An anonymous reader sends in this piece about chimeras - not the ones with a THAC0 of 11 [...]
The implications of a "humanzee" is enough to keep philosophers and religious thinkers busy for quite a while.
And as we look forward to a real world actually populated with creatures of our own devising, we look back to primitive role-playing technologies such as THAC0. Please people, check out the 3.5 edition D&D system. It doesn't suck. Gone are oddities like negative AC and convoluted "multiclass" and "splitclass" shenanigans. These pre-3rd Ed. D&D references make me sad.
I watched all three debates, as well as a Frontline special sunday night about the history of the two candidates (yay TiVo!), and this statement is just factually incorrect. I don't blame you, though, I've heard it a lot recently and I didn't have any info to verify it's veracity. I was merely anti-Bush before getting some information - now I am very pro-Kerry.
Kerry has been speaking out against unjust war and war atrocities since he was young and in Vietnam. He was instrumental in exposing the Iran-Contra scandal of the 80s, because he didn't feel that Communism was enough of a reason to support war. He spoke out against the Gulf war, and even against the Iraq war - though he somehow felt he just had to vote for the latter, which is disappointing to me. I guess his argument was that he was voting to give the authority to the president to use force in Iraq, but he wanted the president to wield that authority against Saddam, not the force itself, if that make any sense. But Kerry has always been very strongly anti-war/pro-diplomacy.
Bush, on the other hand, while using family favors to get into the national guard (a tactic many employed to avoid being sent overseas) - was vocal about how Vietnam was the right thing to do, and that we needed to unleash the full might of the US military to win. Bush has ALWAYS been Hawkish, even while simultaneously managing to avoid actual combat.
That's just the major important policy stance that seperates them this election. They are vastly different candidates, and neither are particularly moderate, which is where I tend to prefer leaders. Kerry is definitely closer to where I sit, though.
...and they don't have as much influence as you think.
I believed this until Bush came into office. I really did. When he was elected, I wasn't happy, but I said to people, I actually said this, "What's the worst he could do?" 4 years later, my jaw is on the floor and my eyes are glazed over a bit. When a President has a national emergency and a sympethetic legislature, he can make radical, influential changes.
I agree that Stewart should put his money where is mouth is and coordinate honest, factual public debate. If you saw him talk to Rudy Giuliani after the first presidental debate, he did that, he tore him a new factual asshole about Giuliani's (and the GOP's) blatant misreading of everything Kerry said that night - in as polite a way as possible, of course, in the standard Stewart mannerism.
But, I disagree with two things in your post:
First, the fact that shows like Crossfire get good ratings doesn't enter into his argument. He is saying that as pundits on CNN, they have an ethical RESPONSIBILITY to be honest, not to twist facts according to the parties' wishes, and to actually discuss civilliy the issues of the day. It has nothing to do with ratings - they make a lot of money with all sorts of different kinds of shows. In order to make that money, they have to acquire the media POWER to get viewers, and to be a respected news organization. But the COST is not just the dollars to do so, it's also an ethical responsibility to provide real coverage, discussion, information, and so on to the public so everyone can make a decision on november 2 informed by the facts, and not "spin". That they instead provide argument shows where shills from both parties yell the party lies at each other is a disgrace and an outrage. Even MORE so because people get suckered into watching it. The demographic is people just a little too high-brow for Springer. But at least Springer isn't spreading biased misinformation about important political issues, he just perpetuates stereotypes and paints a caricature of America for the world to hate. Not nearly as bad.
The second thing is Stewart's hypocrisy. I agree he is a hypocrite - if he would stop shirking HIS responsibility with the excuse that he's a comedian, he could do a lot of good in this area that he was just speaking out against. He is in a good position to do this. But, I just wanted to point out that just because someone is a hypocrite doesn't mean they are wrong. There is no correlation.
This phenomenon issomething that consistent readers of Slashdot will find American programmers are incapable of.
Now HERE is a complete sentence. subject: This phenomenon verb: is object: something
"that consistent readers of Slashdot will find American programmers are incapable of" is a restrictive clause, used to specify which particular "something" the speaker is talking about. Without the "This phenomenon is" there is no subject and there is no verb because of that "that".
Now what is being ignored is that using sentence fragments is perfectly acceptable in casual, particularly spoken, English. One can even find incomplete sentences in published fiction! Gasp!
-If (American Programmer, for the record)
I was going to add a smarmy remark about project managers to compete with the line-item crack... but it's not worth it - since I'm right.
