I don't know. I am looking at the screenshots and thinking that Linux was a lot more interesting in 2000. The user interface looked funny (niceish different) and nothing really worked as it should. You could spend hours trying to figure out how to make something work.
What is left now? You install it and everything works. All the fun is gone.
"and internet that the MWR give us for free is actually really quite good considering where we're at."
I currently have a crappy (and expensive) 3G connection that keeps on disconnecting. So what you are basically saying is that Americans in a war zone have better access than me (living in a stable country)?
Amazing.
China builds electronics in big factories that are really indistinguishable from the old collective farms and communist era factories.
I would differ with this. Productivity markedly increased since the free market reforms. A lot of workers are paid piecewise. Here is a nice section of an article giving basically the argument that I want to make (http://www.imf.org/EXTERNAL/PUBS/FT/ISSUES8/INDEX.HTM#Boom).
As far as I understand China still has free health care (obviously not up to western standard).
Most of the factory owners are foreign, usually Taiwanese and all the design is done outside China. Basically China is a massively feudal place.
This is true in a certain sense. There is a lot of mindless manufacturing going on. But you ignore the amount of scientists and engineers that China produces. They produce a lot of engineers (and some at least) to a high standard. Here is another interesting article: (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2005/07/29/the-chinese-education-boom/). College enrolment has tripled between 1998 and 2008. 20% of people will be enrolled in a form of higher education by 2010. Compare this with 1978 â" 4/5 people were involved in subsistence farming.
My point in the previous post was that you will not see a lot of Chinese engineering because it does not stare you in the face. This is certainly true â" whether it is a dough mixer, cheap infra-red dongle, re-branded 3G modem, ulta-cheap (and somewhat shitty) cellphone charger or a rechargeable battery.
I agree with you that the comparison with Japan may not be apt â" Japan certainly comes from a higher base. Probably the best comparison would be Taiwan's economic development.
Japan was building cheap knock-off products through the 1950's and '60's, and didn't begin to really rival U.S. design and engineering until the '80's.
This may (partially) be true. Remember that some Japanese companies sold transistor radios while American companies were still using vacuum tubes. China's economy is a lot stronger than most people think.
They for example produce almost four times as much steel as its nearest competitor (Japan). Its global share of publications almost quadrupled in the ten years from 1995 to 2005 and almost equals Japan's.(OECD science, technology and industry outlook 2008).
If China follows the same path then we're about 10-15 year away from quality products designed in China.
There are already a lot of quality products designed in China. Huawei 3G modems comes to mind. One of my family members recently opened a little factory and almost all equipment was designed and built in China.
I would be more worried about the USA. A smaller percentage of things that I buy was designed in the USA (operating system + CPU is all I can think of). Chinese and Indian cars are becoming more common (GWM, Tata, Cherry, Channa) and American cars less common.
"Bringing in tens of thousands of people from overseas to do work at lower pay than U.S. employees so that U.S. companies can make higher profit margins is another."
If the USA starts with protectionist policies, the competitiveness of corporations in the USA will start to suffer. This will either cause companies to fail, or companies to move.
We're employing tens of thousands of people from countries that employ pretty close to zero people from the U.S.
Yet those same countries do business and export goods to the countries which the workers are from. Compare the amount of software that the USA sells to for instance South Africa with the converse (Oracle, Microsoft, etc...).
You want your companies to be able to do business in other countries â" but not hire immigrants. You also only want certain people (e.g. taking doctors from 3rd world countries) but not others.
You like to see employment as a zero-sum game (I.e. for someone to work someone has to lose a job). This is unfortunately not how it works. It is estimated (at least in my country) that each engineer creates 8 downstream jobs.
Remember that protectionism is a two way street. You can't just expect the benefits without giving something in return. If you start to interfere with the decisions of companies, the will start packing their bags and moving to greener pastures.
That is fairly short-sighted (IMHO). One of the reasons that the USA is so successful is that it is nation of immigrants - skilled people coming to the USA to work and then later staying on. The USA have drawn skilled people from around the world. The most significant is probably 1930-1945.
Furthermore, skilled immigrants contribute a lot to the country. If you draw skilled people to your country, you have a higher ratio of skilled vs. unskilled people/retired people (I.e. a higher percentage of tax payers vs. non-tax payers). That is good for everybody.
