Just think how much more it would be if Mao hadn't killed 30-60 million of his own people during "The Great Leap Forward" (plus another million or so during the "Cultural Revolution"), and if the current regime didn't perform forced abortions for population control.
Jackie Chan was asked once in an interview if he regretted not breaking into the US market. He replied that with 2 billion people in asia, why should he care about the States?
Yes, that would explain why he never came to the U.S. and started working in Hollywood. Hey, wait a minute...
So, is the version of Robot Wars that will show on the new merged channel be the cool UK version, or the loud, dumbed-down, idiotic pro-wrestling-esque American version? I'm an American myself, but every single aspect of the UK show is superior to the American travesty.
Signed, A Man Without Cable Until He Buys a House This Year
I do see that you've made no mention of the huge tax breaks that companies are currently getting by outsourcing.
Please be so kind as to name them, cite the code itself, and cite the exact section of the tax code that allows them. It's impossible to rationally debate the positive or negative effects of any given law without reference to the law itself. Some may be misguided. Some may have perfectly logical and justifiable reasons. We don't know, because you haven't cited any, only asserted they exist without offering any evidence that this is the case.
Find me a noted economist who can prove numbers showing the benfits of outsourcing and I'll show you two who have just as much evidence of the opposite.
I just cited one. I await you citing two, and the exact works which "offer just as much evidence of the opposite," along with a brief summary of such works.
If the U.S. corporations are allowed to circumvent free trade, they will do so.
Indeed. But this is not an arguement against free trade, but an argument against politcial mechanisms that allow the circumvention of free trade. You won't get money out of politics until you get politics out of money.
I'm am still waiting, of course, for you to offer any evidence that outsourcing, even under today's imperfect free trade regime, is not a net plus to the economy when you count all of the insourcing from other countries.
I know it's always bad form to inroduce verifiable facts into a the latest Slashdot two-minute hate, but Daniel T. Griswold of the Cato Institute has a rather different (and seemingly more informed) view of outsourcing than most expressed in this thread. In his article in the May 3, 2004 issue of National Review (which does not appear to be online for non-subscribers), he makes the following points:
America is actually a net benificiary of outsourced jobs (i.e., more money comes in from foreign countries outsourcing jobs to the U.S. than are lost outsourcing jobs from the U.S. to foreign contries). "In 2002, U.S. companies exported $14.8 billion worth of computer, data-processing, research, development, construction, archicetural, engineering and other IT services. During that same year, America imported $3.9 billion of those same kinds of services. So for every dollar Americans sent abroad for outsourcing, the world sent more than three dollars to the US. for 'insourcing.'"
According to a 2003 study by the McKinsey Global Institue, every $1 spent on foreign outspurcing creates $1.12 to $1.14 of additional economic activity in the U.S.
The vast majority of job losses due to outsourcing have been for lower skill jobs. Between 1999 and 2002, IT jobs went from 6.24 million to 5.95 million. However, during the same period of time, those requiring a relatively high level of training (i.e., an associates degree or higher) actually increased, from 3.43 million to 3.51 million.
If you use the saner baseline of 1998 rather than the peak of the dotcom bubble, things look better still. Current IT employment levels are equal to those of 1998.
"Domestic software, computer, and communications services accounted for a combined 4621 billion in 2003, up from $510 billion in 1999."
Far more people loose their jobs to technology or domestic competition than outsourcing.
The total outsourcing between 2000 and 2015 is only projected (by Forrester Research) to be 3.3 million jobs, or about 220,000 a year. This is a fairly miniscule number for an economy that employees 137 million, where an average of 350,000 million people file for unemployment every week even in strong economies, and which creates and average of 32.8 million news jobs (while eliminating 31 million, for a net annual gain of 1.8 million jobs) every year.
Outsourced jobs tend to go to countries that emulate the United States with low taxes and deregulated economies, and the foreign companies jobs are outsourced to tend to buy American equipment and services to do the job.
A lot of the reason you see so many complaints about outsourcing on Slashdot tends to be the reinforced tendencies of self-selected sets. The people who do lose their job to outsourcing are the ones that complain loudest and longest, and the ones whose sob stories get modded up. The people who haven't lost their job, or who work in a company that benefits from "insourcing," have no particular reason to speak up. The fact is, outsourcing is just one of the more painful parts of free trade, but free trade improves the lives of everyone. You have to be able to look at the big picture to see that.
