You are a through-and-through communist. Do you have a job yet? If so, please tell me that you think every person you work with deserves the same pay as you. I want to see you take your idiotic assumption of the evil of wealth and the egalitarianism of society to the bitter end. If you honestly believe that those who are more capable don't deserve to be paid for it, then you should move to a country where no amount of hard work or ingenuity ever pays off. If any of those employees that Bill Gates "stole" from were honestly capable of leading the company the way Gates did, and of marketing and selling the way that Gates did, then those capable people either a.) moved up in the company very quickly, or b.) left and started their own companies. That's the beauty of capitalism, you see--if someone makes more money than you and they really don't deserve to, you can make your own company, generate capital for it, and aggressively take over the market. If you have a better product AND are capable of selling it, you'll win. If you're unable to do this, and it's not the fault of a government-enforced monopoly, then guess what? That other guy is more capable than you. It sucks, but it's true.
Bill Gates created an industry, whether you like it or not. Would it have been better if someone else had created the industry? Yeah, maybe. But he still did it. He was a brilliant marketer and a hell of a businessman--and a world-class asshole. That doesn't change the fact that he made billions through his own personal merit. It's not like some hand from above came down and gave him all the money in the world and made sure that only his company was successful. He bit and clawed and cheated his way to the top, and I guarantee that every other executive in the world--be it Apple, (did you know Steve Jobs is a dick? Because he is.), IBM, Sun, whatever, was doing the same. They just didn't do it as well as he did, plain and simple. The amazing thing about all of these jerks running the world's businesses, though, is that somehow they end up generating tons of money, and employing people who then go on to make tons of money. To act like someone who starts a business should equitably split all of their profits with their workers is asinine: that person STARTED the company. They are the driving force behind the idea; they are the reason shit gets done. If their workers are more capable than they are, then those workers leave the company, start their own, and then THEY reap the profits. If you work at all, you have undoubtedly by now discovered that there are two types of people in the workplace, be it public or private sector: people who get shit done, and people who sit on their asses. 95% of the workforce gradiates towards the latter. Those 5% who get shit done are the ones who end up running the show. This is not fail-safe; there is always some amount of corruption or nepotism inherent in business. But if you want to show me a business that is run by morons, that isn't propped up by government subsidies, I'll show you a business that is about to collapse.
I should actually expound a little bit. What really happened is that last year, the FCC reclassified DSL from "telecommunications transfer" to "information transfer." The regulations surrounding telecommunications are extensive (probably too extensive, considering how terrible our phone system is) but one of the enforceable provisions therein is the idea that packets cannot be prioritized; the telcoms have to let whatever comes through keep going, and cannot modify it. Once the FCC changed DSL's classification, the rules changed, and the regulations surrounding "information transfer" are much less clear about the extent to which telcoms can interfere with the content. This current bill essentially lays the groundwork for how information technology is going to be handled in the foreseeable future--it is the guideline for how things are going to run. (So the idea that the govt. should stay out of the market is a moot point, because with or without the amendment for net neutrality, the telco bill is going to pass in Congress.) If that bill does not include provisions for network neutrality, you can bet your ass that our ability to retrieve content is going to be affected almost immediately. I have no problems with prioritizing certain packets over others, as long as no one stands to profit from it. You want to make 911 VoIP calls take preference over everything else? Great, sounds like a plan. But if you want to make sure Verizon's business partner's website comes up faster than Google, then I'm not buying it.
You're not grasping what's happening. Right now, things are the way they are because Congress agreed to net neutrality during the Clinton Administration. It's actually law that a telco cannot be preferential in how it directs traffic. However, the bill only included a temporary provision for net neutrality, and now its time is running out. The entire point of net neutrality is to keep the status quo, and therefore renew net neutrality.
One thing that has continually confused me in this debate is the idea that Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo aren't already paying for their bandwidth. The telcos lay the wire, sell it to ISPs, and the ISPs sell bandwidth, plain and simple. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but what the telcos WANT to do is find some way of charging the big companies MORE because they use bandwidth--but they already pay for it. It's not like Google is holding a gun to AT&T's head, here--Google has to pay for the hundreds upon hundreds of terabytes of traffic they generate. So what the hell is the problem? All network neutrality is saying is that you can't make someone pay more for their bandwidth if they happen to actually use it. Am I misunderstanding this? Where, in any of the amendments (the current being the Snow-Morgan) trying to force net neutrality into the telco bill, do they mention price fixing?
Actually, they weren't rising at 10% a year in the mid-90s; they were much higher. I don't have the figures on-hand, but I have been given the impression that they actually did skyrocket in the previous decade, with increases in premiums in the 25-35% range, yearly. Like I said, health care costs are still increasing, but 10% a year, on top of a 3-5% inflation, really isn't bad at all. It's not perfect, but in the next five years we should see a relative stabilization of health care cost, assuming current trends continue. (And it looks like they will.)
As far as why the copays dropped so much, I really couldn't tell you--I was only about five years old at the time.;) I imagine it was a combination of a few factors, the largest being the low cost of insurance up to that point, and thus competing carriers wanted to find some way of bringing corporations over to their side. The late 80s was a time of huge growth for the insurance sector, and as more and more employees expected comprehensive health coverage from their employers, the carriers wanted to make sure that they got the added business. The plan had unforeseen consequences, but it didn't work out badly for the insurance companies in the end; it's not like companies could just stop providing health coverage.
The Mac Mini is actually fairly well-priced in America, due to its form-factor. The Intel Core Solo is a better chip than an AMD Sempron 3000+ (which is probably the CPU in question). I feel sorry for you UKers; your prices are exorbitant.
