Um, I said we haven't carpet bombed anyone/where. We have many types of phosphorus weapons, from incendiary rounds on up. We have grenades, mortor shells, tank rounds, and even bombs all made of the stuff.
Notice how the article you mentioned carefully avoided mentioning what kind of munitions employing WP were used.
I'm more of a necrophobe than a hoplophobe, personally. It's not that I have anything wrong with guns on their own, but that I'm absolutely horrified by the idea that someone (criminals included) could be hurt or killed by them.
Personally, I couldn't care much less about the criminals. But then I'm an evil libertarian, even though I get accused of being an evil right winger occasionially.
Both police and vigilantes are horribly dangerous entities, the question is which is safer. Even though examples such as this have shown that we have grown a bit lazy in keeping policemen in their place, it is much more difficult to keep "responsible citizens" in their place.
My worldview is that you need an effective police force to prevent vigilantes. If Police are seen to be taking care of criminal matters competently, individuals are less motivated to take justice into their own hands.
On the other hand, there is a vast difference between self defense and being a vigilante. It's the line between taking action when a criminal targets you or someone/thing in your presence and activly seeking criminals out. Somebody invades my home and there's a good chance I'll shoot them, but I'm not going to go looking for them. In order to keep the police from growing out of control, citizens need to take some responsability to protect themselves. By taking some responsability and defending themselves, you only need police to play 'clean up', which includes catching the criminals after the fact.
Back on the Library Chief, I agree with requiring a subpoena. Procedures are there for a reason and should be followed. Sure, they limit the powers of police to do their duty. On the other hand, it also helps to prevent abuse, of which examples are legion.
As the other person mentioned, Castle Rock v. Gonzales is the most recent manefestation of this ruling. An earlier one is South v. Maryland
The Gonzales case is pretty far reaching in that the police don't have to provide protection even if: A: Specific threats had been uttered, including death B: A restraining order had been issued* C: The person making the threat has attacked/fulfilled those threats before D: The threat was towards children
I suppose it depends on the definition of protection... I mean, the police aren't legally obligated to basically be a bodyguarding service.
I agree, but feel that if they aren't, that we shouldn't prevent people from defending themselves as best as they can. Not everybody can afford to hire a bodyguard. Most can, however, stretch for a cheap shotgun. Hell, if they know the right people they can get a gun & training for a song if there is a real threat against them. Still, most victims have been abused to the point that their fear of their attacker is such that they can't imagine resisting themselves.
Similarly, an attempt at serious harm (even if it fails) is a criminal offense as well. I would think that a police officer standing by while this kind of thing happens would be a dereliction of duty (which I realize is a military term, but there's also civilian dereliction).
It wouldn't be much of a stretch to make the case cover this one as well. Matter of fact, South vs. Maryland is a closer match where a deputy left hostages and the police essentially did nothing for four days.
*Why I've always felt that restraining orders are worth less than the paper they're printed on.
Don't forget that we haven't carpet bombed anywhere in Iraq, much less with white phosphorus. That's a WWII technique that was frequently used against Japan.
Yes, we have had planes and helicopters bomb/shoot targets in fallujah and elsewhere. However, in one example where they drop a bomb on a group moving down a street, you hear the pilot asking if he should take out the group, and a voice answers 'yes'. That affirmation would be from a combat controller, who's on the ground nearby tracking the enemies.
What would you do if you were sitting there for 3-5 years and no hope of ever getting out or even getting a trial.
Sit there and wait some more? There's always hope of getting out. Some american prisoners of North Vietnam were held for more than 8 years*, in far worse conditions than Gitmo. Hell, look at how little the NV got out of many of them, how much it took to break them, even with outright torture and this was before they were serious about training troops for it.
WW1 lasted 4 years 3 months, WW2 lasted 6 years. By the laws of warfare, enemy combatants can be held without trial for the duration of the conflict. Yes, there were many people who ended up being held for more than five years in WW2.
Now, I personally believe that the prisoners of Gitmo's status as illegal combatants does complicate this, but I think that they should get a trial. I mean, it wouldn't cost that much to form up a number of military tribunals, go over each case and assign to a category: combatant(POW**), illegal combatant(oh shit), innocent civilian(opps, sorry, here's your plane ride home). Otherwise let them mail home. Sure, read all of it, just like you would read a drug lord's correspondance to make sure he's not simply running the operation from prison, but let them have the privileges accorded both POW's and prisoners. If they're stupid enough to send mail to a terrorist network, well, there's an address for you to check up on...
*Discounting Rambo movies and conspiracy theories. ** Like I said earlier, we can legally hold them, without any further trial until the conflict ends. If they find that you were a legal combatant for Al Qaeda, they'd be able to hold you until the USA decides the conflict has ended, IE Never most likely, or until you are no longer able to operate as a combatant, IE an invalid.
I had a healthcare spending account... I'm pulling out of it. Don't you mean a healthcare savings account?
There's actually two types of HSA's. The old style, where the money has to be used that year, and goes back to the company if you don't use it (the suck), of which the only benefit is indeed the fact that it's pretax money. I'm talking about the new style, which is a 'Healthcare Savings AccountPlan', coupled with a 'High deductable insurance program'.
My Dad has it. He contributes $2000 a year to the plan, and the deductable on his insurance is $2000 annually(limit by law), after which it pays 100%. The premiums for this are less than a standard program, and there are no copays. If he doesn't use the full $2000 that year, it can sit there forever gaining interest for use later.
One of Dad's coworkers went with the plan and he ended up with cancer. He burned through his annual $2000 contribution almost instantly, but the insurance then proceeded to pay 100%. Under the conventional plan, he would of had over 200 $20 copays, making the HDIP far cheaper for him. His account doesn't grow this year(it was his first year), but he likes it anyways.
The system works best for those with light or heavy healthcare needs. If you need 'moderate' care of around $2000 a year, it might not be the best option.
I'd spend half an hour setting up a small claim, and the an hour fighting with them a week later because they didn't want to pay it. A month later I *might* get my cash back.
