiring process. That's a manager who is likely more reasonable and sensible in the other decisions he or she makes too.
I was even offered I.T. positions in colleges before, where one would assume it's in the school's best interest to only hire degreed candidates. (After all, don't they want to try to at least attempt to prove the degrees they peddle have value in helping get jobs after school is over?) But again, in these cases, someone liked my skill-set enough to give me a chance to interview -- and once I was in the door, I had the opportunity to show/tell them what I could do for them.
Really, I'm not against anyone deciding to pursue a college degree. I just know that in my case, I tried it for a while and disliked it more and more with each credit I earned. Sure, I had a few "good courses", but also a whole lot of them I felt were irrelevant to anything I'd ever be interested in doing in life. Maybe that's the bottom line though? If you're like many people and just not quite sure what you want to do, college gives a chance to figure that out... or at least to narrow down some fields you decide you DON'T want to get involved in. I knew from the start I wanted to work with computers and I.T. - but my college didn't have a sensible path for me. I was told to take a dBase III+ class and a C programming course at one point, because that's all it really had to offer. (I never wanted to code or become a DBA, mind you. But my counselor hardly knew the difference between those careers and a data entry clerk.)
After doing 25 or more years of work in I.T. myself (and yes, without any degree -- though I do have "some college" as in just a couple credits shy of an Associates degree), I completely agree. Science, math and engineering are fairly irrelevant to working as a PC support person, a systems admin, network admin or even a web developer. The skills that do count for more include good people skills, a LOT of patience, persistence in finding solutions and good writing skills. (That last one is where I do see a difference between many of the degreed and non-degreed I.T. workers. Unfortunately, many people who didn't get the degree also have relatively poor writing skills. It translates to sending out emails that portray an individual as much less bright than he/she really is, and an inability to write clear, concise documentation when needed.)
Like I keep reminding people; there's SO much to know about today's complex I.T. infrastructure, the most useful people in the field tend to be those who are efficient at finding the answers. There's almost an art to forming effective Google queries that the typical computer user doesn't grasp. (EG. If your printer has a strange light flashing on it and you don't know what it means, get *really specific* in your search. Don't just search for "light flashing on printer" or something along those lines. Put in the exact model number of the printer in question as part of the search. Better to get no relevant hits than too many. Then you immediately know to widen the search criteria a bit, vs. wasting time reading through 3+ pages of hits that sound promising but don't really address your specific problem.)
People who are sure they always have the answer off the top of their heads worry me more than those who listen carefully to the problem, and respond "Not really sure, but I can go look that one up!".
Yeah... even at he local Micro Center, which had a big OCZ display set up, I had a salesperson tell me he'd recommend "almost anything other than OCZ" when I was asking about SSDs!
They had so much RMA and customer dissatisfaction, they basically only wanted to sell them to people who grabbed them off the shelves on their own and didn't ask any questions.
I normally wouldn't bother replying to a comment made more than a few days ago, because I know it's Slashdot -- and people often don't even bother to look back at what's said about an "old" discussion topic.
But I have to think you've got blinders on or live under a rock if you "see absolutely no evidence" of things headed the wrong way in this country. Well over 1 *trillion* dollars of debt owed to other nations and climbing every day, and you don't see how that might pose problems??
The NSA spying thing is not anywhere near my biggest concern -- but it's a symptom of the larger problem. When your Federal govt. is this broke and is essentially putting the nation in the pawn shop to keep pretending it's solvent, it's ludicrous to keep fiunding a massive spy operation that works INSIDE our own borders!
As for our government being "freer and fairer than in previous generations", I'm guessing you're largely referring to issues such as allowing women to vote, freeing the slaves, or the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Those are all big steps forward -- but they're swirled into a massive "stew" of little steps backward. Our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, for example? Under attack ALL the time, with legislation which chisels away at it with exception after exception. Where I live, it's against the law for me to even try to resell "high capacity magazines" for rifles (such as the plastic clips that hold 20 or 25 bullets in them). My dad used to own a bunch of these things, and guess what? He wasn't some terrorist or serial killer, solider of fortune, or any of that. He just liked collecting guns and occasionally going to the indoor shooting range with his buddies. It was convenient not to have to reload so often.
We also live in a country where today, it's almost impossible to do a financial transaction of any size without it being reported, logged and tracked. It used to be if you saved up the cash, it was no big deal to go buy a used car with it. These days, you have to fill out special forms and it gets reported -- and who knows? Someone might even come knocking on your door asking a bunch of questions. It sure wasn't like that in previous generations.
There are a lot of people out there (some of my good friends included in this) who simply feel we're rapidly accelerating down a slope to a really bad place, and we've picked up too much speed to where you can say, "Oh, don't worry... We can still put on the brakes and slow this down gradually, until it comes to a peaceful stop."
Life in America *is* good by most standards, and it's great by selected others. But that's part of the reason for the apathy. It's tough to get people too worked up about loss of individual freedoms or rights, or an eventual economic collapse when right now, they're still enjoying what's clearly a "first world existence".
Problem is, the powers in charge know this too. As this continues, you'll see them juggle money and debt all around, doing whatever gymnastics it takes to ensure our poor still qualify for assistance programs, and to ensure everyone who serves in our military continues to get benefits and "special treatment" in various ways. They know a sure path to failure is angering the poor masses enough so they're motivated to riot, or to put a crimp in the supply of people willing to take orders to fight the "enemy" (whoever the govt. claims that happens to be at a given time), as part of the military.
