This is why we should have a political system in place that would include minimum wages and inflation correction on those minimum wages.
I heard an interesting statistic on the news this morning: 2/3rds of those earning less than $10 per hour work for corporations.
But as to "inflation," that's not a very good metric. Expensive things these workers can't afford go down in price and the things they require go up in price, and inflation stays the same but their cost of living has increased.
Now many people in the US and in Europe seem to believe in the trickle down model of wealth distribution. Any idiot can see this is really not the case.
Indeed, corporate profits are at a record high. Any idiot that believes trickle down fairy dust should ask himself why wages aren't also at a record high? It's because "trickle down" isn't a myth, it's a DAMNED LIE. As is the lie (believed by the stupid) that if you tax the rich they won't invest. Taxes have nothing to do with investment. If a factory owner is selling more than he can produce, he's going to buy new machinery and hire people, PERIOD. No matter how high or low his taxes are. Likewise, if he's producing more than he can sell he's going to lay workers off and perhaps sell some machinery. No matter how high or low his taxes are.
To cut a long story short, a worker's pay shouldn't increase only because he / she is more productive, a workers pay should increase because it's the civilised thing to do.
The trouble with that is the people running these giant companies who exploit the poor are sociopaths. They aren't civilized in the least.
Free entertainment is pretty low on my list of desiderata.
It isn't about "free entertainment," it's about culture. Art is like science and technology, in that everything new comes from what has come before. Imagine how technology would stagnate if patents lasted a hundred years? That's how culture is stagnating.
Can we retire this quaint old, now meaningless, saying? When that phrase was coined, donuts were a dime a dozen, less than a penny each. Now that donuts cost more than a dollar each, saying you'd bet dollars to donuts is saying exactly the opposite of what you're trying to convey.
I suspect the computer in your pocket won't still be working in 35 years.
There's no reason why it shouldn't, barring accidents. I bought a 12 inch Panasonic TV in 1968 and it still worked when I got rid of it in 2004. Switches wear out and contacts get oxydized (but not in space), but barring heat or an electrical overload there's no reason whatever for a piece of electronic equipment to "wear out". Only things with moving parts wear out.
OK, so about ten years ago before my kids were old enough to enter into contracts, I simply had them install my software for me, meaning that no one read and understood the EULA. How are these abominations in any way enforceable??
Agreed on everything you say. The new accomodating lenses sit on struts inside the lens capsule and allows focus, the older monofocal lenses require reading glasses.
No, not Lasik. I had an infection, and the steroid eye drops prescribed me gave me a cataract in that eye. Cataract surgery involves a lensectomy, where the eye's natural lens is removed and replaced with a man-made lens. The new lens, the CrystaLens, sits on struts inside the lens capsule so it's able to focus like a young person; age-related farsightedness is caused by the lens becoming rigid.
I was 20/400 before the surgery, 20/16 after (better than normal vision).
LASIK won't bring your vision to normal if you're severely nearsighted, and it won't stop you from getting farsighted with age, and in fact LASIK will make your age-related farsightedness worse. but the new implant completely cures nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, and cataracts. Kind of pricey, though, anout $7k per eye. Insurance will cover the old fixed focus lenses for cataract surgery, the ew lens is about $1k more expensive, I had to pay that out of pocket.
Also, if you're severely nearsighted you're at risk of a retinal tear or detachment. If you're severel nearsighted and your vision worsens or gets funny, get to your doctor immediately.
In addition, questions of what actually happens to these food products post treatment? Are they safe to eat?
Do you have a microwave oven in your kitchen? Has it ever poisoned you? You sound like my sister's husband, "microwaves change the cellular structure!!" Well, duh, so does conventional cooking. The fact is we have decades of data about eating microwaved food, and the data say it's safe.
I can see the cave nerd Ogg and his new invention, "cooked food". His brother in law Org asks "is that safe?"
You raise the pig yourself and your kids give it a name. You get very disturbed by the screams it makes when you kill it, and come back covered in blood. Afterwards you decide to become a vegetarian.
