But I believe that there will very likely be a gap between the toys and "necessities" of US life today and what can be afforded in India on the salaries that US companies pay, there. This is even counting the lower cost-of-living, there.
Consider the US economy on a declining curve as jobs are exported, and the Indian economy on an inclining curve at the same time. But the start point for the US curve is awfully high and likewise awfully low for the Indian curve.
As the US curve declines, at some point some facets of the US economy become unsustainable, and some products just plain lose their market. At the same time, the Indian economy just hasn't risen enough yet to become a market for those products, either.
In other words, during this gap, we have some number of toys/"necessities" that most people can't afford to buy. The companies providing those products fall on hard times, and that's reflected in workers in both US and India. It may also look kind of like flushing the US economy down the toilet, taking the nascent Indian economy with it.
To get the rose-colored view you and others propose, either the US economy has to decline more slowly or the Indian economy has to rise faster. As US workers lose the ability to buy toys/"necessities" the Indian workers need to get that ability, so the market can be sustained.
Ironically, perhaps the best way to achieve this is to "overpay" the Indian workers. This works two ways - it slows the loss of US jobs because the pay differential is less, and it brings the Indian economy up the curve faster. Even though there are fewer US jobs moving, they're higher paid, and stimulate more jobs of other sorts in the local economy.
You've made a supposition that MS passwords are marginally weaker than Unix passwords. Read the article, and there's a more basic factor at work.
>"Windows passwords are not very good," he wrote. "The problem with Windows passwords is that they do not include any random information."
From what I understand, Unix passwords normally take a little 'salt', a little random information, as well as the user password, and hash that. Microsoft just hashed the user password without the salt. This makes it easier to crack., anything else aside.
To their credit, you have to be Admin to get to the password hashes, rather like/etc/shadow. To their debit, most WinDesktops that I'm aware of end up as glorified single-user machines, and that user is also.... Admin. Finally build a decent security model, and then customers ignore it.
A "rich Indian programmer" can buy food, shelter, clothing, and a few toys. But he's far from the SUV/Yacht/Disneyworld/Home Theater market that now exists in the USA.
Unless the Indian (and other similar) economies rise *very quickly* there's going to be a whole class of products that only outsourcing corporate execs can afford, as common US workers lose that ability.
Part of me hopes that this happens to you. The other part doesn't wish ill on others.
It's a race.
Not just a 'race to the bottom', but a race to see if the bottom comes up before the top falls apart.
The model of outsourcing work overseas to cut costs presumes that consumers in the US are still able to buy those now-cheaper products. Eventually perhaps the workers overseas will someday have a high enough standard of living to afford those now-cheaper products, too.
But if the US economy deteriorates the market before the foreign economy moves up into that market, then suddenly the company is left having a hard time selling products.
Don't forget that as the Indian standard of living starts to rise and workers get more expensive, the next cheap labor market appears to be Eastern Europe.
Meanwhile this sends the US economy in a downward spiral, as people lose the ability to afford SUVs, and the automakers have to contract to match, shedding more workers that can no longer afford SUVs.
It's a matter of timing. Can the US lift the world's economies into participation in this marketplace *before* self-destructing? (You know, the marketplace that has a demand for SUVs and IBM products, as opposed to basic food, clothing, and shelter.)
I'll plead ignorance rather than Francophobia. I wasn't deliberately de-Francing beaucoup into boku, but I'm sure not about to courriel anyone, either.
Even if the Internet were IPV6, Adelphia would still only give me only one IP, and tell me not to put servers or a home network behind it. (Although for boku bux they'd rent me a garden-variety NAT box, and then let me have a home network.)
Most of SCOs allegations have to do with 2.4 and SMP.
What does this have to do with the small group of boxen I oversee, all on 2.4, none SMP? Remember that even if these were SMP boxes, you can't run them that way without building/booting an SMP kernel. Remember that SCO is talking about a *binary* license. So it would seem to IANAL me that the vast bulk of Linux systems are completely unaffected, even if SCO happened to be right.
