Re:Kerry's Plans Are Simple! Go Read Yourself!
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 3, Insightful
someone had to bring up the flip-flopping
You're talking about Bush, right? I've never seen somebody who could so completely change their position & pretend like they've always thought that way. I'm not sure what you mean about his "vision" - about the only thing I think he's been consistent on is the "us" vs "them" mentality - all of his other messages seem to change depending on whatever his political handlers are telling him to say at any given moment.
Kerry's not a simple person (maybe unlike Bush). Based on what I've read about him, he seems like the type of guy who analyzes all sides of an issue before making a decision about what to do - and what he decides to do may not be the obvious thing that someone else who hasn't thought about the problem as much would have picked.
You can probably guess who I think is better suited to be a world leader.:-) I have no idea why so many people in the American public think Bush is a good leader. I keep having flashbacks to the popularity-contests called student government in high school. Bush is portrayed on TV as a personable-if-somewhat-slow guy, while Kerry seems to be portrayed as some kind of unlikable ivory-tower "Lurch" character. It depresses me to know that many of my fellow Americans don't pick their leaders based on demonstrated merit (or reject them based on demonstrated incompetence).
Re:All I know is...
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Lots of big, simple, promises.
Kerry can't win in the PR campaign about "simple solutions". The system is too complicated for simple solutions, but every time Kerry tries to get into detail about his plans, no one wants to cover it because they can't get any juicy sound bites (& he gets accused of being another ivory-tower egghead proposing an overly complicated solution). So when he "dumbs it down" so that the media will accept it, he gets accused of being condescending to the public, and proposing overly-simple solutions to a complicated problem.
Bush's approach is a lot simpler: let his buddies write the laws. No thinking involved, and he looks like he's getting something done. As long as nobody can find out where the money's going, he can put on a happy face and pretend like everything's going great (because it IS - at least for him & his buddies...).
At least from those awkward moments in interviews where Kerry gets "too complicated", you can tell he's put some thought into the issues.
For instance who is the murderer? The grunt that is fighting to defend/honour his country (or just being forced to fight)? The general who is leading the army? The government that tells the general what to do? The people that voted in the government?
A person who makes a premeditated decision to kill another person is a murderer. It doesn't matter what their reason is.
The _motivation_ for being a murderer is a different subject, but it doesn't change the basic definition of being a murderer.
Where I live they can just nominate some other person (relative, friend...) to help them when they know they have problems.
Interesting - so an abusive spouse or boss could threaten someone to let the abuser "help" them vote? Kind of reduces the effectiveness of anonymous voting.
I think you can be happy if people too stupid to know what this "election" thing actually is stay away from it
It's not necessarily stupidity; in most cases people "trust" their neighbors & leaders not to deliberately mislead them about important things. Unfortunately, a great number of U.S. citizens are currently receiving really rude wake-up calls, when they realize how professional liars can take advantage of that trust.
It remains to be seen how many act on their outrage, and how many will go back to sleep & hope they were just having a bad dream. Unfortunately, in either case, the general level of trust in our society will go down.
War isn't murder, the needless taking of a life is murder.
Nice bit of rationalization there - I don't disagree with you about what the "Good Book" says, but I strongly feel that people who truly believe that war isn't a form of murder are total hypocrites.
It might make it easier to work out your strategy, but does that really improve your chances to win?
If the bot is working off pure probabilities (and if the programmer doesn't try to implement some weird heuristic to try and decide whether or not you were bluffing, which I assume would probably be pretty easy to game), then the bot's behavior isn't going to depend on whether you are bluffing or not; in fact, it will ignore _any_ psychological tactics on your part. In a game like that, isn't the overall winner going to be the entity who can play according to the probabilities the best?
It seems like bluffing wouldn't be very useful against an opponent who paid attention only to probabilities (and being good at detecting such bluffs wouldn't work so well against such an opponent either).
If you have no rights to any of the code you write, then there is no way you can sell it and you go bankrupt.
It's called: use your code to improve your business's efficiency & make money.
For OSS to really excel, there simply has to be a mechanism that allows people to get paid for their contributions to innovation.
