Well it is the biggest barrier to the use of the technology.
I've worked in the medical device industry as well... and... probably the biggest problem there as well is the various professional organization and unions. We could do healthcare much cheaper and much more effectively if we were allowed to. This is especially true in the diagnostic area.
It's the same with teachers. A large part of what they do can and should be automated. Lessons plans, presentations, tests. Now many would argue... but that loses the individual attention... and my response is simple. You average teacher simply does what is in the textbook or the common lesson plans anyways. That's just how teaching is. There are thousands of schools and thousands of high school teachers... and really... and most classes teach the same thing. You're not that special as a student... and the teacher is really not that special.
Now could there be a super amazing teacher who is able to captivate their students? Quite possibly. But there's also some horrible teachers that probably hurt their students. Automated and digitized teachers will provide *good enough* and *consistent* and *affordable* education to students.
This is in the same way as automating much medical work will provide *good enough* and *consistent* and *affordable* healthcare to people.
This is stuff what should have happened to education a decade ago. So the only thing newsworthy in the article is to talk about the barrier to its implementation, which is the teacher union and their perverse power in society... as are most public sector unions.
you're rated as funny... but I mean... people should keep it in perspective.
How are salaries of doctors, lawyers, teachers, fire fighters, police officers, pharmacists, accountants...
128k in the most expensive jurisdiction for a company known to hire the best and brightest with PHDs and Masters... and little to no job security and no pension.
Yeah... doesn't sound like much to me. It's not bad by any means... but look around at what the rest of regular society earns and consider that Google is supposed to be the best of the best.
If you're looking for moral perfection before people can have an opinion, you're going to have to wait for a world full martyrs and saints. It's not going to happen.
Like it or not, if you're a tech company to say, you have to participate in the patent wars... or you won't be in business at all. This doesn't mean you don't want the whole system reformed.
I have many disagreements with the banking industry... but you know... I'd like to buy a house... and I'm probably going to get a mortgage from a bank and participate in the silly scheme. I have to live my life too.
Systemic change requires just that... systemic change. All the players operate in the current system under the current rules and you can't fault them for it.
Define 'useful'. Amazon makes a lot of very useful technologies and products available.
It started off as an online bookstore. It transformed itself into a general online store.
Not only that, it opened up its e-platform allowing all kinds of people and business access. It also pushed cloud and virtual computing by again making its services available.
They're pushing the content barrier, lowering costs and increasing availability... making content profitable on a mass market for the producers of content.
Today, they are working towards automating the warehouse and general automation. I can't think of a near-term revolutionary idea that generalized warehouse and assembly robotics. Good/bad, the impact is unmistakable.
That they can fund all this and push further into technology by selling things is a godsend to the technology industry. No longer is the technology part just subservient to the real industry.
Europe is very much an area of great political ignorance. They bet on the Euro... thinking you could have a monetary union without a common fiscal or political union. Well, anyone with half a brain could have told you that wasn't going to work. But they want and did it anyways... and now they're finding out maybe you do need a common fiscal and political union if you plan on being in a monetary union. Hey. maybe that was the plan of some European bureau/technocrats anyways.
In the area of 'multiculturalism'... Europe showed more great ignorance. Perhaps even more ignorant than their choice in the Euro. They bought into the idea that you don't need any common cultural policy to have a common political policy. Basically, just throw welfare money at people, and you can let people believe and do whatever they want. Just make sure they don't kill people.
It hasn't worked out very well and it is poised to get worse. Ghettoized communities. Imaams and religious leaders who have no allegiance to Western values or the nation.
Forget about putting people on trial for treason or anything along those lines... just bloody well teaching people the values of your society is not even done in Europe. Schools don't teach what it means to be British. A reason why many British youth aren't even British any more. But it's worse when you have an organized group (Islamic religious leaders) who to 'teach' the youth their values and your society does nothing to push your values.
There used to be a time that to be considered a citizen of a country, you have to subscribe to the values of that country within a degree. At least, the values of that society were pushed heavily in the schools and society.
Just like you can't run a monetary union without some common fiscal/political union... you can't run a national union without some common cultural/values.
Europe will be brought back to reality in one way or another. Not that North America doesn't suffer from similar issues... it's just not as bad and delusional as Europe.
Which is basically how our society likes to play it today in all areas.
