If you can't pass a poly, regardless of how innocent you are, that's a personality indicator that puts you at risk for not being able to safeguard critical information.
No. It does not. It simply shows a biological response of any significant emotion at the time.
You are right as to what it indicates. And parent poster was right as to the implications of that indication. If you cannot control your physiological reactions to different stress inputs, you're probably not the type they are looking for. Source of the stress is irrelevant.
If a polygraph were actually effective, why would you ever need to give someone more than one?
You mistake "effective" with "perfected". If polygraph were perfected, there would be no need to repeat. They aren't perfected.
Why is it that the only result the NSA will "accept" is that of a pass?
What is the purpose of having a test if not to check whether applicants can "pass"?
Out in the real world, sometimes you have to sacrifice "ideal" and "perfect" and settle for "this works better than whatever else we have". You put a bunch of "this works" tools together, and hopefully you can draw an image of a candidate that is comprehensive enough to make an informed decision about their suitability for the job. Is a polygraph perfect? No. Does it operate in a vacuum? No.
Would SPAM be a problem if the machine requires that the sender's email address be on the whitelist and a passcode must be in the subject line?
Have 2 different passcodes - printer code for printing, admin code to remotely execute certain commands (like adding/removing other email addresses from the whitelist). Throw in a little logic to take itself offline temporarily (or some other response) if it's getting DOS'd. Should be fairly ok, no?
I'd also add that you should not be able to "contribute" to more than one candidate in any given race, on the grounds that that's briberey plain and simple.
Where did the idea that money equals speech come from, anyway? Money is NOT speech. But like you say, good luck ever getting that implimented in our plutocratic pseudo-republic.
What do you consider acceptable political speech and what don't you? How do you make the distinction? If I have a means to promote a candidate (time, money, whatever), wouldn't restricting my means (in this context) constitute restricting my political speech?
Something else you seem to miss out on is that voting is bribery. You give something (a vote) in exchange for something (the candidate of your choice has a better chance of getting elected). Whether with short term or long term goals in mind, people do not naturally vote against their own perceived-best interest. Politicians know this and pander to their constituents, "bribing" citizens for their votes. Like it or hate it, it's how it the system is designed.
To quote George Will, "Politics in a democracy is transactional: Politicians seek votes by promising to do things for voters, who seek promises in exchange for their votes."
If we're nothing more than mechanics, there should still be NO reason to pay Chevy wages to fix or maintain a Ferrari.
And nobody does. If you're working on a true Ferrari, and you're a truly qualified Ferrari mechanic... you get paid Ferrari-level wages. Duh.
The problem here is all the people who think their Yugo is actually a Veyron, and should be paid like a NASCAR pit chief because they can plug a tire and change oil.
Perhaps without that free cash, they may have been impelled to go out and produce new creative works of their own.
Or perhaps they would have been impelled to pump gas or flip burgers. Who knows?
Using your logic, an author with rights to Conan-Doyle's work has no incentive to create new unique works. Therefore, we don't want Conan-Doyle's work to become public domain because then the masses have access to his work and nobody has incentive to be creative.
The point is... nobody is being prevented from creating, and the only people with any ability to rest on their laurels are people with rights to the work. Wouldn't it then make sense to limit those rights to as few people as possible to encourage the masses to do more creative work of their own?
if you can milk something infinately, it removes all incentive to create new creative works
I see this argument a lot on Slashdot and it's absurd on its face. For as long as the copyright is in effect, there may be less incentive for the owner to create other works, however, there is more incentive for other creators to produce creative works. Since others cannot personally benefit from a previously created work (unless they own it), they are encouraged to create new works of their own. Your argument seems to assume that there is only one creator out there and this individual stops making new creations then there will be no new works.
If copyright was short term or nonexistent and Tex Avery chose to copy Mickey Mouse instead of creating Bugs Bunny, would that have contributed to art or culture? Walt Disney owned Mickey Mouse, but he didn't sit around "milking" that property infinitely - he created a whole cast of additional characters. He was then able to use his ownership of those creative works to build up a company that provided jobs for thousands of animators, construction workers, designers, unskilled workers, etc.
Allowing people to control their creative works fosters creativity, it doesn't stifle it. Even if a creator chooses to stop creating and live off his/her existing properties, that doesn't prevent the rest of the world from producing new and unique works.
FWIW, Having Strippers at the company is *NOT* a good idea. The last game company I worked for had a stripper come in for the art directors birthday. I t was very awkward -- especially since she tried to get him to strip as well (which is something I did not need to see). Plus between married guys and nerds, no one really knew what we should be doing (I guess neither married guys nor nerds get sex).
