They are getting refunds because our elected officials decided to promote some economic activity (i.e. increased oil well drilling, etc.) by giving a deduction. Now we can argue if that was a good idea (many of them are not), but don't pretend that removing the deduction will only result in more taxes and have no other affect. This is a dynamics problem not a statics problem. Every decision that is made has a ripple effect and often unintended consequences. Every dollar taken in taxes isn't available for investment. Those Exxon and GE stockholders are making profits and unless they are putting them underneath their mattresses, those profits go somewhere (that they won't go if they are taken in the form of taxes). Frankly I've NEVER believed that taxing corporations would work. They either just raise their prices to cover the taxes and in effect, the customer pays the tax anyway or they lobby for loopholes that get them out of
the taxes altogether. I'm a big fan of the flat tax put forth by Senator Shelby many years ago (http://heraldnewsmedia.com/content/?p=2012), but that didn't go anywhere because 50% of the people on the low end aren't paying any taxes now (and they don't feel the responsibility to contribute at all) and there is another group on the high end that aren't really paying a fair amount in taxes (this we agree on, but even if they did we won't fix the problem).
BTW-Corporate income taxes only represent 12% of the total collected (2010 http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/numbers/revenue.cfm) so if you could double them (which you can't) it won't even come close to the shortfall.
I don't agree with your analogy. The government didn't give any money to rich uncles and aunts. Not taking money in taxes isn't giving them anything. Unless you subscribe to the theory that all the income belongs to the government and anything that they let us keep is what they "gave" us. That's pretty close to communism.
If you believe that the "rich" aren't paying their taxes, then why does the top 10% of wage earners in the US pay 70% of the taxes. Should they pay 80%, 90%, 100%? You pick a number that you think is fair. But the problem is no matter what number you pick YOU WON"T BALANCE THE CURRENT BUDGET. There isn't enough money to tax our way out of this situation. So now focus on the REAL problem: expenses (i.e. entitlements) and get out of class warfare politics. Perhaps there are tax deductions (loopholes) that need to be reviewed, but they are tiny and basically inconsequential when it comes to the sizes of deficits we are talking about. Funny think about deductions (loopholes) they were put in the tax law for some reason and unless that reason is no longer viable, eliminating them will have a negative affect on someone that benefits from them.
I guess fundamentally we must decide two things: 1) When has the government (federal, state, and local) reached the limit of how much total money it should take from individuals in the form of taxes. The top 10% of taxpayers are already paying 70% of the taxes. Should they be paying 80%, 90%, 100%? Class warfare that is being used to say the "rich should be pay more" is great for a 6:00 news soundbite, but is neither a fair or a workable solution. The path we are on now is such that if we took 100% of the income of the top 10% of the wage earners in the US we won't balance the budget! 2) While I agree that "trickle down" hasn't worked, I don't think increasing taxes on the highest 10% (or 1%) will fix that problem whatsoever. We don't have an income problem, we have an outgo problem (i.e. spending more than we make). Continuing to hold spending cuts hostage to increased taxes just shifts the focus off the problem and makes for good politics (for democrats).
What I see going on is something like this analogy:
You make a really good income but find that your family has been spending more than you make for quite a while and have now run up credit card and mortgage debt to the point (you are up against your debt ceiling) that after paying interest you can't pay all the monthly bills. You don't get another credit card/loan to continue on. Rather you sit your family down and level with them that this can't go on. In this analogy their response is to tell you that the problem is that you aren't bringing in enough money (I'll let you decide which political party represents you and which is your irresponsible family)! Their proposal is that if you will agree to bring in additional money, they will cut back on their expenses a little, but under no circumstances are they going to cut back enough to balance the budget (even over a 10 year period). They have become accustomed to their spending habits and are unwilling to reduce them and it is your responsibility to make more money even if you have to embezzle it from the company you work for (they make a lot of money and can afford it).
See how ridiculous this is? That is not how things work in the real world. In the real world you IMMEDIATELY cut your expenses back to the point where you are no longer going into the hole and then you determine how you might increase your income and whether that increase (taking a second job, etc) is worth it for the extra income. There is cost associated with gaining the extra income and you must weight the pros/cons of going after more money and it should be debated/decided.
