With more and more scientific advancements in ex-third world countries, I'm starting to wonder if this is the often predicted end of Western civilization.
Even if we accept the implicit assumption that so called ex-third world countries are poor and backwards -- even when the people are poor, often the goverment isn't, but let's not even get into that -- their success doesn't necessarily take anything away from us. If I'm rich, and my neighbor is poor, but becomes rich, his becoming rich doesn't automatically make me any poorer. If my toaster learns how to talk and perform higher maths, I don't become any dumber. It's not always a zero-sum game. Western civilization will not end just because India improves itself.
The Western countries have lost their population advantage long ago - there are much more Chinese and Indians than Europeans and Americans.
"Population advantage"? What's that? Numbers are an advantage? It seems to me that the British Empire had a pretty good run -- tiny little Island dominating huge and populous territories.
Most people aren't white like you. It's always been that way. And that's the real issue here, isn't it? Sorry, man, but you're going to have to get used to the idea.
The military advantage is already gone in thecase of e.g. France or UK or is already decreasing like e.g. US and Germany.
Add Russia, and you've got the five largest navies in the world; airpower is roughly the same. Also, the major shareholders in the Nuke club. Other countries may be able to field more rifles, but both Iraq wars have shown how useful that is against a technologically superior foe.
The industrial advantage is also gone: most industrial consumer products are not produced in Western countries these days leading to the huge trade deficit of the US.
Five largest economies: US, Japan, Germany, France, UK. I think the order is about right, but I'm not sure. You can look up any of this stuff for yourself -- the CIA World Factbook is good, and available online. If the GDP of 50 million or so Brits is bigger than that of a billion-odd Chinese, it stands to reason that the West still has a little industry left, eh?
What is remaining is the technological advantage. However, India and China are catching up. The US has traditional 2 strategies to keep this advantage:
Sucking brillant minds out of 3rd world countries by getting them into the US via e.g. graduate schools.
And then a lot of them go back home. Which is fine. I know it doesn't fit very well with your war-of-cultures mindset, but more educated people means a better world for everybody, regardless of where they're from, or whether or not they look and talk like you. And Universities have always been magnets for foreigners.
Blocking advancement in 3rd world countries by covering every rubbish with patents.
Yeah, with those magical international patents we have.
However, both strategies are failing these days: Foreign graduates from India and China are in fact returning to htheir home countries.
How dare they? Whoever could have forseen this?
By this they are exporting the US technology there and creating unbeatable (cost !) conpetitors to US businesses.
Allowing them to sell us cool things at reasonable prices, while the US, with its tremendous combination of physical and intellectual capital, abundant natural resources, stable government, and military hedgemony lumbers on, lordly, unconcerned.
With reducing importance of the US in the world
Unproven, and unsupportable.
China and other countries are less and less willing to accept the US patent dictatorship -
They never really were, and that was never the point.
Just get a TV for fifty bucks at a pawn shop. It'll probably either be stolen, or have been hocked by someone in desperate straits, so in a sense you'll be trafficing in human misery, but hey, can't beat the prices. That way you'll be able to surf porn while you're watching Letterman.
This made me think...wouldn't it be great for the OS community if we could provide a law to facilitate tax cuts to companies who give to OS, or at least make it mandatory to for-profit organizations to give a certain minimum amount and take it out of their taxes?
Kudos to everybody who pointed out that: A.)If it's mandatory to give up money for something, it's not all that free, is it?;and, B.) Making more laws doesn't necessarily make the world any better.
Now, grasshopper, apply your incisive powers of reasoning to the stuffed shirts in Washington, and everything they say.
My brother got a llama calendar. If his birthday's coming up, you might want to check out that "Love Ewe" inflatable sheep somebody mentioned further up the page.
"Generally speaking the music industry is very digital-averse," acknowledged Gibson Labs general manager Shri Arora, who helped design the core Magic technology. "But as the technology gets better, the cost-effectiveness is becoming a compelling force. In five to 10 years this [electric instruments and related equipment] will all be digital anyway."
Umm . . . yeah. So where do I get digital vacuum tubes?
You can argue, if you want, about whether analog actually does sound better than digital -- all of us purists will still be dragging around our out-dated, cost-ineffective, heavier-than-sh!t gear anyways until we're convinced it's been improved upon.
And as long as I can still fret a note, I'll be gutting cats myself for fiddle strings . . ..