I'd try getting a different company. My dad has a debit card that pulls from the HSA, it's only valid at medical institutions, but pharmacies like Walgreens are now coding medical items can also be put on it. Dad can use it to buy bandaids and it goes towards the deductable/coverage.
nukes just keep the concentrated money in the hands of the already bilionaires, and there has yet to be released a *true* satudy of what an end to end cost of building and running a nuke really costs.
That's odd, I'm part owner of a number of power plants, nuclear and otherwise. My salary is only around 36k a year, though I can and do get thosands extra many years. I've been investing a good chunk of my salary and making good money on my investments. I'm looking forward to retiring early.
As it is now, without costing in factors like decommissioning and armed guards 24/7 for the next millenia, they are *barely* more cost effective than coal, even coal plants with scrubbers, etc. Nukes were pushed as a stealth military budget in order to get weapons grade stuff, they have never been all that good a deal. they make"hot", that's it, just "hot", and we have a ton of other places to get "hot". Hecks windchimes man it is right now this second 99 F where I am and it ain't technically summer yet.
1. Decommissioning: Nuke plants are lasting far longer than we anticipated, so the costs are really not that big of a deal. Yucca mountain is a political boondoggle that as far as I'm concerned we don't even need. I'd be building breeders that would actually help with our 'waste' issue because if we'd build a fuel all the 'waste' currently sitting around could be termed 'fuel' again. I don't want to have to use enriched stuff, I'd even like to be able to burn DU in them. 2. Beating coal: Given how worried we are about CO2 emmisions, I see coal becoming even more expensive, and coal/nuclear are neck and neck for cheapest. Nuclear doesn't spew pollution all over the place, so I like it. 3. 99F Temperatures don't mean much if you don't have a heat differential to exploit. If everything around is 900F it still wouldn't matter because you can't extract usable energy without a heat differential somewhere.
As to adding your name to a list or whatever, again, demand pushes the investors, larger scale means economies of scale in manufacturing costs. As to whether mine is paid off or not, hell ya! The first time the grid went down and I kept power I considered it paid off from the sheer convenience factor, as in running my propane furance fan in january when it was pretty cold and nasty out, the grid goes down frequently around here right when you really want to *keep* power, like ice storms or thunderstorms, etc. Can you put a price on that, or way down south when a big storm hits and the heat is actually at the critical point for a lot of people? Just being able to run some fans and see the news and weather on the TV and maybe pull some well water out is a huge bonus IMO.
Ok, you're rural. Good for you. I plan on buying some property out in the middle of nowhere when I retire.
Anyways, the needs of a rural person is different than a townie like me. I haven't had an outage lasting more than a few minutes in the four years I've been living in my current location. If you add up all the outages I've had in the last ten years it's still under two hours total. I can live without electricity for those periods of time, and while you might need all that stuff, I'd bet that you could, if necessary, live without them for at least a few days. Bundle up if it's cold out.
I not only have grid, and solar(yes I do all my own work and all my stuff was new), but I also own two different fuel generators and a small wind turbine, I want *guaranteed* electric, I require my radios and computers and water well and some lights to function at a minimum, and that means not relying on one source. I also have a year and half worth of "stored solar"-firewood, and a years worth of propane, at all times. I backup my data like most doodz here, have redundant computers, store food and water(enough to carry me much further than most people), have the ability to produce all my food if I had to, have a medkit the rival of most third world local hospitals, grow a ton of my own foo
no law says data centers have to be placed in the middle of expensive high rise towers in large cities, in fact, some of the larger ones being built right now are going out in the sticks in dedicated buildings, the new googleplex, etc. It's nuts to cry poverty when you insist on the highest rent. If your center is large enough, you can get the lines to it.
Except that the cities are where the infrastructure and educated workers are in India. You can do this in america because we've distributed our education and infrastructure enough that you can get most of the same services in some pretty rural areas as you can in the cities. Overnight UPS and Fedex isn't that expensive in business terms. That's why if you look at some of my other posts I advocate things generally called 'farm sourcing/ruralsourcing'. It's relocating to somewhere less expensive within the united states, generally in the midwest.
Again, not sure what you are saying, that alternatve energy doesn't work or it doesn't scale up?
I didn't ever say that. What I was trying to say is that my call center/data center isn't in the power production business. I'd rather pay the power company to deal with all that. That way that I don't have to worry about maintaining multiple power sources, huge banks of batteries, etc.
As to "enough real estate", well, you slap them in right outside the big cities, they are doing it all over.
Again, that's the providence of the power company, not the business center of whatever flaver. I was saying that a center in a city won't have the territory available to run their own wind farm, and likely doesn't have enough surface area for a large enough solar array to be independent of the grid.
And like I said, solar is going in all over as well, and is neat because so many people can take advantage of it and it scales like crazy. It's happening, whether you like it or not, seems *millions and millions* of people are going to it all over the planet, most all the dealers are backlogged with orders and installs.
Great for them! Living in ND, it's going to be a while before I bother, but I'm all for solar power being a suppliment. If nothing else, it provides it's peak power when power demands are at their highest when people have their AC on. What I say is that when you add in the power storage systems/batteries it becomes a whole lot less economical. Wind suffers the same problem in that you don't always have wind, resulting in the power company needing backup power sources when the wind isn't blowing. Add in that the most common backup power source is natural gas turbine, which has the highest fuel costs going, it doesn't necessarily make the cut. Yes, it's improving. I'm all for that. What I'm saying is that it's not yet a simple drop in solution for a high demand electric consumer that also demands high reliability.
s to solar not being cost effective, or quoting some "payback" period,which is a huge variable
No, it's not really. It's simple math, sure there's a number of variables, but they're fairly easy to calculate. I haven't even touched upon cost of capital, anticipated maintenance costs and such. Let's say a solar system for me costs 10k. If I invested that money instead of putting it into a solar system, at a conservative 5% I'd be able to pay $41 per month to the electric company forever from the interest. If I borrowed money at the low low interest rate of 5% I'd be paying more on interest than the system saves me.