Like everything else in the ODF saga, many of the responses are as much political as technical, with some delivering off-topic messages, one (from the ODF Foundation, strangely) refusing to disclose much at all, and several contradicting each other on the technical challenge of working with Office absent further code disclosures by Microsoft.
Conversation between ODF advocates before they submitted their responses:
"Ok, let's see here... cryptic response?"
"Check."
"Stick something in there about penguins?"
"Check."
"Refuse to reveal any actual information?"
"Yep."
"Awesome. Finish it up with something about Bill Gates eating babies, and send it out."
"You got it."
Oh, there's no doubt that Dell does--if they can afford to consistently offer 25-30% off of their laptops via coupons, clearly they're marking up their product quite a bit. But my point is, Apple is doing it too, and they're doing it a lot more.
I don't think a student discount is that dramatic--are you sure it would knock 350 off? And it's also slightly unfair to compare the student discount to a coupon--anyone can use the coupon; you have to be a student to use the discount.
The iPod Nano is after mail-in rebate, which in my experience is always a pain in the ass.
But really, I think my point has been made: Macs cost a lot more than their EXACT PC counterparts. Some of the cost could be justified, but not all of it. I don't think Apple is EVIL for charging more (they're a business, they want to make money, and it's worked) but I do think the complaint "Macs cost too much" is a valid one.
Built-bluetooth adds $15. Yes, the wireless is built-in. Dell helped develop the ExpressCard standard, so yes, it comes with an ExpressCard slot. No, the keyboard is not illuminated. You can program scroll-functionality into a dell touchpad with their drivers very easily. To my knowledge, the Dell does not have a built-in webcam. Not sure what difference a Magsafe PS makes. You'd have to explain that to me. Not sure what a "sudden motion sensor" is either, and whether it adds any value.
Still, I don't think any of these warrant double the cost. A few hundred dollars, sure, I can see that--there's no doubt that the Mac experience is unique and friendly enough to justify that. But an additional $1200? That's pushing it.
First, medical costs in this country have skyrocketed way out of proportion primarily due to a decreasing middle class. As more and more people move out of the middle class and back into the lower class, they can no longer afford insurance. Suddenly these people hit nature's lottery and are in a bad accident or require major heart surgery or something. They can't afford to pay, so they get the procedure and then file for bankruptcy, or fiddle around with debt collectors the rest of their lives. These nonpayments are then built in to the costs of all future procedures. Basically, hospitals have moved from a "let's charge everybody $50 for this procedure" model to "let's charge everybody $500 for this procedure and hope 10% pay up" model. This of course leads to higher insurance in an ever growing cycle that (how convenient) favors the wealthy.
This would be a wonderful indictment of the insurance industry, if only it were remotely true. I work in an insurance brokerage. Our business model rests entirely on analyzing the health care market, evaluating individual carrier plans (such as Anthem, AETNA, Cigna), and then presenting our clients (any small, medium, or large business) with a portfolio that describes their options for health insurance. Now that I've established that I am probably more familiar with the industry you see as THE BIG BAD CAPITALIST PIG MAN EATING ALL OF YOUR SWEET INNOCENT BABIES, we can proceed to the dispensation of facts.
Health care cost increases, per year, are currently decreasing. In 2004, the initial (which means before negotiations) average insurance premium was predicted to rise by 13.7%. Last year it was predicted to rise by 12.4% (actual rate increases was around 10%). This year, it's supposed to rise by 11.7%. (According to a study by Hewitt Associates, an HR Services company.) So, while the price of health care is increasing, the rate at which it does so is slowing, and has been slowing for a number of years now. Paul Harris, the Senior Health Care Strategist at Hewitt Associates, has been saying this for a while now.
So now that we know your first point, that health care costs are skyrocketing, is patently false, I'm going to go ahead and show you why your rationale is wrong too. Medical costs are rising in the country due to two primary factors: frequency of usage (on the claimant's part) and a massive increase in prescription drug usage. The first is a trend since the 1980s, when the copay to visit a general practitioner dropped dramatically. This was part of a general philosophical change in the nature of the health insurance industry--rather than being an "emergency-only" commodity, people began to see health insurance as a subsidy of their day-to-day health care needs. When copays dropped from $100 to $50 to $25, price elasticity of demand kicked in--people started going to the doctor more often, and not necessarily in proportion to the decrease in the associated cost. (For example, if it cost them $100 originally to see the doctor, and suddenly it was only $25, that didn't necessarily imply that they would go to the doctor four times as much--some people still went the same amount, and by doing such saved money, but the data shows that the vast majority of people went six to eight times as much instead, and thus sent health insurance costs through the roof.) Your assumption that it's the big operations that are causing health insurance to go up simply isn't true; the health care industry is pumping out so much for routine care that when true emergencies do pop up, insured people cannot afford the procedure. The cost of medical care (and not insurance) is only going up 3-5% a year, which is in line with inflation. But insurance keeps rising because people won't stop going to the doctor at the slightest worry. The "decreasing middle class" has nothing to do with it--the Census Bureau has confirmed, since 2001, that the percentage of people without health insurance has remained fairly consistent (their
The OP is referring to the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge (of good and evil) and thus, of their own free will, became capable of sin. The three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) all have their own interpretations of what this act entailed, but no one (except maybe archaic Catholicism) really believes this makes man evil by default. But to deny that man had a role in his own sinfulness, in these traditions, is essentially to ignore all existing theology.
Of course, I've quickly learned that mentioning God on the Slashdot forums is a surefire way to get yourself modded a Troll. So I'm not surprised at the immediate and harsh backlash at any mention of a higher power.
