From the article: They(shipping) emit 800 million tonnes of CO2 each year -- 5 percent of the world's total. They emit high levels of sulphur dioxide.
I'd say that, while not huge in proportion, 5% of the world's emmisions certainly deserves a hard look - and if larger kites can cut fuel usage by 40% as the article states, it'd be significant.
I agree that strapping a kite onto an ocean ship is a silly thing to do
If it's silly but it works, is it really silly?
This company developed something that, while it might seem silly, has the potential to save $$$ in fuel costs, and therefore reduce the demand for oil by at least a bit.
Per the article: a kite costs $775k, and can save $1.6k per day, 'under favorable wind conditions'. Figure that's 100 days a year, that's $160k saved per year, or about a 5 year payoff. An easy sell, in financial markets(as long as the kite can be expected to last 10-15).
In other words, every little bit helps. And this stands to help more per $ spent than putting solar panels on homes today.
And people in rural areas will most definitely see the difference. I live in a small town (10,000 people) in Iowa, and I have DSL at home and fiber at work. And that's only because I haven't had the time to get the fiber run to my house yet.
I have you beat. 2mbit DSL, and my town has less than 30 people in it. The nearest gas station is 30 miles away, the nearest movie theater ~45.
For the farmers, point to point radio can be an answer. Use high gain antennas and you probably won't cause much inteference. Not before you run out of farmers, anyways.
On the other hand, a high speed 'mesh' network might not work well in an apartment complex, for example.
Consider, P2P started becoming big ~2000, signaling the beginning of the music sharing craze.
Before that, network traffic was email, webpages, etc... Most people on dialup. Sure, all sorts of stuff was available one usenet, but this was when it went 'mainstream'.
Suddenly people were sharing hundreds, even thousands of MP3 files, most at 128kbps. Call it 5 megs.
A couple years later video files started appearing, but processor power and codecs weren't quite there, especially with more limited bandwidth.
Now music streaming is pretty much assumed, and you have stuuf like netflix's video download service. If you want to be legal, of course. On the other hand you have all sorts of IRC downloads and torrents and such where you can get pretty much any published song or video off the web.
In 2002, most videos you could pull down were markably worse than VCR quality - frequently half the resolution of broadcast. Today you can download HDTV level quality for many videos.
The thing with P2P is that you don't need massive server farms with huge connectivity to saturate routers - if every computer on the web is acting like a server and transmitting data as they do with a P2P client installed, that'd be quite enough to bring today's routers to their knees.
Extrapolating from previous trends gives you quite a bit of bandwidth usage on the network, as more people get broadband(and faster broadband) each year.
Personally, I tend to think that infrastructure upgrades will usually keep up, but there is some cause for alarmism, if only because it gets companies off their butts to install the additional capacity before it becomes critical.
I like how the congressman describes it as an "arbitrary" date for decomissioning and that the risks won't increase overnight. I say send a congressman up on every mission after the shuttle's sell by date.
Given the thrill that space flight still has, such that you do get billionaires buying flights, I think that such a requirement would actually increase the odds of the shuttle program continuing.
Even if only 10% of congress want rides, that's still 73 people wanting to go up.
I could argue that the B52 is still flying mostly because it's a freakily well designed plane for what it is.
The builders happened to hit the mix just right, and even with 'strip to the frame' refits every so often it's showing it's age. For example, it's not really rated for operation in hostile airspace anymore, instead it's a standoff plane - launching cruise missiles rather than dropping bombs.
The shuttle is much more of a white elephant. We don't have enough launches to obtain the body of knowledge and automation to reduce expenses, and it's a strain to launch any given shuttle once a year.
But I'll agree that we'd be able to make do with the shuttle for much longer if it wasn't used for everything. For one obvious example: A seperate system for lifting ISS modules/supplies. This would make servicing Hubble* easier.
Then again, after we have a seperate system for heavy lifting things like ISS modules, I'd put a seperate 'satellite servicer' craft on the list - something like an ISS module with engines that could take supplies lifted by the cargo craft and go do the servicing without hauling what's effectively a relaunchable space station up from earth gravity every time.
To make up for the fact that the shuttle has a bay larger than our likely repair craft can be - go with a bigalow type inflatable system. A couple PSI and suddenly you have a huge bay.
*Of course I think that we should have a replacement for this available as well.
I think that some of the question is, sure, it's used for science and development. But, even for science and development, there are ways to calculate cost effectivness.
Some would ask, what would happen if we took half that and invested it in green energy, such as wind, solar, nuclear, and oil replacement technologies such as cellulostic ethanol?
I personally think that we can and should do both. Arguements will always exist for prioritization.
But then I think that we should of had a replacement for the shuttle long ago. For stuff like that your goal should be to always have a replacement available - IE by the time they can't build new shuttles, they should be able to build the replacement for the shuttle.
[quote]2.4 Ghz is one of the most badly managed spectrum for consumers. You have phone systems that take out access points, access points that take out phone systems, and no idea at all which of those systems will interact badly with another.[/quote]
This is part of the reason I snapped up a 900mhz cordless phone when I saw one recently - at least in my situation, it has far better range than 2.4 or 5ghz phones.
Higher Ghz, especially for low-bitrate stuff like phones, isn't necessarily a good thing. For a given power level, a lower frequency will give you more range.
And why I wish 802.11N had specified 5Ghz operation, IE it's not N unless it can operate at 5Ghz. From reports I've heard, N doesn't play well with interference or other access points within range - which you have to assume in many installations. At least with b/g you could have two other networks on different channels without interfering, with N or other dual channel, another dual channel is going to be interfering.
At least there's a decent number of channels available on 5ghz, and the fact that it doesn't travel as far can be a bonus.
Plus, to be completely honest, I'm not sure how much parallel processing is going to do for your average user
Substitute 'gamer' for 'user' and then take a look at video cards. Parallel processing is alive and doing well enough to be assumed today, at least for video tasks.
As for multiple cores - while it won't benefit the average office program*, I'd also point out that bottom barrel processors have been able to run them effectively for years.
I've seen proposals that would have a thread for the graphics engine, a thread for the physics engine, one for user handling and one for AI stuff. Optimize and add more threads if you have more cores, of course.
It seems like most applications wind up waiting for something other than the CPU these days... It seems to me that more time would be wasted waiting on I/O or other hardware than the CPU... Maybe that's not true at the server, but it certainly is on the desktop.
Might be true at the moment, but both RAM and flash keeps getting faster and cheaper, while CPU speeds seem to have leveled out, more or less.
I'm sure there's plenty of algorithms that would really benefit from being re-examined...
I'm also sure that this would be true anyways, multi-threading/cores or not.;)
Honestly enough, I bought a dual core machine recently instead of the quad core because I figure that it's going to be years before they start optimizing programming enough that an extra two cores will make a significant difference in gaming. At least with a dual core the OS can offload most system operations onto the other core, leaving one free for the game.