Here's a challenge I have yet to have any internet alternative energy debunker "expert" meet, so here's *your* chance: write back when you can point to your personal grid electric supplier for your house (I need a URL to look at it where they offer this) that you use or could use in your area, that will give you a ten or twenty year guaranteed priceing contract, so much a kilowatt hour carved in stone.
Your challange is bunk. Here's why: While energy prices do flu
have seen it myself. A representative of a well known US bank screaming: "What da ya mean, that ya give 6 months payed maternity leave? It is the cow's fault. She should go on state aid".
Ouch. That is wrong on so many levels to me. First he was incredibly insulting by calling her a 'cow'. But it points out that, indeed, defined benefits such as mandatory maternity leave increases the costs of operating there. I think it's even worse to call it 'maternity' leave, since that implies that it only increases the costs of hiring females. I don't care about how many anti-discrimination laws you have, that's a very real and calculatable reason to avoid hiring women, and it'll result in discrimination against them. Now, if you give the benefit to the dad as well, it can mostly even it out.
Finally, I'm generally against all of this. I'm very libertarian, I'll admit, I wish that government would get it's nose out of requiring benefits for businesses, and said businesses concentrated more on paying money rather than having half the employee costs being 'benefits'. Then the individual pays for all their requirements. I'm especially fond of the 'healthcare savings accounts' and high deductable insurance plans. My dad's work has found that it saves money for both people who don't have much healthcare needs and those who do have substantial needs. Think about how many copays it'd take to bust $2000 in a year for someone with cancer? At $20 per visit, per test, etc... It doesn't take long.
Then again, given the average birth rates in european countries, mandatory maternity leave might be a good idea to encourage some of them.
...And that would help Mexico HOW?! A one-time capital investment that quickly prices locals out of the market?!
Those retirees do tend to demand quite a few services, ranging from maid service to major medical. Then when they die, their estate sells their property to new old people who bring more fresh money to the region.
That or we just find the next cheap country and repeat the cycle.
See China.:)
I agree with you, except to note that we're not likely to export jobs to any region that's not stable, which many 'third world countries' aren't. Some regions of the Middleast might be ready soon, but there's serious terrorist concerns to worry about. Africa is just, on average, a real mess.
Lack of stability tends to increase costs, for example, having to bribe a half dozen local warlords and hire a heavily armed security force is expensive.
I bet that $17 billion is untaxed. That makes it difficult for the government to invest in useful goods and services to promote further economic growth.
I'm willing to bet that it ends up being spent in a store at some point, then you have sales tax on it, income taxes for the workers at the store, taxes on the factory that made it or tariffs if it was imported. Plenty of spots to collect some taxes on it.
As was said, it's more a cultural problem leaking into government actions than the other way around. Now yes, the government can initiate a campaign against corruption and bribe taking and such, but they're so corrupt that getting a non corrupt person in there who's willing to endure the threats and such to push for ending corruption is unlikely.
It really makes you wonder just how much damage corruption does to a floundering Third World nation. It also makes the point that throwing money at a problem won't even begin to solve it most of the time.
I'd believe it. It's been my belief for years that aid is generally ineffective in these countries because of it. So much is stolen or wasted that nothing happens.
It's reached the point that I'd rather start invest all the aid for these countries in a fund for invading the worst of the lot every so often. It'd end up being more economical and effective. Sure, it's more expensive in the short term(IE 20 years), but it can pay off big.
Let's see, which country is the worst off right now, but is still reachable by sea or through an allied country...
Heh, I did better than you think, seeing as how that post wasn't run through any spell check or even any significant proofreading. Anything serious I run through spellcheck/somebody else. Slashdot doesn't qualify.
It was a typo, I do that fairly frequently. I catch most of them, but one usually slips through.
You forgot a big factor: English speakers. India has a large number of English-speaking tech workers. The country as a whole has around a billion people and 100 - 200 million of them speak English well. The total population of Nigeria about 130 million.
Good points, though you could probably replace 'Nigeria' with 'Most of Africa'.
Depending upon what they're doing, you might not need to have the average employee speak english, like in manufacturing jobs, but for things like programming and tech support it certainly helps.
For a shoe joint I'd think that you'd be more worried about how stabil the power and reginal government is. Rebels tend to be bad for business.
Overall, especially as the costs of doing work there grow the overall balance of outsourcing work to there will become less and less feasible. If the current tendencies continue, withing the next 2-3 years the costs will become so high that companies will go back to importing people instead of exporting work. This of course will happen if the entire thing is governed by economic realities which I am suspicious that it is not. As you have noted it does smack of an overgrown Monopoly
It's already happened in several cases. Of course, another option is to outsource, but keep the work a little closer to home, and simply 'outsource' to an area like the midwest where costs are quite a bit lower. Sure, stuff is still more expensive, but you do eliminate many hassles/expenses inherent in trying to send work halfway around the world. One-two hours time difference compared to 10-12, English is the default language, no hassle with customs, etc...
It's all up to the bean counters and how/what they count in their calculations.
I'm not too worried, as long as they don't do something stupid like raise the minimum wage again. If to many jobs get exported, it'll depress wages here and raise them over there and it won't make sense to export jobs there anymore since we have the advantage of not having 'shipping costs'.
Really, no offense but you are woefully ignorant of the status of "alternative energy". It works, going in all over, at 10 watt to the multi mega watt levels.
Sure, as long as you have enough real estate available to be covered in solar cells or wind turbines. We're talking about cities here, where space is at a premium.
Wind power is not almost equal to the cost of coal generated electricity.
Like the Indian government is likely to allow you to do something so unsafe as putting a wind turbine up over the heads of thousands of people. It'd be something for the Indian power companies to do, not the companies running the programming/helpdesk centers.
solar is still higher, but if all you have is a hut sitting out in the hot sun
We're not talking about huts in the hot sun, we're talking about skyscrapers and other large building stuffed full of people and computers. Power demands are completely different levels of magnitude between the two.
The last place we lived as caretakers was fully solar PV powered, the main owners house at 7,000 square feet and our rig. They ran full upscale upper middle class fully electric everything from it, and total cost including labor for install was around what a reasonable car costs today, which compared to the cost of the house was a few percent. The cost could have been dropped a lot with homeowner sweat equity in the install, and that is US full "what the market will bear" cost on hardware and labor.
