When I told my parents I was getting married, they painted an optimistic picture of my future: a happy family life, with my children growing up in a prosperous society. I believed it, because it seemed to be true. Now I have two teenage daughters and I advise them to not have children and prepare for a tough and frugal future. I believe it, because it seems to be true. How far we have fallen in one generation.
What if you have no choice but to use their router? I tried using my own but the modem portion of the ISP's modem/router wouldn't play nice with it, and kept hanging my router several times a day. I checked on-line and customers of their competitor have the same complaint. Even though I'm in IT and fairly comfortable with the technology, I don't have hours of spare time to try to find my own compatible DOCSIS 3.0 modem and router that will work with it. So, bottom line, the ISP wins, and I end up renting their POS hardware.
Dumb question: why did you buy Slashdot in the first place if you think the web site is in need of a major makeover? Answer: it wasn't about the web site - it was about what you call the "audience", or what we call the "community". It's all about advertising dollars. We get it - we're not fools. We know the business model. But a word of caution to you: "communities" can be very mobile on the internet. Just ask MySpace. Push the beta on the "community" and you will be left with a web site and a bunch of blank slots where advertising once was. We will find somewhere else to go. After all, we all found this site at one time or another.
Hasn't that been the strategy at most companies for the last decade? Other than a few sensations like Apple, most companies have been successful at slashing costs through outsourcing and downsizing, rather than spectacular innovations.
The government can collect and store digital information about me. But it must be stored in an secured and encrypted repository with access controls that are fully auditable (e.g., who looked at it, when and why), and every piece of data is tagged with its source and collection method (e.g., intercepted in transit between client and server, scraped from a web page, provided by an ISP). Then when the government wants to search my digital information for signs of criminal activity, they go before a judge and ask for a warrant, just like any other warrant for a physical search. And when it's granted and executed, I (and my lawyer) get a copy of the warrant, a list of the data retrieved and the metadata, and a copy of the audit logs up to and including the search that was conducted. Oh, and no gag orders on the warrants. Think the government will go for that? Think they'll give up their "super-secret tools" to appease us voters?
And how will those nuclear weapons be delivered to their target without chemical energy? Do we strap them to swallows? Yes, I know that missiles can run on liquid hydrogen/oxygen propulsion, but I think most modern missiles use chemical propellants.
In my younger years when I had more free time and disposable income, I invested in high-end audio gear. Now that I have kids in university and have nerve damage in my left audio nerve, my music system is much more modest.
I agree with your assessment of the Nest thermostat. However, I'm puzzled about your comment regarding your ability for your home to retain heat. I live in Canada (about an hour north of Toronto) and a couple of years ago our natural gas meter malfunctioned, cutting off the supply to our furnace. By the time it was properly diagnosed and resolved, we were almost 48 hours without heat. However, the house never dropped below +10 degrees Celsius during that time, and that was February with outdoor temperatures around -10 degrees Celsius. While it is only 25 years old and is fairly well insulated (new windows and doors in the last five years), it is nothing special in terms of insulating technology. Perhaps I'm wrong but I would think your home should survive a short-term outage on the heating without damage.
Combine this with the impact of climate change on the global food supply, and I fear we are heading into a very dark period. I fear for the world my children will have to live in.
The more important sentence is this: "His smallish estate pays about $8,000 per month to keep him in this state of perpetual suffering". His father had an estate to pay for the care. Very soon there will be a huge number of aging baby boomers around, without such estates, who will need long-term care. My grandmother spent 15 years in the fog of dementia before dying at age 94, with every expense paid for by the state. New laws are going to start appearing on the books very soon to deal with this, with euphemistic names like "Managing Elderly Care Costs." It won't be morals and beliefs that shape this argument and its resolution. Like everything else in life, it will be all about money.
Were you living in one of the affected areas? I lived in Toronto at the time, and yes, there was panic. When you had health professionals - doctors and nurses - who were getting sick even though they were wearing outfits that were supposed to protect you against any infection, there was good reason to panic. There were a lot of unknowns surrounding SARS and the fear was very justifiable.
Your sig is interesting. There's another part earlier in the song that goes "I know I'm a fool, but what can I say. Whatever the price, I'll pay. For you, Madame Blue." What price are you willing to pay?
