Answer : It's temporary, to make sure neither party suffers to greatly until the Actual Judgement gets made.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Nonsense. If every two bit web site sought and
received a similar restraining order, the
economic impact on those who understand the
need for classless, non-portable addressing would
be severe.
Companies that don't want to expense options but are forced still will simply maintain two sets of books, two earnings reports, etc.
Financial analysts that issue hold/buy recommendations on stocks will simply track the financial figures that don't account for stock option expensing.
Do you think that all comments posted to this story on Slashdot were fairly moderated? It is obvious that opinions at Slashdot which differ from the groupthink stand the highest chance of being unfairly "moderated" down. Very few websites, including Slashdot, are truly bastions of free speech.
The irony of the above being modded down to zero
isnt lost on me. Hypocrites.
I travel a lot, and wouldn't mind a compact device that does calls, basic web browsing, mp3, etc. Having to haul all these devices around is cumbersome.
I got a $20 MasterCard gift card in the mail as part of some travel rebate program. What to spend $20 on? Amazon wants $25 orders before they give free shipping, restuarants will try to add a 20% charge to the authorization total, etc. I ended up buying a bunch of 88cent tracks on Walmart.com.
Of course you get Windows Media (.wma) files from Walmart, and they have DRM, and it is not worth $20 to hack. But the license with Walmart's.wma files does allow 10 or so burns to audio CD format on CD-R or CD-RW. So what I did was burn them to a CD-RW (seems to be much more reliable to burn to CD-RW than CD-R), and then copied the CD-RW to a CD-R. From there, there are lots of tools that will let you burn mp3s (for your own use of course).
What is really needed is a pseudo device driver for Windows that looks like a writable CD-RW disk to the operating system, but instead is a file or folder on a hard drive. This way, the "burns" would be guaranteed to succeed.\
What has increased dramatically is the number of people inflating the reserve numbers so that
a) they can pump more out of the ground, under OPEC rules
b) they can confuse the credulous that there is nothing to worry about - since there's not a damn thing they can do about it
So why hasn't the price of oil gone up
(in real terms) to reflect this scarcity?
Face facts. Oil supply is about to turn down, and when supply can no longer match the rising demand curve, the US way of life comes crashing to a halt. No amount of ostrich impressions is going to change that.
I doubt that will happen. Once the price of
oil starts to rise in real terms that start to
lay a big hurt on the economy, investment in
alternate energy sources and efficiency
will pick up, thus
driving the costs of alternate enerfy
down, and reducing demand for fossil
fuels (thereby reducing the cost of fossil
fuels). And don't
forget nukes either... a relative I recently
had lunch with is an ex Navy sub captain, who has
parlayed his nuclear propulsion expertise to
work at a nuke power consultancy. He tells me
that the US is bringing more plants on line.
Worst case, people will get a clue that
source of ecological damage is not
technology (just the opposite... imagine
the starvation today without modern agriculture),
and is instead higher population. The cost of
those mouths to feed and shelter will go up, and
people will make fewer babies. Cut the world's
population in half, and there's plenty of
energy, and less man made CO2.
> I find it interesting that a lot of Americans,
> including here on Slashdot, see the efforts
> by environmentalists to get global warming
> under control as an attack on America and The
> American Way Of Life(tm).
One can understand that perception from the
fact that the Kyoto treaty calls for the
US to reduce emissions more than most (all?)
countries, and exempts the developing world,
including countries with high GDP grow rates.
[Fast growing economies === econonmies that
produce lots of CO2.] Thus the American Way of Life is diminished
under Kyoto far more than the Chinese or
European Way of Life.
Finally, everything I've
read says that the CO2 levels mandated by
Kyoto won't do a thing to reduce the effects
of global warning. So Kyoto can easily be
(mis)perceived as an attack on American prosperity, rather than a futile attempt to
lower the globe's air and water temperature.
> if dubya is going to spend money on the space
> program that's [europa lander] a worthwhile
> project!