As long as your 'reasonable car' is $30,000 I guess. In my area that'd be roughly 30% of the cost of the house, not a 'few percent'. Also, 7k feet is three times the size of the average home, and 'upscale upper middle class' equipment tends to be fairly power efficient. Meanwhile, I pay $40 a month for all my power demands from the utility, and I run a small server farm. If they'd be paying $60 a month for power, it'd take 42 years for the investment to pay back, assuming no interest or repair/maintenance costs. 25 years if the system replaced a $100/month bill.
it's clean power, too, better than grid supplied.
I, like most corporations, rate my power 'cleanness' upon how pure the sine wave is, not it's source. While I'd prefer to see the coal plants shut down, I'm far too fond of nuclear to make greenies happy.
And as to "UPS", well dang vern that is a primary part of alternate energy rigs, having your own battery bank and smart chargers and inverters, all that is a big UPS system that is modular and has some solar PV or wind charger hooked to it.
12 hours of batteries for your average data/call center would be insanely expensive, and it's a cost you'd have to pay every five to ten years at least.
Note: I've looked at wind/solar for my place, but it hasn't reached the point that I'd buy it yet.
In a lot of the developing world, they are skipping conventional and expensive and now old-fashioned ast century tech infrastructure roll-out and going to the next generation tech, decentralised (and alternative energy, solar, etc) electric power and wireless networks instead of fixed wires. Here is an article on what India is doing to bring electricity to the 1/2 billion people that don't have it yet.
While alternate energy sources such as solar and wind work well in decentralized areas such as the rural USA or small remote Indian villages, it's not nearly as effective as traditional sources for providing power within cities and skyscrapers. The amount of solar cells needed to run a few appliances or lights in a community used to doing without isn't much. In the city it's a matter of serving several thousand people with the same amound of wire needed to serve a couple hundred in a rural area. You're running lights far more often, many computers, phone equipment/exchanges, etc...
The power demand of your average skyscraper exceeds what you'd get by layering it in solar cells, you aren't exactly going to be allowed to put wind turbines up, and you still haven't addressed the problem of how you're going to get power when there's a brownout at night or when the wind's calm.
The cost of living and the wage are only one factor of the cost of an ousourced worker.
Agreed. There are substantial costs involved in outsourcing work to another country that, even if wages are 1/10th that of native workers, it's still a headscratcher and much work by accountants to decide if it's worth it.
You have to add the cost of duplicating power infrastructure because too many companies have moved in and the utility grid cannot cope. Current brownout+blackout rate is 20%+ during daytime and growing.
A very real reason to not locate to India right now. However, they probably weren't figuring on this 10 years ago when outsourcing was really big though, weren't they? Miscalculations happen.
At the end of the adding all the numbers a worker in India will come up to less then US or EU costs in terms of salary and considerably more as far as infrastructure is concerned. From there on the overall numbers depend on how the work is organised, but I am not surprised at a company pulling out from India. There are plenty of other places around the world with comparable salary rates and considerably better infrastructure.
Would you care to name some? I mean, you always have China, but we have some issues with them. Again, it all ends up as a comparison of numbers between options.
Not until the Indian workers train their Nigerian replacements.
The problem with this is that we're running out of areas that have decent education standards, easy access to raw supplies, and, perhaps most importantly, are stable yet have low wages/cost of living. India was fairly unusual in that they had decent universities/colleges(though not enough of them) churning out qualified graduates, a large labor pool, stability, and a cheap cost of living/wage range that encouraged importation of work.
Areas like Nigeria haven't solved these problems yet, thus raising the costs of locating there, even if their labor is dirt cheap. When you have to import the machines, supplies, and labor to build the factory and trainers to teach them how to operate the equipment, costs rise. It'll be a while before they have enough people skilled enough to replace indian programmers.
Not that I object to businesses building factories there, as providing jobs, income, and training are some of the best ways to improve the above. People with paying jobs generally don't have much free time available to go play rebel.
If I remember right, the cost of living in India is still something like a tenth that of the USA. A meal that would be ten bucks here costs a buck there. Now admitably this is partially due to an average quality of life loss, but I've heard of a number of retirees on fixed incomes moving there because it costs half as much to live there as they're accustomed.
While I can't claim to have predicted that this would happen so soon, I will say that I saw it coming.
Part of what happened that made this happen sooner is that the Indian quality of life, bolstered by all sorts of outside companies outsourcing there and pouring money and jobs into their economy, rose. This of course becomes a positive cycle, where the newly wealthy* start demanding more**.
This sucks up potential labor far faster than simply looking at the unemployment/agricultural worker numbers.
We're seeing the results now. India's currency is gaining strength, the dollar is loosing strength. Soon it'll no longer be as economical to outsource to asian countries(China will take longer). Soon it'll make more sense to outsource from expensive american cities to inexpensive smaller cities, larger towns, or downright rural locations within the United States. Arkansas costs half as much to live in than Hawaii.
*relativly of course. They might still be 'poor' by 1st world standards, but they're no longer 'dirt poor' ** Services like telephones, internet, more frequent hair cuts, eating out, things like bigger, better constructed homes, vehicles, etc...
Yeah, but you need to get up from your chair, go to a frigging Wal-Mart, stand in line and then drive back home in order to get that movie. And when you watch that movie, you get FBI warning, RIAA warning and studio-warning that copying the movie is bad.
Don't forget that you have to hope that the local walmart/best buy has it in stock. Even if you already own it, you might have to sort through hundreds of DVD's to find the movie you want to watch, unless you have the skills and discipline of a librarian and actually sort your movies. 1 DVD/week for 10 years leads to 500 DVDs in your library.
And when you watch that movie, you get FBI warning, RIAA warning and studio-warning that copying the movie is bad.
Well, you might still get this. Or have it come up every time the propriatary locked down player required to play the encrypted movies is started.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, I said we haven't carpet bombed anyone/where. We have many types of phosphorus weapons, from incendiary rounds on up. We have grenades, mortor shells, tank rounds, and even bombs all made of the stuff.
