is to help root it out. Get involved with us in the Dean campaign. We're tech savvy, run off linux, and are dead-set on kicking all the bastards out. If you're not sure if you like what Dean's about, come to a meetup (look up a location near you on meetup.com). We're making a huge difference, and with your help we can go all the way.
Many companies have outsourced customer support to locations in poor states in the West and mid-West. Always seemed to make perfect sense to me. There are no cultural differences, there are no issues with accents, the people work hard, and they work cheap. There's also the issue of time difference. Those folks I know who outsource to India constantly have a problem with time differences, and there's just no getting around that. Consequently, you have miscommunications that while small, cause big problems.
So why not outsource this sort of activity to South Dakota or Montana or Idaho? They would love the work, I'm sure.
until the RIAA is dead, dead, dead. How long have we been agitating on this site against their cartel, and now everyone is falling over themselves to give them money because they're beginning to sell things online? And here after a story yesterday about how the *AA's want to put you in prison for filesharing!
Good god, is there any backbone in this crowd at all, or are we just as much the sheep that we often accuse the general public of being?
of what you feel. I said the same thing many, many times: the corporations have the money, the process is so corrupt that we can't possibly change it, etc. I even advocated a general strike in I.T. to protest the DMCA and RIAA, etc. (here on slashdot, in fact)
But three months ago I heard about how Dean's campaign was using the internet, and it occurred to me that this at long last might be someone who gets it. I went to a leafletting event, nearly chickened out a block and a half from the location, but decided I was sick and tired of being angry and frustrated and went anyway. Now I'm the outreach coordinator for Brooklyn For Dean and have helped build our roster from 30 people in July to 650 now.
Now I've learned how to organize people, work with elected officials (we talk to our congressmen in Brooklyn now on a regular basis), how the petitioning process works, how to get endorsements, how to speak in front of large groups of people, and a lot of other things I was terrified of doing before. The result is I feel freer and more in charge of my destiny than ever before, and all of our volunteers have expressed similar sentiments.
These are all skills that actually make the difference on the ground, and I can guarantee you that face-to-face with voters is far, far more effective in influencing the electorate than any corporate-funded TV spin campaign will ever be. Why? Because most people know that the media is all bullshit. They are far more inclined to believe their neighbor than any news anchor.
These are all skills and experience that will carry over for us to fighting for sane tech policies in this country. I encourage you to get involved in a campaign and see for yourself, really. If you have tech skills, anybody would love to have you (thanks to Dean's internet success). Doing nothing in the face of all that's going wrong is the path to madness.
I didn't mention the Dean campaign as the solution to this problem, because honestly they haven't come out with one yet. I merely mentioned it because through involvement with them I've learned that the way to change our government is actually much more possible than I ever thought, given all the FUD upon FUD out there in the public mind about it. The mantra is "the rich have all the money and we can never compete with that, so let's not even try." Actually, the people with the most votes get elected. Having money to field TV ads to create perceptions in the electorate certainly helps, but as I've discovered in the Dean campaign, most people understand that 90% of what the media says is bullshit. They'll consider what an actual human talking to them a lot more seriously than any TV news report. And that is something that only a true grassroots movement can do.
I encourage you and all slashdotters to get involved in a campaign now and get first-hand experience in how it all works. That's the knowledge that will make us truly dangerous to the *AA's and special interests that are killing this country. I chose Dean's campaign because his use of the internet is terrific, and gives me hope that when he does come out with positions on tech, he will "get it." (If you consider the software that the campaign uses, it's all OSS/Linux. How can the guy win the Whitehouse using Linux and then turn around and bend over for MS? I just don't see it happening.) I also chose Dean for a grassroots experience because it's the best game in town and therefore the best classroom for learning these skills. But if you don't like Dean, check out one of the other candidates if you like.
I'm investigating how to start a tech policy membership organization to lobby against these horrible DMCA-like laws and other issues, and once the primaries and petition drives are through I'm going to throw myself into it pretty hard. If you're interested in helping out, drop me a line on my slashdot page.
