Part of the problem is that math is typically taught as an applied art. Students spend maybe five minutes in a classroom introduced to a new concept and then spend the rest of the week honing their problem solving skills while employing the new concept. Then they are introduced to variations of the new concept or expansions of the new concept, then tested on how well they have memorized the steps of implementing the new concept to solve an increasing complicated set of problems while also demonstrating their skill at showing their work, writing neatly, managing their time, improving their problem solving speed while maintaining an acceptable level of accuracy, etc. By the end of just about any particular math course the students are typically expected to be experts in applying and solving problems with the concepts they have been introduced to. Then ten years later after never using their hard earned math skills they no longer remember how to dive into a problem and solve it as quickly as they could as students. The details get fuzzy. But the overall understanding of the concept and its signifcance remains. Often times in a practical situation a person just needs to know how a system will behave in a very general sense. Being able to understand that the behavior of a system will be stable, unstable, oscillate, increase exponentially or decay to a steady state just by knowing a few basic facts about the system is very useful and has applications from electronics to ecology to the stock market.
What is needed are some general overview/survey types of classes to expose non-STEM majors to more advanced concepts in mathematics without expecting them to solve an integral equations without a calculator or to find the solution to a linear system "within the time allotted". It's a shame that most non-STEM majors can't even have a very top-level general discussion on topics such as the limit of a function as a variable approaches zero or infinity. Educated people should not have to back away from discussions that involve mathematical models, phrases such as "interpolation", "extrapolation", "tangential angle", or a sudden switch in topic from "time domain" to "frequency domain".
Call it "mathematical literacy 101" or something like that. A class about math that involves limited actual problem-solving by the student (you have to have some, but it's ok to keep problems simple for the purpose of understanding the concept rather than make a problem have double digit numbers where single digits would do), where test questions are more likely to be true or false, multiple choice, testing mostly the abstract understanding of the concepts, not testing intense arithmetic skills nor the ability to solve problems with speed and precision, nor the discipline to solve increasingly complicated and mentally taxing math problems for several hours each week.
Physicians for decades now have been allowed to take money from drug manufacturers and prescribe those drugs to patients without informing those patients that a cheaper or a generic drug is just as effective. No federal agency (FTC, FDA, FBI) or professional organization (ie AMA) has stepped in to even investigate this common practice.
Advertising in the doctor's office office has been soaring, with posters on the wall and flyers handed to patients hawking everything from prescription drugs and vitamins to therapeutic procedures and cosmetic surgery. You can no longer tell when a physician is offering genuine medical advice or trying to upsell you to something you don't need that could potentially cause harm from the side effects.
I chose to change doctors last year when I noticed pharma reps, with their suits and rolling breifcases, coming in and out of the office more than the patients were.
I hereby committ to the pubic domain the invention of a device consisting of a ball capable of elastic collision upon impact with a surface (a process defined here as "bounce"), embedded with a camera that will take a picture with each occurence of such bounce. This device will possess the ability to perform the described action while interfacing with a computer.
Of course, it's only public domain if someone else hasn't patented this idea beforehand.
And unless the company dictates that I have to own and drive X vehicle with Y specifications, or carry P briefcase with Q specifications, they better be ready to accept that I may show up to work on a bicycle with work documents rolled up in an opening in the frame.
What is much more likely is that in 2017 companies will develop a preference for independent contractors who show up (perhaps virtually from their living room in their PJs) to perform work on specific projects rather than full time staff that has to struggle to look busy between projects. It's very hard to take the "bring your own tools" approach without utilizing workers as independent contractors as compared to full time staff.
Such an approach could be advantageous to ambitious workers who may work on two or three projects simultaneously, presuming, of course, no conflict of interest.
You presume that most companies give a crap about the law. Instead lawyers are hired and loopholes are discovered. You just quoted "...authorized by the employee in writing...". I guarantee that this provision is included within the employee handbook and a signature from the employee to agree to such provisions is almost always a condition of employment.
I know first hand of people who have been required to procure their own uniform at their own cost. Sometimes the employers just don't give a flyin' flip about what the law says. There are still probably hundreds of employers who decide to put an hourly employee on salary and then convince the employee that now they have to work 80+ hours each week without overtime pay because now they are "salaried". Just because employers can be sued doesn't keep them from pulling all sorts of crap. When I was in college I applied for a job at a print shop and was told in an angry tone that he (the employer) only wanted female applicants - totally against the EOA, since there's no particular reason why gender is essential to do work at a print shop, unless he's taking picture of nude ladies (which certainly wasn't in the job description). I could have sued, but why would I? Unfortunately I just didn't have time for such hobbies as lawsuits, petitions or picketing. Neither do most other hourly workers struggling to make ends meet. Employers know this which is why my friends earning an hourly wage are often screwed over with uniform costs, bringing their own tools, etc., while at my job I can buy all sorts of gizmos, pay for the entire table of a business lunch, submit an expense report and even get paid for my extra mileage, even though I already earn more than enough to actually afford these things if reimbursement wasn't an option.
There are thousands of laws that are supposedly meant to help common citizens, but then there are loopholes, exceptions, and bully strategies that the wealthy and powerful use to control, manipulate, and exploit the masses who think they can simply choose to settle for a simple life and raise a family. Some examples include: - contracts of adhesion, like statements on the back of ticket stubs that claim some waiver of liability, or EULAs and/or warranty documents that can only be read after a product has been purchase and the packaging removed. - binding arbitration clauses in consumer contracts where the right to a trial in US courts is taken away and replaced with an informal hearing by a private citizen, often with little or no legal training, let alone any of the qualifications expected from an actual judge. In recent years some arbitration firms have come under fire for having subsidiary collection agencies that would attempt to collect from consumers after the arbitration proceedings were complete. Once an arbitrator makes his decision, a judgment is submitted to actual "real" US courts for the purpose of empowering the winners of such suits to use all legally available remedies to collect on the judgment, including bank levies, liens, foreclosure, debtor examinations, etc. Appeals are not allowed, and it has been upheld that arbitrators are NOT required to follow any rules of civil procedure, follow legal precedence, or even make decisions based on actual state or federal laws. An arbitrator could literally decide that a defendant loses his case because he was wearing a yellow tie even if the defendant was clearly following the law and the rules of applicable contracts. There is no legal remedy to reverse such an abusive decision. - waiver of jury trial as a clause in a contract - waiver of participating in a class action lawsuit as a clause in a contract - SLAPP lawsuits: A strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) is a lawsuit that is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition. - Unenforceable but intimidating contract clauses - very often a loan contract to purchase a car or hous
Then we need to act more like the AMA and NPA. Highlight recent disasters, like the fertilizer explosion in West, TX, even though foreign educated engineers probably weren't involved, emphasize how crucial it is that STEM majors study at accredited schools located within our borders where we can have better control over the quality of education provided. Then emphasize how important it is that only the brightest candidates be permitted to study STEM topics. Then implement strict licensing requirements so that no engineer, programmer, scientist, or mathematician can do their job without jumping through a series of hoops. And make it so you need a graduate level STEM degree and a two year "residency" working 120 hours each week for chump change to make sure that only those who eat, breathe, and dream of STEM subject matter actually pursue this career path.
