So spammers rely even more heavily on hijacked machines, and my grandmother on social security suddenly has a $100,000 bill from her ISP.
Don't see that happening.
This concern is way overrated. The potential problems created by this "postage" model is much more tractable and minor (on a grand sclae) than those under the non-market based status quo. Once this "postage" technology is in place, ISPs would be free to enhance it to offer various security protections. For instance, only allow, say, 100 emails a days (a user-definable setting--but default) and notify the user if this happens. Alternatively, warn the user if X emails appear to be spam or are too identical (perhaps send them a visual challenge/response request after 50 emails--remember the false positive ratio wouldn't have to be nearly 0%). This would jack up the complexity of spamming orders of magnitude, the cost for the spammer (having to find new security exploits), and would also give the government a lot more teeth with which to pursue them. Connecting to an open proxy is one thing, literally hacking their machine and stealing money is quite another.
If spammers are in the business of hacking machines like this, then it seems to me that there's a lot quicker and safer ways to make money.
Re:Email Postage also creates new problems
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If spamming is already a shady enterprise, why do we assume the spammers will pay the postage, or whatever 'fee' we enact? This is the 'if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns' idea. In other words, they already try to defeat filtering software, won't they also try to defeat another other "post send" measure?
Spamming IS already a shady enterprise and there's no way to effectively trace them given the current internet architecture and legal bridges to cross. Look, half the goods they sell are illegal or fradulent (e.g., increase your penis size) in the first place. Yet they've been selling the same stuff, year after year, despite efforts by the FTC and other entities to throw them in jail (these are REAL crimes, unlike spamming per se). Just because it's illegal does not mean you'll effectively minimize it. Even if they prosecute every spammer operating out of the US, they'll simply appear in some safe haven country. As long as you avoid a market-type mechanism, the spammers are going to find to work-around it. That's just the way life is.
If spamming is already a shady enterprise, why do we assume the spammers will pay the postage, or whatever 'fee' we enact?
Because they HAVE to deliver email to the vast majority of the users that demand payment prior to delivery. Think in terms of credit card transactions.
*I* should not have to do anything to my servers to get email from *legitimate* Internet users sending legit email to protect myself (or my customers) from the actions of those that abuse the system.
That's fine and good in theory. Why should you have to install an alarm system? Why do you lock your doors? Why do you insist on payment before you ship product? This world is full of compromises. The question is what is the best compromise. Would you rather:
A) Click a box on your server to make all incoming mail free (get spammed).
B) Click a box on your server to make people pay some fractional amount to send you email and lose %.0001 of your customers who are too cheap to pay that fraction of a penny (even if by secondary means), while in the process saving money (which can be returned to the customers in the form of cheaper product/services), saving your manhours, minimize risk of accidental deletion (including false-positive SPAM filters) of LEGIT customers (probably a higher percentage than those that would walk away)...and so on.
C) Live with the status quo and all of the flawed spam filter methods. Not be able to reach your customers.
D) Wait in perpetuity for some impossible dream, while getting soaked.
Re:who controls what is calculated?
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Besides which, I can't imagine this would be a very practical way of solving any problem in the first place. The only way you could solve any sizable problem would be to be a huge ISP that's already recieving lots of emails (to be challenged) and even then latency and what not involved would likely exceed whatever benefits exist by having the sender's "solve" the problem (and you'd have to NOT solve the problem to obtain any benefits--therefore you'd have to allow SPAM)
Re:who controls what is calculated?
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What if I am morally against what the math problem is trying to solve? Or what if the problem behind it is illegal in my city/state/country or breaks international treaties? Then I can't send email? Will I be told what the math problem is, or do I just blindly crunch numbers
I don't think number crunching is a very good idea either, but why not just send a one-way-hash of the "answer" along with the question, and only send the "answer" back to the server if it matches what the server already claims to already know? If they truly know it, then there's no benefit in asking it again. No?
Re:Fine for the rich but...
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Oh give me a break. First, damn few truly "poor" people are using email or likely will start using it soon. Second, in true poor parts of the world, these costs would be relative to income levels. What might cost 1 cent here would cost.001 cents in India (or be entirely free, since spamming the truly poor isn't a very good proposition in the first place). Granted, it might cost said person an hour's wage to send an email to the first world, but this would be very exceptional and well...people will find a way to cope.
Re:Email Postage also creates new problems
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I own a business and we get something like a fair amount of sales leads via email.
I wonder how many people would not bother contacting us to inquire about services if they had to pay for the priviledge?
Also, I exchange A LOT of emails with existing clients...working off-site makes email the prefered mechanism of communication. I already pay for Internet Access (which currently includes access to routes between mail servers); I'd sure hate to have to pay for using a particular service on the Internet that is now free.
IMO, Spam is best fought at the source. Filters like SA are great for the user end, but the demand on the wires is still there (the recipient server has to GET the spam for it to be dropped). Go after the spammers themselves. Hard. With both barrels.
(1) Make it financially unattractive to spam. This can be either by fines or by MORE user education to NOT RESPOND to the dang things.
(2) Go after them criminally. They put an arguably unethical demand on everyone's Internet; who knows how many hardware failures are accelerated by the traffic due to spam (disks, NIC's etc). I liken spammers to someone who blows up, or at least physically blocks, a bridge on a public highway.
I disagree. This is the best and practically the only really good solution to the problem.
First, the cost for your customers would (or at least could) be so neglible for them, but high enough for spammers so as to destroy their business model. For instance, if it may only cost your customer, say, 1 cent to send it. If they're a good paying customer and they take a couple seconds to write the email, then their time is almost certainly worth more than the component part of deliver (the "stamp"). Whereas, for the spammer, this new cost is earth shattering. If a spammer's expected benefit per email is less than a 1 cent and you charge them a penny to deliver it, then it'd be a losing proposition for them to send it in the first place. Let's say 1 in 1000 sent email results in a 1 dollar payment to the spammer, then their expected (avg.) benefit would be 1/10th of a cent for every email they send). They'd effectively lose 9/10th of a cent for every email they send (a whopping figure when they're sending millions of emails a day).
