It sounds like you are much closer to "fearing the worst" than "hoping for the best." Man, I thought I was cynical. Thanks for one-upping me. I feel better at your expense.:-)
-matthew
Re:The future sucks, it always does
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That explanation might work for news, but Sci-Fi is a lot more complicated than that. THere is plenty of popular happy Sci-Fi, but even there you need some kind of drama to make a story.
Re:The future sucks, it always does
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There is plenty of good utopian Sci-Fi.
Re:The future sucks, it always does
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It's saying "The future will suck! It'll be the worst thing ever! But, if only we were communists, and outlawed companies which tried to seel you things and make money, then everything would be great! Dangerous and highly intrusive technology would never backfire then!" Awwwww. Aint that sweet.
Right. Of course. Anytime someone criticizes corporations they must be communist or suggesting communism. Can't one be a Good Capitalist(tm) and still be critical of the system?
-matthew
Re:The future sucks, it always does
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Why do I get the feeling that if SF writers were in charge of the industrial revolution we'd still all be dairy farmers?
Why do I get the feeling that without SF writers we'd be living out the dystopian stories (in many ways we already are). Sci Fi serves a very important function in a society bent on destroying and/or overthrowing nature.
Why does the future always suck, why is that the natural consequence of progress along any dimension?Why do they embrace defeat? It's always some dark dystopian future and the cure is always either free love or fascism isn't it?
The future doesn't always suck in Sci Fi. Look at things like Star Trek TNG. It doesn't get much more utopian than that. The point of dystopian Sci-Fi isn't to warn us of the future. It is to open our eyes to the present. Good dystopian Sci-Fi will reflect many disturbing aspects of our own society. It sounds like "Feed" does a very good job of this.
That's why I like PK Dick so much. No happy endings, we all die alone tortured by our paranoias.
Indeed, these kinds of stories can be very refreshing, but don't forget to recognize the truth in the paranoia. We are paranoid for a reason. ALthough that reason isn't always what the paranoia would have you believe.
Star Trek (particularly TNG) would an example of near utopian Sci Fi. It does exist. It just doesn't stand out as "fiction" to many geeks when it is utopian.
Who decides what a "fair wage" is? Even you have to admit that it's not the same in every country, and that it will be constantly changing. This would make it hard to regulate, since it is always a highly subjective and mobile target. The restrictions you cite would have the exact same effect on those foreign workers as a tariff.
Really? You mean the money collected from tariffs goes back to the workers? Fact is that trade does continue even with tariffs in place. I'm sure it would continue with regulated wages and working conditions instead of tariffs. We've worked hard to raise the wages and working conditions in the US. Other countries deserve the same if we are going to do business there.
The result would be the same, you would raise the cost of whatever they are producing, taking away their cost advantage.
The result for US corporations would be the same, yeah. What is good for corporations isn't always good for people.
You're "exploitation" is usually much better than the prevailing wages and circumstances found in most of that country's jobs though. Unless you set a minimum wage above the county's average wage (which would be disasterous for that country) you would have little effect on what the so called "exploited" are being paid.
No matter how many times you put exploitation in quotes, it is still exploitation.
You still can't compete--because the cost of living is drastically different! For example, bread costs $1 in USA while it costs $0.10 in the poorer countries. Someone making American minimum wage in a poorer country would probably fall into the middle class in the poorer country. In the poorest of the poorest (say some country in Africa), the American minimum wage would be equivalent to low-upper class wages.
It would be unreasonable to suggest that they get the same minimum wages in other countries as we get in the US. I'm just saying there should be SOME minimum that is better than what a lot of places have. As it is, many parts of the world are being horribly exploited and abused. Also, it isn't just about wage. It is about working conditions and the environment. US coroporations don't gove overseas just for cheap labor, ya know.
The issues are intrinsic to capitalism and there really isn't any solution IMO. Whether USA (or any other country for that matter) totally cuts off trade or if to goes totally laissez-faire, the situation will still exist.
Well, capitalism is the system we have and it isn't going away. We have to try. It isn't about setting the the perfect economic policies. A big part of the solution is awareness, education, and compassion. Consumers need to regain control over what they are consuming, why they are consuming it, and where it comes from.
Your assuming that they would continue to do the work they currently outsource - they may just decide it's too expensive and cut back, resulting in less inovation and fewer jobs.
I'm sure it would have some stalling effect on the economy. My feeling is that the whole system is overvalue as it is anyway. In other words, not sustainable.
or, they could outsource to non-US owned companies which would not be forced to pay US wages and benefits - transfering technology and still leaving the jobs offshore (my guess i staht they'd create holding companies in a mor efriendly venue , say Switzerland, so the offshore company is a Swiss owned firm, not a US owned firm.)
There'd definitly be no shortage of innovation in this regard.:-P
If your saying any company that imports foriegn made goods should pay US wages to their workers - be prepared for your standard of living to go down when the price of goods goes up while your wages stagnate.
I don't think it is reasonable to pay Guatamalans, for example, US wages from the the get go. I'm just saying there needs to be some basic, livable minimum that slowly increases as the areas in question grow economically. Not just wages, either. I'm talking working conditions and benefits too. Yeah, I will end up paying more for goods. Even now I am willing to go out of my way to pay a little more for fair trade coffee and the like. It definitly needs some awareness on the part of the people. This isn't something that would work purely by means of economic policy.
The US could do the same thing by adding tariffs to bring prices in line with what a US manufacturerd product would cost - the net effect to the company would be the same as a foriegn minimum wage law since production in the US would cost the same as producing the good abroad. You might want to Google for Smoot - Hawley to see how it could work...
This is quite opposed to what I am talking about. Tarrifs do nothing but harm to strungling economies. It works fine when you are dealing with other industrialized nations, but not with the third world. Fair trade is the only option when dealing with the third world as far as I am concerned.
In the end, "fair trade" is just a buzzward for protectionism.
If "the end" means raising tariffs, then yes. But that isn't what I am talking about.
Of course, all those laid off workers who used to have a decent standard of living, by local standards, may disagreewith you.
It depends on where we are talking about. India, for example, isn't doing too bad. They are getting decent jobs for relatively good pay. "Fair trade" probably wouldn't apply to them. And China isn't doing too bad, but that has more to do with it's size and potential market share. We could do more to promote better environmental standards there. That would be part of "fair trade," IMO.
But to use your arguement, why not let companies offshore at will, since it means cheaper goods making Americans who buy them better off (albiet more o ftehm than those who lose their job to offshoring).
"I'll say it until people understand it or refute it: you cannot be both for free trade and against outsourcing. They are the same thing."
No they are not. If they where the same thing I could compete for the jobs being outsourced. Since I cant, this is not free trade. Free trade means that no one gets excluded.
Why can't you compete? Minimum wage laws? I'm sure that if you were willing to work for minimum wage you'd be able to compete with outsourcing of jobs. It is free trade in action. You're just upset that it isn't just about blue collar jobs anymore.
I say we ditch free trade and call for fair trade. If we forced American corporations to pay a minimum wage and minimum benefits to foreign workers, you and I would be able to compete much better and the foreign workers (albeit fewer of them) would be much better off for it as well.
Part of the problem of worms is the network congestion that they cause when they scan the internet to spread themselves. Worms can easily take out firewalls and routers. In this way, any worm is "bad." If it were just about computers being comprimized, I would say, "Yeah, go for it, white hats."
I think one of the reasons for the electoral college is to give smaller states a little more influence. Like how the Senate is organized compared to the Congress. I'm not sure how Iraq is organized, but I'm pretty sure the that the reason the electoral college doesn't make any sense there is because they don't have states as we know them.
The Supreme Court didn't decide that you don't need to win the popular vote in the state to win its electoral college votes, as Bush had more votes in the last "official" recount.
Yep, that's the solution. It is mind-bogglingly simple and obvious to anyone who has any interest in fair elections. It follows, therefore, that the voting machine companies, which usually answer such demands with bullshit excuses like "the printer would jam" (that gem comes from Diebold, which also makes ATM's which surely print out many more receipts than any voting machine would be likely to, and do so day after day) do not have such an interest.
Another thing that make this a BS excuse is that a jammed printer only means one lost printed receipt and a sign that says "Voting machine out of order" rather than thousands of votes mysteriously lost to a computer crash. People understand printer jams and can deal with them (assuming it would happen, even if rarely).
Microsoft's UI guidelines have been around for a very long time. When I wrote the first public course on Visual Basic programming for Microsoft over 13 years ago, I included a 2 hour long module to explain to developers exactly how to use the UI guidelines with labs to show how following them made for a better app.
Well, I'm glad to hear that you place so much value in knowing and following UI guidelines, but the reality is that many don't... probably because it isn't suggested by the API itself as it is in Aqua
As for you not knowing where the options are on a Windows app, they've been on the "Tools" menu for many years. Of course, some apps don't follow the UI rules but that isn't because Microsoft hasn't told the developers what to do, it's because the developers have a "better idea" than the standard UI. Exactly what this discussion is about.
I'm not blaming Microsoft. I am speaking of "Windows" as a whole, including 3rd party applications.
As for the dock coming from NeXT, the idea of a group of Icons for running programs was present in Windows 1.0x from 1985 - long before Stevie started up NeXT to piss off the Apple people who ousted him from his own company.The idea of a group of always-accessable icons for commonly used shortcuts in an area of the screen not covered by a maximized window is NOT the NeXT tray.
From a user's standpoint, the Apple dock is a whole lot more like the NeXT tray than the Windows task bar despite your dubious semantics and tenuous IP arguments.
That's it. Everything else goes on the Start menu (always accessable) or the Quick Start bar on the Taskbar (always accessable and copied by Apple to be the "Dock"
If Apple copied the "Dock" it definitly wasn't from Windows. Try NeXT.
Microsoft DOES have standard shortcuts in Windows and has for a decade or so.
What he meant by "standard" shortcuts was that one must learn multiple activation keys to use shortcuts. Sometimes it is ALT. Sometimes it is CTL. Sometimes it is the Windows key or a function key. It is an example of how Windows is inconsistent and hence more difficult for a beginner to learn. He made another valid point about the location of application preferences. I've been using Windows on and off for 14 years now and I still often struggle to find options and preferences in many Windows applications. Sometimes they are under "Edit." Sometimes under "Tools." Sometimes under "File." On a Mac this is a nobrainer, as the previous poster mentioned.
Perhaps you should actually try using Windows before telling the rest of us how it works.
Perhaps you should try using a Mac before you get involved in a discussion comparing the usablility of Windows and Mac OS.
If this could prevent child-napping, yes I'd put one on my kids.
I'd tell 'em they have it when they're old enough to understand. And if they don't like, when they're old enough they can take it out themselves.
I think that is just horrible. The chance of your kids getting nabbed is pretty low to begin with. This RFID thing demonstrantes a fundamental mistrust in children. Yeah, you tell them they have it to find them if they get nabbed, but how do you think they feel if they know you can track them whereever they go? Now what happens later when other forces want to encourage people to keep their RFID's or even get updated ones to satisfy other "fears."
I'm sorry, but people are getting way too hysterical these days. Yeah, the world is a scary place, but you know what? You just can't give in. You can't cave in to the fear and hand over your or your children's freedom like this! It just isn't right.
No, in certain unusual situations, it's the best thing you can do. (And it's a term I've heard for many, many years.) I worked in a graphics/print shop for a while, and some customers would drive us nuts, and lose us money over the stuff they did. ie. bring in questionable originals for copying, choose the cheapest photocopy option available, then return a 10,000-sheet job because there was a speck in the copies. Or, in a low-end design job, argue over nickle and dime issues for hours, eating up the designer's time that should have been spent on better-paying work.
For sure, this practice is done all over the place. It is only really new to retail because stores haven't had the ability to track customers until now. I work for an IT consulting firm and part of our quarterly meetings involve deciding which of our crappiest clients to drop. Some clients are just more trouble than they are worth.
On the other hand, I don't think it is ethical to drop a customer just because they make efficient and legitimate use of deals and promotions. That is just slimy. If you can't handle people taking advantage of sales, find a better way of getting customers.
Apparently the Solaris version of 'killall' works differently than the GNU version. I remotely killed all the processes on a client's production E450 server. They had to reboot it. I was so embarrased.
This probably wasn't the worst accident with a computer. I just thought it might be a nice break from all the "rm -rf"'s and the "spilled ____ on my laptop.";-)
Slashdot Mirror
It sounds like you are much closer to "fearing the worst" than "hoping for the best." Man, I thought I was cynical. Thanks for one-upping me. I feel better at your expense. :-)
-matthew
That explanation might work for news, but Sci-Fi is a lot more complicated than that. THere is plenty of popular happy Sci-Fi, but even there you need some kind of drama to make a story.
There is plenty of good utopian Sci-Fi.
Right. Of course. Anytime someone criticizes corporations they must be communist or suggesting communism. Can't one be a Good Capitalist(tm) and still be critical of the system?
-matthew
Why do I get the feeling that without SF writers we'd be living out the dystopian stories (in many ways we already are). Sci Fi serves a very important function in a society bent on destroying and/or overthrowing nature.
Why does the future always suck, why is that the natural consequence of progress along any dimension?Why do they embrace defeat? It's always some dark dystopian future and the cure is always either free love or fascism isn't it?
The future doesn't always suck in Sci Fi. Look at things like Star Trek TNG. It doesn't get much more utopian than that. The point of dystopian Sci-Fi isn't to warn us of the future. It is to open our eyes to the present. Good dystopian Sci-Fi will reflect many disturbing aspects of our own society. It sounds like "Feed" does a very good job of this.
That's why I like PK Dick so much. No happy endings, we all die alone tortured by our paranoias.
Indeed, these kinds of stories can be very refreshing, but don't forget to recognize the truth in the paranoia. We are paranoid for a reason. ALthough that reason isn't always what the paranoia would have you believe.
-matthew
Star Trek (particularly TNG) would an example of near utopian Sci Fi. It does exist. It just doesn't stand out as "fiction" to many geeks when it is utopian.
-matthew
Really? You mean the money collected from tariffs goes back to the workers? Fact is that trade does continue even with tariffs in place. I'm sure it would continue with regulated wages and working conditions instead of tariffs. We've worked hard to raise the wages and working conditions in the US. Other countries deserve the same if we are going to do business there.
The result would be the same, you would raise the cost of whatever they are producing, taking away their cost advantage.
The result for US corporations would be the same, yeah. What is good for corporations isn't always good for people.
-matthew
No matter how many times you put exploitation in quotes, it is still exploitation.
-matthew
It would be unreasonable to suggest that they get the same minimum wages in other countries as we get in the US. I'm just saying there should be SOME minimum that is better than what a lot of places have. As it is, many parts of the world are being horribly exploited and abused. Also, it isn't just about wage. It is about working conditions and the environment. US coroporations don't gove overseas just for cheap labor, ya know.
The issues are intrinsic to capitalism and there really isn't any solution IMO. Whether USA (or any other country for that matter) totally cuts off trade or if to goes totally laissez-faire, the situation will still exist.
Well, capitalism is the system we have and it isn't going away. We have to try. It isn't about setting the the perfect economic policies. A big part of the solution is awareness, education, and compassion. Consumers need to regain control over what they are consuming, why they are consuming it, and where it comes from.
-matthew
I'm sure it would have some stalling effect on the economy. My feeling is that the whole system is overvalue as it is anyway. In other words, not sustainable.
or, they could outsource to non-US owned companies which would not be forced to pay US wages and benefits - transfering technology and still leaving the jobs offshore (my guess i staht they'd create holding companies in a mor efriendly venue , say Switzerland, so the offshore company is a Swiss owned firm, not a US owned firm.)
There'd definitly be no shortage of innovation in this regard. :-P
If your saying any company that imports foriegn made goods should pay US wages to their workers - be prepared for your standard of living to go down when the price of goods goes up while your wages stagnate.
I don't think it is reasonable to pay Guatamalans, for example, US wages from the the get go. I'm just saying there needs to be some basic, livable minimum that slowly increases as the areas in question grow economically. Not just wages, either. I'm talking working conditions and benefits too. Yeah, I will end up paying more for goods. Even now I am willing to go out of my way to pay a little more for fair trade coffee and the like. It definitly needs some awareness on the part of the people. This isn't something that would work purely by means of economic policy.
The US could do the same thing by adding tariffs to bring prices in line with what a US manufacturerd product would cost - the net effect to the company would be the same as a foriegn minimum wage law since production in the US would cost the same as producing the good abroad. You might want to Google for Smoot - Hawley to see how it could work...
This is quite opposed to what I am talking about. Tarrifs do nothing but harm to strungling economies. It works fine when you are dealing with other industrialized nations, but not with the third world. Fair trade is the only option when dealing with the third world as far as I am concerned.
In the end, "fair trade" is just a buzzward for protectionism.
If "the end" means raising tariffs, then yes. But that isn't what I am talking about.
Of course, all those laid off workers who used to have a decent standard of living, by local standards, may disagreewith you.
It depends on where we are talking about. India, for example, isn't doing too bad. They are getting decent jobs for relatively good pay. "Fair trade" probably wouldn't apply to them. And China isn't doing too bad, but that has more to do with it's size and potential market share. We could do more to promote better environmental standards there. That would be part of "fair trade," IMO.
But to use your arguement, why not let companies offshore at will, since it means cheaper goods making Americans who buy them better off (albiet more o ftehm than those who lose their job to offshoring).
I don't see how that is using my argument.
-matthew
No they are not. If they where the same thing I could compete for the jobs being outsourced. Since I cant, this is not free trade. Free trade means that no one gets excluded.
Why can't you compete? Minimum wage laws? I'm sure that if you were willing to work for minimum wage you'd be able to compete with outsourcing of jobs. It is free trade in action. You're just upset that it isn't just about blue collar jobs anymore.
I say we ditch free trade and call for fair trade. If we forced American corporations to pay a minimum wage and minimum benefits to foreign workers, you and I would be able to compete much better and the foreign workers (albeit fewer of them) would be much better off for it as well.