I plan to go to the USA to work at the end of this year. I can't really see how I will damage your country while just doing a productive job and paying tax.
"So are you volunteering yourself to be the first to go?"
No, I am selfish. It is one of humanity's many shit characteristics.
Seriously - why do you think that people are worth saving. I mean, just look at the USA - half of the people hate the other half of the people (and vice versa).
Clearly people all over the world do not like each other. People just want to screw other people and look out for themselves (either through government corruption or leftists trying to expropriate your private property).
This world is just a large church square. You are either a pigeon or a statue. Everyone tries to be the pigeon. Fuck that. I have 0% faith in humanity.
It is not really the cost of connecting with Europe. If I recall correctly, most of the undersea cables (SAT3, etc...) are vastly underutilized.
The biggest reason is the government supported monopoly of Telkom. The law has changed enough but Telkom is still a monopoly (esp. last mile connection). It is in their interest to ensure that no-one gets adequate data bandwidth at a reasonable price â" otherwise people might counter their mile high voice rates by using VoIP.
Also, most universities charge for Internet to make money. Internet access does not cost a university a tenth of R2/MB they ask students â" it is solely to support an inefficient IT staff.
Also look at Neotel's (the second national operator) prices. They have a CDMA2000 phone that casts R100 a month with 1 MB of data costing 8 cents (around R80/GB, $8/GB). That is a lot lower than Telkom or Vodacom (3G at R280/GB).
Good tip. I also have an extreme low bandwidth connection. Here are some things I found helps to conserve bandwidth:
Use Adblock Add-on as the above poster states. This helps a hell of a lot. Disable flash entirely in your browser (use Flashblock). It is sometimes handy to have to browsers â" one with add-block and flashblock and another with it disabled. If you want to view a link with flash, simply copy and paste it into the other browser.
Another extremely important thing is firewalls â" install a good firewall because (esp. on Vista) everything wants to access the internet and download stuff (only allow port 80,53 and a few other, a good firewall on vista is PCTools). Turn off all automatic updates everywhere.
It is a good idea to disable images entirely (Firefox Alt-T-O, is fast) and only re-enable it when you need it. Unfortunately Firefox does not show a place holder for an image so that you can just right-click and say show-image (like Internet Explorer does).
Turn off pre-fetching in Firefox. Go to the address bar and click about:config, then search for prefetching.
If you are using GMail and GMail's chat program regularly, download the stand-alone program and switch GMail to standard HTML view. Even if you disable images Firefox continues to load favicon. Disable this also (about:config, browser.chrome.favicons). Every little bit helps.
"But making the assumption a Chinese woman has the skills that he finds attractive is a racial assumption"
Not necessarily. I tried to make it clear that there is a difference between culture (I.e. not race). You can try to deny it but that does not mean that there is no difference between culture.
"Now if he made comments about liking ethnically Chinese women for their advanced math skills,"
Not necessarily. Asian women have a fairly high educational attainment in the USA (for example, they are overrepresented in the University of California system, 40%+). So to say that you like Asians for their academic skills would not be racist (because it is the truth).
Difference in educational attainment are in large due to cultural issues. Some cultures/individuals value education more than others.
Hmm... Interesting discussion (though off topic). I think that Bob Bar is kinda an opportunist but the principles that the Libertarian party stands for is sound. Unfortunately the US system is geared towards a two party system. And for both the Dems and the Republicans, you are going to get more government and higher taxes.
Hopefully after solidly losing the next election the Republicans will see the light and return to their roots...
As for socialization of medicine: in my country it is socialization of everything. The people now controlling the ruling party in my country (South Africa) are true socialists (in the old fashioned sense). The ruling party is controlled by trade unionists and communists (yeah, communist parties such as the SACP still exist). After president Mbeki was ousted from the ruling party and then the presidency a trade unionist took over and became president. In the election next year those in the ruling party will take over control of the parliament.
âoePepsi Max contains ginseng, while Coke Zero does not. âoe
Coke Zero was introduced recently in my country so I only drank Coke 0 and Pepsi Max a few times. As for ginseng, I doubt that it produces a great difference in taste.
