The interdependencies are hard to control. The idea that coffee might help this or hurt that is like the idea that green tea might help this or that. As others have mentioned, is it the caffeine, side effects, or other chemicals in the coffee. Is taking caffeine pills going to help. Does eating the essence of green tea do any good with the relaxing ritual, and activity, associated with making a cup of tea?
For most people, I cannot imagine that modest amount of caffeine is harmful or helpful. It is just the next target of the puritan forces in our midst. For instance, I recently received a gift of decaffeinated teas and hot chocolate with marshmallows. Strictly speaking, from a health point of view, this is a stupid gift. If you want caffeine free tea, drink herbal infusions, not alcohol laced decaffeinated teas. And I do not feed rendered animal products to my animals, much less children. There really is no rhyme or reason to those agenda. I guess they are against whatever they are told to be against. And before anyone tells me that decaffeinated teas are equal to regular teas, i say show me the peer reviewed reviews of the literature, otherwise shut up. You can pretty much say whatever you want on a label.
The funniest thing to me is that we are reaching a consensus that what hurts kids, and people in general, is empty calories replacing nutritious food. But we can't afford to get the empty calories out of school and fast food menus, so we keep attacking these strawmen.
I have been thinking for a while about how to respond. I think everyone who received the letter should respond with something like this
Dear SCO
I received you recent letter of inquiry with great interest. I believe that Linux may have legal problems, and I do not wish to subject my company to liabilities that may be a part of those legal difficulties. In particular, I do not wish to a victim of the the harassment tactics that have become part of the Unix and Windows interests.
I regret I cannot answer your question regarding the existence of Unix code in Linux. I am upper management and have no technical skills or knowledge. My IT people say everything we use is properly licensed, written independently, or knowingly contributed by the firms that own the code. They also tell me that the Linux code is available for everyone to look at. My suggestion is that you get a copy of this Linux code and take a look at it and see if anything matches. You can then tell the sections at issue. If you then send me your code for these sections, I can have my tech people compare your code to the Linux code and see if we are running the same code.
But I would rather just solve the issue now. My preferred solution would be to install windows and get it over with. However, my techs refuse to so do. As a businessperson yourself, I am sure you understand the difficulty of hiring competent staff, so I tend to let them do what they want, so long as everything is running. I can't really fire them anyone, since one is sleeping with my daughter, the other one is sleeping with me, and the third is only minority worker we have in the company.
So, the solution may be to license you product. In exchange I will need the following things. First, you must certify that you own or license all the IP in your Unix. My tech staff tells me that a few years ago Unix was caught stealing code, so we want to make sure you longer do this. I will also need a promise from you to defend me against any legal problem that might arise with my use of Unix. Since I have been told that you are brink of bankruptcy, I will need to see proof of a bond that can cover the expenses of such a defense. Finally, again since you may go bankrupt soon, I need a guarantee that I will be have an option to license Unix over the next five years, either from you or your new owners, for comparable prices. If I am unable to license Unix, I must have the freedom to continue to use it for free. If Unix becomes unsupported, I must have access to the source code to modify as I need.
You are obviously a different market. This IPod would be targeted towards someone, for example, that might have a large music library, say 15-20 gigs, but only listens to fraction of that music on a regular basis. One reason I have not bought an IPod is a combination of price and excessive size. The 2G size is a bit small, but at around $100 it is much more reasonable that 10G size.
At this size,with reasonable encoding, you could have almost a weeks worth of music, or, to put another way, enough music to last for two months at three hours a day.
Altavista was big. Very big. The only reason that everyone does not know about Altavista is because the Internet was not fully integrated into society. Yahoo defined itself as a portal rather quickly, it's strength being organized content and services. It still exists because it is true to that identity.
Everyone says that the big reason Google got big was the simple interface and the lack of ads. That is true to a degree, but the another big reason is that Altavista was falling under an attack by those who would load pages with keywords. Which is the same thing that is happening with Google. Advertisers are loading links with keywords and setting up multiple incestuous domains. The attack and effects are largely the same. The first page of google is generally link farms with a few corporate web pages and almost no private content. The freedom of the press is limited to those that can get on the first few pages of google.
Since google seems unable to fix this problem, the time is ripe for another technology. Such technology can succeed if it is properly advertised.
Who exactly are you talking about making money? The developers, the managers, the IT administrators, the sales people, the hardware computer tech? As has been said many times, there are many ways to make money, and the current vogue is not going to last forever.
Apple makes money off free software. Redhat is making money of free software. IBM and HP and Sun all have plans to make money off free software. The small developer still has every opportunity to write shareware, put any necessary public licenses on it, and probably do as well or bad as ever.
The IT administrators will still make money. Someone has to maintain the machines. And companies have show that they want free software, but still are willing to pay for the convenience of having someone else manage it and maintain it. So developer still will have jobs. And the frameworks will still need to put together into vertical applications, although most commoditized horizontal applications, like the word processor, will predicable be free.
