Read Battle Angel Alita. What makes us human? It copying brains ever comes to past you'll have to just accept that you are nothing more than a self-aware algorithm - information that can be encoded in any substrate. The concept of free will and our ability to rise beyond our circumstances is what makes us unique. The same is true of your copy.
There has been plenty of writing inquiring whether cesarean section has contributed to evolution. Most think we are too early in the cycle to answer this question since modern c-section. There hasn't been a statistically significant number of c-sections that went well for both mother and child until recently(mothers, in general, exert environmental influence in the long term survival and well being of the child). The logic is that if the mutation that causes our brain to grow really large continues, it hits a natural physical constraint - the size of the birth canal. The head can only be as large as it can be reasonably pass through the female pelvis. Previously difficult pregnancies that resulted in emergency c-sections would mean brain damage for the child and high mortality rate for the mother. Modern c-sections are much more safe and most are even planned. In US around 30% of all births are through c-sections. I don't think I have read a study yet on what that means for modern human development - could all the increase in ADHD, asperger's and other developmental issues be a result? Maybe it hasn't shown up in the Flynn effect because of normalized curve is wider - ie there are more intelligent people but also people who are born with mental issues as a result of the increase in brain size?
While the article was interesting in showing the cultural component, it misses a much bigger reason on why the japanese pursues technology rather than just using human capital. The short of it is that while human capital, a known quantity who's performance parameters are more or less fixed, the theoretical performance parameters for robots are MUCH bigger. Think about the performance parameters of a horse versus a car. Thinik of a cost curve of a philipino worker. Right now a robot is (much) higher in operating cost and do less than the equivalent philipino worker, but because technology is improving (think of technology as evolution by other means) while human performance parameters are more or less stabilized to a certain degree, it becomes obvious that at some point automation of labor will supersede human labor.
This has already happened in other industries such as chip fabrication, automobile manufacturing (new Toyota plants aim to have robot to worker ratio of up to 9 to 1) and package sorting. This has been done with rudimentry software and simple hardware - nothing that is as advanced as the software algorithm used to win Darpa's Grand Challenge or artificial muscles (which can be at least an order of magnitude more reliable than hydraulics or multiple electric motors for each joint). I read somewhere that the magic number in United States is $17 an hour - the average hourly wage in USA. So when a robot's operating cost goes below that threshhold and do the job with equal productiveness, then at that point it'll make sense to buy robots rather than hire workers.
The evidence is OVERWHELMING - according the cover story of National Geogrphic from Nov 2004: http://www.ironcircus.com/blog/000267.html
So many programs now uses genetic programming, the new field of synthetic biology, and so much more are based on the initial idea of evolution.
Please don't pander to the religious zealots because most of them don't read slashdot anyways. And if they are and they uses email, chances are the spam filter it employs uses some type of genetic algorithm.
I hate how this subject is being trivialized by this thread. I am but a whisker away from have tears running down my face.
I think what the Toronto polic is trying to do is a good thing - BUT IT IS NOT ENOUGH. These children are scarred for life. A life that's is incomprehensible especially for the average geek until you got to know someone who was abused and traumatized. Then the pain is REAL because the pain that the person faced is so deep and scarring that he or she cannot but help radiate that pain and misery. I felt the pain from a close friend of mine first hand. Just 6 months ago she committed suicide because she can't live with the pain and how it has scarred her anymore.
For anyone who think of this as a trivial manner, please read this entry of hers. She is dead now, but hopefully her words here will help people understand how important it is that we face up to these criminals and PREVENT them from ever committing them in the first place.