The species of pigs one eats do NOT make good pets, and you're not going to name them or treat them as pets. I had a friend who was raising a few hogs before it got too expensive, and he said the best pork he ever ate was from the one that bit him.
Pigs are nasty, dangerous creatures that are good for one thing -- food. I see you've never been on a farm.
Why, after 11 years of using this site, should I register an account?
Because if you want your comment seen, registering gives you advanteges over AC. ACs start at 0, registered users start at 1. Secondly, you will never see this comment, but if you were a registered user you would be informed that someone replied to your comment. I've had a lot of enlightening conversations with other slashdotters because of this.
Outside of that, these do sound a bit too good to be true...
So did VCRs, affordable computers, cell phones, the end of polio, my having an eye operation that cured my lifelong nearsightedness and my age related farsightedness...
This whole thing is bizarre. The cops say he's not a suspect but want to question him as a possible witness, McAffee says he already talked to them, as well as a lot of other weird statements that can only be attributed to drug-induced psychosis.
What do McAffee and Rush Limbaugh have in common? Drugs (although opposite ones) and they're both batshit insane.
A lot of people miss leaded gasoline, because they miss the sweeter smell it gave off
I never heard this before, and I'm not buying it. When I started driving all gas was leaded, and it all stank. It's also all toxic, just with one fewer toxin (and fewer mentally retarded kids; that's what lead does).
The reson that folks bitched about unleaded gas the lower octane, and some older cars (particularly high powered cars) needed to be de-tuned to run unleaded or holes would burn in the pistons (the lower the octane the faster it burns) and some had problems with intake valves, as the soft lead acted as a kind of bumper.
Run that 92 octane leaded gas in your new car and you'll burn out your exhaust valves, because it will still be burning when the valve opens.
Or those people who often buy unpasteurized milk on the black market. Because they claim it tastes better and has nutrition.
I don't drink much if any milk any more, but I do remember my garndpa's farm and drinking the fresh, unpasteurized milk. It did indeed taste better. Do vegetables not taste different when cooked? So does milk. But I wouldn't want to drink it from one of the filthy factory farms they have today.
Pasteurized eggnog is worthless -- there's an emzyme in raw egg yolk that kills hangovers, and heat destroys the emzyme. When I was a kid, folks made their own eggnog -- but the FDA did a better job and farmers weren't so greedy that they didn't care of their customers got poisoned. Now drinking home made eggnog is almost certain to give you a bellyache and the runs, and maybe even a hospital stay unless you raise the chickens yourself.
That said, I never could understand my mom's dad, who was dead set against getting indoor plumbing. Even after my uncle built a bathroom, Grandpa still went out in the snow to the outhose.
Old people are crazy. But so are young people, just a different kind of crazy.
Indeed, this whole thing is sickening to anyone living in Illinois. We're broker than California, yet Quinn wastes millions to brainwash Illinois voters that it's the public employees' fault, after his two felonious predecessors wasted billions feeding their rich political cronies.
Living in Springfield, I have a lot of friends in state government. Illinois has fewer state workers per capita than any other state. Illinois is the 5th highest state in private company's salaries, but 7th in public sector salaries.
A Republican has surfaced wanting to run against Quinn, saying "the state employees have to take their lumps like everyone else." They already are, just like the rest of us. Some of them are handicapped, some of them earn so little they're eligibel for food stams. They go to state parks just like you, their taxes doubled just like yours did. They will lose the same services you do.
The Democrats and Republicans are ganging up together trying to destroy unions. Bye bye 40 hour work week. Bye bye vacations. Bye bye weekends. Bye bye living wages. The rich don't care if you starve.
Personally, I'm supporting the workers. They're getting fucked badly in this.
I buy games, it appears in my library and it's always loaded if I'm online, or not. I pay and it works. Not only works, but gives me greater convenience than a CD or a bunch of floppies - I get a definite advantage and I've yet to see a downside.
The downside comes when they decide to shut off your game's servers. Poof, no more game. Those CDs and floppies were little more than backups once the game was installed.