If you have a valid XP Pro key on the bottom of your machine, then you can download an OEM CD of XP and use that key with it--it's perfectly legit. OEM keys won't work with retail CDs (and most pirated copies of Windows are ripped from a retail CD) but they DO work with OEM CDs. If all else fails, find a friend with a Dell and grab his OS CD, rip it, slipstream it, and use that--Dell's the only manufacturer that ships a clean XP Pro/Home CD. (It's a green disc labeled "Operating System.) You don't have to pirate anything at all.
If you'd prefer not to download an OEM CD or rip a friend's, you can call Microsoft and see if they'll send you an OEM CD, (they'll probably charge you a couple bucks), but my experience is that they point you to the PC manufacturer, which won't get you anywhere. But seriously, if you have a valid license on the bottom of that computer, you don't need to pirate anything at all. Just get yourself an OEM CD and enjoy the benefits of legit computing.
15.4-inch widescreen display 1440x900 resolution 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo(1) 1GB (2 SODIMMs) 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM 80GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive 4x SuperDrive ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 128MB GDDR3 memory One FireWire 400 and two USB 2.0 ports 3-year world-class Applecare Support MSRP: $2448.98
Brenthaven Edge II for 15.4-inch MacBook Pro MSRP: $49.99
Total Cost: $2,497.95
Dell Inspiron E1505
Intel Core Duo 2.0 GHz Genuine Windows® XP Professional 15.4 inch UltraSharp(TM) Wide Screen SXGA+ Display with TrueLife(TM) FREE 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz, 2 Dimm 256MB ATI MOBILITY(TM) RADEON® X1400 HyperMemory(TM) 80GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive 8X CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11a/g Mini Card (54Mbps) 85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery 3Yr Ltd Warr,At-Home Service,and HW Warr Support plus Nights and Weekends Dell Nylon Deluxe Carrying Case
MSRP: $2035.00 Total Cost after $750 off $2000 coupon: $1285.00 (And they run this coupon literally every week.)
Differences between the laptops: Macbook Pro has a very slightly faster video card (it's underclocked by default, so this is really a moot point.) Macbook Pro is physically lighter and thinner (a huge selling point, in my opinion) Dell has a greater pixel count (1680x1050 v. 1440x900) Dell has a faster DVD burner
The Apple costs nearly twice as much. I happen to be a fan of the Apple platform, and have considered purchasing a Macbook (not the Pro), but there's no doubt in my mind that they grossly overcharge.
Why did this post get modded down? In fact, a lot of posts previous this were modded "Troll" as well, for pretty suspect reasons, but stratjakt's reply isn't Trollish in the slightest. What's going on?
And guess what? It is inherent in the system, not the people. If we stepped in today and forced public financing of elections, corporations couldn't use campaign contributions as leverage to get their way. Period. It would also lower the current un-democratic incumbency rates, making long-term investments in individual politicians much more risky. Or would you like to try and argue that our 98% re-election rate just shows that our electorate always chooses the best person for the job the first time?
You just contradicted yourself. If it was inherent in the system, then no amount of "stepping in" by the general citizenry could correct the problem. It's clearly a problem with the American people, and the incumbency rates further prove it. Elections aren't rigged towards the incumbent; people are just lazy and once they have one name hammered into their head, it takes a lot of work to get a competitor's name in its place, especially on the local level.
I also think many of your examples show unrealistic bias to the consumer. Let's take the credit card industry one, for example: how familiar are you with bankruptcy laws? Do you really think it's "fair" that people be allowed to absolve their own irresponsibility simply by declaring bankruptcy? Do you have any idea how much that costs credit card companies, and as a result, the general public? Being a company and pursuing your company's interests does not automatically make you evil. I am not saying every bankruptcy is the result of someone's fraud or irresponsible spending, but I do think that there should be very real consequences for bankruptcy and that it should not be easily gained.
The energy bill I will grant you, because our current administration is weaned on an oil teat. I do believe that in this respect the government is corrupted, but that the impact of that corruption truly isn't as massive as people make it out to be.
The airlines have always been a mess, and will always be a mess, but unfortunately we can't do much about it until we get rid of the gasoline-powered turbine engine. We rely too heavily on air travel and freight to allow domestic companies to go belly-up. This is not so much an example of the government being corrupt as it is the government being forced to sustain a corrupt industry. I'm not more happy about it than you are, but if we don't bail them out, we're only screwing ourselves.
I'm not familiar with the Endangered Species Act, but if it's in the vein of general environmentalist science, then it's probably terribly written and even more poorly researched. We have only to look at the global warming "emergency" to get a thorough indictment of that scientific community.
The theme of your posts has a very anti-establishment, anti-corporation feel to it, and contrary to that sentiment, big business does not equal corruption. People have a right to pursue their own interests; that conflict of interests is essential to the free market. I don't expect a company to look out for me and I don't get upset if they lobby the government for stricter protection of their money. I only get upset when those lobbyists break the law or attempt to create a market that is against the law, (the net neutrality bill is a great example), and in those cases I call my senator and voice my opinion. Unless you're doing the same, you don't have any feet to stand on.
I might also add that your real problem is with the triumph of special interests over public interest, which is not a function of any particular institution, but instead a necessary consequence of sociological development. It's something the Founding Fathers were afraid of when they drafted the constitution, but not because of the weakness of the new government, but instead the weakness of the common citizen. A quick search on wikipedia for interest groups will get you a study that supposedly shows that direct action is far more effective in getting legislation changed than lobbying--again, an indication that the problem isn't the system, but the people.
Our political system, at least at the state and national levels IS fundamentally corrupt. It is set up in such a way as to institutionalize bribery on a massive scale. I don't particularly care how bad other countries are. That's their problem to deal with. I'm concerned with dealing with the problems here.
You are making two very large claims: one, that America is fundamentally corrupt, and two, that this is a function of the institution. You need to prove both of these. I don't believe you, and I don't see much evidence that would lend your argument much weight, but if you've got proof, I'd love to hear it.