Let's recap the movies he's done, shall we. So far he has directed:
Piranha II (hey, everyone's gotta eat) Terminator Aliens The Abyss Terminator 2 True Lies Titanic
He also wrote the script for the movie "Strange Days"
There are over-riding themes throughout all his films:
-Strong Female Character -Use and misuse of technology -The strength of human spirit in adversity -Self sacrafice for the greater good -The struggle of technology subsuming humanity -The hubris of man who think (and usually a he) they have nature and technology under control
For anyone who has read the manga and watch all the James Cameron movies (especially the director's cut), it would be immediately obvious why James Cameron picked this project. As a matter of fact when I was reading Battle Angel I was saying to people that it felt like a James Cameron movie done by a japanese manga writer.
Battle Angel is not just another manga. Like Akira before it the books introduced many philosophical questions about humanity, and always asks many existensial questions. Those are the type of questions that were probed in James Cameron movies, even in Titanic. Rose was not just questioning her status as a woman in high society of early 20th century, she was questioning how she should live her life.
I have full faith in James Cameron. He is no fly-by-night fanboy. He is meticulous in the planning of his movies. I am sure he will focus on just one of the story arcs of Battle Angel. He is known to produce sequels, and he has already mentioned that he wants to "break up" the whole arc of Battle Angel if the box office would let him. I think that he's doing the main character in CG so he can really spend time on this project. There's no other way to keep a 200 year old cyborg girl that looks like 20 looking like 20 for 3 movies if it takes him 3-4 years for each movie. The 3 movie part is just my speculation.
For me, my vote goes to the Hugo story as the first arc because it's when the tone of the whole series begin to change and she starts to grow. But knowing what James Cameron has done he will probably do the Bounty Hunter story who was given the Imaginos Body by Dr. Nova that was wreaking havoc on the Scrap Yard. That story got all the elements of a good James Cameron movie.
If James Cameron directs - the android army would now become an unstoppable machine dealing death and destruction throughout the galaxy. Padme will the woman destined to save the future of Jedi-kind, and a jedi who can see the future comes to help her while an evil Sith is assigned solely in killing her. The Sith will have the best lines likes "stick around" or "bye, hand". Various gigantic nuclear explosions will take place and at least one cool chase scene that shows the unstoppable power of some type of large mechanical object. Many scenes will be lit with blue lighting and the whole movie will be rated R.
Francis Ford Coppola - most of the leaders of various planets will be paying homage to the Sith lord in a dark room while italian music plays in the background. There will be a violent ambush that kills most of the jedis with the kills paying one last bit of disrespect by kicking the dead jedi bodies as they leave. Padme told Annie that she had an abortion (she didn't).
Steven Spielberg - more Han Solo! He'll make it up as he goes along.
David Fincher - Anakin slowly degrades as he commits each one of the 7 deadly sins. There's no such thing as the sith lords. Everything happens in a monochromatic/dark/rainy setting, even at the climatic battle over the lava rain would be pouring down, meeting the lava violently with a lot of hissing. Anakin will finally turn evil when Padme's head arrives via GalaxyXpress in a box.
Merchant Ivory - There would be a lot of chit-chat over tea, in conferences, and everyone will be speaking with an english accent. Action set pieces will be small and subtle and most of the scenes will involve the emotional (or lack thereof) aftermath, showing the consequences of killing all the jedis/destroying planets/saying goodbye to Padme. Alas, it will be a bittersweet ending.
Here are a few reasons why Boston is a great place to work for techies:
1. Get to work with smart, old grizzled veterans. They have taught me a few things about discipline, engineering and adaptation. Having a mentor has been invaluable in my career experience.
2. The girls here are hot, and for the girls there are a lot of very fine and eligible bachelors for are actually nice - sometimes too nice for their own good. This place is like "Logan's Run". It seems like nobody is older than 25 at times.
3. You can walk and bike anywhere. Everything is so close. I don't own a car.
4. Compare to New York, you got nature basically right in your backyard - Blue Hills is a 6,000 acre reserve that's 5 miles from downtown Boston.
5. Great, thriving geek culture and community. I never miss the 6.270 autonomous robotic contest at MIT, for example, or the fact that you can take holography classes in adult education schools.
