Now all they need to do is figure out how to keep the brain alive after the body is ready to die and we can be essentially immortal! It's got to be way easier to extend the life span of just one organ when you don't have to worry about keeping the rest of your body alive, right?
I hope that isn't the "slippery slope" they're talking about not going down.
Oh, wait... They're doubled from one case in 100,000 to two cases in 100,000... So, talking on a cell phone for ten years changes my chance of getting one of these (cureable) tumors from slim, to... slim. (assuming they can even get that accurate given a sample size of 600)
Lewis Strauss, chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, in 1955. It's become something of a cliche since then.
I know. I meant that nobody had said it in the context of this discussion.
Photovoltaic is ready for many applications, and people are using it right now to live off the grid, or to run their meters backward.
A distinct minority of people. I'd venture to guess that it's less than the number of people who installed solar in the early '80s, but I don't have statistics to back that up. I'm not saying it isn't ready for some uses, but it's certainly not ready to solve the worlds energy problems, whatever the reasons for that are.
Fission can't be said to be ready until waste disposal and nuclear proliferation are solved issues; even then it's only good for a few hundred years. Better to put the resources into developing renewables.
Proliferation issues are political, not technical. The same is arguable for disposal (most disposal or disposal preperation technologies are considered proliferation, thus banned). As for it only being good for a few hundred years, that's fine... It only needs to hold us until the next technology is viable (both technically and economically... the economic side is another thing that alternative energy advocates seem to forget about). Nuclear alone isn't the answer. Nuclear plus research into the next technology early on is what should be happening... If we manage to learn from our history, the goal should be to never get ourselves into an energy crisis like we're having today ever again, not to find a "set it and forget it" solution right out of the gate.
the idea of "electricity too cheap to meter" is (like a lot of pro-fission thinking) is a product of Gernsbackian imagination.
Who said anything about it being too cheap to meter? We're talking about feasably replacing gasoline and coal with nuclear, not making energy free. Indeed it could be cheaper, but it wouldn't be free.
Electric heat, no; very inefficient. Ground source heat-pumps, yes.
Inefficient, yes, but better than burning oil or natural gas in every house? Debatable. It certainly less poluting and almost certainly less expensive than coal or gas in the long term. It's also likely better than trucking hydrogen around as the parent to my comment suggested.
Too many people look to still-developing technologies to solve our energy problems. The problem with that is that there's always something better on the horizon so you're continually chasing a moving target, and using technology that isn't ready taints the public's perception of that technology in the future. Solar is a perfect example of this. Lots of people added solar to their houses in the '80s and now they, and anybody that knows them, wouldn't touch solar with a 10 foot pole (not to mention the fact that 20 years later it's still not quite ready). Nuclear technology is mature and ready to solve our current energy problems *today* with practically no additional development. In 20 years when the technology that seems promising now, but it a little bit out of reach is mature we can switch if it's enough of an improvement.
Unfortunately, the other side of the equation is portable power generators like petroleum engines. (i.e. your car) These use power independent of the stationary plants and are much harder to find alternatives for. The best suggestion so far seems to be to switch to hydrogen for fuels, then create the hydrogen from the stationary power plants
Better yet: Build nukes, and let people juice their cars up on hydrogen that they generate in their home garages through electrolysis of water using all that nuclear generated electricity that has become so plentiful... While you're at it, change your house over to electric heat from oil. That would be much easier than shipping all that hydrogen around, and we already have infrastructure in place to get the electricity and water to peoples homes, so there would be less initial investment required.
What is Microsoft's motivation here anyway. I mean... Right now all they can really boast about over the PS2 is that they have a years worth of hardware advancement better graphics, and even that isn't helping the bottom line. If they come out way ahead with the next generation machines and Sony maintains it's development lineup strength, they won't even have better graphics to boast about in the next generation. All you have to do to see that being first isn't what makes you successful is to look at the Dreamcast.
The only think I can think of is that perhaps they're still losing money on each Xbox they sell, so the pressure is on to get something with lower manufacturing costs out the door...
Aside from being an apples to oranges comparison (copyright law isn't patent law), the parent has a point. Resellers don't have to have a seperate license. If, somehow, Apple is held liable for infringing this patent, they will almost certainly be able to turn around and sue their suppliers for damages.
