No, I'm pointing out your incorrect use of analogies.
Your CHOICE in eating RESPONSIBLY, is on you. It isn't illegal for you to eat burgers, it isn't even illegal for you to eat fries. But in this case you are saying that it should be illegal for anyone to eat fries or burgers.
It's a matter of personal responsibility. You can choose to eat healthy, and you can choose to drive safe.
Now I agree that when there is a significant risk to society that laws should be enacted to mitigate them. And ideally, such laws should be introduced as a variety of state laws first so we can measure their impact on behavior. And that is my current rub:
1) The fatal accident rate has been declining as cell phone use has been increasing. This is very likely due to other technological improvements, but it does point out that the risk to society is not significant enough to offset our gains. Additionally, I am still looking for a good source of non-fatal accident data. I've only found one trendline so far (with no available data) and it was trending downward. Which implies that this is less of a impact than it is being made out to be.
2) The states that have enacted anti-cellphone laws are not seeing any significant change in accident rates. This to me says that the current crop of laws are ineffective at changing behavior. So none of them should be used as a template for further state laws or federal law.
3) If these laws have no effect on behavior, provide no additional security for society, and turn legitimate citizens into criminals, with the only benefit being a new form of revenue for the municipality, I see no reason for them to exist. Either find a way to effect behavior, or stick to existing laws that can be applied.
I'm all for identifying risks and reducing them. I am not in favor of making existing legal behavior illegal with out some very strong evidence on the behavior's impact on society.
Some states have bans, lets see how they play out for a few years before we go to the national level. And if it turns out that we're not seeing any meaningful reduction in accidents per mile driven, then the laws are NOT reducing accidents, they were just creating a new means of revenue.
Banning 'all' phone use while driving is a reasonable solution in search of a problem.
As the use of cell phones has exploded we are seeing less and less accidents per mile driven.
More cell phones correlates with LESS accidents.
That isn't to say that using cell phones is safe, by any means. But it doesn't correlate to, let alone imply, any between increased cell phone usage and an increase in fatal* accidents. (I haven't seen any non-fatal accident data)
In 2009 there were 114 traffic fatalities per million miles driven. In 1994 there were 174 per mil. A 1/3rd reduction at the same time that cell phone use was growing exponentially.
Point being: Distracted drivers are distracted drivers, whether it's cell phones, texting, eating, signing, etc... Some drivers are just going to be bad drivers. And while I'm far from Libertarian, I don't see the value in creating laws as a solution when the problem isn't clearly defined.
IF cell phones presented the huge risk to society that some articles are claiming they do, why is it that the fatality rate is dropping (as I expect the accident trend line is as well, but I haven't found the quality of data to back that up that I would like). And if the fatality/accident rate is dropping, with out the creation of a new law, why create the new law?
Seeing how 2010 had the lowest number of fatalities, and most of the data I've seen has shown a droping trendline of reduced accidents per vehicle mile driven (your link only shows total fatalities, not fatalities per miles driven), wouldn't that be an indicator that current advances are working and what should be done is minor incremental improvement as needed as opposed to sweeping huge changes?
I mean, if we saw a huge spike coming out of the 90's and a trendline pointing north through the 2000's, I'd be fully behind the efforts to ban all cell phone usage in cars.
But what we see is that the vast majority of people using electronics while driving are doing so in a responsible and safe manner. Sure, we should continue to hammer down on people who are not doing so, but I don't see the need for sweeping changes when things are already going in the right direction.
Having been in the military myself (USMC 97-01) I would agree that you are instructed to be impartial, but that the juror selection is limited to such a tiny segment of society with such a specific subset of the political spectrum, which for the most part has a significantly limited exposure to other points of view, the guy is pretty much hosed.
The odds of him getting a jury with 1 sympathetic juror, and that juror being willing to lose his career over it, is slim to nil.
by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed
There's one rub - He commited his crime in Iraq.
Thus the reason this is a military trial, not a civilian court trial. He enjoys the rights provided by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which differ significantly from the Bill of Rights.
