Ubuntu won't play DVDs, that's between you and Google, my friend: If you were using Windows Vista, you wouldn't have this problem in the first place, and,
WTF? My, you're cruel - why don't you just come clean and tell your friend his CDROM drive won't play DVDs... Blaming it on not having Vista - sheesh! That's a good one. Oh, and Ubuntu doesn't run on 286s, either. Time for your friend to upgrade...
Those who insist on using proprietary operating systems get to pay for them. Yes, even when that means they pay with their time.
If your copy of Windows won't validate, that's between you and Microsoft, my friend:
If you were using OSS, you wouldn't have this problem in the first place, and,
As much as I pity you, I can't help you. No, I'm not going to Google for an MS Keygen for you.
No, you can't "borrow" a Windows key from me. I don't have one.
No, I *really* can't help you. If your OS doesn't validate, there's nothing I can do. It's not just a matter of won't, but I can't.
If you think commercial software is so great, follow the commercial model of paying someone for support.
Oh, and there's a Linux installfest this Thursday. If things between you and Bill don't work out, why don't you stop by and install a real 64 bit OS on your machine?
But I do hate it for the gamers, man. What are they going to do?
No, they only have to spend 100,000 a year combined. Which includes all costs of the campaign, including postage, bandwidth, administration and equipment costs, etc... Think about it - buying a $100,000 server and depreciating it over 2 years would get you halfway toward the reporting requirements.
It is my honest opinion that this was bad legislation. Yes, I know most blogger wouldn't be affected, but organizations like the EFF would have been.
For a non-profit organization, even small expenses can make or break the efforts of the organization. There are a lot of non-profit organizations that have only a handfull of staff, yet influence thousands or millions of people. Groups like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood - which are generally well funded - are the exception, rather than the rule. Political advocacy for minority causes is generally not big business. Especially when said minority opinions are held by the poor or politically disenfranchised.
Furthermore, this legislation would remove the ability of politically influential bloggers and organizations to remain anonymous. It would provide a nice "tool" for an oppressive regime to eliminate dissent. Our Constitutional Rights are important, even if the average blogger is not affected! It's a matter of principlel, one I would expect the/. crowd to understand, considering all of the harping they do about Constitutional liberties.
Organizations like the FSF, EFF, and FIRE would probably be considerably affected by this legislation.
I realize things were different back then, but I've managed to accumulate 120MB of my own source code over the years. Heck, the source for the Linux kernel alone, compressed, wouldn't even fit on that drive. It had a lot of limitations that probably weren't apparent at the time, because the expectations of a computer was probably considerably less than it is today.
Software is bloated today because it tries to be all things to all people, and because hard drive space is cheap. The cost of hard drive space for the typical "bloated" office application is less than some people pay for a cup of coffee. Performance is nice, but features drive the market.
Even I like FreeDOS. It's fast, installs easy, but I haven't used it since I installed it. Why? - Well, because even Windows can do so much more.
Compared to MS-DOS, FreeDOS is an easy winner. But it's not 1980 anymore, and people are looking toward using computers for more and more these days. Even the $300 Sam's club special can play MP3s and burn DVDs. Can the Amiga?
That politicians can't grasp the immediately obvious? Why do they even bother with electronic voting machines when:
The voters don't want them, and,
They cost more and are less reliable than paper ballots, and,
The technical community thinks they're dangerous to democracy.
How could any politician come to a conclusion that electronic voting machines make sense? There is no compelling reason to use electronic voting machines at all. The only possible explanation I see is that counties which bought electronic voting machines had county officials on the payroll of the voting machine makers.
The fact that they've been purchased seems to suggest that politics is already not quite as transparent as it should be.
I wasn't a *bad* kid, but that doesn't my parents had reason to trust me completely. I pushed the limits, and I suppose my children will do the same. In fact, I've got a two year old who is doing that right now. Reason does not apply to the mind of a child, unfortunately.
Kids push the limits because they haven't yet learned that limits exist. It's kind of like running into the street without looking. You and I can figure out that just because you do it once and didn't get hurt doesn't mean it's safe. But kids often don't know any better; they don't have the benefit of experience that we do.