Sorry that won't work (http://www.heritage.org/budgetchartbook/total-tax-burden). Even if you raised tax rates to the highest tax burden in US history, that won't fix the problem. This is because the problem is not an income problem, it is an outgo problem that has no control (http://www.heritage.org/budgetchartbook/growth-federal-spending-revenue).
Basically it is like you gave your teenager a $10,000 limit credit card and they went crazy charging things. You gave them a good talking to and called and had the limit raised because there was a legitimate need for some expenses Now they have reached the limit a second time. You are faced with bills that you can pay the bills but unless you take the credit card away from them this cycle is going to continue until you can't pay and are bankrupt.
You have a choice, follow them into bankruptcy or take away the credit card and make them live within their means.
Unexpected? Japan in on a major fault line. Tsunamis have happened there before. There are markers that date back 600 years telling people that they should not build closer than this marker to the ocean because of the threat of tsunamis. Many tsunami gates and elevated platforms were construction because of the impending threat. It was only a matter of time. Their problem was VERY old technology in the plants and a complete misunderstanding that Murphy was an optimist (i.e. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong).
If you had said 1Gb I might have agreed but only for now. Moving digital pictures, digital video, or any other rich content around is taxing even Gb Ethernet. The number one requirement that I see clients having is a connection that is fast enough to keep timely backups of their system on a network device. For now 100Mb just doesn't cut it. Gb Ethernet is adequate, but as the amount of data that users are keeping on their desktops and laptops explodes, only for now.
Seems like maybe you never watched the old classic movie "12 Angry Men"? It was a good example of someone that was smart enough to present evidence (which wasn't presented in court) to clear an innocent man. I know it was just a movie, but it does get one to thinking...
I don't remember anything in either article that could in any way be construed to mean that Cox made any such claims about being a PE or that is opinions are equivalent to those of a PE.
In addition it is quite a stretch to infer that somehow doing what Mr. Cox is asking for (installation of a traffic light) could somehow be construed as the wrong thing to do (as it applies to life and death that you refer to). It might be the wrong thing to do as it applies to traffic flow, but from a liability stand point it is hard to fathom how it could be used to make a case that a life was lost BECAUSE of the traffic light, which I believe is what you are postulating.
What I believe is really the rub here is now there is detailed information (on the public record) that will be used the FIRST time someone is killed at this intersection without a light and that is a problem for DOT.
As a professional engineer Mr. Lacy advised the neighborhood to hire another professional engineer to prepare the report. I thought that only lawyers generated business for each other in this manner...
This stinks to high heaven and Mr. Lacy should lose his job over this heavy-handed response.
Selling an upgrade is different from selling a standalone product. Apple sells their products like others sell a Tivo, a Wii, or other consumer product where the OS and the hardware are inseparable. They could market OS X to run on all Intel hardware but choose not to.
Most people hate Apple because they seem to "force" their ideas on to their customers. I use Windows, OS X and Linux on a daily basis and can tell you that if you actually use OS X for any period of time, you begin to respect it as a superior desktop operating system.
I didn't say nothing else would run, I said IMHO nothing runs "better" than OS X. Boot Camp, VMware Fusion, and Parallels Desktop all exist to run alternate OSs which may be necessary to run certain specific applications (I've used them when necessary).
First, because IMHO there is nothing that runs better on Macintosh than OS X. If Windows were as good as OS X, there would be less of a problem with this. Secondly, the hardware and OS comes from a single company (Apple) so I believe there's more leniency with the bundle. Thirdly, there's no retail/OEM pricing available for OS X because it isn't sold as a separate product.
>>But you can't craft code that reads like simple English in any other language.
O but I disagree. Python "real" code is as close to "pseudo code" as you can get. It is amazing how little you actually have to do to pseudo code to translate it into Python working code. Python also works as a procedural and an OO language. I came from a background of Basic, Fortran, Pascal, Cobol, etc. (35+ years at this point) and moving into Python was VERY easy. I just kept writing procedural code and it worked fine. When I discovered OO in Python, I was really impressed.
