The only reason it has all those job classifications is because that's what the people surveyed reported as their respective titles. If you notice a significant difference in salary on there between several different titles that in your opinion all describe the same work you do, then maybe it's a hint that your resume should be referring to yourself with the most favorable one of those titles?
My current job gave me a title of "Network Supervisor", which isn't even on their list... so what do I pick? I'm often referred to as the "Network Manager", at least by people trying to reach me to discuss technical things I'm trying to take care of in the typical work-day. So I gave that one a shot. It showed the average for people in my part of the country as about double what I'm being paid currently. BUT, it also warned me that the sample size for that description was only 11 participants... so not a lot to really go on.
Ultimately, I consider the fact that my job doesn't really ever expect me to come in during "off hours". (We don't run 24 hours/7 days, and if people aren't here and a computer crisis happens, nobody will know anyway until they come back in and find out it's down.) It's a small business, too, so I know they can't afford the salaries some places pay. But it's relatively low-stress, MOST of the time, and they're flexible about letting me come in later than usual because of my kid and having to get her to school first. If you need to take a long lunch or what-not, you can usually just do that too, without any real worries. Things like that have value to me beyond the rate of pay.
I think you're right about much of what you said, but recommending people just walk away from their homes if they're "underwater any significant amount" isn't the most responsible thing. Our country is in such bad shape right now, partially because of people with this attitude of "I'll just walk away from what I owe as soon as I don't like the terms anymore that I agreed to initially!"
Granted, there are plenty of exceptions out there. I recently read about a Hispanic family in California, for example, who spent about $440,000 for a home in a new "village" that had its "family friendliness" as a major selling point. They had several kids and he wanted to invest in their future - so they weren't being raised in a bad neighborhood with high crime, drugs, etc.
Well, with the recession, almost everyone in the village filed for bankruptcy and was foreclosed on. His home is now worth well under $200,000 and it'd be impossible to find a buyer right now if he wanted to sell at that kind of loss. Everyone living around him is a drug dealer or "shady" in some manner or another. He said someone already smashed in his family room window one night, and tried to steal his work van another time.
In a case like his, yeah - walking away is the only sensible option left to him, really. (He said he already tried to renegotiate his mortgage with the lender, but they refused to help him.) Basically, he tried to do the right thing and kept up his end of the deal this whole time, but he can't help the fact that everyone else around him didn't, leaving him hanging out to dry. And it's not just about him. It's about the safety and welfare of his whole family.
All in all though, I suspect the majority of Slashdot readers who are in technical fields aren't in this drastic of a situation. A short sale is probably a much better recommendation for them, if they really feel they can't go on with the housing deal they're in. At least that way, the house gets an actual buyer who has plans to get it re-occupied in some manner (often renting out to low income families as section 8). It's not just a case of letting it sit, empty, while the bank gets struck trying to figure out what to do with it, and your credit rating is decimated.
You might be right, but this is such a tired, worn argument that has a lot of little holes in it....
First of all, I don't see how Apple is "moving us towards closed computer environments" when every single one of their desktop, all-in-one, or portable computers runs Mac OS X, a full-fledged operating system allowing people to compile and run whatever code they like. Nothing "closed" about it. What does Apple sell that's "closed"? Seems to only be electronic gadgets/devices to me, like cellphones, MP3 players or set-top TV boxes. The iPad is NOT supposed to be a full-blown computer. It's a large iPod Touch. Apple sells a whole line of laptops, including the ultra-thin and light "Macbook Air" for people who want a portable computer. An iPad is in a category of its own, really.... trying to offer an option someplace just "under" carrying a portable computer around. It focuses a lot more on media consumption/enjoyment than on media creation or modification.
Microsoft's Zune or XBox 360 aren't any more "open" than the iPad....
But second, jailbreaking is great, IMHO. It lets technologically savvy individuals do more with a given device than the original manufacturer really intended (or was willing to provide official support for). I liken it to the people selling aftermarket performance upgrades for a car. If you buy them and put them on, you get more horsepower and torque out of a given engine, but it also often leads to voiding the vehicle's warranty. Some people will have no interest in tinkering with that stuff, because they're content with the vehicle as-is, and value their warranty over the claimed improvements. Others will say "Warranty? So what?! I'll take my chances!" and happily do the upgrades. (Heck, many of them are designed so they can easily be removed before having a vehicle serviced, so you can try to hide the fact you ever used them.) I don't really fault Apple for putting some artificial limitations in their products. Some of it allowed them to work favorable deals with AT&T, who they initially needed as a partner to make their iPhone a success. And some of it is simply to help them pad their profit-margins as they move forward with a long-term "road map" for future releases. (EG. Why allow a bluetooth keyboard to pair with the iPhone, if you knew that down the road, you wanted to release a device with a larger display and one where such a feature would be deemed more useful for daily use? Leaving it out won't really be a "deal breaker" causing the device to lose sales, and on the upside, will seem like another "new feature/improvement" to get buy-in on the new product. That's why the iPad can now do it, though it runs the same basic OS as the iPhone.) So fine, let the hackers find ways to unlock this stuff, for those interested, while letting Apple retain their basic design plans... Win, win in my book.
I agree with you, other than your assertion that an act of selflessness is "largely incompatible with" our individualistic culture.
I say that because making sacrifices for concepts like freedom and liberty should be motivated by an individual's concern for his/her own children, friends and relatives, as much as anything.
The *real* problem is the apathy you see from people who feel like the problems "don't affect anyone in their circle of friends/family". That tends to continue right up to the point where someone eventually steps on THEIR toes, and by then, it's usually too late for them.
That's the irony of this whole thing, I guess. You've got so many people trying to explain why the iPad is *not* "just a large iPod touch", yet hardware-wise, that's exactly what it is. The differentiating factor really comes down to the software, though. If you look at it that way, then it's not "just a large iPod touch" after all. Your iPod touch can't run a version of Apple's "Pages" word processing application, nor can it run Keynote presentation software. It doesn't have a nice book-reader application complete with cool animated turning of virtual paper pages as you swipe it. The iPad also has a vastly superior photo management application to anything seen on the iPod Touch or iPhone. (Oh, and don't forget, Apple has always left out the ability to pair up a bluetooth keyboard or mouse to an iPhone or iPod Touch, but it's officially allowed now on the iPad.)
I think some people are underestimating the usefulness of simply increasing the size of a multitouch-capable display on one of these devices. The iPod Touch/iPhone sized display creates a lot of limitations. Some applications just aren't practical on a small screen. Ability to put in a larger battery with a longer run-time is another nice "side effect" of making the device larger.
I think you just described ONE viable path to better health, but not sure all of your statements are "universal truths" either....