It'll come, eventually, but multi-core processors have to reach a certain critical mass before programmers will go through the hassle. By the sounds of it, part of the hassle will be developing proper multi-thread debuggers.
investing directly in the health, education, and general welfare of the people do you get a healthy and prosperous body politic.
Generally speaking, you'll find that many, even most, republicans agree with this, it's just that they vary on the best means to achieve it.
Personally, I think that teaching a measure of self-reliance is one of the most important things to do. Government aid is, at least in the USA, historically one of the least efficient means to help people. The most efficient is people helping themselves.
I mean, take medicare, with a budget in 2003 of 278 billion - and 33 billion in estimated fraud. That's 11%. Ouch, and it's not even getting into waste.
Private schools regularly manage to give superior educations for half or even a third or less cost per pupil, without even counting 'special needs' students or budget.
Of course, I tend towards the libertarian end of things, but I'm definitly not an anarchist. Government has it's place, but we need to trim it down quite a bit.
My general philosophy is to structure aid to avoid such that situations like where a family on welfare is actually better off not working than getting a job*, even at a minimum wage job. Where a kid who's smart enough to save his inheritance ends up ineligable for grants, versus one who spends it on a car who is(they were fraternal twins).
Still, I think that most people should have to work a bit for college, in order for them to value it. I also think that we need to renew emphasis on technical schools; not everybody is suited for academic pursuits. There are plenty who are happier with a wrench in hand.
*Obvious exemption would be if they're currently getting training for new career skills, but that's temporary.
WOW! You really have NO IDEA how to measure the standard of living.
Sure I do. Unlike you, I'm cognizant that increases in technology result in realworld increases in the standard of living.
Thus my point that people, on average, are better off today than they were a decade ago, and so on and so forth.
Yeah the technology has gotten better right across the board. I think you'll find that the average wage peaked in the US
I suggest that you look up the definition of 'stagnant'.
the number of people living below the poverty line is actually increasing - you know the number of people who can actually afford those basic needs you keep saying are important.
Give me a break - do you even know how the US defines poverty?
The average person's ability to get medical care for serious illness and injury is decreasing
Not really, people can get treatment for illnesses that were untreatable in past years. What's happening though is that these treatments are expensive, and it's gotten to the point that it's a major expense because we can treat so much, but don't often have 'magic cures'. A cancer that used to kill in three months now can be cured half the time- but takes a year of expensive treatment to do so.
Okay so you're saying that kids who ride bikes and mopeds are better off because they get a primary school education.
Heh - nope, I said the EMPLOYEES had started riding to work - first with bicycles, then later on to mopeds.
Their children probably still walked to school - but they were going to school, and completing at least primary(elementary). The study didn't cover secondary education, past the terms of the study at the time I read about it.
probably something the company encourages so they can have employees children in the same sweatshops their parents work in
Just a vast source of optimisim aren't you? The factory employed adults - not children, actually reducing the child labor rates over the previous farms that pulled children out of school early to work on the farms.
Which brings us back to the protectionalism you so loath, and reasonable well regulated working conditions.
And your complete misunderstanding, as the parents were working within the hours you mentioned.
A COMPANY THAT CAN'T PROVIDE A LIVING WAGE FOR AN EMPLOYEE SHOULD NOT BE PERMITTED TO HIRE THAT EMPLOYEE.
They were though, especially by the standards of the area. Again, it seems you'd prefer them to remain virtually grubbing in the mud rather than be employed for lower wages than the USA.
As for the USA, if an employee isn't WORTH what you consider a 'living wage', they're going to be unemployed. Personally, I'd rather them work at least some. Eventually they might get there. Meanwhile, at least, we don't have them sucking on the government teat.
What's more to be reasonably fair there has to be some kind of reward for working hard beyond simply subsisting.
Like the workers at the factory actually being able to afford something as simple as a bicycle? Housing with plumbing, electricity?
There has to be some reasonable prospect for someone in a 3rd world country of improving their situation. Again minimum subsistence wages that lead to a life of forced labour (on threat of starvation) just isn't enough.
Ah, life before the factory opened. Again - this is the life they had BEFORE the facotry opened. They depending upon their farm producing in order to eat, and a bad year can lead to famine. Medical care is limited, injury rehab virtually non-existant.
To trade even a small jobs that don't do this for a number of jobs that do is AWFUL for all of humanity because eventually that will become the norm (ie work, or die, there's someone else willing to take your place). What a horrible world that would be. Think of it this way, in such a world you wouldn't have
Yep standard of living goes up a tiny bit for far flung countries. Meanwhile people in your own countries see their standard of living plumet.
Goes up a tiny bit for billions. Stays pretty much stagnant for the USA
Or would you rather go back 30 years? I look around, plenty of people are buying 50" HTDVs, go back 20 and we'd be looking at 32" as 'big', or really expensive projection sets that needed lots of maintenance.
Go back even 10 years and cars on average had less power, fewer features, and were more polluting.
Current expense increases tend to be more about the increasing cost of oil, than outsourcing of wages. Mandate a high wage and everyone competes on merit. It means you have to raise people's standard of living enough in the 3rd world country for them to be able to afford an education and compete against people in your own country. That is not a bad thing. That makes for real competition, instead of outsourcing jobs to people who can't actually do them because they work 16 hours a day and can't afford much more than food.
Uh, they are. Not immediately of course, it'll take generations. Mandate what you'd consider a high wage and the jobs never move.
If you take someone that's paid $1 a week and pay them $4 a week, they're still not going to be able to live a good life.
First, let's move away from looking at 'pay' and switch to income. Before being hired by the factory, they were essentially self-employed on their farms.
Matter of fact, even if you work for a single employer getting a regular paycheck, you could still consider yourself self-employed, as you can always leave to do something else(income variations aside).
Anyways, I'm arguing for incremental improvement - you seem to be arguing for 'all or nothing' affairs. Fact is, in the report I read - the workers were riding bicycles in two years, and many had mopeds in 10. As a result, other businesses opened to sell and support the bicycles, and then the mopeds. Primary school completion was an order of magnitude higher for the kids of the employees over the farmers.
I fail to see how all this isn't a good thing. Look at our history - even with the exploitation we eventually improved.
There are actual slave-labor shops out there that do as you say - but they're a different matter.
Yeah some choice. You just lost your right to work your land. You and your whole family may work for pitance or starve. When faced with this choice there is effectively no other choice but suicide. As for trading and selling them, I've got that covered too. The sweat shop is bought, or taken over. What choice did these people have again? Thats right work for new owner or starve. It is slavery. Period.
Who took their land? I said they left the farm to go work at the factory. The only land lost would be the space the factory takes up - which should have been bought by the farmers.