You are the editor of a site called SLASHDOT. You see a SUBMISSION. Do you open it? (Y/N)
>Y
You open SUBMISSION. It is an article on FREE SPEECH that bashes the Bush Administration. You possible actions are (P)OST, (R)EJECT, or (T)EST FOR DUP. (P/R/T)
>T
Archives shows that this article is a duplicate of one posted 8 hours ago. POST anyway? (Y/N)
POWAY, Calif., April 1/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Gateway, Inc. (NYSE: GTW)
said today that after reviewing strategic options for its network of 188
company-operated retail stores, it is planning to close the stores on April 9.
Gateway also said it is pursuing wider retail distribution of its products
in the U.S. and abroad.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020930/LAM05 0LOGO )
The company will continue direct sales of Gateway products to consumers
and businesses via http://www.gateway.com and 1-800-Gateway.
As a result of Gateway's decision, approximately 2,500 retail positions
will be eliminated during the month of April as store operations wind down.
Gateway will provide more detail on its brand and channel strategies, as
well as any revenue and cost implications of closing the stores, when it
announces its first quarter financial results April 29.
Although Apple seems to be doing quite well in retail, Gateway was losing money hand-over fist. (Gee, think that could have anything to do with quality?)
My prediction: Either they merge with another company or they'll be out of business within two years.
Say, between this and the next generation X-Box being based on the PowerPC, assuming you could get Mac OS X to run on it, does that mean you could dowload XXX pr0n to display in an X window under OS X using X-Grid on an X-array of XBoxes?
As soon as I saw the trailer for this last year during Return of the King, I immediately called up Howard Waldrop and told him "Howard, they finally made a film just for you!" It's got that 1940s, retro-futurist vibe to it that Howard has in a lot of his stories (like "30 Minutes Over Broadway!"). If it's half as good as Howard's work, I'll be impressed.
Mark my words, the draft will be back.
If Bush is reelected then the draft will start Jan or Feb 2005, slow for the first few months and then when they are up to speed they'll start pulling large amounts of young men.
I am willing to wager you $1000 you are wrong, with the following guidelines:
I bet that by June 1, 2005, not a single U.S. citizen will have been drafted into the U.S. military by Selective Service conscription (i.e., National Guard call-up and the like doesn't count).
I am willing to write a check to you in the amount of $1000 (U.S. dollars only), if you will do the same for me, both of these to be placed in the custody of a mutually trustable third party. I suggest Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctrow or Eric Raymond (all of whom I know) as three possibilities of third parties sufficiently well-known to the Slashdot community to be stewards of the bet (and at least two of which lean politically to the left).
If by June 1, 2005, no draft has been instituted, the third party will give your check and my own to me.
If at any time before that, Congress, the White House, or the Selective Service administration actually reinstitutes (not just suggests or discusses reinstituting) the draft by actually calling up conscripts (news that must be verified on the front page of The Washington Post or The New York Times), then the third party will forward these checks to you.
If a major terrorist incident (defined as one causing 1000 or more civilian deaths) occurs on U.S. soil, the bet is off.
So, are you willing to put your money where your mouth is? Are you willing to wager cold, hard cash that your paranoid liberal view of the world is rooted in fact rather than delusion? I've even given you four months longer than you're "sure" the draft will be reinstated. Or are you all just talk?
I know it's useless to ask Slashdotters to RTFA before posting, but those who did would find the following:
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is adamant that he will not ask Congress to authorize a draft, and officials at the Selective Service System, the independent federal agency that would organize any conscription, stress that the possibility of a so-called "special skills draft" is remote.
Nonetheless, the agency has begun the process of creating the procedures and policies to conduct such a targeted draft in case military officials ask Congress to authorize it and the lawmakers agree to such a request.
This makes clear that the "U.S. Plans Targeted Draft for Computer Personnel" headline is pure scaremongering. No one is about to get drafted. This is not "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming" for those of you trapped in the 1970s. This is deep, long-range contingency planning by a government agency that needs to look busy to keep their funding from being cut.