Second, the psychological cost could be defrayed by simply lumping the "postage" cost into your existing ISP contract. In other words, you'd pay say, 5 dollars a month to send 500 gauranteed-delivery emails a month (and this is probably FAR more expensive then it would be in reality).
Third, networks of trust and various hybrid models could be integrated into this. For instance, AOL and MSN could agree to exchange email for free (providing each other with a list of trusted IPs). In other words, the "cost" that you ultimately pay for would be effectively reduced to a mere fraction of what it is (since most people are using a couple major providers). Likewise, users could individually whitelist known senders so that they don't have to pay anything. If you're a member of a mailing list, you could easily pass, say, a public key for that sender to send you regular bulk emails. Again, you could have a flag on YOUR outbound emails that would ensure that you never have to pay.
Fourth, although I think it'd be unnecessary for 99% of applications, there's no reason why a company such as yours couldn't configure your server to NOT charge senders anything.
Lastly, the current email status quo (with its huge proportion of SPAM) has a real cost too and this system could, in fact, result in a net cost savings. If 70% of an ISPs inbound emails are SPAM, then they have to pay for this in increased CPU, bandwidth, backup, support, and other costs. These costs ARE passed onto you as the consumer. How many of your customer emails are blocked because of it? How many of your "legitimate" BULK emails (with those customers who opt-in or whom you have business connections with) are blocked? If this s
'Discover what pseudonyms your candidate uses online....'
BS, I say. There are many reasons why people take nom de plumes and pseudonyms, but all come back to the fact that "-and I just wanted a certain level of anonymity". Not fullblown anonymity, just enough to make your online personal dealings disjoint from any sort of RL responsibilities you have.
There's a reason why you're not supposed to talk about religion, politics, and all that stuff on first dates or job interviews: because it's inappropriate (unless the job is, obviously, at a church, for a political party, etc.). Employees are expected to leave their personal lives at the door when at the job. But employers should feel peachy about betraying that same confidence?
When writing some free COM app or TPS report coversheet, what does an employee's view on gay marriage, Palestine, or the RIAA have to do with anything? And even if the employer was doing something as inoccuous as suggested in the article and just "seeing if they are passionate without compromise"... who here doesn't think they could find something they'd hold against you?
Candidates are looking for jobs, not friends. Neither should employers.
While the prospect of having employers do background searches of that sort on me always gives me some pause (although I _don't_ exactly have a lot to hide), I think it's equally insane to suggest that a person's behavior and posts on slashdot and other forums has no baring on their performance as an employee. Some examples:
a) An employee can make it abundantly clear that they're strictly a 9 to 5er--not one hour more.
b) An employee may be extremely litigious and has commented about it on slashdot.
c) An employee may be vehemently opposed to the very concept of intellectual property (not a great thing if you're a company that depends on the same person to produce/enhance your own IP).
d) An employee may believe that piracy ala Napster et. al is perfectly alright. This implies that they're more willing to skirt the law, personal beliefs aside, than those that are not.
e) An employee may have espoused points of view that run contrary to your very business interests. For instance, if you ARE RIAA.
f) An employee may simply be a malcontent--angry at every and anything that've ever known. I've certainly known people like this in real life and, I'm pretty sure, on slashdot too.
g) An employee can be wholly opposed to US government policy and accept a position only for the money. If you're an aerospace contractor, say, the odds are that this employee is not going to last very long.
h) An employee may have commented on stealing from their last employers (or their creditors rather, as in the case of some on slashdot following the DotCom crash). This has bearing too.
i) If you're a potential employer knows you were consistently posting 20 times a day during workhours during your previous/current employement, that's pretty important clue that you're not doing a lot of work.
These are just a few quick examples...
Now I'll grant you that people can adopt alter-egos, outright lie, and more on slashdot and other online forums, but I think it's a real mistake to assume that NOTHING useful can be determined from such a search. Wouldn't you as an employee be interested in knowing the interactions between your potential future employer and employees/business partners/customers/community/etc? It's not as if the only important criteria is: skill set, "official" hours, and salary paid. General happiness, social ability, effort, willingness to work hard, ethics, and other qualities can have HUGE impact on performance and relationships on both sides. There are quite a few people on slashdot that I've had discussions with or seen that I would NEVER hire if I knew they were the same slashdot user--it has NOTHING to do with the fact that they disagree with me per se and more with some of the examples I listed.
All else being equal, in a long-distance race between a man and a woman, the woman will win.
Can you back up this claim? What do you define as "long distance"? Men consistently win by large margins in both "average" and professional running "classes". Yes, I'm aware that some scientists predict that women will eventually beat the best men in ultra-marathons (e.g., ~60+ miles), but it has yet to happen and it is much contested. To argue that because women have "more endurance" (itself not entirely proven) that they will win in actual events simply does not follow. Men have less body fat to carry, more muscle per pound, larger lung capacity, larger hearts, and so on. These factors can easily make up for relative lack of endurance in the real world. In any event, I've yet to see a shred of evidence to back this claim up, particularly at more amature levels. What's more, women who compete at these sorts of levels do tremendous permanent damage to their ability to safely reproduce.
Or do the pictures of these guys remind you of the Calvin Cline ads awhile back that bordered on kiddie porn? These kids look like they are wearing makeup and exude a bit of homo-erotic teasing.
It just gave me the creeps, knowing that this is an article for nerds.
While I respect much of the work Cringely has done over the years, this article is not "good". He is resting most of his argument against outsourcing on the belief that it yields worse customer service! Where is his proof and why does he believe that the free market suddenly stopped working? Are customers suddenly incapable of voting with their feet for companies that offer better customer service (presumably those that hire Americans)? Are CEOs suddenly too stupid to realize that they lose business this way? Did it ever occur to him that the company can hire a couple Indians who are more intelligent and better educated for the price of a single American? Perhaps the Indians don't have the cultural awareness, language skills, or what have you to work effectively in customer service, but Cringley's arguments are not plausible. Companies and consumers can make mistakes, the power of the free market is that we generally recognize that it's better to let them make mistakes on their own.