But not the most worthwhile project.
Why do we want humans to colonize space?
To enrich nonfictional tycoons like the
entrepeneur described in Heinlein's "The Man
who Sold the Moon"? To stimulate technology
advancement? To inspire school kids to become
scientists and engineers? Those are certainly
worthy things, but they are merely the means,
not the end.
Earth may possibility be unique among the universe. After all, were it not so, then as
Fermi asks, where are the aliens. Even I
can come up with rebuttals to Fermi, but
that's not what I'm debating here. Let's
say that the only intelligent species
in the universe today are us humans.
Maybe you want humans, or post humans to
survive the inevitable planet killing event
(a comet, asteroid, rapid global warning,
rapid ice age, supernova of a nearby star,
the solar system passing through a thick
dust cloud, etc.) Or maybe you don't care,
as long something intelligent survives
to continue civilization.
Either way, humans are the only existance
proof of intelligence. So if you want intelligence to persist,
you should be behind man in space in
self-sustaining settlements that could expand
intelligent civilization independent of Earth.
If you don't want intelligence to persist,
then by all means, hunt for bacteria on
Europia at the expense of manned missions and
colonies.
Maybe we should wait until the technology is cheaper so that we don't have to trim social programs? It won't be cheaper until we start
making many more space ships, and learn how
to make it cheaper, better, faster, etc. And
how do we know when the planet killing event
will occur. It may already be too late...
there could be a big comet outside of Pluto's
orbit that we haven't discovered, headed for
collision a century or two from now. If so,
if we don't get busy now, humans will be
extinct. Single payer, universal health
care is nice, but no one will care when
the planet killer comes.
Maybe the answer to the Fermi Paradox, is
that there's an intergalactic organization
out there that nurtures planets till they
produce space capable civilizations, and then
sends a planet killer. The smart ones that
have an interplanetary civilization join
the club, the stupid ones win a Darwin
award. Extra credit goes to the smarter ones
that have the tech to divert planet killers:-)
> Except that you can't. They won't let you
> move over there to work
Everything Indians have told me is that the
above is not true. http://mha.nic.in/fore.htm says India allows foreign workers.
This usenet article says the same.
My employer recently opened an office
an India and some of the transferees were
U.S. Citizens of non-India origin.
Do you have a pointer (other than from
a white redneck) that says otherwise?
Seriously, think about moving to India. Lower wages for sure, but much lower cost of living. A rich culture to experience. If things ever turn around in the USA you'll be well positioned to lead your Indian employer's expansion into America.
If I were a lot younger, single, unattached, and in your situation, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
Hmm, how do you propose to force other countries to use the US minumum wage? And to be fair, what about countries that have a higher minimum wage than the US? Shouldn't we use the highest possible minimum wage, or are you an America firster?
Finally, are you prepared for the higher costs of consumer goods or do you plan on growing your own cotton and making clothes from it?
> Even if they all suddenly would work for half > the salary overnight, HP would have to reduce > the price of their products too in order to > ensure that people can afford to purchase > them.
A large percentage of HP's revenue, if not most their revenuse comes from outside the USA. So, the pricing pressure is not one to one with salary pressure on the US worker.
A large percentage of HP's revenues in the USA are to other companies who are also moving jobs off shore. With the customer's reduced costs, pricing pressure on HP is further removed from one-to-one with salary pressure on the US worker.
You are also assuming that the US worker won't find highly paid work in another area. In the past, when for example, when the memory chip business moved off shore, the CPU chip business soared, and the US chip worker, if anything made more money. This is basic economics... Asia was better suited to make memory, and the USA was better suited to make CPUs.
But even if it turns out there are no more high paying tech jobs in the USA, what will happen is that as salaries rise in Asia, and decline in the USA, eventually there will be a meeting point, such that the overall costs (labor, hassles of long distance management, etc.) will equalize. In a perfect world economy, a US dollar (or Euro, or whatever) will buy the same basket of goods and services everywhere. We aren't there yet, hences jobs ebb and flow across the world.