Besides, with or without SMP, a binary-only license for Linux is utterly worthless for truly serious usage. Provided binary kernels are OK for casual usage on garden-variety hardware, but for serious usage, or serious hardware, you just about have to recompile.
As others have pointed out, SCO has been violating the GPL by having kept Linux on their ftp site after announcing the copyright issues. Maybe this isn't an accident, maybe it isn't negligence.
Maybe SCO is trying to get the GPL invalidated in court.
Of course how you invalidate the GPL without the repercussions affecting other aspects of software copyright might well be another issue. There might be a bunch of Unintended Consequences cropping up, if SCO were to actually win.
In another sense, the true utility of the GPL is that it grants 'fix it yourself' ability. SCO's offered license removes that.
So in another sense, the SCO suit strikes at the heart of the GPL.
This may well be a much more precise strike than it seems. Given than it's really a vehement anti-GPL campaign, and we know *who* hates the GPL more than anyone, it's not hard to imagine that there's a puppeteer pulling the strings on this.
There are real technical issues to laptop motherboards. It's not all 'Cartel effect' no matter how much people might like to invent a conspiracy.
Two of the biggest issues that come to mind:
1: Laptops have much tighter motherboard/peripheral/case integration than desktops. Desktops practically have none at all, just wrap plastic or metal around standard-sized components and make sure you have enough air packaged in there that it can flow. Clearances inside a standard case can be measured in substantial fractions of an inch, sometimes in multiple inches. Laptops don't have that kind of space to burn. On some laptops, the bottom of the battery forms part of the bottom of the case, and the same may exist for other components.
Because of this, you can't have 'supplier of the week' like you can in desktops. Every part has to be just-so, physically.
2: Laptops have to have tighter power integration. It isn't just SpeedStep or PowerNow in the CPU, it's quiescing peripherals, putting DRAM to sleep, etc. The BIOS has to be much more aware of all of the parts.
Again, this plays against 'supplier of the week' because the subtle differences really count in power management.
The interviewed CEOs are in the bargain-basement business, where success may well be measured in pennies per component. That model is not appropriate to the laptop market, and attempting to bring out such might well dilute their focus on their core market.
In other news, an unnamed source in the Bush Administration revealed that the White House had recently outsourced a portion their new email system to a Nigerian company.
Isn't government intervention just like capitalism or just about anything else in life?
There's a proper amount that's necessary. Too little and you suffer, too much and you suffer.
One hard part is figuring out how much is just right. Another hard part is getting others to sign on to your concept of 'just right.' Plus I'm sure that there are more hard parts, life is full of them.
1. self aware networks 2. intelligent machines 3. robot vacuums 4. ??? 5. Skynet! (What happened to "Profit!" for this step?)
On an only slightly more serious note... (but not much) If we were to invent a truly conscious and intelligent machine: (computer/program/etc) 1: Would it then be 'slavery', would we need to 'free' it? 2: Would pulling the power plug be murder?
As long as you make those stipulations, I agree with you. My point was when those stipulationa are not met. It depends on your attitude as you move your labor overseas, and how tough their government is at negotiating.
Perhaps. I partly share your opinion. But the time factor plays into it, too. It may be possible to skip from cheap labor market to cheap labor market. As one labor market starts to develop, and get more expensive, move production to another area that is still cheap. Maybe this does lift all boats, as you say, and I won't entirely disagree with you.
But the other possiblity is that it leaves depressed labor markets behind. By the time you've gone through your cheap markets, if things are badly enough depressed, you've got a cheap labor market back where you started.
A key part of the problem is the pay given in the cheap labor market. Are you cultivating a future market, or are you out for maximum short-term profits?
We'll see whether or not it's catastrophic for the US, because it's not done happening. Where this becomes a self-destructive cycle is if Company A's foreign workers are not on a path to afford their products, and the loss of jobs in the US means that we're off the path of affording their products, either. That hasn't happened on a big scale yet, but things are still moving.
IMHO, capitalism can't be left alone, it needs a framework of Law. Without that framework, capitalism will devolve as Marx predicted. With the framework, I agree that it can be stable.
I don't deny that I would be forced to send jobs overseas, too. We don't really disagree.