EG. You claim that if you "feel full", then you already ate far too much. That implies that our body's mechanism for telling us we're full is defective. Not sure I agree with that, so much as I think our bodies evolved these systems during a period of time when we didn't have such calorie-packed foods to choose from. I'm pretty sure it's possible to feel full by eating a bunch of salad, and yet not have consumed excessive calories in that meal.
There's also that fact that "fast food" places simply lack an interest in offering people healthier choices. Do I think legislation is the answer to that? NO! But when I watch how Subway sandwich shops shot up from relative obscurity to battling it out with McDonalds for the #1 spot in fast-food sales, it tells me a LOT of people are more than happy to patronize a fast food establishment that offers healthier alternatives. All I can figure, though, is that most fast food places find it less expensive to serve up the other stuff. Maybe they have a tougher time keeping the fresh veggies and/or fruits from going bad?
I'll openly admit that by the twisted definition of "software pirate" in popular use today, I qualify. But the interesting thing is, I've bought quite a bit of software over the years too. In relation to my total income, I probably spend a larger percentage on "intellectual property" than the average "I don't pirate!" user out there.
The companies trying to rule with an iron fist of copy protection create much of the problem for those of us who have the means to buy software.
Here's just one recent example. I was asked to help a small business transfer over their data from an older, dying PC to a new replacement PC they purchased. Fine, but the old PC apparently had an "OEM version" of Microsoft Office 2003 Pro installed on it, and they couldn't even locate the original CD for it anymore. Their expectation was that the product would keep on working just fine when I was done transferring it over. (That's what any normal, logical-thinking person would assume, right?) But thanks to Microsoft's product activation and arbitrary rules on what limitations exist on OEM vs. retail copies of their products - they were technically stuck buying a whole new copy of Office to remain "legal" and keep using it like they did before the old PC died.
Considering nobody even sells Office 2003 anymore (well, without a LOT of digging online to find some old stock left-over copy someplace obscure, anyway), they weren't even able to continue using the product if they WERE willing to pay for a new copy. They were basically going to be herded into buying a copy of Office 2007 instead, which they didn't want.
Since I was already getting paid to "make this transfer work without any hassles", my best option was to install a different copy of Office 2003 Pro on the PC, using a pirated key. (If you know where to look, there are Asian web sites out there selling such keys, via email, for about $20-25 a pop. The keys they sell will activate with MS product activation just fine and pass all the tests as being genuine. How they're obtained, I honestly don't know and probably don't want to know. But it's an affordable solution to the problem, even IF Microsoft says it's not legal.)
As to how all this relates to Rapidshare? Well, let's just say that Rapidshare's main function for MOST of its users is to obtain copyrighted software they're seeking for any number of reasons (some more "legitimate" than others). If they turn around and bite that hand that feeds, thinking the "industry" is a better partner to please? They're more than welcome to try, but I think they'll find nobody finds any value in Rapidshare offering up suggestions on how to purchase things they were looking to download for free.
The Libertarians have exactly HOW many people in political office right now? A major influence or driving force in American government, they're simply not....
IMHO, we've never truly even HAD a situation where "very little was regulated". What we usually get is some random "deregulation" in one area, while everything related stays under tight government control. Then when it fails, they turn around and say "See! The free market doesn't work!"
Yep.... except it appears Apple is also working hard to address alternate ways to handle some of the input-side with the "gestures" they're so interested in.
I think the gestures, a la Fingerworks that Apple bought out, have a lot of potential - but they require a lot of "thinking outside the box" on the part of the software developers too. Gesture-based input starts to suck when the user starts feeling like he/she has to memorize a bunch of random ones to get anything accomplished. The truly effective gestures, so far, seem to be the ones with parallels in the "real world". Everyone immediately "gets" the idea that you'd pinch your fingers together or spread them apart to shrink or zoom an object on the screen. They're also going to "get" concepts like making a twisting/turning motion with your fingers to spin a virtual dial around on the screen. They're NOT really going to intuitively "get" something like drawing a "Z" with 3 fingers held on the pad though... so they've got to be really careful when they start trying to come up with more unique movements.
I'm also starting to see a user interface "issue" developing with the iPhone/iPad and other similar devices, where they want to give users a menu bar of some sort, but the screen real-estate just isn't there to leave it on-screen all the time. So they do the "invisible" one that only pops up when you tap or double-tap the right place. That's non-intuitive and leads to frustration when people accidentally make the thing appear, as well as when they have to accidentally discover that one is even being used in a certain place in a program. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I think I like the idea of making apps feel like they have a front and a back side, and an appropriate gesture will "flip them over" like you'd flip a playing card, to see an options screen on the "back side".
Why do people get so upset when they find out that H.R. departments are trying to comb MySpace or Facebook before hiring a candidate? Same idea, but simply a group trying to glean the data for a different purpose.
The thing is, yes - I fully realize law enforcement is going to make use of the tools available to them. If they can see my info on Facebook and they're interested in me, obviously they'll take a peek at it.
BUT, there's a danger here that comes by misinterpreting the data, too. For starters, who's to say someone's profile on a social networking site is an accurate depiction of who they *really* are, vs. a persona they like to project?
EG. I once dated a gal who had a MySpace account that gave a VERY different idea of who she was from reality. It's not that her photos weren't really her, or that she *lied* about anything. It's more that she was trying to be as "hip" and "trendy" as possible on her page. So, despite the fact she was basically an "A" student and spent most of her time studying in grad. school, all of that was conveniently left out, and things that in reality were only minor footnotes in her daily life were accentuated instead. Her photo gallery? Pretty sparse in the way of photos showing her typical clothing and "look", or of pictures of the family. Instead? A whole collection of photos she asked a friend to take one time when she was all "made up" in clothes she didn't usually wear, and trying to do a "photo shoot" type of thing with it. Even her listed "favorite books" and "favorite music" were carefully picked and chosen. Once I knew her a while, I realized she listened to quite a bit of classic rock... yet she didn't seem to think that was part of the image she wanted to portray on her profile, so it was ignored in favor of the latest alternative and dance bands she also happened to like.
And that's all really just harmless, "fun" stuff. But what about people who are thinking along those same lines when they post the set of 50 crazy, drunk party photos they've got from one of the ONLY times they really went out and partied? What about the people who take an interest in something like computer hacking, so they post a lot of links related to the subject and list those types of books as their favorites? Does that mean they're actually INVOLVED in hacking, or does it mean they're actively trying to STOP hacking (a "white hat" type)?
You have to remember that whether or not people go to the effort to lock their FB or MySpace profiles down as "private" -- they often only have a certain audience in mind. They're not building the whole page thinking "This is what I'd want law enforcement to know about me, in case they come looking." They're not generally thinking, "I'm putting this here because I'm job hunting." either. It's a *social* network, meaning friends, family and like-minded individuals they consider "brethren" in some fashion. I think anyone trying to use the info from OTHER angles than that need to be very cautious how they interpret what they see.
