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Comment Re:Why choose between incompetence and hypocrisy.. (Score 1) 750

by Sean0michael (#34031332) Attached to: Excitement about U.S. mid-term elections:
Most politicians won't give answers to cuts in government since they greatly upset those directly affected by the cuts while only moderately increasing their standing among those not affected as much. It's how California got to be as bad as it is -- loud, small interests push for spending that can't be cut, and no large group has the same passion to cut it.

And when you do suggest cuts in spending a la Ron Paul (who wants to cut just about everything), you're not taken seriously.

It's not just a problem that no one wants to be the one to cut spending, but the voting masses wouldn't tolerate it even if someone did.

Comment Re:Wrong carrier. (Score 1) 303

by Sean0michael (#33830814) Attached to: Verizon, 4G and iPhones
Sprint is upgrading to 4G on WiMax technology, and fast. They're pushing their EVO and such pretty heavily, along with their generous $70 talk-text-web plans. They're not likely to be interested in an iPhone unless its 4G, which just doesn't seem to be the case.

To boot, Sprint's 3G network is even less capable of handling the traffic than AT&T's, so I doubt their eager for the extra data the iPhone will bring.

Comment Re:Well Duh (Score 1) 2058

by Sean0michael (#33824154) Attached to: Firefighters Let House Burn Because Owner Didn't Pay Fee
An excellent post, but I think you neglect some salient points about the retail price. Since it would have to consider the funds not contributed, it would have to be a substantial sum. Let's spitball and say $2,000 as the retail price (a little under $75 times 30 years in the home). That's a fairly large sum for a lot of families, and many may not be able to pay that. The firefighters have no way to assess their ability to pay the sum on the spot, so they'd have to take their word that they can afford the retail price.

So if the retail price is too high, then the firefighters may lose money since they may never collect the retail price for the service. So let's lower the price to something more generally affordable. Let's say $300 (that'd be 4 years of coverage). That's a lot more affordable price, but then there's a lot less incentive to ever pay. If the retail price is too low compared to the insurance price, people will just pay retail when they need it and never pay the insurance price. Again, the firefighters don't get paid.

I think the solution may be something like putting a lien on the house for the retail price to ensure repayment, but I don't know how lien's work or what the legal costs would be for collecting on liens.

Comment Re:Counterpoint (Score 1) 2058

by Sean0michael (#33823976) Attached to: Firefighters Let House Burn Because Owner Didn't Pay Fee

But in the interest of public good, a fire that's allowed to burn out-of-control at one home could spread to another home, or to a forest, extending the initial threat from a single private residence to the general welfare of the public. If I were this man's neighbor, and the fire that the fire department let burn suddenly engulfed my house as well, I would be quite the irate citizen.

If you read the article, you would see that the firefighters did actually keep the flames from spreading to his neighbor's property, since the neighbor had paid the $75 fee. While I agree that it is a good idea to keep fires from spreading, in this case it was only spreading to private property that was already protected.

Comment Re:Grow up. (Score 1) 448

by Sean0michael (#33681690) Attached to: Facebook Is Down

[Sigh, I know this is going to get modded 'flamebait' and 'troll', but it had to be said.]

Actually, studies show that 78% of Slashdot posts that mention the author's certainty their post will be modded 'flamebait' or 'troll' are modded to at least +4 in either the insightful or informative categories (the split is usually 3:1 insightful to informative). The percentage jumps above 94% when the author uses the phrase 'karma to burn'.

Comment Re:To remove the annoying phone icon (Score 1) 179

by Sean0michael (#33380688) Attached to: Google Officially Brings Voice To Gmail
Well, if you consider how Gmail actually has the potential to be a large part of its Apps for Business, it sure helps that they can now offer the ability to call a real phone from your computer. Plenty of companies that use Apps could also use this to make in-office calls and now calls to customers/vendors/partners in the real world. Selling their Apps perhaps has the best potential for a second stream of revenue aside from advertising, just like how Office is the 2nd stream to Microsoft's Windows OS.

Comment Re:American Guns!! Yay NRA!! (Score 1) 518

by Sean0michael (#33253392) Attached to: Narco-Blogger Beats Mexico Drug War News Blackout
Cig taxes tend not to go up because studies show that increasing the tax generally decreases revenue. Cities and states care more about the revenue than your health (and rather short-sighted in that sense) so they haven't increased the taxes to deal with the health problems they cause. The revenue often doesn't go to paying health costs anyway.

Comment Re: (Score 1) 311

by Sean0michael (#32646804) Attached to: Why Being Wrong Makes Humans So Smart

As an engineer, I would honestly rather upper management to be as far away as possible, that's how the real work gets done. Show me an engineer that wants a CEO breathing down their neck and I'll show you an average engineer that wants to brown nose with management. Also what is a CEO supposed to do? What in his background would leave you to believe that other than signing 20 BILLION dollars into escrow for repairs/claims that he would be more effective at the scene? I'm not a fan of big business, but people are just looking for a reason to crucify him. I don't go to BP, that's what I do to show my disapproval.

You could say something similar about a certain President with his "boot on the neck" of BP looking for "who's ass to kick".

Comment Re:What About The Parents? (Score 1) 436

by Sean0michael (#31591294) Attached to: Later School Start For Teenagers Brings Drop In Absenteeism
Speaking as a happily married man, I did not date at all in high school, and only dated one woman in college -- the same woman I am married to now. I didn't need to make mistakes to find out what was best for me.

Experience is a good teacher. So I took the experience of others and applied it to my own life. Some of that experience came from having great parents in a very healthy relationship. Some of it came from friends dating. Some of it came from movies, TV, and society in general. But I didn't have to make my own mistakes to gain that "valuable practical experience." I was smart and reused some else's code (for an open-source analogy, if you will).

I didn't have to practice finding a marriage partner, since I already learned from others what I was looking for. I hope that my kids can do the same thing some day.

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