Notice how the article you mentioned carefully avoided mentioning what kind of munitions employing WP were used.
And yes, we use them. War is ugly.
I'm more of a necrophobe than a hoplophobe, personally. It's not that I have anything wrong with guns on their own, but that I'm absolutely horrified by the idea that someone (criminals included) could be hurt or killed by them.
Personally, I couldn't care much less about the criminals. But then I'm an evil libertarian, even though I get accused of being an evil right winger occasionially.
Both police and vigilantes are horribly dangerous entities, the question is which is safer. Even though examples such as this have shown that we have grown a bit lazy in keeping policemen in their place, it is much more difficult to keep "responsible citizens" in their place.
My worldview is that you need an effective police force to prevent vigilantes. If Police are seen to be taking care of criminal matters competently, individuals are less motivated to take justice into their own hands.
On the other hand, there is a vast difference between self defense and being a vigilante. It's the line between taking action when a criminal targets you or someone/thing in your presence and activly seeking criminals out. Somebody invades my home and there's a good chance I'll shoot them, but I'm not going to go looking for them. In order to keep the police from growing out of control, citizens need to take some responsability to protect themselves. By taking some responsability and defending themselves, you only need police to play 'clean up', which includes catching the criminals after the fact.
Back on the Library Chief, I agree with requiring a subpoena. Procedures are there for a reason and should be followed. Sure, they limit the powers of police to do their duty. On the other hand, it also helps to prevent abuse, of which examples are legion.
As the other person mentioned, Castle Rock v. Gonzales is the most recent manefestation of this ruling. An earlier one is South v. Maryland
The Gonzales case is pretty far reaching in that the police don't have to provide protection even if:
A: Specific threats had been uttered, including death
B: A restraining order had been issued*
C: The person making the threat has attacked/fulfilled those threats before
D: The threat was towards children
I suppose it depends on the definition of protection... I mean, the police aren't legally obligated to basically be a bodyguarding service.
I agree, but feel that if they aren't, that we shouldn't prevent people from defending themselves as best as they can. Not everybody can afford to hire a bodyguard. Most can, however, stretch for a cheap shotgun. Hell, if they know the right people they can get a gun & training for a song if there is a real threat against them. Still, most victims have been abused to the point that their fear of their attacker is such that they can't imagine resisting themselves.
Similarly, an attempt at serious harm (even if it fails) is a criminal offense as well. I would think that a police officer standing by while this kind of thing happens would be a dereliction of duty (which I realize is a military term, but there's also civilian dereliction).
It wouldn't be much of a stretch to make the case cover this one as well. Matter of fact, South vs. Maryland is a closer match where a deputy left hostages and the police essentially did nothing for four days.
*Why I've always felt that restraining orders are worth less than the paper they're printed on.
Don't forget that we haven't carpet bombed anywhere in Iraq, much less with white phosphorus. That's a WWII technique that was frequently used against Japan.
Yes, we have had planes and helicopters bomb/shoot targets in fallujah and elsewhere. However, in one example where they drop a bomb on a group moving down a street, you hear the pilot asking if he should take out the group, and a voice answers 'yes'. That affirmation would be from a combat controller, who's on the ground nearby tracking the enemies.
What would you do if you were sitting there for 3-5 years and no hope of ever getting out or even getting a trial.
Sit there and wait some more? There's always hope of getting out. Some american prisoners of North Vietnam were held for more than 8 years*, in far worse conditions than Gitmo. Hell, look at how little the NV got out of many of them, how much it took to break them, even with outright torture and this was before they were serious about training troops for it.
WW1 lasted 4 years 3 months, WW2 lasted 6 years. By the laws of warfare, enemy combatants can be held without trial for the duration of the conflict. Yes, there were many people who ended up being held for more than five years in WW2.
Now, I personally believe that the prisoners of Gitmo's status as illegal combatants does complicate this, but I think that they should get a trial. I mean, it wouldn't cost that much to form up a number of military tribunals, go over each case and assign to a category: combatant(POW**), illegal combatant(oh shit), innocent civilian(opps, sorry, here's your plane ride home). Otherwise let them mail home. Sure, read all of it, just like you would read a drug lord's correspondance to make sure he's not simply running the operation from prison, but let them have the privileges accorded both POW's and prisoners. If they're stupid enough to send mail to a terrorist network, well, there's an address for you to check up on...
*Discounting Rambo movies and conspiracy theories.
** Like I said earlier, we can legally hold them, without any further trial until the conflict ends. If they find that you were a legal combatant for Al Qaeda, they'd be able to hold you until the USA decides the conflict has ended, IE Never most likely, or until you are no longer able to operate as a combatant, IE an invalid.
Sorry for the delay, was traveling.
I had a healthcare spending account... I'm pulling out of it.
Don't you mean a healthcare savings account?
There's actually two types of HSA's. The old style, where the money has to be used that year, and goes back to the company if you don't use it (the suck), of which the only benefit is indeed the fact that it's pretax money. I'm talking about the new style, which is a 'Healthcare Savings AccountPlan', coupled with a 'High deductable insurance program'.
My Dad has it. He contributes $2000 a year to the plan, and the deductable on his insurance is $2000 annually(limit by law), after which it pays 100%. The premiums for this are less than a standard program, and there are no copays. If he doesn't use the full $2000 that year, it can sit there forever gaining interest for use later.
One of Dad's coworkers went with the plan and he ended up with cancer. He burned through his annual $2000 contribution almost instantly, but the insurance then proceeded to pay 100%. Under the conventional plan, he would of had over 200 $20 copays, making the HDIP far cheaper for him. His account doesn't grow this year(it was his first year), but he likes it anyways.
The system works best for those with light or heavy healthcare needs. If you need 'moderate' care of around $2000 a year, it might not be the best option.
I'd spend half an hour setting up a small claim, and the an hour fighting with them a week later because they didn't want to pay it. A month later I *might* get my cash back.
