The problem is very complex. It's a cross between expensive regulation that makes Americans expensive, lack of foresight being called an asset by many business people and just general lack of concern about the future.
I take issue with the statement, "...expensive regulation that makes Americans expensive." Most of these 'expensive' regulations end up being worker safety rules, or environmental protection laws, which do indeed incur increased costs for American businesses operating in the US. However, for the economy as whole, regulations tend to save money because they reduce the end costs of ignoring worker safety and the environment.
Look at it this way -- if a $10 flu shot saves a week of lost productivity on the assembly line for an uninsured employee, it's a good thing for the economy, right? Industrial output is increased and hospital costs are reduced at the county-run emergency room. However, that $10 flu shot shows up on the businesses balance sheet as an expense, where the lost week of reduced industrial output, and savings at the county-run hospital, do not. Similarly, as a business owner, it's a heck of a lot cheaper for me to dump my toxic waste in the nearest river than to hire some 'expensive' company to haul it away to a certified and tightly-regulated dump site. Of course, if you live downstream from where I'm cheaply dumping my toxic waste, life sucks for you, and for fishermen in the area that depend on the river for their jobs, and for the city or town that eventually has to foot the bill to clean up my mess. Still, it's a good deal for me as the business owner, as it makes my company appear more profitable than it would be if I had to pay for that 'expensive' regulation that forbids me from dumping my waste whenever and wherever I want. In economics, what we're talking about is called spill-over costs, and most of the 'expensive' government regulations business owners complain about when asked why they offshore jobs are all tied to these types of 'business-friendly' spill-over costs.
The real problem with off-shoring, at least as I see it, has nothing to do with how expensive American workers are when compared with workers elsewhere. No, the real problem is that off-shoring allows American companies to continue the practice of sticking someone else with the spill-over costs inherent in most types of industrial activity. Foreign governments are more than happy to go along for the ride since they too can stick it to the next government administration when it comes to those spill-over costs. Granted, software companies don't have problems with the same kinds of environmental regulations that industrial manufacturers do, but worker health and safety issues can still be shifted into the future, and in most cases on to someone else's balance sheet. There's no 'lack of foresight' or 'lack of concern for the future' involved. American business leaders know *exactly* what they are doing, as do the foreign governments in on the deal. As long business leaders can continue to shift their costs onto someone else's back, further enriching their own pockets in the process, off-shoring will continue. Ultimately, it's all about your needs vs. the wants and desires of others. When our culture lauds the idea that, "It's fine to fuck 'em if it makes me a buck," none of this will change.
There's a lot of value to being able to 'build' a server in my bedroom and upload it to bigger metal when I get to work. Parallels didn't have that, VMWare does. I'm going with VMWare.
Strangly enough, I did just this with a Parallels VM two nights ago, and it worked like a champ.
You may not know it, but Parallels has options for OS-X, Windows and Linux. The Parallels VMs are interoperable between all the platforms, although the VM settings do need a bit of tweaking when switching between Windows and OS-X. Still, there are a few things missing in Parallels, x64 support for one, and multi-VM support for another. At the moment though, Parallels works pretty well, and it's saved me a ton of time and effort. It's also pretty cheap compared to what I've seen from VMWare. I have no doubt that VMWare will eventually surpass Parallels' offerings, but for the moment, Parallels seems to have the advantage on OS-X.
No, I disagree -- most politicians attacking civil rights like free speech easily figure that they are the biggest fishes in the pond. In their world view, restrictions on free speech will always apply to everyone else, never to them. Restrictions on civil rights like free speech are a good thing if you're in the elite. Added restrictions on what citizens can say or do makes it that much easier for the wealthy and the powerful to target you, or me or anyone else of lessor means who stands in their way. That's why people like Newt Gingrich can stand in front of an audience of his peers, calling for more laws, more restrictions on free speech and a 200 year roll-back of basic Constitutional rights. There's nothing new or astonishing about any of this. It really is this simple. It's a pattern repeated again and again throught human histroy. This is just the latest act in a drama that's been going on since the dawn of recorded time.
It works like this; people with money and power will always want more money and more power. People with money and power will always want more laws. People with money and power will always have the lawyers and the political greese to make onerous restrictions simply vanish in the wink of an eye. People without money and power will always be the first victims when governments impose new and tighter restrictions on rights like freedom of speech. Again, none of this is new. A quick look at world history will tell you this much.
If the Republicans have taught us anything in the last six years, it's that fear-mongering works wonders in convincing the voting public to place more and more restrictions on themselves. It is no surprise that Republican leaders continue to call for more laws and more restrictions on civil rights, all in the name of fighting terror. The political boogyman of global terror is a very effective tactic; why should the Republicans want to give up a strategy that works so well for them?
The War on Terror has nothing to do with preserving the freedoms of citizens. The War on Terror has everything to do with the expansion and consolidation of power among those who already have power. By both their words and their deeds, the Bush administration and their cohorts have demonstrated time and time again that they do not give a damn about civil rights. Torture, secret wire taps, detention without trial... the list goes on an on. No group who had any respect for the principles of civil rights would so often abuse a system they claim to believe in. Bush said it honestly when he said, "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier... just so long as I'm the dictator."Bush meant it folks. He wasn't kidding when he made that statement. When Gingrich says he'd like new restrictions on freedom of speech, he isn't kidding either, for all of the reasons cited above.
This is the email I sent to the Associated Press after they reported the $100 X-Box 360 deal in a story, but failed to mention the number of consoles Amazon had for sale at the discounted price:
Hello,
I'm writing to express my deep concerns about your story titled "Some stores begin shopping season early" by Shaila Dani, on November 24th, 2006.
My biggest concern about this piece is Dani's mention of Amazon's limited sale of deeply-discounted X-Box 360 consoles. As far as I can tell, this story appeared on Yahoo! more than an hour *after* these consoles went on sale. The story lacked specifics as to the number of consoles available on Amazon's web site, so readers had no way of knowing if they could take advantage of Amazon's discounted price once they read the piece. It appears as if Dani wrote the story to entice online readers to visit Amazon's web site in search of a 66% discount on a popular game console. This smells to me like a 'bait & switch' advertising tactic, and it makes me wonder if your news agency, or the story's writer, colluded with principles from Amazon in order to drive Internet traffic to Amazon's web site.
Shame on you Associated Press! It isn't news you're reporting anymore; this is plainly advertising, cloaked as a legitimate news piece. Thanks for contributing to the continuing degradation of journalism in the public's eye. The lack of ethical standards and plain common sense in this story makes me think your vaulted writers and associated newspaper publishers are nothing more than advertising hacks in disguise.
So let me see if I get this straight -- the Mapuche tribal leaders
are making the claim that Microsoft needs their permission to use a
language because, well, they say they own this language?
OK... later on in the article, a Mapuche leader makes the claim that
he's afraid that their language might become like Latin, i.e. spoken and
read only in universities, but that the solution to the problem is
to make Mapuche an official state-sponsored language, alongside
Spanish. Pardon me, but that objective seems diametrically opposed with
the current legal action against Microsoft. Preventing Microsoft from
incorporating Mapuche into Windows does nothing but retard the
usefulness of the language, or am I missing something? It certainly
opens up a whole can of questions about a state's sponsoring a language,
but only to a select group of people, with control held by a tiny group
of non-state leaders. Where's the sense in that idea? Where's the
logic? Are these guys simply smoking some kind of native herb that I've
never heard of, because that's the only 'logic' I can see in this whole
silly situation
I suspect that the tribal leaders have another agenda here, namely
fleecing Microsoft out of a few bucks for the right to incorporate the
Mapuche language into Windows. That idea I can understand, even if I
don't support it. It will be interesting to see what the Chilean courts
decide. On one hand, there's a cash-cow opportunity for them to make a
ruling that will benefit a group of Chileans by thumbing their noses at
one of the richest companies in the world. On the other hand, it sets a
bad precedent for businesses, and I wouldn't even want to think about
the lost economic opportunities a ruling for the Mapuche might have.
One thing's for sure -- remind me not to go to Chile with my camera.
God forbid I should snap a photo and deprive these people of their
right to control their cultural heritage or something. Hell; they they
sound like the kind of people who might believe that I'm stealing their
souls when I take a picture. I guess those beautiful llama photos will just have to wait till
next year.
Actually, I bet you can use your ISP's email server as a smart host. Really. 'Smart hosts' aren't as sophisticated as they sound. All you do is tell your email server to send all email through your ISP's email server, supplying login credentials if necessary. It's that simple. Comcast never required logins, Yahoo did -- go figure...;-) Regardless, this is a five-minute configuration job, and it will save you problems with email bounces from the big ISPs.
And thank you for the kind comments on my photos... I appreciate it. Actually, I work for a company that makes digital image editing software. Go to http://www.lightcrafts.com/products/lightzone/down load for a free trial. We support Mac, Windows & Linux (although you won't see the Linux version for sale on the web site, but Google will find it). If you're interested in buying a copy, send an email to info@lightcrafts.com, mention this Slashdot posting, and I'll hook you up with a substancial discount. I'm always happy to help out a fellow geek and photographer.