Anything short of Google exiting China completely would just emphasize China's stance that they can censor anyone, any time -- and even the USA will bow to their demands, when push comes to shove.
It's irrelevant if "Bing takes their place", really. This isn't about Bing or Microsoft right now. It's about Google and how THEY will react to being told by a nation how to run a search engine.
If and when Microsoft opportunistically steps in and offers to do what Google refused to do, THEN it will be about Microsoft. We can cross that bridge when we come to it.
Although actually, I'm not clear on why you're so confident this is a move to "destroy state employee unions"? This wouldn't seem to displace any actual state employees. Rather, it makes a change so the contractors they now outsource (instead of actually hiring state employees who would be part of a union) would be substituted with temporary employees, paid half as much as the contractors were costing them.
Personally, I think contractors are generally "bad news" when it comes to government projects. They inflate costs and take advantage of the fact that their paychecks come from the taxpayers. (Once they "win a contract" to complete some project, they know they're getting paid for a while. They can slack off or just learn what they're doing on the job. If the project goes over budget or collapses completely, they just walk away at the end of the contract period, and let other people sort out the mess. Half the time, they even convince the right people that it wasn't their fault, and they get a second chance and more money to try again.)
When you're directly employed by the state, by contrast, your paycheck is subject to being cut off at any time, if you fail to live up to their expectations. Someone else is always happy to interview for the job opening to take your place, and the project as a whole goes on with or without you. If you're successful and save the govt. money or improve its efficiency, that stands to benefit you too. (They're not going to give a contractor a raise for doing a job well.)
I'd like to add that Kaspersky's worthless method of validating their desktop PC client's anti-virus subscription's expiry date is "the wrong way of behaving" too! We have their corporate AV product where I work, and every few weeks, I get a phone call from at least someone who says their anti-virus stopped updating, and keeps popping up a warning about "black.lst" being missing or corrupt. I wind up forcing a manual refresh from the server console and eventually, it realizes it IS still a legally licensed copy and starts working again.
Nice way to treat your paying customers.... make the product randomly quit on you (with an error message that doesn't at all explain what's really going on, no less).
Claiming Reaganomics was a "pyramid scheme" sounds good at first glance, but I don't buy into the theory.
In a classic pyramid scheme, you're looking at ONE entity at the top, making promises of success and fortune to all the people to sign up to work for them at the lower levels. And typically, that "work" includes some arrangement causing the number of people signed up to expand exponentially, as they're encouraged to sign up at least X number of other recruits, collecting some sort of fee or earning some sort of bonus for each one they sign on. Before too long, the visual concept of a pyramid isn't even too accurate anymore, as a more accurate depiction would be a squashed pyramid that's radically wider as it approaches its base.
In a "trickle down theory" as Reagan was advocating, it's more like you're trying to create a huge field of little pyramids. You want to *encourage* people to start their own businesses. And yes, it's true that there will always be a relative few at the top who earn more than the greater number of people comprising the lower layers of these "pyramids", but the people in the "lower layers" aren't prevented from getting out from under one and trying to start their OWN pyramid, where they get to be on top, OR sliding into a layer of an existing pyramid elsewhere, where they're happier with their situation.
To take the analogy a bit further, when you've got this field of pyramids, none of them are fully self-sustaining. They need to exchange resources with each other. So the more of them are out there, successfully "trickling money down", the better the economy is on the whole - because money is going to circulate amongst all of them.
Where did you get the idea that Reagan made claims about "infinite sustained growth", or was this just a conclusion you came to about the process? There are ALWAYS going to be a limited number of resources to go around, and a population limit of so many people on the planet. Nothing is "infinite" in the equation.
IMHO, you can boil everything on the planet down to two different basic philosophies of how wealth should be distributed. One camp advocates attempting to "equalize" everyone, so regardless of our personal efforts, we're all essentially guaranteed an equal share of wealth and resources. The other advocates competition, believing it's not only "ok" but "good and proper" for some people (or even nations) to succeed in claiming larger shares of wealth and resources than others. Oddly enough though, I think you USUALLY find that the leaders of any nation subscribing to the former ideology manage to justify larger shares of said wealth and resources for themselves than for the rest of their citizenry.
Yeah... this is more of a solution than a problem, any way you slice it. Why? Simple... Many of the games they'll deliver to Mac users via Steam will offer cross-platform network play. So regardless of the specs they're constrained to for a native Mac version of the game, it will help keep a title popular having more people playing it. They can always support higher-res graphics capabilities in the Windows version, if they so desire. And if they do? All the more incentive for Apple to start releasing better graphics options for their own systems.
What happens when someone breaks the security on your keyring? They gain access to whatever you've protected by it, obviously. How is this different than a person who gains access to your physical keyring? They gain access to whatever you've got keys for.
In the current "security model", the reality is, most of us protect our property with insurance, really. If someone steals it, a claim is filed and you're compensated for the loss. (You may also qualify for a tax write-off for the loss on the next year's taxes.)
Lock and key technology is really a VERY weak form of protection. Look up the art of "lock bumping" on YouTube sometime. You can find numerous videos illustrating a technique that defeats most locks in seconds, and doesn't even require any traditional "lock picking skills".
I think it's fair to say that an electronic keyring built into, say, one's iPhone, is no less secure than the traditional method. At least with the iPhone, you can set up a PIN for access to the phone itself. So someone stealing or randomly finding your lost phone would have to break that before they could even get to a control panel allowing them to enter PIN codes to use with your electronic locks. When they find my physical keyring, the biggest issue they have is trying all the keys to see which one fits a given lock of mine.... and many can be ruled out just by seeing their physical dimensions make them unsuitable.
Initially, these automobile black boxes weren't even intended for use as "accident scene reconstruction aids". They started out as equipment the auto makers installed for their own internal use. (It makes a useful tool for their engineers and quality people to examine post-crash data. EG. The speed a car was traveling at time of impact, to see if their "5MPH bumper" was really holding up as intended at the rated speed.) Like most things though, as soon as people figured out they were able to collect and store this data, their eyes lit up and they all wanted a piece of it for their own purposes (government, lawyers, car insurance companies, etc.).
Now, I'm pretty sure this will pan out in the end with a federal govt. mandated "standard" for black boxes for ALL cars and trucks sold in the country, with a list of required data they must keep and a length of time they must snapshot all of it. (And given today's government, I think it's safe to say they'll throw in a new law, for good measure, that makes it a serious crime to tamper with the box or disable it.)
To be honest, yes, I think Toyota was hiding some information in some of these past court cases. They've said too many inconsistent things about the data they supposedly do or don't collect for me to believe their black boxes were changed around that often, or failed to collect obviously relevant data they claimed they weren't collecting at that time.) But like the O.P. said, all of this is just "smoke and mirrors" over the REAL issue of consumer privacy.
Reality is, folks: No matter WHAT some hidden recorder box captures in your vehicle as you drive, if the car has a serious design flaw and something goes wrong, people get injured or DIE. No black box in a car has EVER saved a person's life in an accident.