You have the freedom of speech as long as you don't offend anyone. You have the right to make choices in your life, as long as they aren't important choices (healthcare, education, end of life) You have the right to be treated equally, except in all areas the government decides you should not (quotas, men/women rights, differential treatment of public sector/private worker security/pay/pensions/work, different laws apply to American citizens versus various free trade partners) You have the right to choose when/what/how much employment you want except when it interferes with the infinite growth, banking-debt based model.
There's always reasons for it, but it's the increasing myth that the West has all these freedoms that is at the heart of it. It's basically been... you have all these rights, but we'll make it very difficult for you to go against the decisions the government has made for you.
Yes, let's not exaggerate... the West still has far greater freedoms than many other countries.
Hopefully, these attacks on free-speech spark a certain fight back for rights. The 'right' in America hangs on to gun rights with excess.. Hopefully there's still an element on the left that hangs on to freedom of speech with excess.
That TV stations can't show controversial material. I'd go one step further. Even if they showed TV commercials with the same content, they shouldn't go nuts. But maybe I have higher expectations of British citizens.
Or there's a much simpler explanation... people who design protocols make tradeoffs or don't care about security.
Most of the Internet protocols were designed in a relatively open way. Are they secure?
Have you perhaps taken a look at SMTP, HTTP... heck even TCP isn't really secure. There's no authentication.
Now yes, things have been built on top of things and security added on and more focused on... but really...
In any case, just looking at history in the internet space, I think the lack of security has more to do with tradeoffs and trying to get things out quickly than any grand plan for patents.
1. He's not over-exaggerating. With the exception of the United States, many Western countries already have something similar. Canada for example already has human rights tribunals which seek to censure offensive material. Muslim groups are powerful and blasphemy is still a big deal in Muslim communities.
2. Why is he complaining? Because he prefers the American way to the Saudi Arabia way. What kind of world would you rather live in? That ruled by the Saudis or the Americans? Is this concept so difficult for you to understand?
No shit... the bigger power makes the laws. Wooo... what a revelation. That has been the case for thousands upon thousands of years. And other powers come in and try to push their ideas.
Does that mean, the average person/country shouldn't try and join sides with the power they most prefer or that they consider more moral or more just or best way of life?
Logical and Scientific arguments have no meaning in morality or ways of life. That is all value judgment. Go ahead... give me a logical and scientific argument why the Nazi way of life should be opposed?
You can't do it without appealing to morality. Life is sacred... that's morality. Freedom is good... that's morality. We should treat people equally... that's morality. We should treat people well... that's morality. We should have peace... that's morality.
Like it or not, everything starts from morality and values. You can't reach a decision without morality and values. Science and logic only come in to play once you have morality and values.
So yeah... people take sides and push their vision of the world. Welcome to life and history. The only thing that matters and the only thing that ever matters is which side wins and what they want to do with the world.
So take 5 years and live in Saudi Arabia as a regular person. Now, take 5 years and live in the United States as a regular person.
Then come back and let me know which society you'd rather have lead the world.
There's a lot of possible answers mixed in everywhere.
1. As you say... success encourages immigration 2. Perhaps genetic diversity allows different strengths from various genetic backgrounds to manifest themselves. 3. Perhaps there is a high tie in with culture and genetics... and different cultures interacting and mixing their ideas produce innovative results 4. Perhaps history is accounted for the spread of empire and the mixing that occurs there is also a cause for prosperity. When the British mixed with the Indians... a certain class of Indians adopted more successful British values... and also adopted some mixing with British genes for example.
But the actual articles is quite interesting to read.
I think people underestimate Microsoft. They've been at this for a long time.
Services are a very profitable business. Constant cash-flow. It is good. You also avoid the need to constantly push pointless updates and frameworks to make it seem like the next version has value. I actually think this will allow Microsoft to build better products which will actually let them compete better in the market.
When you look at something like email, Microsoft has Exchange and a lot of the market runs it. They are in the best position to leverage that into a service. Most importantly.... and this is a big one... they are always willing to do the dirty work in the enterprise and government world. That is to say work with companies and deployments to have mixed cloud/private environments... all the legal stuff...
This also applies to Office/Sharepoint...
On the device side, turn over seems anecdotal pretty high on the consumer side. People switch from IOS to Android without much concern for data or lockin. Sure, not all people will switch easily as being on ICloud or whatever has advantages if you have all Apple devices. But there's enough room in there that a solid product with some decent marketing could make big inroads quickly.
