http://www.weblocator.com/attorney/ca/law/c05.html California Finally, consumers should be aware that the three-day "cooling off" period that allows a buyer to cancel a contract within three days does not apply to the purchase of new or used cars. Because the contract cannot be canceled under this consumer protection provision, a buyer should exercise caution before signing any contract for the purchase of a used car.
However... if it is not a car... and at your home... and worth over $25...
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/products/pro03.shtm If you buy something at a store and later change your mind, you may not be able to return the merchandise. But if you buy an item in your home or at a location that is not the seller's permanent place of business, you may have the option. The Federal Trade Commission's (FTC's) Cooling-Off Rule gives you three days to cancel purchases of $25 or more. Under the Cooling-Off Rule, your right to cancel for a full refund extends until midnight of the third business day after the sale.
The Cooling-Off Rule applies to sales at the buyer's home, workplace or dormitory, or at facilities rented by the seller on a temporary or short-term basis, such as hotel or motel rooms, convention centers, fairgrounds and restaurants. The Cooling-Off Rule applies even when you invite the salesperson to make a presentation in your home.
Under the Cooling-Off Rule, the salesperson must tell you about your cancellation rights at the time of sale. The salesperson also must give you two copies of a cancellation form (one to keep and one to send) and a copy of your contract or receipt. The contract or receipt should be dated, show the name and address of the seller, and explain your right to cancel. The contract or receipt must be in the same language that's used in the sales presentation.
Ah. Yea, it's a currently legal smoke mix that several of my friends have now tried over a couple months. I'm very interested but cautious. So far none have shown ill effects. I'll probably order some before the loophole is closed. It sounds a bit more trippy than giggly.
You sound libertarian (a nice philosophy we can thank Hienlien for popularizing). I was libertarian too once but experience changed that.
There are a lot of functions which are better handled by the government.
Firemen are the obvious case because when we had private fire companies, the results bad. They would sit and watch buildings that hadn't bought fire coverage burn (which then spread to surrounding buildings).
When let unfettered, capitalism basically turns to slavery. Read up on company stores and sweatshops.
Government is good at doing highways (imagine if you could only drive on microsoft highways if you were a customer).
"Government" is a two edged sword. When it's run by citizens, it is a very good thing. But eventually all governments are corrupted by moneyed interests (at which point it pretty much becomes a bad thing). Right now, as a result of reagan (who I voted for) we have gone very hard into business dominated bad government.
Without someone to stand up against corporations they do engage in murder (i'm not going to bother googling it for you- there are many many cases out there), fraud, and any other crime if it makes any sense. It's been pointed out and I believe it is true that businesses are basically sociopaths.
Now, I would be remiss not to point out that business is also good and bad depending on the scale. Small business and capitalism (without lock in markets and which can't control the government) does make prices lower through competition and improves living standards.
For both, it's really a problem of scale. We need to chop down the size of corporations and government. Both are now out of control.
Oh please... what's with this "Window" customer requirement? It's trivial for a thief to break it with a rock. So what exactly is the point of doors and locks????
Apparently all car makers are aiding and abetting by including windows.
http://history.howstuffworks.com/world-war-ii/the-atomic-bomb-and-the-surrender-of-japan.htm The Japanese navy had been destroyed in Leyte Gulf. Japan could no longer import the grain, coal, oil, and vital raw materials needed to sustain its war effort because a large part of its merchant marine had been destroyed and because it was under a tight air and sea blockade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketsu_Go By August 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) had ceased to be an effective fighting force. The only Japanese major warships in fighting order were six aircraft carriers, four cruisers, and one battleship, none of which could be adequately fueled. They could "sustain a force of twenty operational destroyers and perhaps forty submarines for a few days at sea."[20]
http://www.city-data.com/forum/history/223273-what-would-have-happened-if-we.html "Japan in turn was preparing for the invasion, Ketsu-Go. They had been preparing since 1944. They actually had no shortage of suicide aircraft, thousand of cheap planes, essentially flying bombs. Their plan was to launch massive kamakaze aircraft attacks (from hidden airstrips) at allied vessels to smash the invasion fleet. They estimated they could attack and damage 800 vessels in one strike. If a landing was achieved, the first one in November was aimed at Kyushu, Japan had some 800,000 soldiers to fight. These aren't woman and children, but hard core fanatical soldiers. Organized divisions, tank brigades. etc. They had already stockpiled supplies and ammo. Beyond the beaches, Japan is rocky and mountainous, a natural defendable fort."
---
This was total war. We were already killing civilians. They were killing civilians (and raping them, using them as human batteries/slaves). Both sides were killing without quarter and taking no prisoners. They didn't understand about fallout (and given chernobyl and the 600ish excess deaths in 60 years - I feel like we grossly overweight fallout risk. Cigarette smoking and driving automobiles during that 1945-2010 have probably produced more deaths than fallout).