I'm merely saying that Capitalism requires constraints in order to be stable. Capitalism itself will not protect the Commons that are necessary for its survival. The Commons must be protected by *enough participants* doing so out of their own enlightenment/goodwill or it must be protected by force of Law.
I like this line, and IMHO it illustrates much of what is wrong with the USA, today.
Don't get me wrong, I don't advocate any sort of move to Communism or Socialism, or anything like that.
But Capitalism is good as a motivator. Greed is a powerful motivator. But it doesn't belong in the same basket as 'air', 'water', 'food', and such. Maybe in the short term, it can sit in the same basket as 'sex'.
But in the USA, it appears that we've turned Capitalism (perhaps more precisely, greed) into a religion. IMHO this particular shuffling of priorities causes an unstable situation.
Simple demonstration: Want to increase profits? Move jobs overseas, paying 'local' wages. Profit!!!...but that's not the end of the story...
Everybody does it, too many jobs move overseas. Nobody at home can afford your prices, because they're unemployed. Overseas they can't afford your prices, because you never paid them enough.
Is the profit sustainable, or have you simply ransacked the commons? (one-time)
Again, not proposing Communism, but to say that Capitalism can exist without a Commons is myopic.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't doubt what you say.
But I believe that there will very likely be a gap between the toys and "necessities" of US life today and what can be afforded in India on the salaries that US companies pay, there. This is even counting the lower cost-of-living, there.
Consider the US economy on a declining curve as jobs are exported, and the Indian economy on an inclining curve at the same time. But the start point for the US curve is awfully high and likewise awfully low for the Indian curve.
As the US curve declines, at some point some facets of the US economy become unsustainable, and some products just plain lose their market. At the same time, the Indian economy just hasn't risen enough yet to become a market for those products, either.
In other words, during this gap, we have some number of toys/"necessities" that most people can't afford to buy. The companies providing those products fall on hard times, and that's reflected in workers in both US and India. It may also look kind of like flushing the US economy down the toilet, taking the nascent Indian economy with it.
To get the rose-colored view you and others propose, either the US economy has to decline more slowly or the Indian economy has to rise faster. As US workers lose the ability to buy toys/"necessities" the Indian workers need to get that ability, so the market can be sustained.
Ironically, perhaps the best way to achieve this is to "overpay" the Indian workers. This works two ways - it slows the loss of US jobs because the pay differential is less, and it brings the Indian economy up the curve faster. Even though there are fewer US jobs moving, they're higher paid, and stimulate more jobs of other sorts in the local economy.
Yep, my experience of Kansas is limited to visual range of I70. (or is it I80?)
At least there the Civ-Es did their job. My brother has horror stories of I80 west of Laramie, Wyoming where they didn't.
I also lived in Cleveland for four years, so I know what it's like living in a national joke.
You've made a supposition that MS passwords are marginally weaker than Unix passwords. Read the article, and there's a more basic factor at work.
/etc/shadow.
>"Windows passwords are not very good," he wrote. "The problem with Windows passwords is that they do not include any random information."
From what I understand, Unix passwords normally take a little 'salt', a little random information, as well as the user password, and hash that. Microsoft just hashed the user password without the salt. This makes it easier to crack., anything else aside.
To their credit, you have to be Admin to get to the password hashes, rather like
To their debit, most WinDesktops that I'm aware of end up as glorified single-user machines, and that user is also.... Admin. Finally build a decent security model, and then customers ignore it.
Insufficient "geek density" compared to the range of the transceivers. ie: We're spread out too thinly to form the mesh you'd like.
I once told a friend, "There is far more Stupidity than Evil in the world."
I have since unfortunately found the corollary, "Sufficient Stupidity combined with enough Power is effectively indistinguishable from Evil."
Something like that applies here, "Sufficient Greed combined with enough Power/Wealth can effect the appearance of a Conspiracy."
Think "Greedy Lemmings," and it can look like a Conspiracy.
I've been across Kansas by car - twice. (there, and back again)
Only a few hours of direct subjective experience, but it was FLAT.
IMHO your "hills" are comparable to the topological deformities found when you put blueberries into the pancakes.
