Right on, bro. Perfect example of "I'm-incapable-so-bring-things-down-to-the-lowest- denominator!"
If you can't make money in the US, you should really *really* consider jumping off the grand canyon. Or something.
As an immigrant, I can tell you that there is no dearth of opportunities in the US - if you are willing to work hard for it.
Oh wait, what did you say? You can't work, eh? Aww, I'm sorry. Tough luck, pal. You reap what you sow. If you aren't willing to make the effort, stop whining.
Not most Americans, just those on Slashdot, most of whom tend to have fairly left-liberal views.
Socialism is the fig leaf of losers who don't have the balls to succeed. Ergo, it is not surprising/. favors socialist opinions over libertarian/captilalist ones.
Those in the Real World (TM) have better things to do, like start their own companies and make money off the process, rather than whine about things they do not even have the basic knowledge of.
Excuse me - but I did not make the claim. If you notice, I did not make any claim.
S/he made an assertion, I asked to back up that assertion.
Person 1: Everyone's a turtle! Person 2: Care to prove it? Person 3: I've seen something that looks like a turtle, so everyone has to be a turtle. Person 4: Can you prove that everyone's not a turtle!
I did not make that claim - in fact, I did not make a claim eitherway.
The parent was spouting forth stuff on how capitalism wasn't the fundamental driver of freedom. S/he made that comment, all I asked was to prove the comment.
And FYI - an odd example of DMCA does not disprove capitalism as a whole. If anything, it's not a part of the free market.
I mean, if you folks are making such wonderful authoritatively wonderful claims ("it is not" indeed, remarked a wonderful troll), you ought be to able to substantiate it a little more than attacking the guy who asked you to prove your statement.
I might be tempted to believe him if he had a Nobel in economics. But then again, someone that smart wouldn't be making baseless assertions on Slashdot, of all places.
Ever since I can remember, articles on India on/. have always been accompanied by ignorant drivel ranging from, "they're taking away our jobs!" to "India is dirt poor!" and everything in between.
Most people have no clue about the real situation, but that does not stop them from shooting off their mouths, though.
The growth bubble in India has a few years to go before it becomes almost as expensive as Eastern Europeans.
Ah, therein lies the flaw. India will never become as expensive as Eastern Europe for two reasons:
1. There is a large population in India, and 2. There is a wide and disparate economic strata
So, what will happen is that development costs will go up, but there will be people who would still be willing to do it for cheaper.
For instance, certain Indian companies like Infosys and Wipro have already started investing and outsourcing THEIR work to China. That is only because they are the best, and their costs have gone up.
However, there are still more people who are willing to take up less-profitable markets and areas that these big guys no longer care for.
Indonesia (and other SE Asian countries) do not have two things that India has:
1. Population 2. English Language
Sure, Indian English has a weird accent and is quite British in its written form, but it's still English. It's the language of education and business, which is a big plus - a lot of countries in the SE Asian belt can't boast the same. Now, take a country like Philippines which has good English speaking folks - it does not have enough population to assure a continuous supply of man power. These two together go a long way.
Now, given the fact that India has existing infrastructure, existing business and an alread-penetrated market, it becomes easier for the folks at the lower economic strata to pick up work that others have deemed too cheap.
This is what will sustain India in the long term. And that is where those bottom denominators will go.
It's not exactly the most stable part of the world as it is.
Not exactly the most stable part of the world?
The only real problem that India has is with Pakistan, which is way up north, around the Himalyan mountain range. China, its other neighbor is an economic power in itself, the last thing either countries would do is do something that would affect their economies.
Are there troubles in India? Sure, take any region of a billion people of an astounding mix and variety of religion and culture, and introduce secular democracy - see what you get. Most troubles in India are just that - they are troubles.
That hardly calls forth a strong word like "unstable". Btw, India is a huge country, both in terms of size and in terms of populace. Just because a nation has a pacifist outlook does not mean they are to be underestimated. It would take a whole lot to unsettle, undermine or destabilize India.
I'm all for the government buying back the spectrum - but I also think that a part of the spectrum should be 'lent' to corporations simply because they've more resources to do cool stuff than joe user off the street.
If you must, insist that a bunch of corporations share the responsibility, that way you can be sure that there isn't exactly a monopoly of sorts.
That need not necessarily be a Bad Thing (TM). Use of that spectrum could mean services that you need to pay for, but like everything else, it might be shared with other tech.
With things like SSMA, you might be able to spread your use of the spectrum widely enough to allow for shared applications.