Read the articles. The lives saved were based on calculations from known battles. They were cold bloodedly estimating the casulties per square mile and per day based on what the japanese had already done. The japanese had 15 divisions, in hardened defense positions and pretty much knew exactly where the americans had to land so it was at least as bad as D-day.
"The Battle of Okinawa, the very last pitched battle against Japan, ran up 72,000 casualties in 82 days, of whom 12,510 were killed or missing. (This is conservative, because it excludes several thousand U.S. soldiers who died after the battle indirectly from their wounds.) The entire island of Okinawa is 464 square miles; to take it, therefore, cost the United States 407 soldiers (killed or missing) for every 10 square miles of island.
If the U.S. casualty rate during the invasion of Japan had only been 5 percent as high per square mile as it was at Okinawa, the United States would still have lost 297,000 soldiers (killed or missing)."
I don't really respect our modern politicians and think they are a bunch of lying scumbags. But I do respect those military and political men of world war 2. It was way too serious for the kinds of games we see them playing today.
"Since "[a few months after the bombings]" then, more have died from leukemia (231 observed) and solid cancers (334 observed) attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bombs."
Most of the 150k civilian casualties pre nuclear weapon were apparently from firebombings of japanese cities like Dresden. These had had no apparent affect on morale and the japanese (including school children) were ramping up for a extended resistance.
I was watching some shows on Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal and the japanese took extremely high casualties (10:1 or worse) and still felt the bushido ethic and charges against superior firepower made sense. Americans were much more pragmatic about this kind of thing. There was a really cool bit about this one guy who carried a fighter plane machine gun with a rifle stock mounted on it and kept clearing out japanese bunkers with it (apparently firing 1,100 rounds per second into the gun slit turns the inside of a bunker into a killing zone). Then he'd run back barefoot, picking up a wounded marine and take them to the beach, get more ammo and do it again. Crazy stuff.
Anyway, the "to the death" attitude was definitely there. If they had used better tactics, it would have been pretty terrible.
Dropping two nuclear bombs on Japanese civilians saved the lives of an estimated 300,000 to 1,000,000 japanese soldiers and 250,000 to 750,000 japanese civilians.
(http://socyberty.com/history/did-we-have-to-nuke-japan/) "In the South Pacific, our combatant kill rate, Japanese to Allies was about ten to one. We killed about ten of their soldiers for each one of ours. Had we lost 100,000 men in the landings, not an impossible number, and continued that kill ratio, we would have killed nearly one million Japanese soldiers. More realistic numbers based on Normandy would have been 30,000 American deaths mapping to over 300,000 Japanese Soldiers killed. Notice I am careful to use the word soldiers. I remind you we would have killed a significant number of Japanese civilians, easily more than one quarter of a million had they not resisted the Americans, based on the losses of French and Dutch civilians in the taking of Europe from the Nazis. Had they resisted, the toll would have easily tripled based on the civilian casualties at Stalingrad. The pre-invasion air assault and shore bombardment would also have taken its toll. Even if those numbers are halved, the losses at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still much lower!"
Hiroshima was chosen because of its large size, its being "an important army depot" and the potential that the bomb would cause greater destruction because the city was surrounded by hills which would have a "focusing effect". Nagasaki was the backup target when Kokura (and it's arsenal) was clouded in.
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Dresden alone (by comparison) is currently estimated at about 25,000 casualties (so half of Nagasaki but still a lot of civilians).
Germany 2million (ten times the civilian casualties resulting from a clean, non nuclear defeat) Japan 350,000 (--- when you consider 200,000 of those were the two nuclear bombs...) Rumania 400,000 (1/3rd the population of Japan, higher civilian casualty rates)
---
We have done a lot of scummy crap. And you know what- most of it seems like it turned out badly. So it makes you wonder why they keep doing it?
My theory is that we want to keep a lot of the world balkanized to prevent more superpowers from arising.
No... because if the older employee asks for the lower salary then they are not hired because they are "over qualified".
Listen, look at the job ads. Sometimes the companies are actually stupid enough to say "looking for a young, dynamic, blah blah blah". If not, they'll use code like, "must work to a deadline", "cutting edge technology shop", "fun casual atmosphere" which stands for "young people come here- old people go away".
HP is currently only hiring people who graduated college in the last 2 or 3 years. The rational is "because then the experience is current!" but the real reason is age discrimination. Indian companies in america are extremely insistent on getting your high school graduation date (not your college graduation date) on your resume. it's a *requirement* to submit a resume for some of the larger companies.