Oh, and to top it all off, the one woman who was working there at the time (the receptionist) ended up suing the company for sexual harassment when she quit.
I'm guessing your event was in the US? FWIW, an event held in Asia is nothing like an event held in the US. In the land of karaoke bars and "anything goes", a stripper at an event is nothing of note.
What would you prefer, that this be rushed through without planning, server load testing, and figuring out exactly how it interacts with existing services?
I'm afraid that's wasted sentiment on this board. The same people that are quick to bash MS for rushing the hardware and experiencing massive failure rates are the same trolls claiming MS is just holding this up until they can milk it for every last penny. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
The people who aren't aware of Microsoft's behavior are probably even less likely to understand and respect the comments of the FSF. In other words, they're preaching to the choir.
Agreed. I would really like to see a party that is truly fiscally conservative and socially/morally liberal. I don't care what the other 300mil Americans want to do with their free time, I just don't want them using my money to do it.
The people who want more government regulation want more of a public say.
Yet people continually re-elect incumbents, despite their poor performance. "Public say" has been available since the birth of the republic, we don't need a bigger government so we can have more "public say".
People who truly want a "public say" should be conservative leaning - choosing what to do with their own money as opposed to paying ever increasing taxes that fund things the don't approve (ie., "oppressive world military", etc.)
Doesn't it bother you that 1-2 days of your work week are essentially solely for the purpose of paying for government programs (many of which you don't approve of)?
Well they certainly didn't blow through it on wardrobe and props. They rocked motorcycle helmets and unbadged Cadillacs in that twisted dystopian future state...
Could a device the size of a cel-phone effectively triangulate the location of an RFID tag?
The proposed device wouldn't work well in a library, but I don't see RFID as very useful either. If you have to walk your reader past every book you might as well just read the spines.
Not detracting from your post, I agree there is always that option. Unfortunately (in the context of the discussion at/.) if they chose Option 4, there's a good chance we'd see an article here complaining that "MS would rather pull a product / waste developer hours / any option other than release GPL'd code". MS can't win here...
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for unaccountable entities whose primary responsibility is profit.
Right... because nobody is profiting from the broken system overseen by "accountable" politicians. Take a look at the education system in California. Corrupt politicians bound to their lobbyist masters. CTA spending $58 MILLION on advertising in 2007 to defeat reform measures that Govenor Schwarzenegger was trying to get passed. California's education meanwhile, ranked 40th out of the 50 states (and DC).
Private corporations may have profitability as a goal, but you're sadly mistaken if you believe they can achieve that goal without providing a satisfactory product (in this case, education). Why do you think some parents pay expensive tuition at private schools? Despite the fact that private schools may want to be profitable, the education they provide is generally better than their public counterparts. Meanwhile the administrators of the public school system are happy to piss money away because, when it eventually becomes time to raise taxes, they know nobody will want to be the jerk voting "against education".
California is a very visible example of the naivete inherent to the "government is non-profit and accountable and therefore better" argument.
I agree with your point about the suckiness of TV in general and "reality" shows in particular, but you couldn't have picked worse examples of shows that got canceled (according to you) due to this trend.
Terminator - looked like a crappy rehash of an ancient franchise
My Name is Earl - got 4 seasons out of it. Not a great run, but not terrible either.
Scrubs - 8 seasons and getting noticeably tired at the end
Frasier - 11 seasons, dozens of Emmy's, that's a fantastic run (especially for a spin-off)
Samantha Who - "who?" is right. Never heard of this one. Maybe they needed better marketing?
It's tough to respect a list of shows that were canceled "because people are stupid and watch reality TV" when you include 2 long running shows who clearly had reached the end of their writers' creative pools. Sometimes a show doesn't know when to quit (ahem, The Simpsons, I am looking at you), but those shows did and I doubt the reality TV fad had much to do with it.
Dude, you're missing the point and not dishing out any knowledge in the process. You accused these people of being "blue bloods" - indicating that they came from substantially wealthy & established families. Ok, maybe the son of a congressman fits that description. My mistake for not vetting the list properly. Instead of picking out the 1-2 guys who don't fit, why don't you try and see what the greater point of the list was. These are people who are each worth BILLIONS and they didn't come from families with anywhere near as much affluence as they now have. Most of them did it without vast social networks or tons of funding like you assume all wealthy people have, they just hustled until they were at the top of the game.