I'd try getting a different company. My dad has a debit card that pulls from the HSA, it's only valid at medical institutions, but pharmacies like Walgreens are now coding medical items can also be put on it. Dad can use it to buy bandaids and it goes towards the deductable/coverage.
nukes just keep the concentrated money in the hands of the already bilionaires, and there has yet to be released a *true* satudy of what an end to end cost of building and running a nuke really costs.
That's odd, I'm part owner of a number of power plants, nuclear and otherwise. My salary is only around 36k a year, though I can and do get thosands extra many years. I've been investing a good chunk of my salary and making good money on my investments. I'm looking forward to retiring early.
As it is now, without costing in factors like decommissioning and armed guards 24/7 for the next millenia, they are *barely* more cost effective than coal, even coal plants with scrubbers, etc. Nukes were pushed as a stealth military budget in order to get weapons grade stuff, they have never been all that good a deal. they make"hot", that's it, just "hot", and we have a ton of other places to get "hot". Hecks windchimes man it is right now this second 99 F where I am and it ain't technically summer yet.
1. Decommissioning: Nuke plants are lasting far longer than we anticipated, so the costs are really not that big of a deal. Yucca mountain is a political boondoggle that as far as I'm concerned we don't even need. I'd be building breeders that would actually help with our 'waste' issue because if we'd build a fuel all the 'waste' currently sitting around could be termed 'fuel' again. I don't want to have to use enriched stuff, I'd even like to be able to burn DU in them.
2. Beating coal: Given how worried we are about CO2 emmisions, I see coal becoming even more expensive, and coal/nuclear are neck and neck for cheapest. Nuclear doesn't spew pollution all over the place, so I like it.
3. 99F Temperatures don't mean much if you don't have a heat differential to exploit. If everything around is 900F it still wouldn't matter because you can't extract usable energy without a heat differential somewhere.
As to adding your name to a list or whatever, again, demand pushes the investors, larger scale means economies of scale in manufacturing costs. As to whether mine is paid off or not, hell ya! The first time the grid went down and I kept power I considered it paid off from the sheer convenience factor, as in running my propane furance fan in january when it was pretty cold and nasty out, the grid goes down frequently around here right when you really want to *keep* power, like ice storms or thunderstorms, etc. Can you put a price on that, or way down south when a big storm hits and the heat is actually at the critical point for a lot of people? Just being able to run some fans and see the news and weather on the TV and maybe pull some well water out is a huge bonus IMO.
Ok, you're rural. Good for you. I plan on buying some property out in the middle of nowhere when I retire.
Anyways, the needs of a rural person is different than a townie like me. I haven't had an outage lasting more than a few minutes in the four years I've been living in my current location. If you add up all the outages I've had in the last ten years it's still under two hours total. I can live without electricity for those periods of time, and while you might need all that stuff, I'd bet that you could, if necessary, live without them for at least a few days. Bundle up if it's cold out.
I not only have grid, and solar(yes I do all my own work and all my stuff was new), but I also own two different fuel generators and a small wind turbine, I want *guaranteed* electric, I require my radios and computers and water well and some lights to function at a minimum, and that means not relying on one source. I also have a year and half worth of "stored solar"-firewood, and a years worth of propane, at all times. I backup my data like most doodz here, have redundant computers, store food and water(enough to carry me much further than most people), have the ability to produce all my food if I had to, have a medkit the rival of most third world local hospitals, grow a ton of my own foo
no law says data centers have to be placed in the middle of expensive high rise towers in large cities, in fact, some of the larger ones being built right now are going out in the sticks in dedicated buildings, the new googleplex, etc. It's nuts to cry poverty when you insist on the highest rent. If your center is large enough, you can get the lines to it.
Except that the cities are where the infrastructure and educated workers are in India. You can do this in america because we've distributed our education and infrastructure enough that you can get most of the same services in some pretty rural areas as you can in the cities. Overnight UPS and Fedex isn't that expensive in business terms. That's why if you look at some of my other posts I advocate things generally called 'farm sourcing/ruralsourcing'. It's relocating to somewhere less expensive within the united states, generally in the midwest.
Again, not sure what you are saying, that alternatve energy doesn't work or it doesn't scale up?
I didn't ever say that. What I was trying to say is that my call center/data center isn't in the power production business. I'd rather pay the power company to deal with all that. That way that I don't have to worry about maintaining multiple power sources, huge banks of batteries, etc.
As to "enough real estate", well, you slap them in right outside the big cities, they are doing it all over.
Again, that's the providence of the power company, not the business center of whatever flaver. I was saying that a center in a city won't have the territory available to run their own wind farm, and likely doesn't have enough surface area for a large enough solar array to be independent of the grid.
And like I said, solar is going in all over as well, and is neat because so many people can take advantage of it and it scales like crazy. It's happening, whether you like it or not, seems *millions and millions* of people are going to it all over the planet, most all the dealers are backlogged with orders and installs.
Great for them! Living in ND, it's going to be a while before I bother, but I'm all for solar power being a suppliment. If nothing else, it provides it's peak power when power demands are at their highest when people have their AC on. What I say is that when you add in the power storage systems/batteries it becomes a whole lot less economical. Wind suffers the same problem in that you don't always have wind, resulting in the power company needing backup power sources when the wind isn't blowing. Add in that the most common backup power source is natural gas turbine, which has the highest fuel costs going, it doesn't necessarily make the cut. Yes, it's improving. I'm all for that. What I'm saying is that it's not yet a simple drop in solution for a high demand electric consumer that also demands high reliability.
s to solar not being cost effective, or quoting some "payback" period,which is a huge variable
No, it's not really. It's simple math, sure there's a number of variables, but they're fairly easy to calculate. I haven't even touched upon cost of capital, anticipated maintenance costs and such. Let's say a solar system for me costs 10k. If I invested that money instead of putting it into a solar system, at a conservative 5% I'd be able to pay $41 per month to the electric company forever from the interest. If I borrowed money at the low low interest rate of 5% I'd be paying more on interest than the system saves me.
Here's a challenge I have yet to have any internet alternative energy debunker "expert" meet, so here's *your* chance: write back when you can point to your personal grid electric supplier for your house (I need a URL to look at it where they offer this) that you use or could use in your area, that will give you a ten or twenty year guaranteed priceing contract, so much a kilowatt hour carved in stone.