Yes, and suddenly comprehensive coverage premiums would go up by 70%. Insurance companies are in the business of making a profit. They're not walking away from 80% of their revenue source. Yes, there would be fewer collisions and a reduction in payouts. But, come one, an 80% reduction in the cost to the consumer? Not a chance.
Canadian from Ontario here: for all intents and purposes, non-elective medical care in Canada is 100% government controlled. You cannot open a clinic and offer private services like MRI's or knee surgery, without complying with the mandated queues (either based on priority, if life threatening, or first-come, first-serve). You can't jump to the front of the queue.
The Prime Minister of Canada is an economist by trade, and has had a strong focus on financial and economic matters. That has paid off in lower fiscal deficits, a solid banking system (a lot of credit for that also goes to his predecessors, but the current PM gets credit for not giving into the pressure from the banks to loosen the rules and avoid a US-style collapse), increased foreign investment and new trade agreements with EU and South America. However, he also has a bit of a love affair with all things military and he's been quite aggressive in chopping social programs, so nobody's perfect.
Like Schrödinger's cat, we are all both guilty and innocent at the same time within the box of secret anti-terror laws passed by the government. Unless you can read the law (which most citizens can't), you cannot determine for certain whether you are complying with these laws or not. I suggest we all turn ourselves into the nearest federal law enforcement agency and ask them to prove we are innocent. Otherwise, we must be guilty and should be locked up, right?
Seconded. In this time of high unemployment, most of us are just tired after working ever-increasingly long hours, and are just a little bit more than afraid of losing our jobs. I know that I should protest against this, but I have so many more pressing, more immediate and personal issues to deal with that this gets pushed to the bottom of my list of priorities. I think this is how other countries keep their citizens in line: work them hard enough so that they're just above surviving, so they can buy a few toys and trinkets, yet not allow them enough free time to stop and take stock of how their being oppressed.
Can I replace the abomination that is Microsoft Sync in my Ford? I have tried to enable the "read text message" option with several brands of Android phones, with no success. Ford's suggestion? Reset to factory settings, which does dick-all.
You are lucky - it sounds like your grandmother is quite gentle. My grandmother spent her last two decades of her life in the fog of dementia (she lived to be 94). She was not so gentle. Even though she was only 4 1/2' tall she was physically violent toward other nursing home residents. She would accuse them of stealing her stuff and would attack them, sometimes striking them with whatever object she could grasp, leaving them bruised and bleeding. She did not recognize her own children and did not see the need for using a toilet. While I had a lot of sympathy for her situation, I stopped visiting her after she threw a glass of juice at my father. I wonder if I will end up the same way - my aunt is beginning to show some symptoms, but my father so far seems to be okay (touch wood).
I think the insurance companies are already adjusting their coverage to offset some of these events. In the Toronto Area we had a couple of major rainfall events this summer causing widespread flooding in many people's basements. And now the insurance companies are talking about dropping coverage for water damage to people's basements.
I don't have debt (other than a very small mortgage). I always pay off my credit card bill every month and in 30 years have never paid a penny in interest. I have lots of savings - short term, long term and pension. I use credit cards for the convenience of not having to carry large amounts of cash (safer too). However, I also have a social insurance number (Canadian equivalent of SSN), a driver's license number, bank account numbers, health card numbers, insurance policy numbers, employee number, etc. If you want to live in modern society you will generate lots of numbers and electronic records, that are a proxy for your identity. The alternative is to cash in all your assets, head for the woods and live off the land. Not practical for most of us.
You are naive. Canada has strong gun laws - which I agree with - but that doesn't stop someone who is determined to commit a horrendous act of violence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_lepine. Lepine shot 14 women to death at a Montreal night school class. Gun laws reduce gun deaths, but they can't eliminate them.
Ok class, today's lesson is on the founding principals of the justice system. Please repeat after me: "When you are a corporation, you are innocent until you admit you are guilty. When you are a citizen, you are guilty - period".
People ride in taxis and buses and they're not behind the wheel. A lot of people will be comfortable after the second or third trip. The big shift will be with insurance companies. Once a lot of the risk of collisions and, to some degree liability, has been removed, will insurance premiums go down? This is a huge source of revenue for them.
