Pangloss

Cosine, I'm sorry that you're having trouble following a linear threaded discussion, but that's hardly my fault, and nobody else seems to have had a problem with the story that I told. And I think it's downright disengenuous of you to suggest that I'm ignoring the NYU subject, since I've actually posted several messages in this thread that addressed the issue directly. It's also factually incorrect to say that someone who makes a side comment is "ignoring real events in order to rant". We're having a conversation here, not a formal debate. But most of all, it's dishonest and disrespectful. So further posts along those lines will be removed.

Well that's some pretty obvious circular reasoning. But here's how you break that cycle: The impetus to life one's self out of the safety net is that it's the only way to really get ahead. If you start passing out BMWs to fast food workers just because it equates them with mortgage brokers then you've REALLY lost all incentive for anyone to become a mortgage brokers. (And you can't say "I'm not suggesting BMWs" unless you refute my point about the Census Bureau and the 45 million Americans living "under the poverty line" who actually own homes, have medical care, own two cars, a DVD player, etc etc etc.) Also, you've misrepresented "safety nets". They're temporary anyway, so you can't just live off them indefinitely, at least at the federal level (I'm told that's not true in all areas of the country, and many people in New Orleans were living off the dole, but I haven't really seen anything definitive on this). Anyway, that's why they call them "safety nets". Unemployment compensation being the typical example. In Florida that's six months, with a six month extention you can apply for. That's it.

There's nothing about the article that suggests that we'd no longer be using "normal installers". This looks to me like they're just trapping any installer's "please reboot" call to the system. Right now we get a message prompting us to reboot or not. Instead we'd get no message, because the system files in question had already been reset, or we'd get the same old message we've always gotten, because they were in use. As an added side benefit, if the system does have to reboot, and we approve the rebooting, it'll optionally come back to its current state. You do understand, don't you, that in those situations if you don't reboot, your computer is still not in its original state, right? You may be using the original files at that point, but you can't roll back from that state. You have to complete the changeover first (by rebooting). That's always been a tenuous situation and not really desirable, if you think about it. This strikes me as better. It's never really made any sense that you have to reboot because the system files that were replaced MAY be in use. Installers would still have the ability to sneak files into your system directory and replace system DLLs, just as they can do now. Who can follow a list of files flying by at 900mph? What's generally stopped that from happening is (a) recognition by programmers that it's a bad idea, and (b) better installer wizards (such as the one in Visual Studio) that default to the program directory. At any rate I'm keeping an open mind here and I'm definitely going to be watching for issues like the one you raised, but I don't see any indication of it at the moment.

Er, that post confirms the tacit agreement that nobody minded my changing the subject. (I.E. I changed the subject and you went along with it, as demonstrated by that post of yours.) I'm not going to argue over whether it was a valid post, that's just silly. It was a one-off side comment. We've already moved on. Get over it.

Holy cow! A Bush supporter who lives in the People's Republic of Taxachusetts?!?! (grin) Just kidding, welcome to the boards. Always nice to see someone take a contrary-to-the-prevailing-wind view around here.

It supports it. The finger-painting GAs don't want to recognize the fact that their CHOSEN profession fails to bring in as much income to the university as that of engineers or applied sciences or whatever it was that the GAs were making more money at. They want to be paid the same, in spite of the fact that what they do is not as valuable. Obviously the situation is a little differen here, since the GAs presumably do their jobs without errors, tardiness, and so forth (I'll just assume there's a way to fire them if they don't). But the underlying premise is the same. It doesn't matter what they do, or how much money what they do brings in. You want them paid a "living wage". I will admit that in the case of GAs, the amount of money we're talking about is hardly an example of living high on the hog. That's my complaint about the issue as applied to the general workforce, but here the situation is different, and that's one of the reasons I'm keeping an open mind about it. But that was just one of several arguments I've made against it. Anyway, don't be so nitpicky. It's a long and fully involved thread covering multiple subjects, and nobody had a problem with it when I widened the subject earlier, so I'm going to hold you to that tacit agreement now.

