I wager we ARE producing enough food for 7 billion people.
In 90 days if there are 70 billion surviving people I win.
I am not tying to trivialise suffering here. Simply pointing out that people starving COULD mean we don't have enough for more people, not that we don't have enough food.
You may as well argue that we don't have enough people being born, since every day people day of old age.
There have always been people starving to death, but if the amount of people getting fed is ever increasing, than we can pretty much by definition feed more people than we currently have. Food is not the limiter on human population, it is fucking.
Arguable when the population growth was flatter, there were other limits, but it is pretty clear that for a while our growth has been at least exponential, leading me to believe that there is very little checking it currently.
On the children it is also worth noting that there are variances, but generally parents have children that they can afford.
When someone has very little, the cost of a child is far less than someone who expects to send them to private school, buy them things or send them to college. This leads to poorer people having more children. As people move to the city, but with a culture that values large quantities of children as farm-hands bad things happen, but they adjust over time.
Also, advances in health care outpace adjustments in cultural norms, so it takes longer for high infant survivability, to turn into less births.
No, what I would expect is whitehouse.gov to not use youtube, instead of re-writing policy to allow Google to better track visitors to the whitehouse.gov site.
Way easier than installing flash, now I am curious if it will work.
Additionally, the client is open source, and Adobe has wielded the software patent hammer in the past (against flash I think even). So it's not easy to call MS particularly the greater evil here.
It is quite possible that these disruptive changes lead to a smaller work-force.
For example, the tapestry companies that caught onto the industrial revolution ended up with a lot less master weavers.
The pure reference line of books is probably going to go away (or get VERY expensive) with the popularity of the internet, and those creating putting up in-depth references for free (though if I used primarily one or two technologies, I imagine the $100 for the reference books would be well worth it.
The market for in-depth tutorials, "hacks" books, and cookbooks is one I think will remain.
O'Reilly publishes fantastic work in each of those categories, and the latter two lend themselves to dead tree (or e-ink) since they are great bathroom/nightstand reading to get a feel for a tech in 15 minutes snips without a computer.
The tutorials lend themselves to e-publishing (since you should be at a computer anyway), but nothing on the net matches the quality of a book like "Using Drupal" (recently reviewed here) as a place to get to-the-point howtos with clear examples.
My guess is they are suffering from competition of other dead-wood books as much as anything. Go to a book-store, and O'Reilly does not have the domination it once had. There are plenty of cheaper, reputable looking publishers, that get stuff out quicker.
They also should include an e-book for free with purchase of dead-tree version, or make the e-books unlimited upgradeable, I feel a little upset paying $20 to get a PDF of a book I am purchasing, but it was definitely worth it.
I doubt it happened this way, but lay-offs could even mean successful web-based book sales (bookshelf, and PDF download) leading to less work.
worth noting that WalMart (I them them BTW) really does pass the savings onto the consumer (their profit is consistently under 4%).
The savings at a WalMart does not for me outweigh the trip. It is so gloomy there, and everything is junky, except for maybe the electronics that is brand name. Though it is my understanding they get special crappy versions of the brand name stuff too.
The Contra 4 example they pulled out in support brings the logic of the entire article into question.
And with only 1 in 4 hard core gamers having flash-carts (using the assumption PAX is hard core gamers only), blaming sales for Contra 4 being 1/5th of expectations is pretty week.
I am going to go out on a limb and say that the reason games like Contra 4 don't sell well on the DS is that mine-game style games are better suited for getting a quick 5-10 minutes in and feeling as you have accomplished something. This would go hand in hand with portable gaming.
I personally like more in-depth games on my DS, but lean towards strategy and RPG, since I play as I watch the TV and talk to people. I couldn't keep up with what I imagine is the awesome twitch action of Contra 4 (or even Meteos or Geometry wars which I own).
Now, in Korea the attach rate of less than one, and the availability of flash-carts in legit stores makes a compelling case there. This is probably the reason for region locking in the DSi (the hope to sell there for half price).