Your challange is bunk. Here's why: While energy prices do flu
have seen it myself. A representative of a well known US bank screaming: "What da ya mean, that ya give 6 months payed maternity leave? It is the cow's fault. She should go on state aid".
Ouch. That is wrong on so many levels to me. First he was incredibly insulting by calling her a 'cow'. But it points out that, indeed, defined benefits such as mandatory maternity leave increases the costs of operating there. I think it's even worse to call it 'maternity' leave, since that implies that it only increases the costs of hiring females. I don't care about how many anti-discrimination laws you have, that's a very real and calculatable reason to avoid hiring women, and it'll result in discrimination against them. Now, if you give the benefit to the dad as well, it can mostly even it out.
Finally, I'm generally against all of this. I'm very libertarian, I'll admit, I wish that government would get it's nose out of requiring benefits for businesses, and said businesses concentrated more on paying money rather than having half the employee costs being 'benefits'. Then the individual pays for all their requirements. I'm especially fond of the 'healthcare savings accounts' and high deductable insurance plans. My dad's work has found that it saves money for both people who don't have much healthcare needs and those who do have substantial needs. Think about how many copays it'd take to bust $2000 in a year for someone with cancer? At $20 per visit, per test, etc... It doesn't take long.
Then again, given the average birth rates in european countries, mandatory maternity leave might be a good idea to encourage some of them.
...And that would help Mexico HOW?! A one-time capital investment that quickly prices locals out of the market?!
Those retirees do tend to demand quite a few services, ranging from maid service to major medical. Then when they die, their estate sells their property to new old people who bring more fresh money to the region.
That or we just find the next cheap country and repeat the cycle.
:)
See China.
I agree with you, except to note that we're not likely to export jobs to any region that's not stable, which many 'third world countries' aren't. Some regions of the Middleast might be ready soon, but there's serious terrorist concerns to worry about. Africa is just, on average, a real mess.
Lack of stability tends to increase costs, for example, having to bribe a half dozen local warlords and hire a heavily armed security force is expensive.
I bet that $17 billion is untaxed. That makes it difficult for the government to invest in useful goods and services to promote further economic growth.
I'm willing to bet that it ends up being spent in a store at some point, then you have sales tax on it, income taxes for the workers at the store, taxes on the factory that made it or tariffs if it was imported. Plenty of spots to collect some taxes on it.
As was said, it's more a cultural problem leaking into government actions than the other way around. Now yes, the government can initiate a campaign against corruption and bribe taking and such, but they're so corrupt that getting a non corrupt person in there who's willing to endure the threats and such to push for ending corruption is unlikely.
It really makes you wonder just how much damage corruption does to a floundering Third World nation. It also makes the point that throwing money at a problem won't even begin to solve it most of the time.
I'd believe it. It's been my belief for years that aid is generally ineffective in these countries because of it. So much is stolen or wasted that nothing happens.
It's reached the point that I'd rather start invest all the aid for these countries in a fund for invading the worst of the lot every so often. It'd end up being more economical and effective. Sure, it's more expensive in the short term(IE 20 years), but it can pay off big.
Let's see, which country is the worst off right now, but is still reachable by sea or through an allied country...
Heh, I did better than you think, seeing as how that post wasn't run through any spell check or even any significant proofreading. Anything serious I run through spellcheck/somebody else. Slashdot doesn't qualify.
It was a typo, I do that fairly frequently. I catch most of them, but one usually slips through.
You forgot a big factor: English speakers. India has a large number of English-speaking tech workers. The country as a whole has around a billion people and 100 - 200 million of them speak English well. The total population of Nigeria about 130 million.
Good points, though you could probably replace 'Nigeria' with 'Most of Africa'.
Depending upon what they're doing, you might not need to have the average employee speak english, like in manufacturing jobs, but for things like programming and tech support it certainly helps.
For a shoe joint I'd think that you'd be more worried about how stabil the power and reginal government is. Rebels tend to be bad for business.
Overall, especially as the costs of doing work there grow the overall balance of outsourcing work to there will become less and less feasible. If the current tendencies continue, withing the next 2-3 years the costs will become so high that companies will go back to importing people instead of exporting work. This of course will happen if the entire thing is governed by economic realities which I am suspicious that it is not. As you have noted it does smack of an overgrown Monopoly
It's already happened in several cases. Of course, another option is to outsource, but keep the work a little closer to home, and simply 'outsource' to an area like the midwest where costs are quite a bit lower. Sure, stuff is still more expensive, but you do eliminate many hassles/expenses inherent in trying to send work halfway around the world. One-two hours time difference compared to 10-12, English is the default language, no hassle with customs, etc...
It's all up to the bean counters and how/what they count in their calculations.
I'm not too worried, as long as they don't do something stupid like raise the minimum wage again. If to many jobs get exported, it'll depress wages here and raise them over there and it won't make sense to export jobs there anymore since we have the advantage of not having 'shipping costs'.
Really, no offense but you are woefully ignorant of the status of "alternative energy". It works, going in all over, at 10 watt to the multi mega watt levels.
Sure, as long as you have enough real estate available to be covered in solar cells or wind turbines. We're talking about cities here, where space is at a premium.
Wind power is not almost equal to the cost of coal generated electricity.
Like the Indian government is likely to allow you to do something so unsafe as putting a wind turbine up over the heads of thousands of people. It'd be something for the Indian power companies to do, not the companies running the programming/helpdesk centers.
solar is still higher, but if all you have is a hut sitting out in the hot sun
We're not talking about huts in the hot sun, we're talking about skyscrapers and other large building stuffed full of people and computers. Power demands are completely different levels of magnitude between the two.
The last place we lived as caretakers was fully solar PV powered, the main owners house at 7,000 square feet and our rig. They ran full upscale upper middle class fully electric everything from it, and total cost including labor for install was around what a reasonable car costs today, which compared to the cost of the house was a few percent. The cost could have been dropped a lot with homeowner sweat equity in the install, and that is US full "what the market will bear" cost on hardware and labor.