But for you to say that Clinton didn't commit a crime and Bush did really shows that you don't really give a shit about facts.
In my mind there are two interpretations of "criminal." One is that the letter of the law was broken. This places no value judgment on the action, it is just a statement of fact that a law that was agreed upon by the government was broken.
The second interpretation has nothing to do with what the law is but represents a VALUE judgement on the action. i.e. A crime against society or humanity - independent of the laws we happen to have in effect.
Clinton is a criminal in fact, he did lie under oath. But, that doesn't mean what he did (lying under oath) was actually damaging to the country, or really meaningful in any way. He shouldn't have been asked the questions he was asked under oath, they were none of America's business. It was just a manipulation of people and laws to entrap Clinton into making a felonious mistake under extreme pressure. He probably should not have lied, but like whatever.
In order for us to have a functioning society we HAVE to maintain a rational, common-sense eye on our laws and how they are applied to people. Usually this is where Judges come in. Laws are the law, but they aren't necessarily Right. And what is Right is of course different to everyone... but it seems strange to me to say that an action that breaks a law, yet has no real consequences to anyone warrants more consideration and concern than an action that is perfectly legal within our system, but places many people in harm's way, has several distinct costs, and has dubious gains to the country and its people (I'm talking about invading Iraq, if you hadn't guessed).
I am not someone who believes that the law is sacred and should be always fully upheld to the letter. Humans write laws, and people are never really sure of the consequences until they see it in action. Maybe a law is valuable in 90% of all cases, but is actually UNJUST to uphold in 10% of the cases. Should we punish people unjustly because of some situation or viewpoint unconsidered by the lawmakers?
I have to ask how you can possibly judge any tv series uninteresting w/o watching a single episode?
Hehehe... well, easy, but not necessarily accurately, I suppose. Maybe their advertising just sucked. I saw the ads a lot and not one made me want to watch the TV series. Also, I'm already wary of TV series spawned from movies, as they are usually pretty bad, with the exception of M*A*S*H. Just like computer games spawned from movies. With a couple exceptions usually really bad. So when I see an ad and it seems crappy and it's based on a movie, and it's sci-fi - I'll wait for someone to reccommend it to me rather than waste my time.
"I don't care what anyone says, software is an artform. Repeat ARTFORM. The trap is that it looks like a scientific, engineering exercise. Its not."
I disagree. Some software is art but most is not. The vast majority of software simply implements some well-defined functionality (eg. calculate some equation; display something on screen; parse some input; etc). There is very little art in any of this. There are only a few finite ways of doing these things. The only art in software is with designing something new or innovative. If you were designing a new GUI, that would be art. Or if you were implementing some website. Or whatever. And clearly entertainment products can be considered art (eg. computer games).
That's what I'm talkin' about! Some software is not art - this is what gets exported. The software that IS art, not just GUI and Game development, but any innovative research and development, this is what we need to strive to maintain our superiority in. This necessarily means having a creative and educated populace, and an environment that makes it easier to get new ideas to the marketplace (i.e. small business incentives).
Your major problem is opening your contribution to a civil and potentially constructive discussion with a personal insult. To put it in terms that you can understand: the people you want to convince (assuming that is your goal) won't listen to what you have to say once you take a combative tone.
I'm talking about surviving as a group here. That's what I want, for the US to not only survive, but prosper. I just think that levying punitive taxes and otherwise hiding from globalization will HURT those survival chances more than help. Our economy is in competition with the rest of the world already. So if we retard our economy by looking at what everyone wants to do and then overtaxing that to discourage it, we are just going to be in a worse position later. Maybe we'll have kept our jobs for 10 more years... maybe.
Sure, in the short term it leaves more money for overpaid executives. Believe me, I dislike that aspect of all this, too! But it also means more money for Indians. Then because Indians have more money, their stores realize, hey, they can charge more for everything in Bangalore or wherever (just like they do here in the S.F. Bay Area). Then the poorer people that do the jobs that can't be exported, like being a domestic servant or roti-flipper, in Bangalore can't afford to live off of whatever crap they make, so they have to get paid more or they have to leave the area. So that means the engineer that has to pay more for a McAloo Tikki and someone to do his laundry will demand more money! You can see where this is going. The global equilibrium will be established quicker than you think.
"And what happens when those skills get sent overseas? Are people in India or Korea any less creative than Americans?"