You keep saying that all their profits are made on the backs of the poor. That may be true to the extent that some of their companies may have engaged in unethical business practises, but a few anecdotes in no way proves that all wealthy people got their money off the backs of the poor. That's not only incredibly naive, it's illogical. As for the people who aren't making enough money to be self-sufficient, where is their responsibility in this? Did they ever attempt to learn a trade? Do they speak proper English (not that it is always necessary, but it sure helps)? How many kids do they have? Have they tried to work other jobs or multiple jobs? I have very little sympathy for a person who doesn't speak any English, doesn't have any skills except for knocking up his wife, and now he's complaining that he can't make enough money to feed all the mouths. And before you accuse me of being racist against immigrants, I'm thinking more about the ghetto people who grew up in the US who have had opportunities to get educated (all you really need is a high school diploma), have had opportunities to keep their dicks in their pants, who have opportunities to get jobs that aren't glamorous but will pay the bills. Why is it that illegal immigrants keep coming to this country and make decent livings while people born in this country cry out that they need welfare and government assistance? That's why I call people lazy, despite how offensive you find it. There are hard workers hanging out in front of Home Depot waiting for a chance to make some cash so they can pay their cheap rent and wire moeny home to Mexico and most of them aren't complaining. On the other side of the barrio you have kids who grew up in the US who turn their nose up at working in fast food and sag their pants in job interviews, then complain that they can't get hired and they need assistance.
As for your claim that wealthy people just sit around hording their money all I can say is wow, you really have no clue. Wealthy people aren't wealthy because they put a bunch of money in a WaMu savings account and sit on it. They're wealthy because they use their money to make more money. This is done by investing their money in other ventures - their money gets used by people with less money to start new businesses. Even money getting thrown around the stock market is flowing into companies who turn around and use that capital to conduct their business. With few exceptions, the money does flow back into the economy. Not only that, but when investments are successful and these businesses grow they have to hire more people and more jobs are created. World Wealth is not a zero-sum game. Wealthy people having money doesn't deprive the poor people like you seem to think.
You and I are never going to agree. You think that the wealthy exist only because of the poor, and vice versa. I think the wealthy exist largely because of themselves, as do the poor exist largely because of themselves as well. If I ever make enough money where my kids and grandkids never have to work, holy shit that's a great thing for my family. Hopefully they are good stewards with the money and can help make the world a better place.
You never answered the other question: Can I have $20 from your wallet? I'm sure your lifestyle w
please poll the income level of those attending elite academic institutions. I was the "poor kid" at such an institution, and can attest to this from a personal level. 80% of attendees had a brand new car. 30% of those new cars were worth 40 thousand dollars or more. Few people had to procure loans despite the yearly fees (after aid) greater than the US median income.
So you went to an institution with kids from more affluent families... so what? You could've gone to a small community college in a low income neighborhood and been the rich kid. Comparing yourself to the people around you is pointless and part of the reason our society lives too much on credit.
Ah yes the mythical rags to riches group?... Need I set any more of these straw men alight?
You haven't set any alight but have created one of your own. I didn't say these were rags to riches, but that they became hugely successful despite not being born with silver spoons in their mouths.
These people dont suffer the slightest denial of their lifestyle by paying more taxes, nor is that money which they are not paying substantially helping the economy(theyre not buying finished goods with it because they already have orders of magnitude more than they need to buy what they want). On the other hand, the poor do suffer denial of basic security in their health, housing, childcare, etc. because they are paid as little as possible by this priviledged class.
Can I take $20 from your wallet? I'm sure it won't hurt your lifestyle.
the problem I have with this is it comes at the expense of the bottom 50% of the income bracket, which represents a vast fraction of the population.
The people causing the expense are the ones paying for the expense, what is wrong with that?
I'd really like to see the world be a better place, I just think involvement should be voluntary. I'm a drop-out and I've worked many jobs to earn a decent living and now I'm comfortably middle class on my own. I probably won't ever make the jump to upper class in the realm of billions of dollars, but I still don't begrudge the ones that are there. If people with tons of money want to give it away to help others, excellent! If they don't, the government shouldn't force them. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are huge philanthropists, Larry Ellison isn't. I think that's ok. Every tax dollar taken from my pocket means I'm less likely to donate anything of my own accord.
after all, the top earners didnt earn all that money by exploiting those "bottom wrung wallowers".
It's cute that you think every rich person could only get to that level by exploiting poor people. Cute, but naive. Exploitation is not exclusive to the rich, nor is it requisite to become rich. Pimps exploit hoes in the ghetto on a daily basis and most of them aren't making enough income to even be considered middle class.
how intellectually dishonest can you get? 99.99% of people in these brackets were born with a silver spoon in their mouths, had everything provided to them, are inheritors, and were given private elevators through social ties into the corporate top floor.