If your argument held true, people wouldn't work in sweat shops all their lives. They'd work between 5 and 10 years and get a higher wage. That's not the typical story and you know that very well.
Actually, it tends to take generations. The grandfather's a peasant, the father is a shoe assembler, the son is a plumber, and the grandson an accountant.
Great job setting up strawmen, though.
Do you really think that outsourcing a $100,000 job to Bangalore for $50,000 is going to suddenly create lots of jobs!?
Any one job's effects are marginal. But we outsourced so many jobs that if we'd theoretically kept them all 'home', we'd have negative unemployment.
What that means is that at least most of our people managed to find work doing something other than the jobs outsourced. Job maintenance in the USA, growth over there.
Another part of this is secondary effects - we employ thousands of people in the country - now that they're making more than they would have otherwise, they demand more goods/services as well. Th
Rather than clever, I find that logic completely backwards. While you're busy trying to dry up a massive labour market, your own country's market languishes and suffers. Great for the employer in the short term. They pay less as they've just increased supply by orders of magnitude. Meanwhile you've not even made a dent fixing their economy..
Look at China. Look at India. I wouldn't call those dents. And yes, it's great for the employer in the short term. In the long term it works out for everybody as the economy of the world as a whole increases.
The only way to do it is to legislate that work done for an employer in a particular company (directly or otherwise) is to be paid above a certain minimum wage. Competition should be above that minimum wage. Unfortunately the directly or otherwise part is notoriously difficult to police.
This is just protectionalism again - If you mandate a high wage, the jobs don't move, and the peasant who'd gladly take that 'sweatshop' job rather than work in the fields like his ancestors have done for thousands of years.
Please note that when I'm talking about 'sweatshop' stuff I'm talking about stuff that pays wages that outrage americans. But when you dig into them, you find out that the people working in the factory or whatever are actually making multiples of what they were previously - normally subsidence farmers. As a result of the increased pay and moves away from farming, additional services end up appearing - taking even more farmers out of the fields. Frequently the farmers end up being able to sell their products for more, allowing them to automate to increase production even more. It ends up being a positive circle.
If you accept slave labour (as you have above)
No, I haven't. Where did I talk about forcing people to work, trading and selling them?
A slippery slope argument. If you accept this you must also accept that the vast majority of the world's people will end up earning slave wages within the next few decades. As you introduce sweatshop wages to replace those worse conditions, the rest of the world has to compete with those sweatshop wages. Pretty soon only sweat shop wages are competitive. I don't accept this. If you have children, nieces, nephews or just kids you care about neither should you.
Sigh... Even as there's a downward pressure on wages in well paid areas like the USA there's an upward pressure on wages in the low wage areas. Once development takes hold, wages tend to increase there as the job/population ratio increases. In addition, higher economy allows for higher education - increasing wages more.
Your approach would see us move towards the past as people make less and less money and instead of having to sacrifice perks and luxury items they have to sacrifice decent food, education and medical care
Again, it's not my 'approach'. It's reality. There is downward pressure on US wages due to outsourcing to China/India. The outsourcing has also resulting in upward pressure in those areas, though it's more evident in India than China. China still has a good amount of former subsidence farmers for cheap labor.
We completely agree that your needs and those of your family if you have one should come way above playstations and booze.
While I'm not about to say that you're not going to get stuck working on something you don't like; however it should be a positive experience on the whole.
Why? You spend 40 hours a week at a job, probably another 10 hours to get ready and to/from and take lunch in the middle.
50 hours a week, out of 16 waking hours a day, 7 days a week for a total of 112. That's nearly half!
Now, I can't put a dollar value on happiness and fulfillment, that's up to the individual.
And, of course, he might be in that lower bracket where he's still concerned about fulfilling the basics - in which case he's doing what he has to do in order to get by.
Some would say if we want a civilized society, making those conditions that make US citizens too expensive universal is what we should be aiming for, rather than pulling away those protections and moving back to a fend for yourself law of the jungle situation. Having some protection by society is a good thing.
Oddly enough, the best way to do this is to encourage stuff like outsourcing; outsourcing helps dry up the labor market in the receiving country, increases the economy - helping to point the country towards the labor shortages that improved working conditions in the USA.
Do YOU really want to live in a society where if you get hurt at work, you end up a beggar? Do you know what it's like in some of the countries you're talking about? Can you blame a guy for wanting to kill you for $5 if that is all that stands between him and starvation (or worse his family starving)? Nope, somewhat, and I'd happily shoot him down; but would rather he get a job, even if it only pays enough for the extreme basics.
'Sweatshop wages' often are better than the alternative.
If you're stuck in a badly paid position, moving is almost never an option. Moving costs money. Much moreso if you've got a family.
Yet people find ways. They found ways during the potato famine, Iraqies managed to find ways to get out of the country, etc... In multiple areas you had people move between continents with only the clothes on their back.
Oh I see, you'd like to go back to the good old days
No effing way. You offer me a time machine to the past, I'm going to decline it. We live better today than we ever have in the past. What I was talking about though, is reality. You take care of the basics first, doing what you have to do. THEN you work towards personal gratification(ie perks).
If your kids are hungry, the social security office is dragging their feet and the only job you can get is bussing tables - then you bus tables until you can get something better. You pawn your TV if necessary. Etc...
When I talked about 'how it should be', I was meaning that some parents take gratification over their kid's needs - which isn't 'how it should be'. Vegetables come before beer on the shopping list.
Note on the losing money part - If I decide that time and a half, or even something like 'double time if I have to work between 11 pm to 6 am', is sufficient compensation for coming in, If the company's willing to pay it due to a website outage, that'll count as an emergency for me.
The trick is to make sure that it's at least somewhat painful for the company, so they only bother with serious stuff.
The combination of trade treaties and telecommunications has made it easy for employers/companies to shop around for a jurisdiction. Somehow, we in North America have been convinced that the destruction of our manufacturing sector in exchange for cheap chinese-manufactured goods at wal-mart is a good deal.
Technically, it is. Our employment figures are still rather high, after all. There are some losers, but not everybody lost.
Now, China is currently the big winner right now, the outsourcing of labor is helping them raise their population out of 3rd world status.
One consequence is the stagnation of US wages though, I'm somewhat surprised that they're not falling behind more than they are. I figure I can only hope that we remain merely stagnant until China and India start running short on labor, expenses go up, and outsourcing is no longer profitable.
Workers being treated with respect is more commonly thought of as progress. If you'd rather go back the the more "usual" parts of history, blackberries wouldn't be the least of your concerns.
I never said that I want to go back to that system. However, as much as I'd like to get a car that gets 200mpg per gallon of water, it's not going to happen.