Yes, it's called: use your code to improve your business's efficiency & make money.
Oh, you were talking about companies that _SELL_ software as a retail product. Hmmm, well they might be out of luck.
Guess we'll have to go back to the bad old days of regarding software as a tool to be used to improve your main business. Some companies might even be willing to pay a few developers to make software that would help them accomplish their business goals.
Actually, it might have an interesting effect if there were two U.S. federal constitutional amendments: a balanced budget amendment, and an amendment for free legal services for residents of the U.S.
Once the Congress started getting cost-benefit reports back on how much every law & regulation that they are proposing would cost, I have a feeling that the current U.S. legal system would get a _LOT_ simpler & easier to maintain.
I'm sorry, just because you might've saved me from bullies a couple of times, doesn't mean I'm going to help you mug someone else. Only a neocon (compassionate conservatism my ass) would believe that loyalty is more important than morality.
Actually, XP works perfectly fine with just a clean install and automatically-installing patches.
Well, as long as you have the "cleanly-installed" machine behind a firewall while you download the patches. Even using broadband, it takes longer to download the patches than it does to get infected by one of the many RPC-worm-variants probing everything out there on the net.
So even though you may think all the jobs created in the defense sector are useless, national security is very important to the economy.
I didn't say they were _useless_, I said they are _overhead_ for society - please note the difference. In a perfect world, where we didn't have to worry about being attacked by outside forces, then all that money would do an incredible amount of good if it were applied directly to improving our society's infrastructure.
Of course, this is not a perfect world, so it is a necessity to spend money on defense to make sure our society isn't destroyed by outside forces. But you don't want to spend any more than is necessary to ensure your own safety, and you want your defense sector to use that money efficiently, otherwise you are wasting money that could be used to make a lot more people's lives better.
I find it a bit disturbing that the FTC is likening spammers to violent criminals.
No, they're likening them to people who steal a _lot_ of money. When you hear the stats that 40-60% of all email traffic is spam, and start adding up how much infrastructure that 40-60% requires (considering that email is supposed to be one of the net's "killer apps", not even taking into account how much it costs in time & labor to clean up zombie machines, there's plenty of incentive to pay a _lot_ of money to put these guys in a place where they can't access a net connection (and where they might find some time to explain to Bubba where he can get some of those penis enlargement pills...).
This is impossible because of the nature of the internet(routed through zombie after zombie).
You could probably pay some of those zombie machine owners to run something that would help you track who was connecting to those zombie machines. A 6-figure bounty makes spending that kind of money worthwhile, even for hundreds of machines.
the only way to minimize the loss of efficiency is to minimize the entire system.
Well, that was part of the point behind my proposal - remove as much bureacracy out of the process as possible, reduce things down to simple auction.
My personal suggestion is to eliminate the patent system altogether and put the power truly back in the hands of the individuals.
Then you're back to people/companies with money stealing individuals' ideas & preventing them from having any hope of making a buck by either selling OR using their idea. At least with my proposal, the people who are submitting ideas to be patented would get paid by the winning bidder an amount equal to the value determined by the auction.
They don't hire as many low-income people as highly-competitive, socially-focussed industries, and they've got a proven track record of padding their bills big-time. The whole military-industrial complex is overhead for a society - the main focus of that industry is _not_ to improve a society's health. It might be _necessary_ overhead to ensure a society's survival, but if it gets bigger than you need to protect your society, then it is sucking essential resources which could be better applied to a society's health & growth.
Forest rangers??! As a search and rescue field team leader I appreciate them and their importance but I'm not sure they directly impact the economy in any meaningful way.
You're missing my overall point by zeroing in on the "forest rangers" item - "forest rangers" was just _one_ of the professions that I was throwing out as an example of the types of people that the government could hire to help prime the economic pump. Others (including the ones I already listed) might include health inspectors, safety inspectors, applied science researchers, etc... Basically, all the front-line people who are directly responsible for improving society's health and/or infrastructure (infrastructure would include education).