Do you have a source for this "99.99%" stat? Link please. Regardless... If you earn money, why shouldn't you be allowed to do with it as you please? It's your property. If you earn a lot of money and choose to bequeath it to your spouse or children, why should they be resented for receiving it? Better yet, why should it be stolen from them to be given to the people who trudge to work each day? What gives the anonymous "trudging worker" more entitlement to your money than the people who you chose to leave it to?
By the way... Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Steven A. Cohen, Dhirubhai Ambani, Michael Dell. Want to know what all these names have in common? They're billionaires, and all of them came from modest means and most did it without college degrees. These are some of the richest men on the planet and none of them were born with silver spoons in their mouths. They got to where they are because they worked their balls off to make it happen, not because money was redistributed to them from the Rockefellers via government programs.
The thing which differs the developed west from undeveloped third world countries is a thriving middle class, which would not exist period without regulations and programs forcibly redistributing wealth, keeping the gap between rich and poor reasonable.
Wrong. Redistibuting wealth from the rich to the poor does not create a thriving middle class. If you read the article linked in my previous post, you would realize that there are people living in abject poverty because they receive handouts, not despite them. The middle class thrives when regulations are relaxed and it is easy for people to go into business for themselves.
That gap has been increasing for the past decade and a half, and now those poor rich people are suffering because it turns out most people cant afford their own house now because of this.
If people can't afford houses, they should be renting or living in a less expensive area. If enough people aren't buying houses, the market will drop and houses will become more affordable. It doesn't happen overnight but it does happen.
Wealthy people don't seem to understand that attacking government programs which keep their customers and laborers afloat because they dislike having to let go of a negligible sum of their vast wealth will eventually bite them in the ass when there is no demand to move their inventories or hold up the value of their real estate investments.
Watch out, you just agreed with my point. Regulation is not necessary, if the rich people act selfish and short-sighted they will kill their own profitability and the market will correct itself. It's painful when it happens, but it does happen.
That's the reason why there has been a predictable recession surrounding every republican presidency since reagan.
After you graduate and get out in the real world, you'll learn that there's very little real difference between Democrats and Republicans. They're all awful.
No rich person would be where they are without the society around them, the infrastructure created by the government, the military that defends them (made up disproportionally, of course, with the lower and middle class), and the people who work for them. The redistribution of wealth acknowledges that people owe society for what it has given them, and must support it so that future generations can benefit from it as well.
Paying taxes to cover minor costs of infrastructure and military is reasonable. Taxing the wealthy to compensate the poor is a horrible idea. People should get off their asses, get jobs, and better themselves and their community. The government should not force the cost of the "betterment" on the top-earners while the bottom rung wallows in self-pity and reliance. The old "give a man a fish..." adage still applies. Taking money from the rich to pay the poor only teaches the poor that they don't have to work. Read this article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/03/MNB4RN991.DTL and make sure you pay attention to the part where the woman says she doesn't want to get a job because if she earns more money, the government will subsidize less of her rent.
Your comparison to slavery is disgusting and horribly elitist.
You know what I find disgusting? The concept that people who actually put forth the required effort to make nice lives for themselves are resented and there's a weird misconception that they don't deserve to keep the fruits of their labor. Redistribution isn't slavery but certainly has a lot in common with theft and organized crime.
It may come as a surprise to you that not everybody grows up in a blue-blood family, and that social mobility is not perfect in the US. Redistributive tax systems allow for the strengthening of social mobility by ensuring that the lower class isn't always subject to abject poverty-
Now you sound like a spoiled college student railing against "the Haves". Do you really seem to think that taking away money from the upper class and giving it to the lower class will help make them socially mobile? More likely it will make them socially paralized. The redistibution will never give them enough affluence to become middle or upper class, but their dependence on it will retard any chance that they will ever earn middle/upper-class income on their own. Instead of making snide comments about "blue bloods", go visit the projects. Not just a ghetto suburb, but a genuine VLI/Section-8 project. When you look around and see children growing up in families that have been in the projects for multiple generations you will start to understand that redistribution is not a solution and usually just makes the problem worse.
that even if they are searching for a job or lose a job they do not lose their home and their entire life in the process.
It's called unemployment compensation. If you lose your job, you get a small stipend depending on how long you worked there and how much money you made. This is supposed to help you maintain your quality of life while searching for a new job. It's paid for by your old employer which means you (indirectly) earned it for yourself. This is a good thing. The moment somebody else has to start paying for your mortgage because you're unemployed, the system is flawed. If you can't afford a house, you should be renting. If you can't afford the big apartment, you should be in a smaller one. If you're in a tiny apartment and still can't afford to pay the rent, you need to stop turning your nose up at the minimum-wage fast food jobs. There are always ways to make the ends meet if people try hard enough and are wise with what they have.