6. Energetic, creative nightlife. If you're into bars, clubs and dancing, it's here. But if you are into performance art, experimental music, hacking groups, murder mysteries or pot luck dinners w/strangers, they are here also.
There's a lot more. Of course there are problems with the city too, but I think the good outweighs the bad.
Science is not done only for science's sake
on
The Wrong Stuff
·
· Score: 1
While I agree that the so-called scientific work can be done by machines, it really isn't the point of space exploration. Space exploration is not about collecting data just like science experiments on earth isn't just about collecting data. ALL the data we collecting is about serving us. Human beings uses the collected data for OUR benefit. Even stuff as esoteric as quantum mechanics, physics, chemistry, etc, etc are useful in some way FOR US.
Ultimately, no matter how you argue it, society does science not just for science's sake. We don't take to other planets because we are merely curious about them. We take to them because ULTIMATELY we will have to (the ABSOLUTE deadline for us is when sun began to intensify before it becomes a red giant - it'll boil all the oceans long before the planet gets eviscerated). The analogy I will use in comparison to computers is that we are at a stage of Babbage's analytical engine. A certain amount of logic is understood and machines are built to our knowledge, but it's tremendously expensive and almost impractical to build (the reason why the Babbage's machine was never finished).
So the big science question that can only be solved by sending people into space is: Can people live in space? Can people live on Mars or other planets? What happens to human physiology when you send them out there? These questions cannot be answered by sending probes or machines.
Finally, let's look at this economically also. If we can terraform Mars, then it's a whole other planet that will have it's own self supporting economy (globalization? Ha, try planetization? Not practical). Earth's GDP stands around 40 trillion a year right now. Assuming no FURTHER GROWTH OF the plaet's GDP (which is not the case) AND using EXTREMELY CONSERVCATIVE measure of that Mars has 1/10th the mass of earth (though currently, w/o oceans, roughly the same surface area as all of dry land including antartica), then once (gazzilion of years from now) it gets going, it'll theorectically produce (in today's dollars) 4 trillion dollars in GDP per annum, all things being equal. Keep in mind California, with 35 or so million people, has a GSP of 2 trillion dollars. Say it takes (this is a magic number, I know, but to my credit I'm making it very large) 100 trillion dollars to terraform Mars in today's dollars, then our breakeven point is 25 years. W/o doing the super-heavy math lifting, it looks easily like a double digit return on our investment. Anyone care to try and create a ROI on this?
I think most people misses a crucial question when they are arguing about free trade, outsourcing and globalization. Almost all economist uses the standard "extrapolation of the curve" arguments. For example, manufacturing jobs moved offshore, and service/knowledge worker jobs took over and actually created "more" jobs and more wealth creation.
What economists missed are the context in which the change happend - mainly the reconstruction of western europe and Japan, and the cultural revolution (women's movement, race matters, etc) that is happening w/in the United States. The gut wrenching change that happened hit America very, very hard. People our age do not remember double digit inflation, 10% unemployment in the late 70s, and the COMPLETE stagnation of the the income of the middle class for 20 years. As a matter of fact you can argue that the speculative bubble of the late 90s is an abberation from the continued trend of decline within the general welfare of the average american citizen.
There are a ton of "stealth inflation" that is going on that is biting at the wealth of the average american. Health care, education and real estate has all been growing at rate above inflation. Fees are being charged for EVERY LITTLE thing that were not the case before that does not get reflected in the numbers.
What does this have to do w/jobs? The simple fact is that offshoring/outsourcing has a measurable impact on average wage (check out the statistics for family of 4 living at poverty level for the past 25 years) for a LONG time now. It is not a new phenomenon. We, as americans, have adapted to this new way of life. The majority of families are dual income families when 30 years ago (at the cusp of the women's movement) that was not the case. Our savings rate is the lowest in recorded history, our consumer debt is the highest. The government is borrowing at a rate of 500 billion dollars a year for the forseeable future. There are pressure to raise interest rates, especially if the treasury bond market underperforms(a real danger) due to slack demand as people and foreign countries, especially in times of trouble, shifts to precious metals or other investment vehicles.