And the question is, how many people make money now programming. It becoming an increasingly small number. Again, if you programming as part of an administrator function, or creating custom interfaces for corporate, that stuff will still be a paid position. if you doing OS development or app development at MS or Apple, your job may be in jeopardy. But what of it? How many small developers have they put out of business because these companies integrating previously paid-for products into their OS and gave it away. What is the difference between this and giving away an OS?
Look at it this way. We can get water for almost nothing out of the tap. We can get fresh fruit and vegetables for almost nothing out of the ground. We can get quality music for almost nothing by going to the local bar. We can go out and live life for almost nothing and have fun with a walk in the park or a playing ball. And yet we pay large sums of money to have other people do these things for us, or to give us what we consider a value added manifestation. We are willing to pay for things we can get for free, if the product is marketed properly and the opportunity costs allow it.
Outsourcing software, unfortunately, is going to be some we have to live with. Few of the points made in the article have much relevance, and those that do miss the big picture.
For instance, the chocolate example. First, how much of the chocolate is made at the shop. Is the milk from a cow, or it is a homogenized, pasteurized, milk like product. Is the butter made at the shop, or is it likewise mangled by a factory. Is the chocolate and oils processed from the cocoa bean at the shop? Of course not. All the commodities are outsourced. How much more of the chocolate making process is outsourced we cannot say. Does the owner do anything more than buy cases of goop and pour them onto a plate, and them sell them. Is the owner like the so called baker that pull out frozen loaves of preformed bread and put them in the oven? Who knows.
The box is also a good example. One danger of outsourcing, especially to market that are not in line to consume your product, is that you won't have a market to buy your product. The chocolatier, instead of purchasing the boxes more locally, and helping to create an environment in which people can afford his product, is instead expected others to create the economy in which the luxury goods can be consumed.
The reference back to the 80's is of no consequence. Most software development today bears little resemblance to most of what was going on back them. We are continuously building and standardizing additional tools. We are continuously automated the process of programing though visual tools, more advanced debuggers, and completely prepackaged components. The reference to design and assembly is apt. Most cars are designed in first world countries. The design process has been greatly simplified because we know pretty much put together prefab parts. Some components are still designed from scratch, and the body is still crafted. If the car is assembled in a first world country, it is, like the chocolate, assembled from performed commodity parts.
Software outsourcing is with us to stay. The demand for labor is such that companies are demanding M.S. CS people at low wages. The U.S. cannot provide these people. Likewise, CS people have always been treated like a plumper or a electrician. Someone who you have to pay, but resent the high wage. Software development is an international process, and there is no reason to make the development otherwise. My only hope is that managers who have yet to suffer the effects of their planned obselesce, are forced to do so sooner than later.
A good joke, but leads to an interesting exercise. First, I would be afraid to be a part of such a scam, because even the assertion that such a stockpile exists might be enough to call out the DeBeer hit squad.
Beyond that, we can ask the question of how it got to the moon. Assuming that a slightly inflated price of 20K/carat is used, and using the quoted $50 billion, we are taking about 2.5 million carats, or 0.5 million kilograms, about 1 million pounds or 500 tons. From what I can tell, each few tons would require a full moon mission, which in todays dollars would cost 500 million. If we give it the benefit of the doubt, we might be able to get the mass to the moon in 100 missions, which would cost right at 50 billion dollars, at a minimum. It seems to me the value of the rocks is that derived from the fact they are in space. Returning them to earth would serve no purpose.
I think we can laugh guilt free at any fool who falls for this one.
Re:Two things you can't say
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You have to pretend that men and women are equal, even when it's obvious there are some pretty fundamental differences between the genders.
In reality there is no standard man or women. Outside of some basic biology, most traits are spread over a certain range. One can posit a 'center' for each range, and that center might be different in each given population, but it would be a fallacy to say any center was representative of the sex as a whole. Since even the most conservative philosophy, i.e. Rand, says we are looking for the best person for a job, categorizing a class of people by assuming a central characteristic would be contraindicated.
You have to avoid commenting on any difference between the races, even though it's obvious that some races tend to be better at some things than others
Read the discussion above. Not every jew is a good accountant, not every black is good runner, not every white is a homicidal maniac with an arsenal that could be used to invade most small countries, and not every muslim hates women.
In general, you have to avoid any use of generalities, even though generalities are often useful ways to express means and modes
Generalities are a useful method to express centers. However, your comments here indicate why they are not useful in conversation. For instance, it may be true that white male with a family and moderate financial difficulties is the expected person to commit treason against the United States. However, this does not mean that we put everyone with such characteristics under surveillance, nor does it mean that assume that everyone not fitting the description is assumed to be of no threat. The problem is that people will tend to apply centers to the entire population.
It is also important not to confuse measureable structural differences with more abstract issues. Running, dancing, swimming, even surgery, depend on certain physical aspects. This leads to the situation in which the different centers for those traits in each population may lead to different percentages of persons who have an advantage in those fields. It does not mean that the population as a whole is better in those fields, just that more individuals from those populations will have a structural advantage.