-matthew
command.com-3.0. But I guess a more robust cmd.exe would do as well.
Part of the problem of worms is the network congestion that they cause when they scan the internet to spread themselves. Worms can easily take out firewalls and routers. In this way, any worm is "bad." If it were just about computers being comprimized, I would say, "Yeah, go for it, white hats."
-matthew
I think one of the reasons for the electoral college is to give smaller states a little more influence. Like how the Senate is organized compared to the Congress. I'm not sure how Iraq is organized, but I'm pretty sure the that the reason the electoral college doesn't make any sense there is because they don't have states as we know them.
-matthew
Who decided what was "official?"
-matthew
Another thing that make this a BS excuse is that a jammed printer only means one lost printed receipt and a sign that says "Voting machine out of order" rather than thousands of votes mysteriously lost to a computer crash. People understand printer jams and can deal with them (assuming it would happen, even if rarely).
-matthew
Well, I'm glad to hear that you place so much value in knowing and following UI guidelines, but the reality is that many don't... probably because it isn't suggested by the API itself as it is in Aqua
As for you not knowing where the options are on a Windows app, they've been on the "Tools" menu for many years. Of course, some apps don't follow the UI rules but that isn't because Microsoft hasn't told the developers what to do, it's because the developers have a "better idea" than the standard UI. Exactly what this discussion is about.
I'm not blaming Microsoft. I am speaking of "Windows" as a whole, including 3rd party applications.
As for the dock coming from NeXT, the idea of a group of Icons for running programs was present in Windows 1.0x from 1985 - long before Stevie started up NeXT to piss off the Apple people who ousted him from his own company.The idea of a group of always-accessable icons for commonly used shortcuts in an area of the screen not covered by a maximized window is NOT the NeXT tray.
From a user's standpoint, the Apple dock is a whole lot more like the NeXT tray than the Windows task bar despite your dubious semantics and tenuous IP arguments.
-matthew
If Apple copied the "Dock" it definitly wasn't from Windows. Try NeXT.
Microsoft DOES have standard shortcuts in Windows and has for a decade or so.
What he meant by "standard" shortcuts was that one must learn multiple activation keys to use shortcuts. Sometimes it is ALT. Sometimes it is CTL. Sometimes it is the Windows key or a function key. It is an example of how Windows is inconsistent and hence more difficult for a beginner to learn. He made another valid point about the location of application preferences. I've been using Windows on and off for 14 years now and I still often struggle to find options and preferences in many Windows applications. Sometimes they are under "Edit." Sometimes under "Tools." Sometimes under "File." On a Mac this is a nobrainer, as the previous poster mentioned.
Perhaps you should actually try using Windows before telling the rest of us how it works.
Perhaps you should try using a Mac before you get involved in a discussion comparing the usablility of Windows and Mac OS.
-matthew
phpMyAdmin is better for web based mysql administration. Give it a try. Webmin is still pretty good for other stuff.
Since when did people become like luggage?
I'd tell 'em they have it when they're old enough to understand. And if they don't like, when they're old enough they can take it out themselves.
I think that is just horrible. The chance of your kids getting nabbed is pretty low to begin with. This RFID thing demonstrantes a fundamental mistrust in children. Yeah, you tell them they have it to find them if they get nabbed, but how do you think they feel if they know you can track them whereever they go? Now what happens later when other forces want to encourage people to keep their RFID's or even get updated ones to satisfy other "fears."
I'm sorry, but people are getting way too hysterical these days. Yeah, the world is a scary place, but you know what? You just can't give in. You can't cave in to the fear and hand over your or your children's freedom like this! It just isn't right.
-matthew
For sure, this practice is done all over the place. It is only really new to retail because stores haven't had the ability to track customers until now. I work for an IT consulting firm and part of our quarterly meetings involve deciding which of our crappiest clients to drop. Some clients are just more trouble than they are worth.
On the other hand, I don't think it is ethical to drop a customer just because they make efficient and legitimate use of deals and promotions. That is just slimy. If you can't handle people taking advantage of sales, find a better way of getting customers.
-matthew
Uh, ya, I'm a hippie. Ok. I think we're done here. Go along and play now.
Hey, you're the one typing in all caps, not me.
-matthew
Apparently the Solaris version of 'killall' works differently than the GNU version. I remotely killed all the processes on a client's production E450 server. They had to reboot it. I was so embarrased.
;-)
This probably wasn't the worst accident with a computer. I just thought it might be a nice break from all the "rm -rf"'s and the "spilled ____ on my laptop."
-matthew