Too many people are trying to pay for the leased car parked in the garage of the house that was just slightly too expensive so they could on
Slashdot Mirror
If you can't pass a poly, regardless of how innocent you are, that's a personality indicator that puts you at risk for not being able to safeguard critical information.
No. It does not. It simply shows a biological response of any significant emotion at the time.
You are right as to what it indicates. And parent poster was right as to the implications of that indication. If you cannot control your physiological reactions to different stress inputs, you're probably not the type they are looking for. Source of the stress is irrelevant.
If a polygraph were actually effective, why would you ever need to give someone more than one?
You mistake "effective" with "perfected". If polygraph were perfected, there would be no need to repeat. They aren't perfected.
Why is it that the only result the NSA will "accept" is that of a pass?
What is the purpose of having a test if not to check whether applicants can "pass"?
Out in the real world, sometimes you have to sacrifice "ideal" and "perfect" and settle for "this works better than whatever else we have". You put a bunch of "this works" tools together, and hopefully you can draw an image of a candidate that is comprehensive enough to make an informed decision about their suitability for the job. Is a polygraph perfect? No. Does it operate in a vacuum? No.
Would SPAM be a problem if the machine requires that the sender's email address be on the whitelist and a passcode must be in the subject line?
Have 2 different passcodes - printer code for printing, admin code to remotely execute certain commands (like adding/removing other email addresses from the whitelist). Throw in a little logic to take itself offline temporarily (or some other response) if it's getting DOS'd. Should be fairly ok, no?
I'd also add that you should not be able to "contribute" to more than one candidate in any given race, on the grounds that that's briberey plain and simple.
Where did the idea that money equals speech come from, anyway? Money is NOT speech. But like you say, good luck ever getting that implimented in our plutocratic pseudo-republic.
What do you consider acceptable political speech and what don't you? How do you make the distinction? If I have a means to promote a candidate (time, money, whatever), wouldn't restricting my means (in this context) constitute restricting my political speech?
Something else you seem to miss out on is that voting is bribery. You give something (a vote) in exchange for something (the candidate of your choice has a better chance of getting elected). Whether with short term or long term goals in mind, people do not naturally vote against their own perceived-best interest. Politicians know this and pander to their constituents, "bribing" citizens for their votes. Like it or hate it, it's how it the system is designed.
To quote George Will, "Politics in a democracy is transactional: Politicians seek votes by promising to do things for voters, who seek promises in exchange for their votes."
If we're nothing more than mechanics, there should still be NO reason to pay Chevy wages to fix or maintain a Ferrari.
And nobody does. If you're working on a true Ferrari, and you're a truly qualified Ferrari mechanic... you get paid Ferrari-level wages. Duh.
The problem here is all the people who think their Yugo is actually a Veyron, and should be paid like a NASCAR pit chief because they can plug a tire and change oil.
Again, you take money out of politics
Again, not arguing that this is unlikely. I never said this is going to happen, just my little dream...
Perhaps without that free cash, they may have been impelled to go out and produce new creative works of their own.
Or perhaps they would have been impelled to pump gas or flip burgers. Who knows?
Using your logic, an author with rights to Conan-Doyle's work has no incentive to create new unique works. Therefore, we don't want Conan-Doyle's work to become public domain because then the masses have access to his work and nobody has incentive to be creative.
The point is... nobody is being prevented from creating, and the only people with any ability to rest on their laurels are people with rights to the work. Wouldn't it then make sense to limit those rights to as few people as possible to encourage the masses to do more creative work of their own?
If copyright is extended jobs are lost. You don't need to hire people to create new stuff because you can still earn money from the ancient stuff.
Perhaps you won't be hiring super creative types to make new properties, but your competitors will.
Creativity is not a zero-sum game...
if you can milk something infinately, it removes all incentive to create new creative works
I see this argument a lot on Slashdot and it's absurd on its face. For as long as the copyright is in effect, there may be less incentive for the owner to create other works, however, there is more incentive for other creators to produce creative works. Since others cannot personally benefit from a previously created work (unless they own it), they are encouraged to create new works of their own. Your argument seems to assume that there is only one creator out there and this individual stops making new creations then there will be no new works.
If copyright was short term or nonexistent and Tex Avery chose to copy Mickey Mouse instead of creating Bugs Bunny, would that have contributed to art or culture? Walt Disney owned Mickey Mouse, but he didn't sit around "milking" that property infinitely - he created a whole cast of additional characters. He was then able to use his ownership of those creative works to build up a company that provided jobs for thousands of animators, construction workers, designers, unskilled workers, etc.
Allowing people to control their creative works fosters creativity, it doesn't stifle it. Even if a creator chooses to stop creating and live off his/her existing properties, that doesn't prevent the rest of the world from producing new and unique works.