Let's say that the IRS accuses you of tax evasion. You initially decided to cooporate because you have the proverbial nothing-to-hide. They decided to search your house of receipts, inquire into your book report grades, medical records, drug-use, and sexual activites. You then decided that you did not want to cooporate anymore so you get a lawyer.
Absurd. There is no denying Iraq illegally
invaded Kuwait. Whereas given the complexity of the US tax code, the the room for
interpretation and confusion (both on the
part of IRS and the taxpayer), its easy to
presume innocence on the part of the accused. Saddam ceded his right to innocence when he
invaded Kuwait, triggering a war that the US has yet to sign a treaty for. The war is still on. There's no analogy here.
And this was modded to 5? Absurd.
According to Scott Ritter, former-UN weapons inspector who gave a talk at my school a while back [...]
Perhaps Ritter was at your school (probably
an elementary school), to scope out underaged girls to
rape.
If you could ask Mr. Cray, he'd might say that
SRC Computers
is his legacy, not Cray Computer
Corp.
He co-founded this company (with several other
ex-Cray employees) and
died while still
an employee/owner.
Interestingly, SRC is still around without any
evidence on their website
of shipping a
product. My guess is that their customers
and/or investors prefer to stay out of
the limelight.
With outsourcing the employer is contracting with another company, and the employer has more legal remedies if the contractor does not deliver (and deeper pockets to attack). With the telecommuter, the emploer's remedies are much more limited.
The other difference is that the outsourcer is presumably employing professional mamangent to oversee the remote workers. With the telecommuter the employer has to rely more on trust.
Finally, I'm not sure the submitter of this item really meant outsourcing versus exporting jobs to a foreign subsidiary of the company. If the latter, then my legal remedy argument doesn't hold, but the oversee and trust argument does.
Seriously, a new law goes into effect this summer that prevents cities and counties from limiting concealed weapons. This is a great state, and I'm glad governor Bill realizes that his state has bigger tech industry than recording industry.
I don't understand why this is such a shock. I mean, did you really expect that it would be LEGAL to rebroadcast television over the internet without proper permission? Do you think that would be "right"?
What's the issue... someone puts a signal
into the "air" for anyone to pick up, and
someone else amplifies it. The amplifier happens
to be the Internet. *Copy*right is for protecting
copying; extending the range of a broadcast is
not copying. Indeed, extending the broadcast of
content laden with commercials is a good thing
for the original broadcaster.
I'll answer my
owner rhetoric... the issue is the same one
that motivates region encoding in DVDs. Which
is that content providers do not want a free
and competitive market for content, and instead
want to balkanize the market into little fiefdoms
so as to artificially raise the costs. The value
of watching the Toronto Maple Leafs on TV to someone in Toronto is likely less than
the value to an ex-Toronto resident watching
that same game from his new home in Vancouver.
However, the purpose of communications
technology is to remove distance as an inhibitor
to enjoying life. The costs of the Vancouverite
for watching the Toronto hockey game should be
in proportion to the cost of retransmitting the
signals thousands of miles away. Instead, the
government has effectively levied a trade
tariff on the content receiver in Vancouver.
Trade tariffs create market distortions and
inhibit growth (re: The Great Depression).
This is a slippery slope. Someday it will be
illegal to sell or purchase antennae that
allow one to pick up TV and AM/FM signals from more than 100 miles away. Let's say someone
invents a TV receiver that lets someone in LA
pickup TV signals from Chicago. So now a
transplanted Chicagoan doesn't need NFL
Sunday Ticket on DirecTV to watch the Bears.
Any predictions on whether the broadcasting
industry will sue?
But maybe you think it is wrong to receive
long distance weak transmissions? I'm sure then,
when you manage to pickup an AM radio station from
500 miles away, you quickly change stations, because to fo otherwise, wouldn't be "right".
A hilarious book about what happens
when the aliens come to earth. The
aliens have superior
technology at affordable prices.