Ahh, now I understand. You're saying that Congressional legislation doesn't affect us in our daily lives. I get it now. Oh wait.. I think you're the one that's not getting it.
This point rests entirely on whether or not you think every piece of Congressional legislation is a direct result of high-level bribery. Again, I don't believe you. I don't think corruption affects my day-to-day life, probably because I've lived in countries where it has and the result is markedly different than the typical American day. (When was the last time one of your friends was arrested because his father had money and thus could be extorted?) I'm going to reiterate my earlier point: I really don't think most people that post on Slashdot know what true corruption is, and as a result are overly quick to accuse America of crimes that it is very far from committing. For you to confuse my outrage at false accusations as complacency puts you in the same boat as all of the neo-conservatives who say that my protestation of the Patriot Act somehow makes me unpatriotic. I'm not going to accuse the government of anything unless I have proof of my claim and the charge is actually akin to what they're doing. I see slashdot's prevalence towards "ZOMG CORRUPTION" claims as the functional equivalent as charging a man guilty of assault with first-degree murder: the man is guilty of assault and should be punished for it, but he didn't commit murder and thus shouldn't be treated as though he has.
I'm not sure yet whether this is a case of corruption or not. I think it's quite possible that there was some backroom dealing on this one, given the fact that they seem to be trying to sneak an amendment through that would benefit only Microsoft.
Then we agree on this point: innocent until proven guilty.
Look, here in the United States, those of us born, bred, and fed here look at the world in a different light.
I was born and raised in the US. My family is from Iran; I am not, at least not technically.
On the other, we have the most corrupt and contemptible form of government imagineable, where the little guy is run roughshod over by special interests and votes in Congress and for President are for sale.
I really can't take you seriously after this point. If you honestly believe this, you have not travelled enough. Our government provides the most avenues for recourse for the general citizen than any other form of government today. We have plenty of problems, (my particular beef is with the overbearing power of the oil lobby, and our completely asinine foreign policy when it comes to Israel), but we are light-years ahead of any other form of government, and really any other system in the world that I've seen. Most of the corruption in the American system is not institutional. Contrast this with the Iranian government, where until Ahmadinejad came into power, very little on the institutional level got done without bribery.
Finally, the phenomenon you're describing is competition, not bribery. Microsoft is trying to convince a state legislature that their solution is the better one, and I can't think of a better way to do that than to provide the most commonly-used Office suite for free to state schools. Until you can show me that Bill Gates made a very large "contribution" to a politician's bank account, I'm not going to consider this corruption. Part of the responsibility of being a politician is balancing political image with personal responsibility. If our politicians were as incapable of doing this as you posit, we would be in far worse shape than we are now.
Yes, that's my point exactly. Wow, you got me. I am awed by your deductive prowess.
Now, if you read the entirety of my post and do me the favor of assuming I'm not a complete moron, you might take my post for what it is: a renunciation of the idea that America is fundamentally corrupt. To prove this point, I quoted many other countries that I've been to and shown that they are much further along than the US is. Since our wonderful crowd of Slashdotters doesn't normally decry the breadth of Eastern European or East Asian corruption, it is then rather knee-jerk to go off on America. People here throw around the word corruptuon like they know what it means. They don't. America has its share of corruption, and we should fight it, (do you honestly believe I would sit here and say corruption is a-ok?), but acting like its widespread, prevalent, and that the US is the scourge of the earth is naive and hackneyed. When corruption affects your daily life, then it's widespread. Again, I reiterate: go to other countries if you want to see what prevalent corruption looks like. I am tired of dealing with pubescent teenagers taking out their angst on the American government. (Even if that teenager is in reality a 39 year-old sysadmin who never grew out of it).
Furthermore, show me where the hell corruption entered this particular case? You really think that Microsoft supplying software licenses for a state educational system is corrupt? I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say you don't.
So let me make sure I understand you. Lobbying is now considered bribery? From my viewpoint, Microsoft is donating a large amount of software to the MA educational system. There's no money being funneled into a politician's hands; there's no money involved, period. And furthermore, where's your data to backup that corruption is "the standard way that US politics work?" There is certainly corruption in US government, I won't argue that, but to try and postulate that it's widespread and terrible shows a startling lack of worldliness. My original point was, if you want to see real corruption, start travelling. America's got its share, but I'm confident that what corruption does exist is a function of human nature, not the American system.
WTF? How did you get modded insightful? Oh, wait, you criticized MS AND used a dollar sign! That's never been done before.
Let's start with the basics. Can you identify a carbeurator? A fuel injection system? Do you know the real difference between analog and digital cellular phone service? What are the physical and mechanical differences between a 208V and a 220V socket? If you can answer all of these questions without referring to outside documentation, then your point about Egyptian students not being able to recognize a word processor or a spreadsheet app might be considered valid. But I doubt you could answer all those questions without any help (which is completely normal), so there's no reason that any students should have to know what freaking classification their software runs under. The world runs on Office applications. You REALLY think it's a disservice for them to get the most powerful business suite for practically free? Someone else can tell them, when they're in the workforce, that Microsoft Word falls under a more general category of software. You are an idiot. There are no words to accurately express your naivete. I thank God that there are Egyptian officials with more sense of how to train the next generation than you.
Is there some sort of filtering process during slashdot's account creation process that requires you make stupid, overzealous statements about the evils of government and politics? If you honestly believe the US is a bastion of corruption, you should try visiting a few other continents. My family is from Iran, and I've been back plenty of times, and I have to bribe the goddamned luggage handlers so I can get out of the airport in a timely fashion. And that's the tip of the freaking iceberg. I've been to Japan, Turkey, Hungary, Romania (where policemen are beaten for reporting police brutality), Bulgaria, the UK, France, and let me assure you, bribery and corruption are everywhere. I'm by no means a nationalist, but I know a good thing when I see it, and you have no idea how much better the US is when it comes to the rule of law.