Now--- what possible value is knowing a person's high school graduation date????
The only possible valid response to a requirement like that is to lie or sue.
The biggest problem I see developing is the inability to say "no" to management.
It has probably cost us at least $600,000 over the last year. And the resulting "work" is being quietly shifted lower and lower on the status reports and no one talks about it any more.
This was after three groups of experienced company programmers had told the executives three different times that the project was 2 million dollars in hardware and 2400, 3800 and 4000 hours of work. The latest executive said, "no, you just don't understand, we can use existing hardware, drop disaster recovery, and get it done in 600 hours". The indians said yes... then extended it to about 1100 hours. And finally produced a working model which will never be used. (a big reason being that the executive did a double backflip and both wanted to go without disaster recovery yet have continuous availability if there was a disaster).
There are many other things we could have used the money for.
There is an artificial shortage of doctors maintained by restricting admissions to medical schools and even more so by restricting the total number of medical schools as well as increasing tuition for medical school much faster than costs.
By Mark J. Perry|Jun 24, 2009, 2:47 PM|Author's Website
Greg Mankiw features the chart below on physicians' salaries in the U.S. vs. various European countries and Canada, showing that MDs in the U.S. make about $200,000, which is between 2 and 5 times as much as doctors make in other countries. How do we explain the significantly higher physician salaries in the U.S.?
The Medical Cartel: Why are MD Salaries So High?
One explanation is the restriction on the number of medical schools, and the subsequent restriction on the number of medical students, and ultimately the number of physicians. Consider the difference between law schools and medical schools.
In 1963, there were only 135 law schools in the U.S. (data here), and now there are 200, which is almost a 50% increase over the last 45 years in the number of U.S. law schools. Unfortunately, we've witnessed exactly the opposite trend in the number of medical schools. There are 130 medical schools in the U.S. (data here), which is 22% fewer than the number of medical schools 100 years ago (166 medical schools, source), even though the U.S. population has increased by 300%.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/archives/fm/08-90.html "During the great depression, as Milton Friedman notes, the AMA ordered the remaining medical schools to admit fewer students, and every school followed instructions. If they didn't, they risked losing their AMA accreditation."
During world war II, they needed doctors quickly and they created so many (about 16,000) that there was a glut until the 1970's.
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The nursing shortage takes care of itself because pay sucks and hours are terrible. You work long enough to get experience to go work somewhere besides a hospital. A friend of mine's wife is an RN and basically works when she wants to now that she has left the hospital system.
My current phone is breaking and I have insurance so I go into the store.
"I'm sorry sir, you have 70 days to go on your two year contract. If you want, we can give you an insurance replacement phone- that will be $50 deductible"
So here I am, having been a customer since close to 2000, and instead of seeing this as a GOLDEN opportunity to lock me in for another 2 year contract, they are going to stiff me.
If I'm going to have to wait 70 days, I might as well go to another company. Which is what I'll be doing in (now) 53 days.
--- On a related note, I have been a DISH customer for a while now. HD, DVR, Lots of non premium channels. It got up to $72 a month. I said, "this is a bit high, I want to reduce it to $60" so they cut some obscure service and i was happy. Then next frakkin month, a $10 increase. Then next month a $3 increase. Here I am back at $73 with less service than I had two months ago.
So I have switched to DirectTV. Dish is canceled as of the next billing period. Now I'm paying under $40. And I get some premium services free for three months.
But I'm just about ready to kill TV entirely.
At $100 a month, that's $12,000 per decade. You know-- A CAR. or five NICE vacations. or half of a really nice car. Cable is worth $40 a month. It's not worth $100 a month. Especially after I edit down the 500 channels to what I actually watch-- it's about 34 channels.
Design your code so it can be maintained. Design your code for growth. Design your code for debugging. Design your code so you only write 20% as much code. Code for risks first- do the easy stuff last.
Young pups seem to very quickly code things that do not scale, is hard to debug in production, and fails as soon as the number of transactions goes up by 20% from the specs. Which is what the old geezers did 20 years ago.
They are also murderous about writing huge amounts of unnecessary code because they have no design experience. Patterns and so on are helping them some by externalizing common programming experience and coding solutions but still... Indians were good back in 2002-2004 but lately they are doing the same things which means to me that we must be getting more college grads (and trade school grades) where as previously we were getting masters degree types with more experience.
Without guidance, a young person will write code which isn't documented... OR is overdocumented in areas you don't need it... or stupidly documented (' add 1 to the counter) with teeny variable names "tw = p1 + b" instead of "tableWindow = row 1 + offset" instead of "invoiceTableWindow = (startOfPeriod + weekOffset)"
They will write routines which are only used once. They will write code without optional transaction recording to log files so when someone says "why did this happen" your only answer is, "we don't know".