But the only way to stop all of this stuff, the DMCA, ridiculous patents, et al is to get involved in the political process and vote each and every one of these special interest-pandering congressmen out of office.
I'm involved in the Dean campaign, and it has cleared up a great deal of the mystification surrounding government and how it works. It's not really that hard. In fact, it's so straightforward and easy that you smack your forehead at how difficult you thought it once was.
When there is deep, latent consensus on an issue like this, movements to counter it pretty much organize themselves, given a catalyst. Think of it as seeding clouds to make it rain. Or ice-9, if you prefer.
We can point out the injustice of current copyright law, declare over and over again that fair use protects file sharing, scheme up new file sharing software that escapes monitoring, and on and on ad infinitum, but that's really only treating the symptoms of the disease. The cause of the disease is the government in Washington D.C. and its members who only listen to the wishes of monied special interests. Root that out, and all our lives will be much, much easier in tech.
I know that most techies loathe politics because they associate it with student government and the popular kids in it who spat on us in our formative years, but they have clearly made it their business to come after us and make our lives difficult. So we had better go after them, or we will get what we deserve: nothing.
The Wachowski brothers are devotees of something called the Landmark Forum, formerly called EST. The Landmark Forum was founded by the guy who co-founded Scientology with L. Ron Hubbard, and uses much of the same philosophy and tactics.
All of the Matrix blathering about pre-determined actions vs. choice, dreamlife in the Matrix vs. gritty reality in Zion, are all directly taken from Landmark's philosophy. The basic idea is that hidden rationalizations such as those that keep people complacent in the Matrix control our actions and really enslave us. It's only when you 'wake' people up to the reality that they're being controlled by their own rationalizations that they have the freedom to choose their direction. It's re-packaged zen buddhism with dashes of existentialism rolled up in a Scientology wrapper that only costs you half price if you act now.
Sure it's not your five-foot mega-spiffy setup that costs $10,000 and is distinct enough to let you hear a pin drop, but with all the allergens in the NE stuffing me up I usually can't hear a pin drop in the real world anyway. My desktop is all the music center I'll ever need, and it also plays games and finds free porn. Let's see your MP3 stereo do that.
Or at least fear did. The United States only geared up its space program after the USSR launched sputnik.
The negative reactions in this country to the Chinese launch are in large part because it helps prop up a totalitarian regime that is itself quite xenophobic and draws legitimacy from a nazi-like notion of herrenrasse (master race) and has expansionist ambitions. That is a bad thing.
But putting that aside, I agree with you that this is a good thing for humanity and god bless the Chinese for this feat. I hope that they crank right along and put a space station in orbit and then a base on the moon, because the US, Europeans, and Russians need a kick in the butt to get moving again. I want to visit Mars someday, and it seems like the only way it's going to happen is with another space race.
This is a publication read by a great many influential MBAs running large corporations around the country. If this magazine gets it, then MBAs will get it. That is, if something has become so maddeningly obvious that even the PHBs get it, then you know that the politicians won't be far behind. You see, it's rather like us explaining to the PHBs using crayon and large-childlike images and letters and they, in turn, dumbing it down for the politicians by use of grunts and clumsy gestures.
to directly communicate our views on technology policy to government. Most of our representatives couldn't even tell you what the DMCA is, much less give two shakes about why it's bad. They're in the pockets of special interests.
But it occurs to me that the Dean campaign is the best shot we have to turn the fight for online freedoms around. They're an organization that's volunteer-run, so it's not beholden to special interests. They use OSS to run their site and various tools, and now they're open-sourcing their stuff, so they're going to understand why free software is so important. Finally, as a tech-driven campaign they're predisposed to sympathize with our take on issues like privacy, frivolous patents, etc.
And as far as I know, they haven't yet expressed any kind of position on tech issues. So a/. interview would be the perfect opportunity to imprint their campaign and let them know we're out here.
unless all of us do something about it. As long as Bush is in office, you can continue to kiss your god-given freedoms goodbye. But aren't you just engaging in hyperbole, you say? Hmm, well, lessee, put all the reports about stuff like this on one side of the scales, and all the (one, two?) reports about the government protecting our freedoms or, , increasing them on the other, and watch it come crashing down.