As long as your 'reasonable car' is $30,000 I guess. In my area that'd be roughly 30% of the cost of the house, not a 'few percent'. Also, 7k feet is three times the size of the average home, and 'upscale upper middle class' equipment tends to be fairly power efficient. Meanwhile, I pay $40 a month for all my power demands from the utility, and I run a small server farm. If they'd be paying $60 a month for power, it'd take 42 years for the investment to pay back, assuming no interest or repair/maintenance costs. 25 years if the system replaced a $100/month bill.
it's clean power, too, better than grid supplied.
I, like most corporations, rate my power 'cleanness' upon how pure the sine wave is, not it's source. While I'd prefer to see the coal plants shut down, I'm far too fond of nuclear to make greenies happy.
And as to "UPS", well dang vern that is a primary part of alternate energy rigs, having your own battery bank and smart chargers and inverters, all that is a big UPS system that is modular and has some solar PV or wind charger hooked to it.
12 hours of batteries for your average data/call center would be insanely expensive, and it's a cost you'd have to pay every five to ten years at least.
Note: I've looked at wind/solar for my place, but it hasn't reached the point that I'd buy it yet.
In a lot of the developing world, they are skipping conventional and expensive and now old-fashioned ast century tech infrastructure roll-out and going to the next generation tech, decentralised (and alternative energy, solar, etc) electric power and wireless networks instead of fixed wires. Here is an article on what India is doing to bring electricity to the 1/2 billion people that don't have it yet.
While alternate energy sources such as solar and wind work well in decentralized areas such as the rural USA or small remote Indian villages, it's not nearly as effective as traditional sources for providing power within cities and skyscrapers. The amount of solar cells needed to run a few appliances or lights in a community used to doing without isn't much. In the city it's a matter of serving several thousand people with the same amound of wire needed to serve a couple hundred in a rural area. You're running lights far more often, many computers, phone equipment/exchanges, etc...
The power demand of your average skyscraper exceeds what you'd get by layering it in solar cells, you aren't exactly going to be allowed to put wind turbines up, and you still haven't addressed the problem of how you're going to get power when there's a brownout at night or when the wind's calm.
The cost of living and the wage are only one factor of the cost of an ousourced worker.
Agreed. There are substantial costs involved in outsourcing work to another country that, even if wages are 1/10th that of native workers, it's still a headscratcher and much work by accountants to decide if it's worth it.
You have to add the cost of duplicating power infrastructure because too many companies have moved in and the utility grid cannot cope. Current brownout+blackout rate is 20%+ during daytime and growing.
A very real reason to not locate to India right now. However, they probably weren't figuring on this 10 years ago when outsourcing was really big though, weren't they? Miscalculations happen.
At the end of the adding all the numbers a worker in India will come up to less then US or EU costs in terms of salary and considerably more as far as infrastructure is concerned. From there on the overall numbers depend on how the work is organised, but I am not surprised at a company pulling out from India. There are plenty of other places around the world with comparable salary rates and considerably better infrastructure.
Would you care to name some? I mean, you always have China, but we have some issues with them. Again, it all ends up as a comparison of numbers between options.
The math really isn't that hard, 1 DVD/Week*52 weeks/year*10 years * 520 dvd/10 years, where did this "500" come from?
A: Rounding
B: Breakage/Throwing away/losing
C: Lending(and not having returned)/Giving away
Not until the Indian workers train their Nigerian replacements.
The problem with this is that we're running out of areas that have decent education standards, easy access to raw supplies, and, perhaps most importantly, are stable yet have low wages/cost of living. India was fairly unusual in that they had decent universities/colleges(though not enough of them) churning out qualified graduates, a large labor pool, stability, and a cheap cost of living/wage range that encouraged importation of work.
Areas like Nigeria haven't solved these problems yet, thus raising the costs of locating there, even if their labor is dirt cheap. When you have to import the machines, supplies, and labor to build the factory and trainers to teach them how to operate the equipment, costs rise. It'll be a while before they have enough people skilled enough to replace indian programmers.
Not that I object to businesses building factories there, as providing jobs, income, and training are some of the best ways to improve the above. People with paying jobs generally don't have much free time available to go play rebel.
If I remember right, the cost of living in India is still something like a tenth that of the USA. A meal that would be ten bucks here costs a buck there. Now admitably this is partially due to an average quality of life loss, but I've heard of a number of retirees on fixed incomes moving there because it costs half as much to live there as they're accustomed.
While I can't claim to have predicted that this would happen so soon, I will say that I saw it coming.
Part of what happened that made this happen sooner is that the Indian quality of life, bolstered by all sorts of outside companies outsourcing there and pouring money and jobs into their economy, rose. This of course becomes a positive cycle, where the newly wealthy* start demanding more**.
This sucks up potential labor far faster than simply looking at the unemployment/agricultural worker numbers.
We're seeing the results now. India's currency is gaining strength, the dollar is loosing strength. Soon it'll no longer be as economical to outsource to asian countries(China will take longer). Soon it'll make more sense to outsource from expensive american cities to inexpensive smaller cities, larger towns, or downright rural locations within the United States. Arkansas costs half as much to live in than Hawaii.
*relativly of course. They might still be 'poor' by 1st world standards, but they're no longer 'dirt poor'
** Services like telephones, internet, more frequent hair cuts, eating out, things like bigger, better constructed homes, vehicles, etc...
Yeah, but you need to get up from your chair, go to a frigging Wal-Mart, stand in line and then drive back home in order to get that movie. And when you watch that movie, you get FBI warning, RIAA warning and studio-warning that copying the movie is bad.
Don't forget that you have to hope that the local walmart/best buy has it in stock. Even if you already own it, you might have to sort through hundreds of DVD's to find the movie you want to watch, unless you have the skills and discipline of a librarian and actually sort your movies. 1 DVD/week for 10 years leads to 500 DVDs in your library.
And when you watch that movie, you get FBI warning, RIAA warning and studio-warning that copying the movie is bad.
Well, you might still get this. Or have it come up every time the propriatary locked down player required to play the encrypted movies is started.
Moment of idiocy...
Trillion->Billion