Besides, I don't see us going back to that system. Fortuantly there are many employers that have figured out that treating employees well is in their best interest. Not all have, however. The best recourse, as I see it, is to have an aware and mobile work force, such that employers who don't treat their employees good end up with no labor, and thus end up out of business.
You are a very fortunate person to have parents and even grandparents that were able to live comfortably enough to take those professional leaps and educate their children
I have parents and grandparents that sacrificed in order for me to be where I am today. Even my great-grandparents did so. Live comfortably enough? My grandparents didn't have running water until after my mother had moved out of the house. My grandparents went hungry a few times to ensure that my parents got what they needed.
dangerous gun-riddled world that wants to kill them and take their hard-earned money.
Gunriddled indeed. My grandfather on my father's side makes his living hunting and trapping. My grandfather on my mother's side had to commit violence on more than one occasion.
We grew up learning that the world, especially people on it, aren't always nice or fair. That you just have to deal with it as best as you can.
Was I lucky? Darn tootin - I already beat the odds by being born in the USA. Most of the world's population is in worse circumstances.
It is not the employer's job to run their employees into the ground, and a system demanding such inhumanity is just as failed.
In a system with a relatively expensive and restrained labor pool(ie there are more jobs than people to fill them), it becomes in the interest of the employer to conserve their labor pool by treating their workers right.
Given the way modern society works, I figure that China and India will start running into labor shortages sooner or later. It'll still take years, but it'll happen. Then their wages will start rising even faster, outsourcing won't be profitable any more, and US jobs will stop stagnating.
I'm not talking about what employers should or should not be doing. I'm talking about what YOU should be doing to support your family. It's an acknowledgement of reality, not a statement of how things should be. Should employers be required to have a safe working enviroment, and be held liable if they don't? Yes, they should. But 'should' doesn't necessarily cut it in the real world. It can be far too late by the time the court system finishes going through the evidence.
It's along my beliefs about self reliance and prepardness. I believe that YOU are your own first and last line of defense against the harsh unfairness that is the world. This extends to your family; most importantly your children(1).
You're your own first line of defense because you're always there. When the incident occurs, emergency response units like the police, fire department, EMTs can be only minutes away when seconds matter. Better yet, if your defense(2) succeeds, the emergency responders are free to help somebody else. This can result in a save for somebody who's first line fails.
You're your own last line of defense for a different reason: You're the one with the most to lose if you fail. Your own life, sanity, health, etc...
Yes we've had workers rights for a small period of time, but I don't see that as a reason for its desired transience. Most cultures, too, have only seen the abolition of slavery, suffrage, and the germ theory of disease for a short period of time too, would be be so apathetic about losing them too?
There's worker's rights, and then there's worker's rights. Personally, I think that employee and employer relations should mostly be contract based. For example, in France you actually get demonstrations occasionally where employees are protesting to be allowed to work more.
Personally, I'd expect workcenters to be as safe as reasonably possible(3). Working hours to be agreed upon before hand, and if on-call status is required for unexpected work, that that be worked out before hand. Benefits agreed upon, etc...
40 hour work week? Fairly recent innovation, and France has a 30 hour one. Some people are willing to work longer hours than others, especially for more money. Why should they be forced to circumvent some restriction by working two or more jobs, frequently for less money?
Living wage? How do you define a 'living wage'? Would you rather be unemployed than working for a sub-living wage, if no employer determines that your work is worth what you consider a living wage? Healthcare? Personally, I'd rather be paid to obtain my own healthcare that I can keep if I move jobs. Or even a single-payer system like Canada. Anything but our current boondoggle.
(1)Though even then the kid's his own first and last, but being incapable(especially in the case of a baby), you're up next. It's part of the tragedy that is parental abuse. (2)I'm being very generic here. (3) Racing, for example, will never be 100% safe. But drivers know the risks rather well. Same with fishing, flying, etc...
Why should a type A have to find a different job, when he can work 50 hours and get 10 hours at 1.5X salary rather than getting what's probably a part time job at a lower hourly rate than his work?
Then there's also surge operations - rather than underemploy people through most of the year, or scramble to get temps, stipulate(and pay extra) extra hours during surge times - like christmas for retail, april for accountants, etc...
Spoken like management. There was a time when jobs offered benefits, job security, and respect for their employees.
Hah! Obviously you haven't studied history much. That period was actually very unusual in history.
It used to be that if you got hurt at work you'd lose your job. Likely become unemployed, or have to find another career or become a beggar if the injury wasn't temporary. Safety equipment was rare. We're talking about the heyday of railroads and 'big oil'.
Unions, safety regulations, and some smart employers(Like Mr. Ford) combined with a labor crunch changed that, at least for a while.
Then hiring US citizens became too expensive and stuff was outsourced to other countries where the old conditions prevailed because it was cheaper.
I look for more or other work. I've been looking for 4 months, and guess what? If I find a job that will be a dick about my free time, I have to take it.
If you want to change things, realize that you might have to move, get training to go into a different career field, change your income expectations, etc...
Basically, you need to realize that it takes intelligent effort to get what you want.
You do what it takes to keep a roof over your family's head, food in their mouths, shoes on their feet. After that, then you can work towards personal satisfaction. That's just how it is(or at least should be). That's what my grandparents did. That's what my parents did. That's what I do.
There might even be small errors in there that would otherwise have been fixed by peers.
Bingo. Sure, I can write an article, but there will likely be errors - no matter how informed I am on the topic. With peer review these can be mostly fixed*.
Now, if I can adjust the article based on reviews I receive, reviewers can basically be editors. That would be nice, and perhaps better to have a single point of control for each article. But how will 'legacy' pages be handled - for example, if I get hit by a bus later in the day, or even just lose interest?
That's even without addressing what happens when a rabid anti/pro bush extremist manages to be the first to submit the article for 'Bush, George'. Or even somebody of only middling knowledge.
There are arguements either way, but I personally think that even with wiki's issues, it's still a better model.
YES. THE ADVERTISER IS SPENDING THIS MONEY... except they're generally not 'LOSING MONEY', as the purpose of advertising is to promote your product for less money than you will get back from the increased consumer base and sales as a result of the advertising.
Bingo. Don't forget that Google is pretty much king of directed advertising. Look up an article on motorcycle engine repair and you'd likely get a ad for a motorcycle engine parts store.
They, at least right now, are also very good at having unannoying ads. Not ones that insist on popping up in the middle of the screen, for just one example out of many.
Remember - having a defined revenue stream can help ensure that the service/business is available in the future.
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From the article: They(shipping) emit 800 million tonnes of CO2 each year -- 5 percent of the world's total. They emit high levels of sulphur dioxide.
I'd say that, while not huge in proportion, 5% of the world's emmisions certainly deserves a hard look - and if larger kites can cut fuel usage by 40% as the article states, it'd be significant.