The freedom to speak, to publish, and to create are under the greatest threat they've been since the McCarthy years. Speak up now, or you will be silenced.
There are 10 million more than that who admit to file sharing, and probably twice that who actually do but won't admit it. So why is it that the telemarketers are instantly smacked down in an afternoon in congress, but the RIAA has not been seriously rebuked once in five years of legal intimidation and planned erosion of our civil liberties? Not once! We got a weak, 'gee, maybe you are being a little heavy handed in suing children for hundreds of thousands of dollars' a couple weeks ago, but no action. None.
If the congressmen think they could get hanged over this one, think what will happen when file-sharers ever get off their butts and vote accordingly.
Traditionally media leans toward the Democrats, Rupert Murdoch notwithstanding. I would think that letting them get richer would funnel more money toward the GOP's opponents.
2. Yes, as things stand now, workers can't move. They should be able to. Adam Smith would be in complete agreement. In order for markets to find equilibrium (in this case, the labor market), capital and labor have to be able to freely seek their point of highest utility. Right now, capital is largely allowed to do so, but labor is not. Therefore you have imbalances.
3. CEOs are employees of the public corporation, just like the guy in the mailroom. They are hired and fired by the Board of Directors, and ultimately by the shareholders. Thus, as an employee why should not their job be subject to export as well? How much more efficient it would be for a company to pay a CEO an annual bonus of $100K instead of $10 million? A Board could do it easily. And Connections? A CEO in India is just as likely to be well-connected and business savvy as your average American CEO.
Yes, I know that a person can't easily follow the jobs oversees. That's why I said they should be able to. If it's fair for companies to move their operations oversees, it should be fair for the workers to be able to do the same. I personally would have no problem with working from a ski condo in Chile, making $50/day, because my expenses would probably be like $1/day. It's all relative.
Ahem, you missed my point. "so too should workers be able to chase the jobs" means that if it's fair for companies to outsource jobs to countries with a lower cost of living, then it's only fair that the workers should be able to follow the work without restrictions. Yes, there are significant restrictions to Americans who want to do that. Thus, it's unfair that companies aren't bound be the same contraints. Eventually, one or the other has to give.
And someone who says that "most of those countries aren't very nice places to live" probably hasn't been to any of those places. Thailand, for example, is quite a nice country. Very clean, people are friendly, there's electricity and air-conditioning, and has a great cuisine. You can also live quite nicely for about $10/day. And who cares if you don't speak Thai? You'd be dealing via the Internet and phone and video conferencing with people who speak English. It's really no different from living in the middle of Spanish Harlem in New York. Walk outside and you can't understand a word anyone's saying.
First, how interesting how loudly programmers cry now when during the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs they said nothing.
Second, if companies can send jobs overseas, and move their capital around whither they will, so too should workers be able to chase the jobs. I'm sure many folks here would be more than happy to code while sitting on a beach in Goa.
Third, with video conferencing a CIO/CFO/CEO could really be anywhere in the world. So why not hire an Indian CEO with a degree from Stanford for $50K? Think of the millions the company would save! Hey, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
I'm setting up a freenet node on my machine and making my extensive collection available. Freenet's not perfect, but this is a political fight more than a technological one; and it's good enough to make a statement.
Sigh. So when you search freenet and get 999 hits for porn, and 1 for music, that one'll be me...
their support of big media now. Think of all the parents who will be calling Washington tonight to complain to their senators. Let's see the congresspeople scurry now that the full light of public wrath is turned on them to put a stop to these jackasses.
I live in New York, and on the subway in the morning it is the New York Post and the Daily News that are read by most people. This story made the front page of both, and both painted the RIAA as the bad guys. When that happens, you've lost the man on the street and it's game over. It's been my personal mission to do what I can to bring the RIAA down for three years, and this morning I could feel the invisible presence of millions of other Americans lining up next to me.
Methinks, my friends, that today marks the beginning of the end of the recording industry as we know it. I say that the day the last of them declares bankruptcy, we gather in Central Park with our MP3 players and party.
You know how they had those public pledges for those kids who swore they wouldn't have premarital sex or the promise-keeper guys who swore they'd be better husbands and fathers? Maybe we need a pledge that in defense of freedom, we won't buy CDs nor attend concerts from RIAA companies ever again, until they shall have perished from the earth. Imagine how a stadium full of folks taking that pledge on TV would send a message to the RIAA and congress.
A snappy slogan for bumperstickers like "Friends don't let friends buy CDs" would be a great thing too.
Graphic posters like AdBusters puts out lampooning the record companies is another idea. I tried to adapt an old Maoist poster from the Great Leap Forward to a picture of Hilary Rosen handing out CDs to handcuffed, smiling masses, but I'm a programmer, not a photoshop guy.
The reason the RIAA has been able to so easily track and file lawsuits against file sharers is because they simply scan Kazaa like everyone else. But I wonder if there isn't a way to get around that by incorporating the flash mob idea into file-sharing networks. The formation of the network is random, and private. Legally then the RIAA would have to go through the courts, make allegations, convince law enforcement to dedicate scarce resources to a surveillance operation, and then try to get evidence that will stand up in a court of law. Being a randomly and spontaneously formed network, it would be exceedingly difficult to do this. Then multiply by, oh, 60 million and you're talking about the death of the RIAA.
Just who do these people at the RIAA think they are? Trying to extort money from 60 million people? They want to use laws they've bought to push us around, tag us as criminals, and take our freedom away?
Well, folks, I think it's time to put the fear of god, or rather us 60 million people, into the record execs and heads of the RIAA. If they think it's cute to illegally root through our files and information, then let's see what they think about some payback. Let's put our considerable skills to work and dig up all the dirt (tax evasion, fraud, marital infidelities, etc.) we can on them. Let's expose them for the criminals they really are. Shoot, we could nail them on violating payola laws alone.
On the political front, let's get our acts together and start making the politicians who do their bidding feel the heat. We've seen how the Howard Dean campaign has been able to raise money over the net and sign up armies of volunteers, so let's do likewise. Imagine how quickly the tables would turn if a thousand protesters showed up in a flash mob in front of our representatives' family homes every time the RIAA turned the screws like this.
Enough whining and doublethink on Slashdot. Let's DO something about this.
the segway is still perfect for cities like new york and tokyo. seems that a lot of you who scoff at the segway live in auto-centered cities. to a person who commutes in an SUV everyday, something like this device must seem like a silly toy to be mocked. but to someone who lives in a city like new york and who commutes in the subway every day, it is still a cool thing. you would get there just about as fast, you would save a lot of money in tokens, and it is far more convenient than a bicycle. ever try cramming a bike through the revolving doors of your office building, jamming it into an elevator full of people, and then finding room in your cubicle to put it? not to mention the effort of doing which makes you completely sweaty--very professional.
then there's the security aspect that became clear after last week's blackout. nothing but a segway could have gotten you off manhattan as fast. cars couldn't move, and bikes weren't much better: the streets were so crowded cyclists wound up not doing much better than pedestrians. but from what i've seen of the segw
This is a very real threat to the future of Linux and OSS. It is not a minor attack, nor even a snide comment from MS that Linux is a cancer. It is a direct legal assault on every linux user. If this fight is lost, then the future of free computing will have been lost for all of us. That is the magnitude of the threat.
I know that it may be hard for some to believe that in the real world there really are evil, greedy people out to hurt, destroy, manipulate, and disenfranchise others, but there are. Just because there is an HBO sitcom about Mafiosi does not mean, unfortunately, that the Mafia is make-believe. Just because the news is reporting that SCO is threatening the very future of OSS, does not mean that they are making it up.
Eric Raymond, Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and many others realize that this threat is large and real, and that is why they're responding so passionately. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, that was called "a day that will live in infamy." Was FDR drunk? Was he being melodramatic? No, he was inspired to say what he did, and that's why you still learn that speech in school today.