The biggest problem with GMOs as they are being grown today, is that the most frequent genetic modification is Roundup resistance. Farmer's literally spray their GMO crops with Roundup to kill ALL PLANT LIFE, except the GMO crop. Now, I have seen the label for Roundup and the prognosis of ingesting the stuff is not good. It is known to the state of California to cause cancer and/or reproductive defects. Now if all you eat or GMO crops soaked in Roundup, how many years will it take your liver to accumulate the toxins into a lethal dosage? How is it that most over-the-counter herbicides and pesticides for home gardens have warnings not to use them on or near vegetables, but we are supposed to go to the store and buy vegies that have been soaking all their growing life in a sea of chemicals much stronger?
One unintended consequence of Roundup resistant crops is that now superweeds are developing, through natural selection, that are also resistant to Roundup. Doesn't sound like "sustainable" agriculture to me. Scientists have often claimed that something is safe and there is no danger because they haven't found evidence of any harm - but once the whole world is committed to GMO crops there is not going to be much chance to turn back once we realize that there is a problem. Keep the GMO crops in smaller regions and test markets and expand their use gradually so that if decades from now if a problem is identified there is a chance to revserse it.
As for these scientists, let's Google the sorts of things that scientists told us were safe in the past:
1. Some scientists once thought it was safe to dump garbage into the oceans, believing the oceans were large enough to absorb sludge without harmful effects. 2. Scientists have claimed that some cigarettes were "safer" than others: “you're safer smoking Philip Morris . ..this cigarette has been scientifically proved less irritating to the nose and throat . ..eminent doctors report that every case of irritation of the nose and throat due to smoking cleared completely or definitely improved.” In 1943, Lorillard promoted its Old Gold brand by claiming it was “lowest in nicotine, lowest in throat—irritating tars and resins.” In 1946, Brown and Williamson used baseball legend Babe Ruth to pitch Raleigh cigarettes, with the claim that “Medical science offers proof positive . ..No other leading cigarette is safer to smoke!” Ironically, Babe Ruth later died of throat cancer. 3. I'm pretty sure that the Brazilian geneticists crossbreeding mild-mannered European honeybees with their more aggressive, territorial cousins from Africa in the 1950's thought that their experiments were safe. 4. Cane toads in Australia - notorious! 5. Fen-phen - it was first deemed safe, until later when studies showed that fatal heart and lung conditions developed from as little as three months exposure. 6. Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories - fabricated research data to the extent that upon FDA analysis of 867 studies, 618 (71%) were deemed invalid, including many of which were used to gain regulatory approval for widely-used household and industrial products. (see Investigators charged that three big chemical companies—[Monsanto, Olin Corporation, and FMC Corporation]—knowingly submitted flawed data to the EPA in support of a widely used swimming pool chlorinator that was suspected of causing kidney and bladder problems." All three companies denied allegations of wrongdoing and reaffirmed the safety of their products. LISTEN PEOPLE - this is the same company who just a few decades ago duped us into thinking their products were safe - when they weren't and they knew they weren't! Now we want to believe them when they say GMO is the only way to go? OPEN YOUR EYES!
For the scientists to even argue that GMO crops are essential to sustainable agriculture, it is clear that they do not understand the definition of "sustainable". Never mind the fact
Don't forget out of control military spending, creating more enemy terrorists every time we take out innocent bystanders with drone strikes around the globe, propping up dictators with our financial support and military protection, corporate bail-out fraud and abuse, offshore tax haven fraud and abuse, physicians and hospitals that bill patients into bankruptcy - regardless of insurance renumeration - but refuse to continue treatment and let patients die after the money is gone, government meddling in the relationships between private citizens, unbalanced influence of wealthy lobbying groups - yes, this country is sick and dying.
Perhaps the greatest danger is the illusion of privacy. Or the false comfort that "they're a big corporation...they would never stoop so low as to scam me." Along with computer literacy, every person should take at least a short course in social engineering to understand how groups and individuals can be so easily manipulated to give away critical information that can lead to identity theft and account hijacking. Just following the history of Facebook it is easy to see how easily people can cause irreversable harm to themselves. Facebook has unilaterally changed privacy settings on multiple occasions only to inform users of the changes after they went into effect. People with photos they thought were private suddenly become publicly viewable. The last straw for me as a Facebook user was when I was asked for my phone number so they could verify my identity in case I was ever locked out of my account. No mention was made that my phone number could be entered into their search tool to look up my Facebook page (and name, and friends, etc.). I just happened to stumble on the news story about this fact, otherwise I still wouldn't know today.
The crazy thing is that I have no use for Facebook, but when family members, friends, coworkers, and business acquaintences ask for your Facebook credentials so they can 'friend' you, you either make sure you are signed up or you reply that you don't use Facebook, which then leaves them with the impression that you don't do social networking, which means that you are not sociable, or worse - that you are some sort of paranoid schizo, afraid of technology, and/or lacking in technological savvy. The end result for myself, and many others I'm sure, is that I do have a Facebook account with my real first and last name, and accept 'friends' from certain friends, family, and business associates, but that is all the business I do with Facebook, of which I do relunctantly. But showing my network of friends and business associates how many hours I play Farmville (ugh!), or letting some Facebook app post some embarrassing 'pic-of-the-day' automatically just doesn't seem like a smart move.
Unfortunately I fear that the trend will soon be to recruit users like zombies to force others to participate more directly with information whoring services like Facebook. Before long there will be an app to find out who is active on Facebook and who is just using it like an online address book - and some guru will be advising potential employers not to hire those sticks-in-the-mud who aren't expressing personal opions and clicking "like" on at least ten items each week.