By hiring a lot of these types of guys, you end up getting lots of social services (making you feel like your tax dollars are paying for something useful), and most of those guys will spend all their money, creating natural economic growth through supply & demand. This is a method of wealth redistribution which requires people to work honest, productive jobs to receive it (instead of just being welfare).
Exactly *how* do you expect the president to get jobs back?
Instead of giving massive amounts of money to wasteful defense contractors & other government cronies (or having it lost in the rats-mazes of bureaucracy), use all that money to hire LOTS of front-line workers. E.g., teachers, firemen, policemen, social workers, forest rangers, etc. (Note: front-line != bureaucrats.)
Not only does this directly give people jobs, but all of those types of jobs contribute directly to the infrastructure (which makes the general society have a better standard of living & creates opportunities for other non-government related jobs), plus all of those people are going to be _spending_ most of their money, which creates demand for goods & services, which causes companies to want to gear up to satisfy the demand, etc). It also increases opportunities for people in the low economic classes to save their way into more stable existences.
I like to think of it as trickle-UP economics, like nutrition being injected at the bottom of the food chain (which benefits _everything_ in the food chain), instead of "trickle-down" economics which encourages class stratification.
If you're going for adding things to your field of vision, why not overwrite the Japanese version of the sign with the text written in plain english?
Well, for those of us who actually like seeing the thing which is being translated, covering everything up would make the experience a little less rich. Also, over time, if you always see the two things together, you might be able to recognize patterns (hey, that set of ideograms always means Tokyo!), so if your batteries go dead, you still have a chance of navigation.
Top this off with the audio translation playing the sound back of the translated words of someone speaking to you
I prefer subtitles for similar reasons as for the signs, plus there is the added issue of cognitive modality - it is harder for you to concentrate on an audio translation if you can hear the person speaking to you at the same time (brain has to filter out similar sensory information), whereas I find it fairly easy to follow subtitles for meaning even while using the audio from the person only as an emotional "channel" (brain can use complementary sensory info).
The other stuff you mention (colloquialisms, vernacular, etc) I agree with, except that I actually like to see the Babelfish-like (straight) translations in some of those instances, perhaps with a background notation of the slang's translation, its probable meanings & maybe its origin (although I doubt you would look at all that stuff while in the middle of conversation:-).
Actually, I would prefer the translated text to appear as subtitles in my field of vision (attached to the source of sound). Translation should also include OCR for any signs that I happen to be looking at.
Combine that with a your-language-to-other speech-to-audio function (type in your sentence, either try & repeat funny sounds from headphones or let audience listen to speaker), you'd get tricked-out geeks wandering fearlessly in odd places all over the world, providing vast amounts of amusement for the locals.
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You're talking about Bush, right? I've never seen somebody who could so completely change their position & pretend like they've always thought that way. I'm not sure what you mean about his "vision" - about the only thing I think he's been consistent on is the "us" vs "them" mentality - all of his other messages seem to change depending on whatever his political handlers are telling him to say at any given moment.
Kerry's not a simple person (maybe unlike Bush). Based on what I've read about him, he seems like the type of guy who analyzes all sides of an issue before making a decision about what to do - and what he decides to do may not be the obvious thing that someone else who hasn't thought about the problem as much would have picked.
You can probably guess who I think is better suited to be a world leader. :-) I have no idea why so many people in the American public think Bush is a good leader. I keep having flashbacks to the popularity-contests called student government in high school. Bush is portrayed on TV as a personable-if-somewhat-slow guy, while Kerry seems to be portrayed as some kind of unlikable ivory-tower "Lurch" character. It depresses me to know that many of my fellow Americans don't pick their leaders based on demonstrated merit (or reject them based on demonstrated incompetence).
Kerry can't win in the PR campaign about "simple solutions". The system is too complicated for simple solutions, but every time Kerry tries to get into detail about his plans, no one wants to cover it because they can't get any juicy sound bites (& he gets accused of being another ivory-tower egghead proposing an overly complicated solution). So when he "dumbs it down" so that the media will accept it, he gets accused of being condescending to the public, and proposing overly-simple solutions to a complicated problem.