Nothing Earth manufactures can
compete with the imports, causing an economic
depression, and the book's human protagonist to
go from riches to rags.
It combines nanotech, AI, interplanetary
warfare and the dawn of interstellar travel
as the backdrop for a familiar good versus
evil plot. The issue of Daniel's future is what
is a human being? The inhabitants of the outer
planets have a much more liberal view than that
of the dictator of the inner planets.
Unfortunately, the sequel to Metaplanetary,
Superluminal, is not yet out, so if you if want to
be sure you won't be hung out to dry like
David Gerrold did to us with the Chtorr series,
you might want to wait.
Slashdot Mirror
> and a more secure version of NFS
In the context of Linux, this is coming in
Linux 2.6 (Kerberized NFS). RedHat Fedora already ships it.
Solaris has shipped it since '98.
Companies that don't want to expense options
but are forced still will simply maintain
two sets of books, two earnings reports, etc.
Financial analysts that issue hold/buy
recommendations on stocks will simply track
the financial figures that don't account for
stock option expensing.
The irony of the above being modded down to zero isnt lost on me. Hypocrites.
I travel a lot, and wouldn't mind a compact
device that does calls, basic web browsing,
mp3, etc. Having to haul all these devices
around is cumbersome.
If you look more closely, you'll that '0' is on
the keypad twice. This is obviously a mock up.
I got a $20 MasterCard gift card in the mail
.wma files does allow 10 or so burns
as part of some travel rebate program.
What to spend $20 on? Amazon wants $25 orders
before they give free shipping, restuarants
will try to add a 20% charge to the authorization
total, etc. I ended up buying a bunch of 88cent tracks on Walmart.com.
Of course you get Windows Media (.wma) files
from Walmart, and they have DRM, and it is not
worth $20 to hack. But the license with
Walmart's
to audio CD format on CD-R or CD-RW. So what I
did was burn them to a CD-RW (seems to be
much more reliable to burn to CD-RW than CD-R),
and then copied the CD-RW to a CD-R. From there,
there are lots of tools that will let you
burn mp3s (for your own use of course).
What is really needed is a pseudo device driver
for Windows that looks like a writable
CD-RW disk to the operating system, but instead
is a file or folder on a hard drive. This way,
the "burns" would be guaranteed to succeed.\
Generally perhaps, but American's can use the
NAFTA free trade provisions to enter Canada
for work for certain classifications including
high tech.
a) they can pump more out of the ground, under OPEC rules
b) they can confuse the credulous that there is nothing to worry about - since there's not a damn thing they can do about it
So why hasn't the price of oil gone up (in real terms) to reflect this scarcity?
Face facts. Oil supply is about to turn down, and when supply can no longer match the rising demand curve, the US way of life comes crashing to a halt. No amount of ostrich impressions is going to change that.
I doubt that will happen. Once the price of oil starts to rise in real terms that start to lay a big hurt on the economy, investment in alternate energy sources and efficiency will pick up, thus driving the costs of alternate enerfy down, and reducing demand for fossil fuels (thereby reducing the cost of fossil fuels). And don't forget nukes either ... a relative I recently
had lunch with is an ex Navy sub captain, who has
parlayed his nuclear propulsion expertise to
work at a nuke power consultancy. He tells me
that the US is bringing more plants on line.
Worst case, people will get a clue that source of ecological damage is not technology (just the opposite ... imagine
the starvation today without modern agriculture),
and is instead higher population. The cost of
those mouths to feed and shelter will go up, and
people will make fewer babies. Cut the world's
population in half, and there's plenty of
energy, and less man made CO2.
> including here on Slashdot, see the efforts
> by environmentalists to get global warming
> under control as an attack on America and The
> American Way Of Life(tm).
One can understand that perception from the fact that the Kyoto treaty calls for the US to reduce emissions more than most (all?) countries, and exempts the developing world, including countries with high GDP grow rates. [Fast growing economies === econonmies that produce lots of CO2.] Thus the American Way of Life is diminished under Kyoto far more than the Chinese or European Way of Life.