Slashdot Mirror
When I told my parents I was getting married, they painted an optimistic picture of my future: a happy family life, with my children growing up in a prosperous society. I believed it, because it seemed to be true. Now I have two teenage daughters and I advise them to not have children and prepare for a tough and frugal future. I believe it, because it seems to be true. How far we have fallen in one generation.
What if you have no choice but to use their router? I tried using my own but the modem portion of the ISP's modem/router wouldn't play nice with it, and kept hanging my router several times a day. I checked on-line and customers of their competitor have the same complaint. Even though I'm in IT and fairly comfortable with the technology, I don't have hours of spare time to try to find my own compatible DOCSIS 3.0 modem and router that will work with it. So, bottom line, the ISP wins, and I end up renting their POS hardware.
Dumb question: why did you buy Slashdot in the first place if you think the web site is in need of a major makeover? Answer: it wasn't about the web site - it was about what you call the "audience", or what we call the "community". It's all about advertising dollars. We get it - we're not fools. We know the business model. But a word of caution to you: "communities" can be very mobile on the internet. Just ask MySpace. Push the beta on the "community" and you will be left with a web site and a bunch of blank slots where advertising once was. We will find somewhere else to go. After all, we all found this site at one time or another.
Hasn't that been the strategy at most companies for the last decade? Other than a few sensations like Apple, most companies have been successful at slashing costs through outsourcing and downsizing, rather than spectacular innovations.
The government can collect and store digital information about me. But it must be stored in an secured and encrypted repository with access controls that are fully auditable (e.g., who looked at it, when and why), and every piece of data is tagged with its source and collection method (e.g., intercepted in transit between client and server, scraped from a web page, provided by an ISP). Then when the government wants to search my digital information for signs of criminal activity, they go before a judge and ask for a warrant, just like any other warrant for a physical search. And when it's granted and executed, I (and my lawyer) get a copy of the warrant, a list of the data retrieved and the metadata, and a copy of the audit logs up to and including the search that was conducted. Oh, and no gag orders on the warrants. Think the government will go for that? Think they'll give up their "super-secret tools" to appease us voters?
And how will those nuclear weapons be delivered to their target without chemical energy? Do we strap them to swallows? Yes, I know that missiles can run on liquid hydrogen/oxygen propulsion, but I think most modern missiles use chemical propellants.
In my younger years when I had more free time and disposable income, I invested in high-end audio gear. Now that I have kids in university and have nerve damage in my left audio nerve, my music system is much more modest.
I agree with your assessment of the Nest thermostat. However, I'm puzzled about your comment regarding your ability for your home to retain heat. I live in Canada (about an hour north of Toronto) and a couple of years ago our natural gas meter malfunctioned, cutting off the supply to our furnace. By the time it was properly diagnosed and resolved, we were almost 48 hours without heat. However, the house never dropped below +10 degrees Celsius during that time, and that was February with outdoor temperatures around -10 degrees Celsius. While it is only 25 years old and is fairly well insulated (new windows and doors in the last five years), it is nothing special in terms of insulating technology. Perhaps I'm wrong but I would think your home should survive a short-term outage on the heating without damage.
Combine this with the impact of climate change on the global food supply, and I fear we are heading into a very dark period. I fear for the world my children will have to live in.
The more important sentence is this: "His smallish estate pays about $8,000 per month to keep him in this state of perpetual suffering". His father had an estate to pay for the care. Very soon there will be a huge number of aging baby boomers around, without such estates, who will need long-term care. My grandmother spent 15 years in the fog of dementia before dying at age 94, with every expense paid for by the state. New laws are going to start appearing on the books very soon to deal with this, with euphemistic names like "Managing Elderly Care Costs." It won't be morals and beliefs that shape this argument and its resolution. Like everything else in life, it will be all about money.
Were you living in one of the affected areas? I lived in Toronto at the time, and yes, there was panic. When you had health professionals - doctors and nurses - who were getting sick even though they were wearing outfits that were supposed to protect you against any infection, there was good reason to panic. There were a lot of unknowns surrounding SARS and the fear was very justifiable.
It's about control. They see these sites as equivalent to "public domain" and that is a threat to their existing model.
Your sig is interesting. There's another part earlier in the song that goes "I know I'm a fool, but what can I say. Whatever the price, I'll pay. For you, Madame Blue." What price are you willing to pay?