Similar words have been spoken of Baby Boomers and Generation X by the generations that preceded them. For every meth smokin', Wall-Street Occupyin', Tweeting Millenial, there is a brave, young, volunteer soldier and firefighter, putting the needs of his community and his family above his own, desparately struggingly to make ends meet while being berated and dismissed by a grumpy ex-hippy ticked off that the money he didn't earn with his stock picks in the roaring 90's won't buy him the private island he was planning to sail off to in his yacht.
Yes, except you limited the houses to "normal-sized homes". Most Americans are overwieght, eat super-sized food, drive over-sized cars, and live in huge homes. Most homes in rural areas with septic drain fields are single-wide mobile homes.
I'm still trying to understand this. How did they trace viruses to the bedrock well sites? Did they have Windows installed? Did they find the address where IP from? I suspect that I may be an inadvertant source of the virus, but I don't know why or how to stop it. I even tried to wipe my drive and perform a system flush, but it just made the problem worse. Help - anybody?
Part of the problem with cutting deficits with spending reductions is that there is often a major cut that is required that no one wants to be responsible for. You can gut the military, or you can drop off elderly, disabled people at the door step of their next of kin, but without taking one or both of these drastic measures, there just aren't enough budget cuts available. As a percentage of GDP, the US national debt combined with other public debt on the state and local level is not that much better than Greece, Spain, Ireland, or Cyprus. It really might be already too late. Governments do "declare bankruptcy" by defaulting on public debt. The US may see a situation similar to what Russia went through during the 1990's. If it's not too late it would be better to pursue budget cuts now willfully than to be forced to after no one is willing to loan to the USA.
Maybe we need some out-of-the-box thinking. The world enjoys a prosperous global economy in part due to Pax Americana, where the USA is the primary, sometimes at 90% of coalition force, peace keeping force and deterent in the world. Why not charge for this service? Tell the Europeans that we're pulling out of our bases unless they start paying their security fee. If they would prefer we could offer services, at a fee, to train their own armies to protect their territories. And sell them weapons, with a markup sufficient to cover some of our debt repayments. Go to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc. and do the same, as well as the major importers of oil from these countries, since we are paying millions to protect all these Arabic sources of oil from invaders (was Iraq, now supposedly Iran). Charge a fee to South Korea and Japan for keeping North Korea at bay. Sell off unprofitable territory - ask the French if they want New Orleans back, or ask China if they would like to lease California for 100 years so they could import their manufactured goods duty free and build factories closer to one of their biggest customers. Sure this would mean that Californians would have to work 100 hours each week for $16 a day, no benefits, brutal oppression of human rights, etc., but it would bring jobs back to American, sort of.
Start selling immigration rights. If you want to come here, pay $40k and you get to move in, no questions asked. $10k more buys citizenship. If revenue is less than expected, drop the price a few points every couple of years. Here's a thought - charge wealthy people the same tax rate as working Americans. No more exemptions from social security tax for every dollar over $100k. Stop making punishing those with "earned" income and rewarding those with passive income - tax it all the same. Free market theory would suggest that people will invest and don't need government to prop up the system with bogus tax incentives. Collect a deposit of 20% of net worth for every individual leaving the country. Return deposit only when they come back.
Considering that some of the most brilliant engineers I know still use some VERY antiquated technology and software, but have customized and adapted it over the years to integrate with newer technology to do things that no off-the-shelf software can do.
Reminds me of a cartoon I saw once. It showed a hiring manager explaining to a rejected job applicant: "no, actually your resume is quite impressive. The accomplishments at your previous employers are quite remarkable, and your commitment to your community service projects is commendable. But we are really looking for an unscrupulous ass-kissing minion to fill this position".
The CEO as hired manager subject to fair market theory is largely a myth in actual practice. Communism also touts amazing theories that if worked properly would not have left us with we know today as modern China, Russia, North Korea, and Cuba. Sure, if the CEO royally screws up he either destroys the company, therefore losing his job, or he gets fired by the board of directors and blacklisted.
But there are serious repurcussions of "firing" a CEO. To some degree it shows the public that the board of directors failed at hiring the right CEO in the first place. Just look at the controversy this week regarding the firing of the CEO at JC Penny. Of course, in reality it's not so much of a firing as a job change, because executives can just walk into another companies executive team by just mentioning their previous title and the prestigious names they have worked for, regardless of whether or not their own talents were what made the difference.
Investors fear change and the unknown, so at large public companies there is powerful internal pressure to make sure the CEO succeeds and do everything possible to avoid rocking the boat. The CEO in this case is not that different from the Queen of England - just smile, wave, look the part, deliver speeches the way they are written for you, and don't screw up doing something totally bizarre. But the management skill of a CEO earning mega millions is not much different than the department head of a medium sized company earning $300k (which is still probably bloated for the value provided - but again pay for managers is a gimmick to distribute the wealth upward away from employees but also away from investors, mostly retail investors with 401k plans, as the better opportunities for investment lie within the private equity realm where only "qualified" investors are allowed to play).
Even Warren Buffet has acknowledged that there are many companies that are run today to strengthen the position of management at the detriment of shareholders. Low compensation for workers is an automatic given.
Fundamentally our economy is not a free market of relatively equal participants, but rather an oligarchy of wealthy executives and hedge fund managers that work hard to keep the lion's share within the hands of a chosen few. Compensation for workers is based on meeting their bare essential needs, with talented and professional staff compensated just a little more to offset the cost of their education plus a tiny pitance more to keep them motivated to stay within the system.
This becomes a problem for engineers and developers when we presume that the free market is taking care of us and that we should be happy to work for the company the provides just enough pay at a location we prefer doing a job we are good at or sometimes even enjoy. It is a shame that human progress has to be shelved so that those who are delivering that progress can actually take for themselves a proper share of the cash stream flowing from their endeavors. It's a problem that is growing more perverse in every aspect or our society. You can't even join a gym without reading through a 20 page "policy" mostly regarding safety rules with archaic contract provisions and cancellation fees buried on page 16. Imagine how much work would NOT get done and the cost if we all sat down with a highlighter and an attorney to go over every single EULA for every program we install or every single Terms of Use disclosure on every website we visit. The fast paced skimming I give such documents takes too much time already, but I can't just allow myself to "agree" to so many contracts during the course of a day without at least hoping I can catch some of the scams and "gotcha"s out there. Profits today are in the taking, not in the producing.