Well, that would be the point in cultivating a creative and educated populace. In a global economy, you don't just compete with your neighbor, but with people on the other side of the world. So, ideally, yeah, we would strive to be a more creative and educated a populace. That would give us a distinct advantage.
Also, what skills are most effective to get sent overseas? It's not product development or research. More effective are the jobs that require technical skill and little innovation. If you export your product development team, do you export your product managers as well? It starts to get inefficient when product management isn't in the same building as development, let alone not in the same country. If you do export your product management, then you lose a great deal of control over what the hell your team is even doing. This is where you want me to provide all sorts of proof and statistics - sorry, I don't have it, I'm not a sociologist or an investigative reporter. Lucky for me, I'm pretty sure that you are not, either. Anyway, I think it's still valuable to have a discussion based on anecdotal evidence, since most of this is conjecture.
When new industries get created, it is also possible that they are new local service industries. You are correct in that we cannot export burger flippers, waitstaff, and plumbers. If we increase the rate of invention, we increase the chances of creating the types of jobs you like as well as other kinds of jobs that could get exported 5-10 years later.
Another thing about a global economy is that as demand increases for cheap overseas labor, the overseas labor realizes they can raise their prices and get more money. Long-term, yes, it is clearly not in their interest to reduce their single competitive advantage, but, just like Americans, most of them are going to think in terms of short-term gains like "more money now." We are already seeing that in India the cost of hiring engineers is not as spectacularly cheap as it used to be. And the value of oversease labor is ultimately much less because of all the logistical problems with language, time difference, and so on. How much cheaper does it HAVE to be to be worth it to outsource? The supply and demand will find an equilibrium of price, just as it does here. Then The Phillipines or someone else is going to come and undercut them and then India will be left with a similar problem that we feel we have right now.
Basically, creative skills are expensive. If Eastern Naquha can provide cut-rate dollar-a-day engineering consultants, it's likely because they don't have the training and education that more expensive engineers have. i.e. you get what you pay for. If they do have that training and education, they had to import it at some point, and then they have establish an infrastructure to proliferate and maintain those skills. Thus now they have the University of Eastern Naquha, increasing the costs of creating those engineers, and they find they are undercutting by so much they can raise their prices and still steal the business. It's only a temporary advantage. Their prices will become competitive at whatever level of quality they produce in the global economy. So if we want to be successful, we need to compete on quality - training, education, and creativity.
Also, I get nervous with plans that involve jacking up taxes or assessing penalties for very specific situations. They create HUGE incentive pressures, but then no one is really sure what those pressures actually are until they they are applied. Whoops, you wanted to decrease offshoring, but you just retarded the economy in general.
I do think that decreasing risk and lowering barrier-to-entry for small business across the board will help significantly stimulate the local economy and create local jobs. Whereas taxing Wal-mart into oblivion... I hate Wal-mart as much or more than the next guy, but I'm just not confident anyone knows what that will do.
I was gonna mod you up, but I decided to post a response instead. Lucky you! I don't entirely agree with your post, so I wanted to blab on about my silly ideas.
I take serious issue with anyone who wants to try and suppress outsourcing or "globalization" in any way. Not because I think it's good for me personally - it's bad for me personally, as a software engineer in the Silicon Valley... at least in the short term. But this attitude is similar to the attitude of the RIAA who wants to fight the inevitable. The world is changing, national economies are becoming one global economy. You can try and fight it, but we will just be damaging our position in this new global economy. It's going to happen, whether we like it or not. The ubiquity of the Internet that gave us such prosperity in the late 90's has also helped to ensure the inexorable approach of globalization.
The question we has to ask ourselves is not "How do we stop outsourcing/globalization?" The question is "How do we make sure we have a strong position in the new global economy?"
Unfortunately, I don't have any firm answer I can beat people around the head with. It's a hard problem. I have some ideas, though (of course). I think what will keep us fiscally healthy as certain types of jobs become more efficient to export is innovation, pure and simple. We need to encourage innovation and entrepreneurialism, which will not only create new jobs, but new TYPES of jobs, new fields, and new skills that we will have a distinct advantage in possessing.
Assuming you buy that idea at all, the question then becomes, how do we promote that? We already have a culture that encourages individualism, creativity, and risk-taking. I think that's a good start. But we need to focus more heavily on education. We should be more aggressive about the expectations of our children. Perhaps have some government subsidy of pre-schooling. More education about education - make sure kids know what their options are. Anyone that can finish high school can go to a university or a vocational school and get some basic knowledge about a field where there is a chance they will innovate. There's all sorts of loans or scholarships available for people who don't have the money. There are some exceptional people that will be revolutionary no matter what schooling or environment they come from, but innovation will be more common given more rigorous and effective education. I think the government should aggressively fund and incentivize education at all levels.