All true... and back to the question that matters.
What power would you rather be ruled by? The Americans, The Chinese, The Russians, The Arabs?
Yeah, sorry... I'm still going with the Americans. Perhaps there is a utopia out there somewhere where power is distributed and no one rules. Until that time, the best we as people can do is keep perspective to choose the best power to rule us.
Heck, I'd even choose the Americans over the EU. The Americans value free speech more than than EU who'd probably move quickly to ban offensive speech.
None of us thought of exploiting it by arbitrage, because we knew it was "wrong". This creep from Thailand did just that. If the courts do not rule narrowly and uphold first sale doctrine for these EEE books, the publishers will simply stop licensing EEE books under cheap terms. Millions of Asian students will be affected.
Just what is 'wrong' about bypassing differential pricing? Illegal perhaps. I actually think differential pricing should be illegal as it is wrong. Just my opinion of course.
Why should companies license books or drugs or games or music or anything else for cheap in other countries? Maybe they should respond to it by lowering pricing in America and increasing pricing in Asia?
Indeed, differential pricing is one of the problems with free trade. A 'high-dollar' is supposed to allow country access to a higher standard of living and increased efficiency by machinery purchases and others. But what happens when companies can simply differentiate pricing, then the benefit of a high-dollar is hurt.
That was my point... we in the West are just as capable. BUT... since the current manual manufacture is being done overseas, they then have the ability to automate it.
TV manufacturing as you example said moved out of the US a long time ago. I could be wrong, but I think the last major manufacturer with Zenith.
Since Panasonic was assembling TVs manually for years in Japan, they could see the opportunity and had the know how on how to automate it. They also have the grand name.
I think I was clear in my original post. But I'm not suggesting it is impossible for the West to automate such thing or do it locally... just that it is not an 'obvious' or 'natural' shift.
Do you know how long it took China to build its industry? It took decades. It takes a lot to move big systems.
Why is Ontario or Michigan still a huge player in the automotive game despite their high cost? There's a huge system there that is hard to move. Lots of suppliers, skilled people that know what they're doing...
You will note it is FoxConn working on this. There's nothing of course stopping a Western country from working on it.... but do you know the first thing about assembling mobile phones? No... it takes knowledge. Knowledge that right now resides in China. They know all the tasks people need to do to assemble the smartphone and can then build and task robots to do it.
And most likely it won't happen all at once. Maybe one part of the assembly gets automated. So that robot is placed in the FoxConn factory in China. A lot of parts suppliers are probably in China too (transport costs there as well). To move the automated factory to the west would cost a lot of time and money... is it worth the shipping costs? Believe it or not... shipping costs... even with todays gas prices are still quite low relative to the costs of everything else.
I'll leave it to the companies to figure out the optimal cost... but it's just not obvious that you'd want to assemble locally for such small items.
This is a very important point in these tough times.
Too many countries want to 'cut waste' and preserve social spending.
The problem is simply that the big social spending takes up so much of the budgets. The other cuts are pretty much meaningless, but can have drastic impacts on the areas affected.
University R&D - cheap but essential for new discoveries. K-12... expensive and not much payback once u get past basic education. We keep spending more money and our kids aren't getting any smarter. Taboo to cut back on.
Mental Health - cheap to provide and deals with small numbers of people that desperately need it. Regular healthcare... ridiculously expensive taboo to cut back on.
This goes for arts spending, highly specific industries (nuclear...)...
If they're going to cut anything, they should be cutting healthcare, education, and policing. These are the massive cost drivers in any modern society. A mere 2% wage cut to these areas would do a lot more for any budget than going after all the little programs.
"Neither drugs nor guns are that easy to make, or else you wouldn't have many drug or gun dealers. "
That makes about 0 sense. People can grow their own vegetables, but most go to the store to buy it because it is easier. Not everyone has to make their own stuff. But it is easy enough that there will always be an underground market to make it.
This is not about libertarian philosophy. This is about what laws work... and if laws don't work or make the situation worse, why have them?
Banning alcohol during prohibition didn't work because well... alcohol is easy to make.
You can't ban marijuana... too easy to make.
There's not a country on Earth where you can't get access to illegal substances. Even even in Saudi Araba where they would probably kill you for having drugs, you can get anything you want.