Then again, maybe the no-doubt huge bandwidth bill they will receieve after being linked to from/. will be slightly offset by the contributions it (may) also bring(s)..
Makes me wonder how long it will be before someone hacks together some control units, a lawn tractor, and a gps system and some randome patteren generator software and creates an autonomous crop circle generator.
Yeah, it's all fun and games until one gets loose at the old folk's home.
Nothing as far as the eye can see but blood, gore, and dentures. Will we ever learn?
It'd really be much cooler if the monkey controlled the robots with it's mind, and was in turn controlled by me, through marionette strings. It's beyond science; it's art.
Seriously, though, doesn't this raise the very real potential problem of armies of robots, mechanically flinging monkey poo?
And imagine a beow . . . Oh, never mind. I'll shut up now.
Imagine if the criminal law was like this: imagine if you were paralyzed realizing anything you did good could end up causing you to be sentenced to jail.
Were you worried about writing this sentence too well? Or were you simply reading Ayn Rand during English class, instead of paying attention?
While I agree that as this case is being brought in the US weighting ought to be given to US residents as this affects everyone people outside the US ought to have some scope to feed comments into the process.
Generally speaking (e.g., grossly over-simplifying), US legal rulings only apply to domestic business practices. Our courts have very little say over what goes on in your country, something for which you should probably be thankfull; engaging in law-enforcement in other people's countries is generally considered rude, I understand. So, strictly speaking, it wouldn't really be fair to admit evidence in the anti-trust case pertaining to how M$ behaves overseas. Sorry.
As I recall, though, the EU's stance on this is comparable to the US's and some similar ruling may be in the works even now. (Anybody know more about this than me?)
According to the article's illustration, the Germans will digitally sign their names by writing a long, free-floating string of binary in the air with an ordinary pencil. Evidently the technology being used is both more advanced and more bizarre than anything I've ever seen.
91.6% -- Yes. Hundreds of complaints can't be wrong. (456 responses)
8.4% -- No. Give the guy a break. He's looking for a job. (42 responses)
498 total responses
How dare you repeat such lies?!? This is slander! this is libel! I'll sue you! I'll sue the Chicago Tribune! I'll sue all 456 respondants who answered 'yes'! I will also be suing Al Gore and Bill Gates for inventing the internet, and the moderators and editors on slashdot for violating my 1st ammendment rights! Please give me your address and phone number, as well as those of all of your co-conspirators mentioned above, so my lawyers can sue all of you.
The last time I checked, the security testing group at MS consisted of two Norwegian Black rats, a four-year-old, and a blind, deaf, chimpanzee with a drinking habit.
This allegation you're making is both hurtful and untrue. That chimpanzee is a friend of mine, and I'll have you know that he only drinks socially, and conducts himself with the utmost professionalism.
Re:Paramount gets it right.
on
Star Trek TNG DVDs
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Is Enterprise still on? Did it even make it past the first six episodes?
Um, yes. This is an honest question.
Yup. New episodes in January, I believe. I think those pouty Vulcan lips will keep the show going long enough to hit its stride and attract a following. With some luck, they'll rethink the music.
Having screwed up quite a bit in the past, it's good to see Paramount getting their act together with this boxed set. I guess they're just trying to make up for Enterprise.
Whoa, there! Let's not get ahead of ourselves -- they're still making up for DS9.
Yeah, it's really easy to pick out those end-of-season low-on-cash episodes: "Data's cat suffers from distemper and Worf learns a lesson about sharing when he takes square-dancing lessons on the holodeck. Picard gets a haircut. Wesley shaves for the first time."
Slashdot Mirror
Only if you fail your saving throw.
Dude. Where do I begin?
With more and more scientific advancements in ex-third world countries, I'm starting to wonder if this is the often predicted end of Western civilization.
Even if we accept the implicit assumption that so called ex-third world countries are poor and backwards -- even when the people are poor, often the goverment isn't, but let's not even get into that -- their success doesn't necessarily take anything away from us. If I'm rich, and my neighbor is poor, but becomes rich, his becoming rich doesn't automatically make me any poorer. If my toaster learns how to talk and perform higher maths, I don't become any dumber. It's not always a zero-sum game. Western civilization will not end just because India improves itself.
The Western countries have lost their population advantage long ago - there are much more Chinese and Indians than Europeans and Americans.