I taught in the Computer Honors program at my local University for several years and would have loved to have taught my students Python instead of BASIC and Fortran (but that was a long time ago). It has the power of being interpreted (which is really important for learning), but the power of an industrial strength OO language to build non-trivial real world applications.
Other reasons to teach Python is that it is EVERYWHERE and free. You can get a consistent Python runtime on virtually all platforms, but not a consistent BASIC or for that matter a consistent version of virtually any other language except maybe C (which would be a TERRIBLE teaching language). Using Python I can write to a web framework (Django, Zope) in the morning, write a Windows Service or COM object in the afternoon, and write a Linux/Macintosh GUI app or daemon in the evening. I dare you to do that in any other language. You can't begin to do that with BASIC, Java, or C#.
Only if you are setting up one firewall or editing one rule. Try that on 50 firewalls for 50 remote offices and you will notice that this doesn't work well any longer. You will want a script that you can apply to all 50 quickly and with confidence that all of them are EXACTLY alike.
Too expensive to rent Windows servers? You can get Amazon EC2 Windows instance for less than $100/month for 24 x 7 uptime. Pretty hard to run a Windows Server in-house for that amount of money (remember you have hardware, Windows 2008 license, cooling, electricity to consider).
Market momentum is a "real" thing. I watched as Lotus kept riding that momentum for years, then, Novell, then WordPerfect, etc.
One thing that has made an impression on me recently is that my daughter started University last year and I noticed that fully 3/4 of the kids on campus were using Mac laptops. They all loved iPods, then iPhones, and Mac laptop made complete sense to them. I suspect that this is true on most University campuses. They are not afraid of "change". They casually boot Windows XP/Vista in a Parallels or VMware virtual machine when necessary. They use Safari, iPhoto, iChat, etc. and marvel at how antiquated the equivalent applications are on Windows. So just wait a few years until those kids are calling some of the shots on what gets purchased in businesses. I think Jobs got it right by getting entrenched in their lives via iPods and iPhones and then getting their laptop and desktop purchases. Sometimes the indirect approach is best.
I agree with most of your post. I also agree that we are out here with money, but just don't like what we see. I just looked at new Apple TV and was severely disappointed: 720p only, no DVR, HDMI w/HDCP only, etc. Crap my 65" HDTV, that is only a few years old, doesn't even have 720p or HDMI (component only).
Another gripe is that I ABSOLUTELY refuse to rent movies for $3.99, $4.99 or more and be constrained to something like 24.48 hours. Sorry, but you should be selling most of them for $1.99-$2.99 because most of them really aren't worth watching more than once. I started purchasing DVDs when they became popular and then just stopped. It wasn't worth the cost to "own" a copy of the movie. Since they aren't HD, I find re-runs on HBO/Starz and record them on my HD DVR. Not that is something that actually works pretty well..99 for a TV re-run is also, as you put it, straight-up funny. Maybe I'm the only one that thinks that the cost to ship me some bits down the Internet should be a LOT lower a'la Hulu or Netflix. Come on guys, do the math. There are hundreds of millions of potential customers out here. Didn't you learn anything from iTunes. Get the price down low enough and people will purchase 10 times as much stuff, but we have to be able to keep it and to play it on whatever we want.
Another reason that I haven't seen mentioned for wanting younger programmers that are paid less is because the person that is doing the hiring is building their departments by hiring more people. Would you rather have one $100K superstar or two $60K barely adequate programmers? The manager learns quickly that having more lower paying employees under their direct responsibility results in more pay. This isn't just true in IT, it is basically true across the board. People who manage more people get paid more. Build your kingdom (and your salary), by just hiring more people. Eventually you will have built a department and have a good salary. Now if you could have solved the problem with the $100K superstar and yourself, you won't get rewarded for that.