The problem in this case is that 1.) the pre-established criteria are not based on any scientific evidence, and 2.) the defendent being held accountable for the sale of the video game will be the sales clerk, not the retailer. Can you imagine being sentenced to a year in prison for selling a kid a video game? To put that in perspective, three years is a typical sentence for manslaughter. And to make matters worse, why in the world would you give a judge the right to remove a product entirely from circulation? Unless it's ruled as obscene, (and thanks to the porn industry, I can't think of any game that would satisfy the legal definition of the word), there's no legal precedent to allow that sort of power. The bill's a mess.
Slashdot Mirror
You are a through-and-through communist. Do you have a job yet? If so, please tell me that you think every person you work with deserves the same pay as you. I want to see you take your idiotic assumption of the evil of wealth and the egalitarianism of society to the bitter end. If you honestly believe that those who are more capable don't deserve to be paid for it, then you should move to a country where no amount of hard work or ingenuity ever pays off. If any of those employees that Bill Gates "stole" from were honestly capable of leading the company the way Gates did, and of marketing and selling the way that Gates did, then those capable people either a.) moved up in the company very quickly, or b.) left and started their own companies. That's the beauty of capitalism, you see--if someone makes more money than you and they really don't deserve to, you can make your own company, generate capital for it, and aggressively take over the market. If you have a better product AND are capable of selling it, you'll win. If you're unable to do this, and it's not the fault of a government-enforced monopoly, then guess what? That other guy is more capable than you. It sucks, but it's true.
Bill Gates created an industry, whether you like it or not. Would it have been better if someone else had created the industry? Yeah, maybe. But he still did it. He was a brilliant marketer and a hell of a businessman--and a world-class asshole. That doesn't change the fact that he made billions through his own personal merit. It's not like some hand from above came down and gave him all the money in the world and made sure that only his company was successful. He bit and clawed and cheated his way to the top, and I guarantee that every other executive in the world--be it Apple, (did you know Steve Jobs is a dick? Because he is.), IBM, Sun, whatever, was doing the same. They just didn't do it as well as he did, plain and simple. The amazing thing about all of these jerks running the world's businesses, though, is that somehow they end up generating tons of money, and employing people who then go on to make tons of money. To act like someone who starts a business should equitably split all of their profits with their workers is asinine: that person STARTED the company. They are the driving force behind the idea; they are the reason shit gets done. If their workers are more capable than they are, then those workers leave the company, start their own, and then THEY reap the profits. If you work at all, you have undoubtedly by now discovered that there are two types of people in the workplace, be it public or private sector: people who get shit done, and people who sit on their asses. 95% of the workforce gradiates towards the latter. Those 5% who get shit done are the ones who end up running the show. This is not fail-safe; there is always some amount of corruption or nepotism inherent in business. But if you want to show me a business that is run by morons, that isn't propped up by government subsidies, I'll show you a business that is about to collapse.
"Words of praise for fish food." ;)
"Acknowledgement and acceptance of terms."
I should actually expound a little bit. What really happened is that last year, the FCC reclassified DSL from "telecommunications transfer" to "information transfer." The regulations surrounding telecommunications are extensive (probably too extensive, considering how terrible our phone system is) but one of the enforceable provisions therein is the idea that packets cannot be prioritized; the telcoms have to let whatever comes through keep going, and cannot modify it. Once the FCC changed DSL's classification, the rules changed, and the regulations surrounding "information transfer" are much less clear about the extent to which telcoms can interfere with the content. This current bill essentially lays the groundwork for how information technology is going to be handled in the foreseeable future--it is the guideline for how things are going to run. (So the idea that the govt. should stay out of the market is a moot point, because with or without the amendment for net neutrality, the telco bill is going to pass in Congress.) If that bill does not include provisions for network neutrality, you can bet your ass that our ability to retrieve content is going to be affected almost immediately. I have no problems with prioritizing certain packets over others, as long as no one stands to profit from it. You want to make 911 VoIP calls take preference over everything else? Great, sounds like a plan. But if you want to make sure Verizon's business partner's website comes up faster than Google, then I'm not buying it.
You're not grasping what's happening. Right now, things are the way they are because Congress agreed to net neutrality during the Clinton Administration. It's actually law that a telco cannot be preferential in how it directs traffic. However, the bill only included a temporary provision for net neutrality, and now its time is running out. The entire point of net neutrality is to keep the status quo, and therefore renew net neutrality.
One thing that has continually confused me in this debate is the idea that Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo aren't already paying for their bandwidth. The telcos lay the wire, sell it to ISPs, and the ISPs sell bandwidth, plain and simple. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but what the telcos WANT to do is find some way of charging the big companies MORE because they use bandwidth--but they already pay for it. It's not like Google is holding a gun to AT&T's head, here--Google has to pay for the hundreds upon hundreds of terabytes of traffic they generate. So what the hell is the problem? All network neutrality is saying is that you can't make someone pay more for their bandwidth if they happen to actually use it. Am I misunderstanding this? Where, in any of the amendments (the current being the Snow-Morgan) trying to force net neutrality into the telco bill, do they mention price fixing?
Actually, they weren't rising at 10% a year in the mid-90s; they were much higher. I don't have the figures on-hand, but I have been given the impression that they actually did skyrocket in the previous decade, with increases in premiums in the 25-35% range, yearly. Like I said, health care costs are still increasing, but 10% a year, on top of a 3-5% inflation, really isn't bad at all. It's not perfect, but in the next five years we should see a relative stabilization of health care cost, assuming current trends continue. (And it looks like they will.)