First and foremost, why do apps like Photoshop hang the system for 10 seconds when the default is set to an offline network printer? Is that Photoshop's fault, really? No, it's an inherent problem/defect in the way Windows handles network devices! There's no reason it should take a computer 10 seconds (of CPU intensive behavior, to the point it hangs the app running in the foreground!) to figure out a specific network device isn't online! Why have so many people decided this is "acceptable" for so long?
As for giving error messages AFTER a task is completed? Really, it depends on the type of task -- but a message telling them the printer wasn't connected so the job will print when it's re-attached? Even if they click past that, assuming it doesn't apply - they should get a clue when their print job never appears.
I agree that people should be smart enough to follow basic instructions. They can handle things like a "fuel low" indicator on a car, because it's very basic. A warning lamp illuminates, usually right on top of the gauge monitoring the level of fuel remaining - and it's pretty easy for anyone to make the connection that it's trying to call your attention to the state of that gauge. If only software errors were so straight-forward!
I think the core problem is, perhaps, with the mindset of most software developers. They think logically and prefer a computer to immediately notify them about exactly what's wrong, as soon as an issue arises. They're also accustomed to the traditional way errors are reported, and feel most comfortable making things stick to "tried and true" methods.
The typical user, however, doesn't see any of that as advantageous or even sensible.
Take the example you mentioned, where your users were clicking through a dialog that detects hardware is missing, and then complaining about the main UI coming up and telling them the hardware is not connected. To a user, they've got a specific process they want the machine to complete, and they'd like to go through the required steps they memorized to do the process without any unexpected interruptions in the middle of the input. Such interruptions lead to them "clicking through" the boxes without reading them.
So what would improve this? I think users would like computers to ignore error conditions until they're done with all input related to performing an operation, for starters. Don't want them to click through a warning dialog? Ok... then don't present them with it until the end. (EG. If a printer is disconnected, either notify them of this state BEFORE they even begin inputting anything into the portion of your application that generates printed reports, or hold off until they're finished and they click "print". At that point, give them a friendly error telling them the printer seems to be disconnected, and their print job will complete automatically, once they re-attach it.)
On the same note, *friendly* error messages are key, too. I can't begin to count the number of times I've received an error dialog box in an application that told me nothing useful. I know something just went wrong in the program, but that's about it. Some apps like to dump a bunch of numerical error codes at the user, with expectations that somehow, this data will get forwarded on to one of the programmers who actually understands it. In reality? There's a near 0% chance of that ever happening! The developers at most companies are insulated from the end-users by layers of "customer service and support" people. And what about apps no longer being actively supported at all? Their developers have moved on and probably don't even REMEMBER what those numerical error codes mean anymore if you COULD contact them!
It's no wonder users just "click through" the error boxes these days! They're conditioned to expect the messages do nothing to help them.
To be honest, I'm caught in the middle of this "Big pharma? Good or evil?" debate.... On one hand, sure, I agree with you that many people employed in the pharmaceutical industry want to do good, and aren't part of some agenda to kill people and boost stock prices But let's face the facts. That's almost a universal truth, when you start talking about individuals you've singled out in ANY company. It also holds true for the military. (Talk to a U.S. solider who was deployed to Iraq, sometime. Chances are, he signed up for the service NOT because he had some agenda in his head, but simply because it paid pretty well in a bad economy - and he's trying to take care of a family.)
What you always have to examine is what direction the company is headed, on the whole. That's where I start to see the other side of the debate. It's pretty easy (and common) to hire thousands or even millions of employees who practically ALL believe they're doing "good", while the end result is decidedly "evil". Some of the big pharmaceutical firms come from fairly "tainted" backgrounds, too.
Take, for example, Bayer Corp. Today, you think of them mainly as providers of aspirin... but in WWII, they were cranking out mustard gas, military grade chlorine and phosgene for Germany. In fact, they were stripped of their right to trademark aspirin after WWII in many nations due to their direct involvement in the war.
I actually still work full-time for an employer who has a unionized shop. So even though I work in I.T., in their office, we qualify to join in on the union's health care program. Nonetheless, it's still actually a little bit cheaper for me to opt out of their insurance and pay for my own with a Blue Choice PPO policy. (The union's insurance plan sounds pretty good at first, until you read all the fine print and realize it has a "lifetime limit" hidden in it, which could really screw people over if they were in the hospital for cancer or something, and hit the limit all of a sudden.)
My rates have gone up every December since I bought the plan, but it's typically been about a $40/month increase when they've done it. Not happy about it, but still competitive with what my employer wants to take out of my paychecks for their plan.
On the other hand, I didn't have any pre-existing conditions to deal with either. I think the people who do are the ones who generally find they can't get a decent price on an individual health plan.
I was watching some documentary type TV show a few years ago, talking about some of the largest man-made structures ever built. One was a gigantic bridge over water. They interviewed one of the engineers, asking him how he was able to conceptualize something so massive, and successfully get it completed. He, matter-of-factly said, "It's really no different than building a much smaller bridge. Once you know the principles involved for building one, you just start multiplying everything and using a lot bigger parts."
I think that's probably true for most things, really. People get so "awestruck" by huge things, they sometimes forget that they were accomplished by people who just applied the same principles you'd apply to successfully do it on a much smaller scale, and scaled things up from there. So there isn't much of a valid reason to fear thinking big.
The boogey man that is "nuclear energy" is really more about the fear that it MIGHT hurt a *lot* of people simultaneously, in ugly ways. All the injuries and deaths from coal mining don't really bother people much, because they're limited to people who volunteered to accept that job. (And we've all long been told that it's a dangerous one.)
A nuclear reactor massively failing conjures up visions of people dying horrible deaths from radiation poisoning and kids being born with 6 fingers, and a food supply that's rendered unsafe for use for decades.... It certainly would be expected to spread to many people beyond just the employees of said power plant.
All that being said, though? I have no problems with nuclear power. I think it's really our future for clean energy, and as others have said -- "nuclear waste" is really just left-over energy we've chosen not to harness and use. Eventually, one would hope they'd address that.
I guess the optimistic side of me thinks of it another way, though. In the last 30 years, we've learned a lot about how to safely and efficiently build nuclear reactors. Hopefully one that starts out being built today will be magnitudes better than ones we'd have in operation now, if we were in a rush to build them earlier.
Obviously, you can't just wait around forever with the excuse that "we'll have a better one developed next year"... but at the same time, our other energy sources have held out for us this long, and it doesn't look like we're going to deplete them within 10 years or less. So perhaps now is a great time to start building one, so it can go online right when it starts really being needed the most?
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You're just not interpreting it properly....
The only reason it has all those job classifications is because that's what the people surveyed reported as their respective titles.