My wife is an accountant for a small manufacturing business. They're in an economically depressed part of town. The company my wife works for is owned by her family, and operated by her two brothers. She brings home stories. Oh, does she bring home stories! Remind me to post her basic math skills test some time. Anyway, here's a situation that came up recently. She mentioned it tonight when I mentioned to her over dinner the interesting discussion that we've been having about capitalism versus socialism in this thread. She had an employee who worked for her in the accounting department a while back, and after she'd been there for a couple of months she came to my wife one day and asked for a raise far in excess of what an employee might normally receive after a year of employment. This employee had a history of making costly mistakes, tardiness, and difficulty working with others. My wife denied her the raise, and a few days later she departed, presumably for greener pastures. One of the things my wife found interesting about the encounter is that the person in question actually believed that she *deserved* the raise. When she didn't get it, she couldn't understand why not. Mind you, this was the accounting department, where mistakes can cost serious money. My wife is no taskmaster -- she has no problem with people making mistakes. It's when they don't admit their errors, correct them, and seek to not make them again that she has a problem. This girl just could never figure out why that was important. The thing that's so frightening to me is how frequently my wife brings home stories like this. People aren't interested in earning their way anymore. They want it handed to them on a silver platter. They toss around phrases like "living wage" and "fairness from employers to employees", but what they really mean is "you have it, give it to me."

Oh I think we've already established our relative positions, cosine. If you're not going to refute specifics, then we're just knocking opinions back and forth, so there's not much room for debate.

And my position is that if survival requires money, then those essentials needed for survival are already sufficiently provided by society. Regarding EA, the employees weren't being mistreated, they were given the option of working for the company. They also had the option not to do so. Proof positive: I wouldn't have put up with it for a split second. And I'd have turned out just fine. Now if they actually had unsafe conditions, like a hazaard that the employees didn't know about, that would be different. Or if they broke employment laws in some way, you might have a point there. We're rapidly approaching the point where we'll just have to agree to disagree, I'm afraid. But I respect your opinion on it.

Nonsense. It's politics at the point of a gun. Whoa! Do you see what you just did? You just compared people who have no money, who live from paycheck to paycheck, who are always the employed and not the employing... to dogs! Okay, I can see that you know they're actually people, but you view them as second class citizens, incapable of defending or promoting themselves. In your view, society has to take care of them. And here's the key: Society has to take care of them (again in your view) not because they are starving in the streets, and unable to get food, water or shelter (because as I established above, that's not happening), but because they are inferior to the ones who have money! No they can't. That's certainly not the case right now, for example. You've got fast food restaurants offering cash signing bonuses, for crying out loud! ABC News ran a story the other day saying that this is very much an employee's job market, from top to bottom, in every sector. And the same thing was true during much of the Clinton bubble as well. Sure, I agree with that statement, in so far as it goes. I believe in quality control (such as the FDA). I believe in helping hands and safety nets, as discussed above. I'm comfortable with temporary unemployment compensation. All of those things can be viewed as investments. This was what Ayn Rand never quite understood. Anyway, I'm getting digressive as I get tired. I'd better wrap this up. I'm actually really familiar with that situation, knowing several people who worked there, as it so happens. It's a bit of a long story but just to cut to the chase, I remember chastising my friends about staying in that industry and having them tell me "yeah I know, but I love making games". Well okay, but you're the one capitulating, putting yourself into their arena. So don't be surprised when they treat you like scum again. It's a free country. If you don't like what's happening to you, change your situation. We discussed it here previously on the boards and there are some threads on it. Remember when we talked about the census and the poverty line, recently? I'm sure you participated. It's the one where I kept harping on the fact that they all had two cars, owned a house, got health care from the state (indigent), owned a DVD player and a TV, etc etc etc. I kept lamenting the fact that we had NO statistics on the ACTUAL poor in our society, but a damn fine number on the folks who owned all of those things! See my sig for an additional clue. (If you still don't remember I'll look it up tomorrow.)