And worst, they'll write 80% of the project before finding out something is impossible or impractical.
The ideal matchup seems to be one senior person and two to four junior people. The senior person uses the juniors and code monkeys and enforces good standards and practices. High Productivity + High Quality. When we have contractors they do this-- but at a 20:1 ratio instead of a 2or4:1 ratio. The results are predictable.
Not sure exactly what would be "trippy" vs "couch lock". In the show, when they gave her the one with more CBD, she was laughing and very happy. When they gave her the one with high thc, she got very wierded out, paranoid, and unhappy. This had also happened to her the first day in Amsterdam when she took two hits and then felt nothing so kept hitting until she started feeling it (ignoring the advice of the coffee shop owner).
I thought K2 didn't show up on pot tests so I can't see how it would be a hybrid of two pot varieties and also it is legal (to the irritation of the police and so probably will be illegal soon).
I hope the trends will continue and pot will be legal in short order. Booze is too hard on my blood sugar and triglycerides.
HP is very specifically engaging in age discrimination right now.
In part because 20 years ago they engaged in age discrimination and so there is a huge block of people the same age headed towards retirement at the same time.
The way they are doing it is by only hiring people who have graduated in the last few years (which is 99% under 28).
Older programmers will typically not repeat the same naive mistakes again.
OTH
A large percentage of older programmers are unable to learn a new programming model. For example: Object Oriented coding. There are some who just do not get it and will write procedural code in object oriented languages.
by and large, programming as a field in general has such low status and poor conditions that I can't recommend it to anyone any more. Go into programming if you
a) want to likely suffer terrible age discrimination and a truncated career. b) want to spend a lot of your time learning new ways of doing the same work* c) want substandard pay for the effort put into the degree. d) want to compete with people in third world countries who feel like kings on $15,000 a year. e) want to be forced to work nights f) want to be forced to get up at 5am g) want to be forced to work holidays h) want to be forced to not take a vacation over one week long i) want to have no respect from the business at all (unless your business is selling software-- but then see EA so not even then) j) want to be forced to implement stupid solutions that you know will fail because some lame brained executive won't accept your input.
* Don't get me wrong- some people like learning. But unlike plumbing, accounting, legal work, management, heck even engineering (which has a lot of training but minimal compared to IT), in IT, every 3-5 years, you pretty much have to toss out everything you know, learn the new "big thing" while ruthlessly ignoring good but dead end jobs.
Oh and k) have a harder time finding a spouse given your lower status AND have a harder time keeping one given your unreasonable work hours and substandard pay and general societal low status.
By having fiber, certain high speed businesses become possible. So a dozen of your neighbors start running internet businesses. Based on the volume, UPS sets up a shipping center in your area creating a few more jobs. The post office hires an extra worker. The local deli sells a few more sandwiches and hires another server.
The money from these businesses funnels into your community and pays for products that keep you in a job, pay taxes to buy your grandmother a new hip via medicare, attracts a new dentist to town who fixes your sibling sally's teeth.
---
The same argument could be made for schools, highways, etc.
In the old days, when businesses were not run by leeches, it might be more efficient to have a business do these activities. But, right now, the cost of business (health insurance, toll roads, garbage collection) is higher than government for many items so it makes sense to take the business back from companies where the CEO is taking in 4,000,000 a year and collectively do it with your neighbors through the government.
The government is also grossly overpaid in many cases (both pensions and salaries) so get out and vote against incumbants.
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot whipping off your sunglasses and saying, "looks like they got... burned".
So that hasn't been presented in a case yet? It seems pretty obvious.
You have a computer log of exactly how many copies you distributed.
Don't let the pigs draw you down in the mud.
It makes them happy and you get muddy.
The constitution failed to a bushel overflow attack in 1942.
Ever since then, government hackers have been putting all kinds of unapproved patches to government limits, behavior, and authority through that hole.
The state commerce clause needs to be reiterated and rephrased back to its original power.
Texas
http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/is-there-a-3-day-cooling-off-period-after-a-car-ha-5545.html
THERE IS NO 3 DAY CHANCE TO GET OUT OF A CAR PURCHASE IN TEXAS
http://www.weblocator.com/attorney/ca/law/c05.html
California
Finally, consumers should be aware that the three-day "cooling off" period that allows a buyer to cancel a contract within three days does not apply to the purchase of new or used cars. Because the contract cannot be canceled under this consumer protection provision, a buyer should exercise caution before signing any contract for the purchase of a used car.
However... if it is not a car... and at your home... and worth over $25...