Re:The first 15 posts on this are things you cant
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
The funny thing is that reverse discrimination is a form of discrimination. It assumes that discrimination is somehow different in it is against a majority instead of a minority. While the methods and effects may be different, bigotry is bigotry, and the causes are always greed, ignorance, and hate. Calling discrimination 'reverse' makes it no less acceptable, and those that use the modifer are propogating prejudicial speech.
This illustrates my point even better. You assume that the majority (okay, 49% or so, but even more voted for Republicans in 2002) voted for Bush because they're ignorant dolts easily wowed by a cowboy act. Most Democrats appear to believe this as well, hence the NASCAR/Wal-Mart allusion.
In fact, most non-republics believe that people voted for Bush for the same reasons that german;s voted for Hitler. A combination of greed, ignorance, bigotry, and fear. The same reason they shop at Walmart.
Of course, the most important component for any optical experiment is the Vibration Proof Table(TM)(patent pending). We have several of these using your choice of technology. The cheapest is the Immovable Mass (TM). The downside to this is that it is nearly impossible to ship. Another technique is hanging the apparatus on the Massless String(TM) from a Nearly Immovable Mass(TM). This requires not only an onsite visit by our service technician, but two years advance notice to acquire the material. Finally, we have the Completely Decoupled Environment(TM), in which we put the apparatus in the Perfect Vacuum(TM), and keep it away from all walls with a Leak Free Perfectly Damped Magnetic Field(TM)(patents pending). Unfortunately, though this system is relatively cheap, getting new samples on the 'scope is quite impossible.
We assure you, however, that hanging the scope from a thin scaffolding using light springs, and then attaching the entire setup to a huge piece of granite will not be sufficient.
On a more serious note, an STM is really easy to build, but really hard to make work. There has been more than one physics graduate student that has entered perpetual grad school limbo trying to get one of these to work. The vibration damping is just the start. Learning to etch the tungsten probes so that you get the necessary few atoms at the end is quite an ordeal. And then attaching the probe without allowing the tip to even come close to any surface. And then calibrating the piezoelectric so that the tip will be very very very close to the sample, but never touch it. You will go through 100 hand etched probes before the instrument is even grossly calibrated.
And then measuring the gap current. You learn what kind of noise a power supply really has. Getting a noise low enough so that a signal is discernible after amplification requires a power supply the likes of which few has seen. And then the noise that introduced by the amplification process. This are not your ordinary op amps. I shudder to even think about building a board that quiet.
But have fun, and remember us for you optical table needs. We are, after all, the only one who sell the genuine and otherwise real and purchasable Vibration Proof Table(TM)(patent pending).
I guess we me it is not the expanding bills, as those come with additional services. It is the long contracts and, at least for cell phones, the difficulty of upgrading.
For the ISP, the problem is a long list of restrictions. You can do this, can't do that. You have to install this software, and we can redirect you. My favorite is that on SWB, Yahoo will take you a useless ad page, which youmay customize, rather than yahoo.com, which is actually useful.
For the cell phone, I would use the new services, but it is so hard to upgrade. I have to buy a new phone, sign up for two years, and maybe even pay an activation fee. What the hell do they think? That after several years of staying with the same company I am going renew a plan and then quit after a few months. They have to create a reasonable path so that old customer can migrate to thier new services.
That is my question in response of all of this. Why are we so willing to put passengers lives in danger when other, less drastic solutions are available?
To be clear, I think the system itself has promise. There are areas of the world, such as central and south america, where plane have to go over mountains and then land in relatively small valleys, e.g. Bogota. There has been cases where planes have crashed into mountains, usually because of pilot error and poor weather conditions. Proximity indicators were not sufficient, and allowing the plane to automatically pull up would be good. However, more complex maneuvers are harder to justify.
But the upshot of the past few years is that a 9/11 is no longer practical. We no longer live in a world where cooperation with a hijacker insure our safety. And a plane load of passengers can easily take several hijackers. A few passengers might be killed, but I cannot at this point imagine being on a hijacked plane and not taking that risk.
Even if someone was stupid enough to try it, or if they smuggled a real weapon on board, or more likely took it from a pilot or air marshal, the defense is simple. Secure the cockpit. No one in or out during the flight. The cockpit should be constructed to resist a forced entry. The ultimate goal must be to keep the pilots in control of the craft. We can also train pilots, and give then orders, to maneuver the aircraft in such a way to disorient and incapacitate all passengers on the plane.
Some tinfoil hat people might say the pilots could be the terrorists. Well, given that we now encourage pilots to carry guns, I say if that is a possibility, we are all screwed.
