Thoughts & Ideas posts page 4

Presidential Advertising and Funding

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The advertisements on the TV and radio and the costs associated are crazy and huge, and one item that helps prevent smaller parties from entering the political game. The money for these adverts coming primarily from donations, these donations sources have become a large point of contention.

I suggest that we eliminate all advertising by campaigners in these traditional advertising mediums. All other forums of communications that are currently used would then be expanded in power. Speeches and appearances, campaigners, candidate websites, and the debates should all be given more power.

The debates in particular need to be improved to allow more even representation of competing candidates and their ideas. Each candidate should be timed during the debate for how much they’ve said. This includes words spoken during or interrupting others’ speech. At the end, during their final statements, the other candidates should be given the time to even out their total speaking time. And the presidential debates should always include at least one third party candidate, the most popular probably. This will bring in an additional voice to attempt to break up the polarization in the discussion between only two voices.

Both the costs of campaigning and the needs to receive all that money through donations must be reduced significantly. All that money could potentially be used for better purposes.

Other mediums should be better at providing information than the more stagnant campaign adverts on TV and radio.

Objective File System

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This is a modification of part of a previous post.

each file is stored in two databases: the normal hierchical db and an objective db. The hierarchical db is used for speed and for compatibility with current file systems. The objective db is used for metadata and other information less critical to basic file operations.

The objective db contains much of the metadata (non file operation related stuff). Each file type is an object type in the database, inheriting from the basic file object or one of its children. Each file type will have its own attributes as well as actions related to it. The actions may consist only of OS functions related to it, may also include application calls, and could even include user/other created scripts and functions related to the file type. The actions would provide the data from the file to the system or other function that is necessary for it to operate (functions and applications would all have a defined standard interface to them).

the opennest market

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In democracy, each person gets one vote equal to every other. The votes are basically free, but some rules must be set up to ensure this. The free or open market is somewhat considered to be democracy of commerce. To take this to the extreme:

There would be a number of businesses equal to the number of citizens, each business owned and run by exactly one citizen. There would be no employees. All needs of the business that could not be completed by the owner would be outsourced to other businesses, surely creating the need for a lot of very specialized businesses. Government oversight would be needed to ensure that no mergers or pseudo mergers occur. Every business runs on its own, with no collusion, and any interactions with other businesses must be proper business transactions with dollars exchanged for goods or services and the best value chosen from multiple candidates. Each business would be required to turn, or attempt to turn, a profit, and that profit would be the sole income of the owner. Oversight would also ensure that there were a number of a given type of businesses in a given geographical region.

All of this should create somewhere near the largest amount of competition possible, and really test competition’s ability to create low costs, innovation, and good quality.

This system would certainly have many problems, especially in enforcement, but can serve for analysis of the openness of markets and the rules affecting them.

An interesting modification of this system would be to force all of this at the initialization of the system, but then remove all oversight. This would somewhat mirror the entire human history relating to economic issues, except that it would certainly go very fast. Mergers would happen all over until large companies would be formed.

Force multiple candidates

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Each party must field in final election a number of candidates based on the percentage of support the party recieved in the previous election for that race. It could be that a candidate must be fielded for each 105 of support. This would be a minimum. Larger elections that can field more candidates, such as presidential elections, would have a higher number of required candidates than smaller ones, such as local elections in small towns, which may be able to field only one per party or not even have party affiliations.

This would give a wider range of choices in the final election. It would also force the big two to divide their forces, giving independent candidates a better chance while keeping the same elections style.

versatile home: an ideal

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The versatile home is a type of home which can be changed easily to fit any needs of the user. Ideally,

  • Quick and easy: anything can be changed quickly and easily enough that it can be changed for testing purposes, and changed back if need be.
  • Non-destructive: should require no materials to be wasted in the process.

Layout

Layout of anything and everything ideally would be able to be changed.