I agree that strapping a kite onto an ocean ship is a silly thing to do
If it's silly but it works, is it really silly?
This company developed something that, while it might seem silly, has the potential to save $$$ in fuel costs, and therefore reduce the demand for oil by at least a bit.
Per the article: a kite costs $775k, and can save $1.6k per day, 'under favorable wind conditions'. Figure that's 100 days a year, that's $160k saved per year, or about a 5 year payoff. An easy sell, in financial markets(as long as the kite can be expected to last 10-15).
In other words, every little bit helps. And this stands to help more per $ spent than putting solar panels on homes today.
And people in rural areas will most definitely see the difference. I live in a small town (10,000 people) in Iowa, and I have DSL at home and fiber at work. And that's only because I haven't had the time to get the fiber run to my house yet.
I have you beat. 2mbit DSL, and my town has less than 30 people in it. The nearest gas station is 30 miles away, the nearest movie theater ~45.
For the farmers, point to point radio can be an answer. Use high gain antennas and you probably won't cause much inteference. Not before you run out of farmers, anyways.
On the other hand, a high speed 'mesh' network might not work well in an apartment complex, for example.
Consider, P2P started becoming big ~2000, signaling the beginning of the music sharing craze.
Before that, network traffic was email, webpages, etc... Most people on dialup. Sure, all sorts of stuff was available one usenet, but this was when it went 'mainstream'.
Suddenly people were sharing hundreds, even thousands of MP3 files, most at 128kbps. Call it 5 megs.
A couple years later video files started appearing, but processor power and codecs weren't quite there, especially with more limited bandwidth.
Now music streaming is pretty much assumed, and you have stuuf like netflix's video download service. If you want to be legal, of course. On the other hand you have all sorts of IRC downloads and torrents and such where you can get pretty much any published song or video off the web.
In 2002, most videos you could pull down were markably worse than VCR quality - frequently half the resolution of broadcast. Today you can download HDTV level quality for many videos.
The thing with P2P is that you don't need massive server farms with huge connectivity to saturate routers - if every computer on the web is acting like a server and transmitting data as they do with a P2P client installed, that'd be quite enough to bring today's routers to their knees.
Extrapolating from previous trends gives you quite a bit of bandwidth usage on the network, as more people get broadband(and faster broadband) each year.
Personally, I tend to think that infrastructure upgrades will usually keep up, but there is some cause for alarmism, if only because it gets companies off their butts to install the additional capacity before it becomes critical.
I like how the congressman describes it as an "arbitrary" date for decomissioning and that the risks won't increase overnight. I say send a congressman up on every mission after the shuttle's sell by date.
Given the thrill that space flight still has, such that you do get billionaires buying flights, I think that such a requirement would actually increase the odds of the shuttle program continuing.
Even if only 10% of congress want rides, that's still 73 people wanting to go up.
I could argue that the B52 is still flying mostly because it's a freakily well designed plane for what it is.
The builders happened to hit the mix just right, and even with 'strip to the frame' refits every so often it's showing it's age. For example, it's not really rated for operation in hostile airspace anymore, instead it's a standoff plane - launching cruise missiles rather than dropping bombs.
The shuttle is much more of a white elephant. We don't have enough launches to obtain the body of knowledge and automation to reduce expenses, and it's a strain to launch any given shuttle once a year.
But I'll agree that we'd be able to make do with the shuttle for much longer if it wasn't used for everything. For one obvious example: A seperate system for lifting ISS modules/supplies. This would make servicing Hubble* easier.
Then again, after we have a seperate system for heavy lifting things like ISS modules, I'd put a seperate 'satellite servicer' craft on the list - something like an ISS module with engines that could take supplies lifted by the cargo craft and go do the servicing without hauling what's effectively a relaunchable space station up from earth gravity every time.
To make up for the fact that the shuttle has a bay larger than our likely repair craft can be - go with a bigalow type inflatable system. A couple PSI and suddenly you have a huge bay.
*Of course I think that we should have a replacement for this available as well.
I think that some of the question is, sure, it's used for science and development. But, even for science and development, there are ways to calculate cost effectivness.
Some would ask, what would happen if we took half that and invested it in green energy, such as wind, solar, nuclear, and oil replacement technologies such as cellulostic ethanol?
I personally think that we can and should do both. Arguements will always exist for prioritization.
But then I think that we should of had a replacement for the shuttle long ago. For stuff like that your goal should be to always have a replacement available - IE by the time they can't build new shuttles, they should be able to build the replacement for the shuttle.
[quote]2.4 Ghz is one of the most badly managed spectrum for consumers. You have phone systems that take out access points, access points that take out phone systems, and no idea at all which of those systems will interact badly with another.[/quote]
This is part of the reason I snapped up a 900mhz cordless phone when I saw one recently - at least in my situation, it has far better range than 2.4 or 5ghz phones.
Higher Ghz, especially for low-bitrate stuff like phones, isn't necessarily a good thing. For a given power level, a lower frequency will give you more range.
And why I wish 802.11N had specified 5Ghz operation, IE it's not N unless it can operate at 5Ghz. From reports I've heard, N doesn't play well with interference or other access points within range - which you have to assume in many installations. At least with b/g you could have two other networks on different channels without interfering, with N or other dual channel, another dual channel is going to be interfering.
At least there's a decent number of channels available on 5ghz, and the fact that it doesn't travel as far can be a bonus.
Plus, to be completely honest, I'm not sure how much parallel processing is going to do for your average user
;)
Substitute 'gamer' for 'user' and then take a look at video cards. Parallel processing is alive and doing well enough to be assumed today, at least for video tasks.
As for multiple cores - while it won't benefit the average office program*, I'd also point out that bottom barrel processors have been able to run them effectively for years.
I've seen proposals that would have a thread for the graphics engine, a thread for the physics engine, one for user handling and one for AI stuff. Optimize and add more threads if you have more cores, of course.
It seems like most applications wind up waiting for something other than the CPU these days... It seems to me that more time would be wasted waiting on I/O or other hardware than the CPU... Maybe that's not true at the server, but it certainly is on the desktop.
Might be true at the moment, but both RAM and flash keeps getting faster and cheaper, while CPU speeds seem to have leveled out, more or less.
I'm sure there's plenty of algorithms that would really benefit from being re-examined...
I'm also sure that this would be true anyways, multi-threading/cores or not.
Honestly enough, I bought a dual core machine recently instead of the quad core because I figure that it's going to be years before they start optimizing programming enough that an extra two cores will make a significant difference in gaming. At least with a dual core the OS can offload most system operations onto the other core, leaving one free for the game.
It'll come, eventually, but multi-core processors have to reach a certain critical mass before programmers will go through the hassle. By the sounds of it, part of the hassle will be developing proper multi-thread debuggers.