FWIW, Having Strippers at the company is *NOT* a good idea. The last game company I worked for had a stripper come in for the art directors birthday. I t was very awkward -- especially since she tried to get him to strip as well (which is something I did not need to see). Plus between married guys and nerds, no one really knew what we should be doing (I guess neither married guys nor nerds get sex).
Oh, and to top it all off, the one woman who was working there at the time (the receptionist) ended up suing the company for sexual harassment when she quit.
I'm guessing your event was in the US? FWIW, an event held in Asia is nothing like an event held in the US. In the land of karaoke bars and "anything goes", a stripper at an event is nothing of note.
What would you prefer, that this be rushed through without planning, server load testing, and figuring out exactly how it interacts with existing services?
I'm afraid that's wasted sentiment on this board. The same people that are quick to bash MS for rushing the hardware and experiencing massive failure rates are the same trolls claiming MS is just holding this up until they can milk it for every last penny. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
The people who aren't aware of Microsoft's behavior are probably even less likely to understand and respect the comments of the FSF. In other words, they're preaching to the choir.
Sometimes it's better to have a small set of features that work well, than a large set of buggy and broken features...
Except when the market is saturated with competing handsets that have larger feature sets that aren't buggy or broken.
Agreed. I would really like to see a party that is truly fiscally conservative and socially/morally liberal. I don't care what the other 300mil Americans want to do with their free time, I just don't want them using my money to do it.
The people who want more government regulation want more of a public say.
Yet people continually re-elect incumbents, despite their poor performance. "Public say" has been available since the birth of the republic, we don't need a bigger government so we can have more "public say".
People who truly want a "public say" should be conservative leaning - choosing what to do with their own money as opposed to paying ever increasing taxes that fund things the don't approve (ie., "oppressive world military", etc.)
Doesn't it bother you that 1-2 days of your work week are essentially solely for the purpose of paying for government programs (many of which you don't approve of)?
I find it kind of funny that, despite things like this, there are still people who think more government is the answer.
Despite what people would like you to believe, willful ignorance is never an acceptable excuse.
Well they certainly didn't blow through it on wardrobe and props. They rocked motorcycle helmets and unbadged Cadillacs in that twisted dystopian future state...
Could a device the size of a cel-phone effectively triangulate the location of an RFID tag? The proposed device wouldn't work well in a library, but I don't see RFID as very useful either. If you have to walk your reader past every book you might as well just read the spines.
Not detracting from your post, I agree there is always that option. Unfortunately (in the context of the discussion at /.) if they chose Option 4, there's a good chance we'd see an article here complaining that "MS would rather pull a product / waste developer hours / any option other than release GPL'd code". MS can't win here...
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for unaccountable entities whose primary responsibility is profit.
Right... because nobody is profiting from the broken system overseen by "accountable" politicians. Take a look at the education system in California. Corrupt politicians bound to their lobbyist masters. CTA spending $58 MILLION on advertising in 2007 to defeat reform measures that Govenor Schwarzenegger was trying to get passed. California's education meanwhile, ranked 40th out of the 50 states (and DC).
Private corporations may have profitability as a goal, but you're sadly mistaken if you believe they can achieve that goal without providing a satisfactory product (in this case, education). Why do you think some parents pay expensive tuition at private schools? Despite the fact that private schools may want to be profitable, the education they provide is generally better than their public counterparts. Meanwhile the administrators of the public school system are happy to piss money away because, when it eventually becomes time to raise taxes, they know nobody will want to be the jerk voting "against education".
California is a very visible example of the naivete inherent to the "government is non-profit and accountable and therefore better" argument.
I agree with your point about the suckiness of TV in general and "reality" shows in particular, but you couldn't have picked worse examples of shows that got canceled (according to you) due to this trend.
It's tough to respect a list of shows that were canceled "because people are stupid and watch reality TV" when you include 2 long running shows who clearly had reached the end of their writers' creative pools. Sometimes a show doesn't know when to quit (ahem, The Simpsons, I am looking at you), but those shows did and I doubt the reality TV fad had much to do with it.
Dude, you're missing the point and not dishing out any knowledge in the process. You accused these people of being "blue bloods" - indicating that they came from substantially wealthy & established families. Ok, maybe the son of a congressman fits that description. My mistake for not vetting the list properly. Instead of picking out the 1-2 guys who don't fit, why don't you try and see what the greater point of the list was. These are people who are each worth BILLIONS and they didn't come from families with anywhere near as much affluence as they now have. Most of them did it without vast social networks or tons of funding like you assume all wealthy people have, they just hustled until they were at the top of the game.
