Comment Quite interesting (Score 4, Informative) 51
Till we see 1300km long and 10 to 10 km diameter asteroids in space, we just have to file it under, "it is the best we could do, under these circumstances".
Till we see 1300km long and 10 to 10 km diameter asteroids in space, we just have to file it under, "it is the best we could do, under these circumstances".
Even though the recordings have been deleted, the officials can be called in and to testify what they saw. The teacher who was allegedly present in these bullying sessions can be called in to testify. Collect evidence of bullying and have the school suspended for three years. That will teach them.
One bug that allows silent remote code execution on the WAN side and another bug that is a privilege escalation possibility on the LAN can not be treated as one bug each, right? This is not limited to just security vulnerabilities alone. Many software company top managers insist on looking at bug counts, sometimes sorted into 5 priority/severity levels or so.
It gets worse in the planning and progress monitoring. They use fancy tools like rallydev.com or something, but they allow each team to define its own story points. The Bangalore team uses 1 story point = 1 engineer week. The Boston team uses 1 story point = 1 engineer day. The Bangkok team uses engineer hour. And the top management gets the report, "This SAGA feature story was estimated to take 3264 story points, and it is 2376 points complete". Complete b.s. that is.
We pay ridiculously high salaries for the top management, and instead of expecting them to put in the time, energy and effort commensurate with that kind of pay, to make valuable judgement, hard decisions, step on people's toes, tell it like it is, and paint an accurate picture of the state of the company, we let them shirk their responsibilities.
So all in all, it is a fair system where the successful people of one generation, pay the dividends to the original investor, Uncle Sam, so that the gig can keep going for another generation.
You car argue about what is the fair split, what part goes to Uncle Sam and what part the "makers" get to keep etc. And you need to keep the Uncle Sam's part low enough to encourage innovation and hard work and enterprise. But at the same time, you need to watch out for people who would game the system and try to dodge paying their fair share. Making blanket statement that all taxation is theft is dumb.
Anyway that is what I believe in and vote accordingly. You may think differently and vote according to your belief. I think the system is fair and I am staying here. If you think the deal offered by the USA is not good enough for you, pack your bags and leave. Good riddance.
But when it looks hopeless, just remember the dark days of Microsoft monopoly. By 1998-2000 time frame, Microsoft could kill projects and make venture capital vanish for its upstart competition just by issuing press release about vaporware. It really did look hopeless back then, how any one could fight that behemoth. Now Microsoft is still pulling in huge revenues, but it does not look like the unbeatable titan it was seen to be.
Right now, the last mile wiring cost is so high, Comcast has this monopolistic advantage. But wireless-in-the-loop (WITL fiber optics to neighborhood pillar boxes, and wireles from there) technology or micro cell or femto cell networks or something we don't know yet might come in and upset the apple cart for Comcast. WITL is quite effective for sparsely populated rural areas and is quietly building up strength and robustness there. If/when it transitions to compete with wired connections to homes, it could prove to be effective.
Only thing that will save us is competition.
I do not see taxation as theft, as many conservatives, libertarians claim.
I see government as a long term venture capitalist, who invests in the entire next generation of America. Some of them will strike it big, and others will strike out. If I am one of the fortunate group that was able to take full advantage of the investment the government made in me, investments that protected my earning potential and my property rights, then the tax I pay is just dividend to the venture capitalist.
So despite all the reluctance and the pain associated with parting with my money, I know it is the right thing to do. The government investment in the next generation depends on it. I can invest better on my children, and the government investment is creating competitors to my children. If I believed in Social Darwinism, I will fight taxes tooth and nail. But I believe human beings should rise above this level of self interest and pay the taxes.
In the 1700s canals were the big thing. A nearly bankrupt Brit baron built a canal to deliver his coal to a harbor and became fantastically rich. Then there was this canal building boom. Eminent domain to take land and give to canal companies, tax incentives, tax abatements. Lots of speeches about how canals are going to create jobs and development would pass the city by, unless the poor, the unwashed and the indigent chip in to pay taxes. Canals were built. Early canals really created prosperity. But almost all the late canal extensions were boondoggles.
Then the railroads came in. The canal companies hated the railroad companies. Canal towns created stumbling block for the railroads. Local ordnances, zoning rules, misinformation campaigns. Rail roads passed the canal towns by. You can still see quaint little abandoned villages and hamlets all along the Erie canal untouched by progress. Rail road barons, who were canal barons earlier, ran the same damned schemes all over again. They got so egregious their exploits are more remembered than their fore runners in the canal era.
What is history if it does not repeat itself. When Eisenhower kicked off the interstate highway construction boom, the railroad towns fought the highways tooth and nail. But high ways also had powerful cronies based on the illegal cartel of Firestone, Ford Motor Company and Standard Oil. So railroads towns did not win completely. But there are hundreds of railroad towns like Altoona PA that made sure no high ways come close to them. Altoona with its location on strategic location in the Appalachia is still holding on to rail roads because almost all the East-West rail road traffic must go through that town. But it made sure I-76 came nowhere near it. Till data all auto traffic between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh curve sixty miles south to avoid Altoona. https://www.google.com/maps/@4... (The mountains in between are not the issue. All the railroads go through Altoona. The passage has been graded ages ago, with bridges too. Would have been cheaper to build the new highway through Altoona. But the resurrected the old turn pike)
America has always been afflicted by this crony capitalism. But our Democracy was bringing sanity and regression to the mean, till about 1980s. Then Reagan came, and they perfected the art, nay science, of persuading folks like our friend roman_mir to vote against their own self interest. No wonder we are going down the drain now.
Today is a good day for information-gathering. Read someone else's mail file.