But despite all empirical evidence to the contrary, if you still support laws banning simple drugs and basic firearms, well that's your prerogative to keep spending money and destroying people's lives on things that don't work.
Me, I'd rather spend all the money on the war on drugs and war on guns on public health and mental health.
We're the most scientific society the world has ever known. Science holds more power today that at any point in history.
Now you can say, it is 'not true science' in as much as people can say Saudi Arabia or Iran is not 'true Islam'.
Some abstract notion of science or religion as *truth*.
But back in reality.
People who say science is their guide are at the most powerful in history. Regular people walk around saying 'we need independent scientific bodies to set healthcare, education policy. People readily accept the truth from scientific panels without much understanding of the actual science. Institutions of science are well funded by government as is the education systems (Relative to most other times in history).
It's not the academic community that is at fault. It is our society.
I've long held the view that science only gained the credibility it has because it was free from politics and power.
But since science has gained such credibility, people think we should now *trust* with power. Which of course destroys the very thing that gave it that trust. Ye old saying 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely'.
For one thing, we now have government funding for science. Sounds like a good idea... except of course. That means funding for universities... which need to hire faculty. So whom do they hire and how much do they pay them? Why did they hire Bob and not Alice? Alice would like a job too. The whole question of fairness comes up.
Then of course there's the issue of funding projects. Which projects get funded? Which lobbyists and politicians and special interest groups matter? What policies will be impacted?
It all sounds very neat to have a special scientific class able to deliver *the truth*. It's just completely unscientific and contrary to all empirical evidence in history to think it possible. There has never been a group of wise people in power outside of politics.
Plato envisioned the Philosopher Kings on a group of wise societal leaders. It is said this actually that this was the foundation of the Islamic Republic in Iran... a group of wise religious people given power in Iran. Not unlike people who wish for rational administration or scientific experts in position in Western society to make decision outside of democracy. It's all too common to hear people wishing for transit policy to be decided by transit experts in 'independent panels'. Or healthcare policy...
It's a very dangerous road.
In short... despite all the technology, education, and the internet and accessibility to information... the *truth* remains as elusive as ever.
Except that requires experts in the field to be able to spot very fine details in scientific findings. This is often times hard to do. Not to mention when two expert scientists differ on items, it becomes hard for anyone outside that field to really have any idea whose actually right.
In these cases, it is absolutely valuable to be able to get access to the personal emails and other items relating to the finding. If you see emails like:
"Hey Joe. I don't like those findings. See if you can change the graph to make it look less drastic"
"Hey Paul. This really isn't helping our case for policy X." "Hey man, okay... I'll see what I can do."
A lot of professions struggle with these issus (doctors, lawyers, engineers...)
This is where people like you need to recognize the limits of the CAPABILITY of government.
The government cannot truly ban drugs for the simple reason that most drugs are easy to make. Anyone can grow a plant. A person with a decent knowledge of chemistry can make all sorts of harder drugs.
Anyone with a decent knowledge of metal working and basic materials can easily make bullets.
Making a gun is harder... but easily within the realm of personal manufacture. Making a good gun is harder of course, but nothing that couldn't be done.
There's no point in banning something which can be so easily produced. You can certainly try and control things which are harder to product or easier to detect though.
Why pretend we have a free global market? This goes for all countries. They all sit around signing global free trade and open investment, but it is clear no country is really willing to deal with true global free trade. They're not willing to pay the true price of it.
Is there a soul on this planet who actually thinks Obama is concerned with national security in terms of this Wind Farm?
Let's not even get into Buy America, Stimulus packages...
Just don't sign free-trade deals if you really don't want free trade. It's not the end of the world, if nations/regions have their own companies. If anything, at least its a bit of global redundancy.
Disclaimer: I think global free trade should be illegal as it applies different rules to different people. American workers have to obey a minimum wage which Chinese workers do not.
What employee jumps ship from a well-run company filled with good training, professional development, pretty good pay, and stability?
Sure, I *can* simply jump ship. But hey, I could do that now and the company isn't training me at all.
All investment entails risk. Investing in your employees is no different. But engineers, like many professionals are not super-keen on jumping from a good ship just for good money... and we're really not going to jump ship from a good company to a bad one just for money.
Somehow or another lawyers, doctors, accountants... every other field of professionals seems to have no problem training their workers and they are just as likely to jump ship.
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Well it is the biggest barrier to the use of the technology.
