Actually, economics students are probably screaming at you - recent performance means nothing. Previous performance means nothing. I've been told that all publically known information about a stock is integrated in the stock price within a minute.
My first argument against this was "hey, what if the CEO that just came in is REALLY good and things well likely improve over the next few years?" That too is integrated into the stock price - analysts far smarter than us, with far more information that us, can judge how 'good' this CEO is at least as good as us.
What does that mean? If we predict the CEO is going to do a kickass job, in ONE minute, the stock price will reflect this - people will keep buying until something else looks better.
If said CEO will do an OK job, again, in a minute the stock price reflects this.
Stock price is pretty much a random variable - for every exception you can think of ("IBMs been doing great for 5 years...") there are FAR far more companies that have apparently 'random' stock prices.
Think of it like this: Intel managed to flip 20 heads in a row back in the 80s, AMDs doing 20 in a row now. What happens tomorrow? Is AMD more likely to keep flipping heads, or Intel? (Answer: Neither)
I can't remember who does this but a fairly prominent school has monkeys compete with expert stock analysts to see who can do better at picking stocks. And the monkeys throw darts. But they still perform similarly to the analysts (not quite as good, because the stock price isn't PERFECTLY random, experts can make SOME good inferences).
So, future investors: pick a few different markets, pick several stocks from each, and let your money stay there for a few decades. *Nothing* beats the after-tax returns of a diversified stock portfolio over the medium or long term. Index funds are great too.
I don't have the links anymore, but there is a good amount of research saying cellphone use is cellphone use, regardless of handsfree or other 'aids'.
When you use a cell phone in a car, you are distracted. As a previous poster said, at 55MPH, you are moving 80 feet per second.
A Ford Taurus is not a small car and comes in at 16 feet. You need at least another full second to brake.
How many people do you know give themselves 10 car lengths on a highway?
Cell phones are dangerous to use, period. Sadly, this hasn't stopped me from using a cell phone while driving but I minimize it and don't kid myself that handsfree = safe. Be careful.
Definately possible - general purpose CPUs have to do everything where graphics cards can specialize and do what little they can, faster.
Also, good point about comparing GHz to GHz - AMD CPUs do more per cycle than Intel, but are also clocked much lower. You could look at a subset of instructions (ie: FLoating-point OPerations (FLOPS)) but this only gives you a piece of the overall performance picture.
Without having read the article, my guess is they extrapolated (educated, math-based guess) how fast a 10GHz P4 would perform and compared the results that way.
I'd LOVE to see this tech built into a SETI or Folding@Home client (steroids version). (Imagine the kids - "Mom, I need the Radeon 9800XT to find a cure for Grandma's cancer!")
What do you mean, "missing letter"? The URL is "goatse.cx", the joke is that the top level domain is part of the word spelled in the domain name. See also cr.yp.to, www.the-b.org (although the page seems unrelated to the Borg, unfortunately...), and others that I can't seem to remember.
Good point - the first time I ran across it was before Slashdot implemented the [top level domain] trailing text at the end of every linked url. I should have said 'ending letterS' (goatse_____?) or maybe 'extra letters' (goats?) and I have to agree with MicroBerto, tubgirl is far more painful a memory than goatse.
Most tasks only require a small subset of the Perl language. One of the guiding mottos for Perl development is "there's more than one way to do it" (TMTOWTDI, sometimes pronounced "tim toady"). Perl's learning curve is therefore shallow (easy to learn) and long (there's a whole lot you can do if you really want).
Again, this announcement has nothing to do with people downloading songs. This is legal; police will NOT be showing up at your door and you will not be sued. I can download a billion songs and NOT pay a penny of any levy NOR will I get charged with a crime.
Uploaders though are distributing something of value for free, without have any right or permission to do so.
If you disagree with the idea of copyright, fine. Attack the law. But complaining that they're actually enforcing it is pretty weak.
I got part-way some of the higher-rated comments and haven't seen many people talk about a very important point:
Who's the audience and what's your goal?
At my university (medium-sized, well-known Canadian) first-year students have three places to 'start' in CS. New to computers, new to programming and some experience programming.
I've worked with the new to computers crowd, so there is my bias/experience. Database and theory were covered for two weeks in lectures and practical knowledge through three weeks of labs. We used Access - if we didn't, we would have needed triple the time to cover the basic (and maybe a little extra).
More first-year students take this course than there are CS student in the CS program. Their questions are "What is a primary key and why is it there?" NOT "why doesn't my outer join work?".
MySQL is not appropriate for this group. Given an entire course of databases, sure, but now you're targetting the CS major/minor crowd. How many arts/science students would take an entire course on DBs compared to a well-rounded, multiple application course?
Give the minors/majors a real DB. They HAVE to know this stuff at a rudimentary level or their CS degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Give the other students a once over with Access, tell them small companies and mom-and-pop stores use it for VERY small installations and point them to the DB course if they want to know more.