*Most* People actually wish to pay a fair price for the media they consume. If a service offers them the opportunity to do this, then they will - and they'll consume more.
Indeed. Notice how people started buying more music when the DRM went away?
ICBMs weren't the only delivery method, most nukes were to be delivered by bombers, of which the USSR had quite a few. When I was in the Air Force, I spent my last year at Beale, where they had more B-52 than I could count, all ready to take off and bomb Russia at a moment's notice (this was 1974-1975).
I don't know if the Russians had subs with nukes or not, but we did so they probably did as well.
As to them not having ICBMs, how is it then that they launched Sputnik in 1959 but we were incapable of putting a satellite in orbit?
Troll? Whoda thunk that MAFIAA shills would get mod points? Or was the moderator one of the frauds who write DRM? Either way, whoever you are, you disgust me.
Windows 8 is pretty much a refined version of 7 with a full screen Start menu. It's faster than 7
I'll believe it whan I see it. Every new MS OS makes that claim, and so far It's been a damned lie. When I upgraded from w98 to XP it made that same claim. But I'd just wiped and reinstalled W98 before wiping and installing XP, and XP was not only not faster, but a little slower than W98. When I bought a new notebook with W7 preinstalled, it was no faster than an old XP machine with 1/4 the ram and half the processor speed as the new W7 computer.
Perhaps it's different this time, but lie to me once and if you say the same thing about something else, you're going to have to prove it.
"WOLF! It's faster, I swear I'm not lying this time! Honest! WOLF!"
Slashdot Mirror
Old people having stuff worth stealing is a recent phenomena.
No, the longer you're here the more time you have to collect stuff.
This is why we should have a political system in place that would include minimum wages and inflation correction on those minimum wages.
I heard an interesting statistic on the news this morning: 2/3rds of those earning less than $10 per hour work for corporations.
But as to "inflation," that's not a very good metric. Expensive things these workers can't afford go down in price and the things they require go up in price, and inflation stays the same but their cost of living has increased.
Now many people in the US and in Europe seem to believe in the trickle down model of wealth distribution. Any idiot can see this is really not the case.
Indeed, corporate profits are at a record high. Any idiot that believes trickle down fairy dust should ask himself why wages aren't also at a record high? It's because "trickle down" isn't a myth, it's a DAMNED LIE. As is the lie (believed by the stupid) that if you tax the rich they won't invest. Taxes have nothing to do with investment. If a factory owner is selling more than he can produce, he's going to buy new machinery and hire people, PERIOD. No matter how high or low his taxes are. Likewise, if he's producing more than he can sell he's going to lay workers off and perhaps sell some machinery. No matter how high or low his taxes are.
To cut a long story short, a worker's pay shouldn't increase only because he / she is more productive, a workers pay should increase because it's the civilised thing to do.
The trouble with that is the people running these giant companies who exploit the poor are sociopaths. They aren't civilized in the least.
Free entertainment is pretty low on my list of desiderata.
It isn't about "free entertainment," it's about culture. Art is like science and technology, in that everything new comes from what has come before. Imagine how technology would stagnate if patents lasted a hundred years? That's how culture is stagnating.
For one thing, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts
Can we retire this quaint old, now meaningless, saying? When that phrase was coined, donuts were a dime a dozen, less than a penny each. Now that donuts cost more than a dollar each, saying you'd bet dollars to donuts is saying exactly the opposite of what you're trying to convey.
I suspect the computer in your pocket won't still be working in 35 years.
There's no reason why it shouldn't, barring accidents. I bought a 12 inch Panasonic TV in 1968 and it still worked when I got rid of it in 2004. Switches wear out and contacts get oxydized (but not in space), but barring heat or an electrical overload there's no reason whatever for a piece of electronic equipment to "wear out". Only things with moving parts wear out.
Except that slashdot is not a legal requirement for anything. EULAs purport to be.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_count#In_fiction
OK, so about ten years ago before my kids were old enough to enter into contracts, I simply had them install my software for me, meaning that no one read and understood the EULA. How are these abominations in any way enforceable??