I've worked in the medical device industry as well... and... probably the biggest problem there as well is the various professional organization and unions. We could do healthcare much cheaper and much more effectively if we were allowed to. This is especially true in the diagnostic area.
It's the same with teachers. A large part of what they do can and should be automated. Lessons plans, presentations, tests. Now many would argue... but that loses the individual attention... and my response is simple. You average teacher simply does what is in the textbook or the common lesson plans anyways. That's just how teaching is. There are thousands of schools and thousands of high school teachers... and really... and most classes teach the same thing. You're not that special as a student... and the teacher is really not that special.
Now could there be a super amazing teacher who is able to captivate their students? Quite possibly. But there's also some horrible teachers that probably hurt their students. Automated and digitized teachers will provide *good enough* and *consistent* and *affordable* education to students.
This is in the same way as automating much medical work will provide *good enough* and *consistent* and *affordable* healthcare to people.
This is stuff what should have happened to education a decade ago. So the only thing newsworthy in the article is to talk about the barrier to its implementation, which is the teacher union and their perverse power in society... as are most public sector unions.
Also it is teacher's unions, professors, and universities who don't want to compete with free universally accessible competition.
you're rated as funny... but I mean... people should keep it in perspective.
How are salaries of doctors, lawyers, teachers, fire fighters, police officers, pharmacists, accountants...
128k in the most expensive jurisdiction for a company known to hire the best and brightest with PHDs and Masters... and little to no job security and no pension.
Yeah... doesn't sound like much to me.
It's not bad by any means... but look around at what the rest of regular society earns and consider that Google is supposed to be the best of the best.
Okay, so he's part of the problem.
If you're looking for moral perfection before people can have an opinion, you're going to have to wait for a world full martyrs and saints. It's not going to happen.
Like it or not, if you're a tech company to say, you have to participate in the patent wars... or you won't be in business at all. This doesn't mean you don't want the whole system reformed.
I have many disagreements with the banking industry... but you know... I'd like to buy a house... and I'm probably going to get a mortgage from a bank and participate in the silly scheme. I have to live my life too.
Systemic change requires just that... systemic change. All the players operate in the current system under the current rules and you can't fault them for it.
Define 'useful'. Amazon makes a lot of very useful technologies and products available.
It started off as an online bookstore.
It transformed itself into a general online store.
Not only that, it opened up its e-platform allowing all kinds of people and business access.
It also pushed cloud and virtual computing by again making its services available.
They're pushing the content barrier, lowering costs and increasing availability... making content profitable on a mass market for the producers of content.
Today, they are working towards automating the warehouse and general automation. I can't think of a near-term revolutionary idea that generalized warehouse and assembly robotics. Good/bad, the impact is unmistakable.
That they can fund all this and push further into technology by selling things is a godsend to the technology industry. No longer is the technology part just subservient to the real industry.
Europe is very much an area of great political ignorance.
They bet on the Euro... thinking you could have a monetary union without a common fiscal or political union. Well, anyone with half a brain could have told you that wasn't going to work. But they want and did it anyways... and now they're finding out maybe you do need a common fiscal and political union if you plan on being in a monetary union. Hey. maybe that was the plan of some European bureau/technocrats anyways.
In the area of 'multiculturalism'... Europe showed more great ignorance. Perhaps even more ignorant than their choice in the Euro. They bought into the idea that you don't need any common cultural policy to have a common political policy. Basically, just throw welfare money at people, and you can let people believe and do whatever they want. Just make sure they don't kill people.
It hasn't worked out very well and it is poised to get worse. Ghettoized communities. Imaams and religious leaders who have no allegiance to Western values or the nation.
Forget about putting people on trial for treason or anything along those lines... just bloody well teaching people the values of your society is not even done in Europe. Schools don't teach what it means to be British. A reason why many British youth aren't even British any more. But it's worse when you have an organized group (Islamic religious leaders) who to 'teach' the youth their values and your society does nothing to push your values.
There used to be a time that to be considered a citizen of a country, you have to subscribe to the values of that country within a degree. At least, the values of that society were pushed heavily in the schools and society.
Just like you can't run a monetary union without some common fiscal/political union... you can't run a national union without some common cultural/values.
Europe will be brought back to reality in one way or another. Not that North America doesn't suffer from similar issues... it's just not as bad and delusional as Europe.