For the record, I've flown to Vancouver myself at approximately half the rate you suggested ($450 after fees I believe, but excluding the $10 airport improvement fees). A friend who lives in Vancouver pays roughly the same, slightly higher at times.
I'm not sure where $800 comes from, but even at that a quarter of that price, the 2 day train currently commuting Vancouver-Toronto isn't much of a deal. Even if high-speed cuts that to a day, or even 12 hours, it has to compete with a $400 3-4 hour flight.
The crux of this argument I think is 'since the labels make most of the money, and the artist doesn't, we aren't hurting (many) artists (much).'
As much as we demonize the labels, we agree that not a single person in the entire process does anything of value? No one found the band, hooked them up with some lyrics (yes, a minority of bands do all their own work), promoted them, bribed radios to play the songs, etc, etc, etc?
Yes, the labels are 'evil'. Yes, we don't really 'need' them, but artists seem to think there is no other way to succeed. Yes, the companies likely profit (I haven't seen a financial statement though).
But assuming you know enough about the entire process, the costs, the options the artists have (I can't think of any well-known bands, or even bands I hear on the radio, stating they're proudly label-free) and having the arrogance to skip to a conclusion amounting to "they steal from the artists so it's ok to download music for free" is a little hasty.
"Cheap commodity" does not begin to address the true costs of producing music.
Not for a second do I think labels are a good solution to the whole problem of publishing music but demonizing every single label, stating they add zero value to the process and we should only pay the direct costs is childish and simplistic.
Also, exaggerating costs to prove a point doesn't do much for your argument. $19-21USD for a CD? In Canada, several chains offer the newest and most popular CDS - the guaranteed money makers - as low as $9.99CAD ($7.69USD). Going to the most expensive stores, I have seen $20-25CAD prices, but using $19-21USD as an average price is grossly exaggerating.
If you don't like the prices, don't pay them. Don't buy the music. But don't confuse your unwillingness to pay (what you consider) a high price as your right to download music illegally.
I was speaking with my dad about this the other day and realized one small intangible benefit Apple has going for it.
Before 2000, there were several reasons why "you need a Windows PC" to do/use something. There were very few (I still can't think of any) reasons why you needed a Mac and couldn't use Windows. (I guess a few Mac-exclusive games, some software, but very little mainstream stuff).
Now, want an iPod? Mac only (out-of-the-box retail experience). Want to try out iTMS? Mac only. Windows support 'coming soon'.
I doubt Apple bet its profitability on the idea that once they get a few "Mac only" tasks, they would win. But it was one of the many intangible benefits of their decision.
If Apple began making everything Windows-centric first, they've just announced "Hey, Mac products aren't the way to profit" - which would definately affect their bottom line. Selling products/services windows-first might make them a few quick bucks on iPod/iTMS sales but they would be marking their computers with a big X. Don't underestimate the power of consumer opinion on purchases. ("hey, Sara's Apple computer is easy to use and can get all kinds of music...")
I'm still not sure if I would have made the choice they did but I also would have skipped over a lot of the intangible benefits.
This doesn't seem to be a difficult problem. I may have read this somewhere but no idea where.
Mark the filesystem as 'not cleanly shutdown' when the OS boots. If it shuts down properly, mark it 'clean shutdown'. The only remaining option, an improper shutdown, will leave the flag in the original state - 'not cleanly shutdown'.
Only thing to watch out for is a proper shutdown not updating the flag correctly, which should be rare - if you get to the 50th item on a shutdown list ("update flag"), you're pretty much set.
Your cheque: unemployment benefits, tax deductions for certain investments, a well-defended country, etc, etc. You've been receiving this cheque since birth and all walks of life have paid for it.
As mentioned earlier, I hope one day there is a way to penalize companies who support (ie: use) slave labour. My argument was that it isn't inherently wrong/immoral to 'shift' jobs away from where you happen to be.
Actually, I just took a small course that quickly covered many of the fallacies you accuse me of - I'm working on it:).
I'm not sure if I see the strawman - the original point I was addressing was "You think software companies or any other big corporation pass the savings to customers or compotent workers?". He was suggesting the savings were used negatively, I was pointing out they were likely being used positively.
I'll state the assumption I had for the slippery slope: people invest where they get the most back. If tech companies make tons of money suddenly, I count that as a GREAT place to shift my money. Other companies see this signal (large, new investment) and larger profits as "hey, if I can start a company and get those returns, *I* can be richer too". I guess it could be possible everyone will just dump billions into a market and no one thinks to get in on the action.
I never meant to state anything as a guarantee, just as an alternate (and valid) point of view. I will keep an eye on abusing rhetorical questions though.
I've tried to make sense of the point of your game and I have to admit, I can't. If you and I were the only two people in the world, the world is not suddenly poorer - wealth shifted, it didn't disappear. I could be missing the entire point though.
