This seems to be confirmed by what one can see in Germany - the state part of health insurance system has lists of drugs that are refunded meaning that you pay yourself if you take 'new better one' that is not on the list. This may have its drawbacks but the institute that provides advice on which new drugs can be put on the list is contested by industry yet they do not argue with the results but go straight to Berlin to lobby for their products to be placed on the list. The institute often finds that new changes have no value (except for the patent extension and price hike but that is not their domain of course). This whole show and refusal to argue in scientific terms means to me that indeed they invested a lots of money to be able to re-patent their products and again reach high novelty price without real work being done. The industry is corrupt not only in USA. The problem seems to be in the way free market works here. This is no normal situation where customer has a choice of time of purchase and vendor. The customer is under pressure in such nasty way that it if one posses a monopoly on particular cure then one posses power over once life. Seems like a good situation to rip people off. The discussion about motivation for research is a good one but from what I see as soon as state sponsored basic research is not available the industry struggles. I guess it is normal - basic research is more expensive than specific one because it is not focused as it cannot be. I guess this should mean something for policy makers.
this is all of topic of course. M3 is interesting of course but I looked at it once and I was surprised to see that neither there is one definition of it (Switzherland, ECB, US & UK have all different definitions and other countries have own ones too I guess). I was also surprised that ECB measured M3 as sum of money and investments with maturity up to 2y - obviously they make certain assumptions when they calculate this. I guess the theory is also that the the link between inflation and money supply (of which M3 is just indication) weak and depends for instance on the speed the supply is increasing and money is circulating in the economy. I also found it quite interesting how this all converted from creating huge inflation by printing press in Weimar Republik and now when money is largely created by a click of a mouse (or other pointing device). It is all a fake but that is oversimplified view - there are different fakes and they all have different properties, benefits and risks. I suspect how that really works is understood by nobody - there are only more and less brave individuals that operate the system. It is scary.
Some geeks have interests reaching beyond IT. This is expression of both i.e. their geekismo and their broad interests. I do not see a problem here albeit I admit the amount of IT or broader technology related articles is rather low or late. Maybe this is sign of times. The basic technology is offshored to Zamunda and the rest is too complex to be understood by an average geek and/or discussed in a popular thread. Quite frankly the others social sites for nerds are either populated by aggressive indihviduals with agendas or are bloody boring. For the geek from old good times when we were writting applications in the house and could understood how they worked within limited time that is too bad. Considering all this I think/. is still not that bad.
Indeed a friend of mine traveling from NL to Mexico with transfer in US was asked to produce transit visa in US (this was in 1998 I believe so even before TSA). He is Polish so the traditional friendship between the great nations of Poland and US cost him hours of stress and missed flight to Mexico. He also needed to buy a new ticket to Mexico and arrange for a new no-US transfer flight back to Europe because he was put on some sort of special list for terrorists and other persona non grata. This was as said before TSA and I see the situation 'improved' a lot since then.
Not sure what does it do except proves that US authorities behave like assholes towards anybody because they can - it certainly does not improve security. I guess US is a federation i.e. there are really progressive states nice to visit and maybe even work but I would never know because at this time even if I personally do not have to have a visa to travel there I would only go if they really pay well say with the rates used when you travel to war zone which is unlikely. Even if they paid well I would consider twice before going. I am considered conservative and pro-US by majority of my friends so go figure.
I do not think GP actually said what you think was said. Quite frankly if you want to throw abuse then do but think twice. GP exaggerated of course (with lions etc) but low chance of your kid being kidnapped does not mean that you have to go for facebook shit. Neither is this the only option nor is it protecting your kid from anything so stop throwing abuse and think. There is no reason to get hysterical on this. The GGGP post was possibly not very serious but neither is facebook serious about doing anything good to people - their only concern is how best sell your private data. If you think that this helps in anything than I think we do not really have anything to discuss. I have 3 kids myself and there are things that keep me awake at night but you cannot protect the kids from everything without actually damaging them or damaging rights of other people. Neither you can protect them with FB - rather contrary is true considering how much bullying is done thanxt to social media. Whether facebook is damaging your democracy may be a subject of a discussion (I do not think one is needed really but that is me) - GP obviously think it is. You just throw silly abuse at the guy instead of taking part in a discussion. Lookingat this from distance - you are much worse than FB - if that is true that you are an active member of your community that maybe not so good for it then. I cannot stop wondering : are you member of Tea Party?
where aer those more experience programmers? I met few of the c++ muppets in my life and only one was not a muppet but an engineer worth being called that. The guy knew the features of the language he used, he knew subject he worked on, he knew how to communicate with mortals and he knew the value of code that is simple - and tried hard to make it as simple as possible but not more so. Now this guy is in pension now. The rest of infallible gurus and hackers pissed me off all day long till I realized that they just provide perfect opportunity for an engineer to laugh. Few of them gurus rise above the rest. Few of these few are capable enough to actually work in a team and produce code that is maintainable. The problem I see with this picture is not that there are so many ignorants but too few gurus of the good kind. They usually get burnt out.