While I think that teacher's unions are "part" of the problem, I'm convinced that the bigger problem is that there is a lack of discipline and kids aren't afraid of anything that a teacher or principal can currently do to them. "Time out" just doesn't motivate a teenager to change their behavior. Parents just are not supporting teachers in this area. We have a complete generation of children that "can do no wrong" in the eyes of their parents. Until parents quit thinking their child is a complete "angel" and always blindly takes their side against teachers and administrators we will continue down this path. How things have changed in the last 30 years.
No I will admit that teachers and administrators could be wrong, but parents have got to go into this with the assumption that the child is probably wrong until proven otherwise. Assuming that the children are always right hasn't and won't work. They are children after all. While there may be times when the child is right, it is extremely important that they learn to work within the power structure that exists. The real world just isn't going to change to accommodate them even if they are right, they must find a way to adapt or we are setting them up for a lifetime of disappointment. The workplace is just not going to put up with the lack of discipline that teachers are forced to endure today and it is the children that are in for a rude awakening.
In return for this support, parents should expect teachers to be accountable. Asking teachers to be accountable for their student's proficiency without discipline or any ability to modify the student's behavior can't work.
...require extraordinary proof. The more specific the details surrounding the being, the more proof is required.
Ah, now you are on to something. We are in agreement on at least one thing. I said earlier that either Jesus was who He said He was or He was a lunatic. The proof that Jesus was who He said he was is in His crucifixion/resurrection. If you would seriously investigate this event, you will find that that it stands up to your test of "extraordinary proof". Hundreds of people were eyewitnesses this miraculous event. You can, of course, discount it because it doesn't "seem plausible to you" or "you just don't believe in miracles" but given the magnitude of that decision, you should at least make certain that you make an informed decision about it. Either way, you are an eternal being and like it or not, God will continue to purse a personal relationship with you as long as you live.
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They are getting refunds because our elected officials decided to promote some economic activity (i.e. increased oil well drilling, etc.) by giving a deduction. Now we can argue if that was a good idea (many of them are not), but don't pretend that removing the deduction will only result in more taxes and have no other affect. This is a dynamics problem not a statics problem. Every decision that is made has a ripple effect and often unintended consequences. Every dollar taken in taxes isn't available for investment. Those Exxon and GE stockholders are making profits and unless they are putting them underneath their mattresses, those profits go somewhere (that they won't go if they are taken in the form of taxes). Frankly I've NEVER believed that taxing corporations would work. They either just raise their prices to cover the taxes and in effect, the customer pays the tax anyway or they lobby for loopholes that get them out of the taxes altogether. I'm a big fan of the flat tax put forth by Senator Shelby many years ago (http://heraldnewsmedia.com/content/?p=2012), but that didn't go anywhere because 50% of the people on the low end aren't paying any taxes now (and they don't feel the responsibility to contribute at all) and there is another group on the high end that aren't really paying a fair amount in taxes (this we agree on, but even if they did we won't fix the problem). BTW-Corporate income taxes only represent 12% of the total collected (2010 http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/numbers/revenue.cfm) so if you could double them (which you can't) it won't even come close to the shortfall.
I don't agree with your analogy. The government didn't give any money to rich uncles and aunts. Not taking money in taxes isn't giving them anything. Unless you subscribe to the theory that all the income belongs to the government and anything that they let us keep is what they "gave" us. That's pretty close to communism. If you believe that the "rich" aren't paying their taxes, then why does the top 10% of wage earners in the US pay 70% of the taxes. Should they pay 80%, 90%, 100%? You pick a number that you think is fair. But the problem is no matter what number you pick YOU WON"T BALANCE THE CURRENT BUDGET. There isn't enough money to tax our way out of this situation. So now focus on the REAL problem: expenses (i.e. entitlements) and get out of class warfare politics. Perhaps there are tax deductions (loopholes) that need to be reviewed, but they are tiny and basically inconsequential when it comes to the sizes of deficits we are talking about. Funny think about deductions (loopholes) they were put in the tax law for some reason and unless that reason is no longer viable, eliminating them will have a negative affect on someone that benefits from them.