My main concern is that we are not allowing pilots to do what their job. Safely get the plane from point a to point b with minimum damage to the passengers. We want to take discretionary control away from them. We want them to leave their posts, where they are most valuable, to police the aisles, in the process exposing the cockpit to compromise. Again, the pilots can do quite a lot from the cockpit. They pilots will presumable not ram a building. The pilot can make the passenger area of the plane a very uncomfortable and disorienting space. The pilots can land whoever they hell they need to. And if can scramble fighter craft to shoot down the plane, i hope we can scramble ground personnel to storm it as soon as it on the ground. God help us if this system makes military airspace off limits.
Of course storming a plane on the ground may not be as sexy as shooting it out of the air. I am, however, gratified that many of America's finest are not willing to shoot down an unarmed civilian craft.
To be fair, it is not specifically a Windows problem. If Macs had even 25% of the market, someone would write mac centered spyware. A certain number of users would voluntarily install the new code, some may even type in thier password to give the code access to thier systems,and the games would be on.
Of course, such code would not have the luxury of tailoring itself to outlook/IE. It would have to learn to work with mail/Safari, neither of which are as instrusive as the MS counterparts.
I leave it as an excersise to the reader as to whether Safari is as much annoyware as IE, or if the OSS base of Safari gives it an edge.
A real lawyer would tell you what is probably legal and what is not if we assume certain things are true. For the sake of the case, and their client, they will assume that these facts are true.
OTOH, a paralegal will try to discover what things are true and what things aren't. It is important to know the all the facts, even if all those facts are not presented in court. This is so the lawyer does not ask a question that might lead to unwanted introdcution of evidence. The skill of a paralegal is discovery of such facts. The only thing one can say is that the second skill of the paralegal may be the highlighting of wanted facts at the expense of unwanted facts.
What is amazing is that the busiest person in most law offices is the paralegal. Long after the lawyers have left for a game of golf, the paralegals are winning the case.
Re:Grokking McDonalds Coffee Lawsuit
on
The Voice of Groklaw
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Can we just have a hiatus on the McDonald lawsuit thing. It is done. It wouldn't have happened if they would have just paid in the first place. In any case, the money they ended up paying was no a significant amount. They probably spend more money on hookers when all the owners go to burger college.
The silly thing is that saying that McDonalds was unfairly treated. McDonalds believes in using and abusing the courts. The case cited is an prime example of such abuse. Another good example of this was when they sued private individuals in England for claiming that the food was not good. It was a waste of the courts time and an abuse of the laws of England.
A few big lawsuits are publicized to make the public believe that the suits are costing significant amounts of profits. Most of these are a result of the companies attempt to abuse the courts to hound customers into submission. Anyway, we now know that what is costing profits is the embezzlement by top managers and other such corruption. Of course, a key defense to such corruption is shareholder lawsuits, which are becoming increasingly difficult for anyone but the biggest players.
Might i suggest that the lameness filter be modified to disallow the word McDonalds and lawsuit to be used in the same post.
You did not mention if it was a confirmed opt-in. If you do confirm that a particular email exists and in fact wants to be added, then the treatment is unfair. If you do not, blacklisting seems reasonable.
Installation is not that bad in Linux. The real problem is some underlying issues, such as the lack of on-the-fly monitor chages, that requires the user to reinstall when changes are made to the system. However, this is not such a big deal. It has only been recently since windows has been able to handle simple changes, such as network, monitor, and mass storage, without having to install more drivers and reboot the system. Linux has had good automation since at least Mandrake 7.x.
Usabilty is also good. There are some fancy advanced features, many of which have been introduced to windows to compensate for other flaws, and some of which are geniunely useful. However, most of these just lead to potential confusion when dealing with an average user. For instance, if a gesture opens an application, then the user must be careful not to make that gesture. Anyone who has worked with casual users know the importance of not overloaded the system with redundant features.
Which leads to three important conclusions. First, most users do not want to do installations at all. like Windows and MacOS, *nux machines must be already pretty much set up at the factory, and only require minimal setup by the user. This is hard to do right now due to lack of *nix demand and MS licensing, but, as Sun has shown, it can be exploited. It is not that installation is hard, it is that it is required at all.
Second, *nix has to be usable by people who now use windows. The basics have been in the marketplace for 10 years, and are largely implemented. The bells and whistles are good, but cannot be confusing to the new user.
Third, corporate is the taget. Many people get thier experience from corporate. Many people get thier tech support from corporate. Many people get thier software from corporate. If the office runs *nix,it is much more likely the home will as well. If the home can buy a machine that already has *nix installed.
The exact effect on ADD/HD of caffeine is unclear. The molecules may block the over-simulated sites of the brain that get over-stimulated and lead to attention difficulties. Again, the effects are varied and will depend on your sensitivity. Most papers I read says that self-medicating with safe levels of caffeine has little effect
Since there is no really useful professional advice on/., and since you are at a university, I suggest you go to the library and ask you reference librarian to help you do a literature search on medline or the like. You should be able to come up with some review papers. Reading the abstracts should be sufficient to answer your questions.