Quickest valid explaination I can think of: tech spending is down. Tech companies aren't making enough money so they're cutting costs drastically (moving ops to India is a risk).
Under that guess, the savings are keeping companies afloat. Just one plausible guess though.
For each company paying nothing in tax - which is NOT illegal (usually) - you will likely find a company paying in the billions. I can't find my economics text at the moment but several drug companies pay taxes to the order of several billion dollars.
Be careful about complaining that 'all that money' went into India instead of the US. You might not be here if not for the exploration(/exploitation) and investment of our ancestors. They weren't local either.
The US - no one - has the right to be the 'best' country. There will be good times (the boom of the 50s and 80s) where investing in the US is a great idea and there are times where it is not.
These are two distinct issues - money leaving the US and a wage disparity between uber-rich and dirt poor. And I question the morality of storming a firm because they have assets. If a non-profit got to be the size of Microsoft, would you storm them? How about a company who perfects nuclear fusion and efficient electric cars - without harming anyone or anything?
You can be rich and a decent human being. Or the devil. But I doubt it was the money that suddenly changed things.
Thanks for replying - I'll try to see if I can keep this slightly on topic;).
My original post actually includes the answer, wage to have the worker have a decent life is fair. Your example makes sense of course, however think how Turkey's textile and cloth industry collapsed because of sweatshops in far east. In any case, my point is, the labor force in the countries where there is no job security, no labor rights, no expectation of decent life because people are literally struggling to live, is being used to push the working class in industrialized societies further down. You might say "This is capitalism, that's what cooperations do." And I'd say "Exactly! And it is not fair. The people who work as the labor for a factory should live as decently as the person who put the capital for the factory. We are all human beings, wage slavery is still slavery."
As far as I can recall, India's middle class is booming. Time magazine has a good article on this; prospects for Indian technology grads have been great for many years now. I've had similar thoughts as you - companies which outsource work to firms that don't respect basic human rights should be penalized (tariffs, something). There are big problems with this but they don't apply here - India, in my semi-educated opinion, does not have problems with techies not receiving basic human rights. Jobs going their way is going to do a ton for India.
The argument of everyone living equally (capital owners having the same quality of life as a worker) is a little far fetched though. If the world just worked that way, I'd sure be happy. But I doubt the average high-school dropout's earning potential matches the average university graduate. This is fair to me - provided a base quality of life is available to everyone. Wage disparity is not necessarily bad for a society. As someone else in this thread mentioned, we tend to only see massive social upheaval when this disparity is huge. Looking at aggregate data, the average person is at least near middle class and has a decent home, car, luxury items and access to higher education.
Everything else - including the dig about my poor soul's exposure and subsequent corruption by propoganda - is too off topic to address.
You are not being fair. Big corporations, and in general the rich class, are continuously being subsidized by the government in US. It is not adapt or die. The environment is changing faster than we can adapt, we do not have lobbying power or PR money to change the environment to our needs, Microsoft does. Every human being has a right to live a decent life. You do not have to earn it, if it is denied to you by underpaying for your abilities, yes! you are being cheated.
All you accomplish through getting the government involved to prevent outsourcing is hurting a hundred people through higher prices for the sake of one person.
Who are these hundreds of people? You think software companies or any other big corporation pass the savings to customers or compotent workers? How is the weather on your planet?
A little cool, actually. Thanks for asking.
If you're seriously equating not being able to live a decent life because someone else on Earth can get the same (or similar) work done for a substantially cheaper wage, I don't think you planned on having a serious conversation.
Feeling particularly charitable today, I'll assume you did want to. To address each point:
1. Everyone is subsidized. You get tax breaks, benefits, etc. SOME companies pay no tax but as others have stated, businesses are responsible for a large amount of tax revenue - businesses as a whole get no free ride.
2. You say work is being sent to underpaid workers. What did you decide is the right wage? Is it ok if a company avoids outsourcing by moving jobs from say NYC to Boonieville, OH where living expenses and labour is cheaper?
3. Assuming the company cuts their salary expenses in half. Where did that money go? Your post seemed to be anti-outsourcing so I'll assume the worst: the evil company paid more tax and kept the money. Which now belongs to the shareholders. Who now invest more heavily in technology. Which causes other businesses to pop up in this very profitable field. Other companies hire more people (a few of which have to be local).
If the company was losing money, they may now have the option to buy better equipment or even just stay in business.
Just because you can't see the "hundreds of people" who benefit from suddenly lower costs doesn't mean they aren't there.
Losing a job feels horrible. Losing a job because you can't compete with others (in the same city, same state, same country, internationally...) might lead you to blame others. Again, like others have said - find a job and make yourself valuable. If you can work well with clients and can communicate clearly in the software industry (only one I've personally experienced) you're worth your weight in gold. You STILL aren't guaranteed a job though.
