If you have enough bandwidth, you can use that to hide latency in some situations. Think of an RPC-style app: if you migrate the client to the other side of the world via a high-latency/high-bandwidth pipe, latency drops out of the time-to-completion for the rest of the computation.
That really starts to pay off after a few hundred queries (if you're going around the world, you're saving at least a quarter of a second per query).
My grad school research was in mobile agents. I think satellite networks are ideal for them.
I've asked a lawyer about this. If you agree to a legal venue in a contract, that is binding. The stock MS contract does specify WA as a venue, so if they come after someone who is working in CA, he has to fly up to WA to defend himself in a WA court, subject to WA non-compete laws.
I just finished a tool that uses XML to describe and execute a process. It is much more like a runtime environment than a document format.
The syntax I arrived at is much cleaner (though a bit weaker) than the syntax in the story.
I don't see why people are having strong reactions to this idea. I guess the syntax is yucky in their example, but the distinction between code and data can get blurry at every level of abstraction.
My mom uses those, but she got frustrated about all the bizarre extra charges that you get just for dialing a number, even if no one picks up.
So she started probing with her normal phone service.
If no one picks up on the normal phone call, no charge. If someone does pick up, it's a quarter or so connection fee for a 15 second call consisting of "Ah, you're home. I'll call you right back." Then she calls back on the card, and juices it for every single minute it's advertised to get.:)
It doesn't matter much if you can't detect the latest thing right out of the box. They have windows update already which should, theoretically , detect and close any known holes about as fast as a virus scanner would discover signatures for virii.
Unless you're talking about user stupidity exploits, which most virii are, which would be a great reason for why people have to pay someone else to protect them: those aren't Microsoft's fault.
> Why isn't patching these defects included in the purchase price of this obviously defective product?
Well, for one, it means that you may have a harder time getting adoption of your software, especially by people with a lot to lose. Patent indemnity is a big deal for some... entities.
A lot of these angles are explored here: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,163468 7,00.as p
Yeah, HT works better on deep pipelines, but it's still a win for shallower ones. I couldn't find any more recent figures on AMD's pipeline depth, but duron was using a 20-stage pipeline.
That's not shallow.
I saw a graph based on HT simulations, it was CPU utilization versus degree of hyperthreading. Utilization didn't start to level off until you have something like 6-8 execution contexts on the chip (that's assuming you have work for all of them, of course.)
That's probably geared towards an Intel-style pipeline, but surely AMD would benefit from adopting the technology. Though since they're already going with dual-core, I'd rather see them apply it towards speculation to absorb cache misses than expose those contexts. That way single-threaded apps could get some love.
Yeah, that sounds a lot more like what I learned in architecture than the "AMD doesn't need HT" dogma I'm hearing. Efficient use of silicon is good no matter how long your pipeline is.
Does AMD have any Hyper-Threading-like technologies in their chips or in the works?
It's such a high bang-for-your-buck optimization that I'd feel a lot more comfortable buying AMD chips if I knew they weren't hobbled by not exploiting it.
I'd be really stoked if they started maintaining an extra execution context internally, but use it for speculative execution. Sair got some pretty impressive results doing that, and single-threaded apps actually stand to benefit from that application of the technology.
Not a bloody chance. It's pretty clear that they just capitalized on the source code leak as an excuse to slip the release date. There's really no way they could sit on a game for nine months reworking the code to break compatibility with potential cracks for the leaked code. It's neither that long of a project, nor an justifiable use of man-hours.
Down at SDSC they have a little less than 1% of ALL of the routable IP space dedicated to doing this stuff. They call it a network telescope, and use it to study DOS activity and stuff.
It could also be that they don't want records that can show their junk doesn't work in a court of law.
It smells just like liability concerns to me. And that's in line with the 500K/mo legal fund. But I won't go so far as to say they haven't or won't intentionally skew election results. Splitting the legal budget with some top notch outside security consultants would probably be a more effective way to curb liability, but only if they were willing to lock themselves out of skewing election results.