Too many people seem to be ignorant of the difference between "contingent" and "imminent." Just because, say, for example, FEMA updates its plans on recovering from a nuclear war DOESN'T MEAN we're planning to launch a nuclear war. Likewise, that whole "Pentagon plans for possibility of global climate change" had nothing to do with them planning for what they thought was going to happen, but everything to do with laying in contingency plans for what MIGHT happen, just like we had "rainbow" plans before World War II as to what we might have to do if involved in a global war against various enemies; just because we made plans for a global war against England, Russia and China (as well as Japan and Germany) didn't mean such an event was likely.
Will anyone here on Slashdot be called up? If, say, al Queda or North Korea nukes DC or Los Angeles, maybe. Otherwise all this talk is a bunch of blather from people who like to over-react anytime anyone in the Bush administration mentions the words "national security" and "computers" in the same sentence.
...and a voice said "Come and see," and the four horsemen of the apocalypse were unleashed upon the earth, and Microsoft released Windows NT for Macintosh, and verily the end times had come.
This has not been my experience, maybe because my ISP more effectively blocks spam freom the U.S., but far and away the most persistent spammers I've seen for at least the last six months have been for Chinese phramacies. (Korea used to be far and away the worst, but now they're way back in second.) American ISPs (at least all the decent ones) kick spammers and spamvertised sites off their system, but the ones in China keep going and going and going.
If anyone knows a contact at chinanet.net where you can actually reach an administrator (or, better yet, one that speaks English), that would be a very useful thing to have...
"Sure, we all would! Thanks to the Technical Institute of Institutes' patented methods, you can be pulling in money from gullible students in no time!"
Seriously, however, the phrase "caveat emptor" should apply to spending money on training just as much as anyone else. I mean, just take a look at this priceless quote: "Most students go into these schools with the perception that the schools are going to watch out for their best interests," said Mary Jayne Fay." If that's true, then "most students" are utter dumbasses. Never assume that anyone else is ever going to watch out for your best interests. (And that includes bureaucrats with an interesting in scarfing up more taxpayer dollars for imposing more regulations. Like, say, Mary Jayne Fay...) That's your job, and no one else can do it for you. I don't assume that my landlord, my credit union, my grocer, or even Apple Computer are looking out for "my best interests." Why should trade schools be any different?
I don't think any of these students were forced to take out loans at gunpoint, or to sign the contracts for classes. They guessed that they would be able to make enough money to make the investment worthwhile. They guessed wrong. It happens. Deal with it and move on.
If any of these schools made did anything illegal then they should be prosecuted and as much money recovered and refunded as possible. If they didn't do anything illegal, it's just like signing a bad contract with any other service provider. Bankruptcies happen.
The solution is smarter and wiser students, not more regulation.
Since no one is going to buy a car with this screwey Big Brotherlizer built in if they don't have to, I forsee a gold-rush of New Mexicans streaming over into to Texas to buy new cars (perfectly legal).
As a Texas resident, I would just like to thank the legislators of New Mexico for generously reducing the burden of the Texas taxpayer while increasing their own. Thanks guys!
Likewise, at 99 cents per song, Apple is actually losing money on each track it sells.
No, Apple is NOT losing money on every track they sell. Time and time again they've stated that the iTunes store itself breaks even; by now, with all the volume it's doing, it may even be turning a slight profit.
This is yet another example of why you can't trust newspapers or any "general interest" journalists (I'm a Mac owner, so I keep up with Apple very closely). As a fellow science fiction writer (I think it was S. M. Striling) said on a panel: "You know all the errors you spot when a newspaper does an article on a subject you're an expert on? Well, all the other articles are just as inacurate, you just don't know it."
I, for one, welcome our new Gray Goo Overlords!
on
The Law of Disassembly
·
· Score: 1, Funny
This article in The Scotsman takes an in-depth look at the Columbia disaster and presents a number of disturbing facts:
NASA has known there were problems with tile flaking for a long time.
Stress from the impact was noted on the black box recorder, but not transmitted to the crew or ground control
Some of the shielding floated away during orbit, a fact confirmed by radar data, but no one noticed at the time.
NASA turned down repeated requests to inspect the wing for damage during the mission.