  • Rooms: the walls in the house should be easily movable and removable to create any floorplan. Any given room should be expandable or shrinkable depending on the needs for it and adjacent rooms.
  • Utilities: any sort of appliance should be placable anywhere in the house, regardless of utility needs. Electricity would be the easiest to deal with, and should be easily accessible anywhere on the floor, walls, ceiling, or outside walls. Phone and the like wouldn’t be hard either. Water and gas would pose quite a challenge, especially with water requiring sewer connections as well. But ideally you could put a toilet, shower, heater, whatever anywhere in the house, even move them around in a room, without much more consideration than moving a table.
  • Outside walls: these go along with the layout, but pose far greater challenges than interior layout. Any expansion or subtraction of total area of the house would require addition or subtraction of both floor and ceiling in addition to the walls. Also, utility hookups would need to be expanded or subtracted, as would heating ducts or pipes. This type of modification would probably be left as the hardest to do. Still, changing needs deem it important for a versatile house, so it must be left with the capabilities of doing so, preferably non-destructively as well.

Modules

It would probably be easiest if every part of the house could be created and then installed and removed as easily connecting modules. Utilities would connect from one module to the next. Structural modules (structure of walls and ceilings, subfloor) would be seperate from the visible facings (wall and ceiling painting, carpet or wood on floor) of them, allowing easy change in appearance of area or the ability to change the size and shape of a room without having mismatched visible facings.

It would be good if companies produced these modules, standardized. The companies would deliver or take them back as the users added or removed them. This would eliminate much wasted materials, make the system more cost effective, and also make it much easier for the user.

With company produced modules, there would have to be industry standards so that no user would be stuck buying modules from any given company, especially with the possibility of companies going out of business. With changing technology, new versions of the modules would need to be created. This should happen at a relatively slow pace, and the new versions should be relatively backwards compatible with old versions. All modules should be designed for relatively easy upgrades to possible future versions.

Need

The need for versatile housing is evident in the variety of ways and things people use houses for, the changing needs of a user, and the need to be able to accommodate multiple users over the lifespan of the house.

The operating systems of the user should not be dictated by the layout and setup of the house: Rather, the operations should be set up to be as efficient or comfortable (or whatever other criteria you want) as possible, then the layout and setup should be modified to best fit these needs. If a layout doesn’t fit these needs as good as it was thought, it should be modifiable to better accommodate.

Workshop Paradigm

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apps + files organized by job/workshop

example: music making workshop has music creation apps + users personal (and other’s shared?) music files

different users have same apps (tools) but their own files (works)

different jobs/workshops may use same tools ie music making and music listening workshop may both need some listening tools

congress and president money

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Here are several ideas about money relating to the president and congressmen. They are not all directly releted, and some may negate others.

– these officials are paid the average salary of the people in the territory they represent. This will give them more reasonable wages. It will give them much more insentive to produce economic results.
– Alternativily, they are all paid the average salary of the entire United States. This would prevent them from supporting items that only benifit the area they represent.
– They are paid a fixed multiple of this average salary. Thus, they will still make a lot of money, but will also have the economic insentive to improve the economy

– they are paid no salary. They are already wealthy, and almost always have income coming in from elsewhere. It is government money that could be put to better use elsewhere.

– they may recieve no campaign funds. campaigns are set up and run in a fixed format for all candidates, payed for with tax dollars. Additional campaigning is up to them, or perhaps not allowed except for travelling and meeting people. This reduces peoples ability to influence the candidates with money.
– no one may give financial or other gifts to these people whatsoever. They may endorse them only. They may not run media adverts about them, but may be mentioned as endorsers by the candidates themselves.

Schooling: focus on life

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Schools are very focused on ‘academic’ stuff; they need to give better focus to things important to people, things to help them get jobs and to live their lives. If given an easy path into the job they want, many people will take it. The easier that path is, the better. Many things are expected to be taught at home, but they aren’t always, and most people will be missing bits and pieces of it even if parents and family do teach it.