You're being silly. ISPs block port 25 for good reason; they're trying to stem the tide of SPAM zombies flooding everyone's email inbox with junk mail. If you want to run your own email server, simply use your ISP's email server as a smart host. Every email server I've seen in the last few years has this capability. Plus, smart hosting has the added benefit of side-stepping the problem of RBLs' blocking anything that comes from an IP address listed in IANA's records as originating from a dynamic DSL port or cable modem. Setting your ISP's email server as your email server's smart host is really the best way to go. Your ISP won't care, you don't have to fight with them over the issue and AOL won't bounce your email out of hand. Trust me -- using smart hosts works. Give it a try.
Agreed. The university police made several grevious errors in this instance, the least of them being their non-sensical shouts of, "Stand up, stand up" after repeatedly shocking this kid with a TASER. I think the university police were *very* lucky not to have precipitated a riot during the incident. At the least, I would have thought they should have cleared the area citing public safety, yet they failed take even that obvious step. That's just hard to understand. Certainly, UCLA's administration is going to have a large number of embarrasing questions to answer over the next few weeks and months. The YouTube video doesn't tell us much about the racial issues involved, but it doesn't show the university police in a very favorable light either.
I don't know exact specifics, but based on the information provided, I think this "glitch" will have to do with the data/time difference between ground stations and the Shuttle computers. Things like message time stamping between the Earth and the Shuttle, etc, will be wrong, and things could be garbled or just dropped all together.
Based on your guess, I wondered if the problem could have something to do with leap seconds, since these get added at the end of the year and might not be accounted for in the Shuttle's software. However, the US Navy's time service (actually, an international organization called the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service says that there won't be a leap second addition at the end of 2006. Still, it makes me wonder if the Shuttle computers are simply using a time base that's slightly different from ground-based computers, say using Julian dates and fractions of Julian dates that might get out of sync. due to calender issues at the end of the year. At least, this *seems* like a reasonable explanation. In any case, it would be interesting to know exactly where the real issue is in the software.
I might have cared passionately about something like this. Now, I have more faith -- the Internet tends to route around folks with bad manners. This isn't the first time someone's come up with a grandiose plan to corner the market on user error and I doubt it will be the last. If Cameroon pisses off or annoys enough people with a stunt like this, I suspect someone, somewhere will do something about it. At the moment, there's not much more I can do than whine and complain, and I just don't see that it serves a useful purpose to do so.
If any one of the geniuses who dreamed up this little scheme happens to read this message, than I've got just one thing to say to them -- good luck. Maybe it will work out for you... and than again, maybe it won't. Regardless, if you could tell those Nigerian bankers to stop sending me letters asking for my help with fraudulent transactions, I'd surely appreciate it.
...without pr people, journalists would either not get a story or have to do a significant amount of leg work to get it, and well, journalists, also, by and large, are lazy.)
Oh, dear God, where do I begin? You've never worked on the other side of the fence, have you pal? If you knew anything about the news biz, you wouldn't be calling journalists lazy. Most of the people I've known in that line of work -- and I've met a few -- are determined and driven individuals. You almost have to be; freelance journalists still get paid about $1 a word, and the rate hasn't gone up in decades. A journalist's life isn't much better if she's employed full-time for just about any publication you care to name. With all of the consolidation that's gone on within the industry since the 1990s, most newsrooms are doggedly trying to churn out the same amount of content they did way back when, yet with only a fraction of the staff they had before Wall Street got greedy. That's not laziness my friend, no matter how you try to shake it.
Would you like to hear a few depressing statistics? Where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area, the starting salary for public school teachers is *higher* than the average salary for a moderately successful journalist, and the teachers get summers off, plus a whole host of local, state and Federal programs to help with home purchases, etc. Go grab a copy of your local newspaper and have a look at the masthead to see how many reporters they have on staff. Now compare that figure to the number of home-grown news or feature stories that the same paper publishes each week. I'm willing to bet that each one of those reporters are probably writing one or two stories *each day*, and it's not like they can just go get their CEO or a friendly customer to give them a quick quote on deadline. How many PR reps. do you know who write a couple of press releases each day? Probably not many, right?
And we haven't even begun to talk about how many journalists are threatened, shot at, killed or imprisoned over their work... do you really think that all journalists are just a bunch of lazy-ass writers at, say, a game review magazine? When was the last time you stood with a journalist friend in court because some scumbag child-murderer's lawyer figured to spare his client the death penalty by telling a judge that your friend had inside knowledge of a police conspiracy? That's a true story dude; I watched that one happen three years ago in San Diego. Thankfully, California has a shield law protecting journalists. Otherwise, my friend might have had the privilege of sitting in jail cooling his heals because he wouldn't have divulged his source. Somehow, I just bet that kind of thing doesn't happen when you're flacking for a living.
Sure, the grass always looks greener from the other side, but why you'd want to antagonize the folks who are helping PR folks get their jobs done is just astonishing to me. Calling journalists lazy is a useless shot across the bow, and the statement seems pretty self-centered if you ask me. I suppose public relations staffers do require a certain me-first attitude, plus a steadfast belief that their clients can do no wrong. Still, only fools or idiots bite the hand that feeds them. Without journalists to spread the word, I imagine that most PR people would be out of a job.
Agreed. India has nuclear power -- and, of course, nuclear weapons -- plus indigenous satellite launch capabilities, the largest film industry anywhere (a.k.a. Bollywood), the fourth largest economy on Earth measured in purchasing power, the second largest global population and, to top it all off, India is the home to one of the world's oldest pre-industrial civilizations and is the origin of not one but *two* of the world's major religions, Hinduism and Buddism. Somehow, I don't think the Indian government is going to be keen to accept a program that seems adapted to third-world nations, not regional superpowers struggling for first-world status and recognition. Hell -- just based on how much software development is going on in the country, the $100 laptop ought to be a sure-fire winner, so it's hard to justify India's turning down the program for reasons other than politics and national pride.
I'm dubious about the potential market for customized DVDs of old news clips. I just can't recall any instances where I've felt like sitting down to an evening of watching old 60 Minutes segments from way back when. News is attractive because it's happening 'right now', or because it tells an interesting story that we didn't know before. Old news clips have none of this immediacy or novelty, and without those critical interest factors, what's left for us to enjoy? Watching old news clips seems as exciting to me as looking at last years' slides of my neighbors' trip to Las Vegas. It's like watching a documentary without narration, or even an overall theme to the story.
I don't know -- the only market I can see for this service is in education, as a supplement to a history class, or perhaps to underline some other subject with appropriate video eye-candy. By itself, the concept of customized DVD news clips just seems, well, boring. Why waste my time like this when there are so many other, more interesting ways to spend $25?
So Boyd wasn't a computer expert when this saga started. Big deal. Most of the people I know fall into that category, and yet they still manage to get along and accomplish things in life. As I see it, ignorance in the ways of computing isn't criminal; it's profitable, at least it is for me. Over the past decade, I've made a respectable living because a large percentage of the public still sees computers as mysterious little boxes that just do things. From what I read in the article, Boyd's biggest blunder was that he didn't have a backup of his work. If I had a $100 for every time I've seen that scenario play out, even in a multi-million dollar business, I could quit working and retire right now.
According to the facts in the article, SBC was negligent in deleting Boyd's files. However, I'm dubious about the implied poor quality of Boyd's work, and the allegation that Boyd just wanted to 'strike it rich' by suing SBC. Without seeing an example of Boyd's writing, there just isn't enough information available in the story to draw any kind of conclusion. For all I know, Boyd could be the next Hollywood genius... or he could be a complete and total hack. Again, there's just no way to know without seeing his screenplays.
Years ago, I spent some months working with the 'creative' types Hollywood likes to hire, enough to know that egos in the film business tend to be inflated, and the people who control the money operate in very strange and mysterious ways. It wouldn't shock me to hear that one of these guys started pulling million dollar figures out of his rear end based only on a conversation or a concept sketch. One thing I'm certain of is that if I'd written three screenplays, and then some Hollywood character had even *hinted* that these screenplays might be worth millions, I'd be frothing at the mouth if a technician installing a DSL screwed up and deleted my files. My screenplays might be crap and I might be deluding myself about their value, but who among us can just shrug their shoulders and say, "Oh well," when they see years of effort, and a chance at a couple of million dollars profit, go spinning down the drain?
I know it's hard for the technorati crowd on slashdot to appreciate anything that isn't directly related to coding in bits and bytes, but consider this -- someone has to write the screenplays for the movies we like to watch. Boyd may not be the next Lucas or Spielberg, but even those two must have had a point in their careers where they couldn't write worth a damn and they hadn't sold anything yet. Offered the choice of laughing at Boyd's misfortune, or giving him the benefit of the doubt, I'll choose the later option for one simple reason -- it's what I hope people will do for me when I do something stupid in public.
