Not so fast. We're anything *but* disarmed. Last I looked we still have loads of deployed nuclear weapons pointing at each other, and are now entering an age of increased geopolitical instability and acute resource shortages. Oil, fresh water, metals... all are going to be in short supply. This is not the time to become complacent and think we've dodged the nuclear bullet as the varying large superpowers and superpower wannabes try to out-dick each other for what's left of an ever-decreasing pie.
Not the same fluid... this one's using fluorinert, a perflurocarbon. That one used Midel, a fire-resistant, oil-like compound which has been used in transformers. I suspect that fire-resistance doesn't equal inert.
easy enough to prove - just look at the cows in Argentina. They'll point south if they're trying to avoid the sun getting in their eyes.
I'd be leery on blaming the earth's magnetic field on the phenomenon since it has reoriented very recently (like on 100,000 year intervals). Cows have been around for a lot longer than that.
It's Dubai. The price of admission to Dubai ensures that it contains no poor people. Kind of like the Monaco of the Middle East.
I'm half-convinced this is the place where all the uber-wealthy will escape to when every other place on the planet is too dangerous for them to live.
I'd say it would depend on what stage of your career you are in, and what responsibilities you either have or think you might end up having.
If you are in your early 20s, and want to have a family, or own a house definitely change to something that will help you 20 years from now when you are in your 40s. Given the globalization issues, I wouldn't recommend putting all your eggs into any job that could be done through an internet pipe.
I'm in my late 40s, the mortgage is over halfway paid off, and there's no kids to worry about. Worse case is that I lose my permanent position job (for whatever reason), and have to take a pay cut, or do temporary consulting at bargain rates.
I chose IT 25 years ago because I knew it would afford me a nice standard of living, that at least for the foreseeable future there likely would be a job that would pay enough to cover the kind of house I wanted to live in, and leave a little extra for vacations, emergencies, retirement, weddings, etc. It worked out, but I wouldn't recommend it for someone starting their career today. It's definitely a sad state of affairs.
I'd say that one could learn to do something that you can't outsource, like nursing - but even that isn't guaranteed. Many of those jobs are being "insourced" - that is people from developing countries are being hired here at a lower rate than what us locals are willing to bear.
I guess the best bet (if you don't want to deal with the uncertainty of working for yourself) is for whatever you decide to do, to find a job working for a small company that has a good business model. One, which as part of its culture, tries to keep money local -including the money that it pays to its employees. One that really doesn't have the resources to outsource or sponsor people for insourcing.
Unfortunately here in Pennsylvania, they're ready to remove the price caps on electricity. So, at least here it solves a little, if you already have a clean way of generating your own electricity. For example, if you live next to a fast stream, there are microgenerators that you can buy which will charge up a battery bank. Same goes for PV cells. It'd be nice if a PV system designed to recharge a car for a few trips back and forth to work was available for the price of a hefty workstation, and the cost to replace the batteries wasn't in the multi-thousand dollar range. You could charge up a separate battery bank during the day, then plug into it when you got home at night. Totally off-grid and aside from the amount used to transport the equipment to your house, it doesn't marry your commute to the oil companies.
Agreed. Even if it is true that most other star systems do follow the "hot Jupiter" model, it doesn't rule out that those systems couldn't contain a "lukewarm" Jupiter with *moons* that are large enough to contain an atmosphere and support life. Our system contains four gas-giants. Odds are that other systems will have a good chance of contain more than one gas-giant as well. The moons of a hypothetical innermost Jupiter-sized planet might not support life, but one with a larger orbit in the habitable zone certainly could have moons that do.
5) lie as a cover story for something completely different, and invariably human-caused.
Some of the "UFO" sightings from the 70's and 80's look notoriously like the F114 stealth fighter when viewed edge-on. When confronted with the "evidence" the military would disingenuously play up the "of alien-origin" reason, which a "let's all play with ET"-mindset public was more than happy to believe.
As a result, unlike my feckless, teenage self, now anytime I see things in the news about strange lights or craft flying around, my thoughts do not go off-world for the origin. Instead, I think "ah, new hardware finally being field tested, cool.".
For me, I'll be convinced that this guy is telling the truth when I can get a ride to their home planet, and back again, and post the vacation videos on YouTube (or YouPorn - if the aliens let me pull on their jagons on the way there - or back).
Yes, "The World is Flat" - for now, and for IT in the foreseeable future. Anything which can fit through an Internet connection can be potentially outsourced, quite easily.
Industries that produce things that can't, like manufacturing or farming, will only be capable of being outsourced while energy costs are still relatively low. Once energy costs start to severely cut into profit margins, it's going to be hard to ship raw materials to China, and get finished goods back, and still sell them cheaply here in the US. That time is fast approaching.