Quite honestly, I'd much rather have that bandwidth being used for something that I might actually find useful. Of course, the problem then would be of internationalization - there are a lot of countries out there where radio still means a lot, and the radio is one of those few things that has been fairly universal. But that might change.
Combine it with HAM operators and the percentage of folks that do listen to the radio in the US (for instance, morning drive-to-work listening), it's unlikely that it will COMPLETELY go away. More likely that it will amalgamate with other apps and evolve into something more.
Besides, auctioning a spectrum to a corporation might actually be beneficial. Resources + reach is something that Joe Schmoe does not have. Besides, built a strong enough transmitter (if you needed it that badly), you might be able to over-ride just about any transmission (of course, the legality of the issue would be another thing altogether).
Actually, India was never socialist in the sense that you are speaking of. Nor was it ever a welfare state - basically, it was divided into public and private sectors, where the government controlled several core infrastructures in the public sectors. For instance, India has never had a state medical system - sure, there are state hospitals - but still, majority of the medical system in the country has always been privatized.
Anyway, this division made sense at the time of independence because as a newly born democratic state at the end of WW2, with severely depleted resources, it made sense for the government to control core assets and plan infrastructure building. This did work very well for the longest time (check out India's Five Year Plans until about the 70s). Even then, private enterprises did exist in a lot of the domains, just that they had a hard time competing with the government.
The time when the growth started slowing down was about the time Soviet Union died - but this was owing to several factors, particularly a very bad political climate. Even otherwise, the original plan was to slowly privatize parts of the public sector. Such a plan was considered earlier, but was not adopted due to several reasons, some political and some economic.
However, in the 1990s, there was a radical change in the political climate in the world and in India, and private enterprises started picking pace. That, and the fact that India's former ally Russia was facing economic troubles were reasons -- but one of the most important (and often missed easily) reason was the fact that for the first time, India had a significant portion of the middle class of a younger generation with a buying power never seen before. And thus, the free market as you know it was brought into the country in full force.
This changed the economic landscape, bringing forth the change that you see today.
So, India was never really a socialist state in the sense of the word - it was always a mixed economy, taking the middle path (i.e. state controlled where it made sense, privatized where it would fuel economic growth). Even today, the move towards a "capitalist" state is a misleading term - India is still a mixed economy, only that it's leaning more towards capitalism with less of a state control over infrastructure.
There is always a section of populace that does some screwed up, ridiculous things - generalizing such to and across a whole population, or worse yet, a whole nation, is ridiculous at best and offensive at worst.
While your reference to Laloo is apropos, I was in fact referring to West Bengal and Kerala - the only two states where the CPI and CPI (Marxist) have had significant presence in the past.
I do not think Laloo represents any leftist ideals - usually, his ideals are those that serve his party and his extended family well.:)
And I must also mention that the left in India isn't left by a lot of standards (i.e. say, Europe). In some policies, they are quite centric and are even fiscally conservative. And in certain issues, such as privatization of all government assets, they tend to hold more leftist views.
Yeah, there is a significant amount of corruption and bureacracy in the system, but for the most part, privitization has helped cut down on that significantly.
However, there is no real strong "communist" party in India - the existing government is being supported by the Communist Party of India, they have minimal say. The thing is, until about 30 years ago, India and the Soviet Union were fairly close. And as a newly independent nation, a government that had equal parts public and private sectors seemed like a good idea at the time.
However, gradually, the public sectors began to be privatized. Sure, the Communist party of India occasionally throws a tantrum, but nobody listens to them anyway. If at all, they have some semblance of power in all of two states, only one of which is consistent.
To be fair, there are some politicians who're above this, and who really understand technology and the need. For instance, the President is a rocket scientist (quite literally) and the Prime Minister is a renowned economist (he was awarded his Ph.D. in economics from Oxford and has been a professor of economics).
Of course, like any system, there are corrupt folks, and folks who refuse to change or adapt to the new system, particularly since it undermines their power and authority. But most of these are at the state level, and the Central (equivalent of Federal) government has a lot more power, and is a lot cleaner, too (relatively speaking, of course).
So, to answer your question - there is some definite corruption and bureacracy, but it's on the decline. More privatization and media exposures have largely made it harder, and folks who're at the helm are a lot more knowledgeable and capable.
Here's hoping for a better India in the days to come!:)
I do not think either Stargate or Firefly would qualify as being sucky, or for that matter, I think that Farscape is a little over-rated.