It's also absurd when he says, on one hand, that government is incompetent and then, on the other, he implies that we should have government tie the hands of business leaders and/or consumers. What's more, he argues that protectionist acts won't hurt the US because India is a net exporter of goods/services (and aid recipient) relative to the US. This may be the case, but he forgets that other countries may well follow suit against the US (e.g., Europe) and that as India gets wealthier it will likely grow into a consumer of US products. There may be good arguments against outsourcing jobs to foreign countries like India (e.g., that it has the potential to hurt innovation in the long term), but Cringley 's argument simply isn't one of them.
I love a good number of NPR shows (e.g., Fresh Air), but I can't stand Prarie Home Companion or whatever it's called. There's just something about that whining, nasal, condescending voice that both turns me off and puts me to sleep. Does anyone actually like it?? It must have it's following, but I really don't get its appeal.
So when are you going to give me all your stuff? Come now, don't be selfish!
*pure* capitalism isn't a good thing. *pure* communism isn't a good thing. *pure* democracy isn't a good thing.
We must use common sense. No single ideology will succeed. The United States Government has a duty to protect the interest of it's own citizens. It does *not* have the duty to ensure that Indians get wealthy. I personally hope some sort of penalties are applied to those companies out-sourcing vast amounts of jobs. Or that large benefits are given to those who refuse to do so. Probably the latter, as I prefer to use the carrot than the stick...
We don't have "pure" capitalism; we have many laws on the books that restrain absolute free trade. Most of these laws are reasoned though and well thought out. What you fail to mention is that we simply can't erect these barriers with any lasting benefit and without sacrificing a lot in the process. If we raise our own protectionist barriers for programmers, then the rest of the world will follow suit and bar our products. The most troubling fact is that the United States is a NET EXPORTER of IT/Software. In other words, we have far more to lose in this transaction (lost sales) that we do have to gain (lost jobs). Even domestically, we are going to have to compete with international software companies selling products here. If you force American software/IT companies to hire labor that costs 10x as much, then it's just a matter of time until they can no longer compete. What's more, the American companies that IT/software powers and makes more efficient would also victim to these increased costs. The United States has remained the world's superpower by embracing change, not running away from it. If we followed your inclinations through the various stages of technical progress (IT itself, industrial revolution, etc), you simply wouldn't have a job to lose in the first place and your standard of living would be much lower.
You need to remember that a contract signed by the driver of the car doesn't necessarily have any baring on the VICTIM's (e.g., pedestrians) right to sue any and everyone they believe to be at fault.
IANAL too, but these contracts are ROUTINELY ignored in the legal system. A customer cannot sign away his or her rights and parents, particularly, cannot sign away their children's rights to sue. I don't agree with it, but it's the way the system works today.
All of those links work, you simply need to remove the white space from the links (slashdot breaks up any continous lines)
I never said all arabs are the same [I have some arab friends] I was simply answering your assertion, based on a sample composed of the 9-11 terrorists, that there is some widespread hate of the United States in the arab world. It is a fact though, that, the Protocols are widely distributed, widely quoted, and widely believed throughout much of the Arab world. They have even been quoted on their national radio shows and what not. Comparing it to AMAZON selling the Mein Kampf, which sells many thousands of different books, is absurd. The Protocols are:
a) much more popular relatively speaking (being one of the few or the only books carried in many of these markets)
b) A proven forgery (they are supposed to be the actual plans of the Jews)
c) Not a document of direct historical relevance so it's generally NOT studied by educated people (unlike the Mein Kampf in the US)
d) Quoted repeatedly by various Arab leaders and media figures.
Furthermore, the point is that, regardless of real action or inaction (on the part of the Jews in this case), it only takes a handful of people to believe it and commit violent terrorist acts. Do you really believe, for instance, that there is any reasonable policy that the US Government could have enacted to have stopped Timothy McVeigh from blowing up the Federal building in OKC? Terrorist acts are not a priori evidence of bad policy or lack of good policy. There are crazy people in this world and most of them don't have any justification for their acts.
Germany, just like the US, has faced and will continue to face terrorism, particularly Arab terrorism, no matter how much you deny it and no matter what policies of capitulation it follows. Although policy can play some role in pro-actively preventing some terrorism, it will continue no matter what. Resting your beliefs on what happened in Israel is bad comparison because the elapsement of time was short and because Israel pursues policies that have direct and very substantial impact on the Palestianians (thus they have REGULAR politically directed bombings) that they can potentialy and realistically change.
All of European terrorism has been home grown. And all terrorist activities e.g. IRA in the UK, RAF in Germany have been not eradicated militarily but rather by solid police work and much more important political initiative.
Rock solid politics is the foundation to overcome terrorism. Everything else is secondary. The US because of its outstanding position simply can not afford the kind of mistakes that have happened in the past.
But instead of pressing ahead with political initiatives to resolve one of the main causes for Arab hate against the US - the current administration solely relied on military might.
The post war efforts in Iraq have shown that too many political mistakes are still made. The US military performed flawlessly but the administrative planning has been lousy.
I monitor these Iraq blogs that I can highly recommend:
salam&raed riverbend healing Iraq
They are all happy that Saddam is gone, and want democracy in Iraq, but they also mercilessly shed light on all the mistakes that have been made, and that can have catastrophic consequences for these people. I very much feel for them.
If the US does not manage to convert Iraq into a democratic and free society the whole effort was for naught. That'll be utterly depressing.
The US can simply not afford to misunderstand the situation on the ground in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc. Too much depends on it.
So tell me. If Germany et. al have their acts so much in order, then why is Al Queda also targeting Germany?
Did it ever occur to you that the terrorists might want something untenable and fundamentally incompatible with democracy, such as the complete Islamisation of Saudi Arabia (as Osama would have it)? And you complain about US "support" of the Saudis now, pfft? Did it ever occur to you that you can't keep all people happy all the time, that there will always be some unhappy and violent individuals no matter what you do? Sept 11 2001 was the act of a handful of individuals, not hundreds, not thousands, not millions. Why do you presume good will alone will make these people go away?
As for the so-called Arab Street disliking the United States, how do you expect to reason with people, who clearly believe in outright lies about the Jews such as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (which is openly sold throughout many parts of the arab world)? And what about those in the Arab world who still believe that 9-11 was just a Jewish or American conspiracy to attack Afghanistan? Real actions cannot compete with the make believe acts, particularly when the Arab world is full of leaders who find it all too convenient to point fingers at the United States and other superpowers so as the distract their people from their own problems.