*Database applications aside.
investing directly in the health, education, and general welfare of the people do you get a healthy and prosperous body politic.
Generally speaking, you'll find that many, even most, republicans agree with this, it's just that they vary on the best means to achieve it.
Personally, I think that teaching a measure of self-reliance is one of the most important things to do. Government aid is, at least in the USA, historically one of the least efficient means to help people. The most efficient is people helping themselves.
I mean, take medicare, with a budget in 2003 of 278 billion - and 33 billion in estimated fraud. That's 11%. Ouch, and it's not even getting into waste.
Private schools regularly manage to give superior educations for half or even a third or less cost per pupil, without even counting 'special needs' students or budget.
Of course, I tend towards the libertarian end of things, but I'm definitly not an anarchist. Government has it's place, but we need to trim it down quite a bit.
My general philosophy is to structure aid to avoid such that situations like where a family on welfare is actually better off not working than getting a job*, even at a minimum wage job. Where a kid who's smart enough to save his inheritance ends up ineligable for grants, versus one who spends it on a car who is(they were fraternal twins).
Still, I think that most people should have to work a bit for college, in order for them to value it. I also think that we need to renew emphasis on technical schools; not everybody is suited for academic pursuits. There are plenty who are happier with a wrench in hand.
*Obvious exemption would be if they're currently getting training for new career skills, but that's temporary.
Boy, you're just losing your temper, aren't you?
WOW! You really have NO IDEA how to measure the standard of living.
Sure I do. Unlike you, I'm cognizant that increases in technology result in realworld increases in the standard of living.
Thus my point that people, on average, are better off today than they were a decade ago, and so on and so forth.
Yeah the technology has gotten better right across the board. I think you'll find that the average wage peaked in the US
I suggest that you look up the definition of 'stagnant'.
the number of people living below the poverty line is actually increasing - you know the number of people who can actually afford those basic needs you keep saying are important.
Give me a break - do you even know how the US defines poverty?
The average person's ability to get medical care for serious illness and injury is decreasing
Not really, people can get treatment for illnesses that were untreatable in past years. What's happening though is that these treatments are expensive, and it's gotten to the point that it's a major expense because we can treat so much, but don't often have 'magic cures'. A cancer that used to kill in three months now can be cured half the time- but takes a year of expensive treatment to do so.
Okay so you're saying that kids who ride bikes and mopeds are better off because they get a primary school education.
Heh - nope, I said the EMPLOYEES had started riding to work - first with bicycles, then later on to mopeds.
Their children probably still walked to school - but they were going to school, and completing at least primary(elementary). The study didn't cover secondary education, past the terms of the study at the time I read about it.
probably something the company encourages so they can have employees children in the same sweatshops their parents work in
Just a vast source of optimisim aren't you? The factory employed adults - not children, actually reducing the child labor rates over the previous farms that pulled children out of school early to work on the farms.
Which brings us back to the protectionalism you so loath, and reasonable well regulated working conditions.
And your complete misunderstanding, as the parents were working within the hours you mentioned.
A COMPANY THAT CAN'T PROVIDE A LIVING WAGE FOR AN EMPLOYEE SHOULD NOT BE PERMITTED TO HIRE THAT EMPLOYEE.
They were though, especially by the standards of the area. Again, it seems you'd prefer them to remain virtually grubbing in the mud rather than be employed for lower wages than the USA.
As for the USA, if an employee isn't WORTH what you consider a 'living wage', they're going to be unemployed. Personally, I'd rather them work at least some. Eventually they might get there. Meanwhile, at least, we don't have them sucking on the government teat.
What's more to be reasonably fair there has to be some kind of reward for working hard beyond simply subsisting.
Like the workers at the factory actually being able to afford something as simple as a bicycle? Housing with plumbing, electricity?
There has to be some reasonable prospect for someone in a 3rd world country of improving their situation. Again minimum subsistence wages that lead to a life of forced labour (on threat of starvation) just isn't enough.
Ah, life before the factory opened. Again - this is the life they had BEFORE the facotry opened. They depending upon their farm producing in order to eat, and a bad year can lead to famine. Medical care is limited, injury rehab virtually non-existant.
To trade even a small jobs that don't do this for a number of jobs that do is AWFUL for all of humanity because eventually that will become the norm (ie work, or die, there's someone else willing to take your place). What a horrible world that would be. Think of it this way, in such a world you wouldn't have
Yep standard of living goes up a tiny bit for far flung countries. Meanwhile people in your own countries see their standard of living plumet.
Goes up a tiny bit for billions. Stays pretty much stagnant for the USA
Or would you rather go back 30 years? I look around, plenty of people are buying 50" HTDVs, go back 20 and we'd be looking at 32" as 'big', or really expensive projection sets that needed lots of maintenance.
Go back even 10 years and cars on average had less power, fewer features, and were more polluting.
Current expense increases tend to be more about the increasing cost of oil, than outsourcing of wages.
Mandate a high wage and everyone competes on merit. It means you have to raise people's standard of living enough in the 3rd world country for them to be able to afford an education and compete against people in your own country. That is not a bad thing. That makes for real competition, instead of outsourcing jobs to people who can't actually do them because they work 16 hours a day and can't afford much more than food.
Uh, they are. Not immediately of course, it'll take generations. Mandate what you'd consider a high wage and the jobs never move.
If you take someone that's paid $1 a week and pay them $4 a week, they're still not going to be able to live a good life.
First, let's move away from looking at 'pay' and switch to income. Before being hired by the factory, they were essentially self-employed on their farms.
Matter of fact, even if you work for a single employer getting a regular paycheck, you could still consider yourself self-employed, as you can always leave to do something else(income variations aside).
Anyways, I'm arguing for incremental improvement - you seem to be arguing for 'all or nothing' affairs. Fact is, in the report I read - the workers were riding bicycles in two years, and many had mopeds in 10. As a result, other businesses opened to sell and support the bicycles, and then the mopeds. Primary school completion was an order of magnitude higher for the kids of the employees over the farmers.
I fail to see how all this isn't a good thing. Look at our history - even with the exploitation we eventually improved.
There are actual slave-labor shops out there that do as you say - but they're a different matter.
Yeah some choice. You just lost your right to work your land. You and your whole family may work for pitance or starve. When faced with this choice there is effectively no other choice but suicide. As for trading and selling them, I've got that covered too. The sweat shop is bought, or taken over. What choice did these people have again? Thats right work for new owner or starve. It is slavery. Period.
Who took their land? I said they left the farm to go work at the factory. The only land lost would be the space the factory takes up - which should have been bought by the farmers.
If your argument held true, people wouldn't work in sweat shops all their lives. They'd work between 5 and 10 years and get a higher wage. That's not the typical story and you know that very well.