"Population advantage"? What's that? Numbers are an advantage? It seems to me that the British Empire had a pretty good run -- tiny little Island dominating huge and populous territories.
Most people aren't white like you. It's always been that way. And that's the real issue here, isn't it? Sorry, man, but you're going to have to get used to the idea.
The military advantage is already gone in thecase of e.g. France or UK or is already decreasing like e.g. US and Germany.
Add Russia, and you've got the five largest navies in the world; airpower is roughly the same. Also, the major shareholders in the Nuke club. Other countries may be able to field more rifles, but both Iraq wars have shown how useful that is against a technologically superior foe.
The industrial advantage is also gone: most industrial consumer products are not produced in Western countries these days leading to the huge trade deficit of the US.
Five largest economies: US, Japan, Germany, France, UK. I think the order is about right, but I'm not sure. You can look up any of this stuff for yourself -- the CIA World Factbook is good, and available online. If the GDP of 50 million or so Brits is bigger than that of a billion-odd Chinese, it stands to reason that the West still has a little industry left, eh?
What is remaining is the technological advantage.
However, India and China are catching up.
The US has traditional 2 strategies to keep this advantage:
Sucking brillant minds out of 3rd world countries by getting them into the US via e.g. graduate schools.
And then a lot of them go back home. Which is fine. I know it doesn't fit very well with your war-of-cultures mindset, but more educated people means a better world for everybody, regardless of where they're from, or whether or not they look and talk like you. And Universities have always been magnets for foreigners.
Blocking advancement in 3rd world countries by covering every rubbish with patents.
Yeah, with those magical international patents we have.
However, both strategies are failing these days:
Foreign graduates from India and China are in fact returning to htheir home countries.
How dare they? Whoever could have forseen this?
By this they are exporting the US technology there and creating unbeatable (cost !) conpetitors to US businesses.
Allowing them to sell us cool things at reasonable prices, while the US, with its tremendous combination of physical and intellectual capital, abundant natural resources, stable government, and military hedgemony lumbers on, lordly, unconcerned.
With reducing importance of the US in the world
Unproven, and unsupportable.
China and other countries are less and less willing to accept the US patent dictatorship -
They never really were, and that was never the point.
killing the exploiting by IP strategy of the US.
Uhh. . . yeah.
Bush tries to cover these facts by mad
Just get a TV for fifty bucks at a pawn shop. It'll probably either be stolen, or have been hocked by someone in desperate straits, so in a sense you'll be trafficing in human misery, but hey, can't beat the prices. That way you'll be able to surf porn while you're watching Letterman.
Kudos to everybody who pointed out that: A.)If it's mandatory to give up money for something, it's not all that free, is it?
Now, grasshopper, apply your incisive powers of reasoning to the stuffed shirts in Washington, and everything they say.
The future, as supplied by mega-corporations: More and more of what you need less and less.
Do you really want your toaster to be twice as expensive, half as reliable, licenced instead of owned, and subject to planned obsolescence?
My brother got a llama calendar.
If his birthday's coming up, you might want to check out that "Love Ewe" inflatable sheep somebody mentioned further up the page.
"Generally speaking the music industry is very digital-averse," acknowledged Gibson Labs general manager Shri Arora, who helped design the core Magic technology. "But as the technology gets better, the cost-effectiveness is becoming a compelling force. In five to 10 years this [electric instruments and related equipment] will all be digital anyway."
.
Umm . . . yeah. So where do I get digital vacuum tubes?
You can argue, if you want, about whether analog actually does sound better than digital -- all of us purists will still be dragging around our out-dated, cost-ineffective, heavier-than-sh!t gear anyways until we're convinced it's been improved upon.
And as long as I can still fret a note, I'll be gutting cats myself for fiddle strings . . .
Then again, maybe the no-doubt huge bandwidth bill they will receieve after being linked to from /. will be slightly offset by the contributions it (may) also bring(s)..
/. crowd?
Uhhhh . . . . Contributions . . . ? From the
Yeah, they might get spammed with goat sex links, but if I were over there, I wouldn't be holding my breath. Poor bastards.
Makes me wonder how long it will be before someone hacks together some control units, a lawn tractor, and a gps system and some randome patteren generator software and creates an autonomous crop circle generator.
Yeah, it's all fun and games until one gets loose at the old folk's home.
Nothing as far as the eye can see but blood, gore, and dentures. Will we ever learn?