It looks like this (physically) small key plugs directly into the encryption/decryption chip (the interface looks like a USB plug but the picture doesn't show it well; the interface itself has a 4 pin header though).
It looks like to boot your computer, the key needs to be there. So make sure the police never show up while you are using the computer, never keep the key on you and keep your case open all the time so you can attach/detach it easily?
I'll take the flames for reading the article before posting, but ABit seems to be selling this to people who think that when the police/bad guys/whoever take your computer, they only take the hard drive.
Since they don't have a Secure ATA controller, they couldn't read the drive. They probably even need the same Secure ATA controller.
But if they have access to your hard drive, time to unscrew it, secure it, etc - why not take the entire machine?
The marketing people are probably patting themselves on the back right now but ABit just lost a fair bit of respect from me. If it is secure, post more information about "Secure" ATA and prove me wrong - if you want to hide details and claim it is secure, I'm worse than not interested in this tech. I'm less interested in Abit on the whole now.
I have to agree with the AAA comment; I've been playing with NiMH batteries for a while now and the AAs are great (mostly) but the AAAs have been very disappointing.
A little over a year ago, I replaced the alkaline AAAs in my Palm IIIxe with average NiMH AAA batteries. I'd swapped in new alkalines and was getting well over a month worth of usage. Once I moved to NiMH, I was getting 1 and a half weeks at best. (no difference in usage) I was told at the time that the NiMH batteries should meet or exceed the life on alkalines - so I sent them back.
Recently, I did the same thing with a better set (higher capacity) of AA/AAAs. Top-notch charger as well (delta-V cutoff instead of time/temperature). Most of my devices are AA now and I haven't had to swap them yet. I have one wireless mouse that is almost never used which I have had to replace the batteries with already.
The odd case is my optical, wireless mouse. I've already had to swap the batteries once. Alkalines again lasted 1-2 months (probably longer; I've been swapping between dead sets of AAs for a few weeks until my new batteries came in) but the NiMH (1900mAH) lasted two weeks.
I care less about the life of the batteries now - I've got a higher priority on environmentally-positive actions over my own lazyness - but for the devices I use, I haven't seen any superior or even decent performance out of these batteries.
Nothing special, just remotes, wireless keyboards and mice.
I'd still buy them but I wouldn't spend a dime for 'high' performance models without knowing *for sure* they'll match alkaline performance.
Just for comparison purposes, when I worked for an unnamed membership-only chain of warehouses and our site was in the 100 million (Canadian dollars, not REAL money) annual sales group.
Inventories were done twice a year and our shrinkage was average at 0.16% - 0.18%. Sounds great until you realize that the (preventable) amount you lose each year could buy a decent house. Each year. Or another 5 full time staff.
I think industry-wise this chain had lower than average shrinkage rates. Scary.
"Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 7 years!"
OpenBSD is one of the most trusted OSes of our generation. You've got REAL guts if you can say that about Windows v.anything. (Not bashing windows - it just has some common issues with security)
Ontario, and many other provinces, never got on the HST bandwagon for two official reasons:
1) GST is applied in more places (covers services that PST doesn't, I think more food items, books, etc) so this means a sales tax increase.
2) Atlantic provinces were offered $1 billion to switch over to the new system; Ontario (and other provinces) wanted a similiar incentive. But with a FAR larger part of the economy, they likely wanted a far larger brib...incentive.
I like the penny idea; statistically you're probably right. Even if we buy certain prices more often (no more random distribution) we might be out tiny fractions of a percent. Governments can even up tax rebates to those affected the most and get a few more votes.
I think students belong in the process but it may be a little naive for Ford to fire the engineers yet.
In regards to the engine and the environment, auto makers have a choice not unlike NASA's: the engine can be fuel-efficient, minimally poluting (NOT the same thing) or powerful - pick any two.
Time's most recent issue had an interesting stat - Model Ts got 25 MPG and the current average of Ford's fleet (not sure why it was a pick on Ford day) is 22.5MPG.
I think if options were offered - ie: a lower poluting, fuel-efficent but half as powerful engine - very few would choose the extra costs but the choice is there.
Ford is planning to release an Explorer in 2005 or 2006 that will get mileage similar to a Honda Civics (in that 'class' versus the SUV class). I haven't heard what the cost will be, but I don't see it changing the pretty sorry sitation we have now where all 'environmentally friendly' (hybrids, etc) account for tiny, tiny percentages of current sales. Something on the order of tens of thousands of cars - across three manufactures across THREE YEARS.
I think we should find a NIMBY-like acronym for people who can easily afford to purchase environment friendly cars (and one that meet their requirements) but complain about pollution.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, economics students are probably screaming at you - recent performance means nothing. Previous performance means nothing. I've been told that all publically known information about a stock is integrated in the stock price within a minute.
My first argument against this was "hey, what if the CEO that just came in is REALLY good and things well likely improve over the next few years?" That too is integrated into the stock price - analysts far smarter than us, with far more information that us, can judge how 'good' this CEO is at least as good as us.
What does that mean? If we predict the CEO is going to do a kickass job, in ONE minute, the stock price will reflect this - people will keep buying until something else looks better.
If said CEO will do an OK job, again, in a minute the stock price reflects this.
Stock price is pretty much a random variable - for every exception you can think of ("IBMs been doing great for 5 years...") there are FAR far more companies that have apparently 'random' stock prices.
Think of it like this: Intel managed to flip 20 heads in a row back in the 80s, AMDs doing 20 in a row now. What happens tomorrow? Is AMD more likely to keep flipping heads, or Intel? (Answer: Neither)
I can't remember who does this but a fairly prominent school has monkeys compete with expert stock analysts to see who can do better at picking stocks. And the monkeys throw darts. But they still perform similarly to the analysts (not quite as good, because the stock price isn't PERFECTLY random, experts can make SOME good inferences).
So, future investors: pick a few different markets, pick several stocks from each, and let your money stay there for a few decades. *Nothing* beats the after-tax returns of a diversified stock portfolio over the medium or long term. Index funds are great too.
I don't have the links anymore, but there is a good amount of research saying cellphone use is cellphone use, regardless of handsfree or other 'aids'.
When you use a cell phone in a car, you are distracted. As a previous poster said, at 55MPH, you are moving 80 feet per second.
A Ford Taurus is not a small car and comes in at 16 feet. You need at least another full second to brake.
How many people do you know give themselves 10 car lengths on a highway?
Cell phones are dangerous to use, period. Sadly, this hasn't stopped me from using a cell phone while driving but I minimize it and don't kid myself that handsfree = safe. Be careful.
Definately possible - general purpose CPUs have to do everything where graphics cards can specialize and do what little they can, faster.
Also, good point about comparing GHz to GHz - AMD CPUs do more per cycle than Intel, but are also clocked much lower. You could look at a subset of instructions (ie: FLoating-point OPerations (FLOPS)) but this only gives you a piece of the overall performance picture.
Without having read the article, my guess is they extrapolated (educated, math-based guess) how fast a 10GHz P4 would perform and compared the results that way.
I'd LOVE to see this tech built into a SETI or Folding@Home client (steroids version). (Imagine the kids - "Mom, I need the Radeon 9800XT to find a cure for Grandma's cancer!")
What do you mean, "missing letter"? The URL is "goatse.cx", the joke is that the top level domain is part of the word spelled in the domain name. See also cr.yp.to, www.the-b.org (although the page seems unrelated to the Borg, unfortunately...), and others that I can't seem to remember.
Good point - the first time I ran across it was before Slashdot implemented the [top level domain] trailing text at the end of every linked url. I should have said 'ending letterS' (goatse_____?) or maybe 'extra letters' (goats?) and I have to agree with MicroBerto, tubgirl is far more painful a memory than goatse.
For non-perl geeks like me (from here):
Most tasks only require a small subset of the Perl language. One of the guiding mottos for Perl development is "there's more than one way to do it" (TMTOWTDI, sometimes pronounced "tim toady"). Perl's learning curve is therefore shallow (easy to learn) and long (there's a whole lot you can do if you really want).
Just wait until s/he clicks on the goatse url to find out "what is that missing letter..."
Again, this announcement has nothing to do with people downloading songs. This is legal; police will NOT be showing up at your door and you will not be sued. I can download a billion songs and NOT pay a penny of any levy NOR will I get charged with a crime.
Uploaders though are distributing something of value for free, without have any right or permission to do so.
If you disagree with the idea of copyright, fine. Attack the law. But complaining that they're actually enforcing it is pretty weak.
I got part-way some of the higher-rated comments and haven't seen many people talk about a very important point:
Who's the audience and what's your goal?
At my university (medium-sized, well-known Canadian) first-year students have three places to 'start' in CS. New to computers, new to programming and some experience programming.
I've worked with the new to computers crowd, so there is my bias/experience. Database and theory were covered for two weeks in lectures and practical knowledge through three weeks of labs. We used Access - if we didn't, we would have needed triple the time to cover the basic (and maybe a little extra).
More first-year students take this course than there are CS student in the CS program. Their questions are "What is a primary key and why is it there?" NOT "why doesn't my outer join work?".
MySQL is not appropriate for this group. Given an entire course of databases, sure, but now you're targetting the CS major/minor crowd. How many arts/science students would take an entire course on DBs compared to a well-rounded, multiple application course?
Give the minors/majors a real DB. They HAVE to know this stuff at a rudimentary level or their CS degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Give the other students a once over with Access, tell them small companies and mom-and-pop stores use it for VERY small installations and point them to the DB course if they want to know more.