Both employee and employer set a value on the worth of their work. When they agree, or compromise to reach an agreement, then a relationship can be established. When they disagree, or cannot come to agreement, they do not establish a relationship. That's just the opposite that I'm saying. I believe that an employee gets to declare his worth by refusing to accept the worth assigned to him by the state or an employer. It's not my employer's job to hold my welfare close to his heart. It's MINE. THAT's freedom. Not the other way 'round. To me, it sounds like you believe that employers are masters, a higher class of individual, endowed with a certain moral obligation to behave in a responsible manner in the discharge of their duties. Employees are servents to the master class of employers, and the state protects them and empowers them to fight against the improperly exersized power of the master employer class. In other words, to me it sounds like you don't believe that employers are empowered with the same rights as non-employers. Let me tell you what I believe. And, by the way, I believe this to be immediately apparent, not something that has to be analyzed and discovered. I believe that everyone is the same. That everyone was born with the same freedoms, which cannot be abbrogated by a state without just cause. I believe that in order to guarantee those rights, we created a government based on that principle, and that it gains its powers from the agreement amongst its members that this simple truth is not only glaringly obvious, but the only possible conclusion that any sane human being can make. Or, put another way: Whether it is the inferiority of racial segregation or the superiority of money makes no difference in the end. All men are equal. All rights are the same. And everyone gets them. How Bill Gates decides to spend his money is no different from whether a black woman has to give up her seat for a white man. It is the same thing. come on, Pangloss. There is no need for petty insults. We're all adults here. I phrased that specifically to try and avoid directing any insult towards you while still making what I believe is a central point in my argument: How can someone who believes that their worth is determined for them by another human being look in the mirror and have any respect for what they see? This point has nothing to do with you and me, and the interesting and enlightening debate that we're having. Please don't take it that way.

Yah we're cross-posting, but I'm about to run off to dinner so I'm gonna post one more quick thought and let you have the floor, and I'll drop by later tonight if I get a chance. It's an interesting discussion, and I hope I'm not coming across in a pejorative fashion. I certainly agree that employees should seek the highest level of compensation that they can, and when it comes to government-funded services then it gets a little more complicated than the standard capitalist model, because the worker cannot "shop around". So in cases like this I'm amenable to a certain degree of third party intervention and perhaps even artificially inflated compensation. Perhaps a compromise might be to avoid unionization, but allow the workers to bargain somewhat collectively. Then involve the taxpayer in the decision -- tell me why it's in my best interest to pay finger painter TAs more money than they currently receive. Tell me how it's good for my state if we have more finger painters. Perhaps it'll mean better looking public facilities. More arts options for kids. More places of entertainment and education and even edutainment. All of these are positive things -- sell me on 'em. Ask me to fund a specific program that pays those finger painter TAs. Have a referendum, and if people vote in favor, float a bond on it. That way I get to at least participate a bit in the process. Anyway, an interesting discussion, and I look forward to hearing more about how it works out for NYU and NY taxpayers.

Yah, well put. And of course, we've had to struggle over similar conundrums in our country lately over a little thing called the War in Iraq. We've hardly come out squeeky clean in the arena of affecting civilians ourselves.

Yes there are. And the correct response to such a situation is to QUIT! I just can't fathom how we've forgotten that in this society. The concept of self-worth has been completely replaced with demanding that the government order the employer to pay what you perceive is your worth! It's just not something I understand at all. How can anybody say something like the above, and still look themself in the mirror? Does someone who says something like that have any interest at all in bettering themself? Do they just not think that it's even possible that they could be what they want to be in life? What a strange, strange concept. You know what the result of enforcing that would be, right? Fewer TAs so that the ones they can afford get paid what you think they should get paid. Either that or more money taken from my pocket. I want some say in that. As I indicated above, I'm open to the suggestion that more, higher-paid TAs is a good investment. Show me why. Convince ME, not some union boss who just has a different kind of gun pointed at me. By the way, I've heard that waiters can make $50-60k/yr in NYC. Why not do that? Where's the problem? What difference does it make that they have to wait tables, so long as they're closer to achieving their goal? Why would anybody see it as a BAD thing that a TA had to work hard to achieve their goals?