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/products/pro03.shtm
If you buy something at a store and later change your mind, you may not be able to return the merchandise. But if you buy an item in your home or at a location that is not the seller's permanent place of business, you may have the option. The Federal Trade Commission's (FTC's) Cooling-Off Rule gives you three days to cancel purchases of $25 or more. Under the Cooling-Off Rule, your right to cancel for a full refund extends until midnight of the third business day after the sale.
The Cooling-Off Rule applies to sales at the buyer's home, workplace or dormitory, or at facilities rented by the seller on a temporary or short-term basis, such as hotel or motel rooms, convention centers, fairgrounds and restaurants. The Cooling-Off Rule applies even when you invite the salesperson to make a presentation in your home.
Under the Cooling-Off Rule, the salesperson must tell you about your cancellation rights at the time of sale. The salesperson also must give you two copies of a cancellation form (one to keep and one to send) and a copy of your contract or receipt. The contract or receipt should be dated, show the name and address of the seller, and explain your right to cancel. The contract or receipt must be in the same language that's used in the sales presentation.
(lists of various exceptions).
I don't see this pointed out in the top page.
When ubisoft stops supporting the servers, your game dies... forever.
Meanwhile, I am still using games from 1996 occasionally when the urge hits me.
But "total annihilation" really was a best of breed even back then.
I didn't make the hop to the new 3d version("Spring").
Ah. Yea, it's a currently legal smoke mix that several of my friends have now tried over a couple months. I'm very interested but cautious. So far none have shown ill effects. I'll probably order some before the loophole is closed. It sounds a bit more trippy than giggly.
You sound libertarian (a nice philosophy we can thank Hienlien for popularizing). I was libertarian too once but experience changed that.
There are a lot of functions which are better handled by the government.
Firemen are the obvious case because when we had private fire companies, the results bad. They would sit and watch buildings that hadn't bought fire coverage burn (which then spread to surrounding buildings).
When let unfettered, capitalism basically turns to slavery. Read up on company stores and sweatshops.
Government is good at doing highways (imagine if you could only drive on microsoft highways if you were a customer).
"Government" is a two edged sword. When it's run by citizens, it is a very good thing. But eventually all governments are corrupted by moneyed interests (at which point it pretty much becomes a bad thing). Right now, as a result of reagan (who I voted for) we have gone very hard into business dominated bad government.
Without someone to stand up against corporations they do engage in murder (i'm not going to bother googling it for you- there are many many cases out there), fraud, and any other crime if it makes any sense. It's been pointed out and I believe it is true that businesses are basically sociopaths.
Now, I would be remiss not to point out that business is also good and bad depending on the scale. Small business and capitalism (without lock in markets and which can't control the government) does make prices lower through competition and improves living standards.
For both, it's really a problem of scale. We need to chop down the size of corporations and government. Both are now out of control.
Oh please... what's with this "Window" customer requirement? It's trivial for a thief to break it with a rock. So what exactly is the point of doors and locks????
Apparently all car makers are aiding and abetting by including windows.
http://history.howstuffworks.com/world-war-ii/the-atomic-bomb-and-the-surrender-of-japan.htm
The Japanese navy had been destroyed in Leyte Gulf. Japan could no longer import the grain, coal, oil, and vital raw materials needed to sustain its war effort because a large part of its merchant marine had been destroyed and because it was under a tight air and sea blockade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketsu_Go
By August 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) had ceased to be an effective fighting force. The only Japanese major warships in fighting order were six aircraft carriers, four cruisers, and one battleship, none of which could be adequately fueled. They could "sustain a force of twenty operational destroyers and perhaps forty submarines for a few days at sea."[20]
http://www.city-data.com/forum/history/223273-what-would-have-happened-if-we.html
"Japan in turn was preparing for the invasion, Ketsu-Go. They had been preparing since 1944. They actually had no shortage of suicide aircraft, thousand of cheap planes, essentially flying bombs. Their plan was to launch massive kamakaze aircraft attacks (from hidden airstrips) at allied vessels to smash the invasion fleet. They estimated they could attack and damage 800 vessels in one strike. If a landing was achieved, the first one in November was aimed at Kyushu, Japan had some 800,000 soldiers to fight. These aren't woman and children, but hard core fanatical soldiers. Organized divisions, tank brigades. etc. They had already stockpiled supplies and ammo. Beyond the beaches, Japan is rocky and mountainous, a natural defendable fort."
---
This was total war. We were already killing civilians. They were killing civilians (and raping them, using them as human batteries/slaves). Both sides were killing without quarter and taking no prisoners.
They didn't understand about fallout (and given chernobyl and the 600ish excess deaths in 60 years - I feel like we grossly overweight fallout risk. Cigarette smoking and driving automobiles during that 1945-2010 have probably produced more deaths than fallout).