ESR's letter may not be the Gettysburg address, but it's got fire, and frankly, that's what you and the rest of this community need to get a little more of. If you did, maybe you'd stand up for yourselves and fight back.
Slashdot Mirror
is to help root it out. Get involved with us in the Dean campaign. We're tech savvy, run off linux, and are dead-set on kicking all the bastards out. If you're not sure if you like what Dean's about, come to a meetup (look up a location near you on meetup.com). We're making a huge difference, and with your help we can go all the way.
Many companies have outsourced customer support to locations in poor states in the West and mid-West. Always seemed to make perfect sense to me. There are no cultural differences, there are no issues with accents, the people work hard, and they work cheap. There's also the issue of time difference. Those folks I know who outsource to India constantly have a problem with time differences, and there's just no getting around that. Consequently, you have miscommunications that while small, cause big problems.
So why not outsource this sort of activity to South Dakota or Montana or Idaho? They would love the work, I'm sure.
until the RIAA is dead, dead, dead. How long have we been agitating on this site against their cartel, and now everyone is falling over themselves to give them money because they're beginning to sell things online? And here after a story yesterday about how the *AA's want to put you in prison for filesharing!
Good god, is there any backbone in this crowd at all, or are we just as much the sheep that we often accuse the general public of being?
of what you feel. I said the same thing many, many times: the corporations have the money, the process is so corrupt that we can't possibly change it, etc. I even advocated a general strike in I.T. to protest the DMCA and RIAA, etc. (here on slashdot, in fact)
But three months ago I heard about how Dean's campaign was using the internet, and it occurred to me that this at long last might be someone who gets it. I went to a leafletting event, nearly chickened out a block and a half from the location, but decided I was sick and tired of being angry and frustrated and went anyway. Now I'm the outreach coordinator for Brooklyn For Dean and have helped build our roster from 30 people in July to 650 now.
Now I've learned how to organize people, work with elected officials (we talk to our congressmen in Brooklyn now on a regular basis), how the petitioning process works, how to get endorsements, how to speak in front of large groups of people, and a lot of other things I was terrified of doing before. The result is I feel freer and more in charge of my destiny than ever before, and all of our volunteers have expressed similar sentiments.
These are all skills that actually make the difference on the ground, and I can guarantee you that face-to-face with voters is far, far more effective in influencing the electorate than any corporate-funded TV spin campaign will ever be. Why? Because most people know that the media is all bullshit. They are far more inclined to believe their neighbor than any news anchor.
These are all skills and experience that will carry over for us to fighting for sane tech policies in this country. I encourage you to get involved in a campaign and see for yourself, really. If you have tech skills, anybody would love to have you (thanks to Dean's internet success). Doing nothing in the face of all that's going wrong is the path to madness.
I didn't mention the Dean campaign as the solution to this problem, because honestly they haven't come out with one yet. I merely mentioned it because through involvement with them I've learned that the way to change our government is actually much more possible than I ever thought, given all the FUD upon FUD out there in the public mind about it. The mantra is "the rich have all the money and we can never compete with that, so let's not even try." Actually, the people with the most votes get elected. Having money to field TV ads to create perceptions in the electorate certainly helps, but as I've discovered in the Dean campaign, most people understand that 90% of what the media says is bullshit. They'll consider what an actual human talking to them a lot more seriously than any TV news report. And that is something that only a true grassroots movement can do.
I encourage you and all slashdotters to get involved in a campaign now and get first-hand experience in how it all works. That's the knowledge that will make us truly dangerous to the *AA's and special interests that are killing this country. I chose Dean's campaign because his use of the internet is terrific, and gives me hope that when he does come out with positions on tech, he will "get it." (If you consider the software that the campaign uses, it's all OSS/Linux. How can the guy win the Whitehouse using Linux and then turn around and bend over for MS? I just don't see it happening.) I also chose Dean for a grassroots experience because it's the best game in town and therefore the best classroom for learning these skills. But if you don't like Dean, check out one of the other candidates if you like.