Investors will make decisions to buy or sell Apple stock based on a number of factors, the least of which revolve around gross margin disclosures to investors or just how much information Apple executives are willing to share outside the company. Analysts can and will examine, regurgitate and then pontificate about the most minute information available on a company, but the only meaningful question investors should have about buying or selling Apple stock is, "Will I make money if I buy this stock?" or, "Will I make more money if I sell this stock?" It really is that simple, and it doesn't take an analyst to figure it out.
What analysts may know or not know about Apple's business is secondary and, in most cases, immaterial to calculating the profitability of owning Apple stock. If you trust that Apple's management team knows what they're doing, than buy the stock, even if the executives won't tell analysts how much money Apple makes every time an iPod is sold. If you think Apple is hiding crucial information that affects your own profitability as a stockholder, than your best move is to unload any Apple shares you currently have and not to buy any more. Stock tips from the New York Times are worth about as much as you've paid for them, and it shouldn't take a rocket scientist with reams of mathematical proofs to demonstrate such an obvious fact.
OK, I know I'm being stupid for replying to an acknowledged troll, but let's take a moment and see if we can't try and set the record straight about WMDs and Iraq. This is one of those issues that really bugs me, so I feel compelled to reply:
Well I was thinking of the half KG of radioactive material that was found at one of Iraqi universities.
It's not uncommon for universities to have supplies of radioactive isotopes on hand for physics or medical research. In fact, many universities in the US and elsewhere run small-scale nuclear reactors for producing a variety of radioactive materials. Unless this Iraqi university you mention had half-a-kilo of weapons-grade U-235 or plutonium, than I think it's a stretch to hold this out as proof of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq before the most recent war. There are more uses for radioactives than just building bombs.
Or the airplanes and converted missles that were found, but he and the UN said that he didn't have.
Say it with me now -- evidence of banned missiles or aircraft that *might be* used to deliver chemical, biological or nuclear munitions offers no concrete proof that Iraq actively sought to develop and produce C-B-N weapons prior to the US invasion in 2003. To date, no compelling evidence has emerged to substantiate the claim that the Iraqis had any recent capacity to manufacture weapons of mass destruction, at least not since the end of Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s. While a few examples of old chemical munitions have cropped up in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, none of these weapons proved to have more than trace amounts of Serin or mustard gas inside. As far as I am aware, most experts still agree that the handful of artillery shells found to date containing chemical agents were probably leftovers from Iraq's war with Iran during the 1980s. Despite unlimited access to the country and several years to carry out the search, the US still has no smoking gun which proves that Iraq failed to comply with United Nations resolutions banning the manufacture of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
Or the last few pages of the Wilson report that stated that while that regime might not currently have the capacity for nuclear weapons, that they were actively seeking it.
I don't think that any reasonable person in the US, or any nation in the international community for that matter, believes that Saddam abandoned his ambitions to acquire weapons of mass destruction after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War. The main issue of consequence before the 2003 Iraq invasion was not if Saddam still wanted these weapons, but if he actually *had* them, or had the capacity to manufacture new weapons after 1991, in open defiance of numerous United Nations resolutions. Right now, the overwhelming majority of evidence points to the conclusion that Saddam, perhaps grudgingly and unwillingly, generally complied with the demands of the United Nations. Had anyone really doubted Saddam's intentions, it's unlikely that the United Nations would have spent so much time, money and effort on weapons inspections and monitoring before the 2003 war. Again, it wasn't Saddam's intentions that were up for debate before the US-led invasion, it was his capacity to manufacture and deploy these weapons that the US administration provided as the rationale for war.
I guess since the media didn't feed it to you it didn't happen, right?
I'm going to save my response to this statement for the next section.
...because we have so brave people in those agencies who are all too willing to violate their oaths and several laws so that they can chat with the newspapers regarding whatev
Think about it... China wants to be the world's next space power. They've sucessfully launched three men into space so far, and the next two manned missions will test spacewalks and docking with a laboratory module. The last mission in the series, Shenzhou 10, should be complete by 2010, *exactly* when NASA needs this new vehicle. China already has a reputation for manufacturing low-cost products for Walmart; I see no reason why a federal agency like NASA shouldn't benefit from dirt-cheap Chinese labor. Also, you have to imagine that $500 million would go a lot further in China than it would in the US, the EU or in Russia. Hell -- for half-a-billion in cash, the Chinese could probably build NASA a new ship *and* throw in a complete space station too. NASA working with the Chinese seems to me, if you'll pardon the pun, like a match made in heaven.
I have to agree that the aggressive pricing strategy of DSL service providers *is* having an impact. Just yesterday, I switched away from Comcast's residential high-speed Internet service to SBC-Yahoo's introductory DSL plan. After looking at both services, I simply couldn't ignore DSL's ultra-low $12.99 a month rate. To compare, Comcast cost me nearly $50 a month. In my case, it just didn't make any sense to keep paying a higher fee for bandwidth I don't use.
Occasionally, I download an ISO, and then Comcast's higher speed certainly comes in handy. Most often though, that extra bandwidth goes to waste. Email, instant messaging, Internet video and basic web surfing all seem to work fine with SBC-Yahoo's el-cheapo DSL connection. Additionally, I've had numerous problems in the past dealing with Comcast's customer service. The only recurring problem I've seen so far with SBC-Yahoo! is that the dynamic IP address changes *every time* I restart the DSL bridge; in comparison, dynamic IPs from Comcast are so stable they might as well be static. I can live with that one small issue if I get far-cheaper service in return.
I will say this though -- $12.99 a month is probably not a sustainable rate for broadband Internet service. Next year, when the introductory pricing period ends, I fully expect SBC-Yahoo to jack up my rates to something approaching what I formerly paid Comcast.
Like cell phone carriers, broadband Internet providers seem to go out of their way to penalize existing customers, encouraging them to switch to some other carrier with a dirt-cheap introductory rate. Six months ago, a T-Mobile rep. in the mall nearly convinced me to give up my cell phone number when he showed me how I could cut my monthly fees in half, just by canceling my current T-Mobile plan and then signing up again as a *new* customer with T-Mobile. The last time I was down at my local Comcast office, they were offering a 6-month new customer package for $19.99, which is less than half of what they were charging me. At the time, I stood there and helped one of the Comcast sales people talk someone into the deal, because getting more than twice the download speed for $7 more a month more seemed like a bargain. But *I* couldn't get that rate, even though I'd started my service with Comcast just 7 months before, and I hadn't gotten *any* cheap introductory rate. Argh! Why must it be like this with telecommunications services? Can someone please explain the logic to me?
Anyway, for now, I'll give SBC-Yahoo! a whirl and we'll see how it goes. Last night, when I tested the speed, I saw about 1,200 kbps down and 315 kbps up on the DSL line. That's better than advertised for the upload speed, and so close to the maximum download speed that I'm not going to complain. The little hiccough two hours ago from the DSL bridge wasn't encouraging though, but maybe it happened because it's a hot day here in the Bay Area and I had my old DSL bridge -- I'm not using the new DSL router from SBC-Yahoo! because I'm going to return that one -- sitting right on top of the D-Link wireless router. However, I think I can deal with occasional problems like that knowing that I'm saving $360 a year on broadband service.
The difference between Iran wanting to build a new nuclear weapon and the US wanting to build a new nuclear weapon is vastly significant in my opinion. I think it's light years away from a, "do what we say, not what we do" situation. The US *currently* possess a nuclear weapons capability, and it has for over half a century, while Iran -- we hope -- doesn't yet have the means to produce a destructive nuclear device.
At this point, any new nuclear weapons program in the US will do little more than refine existing US nuclear capabilities. It likely won't increase the number of nuclear weapons in the US stockpile, nor will it increase the yield of the average nuclear weapon. The program seems geared towards producing a new mainstay weapon for the US arsenal that's easier to maintain than what the US has right now.
The DOE has a brief document explaining why the US needs a new nuclear weapon. Again, the prime reason behind the initiative seems to be a maintenance issue, not a military need. Considering that the US nuclear weapons program, in its heyday, produced gems like the "Atomic Annie" mobile artillery piece, as well as the man-portable Davy Crockett nuclear rifle, the current initiative seems mild in comparison. I think it's a stretch to presume that the Iranians should get any moral satisfaction, or a break in the on-going negotiations, simply because US officials see a need to modernize the nation's current Cold War-era nuclear weapons stockpile.
While I'm not totally unsympathetic to your point, I disagree with your argument. You're making a very broad generalization which I don't think is completely valid for all US consumers. It's presumptuous, inaccurate and flat-out wrong to apply a blanket label of hypocrisy just because someone lives in the US. Like most things in life, the truth is never quite so simple as it seems.
To counter your views, I would argue that many consumers in the US -- and elsewhere for that matter -- are unaware of the labor standards employed to produce the products seen on American store shelves. I think you could rightfully charge hypocrisy only if American consumers knew about the standards used to produce these products, disagreed with those practices and then knowingly purchased products made under unfair working conditions. In that case, you'd be correct -- it would be hypocrisy for people to hold Apple accountable to a different, higher standard. The real problem here isn't hypocrisy, it's plain ignorance. That's OK though, because ignorance is something we can easily fix.
While I do think it's true that the average consumer in the US indirectly benefits from substandard labor practices in other nations, I'm unconvinced that it's US consumers who are ultimately responsible for the problem. Most businesses purchase products made overseas, or move their own operations outside the US, because these businesses can reduce costs by, in some cases, 80 to 90 percent over what it would cost to make the same product with US labor. However, let me ask you this -- when was the last time you saw retail prices drop by a similar amount? Granted, retail prices include many expenses that aren't directly affected by production costs, but I think it's reasonable to assume that US consumers aren't seeing all of the economic benefits of the global economy. Instead, I'd argue that most of these benefits end up in the hands of business owners and stockholders, in the form of increased profits. US consumers probably save some money, but I bet the people who own these companies are the real winners when production moves overseas.
One other issue I'd like to point out is that the end costs associated with US businesses mandating fair labor practices overseas probably don't amount to much in the overall costs for any given product. In other words, it wouldn't cost a lot in real dollars and cents to ensure that overseas workers enjoy the same labor standards as their US counterparts enjoy. If, for example, you can cut costs in half by moving production to China, than what portion of those cost savings can we say is attributable to unfair labor practices in China? I'd be willing to guess that the answer is... not much. Dollar vs. yuan values are likely a much larger factor in the equation. Overall, US retailers probably save pennies on the dollar when overseas firms run sweatshops. However, since most US consumers don't know about working conditions associated with a given product, manufacturers -- and US retailers -- benefit when consumers do see a small price difference at the checkout line. Again, the problem tracks back to ignorance. If US consumers knew where those savings came from, they might not be so willing to buy cheaper products made under substandard working conditions.
In Apple's case, I think Jobs will quickly decide to either move production to companies with less onerous labor practices, or else find more reputable suppliers. Apple's spent a huge wad of cash over the years to carefully craft a well-known, positive corporate image. Sweatshop labor in Southeast Asia doesn't seem particularly compatible with Apple's image. Probably, what will happen is that Apple will torpedo the sweatshops and then spend a vast amount of marketing money telling us about it, never admitting that there was a problem in the first place, but making sure that we all know that buying an iPod doesn't contribute to unfair labor. Ultimately, it may mean iPods become a bit more expensive, but Apple will see more
Golly! Well, what do you know -- the fine folks at the SF Chronicle have suddenly discovered that major companies like Bank of America are outsourcing technical jobs to India. Imagine that! Years after the fact, the SF Chronicle finally picks up on this disturbing new trend in American business. Wow! I am just amazed at the stellar reporting guys, just splendid work, just splendid.
Anyway, all razing of the Chronicle aside, I'm not sure why anyone should get their knickers in a knot over the fact that Bank of America's management expects their employees to stay on the job until the Indian replacements come up to speed. The same thing happened to me over 10 years ago, when my job flew south to Texas. At the time, a few conversations with the Texan's replacing my group revealed that they made about 1/3 of the money in Texas compared to what we made in the Bay Area. We certainly had plenty of opportunity to compare notes with these folks; the company flew the Texans in and had them stay for about three months while we trained them on our jobs. Was it irritating to train my replacement? Well, sure, yah... duh. But, considering that the company had already decided to replace me, what good would it have done to complain? Who would care? At least I had money coming in, and I knew exactly when my job would end. I'm no big proponent of outsourcing jobs overseas, but I'm realistic too. It's better to take the money and start looking for another job instead of grousing about why companies treat you like crap when they know they're going to get rid of you.
As long as Bank of America thinks that they can save a buck or two by moving jobs to India, they're going to do it, no two ways about it. This is what the global market is all about. Reporters from the SF Chronicle bitching about it isn't going to make one whit of difference, except perhaps to convince Bank of America's management that they need to hire a few temporary PR agents to handle the negative publicity.
Personally, I'm waiting for the time when US firms start shipping off management positions to India. In a few years, when the bulk of the workforce is in India, this might start to look attractive...
Over the last year or so, I've heard a lot of people in the industry talk about how VMware is fighting a losing battle against Microsoft in the server virtualization market. Really though, I don't see Microsoft beating VMware anytime soon. Here's why:
First, I don't think anyone in their right mind is ever going to truely believe that Microsoft can be entirely agnostic when it comes to what OS you run in a virtualization layer. I just can't see the Linux crowd ever fully buying into the notion that Microsoft will support Linux as a virtual server with the same zealous dedication as they'll support virtualization of Windows servers. We've all seen too many instances in the past where Microsoft has teaked some application to take advantage of their inside knowledge of Windows, at the expense of some other vender's application or operating system. I can't imagine, given this track record, that Microsoft will continue to resist the temptation to shaft everyone else in the virtualization market, ensuring that Windows continues to dominate. This idea alone will seriously retard Microsoft's ability to compete with VMware. I doubt that anyone at VMware really gives a rat's ass what you run in ESX server; Microsoft, on the other hand, will never be able to make the same claim.
Additionally, as I see it, there's also little advantage for Microsoft to expand the number of operating systems they support under their own virtualization layer. Every time they add support for an additional OS running in the virtualization layer, it gives their current customers more choices to run some other operating system that *isn't* Windows. Sooner or later, someone on the Windows server sales team is going to figure that out, potentially putting preasure on the virtualization team to do a half-assed job with anything that doesn't sport a Microsoft logo. Ultimately, I predict that this is going to ensure that Microsoft's virtual server offerings will be the most limited in the market. VMware, of course, won't be bound by the same demands. Every time they expand support for additional operating systems, it makes their products that much more attractive to buyers.
Finally, I suspect that Microsoft will decide at some point in the future that what they really want to do is to build virtualization into the Windows operating system itself. This is the only strategy that makes sense in the long-term. It keeps customers buying Windows while answering the need for server consolidation/management that virtualization brings to the table. In the end, it will put distance between what Microsoft offers and what VMware offers, leaving the independant OS virtualization market squarely in the hands of VMware.
About 10 years ago, a Silicon Valley manufacturer of medical imaging equipment hired me to do accounting work for them. Among my many tasks for this firm was the weekly generation of a report based on the company's current accounts receivable balance. I was told that this report was very important since it was used by one of our execs. during his weekly 'power breakfast' meetings with the other heads of the company.
A month after I arrived at the company, I noticed that the numbers didn't look right when I generated this weekly report. I started examining the spreadsheet formulas and soon found a small error in one of the calculations we used to derive our total balances. I notified my manager and we both agreed that the original spreadsheet wasn't giving accurate results. I corrected the formula and then patted myself on the back -- after all, I'd uncovered an error that many people, including my manager, had missed for months. I thought I was in good shape at the company after that because I'd done the right thing. I'd fixed a problem. Yay for me.
However, a week later, my manager brought me into his office to talk about the issue. I was more than a little surprised when he asked me to go to my desk and change the formula back to what we'd used before. I asked my manager if he still agreed with me that the old formula was giving incorrect data. He just smiled and said yes, he agreed with my original assessment. I was right, he told me, but our exec. had still asked him to revert to the old formula, no reasons given.
Shortly after this incident, my manager again brought me into his office. He had a pained look on his face as he began to tell that the company wouldn't be needing my services anymore. My manager never gave me an explanation as to why, but I didn't really need an explanation. Even though I'd uncovered an error in the company's accounting procedures, I'd made an even bigger error in the process -- I made our exec. look bad when he handed out the correct report during his power breakfast meeting. It turned out that the numbers weren't so rosy that week as they'd been in previous weeks. The other company heads wanted to know why. I'm not sure what our exec. told them then, but I can't imagine it made him look good no matter how he tried to spin it.
I suppose, if the numbers had looked better using my correct spreadsheet calculations, maybe I'd have received a raise from that exec. In this particular case, and much to my surprise, the wrong answer was the right answer in his method of bookkeeping. Frustrated by this incident, I left the accounting business soon afterwards. As it later turned out, the company went belly-up years later. Looking back, I like to imagine that reason was that the company's bankers were using spreadsheets based on mathematics instead of wishful thinking. Then again, after seeing what happened with Enron, I wonder if the bankers were in on it too.
I admit that I was surprised to see FOX News listed as America's most trusted news source. Among the many journalists I've spoken to, none appear to have any respect for the reporting they see on FOX News. The network clearly leans towards the political right in its coverage of national and world events. Despite the network's motto, FOX News is all to often 'fair' only to conservatives and 'balanced' between the center and the extreme right of the Republican Party. According to the New Yorker, this was Murdoch's intention all along. Certainly, the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) watchdog group seems to spend an awful lot of time lambasting FOX News for its coverage. At the moment, FAIR's top story on their website is an article on inaccurate reporting by FOX's own Bill O'Reilly during the May 1 immigrant demonstrations. Considering the controversy over FOX News, I find it strange that more Americans trust FOX News than any other news source.
However, if you look at the country-by-country breakdown from the poll, it starts to make more sense. According to Globescan, CNN has almost the same trust numbers as FOX News, at 11 percent, with the other three major networks adding up to another 11 percent. Take that figure against the poll numbers in other countries and the American news market seems much more fractured than it at first appeared. Surprisingly, the poll also shows that most Americans still trust their local newspapers more than they trust national television news, by a margin of 81 percent to 75 percent. I suspect, but I can't confirm, that what we're actually looking at is ratings numbers in this category, not who the public really trusts more. Since FOX News has the highest ratings in the American market, the network comes out ahead of the competition when Americans are asked to name a single national news source. Tellingly, other poll numbers indicate that Americans are much more skeptical about their news sources than respondents in most other countries, with nearly 9 out of 10 Americans reporting that they look to multiple sources for their news. That fits the hypothesis. Internationally, according to the original Reuters article, CNN is the second most trusted news brand, right behind the BBC. That also seems about what I'd expect if you translate 'trust' to 'ratings' in the poll.
In any case, regardless of the poll numbers, I guess it shouldn't surprise me that many Americans prefer to get their news from sources who share their own political and social views. If I thought that Bush could do no wrong, and that the Republican Party was the greatest thing since sliced bread, I imagine I'd find it very believable too when FOX News reports on the latest victory in Iraq, followed by a story on how Republicans will bring about an economic Golden Age through more tax cuts for the wealthy.
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I take issue with the statement, "...expensive regulation that makes Americans expensive." Most of these 'expensive' regulations end up being worker safety rules, or environmental protection laws, which do indeed incur increased costs for American businesses operating in the US. However, for the economy as whole, regulations tend to save money because they reduce the end costs of ignoring worker safety and the environment.
Look at it this way -- if a $10 flu shot saves a week of lost productivity on the assembly line for an uninsured employee, it's a good thing for the economy, right? Industrial output is increased and hospital costs are reduced at the county-run emergency room. However, that $10 flu shot shows up on the businesses balance sheet as an expense, where the lost week of reduced industrial output, and savings at the county-run hospital, do not. Similarly, as a business owner, it's a heck of a lot cheaper for me to dump my toxic waste in the nearest river than to hire some 'expensive' company to haul it away to a certified and tightly-regulated dump site. Of course, if you live downstream from where I'm cheaply dumping my toxic waste, life sucks for you, and for fishermen in the area that depend on the river for their jobs, and for the city or town that eventually has to foot the bill to clean up my mess. Still, it's a good deal for me as the business owner, as it makes my company appear more profitable than it would be if I had to pay for that 'expensive' regulation that forbids me from dumping my waste whenever and wherever I want. In economics, what we're talking about is called spill-over costs, and most of the 'expensive' government regulations business owners complain about when asked why they offshore jobs are all tied to these types of 'business-friendly' spill-over costs.
The real problem with off-shoring, at least as I see it, has nothing to do with how expensive American workers are when compared with workers elsewhere. No, the real problem is that off-shoring allows American companies to continue the practice of sticking someone else with the spill-over costs inherent in most types of industrial activity. Foreign governments are more than happy to go along for the ride since they too can stick it to the next government administration when it comes to those spill-over costs. Granted, software companies don't have problems with the same kinds of environmental regulations that industrial manufacturers do, but worker health and safety issues can still be shifted into the future, and in most cases on to someone else's balance sheet. There's no 'lack of foresight' or 'lack of concern for the future' involved. American business leaders know *exactly* what they are doing, as do the foreign governments in on the deal. As long business leaders can continue to shift their costs onto someone else's back, further enriching their own pockets in the process, off-shoring will continue. Ultimately, it's all about your needs vs. the wants and desires of others. When our culture lauds the idea that, "It's fine to fuck 'em if it makes me a buck," none of this will change.
Strangly enough, I did just this with a Parallels VM two nights ago, and it worked like a champ.
You may not know it, but Parallels has options for OS-X, Windows and Linux. The Parallels VMs are interoperable between all the platforms, although the VM settings do need a bit of tweaking when switching between Windows and OS-X. Still, there are a few things missing in Parallels, x64 support for one, and multi-VM support for another. At the moment though, Parallels works pretty well, and it's saved me a ton of time and effort. It's also pretty cheap compared to what I've seen from VMWare. I have no doubt that VMWare will eventually surpass Parallels' offerings, but for the moment, Parallels seems to have the advantage on OS-X.
No, I disagree -- most politicians attacking civil rights like free speech easily figure that they are the biggest fishes in the pond. In their world view, restrictions on free speech will always apply to everyone else, never to them. Restrictions on civil rights like free speech are a good thing if you're in the elite. Added restrictions on what citizens can say or do makes it that much easier for the wealthy and the powerful to target you, or me or anyone else of lessor means who stands in their way. That's why people like Newt Gingrich can stand in front of an audience of his peers, calling for more laws, more restrictions on free speech and a 200 year roll-back of basic Constitutional rights. There's nothing new or astonishing about any of this. It really is this simple. It's a pattern repeated again and again throught human histroy. This is just the latest act in a drama that's been going on since the dawn of recorded time.
It works like this; people with money and power will always want more money and more power. People with money and power will always want more laws. People with money and power will always have the lawyers and the political greese to make onerous restrictions simply vanish in the wink of an eye. People without money and power will always be the first victims when governments impose new and tighter restrictions on rights like freedom of speech. Again, none of this is new. A quick look at world history will tell you this much.
If the Republicans have taught us anything in the last six years, it's that fear-mongering works wonders in convincing the voting public to place more and more restrictions on themselves. It is no surprise that Republican leaders continue to call for more laws and more restrictions on civil rights, all in the name of fighting terror. The political boogyman of global terror is a very effective tactic; why should the Republicans want to give up a strategy that works so well for them?
The War on Terror has nothing to do with preserving the freedoms of citizens. The War on Terror has everything to do with the expansion and consolidation of power among those who already have power. By both their words and their deeds, the Bush administration and their cohorts have demonstrated time and time again that they do not give a damn about civil rights. Torture, secret wire taps, detention without trial... the list goes on an on. No group who had any respect for the principles of civil rights would so often abuse a system they claim to believe in. Bush said it honestly when he said, "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier... just so long as I'm the dictator."Bush meant it folks. He wasn't kidding when he made that statement. When Gingrich says he'd like new restrictions on freedom of speech, he isn't kidding either, for all of the reasons cited above.
This is the email I sent to the Associated Press after they reported the $100 X-Box 360 deal in a story, but failed to mention the number of consoles Amazon had for sale at the discounted price:
So let me see if I get this straight -- the Mapuche tribal leaders are making the claim that Microsoft needs their permission to use a language because, well, they say they own this language? OK... later on in the article, a Mapuche leader makes the claim that he's afraid that their language might become like Latin, i.e. spoken and read only in universities, but that the solution to the problem is to make Mapuche an official state-sponsored language, alongside Spanish. Pardon me, but that objective seems diametrically opposed with the current legal action against Microsoft. Preventing Microsoft from incorporating Mapuche into Windows does nothing but retard the usefulness of the language, or am I missing something? It certainly opens up a whole can of questions about a state's sponsoring a language, but only to a select group of people, with control held by a tiny group of non-state leaders. Where's the sense in that idea? Where's the logic? Are these guys simply smoking some kind of native herb that I've never heard of, because that's the only 'logic' I can see in this whole silly situation
I suspect that the tribal leaders have another agenda here, namely fleecing Microsoft out of a few bucks for the right to incorporate the Mapuche language into Windows. That idea I can understand, even if I don't support it. It will be interesting to see what the Chilean courts decide. On one hand, there's a cash-cow opportunity for them to make a ruling that will benefit a group of Chileans by thumbing their noses at one of the richest companies in the world. On the other hand, it sets a bad precedent for businesses, and I wouldn't even want to think about the lost economic opportunities a ruling for the Mapuche might have.
One thing's for sure -- remind me not to go to Chile with my camera. God forbid I should snap a photo and deprive these people of their right to control their cultural heritage or something. Hell; they they sound like the kind of people who might believe that I'm stealing their souls when I take a picture. I guess those beautiful llama photos will just have to wait till next year.
Actually, I bet you can use your ISP's email server as a smart host. Really. 'Smart hosts' aren't as sophisticated as they sound. All you do is tell your email server to send all email through your ISP's email server, supplying login credentials if necessary. It's that simple. Comcast never required logins, Yahoo did -- go figure... ;-) Regardless, this is a five-minute configuration job, and it will save you problems with email bounces from the big ISPs.
And thank you for the kind comments on my photos... I appreciate it. Actually, I work for a company that makes digital image editing software. Go to http://www.lightcrafts.com/products/lightzone/down load for a free trial. We support Mac, Windows & Linux (although you won't see the Linux version for sale on the web site, but Google will find it). If you're interested in buying a copy, send an email to info@lightcrafts.com, mention this Slashdot posting, and I'll hook you up with a substancial discount. I'm always happy to help out a fellow geek and photographer.
You're being silly. ISPs block port 25 for good reason; they're trying to stem the tide of SPAM zombies flooding everyone's email inbox with junk mail. If you want to run your own email server, simply use your ISP's email server as a smart host. Every email server I've seen in the last few years has this capability. Plus, smart hosting has the added benefit of side-stepping the problem of RBLs' blocking anything that comes from an IP address listed in IANA's records as originating from a dynamic DSL port or cable modem. Setting your ISP's email server as your email server's smart host is really the best way to go. Your ISP won't care, you don't have to fight with them over the issue and AOL won't bounce your email out of hand. Trust me -- using smart hosts works. Give it a try.
Agreed. The university police made several grevious errors in this instance, the least of them being their non-sensical shouts of, "Stand up, stand up" after repeatedly shocking this kid with a TASER. I think the university police were *very* lucky not to have precipitated a riot during the incident. At the least, I would have thought they should have cleared the area citing public safety, yet they failed take even that obvious step. That's just hard to understand. Certainly, UCLA's administration is going to have a large number of embarrasing questions to answer over the next few weeks and months. The YouTube video doesn't tell us much about the racial issues involved, but it doesn't show the university police in a very favorable light either.
Based on your guess, I wondered if the problem could have something to do with leap seconds, since these get added at the end of the year and might not be accounted for in the Shuttle's software. However, the US Navy's time service (actually, an international organization called the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service says that there won't be a leap second addition at the end of 2006. Still, it makes me wonder if the Shuttle computers are simply using a time base that's slightly different from ground-based computers, say using Julian dates and fractions of Julian dates that might get out of sync. due to calender issues at the end of the year. At least, this *seems* like a reasonable explanation. In any case, it would be interesting to know exactly where the real issue is in the software.
I might have cared passionately about something like this. Now, I have more faith -- the Internet tends to route around folks with bad manners. This isn't the first time someone's come up with a grandiose plan to corner the market on user error and I doubt it will be the last. If Cameroon pisses off or annoys enough people with a stunt like this, I suspect someone, somewhere will do something about it. At the moment, there's not much more I can do than whine and complain, and I just don't see that it serves a useful purpose to do so.
If any one of the geniuses who dreamed up this little scheme happens to read this message, than I've got just one thing to say to them -- good luck. Maybe it will work out for you... and than again, maybe it won't. Regardless, if you could tell those Nigerian bankers to stop sending me letters asking for my help with fraudulent transactions, I'd surely appreciate it.
Oh, dear God, where do I begin? You've never worked on the other side of the fence, have you pal? If you knew anything about the news biz, you wouldn't be calling journalists lazy. Most of the people I've known in that line of work -- and I've met a few -- are determined and driven individuals. You almost have to be; freelance journalists still get paid about $1 a word, and the rate hasn't gone up in decades. A journalist's life isn't much better if she's employed full-time for just about any publication you care to name. With all of the consolidation that's gone on within the industry since the 1990s, most newsrooms are doggedly trying to churn out the same amount of content they did way back when, yet with only a fraction of the staff they had before Wall Street got greedy. That's not laziness my friend, no matter how you try to shake it.
Would you like to hear a few depressing statistics? Where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area, the starting salary for public school teachers is *higher* than the average salary for a moderately successful journalist, and the teachers get summers off, plus a whole host of local, state and Federal programs to help with home purchases, etc. Go grab a copy of your local newspaper and have a look at the masthead to see how many reporters they have on staff. Now compare that figure to the number of home-grown news or feature stories that the same paper publishes each week. I'm willing to bet that each one of those reporters are probably writing one or two stories *each day*, and it's not like they can just go get their CEO or a friendly customer to give them a quick quote on deadline. How many PR reps. do you know who write a couple of press releases each day? Probably not many, right?
And we haven't even begun to talk about how many journalists are threatened, shot at, killed or imprisoned over their work... do you really think that all journalists are just a bunch of lazy-ass writers at, say, a game review magazine? When was the last time you stood with a journalist friend in court because some scumbag child-murderer's lawyer figured to spare his client the death penalty by telling a judge that your friend had inside knowledge of a police conspiracy? That's a true story dude; I watched that one happen three years ago in San Diego. Thankfully, California has a shield law protecting journalists. Otherwise, my friend might have had the privilege of sitting in jail cooling his heals because he wouldn't have divulged his source. Somehow, I just bet that kind of thing doesn't happen when you're flacking for a living.
Sure, the grass always looks greener from the other side, but why you'd want to antagonize the folks who are helping PR folks get their jobs done is just astonishing to me. Calling journalists lazy is a useless shot across the bow, and the statement seems pretty self-centered if you ask me. I suppose public relations staffers do require a certain me-first attitude, plus a steadfast belief that their clients can do no wrong. Still, only fools or idiots bite the hand that feeds them. Without journalists to spread the word, I imagine that most PR people would be out of a job.
Agreed. India has nuclear power -- and, of course, nuclear weapons -- plus indigenous satellite launch capabilities, the largest film industry anywhere (a.k.a. Bollywood), the fourth largest economy on Earth measured in purchasing power, the second largest global population and, to top it all off, India is the home to one of the world's oldest pre-industrial civilizations and is the origin of not one but *two* of the world's major religions, Hinduism and Buddism. Somehow, I don't think the Indian government is going to be keen to accept a program that seems adapted to third-world nations, not regional superpowers struggling for first-world status and recognition. Hell -- just based on how much software development is going on in the country, the $100 laptop ought to be a sure-fire winner, so it's hard to justify India's turning down the program for reasons other than politics and national pride.
I'm dubious about the potential market for customized DVDs of old news clips. I just can't recall any instances where I've felt like sitting down to an evening of watching old 60 Minutes segments from way back when. News is attractive because it's happening 'right now', or because it tells an interesting story that we didn't know before. Old news clips have none of this immediacy or novelty, and without those critical interest factors, what's left for us to enjoy? Watching old news clips seems as exciting to me as looking at last years' slides of my neighbors' trip to Las Vegas. It's like watching a documentary without narration, or even an overall theme to the story.
I don't know -- the only market I can see for this service is in education, as a supplement to a history class, or perhaps to underline some other subject with appropriate video eye-candy. By itself, the concept of customized DVD news clips just seems, well, boring. Why waste my time like this when there are so many other, more interesting ways to spend $25?
So Boyd wasn't a computer expert when this saga started. Big deal. Most of the people I know fall into that category, and yet they still manage to get along and accomplish things in life. As I see it, ignorance in the ways of computing isn't criminal; it's profitable, at least it is for me. Over the past decade, I've made a respectable living because a large percentage of the public still sees computers as mysterious little boxes that just do things. From what I read in the article, Boyd's biggest blunder was that he didn't have a backup of his work. If I had a $100 for every time I've seen that scenario play out, even in a multi-million dollar business, I could quit working and retire right now.
According to the facts in the article, SBC was negligent in deleting Boyd's files. However, I'm dubious about the implied poor quality of Boyd's work, and the allegation that Boyd just wanted to 'strike it rich' by suing SBC. Without seeing an example of Boyd's writing, there just isn't enough information available in the story to draw any kind of conclusion. For all I know, Boyd could be the next Hollywood genius... or he could be a complete and total hack. Again, there's just no way to know without seeing his screenplays.
Years ago, I spent some months working with the 'creative' types Hollywood likes to hire, enough to know that egos in the film business tend to be inflated, and the people who control the money operate in very strange and mysterious ways. It wouldn't shock me to hear that one of these guys started pulling million dollar figures out of his rear end based only on a conversation or a concept sketch. One thing I'm certain of is that if I'd written three screenplays, and then some Hollywood character had even *hinted* that these screenplays might be worth millions, I'd be frothing at the mouth if a technician installing a DSL screwed up and deleted my files. My screenplays might be crap and I might be deluding myself about their value, but who among us can just shrug their shoulders and say, "Oh well," when they see years of effort, and a chance at a couple of million dollars profit, go spinning down the drain?
I know it's hard for the technorati crowd on slashdot to appreciate anything that isn't directly related to coding in bits and bytes, but consider this -- someone has to write the screenplays for the movies we like to watch. Boyd may not be the next Lucas or Spielberg, but even those two must have had a point in their careers where they couldn't write worth a damn and they hadn't sold anything yet. Offered the choice of laughing at Boyd's misfortune, or giving him the benefit of the doubt, I'll choose the later option for one simple reason -- it's what I hope people will do for me when I do something stupid in public.
Since when has a lack of understanding ever stopped a politician from meddling in someone else's affairs?
Investors will make decisions to buy or sell Apple stock based on a number of factors, the least of which revolve around gross margin disclosures to investors or just how much information Apple executives are willing to share outside the company. Analysts can and will examine, regurgitate and then pontificate about the most minute information available on a company, but the only meaningful question investors should have about buying or selling Apple stock is, "Will I make money if I buy this stock?" or, "Will I make more money if I sell this stock?" It really is that simple, and it doesn't take an analyst to figure it out.
What analysts may know or not know about Apple's business is secondary and, in most cases, immaterial to calculating the profitability of owning Apple stock. If you trust that Apple's management team knows what they're doing, than buy the stock, even if the executives won't tell analysts how much money Apple makes every time an iPod is sold. If you think Apple is hiding crucial information that affects your own profitability as a stockholder, than your best move is to unload any Apple shares you currently have and not to buy any more. Stock tips from the New York Times are worth about as much as you've paid for them, and it shouldn't take a rocket scientist with reams of mathematical proofs to demonstrate such an obvious fact.