---
There's a lot more on Ketsu Go here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/arens/chap4.htm
Note the bit on the Subs.
---
Read the articles. The lives saved were based on calculations from known battles. They were cold bloodedly estimating the casulties per square mile and per day based on what the japanese had already done. The japanese had 15 divisions, in hardened defense positions and pretty much knew exactly where the americans had to land so it was at least as bad as D-day.
"The Battle of Okinawa, the very last pitched battle against Japan, ran up 72,000 casualties in 82 days, of whom 12,510 were killed or missing. (This is conservative, because it excludes several thousand U.S. soldiers who died after the battle indirectly from their wounds.) The entire island of Okinawa is 464 square miles; to take it, therefore, cost the United States 407 soldiers (killed or missing) for every 10 square miles of island.
If the U.S. casualty rate during the invasion of Japan had only been 5 percent as high per square mile as it was at Okinawa, the United States would still have lost 297,000 soldiers (killed or missing)."
I don't really respect our modern politicians and think they are a bunch of lying scumbags. But I do respect those military and political men of world war 2. It was way too serious for the kinds of games we see them playing today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
"Since "[a few months after the bombings]" then, more have died from leukemia (231 observed) and solid cancers (334 observed) attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bombs."
Most of the 150k civilian casualties pre nuclear weapon were apparently from firebombings of japanese cities like Dresden. These had had no apparent affect on morale and the japanese (including school children) were ramping up for a extended resistance.
I was watching some shows on Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal and the japanese took extremely high casualties (10:1 or worse) and still felt the bushido ethic and charges against superior firepower made sense. Americans were much more pragmatic about this kind of thing. There was a really cool bit about this one guy who carried a fighter plane machine gun with a rifle stock mounted on it and kept clearing out japanese bunkers with it (apparently firing 1,100 rounds per second into the gun slit turns the inside of a bunker into a killing zone). Then he'd run back barefoot, picking up a wounded marine and take them to the beach, get more ammo and do it again. Crazy stuff.
Anyway, the "to the death" attitude was definitely there. If they had used better tactics, it would have been pretty terrible.
Just so you are clear...
Dropping two nuclear bombs on Japanese civilians saved the lives of an estimated 300,000 to 1,000,000 japanese soldiers and 250,000 to 750,000 japanese civilians.
(http://socyberty.com/history/did-we-have-to-nuke-japan/)
"In the South Pacific, our combatant kill rate, Japanese to Allies was about ten to one. We killed about ten of their soldiers for each one of ours. Had we lost 100,000 men in the landings, not an impossible number, and continued that kill ratio, we would have killed nearly one million Japanese soldiers. More realistic numbers based on Normandy would have been 30,000 American deaths mapping to over 300,000 Japanese Soldiers killed. Notice I am careful to use the word soldiers. I remind you we would have killed a significant number of Japanese civilians, easily more than one quarter of a million had they not resisted the Americans, based on the losses of French and Dutch civilians in the taking of Europe from the Nazis. Had they resisted, the toll would have easily tripled based on the civilian casualties at Stalingrad. The pre-invasion air assault and shore bombardment would also have taken its toll. Even if those numbers are halved, the losses at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still much lower!"
---
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp10.shtml
Hiroshima Nagasaki
Total Casualties
135,000 64,000
Hiroshima was chosen because of its large size, its being "an important army depot" and the potential that the bomb would cause greater destruction because the city was surrounded by hills which would have a "focusing effect". Nagasaki was the backup target when Kokura (and it's arsenal) was clouded in.
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Dresden alone (by comparison) is currently estimated at about 25,000 casualties (so half of Nagasaki but still a lot of civilians).
---
Japan got off extremely light with regard to civilian deaths.
http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~jobrien/reference/ob62.html
Germany 2million (ten times the civilian casualties resulting from a clean, non nuclear defeat)
Japan 350,000 (--- when you consider 200,000 of those were the two nuclear bombs...)
Rumania 400,000 (1/3rd the population of Japan, higher civilian casualty rates)
---
We have done a lot of scummy crap. And you know what- most of it seems like it turned out badly. So it makes you wonder why they keep doing it?
My theory is that we want to keep a lot of the world balkanized to prevent more superpowers from arising.
Wierd. Wonder how they are getting away selling it legally in head shops right now then?
I'm talking about what is being sold as "k2 incense". I'm still gathering info at this point but it was looking promising.
No ... because if the older employee asks for the lower salary then they are not hired because they are "over qualified".
Listen, look at the job ads. Sometimes the companies are actually stupid enough to say "looking for a young, dynamic, blah blah blah". If not, they'll use code like, "must work to a deadline", "cutting edge technology shop", "fun casual atmosphere" which stands for "young people come here- old people go away".