You can find the source for my statistics on HMOs here: http://www.hewittassociates.com/Intl/NA/en-US/Abou tHewitt/Newsroom/PressReleaseDetail.aspx?cid=2826.
As far as why the copays dropped so much, I really couldn't tell you--I was only about five years old at the time. ;) I imagine it was a combination of a few factors, the largest being the low cost of insurance up to that point, and thus competing carriers wanted to find some way of bringing corporations over to their side. The late 80s was a time of huge growth for the insurance sector, and as more and more employees expected comprehensive health coverage from their employers, the carriers wanted to make sure that they got the added business. The plan had unforeseen consequences, but it didn't work out badly for the insurance companies in the end; it's not like companies could just stop providing health coverage.
The Mac Mini is actually fairly well-priced in America, due to its form-factor. The Intel Core Solo is a better chip than an AMD Sempron 3000+ (which is probably the CPU in question). I feel sorry for you UKers; your prices are exorbitant.
Conversation between ODF advocates before they submitted their responses:
"Ok, let's see here... cryptic response?"
"Check."
"Stick something in there about penguins?"
"Check."
"Refuse to reveal any actual information?"
"Yep."
"Awesome. Finish it up with something about Bill Gates eating babies, and send it out."
"You got it."
Oh, there's no doubt that Dell does--if they can afford to consistently offer 25-30% off of their laptops via coupons, clearly they're marking up their product quite a bit. But my point is, Apple is doing it too, and they're doing it a lot more.
I don't think a student discount is that dramatic--are you sure it would knock 350 off? And it's also slightly unfair to compare the student discount to a coupon--anyone can use the coupon; you have to be a student to use the discount.
The iPod Nano is after mail-in rebate, which in my experience is always a pain in the ass.
But really, I think my point has been made: Macs cost a lot more than their EXACT PC counterparts. Some of the cost could be justified, but not all of it. I don't think Apple is EVIL for charging more (they're a business, they want to make money, and it's worked) but I do think the complaint "Macs cost too much" is a valid one.
Built-bluetooth adds $15.
Yes, the wireless is built-in.
Dell helped develop the ExpressCard standard, so yes, it comes with an ExpressCard slot.
No, the keyboard is not illuminated.
You can program scroll-functionality into a dell touchpad with their drivers very easily.
To my knowledge, the Dell does not have a built-in webcam.
Not sure what difference a Magsafe PS makes. You'd have to explain that to me.
Not sure what a "sudden motion sensor" is either, and whether it adds any value.
Still, I don't think any of these warrant double the cost. A few hundred dollars, sure, I can see that--there's no doubt that the Mac experience is unique and friendly enough to justify that. But an additional $1200? That's pushing it.
This would be a wonderful indictment of the insurance industry, if only it were remotely true. I work in an insurance brokerage. Our business model rests entirely on analyzing the health care market, evaluating individual carrier plans (such as Anthem, AETNA, Cigna), and then presenting our clients (any small, medium, or large business) with a portfolio that describes their options for health insurance. Now that I've established that I am probably more familiar with the industry you see as THE BIG BAD CAPITALIST PIG MAN EATING ALL OF YOUR SWEET INNOCENT BABIES, we can proceed to the dispensation of facts.
Health care cost increases, per year, are currently decreasing. In 2004, the initial (which means before negotiations) average insurance premium was predicted to rise by 13.7%. Last year it was predicted to rise by 12.4% (actual rate increases was around 10%). This year, it's supposed to rise by 11.7%. (According to a study by Hewitt Associates, an HR Services company.) So, while the price of health care is increasing, the rate at which it does so is slowing, and has been slowing for a number of years now. Paul Harris, the Senior Health Care Strategist at Hewitt Associates, has been saying this for a while now.
So now that we know your first point, that health care costs are skyrocketing, is patently false, I'm going to go ahead and show you why your rationale is wrong too. Medical costs are rising in the country due to two primary factors: frequency of usage (on the claimant's part) and a massive increase in prescription drug usage. The first is a trend since the 1980s, when the copay to visit a general practitioner dropped dramatically. This was part of a general philosophical change in the nature of the health insurance industry--rather than being an "emergency-only" commodity, people began to see health insurance as a subsidy of their day-to-day health care needs. When copays dropped from $100 to $50 to $25, price elasticity of demand kicked in--people started going to the doctor more often, and not necessarily in proportion to the decrease in the associated cost. (For example, if it cost them $100 originally to see the doctor, and suddenly it was only $25, that didn't necessarily imply that they would go to the doctor four times as much--some people still went the same amount, and by doing such saved money, but the data shows that the vast majority of people went six to eight times as much instead, and thus sent health insurance costs through the roof.) Your assumption that it's the big operations that are causing health insurance to go up simply isn't true; the health care industry is pumping out so much for routine care that when true emergencies do pop up, insured people cannot afford the procedure. The cost of medical care (and not insurance) is only going up 3-5% a year, which is in line with inflation. But insurance keeps rising because people won't stop going to the doctor at the slightest worry. The "decreasing middle class" has nothing to do with it--the Census Bureau has confirmed, since 2001, that the percentage of people without health insurance has remained fairly consistent (their
The OP is referring to the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge (of good and evil) and thus, of their own free will, became capable of sin. The three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) all have their own interpretations of what this act entailed, but no one (except maybe archaic Catholicism) really believes this makes man evil by default. But to deny that man had a role in his own sinfulness, in these traditions, is essentially to ignore all existing theology.
Of course, I've quickly learned that mentioning God on the Slashdot forums is a surefire way to get yourself modded a Troll. So I'm not surprised at the immediate and harsh backlash at any mention of a higher power.