For the record, I've flown to Vancouver myself at approximately half the rate you suggested ($450 after fees I believe, but excluding the $10 airport improvement fees). A friend who lives in Vancouver pays roughly the same, slightly higher at times.
I'm not sure where $800 comes from, but even at that a quarter of that price, the 2 day train currently commuting Vancouver-Toronto isn't much of a deal. Even if high-speed cuts that to a day, or even 12 hours, it has to compete with a $400 3-4 hour flight.
What the heck, time to burn some karma.
The crux of this argument I think is 'since the labels make most of the money, and the artist doesn't, we aren't hurting (many) artists (much).'
As much as we demonize the labels, we agree that not a single person in the entire process does anything of value? No one found the band, hooked them up with some lyrics (yes, a minority of bands do all their own work), promoted them, bribed radios to play the songs, etc, etc, etc?
Yes, the labels are 'evil'. Yes, we don't really 'need' them, but artists seem to think there is no other way to succeed. Yes, the companies likely profit (I haven't seen a financial statement though).
But assuming you know enough about the entire process, the costs, the options the artists have (I can't think of any well-known bands, or even bands I hear on the radio, stating they're proudly label-free) and having the arrogance to skip to a conclusion amounting to "they steal from the artists so it's ok to download music for free" is a little hasty.
"Cheap commodity" does not begin to address the true costs of producing music.
Not for a second do I think labels are a good solution to the whole problem of publishing music but demonizing every single label, stating they add zero value to the process and we should only pay the direct costs is childish and simplistic.
Also, exaggerating costs to prove a point doesn't do much for your argument. $19-21USD for a CD? In Canada, several chains offer the newest and most popular CDS - the guaranteed money makers - as low as $9.99CAD ($7.69USD). Going to the most expensive stores, I have seen $20-25CAD prices, but using $19-21USD as an average price is grossly exaggerating.
If you don't like the prices, don't pay them. Don't buy the music. But don't confuse your unwillingness to pay (what you consider) a high price as your right to download music illegally.
I was speaking with my dad about this the other day and realized one small intangible benefit Apple has going for it.
Before 2000, there were several reasons why "you need a Windows PC" to do/use something. There were very few (I still can't think of any) reasons why you needed a Mac and couldn't use Windows. (I guess a few Mac-exclusive games, some software, but very little mainstream stuff).
Now, want an iPod? Mac only (out-of-the-box retail experience). Want to try out iTMS? Mac only. Windows support 'coming soon'.
I doubt Apple bet its profitability on the idea that once they get a few "Mac only" tasks, they would win. But it was one of the many intangible benefits of their decision.
If Apple began making everything Windows-centric first, they've just announced "Hey, Mac products aren't the way to profit" - which would definately affect their bottom line. Selling products/services windows-first might make them a few quick bucks on iPod/iTMS sales but they would be marking their computers with a big X. Don't underestimate the power of consumer opinion on purchases. ("hey, Sara's Apple computer is easy to use and can get all kinds of music...")
I'm still not sure if I would have made the choice they did but I also would have skipped over a lot of the intangible benefits.
This doesn't seem to be a difficult problem. I may have read this somewhere but no idea where.
Mark the filesystem as 'not cleanly shutdown' when the OS boots. If it shuts down properly, mark it 'clean shutdown'. The only remaining option, an improper shutdown, will leave the flag in the original state - 'not cleanly shutdown'.
Only thing to watch out for is a proper shutdown not updating the flag correctly, which should be rare - if you get to the 50th item on a shutdown list ("update flag"), you're pretty much set.
Your cheque: unemployment benefits, tax deductions for certain investments, a well-defended country, etc, etc. You've been receiving this cheque since birth and all walks of life have paid for it.
:).
As mentioned earlier, I hope one day there is a way to penalize companies who support (ie: use) slave labour. My argument was that it isn't inherently wrong/immoral to 'shift' jobs away from where you happen to be.
Actually, I just took a small course that quickly covered many of the fallacies you accuse me of - I'm working on it
I'm not sure if I see the strawman - the original point I was addressing was "You think software companies or any other big corporation pass the savings to customers or compotent workers?". He was suggesting the savings were used negatively, I was pointing out they were likely being used positively.
I'll state the assumption I had for the slippery slope: people invest where they get the most back. If tech companies make tons of money suddenly, I count that as a GREAT place to shift my money. Other companies see this signal (large, new investment) and larger profits as "hey, if I can start a company and get those returns, *I* can be richer too". I guess it could be possible everyone will just dump billions into a market and no one thinks to get in on the action.
I never meant to state anything as a guarantee, just as an alternate (and valid) point of view. I will keep an eye on abusing rhetorical questions though.
I've tried to make sense of the point of your game and I have to admit, I can't. If you and I were the only two people in the world, the world is not suddenly poorer - wealth shifted, it didn't disappear. I could be missing the entire point though.