Granted, they'll learn, one way or another. One way of learning - that is, teaching your children, doesn't leave emotional (and sometimes physical) scars. The other way - experience - can be rather painful and have lasting negative effects. Imagine if children had to learn not to play in the street by experience.
MySpace is not much different. Children don't understand adults; if they've been raised in a loving family, they might not understand why anyone would want to hurt them. They don't have the experience and judgement necessary to recognized the telltale signs that someone might have ulterior motives (could a 12 year old even spell ulterior?)
I don't think there's anything wrong with giving children a little leeway to experience the world. They do need exposure to things outside the immediate family for proper development. However, parents have a duty to provide the oversight necessary to keep their children from getting hurt. While the MySpace solution is simplistic, I think that's what this whole thing is all about. Maybe you can trust your kids. Or, maybe you're just naive.
So, my grassroots lobbying is ok as long as nobody is paying attention? And if I do post something which gathers a political following, suddenly I've got papers to fill out?
Why would anyone bother in the first place? The point of grassroots lobbying is to influence a large number of people. Paid lobbyists, OTOH, are paid instead to influence only a handful of very important people. IOW, this bill would effectively stifle citizens groups fighting for their rights in favor of corporate lobbyists.
So, by all means pass this bill! Then act surprised when DRM becomes a mandatory component of computers. Act outraged when Corporate America(TM) patents everything short of tying your own shoes. Protest the tax breaks given to Big Oil. But don't dare blog about it unless you can be certain that nobody cares about your stupid opinion (they probably don't anyway, but one can hope).
Nothing like stifling democracy by restricting fourth amendment freedoms.
While it may be the right thing to do, and I certainly respect your wishes concerning your own website, the unfortunate reality is that business has created a climate of fear and uncertainty surrounding disclosure. Thus, your website may get hacked because some good samaritan is afraid of disclosing a vulnerability with your website.
People are risk averse, and disclosing bugs carries a lot of risk with it. If you desire reporting of security vulnerabilities, you should state so, in unambiguous language, on your website.
And I feel for the innocent people who may bear the brunt of security vulnerabilities, but I must add one thing: Liability is big business. It won't be long before companies are held liable for inability to secure a website, rather than mere due diligence. If Florida can sue the tobacco industry and win, then certainly a company that inadvertently discloses names and SSN's could be held liable for the identity theft that occurs when they get hacked.
Should you discover a security vulnerability, the correct response is to forget it. Here's why:
No one likes the bearer of bad news - not the website owner, not the vendor who sold the software, not the consultant who coded the website. They have lawyers; their interest is in making money, not necessarily in creating secure software. Keep this in mind. If they can find a cause for libel, they will. If they can deflect blame (stupid hackers are at it again!), they will.
Why would you expose yourself to potential legal problems, especially considering that you aren't getting paid for your efforts
If they were truly concerned about security, they would have hired an audit firm.
Getting hacked is perhaps the best teaching experience regarding security. Let another hacker expose their vulnerability in a way they can't deny. Then they will take security seriously.
Do the security industry a favor: why would anyone hire a security specialist when good samaritans on the internet (aka whitehats) will audit their website for free? Don't undermine your fellow workers.
No one has ever been brought to trial or sued for failure to disclose a security vulnerability. You stand nothing to lose by quietly taking your business elsewhere; let the company figure out that the public wants secure web sites.
Naturally, we might feel a sense of duty to help someone out - if they have an exposed security flaw, we naturally want to help them. But first consider how it will be received. Most companies would rather produce software with publicly unknown flaws than to produce perfect software, websites, etc... at a much higher cost.
And, if you feel that the website owner would appreciate knowing, you might at least disclose it from an anonymous email address.
I think the larger philosophical debate is should the government actively track citizens engaged in completely legal activities without some type of oversight.
I agree about the oversight. And no, I don't think they should be able to view individual transactions. As an engineer, I have, as part of my profession, many of the things found in Ted Kaczinski's cabin. At least I have a believable alibi for my possessions. But what about the tinkerer buying batteries in bulk, or timing circuits, or wiring? Yes, it could be very problematic.