Sorry to rant, I just hate reading 5 page articles that construct arguments on facts that do not support the conclusion.
There was no mention even of what the Hard-Core gamers were playing at PAX, or if the cart owners did it for portability (I bet a few did at least).
When I was purchasing a house that was 40-90 minutes away google street view was a great tool.
When going to a location, the street view of the store/house front is nice to have.
When my sister was looking as colleges the street view is a great tool.
When my grandfather was over, and we "took a walk" through his sisters old neighborhood, he was filled with delight.
The ability to walk around somewhere without being there is actually fairly useful, it is certainly a lot more useful than the aerial photos (which is probably why people are concerned).
All these replies imply that getting married gets people pregnant, when in my general experience the opposite is true if anything (getting pregnant causes marriage).
IMO, marriage is a social contract between 2 people, and the recording of said contract to the government.
It does not cause pregnancy, and it does not cause expensive divorce any more than sharing space for 5 years in my state.
I feel reading replies that the fruits of abstinence only education are making their way to the message boards.
And I guarantee that even in the child stage of my life, my wife will deal with my childish antics better than a random person (this is not because we are married, it is part of the why, but still).
We both have life insurance policies that will pay off the house (most of one take-home salary).
Problem solved.
Additionally we live off of about 1.5 salaries, and bank the rest (though much of it into 401K). This good for long term security, and hopefully means a few extra years retired together (Chance willing I don't have the same tragedy in my life as you).
If I lose my job I can work as a stock boy for a ling while, while looking for another job. And she is teaching, with the peak of the boomlet leaving high school last year, school populations are about to start rising again.
Financial responsibility is important, but living on half of a households income is not required. Perhaps if we didn't both make pretty much the exact same thing it would be different.
I think you're completley wrong on the marriage thing.
I certainly wouldn't rush into it, or rush into having children, but being married gives me one person I can be fun/childish with every day guaranteed (living with would work here too). Being married also has a huge benefit when it comes to wasting money. My wife and I can afford, and maintain a 3 bedroom house, either of us on our own would not be able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment, or maintain a house.
Additionally I vacuum half as often save 30-50 percent on the bills, and don't need to cook all the time (most of these apply to living with someone too).
These are not reasons to get married, I just simply wanted to point out it is not the end of childishness/fun. If you really want to commit to spending your life with someone, and makign the compromises that will be required (it's two way if done right) it is not something to dread or avoid. And it can certainly lead to having more money to spend on yourself, not less.
This may be in your country, at least in sweden it's pretty much impossible to buy a TV set not capable of at least 720p. Most people I know already have at least 720p.
In my country (the alleged disposable consumer driven hell of the USA) most (by a HUGE margin) people have TVs over 5 years old, so even though 720p has been pretty much the only option for any non-really small TV for a couple of years, still the vast majority of people have SDTV.
4 years ago my parents purchased a 30" SDTV for $299, 2.5 years ago I purchased a 32" HDTV for $800, theirs is just as tall, so TV shows are the same size (but not as nice looking, this ignore the wide screeniness, since TV is still shot for 4:3).
Expensive compared to what?
Compared to the TV you already own they are incredibly expensive.
Sure, and upscaled DVDs looks as good as blueray also. Have you ever seen HDTV material? It's very easy to see the difference. Even my GF complains about the picture when there is a good movie to watch and we only bought the DVD, the blueray was sold out when we bought the latest Narnia. If you're used to HD material DVD looks like shit, no definition at all.
This is very true, but I still don't own a Blu-Ray player because of cost (price of disks primarily).
In fact the only "HD" content I now watch are upscaled DVDs, and that is when I put in the effort to press the button on the remote.
I generally watch SD Digital cable (the WORSE picture imaginable), and the zoom it, since it is 4:3 letter-boxed usually. This looks awful, but it saves me a lot of money every month.
When I lived closer to a city, I had no cable and watched OTA. This looked great, and I miss it, but not as much as I miss one lunch purchased out a week, or 3-4 TV season boxed sets a year ($240 month savings).