Bush's approach is a lot simpler: let his buddies write the laws. No thinking involved, and he looks like he's getting something done. As long as nobody can find out where the money's going, he can put on a happy face and pretend like everything's going great (because it IS - at least for him & his buddies...).
At least from those awkward moments in interviews where Kerry gets "too complicated", you can tell he's put some thought into the issues.
A person who makes a premeditated decision to kill another person is a murderer. It doesn't matter what their reason is.
The _motivation_ for being a murderer is a different subject, but it doesn't change the basic definition of being a murderer.
How do you make sure that what got printed out & what the computer recorded are the same?
Interesting - so an abusive spouse or boss could threaten someone to let the abuser "help" them vote? Kind of reduces the effectiveness of anonymous voting.
It's not necessarily stupidity; in most cases people "trust" their neighbors & leaders not to deliberately mislead them about important things. Unfortunately, a great number of U.S. citizens are currently receiving really rude wake-up calls, when they realize how professional liars can take advantage of that trust.
It remains to be seen how many act on their outrage, and how many will go back to sleep & hope they were just having a bad dream. Unfortunately, in either case, the general level of trust in our society will go down.
Nice bit of rationalization there - I don't disagree with you about what the "Good Book" says, but I strongly feel that people who truly believe that war isn't a form of murder are total hypocrites.
It might make it easier to work out your strategy, but does that really improve your chances to win?
If the bot is working off pure probabilities (and if the programmer doesn't try to implement some weird heuristic to try and decide whether or not you were bluffing, which I assume would probably be pretty easy to game), then the bot's behavior isn't going to depend on whether you are bluffing or not; in fact, it will ignore _any_ psychological tactics on your part. In a game like that, isn't the overall winner going to be the entity who can play according to the probabilities the best?
It seems like bluffing wouldn't be very useful against an opponent who paid attention only to probabilities (and being good at detecting such bluffs wouldn't work so well against such an opponent either).
It's called: use your code to improve your business's efficiency & make money.
Yes, it's called: use your code to improve your business's efficiency & make money.
Oh, you were talking about companies that _SELL_ software as a retail product. Hmmm, well they might be out of luck.
Guess we'll have to go back to the bad old days of regarding software as a tool to be used to improve your main business. Some companies might even be willing to pay a few developers to make software that would help them accomplish their business goals.
Actually, it might have an interesting effect if there were two U.S. federal constitutional amendments: a balanced budget amendment, and an amendment for free legal services for residents of the U.S.
Once the Congress started getting cost-benefit reports back on how much every law & regulation that they are proposing would cost, I have a feeling that the current U.S. legal system would get a _LOT_ simpler & easier to maintain.
Or they used a password-checking program to see if the spammer had used a weak password. (Not that there's much difference in the result.)
I'm sorry, just because you might've saved me from bullies a couple of times, doesn't mean I'm going to help you mug someone else. Only a neocon (compassionate conservatism my ass) would believe that loyalty is more important than morality.
Well, as long as you have the "cleanly-installed" machine behind a firewall while you download the patches. Even using broadband, it takes longer to download the patches than it does to get infected by one of the many RPC-worm-variants probing everything out there on the net.
I can live without the TV or phone. Internet access is a _LOT_ more important.
I didn't say they were _useless_, I said they are _overhead_ for society - please note the difference. In a perfect world, where we didn't have to worry about being attacked by outside forces, then all that money would do an incredible amount of good if it were applied directly to improving our society's infrastructure.
Of course, this is not a perfect world, so it is a necessity to spend money on defense to make sure our society isn't destroyed by outside forces. But you don't want to spend any more than is necessary to ensure your own safety, and you want your defense sector to use that money efficiently, otherwise you are wasting money that could be used to make a lot more people's lives better.
No, they're likening them to people who steal a _lot_ of money. When you hear the stats that 40-60% of all email traffic is spam, and start adding up how much infrastructure that 40-60% requires (considering that email is supposed to be one of the net's "killer apps", not even taking into account how much it costs in time & labor to clean up zombie machines, there's plenty of incentive to pay a _lot_ of money to put these guys in a place where they can't access a net connection (and where they might find some time to explain to Bubba where he can get some of those penis enlargement pills...).