If you notice a significant difference in salary on there between several different titles that in your opinion all describe the same work you do, then maybe it's a hint that your resume should be referring to yourself with the most favorable one of those titles?
My current job gave me a title of "Network Supervisor", which isn't even on their list ... so what do I pick? I'm often referred to as the "Network Manager", at least by people trying to reach me to discuss technical things I'm trying to take care of in the typical work-day. So I gave that one a shot. It showed the average for people in my part of the country as about double what I'm being paid currently. BUT, it also warned me that the sample size for that description was only 11 participants ... so not a lot to really go on.
Ultimately, I consider the fact that my job doesn't really ever expect me to come in during "off hours". (We don't run 24 hours/7 days, and if people aren't here and a computer crisis happens, nobody will know anyway until they come back in and find out it's down.) It's a small business, too, so I know they can't afford the salaries some places pay. But it's relatively low-stress, MOST of the time, and they're flexible about letting me come in later than usual because of my kid and having to get her to school first. If you need to take a long lunch or what-not, you can usually just do that too, without any real worries. Things like that have value to me beyond the rate of pay.
I think you're right about much of what you said, but recommending people just walk away from their homes if they're "underwater any significant amount" isn't the most responsible thing. Our country is in such bad shape right now, partially because of people with this attitude of "I'll just walk away from what I owe as soon as I don't like the terms anymore that I agreed to initially!"
Granted, there are plenty of exceptions out there. I recently read about a Hispanic family in California, for example, who spent about $440,000 for a home in a new "village" that had its "family friendliness" as a major selling point. They had several kids and he wanted to invest in their future - so they weren't being raised in a bad neighborhood with high crime, drugs, etc.
Well, with the recession, almost everyone in the village filed for bankruptcy and was foreclosed on. His home is now worth well under $200,000 and it'd be impossible to find a buyer right now if he wanted to sell at that kind of loss. Everyone living around him is a drug dealer or "shady" in some manner or another. He said someone already smashed in his family room window one night, and tried to steal his work van another time.
In a case like his, yeah - walking away is the only sensible option left to him, really. (He said he already tried to renegotiate his mortgage with the lender, but they refused to help him.) Basically, he tried to do the right thing and kept up his end of the deal this whole time, but he can't help the fact that everyone else around him didn't, leaving him hanging out to dry. And it's not just about him. It's about the safety and welfare of his whole family.
All in all though, I suspect the majority of Slashdot readers who are in technical fields aren't in this drastic of a situation. A short sale is probably a much better recommendation for them, if they really feel they can't go on with the housing deal they're in. At least that way, the house gets an actual buyer who has plans to get it re-occupied in some manner (often renting out to low income families as section 8). It's not just a case of letting it sit, empty, while the bank gets struck trying to figure out what to do with it, and your credit rating is decimated.
You might be right, but this is such a tired, worn argument that has a lot of little holes in it....
First of all, I don't see how Apple is "moving us towards closed computer environments" when every single one of their desktop, all-in-one, or portable computers runs Mac OS X, a full-fledged operating system allowing people to compile and run whatever code they like. Nothing "closed" about it. What does Apple sell that's "closed"? Seems to only be electronic gadgets/devices to me, like cellphones, MP3 players or set-top TV boxes. The iPad is NOT supposed to be a full-blown computer. It's a large iPod Touch. Apple sells a whole line of laptops, including the ultra-thin and light "Macbook Air" for people who want a portable computer. An iPad is in a category of its own, really.... trying to offer an option someplace just "under" carrying a portable computer around. It focuses a lot more on media consumption/enjoyment than on media creation or modification.
Microsoft's Zune or XBox 360 aren't any more "open" than the iPad....
But second, jailbreaking is great, IMHO. It lets technologically savvy individuals do more with a given device than the original manufacturer really intended (or was willing to provide official support for). I liken it to the people selling aftermarket performance upgrades for a car. If you buy them and put them on, you get more horsepower and torque out of a given engine, but it also often leads to voiding the vehicle's warranty. Some people will have no interest in tinkering with that stuff, because they're content with the vehicle as-is, and value their warranty over the claimed improvements. Others will say "Warranty? So what?! I'll take my chances!" and happily do the upgrades. (Heck, many of them are designed so they can easily be removed before having a vehicle serviced, so you can try to hide the fact you ever used them.) I don't really fault Apple for putting some artificial limitations in their products. Some of it allowed them to work favorable deals with AT&T, who they initially needed as a partner to make their iPhone a success. And some of it is simply to help them pad their profit-margins as they move forward with a long-term "road map" for future releases. (EG. Why allow a bluetooth keyboard to pair with the iPhone, if you knew that down the road, you wanted to release a device with a larger display and one where such a feature would be deemed more useful for daily use? Leaving it out won't really be a "deal breaker" causing the device to lose sales, and on the upside, will seem like another "new feature/improvement" to get buy-in on the new product. That's why the iPad can now do it, though it runs the same basic OS as the iPhone.) So fine, let the hackers find ways to unlock this stuff, for those interested, while letting Apple retain their basic design plans ... Win, win in my book.
I agree with you, other than your assertion that an act of selflessness is "largely incompatible with" our individualistic culture.
I say that because making sacrifices for concepts like freedom and liberty should be motivated by an individual's concern for his/her own children, friends and relatives, as much as anything.
The *real* problem is the apathy you see from people who feel like the problems "don't affect anyone in their circle of friends/family". That tends to continue right up to the point where someone eventually steps on THEIR toes, and by then, it's usually too late for them.
That's the irony of this whole thing, I guess. You've got so many people trying to explain why the iPad is *not* "just a large iPod touch", yet hardware-wise, that's exactly what it is. The differentiating factor really comes down to the software, though. If you look at it that way, then it's not "just a large iPod touch" after all. Your iPod touch can't run a version of Apple's "Pages" word processing application, nor can it run Keynote presentation software. It doesn't have a nice book-reader application complete with cool animated turning of virtual paper pages as you swipe it. The iPad also has a vastly superior photo management application to anything seen on the iPod Touch or iPhone. (Oh, and don't forget, Apple has always left out the ability to pair up a bluetooth keyboard or mouse to an iPhone or iPod Touch, but it's officially allowed now on the iPad.)
I think some people are underestimating the usefulness of simply increasing the size of a multitouch-capable display on one of these devices. The iPod Touch/iPhone sized display creates a lot of limitations. Some applications just aren't practical on a small screen. Ability to put in a larger battery with a longer run-time is another nice "side effect" of making the device larger.
I think you just described ONE viable path to better health, but not sure all of your statements are "universal truths" either....
EG. You claim that if you "feel full", then you already ate far too much. That implies that our body's mechanism for telling us we're full is defective. Not sure I agree with that, so much as I think our bodies evolved these systems during a period of time when we didn't have such calorie-packed foods to choose from. I'm pretty sure it's possible to feel full by eating a bunch of salad, and yet not have consumed excessive calories in that meal.