The other thing that's REALLY important is making it EASY to start and run a small company. Small business is extremely important in innovation, and local job creation. Joe (or Jane) Upper-Middle-Class-with-a-Bachelor's-degree-and-an -idea is not going to offshore anything. He is going to find someone local. The easier it is for him to stay in business, the longer that someone local has a job. And, the more people who can start small businesses are more people who can try their ideas out and perhaps start the next industry people will be scrambling towards.
I think the US government, in order to protect its country's position of economic dominance over the next 20 years, must take an active role in shaping America into as Educated and Creative a country as it can. Big business leads to monopolies leads to a lack of innovation, competition, and freedom leads to mediocrity and the death of Capitalism. Why does our government encourage big business over small business, other than simply corruption?
Let's say I have 5 mod points, and I don't like you. Not what you are saying in a specific post, but YOU. Whenever I get mod points, I look at your comment history and mod down the last 5 of your comments as Overrated. No consequences from Metamod because Overrated isn't ever metamodded.
Some people have claimed that an editor has essentially done this to them but, by virtue of being an editor, with effectively unlimited mod points.
Actually, I think the cost of sending manned probes would be higher than unmanned. An unmanned probe does not require all of the life support systems and all.
I don't think he was neccessarily suggesting a manned probe to Alpha Centauri, but that we need certain things from a manned space-flight program in order to enable all sorts of other space missions - manned or not.
One problem is launching from Earth just isn't economical - we need to be able to manufacture and launch spacecraft from space.
I think he's pointing out the difference between Romance (Latin) languages - languages that are derived from latin (e.g. French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese), and languages that just use a latin character set (English, German, Vietnamese [sorta]).
Elementary school teachers still teach that English is a Romance language, so it is a common misconception. (English is more closely related to German.)
Damn, I was coincidentally JUST thinking I needed to make a new user whose name had it's own UID in it, but you beat me to it. I guess I have to stick with my crummy old 4-digit UID.
This is an interesting side-effect of subscriptions - it enables intelligent first posts. Trolls aren't really gonna subscribe because they are all broke 13-year-olds (or broke 23-year-olds). So you have a bunch of people selected from what is likely to be the most intelligent posters getting a head start. An interesting strategy would be to just delay stories for people with low/no karma. It could possibly make this effect more pronounced. Of course you would market it as a reward for having high karma.
posit:
1. To assume the existence of; postulate. See Synonyms at presume.
2. To put forward, as for consideration or study; suggest.
3. To place firmly in position.
It is entirely possible I got the spirit of this word wrong, but I actually looked this up and was actually going more for the 2nd option there.
Also, I used "its" instead of "it's" in my original post.
Also, you misspelled "pedantic", though it's clearly a typo.
Ok, I am a software engineer, and thusly a pedantic fuck, so I have to posit: When I see chic I think its pronounced "sheek" and means trendy or popular. When I talk about an attractive young adult female human, I think chick, like a baby chicken. Am I wrong? Dictionaries seem to support me.
Though, I have to admit that chicks are often chic.
I think it's hilarious that they put the blame on the programmers who likely were handed specific requirements from Product Management about where to draw the line.
And before we start talking about insensitive PMs, the only example from the article that seemed in any way insensitive was the Arabic chanting from the Koran. And even that didn't sound too terrible, but I'm not religious so I have a hard time really understanding what's important and what isn't regarding that subject. I'd really have to see the context it was in. In general, I like material from games/movies/media to be as authentic as possible, but only if it's actually relevant.
All of the other crap was catch-22 political bullshit.
Slashdot Mirror
An anonymous reader sends in this piece about chimeras - not the ones with a THAC0 of 11 [...]
The implications of a "humanzee" is enough to keep philosophers and religious thinkers busy for quite a while.
And as we look forward to a real world actually populated with creatures of our own devising, we look back to primitive role-playing technologies such as THAC0. Please people, check out the 3.5 edition D&D system. It doesn't suck. Gone are oddities like negative AC and convoluted "multiclass" and "splitclass" shenanigans. These pre-3rd Ed. D&D references make me sad.
-If
Their policies are nearly identical...
...and they don't have as much influence as you think.