There is, however, a generally new shock that has not been recorded before - something I call Kurzweil's Law of unintended consequence of accelerating returns. Productivity is up, but not employment. Why? The short answer is employment is mitigated by increasing automation in productivity. This is happening only with the crudest of software and only limited intelligent hardware (computer operated drills, robotic assembly lines, automated check processing, mail sorting, etc). Imagin what will happen once we have super high definition actuators with 6 degrees of freedom, actual specialized but adaptable AI, and network everything. I read somewhere that in United States the replacement cost of an average manufacturing job by a robot is 17 dollars an hour. That includes operating, amortization and procurement costs. It seems to me that many service jobs are already at that threshhold. Much like one of the comments talking about training his own replacements that are in India, there will come, within a decade or two, a time when even third world countries will start replacing human labor costs with automation. Another economist predicts that the overall job pool in United States will actually stagnate, and then shrink within 30 years. I don't know if that will happen, but I can tell you that the factors that cause long term, systemic shift like this one is unprecidented.
So the question goes like this - if the jobs shifts, and historically jobs shifting has been "good" (in terms of statistical employment numbers) for America as we climb the ladder of better jobs, is there a terminus point for the job ladder? To state simply, history have show in USA human "jobs" shifted from agriculture to manufacture to services. With in the "services" sector what are considered to be the upper echelon such a
The New Financial Order by Robert J. Shiller argues a way to remake modern economies as we know it by HEDGING THE WHOLE ECONOMY! Imagine if all the risks and shocks of our economy be cushioned by modern risk management techniques on a global scale, and you have a book that talk about such strange concepts as "profession insurance" to "inequality insurance" and "intergenerational social security". It's a must read for anybody who consider themselves at the cutting edge of modern thinking.
A friend of mine introduced me to "Sex, Time and Power" by Leonard Shlain, and whether you agree with this guy (who's the Chief of Laparoscopic Surgeon at California Pacific Medical Center), he'll definitely make you think about the ultimate cause - how evolutionary biology shape modern human's gender roles, sexuality and behaviors. It touched upon so many concepts and tied them up to a theory that he proposed as the ultimate factor in human evolution that made Homo Sapiens 150k years ago. Perhaps the most shocking thing is when I see myself in some of the behaviors he described that I thought were wel thought-out "mating strategies", but are in fact I'm just following um..mostly instinctual drives. Definitely made me think as much as any book I read this year.
I just tried MAD - and yes! It's a lot better. For me it's the vocals that shows the most difference. The before and after it pretty dramatic. Though, having said that, I still prefer whatever ITunes uses because the voices just comes out crystal and the general sound range seems more dynamic to me. I'll use Winamp though because I like the way it handles the playlist better.
Just downloaded the 'lite' version and gave it a whirl. I ripped my Coldplay CD at 192 Kbps and it sounds GREAT in ITunes, crystal clear (using default setting). I played the same file under Winamp5 default, and it sounds really muffled. Is it just me or other people are experiencing the same thing? As it stands right now I'm sticking w/ITunes.
I live in Boston and I take the train (amtrak acela) all the time to NYC. I do not own a car. The eastern corridor (DC-NYC-Boston) is the only profitable route that Amtrak runs. In roughly 450 miles (shorter than the length of California by about 250 miles) the 5 major metropolitan areas (Boston, New York, Philly, Baltimore and DC. There's also minor mets such as New Haven, Providence and Trenton) represents about 60 million people. The density is roughly comparable to that of England. The current system, even though profitable, has SERIOUS limitation in its currently incarnation - it has to abide to Metro North's speed limit of 60MPH when it's in Metro North territory, for example. This is done on a train that's designed to cruise at 150MPH. Bottom line - you CAN run a profitable maglev operation in US.