I guess fundamentally we must decide two things: 1) When has the government (federal, state, and local) reached the limit of how much total money it should take from individuals in the form of taxes. The top 10% of taxpayers are already paying 70% of the taxes. Should they be paying 80%, 90%, 100%? Class warfare that is being used to say the "rich should be pay more" is great for a 6:00 news soundbite, but is neither a fair or a workable solution. The path we are on now is such that if we took 100% of the income of the top 10% of the wage earners in the US we won't balance the budget! 2) While I agree that "trickle down" hasn't worked, I don't think increasing taxes on the highest 10% (or 1%) will fix that problem whatsoever. We don't have an income problem, we have an outgo problem (i.e. spending more than we make). Continuing to hold spending cuts hostage to increased taxes just shifts the focus off the problem and makes for good politics (for democrats).
What I see going on is something like this analogy:
You make a really good income but find that your family has been spending more than you make for quite a while and have now run up credit card and mortgage debt to the point (you are up against your debt ceiling) that after paying interest you can't pay all the monthly bills. You don't get another credit card/loan to continue on. Rather you sit your family down and level with them that this can't go on. In this analogy their response is to tell you that the problem is that you aren't bringing in enough money (I'll let you decide which political party represents you and which is your irresponsible family)! Their proposal is that if you will agree to bring in additional money, they will cut back on their expenses a little, but under no circumstances are they going to cut back enough to balance the budget (even over a 10 year period). They have become accustomed to their spending habits and are unwilling to reduce them and it is your responsibility to make more money even if you have to embezzle it from the company you work for (they make a lot of money and can afford it).
See how ridiculous this is? That is not how things work in the real world. In the real world you IMMEDIATELY cut your expenses back to the point where you are no longer going into the hole and then you determine how you might increase your income and whether that increase (taking a second job, etc) is worth it for the extra income. There is cost associated with gaining the extra income and you must weight the pros/cons of going after more money and it should be debated/decided.
Sorry that won't work (http://www.heritage.org/budgetchartbook/total-tax-burden). Even if you raised tax rates to the highest tax burden in US history, that won't fix the problem. This is because the problem is not an income problem, it is an outgo problem that has no control (http://www.heritage.org/budgetchartbook/growth-federal-spending-revenue).
Basically it is like you gave your teenager a $10,000 limit credit card and they went crazy charging things. You gave them a good talking to and called and had the limit raised because there was a legitimate need for some expenses Now they have reached the limit a second time. You are faced with bills that you can pay the bills but unless you take the credit card away from them this cycle is going to continue until you can't pay and are bankrupt.
You have a choice, follow them into bankruptcy or take away the credit card and make them live within their means.
Unexpected? Japan in on a major fault line. Tsunamis have happened there before. There are markers that date back 600 years telling people that they should not build closer than this marker to the ocean because of the threat of tsunamis. Many tsunami gates and elevated platforms were construction because of the impending threat. It was only a matter of time. Their problem was VERY old technology in the plants and a complete misunderstanding that Murphy was an optimist (i.e. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong).
If you had said 1Gb I might have agreed but only for now. Moving digital pictures, digital video, or any other rich content around is taxing even Gb Ethernet. The number one requirement that I see clients having is a connection that is fast enough to keep timely backups of their system on a network device. For now 100Mb just doesn't cut it. Gb Ethernet is adequate, but as the amount of data that users are keeping on their desktops and laptops explodes, only for now.
Seems like maybe you never watched the old classic movie "12 Angry Men"? It was a good example of someone that was smart enough to present evidence (which wasn't presented in court) to clear an innocent man. I know it was just a movie, but it does get one to thinking...
I don't remember anything in either article that could in any way be construed to mean that Cox made any such claims about being a PE or that is opinions are equivalent to those of a PE.
In addition it is quite a stretch to infer that somehow doing what Mr. Cox is asking for (installation of a traffic light) could somehow be construed as the wrong thing to do (as it applies to life and death that you refer to). It might be the wrong thing to do as it applies to traffic flow, but from a liability stand point it is hard to fathom how it could be used to make a case that a life was lost BECAUSE of the traffic light, which I believe is what you are postulating.