Which is basically how our society likes to play it today in all areas.
You have the freedom of speech as long as you don't offend anyone.
You have the right to make choices in your life, as long as they aren't important choices (healthcare, education, end of life)
You have the right to be treated equally, except in all areas the government decides you should not (quotas, men/women rights, differential treatment of public sector/private worker security/pay/pensions/work, different laws apply to American citizens versus various free trade partners)
You have the right to choose when/what/how much employment you want except when it interferes with the infinite growth, banking-debt based model.
There's always reasons for it, but it's the increasing myth that the West has all these freedoms that is at the heart of it. It's basically been... you have all these rights, but we'll make it very difficult for you to go against the decisions the government has made for you.
Yes, let's not exaggerate... the West still has far greater freedoms than many other countries.
Hopefully, these attacks on free-speech spark a certain fight back for rights.
The 'right' in America hangs on to gun rights with excess..
Hopefully there's still an element on the left that hangs on to freedom of speech with excess.
Isn't this even sadder when you think of it.
That TV stations can't show controversial material. I'd go one step further. Even if they showed TV commercials with the same content, they shouldn't go nuts. But maybe I have higher expectations of British citizens.
Or there's a much simpler explanation... people who design protocols make tradeoffs or don't care about security.
Most of the Internet protocols were designed in a relatively open way. Are they secure?
Have you perhaps taken a look at SMTP, HTTP... heck even TCP isn't really secure. There's no authentication.
Now yes, things have been built on top of things and security added on and more focused on... but really...
In any case, just looking at history in the internet space, I think the lack of security has more to do with tradeoffs and trying to get things out quickly than any grand plan for patents.
Several points
1. He's not over-exaggerating. With the exception of the United States, many Western countries already have something similar. Canada for example already has human rights tribunals which seek to censure offensive material. Muslim groups are powerful and blasphemy is still a big deal in Muslim communities.
2. Why is he complaining? Because he prefers the American way to the Saudi Arabia way. What kind of world would you rather live in? That ruled by the Saudis or the Americans? Is this concept so difficult for you to understand?
No shit... the bigger power makes the laws. Wooo... what a revelation. That has been the case for thousands upon thousands of years. And other powers come in and try to push their ideas.
Does that mean, the average person/country shouldn't try and join sides with the power they most prefer or that they consider more moral or more just or best way of life?
Logical and Scientific arguments have no meaning in morality or ways of life. That is all value judgment.
Go ahead... give me a logical and scientific argument why the Nazi way of life should be opposed?
You can't do it without appealing to morality. Life is sacred... that's morality. Freedom is good... that's morality. We should treat people equally... that's morality. We should treat people well... that's morality. We should have peace... that's morality.
Like it or not, everything starts from morality and values. You can't reach a decision without morality and values. Science and logic only come in to play once you have morality and values.
So yeah... people take sides and push their vision of the world. Welcome to life and history. The only thing that matters and the only thing that ever matters is which side wins and what they want to do with the world.
So take 5 years and live in Saudi Arabia as a regular person.
Now, take 5 years and live in the United States as a regular person.
Then come back and let me know which society you'd rather have lead the world.
There's a lot of possible answers mixed in everywhere.
1. As you say... success encourages immigration
2. Perhaps genetic diversity allows different strengths from various genetic backgrounds to manifest themselves.
3. Perhaps there is a high tie in with culture and genetics... and different cultures interacting and mixing their ideas produce innovative results
4. Perhaps history is accounted for the spread of empire and the mixing that occurs there is also a cause for prosperity. When the British mixed with the Indians... a certain class of Indians adopted more successful British values... and also adopted some mixing with British genes for example.
But the actual articles is quite interesting to read.
I think people underestimate Microsoft. They've been at this for a long time.
Services are a very profitable business. Constant cash-flow. It is good. You also avoid the need to constantly push pointless updates and frameworks to make it seem like the next version has value. I actually think this will allow Microsoft to build better products which will actually let them compete better in the market.
When you look at something like email, Microsoft has Exchange and a lot of the market runs it. They are in the best position to leverage that into a service. Most importantly.... and this is a big one... they are always willing to do the dirty work in the enterprise and government world. That is to say work with companies and deployments to have mixed cloud/private environments... all the legal stuff...
This also applies to Office/Sharepoint...
