Sorry, the middle class in China is more important to our businesses than Americans are, given that the middle class in China is larger than the entire American population. Of course, we'll continue to ignore the hundreds of millions of peasants in poverty, just like they're ignored in the US. Bad for profits, you see.
And, keep in mind, the upper class lifestyle that most people in the US attribute to being middle class is possible because of the massive decrease in manufacturing costs for their lifestyle goods that China provides.
So now watermarking counts as DRM? Dammit, stop expanding terms like a madman!
DRM isn't always about preventing copying. It can be about tracing copies, preventing reading, expiring content. A watermark embedded in a stock photo is still a form of DRM.
Big Fines should go to the users harmed, not the State. A corporate screw-up should be punished, but the money shouldn't be flushed down some bureaucratic hole.
Why do you think these sort of laws are put in place? Laws can be written such that a civil lawsuit can be brought for damages, or they can be written to bring heavy fines. Which do you think a government is more likely to pass?
Yes, it does have DRM, just not restrictive DRM. Songs are still tagged with the ID of the buyer. (Don't go uploading your iTunes-purchased songs anywhere without stripping it out!)
I believe your numbers are correct for surface melting.
My understanding is the bigger concern is melting at ground level, and the ice flowing more quickly off the land into the ocean. You don't need the ice to melt to raise ocean levels, you just need it to not be sitting on rock.
To put that into perspective that means sea temperatures could rapidly return to mid-Eocene levels at the North Pole, about 55 F. Unless you are Santa, it would probably be much warmer at your house. Needless to say, growing food in much of the US or perhaps almost anywhere would be no easy task, especially since much of the mid-west will likely again be underwater.
While I agree with most of what you said, the parts of the US that have historically been under water were under water because the ground was physically lower at the time, not because the oceans were higher. Uplift brought big chunks of the continental plates well above where they were, so those areas will not suddenly be underwater because of the rest of the permanent ice melting. And some of those areas (like the mid-west) are still uplifting from the release of the weight of the glaciers 20k years ago.
Isn't it odd that there would be oil anywhere near the poles? It would mean that area had to have had a massive amount of plant and animal life there at some point in the past. Exactly how hot was the Earth back then?!
Two reasons -- one, land masses move. The physical rock under the poles are part of the contentinental plates that used to be near the equator, which is why there's so much oil sands in Canada. Secondly, there are two "normal" states for the Earth -- frozen (30-40% ice coverage) and hot, with conditions like you see in equatorial regions today everywhere, with no permanent ice. The reason we have ice at the poles and warm everywhere else is because right now we're in an interglacial period *in an ice age*. It is a *weird* condition, historically. Now, its entirely plausable that the "global warming" is working to keep us from slipping out of the interglacial period -- we're already significantly beyond the point where most of them appear to have ended in the past. So that's arguably a potentially good thing. Humanity spent most of its existence during the glacial periods, but the planet sure can't support 7 billion people that way.
A bigger concern is if global warming was to tip us *out* of the existing ice age. Humanity *hasn't* lived through a warm period on the Earth. In fact, large mammals in general haven't. No one is particularly sure if the planet can support *any* people that way.
But in either case, there's oil at the poles because that land was near the equator when the deposits that turned into oil were layed down.
You aren't Google's customer, the companies that buy adwords are.
Stripping those sites out of the results helps by getting the high-revenue sites up higher in the results list. That's good for Google and their actual customers.
That's a good list. Did you furiously jackhammer that out on your keyboard when you saw there was an EV post on/. or did you have it ready to go and just cut in paste?
(And, to be clear, the first sentance is serious, the second is mildly sarcastic.)
Oh, it's WAY more than a year too late. Maybe 5 or so.
Of course, Microsoft is setting an absolutely terrible example for the industry. They should have at least demoted the dancing monkey way more than 5 years ago.
I disagree. Microsoft's stock may have been stagnant over the last decade, but its also payed out an enormous amount of money in dividends. Ballmer wasn't holding the reins when the big drop in the stock happened during the dot-com bubble bursting, and the thing that Microsoft got out of it was a firm transition from a "tech" stock to a solid blue-chip stock. The type of investors who buy those securities are very different, and the responsibility of the board and CEO are very different. Microsoft showing solid revenue growth, relative stock price stability and consistent payment of dividends *is* what the stockholders expect. It means everything needs to be more conservative.
