No but Microsoft should be attempting to cut as much waste as humanly possible, and it shouldn't spend money worrying about the personal affairs of it's employees. Just as the US government shouldn't spend money on our companies, it's up to the companies themselves to be competitive and profitable.
This is the absolutely right time to cut taxes (and spending), with global competition fiercer than ever, having a streamlined government is a necessity. Taxes are a necessary evil but they should be as low as possible.
Plus cutting taxes is the best way to give everyone a bump up in standards of living.
Somehow this idea scares me, it seems too easy. It seems like if we got enough of these things it would take quite a bit of momentum out of the rotation of the earth.
The founders of this country gave the world a stellar republican system which has lasted for 225 years or so. The electoral college is not broke, it's one of our greatest assets. The electoral college wasn't put into place to create an elite group of states, it was put into place to get smaller states to join up to the union, states that would be completely dominated by larger states otherwise.
The electoral college actually works for the disenfranchised, rather than against it. The sparse, rural states tend to have lower per capita incomes than those states which are "under-represented".
Large urban coastal states still dominate the American system, as they would in any republic, they simply dominate less because of the electoral college.
50K a year to avoid being poverty-bound? Heh, where do you live?
The hubub about "offshoring" isn't that you should compete with Indians, because you can't naturally. Most of us who understand economics believe that offshoring will create more jobs than it destroys. You won't have to compete with offshored workers, because new and better jobs will be created because of lowered costs.
Like I said above, it works the same way free software worked when that created jobs. Lower the costs of the tools and more jobs will be created. The PC revolution would've been impossible to achieve had the parts not been available for cheaper overseas.
If this is the first time in 200 years that free trade truly does not bring about higher standards of living and more and better jobs, then I will be in favor of protecionism.
This is an utterly nonsensical reason never to reboot. Wear and tear? By the time that wear and tear really does do enough to cause a hardware failure, it's most likely that that hardware will be so out of date you'll be itching to replace it anyway.
And I've never seen any evidence to support this claim anyway.
Nonsense, a computer running Linux is only a little less of a "black box" than a computer running a closed source OS. You really don't have anyway for sure to know if the source code you have on the machine is the code running.
If you compiled it right there, I'm sure someone could write a "gcc" program to look like you're compiling the source and checksum programs and such can be worked around and all that too.
That's what most European countries do but the US still allows hateful books to be printed citing the so-called "free speech" amendment.
Yes, that is because "free speech" is "free speech". Period, it doesn't matter whether it's "hateful" to you or not. Hell half of the stuff on slashdot could possibly be considered hateful towards Americans and especially Indians and it's allowed because we actually have free speech here in the US.
Were I to believe that that would actually happen, I would be all for protectionism. But like I said elsewhere in the thread, just as free software has created more jobs by lowering costs, this will do the same somehow.
Eh... on Slashdot the sentiment seems to be against that of the stereotypical Indian in Bangladesh... and it's definately a "racist" tone. I read quite a few jokes about "Bangladesh" but none about Russia or any of the other offshore centers.
This is also the same reason that free software creates more jobs then it destroys (and it does destroy a few). But lowering the cost of the tools (down to nothing in this case) creates much more programming jobs than it would if the tools cost money.
Nonsense... without offshoring there never would have been a computer revolution in the first place. To think there would've is completely ignorant. Where do you think this computer you're using was made?
PC's didn't become mass-consumables until they started being largely made overseas (except for the processors). There would have been much fewer computer programming jobs without offshoring.
The economic arguments for free trade are sound and they are pretty much laws at this point. When an industry is offshored, it's cost to consumers is generally lowered. Not only that but that creates a whole new class of middle-class consumers.
In the end, it is my belief that offshoring will at some point generate a whole new slew of new computer jobs, but they just may not be the kind we had before.
No the anti-offshoring deal on Slashdot has underlying racism in it... or "nationalism" as the other poster said. The idea is that only our group should have the opportunity to do programming or whatever not based on skill (or competitiveness) but on nationality.
Slashdot is one the most subtetly racist sites on the internet.
...influence technology that is being used by companies and do it on a global scale in a way that cannot occur with any other type of software,'
...except Microsoft software that is... which is on something like 90% of worldwide desktops and has introduced concepts like the 'start menu' that are as familiar as "green light means go".
Sorry I'm not trolling or saying MS software is better... but it's a harsh reality, that's all.