Slashdot Mirror
Read Battle Angel Alita. What makes us human? It copying brains ever comes to past you'll have to just accept that you are nothing more than a self-aware algorithm - information that can be encoded in any substrate. The concept of free will and our ability to rise beyond our circumstances is what makes us unique. The same is true of your copy.
There has been plenty of writing inquiring whether cesarean section has contributed to evolution. Most think we are too early in the cycle to answer this question since modern c-section. There hasn't been a statistically significant number of c-sections that went well for both mother and child until recently(mothers, in general, exert environmental influence in the long term survival and well being of the child). The logic is that if the mutation that causes our brain to grow really large continues, it hits a natural physical constraint - the size of the birth canal. The head can only be as large as it can be reasonably pass through the female pelvis. Previously difficult pregnancies that resulted in emergency c-sections would mean brain damage for the child and high mortality rate for the mother. Modern c-sections are much more safe and most are even planned. In US around 30% of all births are through c-sections. I don't think I have read a study yet on what that means for modern human development - could all the increase in ADHD, asperger's and other developmental issues be a result? Maybe it hasn't shown up in the Flynn effect because of normalized curve is wider - ie there are more intelligent people but also people who are born with mental issues as a result of the increase in brain size?
While the article was interesting in showing the cultural component, it misses a much bigger reason on why the japanese pursues technology rather than just using human capital. The short of it is that while human capital, a known quantity who's performance parameters are more or less fixed, the theoretical performance parameters for robots are MUCH bigger. Think about the performance parameters of a horse versus a car. Thinik of a cost curve of a philipino worker. Right now a robot is (much) higher in operating cost and do less than the equivalent philipino worker, but because technology is improving (think of technology as evolution by other means) while human performance parameters are more or less stabilized to a certain degree, it becomes obvious that at some point automation of labor will supersede human labor.
This has already happened in other industries such as chip fabrication, automobile manufacturing (new Toyota plants aim to have robot to worker ratio of up to 9 to 1) and package sorting. This has been done with rudimentry software and simple hardware - nothing that is as advanced as the software algorithm used to win Darpa's Grand Challenge or artificial muscles (which can be at least an order of magnitude more reliable than hydraulics or multiple electric motors for each joint). I read somewhere that the magic number in United States is $17 an hour - the average hourly wage in USA. So when a robot's operating cost goes below that threshhold and do the job with equal productiveness, then at that point it'll make sense to buy robots rather than hire workers.
The evidence is OVERWHELMING - according the cover story of National Geogrphic from Nov 2004:
http://www.ironcircus.com/blog/000267.html
So many programs now uses genetic programming, the new field of synthetic biology, and so much more are based on the initial idea of evolution.
Please don't pander to the religious zealots because most of them don't read slashdot anyways. And if they are and they uses email, chances are the spam filter it employs uses some type of genetic algorithm.
I hate how this subject is being trivialized by this thread. I am but a whisker away from have tears running down my face.
/ 13 313.html#cutid1
I think what the Toronto polic is trying to do is a good thing - BUT IT IS NOT ENOUGH. These children are scarred for life. A life that's is incomprehensible especially for the average geek until you got to know someone who was abused and traumatized. Then the pain is REAL because the pain that the person faced is so deep and scarring that he or she cannot but help radiate that pain and misery. I felt the pain from a close friend of mine first hand. Just 6 months ago she committed suicide because she can't live with the pain and how it has scarred her anymore.
For anyone who think of this as a trivial manner, please read this entry of hers. She is dead now, but hopefully her words here will help people understand how important it is that we face up to these criminals and PREVENT them from ever committing them in the first place.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/comedotparvuli
Boy People Have Short Memories.