OK, I know I'm being stupid for replying to an acknowledged troll, but let's take a moment and see if we can't try and set the record straight about WMDs and Iraq. This is one of those issues that really bugs me, so I feel compelled to reply:
It's not uncommon for universities to have supplies of radioactive isotopes on hand for physics or medical research. In fact, many universities in the US and elsewhere run small-scale nuclear reactors for producing a variety of radioactive materials. Unless this Iraqi university you mention had half-a-kilo of weapons-grade U-235 or plutonium, than I think it's a stretch to hold this out as proof of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq before the most recent war. There are more uses for radioactives than just building bombs.
Say it with me now -- evidence of banned missiles or aircraft that *might be* used to deliver chemical, biological or nuclear munitions offers no concrete proof that Iraq actively sought to develop and produce C-B-N weapons prior to the US invasion in 2003. To date, no compelling evidence has emerged to substantiate the claim that the Iraqis had any recent capacity to manufacture weapons of mass destruction, at least not since the end of Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s. While a few examples of old chemical munitions have cropped up in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, none of these weapons proved to have more than trace amounts of Serin or mustard gas inside. As far as I am aware, most experts still agree that the handful of artillery shells found to date containing chemical agents were probably leftovers from Iraq's war with Iran during the 1980s. Despite unlimited access to the country and several years to carry out the search, the US still has no smoking gun which proves that Iraq failed to comply with United Nations resolutions banning the manufacture of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
I don't think that any reasonable person in the US, or any nation in the international community for that matter, believes that Saddam abandoned his ambitions to acquire weapons of mass destruction after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War. The main issue of consequence before the 2003 Iraq invasion was not if Saddam still wanted these weapons, but if he actually *had* them, or had the capacity to manufacture new weapons after 1991, in open defiance of numerous United Nations resolutions. Right now, the overwhelming majority of evidence points to the conclusion that Saddam, perhaps grudgingly and unwillingly, generally complied with the demands of the United Nations. Had anyone really doubted Saddam's intentions, it's unlikely that the United Nations would have spent so much time, money and effort on weapons inspections and monitoring before the 2003 war. Again, it wasn't Saddam's intentions that were up for debate before the US-led invasion, it was his capacity to manufacture and deploy these weapons that the US administration provided as the rationale for war.
I'm going to save my response to this statement for the next section.
Think about it... China wants to be the world's next space power. They've sucessfully launched three men into space so far, and the next two manned missions will test spacewalks and docking with a laboratory module. The last mission in the series, Shenzhou 10, should be complete by 2010, *exactly* when NASA needs this new vehicle. China already has a reputation for manufacturing low-cost products for Walmart; I see no reason why a federal agency like NASA shouldn't benefit from dirt-cheap Chinese labor. Also, you have to imagine that $500 million would go a lot further in China than it would in the US, the EU or in Russia. Hell -- for half-a-billion in cash, the Chinese could probably build NASA a new ship *and* throw in a complete space station too. NASA working with the Chinese seems to me, if you'll pardon the pun, like a match made in heaven.
I have to agree that the aggressive pricing strategy of DSL service providers *is* having an impact. Just yesterday, I switched away from Comcast's residential high-speed Internet service to SBC-Yahoo's introductory DSL plan. After looking at both services, I simply couldn't ignore DSL's ultra-low $12.99 a month rate. To compare, Comcast cost me nearly $50 a month. In my case, it just didn't make any sense to keep paying a higher fee for bandwidth I don't use.
Occasionally, I download an ISO, and then Comcast's higher speed certainly comes in handy. Most often though, that extra bandwidth goes to waste. Email, instant messaging, Internet video and basic web surfing all seem to work fine with SBC-Yahoo's el-cheapo DSL connection. Additionally, I've had numerous problems in the past dealing with Comcast's customer service. The only recurring problem I've seen so far with SBC-Yahoo! is that the dynamic IP address changes *every time* I restart the DSL bridge; in comparison, dynamic IPs from Comcast are so stable they might as well be static. I can live with that one small issue if I get far-cheaper service in return.
I will say this though -- $12.99 a month is probably not a sustainable rate for broadband Internet service. Next year, when the introductory pricing period ends, I fully expect SBC-Yahoo to jack up my rates to something approaching what I formerly paid Comcast.
Like cell phone carriers, broadband Internet providers seem to go out of their way to penalize existing customers, encouraging them to switch to some other carrier with a dirt-cheap introductory rate. Six months ago, a T-Mobile rep. in the mall nearly convinced me to give up my cell phone number when he showed me how I could cut my monthly fees in half, just by canceling my current T-Mobile plan and then signing up again as a *new* customer with T-Mobile. The last time I was down at my local Comcast office, they were offering a 6-month new customer package for $19.99, which is less than half of what they were charging me. At the time, I stood there and helped one of the Comcast sales people talk someone into the deal, because getting more than twice the download speed for $7 more a month more seemed like a bargain. But *I* couldn't get that rate, even though I'd started my service with Comcast just 7 months before, and I hadn't gotten *any* cheap introductory rate. Argh! Why must it be like this with telecommunications services? Can someone please explain the logic to me?
Anyway, for now, I'll give SBC-Yahoo! a whirl and we'll see how it goes. Last night, when I tested the speed, I saw about 1,200 kbps down and 315 kbps up on the DSL line. That's better than advertised for the upload speed, and so close to the maximum download speed that I'm not going to complain. The little hiccough two hours ago from the DSL bridge wasn't encouraging though, but maybe it happened because it's a hot day here in the Bay Area and I had my old DSL bridge -- I'm not using the new DSL router from SBC-Yahoo! because I'm going to return that one -- sitting right on top of the D-Link wireless router. However, I think I can deal with occasional problems like that knowing that I'm saving $360 a year on broadband service.
The difference between Iran wanting to build a new nuclear weapon and the US wanting to build a new nuclear weapon is vastly significant in my opinion. I think it's light years away from a, "do what we say, not what we do" situation. The US *currently* possess a nuclear weapons capability, and it has for over half a century, while Iran -- we hope -- doesn't yet have the means to produce a destructive nuclear device.
At this point, any new nuclear weapons program in the US will do little more than refine existing US nuclear capabilities. It likely won't increase the number of nuclear weapons in the US stockpile, nor will it increase the yield of the average nuclear weapon. The program seems geared towards producing a new mainstay weapon for the US arsenal that's easier to maintain than what the US has right now.
The DOE has a brief document explaining why the US needs a new nuclear weapon. Again, the prime reason behind the initiative seems to be a maintenance issue, not a military need. Considering that the US nuclear weapons program, in its heyday, produced gems like the "Atomic Annie" mobile artillery piece, as well as the man-portable Davy Crockett nuclear rifle, the current initiative seems mild in comparison. I think it's a stretch to presume that the Iranians should get any moral satisfaction, or a break in the on-going negotiations, simply because US officials see a need to modernize the nation's current Cold War-era nuclear weapons stockpile.
While I'm not totally unsympathetic to your point, I disagree with your argument. You're making a very broad generalization which I don't think is completely valid for all US consumers. It's presumptuous, inaccurate and flat-out wrong to apply a blanket label of hypocrisy just because someone lives in the US. Like most things in life, the truth is never quite so simple as it seems.
To counter your views, I would argue that many consumers in the US -- and elsewhere for that matter -- are unaware of the labor standards employed to produce the products seen on American store shelves. I think you could rightfully charge hypocrisy only if American consumers knew about the standards used to produce these products, disagreed with those practices and then knowingly purchased products made under unfair working conditions. In that case, you'd be correct -- it would be hypocrisy for people to hold Apple accountable to a different, higher standard. The real problem here isn't hypocrisy, it's plain ignorance. That's OK though, because ignorance is something we can easily fix.
While I do think it's true that the average consumer in the US indirectly benefits from substandard labor practices in other nations, I'm unconvinced that it's US consumers who are ultimately responsible for the problem. Most businesses purchase products made overseas, or move their own operations outside the US, because these businesses can reduce costs by, in some cases, 80 to 90 percent over what it would cost to make the same product with US labor. However, let me ask you this -- when was the last time you saw retail prices drop by a similar amount? Granted, retail prices include many expenses that aren't directly affected by production costs, but I think it's reasonable to assume that US consumers aren't seeing all of the economic benefits of the global economy. Instead, I'd argue that most of these benefits end up in the hands of business owners and stockholders, in the form of increased profits. US consumers probably save some money, but I bet the people who own these companies are the real winners when production moves overseas.