The "literal crazy person" you refer to who advocates revolution (with mass murder and a long period of violence -- though decades is perhaps questionable) is quite possibly just a "long term thinker", who unlike the majority, is willing to give up a comfortable lifestyle if it means securing 200 more years of a fair, just political system and nation for future generations.
I'll be honest.... Despite all the problems I see looming on the horizon, I've been able to get by well enough for myself and for my family so I'm at least keeping my head barely above the waters of "middle class life". I'm not in any hurry to throw it all away for a life of hardship. But I also have a growing fear that time is running out to turn this thing around. I'm not sure my kids won't grow up cursing our whole generation, saying "Why didn't you fight this tyranny while you still could!?"
There's that saying about the 3 boxes used to change things; the soapbox, the ballot box and the ammo box. I'm on the virtual soapbox all the time, at least online, trying to talk sense into those who will listen about where we're going wrong and where we might be able to fix it. The ballot box feels pretty ineffective to me, as of late, with the corruption rampant throughout the political system. (What good is your vote if your only selections have the same fundamental flaws?) I *really* hope we don't have to crack open that ammo box.
I'm fine with the car supporting technologies like bluetooth or offering HDMI connectivity to an external screen. But I don't want it to "just run off a normal device the user already owns". (I'd assume this implies a smartphone for most situations.)
I'd prefer the device in my car to be completely self-sustaining. If I happen to not bring my phone with me for whatever reason, I don't want the whole in-car infotainment/navigation system to be rendered useless! By the same token, I'd rather not have to bog down my smartphone with apps that need to run every time I get in my car, just because my car is just another dumb "remote control device" for it on my phone.
What I realized about this device is, it's *really* a competitor to those monitored alarm systems the companies like ADT want to sell people. The monthly fees for the landline connection they require back to a "dispatch" will easily cost double what you spend on the Nest Protect in a year's time or less. Yes, those are also burglar alarms -- not JUST fire alarms. But many people really only want the smoke/fire protection with alerting. (The burglar alarms are notorious for false alarms and police who no longer consider it a priority to check out the alarms when they sound.)
Interesting claims you make, but I'm not completely sold on your explanation.
I did hear that Verizon basically halted the FiOS rollout "until further notice", but it's also clearly a very costly service to deploy -- and I don't think you can necessarily fault a business for expanding it slowly or in calculated stages.
I live in Poolesville, MD myself (population of only 5,000 - 5,500 or so and stuck right in the middle of the Agricultural Reserve area -- so basically a 20-30 minute drive, minimum, to surrounding communities of any note - like Germantown, Darnestown or Potomac). We got FiOS late last year (I switched from Comcast on pretty much the first day it was possible). Really, it's hard to explain how Verizon would have deemed Poolesville worthy of a FiOS rollout if it truly was only selecting the "most profitable" and "lowest cost / barrier to entry" areas?
Honestly, as demanding and fickle as many of our local residents are, I'm surprised Verizon didn't just give up and yank any initial plans to deploy it here. Poolesville has an ongoing legal battle with Verizon over the initial installation because they're upset Verizon damaged various bits of roadway, edges of driveways or lawns, or what-not while pulling the fiber. Technically, I'm sure the complaints are legitimate -- but I'm also a little surprised residents weren't just thankful enough to receive the service that they couldn't just overlook having to reseed a corner of a lawn or whatever?
My opinion of the service as a customer? Excellent broadband speeds that typically give a little bit more than advertised speeds on a given package. Television channels selection includes everything I'd want and seems to be a little cheaper than Comcast. VoIP phone service has been great too, overall. We have experienced a few outages lasting several hours each where TV never goes out but internet and phone do. The first week the service was installed, it went out constantly. I was about to cancel it and go back to Comcast, but finally spoke to a higher-level technician who explained it was a problem common to new rollouts where the router in the central office needed a firmware update. (He claimed the upgrades were basically pushed out to the routers, but still had to be manually flashed onto them in a separate step... and it's that step that was neglected for whatever reason, causing the instability.) After he claimed they'd done the upgrade, we never had those service issues again.
I have to admit I think you're right on target with most of your observations!
One problem I've seen in today's America is we have far too many people in the vocational trades who are really just "hacks". Because our system on the whole, still puts skills on a pedestal that don't involve working with one's hands, those who prefer to do so wind up self-taught, often through a trial and error process of screwing up jobs they're hired to do!
Even though I found that myself, I'm far more interested and apt to work with computers and technology -- I have a great appreciation for the people with the skills to do quality wood-working, carpentry, or even electrical or plumbing work. All of these skilled trades have a rich history of knowledge people built up over decades (even centuries!) -- so an interested individual can go incredibly deep into any one of them with a lifetime of learning while doing.
We need to collectively get over this mentality that you're somehow "better" or "worth more" if you have advanced degrees and don't need to do physical labor anymore for a paycheck. There's a lot of value in science and research, software development, medicine, etc. etc. But all of us need buildings to do those jobs in and homes to live in after work's done!
I don't see much "insight" in the part of your comment where you say "there is no real reason things need to get more and more expensive".
Really? There are plenty of good reasons this happens. It's not just because businesses are greedy and decide they'd like to make ever-increasing profit margins on whatever they sell you!