Finally, everything I've read says that the CO2 levels mandated by Kyoto won't do a thing to reduce the effects of global warning. So Kyoto can easily be (mis)perceived as an attack on American prosperity, rather than a futile attempt to lower the globe's air and water temperature.
But not the most worthwhile project.
Why do we want humans to colonize space? To enrich nonfictional tycoons like the entrepeneur described in Heinlein's "The Man who Sold the Moon"? To stimulate technology advancement? To inspire school kids to become scientists and engineers? Those are certainly worthy things, but they are merely the means, not the end.
Earth may possibility be unique among the universe. After all, were it not so, then as Fermi asks, where are the aliens. Even I can come up with rebuttals to Fermi, but that's not what I'm debating here. Let's say that the only intelligent species in the universe today are us humans. Maybe you want humans, or post humans to survive the inevitable planet killing event (a comet, asteroid, rapid global warning, rapid ice age, supernova of a nearby star, the solar system passing through a thick dust cloud, etc.) Or maybe you don't care, as long something intelligent survives to continue civilization.
Either way, humans are the only existance proof of intelligence. So if you want intelligence to persist, you should be behind man in space in self-sustaining settlements that could expand intelligent civilization independent of Earth.
If you don't want intelligence to persist, then by all means, hunt for bacteria on Europia at the expense of manned missions and colonies.
Maybe we should wait until the technology is cheaper so that we don't have to trim social programs? It won't be cheaper until we start making many more space ships, and learn how to make it cheaper, better, faster, etc. And how do we know when the planet killing event will occur. It may already be too late ...
there could be a big comet outside of Pluto's
orbit that we haven't discovered, headed for
collision a century or two from now. If so,
if we don't get busy now, humans will be
extinct. Single payer, universal health
care is nice, but no one will care when
the planet killer comes.
Maybe the answer to the Fermi Paradox, is that there's an intergalactic organization out there that nurtures planets till they produce space capable civilizations, and then sends a planet killer. The smart ones that have an interplanetary civilization join the club, the stupid ones win a Darwin award. Extra credit goes to the smarter ones that have the tech to divert planet killers :-)
Everything Indians have told me is that the above is not true. http://mha.nic.in/fore.htm says India allows foreign workers. This usenet article says the same. My employer recently opened an office an India and some of the transferees were U.S. Citizens of non-India origin.
Do you have a pointer (other than from a white redneck) that says otherwise?
Seriously, think about moving to India.
Lower wages for sure, but much lower
cost of living. A rich culture to experience.
If things ever turn around in the USA you'll
be well positioned to lead your Indian employer's
expansion into America.
If I were a lot younger, single, unattached,
and in your situation, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
Hmm, how do you propose to force other
countries to use the US minumum wage?
And to be fair, what about countries
that have a higher minimum wage than the US?
Shouldn't we use the highest possible minimum
wage, or are you an America firster?
Finally, are you prepared for the higher
costs of consumer goods or do you plan
on growing your own cotton and making clothes
from it?
> Even if they all suddenly would work for half
... Asia
> the salary overnight, HP would have to reduce
> the price of their products too in order to
> ensure that people can afford to purchase
> them.
A large percentage of HP's revenue, if not most their revenuse comes from outside the USA. So,
the pricing pressure is not one to one with
salary pressure on the US worker.
A large percentage of HP's revenues in the USA
are to other companies who are also moving jobs
off shore. With the customer's reduced costs,
pricing pressure on HP is further removed from
one-to-one with salary pressure on the US worker.
You are also assuming that the US worker won't
find highly paid work in another area. In the
past, when for example, when the memory chip
business moved off shore, the CPU chip business
soared, and the US chip worker, if anything made
more money. This is basic economics
was better suited to make memory, and the USA
was better suited to make CPUs.