Everyone has different susceptibilities to addiction. Some people are going to get addicted to any drug immediately, which other can manage recreational use for their entire lives. If you are not addicted, then it probably just means that you body is not susceptible. Nothing amazing there.
People also has varied responses to drugs. A drug that will help most people may be fatal to a small subgroup. In the case of caffeine, which for most people is a stimulant, merely focuses the attention of those with ADD/HD.
Sensitivity to drugs also depends on how doped up your body is.
Some each person has to decide what to do for health. Is it the caffeine that is bad, or is the phosphorus in the Coke the dangerous thing. Or is it the sugar? Or is the other chemicals floating around the coffee?
I think the scenario goes like this. When wages are high, workers are attracted to the high paying jobs. The workers are a range of quality, from the highly intelligent and competent looking to apply their skills for a good wage, to the incompetent looking to make a fast buck. As the other labor markets begin to compete with the native market, shakeouts occur. This results is RIF, in which, ideally, the incompetent will be terminated, and lowering of wages.
So what happens now. The incompetent worker has gained some experience and will often be able to do a minimally acceptable job. The worker only got a job in the first place because the employers were desperate. Unless this worker can find another desperate employer in another sector, he or she is better off working at the lower wages.
The intelligent competent worker, OTOH, probably has many transferable skills and a good work ethic. Such a worker, seeing that his or her work is not appreciated, and increasingly being forced to work with or for incompetent persons, looks to other sectors that might provide a more stimulating environment.
The kick is this. In the competing market, however, the wages are still relatively high, so competent workers are drawn in. Companies are therefore able to produce a quality product at a lower labor cost than would be required in the native market. There are still things that must be done in the native market, but a company must either accept high labor costs or lower quality. There might be other factors that make the native labor market attractive, but if the employer does is not willing to absorb higher labor costs, quality will suffer.
Of course all this is complete crap, but makes as much sense as the parent post
In the large cities, at least in Texas, most of us have no signifcant accent, or at least not strong enough to cause difficulty. If we do have an accent, it is as likely to be one connected with a foriegn native tongue as the drawl. I chalk this us to too much TV.
But you are right about the commincation problem. Every once in while an strong accent will creep into my speech, usually the drawl. I remember on more than one occasion when I would be speaking to someone on the phone, and they just could not understand a thing I said. As soon as I realized what was up, I switched back to American English and all was well.
Slashdot Mirror
Radio, WTF is radio?
For most people, I cannot imagine that modest amount of caffeine is harmful or helpful. It is just the next target of the puritan forces in our midst. For instance, I recently received a gift of decaffeinated teas and hot chocolate with marshmallows. Strictly speaking, from a health point of view, this is a stupid gift. If you want caffeine free tea, drink herbal infusions, not alcohol laced decaffeinated teas. And I do not feed rendered animal products to my animals, much less children. There really is no rhyme or reason to those agenda. I guess they are against whatever they are told to be against. And before anyone tells me that decaffeinated teas are equal to regular teas, i say show me the peer reviewed reviews of the literature, otherwise shut up. You can pretty much say whatever you want on a label.
The funniest thing to me is that we are reaching a consensus that what hurts kids, and people in general, is empty calories replacing nutritious food. But we can't afford to get the empty calories out of school and fast food menus, so we keep attacking these strawmen.
Dear SCO
I received you recent letter of inquiry with great interest. I believe that Linux may have legal problems, and I do not wish to subject my company to liabilities that may be a part of those legal difficulties. In particular, I do not wish to a victim of the the harassment tactics that have become part of the Unix and Windows interests.
I regret I cannot answer your question regarding the existence of Unix code in Linux. I am upper management and have no technical skills or knowledge. My IT people say everything we use is properly licensed, written independently, or knowingly contributed by the firms that own the code. They also tell me that the Linux code is available for everyone to look at. My suggestion is that you get a copy of this Linux code and take a look at it and see if anything matches. You can then tell the sections at issue. If you then send me your code for these sections, I can have my tech people compare your code to the Linux code and see if we are running the same code.
But I would rather just solve the issue now. My preferred solution would be to install windows and get it over with. However, my techs refuse to so do. As a businessperson yourself, I am sure you understand the difficulty of hiring competent staff, so I tend to let them do what they want, so long as everything is running. I can't really fire them anyone, since one is sleeping with my daughter, the other one is sleeping with me, and the third is only minority worker we have in the company.
So, the solution may be to license you product. In exchange I will need the following things. First, you must certify that you own or license all the IP in your Unix. My tech staff tells me that a few years ago Unix was caught stealing code, so we want to make sure you longer do this. I will also need a promise from you to defend me against any legal problem that might arise with my use of Unix. Since I have been told that you are brink of bankruptcy, I will need to see proof of a bond that can cover the expenses of such a defense. Finally, again since you may go bankrupt soon, I need a guarantee that I will be have an option to license Unix over the next five years, either from you or your new owners, for comparable prices. If I am unable to license Unix, I must have the freedom to continue to use it for free. If Unix becomes unsupported, I must have access to the source code to modify as I need.