I watched all three debates, as well as a Frontline special sunday night about the history of the two candidates (yay TiVo!), and this statement is just factually incorrect. I don't blame you, though, I've heard it a lot recently and I didn't have any info to verify it's veracity. I was merely anti-Bush before getting some information - now I am very pro-Kerry.
Kerry has been speaking out against unjust war and war atrocities since he was young and in Vietnam. He was instrumental in exposing the Iran-Contra scandal of the 80s, because he didn't feel that Communism was enough of a reason to support war. He spoke out against the Gulf war, and even against the Iraq war - though he somehow felt he just had to vote for the latter, which is disappointing to me. I guess his argument was that he was voting to give the authority to the president to use force in Iraq, but he wanted the president to wield that authority against Saddam, not the force itself, if that make any sense. But Kerry has always been very strongly anti-war/pro-diplomacy.
Bush, on the other hand, while using family favors to get into the national guard (a tactic many employed to avoid being sent overseas) - was vocal about how Vietnam was the right thing to do, and that we needed to unleash the full might of the US military to win. Bush has ALWAYS been Hawkish, even while simultaneously managing to avoid actual combat.
That's just the major important policy stance that seperates them this election. They are vastly different candidates, and neither are particularly moderate, which is where I tend to prefer leaders. Kerry is definitely closer to where I sit, though.
I believed this until Bush came into office. I really did. When he was elected, I wasn't happy, but I said to people, I actually said this, "What's the worst he could do?" 4 years later, my jaw is on the floor and my eyes are glazed over a bit. When a President has a national emergency and a sympethetic legislature, he can make radical, influential changes.
-If
I agree that Stewart should put his money where is mouth is and coordinate honest, factual public debate. If you saw him talk to Rudy Giuliani after the first presidental debate, he did that, he tore him a new factual asshole about Giuliani's (and the GOP's) blatant misreading of everything Kerry said that night - in as polite a way as possible, of course, in the standard Stewart mannerism.
But, I disagree with two things in your post:
First, the fact that shows like Crossfire get good ratings doesn't enter into his argument. He is saying that as pundits on CNN, they have an ethical RESPONSIBILITY to be honest, not to twist facts according to the parties' wishes, and to actually discuss civilliy the issues of the day. It has nothing to do with ratings - they make a lot of money with all sorts of different kinds of shows. In order to make that money, they have to acquire the media POWER to get viewers, and to be a respected news organization. But the COST is not just the dollars to do so, it's also an ethical responsibility to provide real coverage, discussion, information, and so on to the public so everyone can make a decision on november 2 informed by the facts, and not "spin". That they instead provide argument shows where shills from both parties yell the party lies at each other is a disgrace and an outrage. Even MORE so because people get suckered into watching it. The demographic is people just a little too high-brow for Springer. But at least Springer isn't spreading biased misinformation about important political issues, he just perpetuates stereotypes and paints a caricature of America for the world to hate. Not nearly as bad.
The second thing is Stewart's hypocrisy. I agree he is a hypocrite - if he would stop shirking HIS responsibility with the excuse that he's a comedian, he could do a lot of good in this area that he was just speaking out against. He is in a good position to do this. But, I just wanted to point out that just because someone is a hypocrite doesn't mean they are wrong. There is no correlation.
-If
This phenomenon is something that consistent readers of Slashdot will find American programmers are incapable of.
Now HERE is a complete sentence.
subject: This phenomenon
verb: is
object: something
"that consistent readers of Slashdot will find American programmers are incapable of" is a restrictive clause, used to specify which particular "something" the speaker is talking about. Without the "This phenomenon is" there is no subject and there is no verb because of that "that".
Now what is being ignored is that using sentence fragments is perfectly acceptable in casual, particularly spoken, English. One can even find incomplete sentences in published fiction! Gasp!
-If (American Programmer, for the record)
I was going to add a smarmy remark about project managers to compete with the line-item crack... but it's not worth it - since I'm right.
But for you to say that Clinton didn't commit a crime and Bush did really shows that you don't really give a shit about facts.
In my mind there are two interpretations of "criminal." One is that the letter of the law was broken. This places no value judgment on the action, it is just a statement of fact that a law that was agreed upon by the government was broken.
The second interpretation has nothing to do with what the law is but represents a VALUE judgement on the action. i.e. A crime against society or humanity - independent of the laws we happen to have in effect.