Contract that to Apple -- their stock graph, while steadily rising over time, has a sharp sawtooth pattern to it with quick-flip investors sinking billions into it, catching that wave. (I invested a pretty decent amount into Apple two years ago and have nearly *quadrupled* the amount by riding the sawtooth up!) But that pattern doesn't make Apple a better company or a better investment. I've got a lot of Microsoft stock, too -- that stock I'm equally happy with. I *expect* the Apple stock to crash. The investing pattern I follow (and clearly most investors are following, based on those cycles) is exactly that. We all *know* their value is based on transient hype, and not a solid foundation. Thats why people keep pulling money out, waiting out peak and buying back in the dip! The Microsoft stock, on the other hand, I know I'll get a steady return from and never really even consider selling.
For both of those, as an investor in both companies, I'm very happy with both Jobs' job and Ballmers' job.
What government services is someone paying $10m a year in taxes using that is 1000x what someone paying $10k a year is using?
Answer: none.
There is only one fair taxation. Take the total cost off all government services, divide that number by the number of taxpayers. If you make more than that, you keep it. If you make less than that, you owe time back to society. Simple as that. That's the only fair taxation. $26,600 per person. If people don't like it, vote out the people who are spending 3.5 trillion dollars a year. If they can't afford $26,600, work harder. Don't breed. Grab a shovel and spend a few months helping to build a highway. Simple as that.
In a progressive tax system, I'm stealing from everyone who is doing better than me, and being stolen from to support anyone doing worse than me. Its stealing from the responsible individual who makes $100k a year and has no children to support the mouth-breather who has eight kids on $18k a year. Simple as that. You may have made a value judgement that the benefit you would get from the stealing is a net benefit versus the stealing from you, but don't pretent for a second that its not stealing.
America wont stop it, cant stop it, and will ultimately destroy itself for a few rich multi national corporations who have no interest in America, other than benefiting off our high dollar value.
This is the world economy folks. America gets fucked to death, while the rich benefit.
American can't stop it, you're right. But not because of the rich benefitting -- the people who benefit from the arrangement are the people who are complaining about the rich. The rich can afford a $3000 iPhone -- there are a million Foxconn employees working in those conditions because the "middle class" (meaning, the hundred million people in the US who fake a middle or upper middle class lifestyle on credit and cheap goods) insist on that. Your 55" LCD TV is $1000 because of those jobs being overseas. Your $21k car is $21k because of the parts being made overseas. Your phone is $400 because it was made overseas. Hell, most of your food is what it costs because it comes from overseas. You want to drink coffee? Have strawberries during the entire year? Have a closet full of clothes you can replace every year? Chocolate? A couch for $599?
The desire of everyone in the US, and similar countries, to live MASSIVELY beyond their means is why America can't stop it.
Lets put it this way. If the total amount of stuff you acquire during a year would've taken you more time to produce yourself than you have in a year, you took advantage of somebody. You can make $50k a year and live a lifestyle someone 50 years ago couldn't have lived on a million dollars a year because we, as a society, have gotten really good at ensuring there's a hundred people living in poverty under you, doing that work for you.
That has nothing to do with the rich. The rich are rich because they know how to give people what they want, not because they are stealing anything. Bankers are rich selling iffy mortgages because 20 million people who shouldn't have the option of owning a home demanded the right to own a home. Apple execs are rich outsourcing the work because there's 50 million people in the US who demand those devices.
Continuing to deflect the real reasons onto the rich is not what will ever fix things. People deciding they care enough about the plight of workers in China to trim back their lifestyle 90% is the only thing that will fix anything.
And that's because the US and most (all?) civilized countries have labour laws that are in place to provide certain minimum standards as far as health and safety goes... so your average US and European worker don't have to sleep in factory provided dormitories (and most likely pay a fair chunk of their paycheck for the privilege) and be forced to work 12 hour shifts.
Off course, labour laws in the west was prompted by things like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire - in China such incidents are considered part of doing business.
No, instead they work two jobs, with most families having dual incomes, so they can pay 40% of their pay on their house and cars, "volunarily" work 12 hour shifts, skip vacations, and race towards old age with the reality that everyone else is going to have to support them because they have no savings and a mountain of debt, and a house full of material goods that directly represent the labor of the people you're talking about.
