Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Times ran a three part series on the "Wal-Mart Effect" -- namely the outsourcing of jobs to China and other countries.
Last year, the traffic to my local Wal-Mart (at the end of the street my neighborhood intersects with) was so bad I couldn't get out of my neighborhood starting from about Dec 15th on.
This year, after they published the story, it's clear sailing all the way out to the freeway.
I think people are starting to see what globalization is all about -- screwing the little guy. It's one thing to lose jobs because of mechanization and automation: that's real productivity gain. But it's another to force people to work for less and less because you can find somebody even more desperate for work elsewhere. That's how Hollywood operates. For all their liberalism and supposed concern, the fact of the matter is that minimum wage earners at McDonald's are treated better than the sharks in the studios treat their low-level employees, who all too often are expected to work obscene hours -- and do so without complaint because of the very long line of people willing to take that same job.
I have mod points and I can't mod it up further. Pity.
Years ago I talked to a guy who was an ardent supporter of the idea that the government should get into the business of launching people into space. He never did come up with a compelling reason to go there (else, where's his money?).
Repeat after me:
Paramount is run by soulless, clueless Assholes.
But not to worry. Is the Star Trek franchise gaining strength or weakening in the face of their repeated legal assaults that prevent such fan-inspired spinoffs? I would say that the declining ratings of shows like Deep Space Nine and Enterprise relative to the strength of TNG are indications that Paramount has (a) wrecked the franchise by allowing said soulless, clueless assholes to run it, and (b) have reduced fan interest by making it apparent that the source thereof is a bunch of soulless &c. Part of the fan experience is that harmless derivative work stuff that keeps their franchise front-and-center in their audience's mind. Lucas, whatever his other faults as a producer and filmmaker, has treaded with a pretty light hand in that arena, to his credit. The same cannot be said for Paramount.
Some years ago, I recall reading an interview with a Disney executive after the unspectacular financial returns came back from Pocahontas. The spine-without-a-cerebellum observed that the movie was a failure because there was no male hero in it and therefore audiences rejected it. Uh... hello? Remember Little Mermaid, one of your biggest hits? Well, no, and it goes to show that in the entertainment business, people make all kinds of false attributions. They may as well use a Ouija board.
For years, hypesters have been working the lingo-circuit hoping the rest of the country will adopt their creation of Chicago as "the third coast". Somehow, I don't think it will ever fly.
This has been done, and to equally thrilled audiences, by the Star Wars In 30 Minutes guys, who started at USC and premiered at Edinburgh's Fringe Festival (in a galaxy far, far away from George Lucas's lawyers). I saw it when it was in LA last year and it was hilarious.
Does it not worry anyone, then, that the US is allowing so much of our manufacturing to be shipped overseas to oppressive countries? Would you want to have to go to war against the Chinese to defend your liberties armed only with tools they let you have?
Oh, God, not another of these "communism has never been tried" bozos. Yes, it has, it has been found wanting -- and then some. Sorry, you don't get to escape that box by a bogus name-calling exercise.
Otherwise, I can park across the street with a sign reading, "$1 Paid For Each Vote for Candidate X" and buy votes from people coming out of the polling place with proof of their vote. Some of the machines being discussed would enable corrupt voters to do exactly that.
In what substantive way is Social Security different than this? People now drawing from the system get far, far more out of it than they ever put into it, those paying into it won't receive any substantial benefits. The AARP is a racket.
I was sneered at, thanks to/. moderation, regarding my criticism of Larry Wall's creation of yet another incompatible regular expression syntax in Perl 6. I think I just answered my question: yes, he is crazy. Crazy like a Bellevue inmate.
If that's true, "overpriced" first-world programmers should be swimming in it. The fact that it doesn't happen indicates something's wrong with your theory -- i.e., business is migrating to India and poor Indians are becoming less poor.