What I believe is really the rub here is now there is detailed information (on the public record) that will be used the FIRST time someone is killed at this intersection without a light and that is a problem for DOT.
Reading a companion article sheds a little more light on this (at least for me):
http://blogs.newsobserver.com/crosstown/wake-gop-raps-perdue-and-dot-for-stifling-free-speech
As a professional engineer Mr. Lacy advised the neighborhood to hire another professional engineer to prepare the report. I thought that only lawyers generated business for each other in this manner...
This stinks to high heaven and Mr. Lacy should lose his job over this heavy-handed response.
Selling an upgrade is different from selling a standalone product. Apple sells their products like others sell a Tivo, a Wii, or other consumer product where the OS and the hardware are inseparable. They could market OS X to run on all Intel hardware but choose not to. Most people hate Apple because they seem to "force" their ideas on to their customers. I use Windows, OS X and Linux on a daily basis and can tell you that if you actually use OS X for any period of time, you begin to respect it as a superior desktop operating system.
I didn't say nothing else would run, I said IMHO nothing runs "better" than OS X. Boot Camp, VMware Fusion, and Parallels Desktop all exist to run alternate OSs which may be necessary to run certain specific applications (I've used them when necessary).
First, because IMHO there is nothing that runs better on Macintosh than OS X. If Windows were as good as OS X, there would be less of a problem with this. Secondly, the hardware and OS comes from a single company (Apple) so I believe there's more leniency with the bundle. Thirdly, there's no retail/OEM pricing available for OS X because it isn't sold as a separate product.
Hard drives stored in non-temperature/humidity controlled attics is NOT a good method for getting dependable backups.
>>But you can't craft code that reads like simple English in any other language.
O but I disagree. Python "real" code is as close to "pseudo code" as you can get. It is amazing how little you actually have to do to pseudo code to translate it into Python working code. Python also works as a procedural and an OO language. I came from a background of Basic, Fortran, Pascal, Cobol, etc. (35+ years at this point) and moving into Python was VERY easy. I just kept writing procedural code and it worked fine. When I discovered OO in Python, I was really impressed.
I taught in the Computer Honors program at my local University for several years and would have loved to have taught my students Python instead of BASIC and Fortran (but that was a long time ago). It has the power of being interpreted (which is really important for learning), but the power of an industrial strength OO language to build non-trivial real world applications.
Other reasons to teach Python is that it is EVERYWHERE and free. You can get a consistent Python runtime on virtually all platforms, but not a consistent BASIC or for that matter a consistent version of virtually any other language except maybe C (which would be a TERRIBLE teaching language). Using Python I can write to a web framework (Django, Zope) in the morning, write a Windows Service or COM object in the afternoon, and write a Linux/Macintosh GUI app or daemon in the evening. I dare you to do that in any other language. You can't begin to do that with BASIC, Java, or C#.
Only if you are setting up one firewall or editing one rule. Try that on 50 firewalls for 50 remote offices and you will notice that this doesn't work well any longer. You will want a script that you can apply to all 50 quickly and with confidence that all of them are EXACTLY alike.
Too expensive to rent Windows servers? You can get Amazon EC2 Windows instance for less than $100/month for 24 x 7 uptime. Pretty hard to run a Windows Server in-house for that amount of money (remember you have hardware, Windows 2008 license, cooling, electricity to consider).
Amazon and Google going "belly up". You REALLY have other things to worry about that have a much higher probability of actually happening.
I don't watch ads now. I DVR everything and use the "skip 30 seconds" button as needed.
Market momentum is a "real" thing. I watched as Lotus kept riding that momentum for years, then, Novell, then WordPerfect, etc.
One thing that has made an impression on me recently is that my daughter started University last year and I noticed that fully 3/4 of the kids on campus were using Mac laptops. They all loved iPods, then iPhones, and Mac laptop made complete sense to them. I suspect that this is true on most University campuses. They are not afraid of "change". They casually boot Windows XP/Vista in a Parallels or VMware virtual machine when necessary. They use Safari, iPhoto, iChat, etc. and marvel at how antiquated the equivalent applications are on Windows. So just wait a few years until those kids are calling some of the shots on what gets purchased in businesses. I think Jobs got it right by getting entrenched in their lives via iPods and iPhones and then getting their laptop and desktop purchases. Sometimes the indirect approach is best.