âoeAlso, can you tell me what the "natural and artificial flavors" are? âoe
I am not a chemist, but here it goes: My father while working as an analythical chemist used things such as Mass-spectrography to determine unknown substances (mostly arms related). Is there any reason that GC-MS can not be used to analyse Coke (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography-mass_spectrometry#Food.2C_Beverage_and_Perfume_Analysis)?
This is a psychological phenomenon, and it's unlikely that there are any good remedies, except for removing anything that could be perceived as a hilltop.
It is probably because there is low visibility before you cross a hilltop. I generally drive slow (rural roads) when visibility is low, because you never know when an idiot in oncoming traffic decides to overtake another, or when a farmer in the oncoming road decides to drive to his farm gate (i.e. crossing your lane).
The problem is that most people do not keep the speed limits. In some cases you have a slow lane full of trucks (80km/h) and the right lane is full of idiots in BMW's, Mercs and SUV's doing 160+km/h.
In such situations people trying to do the speed limit (120km/h) is royally screwed - it is practicallly impossible to drive at the speed limit.
Personally they should have a point system, and for any violation they deduct points. Once you are at 0 they take away your licence. Speeding fines does not work - a guy driving an expensive SUV does not care about such a small amount./rant
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Hmm.... I would not really argue that. There are a lot of innovation happening in Asian countries.
The USA has a lead in innovation of consumer products - but that is simply because they have a large English audience and target market.
There are numerous Tiger Asian companies that are fairly innovative. A good example - HTC. First with some of the best smart phones.
LG and Samsung are also pretty innovative. Wii (although in Japan) rivals innovation to that of the iPhone).
Hyundia is a company based on innovation - from crane construction to boat construction it was one series of innovations.
I don't know. I am looking at the screenshots and thinking that Linux was a lot more interesting in 2000. The user interface looked funny (niceish different) and nothing really worked as it should. You could spend hours trying to figure out how to make something work.
What is left now? You install it and everything works. All the fun is gone.
"and internet that the MWR give us for free is actually really quite good considering where we're at."
I currently have a crappy (and expensive) 3G connection that keeps on disconnecting. So what you are basically saying is that Americans in a war zone have better access than me (living in a stable country)?
Amazing.
You know that Putin may be the richest man in the world? He is corrupt.
If Putin was really against the oligarchy wouldn't it strain the relationship with his buddy Roman Abramovich?
China builds electronics in big factories that are really indistinguishable from the old collective farms and communist era factories.
I would differ with this. Productivity markedly increased since the free market reforms. A lot of workers are paid piecewise. Here is a nice section of an article giving basically the argument that I want to make (http://www.imf.org/EXTERNAL/PUBS/FT/ISSUES8/INDEX.HTM#Boom).
As far as I understand China still has free health care (obviously not up to western standard).
Most of the factory owners are foreign, usually Taiwanese and all the design is done outside China. Basically China is a massively feudal place.
This is true in a certain sense. There is a lot of mindless manufacturing going on. But you ignore the amount of scientists and engineers that China produces. They produce a lot of engineers (and some at least) to a high standard. Here is another interesting article: (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2005/07/29/the-chinese-education-boom/). College enrolment has tripled between 1998 and 2008. 20% of people will be enrolled in a form of higher education by 2010. Compare this with 1978 â" 4/5 people were involved in subsistence farming.
My point in the previous post was that you will not see a lot of Chinese engineering because it does not stare you in the face. This is certainly true â" whether it is a dough mixer, cheap infra-red dongle, re-branded 3G modem, ulta-cheap (and somewhat shitty) cellphone charger or a rechargeable battery.
I agree with you that the comparison with Japan may not be apt â" Japan certainly comes from a higher base. Probably the best comparison would be Taiwan's economic development.
Japan was building cheap knock-off products through the 1950's and '60's, and didn't begin to really rival U.S. design and engineering until the '80's.
This may (partially) be true. Remember that some Japanese companies sold transistor radios while American companies were still using vacuum tubes. China's economy is a lot stronger than most people think.
They for example produce almost four times as much steel as its nearest competitor (Japan). Its global share of publications almost quadrupled in the ten years from 1995 to 2005 and almost equals Japan's.(OECD science, technology and industry outlook 2008).
