Comment Re: The Good old days (Score 1) 78
Just listen to some of Brian Shul's stories of flying the SR-71
5. State Governments no longer funding Universities. This is a HUGE one. During the recession of the early 2000s states no longer subsidize the universities due to the free money from the federal student loan program.
At every state school I've been able to find detailed budgets, the per capita cost of education has more-or-less matched inflation back to at least 1980. The major difference is that in the 70s and 80s, 70-ish% of the cost was paid by state allocations, while in 2000s-10s, 60-ish% of the cost is paid by tuition. States spending on education has not increased as fast as enrollment, and the difference has to come from somewhere.
Problem is exacerbated by colleges competing for students by offering better campus life. Dormitories today are palatial compared to the 90s. Exercise facilities are luxurious. That's all got to get paid for, and not much of it gets paid by the state.
I don't think people 'strive to create value' at all - we just go to work to get paid, and while we're at work we basically do what we're told.
You wouldn't get paid if no one thought your job created value.
I'd argue that the further your job is from obviously creating value, the less rewarding it will be and the less you will like it. Jobs aren't charity; no executive sits down and says, "The company made too much money last year. Go hire a thousand people to sit around in the big room." Jobs exist because someone wants something done. That's creating value.
The FBI is not the Fourth Branch of Government. They're a function of the Executive branch. Hence why it was stacked with Democrats during the Obama administration.
The director of the FBI is always a Republican. Not by statute, not by tradition, just by simple fact that career FBI is so loaded with Republicans that no one has yet found a Democrat that could get confirmed to run the place.
There could be aliens out there now, but what interest would they have in us?
I assume, the same interest that we have in them: "Holy shit! Aliens!"
...the shooting related death toll in the US is rather insignificant compared to any leading cause of death and certainly is nothing compared to the lives saved because an invading power knows how costly a ground invasion of the heavily armed US would be.
Are you seriously suggesting that the reason Mexico hasn't invaded is that they're more afraid of civilians with hunting rifles than the Army's tanks and the Air Force's bombers?
This is the right answer.
If you ask a mason what he does, he's not going to break into discussion of optimizing portland cement to lime ratios or strategies for accommodating different grades or environmental variations. He's going to tell you he builds walls.
He might tell you about the wall he built in an exceptionally interesting building, or for a particularly controversial company, but he's not going to tell you any of the details of his subjective experience of building walls.
It sounds to me like this guy is arguing that ISPs won't censor or block new content, which I think is accurate. ISPs have an interest in there being as much interesting content as possible to entice customers. They also have a proven interest in rent-seeking, and unlimited access to consumption data. I think we can expect ISPs to default new content services to the "fast" lane and require them to pay higher access fees as their customer bases expand.
For new content businesses, the problem will be less crib death than a big drag on growth and tendency towards balkanization. Something like Uber has to be everywhere to be useful, and it's hard to imagine them growing like that if they face exponential "peering" fees with all of the ISPs.
You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken