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/archives/0000054 8. html
Most of the Arab world is poor and many have repressive governments that have no relation with the United States. They also believe firmly that they are a great people and that they, at one time, ruled the world. It would seem pretty logical to them that the West and, particular, the United States (being the richest and most visible) must be at fault. Now you add in hate and lies such as that in the "Protocols" and you have a potential terrorist on your hands. Out of a population of a couple million it only takes a very small percentage to eventually commit a major terrorist act.
It is the scope of impact if something goes seriously wrong that makes people wary. For the same reason you will not find a non-governmental insurance to underwrite for compensation of all damage for every accident scenario at a nuclear power plant.
If commercial insurances find the risk unmanagable I fail to see how current fission technology is supposed to be a profitable endavour for the general public.
This is a non sequitur.
First, the real risk doesn't necessarily have any concrete relationship with the financial risk in our litigious society with lay juries, professional ambulance chasers that work on contingency, and so on. For instance, millions of dollars were lost and businesses were put out of business by the silicone breast implant scare and yet, despite the fact that they leaked, no one has found any evidence to indicate that the implants cause cancer or other serious ailments, despite numerous studies. It is hard for insurance companies to quantify and evaluate the costs of mass hysteria and panic. One false alarm, in our world today, can easily result in thousands of law suits even when it's been proven that nothing radioactive was released.
Second, insurance operates fundamentally on the concept of scale of the policies and aggregation of risk. When there's only a handful of active nuclear powerplants in the country there's little aggregation of risk, and hence, much more effective volatility in their returns. What's more, when there's only a couple of active plants, they don't necessarily have the institutional skill set in place to practically audit the safety (or the risks, if you will).
Third, nuclear power has to compete with oil and other sources of energy production WITH the insurance premiums whereas the competition really does not in the same sense. We don't necessarily fully appreciate the cost of the competitive options between the pollution element and the political costs (the entire world is heavily dependent on a steady supply of cheap oil and this has resulted in our having to make a certain poltical calculations. We take the unpaid costs, the "risks", of oil for granted, but for some reason we expect nuclear producers to pay for this.
According to these numbers [studentsoftheworld.info] the combined GDP of France and Germany is not that far behind Japan. I also picked Singapore because in terms of GDP per capita [quia.com] it is the only Asian country other than Japan that outranks the US. Given that it is a tiny city state embedded in much poorer countries it should be suffering heavily from terrorism if envy was what motivates terrorists.
Who defined it in per capita terms? I don't think this is a good or reasonable one, but the United States is #2 in the world for per capita GDP (Japan is almost a good 10K a year less) right behind Luxemberg (#1)
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_gdp_cap
The fact that Luxemberg is viewed is #1 in this just illustrates the point that it's a silly measure because they're pretty obscure for most of the world (there are a number of US companies with greater annual revenue than their entire GDP at a mere ~20 billion). Luxemberg's unique economy also allows this to occur (banking, lots foreign workers, etc)--they're not nearly as prolific in a real per capita sense though)
The United States has a far greater GDP than anyone else in absolute terms:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_gdp
The United also exports significantly more than everyone else in absolute terms:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_exp
All of these measures are really just secondary effects of the real reason why we're so visible. We sell a lot of stuff to the world. We broadcast and sell hundreds of TV shows, movies, trademarks, and so on. We enjoy a style of living that 99% of the world can only dream about (not to mention the fact that many try to emulate this).
US policy isn't perfect, but no country is. Just because they made what was, in hindsite, a mistake does not mean that the decision makers were malicious, lazy, or stupid. Far from it. We made some tough decisions during the Cold War, but many of them were decisions that had to be made or, at least, seemed like the lesser of two evils at the time to some very smart people.
What's more you neglect to mention that both France and Germany (and much of Europe for that matter) were victims of lots of terrorism in the 70s and 80s. Also, if our supposed actions in, say, Afghanistan is the cause of Osama's resentment today then why wasn't Russia attacked? Afterall, it was their soldiers, their weapons, their tanks, and so on that killed many thousands of freedom fighters and invaded the country. I'm sorry, but the argument that US actions or inactions insofar as foreign policy goes is a sufficient cause for terrorist acts is a very poor one that doesn't hold water.
Human reaction to this question has been demonstrated, by the way. Genetic tests have been developed that can tell a person with absolute certainty whether they will develop certain congenital disorders, some of them fatal. A surprising number of people in at-risk groups for those disorders (it was 50% in one group that I read about) don't have the test done because they simply don't want to know. They'd rather live on with the chance that they won't develop the disorder, than to know for a fact that they're going to develop something which they're powerless to do anything about, and live with that knowledge casting a shadow on their lives.
First, even in this case, the option is a good thing. Without the test those that want to know wouldn't have the option and those that don't want to "know" would be in the same position. Second, and most importantly, this earthquake situation is most analagous to diseases that you can reduce your risk and take mitigating actions for. For instance, most intelligent people will get tested if they think they're predisposed to type II diabetes. This allows them to watch their diet more carefully so that they can avoid, or at least put off, the onset of diabetes and it has been demonstrated that they can substantially reduce their mortality and complication rate by doing so (in both prevention and in responding appropriately when and if they do become symptomatic). Likewise, a future earthquake victim might choose to rebuild his home, build up stockpiles, reinforce weak support beams, move/remove valuable goods to safer areas, avoid routes that are likely to collapse, and so on. Like most natural disasters they are not necessarily fatal or traumatic to the vast majority of people if the proper steps can be taken in time to minimize and avoid risk.
Sure, if you're living in a 200 year old brick building built right on top of a fault line, you might be SOL, but you should look at these things on the aggregate. What about all those people that can take mitigating steps or aren't at _any_ risk for the next 20 years? California is a big state and only a small percentage of areas experience major earthquakes during any given decade, yet today, without real forecasting ability, everyone in an area that is potentially affected constantly pays the price in insurance, home building costs (increased), fear, worry, and so on. The unknown is more expensive on the aggregate that the known.
Your argument is pretty foolish. While there may be some negative sides to being able to predict the exact date of an earthquake, the benefits far outweigh the negatives (not just in terms of human lives). Markets have long thrived on sound and reliable information. Markets fear uncertainty/risk, the unknowable that's difficult to quantify, far more than anything. Sure, someone may not want to build in a particular spot if they know there's going to be an earthquake there a year later, but that's basically a good thing. If the business person thinks it's going to be net loss, then it probably will be. What's more, the investor has the opportunity to manage their risk, by choosing a superior location, enhancing the buildings strength, and so on. In fact, from a business point of view, an argument can be made that building before a known earthquake in a good location with good design could be beneficial, because the investor knows that the number of available buildings will decrease, i.e., less supply, thus making their offering more profitable. Likewise, for those people that fear earthquakes, California becomes a more attractive market when they can stear clear of any earth quake risk. I can also see insurance premiums being reduced, when re-insurers are better able to measure earthquake risks, the premiums are apt to be reduced on the aggregate (the more uncertainty, the more you pay). Likewise, politicians are going to be far-less reluctant to build up infrastructure when there's a known problem down the road that they will be blamed for if they don't fix it. What's more, when the earthquake passes, the economy is bound to rebound much more, when there's no chance of an earthquake occuring in the next, say, 20 years.
We can't always "let the free market do its thing" when "its thing" causes a great deal of economic dislocation and suffering. Remember, that the free market's "thing" used to be taking boats to Africa, purchasing slaves, and selling them in "free markets" here in America. Regulation serves a useful function in preventing greed from causing unnecessary suffering. The "free market" is driven only by greed, and is not the divine cure-all that some would have you believe.
I never said a completely unrestrained free market is a good thing. Clearly when actions border on the immoral and, especially, when there are no mechanisms to incentivize companies to revert back to "moral" behavior then you can make an argument for regulation or legal action. An example of this would be the company that pollutes; they don't assume a significant cost for polluting so they can continue to do so with impunity. This situation is SUBSTANTIALLY different. Baring the very rare monopoly, if consumers prefer quality over price, then the company will lose sales by employing the Indians. Consequently they will learn the lesson on their own. Another possiblity is that consumers WANT a cheaper product and are WILLING to accept a lower quality product in exchange for it. In either case though, the company is incentivized to deliver what the consumer desires. Companies may make mistakes and may not fully appreciate or "know" the trade off right off the bat, but it is FAR SUPERIOR to allow the company to make such decisions on their own than any law or regulation can possibly hope to strike the proper balance.
You can no more use this regulation argument for Indians in this case then you could reasonably disallow companies from hiring non-CS degreed programmers; the situation corrects itself just the same, where there are REAL problems, without intervention. In free market terms, this is about as clear of an example as you get. Now it might be that the Indians produce an equal or superior product for far less, but that is a different argument. Personally, I think it depends entirely on the group of Indians and on the kind of software you are talking about (comparing the relative labor markets in the US to those of the Indians). Some companies will decide it is a mistake and pull back. Others will expand. In both cases the consumer IS better served by allowing companies to choose.
Same level of quality? Have you actually seen the code coming from India?
You really do get what you pay for but the PHB saved a few dollars so he's a hero.
If you really believe this to be the case, then let the free market do its thing. The midlevel manager might save a few pennies, but surely lesser quality will eventually reflect in the bottom line and, consequently, upper management will resolve not to use "inferior" Indian talent any more. You no more need a law there then you do against, say, hiring liberal arts majors for software development positions.
Quick summary: just about all the conditions you cited got violated in a real-world election. Florida's general election in 2000 which provided the deciding votes to elect Bush II President. Did you think hanging / pregnant chads were imaginary? There was fairly obvious reason to force the elimination of lever-actuated mechanical voting machines.
These hanging chads might prevent a machine from counting the vote, but NOT a reasonable human. The issue in Florida was primarily human error in multiple forms, not something fundamental to levers, never mind mechanical systems as a whole (I am not advocating levers in particular). Voters were, in fact, instructed to CHECK for hanging chads to make sure they had a clean vote--those few people messed up there again.
Besides which, while most reasonable people can agree that if there is a single clear depression in one category that it should count as a vote, it becomes very controversial when there are two or more in a paricular category (e.g., president) and the human counter attempts to divine the voters intent by the relative quality of the depression. Even WITH these errors, which were extraordinarily high due to bungling on multiple levels (e.g., ballot design), it is very rare for even THAT level of error to affect the outcome of the vote. Few important elections in this country are decided by such a slim number of votes that even a relatively high percentage of errors can decide the outcome.
If you want a simple technology that's hard to break without leaving obvious traces, try ink on paper, either by manual count or optical scan.
Well no one "broke" the Florida election maliciously, but that's besides the point. I'm not arguing for levers or any particular mechanical technology. I don't even have a problem with electronic or digital counting machines, as long as the votes are physically tabulated and the opportunity remains to visually inspect the actual votes when questions remain. We could supplement this technology with modern technology by, say, putting scantrons in place to allow the voter to verify their vote before they hand it over. Although I personally think this is total overkill and a waste of money, at least it would not be subject the risks and pitfalls of a wholly electronic system.
I simply don't believe, in the final analysis, that the multi-billion dollars costs to necessary attain near 0% error, particularly what is essentially random error, is worth the price. Nor do I believe, although I fully recognize this is more controversial, that it makes a great deal of sense to propose extensive manual recounts merely on the basis that there are votes out that that might not have been counted. As long as these same sort of machines are distributed evenly across the country, then the error will almost ALWAYS even out. I simply regard it as poor sportsmanship. There is a chance that you _might_ have technically won, but that's just life and it's never going to be decided with a great deal of bitterness. The difference in the voters "will" in this case is so close, that you should just go with whatever the machine decides essentially (baring some massive error)....
Slashdot Mirror
This concern is way overrated. The potential problems created by this "postage" model is much more tractable and minor (on a grand sclae) than those under the non-market based status quo. Once this "postage" technology is in place, ISPs would be free to enhance it to offer various security protections. For instance, only allow, say, 100 emails a days (a user-definable setting--but default) and notify the user if this happens. Alternatively, warn the user if X emails appear to be spam or are too identical (perhaps send them a visual challenge/response request after 50 emails--remember the false positive ratio wouldn't have to be nearly 0%). This would jack up the complexity of spamming orders of magnitude, the cost for the spammer (having to find new security exploits), and would also give the government a lot more teeth with which to pursue them. Connecting to an open proxy is one thing, literally hacking their machine and stealing money is quite another.
If spammers are in the business of hacking machines like this, then it seems to me that there's a lot quicker and safer ways to make money.
Because they HAVE to deliver email to the vast majority of the users that demand payment prior to delivery. Think in terms of credit card transactions.
That's fine and good in theory. Why should you have to install an alarm system? Why do you lock your doors? Why do you insist on payment before you ship product? This world is full of compromises. The question is what is the best compromise. Would you rather:
A) Click a box on your server to make all incoming mail free (get spammed).
B) Click a box on your server to make people pay some fractional amount to send you email and lose %.0001 of your customers who are too cheap to pay that fraction of a penny (even if by secondary means), while in the process saving money (which can be returned to the customers in the form of cheaper product/services), saving your manhours, minimize risk of accidental deletion (including false-positive SPAM filters) of LEGIT customers (probably a higher percentage than those that would walk away)...and so on.
C) Live with the status quo and all of the flawed spam filter methods. Not be able to reach your customers.
D) Wait in perpetuity for some impossible dream, while getting soaked.
Besides which, I can't imagine this would be a very practical way of solving any problem in the first place. The only way you could solve any sizable problem would be to be a huge ISP that's already recieving lots of emails (to be challenged) and even then latency and what not involved would likely exceed whatever benefits exist by having the sender's "solve" the problem (and you'd have to NOT solve the problem to obtain any benefits--therefore you'd have to allow SPAM)
I don't think number crunching is a very good idea either, but why not just send a one-way-hash of the "answer" along with the question, and only send the "answer" back to the server if it matches what the server already claims to already know? If they truly know it, then there's no benefit in asking it again. No?
Oh give me a break. First, damn few truly "poor" people are using email or likely will start using it soon. Second, in true poor parts of the world, these costs would be relative to income levels. What might cost 1 cent here would cost .001 cents in India (or be entirely free, since spamming the truly poor isn't a very good proposition in the first place). Granted, it might cost said person an hour's wage to send an email to the first world, but this would be very exceptional and well...people will find a way to cope.
I disagree. This is the best and practically the only really good solution to the problem.
First, the cost for your customers would (or at least could) be so neglible for them, but high enough for spammers so as to destroy their business model. For instance, if it may only cost your customer, say, 1 cent to send it. If they're a good paying customer and they take a couple seconds to write the email, then their time is almost certainly worth more than the component part of deliver (the "stamp"). Whereas, for the spammer, this new cost is earth shattering. If a spammer's expected benefit per email is less than a 1 cent and you charge them a penny to deliver it, then it'd be a losing proposition for them to send it in the first place. Let's say 1 in 1000 sent email results in a 1 dollar payment to the spammer, then their expected (avg.) benefit would be 1/10th of a cent for every email they send). They'd effectively lose 9/10th of a cent for every email they send (a whopping figure when they're sending millions of emails a day).
Second, the psychological cost could be defrayed by simply lumping the "postage" cost into your existing ISP contract. In other words, you'd pay say, 5 dollars a month to send 500 gauranteed-delivery emails a month (and this is probably FAR more expensive then it would be in reality).
Third, networks of trust and various hybrid models could be integrated into this. For instance, AOL and MSN could agree to exchange email for free (providing each other with a list of trusted IPs). In other words, the "cost" that you ultimately pay for would be effectively reduced to a mere fraction of what it is (since most people are using a couple major providers). Likewise, users could individually whitelist known senders so that they don't have to pay anything. If you're a member of a mailing list, you could easily pass, say, a public key for that sender to send you regular bulk emails. Again, you could have a flag on YOUR outbound emails that would ensure that you never have to pay.
Fourth, although I think it'd be unnecessary for 99% of applications, there's no reason why a company such as yours couldn't configure your server to NOT charge senders anything.
Lastly, the current email status quo (with its huge proportion of SPAM) has a real cost too and this system could, in fact, result in a net cost savings. If 70% of an ISPs inbound emails are SPAM, then they have to pay for this in increased CPU, bandwidth, backup, support, and other costs. These costs ARE passed onto you as the consumer. How many of your customer emails are blocked because of it? How many of your "legitimate" BULK emails (with those customers who opt-in or whom you have business connections with) are blocked? If this s
a) An employee can make it abundantly clear that they're strictly a 9 to 5er--not one hour more.
b) An employee may be extremely litigious and has commented about it on slashdot.
c) An employee may be vehemently opposed to the very concept of intellectual property (not a great thing if you're a company that depends on the same person to produce/enhance your own IP).
d) An employee may believe that piracy ala Napster et. al is perfectly alright. This implies that they're more willing to skirt the law, personal beliefs aside, than those that are not.
e) An employee may have espoused points of view that run contrary to your very business interests. For instance, if you ARE RIAA.
f) An employee may simply be a malcontent--angry at every and anything that've ever known. I've certainly known people like this in real life and, I'm pretty sure, on slashdot too.
g) An employee can be wholly opposed to US government policy and accept a position only for the money. If you're an aerospace contractor, say, the odds are that this employee is not going to last very long.
h) An employee may have commented on stealing from their last employers (or their creditors rather, as in the case of some on slashdot following the DotCom crash). This has bearing too.
i) If you're a potential employer knows you were consistently posting 20 times a day during workhours during your previous/current employement, that's pretty important clue that you're not doing a lot of work.
These are just a few quick examples...
Now I'll grant you that people can adopt alter-egos, outright lie, and more on slashdot and other online forums, but I think it's a real mistake to assume that NOTHING useful can be determined from such a search. Wouldn't you as an employee be interested in knowing the interactions between your potential future employer and employees/business partners/customers/community/etc? It's not as if the only important criteria is: skill set, "official" hours, and salary paid. General happiness, social ability, effort, willingness to work hard, ethics, and other qualities can have HUGE impact on performance and relationships on both sides. There are quite a few people on slashdot that I've had discussions with or seen that I would NEVER hire if I knew they were the same slashdot user--it has NOTHING to do with the fact that they disagree with me per se and more with some of the examples I listed.
While I respect much of the work Cringely has done over the years, this article is not "good". He is resting most of his argument against outsourcing on the belief that it yields worse customer service! Where is his proof and why does he believe that the free market suddenly stopped working? Are customers suddenly incapable of voting with their feet for companies that offer better customer service (presumably those that hire Americans)? Are CEOs suddenly too stupid to realize that they lose business this way? Did it ever occur to him that the company can hire a couple Indians who are more intelligent and better educated for the price of a single American? Perhaps the Indians don't have the cultural awareness, language skills, or what have you to work effectively in customer service, but Cringley's arguments are not plausible. Companies and consumers can make mistakes, the power of the free market is that we generally recognize that it's better to let them make mistakes on their own.
It's also absurd when he says, on one hand, that government is incompetent and then, on the other, he implies that we should have government tie the hands of business leaders and/or consumers. What's more, he argues that protectionist acts won't hurt the US because India is a net exporter of goods/services (and aid recipient) relative to the US. This may be the case, but he forgets that other countries may well follow suit against the US (e.g., Europe) and that as India gets wealthier it will likely grow into a consumer of US products. There may be good arguments against outsourcing jobs to foreign countries like India (e.g., that it has the potential to hurt innovation in the long term), but Cringley 's argument simply isn't one of them.
Enough said.
I love a good number of NPR shows (e.g., Fresh Air), but I can't stand Prarie Home Companion or whatever it's called. There's just something about that whining, nasal, condescending voice that both turns me off and puts me to sleep. Does anyone actually like it?? It must have it's following, but I really don't get its appeal.
You need to remember that a contract signed by the driver of the car doesn't necessarily have any baring on the VICTIM's (e.g., pedestrians) right to sue any and everyone they believe to be at fault.
IANAL too, but these contracts are ROUTINELY ignored in the legal system. A customer cannot sign away his or her rights and parents, particularly, cannot sign away their children's rights to sue. I don't agree with it, but it's the way the system works today.
All of those links work, you simply need to remove the white space from the links (slashdot breaks up any continous lines)
I never said all arabs are the same [I have some arab friends] I was simply answering your assertion, based on a sample composed of the 9-11 terrorists, that there is some widespread hate of the United States in the arab world. It is a fact though, that, the Protocols are widely distributed, widely quoted, and widely believed throughout much of the Arab world. They have even been quoted on their national radio shows and what not. Comparing it to AMAZON selling the Mein Kampf, which sells many thousands of different books, is absurd. The Protocols are:
a) much more popular relatively speaking (being one of the few or the only books carried in many of these markets)
b) A proven forgery (they are supposed to be the actual plans of the Jews)
c) Not a document of direct historical relevance so it's generally NOT studied by educated people (unlike the Mein Kampf in the US)
d) Quoted repeatedly by various Arab leaders and media figures.
Background on the Protocols in the Arab World
Furthermore, the point is that, regardless of real action or inaction (on the part of the Jews in this case), it only takes a handful of people to believe it and commit violent terrorist acts. Do you really believe, for instance, that there is any reasonable policy that the US Government could have enacted to have stopped Timothy McVeigh from blowing up the Federal building in OKC? Terrorist acts are not a priori evidence of bad policy or lack of good policy. There are crazy people in this world and most of them don't have any justification for their acts.
Germany, just like the US, has faced and will continue to face terrorism, particularly Arab terrorism, no matter how much you deny it and no matter what policies of capitulation it follows. Although policy can play some role in pro-actively preventing some terrorism, it will continue no matter what. Resting your beliefs on what happened in Israel is bad comparison because the elapsement of time was short and because Israel pursues policies that have direct and very substantial impact on the Palestianians (thus they have REGULAR politically directed bombings) that they can potentialy and realistically change.
So tell me. If Germany et. al have their acts so much in order, then why is Al Queda also targeting Germany?
http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1432_A_499 10 9,00.html
http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?ar ti cleid=437
Why did Libya blow up a nightclub in Berlin in 1986?
Why did the Libyan government blow up a French Airliners?
http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,4789_W_108 32 06,00.html
Did it ever occur to you that the terrorists might want something untenable and fundamentally incompatible with democracy, such as the complete Islamisation of Saudi Arabia (as Osama would have it)? And you complain about US "support" of the Saudis now, pfft? Did it ever occur to you that you can't keep all people happy all the time, that there will always be some unhappy and violent individuals no matter what you do? Sept 11 2001 was the act of a handful of individuals, not hundreds, not thousands, not millions. Why do you presume good will alone will make these people go away?
As for the so-called Arab Street disliking the United States, how do you expect to reason with people, who clearly believe in outright lies about the Jews such as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (which is openly sold throughout many parts of the arab world)? And what about those in the Arab world who still believe that 9-11 was just a Jewish or American conspiracy to attack Afghanistan? Real actions cannot compete with the make believe acts, particularly when the Arab world is full of leaders who find it all too convenient to point fingers at the United States and other superpowers so as the distract their people from their own problems.
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/archives/0000054 8. html
Most of the Arab world is poor and many have repressive governments that have no relation with the United States. They also believe firmly that they are a great people and that they, at one time, ruled the world. It would seem pretty logical to them that the West and, particular, the United States (being the richest and most visible) must be at fault. Now you add in hate and lies such as that in the "Protocols" and you have a potential terrorist on your hands. Out of a population of a couple million it only takes a very small percentage to eventually commit a major terrorist act.
As for Iraq, what exactly was lousy in the
First, the real risk doesn't necessarily have any concrete relationship with the financial risk in our litigious society with lay juries, professional ambulance chasers that work on contingency, and so on. For instance, millions of dollars were lost and businesses were put out of business by the silicone breast implant scare and yet, despite the fact that they leaked, no one has found any evidence to indicate that the implants cause cancer or other serious ailments, despite numerous studies. It is hard for insurance companies to quantify and evaluate the costs of mass hysteria and panic. One false alarm, in our world today, can easily result in thousands of law suits even when it's been proven that nothing radioactive was released.