There's also that fact that "fast food" places simply lack an interest in offering people healthier choices. Do I think legislation is the answer to that? NO! But when I watch how Subway sandwich shops shot up from relative obscurity to battling it out with McDonalds for the #1 spot in fast-food sales, it tells me a LOT of people are more than happy to patronize a fast food establishment that offers healthier alternatives. All I can figure, though, is that most fast food places find it less expensive to serve up the other stuff. Maybe they have a tougher time keeping the fresh veggies and/or fruits from going bad?
I'll openly admit that by the twisted definition of "software pirate" in popular use today, I qualify. But the interesting thing is, I've bought quite a bit of software over the years too. In relation to my total income, I probably spend a larger percentage on "intellectual property" than the average "I don't pirate!" user out there.
The companies trying to rule with an iron fist of copy protection create much of the problem for those of us who have the means to buy software.
Here's just one recent example. I was asked to help a small business transfer over their data from an older, dying PC to a new replacement PC they purchased. Fine, but the old PC apparently had an "OEM version" of Microsoft Office 2003 Pro installed on it, and they couldn't even locate the original CD for it anymore. Their expectation was that the product would keep on working just fine when I was done transferring it over. (That's what any normal, logical-thinking person would assume, right?) But thanks to Microsoft's product activation and arbitrary rules on what limitations exist on OEM vs. retail copies of their products - they were technically stuck buying a whole new copy of Office to remain "legal" and keep using it like they did before the old PC died.
Considering nobody even sells Office 2003 anymore (well, without a LOT of digging online to find some old stock left-over copy someplace obscure, anyway), they weren't even able to continue using the product if they WERE willing to pay for a new copy. They were basically going to be herded into buying a copy of Office 2007 instead, which they didn't want.
Since I was already getting paid to "make this transfer work without any hassles", my best option was to install a different copy of Office 2003 Pro on the PC, using a pirated key. (If you know where to look, there are Asian web sites out there selling such keys, via email, for about $20-25 a pop. The keys they sell will activate with MS product activation just fine and pass all the tests as being genuine. How they're obtained, I honestly don't know and probably don't want to know. But it's an affordable solution to the problem, even IF Microsoft says it's not legal.)
As to how all this relates to Rapidshare? Well, let's just say that Rapidshare's main function for MOST of its users is to obtain copyrighted software they're seeking for any number of reasons (some more "legitimate" than others). If they turn around and bite that hand that feeds, thinking the "industry" is a better partner to please? They're more than welcome to try, but I think they'll find nobody finds any value in Rapidshare offering up suggestions on how to purchase things they were looking to download for free.
Yeah, sure.... let's twist the truth to suit you.
The Libertarians have exactly HOW many people in political office right now? A major influence or driving force in American government, they're simply not ....
IMHO, we've never truly even HAD a situation where "very little was regulated". What we usually get is some random "deregulation" in one area, while everything related stays under tight government control. Then when it fails, they turn around and say "See! The free market doesn't work!"
Yep.... except it appears Apple is also working hard to address alternate ways to handle some of the input-side with the "gestures" they're so interested in.
I think the gestures, a la Fingerworks that Apple bought out, have a lot of potential - but they require a lot of "thinking outside the box" on the part of the software developers too. Gesture-based input starts to suck when the user starts feeling like he/she has to memorize a bunch of random ones to get anything accomplished. The truly effective gestures, so far, seem to be the ones with parallels in the "real world". Everyone immediately "gets" the idea that you'd pinch your fingers together or spread them apart to shrink or zoom an object on the screen. They're also going to "get" concepts like making a twisting/turning motion with your fingers to spin a virtual dial around on the screen. They're NOT really going to intuitively "get" something like drawing a "Z" with 3 fingers held on the pad though ... so they've got to be really careful when they start trying to come up with more unique movements.
I'm also starting to see a user interface "issue" developing with the iPhone/iPad and other similar devices, where they want to give users a menu bar of some sort, but the screen real-estate just isn't there to leave it on-screen all the time. So they do the "invisible" one that only pops up when you tap or double-tap the right place. That's non-intuitive and leads to frustration when people accidentally make the thing appear, as well as when they have to accidentally discover that one is even being used in a certain place in a program. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I think I like the idea of making apps feel like they have a front and a back side, and an appropriate gesture will "flip them over" like you'd flip a playing card, to see an options screen on the "back side".
Why do people get so upset when they find out that H.R. departments are trying to comb MySpace or Facebook before hiring a candidate? Same idea, but simply a group trying to glean the data for a different purpose.
The thing is, yes - I fully realize law enforcement is going to make use of the tools available to them. If they can see my info on Facebook and they're interested in me, obviously they'll take a peek at it.
BUT, there's a danger here that comes by misinterpreting the data, too. For starters, who's to say someone's profile on a social networking site is an accurate depiction of who they *really* are, vs. a persona they like to project?
EG. I once dated a gal who had a MySpace account that gave a VERY different idea of who she was from reality. It's not that her photos weren't really her, or that she *lied* about anything. It's more that she was trying to be as "hip" and "trendy" as possible on her page. So, despite the fact she was basically an "A" student and spent most of her time studying in grad. school, all of that was conveniently left out, and things that in reality were only minor footnotes in her daily life were accentuated instead. Her photo gallery? Pretty sparse in the way of photos showing her typical clothing and "look", or of pictures of the family. Instead? A whole collection of photos she asked a friend to take one time when she was all "made up" in clothes she didn't usually wear, and trying to do a "photo shoot" type of thing with it. Even her listed "favorite books" and "favorite music" were carefully picked and chosen. Once I knew her a while, I realized she listened to quite a bit of classic rock ... yet she didn't seem to think that was part of the image she wanted to portray on her profile, so it was ignored in favor of the latest alternative and dance bands she also happened to like.
And that's all really just harmless, "fun" stuff. But what about people who are thinking along those same lines when they post the set of 50 crazy, drunk party photos they've got from one of the ONLY times they really went out and partied? What about the people who take an interest in something like computer hacking, so they post a lot of links related to the subject and list those types of books as their favorites? Does that mean they're actually INVOLVED in hacking, or does it mean they're actively trying to STOP hacking (a "white hat" type)?
You have to remember that whether or not people go to the effort to lock their FB or MySpace profiles down as "private" -- they often only have a certain audience in mind. They're not building the whole page thinking "This is what I'd want law enforcement to know about me, in case they come looking." They're not generally thinking, "I'm putting this here because I'm job hunting." either. It's a *social* network, meaning friends, family and like-minded individuals they consider "brethren" in some fashion. I think anyone trying to use the info from OTHER angles than that need to be very cautious how they interpret what they see.
There's also this to consider:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2006/061206seedmoney.htm
I'm not so sure Google, and for that matter, Facebook, aren't essentially bought and paid for by the CIA.