Agreed on everything you say. The new accomodating lenses sit on struts inside the lens capsule and allows focus, the older monofocal lenses require reading glasses.
No, not Lasik. I had an infection, and the steroid eye drops prescribed me gave me a cataract in that eye. Cataract surgery involves a lensectomy, where the eye's natural lens is removed and replaced with a man-made lens. The new lens, the CrystaLens, sits on struts inside the lens capsule so it's able to focus like a young person; age-related farsightedness is caused by the lens becoming rigid.
I was 20/400 before the surgery, 20/16 after (better than normal vision).
LASIK won't bring your vision to normal if you're severely nearsighted, and it won't stop you from getting farsighted with age, and in fact LASIK will make your age-related farsightedness worse. but the new implant completely cures nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, and cataracts. Kind of pricey, though, anout $7k per eye. Insurance will cover the old fixed focus lenses for cataract surgery, the ew lens is about $1k more expensive, I had to pay that out of pocket.
Also, if you're severely nearsighted you're at risk of a retinal tear or detachment. If you're severel nearsighted and your vision worsens or gets funny, get to your doctor immediately.
What happens between the input and the output is a whole 'nother matter...
There's the firehose.
In addition, questions of what actually happens to these food products post treatment? Are they safe to eat?
Do you have a microwave oven in your kitchen? Has it ever poisoned you? You sound like my sister's husband, "microwaves change the cellular structure!!" Well, duh, so does conventional cooking. The fact is we have decades of data about eating microwaved food, and the data say it's safe.
I can see the cave nerd Ogg and his new invention, "cooked food". His brother in law Org asks "is that safe?"
Lots safer than eating it raw, Org.
You raise the pig yourself and your kids give it a name. You get very disturbed by the screams it makes when you kill it, and come back covered in blood. Afterwards you decide to become a vegetarian.
The species of pigs one eats do NOT make good pets, and you're not going to name them or treat them as pets. I had a friend who was raising a few hogs before it got too expensive, and he said the best pork he ever ate was from the one that bit him.
Pigs are nasty, dangerous creatures that are good for one thing -- food. I see you've never been on a farm.
You don't need a lab coat or even a lab to research.
"But it's culturally-defined what is and isn't normal"
I'm just going to jump in here and yell "BULLSHIT!". Ever looked up the definition of normal?
Does normal even exist? Would you consider Newton or Einstein or Shekespeare "normal"? I'm certainly not normal, but I don't suffer, either.
Why, after 11 years of using this site, should I register an account?
Because if you want your comment seen, registering gives you advanteges over AC. ACs start at 0, registered users start at 1. Secondly, you will never see this comment, but if you were a registered user you would be informed that someone replied to your comment. I've had a lot of enlightening conversations with other slashdotters because of this.
Outside of that, these do sound a bit too good to be true...
So did VCRs, affordable computers, cell phones, the end of polio, my having an eye operation that cured my lifelong nearsightedness and my age related farsightedness...
This whole thing is bizarre. The cops say he's not a suspect but want to question him as a possible witness, McAffee says he already talked to them, as well as a lot of other weird statements that can only be attributed to drug-induced psychosis.
What do McAffee and Rush Limbaugh have in common? Drugs (although opposite ones) and they're both batshit insane.
A lot of people miss leaded gasoline, because they miss the sweeter smell it gave off
I never heard this before, and I'm not buying it. When I started driving all gas was leaded, and it all stank. It's also all toxic, just with one fewer toxin (and fewer mentally retarded kids; that's what lead does).
The reson that folks bitched about unleaded gas the lower octane, and some older cars (particularly high powered cars) needed to be de-tuned to run unleaded or holes would burn in the pistons (the lower the octane the faster it burns) and some had problems with intake valves, as the soft lead acted as a kind of bumper.
Run that 92 octane leaded gas in your new car and you'll burn out your exhaust valves, because it will still be burning when the valve opens.
Or those people who often buy unpasteurized milk on the black market. Because they claim it tastes better and has nutrition.
