It all ends up as heat anyway, and yes, you're absorbing more energy from the sun than you would be otherwise. The question is, is it more or less than the equivalent CO2 produced by conventional generation.
reduction of political leverage of oil rich countries Nope. Not unless everyone switches to solar or the US dollar loses it's reserve status and isn't required for oil purchases.
The problem is everything is windows, including the stuff the accountants and government do. It makes selling Linux a very very hard sell. Speaking from experience most businesses don't even think about OS/system, they just have a bookeeping package, they often don't even know what it's called.
A small Linux OEM can really only handle small, medium businesses, but they're already locked into Microsoft before you get anywhere near them. Hell, even the enterprise councils people give away Windows based business software to help them with their IT needs.
The people who really use Linux are big businesses with thousands of employees. Because of the economics, they are also the ones who benefit most. However, a small Linux OEM has bugger all chance of getting their business as anything other than a contractor.
If Americans could think beyond conservative and liberal[1]. The world is actually a little more complex than black and white. Sadly your electoral system forces one into a black or white world view.
[1] American "liberals" are not liberal btw, they're socialists.
Also. The point being that it's part of our makeup to create significance, whether there is any or not and whether we can rationally explain something or not.
In fact, as one of the other posters pointed out about the pigeons, it may well be a feature of the way brains work. We may well find out that any life which uses something like a neural network to generate consciousness will be prone to superstition and religion.... Which becomes interesting when you start building big neural networks into machines.
If they cannot afford bread on what they make, let them eat cake, I say... Actually, that saying is basically the argument that most anti-globalisation activists use. They believe that not having a job in a sweatshop is better than working in one. They seem to think that there's some utopian alternative.
People work in sweatshops for what seems to us to be slave wages (oxymoron I know) because it's the best they can get. They chose a better life. The more we exploit them, the better their lives will get.
A Free Market requires informed intelligent consumers, such people are rare, we're in trouble. No, it doesn't. All it needs is for people to prefer one thing over another.
Wal-Mart destroys locally run "mom & pop" stores, lowers the real estate value of business districts, and as a result Wal-Mart is one of the few businesses left. And people don't drive about in horse and cart any more either. Life, progress, adapting to the economic situation.
While that's a great idea in theory, how would that ever happen? Supply and demand. Inflation. The mechanism is currency conversion rates.
If we drove these outsourced wages up, they'd then be without jobs. Why would a company hire these workers overseas, when they could get them locally for the same price? At that point, either us or them producing the goods would result in higher prices, and we couldn't afford to buy as much, in which case neither the local or outsourced workforces would have a job, and we'd both be SOL. There's still a demand for the products and... now, you have 2 countries with people who can afford them. The market's bigger. It's happening, there are labour shortages in China. Their wages are increasing, their internal market is improving, they're starting to buy imports of their own.
It seems like hitting on some lottery numbers and then playing those same numbers every day for the rest of your life in the misguided belief that they have some special odds of hitting again. Bingo. You just hit the reason religion exists. The human brain looks for patterns all over the place, even in random chance.
the value we enjoy from those prices are supported solely by the unfair wages and operations of overseas manufacturers. It is just like thermodynamics. The low cost of these products has to come from somewhere. It just happens this somewhere is sometimes a sweatshop. It's more like pressure or heat. The greater the disparity in the economies, the more unfair it appears, however the very act of buying products from these areas increases the economy and demand for workers, the money flows into the region.
Bangladesh for example gained 1.5 million additional jobs over the 90s. Their textile industry is now worth billions and growth is running at 6%pa. Are the jobs still relatively shit? Yeah, but the alternative is worse and by not buying their products you just make their life and economy worse.
These people do these jobs because they are the best that are available. The alternatives are worse.
If you simply give better working conditions and wages, you will be undercut by the competition and you'll go out of business. WTF do you think outsourcing and the loss of manufacturing is all about? Americans are too expensive to employ.
For improvements in working conditions to be sustainable it has to be led by demand. There has to be a high demand for employees. If you want to improve the conditions of Walmart employees in 3rd world countries then buy products from that country.
I have the choice of other jobs. I don't need a shit walmart job because there are other companies out there who want to exploit me and who are willing to pay more.
We should be encouraging more companies to go to Bangladesh and exploit the population. Not less.
When one company pays to put down a large phone network, who the hell is going to make another one? Would you say the same about Microsoft? When the prices become punitive, the wolves see a lot of money to be made and start providing similar services. Yes I would. MS should be left to their own devices, the higher they price their software the larger the numbers who will defect.
But alas, you're a libertarian ideological fundamentalist, so if the corporation did something bad, they didn't do anything "actually" bad. Eh, no. The purpose of a corporation is to make money. As much money as they can get their greedy little paws on. It's the stated purpose. In black and white. Anyone with half a brain and an honest heart realises that's the purpose of a corporation and treats it accordingly.
The purpose of a government is to govern for the benefit of it's people. Not to make money for corporations. The fault therefore lies with the government (whether corrupt or stupid) for allowing the monopoly situation. The corporation did exactly as it was supposed to. The corporation did a good thing, not a bad thing, for it's shareholders. It fulfilled it's purpose admirably.
but the ultimate source of the problem was corporate greed that lead to the collusion of government and a corporation, Oh, don't be stupid.
Corporate greed has always existed in one form or another since the dawn of the human race. Greed is human nature. The utter utter stupidity is not to take it into account, and that's where free markets come in.
You pit one greedy bastard against a dozen other greedy bastards. Everyone benefits from the hard work of the group of greedy bastards.