Yes, and suddenly comprehensive coverage premiums would go up by 70%. Insurance companies are in the business of making a profit. They're not walking away from 80% of their revenue source. Yes, there would be fewer collisions and a reduction in payouts. But, come one, an 80% reduction in the cost to the consumer? Not a chance.
Canadian from Ontario here: for all intents and purposes, non-elective medical care in Canada is 100% government controlled. You cannot open a clinic and offer private services like MRI's or knee surgery, without complying with the mandated queues (either based on priority, if life threatening, or first-come, first-serve). You can't jump to the front of the queue.
The Prime Minister of Canada is an economist by trade, and has had a strong focus on financial and economic matters. That has paid off in lower fiscal deficits, a solid banking system (a lot of credit for that also goes to his predecessors, but the current PM gets credit for not giving into the pressure from the banks to loosen the rules and avoid a US-style collapse), increased foreign investment and new trade agreements with EU and South America. However, he also has a bit of a love affair with all things military and he's been quite aggressive in chopping social programs, so nobody's perfect.
Like Schrödinger's cat, we are all both guilty and innocent at the same time within the box of secret anti-terror laws passed by the government. Unless you can read the law (which most citizens can't), you cannot determine for certain whether you are complying with these laws or not. I suggest we all turn ourselves into the nearest federal law enforcement agency and ask them to prove we are innocent. Otherwise, we must be guilty and should be locked up, right?
Seconded. In this time of high unemployment, most of us are just tired after working ever-increasingly long hours, and are just a little bit more than afraid of losing our jobs. I know that I should protest against this, but I have so many more pressing, more immediate and personal issues to deal with that this gets pushed to the bottom of my list of priorities. I think this is how other countries keep their citizens in line: work them hard enough so that they're just above surviving, so they can buy a few toys and trinkets, yet not allow them enough free time to stop and take stock of how their being oppressed.
Can I replace the abomination that is Microsoft Sync in my Ford? I have tried to enable the "read text message" option with several brands of Android phones, with no success. Ford's suggestion? Reset to factory settings, which does dick-all.
You are lucky - it sounds like your grandmother is quite gentle. My grandmother spent her last two decades of her life in the fog of dementia (she lived to be 94). She was not so gentle. Even though she was only 4 1/2' tall she was physically violent toward other nursing home residents. She would accuse them of stealing her stuff and would attack them, sometimes striking them with whatever object she could grasp, leaving them bruised and bleeding. She did not recognize her own children and did not see the need for using a toilet. While I had a lot of sympathy for her situation, I stopped visiting her after she threw a glass of juice at my father. I wonder if I will end up the same way - my aunt is beginning to show some symptoms, but my father so far seems to be okay (touch wood).
I think the insurance companies are already adjusting their coverage to offset some of these events. In the Toronto Area we had a couple of major rainfall events this summer causing widespread flooding in many people's basements. And now the insurance companies are talking about dropping coverage for water damage to people's basements.
I don't have debt (other than a very small mortgage). I always pay off my credit card bill every month and in 30 years have never paid a penny in interest. I have lots of savings - short term, long term and pension. I use credit cards for the convenience of not having to carry large amounts of cash (safer too). However, I also have a social insurance number (Canadian equivalent of SSN), a driver's license number, bank account numbers, health card numbers, insurance policy numbers, employee number, etc. If you want to live in modern society you will generate lots of numbers and electronic records, that are a proxy for your identity. The alternative is to cash in all your assets, head for the woods and live off the land. Not practical for most of us.
You are naive. Canada has strong gun laws - which I agree with - but that doesn't stop someone who is determined to commit a horrendous act of violence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_lepine. Lepine shot 14 women to death at a Montreal night school class. Gun laws reduce gun deaths, but they can't eliminate them.
Ok class, today's lesson is on the founding principals of the justice system. Please repeat after me: "When you are a corporation, you are innocent until you admit you are guilty. When you are a citizen, you are guilty - period".
People ride in taxis and buses and they're not behind the wheel. A lot of people will be comfortable after the second or third trip. The big shift will be with insurance companies. Once a lot of the risk of collisions and, to some degree liability, has been removed, will insurance premiums go down? This is a huge source of revenue for them.