Inflation, by and large, happens because as our government continues printing more money out of thin air, the value of any given dollar bill decreases. When the government is in a large amount of debt, as it is today, the value of the dollar is really only propped up by the faith the debt-holders have in the nation's ability to make good on the interest payments.
I know as a small business owner myself, I decided on an hourly fee for my service based on what I thought was the lowest acceptable/fair price I would be ok receiving for my labor. It factored in such things as my fuel and vehicle expenses to travel to my clients, and some margin to cover the inevitable return trips I'd make for free as "goodwill" to fix an issue that wasn't fixed 100% the first time around. After a couple years, I felt I had to increase my rate -- but even then, I kept the old pricing for certain long-time customers as long as I could. It was never about anything but trying to ensure I was compensated just enough to make the whole thing worthwhile.
Any employee is free to change jobs or careers, in an attempt to get better pay. But obviously there are many strings attached to that whole process. Increasingly, the quest for a better job requires traveling further and further from one's home. At given times, only certain parts of the country are really "hot spots" for different skillsets. The day when you could settle down in one city for life, and work for the same employer through retirement are nearly over. A few people still do so, but frankly, many of them do so at the expense of getting paid more money they could have earned if they were willing to move.
We moved to the metro D.C. area last year (small town in Maryland, not far from Rockville or Bethesda). I took a private sector job doing I.T. support, and my wife eventually found a job as a govt. contractor.
The "shutdown" means her pay situation is uncertain. Her contractor promised they'd receive the next couple paychecks but no details after that. (She's caught in sort of a grey area too, because she's doing work for one of the places the Federal govt. has decided is actually doing "essential" work, yet her particular office/building isn't directly involved with the essential part of what they do. So we simply don't know if she'll be out of work or not, yet.)
If you want my opinion (and one i believe my wife shares)? The Federal govt. is massively bloated, inefficient and spending WAY too much money for too little in the way of useful results. As she says her own job illustrates every day -- the primary reason govt. has "over 800,000 contractors" they're furloughing right now is because they've hired useless, inept people as EMPLOYEES for so long, they need the contractors to do the work their regular staff isn't able or willing to do!
IMO, this is intentional because Federal govt. feels a need to keep the unemployment figures as low as possible, to give the illusion that our economy is on more solid footing than it really is. By hiring people who are otherwise unemployable (due to poor social skills, laziness, lack of education, plenty of formal education but no common sense, etc.) -- they keep people from becoming unemployment statistics and as a bonus, from increasing the numbers collecting from govt. assistance programs (another measuring stick of economic health).
There's a strong "entitlement culture" that's developed in the D.C. area as a result. The govt. workers become "lifers" who can't fathom life without a govt. issued paycheck (since frankly, they're not competitive as hires in the private sector), and by and large, their pay is pretty good. The twisted thing is, the entire market is priced around these govt. wages too. As a result, you find that when private sector businesses open a presence in the D.C. area, paying the same wages they pay elsewhere in the U.S., they're too low to maintain a decent lifestyle here. (Govt. workers typically receive "perks" that private sector businesses can't or won't match, such as compensation for the cost of using public transportation to get to/from the job every day.)
Let's be honest here.... Even ignoring the fact that it's a former NSA character passing along this supposed fact that corporate security is abysmally poor? (Just a couple stories above this one on Slashdot today, we see where the FBI is forcing companies to either hand over access to the root SSL certificate they use or shut the entire business down, and generally doing so with "secret" court orders. How do good security solutions work if govt. agencies can bully places into handing over the keys?)
The fact is, most security analysts I see hired by big businesses are paid to be the "fall guy" when something major goes wrong. Nobody can really guarantee they've succeeded in security an internet connected site from attackers. I mean, even if the analyst made NO mistakes and didn't miss a single thing (and that's not exactly human nature) - he or she didn't design all of the corporate firewalls from scratch. The (typically Asian) manufacturer may have inserted a back door at the chipset level. He/she can't be sure there aren't software vulnerabilities in the wild that aren't published or documented officially. He/she can never tell when another employee or contractor, trusted with certain passwords, decides to share them.
I think in most situations, setting up all of the basics with "best practices" (you know... actually HAVING a firewall in place that blocks incoming connections on all ports except the ones you designate as needed for things, not using default passwords for any of your gear or databases, doing all the security patches and updates as they're released, etc.) puts you in a reasonably good situation, security-wise. Your regular I.T. staff can handle all of that, without paying for a specialist.
Beyond that, you're paying for people with a lot of textbook knowledge and usually a certain amount of arrogance, who wind up implementing rules that hinder everyone's ability to get daily work done. This leads to lower morale and MORE risk of employees bypassing security protocols out of resentment. So where's the real benefit in paying inflated salaries for all of this? You have a specific name to pin things on if it goes horribly wrong.....
Doesn't the ability to comprehensively search for such things as child abuse photos OR pirated software aid the authorities in tracking it down and stopping it at the sources, just as much as it aids someone trying to download it?
I'd also point out, though, that your "1 in 100" chance of injury in a car accident probably makes no distinction about the type or extent of the injuries. I've been in several pretty bad accidents myself over the years, including a drunk driver of a full-size station wagon who struck my car, sitting at a stop light, at a speed of over 50MPH and totaled both of our vehicles. I got rushed to the hospital in that one and treated for whiplash -- but I've been perfectly fine since then.