In the civilian world, yes. In the military world, he could stand before a general, or a tribunal, or a jury of his peers, which is to say, a bunch of active duty military guys who have been told over and over for the last year that this guy is evil.
You own the content you have posted to the internet.
The "right" is an extention of the rights described in the 1st amendment. These are inallienable rights. You are born with them. You are born with the inallienable right to peacably assemble and the freedom of speech.
This petition is just asking for the 1st amendment to be copied and appended with "On the Internet" like so many of those crappy patents from the 90's.
Just take the 1st amendment, and any place you see a coma or semicolon, inject "on the internet".
This isn't just a "Video Game", it's an intelligence platform. It's coming from IARPA, cousin of DARPA, you know that wasteful part of the government that blew all that money on some stupid thing called "the internet". I hear it turned out to be nothing more than a series of tubes that dumptrucks get stuck on.
I don't know how many project charters have come across my desk that have the project goal as "To create software that..."
I work at a food company. A multibillion dollar food company. We do food research. We sell food. We do NOT turn a profit writting software. So no project should ever come to me with a goal of creating software.
You are correct in that the only metric that matters to the business is the profit. But in order to determine individual contribution, you can't just look at the 50,000 foot view. You'll wind up with some rather irate folks if the people who did all the work get the same bonus as the ones who contributed nothing, or negative value.
There are Objectives, and then there are Enabling Objectives. Enabling objectives are were you can start to compare individual contributions to the outcome of the overall Objective.
That's really the key to it. Focusing on objectives.
Are outputs matching estimates for time? Are programs being deployed/shipped on schedule? Are bug report rates with in acceptable ranges? etc...
And once you get good at that, start looking for ways to improve on the metrics. Reducing bug counts, getting more accurate estimates, and pushing for shorter (but still reasonable) estimates.
I knew a programmer who once solved a problem that was going to be addressed with a $100,000 inventory management system, with a piece of cardboard and a black magic marker. No code metric could show that performance. But outcome based metrics were all maxed out for that job.
Writing for reuse can be excessive, but there are a number of reasons to move in that direction even if you don't intend to reuse that specific code block:
1) Unit Tests. If you abstract your functionality in a way that allows reuse, it also abstracts in for extremely easy unit testing. And unit testing will save you an incredible amount of effort in code maintenance.
2) Consistency. If you follow the same design pattern for all of your abstractions, all of your developers should be familiar with it. This makes it significantly easier for different developers to step into projects as the hopefully don't have to learn another person's style for abstraction.
3) Replacement and isolation. Need to implement a functional change? If your code is abstracted, like it would be for reuse, the functional change is limited to a single block, which is easily identifiable and if you're doing it right, unit-testable.
4) Just in case. Most of the time abstracted code doesn't get reused, and event when it does get reused it's usually a copy and paste job instead of a reference. Even so, if anyone ever does need the same functionality, it allows them to quickly rip off the exact piece they are looking for as opposed to trying to strip out your programs logic to get the tiny bit they want.
The current implementation is based on a legal briefing from Reagan's AG in 1987 that basically said that if the government felt that the information was too sensitive, or was part of any on-going opperation or investigation, that they could lie about the existance of that record.
That loophole has been in place for the last 24 years. The rule amendment that just got shot down would have taken that implied hole in the law and made it an explicit hole in the law.
Now that the rule has been shot down, and the practice is getting some much needed sunlight, it opens up the option of lawsuits to challenge the "it's okay to lie" brief and to try to uncover abuses of that brief.
I'm not saying that the Obama Administration is all farts and roses here. They've done plenty enough to leave me fairly apathetic towards them. But the GP was implying that this issue was some how created by the Obama administration, when it was in fact created by the Reagan administration.
Yeah, it would have been great if Obama had walked in (on water) on day 1 and fixed every problem we have with the consolidation of power to the executive branch, but honestly, unless we have another huge Watergate that the press gets seriously pissed off about, that isn't going to happen.