The funny thing is - decision to use particular language or tool which is done at the beginning of a project or new product line is done by the evil gurus i.e. those that do not know how to work in big teams and organize things efficiently. So what you write is correct. C++ will allow you to do things you can do in other languages in very convoluted way only in C++ your average developer cannot or does not want to do it in not convoluted, maintainable way because that would not be glorious and we are into C++ for the glory of it - right? This is the attitude prevalent in C++ community to the point that makes me puke when I have to go to work in the morning. The theoretical gains the language gives are nothing if they are offset by malpractice and incompetence (this being social as well as in engineering and organisation). Why bother then? I think any reasonable project managers (do we still have some) should think twice if s/he has a choice to use glorious tools or tools that his/her team can handle.Theoretical benefits are exactly this i.e. theoretical unless your team can produce code that shows them to exist and that is sadly not the reality in majority of cases.
Indeed if you take a definition of monopoly then Apple is not one and I do not think they neither want to be nor stand a chance of becoming one. The argument the GP brought is silly as the described situation is not a monopoly (other vendor is there even if only one). The situation is not as straight forward as you point out either. It is not the machine that I buy - today I think it is safe to say that majority of the devices public buys has a pre-installed OS. This in itself is not bad but then some of them have made provisions so that it stays so. You may argue that this still is OK after HW like this is traditionally sold with specific OS. The software that runs on top however is usually bought freely where one wants or in quite rare cases (if you look at customer base) can be written by and owner of particular piece of HW. This is actively fought against by Apple. One may still argue (as with OS) that that is OK but is it really? How many smartphones do you expect person to have? I mean if I buy one then normally I would have enough thus by simple act of choosing a mobile phone vendor I select also vendor of products that are completely unrelated to it. This is still not a monopoly but it is not what one wants it to be and it is strangely close to what some call natural monopoly. In our case it is not a water pipe delivering water to your house but a device that you bought that delivers different services some of them restricted to only one vendor. There is a difference here of course - in old good days having said pipe connected meant you could not buy water from anybody else than owner of the pipe. Now you are not forced to do that anymore at least not in places where a commie state supported market competitions on utilities too. Assuming (I do) that such market distortion is desired to ensure that companies and corporations behave one would wander whether buying a phone or a tablet constitutes a situation like one with water pipe owned by a water company. I usually own such piece of HW/SW for 6+ years (yes I threw away my t-39 when smart phones already won). Even if you practically own such phone or tablet max 2y - still once you bought it you are limited. To me it justifies gov or rather law makers intervention.
Besides being slightly OT you are also wrong. Or to put it other way - your statement is based on very static (as in statism) assumption that a company cannot change its ways this being either ways of working or ways of doing business including area in which they do business. In fact this ability to survive the change is possibly more important than quarterly profits - good companies do survive bad companies do not. The difference between these two types can be partially luck, partially good management and partially hard working skilled labour force unless of course you replace them with something less reliable.
Probably not always true but then that is the trade - most tools we use are the same everywhere. Switching a specialist on a drilling platform is a bit more complicated because the technology there is very special so getting a cheap worker from India is possible but not as easy as 'python coder'. This trend of replacing expensive 'experienced' (admit: often overpaid) folks with cheap imports looks almost like cause by a law of nature...
The quality inflation (we call ever crappier things good) is not dependent on incompetent people. I saw may competent people working in big 'agile' teams in a way that I could not explain. As soon as the 'old ways' have been branded evil they 'forgot' about all this difficult tasks like writing specifications, planning, modelling, working on concepts and sharing them to avoid double work etc. This in fact made our work easier at least on the face of it - no specification for instance means that there is nothing to compare the result to so no core dump already means 'success'. Now this is not associated with 'agile' of course as the disease is actually both in corporate bonus hunters as well as in heads of those experienced coders that do not understand the reasons why certain not directly code related things (like planning, coordination etc) are done. It may be that indeed this process of decreasing quality is unavoidable. After all good enough is good enough. Why pay more if customer is happy and she & he do not see the connection between some problems they experience and the choices they constantly make because this connection is 'hidden'.
