IIRC, North American grid system differs from the entire world. The entire world uses 220/50, and not 127/60. Hence the waste of a switch in most of the power supplies.
And what about different electrical outlet' shapes?
I have had a girlfriend from Sweden visiting me, and she brought a converter that had about 6 or 7 different forks. Only that allowed her to recharge her cell phone and digital camera that would otherwise be incompatible.
The West does have enough tanks and missiles to wipe out all Muslims, but it does not have any guts to do so. Muslims have guts to butcher all westerners, but they don't have planes and missiles to do that.
Ability to deal with losses brings us to the biggest underlying difference between the Western civilization and the traditional cultures. It is K- versus R- reproductive strategies.
K means a few offsprings, most survive, life has a very high value. R - millions of offsprings, a few survive, price of life is nothing. Now bring it into human realm, and you will be able to trace several pieces of the culture (such as "Live free or die" or "Whatever it takes") to the R-strategy times. And now nobody wants to die - neither for the country nor for anything else.
This is why Western type society will probably never commit genocide even if its survival will depend on it.
Here is the main article: http://www.cofe.ru/appleubb/noncgi/Forum13/HTML/00 0763.html
It has some links, but ones you must read are two Dolnick's articles.
Also of interest might be http://www.cofe.ru/appleubb/noncgi/Forum13/HTML/00 0420.html
where I talk about China and Iraq, and http://www.cofe.ru/appleubb/noncgi/Forum13/HTML/00 1039-2.html where I talk about liberals and a bit about human's development.
If you have a feedback, publish it there or e-mail me to the address in the profile at cofe.ru (my nickname is mu-mu;).
There are two problems. 1) You don't have the need for a 1000 more educated employees in France; you can't afford to pay them more, and you can't just educate 1000 uneducated workers that lost their jobs.
They won't care much about somewhat* cheaper prices in stores if they don't have any income. And they will need to be fed by the society through the taxation of ones who still have jobs.
2) Look at Taiwan and Japan; as soon as manufacturing took off there, it became inefficient just to use foreign designs and have foreign managers. Modern production requires a lot of skilled professionals, so they invest money in local universities and schools.
I have read an article in Forbes a few years ago. When Sony bought out troubled Aiwa in mid-eighties, they have installed a manager who was the first one to build factories in Taiwan. It resulted in savings that allowed Aiwa to slash prices and become number 3 in market share.
About USSR. No bigwig risked a bullet in their head, even though they lived somewhat differet life (like Orwell's "Internal Party"). Some of their children studied in the same schools with "commoners". It were some of the universities where mere mortals could hardly get.
As for the child rearing, guess how many women can be housewives in the modern US, and how much time can working parents afford to their children. And it might be better or worse to be in a "community" rather than have an individual babysitter. I'd say that lack of parents' attention is a problem of any technologically advanced society.
Speaking of the command economy, it is not driven by the scarcity. In the USSR it was driven by the ideology, so the consumer goods were a second, if not the third, priority. It could have been the other way around.
Also, I would not put all the crap on just Communists. Any system based on the hierarchy is like that. Saudi rulers don't differ form Soviet Communists or Chinese Emperors that much. It was the genius of Orwell who had shown the 3-level system of such a society.
It matters a lot to a country how well my software streamlines production.
Have you heard about the curse of efficiency?
Every inefficiency has some group of people feeding from it. This inefficiency (and their living) is paid by the general populace through the taxes or higher purchase prices.
Making some inefficient process efficient causes these people to lose their source of living. Since we have both democracy (one person - one voice), consumer-driven economy (then more I consume, then better it is for the economy) and more or less advanced social institutions (nobody dies from hunger; society feeds them one way or another), the government is directly interested in preserving these inefficiencies.
However, it can't always stop the progress (if we can call it progress).
As for the US becoming a superpower, WWII played a great role as an enabler. However, it was not the biggest contributing factor. The biggest factor is IMHO competitiveness that is engrained in the American culture. It has always been survival of the fittest until the most recent times when whiny leftists took over the media.
I've had big article on the subject, but it is in Russian. This article shows real goals of globalization, and why/how it is gonna work. It shows why the globalization is absolutely necessary to save the humankind.
On one hand, locking out disabled/Lynx/et al might lead us to the IE5+ only Web as soon as 70-80% will use it. It will totally contradict the premises on which the Web was created, the premises of equal access for all clients and all platforms.
On the other hand, we live in a democratic society, and the democracy is the power of a majority. The way everything is moved, there is a mainstream/commodity market that tries to grow to a 100%, and there are niches.
And these representing a niche DO NOT HAVE A RIGHT TO DEMAND from the majority something that makes everyone go extra mile. Society can give it to some minority, but you do not have inalienable right for having the world changed to your liking.
