Any company caught slamming in Massachusetts gets automatically fined $15E3 (or 15E2, I can't remember). My wife is a telecommunications policy/law/economics consultant and related this tidbit to me once. I would definetly contact the AG's office.
I can sympathize...when I wanted to learn how to code in a *real* language, like C++, I didn't know where to start.....it is confusing. My advice to you, if you really want to learn a language, is take a class at your local community college and read the newsgroups for the language you are interested in. Get a subscription to Dr. Dobbs and play w/all of the programs in every issue.
One thing you will find out is that after you learn one language reasonable well, the next language is much easier, because you have context to work with.
Another thing that I should have mentioned above is that you really need to take some basic CS courses as well. With out those, the language is kinda useless (like giving a 16 year old a Ferrari Mondelo, he'll have a really cool car, he just won't be able to do anything with it!)
hmmm...I'm stupid huh? I think I'm a realist and you are an idealist.
You speak of nobility, I speak of action. I speak of better, food being better than not having food, working for twelve hours a day in a tire factory being better than being killed because you are female and don't offer anything except the expense of a dowry and marriage.
As for the nobility of American companies, my answer is so what? Do you think that the Javenese mafia or the Indian brass manufacturer is any better becuase they're locals? Guess what? If those kids cost more than a nickel an hour, the American company WOULDN'T BE THERE! The kids would be back at the garbage dump or the sex house, ecking out a more miserable existance having a ugly(ier), short(er) life.
Everyone is trying to get ahead and the idea that if you whine enough and be disruptive enough, that yuppies will drop everything they are doing and start digging ditches in Somalia is idiotic. It is not going to happen. EVERYONE in the development community has realized this a long time ago. Organizations like the IMF, the World Bank and other NGO's support corporations coming into these countries because it is something better than the status quo. Is it noble? No, you're right it isn't. Is it the best thing humanity could do? No, we could do a lot more if people cared.
I'm a social liberal and a fiscal conservative, I believe in helping my fellow man and I don't bitch when I pay my taxes. I resent your assertion that because I believe that things are evolving and getting better, albeit slowly, that I support anything that makes a dollar. I support progress and action, not uninformed generalizations and dogma being regurgitated by people who don't even understand the underlying economics or political dynamics of the second and third world. I don't codemn people for wanting better lives for others. I codemn people for knee-jerk reactions, simplistic analysis and an inability to have a conversation w/out insult.
And by the way, some American companies are really helping to improve the lives of the people they employ in the developing world. I know you don't belive it, but it is true.
I wan't speaking of EU VAT. VAT is a generic term as well. The government's charter may not be to redistribute income, but it's defacto job IS to redistribute income. In the US, the federal government, by any measure, spends most of its time funnelling money from individuals to the IRS to the states. I wasn't attempting to validate types/modes of government. Lighten up and stop things so literally.
When you get down to it, one the major responsibilities of the government is to redistribute income. Yeah, the infrastructure involved w/online ecommerce is a bit more ethereal, but the UPS truck still has to get to your house, the cops need to enforce laws so the truck gets there safely, etc...you get the idea. Only 1.5% of commerce is occurring online. What happens when it is 25%(not that I think that is going to happen ANYTIME soon)? We still need schools, law enforcement, etc. How do you think we should do this? Taxation has been a pretty good mechanism up to now....why change? Do you think you are not going to drop $75 bucks on O'reilly books at FatBrain because you have to pony up $3 additional for VAT? Please, grow up, and get informed everybody. Quit trying to repeal the laws of thermodynamics.
Social Darwinism favors people with rich parents? Another sweeping generalization! Many people, including Mr Katz make very simplistic arguements with little factual evidence. Most posters at/. appear to have very little understanding of the real world. Poor children in poor countries having to work twelve hours a day to make 50 cents? I shout with joy! I think it is better that these children manufacture shoes rather than prostitute themselves or rumage through garbage dumps to subsist on 250 calories a day. Corporations taking over governments? Where? Can you point to a country that is effectively being run by a corporation? Have your civil liberties been restricted in some way because of capitalism? I believe in social engineering, I don't believe in quick fixes. I think that what we are seeing in the world today is the natural evolution of our global society. There will be bad (exploitation of poor), there will be good (poor people having higher standards of living: yes it is happening) and over all, it will be a non-event. We will go on living and procreating, because when you get right down to it, that is what we do, we're organisms!
I am tired of the simplicity of analysis so commonplace in any sort commentary today, not just by Mr. Katz. Maybe my position in the technnology industry and the huge amounts of factual information available to me on lots of different subjects makes my jaded, but I'm partial to taking a little bit more time and doing more analysis.
Lets talk about young kids being exploited and coutries being figuratively raped. Cheap labor? how about the alternatives? Prostitution, eating and scavenging from garbage heaps, living in hovels or having no housing at all. These conditions were commonplace before companies in industrialized nations starting searching for cheap labor outside of their home country's borders. Now children might only make $1.75 a day but they don't have to sell their bodies to eat garbage. Often, these companies provide some level of schooling and housing. They provide basic medical care and counseling.
Changing conditions for people in the 3rd world is something that is going to take time. As is common in most efforts, THERE ARE NO QUICK FIXES. These countries will have to go through the same growing pains that we (the US) did. Some time there are lesser evils. Keep that in mind.