I live in West of Germany which of course can be significantly different from your experience. Still the motives and issues are similar everywhere only the pressure and ability to solve them may be different: price and convenience as well as public policy are main factors to me and If I can get where I want in comfy way without hassle of switching trains, buses and god knows what then I would go for it. What I said about trends is also a fact in metropolitan areas - in Europe or at least in Germany and some other Nordic countries people tend to live in such centers - it is often possible with little trouble to live without a car for daily needs even if you have kids. I understand this is not something you can do on your own - public transport must be available to make it possible but that is what I just stated - if t rend continue we may have an opportunity to have public transport service that suits the individual needs better that it ever could and I am pretty sure some of us will have the chance to use it too then. Again price and convenience but also public policy may change things drastically. You would not expect such changes to happen in countries where big parts of population consider public policy as evil and their cars as god given gift but I would hate my life if I had to rely on my car for everything - driving is work for me and I work enough already.
Indeed. I think however that as with any trend it will evolve. I think cars becoming more sophisticated (well....) become also more and more expensive. It may be that automation of driving experience may be at t he same time expensive for a common owner and cheap if used as a service. If these things can drive by themselves why not let them drive the whole day long instead of two commuting drives a day plus some odd shopping, cinema, massage parlor drives a week? I can imagine that you live in a metropolitan area this may be a good choice and one enforced by raising prices. I do not mind if that were the case. OC car companies would not appreciate that this much as such new trend would mean less cars sold but if I look at our streets and park lots I see too many cars not too few and frankly owning a car is a nuisance unless you live in a countryside. I have already met people leasing cars: one for commuting and common needs and another for holidays etc. Moving this direction would be perfect for me and I think plenty of other folks that do not want to bother having a car and caring for its maintenance etc. Hell if I had real brains I would patent the idea the hell out of public domain.
it of course helps if your 'visualization' has some sense and can be used for things for which it is devised. I suppose as long as you limit expected usefulness of the term we discuss to a s-f book it came from then all is well but we use it all over the place and at some point (I'd say almost as soon as you leave s-f domain) you reach a situation where abstract concepts you talk about or ones that are generally associated with the term (free as in freedom, anonymous, borderless etc) make it a term useful to fill a blog but not to do real things. To put it differently - there are terms and concepts they describe that are more commonly understood in a similar way. This allows for a meaningful discussion based on such concepts. If they are fluffy or their understanding goes so far apart between different users that makes communication meaningless or impossible then they are not very useful. I'd say cyberspace has very limited use and I am already far away of other 'common' perceptions, at least perceptions seemingly common on slashdot. I am not sure if that is what the author or the blog article in question meant but I feel sympathetic to it. There are many other concepts and terms that have limited use and are commonly (mis-)used by huge number of relatively small groups of people. They have a meaning behind such terms that generates profit when used because their understanding is similar and they save time coining a term or using one from s-f book for such concepts. For me cyberspace either has so many different aspects that is almost useless for any practical purpose other then communicating over a beer (but not the first one) or it has a very specific meaning in which case this particular usage is different from general one in which case you cannot really claim general usefulness.
I think you missed big chunk of recent history (while watching pr0n???) the bigger need is around Senkaku Islands - considering how nationalistic Chinese population got manipulated into (see this (and comments to this article) or this. If that is not enough Persian Gulf is bound to explode some time too. I think Baltic is not such a big trouble area at least not now but thegeneral idea is cool.
Tax laws are complex that is true. The society and its economy is complex too so some of this complexity gets into the tax code. The fact is however that majority of the tax laws across the world are too complex for their own good. If rules are complex then enforcing them is expensive i.e. the state gets less from each of CurrencyUnit they collect. Looking at this from historical perspective - you started with simple laws some time ago and in time they gathered fat of tax code that nobody can understand and changing one little thing may create unforeseen consequences.If the state is forced to created a new tax code (like for instance the Baltic states have been forced to after they suddenly sprang into existence) then you can chose simple model - say for instance it is 21% no exemptions, non-taxable income set to minimum social support level. It will grow over time but with rules like this you give companies and their owners more time to do the business that was spent on accounting tricks before. No loopholes, no waste so everybody is happy (well that is never true is it?).