But as long as technical professionals are happy being 10% better off than their less educated peers in spite of the extra time, effort, and risk of pursuing their own education and career development, and as long as they believe that unions are only for bl
I worked at a call center during college. Your time was logged based on when your headset was turned on. When turned on, an automatic dialer connected you immediately to a live customer - there was no waiting for a dial tone between calls. As soon as one call ended another began instantly, which can be somewhat jarring on the first day. You could hit pause at any time but you would not be paid for those seconds. At least there were some mandatory short breaks though out the day, but I don't remember these being paid breaks.
You really can't compare CEO pay to the pay of workers and professionals. A key difference is that the CEO decides how resources are allocated. Say a startup company has a CEO and one employee. The company brings in $2mil in revenue its first year and the only expense is the employee salary. If the CEO offers the employee $100k per year and the employee agrees that this is a good salary to accept an offer and remain employed then the CEO can choose to do with the remaining $1.9mil whatever he sees fit. Now let's say that there is a minority shareholder who expects a return on his investment. Suppose he originally invested 40% of $200k in startup capital. And let's say that the CEO wants the stock price to remain stable and competitive with similar companies in his industry. If most similar companies are paying investors a 5% dividend each year as the stock price increases by 12% each year, then the CEO can do likewise, even though the young startup company has just earned a massive windfall in its first year. Such a windfall may (or may not based on various factors) drive up the price of the company stock. If the CEO wants to keep the price increase of the company stock at a stable level matching the growth of similar companies in his industry he can pay himself huge bonuses, increased salary, and enjoy a few tax write-offs such as a company car and a timeshare in a corporate jet. The end result is that the investor is paid the "market rate" in the form of dividends and capital gains while the employee is paid the "market rate" for his services, without any regard for the fact that the profits generated are far and above the market rates paid to either. The CEO in literally raking it all in simply because he's in the position to plunder the corporate funds however he chooses and his only risks are that the minority shareholders might grumble if they get less than the market rate for their investment, and similar concerns for employees who will only grumble if they earn less than their peers.
Now, expand this system to hundreds of types of employees, managers, and classes of investors. The CEO can only borrow so much cash to maintain position as majority shareholder, so he teams up with his buddy who is a CEO at another firm. They decide to swap shares with each other, sit on each other's board of directors, convince retailer investors (aka their employees of their own and their buddy's firms) to put their savings into their companies, perpetuate the myth of independent corporate governance, perpetuate the myth of free markets and the effectiveness of anti-trust legislation, direct the funds of their corporations to pass laws that strengthen the position of their class in society, pay exponentially higher compensation to managers depending on level of authority to perpetuate the myth that executive pay is a product of the free market, and while sitting on each other's boards of directors vote each other exhorbitant pay increases, bonuses, and perks. Then when the system comes crashing down, call up the government that they bought and paid for to borrow excessively by selling bonds to China, print currency that reducses the value of the US dollar earned and held by the middle class, and give it to them to "bail" them out, then vote each other bonuses for accomplishing the goal. Go back to the government to reduce their taxes while making sure there is little or no tax cuts for the middle class, "reform" bankruptcy, manipulate the labor market by paying low wages while making sure that underpaid workers receive food stamps, social security and medicaid that is subsidized by the middle class. Remind corporate stooge politicians to keep taxes for social security and medicare only on the first $100k of income so this burden is placed mostly on the middle class. Hire astro-turfers to convince the working class voters that giving bailouts and tax breaks to the wealthy will make the rich richer and that this is a good thing since ONLY the mega-rich create jobs, but make sure not to mention that those jo
Trying to make yourself untraceable while still using modern technology is not an easy task. People have thought that they could avoid being tracked by buying an item with cash, but there are numerous cases of store security cameras recording purchases at the checkout counter and these images used to identify the culprets of a variety of alleged offenses. Combined with facial recognition software and the increasing cross-linkage of databases, such as photos from your driver's license or passport; combined with the fact that your face is probably online somewhere, such as your own Facebook page, or your friend's Facebook page if you avoid using facebook, or Flickr, or one of hundreds of image intensive online depositories, it is only a matter of time and effort to track you down. Even using a laptop you bought a garage sale and public wifi can't guarantee anonymity since surveilance cameras can show you within the vicinity of the wifi hotspot at the time of a particular event - such has already been used to identify "cyber-crooks" on more than one occasion.
Best defense is security by obscurity - don't do anything that will make you a target. If for sure you are going to be a target, then I'm not sure what will help you. If you try to live in some remote area with no technology at all, chances are people will be talking about you for miles around where you set up camp. "Ya, he's the guy living in the middle of that forest with nothing but a cabin and messenger pigeons."
It has come to our attention that you are making use of a dialect of English combined with a particular form of logic, while using a computer. We cannot provide more clarification due to the security requirements for protecting our trade secrets, but the method(s) you are using violates patents that we own. We demand that you immediately cease and desist from all such activity that violates our patent rights. If you would like further clarification on how you may be violating our patents we will make this information available after you have signed our non-disclosure agreement and paid a processing fee of $500.00. Failure to comply with this demand could subject you to legal action in which we will seek a judgment for substantial damages to our a patent trolling operation, plus attorney's fees, loss of potential revenue, and punitive damages.
How is it any less reasonable from Monsanto suing farmers for planting their own corn seed after it was contaminated by Monsanto engineered pollen from a neighboring farm?
And remember, RIAA relates only to copywritten material. Since gene patents would be essential to human life they would be much more valuable to each individual. Though the median income for an American family is less than $60k per year, medical costs for just one cancer patient can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. So if the chance, not the guarantee, of prolonging the life of one individual, perhaps by just a few months or maybe a couple of years, has a market value that pushes an entire family household into bankruptcy, then how should we value the genes that make life possible from craddle to grave? Factoring offspring into the equation changes everything. Since just one child can spawn an entire nation, this has to be considered when a patented gene is illegally "copied" through procreation. So again, if the market value of prolonging a life by a few months is worth as much as the lifetime earnings of a typical household, then the cost of lost revenue from unauthorized distribution of a patented gene into the gene pool could easily be worth $100 trillion, since such a figure would represent the GDP of a small nation compounded over the course of said nation's history - totally reasonable since it has already been established by sources as old as the book of Genesis that just one child can father an entire nation. In retrospect $100 trillion is a very generous settlement offer that a violator should consider carefully before going to trial.