My point is, with all of the safety features and crash testing required for modern vehicles in the U.S. -- you still have a pretty good chance of only sustaining pretty minor injury when you're in a car accident. Sometimes I think people forget that and pretend that every car accident WILL result in serious injury or death. Simply not the case.....
I *do* blame the individual cops for this because THEY serve as the initial point of enforcement. The officer has the ability to use his/her judgement. He/she can easily choose to ignore something if he/she believes it really isn't causing any harm - regardless of what the "letter of the law" gives the permission to stop/cite the person for.
If the police all decided a law was unreasonable and unfair and elected not to stop people for it, I guarantee the law would eventually be changed.
Yeah, I'm not even a really big wine connoisseur, but I'd say the high priced wines have more to do with vintage than any other single factor. The idea that "The older, the better!" is only true in a very general sense and subject to so many exceptions and other mitigating factors, it's really not a good way to determine if a given bottle of wine will taste good to you.
At some point, I think it's more about showing off/snobbery, really.... That feeling of superiority one gets from cracking open a bottle that's sat, undisturbed, for so many years. People will pay for that experience.
Perhaps? But by far, the most popular game I've seen with our kids and their classmates is Minecraft. And the ability to actually build things in the virtual world and use coding and text commands to do it is what gives the game its real staying power with them.
This is why on the PS3, the Little Big Planet series also seems to be a big hit with the kids.
They might all say they like Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja... but they're not playing those games for more than a brief period of time, from what I've seen.
Sure, there's such a thing as "addiction" to ANYTHING someone might enjoy. And yes, that apparently includes texting. Personally, I find text messaging really useful in limited situations but otherwise annoying. (I think it's a great tool if you simply need to communicate one specific thing to a person and it doesn't really warrant a whole phone conversation, yet it's time sensitive enough that you want it "pushed" to them ASAP, vs. just emailing and waiting for them to have a chance to check their mailbox (and sift through everything else they might have received along with your message).
But my claim about some potential value in fasting from high-tech for "a few weeks" relates to doing it because you're going on a VACATION. By definition, a vacation should be a time when you stop doing a lot of the things you otherwise do in daily life. It's about taking a break from things like the daily grind of work, rushing home to fix a meal for the family, the daily chores, etc. Why shouldn't it also be a break from the high-tech communication tools you normally use, too?
If you told me you were just going to stop taking out the garbage for a year and stop doing laundry for a year, though, I'd think that was probably not such a wise decision.
For the record though, too? When you see me "walking down the street like a zombie, staring at my glowing gadget"? That's only because I walk down that street at least 2-3 times every single day, going to/from work or lunch, and I've seen pretty much all there is to see about it already. I'm happy that I can make a little bit more productive use of those minutes of walking to my destination by reading some of my email or the latest news while I do it. I don't think I owe any of the random strangers "eye contact" or a random conversation. I get more out of reading messages from people I already know, directed to me!
Slashdot Mirror
What we've got today is Corporatism, mixed with a few dashes of Socialism, with a "candy coated surface" giving the shiny appearance of Capitalism.
Truth is, China has more real Capitalism than we do here in the U.S. If you keep your head down and don't run afoul of the government there, you're basically free to do as you wish with a business. Hardly even much to worry about in the way of environmental or safety regulations..... (Why do you think so many businesses traditionally considered American have huge factories over there? The CEO of Coca Cola, not too long ago, declared he'd never be interested in any more company growth inside the U.S. borders. All the real opportunity is elsewhere.)
Jefferson truly was an expert in many ways, but his beliefs didn't always dictate the ultimate direction the nation went.... He wasn't a fan of Central Banking either.
“The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin." - Jefferson
I'm not sure the Founding Fathers really grasped the idea of today's multinational corporations in the first place? With the technology of the day, it wasn't nearly as feasible for a business to successfully grow that large. Regardless, I don't necessarily see a problem with an "impartial" government if one takes it to mean a government that doesn't allow itself to be bought by special interests, and which enforces the laws of the land in a fair manner. There are MORE than enough laws on the books to enforce "moral accountability" for corporations; environmental regulations, limits on the number of hours employees are allowed to work without receiving overtime pay, minimum wage laws, etc. etc.
Corporations are saying, "We're powerful and wealthy enough so we can use governments to our advantage!"
Government is still plenty big and powerful enough so corporate entities can't ignore it. Rather, corporations simply buy some govt. collusion so a preferred status is granted.
That's the "rub" with the whole system. Government is supposed to play the role of the impartial referee in the game of "Capitalism". But instead, the most successful "teams" keep paying them off.
I'd say it's more a matter of people being HUMAN. Humans have a whole range of emotions too, which often prove detrimental or at least reduce efficiency at attaining the desired outcome in a particular situation. Should we just eliminate all those pesky feelings too and become strictly logical?
