I just got a Rio Karma. It was $280 for 20Gig player. A dock is included. The player supports MP3 and Ogg formats (in addition to FLAC and $MS).
Besides that Rio Karma comes with a Java application that can be run from Linux to manage the music on your player (of course it comes with Windows sofware too).
Oh, yeah and the cool thing is that the dock has an ethernet port so your Karma can be accessed from the network.
Ain'a hey. All the more reason to not support Wal-Mart, which perpetuates much of the sweatshop culture and low wages of Chinese labor. A recent article I read states that approximately one tenth of Chinese manufacturing goes to satisfy needs for Wal-Mart stores. Ten percent of the output of all of China goes to Wal-Mart.
The things is that the Chinese wages are low by our standards. By Chinese standards, even with long hours of work, the pay the workers get is the best living they can make.
Some US companies try to make sure that the factories that make stuff for them follow reasonable work practices (I heard a program about this on NPR and how the Chinese companies try to cheat).
"Monopoly: Exclusive ownership or control, as of a certain commodity or business activity." Doesn't say anything about prices.
I don't disagree with you, however in general the reason monopolies are considered bad is because they can jack prices up. That's why when the telephone company was a monopoly it was heavily regulated.
The point NYT article was making (it was in Dec 7th Week In Review section) is that Wal-mart maybe the largest retailer, perhaps large enough for the anti-trust laws to kick in, except that Wal-mart has lowest prices on the stuff it sells.
When those low prices are (a)artificial due to coercion of suppliers and (b)ultimately to the detriment of our own factories and workers? Yes.
Again, I don't know the solution. But we have a problem is someone can do the same we can at one tenth the cost, and it costs next to nothing to bring the work there.
If the standard of living and the cost of things was the same all over the world this would not be a problem.
As a scientifically active culture, the Islamic world really began to fall behind around the time of the invention of the printing press (which was banned for use with Turkish and Arabic in the Ottoman Empire until 1729)
I forgot the part about the printing press. It's funny, you could say that the Ottoman/Islamic empire began to die when strong protection for "intellectual property" was in place (that is no easy way to copy Koran).:-)
For everybody saving a dollar in the US, there is someone losing a dollar and a half in China on labour, etc. Please do not endorse someone that promotes human exploitation.
This problem will persist until the one dollar in China is worth the same a dollar in the US. Otherwise the work will move to where it can be done for least amount of money.
Hopefully the equilibrium will be reached by raising the standard of living in the third world not lowering it in the first world..
I've read about Indian companies outsourcing work to China...
Ironic comparison. You may recall a little antitrust trial that Microsoft just had? MS did the exact same thing that Wal-Mart is doing, except limited to the PC; using their market position to force vendors to their terms.
Wal-mart's market penetration is not nearly as big as Microsoft's. It's below 50% (according to a NYT article I read last weekend).
Plus Wal-mart is keeping prices low. Aren't monopolies supposed to make prices go higher?
300 years ago is 1703. Europe was not a third world country in 1703
I was thinking of the time when the Turks lost the wars against the europeans. I thought their defeat at Vienna was in mid 1700s. Before then the Turks and the Ottoman Empire were world powers and europeans were bit above barbarians..:)
Westerners who are good at what the West does - innovate - will be as in demand as ever. Those who can't or won't work to remain on the cutting edge, well, there's no helping them.
This is not really true if you go back in history more than 300 years.
Back then Europe was a third world country. Most of the innovators lived in China, India or the Middle East. Several of their innovations are things like writing, the number 0, arabic (!!) number system, gun powder and I'm sure countless other inventions.
They are screwing all the grocery store businesses in the southwest by forcing their competitors to stop paying their workers health insurance just to say competitive.
Perhaps part of the problem is that health insurance in the US is outrageously expensive.
Walmart also forces vendors to outsource labor to 3rd world countries because they only stock products that are the cheapest. If not then you go out of business since Walmart will own 50% of all your customers by 2008!
By keeping their prices low Walmart provides a lot of goods for people who are in the lower income bracket. These people like to eat too.
If vendors want to sell to Walmart, they need to keep their prices low. How they do it is up to them, not up to Walmart.
Even if Walmart has 50% the market (which it doesn't yet) shouldn't competition be able to survive? MS has 90% of the desktops, but somehow Macs and Apple are doing OK.
2)I don't have a car. But that's beside the point, since most people have no (realistic) choice but to buy from these "evil oil companies". Hell, even public transportation is encouraging them!
Actually you can do a lot by encouraging car companies to make fuel efficient cars. See Detroit Project
it was Richard Pearse's plane that *did* have ailerons.