There was no real reason Columbia's flight couldn't have been delayed after tile problems with Atlantis except for the bureaucratic need to maintain "momentum."
All in all, the article is pretty damning for NASA's management.
Good to see that Peter Gabriel isn't just lying down like some lamb on Broadway. He's not just saying "Excuse me" and waiting for the big one. Early on he saw the potential of digital downloading to change the industry and said "here comes the flood." Rather than getting humdrum or doing a slowburn over others controlling the medium, he got some perspective and decided to DIY and get on the air himself. Now he's having a wonderful day in what was a one way world sending out music through the wire. I don't remember any musical artist getting such a start on changing the industry. I'm sure record companies will consider him an intruder, say "you're not one of us" and claim he has no self control. I'm sure they'd prefer he remain a wallflower instead of saying "I have the touch" and bestowing the kiss of life to independent artists. This will shock the monkeys at the RIAA, who have gone gaga over downloading, and would much rather draw the curtains and see artists remain quiet and alone, or under their lock and key. But Gabriel was disturbed, troubled and in doubt about where the industry was going, and with an open mind and a passion for music, he decided to march to a different drum. Now he's telling artists "Don't give up, you can make it big time. Come talk to me," and initiating them into the secret world of rights contracts and digital licensing agreements. He saw that this was the time of the turning, and he's giving artists a sense of home and putting them on the map. He refused to believe there was no way out of the dilemma. He drew back the darkness, cut through the signal to noise ratio, said "there has to be more than this," saw it was high time for artists to start growing up about the business and technical sides of the industry, and then lead the way. So, thanks to his passion, things are on the way up for all of us!
"People who gave less than $200 to politicians or parties gave 64 percent of their money to Republicans. Just 35 percent went to Democrats."
"People who gave $1 million or more gave 92 percent to Democrats -- and a whopping eight percent to Republicans."
It's ironic that Democrats were the primary people pushing for McCain-Feingold, as it has turned out hurting them (and their previously extremely effective "Union muscle" soft money operations) far more than the Republicans, an advantage that all George Soros' millions to organizations like MoveOn is unlikely to overcome.
Slashdot Mirror
Signed, A Man Without Cable Until He Buys a House This Year
"Against what?"
"Every single military installation worldwide!"
"Really? What did it say?"
"'All Your Base Are Belong To Us."
Please be so kind as to name them, cite the code itself, and cite the exact section of the tax code that allows them. It's impossible to rationally debate the positive or negative effects of any given law without reference to the law itself. Some may be misguided. Some may have perfectly logical and justifiable reasons. We don't know, because you haven't cited any, only asserted they exist without offering any evidence that this is the case.
Find me a noted economist who can prove numbers showing the benfits of outsourcing and I'll show you two who have just as much evidence of the opposite.
I just cited one. I await you citing two, and the exact works which "offer just as much evidence of the opposite," along with a brief summary of such works.
If the U.S. corporations are allowed to circumvent free trade, they will do so.
Indeed. But this is not an arguement against free trade, but an argument against politcial mechanisms that allow the circumvention of free trade. You won't get money out of politics until you get politics out of money.
I'm am still waiting, of course, for you to offer any evidence that outsourcing, even under today's imperfect free trade regime, is not a net plus to the economy when you count all of the insourcing from other countries.
- America is actually a net benificiary of outsourced jobs (i.e., more money comes in from foreign countries outsourcing jobs to the U.S. than are lost outsourcing jobs from the U.S. to foreign contries). "In 2002, U.S. companies exported $14.8 billion worth of computer, data-processing, research, development, construction, archicetural, engineering and other IT services. During that same year, America imported $3.9 billion of those same kinds of services. So for every dollar Americans sent abroad for outsourcing, the world sent more than three dollars to the US. for 'insourcing.'"
- According to a 2003 study by the McKinsey Global Institue, every $1 spent on foreign outspurcing creates $1.12 to $1.14 of additional economic activity in the U.S.
- The vast majority of job losses due to outsourcing have been for lower skill jobs. Between 1999 and 2002, IT jobs went from 6.24 million to 5.95 million. However, during the same period of time, those requiring a relatively high level of training (i.e., an associates degree or higher) actually increased, from 3.43 million to 3.51 million.