You could probably pay some of those zombie machine owners to run something that would help you track who was connecting to those zombie machines. A 6-figure bounty makes spending that kind of money worthwhile, even for hundreds of machines.
Well, that was part of the point behind my proposal - remove as much bureacracy out of the process as possible, reduce things down to simple auction.
Then you're back to people/companies with money stealing individuals' ideas & preventing them from having any hope of making a buck by either selling OR using their idea. At least with my proposal, the people who are submitting ideas to be patented would get paid by the winning bidder an amount equal to the value determined by the auction.They don't hire as many low-income people as highly-competitive, socially-focussed industries, and they've got a proven track record of padding their bills big-time. The whole military-industrial complex is overhead for a society - the main focus of that industry is _not_ to improve a society's health. It might be _necessary_ overhead to ensure a society's survival, but if it gets bigger than you need to protect your society, then it is sucking essential resources which could be better applied to a society's health & growth.
You're missing my overall point by zeroing in on the "forest rangers" item - "forest rangers" was just _one_ of the professions that I was throwing out as an example of the types of people that the government could hire to help prime the economic pump. Others (including the ones I already listed) might include health inspectors, safety inspectors, applied science researchers, etc... Basically, all the front-line people who are directly responsible for improving society's health and/or infrastructure (infrastructure would include education).
By hiring a lot of these types of guys, you end up getting lots of social services (making you feel like your tax dollars are paying for something useful), and most of those guys will spend all their money, creating natural economic growth through supply & demand. This is a method of wealth redistribution which requires people to work honest, productive jobs to receive it (instead of just being welfare).
Instead of giving massive amounts of money to wasteful defense contractors & other government cronies (or having it lost in the rats-mazes of bureaucracy), use all that money to hire LOTS of front-line workers. E.g., teachers, firemen, policemen, social workers, forest rangers, etc. (Note: front-line != bureaucrats.)
Not only does this directly give people jobs, but all of those types of jobs contribute directly to the infrastructure (which makes the general society have a better standard of living & creates opportunities for other non-government related jobs), plus all of those people are going to be _spending_ most of their money, which creates demand for goods & services, which causes companies to want to gear up to satisfy the demand, etc). It also increases opportunities for people in the low economic classes to save their way into more stable existences.
I like to think of it as trickle-UP economics, like nutrition being injected at the bottom of the food chain (which benefits _everything_ in the food chain), instead of "trickle-down" economics which encourages class stratification.
Well, for those of us who actually like seeing the thing which is being translated, covering everything up would make the experience a little less rich. Also, over time, if you always see the two things together, you might be able to recognize patterns (hey, that set of ideograms always means Tokyo!), so if your batteries go dead, you still have a chance of navigation.
I prefer subtitles for similar reasons as for the signs, plus there is the added issue of cognitive modality - it is harder for you to concentrate on an audio translation if you can hear the person speaking to you at the same time (brain has to filter out similar sensory information), whereas I find it fairly easy to follow subtitles for meaning even while using the audio from the person only as an emotional "channel" (brain can use complementary sensory info).
The other stuff you mention (colloquialisms, vernacular, etc) I agree with, except that I actually like to see the Babelfish-like (straight) translations in some of those instances, perhaps with a background notation of the slang's translation, its probable meanings & maybe its origin (although I doubt you would look at all that stuff while in the middle of conversation :-).
Actually, I would prefer the translated text to appear as subtitles in my field of vision (attached to the source of sound). Translation should also include OCR for any signs that I happen to be looking at.
Combine that with a your-language-to-other speech-to-audio function (type in your sentence, either try & repeat funny sounds from headphones or let audience listen to speaker), you'd get tricked-out geeks wandering fearlessly in odd places all over the world, providing vast amounts of amusement for the locals.
Read it yourself and draw your own conclusion. It's not like the universe will end if you don't like it.
Oww, what're you trying to do, give me a cerberal hemorrhage?!