A "rich Indian programmer" can buy food, shelter, clothing, and a few toys. But he's far from the SUV/Yacht/Disneyworld/Home Theater market that now exists in the USA.
Unless the Indian (and other similar) economies rise *very quickly* there's going to be a whole class of products that only outsourcing corporate execs can afford, as common US workers lose that ability.
Part of me hopes that this happens to you.
The other part doesn't wish ill on others.
It's a race.
Not just a 'race to the bottom', but a race to see if the bottom comes up before the top falls apart.
The model of outsourcing work overseas to cut costs presumes that consumers in the US are still able to buy those now-cheaper products. Eventually perhaps the workers overseas will someday have a high enough standard of living to afford those now-cheaper products, too.
But if the US economy deteriorates the market before the foreign economy moves up into that market, then suddenly the company is left having a hard time selling products.
Don't forget that as the Indian standard of living starts to rise and workers get more expensive, the next cheap labor market appears to be Eastern Europe.
Meanwhile this sends the US economy in a downward spiral, as people lose the ability to afford SUVs, and the automakers have to contract to match, shedding more workers that can no longer afford SUVs.
It's a matter of timing.
Can the US lift the world's economies into participation in this marketplace *before* self-destructing? (You know, the marketplace that has a demand for SUVs and IBM products, as opposed to basic food, clothing, and shelter.)
I'll plead ignorance rather than Francophobia. I wasn't deliberately de-Francing beaucoup into boku, but I'm sure not about to courriel anyone, either.
Even if the Internet were IPV6, Adelphia would still only give me only one IP, and tell me not to put servers or a home network behind it. (Although for boku bux they'd rent me a garden-variety NAT box, and then let me have a home network.)
Most of SCOs allegations have to do with 2.4 and SMP.
What does this have to do with the small group of boxen I oversee, all on 2.4, none SMP?
Remember that even if these were SMP boxes, you can't run them that way without building/booting an SMP kernel.
Remember that SCO is talking about a *binary* license.
So it would seem to IANAL me that the vast bulk of Linux systems are completely unaffected, even if SCO happened to be right.
Besides, with or without SMP, a binary-only license for Linux is utterly worthless for truly serious usage. Provided binary kernels are OK for casual usage on garden-variety hardware, but for serious usage, or serious hardware, you just about have to recompile.
SCO is going right at the heart of the GPL.
As others have pointed out, SCO has been violating the GPL by having kept Linux on their ftp site after announcing the copyright issues. Maybe this isn't an accident, maybe it isn't negligence.
Maybe SCO is trying to get the GPL invalidated in court.
Of course how you invalidate the GPL without the repercussions affecting other aspects of software copyright might well be another issue. There might be a bunch of Unintended Consequences cropping up, if SCO were to actually win.
In another sense, the true utility of the GPL is that it grants 'fix it yourself' ability. SCO's offered license removes that.
So in another sense, the SCO suit strikes at the heart of the GPL.
This may well be a much more precise strike than it seems. Given than it's really a vehement anti-GPL campaign, and we know *who* hates the GPL more than anyone, it's not hard to imagine that there's a puppeteer pulling the strings on this.
There are real technical issues to laptop motherboards. It's not all 'Cartel effect' no matter how much people might like to invent a conspiracy.
Two of the biggest issues that come to mind:
1: Laptops have much tighter motherboard/peripheral/case integration than desktops. Desktops practically have none at all, just wrap plastic or metal around standard-sized components and make sure you have enough air packaged in there that it can flow. Clearances inside a standard case can be measured in substantial fractions of an inch, sometimes in multiple inches. Laptops don't have that kind of space to burn. On some laptops, the bottom of the battery forms part of the bottom of the case, and the same may exist for other components.
Because of this, you can't have 'supplier of the week' like you can in desktops. Every part has to be just-so, physically.
2: Laptops have to have tighter power integration. It isn't just SpeedStep or PowerNow in the CPU, it's quiescing peripherals, putting DRAM to sleep, etc. The BIOS has to be much more aware of all of the parts.