Finance
People are finding themselves in financial strife very often these days, especially the people currently entering the work force. They are using credit cards and going into debt so much that some call them Generation Debt (or something like that). Schools provide little to no information about how to handle personal finances to the vast majority of students. The basics of finance could be taught in a very short time, yet have a huge impact on students understanding of handling their money. Much of it is fairly simple stuff, but it isn’t always easy to figure out on your own when you have so much else to worry about. Discussions should be had about debt, how to manage it, when to use it; how to save money for expensive things, childrens education, retirement; budgeting and deciding what is important; banks and stock brokers and how those work relative to a student using them; bill paying. Students should learn how to balance a checkbook.

Homestead
Home economics classes briefly go into some of the things a person needs to know about running a home, seeming to focus though on sewing and cooking. There is a lot involved in running a home. There should be at least discussion of all that is done to run a typical home. They should learn how to budget their time, in the more and more hectic lifestyles they will likely be living, to be able to handle cleaning and making food.

Nutrition and Lifestyle
The United States is having somewhat of a crisis with health problems, particularly ones related to high fat, high sugar diets and sedentary lifestyles. Students should be taught basic nutrition, how certain foods can reduce their risk of certain diseases, and how to create meals that are both healthy and taste good. They should go through physical education courses, as they already do, and taught how excercise can reduce risk of disease and increase the duration of the livable portion of their life. They should be taught how and where to excercise after they leave school in ways that might suit them best: they might prefer workouts at gyms, organized sports organizations, walking at work, jogging in the mornings, etc. They should be taught how gyms and sports organizations work and can be found.

Sex and children
Sex needs to be better taught about; it is covered only briefly and somewhat danced about currently. Students should see how it works, learn (directly) how to put condoms on, learn how to time a womans ovulation to know when she can and cannot get pregnant, learn about the diseases. They should learn about the signs of a woman becoming pregnant, about what needs to be done if she becomes pregnant as far as nutrition for her and what should be done with her doctor, and how to prepare for having the childe. Basic parenting skill should be taught.

Health and Biology
Students should learn how their bodies work and how to deal with them. Human biology is a lot more important in everyday life to most than more general biology. Basic first aid is important. Students should also learn how the health care system works and about health insurance.

Job finding skills
Anybody should be able to find and land a job they want and enjoy. They can, but they need to know how. They need to learn both how to figure out what that job might be for them and how to obtain it. They should be given a brief description of ‘all’ general job fields and interests they relate to, and slowly from an early age be directed towards the ones that best match their personal interests, capabilities, and desires. They should be taught the best ways to find jobs in their areas of interest.

Psychology
Everyone should learn the basics of how their mind works and how people work (behaviorly/interacting with each other).

In Sum
I think schools should focus first on job hunting skills, nutrition, lifestyle, finance, health and biology, psychology, social skills, and managing a home. These are the things that most everyone will make use of in their lives, and would benefit from having a lot of knowledge in. I also feel some history to be very important, so people know how they came to be as they are; and some basic physical sciences, so people will know how the world works. Many of the more ‘academic’ subjects are used very little by most people after they finish school, and so are less useful. Schools should ensure that the above things are learned by everybody. They should not need to waste time with tests over these subjects; rather, they should slowly drill the information in over their entire school career.

The schools should follow students interests and very early on start to send students on paths towards the careers they like. The students interested in science would begin learning more about science, while students interested in art would be given more teaching about art. They would need to be followed closely and always taught their interests; they must never be trapped in one path, even if they keep changing paths and only learn a little from each. If their interests are broad, then they will best be served with knowledge that is broad. Individual schools might need to be more narrowly focused to better teach the areas of knowledge, so students might have to go to different schools based on the path they choose. They should be able to take students farther along in the path they choose, as the teachers in those areas would only be teaching students with interest in them.