I think tax code is just lesser problem. Western states were living over their means for last few decades now they need money to pay back the debt they got so tension in the society is increasing. Then there is globalization which allows capital to travel freely while other assets and labour cannot. This is bound to cause trouble at some point. It is a constant struggle. Financiers of the world (and some other people and big corporations too) tend to think that they can decouple themselves from reality of societies they live in. The day they really can will be interesting but we are not as far yet so we i.e. the rest of the society still have means to put pressure on them. Nothing unreasonable of course but just to make a proper proportion of the benefits and costs for everybody. You want to do business with us then you pay taxes here.
as with anything else common sense and a bit of respect for others is mandatory; instead we usually are confronted with idiocy, lack of discipline, lack of competence and lack of respect for other and especially for technical authority. That would not be so bad but the worst thing is that sometimes this gets attention of some person with stamina and good will that can enforce some rules and one may think that this means people learned - once the communication (?) problems are fixed, the fixer is leaving and the group goes back to business as usual. I think that particular thing is called corporate amnesia but I am not sure it is a characteristic of corporations only.
and yet majority of healthy adults would be off bad breath after what GP advised. I had numerous adventures with doctors of different type. They put things into my mouth and stomach I was not happy about and yet at the end an old physician told me the same GP seems to know - the biggest problem is your tongue. Then the food remains between your teeth. and at the edges of stone buildup on your teeth (unless you do not have any). It does miracles to keep your mouth clean. Care is needed tho as too much cleaning can destroy your sense of taste and be painful. If these things do not help go to a doctor and check your stomach or whatever they advice you to do.
What does under-achieving mean? What is the area in which they do that? Is this related to work world or to the household work (it is also work is it not?). Would you accept a man smarter than you are? really? It is all prejudice and we cannot know each other so it is a guess based on what I learned about world and humans over the years. We differ in certain ways along gender lines - that is a fact which many reject because they dislike its consequences but it is a fact and it is not limited to our reproduction organs. Our brains in general differ along gender divide too. This said being a female or male does not automatically make you 'better' in some area it just makes your potential there more likely. Majority of females want to have family and kids. This is also a fact. They are confused as to their role and role of males in their lives but they want to have kids and families. This has consequences even if you are willing only to bear a child and then give it 'away' to your partner, your mama or nanny etc. These consequences are bigger if you want to spend some meaningful time with your kids. It does not mean the person (papa or mama) is underachieving - by citing this anecdote here you fall into old prejudice - repeating it. In fact it does not matter who is underachieving. We know now that if your achievement criteria are more social and less sociopathic then majority of males in our society as well as big part of working and successful females are underachieving.
In short what I wanted to say is this: your post is as flat and generalizing as you would expect from a male chauvinistic pig. Funny that.
the part where parents in two-income household can spend enough time with their kids is just a delusion unless these two incomes come from somebody else. If you the parents work full time which you suggest then this means 40h week plus commuting. Now if you have one kid this means that either parents do not see each other while working in shifts or somebody else is taking care for the kids most of the time. Now take family with 2 kids or 3. The situation does not change much but enough to make the whole thing just impossible unless your full employment means you can work from home, your schedules are fully under your control. How many jobs are there that allow that?
I do not know a single family that can do that. I know about one in Berlin (that is capitol of the country I live in i.e. Germany) - the lady works as if she was self-employed. That may work for her (she is a lawyer or some such) but not for people working on shifts or any other scheme where in/out times are strict. I know about lady's existence because her lifestyle is unusual - meaning really that taking time for kids means you cannot work full time.
If you actively support girls in educational system (and elsewhere) then if you do at least some of these things right the girls will get better.This is not difficult to understand or is it? Then again if you look at primary and secondary schools in western world - these are mostly staffed with female teachers - there is nothing wrong with that of course except that they automagically be biased. In ground school where my son is going they cannot even run and play ball during breaks. There is no real explanation why but one can think of the reason or?
I suppose in majority of western countries we reached the point when we have to realize that needs of boyz and girlz are a bit different and these different needs must be satisfied somehow. This of course is a no-go for PC people for whom for all purposes other than procreation and alimony payments girlz==boyz.
the anecdote you start with is probably explained partially with economics but it is rather off topic. I do buy stuff in a book store if I need advice and have enough time. Majority of my purchases are done by amazon. For the stuff I need wikipeidia is usually a start point. If I need deeper knowledge I usually need a book etc.because technology of all these toys is still not satisfying and because of what we generally associated with DRM I buy paper copies tho. The way I see it modern logistics and technology allow for small issues comparing with previous ages and it is still viable unless some asshole decides that DRM is a king and stops producing paper stuff because control is easier on zeros and ones. me thinks
4) LP to cassette to CD to MP3. VHS to Laserdisc to DVD to Blu-Ray. Same thing. So people re-purchase their favorite titles in a big chunk when they get the device then slow down to their regular rate of buying 5-10 books per year. That seems like the expected pattern for existing content being re-released on new media.