Thank you for your help in this issue.
(signed)
Mr. Bighead
At this size,with reasonable encoding, you could have almost a weeks worth of music, or, to put another way, enough music to last for two months at three hours a day.
Everyone says that the big reason Google got big was the simple interface and the lack of ads. That is true to a degree, but the another big reason is that Altavista was falling under an attack by those who would load pages with keywords. Which is the same thing that is happening with Google. Advertisers are loading links with keywords and setting up multiple incestuous domains. The attack and effects are largely the same. The first page of google is generally link farms with a few corporate web pages and almost no private content. The freedom of the press is limited to those that can get on the first few pages of google.
Since google seems unable to fix this problem, the time is ripe for another technology. Such technology can succeed if it is properly advertised.
Apple makes money off free software. Redhat is making money of free software. IBM and HP and Sun all have plans to make money off free software. The small developer still has every opportunity to write shareware, put any necessary public licenses on it, and probably do as well or bad as ever.
The IT administrators will still make money. Someone has to maintain the machines. And companies have show that they want free software, but still are willing to pay for the convenience of having someone else manage it and maintain it. So developer still will have jobs. And the frameworks will still need to put together into vertical applications, although most commoditized horizontal applications, like the word processor, will predicable be free.
And the question is, how many people make money now programming. It becoming an increasingly small number. Again, if you programming as part of an administrator function, or creating custom interfaces for corporate, that stuff will still be a paid position. if you doing OS development or app development at MS or Apple, your job may be in jeopardy. But what of it? How many small developers have they put out of business because these companies integrating previously paid-for products into their OS and gave it away. What is the difference between this and giving away an OS?
Look at it this way. We can get water for almost nothing out of the tap. We can get fresh fruit and vegetables for almost nothing out of the ground. We can get quality music for almost nothing by going to the local bar. We can go out and live life for almost nothing and have fun with a walk in the park or a playing ball. And yet we pay large sums of money to have other people do these things for us, or to give us what we consider a value added manifestation. We are willing to pay for things we can get for free, if the product is marketed properly and the opportunity costs allow it.
For instance, the chocolate example. First, how much of the chocolate is made at the shop. Is the milk from a cow, or it is a homogenized, pasteurized, milk like product. Is the butter made at the shop, or is it likewise mangled by a factory. Is the chocolate and oils processed from the cocoa bean at the shop? Of course not. All the commodities are outsourced. How much more of the chocolate making process is outsourced we cannot say. Does the owner do anything more than buy cases of goop and pour them onto a plate, and them sell them. Is the owner like the so called baker that pull out frozen loaves of preformed bread and put them in the oven? Who knows.
The box is also a good example. One danger of outsourcing, especially to market that are not in line to consume your product, is that you won't have a market to buy your product. The chocolatier, instead of purchasing the boxes more locally, and helping to create an environment in which people can afford his product, is instead expected others to create the economy in which the luxury goods can be consumed.
The reference back to the 80's is of no consequence. Most software development today bears little resemblance to most of what was going on back them. We are continuously building and standardizing additional tools. We are continuously automated the process of programing though visual tools, more advanced debuggers, and completely prepackaged components. The reference to design and assembly is apt. Most cars are designed in first world countries. The design process has been greatly simplified because we know pretty much put together prefab parts. Some components are still designed from scratch, and the body is still crafted. If the car is assembled in a first world country, it is, like the chocolate, assembled from performed commodity parts.
Software outsourcing is with us to stay. The demand for labor is such that companies are demanding M.S. CS people at low wages. The U.S. cannot provide these people. Likewise, CS people have always been treated like a plumper or a electrician. Someone who you have to pay, but resent the high wage. Software development is an international process, and there is no reason to make the development otherwise. My only hope is that managers who have yet to suffer the effects of their planned obselesce, are forced to do so sooner than later.
Beyond that, we can ask the question of how it got to the moon. Assuming that a slightly inflated price of 20K/carat is used, and using the quoted $50 billion, we are taking about 2.5 million carats, or 0.5 million kilograms, about 1 million pounds or 500 tons. From what I can tell, each few tons would require a full moon mission, which in todays dollars would cost 500 million. If we give it the benefit of the doubt, we might be able to get the mass to the moon in 100 missions, which would cost right at 50 billion dollars, at a minimum. It seems to me the value of the rocks is that derived from the fact they are in space. Returning them to earth would serve no purpose.
I think we can laugh guilt free at any fool who falls for this one.
In reality there is no standard man or women. Outside of some basic biology, most traits are spread over a certain range. One can posit a 'center' for each range, and that center might be different in each given population, but it would be a fallacy to say any center was representative of the sex as a whole. Since even the most conservative philosophy, i.e. Rand, says we are looking for the best person for a job, categorizing a class of people by assuming a central characteristic would be contraindicated.