I think we all realize we're going to die eventually one way or another. When it comes down to it, we're generally far more okay with it happening because we made a mistake while doing something we enjoy (or even something we felt was productive, necessary or just a good idea to do at the time) than because of something not at all under our control (machine error or malfunction). The risk of injury or even death is in some manner, part of what makes things worth doing for people. (Why do people enjoy thrill rides at the amusement park, or parachute jumping out of perfectly good airplanes? Or even for the more risk-adverse among us, why do some people like to gamble at the casino once in a while or follow the stock market?) Life without risk would be incredibly boring. Driving a car is one of those calculated risks people take all the time because the benefits (fast travel and freedom to get from point A to B when YOU want to leave) feel worthwhile. But passively sitting in some machine that takes a person there won't involve any of the joys of operating the vehicle anymore. That's going to be a big downside for people who went through the whole process of learning to drive, achieving a license to do so, and investing years in what they probably believe made them a better and more skilled driver with all the practice.
The fact is, most Linux users get interested in installing/using it because they've got (typically older) hardware in front of them that they'd like to make useful without spending more money on it.
The only Mac system users I've encountered who ran Linux were using very old "legacy" Macs that have long since been abandoned by Apple with software updates or support.
So generally, the use-cases for OS X or Linux just don't really cross much.
It's really too bad, IMO, because I get a lot of value out of Wikipedia. Regardless, the in-fighting over article submissions is totally unacceptable and will lead to its demise eventually, if something isn't done about it.
As an example, one of my good friends tried to submit a few articles to cover specific BBS "door games" from the 1980's -- only to have his articles flagged for removal as containing "irrelevant" information. (I can't remember the exact claim, but whoever moderates the submissions apparently felt the door games he discussed were too obscure for anyone to care? Funny, because a Facebook message group full of over 150 users from the BBS days were the ones who brought these door games up, and were frustrated to find nothing about them on Wiki.)
I agree with you completely -- but at the same time? What a lousy deal! 4 years of effort to make good grades in a costly college or university where you exit, saddled with student loan debt to pay down. And all that just so you can get past an H.R. worker who automatically filters resumes based on "4 year degree in ...." as a line item.
I know I've definitely been rejected for quite a few jobs since I didn't have the degree, but I've always been able to find work in my field without it too. IMO, the companies who are that closed-minded (or just that inundated with applications) that they'd discard my resume automatically are probably places I'd be unhappy working at anyway.
I mean, a company where the manager takes the time to see what skills I claim to have and what I've previously done, and decides to at least talk to me (degree or no degree) is a company where the manager is putting some effort into the hiring process. That's a manager who is likely more reasonable and sensible in the other decisions he or she makes too.
I was even offered I.T. positions in colleges before, where one would assume it's in the school's best interest to only hire degreed candidates. (After all, don't they want to try to at least attempt to prove the degrees they peddle have value in helping get jobs after school is over?) But again, in these cases, someone liked my skill-set enough to give me a chance to interview -- and once I was in the door, I had the opportunity to show/tell them what I could do for them.
Really, I'm not against anyone deciding to pursue a college degree. I just know that in my case, I tried it for a while and disliked it more and more with each credit I earned. Sure, I had a few "good courses", but also a whole lot of them I felt were irrelevant to anything I'd ever be interested in doing in life. Maybe that's the bottom line though? If you're like many people and just not quite sure what you want to do, college gives a chance to figure that out ... or at least to narrow down some fields you decide you DON'T want to get involved in. I knew from the start I wanted to work with computers and I.T. - but my college didn't have a sensible path for me. I was told to take a dBase III+ class and a C programming course at one point, because that's all it really had to offer. (I never wanted to code or become a DBA, mind you. But my counselor hardly knew the difference between those careers and a data entry clerk.)
After doing 25 or more years of work in I.T. myself (and yes, without any degree -- though I do have "some college" as in just a couple credits shy of an Associates degree), I completely agree. Science, math and engineering are fairly irrelevant to working as a PC support person, a systems admin, network admin or even a web developer. The skills that do count for more include good people skills, a LOT of patience, persistence in finding solutions and good writing skills. (That last one is where I do see a difference between many of the degreed and non-degreed I.T. workers. Unfortunately, many people who didn't get the degree also have relatively poor writing skills. It translates to sending out emails that portray an individual as much less bright than he/she really is, and an inability to write clear, concise documentation when needed.)
Like I keep reminding people; there's SO much to know about today's complex I.T. infrastructure, the most useful people in the field tend to be those who are efficient at finding the answers. There's almost an art to forming effective Google queries that the typical computer user doesn't grasp. (EG. If your printer has a strange light flashing on it and you don't know what it means, get *really specific* in your search. Don't just search for "light flashing on printer" or something along those lines. Put in the exact model number of the printer in question as part of the search. Better to get no relevant hits than too many. Then you immediately know to widen the search criteria a bit, vs. wasting time reading through 3+ pages of hits that sound promising but don't really address your specific problem.)
People who are sure they always have the answer off the top of their heads worry me more than those who listen carefully to the problem, and respond "Not really sure, but I can go look that one up!".
Yeah... even at he local Micro Center, which had a big OCZ display set up, I had a salesperson tell me he'd recommend "almost anything other than OCZ" when I was asking about SSDs!
They had so much RMA and customer dissatisfaction, they basically only wanted to sell them to people who grabbed them off the shelves on their own and didn't ask any questions.
I normally wouldn't bother replying to a comment made more than a few days ago, because I know it's Slashdot -- and people often don't even bother to look back at what's said about an "old" discussion topic.
But I have to think you've got blinders on or live under a rock if you "see absolutely no evidence" of things headed the wrong way in this country. Well over 1 *trillion* dollars of debt owed to other nations and climbing every day, and you don't see how that might pose problems??