But, why do we allow private businesses to collect this data in the first place? And, assuming they do the collection, who are we to tell someone how to treat their data? Are we going to add yet more laws which make collections of bits illegal?
I think the solution is a healthy dose of paranoia. I assume that anything I do in public, or over the internet, is public knowledge. If I don't want it seen, I encrypt it; if I don't others knowing about it, I pay in cash. My other option is to go back to the inconveniences of living a cash only life.
Of what use is someone's credit report to the Feds, (assuming they are actually trying to enforce the law), and,
Why does it matter when your credit report is readily available to any business? Wouldn't we expect law enforcement to have the same access, if not greater, than businesses already do?
When I think about it, everything in my credit report is the result of a public transaction. While I believe credit reports are being used inappropriately by employers, etc... I can't see how anyone believes this information to be private. In fact, most corporations who report to credit reporting agencies publicize this fact because they believe it deters fraud.
Now, whether or not the credit reporting agencies should be gathering this information, and how society depends on it, are a whole different matter.
Note that I'm not saying their behavior is right; just that taking isn't. It's kind of akin to asking why you can't trespass on someone's property when, technically, you aren't causing them any monetary loss.
I think the rationale goes something like this: if you don't have those old japanese films to watch, you'll watch something else instead - something which is more marketable by the company. It's the same reason Microsoft doesn't make Windows98 available for free - if they did, how would they sell Windows XP?
Interesting, but the fact that there isn't a viable market doesn't mean that infringing is any less wrong. Internationally, I suppose you're bound to the copyright laws of whatever country you happen to reside, so it might not even be an issue. That said, if someone wants to hoard the material they created because they don't see a good business case for selling it, it is their every right to do so. The fact that they aren't willing to sell it to you does not create an implied right of taking.
A better alternative would have been to hire another engineer: after he's done with the driver, he's still around to provide support for the code he wrote and understands...
Also, when deadlines get tight, you can expect your employees to work overtime. However, once the contract is signed and your money paid, your overseas consultants have no incentive to work any harder for you.
"[Offshoring] was used almost entirely as a form of expansion, not as a replacement," Thomas said.
So, IOW, while we aren't actively replacing American workers, there are jobs that would otherwise have gone to American workers had they not offshored.
In economics, this is called opportunity cost.
The bottom line is the same, though: Instead of hiring American workers, they are paying foreign contractors
Now on to my experience. I was part of a team doing embedded development for a consumer electronics platform. We were under tremendous time pressure to get the product to market, so management decided to offshore the development of drivers which I had been working on. When I handed over my drivers to the offshore team:
The driver was responding to interrupts, and used an interrupt driven model.
The framework for using DMA was setup.
The framework to work with the kernel's block specific device driver interface was setup.
I estimated that it would have taken me another 4 to 6 weeks to complete the driver. The only things I had left to do were to write the routines which actually transferred the data to and from the device.
Now, 6 months and several deadlines go by, and we haven't heard anything regarding the drivers. Finally, we get our code back:
The interrupt code has been removed. The driver now works on a polling basis. Keep in mind how acceptable this would be in a real time system.
The DMA code has likewise been removed.
The driver doesn't interface at all with the kernel's specific device driver interface - instead, it uses a hack by which it talks to the block layer, bypassing the development track of every other said kind of device.
Oh, did I mention that the driver didn't work?
So, not only are we now behind schedule, we ended up shipping a broken driver to the customer. Several of our customers missed the Christmas selling season because our code wasn't delivered in a timely manner; worse, it's now 6 months late and doesn't work.
We had to spend several months of engineering time to debug/redo the driver to get it to a working state. Here's what offshoring cost my company:
We lost goodwill with almost all of our customers.
The licensing revenue for these customers was delayed by two quarters. We're lucky they paid us at all...
We lost the royalty revenues for the Christmas selling season for all our customers whose products were delayed.