Maybe. But could it turn?
The Wrights discovered what is now called "adverse aileron yaw" and build their controls to compensate. The wing warping was actually control would also move the rudder to compensate for the adverse yaw. The F-16 uses a similar mechanism.:)
OK. Tell me who flew the first circle in a powered and heavier than air aircraft?
The Wrights figured out how to steer and airplane in flight, they could turn. Nobody until them understood the mechanics of the turn (the rudder does not turn the airplane).
Before the flyer, most flights were basically straight line "hope you don't end up hitting a tree" type things.
While I agree with you that the Wright's had invented the first workable system to control an aircraft in flight (they understood how airplanes turn), others before attained some controlled gliding flight. For example Otto Lilienthal was able to steer his gliders by shifting his body position - in ways similar to hang-gliders of today.
The patent system most definitely DOES generate innovation. Coming up with new drugs can cost billions of dollars, and that's not likely to happen out of the goodness of mankind.
A lot of those billions are spent on marketing not research. In addition a lot of the fundamental research is done by public institutions, because for profit companies are more reclutant to spend money that may produce some return in 10 years time.
The current situation is clearly impossible, allowing anyone to patent an invention with an extremely vague and broad description, to gain money of it for the next 180 years.
You are confusing patents and copyrights. Patents last only for 20 years from the date of filing. For example RSA public key patent expired recently and that's why all Linux distros can include free and open ssh.
Which is to say that you want to control what everyone else can do. You only naturally expect it because you grew up with copyrights and patents existing. They've only existed from around when the US was founded.
Copyrights existed longer than the US. However, in the US non-US copyrights were ignored until early 20th century. That's why US papers in the 1800s were able to re-print Dickens without paying the author anything.
Worse yet, without this control, I can gain no benefit from my efforts, since anyone can now simply reproduce what I've created at very little cost. So why would I ever create anything of value?
You can always keep to yourself and not tell anyone.
But the larger issue is that no idea is created in vacuum. For example, your song will be based on melodies and harmonies that were developed by hundreds of others, before you.
Or your book or poetry is influenced by all the poets you've read before. In fact without some formal education in literatur you might not even know what a poem was...
Another important factor is the fact that application development has changed a lot. Design is becoming much more important and the coding has become easier
No. Coding is design. When you are writing in Java you are writing very detailed specifications on what a computer must do. It's so precise that a computer can convert it into code that runs.
The thing is, craftsmen don't scale very well. That is because, well, it takes a lot of time to become really good at all the different aspects of building whatever it is they are building. Craftsmen are a scarce commodity, regarless the trade.
Actually with software crafstmen scale great. Because you have to build your system once. Making extra copies is trivial.
So, programmers who spend a lot of time designing systems will get very good and will be able to produce great software, on time and on budget.
Crafstman improve as they make more things.
It's the insane idea that writing sofware is like making shoes that drives these companies to outsourcing. They will get a big suprize when the off shore programming teams realize they don't need remote management and they can deal with their clients directly.
Developers develop bad habits when they have the wheel bit. Stupid things like writing to/var/log instead of useing syslog(). Making them work within the constraints of the final system makes the flesh out all of their various issues, and insures that they don't get to paint a target on YOU when their F@#$%@! software doesn't work at the end of the day.
I wasn't suggesting that the apps run as root. But I've spent too much time waiting for an admin to solve a problem that I could fix in 30 seconds.
Especially when the admin is busy with production, development and test systems are his least priority.
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Besides that Rio Karma comes with a Java application that can be run from Linux to manage the music on your player (of course it comes with Windows sofware too).
Oh, yeah and the cool thing is that the dock has an ethernet port so your Karma can be accessed from the network.
The things is that the Chinese wages are low by our standards. By Chinese standards, even with long hours of work, the pay the workers get is the best living they can make.
Some US companies try to make sure that the factories that make stuff for them follow reasonable work practices (I heard a program about this on NPR and how the Chinese companies try to cheat).
I don't disagree with you, however in general the reason monopolies are considered bad is because they can jack prices up. That's why when the telephone company was a monopoly it was heavily regulated.
The point NYT article was making (it was in Dec 7th Week In Review section) is that Wal-mart maybe the largest retailer, perhaps large enough for the anti-trust laws to kick in, except that Wal-mart has lowest prices on the stuff it sells.
When those low prices are (a)artificial due to coercion of suppliers and (b)ultimately to the detriment of our own factories and workers? Yes.
Again, I don't know the solution. But we have a problem is someone can do the same we can at one tenth the cost, and it costs next to nothing to bring the work there.