> Final accountability isn't enough when you describe a system where it is in the politicians best interest to screw over the constituency as much as possible, but just not enough to miss a re-election.
Here's a brain-teaser for you: if you assume well-informed, rational voters, then politicians don't need reelection money. If you claim that the above is false (and I would agree, to an extent) then that hurts your free-market arguments about what consumers will tolerate. You went from a tautology to a contradiction.:) However, the extent to which that is not false is really the only hope democracy has.
The gentleman you quote seems to think consumers can't be branded. If they could, they become much more merciful bosses.:) His consumers don't sound very emotional either. Is your strengthening of rationality to a tautology a deviation from your mentors?
I'm not claiming business can screw consumers overtly and get away with it. I'm claiming that they can screw labor overtly (which is the same thing as saying consumers can screw business overtly. Since you're arguing consumers have power over producers, then employers have power over labor.) If the GDP grows and labor doesn't benefit, you don't benefit (I'm assuming.) This is happening. Right now. So how does denying the only force other than profit to which business is beholden work to better your rational self-interests? Don't answer right away, I'll reframe this question below.
Stability is not required for an economy. It is most certainly required for labor organization. By stability, I suppose I really mean is at least a weak form of independence, which is what makes credible the threat of cessation of labor. The first and ultimately last bargaining chip in a truly free model. The consequences you spell out for closing of a sweatshop argue against even weak independence (choosing not to lose a child is not a choice.) Prostitution is a choice, usually. But it sounds like that's a market you'd prefer was regulated. Cold steel arm of the state legislating morality and all that.
Some questions: 1) The tragedy of the commons illustrates that situations arise where rational self-interst alone results in suboptimal production. But privatization doesn't always work as a solution, particularly where labor markets are concerned. For example, teacher tenure is at least partially designed to work around a tragedy of the commons stemming from the fact that young teachers are almost universally better than old teachers (but if it turned into a high turnover job, there would be no teachers.) Privatization of teachers is, hopefully, not an option in this day and age. So, given scenarios like this one, how can you argue that goverment intervention is not useful, in the general case? Does this counterexample weaken any of your existing claims?
2) Explain a mechanism by which the continued outsourcing trends result in you getting paid more as an engineer after you graduate. Bear in mind that although a minority of jobs created oversees could not exist here because of our labor market, many could. Intel has a domestic hiring freeze. Microsoft does not, but is opening plants in India, and China. Not, say, Kansas. How does those jobs being overseas increase your expected market value, and by extension, how does a free labor market work in your rational self-interests?
This paypal thing is going to take a week to go through the verification process. I'll put the title/author in my palm and look for it next time I'm in a book store. I was partially concerned from your comments that you were abroad, which would have opened the possibility that the book could not be had domestically at a reasonable price. Which is another interesting example for our discussion: there is no competition for textbook prices in the US because of the way our universities assign material: requried reading in specific books vs required familiarity with a given topic (like it is at most
> Taking into account the costs and benefits of taking any action is--by default--what every human does.
I don't agree that the statement is universally true. That you're framing human rationality as a tautology makes the assumption not terribly useful.
But I see now why you trust people to take actions that are in their rational best interests. Because they do.:)
For my money, rationality is contrasted (and sometimes eclipsed by) emotion and psychology. Not always eclipsed, but often. More so when information is skewed and framed... just so.
There's power everywhere. Politicians do scrounge for election cash. No question. (There are laws that mitigate this, fortunately.) But all the election cash in the world doesn't do a god-damned thing come re-election time if you screw over your constituency. That's where the final accountability comes in.
For instance: it doesn't sound like there's anything Bush can say on TV for you to give him your vote again.
The nature of power is that everyone wants to be buddy-buddy with it. There are really two major sources of power in the US today: The.gov, and big money. One of those is controlled (albeit indirectly) by you, and the other is controlled by people whose interests conflict directly with yours.
Is being opposed to goverment regulation of business in your rational self-interest?
I'm not an extremist. But I think you're naive if you think optimizing the GDP necessarily helps you. Sometimes business has to have their arms twisted to share a bit and play nice (minimum wage, antitrust laws, tax incentives, stiff fines, liability, child-labor laws, anti-discrimination laws,...).