I had few vinyl items (50?) when I started buying CDs. I did busy few of the items I had on vinyl again on CD so I re-created refined copy of my previous library. I stopped buying CDs as soon as I noticed that I could not replay them on some devices and making a backup was impossible or difficult to do. I have few hundred CDs now. I was buying 10..15 per month, now I did not buy any for years. I did not buy any DRMed shit either (except one book just to try) and I do not intend to do. I wonder how many people actually did what you describe here i.e. rebuying their refined libraries when the usage protocol changed. I also wonder how much do they re-buy. Are those patterns widely spread? Unless this is cleared your comment no 4 is irrelevant or misleading.
Slashdot Mirror
This seems to be confirmed by what one can see in Germany - the state part of health insurance system has lists of drugs that are refunded meaning that you pay yourself if you take 'new better one' that is not on the list. This may have its drawbacks but the institute that provides advice on which new drugs can be put on the list is contested by industry yet they do not argue with the results but go straight to Berlin to lobby for their products to be placed on the list. The institute often finds that new changes have no value (except for the patent extension and price hike but that is not their domain of course). This whole show and refusal to argue in scientific terms means to me that indeed they invested a lots of money to be able to re-patent their products and again reach high novelty price without real work being done. The industry is corrupt not only in USA. The problem seems to be in the way free market works here. This is no normal situation where customer has a choice of time of purchase and vendor. The customer is under pressure in such nasty way that it if one posses a monopoly on particular cure then one posses power over once life. Seems like a good situation to rip people off. The discussion about motivation for research is a good one but from what I see as soon as state sponsored basic research is not available the industry struggles. I guess it is normal - basic research is more expensive than specific one because it is not focused as it cannot be. I guess this should mean something for policy makers.
this is all of topic of course. M3 is interesting of course but I looked at it once and I was surprised to see that neither there is one definition of it (Switzherland, ECB, US & UK have all different definitions and other countries have own ones too I guess). I was also surprised that ECB measured M3 as sum of money and investments with maturity up to 2y - obviously they make certain assumptions when they calculate this. I guess the theory is also that the the link between inflation and money supply (of which M3 is just indication) weak and depends for instance on the speed the supply is increasing and money is circulating in the economy. I also found it quite interesting how this all converted from creating huge inflation by printing press in Weimar Republik and now when money is largely created by a click of a mouse (or other pointing device). It is all a fake but that is oversimplified view - there are different fakes and they all have different properties, benefits and risks. I suspect how that really works is understood by nobody - there are only more and less brave individuals that operate the system. It is scary.
Some geeks have interests reaching beyond IT. This is expression of both i.e. their geekismo and their broad interests. I do not see a problem here albeit I admit the amount of IT or broader technology related articles is rather low or late. Maybe this is sign of times. The basic technology is offshored to Zamunda and the rest is too complex to be understood by an average geek and/or discussed in a popular thread. Quite frankly the others social sites for nerds are either populated by aggressive indihviduals with agendas or are bloody boring. For the geek from old good times when we were writting applications in the house and could understood how they worked within limited time that is too bad. Considering all this I think /. is still not that bad.
Indeed a friend of mine traveling from NL to Mexico with transfer in US was asked to produce transit visa in US (this was in 1998 I believe so even before TSA). He is Polish so the traditional friendship between the great nations of Poland and US cost him hours of stress and missed flight to Mexico. He also needed to buy a new ticket to Mexico and arrange for a new no-US transfer flight back to Europe because he was put on some sort of special list for terrorists and other persona non grata. This was as said before TSA and I see the situation 'improved' a lot since then.
Not sure what does it do except proves that US authorities behave like assholes towards anybody because they can - it certainly does not improve security. I guess US is a federation i.e. there are really progressive states nice to visit and maybe even work but I would never know because at this time even if I personally do not have to have a visa to travel there I would only go if they really pay well say with the rates used when you travel to war zone which is unlikely. Even if they paid well I would consider twice before going. I am considered conservative and pro-US by majority of my friends so go figure.
