Depends on the fly-to-dollar ratio on any given day. If 1 fly = 50,000 USD, then sales would drop like... drop like... well, they'd be pretty slow anyway.
Well, I'm travelling between galaxies right now on this large ball shaped thing with a life support system and 7 billion other passengers. Sure it's slow, but nobody's charging me for passage, per se (The taxes, of course, are *really* expensive).
I don't think "despised" is the only factor, but I take your point. Actually I agree with you. I don't think any of the things I mentioned are an absolute barrier to financial success, but they do make it harder, especially when taken together. The examples you mentioned (Jews and Chinese) are mercantile cultures with high value given to education and deferred gratification. This was enough, apparently, to overcome the lack of social connections with the majority.
Innovation needs to be rewarded. How many of you have signed contracts that give *any* invention you create to your employer as a condition of having a job? How may of you have the means to quit to pursue making a business out of your invention? (Hint: You ALL signed one, and you can't if you have a family). And if you did manage to start a business, would you have a legal fund to defend yourself from getting "wallet-whipped" form the inevitable lawsuits?
Patent law, labor law and contract law have all skewed the results of innovation so that corporations profit, while individuals make a few thousand dollars bonus and get a pat on the head from management. This soft corruption is ever so slowly strangling the geese that lay the golden eggs. There are a few Apples and Microsofts and a Facebook. And what would have become of these ideas had Jobs, Gates or Zuckerman been working for IBM at the time they had them?
If I had a million dollar idea tomorrow (and they're not that tough), I can't think of a reason in the world to bother with it while working for a company in the USA. You'd have to be in college, having never worked for a corporation, or offshore in a country that protects you from patent disputes or confiscatory contract provisions.
Here's my 2 cents as an old white guy as to why. In the 60s, black people decided that they needed their own culture to survive, one different from white culture. Prior to this, most black people tried to be more white, culturally speaking. The problem is, when you isolate cultures, you increase alienation, decrease communication and decrease social connections.
So here we have a pretty successful (economically) culture of Europeans in the USA and a not-so-successful culture of African Americans. After the 60s, they go their separate ways, more or less. White culture was rejected by young blacks who become more isolated from social connections, education and attitudes that could help them be a success, economically. The result seems to be an African-American youth culture obsessed with activities and attitudes that guarantee failure. Sports. Entertainment. The development of the physical. A lack of interest in the mental. And most insidious of all, a tendency to go for immediate gratification, rather than to work for long term rewards. The history is different for Hispanics, who have linguistic separation and legal issues thrown in the the mix, but some of the cultural characteristics of separation are similar.
And so, failure is guaranteed as long as there is no assimilation into the majority culture. The only exceptions I've seen to this rule are situations where the children were acculturated in white neighborhoods with "white" values and little to no exposure to their own racial group's culture. Is this fair? No. Is it real? Sure looks that way.
What these bankers and financial institutions don't understand is that people will not let themselves be buttf*cked if they can pass it on to someone else. (Fixed that for you).
When people hurt enough in a democracy, they legislate regulation. When that doesn't work, the guillotines appear. It is ebb and flow. Monopoly abuse of economic power brought on anti-trust regulation. Monopoly abuse of political power brought on the French and Russian revolutions. Whether these were fair or right or even productive changes is, frankly, irrelevant. Human nature is what it is. It happens.
Power balancing won't happen until the next set of serious social upheavals, but these are now inevitable, brought on by the financial firms and their short term, narrow thinking in combination with an insulated, utterly corrupt federal government.
Putting the tax burden on those who insist on playing with depositor money, privatizing profits and socializing losses is a start towards fairness. Not much of a start, granted, but a start. Unfortunately, money = unaccountable political power. Until congress and the class from which most of congress comes (i.e. the wealthy) are barred from office, this will never happen.
Well, many of it's activities are just for show, like airport pat-downs of children and the elderly or confiscating medicines if they're in liquid form.
I say we just be honest and call it "KGB-lite". Gestapo has too many letters and STASI just sounds too unpleasant. Of course, over time, it will outgrow the "lite" part of the name. They all do.
As a self-taught individual who makes 6 figures programming and who's hired a few, I'd have to disagree. Self-taught developers I've hired know that in the real-world, development is not about programming as an art. It's about using software to solve problems and make money.