If the standard of living and the cost of things was the same all over the world this would not be a problem.
I forgot the part about the printing press. It's funny, you could say that the Ottoman/Islamic empire began to die when strong protection for "intellectual property" was in place (that is no easy way to copy Koran). :-)
Thanks for the historical details...
This problem will persist until the one dollar in China is worth the same a dollar in the US. Otherwise the work will move to where it can be done for least amount of money.
Hopefully the equilibrium will be reached by raising the standard of living in the third world not lowering it in the first world..
I've read about Indian companies outsourcing work to China...
Wal-mart's market penetration is not nearly as big as Microsoft's. It's below 50% (according to a NYT article I read last weekend).
Plus Wal-mart is keeping prices low. Aren't monopolies supposed to make prices go higher?
Are lower prices bad?
I was thinking of the time when the Turks lost the wars against the europeans. I thought their defeat at Vienna was in mid 1700s. Before then the Turks and the Ottoman Empire were world powers and europeans were bit above barbarians.. :)
Basically yes. I recomend reading "Germs, Guns and Steel".
This is not really true if you go back in history more than 300 years.
Back then Europe was a third world country. Most of the innovators lived in China, India or the Middle East. Several of their innovations are things like writing, the number 0, arabic (!!) number system, gun powder and I'm sure countless other inventions.
Perhaps part of the problem is that health insurance in the US is outrageously expensive.
Walmart also forces vendors to outsource labor to 3rd world countries because they only stock products that are the cheapest. If not then you go out of business since Walmart will own 50% of all your customers by 2008!
By keeping their prices low Walmart provides a lot of goods for people who are in the lower income bracket. These people like to eat too.
If vendors want to sell to Walmart, they need to keep their prices low. How they do it is up to them, not up to Walmart.
Even if Walmart has 50% the market (which it doesn't yet) shouldn't competition be able to survive? MS has 90% of the desktops, but somehow Macs and Apple are doing OK.
Actually you can do a lot by encouraging car companies to make fuel efficient cars. See Detroit Project
Of course they do. How else would they go up?
Maybe. But could it turn?
The Wrights discovered what is now called "adverse aileron yaw" and build their controls to compensate. The wing warping was actually control would also move the rudder to compensate for the adverse yaw. The F-16 uses a similar mechanism. :)
For all we know the Chinese probably flew people in kites thousands of years before.
OK. Tell me who flew the first circle in a powered and heavier than air aircraft?
The Wrights figured out how to steer and airplane in flight, they could turn. Nobody until them understood the mechanics of the turn (the rudder does not turn the airplane).
And I'm not even an American..
While I agree with you that the Wright's had invented the first workable system to control an aircraft in flight (they understood how airplanes turn), others before attained some controlled gliding flight. For example Otto Lilienthal was able to steer his gliders by shifting his body position - in ways similar to hang-gliders of today.
A lot of those billions are spent on marketing not research. In addition a lot of the fundamental research is done by public institutions, because for profit companies are more reclutant to spend money that may produce some return in 10 years time.
See this article in Salon...for instance.
You are confusing patents and copyrights. Patents last only for 20 years from the date of filing. For example RSA public key patent expired recently and that's why all Linux distros can include free and open ssh.
Copyrights last for a long time.
Copyrights existed longer than the US. However, in the US non-US copyrights were ignored until early 20th century. That's why US papers in the 1800s were able to re-print Dickens without paying the author anything.
You can always keep to yourself and not tell anyone.
But the larger issue is that no idea is created in vacuum. For example, your song will be based on melodies and harmonies that were developed by hundreds of others, before you.
Or your book or poetry is influenced by all the poets you've read before. In fact without some formal education in literatur you might not even know what a poem was...
No. Coding is design. When you are writing in Java you are writing very detailed specifications on what a computer must do. It's so precise that a computer can convert it into code that runs.
See: Joel on Craftsmanship" for example.
Actually with software crafstmen scale great. Because you have to build your system once. Making extra copies is trivial.
So, programmers who spend a lot of time designing systems will get very good and will be able to produce great software, on time and on budget. Crafstman improve as they make more things.
It's the insane idea that writing sofware is like making shoes that drives these companies to outsourcing. They will get a big suprize when the off shore programming teams realize they don't need remote management and they can deal with their clients directly.
I wasn't suggesting that the apps run as root. But I've spent too much time waiting for an admin to solve a problem that I could fix in 30 seconds.
Especially when the admin is busy with production, development and test systems are his least priority.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that developers should have root on production machines. But on their own development boxes or on test machines?
Except that she probably gets $2 from the $103 and the rest goes to pay for malpractice insurance.