Duff

People aren't "starving" in the sense that they are dying. But they are being fattened up on a diet of cheap carbohydrates and salty pre-prepared meals. In my small city, folks living in the poorest areas are a 30-minute bus trip away from a market with fresh produce.

In inner-city communities, the unemployment rate is over 30% in many cities. 30% of the able-bodied population does not have a job of any kind. 40 years ago, those same communities in my city were filled with people working in various industrial facilities, one of a dozen local financial institutions, small retailers, etc.

Have fun in the upper middle class ivory tower. But when the market for whatever you produce implodes due to an infusion of some low-cost commodity-type competitor, be happy. You may be 50 then and unemployable, but you can take pride in the fact that you'll be able to live out your retirement in a room somewhere, and that you'll no doubt have a color television, microwave and maybe internet access.

The birth rate argument doesn't hold water -- the folks with low birthrates are the same middle class people who are losing their livelihoods. A third child means that a middle class family loses the second car and cable sports package.

Poor people have high birthrates. The marginal cost of another kid doesn't really leave them any worse off. The average woman in Afghanistan has like 6 kids, for example.

Other highly technical areas, such as medicine, don't seem to have this problem. The average doctor has a better handle on science and mathematics that the most computer professionals ever had.

I don't know if the startup founder demographic is well defined enough to make a definitive statement.

There are probably significant demographic divisions (race, educational background, housing rent/own ratio, size of industry clusters, national origin, income distribution, etc) that probably have an impact.

Track changes isn't part of any standard, so it's harder to duplicate.

Technical superiority won't defeat Word. Office is on every business desktop because of the licensing regime that Microsoft has been very successful at implementing.

Note: In the Microsoft canon, Publisher is the desktop publishing tool for the masses.

The problem with Word is also it's greatness -- it does everything. It's a word processor. It integrates with SharePoint for content management and all sorts of whiz-bang features. You can make flyers. Insert cross-references. Translate stuff into German. Embed spreadsheets or crazy tie-ins to backend business systems. Draw stuff.

You're thinking in terms of a 2005 business model.

Even government organizations are buying lots of iPhones, even though Apple is an obnoxious vendor for those organizations to deal with.

Microsoft sells stuff these days by bundling product licensing. So unless Apple does something really dumb, you're not going to see enterprises mandating anything Microsoft mobile other than ActiveSync anytime soon.

Usually the government gets a fine or change in behavior.

Afterwards, individual claimants sue the loser, using the facts of the government case. For example, a few states have sued Intel and LCD manufacturers after an FTC ruling.

It's amazing how segmented the market has become. A few years ago, everyone pretty much had 1024x768 or 1280x1024.

Now, just about all cheap laptops are 1366x768. Everything else is all over the map!

Absolutely true -- it's more of a risk mitigation thing for me.

I had a ruptured disk and a spinal fusion a few years ago that went really well.... and I'm a little paranoid about keeping it that way!

I started doing the same thing last year, at least when the weather is pleasant. It's an amazingly liberating experience.

It makes you look forward to spring. I live in a place that typically has bad winters, so the prospect of breaking my neck on ice is not very appealing!

Great point. The whole notion of the "gated community" is patently offensive and only possible by virtue of the automobile.

Walk through an old city. Even in the victorian era, where families were packed in single rooms with no running water, they were just a 5-10 minute walk from stately townhouses of the well-to-do.

Now, we feel the need to separate ourselves with berms and fences.

Before we talk "erosion" we need to talk about what the market actually was. In reality, alot of lousy "photographers" were able to make a living because they had access to professional equipment.

So the challenge is getting to a higher level of professional skill that you can break off from the pack. That's harder to do now, as you're not making alot of money during the learning process.

I think that the legal theory is that possession of certain items is indicative of bad intent.

If I carry x quantity of illegal drugs, I'm a user getting charged with a misdemeanor. If I carry x + y quantity of illegal drugs, I'm presumed to be a drug dealer.

I'm just explaining the thought process -- not agreeing with it. Unlike drug sales or burglary, the most important tool for hacking is whatever is in your head.

I say follow the money. Things that don't make any sense on the surface often have simple motivations. Someone (perhaps someone affiliated with the Instagram funding round that closed days ago) needed an infusion of cash. Facebook has more cash than they know what to do with.

I think the difference, from the perspective of the regulator, is that a firearm is a tool with a limited scope of use, and that certain firearms (pistols) have a further limited scope of use that makes their existence noxious. In the US, the 2nd amendment makes this a controversial issue -- not so in most other jurisdictions.

Possession of burglary tools or drug paraphernalia is typically a modifier used to punish ill-intent. If I'm a carpenter walking home from work with a saw and hammer in my bag, I'm not going to be arrested for possessing burglar tools. If I'm trespassing on someone's property in the middle of the night with a crowbar, on the other hand, I'll probably be prosecuted for possessing burglar tools.

"Hacker tools" is sort of in the middle. A sysadmin with metasploit on his laptop is no different than a carpenter with his hammer. The Level-1 helpdesk technician pinched for stealing passwords is using it as a tool for doing "bad" things. The complication is that the line between "hacker tool" and "legitimate" software is thin or even overlapping.