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Part of the problem is that math is typically taught as an applied art. Students spend maybe five minutes in a classroom introduced to a new concept and then spend the rest of the week honing their problem solving skills while employing the new concept. Then they are introduced to variations of the new concept or expansions of the new concept, then tested on how well they have memorized the steps of implementing the new concept to solve an increasing complicated set of problems while also demonstrating their skill at showing their work, writing neatly, managing their time, improving their problem solving speed while maintaining an acceptable level of accuracy, etc. By the end of just about any particular math course the students are typically expected to be experts in applying and solving problems with the concepts they have been introduced to. Then ten years later after never using their hard earned math skills they no longer remember how to dive into a problem and solve it as quickly as they could as students. The details get fuzzy. But the overall understanding of the concept and its signifcance remains. Often times in a practical situation a person just needs to know how a system will behave in a very general sense. Being able to understand that the behavior of a system will be stable, unstable, oscillate, increase exponentially or decay to a steady state just by knowing a few basic facts about the system is very useful and has applications from electronics to ecology to the stock market.
What is needed are some general overview/survey types of classes to expose non-STEM majors to more advanced concepts in mathematics without expecting them to solve an integral equations without a calculator or to find the solution to a linear system "within the time allotted". It's a shame that most non-STEM majors can't even have a very top-level general discussion on topics such as the limit of a function as a variable approaches zero or infinity. Educated people should not have to back away from discussions that involve mathematical models, phrases such as "interpolation", "extrapolation", "tangential angle", or a sudden switch in topic from "time domain" to "frequency domain".
Call it "mathematical literacy 101" or something like that. A class about math that involves limited actual problem-solving by the student (you have to have some, but it's ok to keep problems simple for the purpose of understanding the concept rather than make a problem have double digit numbers where single digits would do), where test questions are more likely to be true or false, multiple choice, testing mostly the abstract understanding of the concepts, not testing intense arithmetic skills nor the ability to solve problems with speed and precision, nor the discipline to solve increasingly complicated and mentally taxing math problems for several hours each week.
Physicians for decades now have been allowed to take money from drug manufacturers and prescribe those drugs to patients without informing those patients that a cheaper or a generic drug is just as effective. No federal agency (FTC, FDA, FBI) or professional organization (ie AMA) has stepped in to even investigate this common practice.
Advertising in the doctor's office office has been soaring, with posters on the wall and flyers handed to patients hawking everything from prescription drugs and vitamins to therapeutic procedures and cosmetic surgery. You can no longer tell when a physician is offering genuine medical advice or trying to upsell you to something you don't need that could potentially cause harm from the side effects.
I chose to change doctors last year when I noticed pharma reps, with their suits and rolling breifcases, coming in and out of the office more than the patients were.
I hereby committ to the pubic domain the invention of a device consisting of a ball capable of elastic collision upon impact with a surface (a process defined here as "bounce"), embedded with a camera that will take a picture with each occurence of such bounce. This device will possess the ability to perform the described action while interfacing with a computer.
Of course, it's only public domain if someone else hasn't patented this idea beforehand.
Personally, I don't like the store-within-a-store concept. Reminds me too much of an American hospital.
Shhhh! Ixnay on the Otslash-day. If the CEOs find out they can increase profits at the expense of employees then we are all screwed!
And unless the company dictates that I have to own and drive X vehicle with Y specifications, or carry P briefcase with Q specifications, they better be ready to accept that I may show up to work on a bicycle with work documents rolled up in an opening in the frame.
What is much more likely is that in 2017 companies will develop a preference for independent contractors who show up (perhaps virtually from their living room in their PJs) to perform work on specific projects rather than full time staff that has to struggle to look busy between projects. It's very hard to take the "bring your own tools" approach without utilizing workers as independent contractors as compared to full time staff.
Such an approach could be advantageous to ambitious workers who may work on two or three projects simultaneously, presuming, of course, no conflict of interest.
You presume that most companies give a crap about the law. Instead lawyers are hired and loopholes are discovered. You just quoted "...authorized by the employee in writing...". I guarantee that this provision is included within the employee handbook and a signature from the employee to agree to such provisions is almost always a condition of employment.
I know first hand of people who have been required to procure their own uniform at their own cost. Sometimes the employers just don't give a flyin' flip about what the law says. There are still probably hundreds of employers who decide to put an hourly employee on salary and then convince the employee that now they have to work 80+ hours each week without overtime pay because now they are "salaried". Just because employers can be sued doesn't keep them from pulling all sorts of crap. When I was in college I applied for a job at a print shop and was told in an angry tone that he (the employer) only wanted female applicants - totally against the EOA, since there's no particular reason why gender is essential to do work at a print shop, unless he's taking picture of nude ladies (which certainly wasn't in the job description). I could have sued, but why would I? Unfortunately I just didn't have time for such hobbies as lawsuits, petitions or picketing. Neither do most other hourly workers struggling to make ends meet. Employers know this which is why my friends earning an hourly wage are often screwed over with uniform costs, bringing their own tools, etc., while at my job I can buy all sorts of gizmos, pay for the entire table of a business lunch, submit an expense report and even get paid for my extra mileage, even though I already earn more than enough to actually afford these things if reimbursement wasn't an option.
There are thousands of laws that are supposedly meant to help common citizens, but then there are loopholes, exceptions, and bully strategies that the wealthy and powerful use to control, manipulate, and exploit the masses who think they can simply choose to settle for a simple life and raise a family. Some examples include:
- contracts of adhesion, like statements on the back of ticket stubs that claim some waiver of liability, or EULAs and/or warranty documents that can only be read after a product has been purchase and the packaging removed.
- binding arbitration clauses in consumer contracts where the right to a trial in US courts is taken away and replaced with an informal hearing by a private citizen, often with little or no legal training, let alone any of the qualifications expected from an actual judge. In recent years some arbitration firms have come under fire for having subsidiary collection agencies that would attempt to collect from consumers after the arbitration proceedings were complete. Once an arbitrator makes his decision, a judgment is submitted to actual "real" US courts for the purpose of empowering the winners of such suits to use all legally available remedies to collect on the judgment, including bank levies, liens, foreclosure, debtor examinations, etc. Appeals are not allowed, and it has been upheld that arbitrators are NOT required to follow any rules of civil procedure, follow legal precedence, or even make decisions based on actual state or federal laws. An arbitrator could literally decide that a defendant loses his case because he was wearing a yellow tie even if the defendant was clearly following the law and the rules of applicable contracts. There is no legal remedy to reverse such an abusive decision.
- waiver of jury trial as a clause in a contract
- waiver of participating in a class action lawsuit as a clause in a contract
- SLAPP lawsuits: A strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) is a lawsuit that is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.