I'm investigating how to start a tech policy membership organization to lobby against these horrible DMCA-like laws and other issues, and once the primaries and petition drives are through I'm going to throw myself into it pretty hard. If you're interested in helping out, drop me a line on my slashdot page.
But the only way to stop all of this stuff, the DMCA, ridiculous patents, et al is to get involved in the political process and vote each and every one of these special interest-pandering congressmen out of office.
I'm involved in the Dean campaign, and it has cleared up a great deal of the mystification surrounding government and how it works. It's not really that hard. In fact, it's so straightforward and easy that you smack your forehead at how difficult you thought it once was.
When there is deep, latent consensus on an issue like this, movements to counter it pretty much organize themselves, given a catalyst. Think of it as seeding clouds to make it rain. Or ice-9, if you prefer.
We can point out the injustice of current copyright law, declare over and over again that fair use protects file sharing, scheme up new file sharing software that escapes monitoring, and on and on ad infinitum, but that's really only treating the symptoms of the disease. The cause of the disease is the government in Washington D.C. and its members who only listen to the wishes of monied special interests. Root that out, and all our lives will be much, much easier in tech.
I know that most techies loathe politics because they associate it with student government and the popular kids in it who spat on us in our formative years, but they have clearly made it their business to come after us and make our lives difficult. So we had better go after them, or we will get what we deserve: nothing.
The Wachowski brothers are devotees of something called the Landmark Forum, formerly called EST. The Landmark Forum was founded by the guy who co-founded Scientology with L. Ron Hubbard, and uses much of the same philosophy and tactics.
All of the Matrix blathering about pre-determined actions vs. choice, dreamlife in the Matrix vs. gritty reality in Zion, are all directly taken from Landmark's philosophy. The basic idea is that hidden rationalizations such as those that keep people complacent in the Matrix control our actions and really enslave us. It's only when you 'wake' people up to the reality that they're being controlled by their own rationalizations that they have the freedom to choose their direction. It's re-packaged zen buddhism with dashes of existentialism rolled up in a Scientology wrapper that only costs you half price if you act now.
Sure it's not your five-foot mega-spiffy setup that costs $10,000 and is distinct enough to let you hear a pin drop, but with all the allergens in the NE stuffing me up I usually can't hear a pin drop in the real world anyway. My desktop is all the music center I'll ever need, and it also plays games and finds free porn. Let's see your MP3 stereo do that.
The negative reactions in this country to the Chinese launch are in large part because it helps prop up a totalitarian regime that is itself quite xenophobic and draws legitimacy from a nazi-like notion of herrenrasse (master race) and has expansionist ambitions. That is a bad thing.
But putting that aside, I agree with you that this is a good thing for humanity and god bless the Chinese for this feat. I hope that they crank right along and put a space station in orbit and then a base on the moon, because the US, Europeans, and Russians need a kick in the butt to get moving again. I want to visit Mars someday, and it seems like the only way it's going to happen is with another space race.
This is a publication read by a great many influential MBAs running large corporations around the country. If this magazine gets it, then MBAs will get it. That is, if something has become so maddeningly obvious that even the PHBs get it, then you know that the politicians won't be far behind. You see, it's rather like us explaining to the PHBs using crayon and large-childlike images and letters and they, in turn, dumbing it down for the politicians by use of grunts and clumsy gestures.
The RIAA and its members are done for.
to directly communicate our views on technology policy to government. Most of our representatives couldn't even tell you what the DMCA is, much less give two shakes about why it's bad. They're in the pockets of special interests.
/. interview would be the perfect opportunity to imprint their campaign and let them know we're out here.
But it occurs to me that the Dean campaign is the best shot we have to turn the fight for online freedoms around. They're an organization that's volunteer-run, so it's not beholden to special interests. They use OSS to run their site and various tools, and now they're open-sourcing their stuff, so they're going to understand why free software is so important. Finally, as a tech-driven campaign they're predisposed to sympathize with our take on issues like privacy, frivolous patents, etc.