And so schools should be there to prepare students for life and career.

government provides info

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Government needs to give info to the people, the people who need it, not just make it available in some document in a filing cabinet in a basement somewhere or posted on a cork board in a building few people go to. The more people given the information, the more people are liable to use it or follow its guidance. There is too much information the government has created for a person to be able to wade through it to find what applies to them, and this makes it far more difficult for people to do things.

Mailing Lists
Perhaps the government should provide one large list of the types of information they have in categories that people might be interested in them through, such as different occupations, types of residences, types of transportation. These lists would be available in townhalls or the like where people could easily access them (people should be made aware of where it is). People could go to this location and sign up for the ones they are interested, or remove themselves from ones they no longer are. They will then recieve mailings or emailings of all the laws, initiatives, and other relevant things the governemnt thinks would be of use to the people in that category. This should help people out tremendously in being informed, allow people to think about what their interests really are, and hopefully get people more involved with both the community and their field of interest.

Schools
School is a perfect place to begin providing information. They already do to some extent, but they really need to do a lot more. Schools are very focused on ‘academic’ stuff; they need to give better focus to things important to people, things to help them get jobs and to live their lives. As students grow older and make choices about what they want to do with their lives, schools should provide them with information related to their interests. Guidance counselers talk to students about what they want to do occupation wise and may provide a little insight into that occupation and into schools they may go to to learn about it; english classes have students research and write about these careers. Much more can be done. Guidance counselers should be able to provide students with a lot of helpful information on that career, perhaps packets. Libraries could have a career section with government prepared information on each of many categories of careers. Counselers should be able to point students in the direction of further resources.

Career/Government Information Libraries
Libraries and/or town halls could have a seperate libary with the government resources sorted into sections. New laws, initiatives, and other important things would be posted at a certain place in each section. People would be told where these libraries are and what resources are available for them there.

There are far too many laws, government services, and other government related things for a single person to know about even if they spend all their time researching these. One should not have to research them to find out about their existance. One should not have to fear being in violation of some small line in a giant law book somewhere without knowing it because they did not spend hours pouring over that book. One should not feel stuck in a crappy job and awful place because they don’t know that there are options available, including government help, to get them away from that. People given knowledge can use that knowledge to their advantage. If everybody is just given knowlege of how to succeed, without any effort on their part, then they will far more likely succeed than without it. They also must have the will and desire to succeed, but that is their own choice. If the government were to provide the keys to success to everyone, then everyone is a lot more likely to succeed.

finder desktop views

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similar to desktop paging type applications – these allow you to switch between several ‘desktops’ each with a set of windows or designated applications. This would be like the ability to save these desktops, but including the ability to include windows in a ‘desktop’ view that might be visible in other desktop views as well.

one would have a large collection of views, that, upon opening, would launch requisite applications and open windows, possibly moving them to certain positions, and possibly filling them with certain contents (such as a certain finder directory or the last edited project file), and hiding all other windows. One could quickly switch between these as in normal desktop paging. One could leave multiple open, or quit some. When quitting a view, all windows in it are closed, and the applications involved in that are quit if they are not open in another view (a la adding to and removing from a retain count).

due to the nature of these views, there will be many more to choose from than would be in a normal desktop paging system. Therefore, a different access method would be good. I’d propose a list accessible via button and keyboard shortcut. When opened, this menu would work like a normal menu, but all keypresses would enter into a search field and would work to narrow the list items via a search through it. All currently open view items would be highlighted in some way, and could be filtered into this list. One could also quit all open views. This would then open the default view, likely a finder one with windows or just a view of the desktop.

in using a computer, there are many different sets of tasks that a user might perform. some or many of these tasks might cause the use of a certain set of windows, perhaps even setting them into a certain pattern for ideal use. They often span multiple applications, so that a single application properly sorting its windows would not be sufficient.

stub, sorry I’m tired, I will have to revise this jumble later.