- Unenforceable but intimidating contract clauses - very often a loan contract to purchase a car or hous
What is a Blackberry?
And to confirm that bais is the proper way to spell bais.
Then we need to act more like the AMA and NPA. Highlight recent disasters, like the fertilizer explosion in West, TX, even though foreign educated engineers probably weren't involved, emphasize how crucial it is that STEM majors study at accredited schools located within our borders where we can have better control over the quality of education provided. Then emphasize how important it is that only the brightest candidates be permitted to study STEM topics. Then implement strict licensing requirements so that no engineer, programmer, scientist, or mathematician can do their job without jumping through a series of hoops. And make it so you need a graduate level STEM degree and a two year "residency" working 120 hours each week for chump change to make sure that only those who eat, breathe, and dream of STEM subject matter actually pursue this career path.
The biggest problem with GMOs as they are being grown today, is that the most frequent genetic modification is Roundup resistance. Farmer's literally spray their GMO crops with Roundup to kill ALL PLANT LIFE, except the GMO crop. Now, I have seen the label for Roundup and the prognosis of ingesting the stuff is not good. It is known to the state of California to cause cancer and/or reproductive defects. Now if all you eat or GMO crops soaked in Roundup, how many years will it take your liver to accumulate the toxins into a lethal dosage? How is it that most over-the-counter herbicides and pesticides for home gardens have warnings not to use them on or near vegetables, but we are supposed to go to the store and buy vegies that have been soaking all their growing life in a sea of chemicals much stronger?
One unintended consequence of Roundup resistant crops is that now superweeds are developing, through natural selection, that are also resistant to Roundup. Doesn't sound like "sustainable" agriculture to me. Scientists have often claimed that something is safe and there is no danger because they haven't found evidence of any harm - but once the whole world is committed to GMO crops there is not going to be much chance to turn back once we realize that there is a problem. Keep the GMO crops in smaller regions and test markets and expand their use gradually so that if decades from now if a problem is identified there is a chance to revserse it.
As for these scientists, let's Google the sorts of things that scientists told us were safe in the past:
1. Some scientists once thought it was safe to dump garbage into the oceans, believing the oceans were large enough to absorb sludge without harmful effects. .this cigarette has been scientifically proved less irritating to the nose and throat . . .eminent doctors report that every case of irritation of the nose and throat due to smoking cleared completely or definitely improved.” In 1943, Lorillard promoted its Old Gold brand by claiming it was “lowest in nicotine, lowest in throat—irritating tars and resins.” In 1946, Brown and Williamson used baseball legend Babe Ruth to pitch Raleigh cigarettes, with the claim that “Medical science offers proof positive . . .No other leading cigarette is safer to smoke!” Ironically, Babe Ruth later died of throat cancer.
2. Scientists have claimed that some cigarettes were "safer" than others: “you're safer smoking Philip Morris . .
3. I'm pretty sure that the Brazilian geneticists crossbreeding mild-mannered European honeybees with their more aggressive, territorial cousins from Africa in the 1950's thought that their experiments were safe.
4. Cane toads in Australia - notorious!
5. Fen-phen - it was first deemed safe, until later when studies showed that fatal heart and lung conditions developed from as little as three months exposure.
6. Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories - fabricated research data to the extent that upon FDA analysis of 867 studies, 618 (71%) were deemed invalid, including many of which were used to gain regulatory approval for widely-used household and industrial products. (see
Investigators charged that three big chemical companies—[Monsanto, Olin Corporation, and FMC Corporation]—knowingly submitted flawed data to the EPA in support of a widely used swimming pool chlorinator that was suspected of causing kidney and bladder problems." All three companies denied allegations of wrongdoing and reaffirmed the safety of their products. LISTEN PEOPLE - this is the same company who just a few decades ago duped us into thinking their products were safe - when they weren't and they knew they weren't! Now we want to believe them when they say GMO is the only way to go? OPEN YOUR EYES!
For the scientists to even argue that GMO crops are essential to sustainable agriculture, it is clear that they do not understand the definition of "sustainable". Never mind the fact
Don't forget out of control military spending, creating more enemy terrorists every time we take out innocent bystanders with drone strikes around the globe, propping up dictators with our financial support and military protection, corporate bail-out fraud and abuse, offshore tax haven fraud and abuse, physicians and hospitals that bill patients into bankruptcy - regardless of insurance renumeration - but refuse to continue treatment and let patients die after the money is gone, government meddling in the relationships between private citizens, unbalanced influence of wealthy lobbying groups - yes, this country is sick and dying.
Perhaps the greatest danger is the illusion of privacy. Or the false comfort that "they're a big corporation...they would never stoop so low as to scam me." Along with computer literacy, every person should take at least a short course in social engineering to understand how groups and individuals can be so easily manipulated to give away critical information that can lead to identity theft and account hijacking. Just following the history of Facebook it is easy to see how easily people can cause irreversable harm to themselves. Facebook has unilaterally changed privacy settings on multiple occasions only to inform users of the changes after they went into effect. People with photos they thought were private suddenly become publicly viewable. The last straw for me as a Facebook user was when I was asked for my phone number so they could verify my identity in case I was ever locked out of my account. No mention was made that my phone number could be entered into their search tool to look up my Facebook page (and name, and friends, etc.). I just happened to stumble on the news story about this fact, otherwise I still wouldn't know today.
The crazy thing is that I have no use for Facebook, but when family members, friends, coworkers, and business acquaintences ask for your Facebook credentials so they can 'friend' you, you either make sure you are signed up or you reply that you don't use Facebook, which then leaves them with the impression that you don't do social networking, which means that you are not sociable, or worse - that you are some sort of paranoid schizo, afraid of technology, and/or lacking in technological savvy. The end result for myself, and many others I'm sure, is that I do have a Facebook account with my real first and last name, and accept 'friends' from certain friends, family, and business associates, but that is all the business I do with Facebook, of which I do relunctantly. But showing my network of friends and business associates how many hours I play Farmville (ugh!), or letting some Facebook app post some embarrassing 'pic-of-the-day' automatically just doesn't seem like a smart move.
Unfortunately I fear that the trend will soon be to recruit users like zombies to force others to participate more directly with information whoring services like Facebook. Before long there will be an app to find out who is active on Facebook and who is just using it like an online address book - and some guru will be advising potential employers not to hire those sticks-in-the-mud who aren't expressing personal opions and clicking "like" on at least ten items each week.