As bad as it may be in a factory, it's better than staying in the village with no electricity or running water and trying to eek out an existence as a subsistence farmer.
Thats a detail that is painfully obvious to anyone who has actually been to China and talked to anyone with family at places like Foxconn. The employees live VERY well compared to the alternative -- enough so that they live well and can send money back to their families.
But there's a lot of dimwits who don't seem to understand that their western lifestyle *exists* because of a *literal* army of people living in near poverty below them. Making it fair does not mean pulling jobs back to the US -- you'll just send a half billion people back in starvation. Making it "fair" means *everyone* in the world making a couple bucks a day and living in those conditions. Why? There simply isn't enough resources in the world to support even two billion people living at "western" standards of living, much less seven billion people.
That's the choice. Some people live life with greater access to everything from food, recreation and resources than others, or everyone lives in 3rd world conditions. There is *literally* no middle ground there. There can't be because we live on a planet of limited resources and life on Earth *is* zero-sum.
I thought the same thing. Do we really want millions of americans living in factory dormitories making barely enough money to send a few dollars a month home to their family's village, where there is likely no running water and everyone subsists on a diet of rice, vegetables, and a few servings of protein a week? Seriously... if an american factory worker has to compete against that, then there is no point in even bothering.
I'm not sure the alternative is any better -- obese unemployed workers subsisting on handouts taken from the people who actually are working, skyrocketing healthcare costs for the people who are actually working, running out of unemployment and going on food stamps and other forms of welfare while popping out children they can't afford and will end up being another 80 years of burden on society.
So the answer is yes, I'd much rather see that than have my tax money wasted on people who live irresponsibly and don't want to work or think they deserve better than they can get.
The foolishness that is millions of users trusting a single giant computing grid owned by a single private corporation was stupid in the first place.
it is everyone putting their eggs in the same giant basket
Generally speaking, that isn't a bad idea. When you put money in your bank, you're putting your eggs in that same giant basket.
What is a bad idea is putting your eggs in a basket with a switchblade, kilo of coke, a couple grenades, a packet of anthrax and a VHS tape of kiddie porn. At that point, you really need to blame yourself when that basket gets taken from you.
Youtube may be next. Once they started putting ads on pirated content, they became an active participant.
Youtube does a fairly impressive job of detecting that automatically. The content holder can choose to block the content, or Google will plaster ads on it and share the revenue.
I've used entire songs in videos I've uploaded. In every case it immediately picked up the song, warned me that it could result in the video being taken down, and warned me that it won't be watchable on some devices. The artists in question make money off my use of it. Win/win, as far as I'm concerned.
How dare people drink their tap water! After all, how are bottled water companies expected to turn a profit when people can just turn a knob on their faucet and get water on their own?
Insightful? Municipal tap water isn't free, either. Well water is, in some places. But in a lot of places, your land rights don't include water rights.
Go hook a hose up to a fire hydrant and start watering your lawn with it. See what happens.
Now the oinking and squealing objection, Snopes might have a point. But I've never put a piglet in a bag. Perhaps the darkness makes them more quiet. Or perhaps it depends on the breed.
Me, neither... but I can tell you, if you try to put a cat in a bag... you'll know. And if you do, its best to keep it in the bag, because letting it out of the bag without full body armor.... *shudder*
Note: a "poke" is a bag. Apparently, people would sell a cat in a bag, and tell you it was a baby pig (which you could then fatten up). If you "let the cat out of the bag", you were showing everyone what a fraud the merchant was.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, the middle class in China is more important to our businesses than Americans are, given that the middle class in China is larger than the entire American population. Of course, we'll continue to ignore the hundreds of millions of peasants in poverty, just like they're ignored in the US. Bad for profits, you see.
And, keep in mind, the upper class lifestyle that most people in the US attribute to being middle class is possible because of the massive decrease in manufacturing costs for their lifestyle goods that China provides.
Once you've lost it, it's gone forever. ... low level.
Unless you change something really
Like the phone number.
And did you miss your virginity after it was gone?
They already have enough to blackmail everyone.
They're not already blackmailing everyone?