And as far as I know, they haven't yet expressed any kind of position on tech issues. So a
unless all of us do something about it. As long as Bush is in office, you can continue to kiss your god-given freedoms goodbye. But aren't you just engaging in hyperbole, you say? Hmm, well, lessee, put all the reports about stuff like this on one side of the scales, and all the (one, two?) reports about the government protecting our freedoms or, , increasing them on the other, and watch it come crashing down.
The freedom to speak, to publish, and to create are under the greatest threat they've been since the McCarthy years. Speak up now, or you will be silenced.
There are 10 million more than that who admit to file sharing, and probably twice that who actually do but won't admit it. So why is it that the telemarketers are instantly smacked down in an afternoon in congress, but the RIAA has not been seriously rebuked once in five years of legal intimidation and planned erosion of our civil liberties? Not once! We got a weak, 'gee, maybe you are being a little heavy handed in suing children for hundreds of thousands of dollars' a couple weeks ago, but no action. None.
If the congressmen think they could get hanged over this one, think what will happen when file-sharers ever get off their butts and vote accordingly.
Traditionally media leans toward the Democrats, Rupert Murdoch notwithstanding. I would think that letting them get richer would funnel more money toward the GOP's opponents.
2. Yes, as things stand now, workers can't move. They should be able to. Adam Smith would be in complete agreement. In order for markets to find equilibrium (in this case, the labor market), capital and labor have to be able to freely seek their point of highest utility. Right now, capital is largely allowed to do so, but labor is not. Therefore you have imbalances.
3. CEOs are employees of the public corporation, just like the guy in the mailroom. They are hired and fired by the Board of Directors, and ultimately by the shareholders. Thus, as an employee why should not their job be subject to export as well? How much more efficient it would be for a company to pay a CEO an annual bonus of $100K instead of $10 million? A Board could do it easily. And Connections? A CEO in India is just as likely to be well-connected and business savvy as your average American CEO.
Yes, I know that a person can't easily follow the jobs oversees. That's why I said they should be able to. If it's fair for companies to move their operations oversees, it should be fair for the workers to be able to do the same. I personally would have no problem with working from a ski condo in Chile, making $50/day, because my expenses would probably be like $1/day. It's all relative.
Ahem, you missed my point. "so too should workers be able to chase the jobs" means that if it's fair for companies to outsource jobs to countries with a lower cost of living, then it's only fair that the workers should be able to follow the work without restrictions. Yes, there are significant restrictions to Americans who want to do that. Thus, it's unfair that companies aren't bound be the same contraints. Eventually, one or the other has to give.
And someone who says that "most of those countries aren't very nice places to live" probably hasn't been to any of those places. Thailand, for example, is quite a nice country. Very clean, people are friendly, there's electricity and air-conditioning, and has a great cuisine. You can also live quite nicely for about $10/day. And who cares if you don't speak Thai? You'd be dealing via the Internet and phone and video conferencing with people who speak English. It's really no different from living in the middle of Spanish Harlem in New York. Walk outside and you can't understand a word anyone's saying.
First, how interesting how loudly programmers cry now when during the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs they said nothing.
Second, if companies can send jobs overseas, and move their capital around whither they will, so too should workers be able to chase the jobs. I'm sure many folks here would be more than happy to code while sitting on a beach in Goa.
Third, with video conferencing a CIO/CFO/CEO could really be anywhere in the world. So why not hire an Indian CEO with a degree from Stanford for $50K? Think of the millions the company would save! Hey, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
I'm setting up a freenet node on my machine and making my extensive collection available. Freenet's not perfect, but this is a political fight more than a technological one; and it's good enough to make a statement.
Sigh. So when you search freenet and get 999 hits for porn, and 1 for music, that one'll be me...
their support of big media now. Think of all the parents who will be calling Washington tonight to complain to their senators. Let's see the congresspeople scurry now that the full light of public wrath is turned on them to put a stop to these jackasses.
I live in New York, and on the subway in the morning it is the New York Post and the Daily News that are read by most people. This story made the front page of both, and both painted the RIAA as the bad guys. When that happens, you've lost the man on the street and it's game over. It's been my personal mission to do what I can to bring the RIAA down for three years, and this morning I could feel the invisible presence of millions of other Americans lining up next to me.