Also, trades like plumbers and electricians, and medical professionals, although they really can't be outsourced, can be "insourced". This is already happening in the nursing profession. People from overseas are willing to come here and accept lower salaries to do work that US citizens used to perform for higher rates. However, as the standard of living decreases here in the US, things will probably even out as US citizens are willing to accept a lower salary to do the same job they did 10 years ago, simply because they won't have a choice.
So, yes, the world is "flatter" than it used to be, and will probably remain that way provided that the earth continues to have a soft, creamy, cheap, and easily available nugget of fuel that we can easily suck on indefinitely.
However, I think that it's most likely to get less "flat" in the near future, since that is most definitely not the case.
Of course what people tend to forget is that you can make gasoline from a lot of non petroleum sources including water and air. The only thing that prevents it is cost.
Exactly. It's not the unavailability of all of the fuel that is the issue, but how much it will cost, and more importantly how quickly that cost will increase. This rate of increase will determine whether we will be able to actually continue with this easy motoring way of life, or not. The higher the rate of increase, the less probability that we will be able to maintain the current way of doing things.
The cheapness of the fuel *is* the issue. Right now, diesel and gasoline still give the biggest bang for the buck.
Agreed. We need more reasons to not fly in the US, what with all of the airlines ready to go belly up and all. NOT.
I live here, and I've seriously curtailed my flying, not necessarily because I think flying is either more or less safe from terrorists, but because of all the ineffective, silly rules and regulations that are supposedly designed to keep us "safe". I've adapted, but I miss going to the islands, and visiting family members on the other side of the country.
This hands-down has to be my favorite keyboard, ever.
No inane "volume" and "www" keys, and no CTRL-ALT-DEL nonsense. When you typed on it, you knew that the EBCDIC it emitted had enough 'umph' to make it at least all the way to the 3274 controller it was attached to, and maybe even all the way from there to the big mainframe in the machine room.
And most definitely heavy. I think there's probably about as much metal in it as a Toyota Prius. I often think that it'd be interesting to get one of these and modify it to use as a standard USB or ps/2 keyboard.
This would sink "Das Keyboard" in a millisecond.
Slashdot Mirror
Not so fast. We're anything *but* disarmed. Last I looked we still have loads of deployed nuclear weapons pointing at each other, and are now entering an age of increased geopolitical instability and acute resource shortages. Oil, fresh water, metals... all are going to be in short supply. This is not the time to become complacent and think we've dodged the nuclear bullet as the varying large superpowers and superpower wannabes try to out-dick each other for what's left of an ever-decreasing pie.
What do you think all of the top secret briefings are about today? Underwear?
All yuor tardigrades are belong to us!
In EBCDIC.
Not the same fluid... this one's using fluorinert, a perflurocarbon. That one used Midel, a fire-resistant, oil-like compound which has been used in transformers. I suspect that fire-resistance doesn't equal inert.
They don't really vanish. They reappear at the south pole for a microsecond, only to then reappear at the north pole for a microsecond. Forever.
I'd be leery on blaming the earth's magnetic field on the phenomenon since it has reoriented very recently (like on 100,000 year intervals). Cows have been around for a lot longer than that.
It's Dubai. The price of admission to Dubai ensures that it contains no poor people. Kind of like the Monaco of the Middle East. I'm half-convinced this is the place where all the uber-wealthy will escape to when every other place on the planet is too dangerous for them to live.
chess
I'd say it would depend on what stage of your career you are in, and what responsibilities you either have or think you might end up having.
If you are in your early 20s, and want to have a family, or own a house definitely change to something that will help you 20 years from now when you are in your 40s. Given the globalization issues, I wouldn't recommend putting all your eggs into any job that could be done through an internet pipe.
I'm in my late 40s, the mortgage is over halfway paid off, and there's no kids to worry about. Worse case is that I lose my permanent position job (for whatever reason), and have to take a pay cut, or do temporary consulting at bargain rates.
I chose IT 25 years ago because I knew it would afford me a nice standard of living, that at least for the foreseeable future there likely would be a job that would pay enough to cover the kind of house I wanted to live in, and leave a little extra for vacations, emergencies, retirement, weddings, etc. It worked out, but I wouldn't recommend it for someone starting their career today. It's definitely a sad state of affairs.
I'd say that one could learn to do something that you can't outsource, like nursing - but even that isn't guaranteed. Many of those jobs are being "insourced" - that is people from developing countries are being hired here at a lower rate than what us locals are willing to bear.
I guess the best bet (if you don't want to deal with the uncertainty of working for yourself) is for whatever you decide to do, to find a job working for a small company that has a good business model. One, which as part of its culture, tries to keep money local -including the money that it pays to its employees. One that really doesn't have the resources to outsource or sponsor people for insourcing.
followed by: "Sounds like you don't want the job, we'll find some other sucker^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H one else to do it"
Funny. I don't see any office chairs there.
it also contains the electrolytes that plants crave.