Stargate SG1 seasons 1 through 5 must have set a record in terms of SF (I mean the over-encompassing theme of Speculative Fiction, not merely science fiction) shows - they were fast paced, and they had really good stories and story lines, and the whole show had a feeling of one huge plot with story arcs, just like a space opera of sorts. And Stargate Atlantis does not even compare to the first couple of seasons of Stargate SG1 - in almost every other aspect, SG1 has performed better (and I'm not alone in this - you ought to have a look at some of the Stargate forums to get an idea).
And Firefly is one of the most nicely done SF shows ever. It had the perfect feeling of the world it portrayed and conveyed a joe-regular feel. In fact, even SG1 is good because of just that - it's set in today's world with themes you can relate to. While Firefly was set in a future world, it was a world which we could quite easily relate to.
Finally, Farscape is a good show - but it's definitely over-rated. After a while, it got a little boring and a little too cilched. While some characters had depth, most were shown as being one dimensional.
If you look at either Stargate SG1 or Firefly, both had a depth to characters that evolved over time. You could not start watching Stargate SG1 in the middle - you'd be lost and perhaps hate it. However, if you were to watch it from the beginning, it would just all fit in, and you can see the characters grow. In some senses, you can see the same happening in Firefly as the characters unveil and discover themselves gradually over time.
Farscape (and to an extent, Atlantis) deals in stereotypes with very little depth. They're more of action than SF.
You could probably find a geek of narratives and s/he'd be able to explain better in words why those are better SF, but you get the basic idea.
We do not possess sufficient data to accurately predict whether what we are witnessing is a normal cycle, or not. Global warming is a classic example of science by consensus that's been going on since the 70s (and just as bad as Nuclear Winter).
Take a look at things like Maunder Minimums and at past ice ages and you'll see what I mean.
Slashdot Mirror
Right on, bro. Perfect example of "I'm-incapable-so-bring-things-down-to-the-lowest- denominator!"
If you can't make money in the US, you should really *really* consider jumping off the grand canyon. Or something.
As an immigrant, I can tell you that there is no dearth of opportunities in the US - if you are willing to work hard for it.
Oh wait, what did you say? You can't work, eh? Aww, I'm sorry. Tough luck, pal. You reap what you sow. If you aren't willing to make the effort, stop whining.
No wonder you can't get that job. Ummm.
I don't completely disagree with you, although I do have my reservations.
However, my point was merely to question a baseless absolute assertion by the parent poster.
Not most Americans, just those on Slashdot, most of whom tend to have fairly left-liberal views.
/. favors socialist opinions over libertarian/captilalist ones.
Socialism is the fig leaf of losers who don't have the balls to succeed. Ergo, it is not surprising
Those in the Real World (TM) have better things to do, like start their own companies and make money off the process, rather than whine about things they do not even have the basic knowledge of.
Excuse me - but I did not make the claim. If you notice, I did not make any claim.
S/he made an assertion, I asked to back up that assertion.
Person 1: Everyone's a turtle!
Person 2: Care to prove it?
Person 3: I've seen something that looks like a turtle, so everyone has to be a turtle.
Person 4: Can you prove that everyone's not a turtle!
Wonderful Slashdot logic. Good job, though.
Wow, I wonder how this stuff gets modded up.
I did not make that claim - in fact, I did not make a claim eitherway.
The parent was spouting forth stuff on how capitalism wasn't the fundamental driver of freedom. S/he made that comment, all I asked was to prove the comment.
And FYI - an odd example of DMCA does not disprove capitalism as a whole. If anything, it's not a part of the free market.
I mean, if you folks are making such wonderful authoritatively wonderful claims ("it is not" indeed, remarked a wonderful troll), you ought be to able to substantiate it a little more than attacking the guy who asked you to prove your statement.
I might be tempted to believe him if he had a Nobel in economics. But then again, someone that smart wouldn't be making baseless assertions on Slashdot, of all places.
Not really.
/. have always been accompanied by ignorant drivel ranging from, "they're taking away our jobs!" to "India is dirt poor!" and everything in between.
Ever since I can remember, articles on India on
Most people have no clue about the real situation, but that does not stop them from shooting off their mouths, though.
The growth bubble in India has a few years to go before it becomes almost as expensive as Eastern Europeans.
Ah, therein lies the flaw. India will never become as expensive as Eastern Europe for two reasons:
1. There is a large population in India, and
2. There is a wide and disparate economic strata
So, what will happen is that development costs will go up, but there will be people who would still be willing to do it for cheaper.
For instance, certain Indian companies like Infosys and Wipro have already started investing and outsourcing THEIR work to China. That is only because they are the best, and their costs have gone up.
However, there are still more people who are willing to take up less-profitable markets and areas that these big guys no longer care for.