Because kids, software is either about money or masturbation. The guy experimenting with Ocaml is about the latter. The other guy trying to get the feature done for the customer demo on Monday morning is about the former. I hire that guy.
There are differences though. I focus on results more than elegant use of the latest programming techniques. I'm more concerned with readability, ease of maintenance and whether the code can be easily understood by the next programmer I have to hire. I'm totally unconcerned about whether someone I hire knows about, or uses virtual void functions, tuples, or even somewhat useful things like callbacks. I do need them to know about commonly used things like threads, arrays, arraylists and so on.
Google is famous for its short attention span when it comes to new projects, after which Dart will be an orphan. Microsoft is famous for screwing its developer base and abandoning languages and the customers who depend on them (VB6, J#, and soon,.net) whenever some 20-something new manager gets a brainwave. I'd stick with cross platform c-form languages like java, c, c++, javascript, or even C#. The money's in languages like these, not the also-ran languages like Ruby, Python, Ocaml, etc.
My colonoscopy at 53 (3 years late) detected the start of malignant cancer. My gastro guy described my situation as "having *just* missed being hit by the bus. Without treatment, I'd have been dead in less than 5 years, give or take a year.
So, better safe than sorry has become my new motto. The social and economic cost, in the scheme of things, is trivial (That is, if you have health insurance. If you don't, unofficial government policy is the usual de facto homicide applied to the poor).
How "they" know that these chemicals aren't the result of organic processes? If a few thousand planets in the vicinity were ground up in a traffic jam after life formed, wouldn't we see something like this?
and wonder what horrible unforseen consequence its use will create. It probably sterilizes everyone or creates genetic modifications that turn humans into politicians, or zombies, or some other type of monster.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on the fly-to-dollar ratio on any given day. If 1 fly = 50,000 USD, then sales would drop like... drop like... well, they'd be pretty slow anyway.
Well, I'm travelling between galaxies right now on this large ball shaped thing with a life support system and 7 billion other passengers. Sure it's slow, but nobody's charging me for passage, per se (The taxes, of course, are *really* expensive).
And they only last a few seconds until they hit the ground after you drive them off the cliff. You forgot that part.
You cite the exceptions. Have you considered discovering the rule?
Well, this is Slashdot, after all.
Hurry boys! To the labs!
I don't think "despised" is the only factor, but I take your point. Actually I agree with you. I don't think any of the things I mentioned are an absolute barrier to financial success, but they do make it harder, especially when taken together. The examples you mentioned (Jews and Chinese) are mercantile cultures with high value given to education and deferred gratification. This was enough, apparently, to overcome the lack of social connections with the majority.
Innovation needs to be rewarded. How many of you have signed contracts that give *any* invention you create to your employer as a condition of having a job? How may of you have the means to quit to pursue making a business out of your invention? (Hint: You ALL signed one, and you can't if you have a family). And if you did manage to start a business, would you have a legal fund to defend yourself from getting "wallet-whipped" form the inevitable lawsuits?
Patent law, labor law and contract law have all skewed the results of innovation so that corporations profit, while individuals make a few thousand dollars bonus and get a pat on the head from management. This soft corruption is ever so slowly strangling the geese that lay the golden eggs. There are a few Apples and Microsofts and a Facebook. And what would have become of these ideas had Jobs, Gates or Zuckerman been working for IBM at the time they had them?
If I had a million dollar idea tomorrow (and they're not that tough), I can't think of a reason in the world to bother with it while working for a company in the USA. You'd have to be in college, having never worked for a corporation, or offshore in a country that protects you from patent disputes or confiscatory contract provisions.
Here's my 2 cents as an old white guy as to why. In the 60s, black people decided that they needed their own culture to survive, one different from white culture. Prior to this, most black people tried to be more white, culturally speaking. The problem is, when you isolate cultures, you increase alienation, decrease communication and decrease social connections.