This practice was originally sanctioned un the Reagan administration. This rules change would have formalized the practice that was developed by the Feds under Reagan's AG. By removing the rule change (under the Obama administration) they are effectively barred from covering up the previous lies.
If I can't get them and an HDMI port for hooking up to the projector, the tablet loses a huge incentive for me to use it.
I'm not going to be writting massive docs on a tablet, but I need to be able to plug into a projector at a meeting, present project plans and status reports, open spread sheets for SME's to see data models, etc...
The Tablet isn't a replacement for the Laptop/PC, it's just a tool used to increase mobile ability. One that I have so far lived with out, and probably wont bother with until a next gen ASUS Transformer comes out.
I would recommend that instead of spouting this ignorance proving drivel, that you spend some of your time learning how most grant systems work.
I'll give you a hint, other scientists' grant money would not be threatened by blowing the lid off someone who is abusing the system. In fact, since that person would be excluded from future grants, the other scientists would be more likely to aquire grants in the future if they DID expose frauds.
The big problem with software patents, IMO, isn't that they are patents on math, but that they are so grossly vague that they have absolutely no purpose ever being patented.
If a person of moderate experience in the field can't read the patent and make an exact duplicate of it, it shouldn't be a patent.
Their official position is simple: Do what ever generates the most revenue at the highest profit margin or positions the company to do so in the next quarter.
If that means lobbying to get emissions and safty regulations lightened, they will. If that means buying out other companies producing solar or wind generators, they will. What ever it takes to increase their income.
When we have a housing market with a total value of $13 Trillion, and a Credit Default Swap market based solely on that housing market, that has a total value of $35 Trillion, and people are still making models that say we're financially sound, the problem is obvious.
They are the ones holding the $22 Trillion of unbacked debt and they're trying to fool eveyone else into buying it off of them before the whole shit storm blows up.
My choices of funding college for the kids could have been to put the money into a stock fund and bet that stocks would rise faster than college education prices.
And what I'm saying is that regardless of the field, given wide availability, that the price will invariable increase. So any purchase that can be done sooner, rather than later, is cheaper due to nothing other than inflation. Your situation is just a direct example of this. Your purchase was effectively made "sooner" as it was inflation proof. You may or may not have had additional savings through your investments, but if for not other purpose than the inflation protection, you would come out ahead.
You seem to say that competition is causing businesses to raise prices and reduce quality.
I said no such thing. Infact, I said just the opposite, but suddenly and dramatically altering the way education is funded you would be significantly reducing competition. Specifically you would be reducing competetion in everything except for the markets where students don't require loans. The only two categories of education facilities that meet that requirement are: Ivy League schools and diploma mills. As the vast majority of the population does not have access to Ivy League schools, the only remaining option for their "education" would be the diploma mills, that you yourself question the quality of.
In each case, I'd say the prices have fallen and the service level has risen.
Lets see: Cell phones - I usually get a free phone with my contract, so the cost is baked in. But my contract from 2000 was roughly 1/2 what I pay now, not including data plans. Service quality is roughly the same, although now I can pay to download games to my phone where as previously my phones came pre-loaded with a selection of games.
Books - The books I buy today are a few dollars more expensive today than they were when I was in highschool. Mostly just inflationary changes. I do have the benefit of being able to order books online, but I no longer have any local book stores where as there use to be one in my home town and another just down the road. Where I could go and chat with the staff about book series I was reading and when the rest of the series was coming out, what rumors were running around, etc... So in some ways, the service has improved, in others its been deminished.
Retail - I can go to the super stores and get super cheap stuff now 24 hours a day! Prices have gone up (again, that's inflation for you) but not unreasonably. Unfortunately, since all of those workers are paid less (resulting in the lower prices compared to non-super stores) I'm subsidizing the store through higher medical costs, reductions in SS/Medicare, increased national debt interest, etc... Just because the price on the shelf is a couple of cents lower than what it would otherwise be doesn't mean I'm not paying for it.
As an analog, consider how many online encyclopedias we need. Wikipedia seems to do a pretty decent job.