In the end, offshoring was a net loss for everyone involved:
There are our customers, who lost potential revenue.
There is the American engineer who didn't get hired.
There are the overseas engineers, who were paid substandard wages.
There is the company, who may lose marketshare because of the reputation damage...
The only people who are getting rich from offshoring are the offshoring companies. The only reason why this fraud is allowed to continue is because it's hard to prosecute across national boundaries.
And, if anyone is wondering, we later learned that the engineers who wrote the broken code were formerly Java developers who had no experience writing embedded code. My company would not ever have hired these guys had they interviewed with us, yet we saw no problem in contracting a critical part of product to them.
Let's not forget the Neuros OSD which does the same thing, and more, and has open source firmware!
I'm a bit more excited about the OSD because of its hackability factor. It runs Linux - I've got the source and am working on building my own software for it.
An embryo is not a child. Why do we need an "alternative" to embryonic stem cells anyway? Embryonic stem cells work perfectly well, and are usually considered more effective than non-embryonic cells.
Funny how you don't see the anti-stem-cell people protesting IVF and other fertility programmes, even though they "kill" embryos too.
I'm not sure if you're deliberately trolling, or are just expressing an emotional opinion. Regardless, I think your points deserve a response. And I'm really not trying to flame you, but you're wrong on every point you've made:
An embryo is a child - at least according to the 1 billion Catholics on the planet.
Why do we need an alternative...? Well, for starters, to avoid killing human life. A cure which depends on killing someone else to work isn't really a cure.
Embrionic stem cells don't work at all yet - it will be between 10 and 20 years before cures could be developed which use them. Meanwhile, diseases like Parkinson's are being cured today by adult stem cell therapies.
Funny how you don't see the anti-stem-cell people protesting IVF and other fertility programmes, even though they "kill" embryos too. Okay, perhaps you don't see these people, but the rest of the world does. I'm not sure where you've been hiding from the 1 billion Catholics in the world, but in a lot of places, IVF isn't even offered because the medical facilities are Catholic owned. So yes, maybe the don't protest publicly, but it's not as if they aren't opposed to it.
Granted, I understand a lot of people may not agree with the position of the Catholic church regarding stem cell research, birth control, IVF, etc... but at least it is logically consistent. If one believes that life begins at conception, then it logically follows that anything which deliberately causes the end of that life is morally wrong. Hence, you have the objection to the aforementioned activities. If you want to prove the Catholic church wrong on this point, you'd have to produce compelling scientific evidence or a chain of logic which showed that life didn't begin at conception. That's unlikely to happen, as it was medical research which revealed that a person's DNA - that is, their physical characteristics - are uniquely determined at conception.
And please don't take this as a flame or a troll. If you disagree with what I said, post an intelligent reply. After all, I've been proven wrong before.
They aren't merely day-to-day issues. Each one of them affects the lives of people right now, and if we don't get them right today, we might not have the ability to correct them tomorrow. The issues mentioned are those for which we can find solutions. We simply don't know if GW is even a problem yet. But there's no question that the other issues mentioned are problems, are very real, and will only get worse unless we find a solution. For example, without democracy, would we even be able to address the issue of global warming? If our government is controlled by a few key interests (via electronic election rigging...) all the GW science in the world won't matter.
Slashdot Mirror
Ubuntu won't play DVDs, that's between you and Google, my friend: If you were using Windows Vista, you wouldn't have this problem in the first place, and,
WTF? My, you're cruel - why don't you just come clean and tell your friend his CDROM drive won't play DVDs... Blaming it on not having Vista - sheesh! That's a good one. Oh, and Ubuntu doesn't run on 286s, either. Time for your friend to upgrade...
Those who insist on using proprietary operating systems get to pay for them. Yes, even when that means they pay with their time.
If your copy of Windows won't validate, that's between you and Microsoft, my friend:
Oh, and there's a Linux installfest this Thursday. If things between you and Bill don't work out, why don't you stop by and install a real 64 bit OS on your machine?
But I do hate it for the gamers, man. What are they going to do?
