drharris

Um, no. I (the consumer) pay for my bandwidth. End of story. Anything else is a violation of the pipes that run the internet.

Storage is cheap with digital music. Even assuming 10 MB/song, you're looking at 40TB, less than $4k/mo on S3. It's not trivial, but it's probably a drop in the bucket compared to their other costs. Realistically the file sizes are much less than 10MB.

1000 times yes. Back in 7th grade I'd beaten all the zorks and countless other adventures. Never did manage to figure out HGTTG. It's my white whale.

I figured I could either spend the next week fighting script execution on Windows or just spin up a linux VM and be good to go. I wound up installing ubuntu manually on a VirtualBox instance. Had heard of Vagrant, but didn't realize what it offered!

Man, no way this is going to run on any sort of Windows environment. Guess I won't get to sneak in CTF time at work this time around.

You didn't know that Google has secretly been amassing a huge tank of carbon. There's a big red button that, when pressed, will release that carbon. I thought everybody knew this.

But, but... they took college classes. And they have a badge or something.

It's all very important and necessary. Only the sheep-like are ok with a government that operates in secret against its own citizens. They have pitted themselves in an information war against their own citizenry. Like corporations amass patents, our only weapon to defend ourselves is as much information as we can gather about them.

I think that holds pretty true for many things in life (i.e. the "teen pregnancy" gene), but definitely for money management. I also knew decently smart kids that didn't have a lot that now as adults go out and waste money at casinos and sports betting. They were a lot like us growing up, but their parents would spend anything extra on the lotto. So it definitely seems it has more to do with things we observe as children rather than actual income, education, and even learning from bad examples.

Agreed. I got really caught up in the "be your own boss" mentality and career path until I realized that I hated the business side of things, didn't like collecting money from people, and would rather spend time increasing technical abilities rather than learning business stuff. In the end, the corporate route (despite its obvious issues) made me happier. But, I also put in a lot of hours at lesser jobs along the way to get me to this point. No gas stations, but plenty of other jobs that are just a paycheck. Didn't make me happy, but they did pay the bills while I was getting a degree.

Your experience mirrors mine to a large degree. I think most intelligent kids know their family's financial situation, and adjust accordingly. I didn't even ask for name brand clothing or toys because 1) I knew we couldn't afford them, and it would put stress on them, and 2) years of life in this environment made me not care about such frivolities. Kids aren't stupid, they learn proper spending behavior by what they see. I saw my parents buy bare necessities and working hard jobs. Naturally, I learned a hard work ethic and proper spending habits (barring a few years of excess in college when I started making actual money and felt it should be spent).

Right now we make good money (gotta love computing), and because of my habits the money fight is nonexistent in our family. If anything, I find myself constantly fighting to buy our kids less crap. I saw both kinds of kids growing up, and it's a really interesting thing to see how they are now as thirty-somethings. Many of the kids like me are in my boat now - even those who don't have education and professional jobs. Kids who got everything are now suffering in the current economy. It's a stark and obvious difference, at least where I'm originally from.

It's a nice life this way. I like getting a bunch of money for Christmas, and splurging on a tea mug and a set of digital calipers. Everything else is invested in the hope of early retirement. I hope my kids can see what I'm doing and do the same.

And when they're 24 and still at home because "working at the local gas station just isn't what fulfills [their] passion", you might wish differently. An easy environment rarely creates something worthwhile. Steel, and all that.

I find it refreshing. In an age where everyone on the internet is trying to "tell a story" it's nice to just have some plain facts and information presented in plain old text once in awhile. Seriously, how many "why our startup failed/succeeded/grew/shrank/lobotomized" articles do we need? It's nice to have people doing actual analysis with numbers once in awhile.

I think I get what you're saying... mainly that when wealth is so centered in that 0.1% upper crust of power brokers, that it keeps potentially wealthy people off the boat. Combine that with the fact these people are well connected and intertwined, and it becomes

> Wealth, more evenly distributed, would give more people a greater chance at, in turn, creating more wealth.

Yes and no. Look at lottery winners (or other windfall recipients) as an example that the average person cannot create wealth. Some people are able to create wealth and most are not. Let's say Bill Gates does indeed give every person that shares his picture on Facebook $5000 dollars. Most people will waste it, some will use it to pay down debt, and a small percentage will create wealth from it. I think there are two groups that could potentially benefit the most from this. Upper lower class folks can easily put this money toward education and skills that would have a net positive. Upper middle class folks might potentially start new businesses and markets which have a definite impact.

If people have a problem with current wealth distribution, there is a very easy (not easy in the sense of doing it, rather in understanding it) way to reallocate it - get out of debt. Debt is one of the main ways rich people get richer, by reallocating money from the poor to the rich. Getting rid of their main source of income would force them to invest in real, tangible businesses that solve real problems (because presumably without debt, nobody is buying a new TV yearly anymore). I believe debt is the primary source of economic stratification right now, not income.

> In terms of large corporations, I do think it would be more beneficial to split the money more evenly amongst the people who helped create the wealth.

Amen to this. This culture where CEOs earn 20x the average employee salary is screwed up. Also, it would be beneficial if they didn't own every politician ever created, but that's another story.

Yes, wholeheartedly agree here. I was not thinking of having the basic Maslow levels met, as I think that kind of social net should be somewhat guaranteed, and the economic benefit is obvious. Once those needs are met, does a redistribution of $100 have a net positive or negative on the overall economy? Not sure, but gut tells me negative. The wealthy will invest, which has a tiny net positive on the economy that compounds over time. The non-wealthy will consume, which has a positive immediate benefit on the economy, but poor long-term benefit along with terrible environmental consequences. Really, we probably need both for any economy to survive, but consumption is what the middle class is for anyway.