On the device side, turn over seems anecdotal pretty high on the consumer side. People switch from IOS to Android without much concern for data or lockin. Sure, not all people will switch easily as being on ICloud or whatever has advantages if you have all Apple devices. But there's enough room in there that a solid product with some decent marketing could make big inroads quickly.
All true... and back to the question that matters.
What power would you rather be ruled by?
The Americans, The Chinese, The Russians, The Arabs?
Yeah, sorry... I'm still going with the Americans.
Perhaps there is a utopia out there somewhere where power is distributed and no one rules. Until that time, the best we as people can do is keep perspective to choose the best power to rule us.
Heck, I'd even choose the Americans over the EU. The Americans value free speech more than than EU who'd probably move quickly to ban offensive speech.
Just what is 'wrong' about bypassing differential pricing? Illegal perhaps. I actually think differential pricing should be illegal as it is wrong. Just my opinion of course. Why should companies license books or drugs or games or music or anything else for cheap in other countries? Maybe they should respond to it by lowering pricing in America and increasing pricing in Asia? Indeed, differential pricing is one of the problems with free trade. A 'high-dollar' is supposed to allow country access to a higher standard of living and increased efficiency by machinery purchases and others. But what happens when companies can simply differentiate pricing, then the benefit of a high-dollar is hurt.
That was my point... we in the West are just as capable.
BUT... since the current manual manufacture is being done overseas, they then have the ability to automate it.
TV manufacturing as you example said moved out of the US a long time ago. I could be wrong, but I think the last major manufacturer with Zenith.
Since Panasonic was assembling TVs manually for years in Japan, they could see the opportunity and had the know how on how to automate it. They also have the grand name.
I think I was clear in my original post. But I'm not suggesting it is impossible for the West to automate such thing or do it locally... just that it is not an 'obvious' or 'natural' shift.
Supply chains, factory skills, skill workers, operators...
Do you know how long it took China to build its industry? It took decades. It takes a lot to move big systems.
Why is Ontario or Michigan still a huge player in the automotive game despite their high cost? There's a huge system there that is hard to move. Lots of suppliers, skilled people that know what they're doing...
You will note it is FoxConn working on this. There's nothing of course stopping a Western country from working on it.... but do you know the first thing about assembling mobile phones? No... it takes knowledge. Knowledge that right now resides in China. They know all the tasks people need to do to assemble the smartphone and can then build and task robots to do it.
And most likely it won't happen all at once. Maybe one part of the assembly gets automated. So that robot is placed in the FoxConn factory in China. A lot of parts suppliers are probably in China too (transport costs there as well). To move the automated factory to the west would cost a lot of time and money... is it worth the shipping costs? Believe it or not... shipping costs... even with todays gas prices are still quite low relative to the costs of everything else.
I'll leave it to the companies to figure out the optimal cost... but it's just not obvious that you'd want to assemble locally for such small items.
Science might have been more respected back then... but it certainly wasn't as powerful as today.
This is a very important point in these tough times.
Too many countries want to 'cut waste' and preserve social spending.
The problem is simply that the big social spending takes up so much of the budgets. The other cuts are pretty much meaningless, but can have drastic impacts on the areas affected.
University R&D - cheap but essential for new discoveries.
K-12... expensive and not much payback once u get past basic education. We keep spending more money and our kids aren't getting any smarter. Taboo to cut back on.
Mental Health - cheap to provide and deals with small numbers of people that desperately need it.
Regular healthcare... ridiculously expensive taboo to cut back on.
This goes for arts spending, highly specific industries (nuclear...)...
If they're going to cut anything, they should be cutting healthcare, education, and policing. These are the massive cost drivers in any modern society. A mere 2% wage cut to these areas would do a lot more for any budget than going after all the little programs.
"Neither drugs nor guns are that easy to make, or else you wouldn't have many drug or gun dealers. "
That makes about 0 sense. People can grow their own vegetables, but most go to the store to buy it because it is easier. Not everyone has to make their own stuff. But it is easy enough that there will always be an underground market to make it.
This is not about libertarian philosophy. This is about what laws work... and if laws don't work or make the situation worse, why have them?
Banning alcohol during prohibition didn't work because well... alcohol is easy to make.
You can't ban marijuana... too easy to make.
There's not a country on Earth where you can't get access to illegal substances. Even even in Saudi Araba where they would probably kill you for having drugs, you can get anything you want.