I don't drink much if any milk any more, but I do remember my garndpa's farm and drinking the fresh, unpasteurized milk. It did indeed taste better. Do vegetables not taste different when cooked? So does milk. But I wouldn't want to drink it from one of the filthy factory farms they have today.
Pasteurized eggnog is worthless -- there's an emzyme in raw egg yolk that kills hangovers, and heat destroys the emzyme. When I was a kid, folks made their own eggnog -- but the FDA did a better job and farmers weren't so greedy that they didn't care of their customers got poisoned. Now drinking home made eggnog is almost certain to give you a bellyache and the runs, and maybe even a hospital stay unless you raise the chickens yourself.
That said, I never could understand my mom's dad, who was dead set against getting indoor plumbing. Even after my uncle built a bathroom, Grandpa still went out in the snow to the outhose.
Old people are crazy. But so are young people, just a different kind of crazy.
Captcha:defraud.
Indeed, this whole thing is sickening to anyone living in Illinois. We're broker than California, yet Quinn wastes millions to brainwash Illinois voters that it's the public employees' fault, after his two felonious predecessors wasted billions feeding their rich political cronies.
Living in Springfield, I have a lot of friends in state government. Illinois has fewer state workers per capita than any other state. Illinois is the 5th highest state in private company's salaries, but 7th in public sector salaries.
A Republican has surfaced wanting to run against Quinn, saying "the state employees have to take their lumps like everyone else." They already are, just like the rest of us. Some of them are handicapped, some of them earn so little they're eligibel for food stams. They go to state parks just like you, their taxes doubled just like yours did. They will lose the same services you do.
The Democrats and Republicans are ganging up together trying to destroy unions. Bye bye 40 hour work week. Bye bye vacations. Bye bye weekends. Bye bye living wages. The rich don't care if you starve.
Personally, I'm supporting the workers. They're getting fucked badly in this.
I never went to school for money; it was never guranteed. I went to learn, and I still do. Planning on taking some math when I retire in 2014.
I buy games, it appears in my library and it's always loaded if I'm online, or not. I pay and it works. Not only works, but gives me greater convenience than a CD or a bunch of floppies - I get a definite advantage and I've yet to see a downside.
The downside comes when they decide to shut off your game's servers. Poof, no more game. Those CDs and floppies were little more than backups once the game was installed.
*Most* People actually wish to pay a fair price for the media they consume. If a service offers them the opportunity to do this, then they will - and they'll consume more.
Indeed. Notice how people started buying more music when the DRM went away?
ICBMs weren't the only delivery method, most nukes were to be delivered by bombers, of which the USSR had quite a few. When I was in the Air Force, I spent my last year at Beale, where they had more B-52 than I could count, all ready to take off and bomb Russia at a moment's notice (this was 1974-1975).
I don't know if the Russians had subs with nukes or not, but we did so they probably did as well.
As to them not having ICBMs, how is it then that they launched Sputnik in 1959 but we were incapable of putting a satellite in orbit?
Troll? Whoda thunk that MAFIAA shills would get mod points? Or was the moderator one of the frauds who write DRM? Either way, whoever you are, you disgust me.
At that time [1959] the number of warheads was insufficient to destroy humanity.
Incorrect.. In fact, your entire comment is incorrect, as a quick look at wikipedia shows.
Windows 8 is pretty much a refined version of 7 with a full screen Start menu. It's faster than 7
I'll believe it whan I see it. Every new MS OS makes that claim, and so far It's been a damned lie. When I upgraded from w98 to XP it made that same claim. But I'd just wiped and reinstalled W98 before wiping and installing XP, and XP was not only not faster, but a little slower than W98. When I bought a new notebook with W7 preinstalled, it was no faster than an old XP machine with 1/4 the ram and half the processor speed as the new W7 computer.
Perhaps it's different this time, but lie to me once and if you say the same thing about something else, you're going to have to prove it.
"WOLF! It's faster, I swear I'm not lying this time! Honest! WOLF!"