Oh I just noticed I threw abuse to (the TP comment at the end) - I apologize for this. That was not needed.
I do not think GP actually said what you think was said. Quite frankly if you want to throw abuse then do but think twice. GP exaggerated of course (with lions etc) but low chance of your kid being kidnapped does not mean that you have to go for facebook shit. Neither is this the only option nor is it protecting your kid from anything so stop throwing abuse and think. There is no reason to get hysterical on this. The GGGP post was possibly not very serious but neither is facebook serious about doing anything good to people - their only concern is how best sell your private data. If you think that this helps in anything than I think we do not really have anything to discuss. I have 3 kids myself and there are things that keep me awake at night but you cannot protect the kids from everything without actually damaging them or damaging rights of other people. Neither you can protect them with FB - rather contrary is true considering how much bullying is done thanxt to social media. Whether facebook is damaging your democracy may be a subject of a discussion (I do not think one is needed really but that is me) - GP obviously think it is. You just throw silly abuse at the guy instead of taking part in a discussion. Lookingat this from distance - you are much worse than FB - if that is true that you are an active member of your community that maybe not so good for it then. I cannot stop wondering : are you member of Tea Party?
The funny thing is - decision to use particular language or tool which is done at the beginning of a project or new product line is done by the evil gurus i.e. those that do not know how to work in big teams and organize things efficiently. So what you write is correct. C++ will allow you to do things you can do in other languages in very convoluted way only in C++ your average developer cannot or does not want to do it in not convoluted, maintainable way because that would not be glorious and we are into C++ for the glory of it - right? This is the attitude prevalent in C++ community to the point that makes me puke when I have to go to work in the morning. The theoretical gains the language gives are nothing if they are offset by malpractice and incompetence (this being social as well as in engineering and organisation). Why bother then? I think any reasonable project managers (do we still have some) should think twice if s/he has a choice to use glorious tools or tools that his/her team can handle.Theoretical benefits are exactly this i.e. theoretical unless your team can produce code that shows them to exist and that is sadly not the reality in majority of cases.
Indeed if you take a definition of monopoly then Apple is not one and I do not think they neither want to be nor stand a chance of becoming one. The argument the GP brought is silly as the described situation is not a monopoly (other vendor is there even if only one). The situation is not as straight forward as you point out either. It is not the machine that I buy - today I think it is safe to say that majority of the devices public buys has a pre-installed OS. This in itself is not bad but then some of them have made provisions so that it stays so. You may argue that this still is OK after HW like this is traditionally sold with specific OS. The software that runs on top however is usually bought freely where one wants or in quite rare cases (if you look at customer base) can be written by and owner of particular piece of HW. This is actively fought against by Apple. One may still argue (as with OS) that that is OK but is it really? How many smartphones do you expect person to have? I mean if I buy one then normally I would have enough thus by simple act of choosing a mobile phone vendor I select also vendor of products that are completely unrelated to it. This is still not a monopoly but it is not what one wants it to be and it is strangely close to what some call natural monopoly. In our case it is not a water pipe delivering water to your house but a device that you bought that delivers different services some of them restricted to only one vendor. There is a difference here of course - in old good days having said pipe connected meant you could not buy water from anybody else than owner of the pipe. Now you are not forced to do that anymore at least not in places where a commie state supported market competitions on utilities too. Assuming (I do) that such market distortion is desired to ensure that companies and corporations behave one would wander whether buying a phone or a tablet constitutes a situation like one with water pipe owned by a water company. I usually own such piece of HW/SW for 6+ years (yes I threw away my t-39 when smart phones already won). Even if you practically own such phone or tablet max 2y - still once you bought it you are limited. To me it justifies gov or rather law makers intervention.
Besides being slightly OT you are also wrong. Or to put it other way - your statement is based on very static (as in statism) assumption that a company cannot change its ways this being either ways of working or ways of doing business including area in which they do business. In fact this ability to survive the change is possibly more important than quarterly profits - good companies do survive bad companies do not. The difference between these two types can be partially luck, partially good management and partially hard working skilled labour force unless of course you replace them with something less reliable.
Probably not always true but then that is the trade - most tools we use are the same everywhere. Switching a specialist on a drilling platform is a bit more complicated because the technology there is very special so getting a cheap worker from India is possible but not as easy as 'python coder'. This trend of replacing expensive 'experienced' (admit: often overpaid) folks with cheap imports looks almost like cause by a law of nature...