When a telephone or insurance company has Spanish, Russian or Vietnamese hotline, it is a business decision or a cortesy, not the right for the minorities to speak with anyone they want in their language or decline to pay bills that are printed in English. And this can be related to many situations. Thus, a Muslim employee at a factory cannot demand the line where everyone is working stopped because he needs to pray 5 times a day. He can ASK, and the management MIGHT accomodate his request, but it is not his right to sue for "religious discrimination".
However, in the modern American culture it is assumed that everyone has a right to demand from the society not just to accomodate their peculiarities, but often go extra mile for it and feel guilt for belonging to the mainstream. It spawns an attitude describen in the previous comment: "I think society needs to reshuffle its priorities. Anyway, for people like you and me, I've said in another response to my post that there need to be free (supported by taxpayers, perhaps) or cheap (same) tools to make sites more accessible."
This is why race-based "affirmative action" is morally wrong. This way you don't make it right while bringing up morally corrupt whinies, who perceive themselves as plaintiffs and the world as defendant.
Jews who were always discriminated against never asked for special rights, just equal rights, and this should be that way for everybody.
Sure, some of them are necessary. For example, there are places in Eastern Oregon where you won't be able to get in winter without BIG SUV or pickup. However, statistics tells that 95% of SUVs never leave the pavement.
The real reason for the proliferation of SUVs and other big cars lies in the aggression and fear (hence the new "road rage" scarecrow). Read some books on Ethology (notably Conrad Z. Lorenz's (sp?) "Aggression", and your understanding of the society and humans will jump to the next level.
... law enforcement is already in part corporate run. Highway Robbery, Inc is a subsidiary owned by states and counties; they are funded by our tax dollars and inflict additional taxes on us - driving taxes.
1) Very clean drinking water; 2) A lot of cheap electricity (about 40% of power is from the hydro and 1% is from nuclear vs 7% and 20% for the entire States). 3) Enormous tourist potential. 4) Being between California and Washington and cheaper helps the technology.
Decreasing the sizes of cars will help saving fuel and reducing emissions at much greater scale, but it will not happen any time soon (the reasoning is too long to type, read some books on Ethology (like Aggression by Conrad Z Lorenz (sp?)) for more info).
The reason Sun can afford owning Java is that they are totally MS-free. As for IBM, they are seriously in bed with BillG because of their PC/PC Servers division (even though they don't really like it), and owning Java will create a lot of strain in this already unhealthy relationship.
But what about the bookmarks? Title bar problem is at most an annoyance whether the bookmark one is a show stopper for me; it prevents me from sending Netscape 4.72 to bite the dust.
I have a problem with Mozilla 9.6 on Windoze, but I'm not sure it's a bug.
I visit a lot of Cyrillic sites, and the header of the window that is encoded in cyrillic is always shown as a set of question marks. Even worse, when I bookmark such a site, the letters in Bookmarks are not shown as cyrillic but as additional latin symbols (the same way as if a cyrillic page is shown in Western encoding).
I could have made a shitty web site just like that for much less "
Don't you remember a company that paid 1bln for a website called slashdot.org?;-)
The thing is that these outrageous sums were part of the game these times. Worthless companies were buying other worthless companies with their potentially worthless stock.
I don't think they have wasted much cash on BlueMountain (I might be mistaken though).
Even though I'm in Oregon that is supposedly transferred, I'm out of luck.
The problem is that I used to have a static IP on my UNIX box. All the automatic updates were for DHCP'd Windoze (this is why their instruction starts with "reboot"). I was not able to find an instruction for what I should do, so I think about saying "Fuck it!" and going back to friendly local provider with a 56K since I live too far from CO for DSL:-(.
Slashdot Mirror
SPAMmers must die ;-).
>I suppose you'd also favor chopping off someone's hand when they steal something?
;-).
Nope, I'm from Russia, and from Iran
When doing what I propose I don't harm the person; I just make it impossible for him to continue wasting my time.
As for the law, with all due respect to it, this kind of crime (SPAM) pays as of now.
I have discovered that many of these advertizements don't need a valid return address.
Having a website link for these who want to make an order is enough.
Is it possible to "SPAM back" someone by the means of /. effect?
/.-ers sending angry mail to some sites/accounts each day ...
Imagine a couple hundred thousand
One thing though is to somehow avoid showing your own address in order not to get into SPAMmers databases.
Written before the war.
http://sqft87.pisem.net/tiger/iraq.html
IIRC, North American grid system differs from the entire world. The entire world uses 220/50, and not 127/60. Hence the waste of a switch in most of the power supplies.
And what about different electrical outlet' shapes?
I have had a girlfriend from Sweden visiting me, and she brought a converter that had about 6 or 7 different forks. Only that allowed her to recharge her cell phone and digital camera that would otherwise be incompatible.
US is getting there - slowly but steadily.