Methinks, my friends, that today marks the beginning of the end of the recording industry as we know it. I say that the day the last of them declares bankruptcy, we gather in Central Park with our MP3 players and party.
A snappy slogan for bumperstickers like "Friends don't let friends buy CDs" would be a great thing too.
Graphic posters like AdBusters puts out lampooning the record companies is another idea. I tried to adapt an old Maoist poster from the Great Leap Forward to a picture of Hilary Rosen handing out CDs to handcuffed, smiling masses, but I'm a programmer, not a photoshop guy.
The reason the RIAA has been able to so easily track and file lawsuits against file sharers is because they simply scan Kazaa like everyone else. But I wonder if there isn't a way to get around that by incorporating the flash mob idea into file-sharing networks. The formation of the network is random, and private. Legally then the RIAA would have to go through the courts, make allegations, convince law enforcement to dedicate scarce resources to a surveillance operation, and then try to get evidence that will stand up in a court of law. Being a randomly and spontaneously formed network, it would be exceedingly difficult to do this. Then multiply by, oh, 60 million and you're talking about the death of the RIAA.
Just who do these people at the RIAA think they are? Trying to extort money from 60 million people? They want to use laws they've bought to push us around, tag us as criminals, and take our freedom away?
Well, folks, I think it's time to put the fear of god, or rather us 60 million people, into the record execs and heads of the RIAA. If they think it's cute to illegally root through our files and information, then let's see what they think about some payback. Let's put our considerable skills to work and dig up all the dirt (tax evasion, fraud, marital infidelities, etc.) we can on them. Let's expose them for the criminals they really are. Shoot, we could nail them on violating payola laws alone.
On the political front, let's get our acts together and start making the politicians who do their bidding feel the heat. We've seen how the Howard Dean campaign has been able to raise money over the net and sign up armies of volunteers, so let's do likewise. Imagine how quickly the tables would turn if a thousand protesters showed up in a flash mob in front of our representatives' family homes every time the RIAA turned the screws like this.
Enough whining and doublethink on Slashdot. Let's DO something about this.
the segway is still perfect for cities like new york and tokyo. seems that a lot of you who scoff at the segway live in auto-centered cities. to a person who commutes in an SUV everyday, something like this device must seem like a silly toy to be mocked. but to someone who lives in a city like new york and who commutes in the subway every day, it is still a cool thing. you would get there just about as fast, you would save a lot of money in tokens, and it is far more convenient than a bicycle. ever try cramming a bike through the revolving doors of your office building, jamming it into an elevator full of people, and then finding room in your cubicle to put it? not to mention the effort of doing which makes you completely sweaty--very professional.
then there's the security aspect that became clear after last week's blackout. nothing but a segway could have gotten you off manhattan as fast. cars couldn't move, and bikes weren't much better: the streets were so crowded cyclists wound up not doing much better than pedestrians. but from what i've seen of the segw
This is a very real threat to the future of Linux and OSS. It is not a minor attack, nor even a snide comment from MS that Linux is a cancer. It is a direct legal assault on every linux user. If this fight is lost, then the future of free computing will have been lost for all of us. That is the magnitude of the threat.
I know that it may be hard for some to believe that in the real world there really are evil, greedy people out to hurt, destroy, manipulate, and disenfranchise others, but there are. Just because there is an HBO sitcom about Mafiosi does not mean, unfortunately, that the Mafia is make-believe. Just because the news is reporting that SCO is threatening the very future of OSS, does not mean that they are making it up.
Eric Raymond, Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and many others realize that this threat is large and real, and that is why they're responding so passionately. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, that was called "a day that will live in infamy." Was FDR drunk? Was he being melodramatic? No, he was inspired to say what he did, and that's why you still learn that speech in school today.
ESR's letter may not be the Gettysburg address, but it's got fire, and frankly, that's what you and the rest of this community need to get a little more of. If you did, maybe you'd stand up for yourselves and fight back.