Indonesia (and other SE Asian countries) do not have two things that India has:
1. Population
2. English Language
Sure, Indian English has a weird accent and is quite British in its written form, but it's still English. It's the language of education and business, which is a big plus - a lot of countries in the SE Asian belt can't boast the same. Now, take a country like Philippines which has good English speaking folks - it does not have enough population to assure a continuous supply of man power. These two together go a long way.
Now, given the fact that India has existing infrastructure, existing business and an alread-penetrated market, it becomes easier for the folks at the lower economic strata to pick up work that others have deemed too cheap.
This is what will sustain India in the long term. And that is where those bottom denominators will go.
"...but if you believe in capitalism as a fundamental driver of freedom.."
it is not.
Care to substantiate/prove that statement?
It's not exactly the most stable part of the world as it is.
Not exactly the most stable part of the world?
The only real problem that India has is with Pakistan, which is way up north, around the Himalyan mountain range. China, its other neighbor is an economic power in itself, the last thing either countries would do is do something that would affect their economies.
Are there troubles in India? Sure, take any region of a billion people of an astounding mix and variety of religion and culture, and introduce secular democracy - see what you get. Most troubles in India are just that - they are troubles.
That hardly calls forth a strong word like "unstable". Btw, India is a huge country, both in terms of size and in terms of populace. Just because a nation has a pacifist outlook does not mean they are to be underestimated. It would take a whole lot to unsettle, undermine or destabilize India.
Nice troll, though.
Reminds me of a sig that I once saw -
"My dog! It's full of Rats!" - 2001: A Dyslexic Odyssey
I'm all for the government buying back the spectrum - but I also think that a part of the spectrum should be 'lent' to corporations simply because they've more resources to do cool stuff than joe user off the street.
If you must, insist that a bunch of corporations share the responsibility, that way you can be sure that there isn't exactly a monopoly of sorts.
That need not necessarily be a Bad Thing (TM). Use of that spectrum could mean services that you need to pay for, but like everything else, it might be shared with other tech.
With things like SSMA, you might be able to spread your use of the spectrum widely enough to allow for shared applications.
Quite honestly, I'd much rather have that bandwidth being used for something that I might actually find useful. Of course, the problem then would be of internationalization - there are a lot of countries out there where radio still means a lot, and the radio is one of those few things that has been fairly universal. But that might change.
Combine it with HAM operators and the percentage of folks that do listen to the radio in the US (for instance, morning drive-to-work listening), it's unlikely that it will COMPLETELY go away. More likely that it will amalgamate with other apps and evolve into something more.
Besides, auctioning a spectrum to a corporation might actually be beneficial. Resources + reach is something that Joe Schmoe does not have. Besides, built a strong enough transmitter (if you needed it that badly), you might be able to over-ride just about any transmission (of course, the legality of the issue would be another thing altogether).
to any reasonably well informed slashdot reader.
;)
Ah, now *that* would be proof of Intelligent Design, right there!
You are new here, aren't you, boy?
Actually, India was never socialist in the sense that you are speaking of. Nor was it ever a welfare state - basically, it was divided into public and private sectors, where the government controlled several core infrastructures in the public sectors. For instance, India has never had a state medical system - sure, there are state hospitals - but still, majority of the medical system in the country has always been privatized.
Anyway, this division made sense at the time of independence because as a newly born democratic state at the end of WW2, with severely depleted resources, it made sense for the government to control core assets and plan infrastructure building. This did work very well for the longest time (check out India's Five Year Plans until about the 70s). Even then, private enterprises did exist in a lot of the domains, just that they had a hard time competing with the government.
The time when the growth started slowing down was about the time Soviet Union died - but this was owing to several factors, particularly a very bad political climate. Even otherwise, the original plan was to slowly privatize parts of the public sector. Such a plan was considered earlier, but was not adopted due to several reasons, some political and some economic.
However, in the 1990s, there was a radical change in the political climate in the world and in India, and private enterprises started picking pace. That, and the fact that India's former ally Russia was facing economic troubles were reasons -- but one of the most important (and often missed easily) reason was the fact that for the first time, India had a significant portion of the middle class of a younger generation with a buying power never seen before. And thus, the free market as you know it was brought into the country in full force.
This changed the economic landscape, bringing forth the change that you see today.
So, India was never really a socialist state in the sense of the word - it was always a mixed economy, taking the middle path (i.e. state controlled where it made sense, privatized where it would fuel economic growth). Even today, the move towards a "capitalist" state is a misleading term - India is still a mixed economy, only that it's leaning more towards capitalism with less of a state control over infrastructure.