First of all, all packaged groceries have both Metric and American numbers printed on the package.
Second, some corporations who want to sell their goods internationally have to move to Metric internally. I have heard of Boeing doing that.
Also, US Geological Survey and some other government organizations that international in their essence have moved to Metric.
Still, it would be really hard to convert the entire country.
As a foreighner living in the US, I have had some pains getting used to the non-Metric system.
I can use gallons for volume, miles and feet for distance, but the temperature is a bitch.
Even after eight years here I still need to convert into Celsius each time.
Oh, I've forgotten to add "modern Western society".
If you look back, the K-strategy penetrated Western culture pretty recently. I think it bacame part of the mainstream only during the Vietnam war.
... how a society can deal with losses.
The West does have enough tanks and missiles to wipe out all Muslims, but it does not have any guts to do so. Muslims have guts to butcher all westerners, but they don't have planes and missiles to do that.
Ability to deal with losses brings us to the biggest underlying difference between the Western civilization and the traditional cultures. It is K- versus R- reproductive strategies.
K means a few offsprings, most survive, life has a very high value. R - millions of offsprings, a few survive, price of life is nothing. Now bring it into human realm, and you will be able to trace several pieces of the culture (such as "Live free or die" or "Whatever it takes") to the R-strategy times. And now nobody wants to die - neither for the country nor for anything else.
This is why Western type society will probably never commit genocide even if its survival will depend on it.
Here is the main article: http://www.cofe.ru/appleubb/noncgi/Forum13/HTML/00 0763.html
0 0420.html0 1039-2.html where I talk about liberals and a bit about human's development.
;).
It has some links, but ones you must read are two Dolnick's articles.
Also of interest might be http://www.cofe.ru/appleubb/noncgi/Forum13/HTML/0
where I talk about China and Iraq, and http://www.cofe.ru/appleubb/noncgi/Forum13/HTML/0
If you have a feedback, publish it there or e-mail me to the address in the profile at cofe.ru (my nickname is mu-mu
Cheaper labor is not just lower wages.
o ct 2002/tc20021023_1339.htm
2 00 2/nf20021023_1209.htm
It is also much less spent on benefits (healthcare), and labor funds, and labor-related litigation. Lawyers made EVERYTHING US EXTREMELY expensive.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct
There are two problems.
_ 43 /b3805001.htm
1) You don't have the need for a 1000 more educated employees in France; you can't afford to pay them more, and you can't just educate 1000 uneducated workers that lost their jobs.
They won't care much about somewhat* cheaper prices in stores if they don't have any income. And they will need to be fed by the society through the taxation of ones who still have jobs.
2) Look at Taiwan and Japan; as soon as manufacturing took off there, it became inefficient just to use foreign designs and have foreign managers. Modern production requires a lot of skilled professionals, so they invest money in local universities and schools.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02
In a short time they take over design, then they take over research. Who cares than that a company is partially owned by some American investors?
Majority of the American population are not these investors.
*Somewhat cheaper because the production and delivery cost is just a part of the retail price. Some goods have pretty high retail margin.
First of all, about Sony.
I have read an article in Forbes a few years ago.
When Sony bought out troubled Aiwa in mid-eighties, they have installed a manager who was the first one to build factories in Taiwan. It resulted in savings that allowed Aiwa to slash prices and become number 3 in market share.
About USSR.
No bigwig risked a bullet in their head, even though they lived somewhat differet life (like Orwell's "Internal Party"). Some of their children studied in the same schools with "commoners". It were some of the universities where mere mortals could hardly get.
As for the child rearing, guess how many women can be housewives in the modern US, and how much time can working parents afford to their children. And it might be better or worse to be in a "community" rather than have an individual babysitter. I'd say that lack of parents' attention is a problem of any technologically advanced society.
Speaking of the command economy, it is not driven by the scarcity. In the USSR it was driven by the ideology, so the consumer goods were a second, if not the third, priority. It could have been the other way around.
Also, I would not put all the crap on just Communists. Any system based on the hierarchy is like that. Saudi rulers don't differ form Soviet Communists or Chinese Emperors that much. It was the genius of Orwell who had shown the 3-level system of such a society.
It matters a lot to a country how well my software streamlines production.
Have you heard about the curse of efficiency?
Every inefficiency has some group of people feeding from it. This inefficiency (and their living) is paid by the general populace through the taxes or higher purchase prices.
Making some inefficient process efficient causes these people to lose their source of living. Since we have both democracy (one person - one voice), consumer-driven economy (then more I consume, then better it is for the economy) and more or less advanced social institutions (nobody dies from hunger; society feeds them one way or another), the government is directly interested in preserving these inefficiencies.
However, it can't always stop the progress (if we can call it progress).