Clinton is a criminal in fact, he did lie under oath. But, that doesn't mean what he did (lying under oath) was actually damaging to the country, or really meaningful in any way. He shouldn't have been asked the questions he was asked under oath, they were none of America's business. It was just a manipulation of people and laws to entrap Clinton into making a felonious mistake under extreme pressure. He probably should not have lied, but like whatever.
In order for us to have a functioning society we HAVE to maintain a rational, common-sense eye on our laws and how they are applied to people. Usually this is where Judges come in. Laws are the law, but they aren't necessarily Right. And what is Right is of course different to everyone... but it seems strange to me to say that an action that breaks a law, yet has no real consequences to anyone warrants more consideration and concern than an action that is perfectly legal within our system, but places many people in harm's way, has several distinct costs, and has dubious gains to the country and its people (I'm talking about invading Iraq, if you hadn't guessed).
I am not someone who believes that the law is sacred and should be always fully upheld to the letter. Humans write laws, and people are never really sure of the consequences until they see it in action. Maybe a law is valuable in 90% of all cases, but is actually UNJUST to uphold in 10% of the cases. Should we punish people unjustly because of some situation or viewpoint unconsidered by the lawmakers?
-If
I have to ask how you can possibly judge any tv series uninteresting w/o watching a single episode?
Hehehe... well, easy, but not necessarily accurately, I suppose. Maybe their advertising just sucked. I saw the ads a lot and not one made me want to watch the TV series. Also, I'm already wary of TV series spawned from movies, as they are usually pretty bad, with the exception of M*A*S*H. Just like computer games spawned from movies. With a couple exceptions usually really bad. So when I see an ad and it seems crappy and it's based on a movie, and it's sci-fi - I'll wait for someone to reccommend it to me rather than waste my time.
I love sci-fi, but I HATE bad sci-fi.
-If
I liked Stargate the movie. I even bought the DVD. Does that make me a bad nerd? James Spader in a role that doesn't creep me out!
The TV series seemed really uninteresting to me, but I don't think I ever watched an episode.
-If
"I don't care what anyone says, software is an artform. Repeat ARTFORM. The trap is that it looks like a scientific, engineering exercise. Its not."
I disagree. Some software is art but most is not. The vast majority of software simply implements some well-defined functionality (eg. calculate some equation; display something on screen; parse some input; etc). There is very little art in any of this. There are only a few finite ways of doing these things. The only art in software is with designing something new or innovative. If you were designing a new GUI, that would be art. Or if you were implementing some website. Or whatever. And clearly entertainment products can be considered art (eg. computer games).
That's what I'm talkin' about! Some software is not art - this is what gets exported. The software that IS art, not just GUI and Game development, but any innovative research and development, this is what we need to strive to maintain our superiority in. This necessarily means having a creative and educated populace, and an environment that makes it easier to get new ideas to the marketplace (i.e. small business incentives).
-If
Your major problem is opening your contribution to a civil and potentially constructive discussion with a personal insult. To put it in terms that you can understand: the people you want to convince (assuming that is your goal) won't listen to what you have to say once you take a combative tone.
I'm talking about surviving as a group here. That's what I want, for the US to not only survive, but prosper. I just think that levying punitive taxes and otherwise hiding from globalization will HURT those survival chances more than help. Our economy is in competition with the rest of the world already. So if we retard our economy by looking at what everyone wants to do and then overtaxing that to discourage it, we are just going to be in a worse position later. Maybe we'll have kept our jobs for 10 more years... maybe.
Sure, in the short term it leaves more money for overpaid executives. Believe me, I dislike that aspect of all this, too! But it also means more money for Indians. Then because Indians have more money, their stores realize, hey, they can charge more for everything in Bangalore or wherever (just like they do here in the S.F. Bay Area). Then the poorer people that do the jobs that can't be exported, like being a domestic servant or roti-flipper, in Bangalore can't afford to live off of whatever crap they make, so they have to get paid more or they have to leave the area. So that means the engineer that has to pay more for a McAloo Tikki and someone to do his laundry will demand more money! You can see where this is going. The global equilibrium will be established quicker than you think.
-If
"And what happens when those skills get sent overseas? Are people in India or Korea any less creative than Americans?"
Well, that would be the point in cultivating a creative and educated populace. In a global economy, you don't just compete with your neighbor, but with people on the other side of the world. So, ideally, yeah, we would strive to be a more creative and educated a populace. That would give us a distinct advantage.