Quickest valid explaination I can think of: tech spending is down. Tech companies aren't making enough money so they're cutting costs drastically (moving ops to India is a risk).
Under that guess, the savings are keeping companies afloat. Just one plausible guess though.
For each company paying nothing in tax - which is NOT illegal (usually) - you will likely find a company paying in the billions. I can't find my economics text at the moment but several drug companies pay taxes to the order of several billion dollars.
Be careful about complaining that 'all that money' went into India instead of the US. You might not be here if not for the exploration(/exploitation) and investment of our ancestors. They weren't local either.
The US - no one - has the right to be the 'best' country. There will be good times (the boom of the 50s and 80s) where investing in the US is a great idea and there are times where it is not.
These are two distinct issues - money leaving the US and a wage disparity between uber-rich and dirt poor. And I question the morality of storming a firm because they have assets. If a non-profit got to be the size of Microsoft, would you storm them? How about a company who perfects nuclear fusion and efficient electric cars - without harming anyone or anything?
You can be rich and a decent human being. Or the devil. But I doubt it was the money that suddenly changed things.
Thanks for replying - I'll try to see if I can keep this slightly on topic ;).
My original post actually includes the answer, wage to have the worker have a decent life is fair. Your example makes sense of course, however think how Turkey's textile and cloth industry collapsed because of sweatshops in far east. In any case, my point is, the labor force in the countries where there is no job security, no labor rights, no expectation of decent life because people are literally struggling to live, is being used to push the working class in industrialized societies further down. You might say "This is capitalism, that's what cooperations do." And I'd say "Exactly! And it is not fair. The people who work as the labor for a factory should live as decently as the person who put the capital for the factory. We are all human beings, wage slavery is still slavery."
As far as I can recall, India's middle class is booming. Time magazine has a good article on this; prospects for Indian technology grads have been great for many years now. I've had similar thoughts as you - companies which outsource work to firms that don't respect basic human rights should be penalized (tariffs, something). There are big problems with this but they don't apply here - India, in my semi-educated opinion, does not have problems with techies not receiving basic human rights. Jobs going their way is going to do a ton for India.
The argument of everyone living equally (capital owners having the same quality of life as a worker) is a little far fetched though. If the world just worked that way, I'd sure be happy. But I doubt the average high-school dropout's earning potential matches the average university graduate. This is fair to me - provided a base quality of life is available to everyone. Wage disparity is not necessarily bad for a society. As someone else in this thread mentioned, we tend to only see massive social upheaval when this disparity is huge. Looking at aggregate data, the average person is at least near middle class and has a decent home, car, luxury items and access to higher education.
Everything else - including the dig about my poor soul's exposure and subsequent corruption by propoganda - is too off topic to address.
You are not being fair. Big corporations, and in general the rich class, are continuously being subsidized by the government in US. It is not adapt or die. The environment is changing faster than we can adapt, we do not have lobbying power or PR money to change the environment to our needs, Microsoft does.
Every human being has a right to live a decent life. You do not have to earn it, if it is denied to you by underpaying for your abilities, yes! you are being cheated.
All you accomplish through getting the government involved to prevent outsourcing is hurting a hundred people through higher prices for the sake of one person.
Who are these hundreds of people? You think software companies or any other big corporation pass the savings to customers or compotent workers? How is the weather on your planet?
A little cool, actually. Thanks for asking.
If you're seriously equating not being able to live a decent life because someone else on Earth can get the same (or similar) work done for a substantially cheaper wage, I don't think you planned on having a serious conversation.
Feeling particularly charitable today, I'll assume you did want to. To address each point:
1. Everyone is subsidized. You get tax breaks, benefits, etc. SOME companies pay no tax but as others have stated, businesses are responsible for a large amount of tax revenue - businesses as a whole get no free ride.
2. You say work is being sent to underpaid workers. What did you decide is the right wage? Is it ok if a company avoids outsourcing by moving jobs from say NYC to Boonieville, OH where living expenses and labour is cheaper?
3. Assuming the company cuts their salary expenses in half. Where did that money go? Your post seemed to be anti-outsourcing so I'll assume the worst: the evil company paid more tax and kept the money. Which now belongs to the shareholders. Who now invest more heavily in technology. Which causes other businesses to pop up in this very profitable field. Other companies hire more people (a few of which have to be local).
If the company was losing money, they may now have the option to buy better equipment or even just stay in business.
Just because you can't see the "hundreds of people" who benefit from suddenly lower costs doesn't mean they aren't there.
Losing a job feels horrible. Losing a job because you can't compete with others (in the same city, same state, same country, internationally...) might lead you to blame others. Again, like others have said - find a job and make yourself valuable. If you can work well with clients and can communicate clearly in the software industry (only one I've personally experienced) you're worth your weight in gold. You STILL aren't guaranteed a job though.