As for your little comment there... The GPL does pas along to sub-licensees, so your example is actually a counter example of the point you're trying to make.
Apple and Dell don't even make LCD panels... All they do OEM panels from various manufacturers and put them in a plastic housing with some accessory electronics...
Surely it would be the manufacturer that's infringing, right?
It is easy to say that education will solve the problem, but that doesn't even work in the US. Many people know of the dangers of AIDS and yet still have unprotected sex.
Yes, but while that's true, it's also true that many people don't. Enough people that you don't have to worry about AIDS wiping out the entire population.
...to make it clear that if there were a war, there would be more equitable representation of people making sacrifices...
Ever hear him talk about it? When I was listening to an interview with him yesterday it sounded like what he really means is that he thinks all his collegues in congress are racists and wouldn't send our troops to war if there were more white people enlisted. Nice, huh?
Either way, the last thing we need is a law that makes our government hesitate to use the military when it needs to.
The brakes were probably ineffective because when you hit the gas and the brake at the same time at highway speeds the rotors and pads quickly heat up. Brakes work by converting mechanical energy into heat. If you heat your brakes up faster than they can cool off you can't stop and you wear an amazing amount of material off the components. If you let up for a short while they cool down again and should begin working... assuming you didn't keep trying them with the gas in until there were no pads left.
Shifting into neutral, coasting for about 30 seconds, and then trying the brakes should have stopped this guy.
A powerbook is a Mac, not a PC. PC laptops traditionally use more power than mac laptops.
The Powerbook G3 Lombard (which I still use daily) has only a 40 watt power supply, and with the screen dimmed and the drive spun down only uses around 10-15 watts.
In fact the spike in power use from turning a system on in the morning is often higher then the amount of power it will draw all night while doing nothing.
That is complete bullshit.
Let's say your PC spikes to 500 watts for an entire minute before settling down to 50 watts. This would represent a worst case senario.
In this case, your couputer would use as much power in 10 minutes as it did powering up. Show me a modern PC, laptops included, that idle at less than 50 watts. Low end centrinos idle in the low 60s.
Man, that's messed up. That's way worse than the Florida ballot. It's really truly incorrect. At least with half a brain you could figure out the Florida ballot.
Luckily it seems that properly printed ballots have been sent out to replace these incorrect ones...
Tales of Symphonia, while a good game, is barely an RPG. It blurs the lines with action/adventure.
When are publishers going to get over this recent craze and realize that turning battle into a crappy button mashing version of SNES street fighter isn't going to make the game appeal to new audiences, and it's going to alienate existing fans. Star Ocean and the FF VII sequel are like this too. Add to that the delay of Xenosaga and this has been the most disappointing year for RPGs in memory.
I don't pre-order often, just for games I know will sell out early (e.g. Doom3).
I think Doom 3 is a perfect example of a game that won't sell out early, and, of course, didn't sell out at all.
The only two really good reasons I can think of for preordering, is if the game *isn't* really hyped and the store may not be planning on stocking it, or if you get some bonus for pre-ordering.
As for marketing issues, KBToys takes your address. And yes, you start getting junk mail afterwards. Luckily I've moved since I pre-ordered my PS2.
Hold on to your money and buy it when it comes out. If it sells out, they'll get more. Pre-ordering just allows game shops to keep crappier sellection on hand all while providing them with contact info for them to market to you through. If they're going to get your $50 anyway, why give it to them 3 months in advance?
There's something else I wanted to say there, but didn't....
if I am out of work, with a family, a house payment, a car payment, numerous bills, etc - where do I find the time
What business does anybody have getting into a situation where they have a house payment and a car payment without having a signifigant safety net of funds saved up? This debt mentality is fairly recent. It didn't used to be possible to owe so much money... Now people find themselves in debt to three or even five times their annual salaries and they wonder why they are getting themselves into trouble. If you're in a situation like that it means that you were living above your means and you are now dealing with the consequences. If people kept their lifestyles modest and refrained from excessive debt without having a year or more of payments saved up as a safety net then nobody would end up in this type of situation. Honestly, i'm not sure what lenders are thinking allowing people to get so overextended. It can't last forever.