That said... eminent domain is awesome! I'm in California, and if Davis had exercized eminent domain to retake the power grid, he'd have had my vote. Final accountability.
Eminent domain does get abused, though. I've had a family member sue a city here over an eminent domain seizure ($1 in compensation.) The final judgement was in the millions, and included (good!) interest, and lawyers fees, and I think interest on the lawyers fees. Juries don't dig wrongful eminent domain suits.
When that building got siezed, I heard things like: "well... I was going to build something there once my partner caved in... but I stand to make more money with less risk, this way."
Your take on sweatshops has an air of union advocacy about it. Good for you. But telling me that closing a sweatshop leaves people without money doesn't move me. I mean, seriously. Sweat shop workers should be saving up! If they can't, then they have freedom akin to that of... a sharecropper. Maybe less. Would you sign up for that if circumstances were within your control?
You can't organize without stability. A strike fund. Local law enforcement that's not corrupt. Local laws that permit labor organization at all. Organization can get you a bullet in the head in some places. It often comes from the barrel of "aid aimed at protecting US interests in developing nations."
Rather than hearing what happens when a sweatshop is razed, I'd be much more interested in hearing what happens if the blasted thing never gets constructed. If you told me that burning a plantation and leaving the slaves with nothing leads to more infant mortality, I wouldn't be inclined to argue.
A better solution than tolerating sweatshops, is mandating import quotas and minimum fines for companies found employing them (business terms: introduce risk,) with the fines going to the workers so they can start another life without losing a kid on the way.
There are laws that govern conduct of US citizens abroad. Not enough, I think. The only one that comes to mind is that you can't leave the country with the intent of circumventing US child-sex laws abroad.
Branding: I don't see how a four year old can learn to enjoy a Chevy. But I can see a four year having the brand impressed upon him, and favoring it later in life.
> A minivan has a stigma to it,... But an SUV, yeah, that's all the utility of a minivan, but still a little... cooler.
The word you're looking for is masculine. That's the only problem solved by SUVs: minivans are percieved as feminine. I put to you that this is not a rational concern. It's emotional or psychological, but not rational.
> Consumers maximize their happiness, not just their bank accounts.
Obviously false. Those that maximize either are exceptions. They certainly attempt to maximize happiness, but they often aren't very good at identifying what makes them happy. This is where information asymmetry makes them vulnerable. That and psychology.
On that note, I'd urge you to look into buying a more fuel-effecient vehicle, and putting the savings (gas + cash) towards renting a larger vehicle when you need one.:)
> First, there is nothing wrong with having extreme rich.
Agreed. So long as they're not counterproductive.
> the only thing that I personally think sucks is the extreme poor.
So you don't value having a strong middle class? Where do you plan on being after college? You're graduating, so you should have the option of avoiding destitution, but you're taking CS classes, so you aren't inheritng an empire, unlike some people I've known.:)
> Having government controlled markets is exactly where we get in trouble though, because those richies with connects start making the rules and getting their money with guns and not products that serve the consumer.
You've got your motivations skewed, though a healthy mistrust of the wealthy. Companies are beholden to profit. Goverments are beholden to voters. Those are the only final accountabilities. And the bourgiouse (too lazy to look up spelling) uprising scenario you present is rather absurd. That's simply not how rich people think. But many of them are motivated by money (well... more the status that comes with it...) more than is healthy.
The catch-22 is that voters are often irrational. But in the final accountability, there is hope. You don't have that with companies, whose interests do conflict directly with employees'.
But I don't advocate goverment controlled markets, anyway. I know enough about them. But goverment checks on business are absolutely critical. When domestic companies take actions that directly lower the standard of living, the state has a responsibility to act on behalf of the people, in many cases.
Your statistics kind of miss the point. First, I'm more worried about the US-domestic situation right now. Second, correlation does not show causation. Third, you frame your data in a somewhat misleading way: "plus only seventy five percent vs almost doubling." If the richest almost double their income, and the poorest slightly more than double their income, the richest are obviously getting quite a lot more money out of the deal than the poor, right?