A little more info:
It looks like this (physically) small key plugs directly into the encryption/decryption chip (the interface looks like a USB plug but the picture doesn't show it well; the interface itself has a 4 pin header though).
It looks like to boot your computer, the key needs to be there. So make sure the police never show up while you are using the computer, never keep the key on you and keep your case open all the time so you can attach/detach it easily?
Nice idea though. Just not entirely practical.
I'll take the flames for reading the article before posting, but ABit seems to be selling this to people who think that when the police/bad guys/whoever take your computer, they only take the hard drive.
Since they don't have a Secure ATA controller, they couldn't read the drive. They probably even need the same Secure ATA controller.
But if they have access to your hard drive, time to unscrew it, secure it, etc - why not take the entire machine?
The marketing people are probably patting themselves on the back right now but ABit just lost a fair bit of respect from me. If it is secure, post more information about "Secure" ATA and prove me wrong - if you want to hide details and claim it is secure, I'm worse than not interested in this tech. I'm less interested in Abit on the whole now.
I have to agree with the AAA comment; I've been playing with NiMH batteries for a while now and the AAs are great (mostly) but the AAAs have been very disappointing.
A little over a year ago, I replaced the alkaline AAAs in my Palm IIIxe with average NiMH AAA batteries. I'd swapped in new alkalines and was getting well over a month worth of usage. Once I moved to NiMH, I was getting 1 and a half weeks at best. (no difference in usage) I was told at the time that the NiMH batteries should meet or exceed the life on alkalines - so I sent them back.
Recently, I did the same thing with a better set (higher capacity) of AA/AAAs. Top-notch charger as well (delta-V cutoff instead of time/temperature). Most of my devices are AA now and I haven't had to swap them yet. I have one wireless mouse that is almost never used which I have had to replace the batteries with already.
The odd case is my optical, wireless mouse. I've already had to swap the batteries once. Alkalines again lasted 1-2 months (probably longer; I've been swapping between dead sets of AAs for a few weeks until my new batteries came in) but the NiMH (1900mAH) lasted two weeks.
I care less about the life of the batteries now - I've got a higher priority on environmentally-positive actions over my own lazyness - but for the devices I use, I haven't seen any superior or even decent performance out of these batteries.
Nothing special, just remotes, wireless keyboards and mice.
I'd still buy them but I wouldn't spend a dime for 'high' performance models without knowing *for sure* they'll match alkaline performance.
Jeff
Just for comparison purposes, when I worked for an unnamed membership-only chain of warehouses and our site was in the 100 million (Canadian dollars, not REAL money) annual sales group.
Inventories were done twice a year and our shrinkage was average at 0.16% - 0.18%. Sounds great until you realize that the (preventable) amount you lose each year could buy a decent house. Each year. Or another 5 full time staff.
I think industry-wise this chain had lower than average shrinkage rates. Scary.
Actually, the front page of openbsd states:
"Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 7 years!"
OpenBSD is one of the most trusted OSes of our generation. You've got REAL guts if you can say that about Windows v.anything. (Not bashing windows - it just has some common issues with security)
This is offtopic, but this entire topic is :)
Ontario, and many other provinces, never got on the HST bandwagon for two official reasons:
1) GST is applied in more places (covers services that PST doesn't, I think more food items, books, etc) so this means a sales tax increase.
2) Atlantic provinces were offered $1 billion to switch over to the new system; Ontario (and other provinces) wanted a similiar incentive. But with a FAR larger part of the economy, they likely wanted a far larger brib...incentive.
I like the penny idea; statistically you're probably right. Even if we buy certain prices more often (no more random distribution) we might be out tiny fractions of a percent. Governments can even up tax rebates to those affected the most and get a few more votes.
If you are using a TV-Card, playing a game on your GFX and doing 80MB/s over the network, I *want* your computer!
I think students belong in the process but it may be a little naive for Ford to fire the engineers yet.
In regards to the engine and the environment, auto makers have a choice not unlike NASA's: the engine can be fuel-efficient, minimally poluting (NOT the same thing) or powerful - pick any two.
Time's most recent issue had an interesting stat - Model Ts got 25 MPG and the current average of Ford's fleet (not sure why it was a pick on Ford day) is 22.5MPG.
I think if options were offered - ie: a lower poluting, fuel-efficent but half as powerful engine - very few would choose the extra costs but the choice is there.
Ford is planning to release an Explorer in 2005 or 2006 that will get mileage similar to a Honda Civics (in that 'class' versus the SUV class). I haven't heard what the cost will be, but I don't see it changing the pretty sorry sitation we have now where all 'environmentally friendly' (hybrids, etc) account for tiny, tiny percentages of current sales. Something on the order of tens of thousands of cars - across three manufactures across THREE YEARS.
I think we should find a NIMBY-like acronym for people who can easily afford to purchase environment friendly cars (and one that meet their requirements) but complain about pollution.