Similar words have been spoken of Baby Boomers and Generation X by the generations that preceded them. For every meth smokin', Wall-Street Occupyin', Tweeting Millenial, there is a brave, young, volunteer soldier and firefighter, putting the needs of his community and his family above his own, desparately struggingly to make ends meet while being berated and dismissed by a grumpy ex-hippy ticked off that the money he didn't earn with his stock picks in the roaring 90's won't buy him the private island he was planning to sail off to in his yacht.
Yes, except you limited the houses to "normal-sized homes". Most Americans are overwieght, eat super-sized food, drive over-sized cars, and live in huge homes. Most homes in rural areas with septic drain fields are single-wide mobile homes.
I'm still trying to understand this. How did they trace viruses to the bedrock well sites? Did they have Windows installed? Did they find the address where IP from? I suspect that I may be an inadvertant source of the virus, but I don't know why or how to stop it. I even tried to wipe my drive and perform a system flush, but it just made the problem worse. Help - anybody?
Part of the problem with cutting deficits with spending reductions is that there is often a major cut that is required that no one wants to be responsible for. You can gut the military, or you can drop off elderly, disabled people at the door step of their next of kin, but without taking one or both of these drastic measures, there just aren't enough budget cuts available. As a percentage of GDP, the US national debt combined with other public debt on the state and local level is not that much better than Greece, Spain, Ireland, or Cyprus. It really might be already too late. Governments do "declare bankruptcy" by defaulting on public debt. The US may see a situation similar to what Russia went through during the 1990's. If it's not too late it would be better to pursue budget cuts now willfully than to be forced to after no one is willing to loan to the USA.
Maybe we need some out-of-the-box thinking. The world enjoys a prosperous global economy in part due to Pax Americana, where the USA is the primary, sometimes at 90% of coalition force, peace keeping force and deterent in the world. Why not charge for this service? Tell the Europeans that we're pulling out of our bases unless they start paying their security fee. If they would prefer we could offer services, at a fee, to train their own armies to protect their territories. And sell them weapons, with a markup sufficient to cover some of our debt repayments. Go to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc. and do the same, as well as the major importers of oil from these countries, since we are paying millions to protect all these Arabic sources of oil from invaders (was Iraq, now supposedly Iran). Charge a fee to South Korea and Japan for keeping North Korea at bay. Sell off unprofitable territory - ask the French if they want New Orleans back, or ask China if they would like to lease California for 100 years so they could import their manufactured goods duty free and build factories closer to one of their biggest customers. Sure this would mean that Californians would have to work 100 hours each week for $16 a day, no benefits, brutal oppression of human rights, etc., but it would bring jobs back to American, sort of.
Start selling immigration rights. If you want to come here, pay $40k and you get to move in, no questions asked. $10k more buys citizenship. If revenue is less than expected, drop the price a few points every couple of years. Here's a thought - charge wealthy people the same tax rate as working Americans. No more exemptions from social security tax for every dollar over $100k. Stop making punishing those with "earned" income and rewarding those with passive income - tax it all the same. Free market theory would suggest that people will invest and don't need government to prop up the system with bogus tax incentives. Collect a deposit of 20% of net worth for every individual leaving the country. Return deposit only when they come back.
Just some thoughts.
Considering that some of the most brilliant engineers I know still use some VERY antiquated technology and software, but have customized and adapted it over the years to integrate with newer technology to do things that no off-the-shelf software can do.
Reminds me of a cartoon I saw once. It showed a hiring manager explaining to a rejected job applicant: "no, actually your resume is quite impressive. The accomplishments at your previous employers are quite remarkable, and your commitment to your community service projects is commendable. But we are really looking for an unscrupulous ass-kissing minion to fill this position".
The CEO as hired manager subject to fair market theory is largely a myth in actual practice. Communism also touts amazing theories that if worked properly would not have left us with we know today as modern China, Russia, North Korea, and Cuba. Sure, if the CEO royally screws up he either destroys the company, therefore losing his job, or he gets fired by the board of directors and blacklisted.
But there are serious repurcussions of "firing" a CEO. To some degree it shows the public that the board of directors failed at hiring the right CEO in the first place. Just look at the controversy this week regarding the firing of the CEO at JC Penny. Of course, in reality it's not so much of a firing as a job change, because executives can just walk into another companies executive team by just mentioning their previous title and the prestigious names they have worked for, regardless of whether or not their own talents were what made the difference.
Investors fear change and the unknown, so at large public companies there is powerful internal pressure to make sure the CEO succeeds and do everything possible to avoid rocking the boat. The CEO in this case is not that different from the Queen of England - just smile, wave, look the part, deliver speeches the way they are written for you, and don't screw up doing something totally bizarre. But the management skill of a CEO earning mega millions is not much different than the department head of a medium sized company earning $300k (which is still probably bloated for the value provided - but again pay for managers is a gimmick to distribute the wealth upward away from employees but also away from investors, mostly retail investors with 401k plans, as the better opportunities for investment lie within the private equity realm where only "qualified" investors are allowed to play).
Even Warren Buffet has acknowledged that there are many companies that are run today to strengthen the position of management at the detriment of shareholders. Low compensation for workers is an automatic given.
Fundamentally our economy is not a free market of relatively equal participants, but rather an oligarchy of wealthy executives and hedge fund managers that work hard to keep the lion's share within the hands of a chosen few. Compensation for workers is based on meeting their bare essential needs, with talented and professional staff compensated just a little more to offset the cost of their education plus a tiny pitance more to keep them motivated to stay within the system.
This becomes a problem for engineers and developers when we presume that the free market is taking care of us and that we should be happy to work for the company the provides just enough pay at a location we prefer doing a job we are good at or sometimes even enjoy. It is a shame that human progress has to be shelved so that those who are delivering that progress can actually take for themselves a proper share of the cash stream flowing from their endeavors. It's a problem that is growing more perverse in every aspect or our society. You can't even join a gym without reading through a 20 page "policy" mostly regarding safety rules with archaic contract provisions and cancellation fees buried on page 16. Imagine how much work would NOT get done and the cost if we all sat down with a highlighter and an attorney to go over every single EULA for every program we install or every single Terms of Use disclosure on every website we visit. The fast paced skimming I give such documents takes too much time already, but I can't just allow myself to "agree" to so many contracts during the course of a day without at least hoping I can catch some of the scams and "gotcha"s out there. Profits today are in the taking, not in the producing.
