B0Z

There are very few legislation/regulation-based restrictions between the level of one's income and the repayment schedule/amount of one's student loans here in the US though it depends largely on how the education debt was financed. The vast majority of loans are made from a large commercial bank to a private citizen. The bank makes these high-risk loans because the US Federal Government "co-signs" on the loan for the student receiving the funds. In the event of an economic downturn or financial hardship, if the former student has limited income (underemployment) but can pay something, the student negotiates a payment amount with the bank. If the former-student is unemployed or has such severe economic hardship that they can pay nothing, the borrower's loan can go into what they call forbearance. Been a long time for me, but I believe you can have a total forbearance time of 36 months over the life of your loan. If, for a variety of reasons, you default on the loan, the lender can/will submit a claim to the Federal Department of Education and the lender will be compensated for the remaining amount of principle on the loan. At this point, your loan is now "owned" by the Department of Education who has substantially more latitude to get their money out of you than a commercial lender does (they can garnish your wages through your employer and keep annual income tax over-payments). But, getting back to your question, there are no established laws that dictate a lender can extract more from you than you can reasonably pay depending on your circumstances. Lender's are incentivized to work with you for 2 reasons, 1) the loan is guaranteed by the Federal Government so they will not lose a dime of principle 2) the longer you carry the debt, the more money the lender can make from interest.

Note: Congress did pass a law that stipulates that student loan debt cannot ever be included in a personal bankruptcy. The loan, theoretically, can and will follow you for as long as you live until you pay it off.

Absolutely nothing I've read in the last decade exacerbates a feeling of complete helplessness as much as this article (and 60 minutes video mentioned) does.

^

While the password limit raises some concerns, this ^ is exactly what I took away from the exchange. Brilliant support!

Last night I experienced 70% packet loss just trying to access the site. Hopefully it was just a launch hiccup.

As if Lessig's feeling of extreme loss isn't already justified and understandable given their years-long friendship, Lessig's comments punctuate the grief harder than I thought was possible. Lawrence, it's not your fault!

They aren't used. It's no different than trying them on in a Victoria's Secret. Trying stuff on is a little different for women than it is men.

The behavior you experienced from the "manager" was, at best, grossly inappropriate. It may or may not help now, but I think it's important to be mindful of where other peoples' perspective is. The "shoe on the other foot" mentality sounds like it has been forgotten both both the manager and you. It's a two-way street.

Personally I only think it's annoying if you're only skimming the article and scrolling fast. What about pinning the affiliate images fixed above, but scrolling a smaller, less intrusive "Find all the ingredients for this recipe here". And possibly instead of scrolling, fade it in. (Just my $0.02)

Agreed. I logged in just to upvote this response.

I don't think it's trolling based on the following point. As a purely intellectual exorcize, the article bases an argument on an unproven stated fact -- that version "x" of Windows sucked or didn't suck followed by a version that reversed the trend. While the merits of why an OS will or won't be "good" may seem completely subjective to me, unit sales data as a percentage of in-use computers around the world would provide a nice starting point for debate. Windows 95 (for me) was a watershed OS that has influenced how we use MS OS's _to_this_day_. I just don't have sales figures to support my claim, therefore mine is just an opinion -- like the original article.

I'm mildly curious why this one is down voted. No link?

Damn, shingen. I could have written your response word for word. Well said.

I am sorry this happened to you. By and large, the United States is a great place to live with lots of friendly people (and friendly cops) with whom to share your life with. It would be easy to paint all of America with a broad brush, but I assure you that you've experience an _exception_ to the rule.

Uhh... Did Monster cancel your guys' account for overuse or something?

Because that's his basement, where his hot water heater is surrounded by dirt where one could also assume the washing machine and clothes dryer is.

One the one hand, the scale of this dirt playground and expensive radio controlled cars would make any grown man weep for a chance to be 10 years old again. On the other hand, you have to hope that this much obsession for 100% perfectly-scaled realism isn't as creepy as it looks.

In any event, this is impressive.

One of the things The Securities Act of '33 was established to do was to protect the general public from themselves and from predatory brokers who were loaning a generally ignorant public caught up in speculative bubbles. Brokers were lending people up to 2/3rds of the face value of stock they were purchasing. When the market started to get cold feet and rumors ran rampant, people were selling every stock they owned just to cover the amount they were leveraged.

I haven't read the bill before Congress, but I would think if there are provisions that prohibit borrowing as a mechanism for financing stock purchases, this would benefit the start up ecosystem. The system in it's current state only benefits the very, very wealthy, and forces young start ups into term negotiations with people who do it for a living.