Anything short of Google exiting China completely would just emphasize China's stance that they can censor anyone, any time -- and even the USA will bow to their demands, when push comes to shove.
It's irrelevant if "Bing takes their place", really. This isn't about Bing or Microsoft right now. It's about Google and how THEY will react to being told by a nation how to run a search engine.
If and when Microsoft opportunistically steps in and offers to do what Google refused to do, THEN it will be about Microsoft. We can cross that bridge when we come to it.
Although actually, I'm not clear on why you're so confident this is a move to "destroy state employee unions"? This wouldn't seem to displace any actual state employees. Rather, it makes a change so the contractors they now outsource (instead of actually hiring state employees who would be part of a union) would be substituted with temporary employees, paid half as much as the contractors were costing them.
Personally, I think contractors are generally "bad news" when it comes to government projects. They inflate costs and take advantage of the fact that their paychecks come from the taxpayers. (Once they "win a contract" to complete some project, they know they're getting paid for a while. They can slack off or just learn what they're doing on the job. If the project goes over budget or collapses completely, they just walk away at the end of the contract period, and let other people sort out the mess. Half the time, they even convince the right people that it wasn't their fault, and they get a second chance and more money to try again.)
When you're directly employed by the state, by contrast, your paycheck is subject to being cut off at any time, if you fail to live up to their expectations. Someone else is always happy to interview for the job opening to take your place, and the project as a whole goes on with or without you. If you're successful and save the govt. money or improve its efficiency, that stands to benefit you too. (They're not going to give a contractor a raise for doing a job well.)
I'd like to add that Kaspersky's worthless method of validating their desktop PC client's anti-virus subscription's expiry date is "the wrong way of behaving" too!
We have their corporate AV product where I work, and every few weeks, I get a phone call from at least someone who says their anti-virus stopped updating, and keeps popping up a warning about "black.lst" being missing or corrupt. I wind up forcing a manual refresh from the server console and eventually, it realizes it IS still a legally licensed copy and starts working again.
Nice way to treat your paying customers .... make the product randomly quit on you (with an error message that doesn't at all explain what's really going on, no less).
Claiming Reaganomics was a "pyramid scheme" sounds good at first glance, but I don't buy into the theory.
In a classic pyramid scheme, you're looking at ONE entity at the top, making promises of success and fortune to all the people to sign up to work for them at the lower levels. And typically, that "work" includes some arrangement causing the number of people signed up to expand exponentially, as they're encouraged to sign up at least X number of other recruits, collecting some sort of fee or earning some sort of bonus for each one they sign on. Before too long, the visual concept of a pyramid isn't even too accurate anymore, as a more accurate depiction would be a squashed pyramid that's radically wider as it approaches its base.
In a "trickle down theory" as Reagan was advocating, it's more like you're trying to create a huge field of little pyramids. You want to *encourage* people to start their own businesses. And yes, it's true that there will always be a relative few at the top who earn more than the greater number of people comprising the lower layers of these "pyramids", but the people in the "lower layers" aren't prevented from getting out from under one and trying to start their OWN pyramid, where they get to be on top, OR sliding into a layer of an existing pyramid elsewhere, where they're happier with their situation.
To take the analogy a bit further, when you've got this field of pyramids, none of them are fully self-sustaining. They need to exchange resources with each other. So the more of them are out there, successfully "trickling money down", the better the economy is on the whole - because money is going to circulate amongst all of them.
Where did you get the idea that Reagan made claims about "infinite sustained growth", or was this just a conclusion you came to about the process? There are ALWAYS going to be a limited number of resources to go around, and a population limit of so many people on the planet. Nothing is "infinite" in the equation.
IMHO, you can boil everything on the planet down to two different basic philosophies of how wealth should be distributed. One camp advocates attempting to "equalize" everyone, so regardless of our personal efforts, we're all essentially guaranteed an equal share of wealth and resources. The other advocates competition, believing it's not only "ok" but "good and proper" for some people (or even nations) to succeed in claiming larger shares of wealth and resources than others. Oddly enough though, I think you USUALLY find that the leaders of any nation subscribing to the former ideology manage to justify larger shares of said wealth and resources for themselves than for the rest of their citizenry.
Yeah... this is more of a solution than a problem, any way you slice it. Why? Simple ... Many of the games they'll deliver to Mac users via Steam will offer cross-platform network play. So regardless of the specs they're constrained to for a native Mac version of the game, it will help keep a title popular having more people playing it. They can always support higher-res graphics capabilities in the Windows version, if they so desire. And if they do? All the more incentive for Apple to start releasing better graphics options for their own systems.
What happens when someone breaks the security on your keyring? They gain access to whatever you've protected by it, obviously. How is this different than a person who gains access to your physical keyring? They gain access to whatever you've got keys for.
In the current "security model", the reality is, most of us protect our property with insurance, really. If someone steals it, a claim is filed and you're compensated for the loss. (You may also qualify for a tax write-off for the loss on the next year's taxes.)
Lock and key technology is really a VERY weak form of protection. Look up the art of "lock bumping" on YouTube sometime. You can find numerous videos illustrating a technique that defeats most locks in seconds, and doesn't even require any traditional "lock picking skills".
I think it's fair to say that an electronic keyring built into, say, one's iPhone, is no less secure than the traditional method. At least with the iPhone, you can set up a PIN for access to the phone itself. So someone stealing or randomly finding your lost phone would have to break that before they could even get to a control panel allowing them to enter PIN codes to use with your electronic locks. When they find my physical keyring, the biggest issue they have is trying all the keys to see which one fits a given lock of mine .... and many can be ruled out just by seeing their physical dimensions make them unsuitable.
Initially, these automobile black boxes weren't even intended for use as "accident scene reconstruction aids". They started out as equipment the auto makers installed for their own internal use. (It makes a useful tool for their engineers and quality people to examine post-crash data. EG. The speed a car was traveling at time of impact, to see if their "5MPH bumper" was really holding up as intended at the rated speed.) Like most things though, as soon as people figured out they were able to collect and store this data, their eyes lit up and they all wanted a piece of it for their own purposes (government, lawyers, car insurance companies, etc.).
Now, I'm pretty sure this will pan out in the end with a federal govt. mandated "standard" for black boxes for ALL cars and trucks sold in the country, with a list of required data they must keep and a length of time they must snapshot all of it. (And given today's government, I think it's safe to say they'll throw in a new law, for good measure, that makes it a serious crime to tamper with the box or disable it.)
To be honest, yes, I think Toyota was hiding some information in some of these past court cases. They've said too many inconsistent things about the data they supposedly do or don't collect for me to believe their black boxes were changed around that often, or failed to collect obviously relevant data they claimed they weren't collecting at that time.) But like the O.P. said, all of this is just "smoke and mirrors" over the REAL issue of consumer privacy.
