Prediction: "Band" will soon need "aid"

This is a 2-line patch on a bloated piece of software consisting of millions of lines of code, that uses hard-coded, recycled components using none of the standards software development techniques, that doesn't use API's, has no version control and is beta-tested on users before the finished product is delivered that causes the user to acknowledge a security deficit that can't be fixed by the user that was glued together by programmers who don't work for the same organization and have no network to help collaborate or organize their work.

This is complete nonsense in countries with public health care. Half of the reason why price-gouging doesn't exists is because most everybody carries a card which identifies their provider which is paid by the government through taxes or through a modest monthly fee i.e. here in Alberta it is approximately $60.00 Canadian per month for Blue Cross. The government (oooo bad word) regulates how much a doctor can charge for a covered service. Not all things are covered, however - only the things that are considered essential. So in Alberta, for instance, you can see the doctor regardless if you do or do not have the cash at the time. All it takes is a computer linked to the insurance provider to bill for the service. No gouging or extensive paperwork. The only "responsibility" is that you pay your bills within a reasonable period of time, not whether or not you have the cash on hand. No laws are needed other than that every doctor charges an appropriate fee. I have a question. The repubs in the states like to say how great the free market and capitalism work, and most people agree - for the most part they do. However, for the unfettered one, there is always a caveat like "if only monopolies didn't exist that go against public interest", or "if only the companies responsible for the mess would clean it up before they go bankrupt" or "we would have great infrastructure if only somebody would pay for the roads". How come so often under the fabled unfettered free market (Now I am adding my own in a reverse way), these objectives are seldom met except to say that under a "real free market system" they would be? I guess we just have to keep on hoping and trying.

So they are down to developing customer centric solutions while leveraging their key synergies. Anything better than riding the corporate wave?

"Living on a Carbon Budget" - Parody of Living on a Prayer

Whoa, whoa, whoa
Once upon a time not long ago.

America used to only use coal
Koch brothers in control
Their down on their luck..
It's tough, so tough

Germany is 31% renewable
Working for her neighbours
She gives out her energy
For love, for love

Pielke says, "We've gotta hold on to what we've got"
It doesn't matter if we like solar a lot
We've got each other and that's a lot
For energy
We’ll give it a fill

Whoa, At 2035
We're almost there
Livin’ on a Carbon budget
Read my article and we'll make it - I swear
Whoa, livin on a Carbon budget

We need approximately 770 quads
Now the OCED holdin'in
What they used to make it talk
So tough so tough

China dreams of producing each day
Enough renewable energy
The USA whispers
"It's gonna be okay, someday"

Pielke says, "We've gotta hold on to what we've got"
It doesn't matter if we like solar a lot
We've got each other and that's a lot
For energy
We’ll give it a fill

Livin' on a Carbon budget

We've gotta hold on to coal ready or not
You live in the past if that's all that you've got

Whao
We’re almost there
Whao
Living on a Carbon budget
We’ll make it I swear.

I am one of those persons who get good grades and work hard and challenges myself in difficult fields, but fail when it comes to selling myself or cramming years worth of experience into 30 minutes for a job interview. ( I do well on tests). The motivating problem is that employers cannot seem to find good candidates for the job they are offering, of after they had offered the job, the candidate didn't turn out so good, same thing.

If the interview process was so great, there wouldn't be so much complaining. The problem is, if we eliminate grades as a measure, we will be eliminating another competency. It is a problem of false positives vs false negatives. Sure there are many people who pass college who are incompetent. They are the false positives. The false negatives are the ones who do not pass college who are not incompetent. So it is a balance. Do you want to make sure that nobody who isn't skilled doesn't get a job. (This works against society). Or do you want to take your chances with a system that generates some false positives and false negatives. For myself, I would certainly say that education has been great, because had I been hired into a position of worthiness, I probably would have been able to achieve much more. But consider the true positives, some of those would have been lost because their greatness would have never been realized if we didn't have a system where "building stuff" was more important than "How I answer a question of how I think my life would be if I got a chance to build stuff." .

Now do you want to argue with me when I say "had I been hired" and say that because I didn't I am not an achiever? Suppose I had been a "faker" who really didn't have any marketable skills to show. Or that people had wasted time on me since I didn't move on as well. Well, I guess I was one of the false positives then, but how would we ever know? Surely not putting the best use of everybody in society. The other alternative presented is to have all the best students who show creativity and motivation, but have the chance of generating false positives that have not learned the skills that enable them to "build stuff" and deal with the mechanical and non-human world if such a thing can exist. Sure we will all get along great on our little planet, but how about going beyond that?