- If you use the saner baseline of 1998 rather than the peak of the dotcom bubble, things look better still. Current IT employment levels are equal to those of 1998.
- "Domestic software, computer, and communications services accounted for a combined 4621 billion in 2003, up from $510 billion in 1999."
- Far more people loose their jobs to technology or domestic competition than outsourcing.
- The total outsourcing between 2000 and 2015 is only projected (by Forrester Research) to be 3.3 million jobs, or about 220,000 a year. This is a fairly miniscule number for an economy that employees 137 million, where an average of 350,000 million people file for unemployment every week even in strong economies, and which creates and average of 32.8 million news jobs (while eliminating 31 million, for a net annual gain of 1.8 million jobs) every year.
- Outsourced jobs tend to go to countries that emulate the United States with low taxes and deregulated economies, and the foreign companies jobs are outsourced to tend to buy American equipment and services to do the job.
A lot of the reason you see so many complaints about outsourcing on Slashdot tends to be the reinforced tendencies of self-selected sets. The people who do lose their job to outsourcing are the ones that complain loudest and longest, and the ones whose sob stories get modded up. The people who haven't lost their job, or who work in a company that benefits from "insourcing," have no particular reason to speak up. The fact is, outsourcing is just one of the more painful parts of free trade, but free trade improves the lives of everyone. You have to be able to look at the big picture to see that.>Y
You open SUBMISSION. It is an article on FREE SPEECH that bashes the Bush Administration. You possible actions are (P)OST, (R)EJECT, or (T)EST FOR DUP. (P/R/T)
>T
Archives shows that this article is a duplicate of one posted 8 hours ago. POST anyway? (Y/N)
>N
Article posted!
Well, that would explain a lot, wouldn't it?
...is a 2 meg Flash animation that mimics letters slowly appearing on a green screen at 300 baud.
W E L C O M E
T O
T H E
C O M M O D O R E
P I R A T E 'S D E N
1> Warez 2>Chat 3>BBS System
>?
Although Apple seems to be doing quite well in retail, Gateway was losing money hand-over fist. (Gee, think that could have anything to do with quality?)
My prediction: Either they merge with another company or they'll be out of business within two years.
XXXXXXcellent!
So, are you willing to put your money where your mouth is? Are you willing to wager cold, hard cash that your paranoid liberal view of the world is rooted in fact rather than delusion? I've even given you four months longer than you're "sure" the draft will be reinstated. Or are you all just talk?
This makes clear that the "U.S. Plans Targeted Draft for Computer Personnel" headline is pure scaremongering. No one is about to get drafted. This is not "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming" for those of you trapped in the 1970s. This is deep, long-range contingency planning by a government agency that needs to look busy to keep their funding from being cut.
Too many people seem to be ignorant of the difference between "contingent" and "imminent." Just because, say, for example, FEMA updates its plans on recovering from a nuclear war DOESN'T MEAN we're planning to launch a nuclear war. Likewise, that whole "Pentagon plans for possibility of global climate change" had nothing to do with them planning for what they thought was going to happen, but everything to do with laying in contingency plans for what MIGHT happen, just like we had "rainbow" plans before World War II as to what we might have to do if involved in a global war against various enemies; just because we made plans for a global war against England, Russia and China (as well as Japan and Germany) didn't mean such an event was likely.
Will anyone here on Slashdot be called up? If, say, al Queda or North Korea nukes DC or Los Angeles, maybe. Otherwise all this talk is a bunch of blather from people who like to over-react anytime anyone in the Bush administration mentions the words "national security" and "computers" in the same sentence.
...and a voice said "Come and see," and the four horsemen of the apocalypse were unleashed upon the earth, and Microsoft released Windows NT for Macintosh, and verily the end times had come.
This has not been my experience, maybe because my ISP more effectively blocks spam freom the U.S., but far and away the most persistent spammers I've seen for at least the last six months have been for Chinese phramacies. (Korea used to be far and away the worst, but now they're way back in second.) American ISPs (at least all the decent ones) kick spammers and spamvertised sites off their system, but the ones in China keep going and going and going.
If anyone knows a contact at chinanet.net where you can actually reach an administrator (or, better yet, one that speaks English), that would be a very useful thing to have...