Let's recap the movies he's done, shall we. So far he has directed:
Piranha II (hey, everyone's gotta eat)
Terminator
Aliens
The Abyss
Terminator 2
True Lies
Titanic
He also wrote the script for the movie "Strange Days"
There are over-riding themes throughout all his films:
-Strong Female Character
-Use and misuse of technology
-The strength of human spirit in adversity
-Self sacrafice for the greater good
-The struggle of technology subsuming humanity
-The hubris of man who think (and usually a he) they have nature and technology under control
For anyone who has read the manga and watch all the James Cameron movies (especially the director's cut), it would be immediately obvious why James Cameron picked this project. As a matter of fact when I was reading Battle Angel I was saying to people that it felt like a James Cameron movie done by a japanese manga writer.
Battle Angel is not just another manga. Like Akira before it the books introduced many philosophical questions about humanity, and always asks many existensial questions. Those are the type of questions that were probed in James Cameron movies, even in Titanic. Rose was not just questioning her status as a woman in high society of early 20th century, she was questioning how she should live her life.
I have full faith in James Cameron. He is no fly-by-night fanboy. He is meticulous in the planning of his movies. I am sure he will focus on just one of the story arcs of Battle Angel. He is known to produce sequels, and he has already mentioned that he wants to "break up" the whole arc of Battle Angel if the box office would let him. I think that he's doing the main character in CG so he can really spend time on this project. There's no other way to keep a 200 year old cyborg girl that looks like 20 looking like 20 for 3 movies if it takes him 3-4 years for each movie. The 3 movie part is just my speculation.
For me, my vote goes to the Hugo story as the first arc because it's when the tone of the whole series begin to change and she starts to grow. But knowing what James Cameron has done he will probably do the Bounty Hunter story who was given the Imaginos Body by Dr. Nova that was wreaking havoc on the Scrap Yard. That story got all the elements of a good James Cameron movie.
If James Cameron directs - the android army would now become an unstoppable machine dealing death and destruction throughout the galaxy. Padme will the woman destined to save the future of Jedi-kind, and a jedi who can see the future comes to help her while an evil Sith is assigned solely in killing her. The Sith will have the best lines likes "stick around" or "bye, hand". Various gigantic nuclear explosions will take place and at least one cool chase scene that shows the unstoppable power of some type of large mechanical object. Many scenes will be lit with blue lighting and the whole movie will be rated R.
Francis Ford Coppola - most of the leaders of various planets will be paying homage to the Sith lord in a dark room while italian music plays in the background. There will be a violent ambush that kills most of the jedis with the kills paying one last bit of disrespect by kicking the dead jedi bodies as they leave. Padme told Annie that she had an abortion (she didn't).
Steven Spielberg - more Han Solo! He'll make it up as he goes along.
David Fincher - Anakin slowly degrades as he commits each one of the 7 deadly sins. There's no such thing as the sith lords. Everything happens in a monochromatic/dark/rainy setting, even at the climatic battle over the lava rain would be pouring down, meeting the lava violently with a lot of hissing. Anakin will finally turn evil when Padme's head arrives via GalaxyXpress in a box.
Merchant Ivory - There would be a lot of chit-chat over tea, in conferences, and everyone will be speaking with an english accent. Action set pieces will be small and subtle and most of the scenes will involve the emotional (or lack thereof) aftermath, showing the consequences of killing all the jedis/destroying planets/saying goodbye to Padme. Alas, it will be a bittersweet ending.
Here are a few reasons why Boston is a great place to work for techies:
1. Get to work with smart, old grizzled veterans. They have taught me a few things about discipline, engineering and adaptation. Having a mentor has been invaluable in my career experience.
2. The girls here are hot, and for the girls there are a lot of very fine and eligible bachelors for are actually nice - sometimes too nice for their own good. This place is like "Logan's Run". It seems like nobody is older than 25 at times.
3. You can walk and bike anywhere. Everything is so close. I don't own a car.
4. Compare to New York, you got nature basically right in your backyard - Blue Hills is a 6,000 acre reserve that's 5 miles from downtown Boston.
5. Great, thriving geek culture and community. I never miss the 6.270 autonomous robotic contest at MIT, for example, or the fact that you can take holography classes in adult education schools.