But despite all empirical evidence to the contrary, if you still support laws banning simple drugs and basic firearms, well that's your prerogative to keep spending money and destroying people's lives on things that don't work.
Me, I'd rather spend all the money on the war on drugs and war on guns on public health and mental health.
We're the most scientific society the world has ever known.
Science holds more power today that at any point in history.
Now you can say, it is 'not true science' in as much as people can say Saudi Arabia or Iran is not 'true Islam'.
Some abstract notion of science or religion as *truth*.
But back in reality.
People who say science is their guide are at the most powerful in history. Regular people walk around saying 'we need independent scientific bodies to set healthcare, education policy. People readily accept the truth from scientific panels without much understanding of the actual science. Institutions of science are well funded by government as is the education systems (Relative to most other times in history).
It's not the academic community that is at fault. It is our society.
I've long held the view that science only gained the credibility it has because it was free from politics and power.
But since science has gained such credibility, people think we should now *trust* with power. Which of course destroys the very thing that gave it that trust. Ye old saying 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely'.
For one thing, we now have government funding for science. Sounds like a good idea... except of course. That means funding for universities... which need to hire faculty. So whom do they hire and how much do they pay them? Why did they hire Bob and not Alice? Alice would like a job too. The whole question of fairness comes up.
Then of course there's the issue of funding projects. Which projects get funded? Which lobbyists and politicians and special interest groups matter? What policies will be impacted?
It all sounds very neat to have a special scientific class able to deliver *the truth*. It's just completely unscientific and contrary to all empirical evidence in history to think it possible. There has never been a group of wise people in power outside of politics.
Plato envisioned the Philosopher Kings on a group of wise societal leaders. It is said this actually that this was the foundation of the Islamic Republic in Iran... a group of wise religious people given power in Iran. Not unlike people who wish for rational administration or scientific experts in position in Western society to make decision outside of democracy. It's all too common to hear people wishing for transit policy to be decided by transit experts in 'independent panels'. Or healthcare policy...
It's a very dangerous road.
In short... despite all the technology, education, and the internet and accessibility to information... the *truth* remains as elusive as ever.
Except that requires experts in the field to be able to spot very fine details in scientific findings. This is often times hard to do. Not to mention when two expert scientists differ on items, it becomes hard for anyone outside that field to really have any idea whose actually right.
In these cases, it is absolutely valuable to be able to get access to the personal emails and other items relating to the finding. If you see emails like:
"Hey Joe. I don't like those findings. See if you can change the graph to make it look less drastic"
"Hey Paul. This really isn't helping our case for policy X."
"Hey man, okay... I'll see what I can do."
A lot of professions struggle with these issus (doctors, lawyers, engineers...)
This is where people like you need to recognize the limits of the CAPABILITY of government.
The government cannot truly ban drugs for the simple reason that most drugs are easy to make. Anyone can grow a plant. A person with a decent knowledge of chemistry can make all sorts of harder drugs.
Anyone with a decent knowledge of metal working and basic materials can easily make bullets.
Making a gun is harder... but easily within the realm of personal manufacture. Making a good gun is harder of course, but nothing that couldn't be done.
There's no point in banning something which can be so easily produced. You can certainly try and control things which are harder to product or easier to detect though.
Why pretend we have a free global market? This goes for all countries. They all sit around signing global free trade and open investment, but it is clear no country is really willing to deal with true global free trade. They're not willing to pay the true price of it.
Is there a soul on this planet who actually thinks Obama is concerned with national security in terms of this Wind Farm?
Let's not even get into Buy America, Stimulus packages...
Just don't sign free-trade deals if you really don't want free trade. It's not the end of the world, if nations/regions have their own companies. If anything, at least its a bit of global redundancy.
Disclaimer: I think global free trade should be illegal as it applies different rules to different people. American workers have to obey a minimum wage which Chinese workers do not.
What employee jumps ship from a well-run company filled with good training, professional development, pretty good pay, and stability?
Sure, I *can* simply jump ship. But hey, I could do that now and the company isn't training me at all.
All investment entails risk. Investing in your employees is no different. But engineers, like many professionals are not super-keen on jumping from a good ship just for good money... and we're really not going to jump ship from a good company to a bad one just for money.
Somehow or another lawyers, doctors, accountants... every other field of professionals seems to have no problem training their workers and they are just as likely to jump ship.