You have to avoid commenting on any difference between the races, even though it's obvious that some races tend to be better at some things than others
Read the discussion above. Not every jew is a good accountant, not every black is good runner, not every white is a homicidal maniac with an arsenal that could be used to invade most small countries, and not every muslim hates women.
In general, you have to avoid any use of generalities, even though generalities are often useful ways to express means and modes
Generalities are a useful method to express centers. However, your comments here indicate why they are not useful in conversation. For instance, it may be true that white male with a family and moderate financial difficulties is the expected person to commit treason against the United States. However, this does not mean that we put everyone with such characteristics under surveillance, nor does it mean that assume that everyone not fitting the description is assumed to be of no threat. The problem is that people will tend to apply centers to the entire population.
It is also important not to confuse measureable structural differences with more abstract issues. Running, dancing, swimming, even surgery, depend on certain physical aspects. This leads to the situation in which the different centers for those traits in each population may lead to different percentages of persons who have an advantage in those fields. It does not mean that the population as a whole is better in those fields, just that more individuals from those populations will have a structural advantage.
The funny thing is that reverse discrimination is a form of discrimination. It assumes that discrimination is somehow different in it is against a majority instead of a minority. While the methods and effects may be different, bigotry is bigotry, and the causes are always greed, ignorance, and hate. Calling discrimination 'reverse' makes it no less acceptable, and those that use the modifer are propogating prejudicial speech.
In fact, most non-republics believe that people voted for Bush for the same reasons that german;s voted for Hitler. A combination of greed, ignorance, bigotry, and fear. The same reason they shop at Walmart.
We assure you, however, that hanging the scope from a thin scaffolding using light springs, and then attaching the entire setup to a huge piece of granite will not be sufficient.
On a more serious note, an STM is really easy to build, but really hard to make work. There has been more than one physics graduate student that has entered perpetual grad school limbo trying to get one of these to work. The vibration damping is just the start. Learning to etch the tungsten probes so that you get the necessary few atoms at the end is quite an ordeal. And then attaching the probe without allowing the tip to even come close to any surface. And then calibrating the piezoelectric so that the tip will be very very very close to the sample, but never touch it. You will go through 100 hand etched probes before the instrument is even grossly calibrated.
And then measuring the gap current. You learn what kind of noise a power supply really has. Getting a noise low enough so that a signal is discernible after amplification requires a power supply the likes of which few has seen. And then the noise that introduced by the amplification process. This are not your ordinary op amps. I shudder to even think about building a board that quiet.
But have fun, and remember us for you optical table needs. We are, after all, the only one who sell the genuine and otherwise real and purchasable Vibration Proof Table(TM)(patent pending).
For the ISP, the problem is a long list of restrictions. You can do this, can't do that. You have to install this software, and we can redirect you. My favorite is that on SWB, Yahoo will take you a useless ad page, which youmay customize, rather than yahoo.com, which is actually useful.
For the cell phone, I would use the new services, but it is so hard to upgrade. I have to buy a new phone, sign up for two years, and maybe even pay an activation fee. What the hell do they think? That after several years of staying with the same company I am going renew a plan and then quit after a few months. They have to create a reasonable path so that old customer can migrate to thier new services.
To be clear, I think the system itself has promise. There are areas of the world, such as central and south america, where plane have to go over mountains and then land in relatively small valleys, e.g. Bogota. There has been cases where planes have crashed into mountains, usually because of pilot error and poor weather conditions. Proximity indicators were not sufficient, and allowing the plane to automatically pull up would be good. However, more complex maneuvers are harder to justify.
But the upshot of the past few years is that a 9/11 is no longer practical. We no longer live in a world where cooperation with a hijacker insure our safety. And a plane load of passengers can easily take several hijackers. A few passengers might be killed, but I cannot at this point imagine being on a hijacked plane and not taking that risk.
Even if someone was stupid enough to try it, or if they smuggled a real weapon on board, or more likely took it from a pilot or air marshal, the defense is simple. Secure the cockpit. No one in or out during the flight. The cockpit should be constructed to resist a forced entry. The ultimate goal must be to keep the pilots in control of the craft. We can also train pilots, and give then orders, to maneuver the aircraft in such a way to disorient and incapacitate all passengers on the plane.
Some tinfoil hat people might say the pilots could be the terrorists. Well, given that we now encourage pilots to carry guns, I say if that is a possibility, we are all screwed.
My main concern is that we are not allowing pilots to do what their job. Safely get the plane from point a to point b with minimum damage to the passengers. We want to take discretionary control away from them. We want them to leave their posts, where they are most valuable, to police the aisles, in the process exposing the cockpit to compromise. Again, the pilots can do quite a lot from the cockpit. They pilots will presumable not ram a building. The pilot can make the passenger area of the plane a very uncomfortable and disorienting space. The pilots can land whoever they hell they need to. And if can scramble fighter craft to shoot down the plane, i hope we can scramble ground personnel to storm it as soon as it on the ground. God help us if this system makes military airspace off limits.