Offtopic, I know. You're right, it's definitely hard to see. Allow me to introduce myself: I actually work for pricegrabber.com. OSDN cobrands our site, but we have exactly zero to do with where links go on/. -- that's all up to whomsoever at OSDN. My question to the audience -- assuming anyone is listening -- is simply this: what should we do? Slashdot needs money to operate, we need traffic, it seems simple, but there's a lot of folks here who don't like the idea of advertising, especially when it gets in the way of site navigation. Fair enough. Something's gotta give, though -- how can we all just get along? (Please be aware I'm just a humble geek-behind-the-scenes. I don't do business. At best I can run any comments up the flagpole and see who salutes, to use Madison Avenue parlance.)
I voted against Gore because I thought his connections to the greens would lead to a dictatorship of the trees, i.e., that stupid environmental regulations would put an end to the automobile (which would be a disaster for the country). Now it turns out that Bush and his evil henchman, Ashcroft, have decided that the constitution is optional, and that our rights need to be destroyed by bogus and secret courts, and that apparently our citizenry needs to be spied upon, en masse, without even so much as a warrant from a judge, and hence probable cause.
... why so few people have implemented this. Our website actually has one of these thingys -- we just put it up, in fact, because its absence was causing trouble with some IE releases. Wading through the P3P docs to come up with a meaningful XML privacy description document is a non-trivial undertaking. The funny thing is that, IIRC, having this little shred of XML puts us ahead of a bunch of other commercial sites that don't do it.
We get palm trees and pine trees. But no, they never look out of place -- they're just as fake as the tits on a B-list starlet...
Re:Dear Larry: Are you crazy?
on
Ask Larry Wall
·
· Score: 2
Thanks for putting this much more clearly than I've been able to. Unfortunately, there have been several correspondants on this issue who feel that compatability modes will fix this problem. I disagree, and suggest they will make the situation worse.
Dear Larry: Are you crazy?
on
Ask Larry Wall
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Having read some of the more recent Apocalypses, I have a question for you: are you crazy? The regexp changes you're talking about in Apocalypse 5 will make Perl 6 deeply incompatible with existing scripts and practice. In particular, I object to the conversion of [] to non-capturing grouping rather than character class. As a long-time user of Perl, I have to say this is insane. You're wrong when you say "we're really simplifying" -- you're making things more complex. Changing this breaks Perl and much more; why do you think you're immune from the negative side-effects of hubris? And it is hubris. We know this because you start page 2 of the Apocalypse by saying, "Regex culture has gone wrong in a variety of ways...." One of Issawi's Laws of Progress says that society (even Perl regexp culture) is a mule, not a car -- if pressed too hard, it will kick an throw off its rider. Something this radical and wrong will hurt Perl 6 adoption and will retard the acceptance of some very nifty features.
Slashdot Mirror
More BS from showbiz folks. Nothing to see here. Move on...
Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Times ran a three part series on the "Wal-Mart Effect" -- namely the outsourcing of jobs to China and other countries.
Last year, the traffic to my local Wal-Mart (at the end of the street my neighborhood intersects with) was so bad I couldn't get out of my neighborhood starting from about Dec 15th on.
This year, after they published the story, it's clear sailing all the way out to the freeway.
I think people are starting to see what globalization is all about -- screwing the little guy. It's one thing to lose jobs because of mechanization and automation: that's real productivity gain. But it's another to force people to work for less and less because you can find somebody even more desperate for work elsewhere. That's how Hollywood operates. For all their liberalism and supposed concern, the fact of the matter is that minimum wage earners at McDonald's are treated better than the sharks in the studios treat their low-level employees, who all too often are expected to work obscene hours -- and do so without complaint because of the very long line of people willing to take that same job.
Years ago I talked to a guy who was an ardent supporter of the idea that the government should get into the business of launching people into space. He never did come up with a compelling reason to go there (else, where's his money?).
This is about pulling the plug on booting Linux, period.
Some years ago, I recall reading an interview with a Disney executive after the unspectacular financial returns came back from Pocahontas. The spine-without-a-cerebellum observed that the movie was a failure because there was no male hero in it and therefore audiences rejected it. Uh... hello? Remember Little Mermaid, one of your biggest hits? Well, no, and it goes to show that in the entertainment business, people make all kinds of false attributions. They may as well use a Ouija board.