Let's check: 14.6k - 8.3k 4.8k - 2.5k 6.3k > 2.3k
Fourth, your figures focus on income, which skews things (I'll get to that in a second.) Fifth, income can rise while while standards of living decrease, _especially_ at the income range you're looking at, within the time range and geographic scope you're looking at. If drought forces me from a self-sustaining villiage into an urban sweatshop, my income just became non-zero. But where would I rather be?
Let's talk about the US for a sec. Here's some census data showing income inequity diversion:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2000pubs/p60-204.pdf
I don't like those measurements though because they seem geared towards taxable income, which I think skews things a whole lot: it measures the flow of wealth into hom
This stuff beats the everloving snot out of DirectX networking. Thanks for the link.:)
To think... if this package were out two years ago, I could have totally slacked off through, and hence missed out on, one of the best learning experiences of my college career.
"*Ahem* yeah... network stuff's coming along okay... you know... work smarter, not harder. Bob, I know you're pretty busy writing that graphics engine single-handed, but can you get me that scopeing stuff from your scene graph by Friday so I can decide what to send? About licensing... I'm thinking GPL..."
Slashdot Mirror
Not true.
If you have enough bandwidth, you can use that to hide latency in some situations. Think of an RPC-style app: if you migrate the client to the other side of the world via a high-latency/high-bandwidth pipe, latency drops out of the time-to-completion for the rest of the computation.
That really starts to pay off after a few hundred queries (if you're going around the world, you're saving at least a quarter of a second per query).
My grad school research was in mobile agents. I think satellite networks are ideal for them.
I've asked a lawyer about this. If you agree to a legal venue in a contract, that is binding. The stock MS contract does specify WA as a venue, so if they come after someone who is working in CA, he has to fly up to WA to defend himself in a WA court, subject to WA non-compete laws.
I just finished a tool that uses XML to describe and execute a process. It is much more like a runtime environment than a document format.
The syntax I arrived at is much cleaner (though a bit weaker) than the syntax in the story.
I don't see why people are having strong reactions to this idea. I guess the syntax is yucky in their example, but the distinction between code and data can get blurry at every level of abstraction.
My mom uses those, but she got frustrated about all the bizarre extra charges that you get just for dialing a number, even if no one picks up.
:)
So she started probing with her normal phone service.
If no one picks up on the normal phone call, no charge. If someone does pick up, it's a quarter or so connection fee for a 15 second call consisting of "Ah, you're home. I'll call you right back." Then she calls back on the card, and juices it for every single minute it's advertised to get.
Doah! Sorry about the skanky link in my last response. Here's a correct one.
Sure. I had the exact opposite problem... I went looking for the graphs, and couldn't find them because I wound up in part 1. :)
h tm l
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041220/index.
In totally unrelated news, MSN became profitable last quarter.
:)
It's a pretty roundabout way to capitalize Hotmail for advertizing revenue, but I like it.
It doesn't matter much if you can't detect the latest thing right out of the box. They have windows update already which should, theoretically , detect and close any known holes about as fast as a virus scanner would discover signatures for virii.
Unless you're talking about user stupidity exploits, which most virii are, which would be a great reason for why people have to pay someone else to protect them: those aren't Microsoft's fault.
> Why isn't patching these defects included in the purchase price of this obviously defective product?
It is.
Well, for one, it means that you may have a harder time getting adoption of your software, especially by people with a lot to lose. Patent indemnity is a big deal for some
A lot of these angles are explored here:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,16346
HT may be less sexy, but it's cheaper. I'd rather pay +20% for an 80% speedup than +40% for a 100% speedup.
There's something to be said for playing catchup when you're behind, walking before you run, et cetera.
Yeah, HT works better on deep pipelines, but it's still a win for shallower ones. I couldn't find any more recent figures on AMD's pipeline depth, but duron was using a 20-stage pipeline.
That's not shallow.