6. Energetic, creative nightlife. If you're into bars, clubs and dancing, it's here. But if you are into performance art, experimental music, hacking groups, murder mysteries or pot luck dinners w/strangers, they are here also.
There's a lot more. Of course there are problems with the city too, but I think the good outweighs the bad.
While I agree that the so-called scientific work can be done by machines, it really isn't the point of space exploration. Space exploration is not about collecting data just like science experiments on earth isn't just about collecting data. ALL the data we collecting is about serving us. Human beings uses the collected data for OUR benefit. Even stuff as esoteric as quantum mechanics, physics, chemistry, etc, etc are useful in some way FOR US.
Ultimately, no matter how you argue it, society does science not just for science's sake. We don't take to other planets because we are merely curious about them. We take to them because ULTIMATELY we will have to (the ABSOLUTE deadline for us is when sun began to intensify before it becomes a red giant - it'll boil all the oceans long before the planet gets eviscerated). The analogy I will use in comparison to computers is that we are at a stage of Babbage's analytical engine. A certain amount of logic is understood and machines are built to our knowledge, but it's tremendously expensive and almost impractical to build (the reason why the Babbage's machine was never finished).
So the big science question that can only be solved by sending people into space is: Can people live in space? Can people live on Mars or other planets? What happens to human physiology when you send them out there? These questions cannot be answered by sending probes or machines.
Finally, let's look at this economically also. If we can terraform Mars, then it's a whole other planet that will have it's own self supporting economy (globalization? Ha, try planetization? Not practical). Earth's GDP stands around 40 trillion a year right now. Assuming no FURTHER GROWTH OF the plaet's GDP (which is not the case) AND using EXTREMELY CONSERVCATIVE measure of that Mars has 1/10th the mass of earth (though currently, w/o oceans, roughly the same surface area as all of dry land including antartica), then once (gazzilion of years from now) it gets going, it'll theorectically produce (in today's dollars) 4 trillion dollars in GDP per annum, all things being equal. Keep in mind California, with 35 or so million people, has a GSP of 2 trillion dollars. Say it takes (this is a magic number, I know, but to my credit I'm making it very large) 100 trillion dollars to terraform Mars in today's dollars, then our breakeven point is 25 years. W/o doing the super-heavy math lifting, it looks easily like a double digit return on our investment. Anyone care to try and create a ROI on this?
I think most people misses a crucial question when they are arguing about free trade, outsourcing and globalization. Almost all economist uses the standard "extrapolation of the curve" arguments. For example, manufacturing jobs moved offshore, and service/knowledge worker jobs took over and actually created "more" jobs and more wealth creation.
What economists missed are the context in which the change happend - mainly the reconstruction of western europe and Japan, and the cultural revolution (women's movement, race matters, etc) that is happening w/in the United States. The gut wrenching change that happened hit America very, very hard. People our age do not remember double digit inflation, 10% unemployment in the late 70s, and the COMPLETE stagnation of the the income of the middle class for 20 years. As a matter of fact you can argue that the speculative bubble of the late 90s is an abberation from the continued trend of decline within the general welfare of the average american citizen.
There are a ton of "stealth inflation" that is going on that is biting at the wealth of the average american. Health care, education and real estate has all been growing at rate above inflation. Fees are being charged for EVERY LITTLE thing that were not the case before that does not get reflected in the numbers.
What does this have to do w/jobs? The simple fact is that offshoring/outsourcing has a measurable impact on average wage (check out the statistics for family of 4 living at poverty level for the past 25 years) for a LONG time now. It is not a new phenomenon. We, as americans, have adapted to this new way of life. The majority of families are dual income families when 30 years ago (at the cusp of the women's movement) that was not the case. Our savings rate is the lowest in recorded history, our consumer debt is the highest. The government is borrowing at a rate of 500 billion dollars a year for the forseeable future. There are pressure to raise interest rates, especially if the treasury bond market underperforms(a real danger) due to slack demand as people and foreign countries, especially in times of trouble, shifts to precious metals or other investment vehicles.