Actually, it tends to take generations. The grandfather's a peasant, the father is a shoe assembler, the son is a plumber, and the grandson an accountant.
Great job setting up strawmen, though.
Do you really think that outsourcing a $100,000 job to Bangalore for $50,000 is going to suddenly create lots of jobs!?
Any one job's effects are marginal. But we outsourced so many jobs that if we'd theoretically kept them all 'home', we'd have negative unemployment.
What that means is that at least most of our people managed to find work doing something other than the jobs outsourced. Job maintenance in the USA, growth over there.
Another part of this is secondary effects - we employ thousands of people in the country - now that they're making more than they would have otherwise, they demand more goods/services as well. Th
Rather than clever, I find that logic completely backwards. While you're busy trying to dry up a massive labour market, your own country's market languishes and suffers. Great for the employer in the short term. They pay less as they've just increased supply by orders of magnitude. Meanwhile you've not even made a dent fixing their economy..
Look at China. Look at India. I wouldn't call those dents. And yes, it's great for the employer in the short term. In the long term it works out for everybody as the economy of the world as a whole increases.
The only way to do it is to legislate that work done for an employer in a particular company (directly or otherwise) is to be paid above a certain minimum wage. Competition should be above that minimum wage. Unfortunately the directly or otherwise part is notoriously difficult to police.
This is just protectionalism again - If you mandate a high wage, the jobs don't move, and the peasant who'd gladly take that 'sweatshop' job rather than work in the fields like his ancestors have done for thousands of years.
Please note that when I'm talking about 'sweatshop' stuff I'm talking about stuff that pays wages that outrage americans. But when you dig into them, you find out that the people working in the factory or whatever are actually making multiples of what they were previously - normally subsidence farmers. As a result of the increased pay and moves away from farming, additional services end up appearing - taking even more farmers out of the fields. Frequently the farmers end up being able to sell their products for more, allowing them to automate to increase production even more. It ends up being a positive circle.
If you accept slave labour (as you have above)
No, I haven't. Where did I talk about forcing people to work, trading and selling them?
A slippery slope argument. If you accept this you must also accept that the vast majority of the world's people will end up earning slave wages within the next few decades. As you introduce sweatshop wages to replace those worse conditions, the rest of the world has to compete with those sweatshop wages. Pretty soon only sweat shop wages are competitive. I don't accept this. If you have children, nieces, nephews or just kids you care about neither should you.
Sigh... Even as there's a downward pressure on wages in well paid areas like the USA there's an upward pressure on wages in the low wage areas. Once development takes hold, wages tend to increase there as the job/population ratio increases. In addition, higher economy allows for higher education - increasing wages more.
Your approach would see us move towards the past as people make less and less money and instead of having to sacrifice perks and luxury items they have to sacrifice decent food, education and medical care
Again, it's not my 'approach'. It's reality. There is downward pressure on US wages due to outsourcing to China/India. The outsourcing has also resulting in upward pressure in those areas, though it's more evident in India than China. China still has a good amount of former subsidence farmers for cheap labor.
We completely agree that your needs and those of your family if you have one should come way above playstations and booze.
Thank you.
I have to agree with you on this.
While I'm not about to say that you're not going to get stuck working on something you don't like; however it should be a positive experience on the whole.
Why? You spend 40 hours a week at a job, probably another 10 hours to get ready and to/from and take lunch in the middle.
50 hours a week, out of 16 waking hours a day, 7 days a week for a total of 112. That's nearly half!
Now, I can't put a dollar value on happiness and fulfillment, that's up to the individual.
And, of course, he might be in that lower bracket where he's still concerned about fulfilling the basics - in which case he's doing what he has to do in order to get by.
It's happened, but is, of course, far smaller demonstrations than those demanding more benefits or even shorter hours.
Some would say if we want a civilized society, making those conditions that make US citizens too expensive universal is what we should be aiming for, rather than pulling away those protections and moving back to a fend for yourself law of the jungle situation. Having some protection by society is a good thing.
Oddly enough, the best way to do this is to encourage stuff like outsourcing; outsourcing helps dry up the labor market in the receiving country, increases the economy - helping to point the country towards the labor shortages that improved working conditions in the USA.
Do YOU really want to live in a society where if you get hurt at work, you end up a beggar? Do you know what it's like in some of the countries you're talking about? Can you blame a guy for wanting to kill you for $5 if that is all that stands between him and starvation (or worse his family starving)?
Nope, somewhat, and I'd happily shoot him down; but would rather he get a job, even if it only pays enough for the extreme basics.
'Sweatshop wages' often are better than the alternative.
If you're stuck in a badly paid position, moving is almost never an option. Moving costs money. Much moreso if you've got a family.
Yet people find ways. They found ways during the potato famine, Iraqies managed to find ways to get out of the country, etc... In multiple areas you had people move between continents with only the clothes on their back.
Oh I see, you'd like to go back to the good old days
No effing way. You offer me a time machine to the past, I'm going to decline it. We live better today than we ever have in the past. What I was talking about though, is reality. You take care of the basics first, doing what you have to do. THEN you work towards personal gratification(ie perks).
If your kids are hungry, the social security office is dragging their feet and the only job you can get is bussing tables - then you bus tables until you can get something better. You pawn your TV if necessary. Etc...
When I talked about 'how it should be', I was meaning that some parents take gratification over their kid's needs - which isn't 'how it should be'. Vegetables come before beer on the shopping list.
Note on the losing money part - If I decide that time and a half, or even something like 'double time if I have to work between 11 pm to 6 am', is sufficient compensation for coming in, If the company's willing to pay it due to a website outage, that'll count as an emergency for me.
The trick is to make sure that it's at least somewhat painful for the company, so they only bother with serious stuff.
The combination of trade treaties and telecommunications has made it easy for employers/companies to shop around for a jurisdiction. Somehow, we in North America have been convinced that the destruction of our manufacturing sector in exchange for cheap chinese-manufactured goods at wal-mart is a good deal.
Technically, it is. Our employment figures are still rather high, after all. There are some losers, but not everybody lost.
Now, China is currently the big winner right now, the outsourcing of labor is helping them raise their population out of 3rd world status.
One consequence is the stagnation of US wages though, I'm somewhat surprised that they're not falling behind more than they are. I figure I can only hope that we remain merely stagnant until China and India start running short on labor, expenses go up, and outsourcing is no longer profitable.
Workers being treated with respect is more commonly thought of as progress. If you'd rather go back the the more "usual" parts of history, blackberries wouldn't be the least of your concerns.
I never said that I want to go back to that system. However, as much as I'd like to get a car that gets 200mpg per gallon of water, it's not going to happen.