I saw a graph based on HT simulations, it was CPU utilization versus degree of hyperthreading. Utilization didn't start to level off until you have something like 6-8 execution contexts on the chip (that's assuming you have work for all of them, of course.)
That's probably geared towards an Intel-style pipeline, but surely AMD would benefit from adopting the technology. Though since they're already going with dual-core, I'd rather see them apply it towards speculation to absorb cache misses than expose those contexts. That way single-threaded apps could get some love.
Yeah, that sounds a lot more like what I learned in architecture than the "AMD doesn't need HT" dogma I'm hearing. Efficient use of silicon is good no matter how long your pipeline is.
:)
Thanks for your insightful, if anonymous reply.
So it sounds like AMD is going without HT.
Damn.
Does AMD have any Hyper-Threading-like technologies in their chips or in the works?
It's such a high bang-for-your-buck optimization that I'd feel a lot more comfortable buying AMD chips if I knew they weren't hobbled by not exploiting it.
I'd be really stoked if they started maintaining an extra execution context internally, but use it for speculative execution. Sair got some pretty impressive results doing that, and single-threaded apps actually stand to benefit from that application of the technology.
-Scott
Seriously... did anyone else notice that the story was submitted by someone calling themselves slashdotbs?
:)
If it were April 1, I'd think Michael was playing a joke on us, but as it stands, I think someone pulled a pretty good joke on Michael.
Misquoted too:
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
I like Yeats' version better.
I propose "flensing."
Not a bloody chance. It's pretty clear that they just capitalized on the source code leak as an excuse to slip the release date. There's really no way they could sit on a game for nine months reworking the code to break compatibility with potential cracks for the leaked code. It's neither that long of a project, nor an justifiable use of man-hours.
The game is just way behind schedule.
Down at SDSC they have a little less than 1% of ALL of the routable IP space dedicated to doing this stuff. They call it a network telescope, and use it to study DOS activity and stuff.
http://www.caida.org/analysis/security/telescop
"Inferring Internet Denial-of-Service Activity" [2001] is good reading.
I don't know about any of that hippy "food chain" crap, but I say it's about time someone stuck it to those plants!
Umm... the pictures we're seeing on the news weren't taken three days ago, or a week ago, but months ago:
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040505-03
You know, when the pressure was on to find Saddam. This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum.
So I'm curious how this pertains to digital photography at all...
It could also be that they don't want records that can show their junk doesn't work in a court of law.
It smells just like liability concerns to me. And that's in line with the 500K/mo legal fund. But I won't go so far as to say they haven't or won't intentionally skew election results. Splitting the legal budget with some top notch outside security consultants would probably be a more effective way to curb liability, but only if they were willing to lock themselves out of skewing election results.
> Final accountability isn't enough when you describe a system where it is in the politicians best interest to screw over the constituency as much as possible, but just not enough to miss a re-election.
:) However, the extent to which that is not false is really the only hope democracy has.
:) His consumers don't sound very emotional either. Is your strengthening of rationality to a tautology a deviation from your mentors?
Here's a brain-teaser for you: if you assume well-informed, rational voters, then politicians don't need reelection money. If you claim that the above is false (and I would agree, to an extent) then that hurts your free-market arguments about what consumers will tolerate. You went from a tautology to a contradiction.
The gentleman you quote seems to think consumers can't be branded. If they could, they become much more merciful bosses.
I'm not claiming business can screw consumers overtly and get away with it. I'm claiming that they can screw labor overtly (which is the same thing as saying consumers can screw business overtly. Since you're arguing consumers have power over producers, then employers have power over labor.) If the GDP grows and labor doesn't benefit, you don't benefit (I'm assuming.) This is happening. Right now. So how does denying the only force other than profit to which business is beholden work to better your rational self-interests? Don't answer right away, I'll reframe this question below.
Stability is not required for an economy. It is most certainly required for labor organization. By stability, I suppose I really mean is at least a weak form of independence, which is what makes credible the threat of cessation of labor. The first and ultimately last bargaining chip in a truly free model. The consequences you spell out for closing of a sweatshop argue against even weak independence (choosing not to lose a child is not a choice.) Prostitution is a choice, usually. But it sounds like that's a market you'd prefer was regulated. Cold steel arm of the state legislating morality and all that.