I also watch a lot of DVD's that are 480P progressive scan xvid, and then converted to 2500kps DVDs, with all settings towards speed, not quality. They looks terrible, but I get a lot on a disk, which is nice since my player has trouble with DVD-RW.
Did you read the part where I said I used my gmail?
Since my email can reset pretty much any password I have, it makes a lot of sense to use the email as the only point of failure.
The great thing is, I don't need to worry about a password compromise at some random small site propagating to my other accounts. Just one strong password, at my always SSL'ed email account and I'm secure.
Currently I need many passwords to be secure (one for each of the non-SSL sites I visit, and one shared one at the others.
It was in a poorer area, that proves it is government subsidized housing.
Maybe if you have a family of 4, and a job TV is a very affordable form of entertainment. With a $600 Christmas present for the whole family being a bargain, and in your cramped house the space saved worth something too.
I'm sure I spend more on luxury (income relative) than household with 2 minimum wage earners buying a TV for $1000 every 5 years.
Now, the $150 HD cable package would be absurd, but I bet you (from expieriance) it is hooked up to a $30 DVD player and/or an XBOX original, and with $5.00 bootleg DVDs substitutes for $30 trips to the movies (family of 4 with no extras).
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I will make a wager on this.
I wager we ARE producing enough food for 7 billion people.
In 90 days if there are 70 billion surviving people I win.
I am not tying to trivialise suffering here. Simply pointing out that people starving COULD mean we don't have enough for more people, not that we don't have enough food.
You may as well argue that we don't have enough people being born, since every day people day of old age.
There have always been people starving to death, but if the amount of people getting fed is ever increasing, than we can pretty much by definition feed more people than we currently have. Food is not the limiter on human population, it is fucking.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Poulation-since-1000AD.jpg
Arguable when the population growth was flatter, there were other limits, but it is pretty clear that for a while our growth has been at least exponential, leading me to believe that there is very little checking it currently.
On the children it is also worth noting that there are variances, but generally parents have children that they can afford.
When someone has very little, the cost of a child is far less than someone who expects to send them to private school, buy them things or send them to college. This leads to poorer people having more children. As people move to the city, but with a culture that values large quantities of children as farm-hands bad things happen, but they adjust over time.
Also, advances in health care outpace adjustments in cultural norms, so it takes longer for high infant survivability, to turn into less births.
The problem is they aren't really that dangerous.
It would be much more effective to build coal plants in their backyards.
No, what I would expect is whitehouse.gov to not use youtube, instead of re-writing policy to allow Google to better track visitors to the whitehouse.gov site.
I just downloaded it, it was a 64-bit XPI.
Way easier than installing flash, now I am curious if it will work.
Additionally, the client is open source, and Adobe has wielded the software patent hammer in the past (against flash I think even). So it's not easy to call MS particularly the greater evil here.
It is quite possible that these disruptive changes lead to a smaller work-force.
For example, the tapestry companies that caught onto the industrial revolution ended up with a lot less master weavers.
The pure reference line of books is probably going to go away (or get VERY expensive) with the popularity of the internet, and those creating putting up in-depth references for free (though if I used primarily one or two technologies, I imagine the $100 for the reference books would be well worth it.
The market for in-depth tutorials, "hacks" books, and cookbooks is one I think will remain.
O'Reilly publishes fantastic work in each of those categories, and the latter two lend themselves to dead tree (or e-ink) since they are great bathroom/nightstand reading to get a feel for a tech in 15 minutes snips without a computer.
The tutorials lend themselves to e-publishing (since you should be at a computer anyway), but nothing on the net matches the quality of a book like "Using Drupal" (recently reviewed here) as a place to get to-the-point howtos with clear examples.
My guess is they are suffering from competition of other dead-wood books as much as anything. Go to a book-store, and O'Reilly does not have the domination it once had. There are plenty of cheaper, reputable looking publishers, that get stuff out quicker.