My solution is a medieval one, have apprentices just like in the middle ages. Co-op's and industrial internships are a step, but how about taking it a step further and developing a system whereby people learn on the job while they are being educated? I believe Germany has this model. One side effect is that people have less choice later in life to decide which career path to follow, but do we have a better way now? As another side effect though, such an alternate system might might not do as well in generating people who sell themselves ... or people might switch to another employer who pays more but doesn't participate. One other side effect, is that those who are creative and talented might get relegated to a role that doesn't use their capabilities, or that the system might be inflexible once we have it set up. We could have a stream for such bright and talented individuals like they have in the movies, but now we can't even debate the merits of such a system because we haven't done so.

So in other words, instead of building a user-interface lab to track and observe reactions, Microsoft is using test users not associated with Microsoft, per say, saving some money while at the same time gathering what could argued to be private user data. Win for Microsoft but a loss for the consumer. I wonder if it is entirely modular so that they can simply just remove it.

Isn't your idea equivalent to no government? The idea behind government is to pool resources. Sure and who is charging for the service. Probably according to you it is not a government. Who then, is in charge of making sure we aren't held hostage on a road tax? Environmental tax? Nice idea. The whole idea behind protecting the environment is to foresee a common problem, then work towards a goal that will mitigate that problem. If we collect an "environment tax" for a so-called problem, how do we know it is going to solve that "right" problem? Besides isn't the whole idea behind a corporation is that they are fallible, that is they can die. If one of your issues suddenly become moot, we have a whole infrastructure dedicated to collecting those taxes and providing the service = less change. Most sane people (and I hate to label others the opposite) know that pooling of resources and hence some form of "socialization" is the best way to get things done, whether it be money from a general populace to an owner who prioritizes, or a government that collects taxes to do things that benefit others, and themselves. Suppose we need a road, or other infrastructure that benefits both you and your competitors, but building it would transfer wealth away from your business, would you build it? Probably not because it would put you at an immediate competitive disadvantage. Want to form a bigger group to get it done, no problem, there are bigger competitors. No one wants to be a sacrificial lamb. Can you see an answer to that problem?

In other news pizza is a vegetable.

Scientific consensus has not received a bad reputation. The scientific method has existed for hundreds of years. However, sometimes science makes people mad for the conclusions it has drawn. I bet you that "Americans for Progress" would not even venture to understand science. Others want it to be wrong, but they can't use the scientific method to disprove science. Flaimbat of a summary. Even for those who do not understand science, let us not try to weaken its conclusions by acting like it "has gotten a bad reputation".
A reputation is a little like science in that it takes several observations to come up with a reputation because there is something to it as opposed to an inkling or a hunch. The title "Some people have a hunch that science is not sound.", however false, would be more true but the real story here is "Some people want science to have a bad reputation because it serves their interest".

People Against Hockey Stick Graphs...seriously, in whose best interest is this lawsuit being filed? If his research was false, then other researchers will come forth to put another more valid model. That is how science works. The hockey stick graph was a model. Are models now illegal?

Did you know that there is a zero-day emacs flaw which allows an attacker to run arbitrary Lisp code??? Scary, I know, much less vim. If Emacs is to overtake Windows, this type of careless programming has to stop.

Respectfully sir, I don't have to. The fact that the name of the file given is infringing is not enough and the fact that the site is a torrent site. Even if there was a hash "identifying" the file, that is not 100% accurate, although it may be given a very strong indication of. I said "a site", not "the site", which is what the court will be determining, whether "a" site should be suspended due to a copyright holder's evaluation of "a" site and/or file. Like other commenters have mentioned, the burden placed on "a" site to manually check whether a file follows a certain copyright or not is expensive for "all" sites and is overy onerous. The solution is to go after the site itself, not the "linker" to the site. Perhaps there is an automated way to identifying a song, or perhaps. not "A" file on a site could be arbitrarily long and you could change just a few bits of a file and it would be different. You cannot decide with reasonable certainty right now without some algorithm or machine learning that uses incredible amounts of computing power to identify a file. BTW the industry is working tirelessly on this problem, and Google just received a patent on identifying objects in a file, so we are a step away from actually impersonating a person to see if a file resembles another file and that is the only way.

So just by looking at a site, you can tell if it is hosting infringing copies or not? How is it obvious? The bar is set way to low for prosecution. What about a site like GoDaddy who has probably hundreds of thousands of sites? Was the process automated? If so then it would be far too easy for someone to claim infringement when there is not, or even when there is clearly not infringement to try and take down someone's site because that person or organization does "not like" the site. Again just like the DMCA and we know that that process has not been abused. The problem lies with the owner and maintainer of the site. If we are going to prosecute everybody along the way for an infringement then bless our technological souls.

If you would notice a pattern where Microsoft names their products with simple, yet all encompassing names. For example:

Word,
Office,
SQL Server,
System Center,
and many others...including the name "Windows"

It is amazing as if Bill Gates had a dog and named him "Microsoft Woof".