I agree with most of your post. I also agree that we are out here with money, but just don't like what we see. I just looked at new Apple TV and was severely disappointed: 720p only, no DVR, HDMI w/HDCP only, etc. Crap my 65" HDTV, that is only a few years old, doesn't even have 720p or HDMI (component only).
.99 for a TV re-run is also, as you put it, straight-up funny. Maybe I'm the only one that thinks that the cost to ship me some bits down the Internet should be a LOT lower a'la Hulu or Netflix. Come on guys, do the math. There are hundreds of millions of potential customers out here. Didn't you learn anything from iTunes. Get the price down low enough and people will purchase 10 times as much stuff, but we have to be able to keep it and to play it on whatever we want.
Another gripe is that I ABSOLUTELY refuse to rent movies for $3.99, $4.99 or more and be constrained to something like 24.48 hours. Sorry, but you should be selling most of them for $1.99-$2.99 because most of them really aren't worth watching more than once. I started purchasing DVDs when they became popular and then just stopped. It wasn't worth the cost to "own" a copy of the movie. Since they aren't HD, I find re-runs on HBO/Starz and record them on my HD DVR. Not that is something that actually works pretty well.
Another reason that I haven't seen mentioned for wanting younger programmers that are paid less is because the person that is doing the hiring is building their departments by hiring more people. Would you rather have one $100K superstar or two $60K barely adequate programmers? The manager learns quickly that having more lower paying employees under their direct responsibility results in more pay. This isn't just true in IT, it is basically true across the board. People who manage more people get paid more. Build your kingdom (and your salary), by just hiring more people. Eventually you will have built a department and have a good salary. Now if you could have solved the problem with the $100K superstar and yourself, you won't get rewarded for that.
You might want to take a look at these IP connected video cameras:
http://www.axis.com/products/video/camera/ptz/index.htm
They have pan/zoom so you can control them remotely.
While I think that teacher's unions are "part" of the problem, I'm convinced that the bigger problem is that there is a lack of discipline and kids aren't afraid of anything that a teacher or principal can currently do to them. "Time out" just doesn't motivate a teenager to change their behavior. Parents just are not supporting teachers in this area. We have a complete generation of children that "can do no wrong" in the eyes of their parents. Until parents quit thinking their child is a complete "angel" and always blindly takes their side against teachers and administrators we will continue down this path. How things have changed in the last 30 years.
No I will admit that teachers and administrators could be wrong, but parents have got to go into this with the assumption that the child is probably wrong until proven otherwise. Assuming that the children are always right hasn't and won't work. They are children after all. While there may be times when the child is right, it is extremely important that they learn to work within the power structure that exists. The real world just isn't going to change to accommodate them even if they are right, they must find a way to adapt or we are setting them up for a lifetime of disappointment. The workplace is just not going to put up with the lack of discipline that teachers are forced to endure today and it is the children that are in for a rude awakening.
In return for this support, parents should expect teachers to be accountable. Asking teachers to be accountable for their student's proficiency without discipline or any ability to modify the student's behavior can't work.
...require extraordinary proof. The more specific the details surrounding the being, the more proof is required.
Ah, now you are on to something. We are in agreement on at least one thing. I said earlier that either Jesus was who He said He was or He was a lunatic. The proof that Jesus was who He said he was is in His crucifixion/resurrection. If you would seriously investigate this event, you will find that that it stands up to your test of "extraordinary proof". Hundreds of people were eyewitnesses this miraculous event. You can, of course, discount it because it doesn't "seem plausible to you" or "you just don't believe in miracles" but given the magnitude of that decision, you should at least make certain that you make an informed decision about it. Either way, you are an eternal being and like it or not, God will continue to purse a personal relationship with you as long as you live.