You keep saying that all their profits are made on the backs of the poor. That may be true to the extent that some of their companies may have engaged in unethical business practises, but a few anecdotes in no way proves that all wealthy people got their money off the backs of the poor. That's not only incredibly naive, it's illogical. As for the people who aren't making enough money to be self-sufficient, where is their responsibility in this? Did they ever attempt to learn a trade? Do they speak proper English (not that it is always necessary, but it sure helps)? How many kids do they have? Have they tried to work other jobs or multiple jobs? I have very little sympathy for a person who doesn't speak any English, doesn't have any skills except for knocking up his wife, and now he's complaining that he can't make enough money to feed all the mouths. And before you accuse me of being racist against immigrants, I'm thinking more about the ghetto people who grew up in the US who have had opportunities to get educated (all you really need is a high school diploma), have had opportunities to keep their dicks in their pants, who have opportunities to get jobs that aren't glamorous but will pay the bills. Why is it that illegal immigrants keep coming to this country and make decent livings while people born in this country cry out that they need welfare and government assistance? That's why I call people lazy, despite how offensive you find it. There are hard workers hanging out in front of Home Depot waiting for a chance to make some cash so they can pay their cheap rent and wire moeny home to Mexico and most of them aren't complaining. On the other side of the barrio you have kids who grew up in the US who turn their nose up at working in fast food and sag their pants in job interviews, then complain that they can't get hired and they need assistance.
As for your claim that wealthy people just sit around hording their money all I can say is wow, you really have no clue. Wealthy people aren't wealthy because they put a bunch of money in a WaMu savings account and sit on it. They're wealthy because they use their money to make more money. This is done by investing their money in other ventures - their money gets used by people with less money to start new businesses. Even money getting thrown around the stock market is flowing into companies who turn around and use that capital to conduct their business. With few exceptions, the money does flow back into the economy. Not only that, but when investments are successful and these businesses grow they have to hire more people and more jobs are created. World Wealth is not a zero-sum game. Wealthy people having money doesn't deprive the poor people like you seem to think.
You and I are never going to agree. You think that the wealthy exist only because of the poor, and vice versa. I think the wealthy exist largely because of themselves, as do the poor exist largely because of themselves as well. If I ever make enough money where my kids and grandkids never have to work, holy shit that's a great thing for my family. Hopefully they are good stewards with the money and can help make the world a better place.
You never answered the other question: Can I have $20 from your wallet? I'm sure your lifestyle w
So you went to an institution with kids from more affluent families... so what? You could've gone to a small community college in a low income neighborhood and been the rich kid. Comparing yourself to the people around you is pointless and part of the reason our society lives too much on credit.
Ah yes the mythical rags to riches group?You haven't set any alight but have created one of your own. I didn't say these were rags to riches, but that they became hugely successful despite not being born with silver spoons in their mouths.
These people dont suffer the slightest denial of their lifestyle by paying more taxes, nor is that money which they are not paying substantially helping the economy(theyre not buying finished goods with it because they already have orders of magnitude more than they need to buy what they want). On the other hand, the poor do suffer denial of basic security in their health, housing, childcare, etc. because they are paid as little as possible by this priviledged class.Can I take $20 from your wallet? I'm sure it won't hurt your lifestyle.
the problem I have with this is it comes at the expense of the bottom 50% of the income bracket, which represents a vast fraction of the population.The people causing the expense are the ones paying for the expense, what is wrong with that?
I'd really like to see the world be a better place, I just think involvement should be voluntary. I'm a drop-out and I've worked many jobs to earn a decent living and now I'm comfortably middle class on my own. I probably won't ever make the jump to upper class in the realm of billions of dollars, but I still don't begrudge the ones that are there. If people with tons of money want to give it away to help others, excellent! If they don't, the government shouldn't force them. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are huge philanthropists, Larry Ellison isn't. I think that's ok. Every tax dollar taken from my pocket means I'm less likely to donate anything of my own accord.
It's cute that you think every rich person could only get to that level by exploiting poor people. Cute, but naive. Exploitation is not exclusive to the rich, nor is it requisite to become rich. Pimps exploit hoes in the ghetto on a daily basis and most of them aren't making enough income to even be considered middle class.
how intellectually dishonest can you get? 99.99% of people in these brackets were born with a silver spoon in their mouths, had everything provided to them, are inheritors, and were given private elevators through social ties into the corporate top floor.Do you have a source for this "99.99%" stat? Link please. Regardless... If you earn money, why shouldn't you be allowed to do with it as you please? It's your property. If you earn a lot of money and choose to bequeath it to your spouse or children, why should they be resented for receiving it? Better yet, why should it be stolen from them to be given to the people who trudge to work each day? What gives the anonymous "trudging worker" more entitlement to your money than the people who you chose to leave it to?