Hanging out with people on a team isn't a friendship. For one, teams are ephemeral. More importantly, people generally don't behave like dogs, humping everything in sight... Some folks find themselves "in lust" at first sight. Others take longer to develop the bond that they share.

I think that in any long-term business or personal relationship between two people, you're going to have a point where at least one of the two has some level of attractiveness to each other. Whether that manifests into a sexual relationship depends on the people and their circumstances.

Were they really inspirational?

I remember my first walkman fondly. But I think that it was always a small cassette player to me.

I find all of this hand-wringing over working conditions to be the biggest pile of bunk that I have ever heard of.

The only reason that China is manufacturing just about every consumer product out there is that sending work there allows you to exploit cheap labor, lax environmental regulation, and other regulation found in western countries.

So now some westerners who "care" are waxing on about the poor iPhone workers. Why aren't the Chinese people making shoes, underwear, leather coats or other unpleasant jobs worthy of our pity?

This sounds like a very sober analysis of "the mob" and the inane-stream media whipping up a phony crisis.

While there is some overreaction, it has been documented that teachers and corrections officers have been asked to provide access to their Facebook account as a condition of employment.

No big deal, right? Well, I'd argue that it is --- I know at least a dozen teachers and a few policemen. If those acquaintances are my "friends", the person doing the background snooping will have access to things relating to me that I was intending to share only with friends.

You nailed it.

The worst part about that is that the people behind Facebook think this is a great thing.

Perhaps this is just another case where the Obama administration is "speaking in shorthand."

It sounds like the president is supporting SOPA, but in actuality he is speaking in some law professor dialect where words do not mean what they seem to mean.

Agreed. If you stop me from copy and pasting, there is always pen and paper. Security auditors have fun making companies look dumb when they find passwords to critical systems on post-it notes.

My #1 pet peeve is annoying address fields.

I live in New York. Why can't I type "New York", "NY", or have the system figure out where I live by zipcode. Instead, I get some sort of pull-down menu.

You already asked me where I live and I filled out the stupid form. So you know that I said "New York". And that I gave you a US-formatted zipcode. And that I came from a US IP-Block. And that my browser language is en-us. So why do you have a mandatory field for "Country" implemented as a massive pull-down with Afghanistan listed first?

People act differently around unusually attractive and unattractive people. Some of these folks have issues that seem odd at first glance, like a tall, exceptionally attractive woman who cannot find a date.

It happens to guys too. At the end of the day, humans are really bizarre creatures.

The published examples that I have seen were teachers and prison guards. Employers of these folks want evidence of fraternization with students and inmate families, respectively.

I don't know if it matters whether there is a bona fide investigation or not. The police have broad authority to identify subjects of investigations.

The NYS Department of Labor and the NYS Office of the Inspector General placed GPS devices on the personal vehicles of an employee who was being investigated for timecard abuse. (http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/nyclu-files-suit-...)

This isn't exactly the same, but I think the issues are similar enough for discussion purposes. Police do have the ability to have investigators follow someone to learn about their behavior. But the costs associated with doing this, both in dollars and investigative resources, are high enough that police do not follow subjects 24x7 often -- certainly not to investigate some state employee's time card issues. How low does the bar go? Will the cops track me if I'm suspected of illegally obtaining fireworks? Jump a subway turnstile? Shoplift a candy bar?

This relatively new technology lowers the cost curve so much that the barrier to entry is trivally low. And that is a problem that must be moderated by some power external to the police.

Is anyone harmed? I don't know how you could argue that having the authorities systematically track someone's movements isn't harmful. Even people as irrational as crazy ex-boyfriends track the movements of their ex's to intimidate. How would you feel personally if you found a GPS tracker on your car? Or discovered that your phone was tapped? I would feel sick -- whether I was a criminal or not!

It's not a myth -- it just isn't an absolute statement.

I'm an employee in a large enterprise. With a multi-year contract. So getting rid of me without cause is challenging because it is expensive and onerous to do so. Corporate politics is a double-edged sword; it can kill you, but it can also protect you.

In 2008 and 2009, many small business owners and independent consultants got screwed in a major way. I think that I let go of about 30 people in that situation. I also know of companies who lagged payments... that invoice billed on March 1 may not have been paid until the following February. Those folks may not have been "fired", but they were hurt badly. When the client doesn't pay, salaries still need to be paid, taxes collected, etc.

So if you're an at-will employee who is an average performer who doesn't politic well in a company that purges X% of people every year then yeah, you're screwed. But I betcha that mediocre performer probably isn't a good entrepreneur either.

The court order is important, because it shines a light into a dark corner. Like cockroaches, bureaucrats engaged in behavior that they believe to be wrong always avoid the light.

Court involvement means court supervision and ultimately a more consistent application of justice. The courts are more trustworthy than a faceless police agency. I agree that it's a good thing that the police have access to this sort of technology -- but someone needs to watch the watchers.

That's the police equivalent of saying "Here, have a cookie for your way out."

Call your local alderman, etc and make a stink about it.