If you have a valid XP Pro key on the bottom of your machine, then you can download an OEM CD of XP and use that key with it--it's perfectly legit. OEM keys won't work with retail CDs (and most pirated copies of Windows are ripped from a retail CD) but they DO work with OEM CDs. If all else fails, find a friend with a Dell and grab his OS CD, rip it, slipstream it, and use that--Dell's the only manufacturer that ships a clean XP Pro/Home CD. (It's a green disc labeled "Operating System.) You don't have to pirate anything at all.
If you'd prefer not to download an OEM CD or rip a friend's, you can call Microsoft and see if they'll send you an OEM CD, (they'll probably charge you a couple bucks), but my experience is that they point you to the PC manufacturer, which won't get you anywhere. But seriously, if you have a valid license on the bottom of that computer, you don't need to pirate anything at all. Just get yourself an OEM CD and enjoy the benefits of legit computing.
Ok, I'll take the bait.
Macbook Pro 15.4" Stats:
15.4-inch widescreen display
1440x900 resolution
2.0GHz Intel Core Duo(1)
1GB (2 SODIMMs) 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
80GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive
4x SuperDrive
ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 128MB GDDR3 memory
One FireWire 400 and two USB 2.0 ports
3-year world-class Applecare Support
MSRP: $2448.98
Brenthaven Edge II for 15.4-inch MacBook Pro
MSRP: $49.99
Total Cost: $2,497.95
Dell Inspiron E1505
Intel Core Duo 2.0 GHz
Genuine Windows® XP Professional
15.4 inch UltraSharp(TM) Wide Screen SXGA+ Display with TrueLife(TM)
FREE 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz, 2 Dimm
256MB ATI MOBILITY(TM) RADEON® X1400 HyperMemory(TM)
80GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive
8X CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11a/g Mini Card (54Mbps)
85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
3Yr Ltd Warr,At-Home Service,and HW Warr Support plus Nights and Weekends
Dell Nylon Deluxe Carrying Case
MSRP: $2035.00
Total Cost after $750 off $2000 coupon: $1285.00 (And they run this coupon literally every week.)
Differences between the laptops:
Macbook Pro has a very slightly faster video card (it's underclocked by default, so this is really a moot point.)
Macbook Pro is physically lighter and thinner (a huge selling point, in my opinion)
Dell has a greater pixel count (1680x1050 v. 1440x900)
Dell has a faster DVD burner
The Apple costs nearly twice as much. I happen to be a fan of the Apple platform, and have considered purchasing a Macbook (not the Pro), but there's no doubt in my mind that they grossly overcharge.
Why did this post get modded down? In fact, a lot of posts previous this were modded "Troll" as well, for pretty suspect reasons, but stratjakt's reply isn't Trollish in the slightest. What's going on?
You just contradicted yourself. If it was inherent in the system, then no amount of "stepping in" by the general citizenry could correct the problem. It's clearly a problem with the American people, and the incumbency rates further prove it. Elections aren't rigged towards the incumbent; people are just lazy and once they have one name hammered into their head, it takes a lot of work to get a competitor's name in its place, especially on the local level.
I also think many of your examples show unrealistic bias to the consumer. Let's take the credit card industry one, for example: how familiar are you with bankruptcy laws? Do you really think it's "fair" that people be allowed to absolve their own irresponsibility simply by declaring bankruptcy? Do you have any idea how much that costs credit card companies, and as a result, the general public? Being a company and pursuing your company's interests does not automatically make you evil. I am not saying every bankruptcy is the result of someone's fraud or irresponsible spending, but I do think that there should be very real consequences for bankruptcy and that it should not be easily gained.
The energy bill I will grant you, because our current administration is weaned on an oil teat. I do believe that in this respect the government is corrupted, but that the impact of that corruption truly isn't as massive as people make it out to be.
The airlines have always been a mess, and will always be a mess, but unfortunately we can't do much about it until we get rid of the gasoline-powered turbine engine. We rely too heavily on air travel and freight to allow domestic companies to go belly-up. This is not so much an example of the government being corrupt as it is the government being forced to sustain a corrupt industry. I'm not more happy about it than you are, but if we don't bail them out, we're only screwing ourselves.
I'm not familiar with the Endangered Species Act, but if it's in the vein of general environmentalist science, then it's probably terribly written and even more poorly researched. We have only to look at the global warming "emergency" to get a thorough indictment of that scientific community.
The theme of your posts has a very anti-establishment, anti-corporation feel to it, and contrary to that sentiment, big business does not equal corruption. People have a right to pursue their own interests; that conflict of interests is essential to the free market. I don't expect a company to look out for me and I don't get upset if they lobby the government for stricter protection of their money. I only get upset when those lobbyists break the law or attempt to create a market that is against the law, (the net neutrality bill is a great example), and in those cases I call my senator and voice my opinion. Unless you're doing the same, you don't have any feet to stand on.
I might also add that your real problem is with the triumph of special interests over public interest, which is not a function of any particular institution, but instead a necessary consequence of sociological development. It's something the Founding Fathers were afraid of when they drafted the constitution, but not because of the weakness of the new government, but instead the weakness of the common citizen. A quick search on wikipedia for interest groups will get you a study that supposedly shows that direct action is far more effective in getting legislation changed than lobbying--again, an indication that the problem isn't the system, but the people.
You are making two very large claims: one, that America is fundamentally corrupt, and two, that this is a function of the institution. You need to prove both of these. I don't believe you, and I don't see much evidence that would lend your argument much weight, but if you've got proof, I'd love to hear it.