Of course storming a plane on the ground may not be as sexy as shooting it out of the air. I am, however, gratified that many of America's finest are not willing to shoot down an unarmed civilian craft.
Of course, such code would not have the luxury of tailoring itself to outlook/IE. It would have to learn to work with mail/Safari, neither of which are as instrusive as the MS counterparts.
I leave it as an excersise to the reader as to whether Safari is as much annoyware as IE, or if the OSS base of Safari gives it an edge.
OTOH, a paralegal will try to discover what things are true and what things aren't. It is important to know the all the facts, even if all those facts are not presented in court. This is so the lawyer does not ask a question that might lead to unwanted introdcution of evidence. The skill of a paralegal is discovery of such facts. The only thing one can say is that the second skill of the paralegal may be the highlighting of wanted facts at the expense of unwanted facts.
What is amazing is that the busiest person in most law offices is the paralegal. Long after the lawyers have left for a game of golf, the paralegals are winning the case.
The silly thing is that saying that McDonalds was unfairly treated. McDonalds believes in using and abusing the courts. The case cited is an prime example of such abuse. Another good example of this was when they sued private individuals in England for claiming that the food was not good. It was a waste of the courts time and an abuse of the laws of England.
A few big lawsuits are publicized to make the public believe that the suits are costing significant amounts of profits. Most of these are a result of the companies attempt to abuse the courts to hound customers into submission. Anyway, we now know that what is costing profits is the embezzlement by top managers and other such corruption. Of course, a key defense to such corruption is shareholder lawsuits, which are becoming increasingly difficult for anyone but the biggest players.
Might i suggest that the lameness filter be modified to disallow the word McDonalds and lawsuit to be used in the same post.
You did not mention if it was a confirmed opt-in. If you do confirm that a particular email exists and in fact wants to be added, then the treatment is unfair. If you do not, blacklisting seems reasonable.
Usabilty is also good. There are some fancy advanced features, many of which have been introduced to windows to compensate for other flaws, and some of which are geniunely useful. However, most of these just lead to potential confusion when dealing with an average user. For instance, if a gesture opens an application, then the user must be careful not to make that gesture. Anyone who has worked with casual users know the importance of not overloaded the system with redundant features.
Which leads to three important conclusions. First, most users do not want to do installations at all. like Windows and MacOS, *nux machines must be already pretty much set up at the factory, and only require minimal setup by the user. This is hard to do right now due to lack of *nix demand and MS licensing, but, as Sun has shown, it can be exploited. It is not that installation is hard, it is that it is required at all.
Second, *nix has to be usable by people who now use windows. The basics have been in the marketplace for 10 years, and are largely implemented. The bells and whistles are good, but cannot be confusing to the new user.
Third, corporate is the taget. Many people get thier experience from corporate. Many people get thier tech support from corporate. Many people get thier software from corporate. If the office runs *nix,it is much more likely the home will as well. If the home can buy a machine that already has *nix installed.
Funny, installing Linux does nothing to effect my ball games, board games, drinking games, or sex games.
Since there is no really useful professional advice on /., and since you are at a university, I suggest you go to the library and ask you reference librarian to help you do a literature search on medline or the like. You should be able to come up with some review papers. Reading the abstracts should be sufficient to answer your questions.
People also has varied responses to drugs. A drug that will help most people may be fatal to a small subgroup. In the case of caffeine, which for most people is a stimulant, merely focuses the attention of those with ADD/HD.
Sensitivity to drugs also depends on how doped up your body is.
Some each person has to decide what to do for health. Is it the caffeine that is bad, or is the phosphorus in the Coke the dangerous thing. Or is it the sugar? Or is the other chemicals floating around the coffee?
Well, i am overjoyed to have started 2004 with such an award. Being bizarre, is, after all, my raison d'etre
So what happens now. The incompetent worker has gained some experience and will often be able to do a minimally acceptable job. The worker only got a job in the first place because the employers were desperate. Unless this worker can find another desperate employer in another sector, he or she is better off working at the lower wages.
The intelligent competent worker, OTOH, probably has many transferable skills and a good work ethic. Such a worker, seeing that his or her work is not appreciated, and increasingly being forced to work with or for incompetent persons, looks to other sectors that might provide a more stimulating environment.
The kick is this. In the competing market, however, the wages are still relatively high, so competent workers are drawn in. Companies are therefore able to produce a quality product at a lower labor cost than would be required in the native market. There are still things that must be done in the native market, but a company must either accept high labor costs or lower quality. There might be other factors that make the native labor market attractive, but if the employer does is not willing to absorb higher labor costs, quality will suffer.
Of course all this is complete crap, but makes as much sense as the parent post
But you are right about the commincation problem. Every once in while an strong accent will creep into my speech, usually the drawl. I remember on more than one occasion when I would be speaking to someone on the phone, and they just could not understand a thing I said. As soon as I realized what was up, I switched back to American English and all was well.