Crap, I wonder who that I payed that rans^H^H^H^Hdonation to?
So now watermarking counts as DRM? Dammit, stop expanding terms like a madman!
DRM isn't always about preventing copying. It can be about tracing copies, preventing reading, expiring content. A watermark embedded in a stock photo is still a form of DRM.
There's no expansion there.
Big Fines should go to the users harmed, not the State. A corporate screw-up should be punished, but the money shouldn't be flushed down some bureaucratic hole.
Why do you think these sort of laws are put in place? Laws can be written such that a civil lawsuit can be brought for damages, or they can be written to bring heavy fines. Which do you think a government is more likely to pass?
Yes, it does have DRM, just not restrictive DRM. Songs are still tagged with the ID of the buyer. (Don't go uploading your iTunes-purchased songs anywhere without stripping it out!)
I believe your numbers are correct for surface melting.
My understanding is the bigger concern is melting at ground level, and the ice flowing more quickly off the land into the ocean. You don't need the ice to melt to raise ocean levels, you just need it to not be sitting on rock.
To put that into perspective that means sea temperatures could rapidly return to mid-Eocene levels at the North Pole, about 55 F. Unless you are Santa, it would probably be much warmer at your house. Needless to say, growing food in much of the US or perhaps almost anywhere would be no easy task, especially since much of the mid-west will likely again be underwater.
While I agree with most of what you said, the parts of the US that have historically been under water were under water because the ground was physically lower at the time, not because the oceans were higher. Uplift brought big chunks of the continental plates well above where they were, so those areas will not suddenly be underwater because of the rest of the permanent ice melting. And some of those areas (like the mid-west) are still uplifting from the release of the weight of the glaciers 20k years ago.
Isn't it odd that there would be oil anywhere near the poles? It would mean that area had to have had a massive amount of plant and animal life there at some point in the past. Exactly how hot was the Earth back then?!
Two reasons -- one, land masses move. The physical rock under the poles are part of the contentinental plates that used to be near the equator, which is why there's so much oil sands in Canada. Secondly, there are two "normal" states for the Earth -- frozen (30-40% ice coverage) and hot, with conditions like you see in equatorial regions today everywhere, with no permanent ice. The reason we have ice at the poles and warm everywhere else is because right now we're in an interglacial period *in an ice age*. It is a *weird* condition, historically. Now, its entirely plausable that the "global warming" is working to keep us from slipping out of the interglacial period -- we're already significantly beyond the point where most of them appear to have ended in the past. So that's arguably a potentially good thing. Humanity spent most of its existence during the glacial periods, but the planet sure can't support 7 billion people that way.
A bigger concern is if global warming was to tip us *out* of the existing ice age. Humanity *hasn't* lived through a warm period on the Earth. In fact, large mammals in general haven't. No one is particularly sure if the planet can support *any* people that way.
But in either case, there's oil at the poles because that land was near the equator when the deposits that turned into oil were layed down.
You aren't Google's customer, the companies that buy adwords are.
Stripping those sites out of the results helps by getting the high-revenue sites up higher in the results list. That's good for Google and their actual customers.
That's a good list. Did you furiously jackhammer that out on your keyboard when you saw there was an EV post on /. or did you have it ready to go and just cut in paste?
(And, to be clear, the first sentance is serious, the second is mildly sarcastic.)
Final assemby is in the USA. Most of the chassis is made in China, and the rest of the parts are sourced from various places around the world.
Unlike, say, a Hyundai which is almost entirely made in the US.
Oh, it's WAY more than a year too late. Maybe 5 or so.
Of course, Microsoft is setting an absolutely terrible example for the industry. They should have at least demoted the dancing monkey way more than 5 years ago.
I disagree. Microsoft's stock may have been stagnant over the last decade, but its also payed out an enormous amount of money in dividends. Ballmer wasn't holding the reins when the big drop in the stock happened during the dot-com bubble bursting, and the thing that Microsoft got out of it was a firm transition from a "tech" stock to a solid blue-chip stock. The type of investors who buy those securities are very different, and the responsibility of the board and CEO are very different. Microsoft showing solid revenue growth, relative stock price stability and consistent payment of dividends *is* what the stockholders expect. It means everything needs to be more conservative.