If China follows the same path then we're about 10-15 year away from quality products designed in China. There are already a lot of quality products designed in China. Huawei 3G modems comes to mind. One of my family members recently opened a little factory and almost all equipment was designed and built in China.
I would be more worried about the USA. A smaller percentage of things that I buy was designed in the USA (operating system + CPU is all I can think of). Chinese and Indian cars are becoming more common (GWM, Tata, Cherry, Channa) and American cars less common.
Have you ever seen a river of shit and waste with a plank over it leading to someone's home?
India must be bad. I live in a 3rd world country and have never seen rivers of shit.
The only rivers of shit I've seen is in rich coastal towns (where sewage is stored in tanks and sometimes overflows).
"Bringing in tens of thousands of people from overseas to do work at lower pay than U.S. employees so that U.S. companies can make higher profit margins is another."
If the USA starts with protectionist policies, the competitiveness of corporations in the USA will start to suffer. This will either cause companies to fail, or companies to move.
We're employing tens of thousands of people from countries that employ pretty close to zero people from the U.S.
Yet those same countries do business and export goods to the countries which the workers are from. Compare the amount of software that the USA sells to for instance South Africa with the converse (Oracle, Microsoft, etc...).
You want your companies to be able to do business in other countries â" but not hire immigrants. You also only want certain people (e.g. taking doctors from 3rd world countries) but not others.
You like to see employment as a zero-sum game (I.e. for someone to work someone has to lose a job). This is unfortunately not how it works. It is estimated (at least in my country) that each engineer creates 8 downstream jobs.
Remember that protectionism is a two way street. You can't just expect the benefits without giving something in return. If you start to interfere with the decisions of companies, the will start packing their bags and moving to greener pastures.
That is fairly short-sighted (IMHO). One of the reasons that the USA is so successful is that it is nation of immigrants - skilled people coming to the USA to work and then later staying on. The USA have drawn skilled people from around the world. The most significant is probably 1930-1945.
Furthermore, skilled immigrants contribute a lot to the country. If you draw skilled people to your country, you have a higher ratio of skilled vs. unskilled people/retired people (I.e. a higher percentage of tax payers vs. non-tax payers). That is good for everybody.
I plan to go to the USA to work at the end of this year. I can't really see how I will damage your country while just doing a productive job and paying tax.
"So are you volunteering yourself to be the first to go?"
No, I am selfish. It is one of humanity's many shit characteristics.
Seriously - why do you think that people are worth saving. I mean, just look at the USA - half of the people hate the other half of the people (and vice versa).
Clearly people all over the world do not like each other. People just want to screw other people and look out for themselves (either through government corruption or leftists trying to expropriate your private property).
This world is just a large church square. You are either a pigeon or a statue. Everyone tries to be the pigeon. Fuck that. I have 0% faith in humanity.
This only leaves the question: Is humanity worth saving? I don't think so.
It is not really the cost of connecting with Europe. If I recall correctly, most of the undersea cables (SAT3, etc...) are vastly underutilized.
The biggest reason is the government supported monopoly of Telkom. The law has changed enough but Telkom is still a monopoly (esp. last mile connection). It is in their interest to ensure that no-one gets adequate data bandwidth at a reasonable price â" otherwise people might counter their mile high voice rates by using VoIP.
Also, most universities charge for Internet to make money. Internet access does not cost a university a tenth of R2/MB they ask students â" it is solely to support an inefficient IT staff.
Also look at Neotel's (the second national operator) prices. They have a CDMA2000 phone that casts R100 a month with 1 MB of data costing 8 cents (around R80/GB, $8/GB). That is a lot lower than Telkom or Vodacom (3G at R280/GB).
Good tip. I also have an extreme low bandwidth connection. Here are some things I found helps to conserve bandwidth:
Use Adblock Add-on as the above poster states. This helps a hell of a lot. Disable flash entirely in your browser (use Flashblock). It is sometimes handy to have to browsers â" one with add-block and flashblock and another with it disabled. If you want to view a link with flash, simply copy and paste it into the other browser.
Another extremely important thing is firewalls â" install a good firewall because (esp. on Vista) everything wants to access the internet and download stuff (only allow port 80,53 and a few other, a good firewall on vista is PCTools). Turn off all automatic updates everywhere.