Some questions:
1) The tragedy of the commons illustrates that situations arise where rational self-interst alone results in suboptimal production. But privatization doesn't always work as a solution, particularly where labor markets are concerned. For example, teacher tenure is at least partially designed to work around a tragedy of the commons stemming from the fact that young teachers are almost universally better than old teachers (but if it turned into a high turnover job, there would be no teachers.) Privatization of teachers is, hopefully, not an option in this day and age. So, given scenarios like this one, how can you argue that goverment intervention is not useful, in the general case? Does this counterexample weaken any of your existing claims?
2) Explain a mechanism by which the continued outsourcing trends result in you getting paid more as an engineer after you graduate. Bear in mind that although a minority of jobs created oversees could not exist here because of our labor market, many could. Intel has a domestic hiring freeze. Microsoft does not, but is opening plants in India, and China. Not, say, Kansas. How does those jobs being overseas increase your expected market value, and by extension, how does a free labor market work in your rational self-interests?
This paypal thing is going to take a week to go through the verification process. I'll put the title/author in my palm and look for it next time I'm in a book store. I was partially concerned from your comments that you were abroad, which would have opened the possibility that the book could not be had domestically at a reasonable price. Which is another interesting example for our discussion: there is no competition for textbook prices in the US because of the way our universities assign material: requried reading in specific books vs required familiarity with a given topic (like it is at most
> Taking into account the costs and benefits of taking any action is--by default--what every human does.
:)
.gov, and big money. One of those is controlled (albeit indirectly) by you, and the other is controlled by people whose interests conflict directly with yours.
...).
;)
I don't agree that the statement is universally true. That you're framing human rationality as a tautology makes the assumption not terribly useful.
But I see now why you trust people to take actions that are in their rational best interests. Because they do.
For my money, rationality is contrasted (and sometimes eclipsed by) emotion and psychology. Not always eclipsed, but often. More so when information is skewed and framed... just so.
There's power everywhere. Politicians do scrounge for election cash. No question. (There are laws that mitigate this, fortunately.) But all the election cash in the world doesn't do a god-damned thing come re-election time if you screw over your constituency. That's where the final accountability comes in.
For instance: it doesn't sound like there's anything Bush can say on TV for you to give him your vote again.
The nature of power is that everyone wants to be buddy-buddy with it. There are really two major sources of power in the US today: The
Is being opposed to goverment regulation of business in your rational self-interest?
I'm not an extremist. But I think you're naive if you think optimizing the GDP necessarily helps you. Sometimes business has to have their arms twisted to share a bit and play nice (minimum wage, antitrust laws, tax incentives, stiff fines, liability, child-labor laws, anti-discrimination laws,
That said... eminent domain is awesome! I'm in California, and if Davis had exercized eminent domain to retake the power grid, he'd have had my vote. Final accountability.
Eminent domain does get abused, though. I've had a family member sue a city here over an eminent domain seizure ($1 in compensation.) The final judgement was in the millions, and included (good!) interest, and lawyers fees, and I think interest on the lawyers fees. Juries don't dig wrongful eminent domain suits.
When that building got siezed, I heard things like: "well... I was going to build something there once my partner caved in... but I stand to make more money with less risk, this way."
Your take on sweatshops has an air of union advocacy about it. Good for you. But telling me that closing a sweatshop leaves people without money doesn't move me. I mean, seriously. Sweat shop workers should be saving up! If they can't, then they have freedom akin to that of... a sharecropper. Maybe less. Would you sign up for that if circumstances were within your control?
You can't organize without stability. A strike fund. Local law enforcement that's not corrupt. Local laws that permit labor organization at all. Organization can get you a bullet in the head in some places. It often comes from the barrel of "aid aimed at protecting US interests in developing nations."
Rather than hearing what happens when a sweatshop is razed, I'd be much more interested in hearing what happens if the blasted thing never gets constructed. If you told me that burning a plantation and leaving the slaves with nothing leads to more infant mortality, I wouldn't be inclined to argue.