Methinks there is / will be heavy lobbying on behalf of the major investment banks who would naturally oppose any new members in their club.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_1929

Don't be such an engineer. :) :: wink ::

The previous reply is a good interpretation of what I was talking about. Western nations lead the world in technology and advancement because those who do not adapt and grow are marginalized. To be fair to your point though, I should not have used "the Koreans". I used to live there and they are as advanced technologically as any Western nation in the world. Ne, they are "in the club". (I wish the same could be said for their city planning and traffic grids. Ugg.)

This is just the way it is. Deal with it! Get in the game or GTFO the field.

Sure, having the fire in your belly can mitigate much if not most of the "crochety" factor as can staying on the bleeding edge of coding and problem solving. But... if <insert random industry> didn't do this, if the biggest worry was keeping the old farts employed and coddling their irrelevance, <insert random industry> would NEVER progress. The US would be last in the world for meaningful product or service disruptions that every other country strives for.

Again, at 42 with 16 years in technology, I'm one of the old farts. Skills that once got me the coveted double eyebrow raise and an extra digit on my bonus check, now get me the loathed single eyebrow raise and a comfy slot on the next RIF list.

The union between a company and its employee base can be compared to a youthful first marriage between 20-somethings. Almost as soon as you say "I do", subconsciously, your will and desire to improve, to change, to grow starts to decline. You get fat. Your spouse gets fat. You gradually stop going out with friends or trying new things. Squirt out a couple of pups and you can pretty much write the excuses for why you can't do "this" or "that" in stone.

The world is dynamic and the Indians, the Chinese, the South Americans, the Koreans, the Russians, pick your own example -- all of them -- understand this as a simple fact of life. From the moment they wake in the morning to the second their head hits the dirt floor at night, they are mentally and emotionally pounded with the relentless concept that they are NOT in first place. They are NOT the leader. They have miles and miles and miles to go before they can even begin to break into the same stratosphere of "advancement" that Westernized nations have taken for granted for the last 100 years. We provide for them a marker. A goal. A far-off, seemingly impossible to reach objective of what is possible when you push yourselves to limits you never knew you were capable of conquering.

So, no. I don't feel sorry for the elder statesmen of <insert random industry>, and I'm even one of them. The very second I see my career plight as someone else's fault or the responsibility of something I can't control, I have already lost. I might as well close up shop and get my blue Wal-Mart vest on. Start practicing "would you like fry's with that". No. My position in technology is my responsibility. My relevance in comparison with you wiry fuckers 25 years my junior is 120% totally and without question not only my own responsibility, but my own choice. The truth is, if given even moderately comparable skills to you young lads on an interview, I have a leg up. I can run circles around the kids who still rent apartments and are still making payments on their first car. I have the benefit of patience that you only get from trying to do the same thing over and over 1000 times. I am more forward thinking, maybe not in terms of what the next Google is going to be, but in terms of execution, I can see things down the road that the whippersnappers can't see -- because they're not old enough to have seen the writing on the wall before.

No. I am old (in Internet years), but I am not a victim. And when industry moves forward without me, the blame lies on me and MY decision to keep up. You young kids do have your uses though. You keep me and my ilk on our toes and are anything but shy about how fast and nimble I have to be to keep up.

It depends on your perspective. It's getting a lot of coverage and attention overseas where it should be. Here in the states, there's no impression of impending doom for the US-based Internet.

Also, SOPA / PIPA had a specific proposal that called for monkeying directly with DNS which raised obvious "break the internet" concerns.

People still use PCAnywhere?

The true answer to this is more involved than a simple comment can treat with justice.

But... the dysfunction in our political system has been getting more and more noticeable over the last several years. Yes, it is ass backwards and it has never been this bad before. The more notice that it receives, the more people will begin to get involved, the better chance we have of changing how it works.

How much proof do we need that while the likely defeat of SOPA/PIPA was due to the Internet waking up (along with many of it's most popular companies initiating a "black out" that confronted the general public for the first time) the big media companies are not stalled by losing a single battle. They plan for war. ACTA is another "front" to this war that many of us were blindsided to because we were fighting SOPA.

Now, I don't know how one coalesces a decentralized, leaderless, and disparate group of citizens who go by the term "the Internet". But, I do know, that unless we start bringing guns to gunfights (obviously I'm implying the expression here), we will lose the war, in spite of winning the SOPA / PIPA battle.