Besides, I don't see us going back to that system. Fortuantly there are many employers that have figured out that treating employees well is in their best interest. Not all have, however. The best recourse, as I see it, is to have an aware and mobile work force, such that employers who don't treat their employees good end up with no labor, and thus end up out of business.
You are a very fortunate person to have parents and even grandparents that were able to live comfortably enough to take those professional leaps and educate their children
I have parents and grandparents that sacrificed in order for me to be where I am today. Even my great-grandparents did so. Live comfortably enough? My grandparents didn't have running water until after my mother had moved out of the house. My grandparents went hungry a few times to ensure that my parents got what they needed.
dangerous gun-riddled world that wants to kill them and take their hard-earned money.
Gunriddled indeed. My grandfather on my father's side makes his living hunting and trapping. My grandfather on my mother's side had to commit violence on more than one occasion.
We grew up learning that the world, especially people on it, aren't always nice or fair. That you just have to deal with it as best as you can.
Was I lucky? Darn tootin - I already beat the odds by being born in the USA. Most of the world's population is in worse circumstances.
It is not the employer's job to run their employees into the ground, and a system demanding such inhumanity is just as failed.
In a system with a relatively expensive and restrained labor pool(ie there are more jobs than people to fill them), it becomes in the interest of the employer to conserve their labor pool by treating their workers right.
Given the way modern society works, I figure that China and India will start running into labor shortages sooner or later. It'll still take years, but it'll happen. Then their wages will start rising even faster, outsourcing won't be profitable any more, and US jobs will stop stagnating.
Sigh...
I'm not talking about what employers should or should not be doing. I'm talking about what YOU should be doing to support your family. It's an acknowledgement of reality, not a statement of how things should be. Should employers be required to have a safe working enviroment, and be held liable if they don't? Yes, they should. But 'should' doesn't necessarily cut it in the real world. It can be far too late by the time the court system finishes going through the evidence.
It's along my beliefs about self reliance and prepardness. I believe that YOU are your own first and last line of defense against the harsh unfairness that is the world. This extends to your family; most importantly your children(1).
You're your own first line of defense because you're always there. When the incident occurs, emergency response units like the police, fire department, EMTs can be only minutes away when seconds matter. Better yet, if your defense(2) succeeds, the emergency responders are free to help somebody else. This can result in a save for somebody who's first line fails.
You're your own last line of defense for a different reason: You're the one with the most to lose if you fail. Your own life, sanity, health, etc...
Yes we've had workers rights for a small period of time, but I don't see that as a reason for its desired transience. Most cultures, too, have only seen the abolition of slavery, suffrage, and the germ theory of disease for a short period of time too, would be be so apathetic about losing them too?
There's worker's rights, and then there's worker's rights. Personally, I think that employee and employer relations should mostly be contract based. For example, in France you actually get demonstrations occasionally where employees are protesting to be allowed to work more.
Personally, I'd expect workcenters to be as safe as reasonably possible(3). Working hours to be agreed upon before hand, and if on-call status is required for unexpected work, that that be worked out before hand. Benefits agreed upon, etc...
40 hour work week? Fairly recent innovation, and France has a 30 hour one. Some people are willing to work longer hours than others, especially for more money. Why should they be forced to circumvent some restriction by working two or more jobs, frequently for less money?
Living wage? How do you define a 'living wage'? Would you rather be unemployed than working for a sub-living wage, if no employer determines that your work is worth what you consider a living wage?
Healthcare? Personally, I'd rather be paid to obtain my own healthcare that I can keep if I move jobs. Or even a single-payer system like Canada. Anything but our current boondoggle.
(1)Though even then the kid's his own first and last, but being incapable(especially in the case of a baby), you're up next. It's part of the tragedy that is parental abuse.
(2)I'm being very generic here.
(3) Racing, for example, will never be 100% safe. But drivers know the risks rather well. Same with fishing, flying, etc...
Why should a type A have to find a different job, when he can work 50 hours and get 10 hours at 1.5X salary rather than getting what's probably a part time job at a lower hourly rate than his work?
Then there's also surge operations - rather than underemploy people through most of the year, or scramble to get temps, stipulate(and pay extra) extra hours during surge times - like christmas for retail, april for accountants, etc...
Not everything fits the neat 9x5 schedule.
Spoken like management. There was a time when jobs offered benefits, job security, and respect for their employees.
Hah! Obviously you haven't studied history much. That period was actually very unusual in history.
It used to be that if you got hurt at work you'd lose your job. Likely become unemployed, or have to find another career or become a beggar if the injury wasn't temporary. Safety equipment was rare. We're talking about the heyday of railroads and 'big oil'.
Unions, safety regulations, and some smart employers(Like Mr. Ford) combined with a labor crunch changed that, at least for a while.
Then hiring US citizens became too expensive and stuff was outsourced to other countries where the old conditions prevailed because it was cheaper.
I look for more or other work. I've been looking for 4 months, and guess what? If I find a job that will be a dick about my free time, I have to take it.
If you want to change things, realize that you might have to move, get training to go into a different career field, change your income expectations, etc...
Basically, you need to realize that it takes intelligent effort to get what you want.
You do what it takes to keep a roof over your family's head, food in their mouths, shoes on their feet. After that, then you can work towards personal satisfaction. That's just how it is(or at least should be). That's what my grandparents did. That's what my parents did. That's what I do.
even if you're an MD or something (where it's more likely that you really do need to be connected).
At least MD's are traditionally excellently paid in exchange for being there to handle emergencies and other urgent situations.
They also, at least later in life, are able to reduce their workload in other ways to compensate - like having office hours be 10-4 for routine stuff.
There might even be small errors in there that would otherwise have been fixed by peers.
Bingo. Sure, I can write an article, but there will likely be errors - no matter how informed I am on the topic. With peer review these can be mostly fixed*.
Now, if I can adjust the article based on reviews I receive, reviewers can basically be editors. That would be nice, and perhaps better to have a single point of control for each article. But how will 'legacy' pages be handled - for example, if I get hit by a bus later in the day, or even just lose interest?
That's even without addressing what happens when a rabid anti/pro bush extremist manages to be the first to submit the article for 'Bush, George'. Or even somebody of only middling knowledge.
There are arguements either way, but I personally think that even with wiki's issues, it's still a better model.
*Errors will creep up regardless.
YES. THE ADVERTISER IS SPENDING THIS MONEY... except they're generally not 'LOSING MONEY', as the purpose of advertising is to promote your product for less money than you will get back from the increased consumer base and sales as a result of the advertising.
Bingo. Don't forget that Google is pretty much king of directed advertising. Look up an article on motorcycle engine repair and you'd likely get a ad for a motorcycle engine parts store.
They, at least right now, are also very good at having unannoying ads. Not ones that insist on popping up in the middle of the screen, for just one example out of many.
Remember - having a defined revenue stream can help ensure that the service/business is available in the future.