HP is currently only hiring people who graduated college in the last 2 or 3 years. The rational is "because then the experience is current!" but the real reason is age discrimination. Indian companies in america are extremely insistent on getting your high school graduation date (not your college graduation date) on your resume. it's a *requirement* to submit a resume for some of the larger companies.
Now--- what possible value is knowing a person's high school graduation date????
The only possible valid response to a requirement like that is to lie or sue.
The biggest problem I see developing is the inability to say "no" to management.
It has probably cost us at least $600,000 over the last year. And the resulting "work" is being quietly shifted lower and lower on the status reports and no one talks about it any more.
This was after three groups of experienced company programmers had told the executives three different times that the project was 2 million dollars in hardware and 2400, 3800 and 4000 hours of work. The latest executive said, "no, you just don't understand, we can use existing hardware, drop disaster recovery, and get it done in 600 hours". The indians said yes... then extended it to about 1100 hours. And finally produced a working model which will never be used. (a big reason being that the executive did a double backflip and both wanted to go without disaster recovery yet have continuous availability if there was a disaster).
There are many other things we could have used the money for.
Half as much code would probably take 1/4 as long to debug.
Big O time for debugging is exponential.
This is why iterative testing is so powerful compared to testing when the code is complete.
There is an artificial shortage of doctors maintained by restricting admissions to medical schools and even more so by restricting the total number of medical schools as well as increasing tuition for medical school much faster than costs.
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/29/business/curbing-the-supply-of-physicians-who-said-we-have-too-many-doctors.html?&pagewanted=all
While [the AMA] is devoted to improving the quality of medical care, education and the profession, it also operates as a cartel to protect the economic interests of its members.
http://wallstreetpit.com/5769-the-medical-cartel-why-are-md-salaries-so-high
The Medical Cartel: Why are MD Salaries So High?
By Mark J. Perry|Jun 24, 2009, 2:47 PM|Author's Website
Greg Mankiw features the chart below on physicians' salaries in the U.S. vs. various European countries and Canada, showing that MDs in the U.S. make about $200,000, which is between 2 and 5 times as much as doctors make in other countries. How do we explain the significantly higher physician salaries in the U.S.?
The Medical Cartel: Why are MD Salaries So High?
One explanation is the restriction on the number of medical schools, and the subsequent restriction on the number of medical students, and ultimately the number of physicians. Consider the difference between law schools and medical schools.
In 1963, there were only 135 law schools in the U.S. (data here), and now there are 200, which is almost a 50% increase over the last 45 years in the number of U.S. law schools. Unfortunately, we've witnessed exactly the opposite trend in the number of medical schools. There are 130 medical schools in the U.S. (data here), which is 22% fewer than the number of medical schools 100 years ago (166 medical schools, source), even though the U.S. population has increased by 300%.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/archives/fm/08-90.html
"During the great depression, as Milton Friedman notes, the AMA ordered the remaining medical schools to admit fewer students, and every school followed instructions. If they didn't, they risked losing their AMA accreditation."
During world war II, they needed doctors quickly and they created so many (about 16,000) that there was a glut until the 1970's.
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The nursing shortage takes care of itself because pay sucks and hours are terrible. You work long enough to get experience to go work somewhere besides a hospital. A friend of mine's wife is an RN and basically works when she wants to now that she has left the hospital system.
I'm not disagreeing entirely. but there are many things which government does a better job than industry.
unfettered capitalism turns evil very easily.
The status thing in particular gets to me.
You can be a buff sports playing 6'er and making $90k as a programmer and a "sales manager" making $70k plus bonus has more status.
So I've been a customer for close to a decade.
My current phone is breaking and I have insurance so I go into the store.
"I'm sorry sir, you have 70 days to go on your two year contract. If you want, we can give you an insurance replacement phone- that will be $50 deductible"
So here I am, having been a customer since close to 2000, and instead of seeing this as a GOLDEN opportunity to lock me in for another 2 year contract, they are going to stiff me.
If I'm going to have to wait 70 days, I might as well go to another company. Which is what I'll be doing in (now) 53 days.
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On a related note, I have been a DISH customer for a while now. HD, DVR, Lots of non premium channels. It got up to $72 a month. I said, "this is a bit high, I want to reduce it to $60" so they cut some obscure service and i was happy. Then next frakkin month, a $10 increase. Then next month a $3 increase. Here I am back at $73 with less service than I had two months ago.
So I have switched to DirectTV. Dish is canceled as of the next billing period.
Now I'm paying under $40. And I get some premium services free for three months.
But I'm just about ready to kill TV entirely.
At $100 a month, that's $12,000 per decade. You know-- A CAR. or five NICE vacations. or half of a really nice car. Cable is worth $40 a month. It's not worth $100 a month. Especially after I edit down the 500 channels to what I actually watch-- it's about 34 channels.