They also should include an e-book for free with purchase of dead-tree version, or make the e-books unlimited upgradeable, I feel a little upset paying $20 to get a PDF of a book I am purchasing, but it was definitely worth it.
I doubt it happened this way, but lay-offs could even mean successful web-based book sales (bookshelf, and PDF download) leading to less work.
The things that really killed me in France were:
1) undoing closed my open window
and
2) selecting all quit my applications
The shortened shift was an annoyance, but at least it didn't close stuff i had open.
hmmm, dislike I guess.
That reminds me of a story about Comp USA.
Me "Where can i find a SCSI terminator"
Rep "A who?"
worth noting that WalMart (I them them BTW) really does pass the savings onto the consumer (their profit is consistently under 4%).
The savings at a WalMart does not for me outweigh the trip. It is so gloomy there, and everything is junky, except for maybe the electronics that is brand name. Though it is my understanding they get special crappy versions of the brand name stuff too.
damn, 3000 < 4000
I previewed this time.
They probably rounded it for their calculations:
1000 * 3 = 3000 4000
mmmmm,
My friend lives by a place that makes deep fried "inside-outs" (essentially a calzone, but deep fried).
This is east-cost US.
It's like the UK is purposely going out of it's way to prove internet censorship doesn't work.
I hope that's the goal, because otherwise they are just working to make their people dumber.
I somehow doubt the really objectionable stuff is on web pages that are open to the public.
I have to call shenanigans on that article.
The Contra 4 example they pulled out in support brings the logic of the entire article into question.
And with only 1 in 4 hard core gamers having flash-carts (using the assumption PAX is hard core gamers only), blaming sales for Contra 4 being 1/5th of expectations is pretty week.
I am going to go out on a limb and say that the reason games like Contra 4 don't sell well on the DS is that mine-game style games are better suited for getting a quick 5-10 minutes in and feeling as you have accomplished something. This would go hand in hand with portable gaming.
I personally like more in-depth games on my DS, but lean towards strategy and RPG, since I play as I watch the TV and talk to people. I couldn't keep up with what I imagine is the awesome twitch action of Contra 4 (or even Meteos or Geometry wars which I own).
Now, in Korea the attach rate of less than one, and the availability of flash-carts in legit stores makes a compelling case there. This is probably the reason for region locking in the DSi (the hope to sell there for half price).
Sorry to rant, I just hate reading 5 page articles that construct arguments on facts that do not support the conclusion.
There was no mention even of what the Hard-Core gamers were playing at PAX, or if the cart owners did it for portability (I bet a few did at least).
Except they region locked the honest people.
When I was purchasing a house that was 40-90 minutes away google street view was a great tool.
When going to a location, the street view of the store/house front is nice to have.
When my sister was looking as colleges the street view is a great tool.
When my grandfather was over, and we "took a walk" through his sisters old neighborhood, he was filled with delight.
The ability to walk around somewhere without being there is actually fairly useful, it is certainly a lot more useful than the aerial photos (which is probably why people are concerned).
Shit, did I miss something in biology class?
All these replies imply that getting married gets people pregnant, when in my general experience the opposite is true if anything (getting pregnant causes marriage).
IMO, marriage is a social contract between 2 people, and the recording of said contract to the government.
It does not cause pregnancy, and it does not cause expensive divorce any more than sharing space for 5 years in my state.
I feel reading replies that the fruits of abstinence only education are making their way to the message boards.
And I guarantee that even in the child stage of my life, my wife will deal with my childish antics better than a random person (this is not because we are married, it is part of the why, but still).
We both have life insurance policies that will pay off the house (most of one take-home salary).
Problem solved.
Additionally we live off of about 1.5 salaries, and bank the rest (though much of it into 401K). This good for long term security, and hopefully means a few extra years retired together (Chance willing I don't have the same tragedy in my life as you).
If I lose my job I can work as a stock boy for a ling while, while looking for another job. And she is teaching, with the peak of the boomlet leaving high school last year, school populations are about to start rising again.