Anyone who uses Wikipedia as a reference in acedemia should be drawn and quartered. Wikipedia is a starting place, but it is in no way, nor should it ever be used as a valid source of information. That's why they have citations on every page.
If you want to reduce the price, the best thing to do is end the subsidization.
If price is the ONLY concern, that is one viable solution. But price is not the only concern. Education is an investment in our future. The economic boom that the US enjoyed through most of the 20th century can be tied to a significant extent to the GI Bill's function of putting a significant number of Americans through college. A trend that not only lead to their education, but set the foundation for the social accceptance of post secondary education. If it hadn't been for the GI Bill and resulting social changes, we would have quite likely trended right back to the r
I paid mid 90's prices for my kids' education, and I'm done. So I was wrong about student riots (so far, although Occupy X is getting close), but I was financially correct
And that's just common sense. Paying for something widely available sooner rather than later is almost invariably cheaper. It's one of the arguements why Wisconsin should have built the new rail from Milwaukee to Madison, we're going to build the rail eventually, that's not in question. But for every year we put it off, the price gets higher. Congratulations on having more common sense than the leadership of Wisconsin:)
So if you have facts to support that delaying such projects are necessary spending, I'd like to see them
I never said any such thing. I said that for schools that already have campuses, that are already making payments on the debt to build those facilities or that are leasing the property, they can not just stop paying on that debt, or end that lease, and remain a school with a campus. The immediate reduction in revenue would cause most schools to go bankrupt just from the mortgage payments of their existing property. Canceling the building of additional facilities would be a wise first move, but it wouldn't absolve them of their current debt or leases.
Businesses everywhere have to do more with less now. Get with the program, schools!
And how are businesses coping? Higher prices and lower quality services. Exactly what I'm saying schools would do under your proposed change.
Quick semi-random check of Amazon showed 19 out of 20 books cheaper on Kindle (when available), with savings ranging from 6% to 60%.
And this all comes down to licensing and book selection. It's not like you can just get a copy of "Fundamentals of Physics" in digital copy, and if you could, it would still be a $100+ book. Or are you suggesting that the nearly $200 price tag on the book is in some way relative to the production costs of the book?
Some schools have started looking into alternatives. But for the most part, if you want high level books written by knowledgable profs with solid reviews and peer acceptance, you're going to pay through the nose for it. Sure, if you want to drop down to a "Physics For Dumbies" book, it'll only cost $10, but I'd venture a guess that the quality wouldn't be even remotely close.
The book gouging and cronyism is a topic for debate all on its own. I don't disagree with you that it SHOULD be cheaper, I just don't believe that under the current system (of copyrights and cronyism) that quality books would be cheaper given your suggestion.
If your choice as a university is to go out of business or encourage your teachers to use and contribute to free textbooks, you bet colleges and universities will start using and contributing to these resources.
Supply and demand does not have a significant impact on markets that way. Schools, or businesses in this case, will take the most profitable method. You would not see the majority of schools contributing to such projects, as their is no profit in doing so. It would be far more profitable to get the cheapest possible book (see "Physics for Dumbies" comment above) and to charge the highest amount that the students are willing to pay for them. The might move to use the free resources, but contribution would be non-existent, and there would probably be some significant licensing issues.
And certain major universities are putting all their lectures on line. Why not? And why not use these to fight the high cost?
And some schools are completely online. But doing so doesn't fight high costs, it fights to maximize profits. For example, I was recently looking into going back for my masters. Having a full time job and family, I'm not interested in driving to a campus. So I checked out a bunch of online schools. University of Pheonix Onlin
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You are wrongly using my analogy
No, I'm pointing out your incorrect use of analogies.
Your CHOICE in eating RESPONSIBLY, is on you. It isn't illegal for you to eat burgers, it isn't even illegal for you to eat fries. But in this case you are saying that it should be illegal for anyone to eat fries or burgers.
It's a matter of personal responsibility. You can choose to eat healthy, and you can choose to drive safe.