A better solution than tolerating sweatshops, is mandating import quotas and minimum fines for companies found employing them (business terms: introduce risk,) with the fines going to the workers so they can start another life without losing a kid on the way.
There are laws that govern conduct of US citizens abroad. Not enough, I think. The only one that comes to mind is that you can't leave the country with the intent of circumventing US child-sex laws abroad.
Note the wording. Slick, eh?
On the topic of reading, here are some course no
Branding:
... But an SUV, yeah, that's all the utility of a minivan, but still a little... cooler.
:)
:)
I don't see how a four year old can learn to enjoy a Chevy. But I can see a four year having the brand impressed upon him, and favoring it later in life.
> A minivan has a stigma to it,
The word you're looking for is masculine. That's the only problem solved by SUVs: minivans are percieved as feminine. I put to you that this is not a rational concern. It's emotional or psychological, but not rational.
> Consumers maximize their happiness, not just their bank accounts.
Obviously false. Those that maximize either are exceptions. They certainly attempt to maximize happiness, but they often aren't very good at identifying what makes them happy. This is where information asymmetry makes them vulnerable. That and psychology.
On that note, I'd urge you to look into buying a more fuel-effecient vehicle, and putting the savings (gas + cash) towards renting a larger vehicle when you need one.
> First, there is nothing wrong with having extreme rich.
Agreed. So long as they're not counterproductive.
> the only thing that I personally think sucks is the extreme poor.
So you don't value having a strong middle class? Where do you plan on being after college? You're graduating, so you should have the option of avoiding destitution, but you're taking CS classes, so you aren't inheritng an empire, unlike some people I've known.
> Having government controlled markets is exactly where we get in trouble though, because those richies with connects start making the rules and getting their money with guns and not products that serve the consumer.
You've got your motivations skewed, though a healthy mistrust of the wealthy. Companies are beholden to profit. Goverments are beholden to voters. Those are the only final accountabilities. And the bourgiouse (too lazy to look up spelling) uprising scenario you present is rather absurd. That's simply not how rich people think. But many of them are motivated by money (well... more the status that comes with it...) more than is healthy.
The catch-22 is that voters are often irrational.
But in the final accountability, there is hope. You don't have that with companies, whose interests do conflict directly with employees'.
But I don't advocate goverment controlled markets, anyway. I know enough about them. But goverment checks on business are absolutely critical. When domestic companies take actions that directly lower the standard of living, the state has a responsibility to act on behalf of the people, in many cases.
Your statistics kind of miss the point. First, I'm more worried about the US-domestic situation right now. Second, correlation does not show causation. Third, you frame your data in a somewhat misleading way: "plus only seventy five percent vs almost doubling." If the richest almost double their income, and the poorest slightly more than double their income, the richest are obviously getting quite a lot more money out of the deal than the poor, right?
Let's check:
14.6k - 8.3k 4.8k - 2.5k
6.3k > 2.3k
Fourth, your figures focus on income, which skews things (I'll get to that in a second.) Fifth, income can rise while while standards of living decrease, _especially_ at the income range you're looking at, within the time range and geographic scope you're looking at. If drought forces me from a self-sustaining villiage into an urban sweatshop, my income just became non-zero. But where would I rather be?
Let's talk about the US for a sec. Here's some census data showing income inequity diversion:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2000pubs/p60-204.pdf
I don't like those measurements though because they seem geared towards taxable income, which I think skews things a whole lot: it measures the flow of wealth into hom
This stuff beats the everloving snot out of DirectX networking. Thanks for the link. :)
:)
To think... if this package were out two years ago, I could have totally slacked off through, and hence missed out on, one of the best learning experiences of my college career.
"*Ahem* yeah... network stuff's coming along okay... you know... work smarter, not harder. Bob, I know you're pretty busy writing that graphics engine single-handed, but can you get me that scopeing stuff from your scene graph by Friday so I can decide what to send? About licensing... I'm thinking GPL..."
That would have been awful.