No, they only have to spend 100,000 a year combined. Which includes all costs of the campaign, including postage, bandwidth, administration and equipment costs, etc... Think about it - buying a $100,000 server and depreciating it over 2 years would get you halfway toward the reporting requirements.
It is my honest opinion that this was bad legislation. Yes, I know most blogger wouldn't be affected, but organizations like the EFF would have been.
For a non-profit organization, even small expenses can make or break the efforts of the organization. There are a lot of non-profit organizations that have only a handfull of staff, yet influence thousands or millions of people. Groups like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood - which are generally well funded - are the exception, rather than the rule. Political advocacy for minority causes is generally not big business. Especially when said minority opinions are held by the poor or politically disenfranchised.
Furthermore, this legislation would remove the ability of politically influential bloggers and organizations to remain anonymous. It would provide a nice "tool" for an oppressive regime to eliminate dissent. Our Constitutional Rights are important, even if the average blogger is not affected! It's a matter of principlel, one I would expect the /. crowd to understand, considering all of the harping they do about Constitutional liberties.
Organizations like the FSF, EFF, and FIRE would probably be considerably affected by this legislation.
I realize things were different back then, but I've managed to accumulate 120MB of my own source code over the years. Heck, the source for the Linux kernel alone, compressed, wouldn't even fit on that drive. It had a lot of limitations that probably weren't apparent at the time, because the expectations of a computer was probably considerably less than it is today.
Software is bloated today because it tries to be all things to all people, and because hard drive space is cheap. The cost of hard drive space for the typical "bloated" office application is less than some people pay for a cup of coffee. Performance is nice, but features drive the market.
Even I like FreeDOS. It's fast, installs easy, but I haven't used it since I installed it. Why? - Well, because even Windows can do so much more. Compared to MS-DOS, FreeDOS is an easy winner. But it's not 1980 anymore, and people are looking toward using computers for more and more these days. Even the $300 Sam's club special can play MP3s and burn DVDs. Can the Amiga?
Someone actually screwed the RIAA for once?
Wow. I thought the RIAA would be able to recognize such an inequitable and one-sided deal...
some hacker group gets Mickey Mouse elected via electronic voting machines. I'm wondering if even then people will pay attention.
That politicians can't grasp the immediately obvious? Why do they even bother with electronic voting machines when:
How could any politician come to a conclusion that electronic voting machines make sense? There is no compelling reason to use electronic voting machines at all. The only possible explanation I see is that counties which bought electronic voting machines had county officials on the payroll of the voting machine makers.
The fact that they've been purchased seems to suggest that politics is already not quite as transparent as it should be.
I wasn't a *bad* kid, but that doesn't my parents had reason to trust me completely. I pushed the limits, and I suppose my children will do the same. In fact, I've got a two year old who is doing that right now. Reason does not apply to the mind of a child, unfortunately.
Kids push the limits because they haven't yet learned that limits exist. It's kind of like running into the street without looking. You and I can figure out that just because you do it once and didn't get hurt doesn't mean it's safe. But kids often don't know any better; they don't have the benefit of experience that we do.
Granted, they'll learn, one way or another. One way of learning - that is, teaching your children, doesn't leave emotional (and sometimes physical) scars. The other way - experience - can be rather painful and have lasting negative effects. Imagine if children had to learn not to play in the street by experience.
MySpace is not much different. Children don't understand adults; if they've been raised in a loving family, they might not understand why anyone would want to hurt them. They don't have the experience and judgement necessary to recognized the telltale signs that someone might have ulterior motives (could a 12 year old even spell ulterior?)
I don't think there's anything wrong with giving children a little leeway to experience the world. They do need exposure to things outside the immediate family for proper development. However, parents have a duty to provide the oversight necessary to keep their children from getting hurt. While the MySpace solution is simplistic, I think that's what this whole thing is all about. Maybe you can trust your kids. Or, maybe you're just naive.
Yes, but now the eff has papers to fill out. So does the ACLU, the AFA, and a whole host of non-profit organizations.
In fact, I'm not aware of any advocacy group backing this, regardless of their political persuasion.