Great! Glad to hear it. In fact that's my present situation almost to a T. I made a pile consulting, and now I'm back in school working on a PhD. I got low-interest loans to pay for it, but I certainly didn't *expect* them. Nor do I expect to be paid a certain amount either as a student teacher or once I complete my degree. That doesn't mean I'll let myself be run over by unscrupulous bean-counters, of course. If they don't want to pay me what I think I'm worth, I'll shop my skill around. If NOBODY wants to pay me what I think I'm worth, I'll either change tracks, or settle for less. This is all part of the basic set of assumptions I accepted when I made my choices. Where's the problem? An interesting point. But who gets to make that decision? The people who earned the money don't get to decide how they're going to spend it? Why is it *your* call? As a taxpayer, I want to make that call. I certainly don't want some partisan union officials making it without my getting any say in the matter. Isn't that fair? This is where you need to focus, by the way. I'm all for this argument -- appeal to me, the taxpayer, on the merits of investing my hard-earned money in an area that has little industry demand at the moment. Convince me why it's worth it. By the way, I'm all for the public arts. PBS, opera, the ballet, even public funds going to baseball stadiums and such. The point being that I believe in investment. But it's my money. I get to decide. Not the recipient. Yup. Life sucks. What are you doing to change it? I mean, besides demanding that other people change it with their resources which you're going to take from them by force? Here's a thought: Earn a pile of money, and then spend it on the things YOU think are important. Like... finger painters who don't make enough money. I'd be okay with some low-income preferential treatment. I'm all about compromise, and I'm all about safety nets. I know I sound absolutist in my statements in this thread, and I don't mean to come across that way. I'm quite certain, in fact, that the specific situation we're discussing at NYU will be resolved through compromise. (shrug) But you're wrong to say "they couldn't quit because they had too few other options". That's just nonsense. Not in our society. Ugh. The fact that they don't have any such obligation, moral or legal, is exactly what makes this society work. What constitutes a "living wage"? We have 45 million people living below the poverty line in this country, but what does that actually mean? It means (on average) that they have two cars, a VCR and a DVD player, a big TV with cable, they own their own home, they work and are self-sufficient! Isn't that a "living wage"? Aren't you really saying "employers have a moral obligation to pay every employee enough to buy a BMW and living an an expensive house in an upscale neighborhood"? Isn't that what you REALLY mean? The problem with our society isn't that people can't do what they want to do. It's that they've come to expect compensation for doing what they want to do. When did THAT happen? It says in the Constitution that you can do anything you want so long as it doesn't hurt anybody else. Where does it say in the Constitution that other people have to have money pulled from their pockets at the point of a gun just so you can do what you want to do?

No, I'm saying that there's no such thing as "reasonable wages". Nor is there any validity to your implied concept of workers "deserving" anything more than what an employer may or may not offer for their services. Jobs are not a right. Nor are wages. Such things are earned. Money does not grow on trees -- the employers didn't grow it on a farm. They earned it, and as with any ordinary citizen they have a right to spend it as they see fit. Granted the "employer" in this scenario may be a government entity, but I'm not sure I see why a different standard should be applied. Again, nobody is forcing anybody to go to this school or take these TA positions. They're human beings. Why are they acting like slaves?

I think the horse is out of the barn with regard to background-task-intensive operating systems. (chuckle) I'm not totally clear on how this feature would work, but I saw nothing to indicate that it would install something without the user's knowledge, at least to a degree beyond what already happens when you install a program. There's nothing to stop an installer that you execute from overwriting system files *now*, so long as they're not in use, and dumb programers used to do this all the time. And the fact that it doesn't happen much today has to do with better installer programs (and their wizards), not smarter programmers. So I'm not sure I buy that argument. But it's certainly a valid concern.

Well we'd probably agree that whether sonic booming a civilian population represents a physical danger to the population would have to be objectively determined -- we can't simply take the Palestinian leadership's word for it. But the question isn't really whether it's better or worse than other forms of bombing. The question is whether they should be prosecuting civilian targets at all. I didn't agree with that strategy when it consisted of demolishing civilian homes because they may contain terrorists either, for example.