One other issue I'd like to point out is that the end costs associated with US businesses mandating fair labor practices overseas probably don't amount to much in the overall costs for any given product. In other words, it wouldn't cost a lot in real dollars and cents to ensure that overseas workers enjoy the same labor standards as their US counterparts enjoy. If, for example, you can cut costs in half by moving production to China, than what portion of those cost savings can we say is attributable to unfair labor practices in China? I'd be willing to guess that the answer is... not much. Dollar vs. yuan values are likely a much larger factor in the equation. Overall, US retailers probably save pennies on the dollar when overseas firms run sweatshops. However, since most US consumers don't know about working conditions associated with a given product, manufacturers -- and US retailers -- benefit when consumers do see a small price difference at the checkout line. Again, the problem tracks back to ignorance. If US consumers knew where those savings came from, they might not be so willing to buy cheaper products made under substandard working conditions.
In Apple's case, I think Jobs will quickly decide to either move production to companies with less onerous labor practices, or else find more reputable suppliers. Apple's spent a huge wad of cash over the years to carefully craft a well-known, positive corporate image. Sweatshop labor in Southeast Asia doesn't seem particularly compatible with Apple's image. Probably, what will happen is that Apple will torpedo the sweatshops and then spend a vast amount of marketing money telling us about it, never admitting that there was a problem in the first place, but making sure that we all know that buying an iPod doesn't contribute to unfair labor. Ultimately, it may mean iPods become a bit more expensive, but Apple will see more
Golly! Well, what do you know -- the fine folks at the SF Chronicle have suddenly discovered that major companies like Bank of America are outsourcing technical jobs to India. Imagine that! Years after the fact, the SF Chronicle finally picks up on this disturbing new trend in American business. Wow! I am just amazed at the stellar reporting guys, just splendid work, just splendid.
Anyway, all razing of the Chronicle aside, I'm not sure why anyone should get their knickers in a knot over the fact that Bank of America's management expects their employees to stay on the job until the Indian replacements come up to speed. The same thing happened to me over 10 years ago, when my job flew south to Texas. At the time, a few conversations with the Texan's replacing my group revealed that they made about 1/3 of the money in Texas compared to what we made in the Bay Area. We certainly had plenty of opportunity to compare notes with these folks; the company flew the Texans in and had them stay for about three months while we trained them on our jobs. Was it irritating to train my replacement? Well, sure, yah... duh. But, considering that the company had already decided to replace me, what good would it have done to complain? Who would care? At least I had money coming in, and I knew exactly when my job would end. I'm no big proponent of outsourcing jobs overseas, but I'm realistic too. It's better to take the money and start looking for another job instead of grousing about why companies treat you like crap when they know they're going to get rid of you.
As long as Bank of America thinks that they can save a buck or two by moving jobs to India, they're going to do it, no two ways about it. This is what the global market is all about. Reporters from the SF Chronicle bitching about it isn't going to make one whit of difference, except perhaps to convince Bank of America's management that they need to hire a few temporary PR agents to handle the negative publicity.
Personally, I'm waiting for the time when US firms start shipping off management positions to India. In a few years, when the bulk of the workforce is in India, this might start to look attractive...
Or maybe not.
Over the last year or so, I've heard a lot of people in the industry talk about how VMware is fighting a losing battle against Microsoft in the server virtualization market. Really though, I don't see Microsoft beating VMware anytime soon. Here's why:
First, I don't think anyone in their right mind is ever going to truely believe that Microsoft can be entirely agnostic when it comes to what OS you run in a virtualization layer. I just can't see the Linux crowd ever fully buying into the notion that Microsoft will support Linux as a virtual server with the same zealous dedication as they'll support virtualization of Windows servers. We've all seen too many instances in the past where Microsoft has teaked some application to take advantage of their inside knowledge of Windows, at the expense of some other vender's application or operating system. I can't imagine, given this track record, that Microsoft will continue to resist the temptation to shaft everyone else in the virtualization market, ensuring that Windows continues to dominate. This idea alone will seriously retard Microsoft's ability to compete with VMware. I doubt that anyone at VMware really gives a rat's ass what you run in ESX server; Microsoft, on the other hand, will never be able to make the same claim.
Additionally, as I see it, there's also little advantage for Microsoft to expand the number of operating systems they support under their own virtualization layer. Every time they add support for an additional OS running in the virtualization layer, it gives their current customers more choices to run some other operating system that *isn't* Windows. Sooner or later, someone on the Windows server sales team is going to figure that out, potentially putting preasure on the virtualization team to do a half-assed job with anything that doesn't sport a Microsoft logo. Ultimately, I predict that this is going to ensure that Microsoft's virtual server offerings will be the most limited in the market. VMware, of course, won't be bound by the same demands. Every time they expand support for additional operating systems, it makes their products that much more attractive to buyers.
Finally, I suspect that Microsoft will decide at some point in the future that what they really want to do is to build virtualization into the Windows operating system itself. This is the only strategy that makes sense in the long-term. It keeps customers buying Windows while answering the need for server consolidation/management that virtualization brings to the table. In the end, it will put distance between what Microsoft offers and what VMware offers, leaving the independant OS virtualization market squarely in the hands of VMware.
About 10 years ago, a Silicon Valley manufacturer of medical imaging equipment hired me to do accounting work for them. Among my many tasks for this firm was the weekly generation of a report based on the company's current accounts receivable balance. I was told that this report was very important since it was used by one of our execs. during his weekly 'power breakfast' meetings with the other heads of the company.
A month after I arrived at the company, I noticed that the numbers didn't look right when I generated this weekly report. I started examining the spreadsheet formulas and soon found a small error in one of the calculations we used to derive our total balances. I notified my manager and we both agreed that the original spreadsheet wasn't giving accurate results. I corrected the formula and then patted myself on the back -- after all, I'd uncovered an error that many people, including my manager, had missed for months. I thought I was in good shape at the company after that because I'd done the right thing. I'd fixed a problem. Yay for me.
However, a week later, my manager brought me into his office to talk about the issue. I was more than a little surprised when he asked me to go to my desk and change the formula back to what we'd used before. I asked my manager if he still agreed with me that the old formula was giving incorrect data. He just smiled and said yes, he agreed with my original assessment. I was right, he told me, but our exec. had still asked him to revert to the old formula, no reasons given.
Shortly after this incident, my manager again brought me into his office. He had a pained look on his face as he began to tell that the company wouldn't be needing my services anymore. My manager never gave me an explanation as to why, but I didn't really need an explanation. Even though I'd uncovered an error in the company's accounting procedures, I'd made an even bigger error in the process -- I made our exec. look bad when he handed out the correct report during his power breakfast meeting. It turned out that the numbers weren't so rosy that week as they'd been in previous weeks. The other company heads wanted to know why. I'm not sure what our exec. told them then, but I can't imagine it made him look good no matter how he tried to spin it.
I suppose, if the numbers had looked better using my correct spreadsheet calculations, maybe I'd have received a raise from that exec. In this particular case, and much to my surprise, the wrong answer was the right answer in his method of bookkeeping. Frustrated by this incident, I left the accounting business soon afterwards. As it later turned out, the company went belly-up years later. Looking back, I like to imagine that reason was that the company's bankers were using spreadsheets based on mathematics instead of wishful thinking. Then again, after seeing what happened with Enron, I wonder if the bankers were in on it too.
I admit that I was surprised to see FOX News listed as America's most trusted news source. Among the many journalists I've spoken to, none appear to have any respect for the reporting they see on FOX News. The network clearly leans towards the political right in its coverage of national and world events. Despite the network's motto, FOX News is all to often 'fair' only to conservatives and 'balanced' between the center and the extreme right of the Republican Party. According to the New Yorker, this was Murdoch's intention all along. Certainly, the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) watchdog group seems to spend an awful lot of time lambasting FOX News for its coverage. At the moment, FAIR's top story on their website is an article on inaccurate reporting by FOX's own Bill O'Reilly during the May 1 immigrant demonstrations. Considering the controversy over FOX News, I find it strange that more Americans trust FOX News than any other news source.
However, if you look at the country-by-country breakdown from the poll, it starts to make more sense. According to Globescan, CNN has almost the same trust numbers as FOX News, at 11 percent, with the other three major networks adding up to another 11 percent. Take that figure against the poll numbers in other countries and the American news market seems much more fractured than it at first appeared. Surprisingly, the poll also shows that most Americans still trust their local newspapers more than they trust national television news, by a margin of 81 percent to 75 percent. I suspect, but I can't confirm, that what we're actually looking at is ratings numbers in this category, not who the public really trusts more. Since FOX News has the highest ratings in the American market, the network comes out ahead of the competition when Americans are asked to name a single national news source. Tellingly, other poll numbers indicate that Americans are much more skeptical about their news sources than respondents in most other countries, with nearly 9 out of 10 Americans reporting that they look to multiple sources for their news. That fits the hypothesis. Internationally, according to the original Reuters article, CNN is the second most trusted news brand, right behind the BBC. That also seems about what I'd expect if you translate 'trust' to 'ratings' in the poll.
In any case, regardless of the poll numbers, I guess it shouldn't surprise me that many Americans prefer to get their news from sources who share their own political and social views. If I thought that Bush could do no wrong, and that the Republican Party was the greatest thing since sliced bread, I imagine I'd find it very believable too when FOX News reports on the latest victory in Iraq, followed by a story on how Republicans will bring about an economic Golden Age through more tax cuts for the wealthy.