While people elsewhere blow up abortion clinics?
*shrug*
There is always a section of populace that does some screwed up, ridiculous things - generalizing such to and across a whole population, or worse yet, a whole nation, is ridiculous at best and offensive at worst.
While your reference to Laloo is apropos, I was in fact referring to West Bengal and Kerala - the only two states where the CPI and CPI (Marxist) have had significant presence in the past.
:)
I do not think Laloo represents any leftist ideals - usually, his ideals are those that serve his party and his extended family well.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Best. Sig. EVER!!!
And I must also mention that the left in India isn't left by a lot of standards (i.e. say, Europe). In some policies, they are quite centric and are even fiscally conservative. And in certain issues, such as privatization of all government assets, they tend to hold more leftist views.
Yeah, there is a significant amount of corruption and bureacracy in the system, but for the most part, privitization has helped cut down on that significantly.
:)
However, there is no real strong "communist" party in India - the existing government is being supported by the Communist Party of India, they have minimal say. The thing is, until about 30 years ago, India and the Soviet Union were fairly close. And as a newly independent nation, a government that had equal parts public and private sectors seemed like a good idea at the time.
However, gradually, the public sectors began to be privatized. Sure, the Communist party of India occasionally throws a tantrum, but nobody listens to them anyway. If at all, they have some semblance of power in all of two states, only one of which is consistent.
To be fair, there are some politicians who're above this, and who really understand technology and the need. For instance, the President is a rocket scientist (quite literally) and the Prime Minister is a renowned economist (he was awarded his Ph.D. in economics from Oxford and has been a professor of economics).
Of course, like any system, there are corrupt folks, and folks who refuse to change or adapt to the new system, particularly since it undermines their power and authority. But most of these are at the state level, and the Central (equivalent of Federal) government has a lot more power, and is a lot cleaner, too (relatively speaking, of course).
So, to answer your question - there is some definite corruption and bureacracy, but it's on the decline. More privatization and media exposures have largely made it harder, and folks who're at the helm are a lot more knowledgeable and capable.
Here's hoping for a better India in the days to come!
The term Slashdot Editor is a joke. On you. =)
I do not think either Stargate or Firefly would qualify as being sucky, or for that matter, I think that Farscape is a little over-rated.
Stargate SG1 seasons 1 through 5 must have set a record in terms of SF (I mean the over-encompassing theme of Speculative Fiction, not merely science fiction) shows - they were fast paced, and they had really good stories and story lines, and the whole show had a feeling of one huge plot with story arcs, just like a space opera of sorts. And Stargate Atlantis does not even compare to the first couple of seasons of Stargate SG1 - in almost every other aspect, SG1 has performed better (and I'm not alone in this - you ought to have a look at some of the Stargate forums to get an idea).
And Firefly is one of the most nicely done SF shows ever. It had the perfect feeling of the world it portrayed and conveyed a joe-regular feel. In fact, even SG1 is good because of just that - it's set in today's world with themes you can relate to. While Firefly was set in a future world, it was a world which we could quite easily relate to.
Finally, Farscape is a good show - but it's definitely over-rated. After a while, it got a little boring and a little too cilched. While some characters had depth, most were shown as being one dimensional.
If you look at either Stargate SG1 or Firefly, both had a depth to characters that evolved over time. You could not start watching Stargate SG1 in the middle - you'd be lost and perhaps hate it. However, if you were to watch it from the beginning, it would just all fit in, and you can see the characters grow. In some senses, you can see the same happening in Firefly as the characters unveil and discover themselves gradually over time.
Farscape (and to an extent, Atlantis) deals in stereotypes with very little depth. They're more of action than SF.
You could probably find a geek of narratives and s/he'd be able to explain better in words why those are better SF, but you get the basic idea.
How is parent a flamebait?
We do not possess sufficient data to accurately predict whether what we are witnessing is a normal cycle, or not. Global warming is a classic example of science by consensus that's been going on since the 70s (and just as bad as Nuclear Winter).
Take a look at things like Maunder Minimums and at past ice ages and you'll see what I mean.
Oooh!
;)
Even the dinosaurs in India are vegetarian!
(well, as an Indian who happens to be vegetarian, I reserve the right to make such obviously ridiculous jokes)
A better source would be John Preskill's website at Caltech for his PH 219 course on QC.
Includes course material, lecture notes and problems.
No, it's flat because it's stationery, duh!
Who says stationery have to be flat!?
My new Sharpie has some sweet curves.
And don't even get me started on my red stapler...