For startes you're so caught up in buzzwords it's no wonder you can't see where you're going.
Since many of the jobs being outsourced are in IT, what new skills are supposed to be aquired?
Whenever you're tempted to use "IT", stop for a moment and think about what you really mean. The problem with "IT" is that if a computer is involved it's called "IT". It's just like the "Intellectual Property" problem. Once you're free from the brainwashing affect of the "IT" acronym you're free to realize that the guy doing data entry and the guy designing complex systems, while both the same under the "IT" label, actually do vastly different jobs.
Now, to answer your questions that nobody has the answer to...
what new skills are supposed to be aquired?
Critical thinking skills. You need to be able to work on either design or integration of next generation technologies. You need to be able to recognize opportunities, even if they're not in line with what you typically work on. You need to learn to learn on the fly, then you won't have to worry so much about what skills you need to learn next.
Where would the guarantee be that after all the time and money spent (at least two to four years, I would imagine) - that those skills wouldn't have been outsourced as well?
There is no guarantee. The trick is to have your knowledge evolve continually. Never stop learning. That way you never come to a point where you have to stop for 2 years to learn the next thing. You already know the next thing.
Back in the day, an auto or a textile worker had a chance to pick up IT fairly easily and cheaply - for most companies, a degree or certification *was not* necessary to get a job in computers, so these people had a better chance to get a better job, and many did.
"Back in the day" people spent ungodly sums of money on warm-body hiring policies because the IPO boom was giving everybody piles of cash to roll around in. Now, all those unqualified people who were hired into technology positions are figuring out that they can't compete in those fields anymore because they didn't really belong there in the first place.
No one seems to have an answer, either.
I disagree. Nobody seems to have an answer that you like. You seem to want to go back to the days where the rest of the world didn't have the education, or the funds to compete with you. Now they do. No legislation can put the other two thirds of the world back in the third world bottle. Either you get used to continually adapting and learning, or you will have your quality of living fall back to something close to the world average.
"stopping the tax incentives for companies who outsource jobs."
Can any candidate deliver on a promise like that?
Sure. But remember, the promise was to stop "tax incentives", not to stop outsourcing... That part was only implied.
Will stopping these unspecified tax incentives keep jobs from being outsourced? Of course not. Let's say the tax incentives are huge. That would mean companies that outsource are now getting huge tax breaks and cheap labor. If the tax breaks go away do you think they're going to give up the cheap labor? If anything they'll outsource more to make up the difference.
The tax incentives aren't really "tax incentives on outsourcing" anyway. They're tax incentives on research and development, and they don't restrict elegibility to R&D money spent in the US. Sure, you could add that restriction, and increase taxes on these businesses, but there is no scenario where increasing the cost of doing business is going to increase the number of jobs created. It just doesn't work that way.
The fact of the matter is that oursourcing is here to stay, and the fact that it's such a big issue right now is because it's new to a lot of large companies, and the jobs that are getting outsourced used to exist here. Once all those jobs are gone, nobody with an existing job here is going to get outsourced, only newly created jobs are going to be outsourced, and every US company that outsources some jobs needs to create some complementary jobs here at the same time. That keeps the more highly skilled jobs local and exports the jobs that can be done by just about anybody. Assuming you're willing to continually expand your skill set, that means outsourcing is a good thing. If you're lazy and you want to continue to pull an above average paycheck for what was high-tech yesterday, you're out of luck. If you really don't have any skills, well, you better go find yourself a socialist candidate, because capitalism is going to walk all over you.
What incentive do people have to publish these things in the first place if everybody is going to have your attitude? If nobody published them, there wouldn't be anywhere for you to go to get free copies of this stuff.
Secondly, a PDF you buy instead of scan is smaller in file size, and higher in image quality than a scan. Plus, you can text search an official PDF, but you can't text search a scan.
Slashdot Mirror
Now all they need to do is figure out how to keep the brain alive after the body is ready to die and we can be essentially immortal! It's got to be way easier to extend the life span of just one organ when you don't have to worry about keeping the rest of your body alive, right?