But even if it turns out there are no more high
paying tech jobs in the USA, what will happen
is that as salaries rise in Asia, and decline
in the USA, eventually there will be a meeting
point, such that the overall costs (labor,
hassles of long distance management, etc.)
will equalize. In a perfect world economy,
a US dollar (or Euro, or whatever) will
buy the same basket of goods and services
everywhere. We aren't there yet, hences jobs
ebb and flow across the world.
> Also helps if you spell poorly.
Or submit a redundant story.
SRC Computers is his legacy, not Cray Computer Corp.
He co-founded this company (with several other
ex-Cray employees) and died while still an employee/owner.
Interestingly, SRC is still around without any evidence on their website
of shipping a product. My guess is that their customers and/or investors
prefer to stay out of the limelight.
> Forget it. India has laws barring non-Indians from working there.
Reference? Indians that I talk to tell me
otherwise.
With outsourcing the employer is contracting
with another company, and the employer
has more legal remedies if the contractor does
not deliver (and deeper pockets to attack).
With the telecommuter, the emploer's remedies are
much more limited.
The other difference is that the outsourcer is
presumably employing professional mamangent to
oversee the remote workers. With the telecommuter
the employer has to rely more on trust.
Finally, I'm not sure the submitter of this item
really meant outsourcing versus exporting
jobs to a foreign subsidiary of the company. If
the latter, then my legal remedy argument doesn't
hold, but the oversee and trust argument does.
Your guns are welcome in Colorado.
Seriously, a new law goes into effect this
summer that prevents cities and counties from
limiting concealed weapons. This is a great
state, and I'm glad governor Bill realizes that
his state has bigger tech industry than
recording industry.
What's the issue ... someone puts a signal
into the "air" for anyone to pick up, and
someone else amplifies it. The amplifier happens
to be the Internet. *Copy*right is for protecting
copying; extending the range of a broadcast is
not copying. Indeed, extending the broadcast of
content laden with commercials is a good thing
for the original broadcaster.
I'll answer my owner rhetoric ... the issue is the same one
that motivates region encoding in DVDs. Which
is that content providers do not want a free
and competitive market for content, and instead
want to balkanize the market into little fiefdoms
so as to artificially raise the costs. The value
of watching the Toronto Maple Leafs on TV to someone in Toronto is likely less than
the value to an ex-Toronto resident watching
that same game from his new home in Vancouver.
However, the purpose of communications
technology is to remove distance as an inhibitor
to enjoying life. The costs of the Vancouverite
for watching the Toronto hockey game should be
in proportion to the cost of retransmitting the
signals thousands of miles away. Instead, the
government has effectively levied a trade
tariff on the content receiver in Vancouver.
Trade tariffs create market distortions and inhibit growth (re: The Great Depression).
This is a slippery slope. Someday it will be illegal to sell or purchase antennae that allow one to pick up TV and AM/FM signals from more than 100 miles away. Let's say someone invents a TV receiver that lets someone in LA pickup TV signals from Chicago. So now a transplanted Chicagoan doesn't need NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV to watch the Bears. Any predictions on whether the broadcasting industry will sue?
But maybe you think it is wrong to receive long distance weak transmissions? I'm sure then, when you manage to pickup an AM radio station from 500 miles away, you quickly change stations, because to fo otherwise, wouldn't be "right".
A hilarious book about what happens when the aliens come to earth. The aliens have superior technology at affordable prices. Nothing Earth manufactures can compete with the imports, causing an economic depression, and the book's human protagonist to go from riches to rags.
http://www.sfwriter.com I've yet to be disappointed by anything he's written.
It combines nanotech, AI, interplanetary warfare and the dawn of interstellar travel as the backdrop for a familiar good versus evil plot. The issue of Daniel's future is what is a human being? The inhabitants of the outer planets have a much more liberal view than that of the dictator of the inner planets.
Unfortunately, the sequel to Metaplanetary, Superluminal, is not yet out, so if you if want to be sure you won't be hung out to dry like David Gerrold did to us with the Chtorr series, you might want to wait.