The NSA spying thing is not anywhere near my biggest concern -- but it's a symptom of the larger problem. When your Federal govt. is this broke and is essentially putting the nation in the pawn shop to keep pretending it's solvent, it's ludicrous to keep fiunding a massive spy operation that works INSIDE our own borders!
As for our government being "freer and fairer than in previous generations", I'm guessing you're largely referring to issues such as allowing women to vote, freeing the slaves, or the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Those are all big steps forward -- but they're swirled into a massive "stew" of little steps backward. Our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, for example? Under attack ALL the time, with legislation which chisels away at it with exception after exception. Where I live, it's against the law for me to even try to resell "high capacity magazines" for rifles (such as the plastic clips that hold 20 or 25 bullets in them). My dad used to own a bunch of these things, and guess what? He wasn't some terrorist or serial killer, solider of fortune, or any of that. He just liked collecting guns and occasionally going to the indoor shooting range with his buddies. It was convenient not to have to reload so often.
We also live in a country where today, it's almost impossible to do a financial transaction of any size without it being reported, logged and tracked. It used to be if you saved up the cash, it was no big deal to go buy a used car with it. These days, you have to fill out special forms and it gets reported -- and who knows? Someone might even come knocking on your door asking a bunch of questions. It sure wasn't like that in previous generations.
There are a lot of people out there (some of my good friends included in this) who simply feel we're rapidly accelerating down a slope to a really bad place, and we've picked up too much speed to where you can say, "Oh, don't worry... We can still put on the brakes and slow this down gradually, until it comes to a peaceful stop."
Life in America *is* good by most standards, and it's great by selected others. But that's part of the reason for the apathy. It's tough to get people too worked up about loss of individual freedoms or rights, or an eventual economic collapse when right now, they're still enjoying what's clearly a "first world existence".
Problem is, the powers in charge know this too. As this continues, you'll see them juggle money and debt all around, doing whatever gymnastics it takes to ensure our poor still qualify for assistance programs, and to ensure everyone who serves in our military continues to get benefits and "special treatment" in various ways. They know a sure path to failure is angering the poor masses enough so they're motivated to riot, or to put a crimp in the supply of people willing to take orders to fight the "enemy" (whoever the govt. claims that happens to be at a given time), as part of the military.
The "literal crazy person" you refer to who advocates revolution (with mass murder and a long period of violence -- though decades is perhaps questionable) is quite possibly just a "long term thinker", who unlike the majority, is willing to give up a comfortable lifestyle if it means securing 200 more years of a fair, just political system and nation for future generations.
I'll be honest.... Despite all the problems I see looming on the horizon, I've been able to get by well enough for myself and for my family so I'm at least keeping my head barely above the waters of "middle class life". I'm not in any hurry to throw it all away for a life of hardship. But I also have a growing fear that time is running out to turn this thing around. I'm not sure my kids won't grow up cursing our whole generation, saying "Why didn't you fight this tyranny while you still could!?"
There's that saying about the 3 boxes used to change things; the soapbox, the ballot box and the ammo box. I'm on the virtual soapbox all the time, at least online, trying to talk sense into those who will listen about where we're going wrong and where we might be able to fix it. The ballot box feels pretty ineffective to me, as of late, with the corruption rampant throughout the political system. (What good is your vote if your only selections have the same fundamental flaws?) I *really* hope we don't have to crack open that ammo box.
The new BSG was probably the single best sci-fi series I've watched in the last couple decades. But wow ... what an *awful* way to close it out!
Huh? No, I disagree.
I'm fine with the car supporting technologies like bluetooth or offering HDMI connectivity to an external screen. But I don't want it to "just run off a normal device the user already owns". (I'd assume this implies a smartphone for most situations.)
I'd prefer the device in my car to be completely self-sustaining. If I happen to not bring my phone with me for whatever reason, I don't want the whole in-car infotainment/navigation system to be rendered useless! By the same token, I'd rather not have to bog down my smartphone with apps that need to run every time I get in my car, just because my car is just another dumb "remote control device" for it on my phone.
What I realized about this device is, it's *really* a competitor to those monitored alarm systems the companies like ADT want to sell people. The monthly fees for the landline connection they require back to a "dispatch" will easily cost double what you spend on the Nest Protect in a year's time or less. Yes, those are also burglar alarms -- not JUST fire alarms. But many people really only want the smoke/fire protection with alerting. (The burglar alarms are notorious for false alarms and police who no longer consider it a priority to check out the alarms when they sound.)
Interesting claims you make, but I'm not completely sold on your explanation.
I did hear that Verizon basically halted the FiOS rollout "until further notice", but it's also clearly a very costly service to deploy -- and I don't think you can necessarily fault a business for expanding it slowly or in calculated stages.
I live in Poolesville, MD myself (population of only 5,000 - 5,500 or so and stuck right in the middle of the Agricultural Reserve area -- so basically a 20-30 minute drive, minimum, to surrounding communities of any note - like Germantown, Darnestown or Potomac). We got FiOS late last year (I switched from Comcast on pretty much the first day it was possible). Really, it's hard to explain how Verizon would have deemed Poolesville worthy of a FiOS rollout if it truly was only selecting the "most profitable" and "lowest cost / barrier to entry" areas?