Slashdot Mirror
No but Microsoft should be attempting to cut as much waste as humanly possible, and it shouldn't spend money worrying about the personal affairs of it's employees. Just as the US government shouldn't spend money on our companies, it's up to the companies themselves to be competitive and profitable.
What I meant was accompanying tax cuts with spending cuts.
This is the absolutely right time to cut taxes (and spending), with global competition fiercer than ever, having a streamlined government is a necessity. Taxes are a necessary evil but they should be as low as possible.
Plus cutting taxes is the best way to give everyone a bump up in standards of living.
Somehow this idea scares me, it seems too easy. It seems like if we got enough of these things it would take quite a bit of momentum out of the rotation of the earth.
The founders of this country gave the world a stellar republican system which has lasted for 225 years or so. The electoral college is not broke, it's one of our greatest assets. The electoral college wasn't put into place to create an elite group of states, it was put into place to get smaller states to join up to the union, states that would be completely dominated by larger states otherwise.
The electoral college actually works for the disenfranchised, rather than against it. The sparse, rural states tend to have lower per capita incomes than those states which are "under-represented".
Large urban coastal states still dominate the American system, as they would in any republic, they simply dominate less because of the electoral college.
50K a year to avoid being poverty-bound? Heh, where do you live?
The hubub about "offshoring" isn't that you should compete with Indians, because you can't naturally. Most of us who understand economics believe that offshoring will create more jobs than it destroys. You won't have to compete with offshored workers, because new and better jobs will be created because of lowered costs.
Like I said above, it works the same way free software worked when that created jobs. Lower the costs of the tools and more jobs will be created. The PC revolution would've been impossible to achieve had the parts not been available for cheaper overseas.
If this is the first time in 200 years that free trade truly does not bring about higher standards of living and more and better jobs, then I will be in favor of protecionism.
This is an utterly nonsensical reason never to reboot. Wear and tear? By the time that wear and tear really does do enough to cause a hardware failure, it's most likely that that hardware will be so out of date you'll be itching to replace it anyway.
And I've never seen any evidence to support this claim anyway.
I dunno about other distros but debian takes at least as long as windows to boot up.
Do they know there is one? Or is the WWW going to die but the internet will continue to thrive?
Nonsense, a computer running Linux is only a little less of a "black box" than a computer running a closed source OS. You really don't have anyway for sure to know if the source code you have on the machine is the code running.
If you compiled it right there, I'm sure someone could write a "gcc" program to look like you're compiling the source and checksum programs and such can be worked around and all that too.
...to figure out a simple ballot.
And because of that we have all these fscking problems.
A book about a guy using an OS. Wow.
Were I to believe that that would actually happen, I would be all for protectionism. But like I said elsewhere in the thread, just as free software has created more jobs by lowering costs, this will do the same somehow.
Eh... on Slashdot the sentiment seems to be against that of the stereotypical Indian in Bangladesh... and it's definately a "racist" tone. I read quite a few jokes about "Bangladesh" but none about Russia or any of the other offshore centers.
As opposed to an AC?
This is also the same reason that free software creates more jobs then it destroys (and it does destroy a few). But lowering the cost of the tools (down to nothing in this case) creates much more programming jobs than it would if the tools cost money.
Nonsense... without offshoring there never would have been a computer revolution in the first place. To think there would've is completely ignorant. Where do you think this computer you're using was made?
PC's didn't become mass-consumables until they started being largely made overseas (except for the processors). There would have been much fewer computer programming jobs without offshoring.
The economic arguments for free trade are sound and they are pretty much laws at this point. When an industry is offshored, it's cost to consumers is generally lowered. Not only that but that creates a whole new class of middle-class consumers.
In the end, it is my belief that offshoring will at some point generate a whole new slew of new computer jobs, but they just may not be the kind we had before.
No the anti-offshoring deal on Slashdot has underlying racism in it... or "nationalism" as the other poster said. The idea is that only our group should have the opportunity to do programming or whatever not based on skill (or competitiveness) but on nationality.
Slashdot is one the most subtetly racist sites on the internet.
The big fallacy is that you're ignorant of economics. CEO's don't just benefit, consumers of offshored product will benefit, too.
Michael seems to think that only Americans should do programming... it's all he ever posts about.
Yeah but employed Nike workers would also be a small percentage of the population.
... and ugly websites!
Ok, I think it was on CDE right?
But I mean let's be honest here, Microsoft has made desktop computing it's own.
Sorry I'm not trolling or saying MS software is better... but it's a harsh reality, that's all.