So, my grassroots lobbying is ok as long as nobody is paying attention? And if I do post something which gathers a political following, suddenly I've got papers to fill out?
Why would anyone bother in the first place? The point of grassroots lobbying is to influence a large number of people. Paid lobbyists, OTOH, are paid instead to influence only a handful of very important people. IOW, this bill would effectively stifle citizens groups fighting for their rights in favor of corporate lobbyists.
So, by all means pass this bill! Then act surprised when DRM becomes a mandatory component of computers. Act outraged when Corporate America(TM) patents everything short of tying your own shoes. Protest the tax breaks given to Big Oil. But don't dare blog about it unless you can be certain that nobody cares about your stupid opinion (they probably don't anyway, but one can hope).
Nothing like stifling democracy by restricting fourth amendment freedoms.
While it may be the right thing to do, and I certainly respect your wishes concerning your own website, the unfortunate reality is that business has created a climate of fear and uncertainty surrounding disclosure. Thus, your website may get hacked because some good samaritan is afraid of disclosing a vulnerability with your website.
People are risk averse, and disclosing bugs carries a lot of risk with it. If you desire reporting of security vulnerabilities, you should state so, in unambiguous language, on your website.
And I feel for the innocent people who may bear the brunt of security vulnerabilities, but I must add one thing: Liability is big business. It won't be long before companies are held liable for inability to secure a website, rather than mere due diligence. If Florida can sue the tobacco industry and win, then certainly a company that inadvertently discloses names and SSN's could be held liable for the identity theft that occurs when they get hacked.
But then, it's not your business, either.
Should you discover a security vulnerability, the correct response is to forget it. Here's why:
Naturally, we might feel a sense of duty to help someone out - if they have an exposed security flaw, we naturally want to help them. But first consider how it will be received. Most companies would rather produce software with publicly unknown flaws than to produce perfect software, websites, etc... at a much higher cost.
And, if you feel that the website owner would appreciate knowing, you might at least disclose it from an anonymous email address.
I think the larger philosophical debate is should the government actively track citizens engaged in completely legal activities without some type of oversight.
I agree about the oversight. And no, I don't think they should be able to view individual transactions. As an engineer, I have, as part of my profession, many of the things found in Ted Kaczinski's cabin. At least I have a believable alibi for my possessions. But what about the tinkerer buying batteries in bulk, or timing circuits, or wiring? Yes, it could be very problematic.
But, why do we allow private businesses to collect this data in the first place? And, assuming they do the collection, who are we to tell someone how to treat their data? Are we going to add yet more laws which make collections of bits illegal?
I think the solution is a healthy dose of paranoia. I assume that anything I do in public, or over the internet, is public knowledge. If I don't want it seen, I encrypt it; if I don't others knowing about it, I pay in cash. My other option is to go back to the inconveniences of living a cash only life.
I have two questions:
When I think about it, everything in my credit report is the result of a public transaction. While I believe credit reports are being used inappropriately by employers, etc... I can't see how anyone believes this information to be private. In fact, most corporations who report to credit reporting agencies publicize this fact because they believe it deters fraud.
Now, whether or not the credit reporting agencies should be gathering this information, and how society depends on it, are a whole different matter.
You mean XML doesn't solve this problem? Blasphemy!
Note that I'm not saying their behavior is right; just that taking isn't. It's kind of akin to asking why you can't trespass on someone's property when, technically, you aren't causing them any monetary loss.
I think the rationale goes something like this: if you don't have those old japanese films to watch, you'll watch something else instead - something which is more marketable by the company. It's the same reason Microsoft doesn't make Windows98 available for free - if they did, how would they sell Windows XP?
Interesting, but the fact that there isn't a viable market doesn't mean that infringing is any less wrong. Internationally, I suppose you're bound to the copyright laws of whatever country you happen to reside, so it might not even be an issue. That said, if someone wants to hoard the material they created because they don't see a good business case for selling it, it is their every right to do so. The fact that they aren't willing to sell it to you does not create an implied right of taking.