Now I agree that when there is a significant risk to society that laws should be enacted to mitigate them. And ideally, such laws should be introduced as a variety of state laws first so we can measure their impact on behavior. And that is my current rub:
1) The fatal accident rate has been declining as cell phone use has been increasing. This is very likely due to other technological improvements, but it does point out that the risk to society is not significant enough to offset our gains. Additionally, I am still looking for a good source of non-fatal accident data. I've only found one trendline so far (with no available data) and it was trending downward. Which implies that this is less of a impact than it is being made out to be.
2) The states that have enacted anti-cellphone laws are not seeing any significant change in accident rates. This to me says that the current crop of laws are ineffective at changing behavior. So none of them should be used as a template for further state laws or federal law.
3) If these laws have no effect on behavior, provide no additional security for society, and turn legitimate citizens into criminals, with the only benefit being a new form of revenue for the municipality, I see no reason for them to exist. Either find a way to effect behavior, or stick to existing laws that can be applied.
-Rick
I'm all for identifying risks and reducing them. I am not in favor of making existing legal behavior illegal with out some very strong evidence on the behavior's impact on society.
Some states have bans, lets see how they play out for a few years before we go to the national level. And if it turns out that we're not seeing any meaningful reduction in accidents per mile driven, then the laws are NOT reducing accidents, they were just creating a new means of revenue.
-Rick
Banning 'all' phone use while driving is a reasonable solution in search of a problem.
As the use of cell phones has exploded we are seeing less and less accidents per mile driven.
More cell phones correlates with LESS accidents.
That isn't to say that using cell phones is safe, by any means. But it doesn't correlate to, let alone imply, any between increased cell phone usage and an increase in fatal* accidents. (I haven't seen any non-fatal accident data)
http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
In 2009 there were 114 traffic fatalities per million miles driven. In 1994 there were 174 per mil. A 1/3rd reduction at the same time that cell phone use was growing exponentially.
Point being: Distracted drivers are distracted drivers, whether it's cell phones, texting, eating, signing, etc... Some drivers are just going to be bad drivers. And while I'm far from Libertarian, I don't see the value in creating laws as a solution when the problem isn't clearly defined.
IF cell phones presented the huge risk to society that some articles are claiming they do, why is it that the fatality rate is dropping (as I expect the accident trend line is as well, but I haven't found the quality of data to back that up that I would like). And if the fatality/accident rate is dropping, with out the creation of a new law, why create the new law?
-Rick
So because it MIGHT be beneficial for YOU to stop eating burgers for the current time, we should make it illegal for ALL people to EVER eat burgers?
-Rick
I am curious if the Judge would feel the same way if a software update prevented his car from going over 45 MPH.
-Rick
Seeing how 2010 had the lowest number of fatalities, and most of the data I've seen has shown a droping trendline of reduced accidents per vehicle mile driven (your link only shows total fatalities, not fatalities per miles driven), wouldn't that be an indicator that current advances are working and what should be done is minor incremental improvement as needed as opposed to sweeping huge changes?
I mean, if we saw a huge spike coming out of the 90's and a trendline pointing north through the 2000's, I'd be fully behind the efforts to ban all cell phone usage in cars.
But what we see is that the vast majority of people using electronics while driving are doing so in a responsible and safe manner. Sure, we should continue to hammer down on people who are not doing so, but I don't see the need for sweeping changes when things are already going in the right direction.
-Rick
Having been in the military myself (USMC 97-01) I would agree that you are instructed to be impartial, but that the juror selection is limited to such a tiny segment of society with such a specific subset of the political spectrum, which for the most part has a significantly limited exposure to other points of view, the guy is pretty much hosed.
The odds of him getting a jury with 1 sympathetic juror, and that juror being willing to lose his career over it, is slim to nil.
-Rick
by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed
There's one rub - He commited his crime in Iraq.
Thus the reason this is a military trial, not a civilian court trial. He enjoys the rights provided by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which differ significantly from the Bill of Rights.
That is to say... he's screwed.