In order to do that we need to educate the non-geek general public about issues like ACTA and make them understand why they need to care. To do that, we must get out from behind our firewalls and our web farms and begin to communicate using the same mechanisms that old media is using, if for no other reason, the general public doesn't live in the same spaces that we do. If you can change public opinion, you can impact elections and legislation.

Until someone else comes along and steps into the void between the digital world and the power players who pass laws we (US) citizens are bound to, I'm busting my ass to stand up a nonprofit 527 Super PAC as fast as I can. I wish I could move the paperwork faster (IRS, FEC) but it's gonna be a couple of weeks before we can start accepting donations.

The news was all abuzz about how the SOPA / PIPA bills were killed in, what appeared to them anyway, lightning speed and with little notice. Ron Wyden understands how fast Internet mobilization moves, but the rest of Washington still doesn't get it. Yes, Chris Dodd, the SOPA / PIPA death was a "watershed" moment in politics, but not for reasons you might think. It was a watershed moment because we have the capacity to do more than just black out our sites and send emails to Washington and we are taking it to the next level. Like Yamamoto, you have awoken a sleeping giant and we intend on correcting the deficiencies in our armor and arsenal.

God. Sorry to go on a rant, but this shit raises the hair on the back of my neck like few other issues and I'm tired of both political parties in Washington taking for granted that I, the Internet, am not paying attention to what you are doing.

Plug: Consider joining me. theinternetvoice.org. On G+ "The Internet Voice".

I'm still hoping someone will post a recommendation for a site that I can use to accept donations through.

Yep. This is the intention to start with. Provide a maximum budget for each day / campaign and target channels that reach the widest audience.

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind. It sure raises questions about fair access though. The rhetorical question would be 'what if the TV ad you want to run espouses a point of view antithetical to the views of cable and television broadcast media empires?' I may find out.

I'm no expert and I could be reading it wrong, but from what I understand the treaty allows for the "rule of the shorter term" though wikipedia states that not every country has "accepted this rule."

Whoops. I didn't realize I had made that mistake. And instead of "conservative appointee" I intended to reference the appointing President. Though, it does strengthen the argument for the mixture of majority and dissenting opinions. Thanks for the correction.

Yep. You are correct. I got the Presidents who appointed whom wrong. I stand corrected.

(US Citizen) The title of this post is a bit misleading and I'm having a hard time seeing why there's a problem or disagreement here.

The ruling was specifically focused on foreign works as they relate to the Berne Convention. This international treaty binds signatory nations to the copyright protections provided in countries where the original art was created. It would apply to both US copyright holders to protect their works abroad and foreign copyright holders where their works are used here.

The Wikipedia page on the Berne Convention has some really interesting facts on this treaty and you should read it before voicing opposition to the SCOTUS ruling or claiming "American Exceptionalism" is being run over by a truck. This is not a bad ruling and the 6-2 vote suggests 1 judge appointed by a liberal President agrees with the argument. Ne, if you get into the opinion (link below) you'll find that two conservative appointees dissented while the remaining justices agreed (sans Kagan who recused). The point is that this was hardly a "party line" or ideological divide.

The official opinion here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-545.pdf

Some worthy quotations from the Wikipedia page found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protec...

Before the Berne Convention, national copyright laws usually only applied for works created within each country. Consequently, a work published in United Kingdom (UK) by a British national would be covered by copyright there, but could be copied and sold by anyone in France. Likewise, a work published in France by a French national could be copyrighted there, but could be copied and sold by anyone in the UK. Dutch publisher Albertus Willem Sijthoff, who rose to prominence in the trade of translated books, wrote to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands in 1899 in opposition to the convention over concerns that its international restrictions would stifle the country's print industry.

The United States initially refused to become a party to the Convention, since that would have required major changes in its copyright law, particularly with regard to moral rights, removal of the general requirement for registration of copyright works and elimination of mandatory copyright notice. This led to the Universal Copyright Convention in 1952 to accommodate the wishes of the United States. But on March 1, 1989, the U.S. Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 was enacted, and the United States Senate ratified the treaty, making the U.S. a party to the Berne Convention, and making the Universal Copyright Convention nearly obsolete.

Editorial. I believe in American exceptionalism on a number of fronts including some trade issues. But, the notion that any individual or group of people from one country can merely disregard the copyrights of and profit from works created in another is ludicrous. I feel bad for the plantiffs -- the orchestra members who brought the suit. They have been treated unfair, not by the SCOTUS, but by a general failure of US enforcement of foreign copyright as provided by the treaty.

Just my $0.02