Contract that to Apple -- their stock graph, while steadily rising over time, has a sharp sawtooth pattern to it with quick-flip investors sinking billions into it, catching that wave. (I invested a pretty decent amount into Apple two years ago and have nearly *quadrupled* the amount by riding the sawtooth up!) But that pattern doesn't make Apple a better company or a better investment. I've got a lot of Microsoft stock, too -- that stock I'm equally happy with. I *expect* the Apple stock to crash. The investing pattern I follow (and clearly most investors are following, based on those cycles) is exactly that. We all *know* their value is based on transient hype, and not a solid foundation. Thats why people keep pulling money out, waiting out peak and buying back in the dip! The Microsoft stock, on the other hand, I know I'll get a steady return from and never really even consider selling.
For both of those, as an investor in both companies, I'm very happy with both Jobs' job and Ballmers' job.
What government services is someone paying $10m a year in taxes using that is 1000x what someone paying $10k a year is using?
Answer: none.
There is only one fair taxation. Take the total cost off all government services, divide that number by the number of taxpayers. If you make more than that, you keep it. If you make less than that, you owe time back to society. Simple as that. That's the only fair taxation. $26,600 per person. If people don't like it, vote out the people who are spending 3.5 trillion dollars a year. If they can't afford $26,600, work harder. Don't breed. Grab a shovel and spend a few months helping to build a highway. Simple as that.
In a progressive tax system, I'm stealing from everyone who is doing better than me, and being stolen from to support anyone doing worse than me. Its stealing from the responsible individual who makes $100k a year and has no children to support the mouth-breather who has eight kids on $18k a year. Simple as that. You may have made a value judgement that the benefit you would get from the stealing is a net benefit versus the stealing from you, but don't pretent for a second that its not stealing.
America wont stop it, cant stop it, and will ultimately destroy itself for a few rich multi national corporations who have no interest in America, other than benefiting off our high dollar value.
This is the world economy folks. America gets fucked to death, while the rich benefit.
American can't stop it, you're right. But not because of the rich benefitting -- the people who benefit from the arrangement are the people who are complaining about the rich. The rich can afford a $3000 iPhone -- there are a million Foxconn employees working in those conditions because the "middle class" (meaning, the hundred million people in the US who fake a middle or upper middle class lifestyle on credit and cheap goods) insist on that. Your 55" LCD TV is $1000 because of those jobs being overseas. Your $21k car is $21k because of the parts being made overseas. Your phone is $400 because it was made overseas. Hell, most of your food is what it costs because it comes from overseas. You want to drink coffee? Have strawberries during the entire year? Have a closet full of clothes you can replace every year? Chocolate? A couch for $599?
The desire of everyone in the US, and similar countries, to live MASSIVELY beyond their means is why America can't stop it.
Lets put it this way. If the total amount of stuff you acquire during a year would've taken you more time to produce yourself than you have in a year, you took advantage of somebody. You can make $50k a year and live a lifestyle someone 50 years ago couldn't have lived on a million dollars a year because we, as a society, have gotten really good at ensuring there's a hundred people living in poverty under you, doing that work for you.
That has nothing to do with the rich. The rich are rich because they know how to give people what they want, not because they are stealing anything. Bankers are rich selling iffy mortgages because 20 million people who shouldn't have the option of owning a home demanded the right to own a home. Apple execs are rich outsourcing the work because there's 50 million people in the US who demand those devices.
Continuing to deflect the real reasons onto the rich is not what will ever fix things. People deciding they care enough about the plight of workers in China to trim back their lifestyle 90% is the only thing that will fix anything.
'There's no American plant that can match that.'
And that's because the US and most (all?) civilized countries have labour laws that are in place to provide certain minimum standards as far as health and safety goes... so your average US and European worker don't have to sleep in factory provided dormitories (and most likely pay a fair chunk of their paycheck for the privilege) and be forced to work 12 hour shifts.
Off course, labour laws in the west was prompted by things like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire - in China such incidents are considered part of doing business.
No, instead they work two jobs, with most families having dual incomes, so they can pay 40% of their pay on their house and cars, "volunarily" work 12 hour shifts, skip vacations, and race towards old age with the reality that everyone else is going to have to support them because they have no savings and a mountain of debt, and a house full of material goods that directly represent the labor of the people you're talking about.