This point rests entirely on whether or not you think every piece of Congressional legislation is a direct result of high-level bribery. Again, I don't believe you. I don't think corruption affects my day-to-day life, probably because I've lived in countries where it has and the result is markedly different than the typical American day. (When was the last time one of your friends was arrested because his father had money and thus could be extorted?) I'm going to reiterate my earlier point: I really don't think most people that post on Slashdot know what true corruption is, and as a result are overly quick to accuse America of crimes that it is very far from committing. For you to confuse my outrage at false accusations as complacency puts you in the same boat as all of the neo-conservatives who say that my protestation of the Patriot Act somehow makes me unpatriotic. I'm not going to accuse the government of anything unless I have proof of my claim and the charge is actually akin to what they're doing. I see slashdot's prevalence towards "ZOMG CORRUPTION" claims as the functional equivalent as charging a man guilty of assault with first-degree murder: the man is guilty of assault and should be punished for it, but he didn't commit murder and thus shouldn't be treated as though he has.
Then we agree on this point: innocent until proven guilty.
I was born and raised in the US. My family is from Iran; I am not, at least not technically.
I really can't take you seriously after this point. If you honestly believe this, you have not travelled enough. Our government provides the most avenues for recourse for the general citizen than any other form of government today. We have plenty of problems, (my particular beef is with the overbearing power of the oil lobby, and our completely asinine foreign policy when it comes to Israel), but we are light-years ahead of any other form of government, and really any other system in the world that I've seen. Most of the corruption in the American system is not institutional. Contrast this with the Iranian government, where until Ahmadinejad came into power, very little on the institutional level got done without bribery.
Finally, the phenomenon you're describing is competition, not bribery. Microsoft is trying to convince a state legislature that their solution is the better one, and I can't think of a better way to do that than to provide the most commonly-used Office suite for free to state schools. Until you can show me that Bill Gates made a very large "contribution" to a politician's bank account, I'm not going to consider this corruption. Part of the responsibility of being a politician is balancing political image with personal responsibility. If our politicians were as incapable of doing this as you posit, we would be in far worse shape than we are now.
Yes, that's my point exactly. Wow, you got me. I am awed by your deductive prowess.
Now, if you read the entirety of my post and do me the favor of assuming I'm not a complete moron, you might take my post for what it is: a renunciation of the idea that America is fundamentally corrupt. To prove this point, I quoted many other countries that I've been to and shown that they are much further along than the US is. Since our wonderful crowd of Slashdotters doesn't normally decry the breadth of Eastern European or East Asian corruption, it is then rather knee-jerk to go off on America. People here throw around the word corruptuon like they know what it means. They don't. America has its share of corruption, and we should fight it, (do you honestly believe I would sit here and say corruption is a-ok?), but acting like its widespread, prevalent, and that the US is the scourge of the earth is naive and hackneyed. When corruption affects your daily life, then it's widespread. Again, I reiterate: go to other countries if you want to see what prevalent corruption looks like. I am tired of dealing with pubescent teenagers taking out their angst on the American government. (Even if that teenager is in reality a 39 year-old sysadmin who never grew out of it).
Furthermore, show me where the hell corruption entered this particular case? You really think that Microsoft supplying software licenses for a state educational system is corrupt? I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say you don't.
So let me make sure I understand you. Lobbying is now considered bribery? From my viewpoint, Microsoft is donating a large amount of software to the MA educational system. There's no money being funneled into a politician's hands; there's no money involved, period. And furthermore, where's your data to backup that corruption is "the standard way that US politics work?" There is certainly corruption in US government, I won't argue that, but to try and postulate that it's widespread and terrible shows a startling lack of worldliness. My original point was, if you want to see real corruption, start travelling. America's got its share, but I'm confident that what corruption does exist is a function of human nature, not the American system.
Depressed economies? Japan? The UK? France?
WTF? How did you get modded insightful? Oh, wait, you criticized MS AND used a dollar sign! That's never been done before.
Let's start with the basics. Can you identify a carbeurator? A fuel injection system? Do you know the real difference between analog and digital cellular phone service? What are the physical and mechanical differences between a 208V and a 220V socket? If you can answer all of these questions without referring to outside documentation, then your point about Egyptian students not being able to recognize a word processor or a spreadsheet app might be considered valid. But I doubt you could answer all those questions without any help (which is completely normal), so there's no reason that any students should have to know what freaking classification their software runs under. The world runs on Office applications. You REALLY think it's a disservice for them to get the most powerful business suite for practically free? Someone else can tell them, when they're in the workforce, that Microsoft Word falls under a more general category of software. You are an idiot. There are no words to accurately express your naivete. I thank God that there are Egyptian officials with more sense of how to train the next generation than you.
Is there some sort of filtering process during slashdot's account creation process that requires you make stupid, overzealous statements about the evils of government and politics? If you honestly believe the US is a bastion of corruption, you should try visiting a few other continents. My family is from Iran, and I've been back plenty of times, and I have to bribe the goddamned luggage handlers so I can get out of the airport in a timely fashion. And that's the tip of the freaking iceberg. I've been to Japan, Turkey, Hungary, Romania (where policemen are beaten for reporting police brutality), Bulgaria, the UK, France, and let me assure you, bribery and corruption are everywhere. I'm by no means a nationalist, but I know a good thing when I see it, and you have no idea how much better the US is when it comes to the rule of law.
P.S. Don't even get me started on Mexico.
The problem in this case is that 1.) the pre-established criteria are not based on any scientific evidence, and 2.) the defendent being held accountable for the sale of the video game will be the sales clerk, not the retailer. Can you imagine being sentenced to a year in prison for selling a kid a video game? To put that in perspective, three years is a typical sentence for manslaughter. And to make matters worse, why in the world would you give a judge the right to remove a product entirely from circulation? Unless it's ruled as obscene, (and thanks to the porn industry, I can't think of any game that would satisfy the legal definition of the word), there's no legal precedent to allow that sort of power. The bill's a mess.