I hope that isn't the "slippery slope" they're talking about not going down.
Oh, wait... They're doubled from one case in 100,000 to two cases in 100,000... So, talking on a cell phone for ten years changes my chance of getting one of these (cureable) tumors from slim, to... slim. (assuming they can even get that accurate given a sample size of 600)
So what?
The Xbox2 is actually ATI based
Lewis Strauss, chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, in 1955. It's become something of a cliche since then.
I know. I meant that nobody had said it in the context of this discussion.
Photovoltaic is ready for many applications, and people are using it right now to live off the grid, or to run their meters backward.
A distinct minority of people. I'd venture to guess that it's less than the number of people who installed solar in the early '80s, but I don't have statistics to back that up. I'm not saying it isn't ready for some uses, but it's certainly not ready to solve the worlds energy problems, whatever the reasons for that are.
Fission can't be said to be ready until waste disposal and nuclear proliferation are solved issues; even then it's only good for a few hundred years. Better to put the resources into developing renewables.
Proliferation issues are political, not technical. The same is arguable for disposal (most disposal or disposal preperation technologies are considered proliferation, thus banned). As for it only being good for a few hundred years, that's fine... It only needs to hold us until the next technology is viable (both technically and economically... the economic side is another thing that alternative energy advocates seem to forget about). Nuclear alone isn't the answer. Nuclear plus research into the next technology early on is what should be happening... If we manage to learn from our history, the goal should be to never get ourselves into an energy crisis like we're having today ever again, not to find a "set it and forget it" solution right out of the gate.
the idea of "electricity too cheap to meter" is (like a lot of pro-fission thinking) is a product of Gernsbackian imagination.
Who said anything about it being too cheap to meter? We're talking about feasably replacing gasoline and coal with nuclear, not making energy free. Indeed it could be cheaper, but it wouldn't be free.
Electric heat, no; very inefficient. Ground source heat-pumps, yes.
Inefficient, yes, but better than burning oil or natural gas in every house? Debatable. It certainly less poluting and almost certainly less expensive than coal or gas in the long term. It's also likely better than trucking hydrogen around as the parent to my comment suggested.
Too many people look to still-developing technologies to solve our energy problems. The problem with that is that there's always something better on the horizon so you're continually chasing a moving target, and using technology that isn't ready taints the public's perception of that technology in the future. Solar is a perfect example of this. Lots of people added solar to their houses in the '80s and now they, and anybody that knows them, wouldn't touch solar with a 10 foot pole (not to mention the fact that 20 years later it's still not quite ready). Nuclear technology is mature and ready to solve our current energy problems *today* with practically no additional development. In 20 years when the technology that seems promising now, but it a little bit out of reach is mature we can switch if it's enough of an improvement.
Unfortunately, the other side of the equation is portable power generators like petroleum engines. (i.e. your car) These use power independent of the stationary plants and are much harder to find alternatives for. The best suggestion so far seems to be to switch to hydrogen for fuels, then create the hydrogen from the stationary power plants
Better yet: Build nukes, and let people juice their cars up on hydrogen that they generate in their home garages through electrolysis of water using all that nuclear generated electricity that has become so plentiful... While you're at it, change your house over to electric heat from oil. That would be much easier than shipping all that hydrogen around, and we already have infrastructure in place to get the electricity and water to peoples homes, so there would be less initial investment required.
What happened to bravado [...] they once had?
Bravado doesn't earn profits, whereas their current business model rakes in the cash.
What is Microsoft's motivation here anyway. I mean... Right now all they can really boast about over the PS2 is that they have a years worth of hardware advancement better graphics, and even that isn't helping the bottom line. If they come out way ahead with the next generation machines and Sony maintains it's development lineup strength, they won't even have better graphics to boast about in the next generation. All you have to do to see that being first isn't what makes you successful is to look at the Dreamcast.
The only think I can think of is that perhaps they're still losing money on each Xbox they sell, so the pressure is on to get something with lower manufacturing costs out the door...
Aside from being an apples to oranges comparison (copyright law isn't patent law), the parent has a point. Resellers don't have to have a seperate license. If, somehow, Apple is held liable for infringing this patent, they will almost certainly be able to turn around and sue their suppliers for damages.