There is, however, a generally new shock that has not been recorded before - something I call Kurzweil's Law of unintended consequence of accelerating returns. Productivity is up, but not employment. Why? The short answer is employment is mitigated by increasing automation in productivity. This is happening only with the crudest of software and only limited intelligent hardware (computer operated drills, robotic assembly lines, automated check processing, mail sorting, etc). Imagin what will happen once we have super high definition actuators with 6 degrees of freedom, actual specialized but adaptable AI, and network everything. I read somewhere that in United States the replacement cost of an average manufacturing job by a robot is 17 dollars an hour. That includes operating, amortization and procurement costs. It seems to me that many service jobs are already at that threshhold. Much like one of the comments talking about training his own replacements that are in India, there will come, within a decade or two, a time when even third world countries will start replacing human labor costs with automation. Another economist predicts that the overall job pool in United States will actually stagnate, and then shrink within 30 years. I don't know if that will happen, but I can tell you that the factors that cause long term, systemic shift like this one is unprecidented.
So the question goes like this - if the jobs shifts, and historically jobs shifting has been "good" (in terms of statistical employment numbers) for America as we climb the ladder of better jobs, is there a terminus point for the job ladder? To state simply, history have show in USA human "jobs" shifted from agriculture to manufacture to services. With in the "services" sector what are considered to be the upper echelon such a
The New Financial Order by Robert J. Shiller argues a way to remake modern economies as we know it by HEDGING THE WHOLE ECONOMY! Imagine if all the risks and shocks of our economy be cushioned by modern risk management techniques on a global scale, and you have a book that talk about such strange concepts as "profession insurance" to "inequality insurance" and "intergenerational social security". It's a must read for anybody who consider themselves at the cutting edge of modern thinking.
A friend of mine introduced me to "Sex, Time and Power" by Leonard Shlain, and whether you agree with this guy (who's the Chief of Laparoscopic Surgeon at California Pacific Medical Center), he'll definitely make you think about the ultimate cause - how evolutionary biology shape modern human's gender roles, sexuality and behaviors. It touched upon so many concepts and tied them up to a theory that he proposed as the ultimate factor in human evolution that made Homo Sapiens 150k years ago. Perhaps the most shocking thing is when I see myself in some of the behaviors he described that I thought were wel thought-out "mating strategies", but are in fact I'm just following um..mostly instinctual drives. Definitely made me think as much as any book I read this year.
I just tried MAD - and yes! It's a lot better. For me it's the vocals that shows the most difference. The before and after it pretty dramatic. Though, having said that, I still prefer whatever ITunes uses because the voices just comes out crystal and the general sound range seems more dynamic to me. I'll use Winamp though because I like the way it handles the playlist better.
Just downloaded the 'lite' version and gave it a whirl. I ripped my Coldplay CD at 192 Kbps and it sounds GREAT in ITunes, crystal clear (using default setting). I played the same file under Winamp5 default, and it sounds really muffled. Is it just me or other people are experiencing the same thing? As it stands right now I'm sticking w/ITunes.
I live in Boston and I take the train (amtrak acela) all the time to NYC. I do not own a car. The eastern corridor (DC-NYC-Boston) is the only profitable route that Amtrak runs. In roughly 450 miles (shorter than the length of California by about 250 miles) the 5 major metropolitan areas (Boston, New York, Philly, Baltimore and DC. There's also minor mets such as New Haven, Providence and Trenton) represents about 60 million people. The density is roughly comparable to that of England. The current system, even though profitable, has SERIOUS limitation in its currently incarnation - it has to abide to Metro North's speed limit of 60MPH when it's in Metro North territory, for example. This is done on a train that's designed to cruise at 150MPH. Bottom line - you CAN run a profitable maglev operation in US.