Second, insurance operates fundamentally on the concept of scale of the policies and aggregation of risk. When there's only a handful of active nuclear powerplants in the country there's little aggregation of risk, and hence, much more effective volatility in their returns. What's more, when there's only a couple of active plants, they don't necessarily have the institutional skill set in place to practically audit the safety (or the risks, if you will).
Third, nuclear power has to compete with oil and other sources of energy production WITH the insurance premiums whereas the competition really does not in the same sense. We don't necessarily fully appreciate the cost of the competitive options between the pollution element and the political costs (the entire world is heavily dependent on a steady supply of cheap oil and this has resulted in our having to make a certain poltical calculations. We take the unpaid costs, the "risks", of oil for granted, but for some reason we expect nuclear producers to pay for this.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_gdp_cap
The fact that Luxemberg is viewed is #1 in this just illustrates the point that it's a silly measure because they're pretty obscure for most of the world (there are a number of US companies with greater annual revenue than their entire GDP at a mere ~20 billion). Luxemberg's unique economy also allows this to occur (banking, lots foreign workers, etc)--they're not nearly as prolific in a real per capita sense though)
The United States has a far greater GDP than anyone else in absolute terms:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_gdp
The United also exports significantly more than everyone else in absolute terms:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_exp
All of these measures are really just secondary effects of the real reason why we're so visible. We sell a lot of stuff to the world. We broadcast and sell hundreds of TV shows, movies, trademarks, and so on. We enjoy a style of living that 99% of the world can only dream about (not to mention the fact that many try to emulate this).
US policy isn't perfect, but no country is. Just because they made what was, in hindsite, a mistake does not mean that the decision makers were malicious, lazy, or stupid. Far from it. We made some tough decisions during the Cold War, but many of them were decisions that had to be made or, at least, seemed like the lesser of two evils at the time to some very smart people.
What's more you neglect to mention that both France and Germany (and much of Europe for that matter) were victims of lots of terrorism in the 70s and 80s. Also, if our supposed actions in, say, Afghanistan is the cause of Osama's resentment today then why wasn't Russia attacked? Afterall, it was their soldiers, their weapons, their tanks, and so on that killed many thousands of freedom fighters and invaded the country. I'm sorry, but the argument that US actions or inactions insofar as foreign policy goes is a sufficient cause for terrorist acts is a very poor one that doesn't hold water.
Sure, if you're living in a 200 year old brick building built right on top of a fault line, you might be SOL, but you should look at these things on the aggregate. What about all those people that can take mitigating steps or aren't at _any_ risk for the next 20 years? California is a big state and only a small percentage of areas experience major earthquakes during any given decade, yet today, without real forecasting ability, everyone in an area that is potentially affected constantly pays the price in insurance, home building costs (increased), fear, worry, and so on. The unknown is more expensive on the aggregate that the known.
Your argument is pretty foolish. While there may be some negative sides to being able to predict the exact date of an earthquake, the benefits far outweigh the negatives (not just in terms of human lives). Markets have long thrived on sound and reliable information. Markets fear uncertainty/risk, the unknowable that's difficult to quantify, far more than anything. Sure, someone may not want to build in a particular spot if they know there's going to be an earthquake there a year later, but that's basically a good thing. If the business person thinks it's going to be net loss, then it probably will be. What's more, the investor has the opportunity to manage their risk, by choosing a superior location, enhancing the buildings strength, and so on. In fact, from a business point of view, an argument can be made that building before a known earthquake in a good location with good design could be beneficial, because the investor knows that the number of available buildings will decrease, i.e., less supply, thus making their offering more profitable. Likewise, for those people that fear earthquakes, California becomes a more attractive market when they can stear clear of any earth quake risk. I can also see insurance premiums being reduced, when re-insurers are better able to measure earthquake risks, the premiums are apt to be reduced on the aggregate (the more uncertainty, the more you pay). Likewise, politicians are going to be far-less reluctant to build up infrastructure when there's a known problem down the road that they will be blamed for if they don't fix it. What's more, when the earthquake passes, the economy is bound to rebound much more, when there's no chance of an earthquake occuring in the next, say, 20 years.
You can no more use this regulation argument for Indians in this case then you could reasonably disallow companies from hiring non-CS degreed programmers; the situation corrects itself just the same, where there are REAL problems, without intervention. In free market terms, this is about as clear of an example as you get. Now it might be that the Indians produce an equal or superior product for far less, but that is a different argument. Personally, I think it depends entirely on the group of Indians and on the kind of software you are talking about (comparing the relative labor markets in the US to those of the Indians). Some companies will decide it is a mistake and pull back. Others will expand. In both cases the consumer IS better served by allowing companies to choose.
Besides which, while most reasonable people can agree that if there is a single clear depression in one category that it should count as a vote, it becomes very controversial when there are two or more in a paricular category (e.g., president) and the human counter attempts to divine the voters intent by the relative quality of the depression. Even WITH these errors, which were extraordinarily high due to bungling on multiple levels (e.g., ballot design), it is very rare for even THAT level of error to affect the outcome of the vote. Few important elections in this country are decided by such a slim number of votes that even a relatively high percentage of errors can decide the outcome.
Well no one "broke" the Florida election maliciously, but that's besides the point. I'm not arguing for levers or any particular mechanical technology. I don't even have a problem with electronic or digital counting machines, as long as the votes are physically tabulated and the opportunity remains to visually inspect the actual votes when questions remain. We could supplement this technology with modern technology by, say, putting scantrons in place to allow the voter to verify their vote before they hand it over. Although I personally think this is total overkill and a waste of money, at least it would not be subject the risks and pitfalls of a wholly electronic system.
I simply don't believe, in the final analysis, that the multi-billion dollars costs to necessary attain near 0% error, particularly what is essentially random error, is worth the price. Nor do I believe, although I fully recognize this is more controversial, that it makes a great deal of sense to propose extensive manual recounts merely on the basis that there are votes out that that might not have been counted. As long as these same sort of machines are distributed evenly across the country, then the error will almost ALWAYS even out. I simply regard it as poor sportsmanship. There is a chance that you _might_ have technically won, but that's just life and it's never going to be decided with a great deal of bitterness. The difference in the voters "will" in this case is so close, that you should just go with whatever the machine decides essentially (baring some massive error)....