A better alternative would have been to hire another engineer: after he's done with the driver, he's still around to provide support for the code he wrote and understands...
Also, when deadlines get tight, you can expect your employees to work overtime. However, once the contract is signed and your money paid, your overseas consultants have no incentive to work any harder for you.
So, IOW, while we aren't actively replacing American workers, there are jobs that would otherwise have gone to American workers had they not offshored.
In economics, this is called opportunity cost.
The bottom line is the same, though: Instead of hiring American workers, they are paying foreign contractors
Now on to my experience. I was part of a team doing embedded development for a consumer electronics platform. We were under tremendous time pressure to get the product to market, so management decided to offshore the development of drivers which I had been working on. When I handed over my drivers to the offshore team:
- The driver was responding to interrupts, and used an interrupt driven model.
- The framework for using DMA was setup.
- The framework to work with the kernel's block specific device driver interface was setup.
- I estimated that it would have taken me another 4 to 6 weeks to complete the driver. The only things I had left to do were to write the routines which actually transferred the data to and from the device.
Now, 6 months and several deadlines go by, and we haven't heard anything regarding the drivers. Finally, we get our code back:- The interrupt code has been removed. The driver now works on a polling basis. Keep in mind how acceptable this would be in a real time system.
- The DMA code has likewise been removed.
- The driver doesn't interface at all with the kernel's specific device driver interface - instead, it uses a hack by which it talks to the block layer, bypassing the development track of every other said kind of device.
- Oh, did I mention that the driver didn't work?
So, not only are we now behind schedule, we ended up shipping a broken driver to the customer. Several of our customers missed the Christmas selling season because our code wasn't delivered in a timely manner; worse, it's now 6 months late and doesn't work.We had to spend several months of engineering time to debug/redo the driver to get it to a working state. Here's what offshoring cost my company:
In the end, offshoring was a net loss for everyone involved:
The only people who are getting rich from offshoring are the offshoring companies. The only reason why this fraud is allowed to continue is because it's hard to prosecute across national boundaries.
And, if anyone is wondering, we later learned that the engineers who wrote the broken code were formerly Java developers who had no experience writing embedded code. My company would not ever have hired these guys had they interviewed with us, yet we saw no problem in contracting a critical part of product to them.
Let's not forget the Neuros OSD which does the same thing, and more, and has open source firmware!
I'm a bit more excited about the OSD because of its hackability factor. It runs Linux - I've got the source and am working on building my own software for it.
An embryo is not a child. Why do we need an "alternative" to embryonic stem cells anyway? Embryonic stem cells work perfectly well, and are usually considered more effective than non-embryonic cells.
Funny how you don't see the anti-stem-cell people protesting IVF and other fertility programmes, even though they "kill" embryos too.
I'm not sure if you're deliberately trolling, or are just expressing an emotional opinion. Regardless, I think your points deserve a response. And I'm really not trying to flame you, but you're wrong on every point you've made:
Granted, I understand a lot of people may not agree with the position of the Catholic church regarding stem cell research, birth control, IVF, etc... but at least it is logically consistent. If one believes that life begins at conception, then it logically follows that anything which deliberately causes the end of that life is morally wrong. Hence, you have the objection to the aforementioned activities. If you want to prove the Catholic church wrong on this point, you'd have to produce compelling scientific evidence or a chain of logic which showed that life didn't begin at conception. That's unlikely to happen, as it was medical research which revealed that a person's DNA - that is, their physical characteristics - are uniquely determined at conception.
And please don't take this as a flame or a troll. If you disagree with what I said, post an intelligent reply. After all, I've been proven wrong before.
They aren't merely day-to-day issues. Each one of them affects the lives of people right now, and if we don't get them right today, we might not have the ability to correct them tomorrow. The issues mentioned are those for which we can find solutions. We simply don't know if GW is even a problem yet. But there's no question that the other issues mentioned are problems, are very real, and will only get worse unless we find a solution. For example, without democracy, would we even be able to address the issue of global warming? If our government is controlled by a few key interests (via electronic election rigging...) all the GW science in the world won't matter.