So here we have a pretty successful (economically) culture of Europeans in the USA and a not-so-successful culture of African Americans. After the 60s, they go their separate ways, more or less. White culture was rejected by young blacks who become more isolated from social connections, education and attitudes that could help them be a success, economically. The result seems to be an African-American youth culture obsessed with activities and attitudes that guarantee failure. Sports. Entertainment. The development of the physical. A lack of interest in the mental. And most insidious of all, a tendency to go for immediate gratification, rather than to work for long term rewards. The history is different for Hispanics, who have linguistic separation and legal issues thrown in the the mix, but some of the cultural characteristics of separation are similar.
And so, failure is guaranteed as long as there is no assimilation into the majority culture. The only exceptions I've seen to this rule are situations where the children were acculturated in white neighborhoods with "white" values and little to no exposure to their own racial group's culture. Is this fair? No. Is it real? Sure looks that way.
The generals who approved the decisions to purchase critical parts from overseas should be fired. For incompetence. Period. End of story.
You poor IBM system admins...
What these bankers and financial institutions don't understand is that people will not let themselves be buttf*cked if they can pass it on to someone else. (Fixed that for you).
When people hurt enough in a democracy, they legislate regulation. When that doesn't work, the guillotines appear. It is ebb and flow. Monopoly abuse of economic power brought on anti-trust regulation. Monopoly abuse of political power brought on the French and Russian revolutions. Whether these were fair or right or even productive changes is, frankly, irrelevant. Human nature is what it is. It happens.
Power balancing won't happen until the next set of serious social upheavals, but these are now inevitable, brought on by the financial firms and their short term, narrow thinking in combination with an insulated, utterly corrupt federal government.
Putting the tax burden on those who insist on playing with depositor money, privatizing profits and socializing losses is a start towards fairness. Not much of a start, granted, but a start. Unfortunately, money = unaccountable political power. Until congress and the class from which most of congress comes (i.e. the wealthy) are barred from office, this will never happen.
Well, many of it's activities are just for show, like airport pat-downs of children and the elderly or confiscating medicines if they're in liquid form.
I say we just be honest and call it "KGB-lite". Gestapo has too many letters and STASI just sounds too unpleasant.
Of course, over time, it will outgrow the "lite" part of the name. They all do.
who thinks this was pretty obvious without a NASA funded study?
Yeah, but that's Spain, you know?
If it works, and we finally develop batteries worth a crap, then humans may just survive the next centuries without a 90% die-off.
As a self-taught individual who makes 6 figures programming and who's hired a few, I'd have to disagree. Self-taught developers I've hired know that in the real-world, development is not about programming as an art. It's about using software to solve problems and make money.
Because kids, software is either about money or masturbation. The guy experimenting with Ocaml is about the latter. The other guy trying to get the feature done for the customer demo on Monday morning is about the former. I hire that guy.
There are differences though. I focus on results more than elegant use of the latest programming techniques. I'm more concerned with readability, ease of maintenance and whether the code can be easily understood by the next programmer I have to hire. I'm totally unconcerned about whether someone I hire knows about, or uses virtual void functions, tuples, or even somewhat useful things like callbacks. I do need them to know about commonly used things like threads, arrays, arraylists and so on.
Google is famous for its short attention span when it comes to new projects, after which Dart will be an orphan. Microsoft is famous for screwing its developer base and abandoning languages and the customers who depend on them (VB6, J#, and soon, .net) whenever some 20-something new manager gets a brainwave. I'd stick with cross platform c-form languages like java, c, c++, javascript, or even C#. The money's in languages like these, not the also-ran languages like Ruby, Python, Ocaml, etc.
Do NOT "improve" the file. I'd like to continue to be able to use my computer and other devices.
My colonoscopy at 53 (3 years late) detected the start of malignant cancer. My gastro guy described my situation as "having *just* missed being hit by the bus. Without treatment, I'd have been dead in less than 5 years, give or take a year.
So, better safe than sorry has become my new motto. The social and economic cost, in the scheme of things, is trivial (That is, if you have health insurance. If you don't, unofficial government policy is the usual de facto homicide applied to the poor).
Really *tiny* dinosaurs. After all, aren't most of those microscopic species extinct too?
How "they" know that these chemicals aren't the result of organic processes? If a few thousand planets in the vicinity were ground up in a traffic jam after life formed, wouldn't we see something like this?
and wonder what horrible unforseen consequence its use will create. It probably sterilizes everyone or creates genetic modifications that turn humans into politicians, or zombies, or some other type of monster.