The quality inflation (we call ever crappier things good) is not dependent on incompetent people. I saw may competent people working in big 'agile' teams in a way that I could not explain. As soon as the 'old ways' have been branded evil they 'forgot' about all this difficult tasks like writing specifications, planning, modelling, working on concepts and sharing them to avoid double work etc. This in fact made our work easier at least on the face of it - no specification for instance means that there is nothing to compare the result to so no core dump already means 'success'. Now this is not associated with 'agile' of course as the disease is actually both in corporate bonus hunters as well as in heads of those experienced coders that do not understand the reasons why certain not directly code related things (like planning, coordination etc) are done. It may be that indeed this process of decreasing quality is unavoidable. After all good enough is good enough. Why pay more if customer is happy and she & he do not see the connection between some problems they experience and the choices they constantly make because this connection is 'hidden'.
the bonus hunters are paid for this and obviously getting away with it. It seems that cheaper less skilled labour is good enough.
I live in West of Germany which of course can be significantly different from your experience. Still the motives and issues are similar everywhere only the pressure and ability to solve them may be different: price and convenience as well as public policy are main factors to me and If I can get where I want in comfy way without hassle of switching trains, buses and god knows what then I would go for it. What I said about trends is also a fact in metropolitan areas - in Europe or at least in Germany and some other Nordic countries people tend to live in such centers - it is often possible with little trouble to live without a car for daily needs even if you have kids. I understand this is not something you can do on your own - public transport must be available to make it possible but that is what I just stated - if t rend continue we may have an opportunity to have public transport service that suits the individual needs better that it ever could and I am pretty sure some of us will have the chance to use it too then. Again price and convenience but also public policy may change things drastically. You would not expect such changes to happen in countries where big parts of population consider public policy as evil and their cars as god given gift but I would hate my life if I had to rely on my car for everything - driving is work for me and I work enough already.
A bit confused here (I suppose should be going out more often) is yoctobyte bigger then moronbyte - how do both relate to library of congress?
Indeed. I think however that as with any trend it will evolve. I think cars becoming more sophisticated (well ....) become also more and more expensive. It may be that automation of driving experience may be at t he same time expensive for a common owner and cheap if used as a service. If these things can drive by themselves why not let them drive the whole day long instead of two commuting drives a day plus some odd shopping, cinema, massage parlor drives a week? I can imagine that you live in a metropolitan area this may be a good choice and one enforced by raising prices. I do not mind if that were the case. OC car companies would not appreciate that this much as such new trend would mean less cars sold but if I look at our streets and park lots I see too many cars not too few and frankly owning a car is a nuisance unless you live in a countryside. I have already met people leasing cars: one for commuting and common needs and another for holidays etc. Moving this direction would be perfect for me and I think plenty of other folks that do not want to bother having a car and caring for its maintenance etc. Hell if I had real brains I would patent the idea the hell out of public domain.
it of course helps if your 'visualization' has some sense and can be used for things for which it is devised. I suppose as long as you limit expected usefulness of the term we discuss to a s-f book it came from then all is well but we use it all over the place and at some point (I'd say almost as soon as you leave s-f domain) you reach a situation where abstract concepts you talk about or ones that are generally associated with the term (free as in freedom, anonymous, borderless etc) make it a term useful to fill a blog but not to do real things. To put it differently - there are terms and concepts they describe that are more commonly understood in a similar way. This allows for a meaningful discussion based on such concepts. If they are fluffy or their understanding goes so far apart between different users that makes communication meaningless or impossible then they are not very useful. I'd say cyberspace has very limited use and I am already far away of other 'common' perceptions, at least perceptions seemingly common on slashdot. I am not sure if that is what the author or the blog article in question meant but I feel sympathetic to it. There are many other concepts and terms that have limited use and are commonly (mis-)used by huge number of relatively small groups of people. They have a meaning behind such terms that generates profit when used because their understanding is similar and they save time coining a term or using one from s-f book for such concepts. For me cyberspace either has so many different aspects that is almost useless for any practical purpose other then communicating over a beer (but not the first one) or it has a very specific meaning in which case this particular usage is different from general one in which case you cannot really claim general usefulness.
I think you missed big chunk of recent history (while watching pr0n???) the bigger need is around Senkaku Islands - considering how nationalistic Chinese population got manipulated into (see this (and comments to this article) or this. If that is not enough Persian Gulf is bound to explode some time too. I think Baltic is not such a big trouble area at least not now but thegeneral idea is cool.