As for your little comment there... The GPL does pas along to sub-licensees, so your example is actually a counter example of the point you're trying to make.
Apple and Dell don't even make LCD panels... All they do OEM panels from various manufacturers and put them in a plastic housing with some accessory electronics...
Surely it would be the manufacturer that's infringing, right?
It is easy to say that education will solve the problem, but that doesn't even work in the US. Many people know of the dangers of AIDS and yet still have unprotected sex.
Yes, but while that's true, it's also true that many people don't. Enough people that you don't have to worry about AIDS wiping out the entire population.
...to make it clear that if there were a war, there would be more equitable representation of people making sacrifices...
Ever hear him talk about it? When I was listening to an interview with him yesterday it sounded like what he really means is that he thinks all his collegues in congress are racists and wouldn't send our troops to war if there were more white people enlisted. Nice, huh?
Either way, the last thing we need is a law that makes our government hesitate to use the military when it needs to.
The brakes were probably ineffective because when you hit the gas and the brake at the same time at highway speeds the rotors and pads quickly heat up. Brakes work by converting mechanical energy into heat. If you heat your brakes up faster than they can cool off you can't stop and you wear an amazing amount of material off the components. If you let up for a short while they cool down again and should begin working... assuming you didn't keep trying them with the gas in until there were no pads left.
Shifting into neutral, coasting for about 30 seconds, and then trying the brakes should have stopped this guy.
Nobody's claiming (I hope!) that it saves power to leave a machine on all night...
Except the parent to my original comment..
A powerbook is a Mac, not a PC. PC laptops traditionally use more power than mac laptops.
The Powerbook G3 Lombard (which I still use daily) has only a 40 watt power supply, and with the screen dimmed and the drive spun down only uses around 10-15 watts.
G3 iBooks use about 35 watts peak. They only have a 40 watt power supply.
Even at 25 watts idle, you'll still use way more power over-night than in turning on your computer in the morning.
In fact the spike in power use from turning a system on in the morning is often higher then the amount of power it will draw all night while doing nothing.
That is complete bullshit.
Let's say your PC spikes to 500 watts for an entire minute before settling down to 50 watts. This would represent a worst case senario.
In this case, your couputer would use as much power in 10 minutes as it did powering up. Show me a modern PC, laptops included, that idle at less than 50 watts. Low end centrinos idle in the low 60s.
Man, that's messed up. That's way worse than the Florida ballot. It's really truly incorrect. At least with half a brain you could figure out the Florida ballot.
Luckily it seems that properly printed ballots have been sent out to replace these incorrect ones...
Blech.
Tales of Symphonia, while a good game, is barely an RPG. It blurs the lines with action/adventure.
When are publishers going to get over this recent craze and realize that turning battle into a crappy button mashing version of SNES street fighter isn't going to make the game appeal to new audiences, and it's going to alienate existing fans. Star Ocean and the FF VII sequel are like this too. Add to that the delay of Xenosaga and this has been the most disappointing year for RPGs in memory.
I don't pre-order often, just for games I know will sell out early (e.g. Doom3).
I think Doom 3 is a perfect example of a game that won't sell out early, and, of course, didn't sell out at all.
The only two really good reasons I can think of for preordering, is if the game *isn't* really hyped and the store may not be planning on stocking it, or if you get some bonus for pre-ordering.
As for marketing issues, KBToys takes your address. And yes, you start getting junk mail afterwards. Luckily I've moved since I pre-ordered my PS2.
Why do people pre-order?
Hold on to your money and buy it when it comes out. If it sells out, they'll get more. Pre-ordering just allows game shops to keep crappier sellection on hand all while providing them with contact info for them to market to you through. If they're going to get your $50 anyway, why give it to them 3 months in advance?
There's something else I wanted to say there, but didn't....
if I am out of work, with a family, a house payment, a car payment, numerous bills, etc - where do I find the time
What business does anybody have getting into a situation where they have a house payment and a car payment without having a signifigant safety net of funds saved up? This debt mentality is fairly recent. It didn't used to be possible to owe so much money... Now people find themselves in debt to three or even five times their annual salaries and they wonder why they are getting themselves into trouble. If you're in a situation like that it means that you were living above your means and you are now dealing with the consequences. If people kept their lifestyles modest and refrained from excessive debt without having a year or more of payments saved up as a safety net then nobody would end up in this type of situation. Honestly, i'm not sure what lenders are thinking allowing people to get so overextended. It can't last forever.