By the way... Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Steven A. Cohen, Dhirubhai Ambani, Michael Dell. Want to know what all these names have in common? They're billionaires, and all of them came from modest means and most did it without college degrees. These are some of the richest men on the planet and none of them were born with silver spoons in their mouths. They got to where they are because they worked their balls off to make it happen, not because money was redistributed to them from the Rockefellers via government programs.
The thing which differs the developed west from undeveloped third world countries is a thriving middle class, which would not exist period without regulations and programs forcibly redistributing wealth, keeping the gap between rich and poor reasonable.Wrong. Redistibuting wealth from the rich to the poor does not create a thriving middle class. If you read the article linked in my previous post, you would realize that there are people living in abject poverty because they receive handouts, not despite them. The middle class thrives when regulations are relaxed and it is easy for people to go into business for themselves.
That gap has been increasing for the past decade and a half, and now those poor rich people are suffering because it turns out most people cant afford their own house now because of this.If people can't afford houses, they should be renting or living in a less expensive area. If enough people aren't buying houses, the market will drop and houses will become more affordable. It doesn't happen overnight but it does happen.
Wealthy people don't seem to understand that attacking government programs which keep their customers and laborers afloat because they dislike having to let go of a negligible sum of their vast wealth will eventually bite them in the ass when there is no demand to move their inventories or hold up the value of their real estate investments.Watch out, you just agreed with my point. Regulation is not necessary, if the rich people act selfish and short-sighted they will kill their own profitability and the market will correct itself. It's painful when it happens, but it does happen.
That's the reason why there has been a predictable recession surrounding every republican presidency since reagan.After you graduate and get out in the real world, you'll learn that there's very little real difference between Democrats and Republicans. They're all awful.
No rich person would be where they are without the society around them, the infrastructure created by the government, the military that defends them (made up disproportionally, of course, with the lower and middle class), and the people who work for them. The redistribution of wealth acknowledges that people owe society for what it has given them, and must support it so that future generations can benefit from it as well.
Paying taxes to cover minor costs of infrastructure and military is reasonable. Taxing the wealthy to compensate the poor is a horrible idea. People should get off their asses, get jobs, and better themselves and their community. The government should not force the cost of the "betterment" on the top-earners while the bottom rung wallows in self-pity and reliance. The old "give a man a fish..." adage still applies. Taking money from the rich to pay the poor only teaches the poor that they don't have to work. Read this article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/03/MNB4RN991.DTL and make sure you pay attention to the part where the woman says she doesn't want to get a job because if she earns more money, the government will subsidize less of her rent.
Your comparison to slavery is disgusting and horribly elitist.
You know what I find disgusting? The concept that people who actually put forth the required effort to make nice lives for themselves are resented and there's a weird misconception that they don't deserve to keep the fruits of their labor. Redistribution isn't slavery but certainly has a lot in common with theft and organized crime.
It may come as a surprise to you that not everybody grows up in a blue-blood family, and that social mobility is not perfect in the US. Redistributive tax systems allow for the strengthening of social mobility by ensuring that the lower class isn't always subject to abject poverty-
Now you sound like a spoiled college student railing against "the Haves". Do you really seem to think that taking away money from the upper class and giving it to the lower class will help make them socially mobile? More likely it will make them socially paralized. The redistibution will never give them enough affluence to become middle or upper class, but their dependence on it will retard any chance that they will ever earn middle/upper-class income on their own. Instead of making snide comments about "blue bloods", go visit the projects. Not just a ghetto suburb, but a genuine VLI/Section-8 project. When you look around and see children growing up in families that have been in the projects for multiple generations you will start to understand that redistribution is not a solution and usually just makes the problem worse.
that even if they are searching for a job or lose a job they do not lose their home and their entire life in the process.
It's called unemployment compensation. If you lose your job, you get a small stipend depending on how long you worked there and how much money you made. This is supposed to help you maintain your quality of life while searching for a new job. It's paid for by your old employer which means you (indirectly) earned it for yourself. This is a good thing. The moment somebody else has to start paying for your mortgage because you're unemployed, the system is flawed. If you can't afford a house, you should be renting. If you can't afford the big apartment, you should be in a smaller one. If you're in a tiny apartment and still can't afford to pay the rent, you need to stop turning your nose up at the minimum-wage fast food jobs. There are always ways to make the ends meet if people try hard enough and are wise with what they have.
Too many people are trying to pay for the leased car parked in the garage of the house that was just slightly too expensive so they could on