Reality is, folks: No matter WHAT some hidden recorder box captures in your vehicle as you drive, if the car has a serious design flaw and something goes wrong, people get injured or DIE. No black box in a car has EVER saved a person's life in an accident.
Well, there are several issues here, really.
First and foremost, why do apps like Photoshop hang the system for 10 seconds when the default is set to an offline network printer? Is that Photoshop's fault, really? No, it's an inherent problem/defect in the way Windows handles network devices! There's no reason it should take a computer 10 seconds (of CPU intensive behavior, to the point it hangs the app running in the foreground!) to figure out a specific network device isn't online! Why have so many people decided this is "acceptable" for so long?
As for giving error messages AFTER a task is completed? Really, it depends on the type of task -- but a message telling them the printer wasn't connected so the job will print when it's re-attached? Even if they click past that, assuming it doesn't apply - they should get a clue when their print job never appears.
I agree that people should be smart enough to follow basic instructions. They can handle things like a "fuel low" indicator on a car, because it's very basic. A warning lamp illuminates, usually right on top of the gauge monitoring the level of fuel remaining - and it's pretty easy for anyone to make the connection that it's trying to call your attention to the state of that gauge. If only software errors were so straight-forward!
I think the core problem is, perhaps, with the mindset of most software developers. They think logically and prefer a computer to immediately notify them about exactly what's wrong, as soon as an issue arises. They're also accustomed to the traditional way errors are reported, and feel most comfortable making things stick to "tried and true" methods.
The typical user, however, doesn't see any of that as advantageous or even sensible.
Take the example you mentioned, where your users were clicking through a dialog that detects hardware is missing, and then complaining about the main UI coming up and telling them the hardware is not connected. To a user, they've got a specific process they want the machine to complete, and they'd like to go through the required steps they memorized to do the process without any unexpected interruptions in the middle of the input. Such interruptions lead to them "clicking through" the boxes without reading them.
So what would improve this? I think users would like computers to ignore error conditions until they're done with all input related to performing an operation, for starters. Don't want them to click through a warning dialog? Ok ... then don't present them with it until the end. (EG. If a printer is disconnected, either notify them of this state BEFORE they even begin inputting anything into the portion of your application that generates printed reports, or hold off until they're finished and they click "print". At that point, give them a friendly error telling them the printer seems to be disconnected, and their print job will complete automatically, once they re-attach it.)
On the same note, *friendly* error messages are key, too. I can't begin to count the number of times I've received an error dialog box in an application that told me nothing useful. I know something just went wrong in the program, but that's about it. Some apps like to dump a bunch of numerical error codes at the user, with expectations that somehow, this data will get forwarded on to one of the programmers who actually understands it. In reality? There's a near 0% chance of that ever happening! The developers at most companies are insulated from the end-users by layers of "customer service and support" people. And what about apps no longer being actively supported at all? Their developers have moved on and probably don't even REMEMBER what those numerical error codes mean anymore if you COULD contact them!
It's no wonder users just "click through" the error boxes these days! They're conditioned to expect the messages do nothing to help them.
To be honest, I'm caught in the middle of this "Big pharma? Good or evil?" debate.... On one hand, sure, I agree with you that many people employed in the pharmaceutical industry want to do good, and aren't part of some agenda to kill people and boost stock prices But let's face the facts. That's almost a universal truth, when you start talking about individuals you've singled out in ANY company. It also holds true for the military. (Talk to a U.S. solider who was deployed to Iraq, sometime. Chances are, he signed up for the service NOT because he had some agenda in his head, but simply because it paid pretty well in a bad economy - and he's trying to take care of a family.)
What you always have to examine is what direction the company is headed, on the whole. That's where I start to see the other side of the debate. It's pretty easy (and common) to hire thousands or even millions of employees who practically ALL believe they're doing "good", while the end result is decidedly "evil". Some of the big pharmaceutical firms come from fairly "tainted" backgrounds, too.
Take, for example, Bayer Corp. Today, you think of them mainly as providers of aspirin ... but in WWII, they were cranking out mustard gas, military grade chlorine and phosgene for Germany. In fact, they were stripped of their right to trademark aspirin after WWII in many nations due to their direct involvement in the war.
I actually still work full-time for an employer who has a unionized shop. So even though I work in I.T., in their office, we qualify to join in on the union's health care program. Nonetheless, it's still actually a little bit cheaper for me to opt out of their insurance and pay for my own with a Blue Choice PPO policy. (The union's insurance plan sounds pretty good at first, until you read all the fine print and realize it has a "lifetime limit" hidden in it, which could really screw people over if they were in the hospital for cancer or something, and hit the limit all of a sudden.)
My rates have gone up every December since I bought the plan, but it's typically been about a $40/month increase when they've done it. Not happy about it, but still competitive with what my employer wants to take out of my paychecks for their plan.
On the other hand, I didn't have any pre-existing conditions to deal with either. I think the people who do are the ones who generally find they can't get a decent price on an individual health plan.
I was watching some documentary type TV show a few years ago, talking about some of the largest man-made structures ever built. One was a gigantic bridge over water. They interviewed one of the engineers, asking him how he was able to conceptualize something so massive, and successfully get it completed. He, matter-of-factly said, "It's really no different than building a much smaller bridge. Once you know the principles involved for building one, you just start multiplying everything and using a lot bigger parts."
I think that's probably true for most things, really. People get so "awestruck" by huge things, they sometimes forget that they were accomplished by people who just applied the same principles you'd apply to successfully do it on a much smaller scale, and scaled things up from there. So there isn't much of a valid reason to fear thinking big.
The boogey man that is "nuclear energy" is really more about the fear that it MIGHT hurt a *lot* of people simultaneously, in ugly ways. All the injuries and deaths from coal mining don't really bother people much, because they're limited to people who volunteered to accept that job. (And we've all long been told that it's a dangerous one.)
A nuclear reactor massively failing conjures up visions of people dying horrible deaths from radiation poisoning and kids being born with 6 fingers, and a food supply that's rendered unsafe for use for decades.... It certainly would be expected to spread to many people beyond just the employees of said power plant.
All that being said, though? I have no problems with nuclear power. I think it's really our future for clean energy, and as others have said -- "nuclear waste" is really just left-over energy we've chosen not to harness and use. Eventually, one would hope they'd address that.
I guess the optimistic side of me thinks of it another way, though. In the last 30 years, we've learned a lot about how to safely and efficiently build nuclear reactors. Hopefully one that starts out being built today will be magnitudes better than ones we'd have in operation now, if we were in a rush to build them earlier.
Obviously, you can't just wait around forever with the excuse that "we'll have a better one developed next year" ... but at the same time, our other energy sources have held out for us this long, and it doesn't look like we're going to deplete them within 10 years or less. So perhaps now is a great time to start building one, so it can go online right when it starts really being needed the most?