The fault lies with the either utterly stupidity or corrupt politicians who granted the monopoly. It has nothing to do with libertarian ideology and everything to do with understanding human beings.
i comforted my self with the thought that oil might be the real reason for the Iraq invasion... No, it is unbelievably stupid to allege, that "stealing oil" was our reason. Only the least-educated of the "Arab street" think so... If this really were our motivation, we would've taken over Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (both governed by rather unpleasant regimes, BTW). And, of course, something as desperate as Congo would've been an even lower-hanging fruit (would've been good for them, actually).
But no, that was not our reason -- these days natural resources are much easier bought that stolen. Yes... With money which is printed on US printing presses for $0.01 (or less) per $100. Course. Saudi and Kuwait are good little countries which accept said bits of green paper in return for their oil. Iraq, wanted European printed paper instead.
But Saddam has violated many items of the peace agreement -- he initially promised to destroy those (in)famous WMDs within 12 months, for example, but still had them in 1997 and some remnants were even found in 2003-4. Nothing was found. There were no weapons. What triggered the invasion was the decision Saddam made in 2000 to stop using the US dollar as a reserve currency. The whole US economy is based on the US dollar being the world reserve currency and that status was threatened by Saddam. It is now threatened by Iran and Venezuela... Expect "regime change" of some sort in both countries fairly soon. Coup, revolution, civil war or perhaps even invasion.
Slashdot Mirror
That has a nice irony about it.
It all ends up as heat anyway, and yes, you're absorbing more energy from the sun than you would be otherwise. The question is, is it more or less than the equivalent CO2 produced by conventional generation.
The problem is everything is windows, including the stuff the accountants and government do. It makes selling Linux a very very hard sell. Speaking from experience most businesses don't even think about OS/system, they just have a bookeeping package, they often don't even know what it's called.
A small Linux OEM can really only handle small, medium businesses, but they're already locked into Microsoft before you get anywhere near them. Hell, even the enterprise councils people give away Windows based business software to help them with their IT needs.
The people who really use Linux are big businesses with thousands of employees. Because of the economics, they are also the ones who benefit most. However, a small Linux OEM has bugger all chance of getting their business as anything other than a contractor.
Remove the cheapest competitors from the market and the average profit per unit increases.
Hysterical, there's a moderation war between religious nuts and rational moderators.
Yes, this is a troll.
If Americans could think beyond conservative and liberal[1]. The world is actually a little more complex than black and white. Sadly your electoral system forces one into a black or white world view.
[1] American "liberals" are not liberal btw, they're socialists.
The US military now has a new target.
Also. The point being that it's part of our makeup to create significance, whether there is any or not and whether we can rationally explain something or not.
In fact, as one of the other posters pointed out about the pigeons, it may well be a feature of the way brains work. We may well find out that any life which uses something like a neural network to generate consciousness will be prone to superstition and religion.... Which becomes interesting when you start building big neural networks into machines.
People work in sweatshops for what seems to us to be slave wages (oxymoron I know) because it's the best they can get. They chose a better life. The more we exploit them, the better their lives will get.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/03/business/03labo
Globalisation works. The economists have know for decades that if you take down the barriers, eventually the economies will level out.
Bangladesh for example gained 1.5 million additional jobs over the 90s. Their textile industry is now worth billions and growth is running at 6%pa. Are the jobs still relatively shit? Yeah, but the alternative is worse and by not buying their products you just make their life and economy worse.
These people do these jobs because they are the best that are available. The alternatives are worse.
If you simply give better working conditions and wages, you will be undercut by the competition and you'll go out of business. WTF do you think outsourcing and the loss of manufacturing is all about? Americans are too expensive to employ.
For improvements in working conditions to be sustainable it has to be led by demand. There has to be a high demand for employees. If you want to improve the conditions of Walmart employees in 3rd world countries then buy products from that country.
I have the choice of other jobs. I don't need a shit walmart job because there are other companies out there who want to exploit me and who are willing to pay more.
We should be encouraging more companies to go to Bangladesh and exploit the population. Not less.
Yeah. Let them starve instead.
Right... So did you miss the "government granted monopoly" bit?
... granted ... monopoly... So not a free market then. eh?
Monopoly:
"exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices."
Government
The purpose of a government is to govern for the benefit of it's people. Not to make money for corporations. The fault therefore lies with the government (whether corrupt or stupid) for allowing the monopoly situation. The corporation did exactly as it was supposed to. The corporation did a good thing, not a bad thing, for it's shareholders. It fulfilled it's purpose admirably.
Corporate greed has always existed in one form or another since the dawn of the human race. Greed is human nature. The utter utter stupidity is not to take it into account, and that's where free markets come in.
You pit one greedy bastard against a dozen other greedy bastards. Everyone benefits from the hard work of the group of greedy bastards.
The fault lies with the either utterly stupidity or corrupt politicians who granted the monopoly. It has nothing to do with libertarian ideology and everything to do with understanding human beings.
ITYM State regulation in action.
But no, that was not our reason -- these days natural resources are much easier bought that stolen. Yes... With money which is printed on US printing presses for $0.01 (or less) per $100. Course. Saudi and Kuwait are good little countries which accept said bits of green paper in return for their oil. Iraq, wanted European printed paper instead. But Saddam has violated many items of the peace agreement -- he initially promised to destroy those (in)famous WMDs within 12 months, for example, but still had them in 1997 and some remnants were even found in 2003-4. Nothing was found. There were no weapons. What triggered the invasion was the decision Saddam made in 2000 to stop using the US dollar as a reserve currency. The whole US economy is based on the US dollar being the world reserve currency and that status was threatened by Saddam. It is now threatened by Iran and Venezuela... Expect "regime change" of some sort in both countries fairly soon. Coup, revolution, civil war or perhaps even invasion.
It's looking for more processing power...
http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/
YKIMS!
Is a public file, as are virtually all the others in /etc.
What's it doing? Well, what libraries is it linked with? Perhaps it's converting your UID into a name among other things.