Financial responsibility is important, but living on half of a households income is not required. Perhaps if we didn't both make pretty much the exact same thing it would be different.
I don't
And unless I am mixed up on how biology works getting married isn't making me any more likely to.
In fact, I am one of only a few people I know that got married before having a child on the way at least (family and friends).
I can mis-read statistics (anecdotes) and say that getting married is good protection against having a first child.
I think you're completley wrong on the marriage thing.
I certainly wouldn't rush into it, or rush into having children, but being married gives me one person I can be fun/childish with every day guaranteed (living with would work here too). Being married also has a huge benefit when it comes to wasting money. My wife and I can afford, and maintain a 3 bedroom house, either of us on our own would not be able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment, or maintain a house.
Additionally I vacuum half as often save 30-50 percent on the bills, and don't need to cook all the time (most of these apply to living with someone too).
These are not reasons to get married, I just simply wanted to point out it is not the end of childishness/fun. If you really want to commit to spending your life with someone, and makign the compromises that will be required (it's two way if done right) it is not something to dread or avoid. And it can certainly lead to having more money to spend on yourself, not less.
This may be in your country, at least in sweden it's pretty much impossible to buy a TV set not capable of at least 720p. Most people I know already have at least 720p.
In my country (the alleged disposable consumer driven hell of the USA) most (by a HUGE margin) people have TVs over 5 years old, so even though 720p has been pretty much the only option for any non-really small TV for a couple of years, still the vast majority of people have SDTV.
4 years ago my parents purchased a 30" SDTV for $299, 2.5 years ago I purchased a 32" HDTV for $800, theirs is just as tall, so TV shows are the same size (but not as nice looking, this ignore the wide screeniness, since TV is still shot for 4:3).
Expensive compared to what?
Compared to the TV you already own they are incredibly expensive.
Sure, and upscaled DVDs looks as good as blueray also. Have you ever seen HDTV material? It's very easy to see the difference. Even my GF complains about the picture when there is a good movie to watch and we only bought the DVD, the blueray was sold out when we bought the latest Narnia. If you're used to HD material DVD looks like shit, no definition at all.
This is very true, but I still don't own a Blu-Ray player because of cost (price of disks primarily).
In fact the only "HD" content I now watch are upscaled DVDs, and that is when I put in the effort to press the button on the remote.
I generally watch SD Digital cable (the WORSE picture imaginable), and the zoom it, since it is 4:3 letter-boxed usually. This looks awful, but it saves me a lot of money every month.
When I lived closer to a city, I had no cable and watched OTA. This looked great, and I miss it, but not as much as I miss one lunch purchased out a week, or 3-4 TV season boxed sets a year ($240 month savings).
I also watch a lot of DVD's that are 480P progressive scan xvid, and then converted to 2500kps DVDs, with all settings towards speed, not quality. They looks terrible, but I get a lot on a disk, which is nice since my player has trouble with DVD-RW.
On balance, large organizations have been a net cause of significant evil in the world.
Fixed that for you. ;)
Did you read the part where I said I used my gmail?
Since my email can reset pretty much any password I have, it makes a lot of sense to use the email as the only point of failure.
The great thing is, I don't need to worry about a password compromise at some random small site propagating to my other accounts. Just one strong password, at my always SSL'ed email account and I'm secure.
Currently I need many passwords to be secure (one for each of the non-SSL sites I visit, and one shared one at the others.
It was in a poorer area, that proves it is government subsidized housing.
Maybe if you have a family of 4, and a job TV is a very affordable form of entertainment. With a $600 Christmas present for the whole family being a bargain, and in your cramped house the space saved worth something too.
I'm sure I spend more on luxury (income relative) than household with 2 minimum wage earners buying a TV for $1000 every 5 years.
Now, the $150 HD cable package would be absurd, but I bet you (from expieriance) it is hooked up to a $30 DVD player and/or an XBOX original, and with $5.00 bootleg DVDs substitutes for $30 trips to the movies (family of 4 with no extras).
It would surprise me if it even had cable.