Again, this plays against 'supplier of the week' because the subtle differences really count in power management.
The interviewed CEOs are in the bargain-basement business, where success may well be measured in pennies per component. That model is not appropriate to the laptop market, and attempting to bring out such might well dilute their focus on their core market.
Wish I had some mod points, today.
In other news, an unnamed source in the Bush Administration revealed that the White House had recently outsourced a portion their new email system to a Nigerian company.
Descent is a completely different game series, completely different engine, completely different characteristics.
But at least Loki ported Descent 3 to Linux.
Enough stupid snotty anal spelling jokes.
I'm just glad to see that for a change, I have a better-than-minimum system, though I'll have to buy more memory. (K7 2.1+, R8500LE, 128MB)
Along a similar line, my pet favorite is three balloons with a bound-column framework between them, and the launchpad in the middle.
Isn't government intervention just like capitalism or just about anything else in life?
There's a proper amount that's necessary. Too little and you suffer, too much and you suffer.
One hard part is figuring out how much is just right.
Another hard part is getting others to sign on to your concept of 'just right.'
Plus I'm sure that there are more hard parts, life is full of them.
1. self aware networks
2. intelligent machines
3. robot vacuums
4. ???
5. Skynet! (What happened to "Profit!" for this step?)
On an only slightly more serious note... (but not much)
If we were to invent a truly conscious and intelligent machine: (computer/program/etc)
1: Would it then be 'slavery', would we need to 'free' it?
2: Would pulling the power plug be murder?
This is called "deflation", and every time Alan Greenspan goes to Capitol Hill, he warns about it.
As long as you make those stipulations, I agree with you. My point was when those stipulationa are not met. It depends on your attitude as you move your labor overseas, and how tough their government is at negotiating.
Hurrah!
Let's hear it for the hardline moderates.
Perhaps. I partly share your opinion. But the time factor plays into it, too. It may be possible to skip from cheap labor market to cheap labor market. As one labor market starts to develop, and get more expensive, move production to another area that is still cheap. Maybe this does lift all boats, as you say, and I won't entirely disagree with you.
But the other possiblity is that it leaves depressed labor markets behind. By the time you've gone through your cheap markets, if things are badly enough depressed, you've got a cheap labor market back where you started.
A key part of the problem is the pay given in the cheap labor market. Are you cultivating a future market, or are you out for maximum short-term profits?
We'll see whether or not it's catastrophic for the US, because it's not done happening. Where this becomes a self-destructive cycle is if Company A's foreign workers are not on a path to afford their products, and the loss of jobs in the US means that we're off the path of affording their products, either. That hasn't happened on a big scale yet, but things are still moving.
IMHO, capitalism can't be left alone, it needs a framework of Law. Without that framework, capitalism will devolve as Marx predicted. With the framework, I agree that it can be stable.
I don't deny that I would be forced to send jobs overseas, too. We don't really disagree.
I'm merely saying that Capitalism requires constraints in order to be stable. Capitalism itself will not protect the Commons that are necessary for its survival. The Commons must be protected by *enough participants* doing so out of their own enlightenment/goodwill or it must be protected by force of Law.
I like this line, and IMHO it illustrates much of what is wrong with the USA, today.
...but that's not the end of the story...
Don't get me wrong, I don't advocate any sort of move to Communism or Socialism, or anything like that.
But Capitalism is good as a motivator. Greed is a powerful motivator. But it doesn't belong in the same basket as 'air', 'water', 'food', and such. Maybe in the short term, it can sit in the same basket as 'sex'.
But in the USA, it appears that we've turned Capitalism (perhaps more precisely, greed) into a religion. IMHO this particular shuffling of priorities causes an unstable situation.
Simple demonstration:
Want to increase profits?
Move jobs overseas, paying 'local' wages.
Profit!!!
Everybody does it, too many jobs move overseas.
Nobody at home can afford your prices, because they're unemployed.
Overseas they can't afford your prices, because you never paid them enough.
Is the profit sustainable, or have you simply ransacked the commons? (one-time)
Again, not proposing Communism, but to say that Capitalism can exist without a Commons is myopic.