-Rick
In the civilian world, yes. In the military world, he could stand before a general, or a tribunal, or a jury of his peers, which is to say, a bunch of active duty military guys who have been told over and over for the last year that this guy is evil.
-Rick
You own the content you have posted to the internet.
The "right" is an extention of the rights described in the 1st amendment. These are inallienable rights. You are born with them. You are born with the inallienable right to peacably assemble and the freedom of speech.
This petition is just asking for the 1st amendment to be copied and appended with "On the Internet" like so many of those crappy patents from the 90's.
Just take the 1st amendment, and any place you see a coma or semicolon, inject "on the internet".
-Rick
This isn't just a "Video Game", it's an intelligence platform. It's coming from IARPA, cousin of DARPA, you know that wasteful part of the government that blew all that money on some stupid thing called "the internet". I hear it turned out to be nothing more than a series of tubes that dumptrucks get stuck on.
-Rick
At a high level, absolutely!
I don't know how many project charters have come across my desk that have the project goal as "To create software that..."
I work at a food company. A multibillion dollar food company. We do food research. We sell food. We do NOT turn a profit writting software. So no project should ever come to me with a goal of creating software.
You are correct in that the only metric that matters to the business is the profit. But in order to determine individual contribution, you can't just look at the 50,000 foot view. You'll wind up with some rather irate folks if the people who did all the work get the same bonus as the ones who contributed nothing, or negative value.
There are Objectives, and then there are Enabling Objectives. Enabling objectives are were you can start to compare individual contributions to the outcome of the overall Objective.
-Rick
That's really the key to it. Focusing on objectives.
Are outputs matching estimates for time? Are programs being deployed/shipped on schedule? Are bug report rates with in acceptable ranges? etc...
And once you get good at that, start looking for ways to improve on the metrics. Reducing bug counts, getting more accurate estimates, and pushing for shorter (but still reasonable) estimates.
I knew a programmer who once solved a problem that was going to be addressed with a $100,000 inventory management system, with a piece of cardboard and a black magic marker. No code metric could show that performance. But outcome based metrics were all maxed out for that job.
-Rick
Writing for reuse can be excessive, but there are a number of reasons to move in that direction even if you don't intend to reuse that specific code block:
1) Unit Tests. If you abstract your functionality in a way that allows reuse, it also abstracts in for extremely easy unit testing. And unit testing will save you an incredible amount of effort in code maintenance.
2) Consistency. If you follow the same design pattern for all of your abstractions, all of your developers should be familiar with it. This makes it significantly easier for different developers to step into projects as the hopefully don't have to learn another person's style for abstraction.
3) Replacement and isolation. Need to implement a functional change? If your code is abstracted, like it would be for reuse, the functional change is limited to a single block, which is easily identifiable and if you're doing it right, unit-testable.
4) Just in case. Most of the time abstracted code doesn't get reused, and event when it does get reused it's usually a copy and paste job instead of a reference. Even so, if anyone ever does need the same functionality, it allows them to quickly rip off the exact piece they are looking for as opposed to trying to strip out your programs logic to get the tiny bit they want.
-Rick
The current implementation is based on a legal briefing from Reagan's AG in 1987 that basically said that if the government felt that the information was too sensitive, or was part of any on-going opperation or investigation, that they could lie about the existance of that record.
That loophole has been in place for the last 24 years. The rule amendment that just got shot down would have taken that implied hole in the law and made it an explicit hole in the law.
Now that the rule has been shot down, and the practice is getting some much needed sunlight, it opens up the option of lawsuits to challenge the "it's okay to lie" brief and to try to uncover abuses of that brief.
I'm not saying that the Obama Administration is all farts and roses here. They've done plenty enough to leave me fairly apathetic towards them. But the GP was implying that this issue was some how created by the Obama administration, when it was in fact created by the Reagan administration.
Yeah, it would have been great if Obama had walked in (on water) on day 1 and fixed every problem we have with the consolidation of power to the executive branch, but honestly, unless we have another huge Watergate that the press gets seriously pissed off about, that isn't going to happen.