Seriously, however, the phrase "caveat emptor" should apply to spending money on training just as much as anyone else. I mean, just take a look at this priceless quote: "Most students go into these schools with the perception that the schools are going to watch out for their best interests," said Mary Jayne Fay." If that's true, then "most students" are utter dumbasses. Never assume that anyone else is ever going to watch out for your best interests. (And that includes bureaucrats with an interesting in scarfing up more taxpayer dollars for imposing more regulations. Like, say, Mary Jayne Fay...) That's your job, and no one else can do it for you. I don't assume that my landlord, my credit union, my grocer, or even Apple Computer are looking out for "my best interests." Why should trade schools be any different?
I don't think any of these students were forced to take out loans at gunpoint, or to sign the contracts for classes. They guessed that they would be able to make enough money to make the investment worthwhile. They guessed wrong. It happens. Deal with it and move on.
If any of these schools made did anything illegal then they should be prosecuted and as much money recovered and refunded as possible. If they didn't do anything illegal, it's just like signing a bad contract with any other service provider. Bankruptcies happen.
The solution is smarter and wiser students, not more regulation.
As a Texas resident, I would just like to thank the legislators of New Mexico for generously reducing the burden of the Texas taxpayer while increasing their own. Thanks guys!
This is yet another example of why you can't trust newspapers or any "general interest" journalists (I'm a Mac owner, so I keep up with Apple very closely). As a fellow science fiction writer (I think it was S. M. Striling) said on a panel: "You know all the errors you spot when a newspaper does an article on a subject you're an expert on? Well, all the other articles are just as inacurate, you just don't know it."
- NASA has known there were problems with tile flaking for a long time.
- Stress from the impact was noted on the black box recorder, but not transmitted to the crew or ground control
- Some of the shielding floated away during orbit, a fact confirmed by radar data, but no one noticed at the time.
- NASA turned down repeated requests to inspect the wing for damage during the mission.
- There was no real reason Columbia's flight couldn't have been delayed after tile problems with Atlantis except for the bureaucratic need to maintain "momentum."
All in all, the article is pretty damning for NASA's management.Good to see that Peter Gabriel isn't just lying down like some lamb on Broadway. He's not just saying "Excuse me" and waiting for the big one. Early on he saw the potential of digital downloading to change the industry and said "here comes the flood." Rather than getting humdrum or doing a slowburn over others controlling the medium, he got some perspective and decided to DIY and get on the air himself. Now he's having a wonderful day in what was a one way world sending out music through the wire. I don't remember any musical artist getting such a start on changing the industry. I'm sure record companies will consider him an intruder, say "you're not one of us" and claim he has no self control. I'm sure they'd prefer he remain a wallflower instead of saying "I have the touch" and bestowing the kiss of life to independent artists. This will shock the monkeys at the RIAA, who have gone gaga over downloading, and would much rather draw the curtains and see artists remain quiet and alone, or under their lock and key. But Gabriel was disturbed, troubled and in doubt about where the industry was going, and with an open mind and a passion for music, he decided to march to a different drum. Now he's telling artists "Don't give up, you can make it big time. Come talk to me," and initiating them into the secret world of rights contracts and digital licensing agreements. He saw that this was the time of the turning, and he's giving artists a sense of home and putting them on the map. He refused to believe there was no way out of the dilemma. He drew back the darkness, cut through the signal to noise ratio, said "there has to be more than this," saw it was high time for artists to start growing up about the business and technical sides of the industry, and then lead the way. So, thanks to his passion, things are on the way up for all of us!
A few interesting facts:
- "People who gave less than $200 to politicians or parties gave 64 percent of their money to Republicans. Just 35 percent went to Democrats."
- "People who gave $1 million or more gave 92 percent to Democrats -- and a whopping eight percent to Republicans."
It's ironic that Democrats were the primary people pushing for McCain-Feingold, as it has turned out hurting them (and their previously extremely effective "Union muscle" soft money operations) far more than the Republicans, an advantage that all George Soros' millions to organizations like MoveOn is unlikely to overcome.W1LL 0WNZ UR NETW0RK 4 F00D?
View the proof right here.
At best, The White Stripes deserve the Most Overhyped Band award for this year, and nothing more.