As for the US becoming a superpower, WWII played a great role as an enabler. However, it was not the biggest contributing factor. The biggest factor is IMHO competitiveness that is engrained in the American culture. It has always been survival of the fittest until the most recent times when whiny leftists took over the media.
I've had big article on the subject, but it is in Russian. This article shows real goals of globalization, and why/how it is gonna work. It shows why the globalization is absolutely necessary to save the humankind.
I see both sides of this debate.
On one hand, locking out disabled/Lynx/et al might lead us to the IE5+ only Web as soon as 70-80% will use it. It will totally contradict the premises on which the Web was created, the premises of equal access for all clients and all platforms.
On the other hand, we live in a democratic society, and the democracy is the power of a majority. The way everything is moved, there is a mainstream/commodity market that tries to grow to a 100%, and there are niches.
And these representing a niche DO NOT HAVE A RIGHT TO DEMAND from the majority something that makes everyone go extra mile. Society can give it to some minority, but you do not have inalienable right for having the world changed to your liking.
When a telephone or insurance company has Spanish, Russian or Vietnamese hotline, it is a business decision or a cortesy, not the right for the minorities to speak with anyone they want in their language or decline to pay bills that are printed in English. And this can be related to many situations. Thus, a Muslim employee at a factory cannot demand the line where everyone is working stopped because he needs to pray 5 times a day. He can ASK, and the management MIGHT accomodate his request, but it is not his right to sue for "religious discrimination".
However, in the modern American culture it is assumed that everyone has a right to demand from the society not just to accomodate their peculiarities, but often go extra mile for it and feel guilt for belonging to the mainstream. It spawns an attitude describen in the previous comment: "I think society needs to reshuffle its priorities.
Anyway, for people like you and me, I've said in another response to my post that there need to be free (supported by taxpayers, perhaps) or cheap (same) tools to make sites more accessible."
This is why race-based "affirmative action" is morally wrong. This way you don't make it right while bringing up morally corrupt whinies, who perceive themselves as plaintiffs and the world as defendant.
Jews who were always discriminated against never asked for special rights, just equal rights, and this should be that way for everybody.
Sure, some of them are necessary. For example, there are places in Eastern Oregon where you won't be able to get in winter without BIG SUV or pickup. However, statistics tells that 95% of SUVs never leave the pavement.
The real reason for the proliferation of SUVs and other big cars lies in the aggression and fear (hence the new "road rage" scarecrow). Read some books on Ethology (notably Conrad Z. Lorenz's (sp?) "Aggression", and your understanding of the society and humans will jump to the next level.
... law enforcement is already in part corporate run. Highway Robbery, Inc is a subsidiary owned by states and counties; they are funded by our tax dollars and inflict additional taxes on us - driving taxes.
Oregon has some advantages over other states.
1) Very clean drinking water;
2) A lot of cheap electricity (about 40% of power is from the hydro and 1% is from nuclear vs 7% and 20% for the entire States).
3) Enormous tourist potential.
4) Being between California and Washington and cheaper helps the technology.
What about all these unnecessary SUVs?
Decreasing the sizes of cars will help saving fuel and reducing emissions at much greater scale, but it will not happen any time soon (the reasoning is too long to type, read some books on Ethology (like Aggression by Conrad Z Lorenz (sp?)) for more info).
Try thinking what will BillG say about it.
The reason Sun can afford owning Java is that they are totally MS-free. As for IBM, they are seriously in bed with BillG because of their PC/PC Servers division (even though they don't really like it), and owning Java will create a lot of strain in this already unhealthy relationship.
Thanks, Hekan.
But what about the bookmarks? Title bar problem is at most an annoyance whether the bookmark one is a show stopper for me; it prevents me from sending Netscape 4.72 to bite the dust.
I have a problem with Mozilla 9.6 on Windoze, but I'm not sure it's a bug.
;-)
I visit a lot of Cyrillic sites, and the header of the window that is encoded in cyrillic is always shown as a set of question marks. Even worse, when I bookmark such a site, the letters in Bookmarks are not shown as cyrillic but as additional latin symbols (the same way as if a cyrillic page is shown in Western encoding).
Is it Mozilla or just silly me?
"Are you serious?
;-)
Oh my god.
I could have made a shitty web site just like that for much less "
Don't you remember a company that paid 1bln for a website called slashdot.org?
The thing is that these outrageous sums were part of the game these times. Worthless companies were buying other worthless companies with their potentially worthless stock.
I don't think they have wasted much cash on BlueMountain (I might be mistaken though).
Some crap seems to go on.
:-(.
Even though I'm in Oregon that is supposedly transferred, I'm out of luck.
The problem is that I used to have a static IP on my UNIX box. All the automatic updates were for DHCP'd Windoze (this is why their instruction starts with "reboot"). I was not able to find an instruction for what I should do, so I think about saying "Fuck it!" and going back to friendly local provider with a 56K since I live too far from CO for DSL