-Rick
This practice was originally sanctioned un the Reagan administration. This rules change would have formalized the practice that was developed by the Feds under Reagan's AG. By removing the rule change (under the Obama administration) they are effectively barred from covering up the previous lies.
So clearly, Obama is to blame....
-Rick
I'd consider it one of the necesities.
Along with Power Points, MS Project, and Excel.
If I can't get them and an HDMI port for hooking up to the projector, the tablet loses a huge incentive for me to use it.
I'm not going to be writting massive docs on a tablet, but I need to be able to plug into a projector at a meeting, present project plans and status reports, open spread sheets for SME's to see data models, etc...
The Tablet isn't a replacement for the Laptop/PC, it's just a tool used to increase mobile ability. One that I have so far lived with out, and probably wont bother with until a next gen ASUS Transformer comes out.
-Rick
Hook, line, and sinker.
-Rick
I would recommend that instead of spouting this ignorance proving drivel, that you spend some of your time learning how most grant systems work.
I'll give you a hint, other scientists' grant money would not be threatened by blowing the lid off someone who is abusing the system. In fact, since that person would be excluded from future grants, the other scientists would be more likely to aquire grants in the future if they DID expose frauds.
-Rick
This is a critical point IMO.
The big problem with software patents, IMO, isn't that they are patents on math, but that they are so grossly vague that they have absolutely no purpose ever being patented.
If a person of moderate experience in the field can't read the patent and make an exact duplicate of it, it shouldn't be a patent.
-Rick
Published position != Official position.
Their official position is simple: Do what ever generates the most revenue at the highest profit margin or positions the company to do so in the next quarter.
If that means lobbying to get emissions and safty regulations lightened, they will. If that means buying out other companies producing solar or wind generators, they will. What ever it takes to increase their income.
-Rick
When we have a housing market with a total value of $13 Trillion, and a Credit Default Swap market based solely on that housing market, that has a total value of $35 Trillion, and people are still making models that say we're financially sound, the problem is obvious.
They are the ones holding the $22 Trillion of unbacked debt and they're trying to fool eveyone else into buying it off of them before the whole shit storm blows up.
-Rick
I'm thinking you and I are the same type of people ;)
-Rick
PS: It's okay! I'm compiling!
My choices of funding college for the kids could have been to put the money into a stock fund and bet that stocks would rise faster than college education prices.
And what I'm saying is that regardless of the field, given wide availability, that the price will invariable increase. So any purchase that can be done sooner, rather than later, is cheaper due to nothing other than inflation. Your situation is just a direct example of this. Your purchase was effectively made "sooner" as it was inflation proof. You may or may not have had additional savings through your investments, but if for not other purpose than the inflation protection, you would come out ahead.
You seem to say that competition is causing businesses to raise prices and reduce quality.
I said no such thing. Infact, I said just the opposite, but suddenly and dramatically altering the way education is funded you would be significantly reducing competition. Specifically you would be reducing competetion in everything except for the markets where students don't require loans. The only two categories of education facilities that meet that requirement are: Ivy League schools and diploma mills. As the vast majority of the population does not have access to Ivy League schools, the only remaining option for their "education" would be the diploma mills, that you yourself question the quality of.
In each case, I'd say the prices have fallen and the service level has risen.
Lets see:
Cell phones - I usually get a free phone with my contract, so the cost is baked in. But my contract from 2000 was roughly 1/2 what I pay now, not including data plans. Service quality is roughly the same, although now I can pay to download games to my phone where as previously my phones came pre-loaded with a selection of games.
Books - The books I buy today are a few dollars more expensive today than they were when I was in highschool. Mostly just inflationary changes. I do have the benefit of being able to order books online, but I no longer have any local book stores where as there use to be one in my home town and another just down the road. Where I could go and chat with the staff about book series I was reading and when the rest of the series was coming out, what rumors were running around, etc... So in some ways, the service has improved, in others its been deminished.