Honestly, as demanding and fickle as many of our local residents are, I'm surprised Verizon didn't just give up and yank any initial plans to deploy it here. Poolesville has an ongoing legal battle with Verizon over the initial installation because they're upset Verizon damaged various bits of roadway, edges of driveways or lawns, or what-not while pulling the fiber. Technically, I'm sure the complaints are legitimate -- but I'm also a little surprised residents weren't just thankful enough to receive the service that they couldn't just overlook having to reseed a corner of a lawn or whatever?
My opinion of the service as a customer? Excellent broadband speeds that typically give a little bit more than advertised speeds on a given package. Television channels selection includes everything I'd want and seems to be a little cheaper than Comcast. VoIP phone service has been great too, overall. We have experienced a few outages lasting several hours each where TV never goes out but internet and phone do. The first week the service was installed, it went out constantly. I was about to cancel it and go back to Comcast, but finally spoke to a higher-level technician who explained it was a problem common to new rollouts where the router in the central office needed a firmware update. (He claimed the upgrades were basically pushed out to the routers, but still had to be manually flashed onto them in a separate step ... and it's that step that was neglected for whatever reason, causing the instability.) After he claimed they'd done the upgrade, we never had those service issues again.
I have to admit I think you're right on target with most of your observations!
One problem I've seen in today's America is we have far too many people in the vocational trades who are really just "hacks". Because our system on the whole, still puts skills on a pedestal that don't involve working with one's hands, those who prefer to do so wind up self-taught, often through a trial and error process of screwing up jobs they're hired to do!
Even though I found that myself, I'm far more interested and apt to work with computers and technology -- I have a great appreciation for the people with the skills to do quality wood-working, carpentry, or even electrical or plumbing work. All of these skilled trades have a rich history of knowledge people built up over decades (even centuries!) -- so an interested individual can go incredibly deep into any one of them with a lifetime of learning while doing.
We need to collectively get over this mentality that you're somehow "better" or "worth more" if you have advanced degrees and don't need to do physical labor anymore for a paycheck. There's a lot of value in science and research, software development, medicine, etc. etc. But all of us need buildings to do those jobs in and homes to live in after work's done!
I don't see much "insight" in the part of your comment where you say "there is no real reason things need to get more and more expensive".
Really? There are plenty of good reasons this happens. It's not just because businesses are greedy and decide they'd like to make ever-increasing profit margins on whatever they sell you!
Inflation, by and large, happens because as our government continues printing more money out of thin air, the value of any given dollar bill decreases. When the government is in a large amount of debt, as it is today, the value of the dollar is really only propped up by the faith the debt-holders have in the nation's ability to make good on the interest payments.
I know as a small business owner myself, I decided on an hourly fee for my service based on what I thought was the lowest acceptable/fair price I would be ok receiving for my labor. It factored in such things as my fuel and vehicle expenses to travel to my clients, and some margin to cover the inevitable return trips I'd make for free as "goodwill" to fix an issue that wasn't fixed 100% the first time around. After a couple years, I felt I had to increase my rate -- but even then, I kept the old pricing for certain long-time customers as long as I could. It was never about anything but trying to ensure I was compensated just enough to make the whole thing worthwhile.
Any employee is free to change jobs or careers, in an attempt to get better pay. But obviously there are many strings attached to that whole process. Increasingly, the quest for a better job requires traveling further and further from one's home. At given times, only certain parts of the country are really "hot spots" for different skillsets. The day when you could settle down in one city for life, and work for the same employer through retirement are nearly over. A few people still do so, but frankly, many of them do so at the expense of getting paid more money they could have earned if they were willing to move.
We moved to the metro D.C. area last year (small town in Maryland, not far from Rockville or Bethesda). I took a private sector job doing I.T. support, and my wife eventually found a job as a govt. contractor.
The "shutdown" means her pay situation is uncertain. Her contractor promised they'd receive the next couple paychecks but no details after that. (She's caught in sort of a grey area too, because she's doing work for one of the places the Federal govt. has decided is actually doing "essential" work, yet her particular office/building isn't directly involved with the essential part of what they do. So we simply don't know if she'll be out of work or not, yet.)
If you want my opinion (and one i believe my wife shares)? The Federal govt. is massively bloated, inefficient and spending WAY too much money for too little in the way of useful results. As she says her own job illustrates every day -- the primary reason govt. has "over 800,000 contractors" they're furloughing right now is because they've hired useless, inept people as EMPLOYEES for so long, they need the contractors to do the work their regular staff isn't able or willing to do!
IMO, this is intentional because Federal govt. feels a need to keep the unemployment figures as low as possible, to give the illusion that our economy is on more solid footing than it really is. By hiring people who are otherwise unemployable (due to poor social skills, laziness, lack of education, plenty of formal education but no common sense, etc.) -- they keep people from becoming unemployment statistics and as a bonus, from increasing the numbers collecting from govt. assistance programs (another measuring stick of economic health).
There's a strong "entitlement culture" that's developed in the D.C. area as a result. The govt. workers become "lifers" who can't fathom life without a govt. issued paycheck (since frankly, they're not competitive as hires in the private sector), and by and large, their pay is pretty good. The twisted thing is, the entire market is priced around these govt. wages too. As a result, you find that when private sector businesses open a presence in the D.C. area, paying the same wages they pay elsewhere in the U.S., they're too low to maintain a decent lifestyle here. (Govt. workers typically receive "perks" that private sector businesses can't or won't match, such as compensation for the cost of using public transportation to get to/from the job every day.)