Also, what skills are most effective to get sent overseas? It's not product development or research. More effective are the jobs that require technical skill and little innovation. If you export your product development team, do you export your product managers as well? It starts to get inefficient when product management isn't in the same building as development, let alone not in the same country. If you do export your product management, then you lose a great deal of control over what the hell your team is even doing. This is where you want me to provide all sorts of proof and statistics - sorry, I don't have it, I'm not a sociologist or an investigative reporter. Lucky for me, I'm pretty sure that you are not, either. Anyway, I think it's still valuable to have a discussion based on anecdotal evidence, since most of this is conjecture.
When new industries get created, it is also possible that they are new local service industries. You are correct in that we cannot export burger flippers, waitstaff, and plumbers. If we increase the rate of invention, we increase the chances of creating the types of jobs you like as well as other kinds of jobs that could get exported 5-10 years later.
Another thing about a global economy is that as demand increases for cheap overseas labor, the overseas labor realizes they can raise their prices and get more money. Long-term, yes, it is clearly not in their interest to reduce their single competitive advantage, but, just like Americans, most of them are going to think in terms of short-term gains like "more money now." We are already seeing that in India the cost of hiring engineers is not as spectacularly cheap as it used to be. And the value of oversease labor is ultimately much less because of all the logistical problems with language, time difference, and so on. How much cheaper does it HAVE to be to be worth it to outsource? The supply and demand will find an equilibrium of price, just as it does here. Then The Phillipines or someone else is going to come and undercut them and then India will be left with a similar problem that we feel we have right now.
Basically, creative skills are expensive. If Eastern Naquha can provide cut-rate dollar-a-day engineering consultants, it's likely because they don't have the training and education that more expensive engineers have. i.e. you get what you pay for. If they do have that training and education, they had to import it at some point, and then they have establish an infrastructure to proliferate and maintain those skills. Thus now they have the University of Eastern Naquha, increasing the costs of creating those engineers, and they find they are undercutting by so much they can raise their prices and still steal the business. It's only a temporary advantage. Their prices will become competitive at whatever level of quality they produce in the global economy. So if we want to be successful, we need to compete on quality - training, education, and creativity.
Also, I get nervous with plans that involve jacking up taxes or assessing penalties for very specific situations. They create HUGE incentive pressures, but then no one is really sure what those pressures actually are until they they are applied. Whoops, you wanted to decrease offshoring, but you just retarded the economy in general.
I do think that decreasing risk and lowering barrier-to-entry for small business across the board will help significantly stimulate the local economy and create local jobs. Whereas taxing Wal-mart into oblivion... I hate Wal-mart as much or more than the next guy, but I'm just not confident anyone knows what that will do.
-If
I was gonna mod you up, but I decided to post a response instead. Lucky you! I don't entirely agree with your post, so I wanted to blab on about my silly ideas.
n -idea is not going to offshore anything. He is going to find someone local. The easier it is for him to stay in business, the longer that someone local has a job. And, the more people who can start small businesses are more people who can try their ideas out and perhaps start the next industry people will be scrambling towards.
I take serious issue with anyone who wants to try and suppress outsourcing or "globalization" in any way. Not because I think it's good for me personally - it's bad for me personally, as a software engineer in the Silicon Valley... at least in the short term. But this attitude is similar to the attitude of the RIAA who wants to fight the inevitable. The world is changing, national economies are becoming one global economy. You can try and fight it, but we will just be damaging our position in this new global economy. It's going to happen, whether we like it or not. The ubiquity of the Internet that gave us such prosperity in the late 90's has also helped to ensure the inexorable approach of globalization.
The question we has to ask ourselves is not "How do we stop outsourcing/globalization?" The question is "How do we make sure we have a strong position in the new global economy?"
Unfortunately, I don't have any firm answer I can beat people around the head with. It's a hard problem. I have some ideas, though (of course). I think what will keep us fiscally healthy as certain types of jobs become more efficient to export is innovation, pure and simple. We need to encourage innovation and entrepreneurialism, which will not only create new jobs, but new TYPES of jobs, new fields, and new skills that we will have a distinct advantage in possessing.
Assuming you buy that idea at all, the question then becomes, how do we promote that? We already have a culture that encourages individualism, creativity, and risk-taking. I think that's a good start. But we need to focus more heavily on education. We should be more aggressive about the expectations of our children. Perhaps have some government subsidy of pre-schooling. More education about education - make sure kids know what their options are. Anyone that can finish high school can go to a university or a vocational school and get some basic knowledge about a field where there is a chance they will innovate. There's all sorts of loans or scholarships available for people who don't have the money. There are some exceptional people that will be revolutionary no matter what schooling or environment they come from, but innovation will be more common given more rigorous and effective education. I think the government should aggressively fund and incentivize education at all levels.