Oh I agree with that. Assuming it's not all part of some nefarious scheme, the about-face of Sharon is about as fundamental and ground-breaking as one can imagine, and leaves one only to wonder why he couldn't have made that turnaround *before* he triggered the intefada (or bombed the Liberty, or murdered arab prisoners of war, etc etc etc). They're no angels, but they're certainly the lesser of two evils. But as to how this is relevent to the issue of whether they should be sonic-booming civilians in Gaza, I'm not clear.

And again, I'm trying to keep an open mind here -- maybe I'm just missing something fundamental. Do these people have no other options at all? They HAVE to go to certain schools? I know of the difference between tuition and matriculation for in-state students -- are ALL the schools in the state like this? The other thing that I don't understand is that aren't these schools operating on a non-profit basis? Isn't that true of any state or traditional private university -- the ones we're presumably talking about here? So it's not like they're saving money in order to make more profit, right? I guess the thing I don't understand here is the use of force. Why the hurry to grab the tax-collector's gun? If the students are filling the seats, there's not a problem, or they wouldn't be filling the seats, right? If the students stop filling the seats, the stipend goes up, right? Where's the need for the gun?

See this is a reasoning I've never really understood. It's kinda like running into a burning building to grab a pile of cash and then saying that your lack of fire-resistant clothing has created "a real burden". Did someone twist their arms and say "We have decreed that you must pursue a career of finger painting, and therefore we are going to dictate what school you go to, how much of a stipend you're allowed to make, and where you spend your free time"? If it's such a burden, why do it? Why not do something else? Go somewhere else? Do something more lucrative, if money is what's important. Why bang your head against the wall? If their program is that inept, wouldn't actions speak louder than words here? Wouldn't students be failing to sign up for the program at all, if it were that bad? I guess I just don't understand the underlying premise here. Why is it that people feel forced to do this? I did catch the bit where cosine said that for some degree programs a TA position was required, but I still don't see a problem. Nobody says you have to go to school there instead of somewhere else. But you hear this over and over and over again, so much so that nobody bothers to question it. You hear things like "You HAVE to go to the good school in order to have ANY chance of success in THIS economy", which is a sentence that contains so many straw men I don't even know where to begin! But you hear this sort of nonsense time and again. What I would say to the TA is: Do you want an education, and do what it takes to get ahead in the world, or do you want to bang your head on the wall repeatedly until perhaps, some day, out of the blue, either someone gives you something they earned, or the government takes it from them by force and gives it to you?

IMO this is the part that's really bizarre: What in the world are they thinking? Why would they think that something like that would decrease civilian support for armed Palestinian groups? Isn't it rather obvious that it would have the opposite effect? I do agree with the point that criticism over Israel tends to be overblown compared with criticism of Palestinians, but Israel's done far worse than this. But that's really beside the point, I think. The issue here is whether they should be sonic-booming civilians. I don't think they should. By the way, YT, you need to read a little more about Israeli fundamentalist groups. Some of those guys make run-of-the-mill islamofascists look like harmless little brownshirts. These people have committed and been caught trying to commit attrocities of exactly the same nature as Al Qaeda terrorists. Make no mistake about it, the pressure from the radical right wing of Israeli politics is quite real.

Ever postpone updating a driver or patching the OS because you may have to reboot and you're busy doing other things right now? Microsoft is adding something to Windows Vista called "Restart Manager". It runs in the background and monitors system components. When a new driver or update is added and the installer calls for a restart, the Restart Manager is queried to see if that portion of the operating system is "in the clear". If it is, then just that component is restarted without restarting the entire computer. If the component is busy, RM can optionally take a snapshot of the system and reboot it back to its current state (like going into sleep mode and coming back). Pretty cool eh? http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1895276,00.asp

Ok, I'll categorize you some more then, since you've invited me to do so. The question isn't whether other people's eyes are closed, but why yours aren't open. The tragedy of your position is that you're taking the former position in your own signature, not the latter. And every shred of evidence proves it. This is not about politics, so I'm closing this thread. You can go join in mutual masturbation with your fellow conspiracy theorist elsewhere.