Can anybody out there shed any light on this, or is it just some urban legend?
It'd really be much cooler if the monkey controlled the robots with it's mind, and was in turn controlled by me, through marionette strings. It's beyond science; it's art.
Seriously, though, doesn't this raise the very real potential problem of armies of robots, mechanically flinging monkey poo?
And imagine a beow . . . Oh, never mind. I'll shut up now.
Imagine if the criminal law was like this: imagine if you were paralyzed realizing anything you did good could end up causing you to be sentenced to jail.
Were you worried about writing this sentence too well? Or were you simply reading Ayn Rand during English class, instead of paying attention?
While I agree that as this case is being brought in the US weighting ought to be given to US residents as this affects everyone people outside the US ought to have some scope to feed comments into the process.
Generally speaking (e.g., grossly over-simplifying), US legal rulings only apply to domestic business practices. Our courts have very little say over what goes on in your country, something for which you should probably be thankfull; engaging in law-enforcement in other people's countries is generally considered rude, I understand. So, strictly speaking, it wouldn't really be fair to admit evidence in the anti-trust case pertaining to how M$ behaves overseas. Sorry.
As I recall, though, the EU's stance on this is comparable to the US's and some similar ruling may be in the works even now. (Anybody know more about this than me?)
Will /. be running adverts for QVC next?
According to the article's illustration, the Germans will digitally sign their names by writing a long, free-floating string of binary in the air with an ordinary pencil. Evidently the technology being used is both more advanced and more bizarre than anything I've ever seen.
Is Bernard Shifman a "moron spammer?"
91.6% -- Yes. Hundreds of complaints can't be wrong. (456 responses)
8.4% -- No. Give the guy a break. He's looking for a job. (42 responses)
498 total responses
How dare you repeat such lies?!? This is slander! this is libel! I'll sue you! I'll sue the Chicago Tribune! I'll sue all 456 respondants who answered 'yes'! I will also be suing Al Gore and Bill Gates for inventing the internet, and the moderators and editors on slashdot for violating my 1st ammendment rights! Please give me your address and phone number, as well as those of all of your co-conspirators mentioned above, so my lawyers can sue all of you.
Litigiously yours,
Bernie S.
That is some crazy-fun processing power! :)
I wish I had 200 of those babies. My 3D Studio rendering would fly like nobodies business
Would it be fair to say that you are imagining a beowulf cluster of these?
Ahem . . . . Bad joke, I know.
The last time I checked, the security testing group at MS consisted of two Norwegian Black rats, a four-year-old, and a blind, deaf, chimpanzee with a drinking habit.
This allegation you're making is both hurtful and untrue. That chimpanzee is a friend of mine, and I'll have you know that he only drinks socially, and conducts himself with the utmost professionalism.
Is Enterprise still on? Did it even make it past the first six episodes?
Um, yes. This is an honest question.
Yup. New episodes in January, I believe. I think those pouty Vulcan lips will keep the show going long enough to hit its stride and attract a following. With some luck, they'll rethink the music.
Having screwed up quite a bit in the past, it's good to see Paramount getting their act together with this boxed set. I guess they're just trying to make up for Enterprise.
Whoa, there! Let's not get ahead of ourselves -- they're still making up for DS9.
Can you explain this "image squashing technology" for us non-Americans? Do they change the aspect ratio? Why would they need to do that? thanks.
Yup, they change the aspect ratio. They squeeze in some blank space at the bottom of the screen so they can run text ads for wrestling and Baywatch.
DVD Only Special Feature:
*Skip Holodeck Episodes.
Yeah, it's really easy to pick out those end-of-season low-on-cash episodes: "Data's cat suffers from distemper and Worf learns a lesson about sharing when he takes square-dancing lessons on the holodeck. Picard gets a haircut. Wesley shaves for the first time."
What precise effect will this play on the online pr0n industry?
That depends on how many people are turned on by explosions and lightning bolts.
Does that mean he'll add a five minute spot to the film where Jar-Jar gets brutally murdered?
Yes. My sources indicate that a wookie will rip his arms off.
I know we would all love for this to be true but would you mind naming your sources?
No, I wouldn't mind at all. I heard it directly from the wookies. You can ask them yourself if you don't believe me.
Does that mean he'll add a five minute spot to the film where Jar-Jar gets brutally murdered?
Yes. My sources indicate that a wookie will rip his arms off.