The other thing that's REALLY important is making it EASY to start and run a small company. Small business is extremely important in innovation, and local job creation. Joe (or Jane) Upper-Middle-Class-with-a-Bachelor's-degree-and-a
I think the US government, in order to protect its country's position of economic dominance over the next 20 years, must take an active role in shaping America into as Educated and Creative a country as it can. Big business leads to monopolies leads to a lack of innovation, competition, and freedom leads to mediocrity and the death of Capitalism. Why does our government encourage big business over small business, other than simply corruption?
Ok, I've started ranting. I'll stop now.
-If
Ahh, so you really wanted to be a Product Manager, you just got the job title wrong...
-If
Let's say I have 5 mod points, and I don't like you. Not what you are saying in a specific post, but YOU. Whenever I get mod points, I look at your comment history and mod down the last 5 of your comments as Overrated. No consequences from Metamod because Overrated isn't ever metamodded.
Some people have claimed that an editor has essentially done this to them but, by virtue of being an editor, with effectively unlimited mod points.
-If
Actually, I think the cost of sending manned probes would be higher than unmanned. An unmanned probe does not require all of the life support systems and all.
I don't think he was neccessarily suggesting a manned probe to Alpha Centauri, but that we need certain things from a manned space-flight program in order to enable all sorts of other space missions - manned or not.
One problem is launching from Earth just isn't economical - we need to be able to manufacture and launch spacecraft from space.
Also, that would just be cool.
-If
Read all the infocom newsletters at http://infodoc.plover.net/nzt/!
o mXNZT+TSL.html
or http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfoc
They even include the fan comics they published...
-If
Well, someone mentioned to me that they were happy with their job, once... That's about all I know about it.
-If
I think he's pointing out the difference between Romance (Latin) languages - languages that are derived from latin (e.g. French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese), and languages that just use a latin character set (English, German, Vietnamese [sorta]).
Elementary school teachers still teach that English is a Romance language, so it is a common misconception. (English is more closely related to German.)
-If
Oh, you mean my boss? Or his boss? They both fit the bill... Not everyone is fortunate enough to work in an enlightened environment.
-If
Damn, I was coincidentally JUST thinking I needed to make a new user whose name had it's own UID in it, but you beat me to it. I guess I have to stick with my crummy old 4-digit UID.
Curses on you Anonymous MUDders!
-If
This is an interesting side-effect of subscriptions - it enables intelligent first posts. Trolls aren't really gonna subscribe because they are all broke 13-year-olds (or broke 23-year-olds). So you have a bunch of people selected from what is likely to be the most intelligent posters getting a head start. An interesting strategy would be to just delay stories for people with low/no karma. It could possibly make this effect more pronounced. Of course you would market it as a reward for having high karma.
-If
Bad Karma? No Probalo!
posit:
1. To assume the existence of; postulate. See Synonyms at presume.
2. To put forward, as for consideration or study; suggest.
3. To place firmly in position.
It is entirely possible I got the spirit of this word wrong, but I actually looked this up and was actually going more for the 2nd option there.
Also, I used "its" instead of "it's" in my original post.
Also, you misspelled "pedantic", though it's clearly a typo.
-If
Ok, I am a software engineer, and thusly a pedantic fuck, so I have to posit: When I see chic I think its pronounced "sheek" and means trendy or popular. When I talk about an attractive young adult female human, I think chick, like a baby chicken. Am I wrong? Dictionaries seem to support me.
Though, I have to admit that chicks are often chic.
-If
According to the Arcade History Database Pole Position came out in 1982, so you win!
-If
I think it's hilarious that they put the blame on the programmers who likely were handed specific requirements from Product Management about where to draw the line.
And before we start talking about insensitive PMs, the only example from the article that seemed in any way insensitive was the Arabic chanting from the Koran. And even that didn't sound too terrible, but I'm not religious so I have a hard time really understanding what's important and what isn't regarding that subject. I'd really have to see the context it was in. In general, I like material from games/movies/media to be as authentic as possible, but only if it's actually relevant.
All of the other crap was catch-22 political bullshit.
-If
"LOL! It's not a virus. You bought it."
Yeah, you're right, it's really more like a Trojan...
-If