I think tax code is just lesser problem. Western states were living over their means for last few decades now they need money to pay back the debt they got so tension in the society is increasing. Then there is globalization which allows capital to travel freely while other assets and labour cannot. This is bound to cause trouble at some point. It is a constant struggle. Financiers of the world (and some other people and big corporations too) tend to think that they can decouple themselves from reality of societies they live in. The day they really can will be interesting but we are not as far yet so we i.e. the rest of the society still have means to put pressure on them. Nothing unreasonable of course but just to make a proper proportion of the benefits and costs for everybody. You want to do business with us then you pay taxes here.
as with anything else common sense and a bit of respect for others is mandatory; instead we usually are confronted with idiocy, lack of discipline, lack of competence and lack of respect for other and especially for technical authority. That would not be so bad but the worst thing is that sometimes this gets attention of some person with stamina and good will that can enforce some rules and one may think that this means people learned - once the communication (?) problems are fixed, the fixer is leaving and the group goes back to business as usual. I think that particular thing is called corporate amnesia but I am not sure it is a characteristic of corporations only.
and yet majority of healthy adults would be off bad breath after what GP advised. I had numerous adventures with doctors of different type. They put things into my mouth and stomach I was not happy about and yet at the end an old physician told me the same GP seems to know - the biggest problem is your tongue. Then the food remains between your teeth. and at the edges of stone buildup on your teeth (unless you do not have any). It does miracles to keep your mouth clean. Care is needed tho as too much cleaning can destroy your sense of taste and be painful. If these things do not help go to a doctor and check your stomach or whatever they advice you to do.
In short what I wanted to say is this: your post is as flat and generalizing as you would expect from a male chauvinistic pig. Funny that.
the part where parents in two-income household can spend enough time with their kids is just a delusion unless these two incomes come from somebody else. If you the parents work full time which you suggest then this means 40h week plus commuting. Now if you have one kid this means that either parents do not see each other while working in shifts or somebody else is taking care for the kids most of the time. Now take family with 2 kids or 3. The situation does not change much but enough to make the whole thing just impossible unless your full employment means you can work from home, your schedules are fully under your control. How many jobs are there that allow that? I do not know a single family that can do that. I know about one in Berlin (that is capitol of the country I live in i.e. Germany) - the lady works as if she was self-employed. That may work for her (she is a lawyer or some such) but not for people working on shifts or any other scheme where in/out times are strict. I know about lady's existence because her lifestyle is unusual - meaning really that taking time for kids means you cannot work full time.
If you actively support girls in educational system (and elsewhere) then if you do at least some of these things right the girls will get better.This is not difficult to understand or is it? Then again if you look at primary and secondary schools in western world - these are mostly staffed with female teachers - there is nothing wrong with that of course except that they automagically be biased. In ground school where my son is going they cannot even run and play ball during breaks. There is no real explanation why but one can think of the reason or? I suppose in majority of western countries we reached the point when we have to realize that needs of boyz and girlz are a bit different and these different needs must be satisfied somehow. This of course is a no-go for PC people for whom for all purposes other than procreation and alimony payments girlz==boyz.
the anecdote you start with is probably explained partially with economics but it is rather off topic. I do buy stuff in a book store if I need advice and have enough time. Majority of my purchases are done by amazon. For the stuff I need wikipeidia is usually a start point. If I need deeper knowledge I usually need a book etc.because technology of all these toys is still not satisfying and because of what we generally associated with DRM I buy paper copies tho. The way I see it modern logistics and technology allow for small issues comparing with previous ages and it is still viable unless some asshole decides that DRM is a king and stops producing paper stuff because control is easier on zeros and ones. me thinks
4) LP to cassette to CD to MP3. VHS to Laserdisc to DVD to Blu-Ray. Same thing. So people re-purchase their favorite titles in a big chunk when they get the device then slow down to their regular rate of buying 5-10 books per year. That seems like the expected pattern for existing content being re-released on new media.
I had few vinyl items (50?) when I started buying CDs. I did busy few of the items I had on vinyl again on CD so I re-created refined copy of my previous library. I stopped buying CDs as soon as I noticed that I could not replay them on some devices and making a backup was impossible or difficult to do. I have few hundred CDs now. I was buying 10..15 per month, now I did not buy any for years. I did not buy any DRMed shit either (except one book just to try) and I do not intend to do. I wonder how many people actually did what you describe here i.e. rebuying their refined libraries when the usage protocol changed. I also wonder how much do they re-buy. Are those patterns widely spread? Unless this is cleared your comment no 4 is irrelevant or misleading.