I'm talking about basic things like...
Design your code so it can be maintained.
Design your code for growth.
Design your code for debugging.
Design your code so you only write 20% as much code.
Code for risks first- do the easy stuff last.
Young pups seem to very quickly code things that do not scale, is hard to debug in production, and fails as soon as the number of transactions goes up by 20% from the specs. Which is what the old geezers did 20 years ago.
They are also murderous about writing huge amounts of unnecessary code because they have no design experience. Patterns and so on are helping them some by externalizing common programming experience and coding solutions but still... Indians were good back in 2002-2004 but lately they are doing the same things which means to me that we must be getting more college grads (and trade school grades) where as previously we were getting masters degree types with more experience.
Without guidance, a young person will write code which isn't documented... OR is overdocumented in areas you don't need it... or stupidly documented (' add 1 to the counter) with teeny variable names "tw = p1 + b" instead of "tableWindow = row 1 + offset" instead of "invoiceTableWindow = (startOfPeriod + weekOffset)"
They will write routines which are only used once. They will write code without optional transaction recording to log files so when someone says "why did this happen" your only answer is, "we don't know".
And worst, they'll write 80% of the project before finding out something is impossible or impractical.
The ideal matchup seems to be one senior person and two to four junior people. The senior person uses the juniors and code monkeys and enforces good standards and practices. High Productivity + High Quality. When we have contractors they do this-- but at a 20:1 ratio instead of a 2or4:1 ratio. The results are predictable.
Not sure exactly what would be "trippy" vs "couch lock".
In the show, when they gave her the one with more CBD, she was laughing and very happy. When they gave her the one with high thc, she got very wierded out, paranoid, and unhappy. This had also happened to her the first day in Amsterdam when she took two hits and then felt nothing so kept hitting until she started feeling it (ignoring the advice of the coffee shop owner).
I thought K2 didn't show up on pot tests so I can't see how it would be a hybrid of two pot varieties and also it is legal (to the irritation of the police and so probably will be illegal soon).
I hope the trends will continue and pot will be legal in short order. Booze is too hard on my blood sugar and triglycerides.
HP is very specifically engaging in age discrimination right now.
In part because 20 years ago they engaged in age discrimination and so there is a huge block of people the same age headed towards retirement at the same time.
The way they are doing it is by only hiring people who have graduated in the last few years (which is 99% under 28).
Older programmers will typically not repeat the same naive mistakes again.
OTH
A large percentage of older programmers are unable to learn a new programming model. For example: Object Oriented coding. There are some who just do not get it and will write procedural code in object oriented languages.
by and large, programming as a field in general has such low status and poor conditions that I can't recommend it to anyone any more. Go into programming if you
a) want to likely suffer terrible age discrimination and a truncated career.
b) want to spend a lot of your time learning new ways of doing the same work*
c) want substandard pay for the effort put into the degree.
d) want to compete with people in third world countries who feel like kings on $15,000 a year.
e) want to be forced to work nights
f) want to be forced to get up at 5am
g) want to be forced to work holidays
h) want to be forced to not take a vacation over one week long
i) want to have no respect from the business at all (unless your business is selling software-- but then see EA so not even then)
j) want to be forced to implement stupid solutions that you know will fail because some lame brained executive won't accept your input.
* Don't get me wrong- some people like learning. But unlike plumbing, accounting, legal work, management, heck even engineering (which has a lot of training but minimal compared to IT), in IT, every 3-5 years, you pretty much have to toss out everything you know, learn the new "big thing" while ruthlessly ignoring good but dead end jobs.
Oh and
k) have a harder time finding a spouse given your lower status AND have a harder time keeping one given your unreasonable work hours and substandard pay and general societal low status.
Well let's see..
By having fiber, certain high speed businesses become possible. So a dozen of your neighbors start running internet businesses. Based on the volume, UPS sets up a shipping center in your area creating a few more jobs. The post office hires an extra worker. The local deli sells a few more sandwiches and hires another server.
The money from these businesses funnels into your community and pays for products that keep you in a job, pay taxes to buy your grandmother a new hip via medicare, attracts a new dentist to town who fixes your sibling sally's teeth.
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The same argument could be made for schools, highways, etc.
In the old days, when businesses were not run by leeches, it might be more efficient to have a business do these activities. But, right now, the cost of business (health insurance, toll roads, garbage collection) is higher than government for many items so it makes sense to take the business back from companies where the CEO is taking in 4,000,000 a year and collectively do it with your neighbors through the government.
The government is also grossly overpaid in many cases (both pensions and salaries) so get out and vote against incumbants.