Let's be honest here.... Even ignoring the fact that it's a former NSA character passing along this supposed fact that corporate security is abysmally poor? (Just a couple stories above this one on Slashdot today, we see where the FBI is forcing companies to either hand over access to the root SSL certificate they use or shut the entire business down, and generally doing so with "secret" court orders. How do good security solutions work if govt. agencies can bully places into handing over the keys?)
The fact is, most security analysts I see hired by big businesses are paid to be the "fall guy" when something major goes wrong. Nobody can really guarantee they've succeeded in security an internet connected site from attackers. I mean, even if the analyst made NO mistakes and didn't miss a single thing (and that's not exactly human nature) - he or she didn't design all of the corporate firewalls from scratch. The (typically Asian) manufacturer may have inserted a back door at the chipset level. He/she can't be sure there aren't software vulnerabilities in the wild that aren't published or documented officially. He/she can never tell when another employee or contractor, trusted with certain passwords, decides to share them.
I think in most situations, setting up all of the basics with "best practices" (you know... actually HAVING a firewall in place that blocks incoming connections on all ports except the ones you designate as needed for things, not using default passwords for any of your gear or databases, doing all the security patches and updates as they're released, etc.) puts you in a reasonably good situation, security-wise. Your regular I.T. staff can handle all of that, without paying for a specialist.
Beyond that, you're paying for people with a lot of textbook knowledge and usually a certain amount of arrogance, who wind up implementing rules that hinder everyone's ability to get daily work done. This leads to lower morale and MORE risk of employees bypassing security protocols out of resentment. So where's the real benefit in paying inflated salaries for all of this? You have a specific name to pin things on if it goes horribly wrong.....
Doesn't the ability to comprehensively search for such things as child abuse photos OR pirated software aid the authorities in tracking it down and stopping it at the sources, just as much as it aids someone trying to download it?
Quite true!
I'd also point out, though, that your "1 in 100" chance of injury in a car accident probably makes no distinction about the type or extent of the injuries.
I've been in several pretty bad accidents myself over the years, including a drunk driver of a full-size station wagon who struck my car, sitting at a stop light, at a speed of over 50MPH and totaled both of our vehicles. I got rushed to the hospital in that one and treated for whiplash -- but I've been perfectly fine since then.
My point is, with all of the safety features and crash testing required for modern vehicles in the U.S. -- you still have a pretty good chance of only sustaining pretty minor injury when you're in a car accident. Sometimes I think people forget that and pretend that every car accident WILL result in serious injury or death. Simply not the case.....
I *do* blame the individual cops for this because THEY serve as the initial point of enforcement. The officer has the ability to use his/her judgement. He/she can easily choose to ignore something if he/she believes it really isn't causing any harm - regardless of what the "letter of the law" gives the permission to stop/cite the person for.
If the police all decided a law was unreasonable and unfair and elected not to stop people for it, I guarantee the law would eventually be changed.
Yeah, I'm not even a really big wine connoisseur, but I'd say the high priced wines have more to do with vintage than any other single factor. The idea that "The older, the better!" is only true in a very general sense and subject to so many exceptions and other mitigating factors, it's really not a good way to determine if a given bottle of wine will taste good to you.
At some point, I think it's more about showing off/snobbery, really.... That feeling of superiority one gets from cracking open a bottle that's sat, undisturbed, for so many years. People will pay for that experience.
Perhaps? But by far, the most popular game I've seen with our kids and their classmates is Minecraft. And the ability to actually build things in the virtual world and use coding and text commands to do it is what gives the game its real staying power with them.
This is why on the PS3, the Little Big Planet series also seems to be a big hit with the kids.
They might all say they like Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja ... but they're not playing those games for more than a brief period of time, from what I've seen.
I think you missed my point ....
Sure, there's such a thing as "addiction" to ANYTHING someone might enjoy. And yes, that apparently includes texting. Personally, I find text messaging really useful in limited situations but otherwise annoying. (I think it's a great tool if you simply need to communicate one specific thing to a person and it doesn't really warrant a whole phone conversation, yet it's time sensitive enough that you want it "pushed" to them ASAP, vs. just emailing and waiting for them to have a chance to check their mailbox (and sift through everything else they might have received along with your message).
But my claim about some potential value in fasting from high-tech for "a few weeks" relates to doing it because you're going on a VACATION. By definition, a vacation should be a time when you stop doing a lot of the things you otherwise do in daily life. It's about taking a break from things like the daily grind of work, rushing home to fix a meal for the family, the daily chores, etc. Why shouldn't it also be a break from the high-tech communication tools you normally use, too?
If you told me you were just going to stop taking out the garbage for a year and stop doing laundry for a year, though, I'd think that was probably not such a wise decision.
For the record though, too? When you see me "walking down the street like a zombie, staring at my glowing gadget"? That's only because I walk down that street at least 2-3 times every single day, going to/from work or lunch, and I've seen pretty much all there is to see about it already. I'm happy that I can make a little bit more productive use of those minutes of walking to my destination by reading some of my email or the latest news while I do it. I don't think I owe any of the random strangers "eye contact" or a random conversation. I get more out of reading messages from people I already know, directed to me!