For years, hypesters have been working the lingo-circuit hoping the rest of the country will adopt their creation of Chicago as "the third coast". Somehow, I don't think it will ever fly.
This has been done, and to equally thrilled audiences, by the Star Wars In 30 Minutes guys, who started at USC and premiered at Edinburgh's Fringe Festival (in a galaxy far, far away from George Lucas's lawyers). I saw it when it was in LA last year and it was hilarious.
Does it not worry anyone, then, that the US is allowing so much of our manufacturing to be shipped overseas to oppressive countries? Would you want to have to go to war against the Chinese to defend your liberties armed only with tools they let you have?
Oh, God, not another of these "communism has never been tried" bozos. Yes, it has, it has been found wanting -- and then some. Sorry, you don't get to escape that box by a bogus name-calling exercise.
God, yes... that was exactly my reaction. He's never been involved in actual software development, has he?
I was sneered at, thanks to /. moderation, regarding my criticism of Larry Wall's creation of yet another incompatible regular expression syntax in Perl 6. I think I just answered my question: yes, he is crazy. Crazy like a Bellevue inmate.
"misunderestimate"?? You surely mean "underestimate".
If that's true, "overpriced" first-world programmers should be swimming in it. The fact that it doesn't happen indicates something's wrong with your theory -- i.e., business is migrating to India and poor Indians are becoming less poor.
Call it the King Gilette philosophy: give away the razor (printer), sell the blades (ink carts).
... which can only mean that your shit is traceable. Install an RFID scanner on every toilet, and I can paint a decent picture of where you have been.
It ain't "segway", it's "segue".
Offtopic, I know. You're right, it's definitely hard to see. Allow me to introduce myself: I actually work for pricegrabber.com. OSDN cobrands our site, but we have exactly zero to do with where links go on /. -- that's all up to whomsoever at OSDN. My question to the audience -- assuming anyone is listening -- is simply this: what should we do? Slashdot needs money to operate, we need traffic, it seems simple, but there's a lot of folks here who don't like the idea of advertising, especially when it gets in the way of site navigation. Fair enough. Something's gotta give, though -- how can we all just get along? (Please be aware I'm just a humble geek-behind-the-scenes. I don't do business. At best I can run any comments up the flagpole and see who salutes, to use Madison Avenue parlance.)
No. But it's arguable that Gore would have been just as bad in a different direction.
Can I take my vote back now?
The free market has nothing to do with GSM adoption. It was imposed by various European telecom agencies.
... why so few people have implemented this. Our website actually has one of these thingys -- we just put it up, in fact, because its absence was causing trouble with some IE releases. Wading through the P3P docs to come up with a meaningful XML privacy description document is a non-trivial undertaking. The funny thing is that, IIRC, having this little shred of XML puts us ahead of a bunch of other commercial sites that don't do it.
We get palm trees and pine trees. But no, they never look out of place -- they're just as fake as the tits on a B-list starlet...
Thanks for putting this much more clearly than I've been able to. Unfortunately, there have been several correspondants on this issue who feel that compatability modes will fix this problem. I disagree, and suggest they will make the situation worse.
Having read some of the more recent Apocalypses, I have a question for you: are you crazy? The regexp changes you're talking about in Apocalypse 5 will make Perl 6 deeply incompatible with existing scripts and practice. In particular, I object to the conversion of [] to non-capturing grouping rather than character class. As a long-time user of Perl, I have to say this is insane. You're wrong when you say "we're really simplifying" -- you're making things more complex. Changing this breaks Perl and much more; why do you think you're immune from the negative side-effects of hubris? And it is hubris. We know this because you start page 2 of the Apocalypse by saying, "Regex culture has gone wrong in a variety of ways...." One of Issawi's Laws of Progress says that society (even Perl regexp culture) is a mule, not a car -- if pressed too hard, it will kick an throw off its rider. Something this radical and wrong will hurt Perl 6 adoption and will retard the acceptance of some very nifty features.