As bad as it may be in a factory, it's better than staying in the village with no electricity or running water and trying to eek out an existence as a subsistence farmer.
Thats a detail that is painfully obvious to anyone who has actually been to China and talked to anyone with family at places like Foxconn. The employees live VERY well compared to the alternative -- enough so that they live well and can send money back to their families.
But there's a lot of dimwits who don't seem to understand that their western lifestyle *exists* because of a *literal* army of people living in near poverty below them. Making it fair does not mean pulling jobs back to the US -- you'll just send a half billion people back in starvation. Making it "fair" means *everyone* in the world making a couple bucks a day and living in those conditions. Why? There simply isn't enough resources in the world to support even two billion people living at "western" standards of living, much less seven billion people.
That's the choice. Some people live life with greater access to everything from food, recreation and resources than others, or everyone lives in 3rd world conditions. There is *literally* no middle ground there. There can't be because we live on a planet of limited resources and life on Earth *is* zero-sum.
I thought the same thing. Do we really want millions of americans living in factory dormitories making barely enough money to send a few dollars a month home to their family's village, where there is likely no running water and everyone subsists on a diet of rice, vegetables, and a few servings of protein a week? Seriously... if an american factory worker has to compete against that, then there is no point in even bothering.
I'm not sure the alternative is any better -- obese unemployed workers subsisting on handouts taken from the people who actually are working, skyrocketing healthcare costs for the people who are actually working, running out of unemployment and going on food stamps and other forms of welfare while popping out children they can't afford and will end up being another 80 years of burden on society.
So the answer is yes, I'd much rather see that than have my tax money wasted on people who live irresponsibly and don't want to work or think they deserve better than they can get.
The foolishness that is millions of users trusting a single giant computing grid owned by a single private corporation was stupid in the first place.
it is everyone putting their eggs in the same giant basket
Generally speaking, that isn't a bad idea. When you put money in your bank, you're putting your eggs in that same giant basket.
What is a bad idea is putting your eggs in a basket with a switchblade, kilo of coke, a couple grenades, a packet of anthrax and a VHS tape of kiddie porn. At that point, you really need to blame yourself when that basket gets taken from you.
Google went from "Do No Evil" to "Amoral Megacorp" in record time. It's the age we live in (everything happens faster).
No they didn't, they just got lazy about maintaining their public image.
Youtube may be next. Once they started putting ads on pirated content, they became an active participant.
Youtube does a fairly impressive job of detecting that automatically. The content holder can choose to block the content, or Google will plaster ads on it and share the revenue.
I've used entire songs in videos I've uploaded. In every case it immediately picked up the song, warned me that it could result in the video being taken down, and warned me that it won't be watchable on some devices. The artists in question make money off my use of it. Win/win, as far as I'm concerned.
How dare people drink their tap water! After all, how are bottled water companies expected to turn a profit when people can just turn a knob on their faucet and get water on their own?
Insightful? Municipal tap water isn't free, either. Well water is, in some places. But in a lot of places, your land rights don't include water rights.
Go hook a hose up to a fire hydrant and start watering your lawn with it. See what happens.
Now the oinking and squealing objection, Snopes might have a point. But I've never put a piglet in a bag. Perhaps the darkness makes them more quiet. Or perhaps it depends on the breed.
Me, neither... but I can tell you, if you try to put a cat in a bag... you'll know. And if you do, its best to keep it in the bag, because letting it out of the bag without full body armor.... *shudder*
Note: a "poke" is a bag. Apparently, people would sell a cat in a bag, and tell you it was a baby pig (which you could then fatten up). If you "let the cat out of the bag", you were showing everyone what a fraud the merchant was.
See http://xkcd.com/325/ (when the SOPA blackout ends).
An interesting theory, yes ... but not actually true. Thats been very thoroughly debunked for decades. (Heck, Snopes has a whole page on it.)
Not to mention that the product being returned is not electronic.
Wait. Hold on for a second. This could be big.
You could sell these to frequent flyers - they don't have to turn them off during takeoff and landing.
Might fly....
Yeah, try taking a half pound of clay through security and see what happens.
Better yet, stick a couple wires in it, and leave a watch in your bag, too!