It is a good idea to disable images entirely (Firefox Alt-T-O, is fast) and only re-enable it when you need it. Unfortunately Firefox does not show a place holder for an image so that you can just right-click and say show-image (like Internet Explorer does).
Turn off pre-fetching in Firefox. Go to the address bar and click about:config, then search for prefetching.
If you are using GMail and GMail's chat program regularly, download the stand-alone program and switch GMail to standard HTML view. Even if you disable images Firefox continues to load favicon. Disable this also (about:config, browser.chrome.favicons). Every little bit helps.
"But making the assumption a Chinese woman has the skills that he finds attractive is a racial assumption"
Not necessarily. I tried to make it clear that there is a difference between culture (I.e. not race). You can try to deny it but that does not mean that there is no difference between culture.
"Now if he made comments about liking ethnically Chinese women for their advanced math skills,"
Not necessarily. Asian women have a fairly high educational attainment in the USA (for example, they are overrepresented in the University of California system, 40%+). So to say that you like Asians for their academic skills would not be racist (because it is the truth).
Difference in educational attainment are in large due to cultural issues. Some cultures/individuals value education more than others.
Hmm... Interesting discussion (though off topic). I think that Bob Bar is kinda an opportunist but the principles that the Libertarian party stands for is sound. Unfortunately the US system is geared towards a two party system. And for both the Dems and the Republicans, you are going to get more government and higher taxes.
Hopefully after solidly losing the next election the Republicans will see the light and return to their roots...
As for socialization of medicine: in my country it is socialization of everything. The people now controlling the ruling party in my country (South Africa) are true socialists (in the old fashioned sense). The ruling party is controlled by trade unionists and communists (yeah, communist parties such as the SACP still exist). After president Mbeki was ousted from the ruling party and then the presidency a trade unionist took over and became president. In the election next year those in the ruling party will take over control of the parliament.
So consider yourself lucky.
You are right about property tax. I always thought payroll tax is paid by employees (it is in my country).
The payroll tax is substracted by the company but it comes of the employees salary.
You have to make a profit before you can pay taxes... I doubt that AMD is doing this because of taxes. :(
Wasn't Western Freedom killed shortly after the French Revolution? After the French revolution the most unfree system was implemented: conscription.
Cattle are rocket scientists when compared to sheep.
I think a system that shows the position of a herd of cattle would be awesome though (prevent cross border cattle theft).
Funny observation: Most liberals are easily startled when they see a gun. Most conservatives are not.
Why is this? Since it goes against the above research.
âoePepsi Max contains ginseng, while Coke Zero does not. âoe
Coke Zero was introduced recently in my country so I only drank Coke 0 and Pepsi Max a few times. As for ginseng, I doubt that it produces a great difference in taste.
âoeAlso, can you tell me what the "natural and artificial flavors" are? âoe I am not a chemist, but here it goes: My father while working as an analythical chemist used things such as Mass-spectrography to determine unknown substances (mostly arms related). Is there any reason that GC-MS can not be used to analyse Coke (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography-mass_spectrometry#Food.2C_Beverage_and_Perfume_Analysis)?
Coke Zero does not really have a formula - it is just a bunch of Aspartame (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy).
Coke Zero (at least in my country) tastes exactly the same as Pepsi Max - same ingredients.
I am not sure that secrets such as this counts for anything, because the ingredients are known and it is trivial to determine the quantities.
This is a psychological phenomenon, and it's unlikely that there are any good remedies, except for removing anything that could be perceived as a hilltop.
It is probably because there is low visibility before you cross a hilltop. I generally drive slow (rural roads) when visibility is low, because you never know when an idiot in oncoming traffic decides to overtake another, or when a farmer in the oncoming road decides to drive to his farm gate (i.e. crossing your lane).
The problem is that most people do not keep the speed limits. In some cases you have a slow lane full of trucks (80km/h) and the right lane is full of idiots in BMW's, Mercs and SUV's doing 160+km/h.
/rant
In such situations people trying to do the speed limit (120km/h) is royally screwed - it is practicallly impossible to drive at the speed limit.
Personally they should have a point system, and for any violation they deduct points. Once you are at 0 they take away your licence. Speeding fines does not work - a guy driving an expensive SUV does not care about such a small amount.