For startes you're so caught up in buzzwords it's no wonder you can't see where you're going.
Since many of the jobs being outsourced are in IT, what new skills are supposed to be aquired?
Whenever you're tempted to use "IT", stop for a moment and think about what you really mean. The problem with "IT" is that if a computer is involved it's called "IT". It's just like the "Intellectual Property" problem. Once you're free from the brainwashing affect of the "IT" acronym you're free to realize that the guy doing data entry and the guy designing complex systems, while both the same under the "IT" label, actually do vastly different jobs.
Now, to answer your questions that nobody has the answer to...
what new skills are supposed to be aquired?
Critical thinking skills. You need to be able to work on either design or integration of next generation technologies. You need to be able to recognize opportunities, even if they're not in line with what you typically work on. You need to learn to learn on the fly, then you won't have to worry so much about what skills you need to learn next.
Where would the guarantee be that after all the time and money spent (at least two to four years, I would imagine) - that those skills wouldn't have been outsourced as well?
There is no guarantee. The trick is to have your knowledge evolve continually. Never stop learning. That way you never come to a point where you have to stop for 2 years to learn the next thing. You already know the next thing.
Back in the day, an auto or a textile worker had a chance to pick up IT fairly easily and cheaply - for most companies, a degree or certification *was not* necessary to get a job in computers, so these people had a better chance to get a better job, and many did.
"Back in the day" people spent ungodly sums of money on warm-body hiring policies because the IPO boom was giving everybody piles of cash to roll around in. Now, all those unqualified people who were hired into technology positions are figuring out that they can't compete in those fields anymore because they didn't really belong there in the first place.
No one seems to have an answer, either.
I disagree. Nobody seems to have an answer that you like. You seem to want to go back to the days where the rest of the world didn't have the education, or the funds to compete with you. Now they do. No legislation can put the other two thirds of the world back in the third world bottle. Either you get used to continually adapting and learning, or you will have your quality of living fall back to something close to the world average.
"stopping the tax incentives for companies who outsource jobs."
Can any candidate deliver on a promise like that?
Sure. But remember, the promise was to stop "tax incentives", not to stop outsourcing... That part was only implied.
Will stopping these unspecified tax incentives keep jobs from being outsourced? Of course not. Let's say the tax incentives are huge. That would mean companies that outsource are now getting huge tax breaks and cheap labor. If the tax breaks go away do you think they're going to give up the cheap labor? If anything they'll outsource more to make up the difference.
The tax incentives aren't really "tax incentives on outsourcing" anyway. They're tax incentives on research and development, and they don't restrict elegibility to R&D money spent in the US. Sure, you could add that restriction, and increase taxes on these businesses, but there is no scenario where increasing the cost of doing business is going to increase the number of jobs created. It just doesn't work that way.
The fact of the matter is that oursourcing is here to stay, and the fact that it's such a big issue right now is because it's new to a lot of large companies, and the jobs that are getting outsourced used to exist here. Once all those jobs are gone, nobody with an existing job here is going to get outsourced, only newly created jobs are going to be outsourced, and every US company that outsources some jobs needs to create some complementary jobs here at the same time. That keeps the more highly skilled jobs local and exports the jobs that can be done by just about anybody. Assuming you're willing to continually expand your skill set, that means outsourcing is a good thing. If you're lazy and you want to continue to pull an above average paycheck for what was high-tech yesterday, you're out of luck. If you really don't have any skills, well, you better go find yourself a socialist candidate, because capitalism is going to walk all over you.
Oh, two more things.
What incentive do people have to publish these things in the first place if everybody is going to have your attitude? If nobody published them, there wouldn't be anywhere for you to go to get free copies of this stuff.
Secondly, a PDF you buy instead of scan is smaller in file size, and higher in image quality than a scan. Plus, you can text search an official PDF, but you can't text search a scan.