Slashdot Mirror
Any company caught slamming in Massachusetts gets automatically fined $15E3 (or 15E2, I can't remember). My wife is a telecommunications policy/law/economics consultant and related this tidbit to me once. I would definetly contact the AG's office.
I can sympathize...when I wanted to learn how to code in a *real* language, like C++, I didn't know where to start.....it is confusing. My advice to you, if you really want to learn a language, is take a class at your local community college and read the newsgroups for the language you are interested in. Get a subscription to Dr. Dobbs and play w/all of the programs in every issue.
One thing you will find out is that after you learn one language reasonable well, the next language is much easier, because you have context to work with.
Another thing that I should have mentioned above is that you really need to take some basic CS courses as well. With out those, the language is kinda useless (like giving a 16 year old a Ferrari Mondelo, he'll have a really cool car, he just won't be able to do anything with it!)
hmmm...I'm stupid huh? I think I'm a realist and you are an idealist.
You speak of nobility, I speak of action. I speak of better, food being better than not having food, working for twelve hours a day in a tire factory being better than being killed because you are female and don't offer anything except the expense of a dowry and marriage.
As for the nobility of American companies, my answer is so what? Do you think that the Javenese mafia or the Indian brass manufacturer is any better becuase they're locals? Guess what? If those kids cost more than a nickel an hour, the American company WOULDN'T BE THERE! The kids would be back at the garbage dump or the sex house, ecking out a more miserable existance having a ugly(ier), short(er) life.
Everyone is trying to get ahead and the idea that if you whine enough and be disruptive enough, that yuppies will drop everything they are doing and start digging ditches in Somalia is idiotic. It is not going to happen. EVERYONE in the development community has realized this a long time ago. Organizations like the IMF, the World Bank and other NGO's support corporations coming into these countries because it is something better than the status quo. Is it noble? No, you're right it isn't. Is it the best thing humanity could do? No, we could do a lot more if people cared.
I'm a social liberal and a fiscal conservative, I believe in helping my fellow man and I don't bitch when I pay my taxes. I resent your assertion that because I believe that things are evolving and getting better, albeit slowly, that I support anything that makes a dollar. I support progress and action, not uninformed generalizations and dogma being regurgitated by people who don't even understand the underlying economics or political dynamics of the second and third world. I don't codemn people for wanting better lives for others. I codemn people for knee-jerk reactions, simplistic analysis and an inability to have a conversation w/out insult.
And by the way, some American companies are really helping to improve the lives of the people they employ in the developing world. I know you don't belive it, but it is true.
I wan't speaking of EU VAT. VAT is a generic term as well. The government's charter may not be to redistribute income, but it's defacto job IS to redistribute income. In the US, the federal government, by any measure, spends most of its time funnelling money from individuals to the IRS to the states. I wasn't attempting to validate types/modes of government. Lighten up and stop things so literally.
I agree with the AC.
When you get down to it, one the major responsibilities of the government is to redistribute income. Yeah, the infrastructure involved w/online ecommerce is a bit more ethereal, but the UPS truck still has to get to your house, the cops need to enforce laws so the truck gets there safely, etc...you get the idea. Only 1.5% of commerce is occurring online. What happens when it is 25%(not that I think that is going to happen ANYTIME soon)? We still need schools, law enforcement, etc. How do you think we should do this? Taxation has been a pretty good mechanism up to now....why change? Do you think you are not going to drop $75 bucks on O'reilly books at FatBrain because you have to pony up $3 additional for VAT? Please, grow up, and get informed everybody. Quit trying to repeal the laws of thermodynamics.
Social Darwinism favors people with rich parents? Another sweeping generalization! Many people, including Mr Katz make very simplistic arguements with little factual evidence. Most posters at /. appear to have very little understanding of the real world. Poor children in poor countries having to work twelve hours a day to make 50 cents? I shout with joy! I think it is better that these children manufacture shoes rather than prostitute themselves or rumage through garbage dumps to subsist on 250 calories a day. Corporations taking over governments? Where? Can you point to a country that is effectively being run by a corporation? Have your civil liberties been restricted in some way because of capitalism? I believe in social engineering, I don't believe in quick fixes. I think that what we are seeing in the world today is the natural evolution of our global society. There will be bad (exploitation of poor), there will be good (poor people having higher standards of living: yes it is happening) and over all, it will be a non-event. We will go on living and procreating, because when you get right down to it, that is what we do, we're organisms!
I am tired of the simplicity of analysis so commonplace in any sort commentary today, not just by Mr. Katz. Maybe my position in the technnology industry and the huge amounts of factual information available to me on lots of different subjects makes my jaded, but I'm partial to taking a little bit more time and doing more analysis.
Lets talk about young kids being exploited and coutries being figuratively raped. Cheap labor?
how about the alternatives? Prostitution, eating and scavenging from garbage heaps, living in hovels or having no housing at all. These conditions were commonplace before companies in industrialized nations starting searching for cheap labor outside of their home country's borders. Now children might only make $1.75 a day
but they don't have to sell their bodies to eat garbage. Often, these companies provide some level of schooling and housing. They provide basic medical care and counseling.
Changing conditions for people in the 3rd world is something that is going to take time. As is common in most efforts, THERE ARE NO QUICK FIXES. These countries will have to go through the same growing pains that we (the US) did.
Some time there are lesser evils. Keep that in mind.