Retail - I can go to the super stores and get super cheap stuff now 24 hours a day! Prices have gone up (again, that's inflation for you) but not unreasonably. Unfortunately, since all of those workers are paid less (resulting in the lower prices compared to non-super stores) I'm subsidizing the store through higher medical costs, reductions in SS/Medicare, increased national debt interest, etc... Just because the price on the shelf is a couple of cents lower than what it would otherwise be doesn't mean I'm not paying for it.
As an analog, consider how many online encyclopedias we need. Wikipedia seems to do a pretty decent job.
Anyone who uses Wikipedia as a reference in acedemia should be drawn and quartered. Wikipedia is a starting place, but it is in no way, nor should it ever be used as a valid source of information. That's why they have citations on every page.
If you want to reduce the price, the best thing to do is end the subsidization.
If price is the ONLY concern, that is one viable solution. But price is not the only concern. Education is an investment in our future. The economic boom that the US enjoyed through most of the 20th century can be tied to a significant extent to the GI Bill's function of putting a significant number of Americans through college. A trend that not only lead to their education, but set the foundation for the social accceptance of post secondary education. If it hadn't been for the GI Bill and resulting social changes, we would have quite likely trended right back to the r
I paid mid 90's prices for my kids' education, and I'm done. So I was wrong about student riots (so far, although Occupy X is getting close), but I was financially correct
And that's just common sense. Paying for something widely available sooner rather than later is almost invariably cheaper. It's one of the arguements why Wisconsin should have built the new rail from Milwaukee to Madison, we're going to build the rail eventually, that's not in question. But for every year we put it off, the price gets higher. Congratulations on having more common sense than the leadership of Wisconsin :)
So if you have facts to support that delaying such projects are necessary spending, I'd like to see them
I never said any such thing. I said that for schools that already have campuses, that are already making payments on the debt to build those facilities or that are leasing the property, they can not just stop paying on that debt, or end that lease, and remain a school with a campus. The immediate reduction in revenue would cause most schools to go bankrupt just from the mortgage payments of their existing property. Canceling the building of additional facilities would be a wise first move, but it wouldn't absolve them of their current debt or leases.
Businesses everywhere have to do more with less now. Get with the program, schools!
And how are businesses coping? Higher prices and lower quality services. Exactly what I'm saying schools would do under your proposed change.
Quick semi-random check of Amazon showed 19 out of 20 books cheaper on Kindle (when available), with savings ranging from 6% to 60%.
And this all comes down to licensing and book selection. It's not like you can just get a copy of "Fundamentals of Physics" in digital copy, and if you could, it would still be a $100+ book. Or are you suggesting that the nearly $200 price tag on the book is in some way relative to the production costs of the book?
Some schools have started looking into alternatives. But for the most part, if you want high level books written by knowledgable profs with solid reviews and peer acceptance, you're going to pay through the nose for it. Sure, if you want to drop down to a "Physics For Dumbies" book, it'll only cost $10, but I'd venture a guess that the quality wouldn't be even remotely close.
The book gouging and cronyism is a topic for debate all on its own. I don't disagree with you that it SHOULD be cheaper, I just don't believe that under the current system (of copyrights and cronyism) that quality books would be cheaper given your suggestion.
If your choice as a university is to go out of business or encourage your teachers to use and contribute to free textbooks, you bet colleges and universities will start using and contributing to these resources.
Supply and demand does not have a significant impact on markets that way. Schools, or businesses in this case, will take the most profitable method. You would not see the majority of schools contributing to such projects, as their is no profit in doing so. It would be far more profitable to get the cheapest possible book (see "Physics for Dumbies" comment above) and to charge the highest amount that the students are willing to pay for them. The might move to use the free resources, but contribution would be non-existent, and there would probably be some significant licensing issues.
And certain major universities are putting all their lectures on line. Why not? And why not use these to fight the high cost?
And some schools are completely online. But doing so doesn't fight high costs, it fights to maximize profits. For example, I was recently looking into going back for my masters. Having a full time job and family, I'm not interested in driving to a campus. So I checked out a bunch of online schools. University of Pheonix Onlin