Everybody knows that.
Unfortunately here in Pennsylvania, they're ready to remove the price caps on electricity. So, at least here it solves a little, if you already have a clean way of generating your own electricity. For example, if you live next to a fast stream, there are microgenerators that you can buy which will charge up a battery bank. Same goes for PV cells. It'd be nice if a PV system designed to recharge a car for a few trips back and forth to work was available for the price of a hefty workstation, and the cost to replace the batteries wasn't in the multi-thousand dollar range. You could charge up a separate battery bank during the day, then plug into it when you got home at night. Totally off-grid and aside from the amount used to transport the equipment to your house, it doesn't marry your commute to the oil companies.
Agreed. Even if it is true that most other star systems do follow the "hot Jupiter" model, it doesn't rule out that those systems couldn't contain a "lukewarm" Jupiter with *moons* that are large enough to contain an atmosphere and support life. Our system contains four gas-giants. Odds are that other systems will have a good chance of contain more than one gas-giant as well. The moons of a hypothetical innermost Jupiter-sized planet might not support life, but one with a larger orbit in the habitable zone certainly could have moons that do.
5) lie as a cover story for something completely different, and invariably human-caused.
Some of the "UFO" sightings from the 70's and 80's look notoriously like the F114 stealth fighter when viewed edge-on. When confronted with the "evidence" the military would disingenuously play up the "of alien-origin" reason, which a "let's all play with ET"-mindset public was more than happy to believe.
As a result, unlike my feckless, teenage self, now anytime I see things in the news about strange lights or craft flying around, my thoughts do not go off-world for the origin. Instead, I think "ah, new hardware finally being field tested, cool.".
For me, I'll be convinced that this guy is telling the truth when I can get a ride to their home planet, and back again, and post the vacation videos on YouTube (or YouPorn - if the aliens let me pull on their jagons on the way there - or back).
Yes, "The World is Flat" - for now, and for IT in the foreseeable future. Anything which can fit through an Internet connection can be potentially outsourced, quite easily.
Industries that produce things that can't, like manufacturing or farming, will only be capable of being outsourced while energy costs are still relatively low. Once energy costs start to severely cut into profit margins, it's going to be hard to ship raw materials to China, and get finished goods back, and still sell them cheaply here in the US. That time is fast approaching.
Also, trades like plumbers and electricians, and medical professionals, although they really can't be outsourced, can be "insourced". This is already happening in the nursing profession. People from overseas are willing to come here and accept lower salaries to do work that US citizens used to perform for higher rates. However, as the standard of living decreases here in the US, things will probably even out as US citizens are willing to accept a lower salary to do the same job they did 10 years ago, simply because they won't have a choice.
So, yes, the world is "flatter" than it used to be, and will probably remain that way provided that the earth continues to have a soft, creamy, cheap, and easily available nugget of fuel that we can easily suck on indefinitely.
However, I think that it's most likely to get less "flat" in the near future, since that is most definitely not the case.
Of course what people tend to forget is that you can make gasoline from a lot of non petroleum sources including water and air. The only thing that prevents it is cost.
Exactly. It's not the unavailability of all of the fuel that is the issue, but how much it will cost, and more importantly how quickly that cost will increase. This rate of increase will determine whether we will be able to actually continue with this easy motoring way of life, or not. The higher the rate of increase, the less probability that we will be able to maintain the current way of doing things.
The cheapness of the fuel *is* the issue. Right now, diesel and gasoline still give the biggest bang for the buck.
See these (now quite well known) sites for more info: Kunstler and The Oil Drum
Agreed. We need more reasons to not fly in the US, what with all of the airlines ready to go belly up and all. NOT. I live here, and I've seriously curtailed my flying, not necessarily because I think flying is either more or less safe from terrorists, but because of all the ineffective, silly rules and regulations that are supposedly designed to keep us "safe". I've adapted, but I miss going to the islands, and visiting family members on the other side of the country.
Brains....
"Researchers Throw Finger at HIV"
Don't forget about the AARP, "I've fallen and I can't get up", and "male-enhancement" ones as well.
This hands-down has to be my favorite keyboard, ever.
No inane "volume" and "www" keys, and no CTRL-ALT-DEL nonsense. When you typed on it, you knew that the EBCDIC it emitted had enough 'umph' to make it at least all the way to the 3274 controller it was attached to, and maybe even all the way from there to the big mainframe in the machine room.
And most definitely heavy. I think there's probably about as much metal in it as a Toyota Prius. I often think that it'd be interesting to get one of these and modify it to use as a standard USB or ps/2 keyboard.
This would sink "Das Keyboard" in a millisecond.
Does it also contain the electrolytes that plants crave?