But as long as technical professionals are happy being 10% better off than their less educated peers in spite of the extra time, effort, and risk of pursuing their own education and career development, and as long as they believe that unions are only for bl
I worked at a call center during college. Your time was logged based on when your headset was turned on. When turned on, an automatic dialer connected you immediately to a live customer - there was no waiting for a dial tone between calls. As soon as one call ended another began instantly, which can be somewhat jarring on the first day. You could hit pause at any time but you would not be paid for those seconds. At least there were some mandatory short breaks though out the day, but I don't remember these being paid breaks.
You really can't compare CEO pay to the pay of workers and professionals. A key difference is that the CEO decides how resources are allocated. Say a startup company has a CEO and one employee. The company brings in $2mil in revenue its first year and the only expense is the employee salary. If the CEO offers the employee $100k per year and the employee agrees that this is a good salary to accept an offer and remain employed then the CEO can choose to do with the remaining $1.9mil whatever he sees fit. Now let's say that there is a minority shareholder who expects a return on his investment. Suppose he originally invested 40% of $200k in startup capital. And let's say that the CEO wants the stock price to remain stable and competitive with similar companies in his industry. If most similar companies are paying investors a 5% dividend each year as the stock price increases by 12% each year, then the CEO can do likewise, even though the young startup company has just earned a massive windfall in its first year. Such a windfall may (or may not based on various factors) drive up the price of the company stock. If the CEO wants to keep the price increase of the company stock at a stable level matching the growth of similar companies in his industry he can pay himself huge bonuses, increased salary, and enjoy a few tax write-offs such as a company car and a timeshare in a corporate jet. The end result is that the investor is paid the "market rate" in the form of dividends and capital gains while the employee is paid the "market rate" for his services, without any regard for the fact that the profits generated are far and above the market rates paid to either. The CEO in literally raking it all in simply because he's in the position to plunder the corporate funds however he chooses and his only risks are that the minority shareholders might grumble if they get less than the market rate for their investment, and similar concerns for employees who will only grumble if they earn less than their peers.
Now, expand this system to hundreds of types of employees, managers, and classes of investors. The CEO can only borrow so much cash to maintain position as majority shareholder, so he teams up with his buddy who is a CEO at another firm. They decide to swap shares with each other, sit on each other's board of directors, convince retailer investors (aka their employees of their own and their buddy's firms) to put their savings into their companies, perpetuate the myth of independent corporate governance, perpetuate the myth of free markets and the effectiveness of anti-trust legislation, direct the funds of their corporations to pass laws that strengthen the position of their class in society, pay exponentially higher compensation to managers depending on level of authority to perpetuate the myth that executive pay is a product of the free market, and while sitting on each other's boards of directors vote each other exhorbitant pay increases, bonuses, and perks. Then when the system comes crashing down, call up the government that they bought and paid for to borrow excessively by selling bonds to China, print currency that reducses the value of the US dollar earned and held by the middle class, and give it to them to "bail" them out, then vote each other bonuses for accomplishing the goal. Go back to the government to reduce their taxes while making sure there is little or no tax cuts for the middle class, "reform" bankruptcy, manipulate the labor market by paying low wages while making sure that underpaid workers receive food stamps, social security and medicaid that is subsidized by the middle class. Remind corporate stooge politicians to keep taxes for social security and medicare only on the first $100k of income so this burden is placed mostly on the middle class. Hire astro-turfers to convince the working class voters that giving bailouts and tax breaks to the wealthy will make the rich richer and that this is a good thing since ONLY the mega-rich create jobs, but make sure not to mention that those jo
Trying to make yourself untraceable while still using modern technology is not an easy task. People have thought that they could avoid being tracked by buying an item with cash, but there are numerous cases of store security cameras recording purchases at the checkout counter and these images used to identify the culprets of a variety of alleged offenses. Combined with facial recognition software and the increasing cross-linkage of databases, such as photos from your driver's license or passport; combined with the fact that your face is probably online somewhere, such as your own Facebook page, or your friend's Facebook page if you avoid using facebook, or Flickr, or one of hundreds of image intensive online depositories, it is only a matter of time and effort to track you down. Even using a laptop you bought a garage sale and public wifi can't guarantee anonymity since surveilance cameras can show you within the vicinity of the wifi hotspot at the time of a particular event - such has already been used to identify "cyber-crooks" on more than one occasion.
Best defense is security by obscurity - don't do anything that will make you a target. If for sure you are going to be a target, then I'm not sure what will help you. If you try to live in some remote area with no technology at all, chances are people will be talking about you for miles around where you set up camp. "Ya, he's the guy living in the middle of that forest with nothing but a cabin and messenger pigeons."
It has come to our attention that you are making use of a dialect of English combined with a particular form of logic, while using a computer. We cannot provide more clarification due to the security requirements for protecting our trade secrets, but the method(s) you are using violates patents that we own. We demand that you immediately cease and desist from all such activity that violates our patent rights. If you would like further clarification on how you may be violating our patents we will make this information available after you have signed our non-disclosure agreement and paid a processing fee of $500.00. Failure to comply with this demand could subject you to legal action in which we will seek a judgment for substantial damages to our a patent trolling operation, plus attorney's fees, loss of potential revenue, and punitive damages.
Warmest regards,
Management of the New Corporate World Order
How is it any less reasonable from Monsanto suing farmers for planting their own corn seed after it was contaminated by Monsanto engineered pollen from a neighboring farm?
And remember, RIAA relates only to copywritten material. Since gene patents would be essential to human life they would be much more valuable to each individual. Though the median income for an American family is less than $60k per year, medical costs for just one cancer patient can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. So if the chance, not the guarantee, of prolonging the life of one individual, perhaps by just a few months or maybe a couple of years, has a market value that pushes an entire family household into bankruptcy, then how should we value the genes that make life possible from craddle to grave? Factoring offspring into the equation changes everything. Since just one child can spawn an entire nation, this has to be considered when a patented gene is illegally "copied" through procreation. So again, if the market value of prolonging a life by a few months is worth as much as the lifetime earnings of a typical household, then the cost of lost revenue from unauthorized distribution of a patented gene into the gene pool could easily be worth $100 trillion, since such a figure would represent the GDP of a small nation compounded over the course of said nation's history - totally reasonable since it has already been established by sources as old as the book of Genesis that just one child can father an entire nation. In retrospect $100 trillion is a very generous settlement offer that a violator should consider carefully before going to trial.