if that was the case, such a puppet would have the combined intelligence of a team of hired PhDs, would be unbeatable in discussions. there would be some lag, naturally.
Oops! Known reserves of oil, coal and natural gas have never been higher, and show every sign of increasing.
what a f*c@$ng pile of bullshit!
show every sign of increasing? like what, they grow themselves? show me that coal mine which magically fills itself back to full because i have to see it.
or maybe i got the wrong information and the earth actually is flat so its surface is infinite. that way, we can always go forward and discover ever more coal deposits and will do so forever?
Humans have evolved in a sub-tropical environment. They are not designed for cool temperate or sub-arctic conditions. proposal: Send only robots to these latitudes on Earth
there is a difference between: warm clothes <-> space suit calorious food <-> life supply system
Or offer to replace a single trained geologist on a field trip to a site in the Rockies with fifty Spirit robots parachuted randomly into the Rocky mountains. No contest.
the robots will visit 50 times more places. the human will visit only one area. if the goal is to make pictures or take back samples, then robots win. if there is a task that robots can not fulfill today, then we shall work on more sophisticated robots. they do not need to be smart. all they have to do is to stay alive (dumb animal IQ level). humans will do the complicated tasks through "remote presence". they do it now (Spirit and Opportunity).
How long will it be before we can get a robot that can climb down lava pipes and into tunnels?
there are robots designed to crawl through canalisation pipes to inspect them. seen them on some science programme. humans in atmospheric suits will not climb between sharp rocks. they could depressurize.
final thought: if we could separate the human mind from the body, than we are ready for deep space exploration. some kind of transhuman. it sounds like sci-fi (Stanislaw Lem wrote such a story), but so did "man on mars". imagine if HAL 9000 was in fact a human's copied/transplanted mind/brain (but A.I. would be easier to research/develop).
final thought #2: how about sending a human into mars orbit first? no fuel for a return from the surface needed, which dramatically decreases the cost. International Mars Orbit Station ? We do have THAT technology today.
observation: humans have evolved in a atmospheric environment. they are not designed for vacuum environment. they are fragile and need extensive life support systems. proposal: send ONLY beings designed for space travel.
Robots are cheaper, we could be doing 10 times as much science for the same cost. I know that some experiments can only be done by humans today. the right decision is to improve robotics. A.I. , visual object recognition, self-repair ability, robotic hand. this research would have a positive impact on civilian aplications, too (working in hazardous environment, like nuclear reactors and dumps).
The ISS is an expensive political project. It is hard to kill it, because of international involvment. but it should be killed, because it is using up resources, which could be spent much better.
> China does not accept U.S. dollars for their goods. They may very well convert their dollars into Yuan and buy Chinese products. But as I covered elsewhere in this thread, at some point, those dollars are coming home, unless they're being used for decoration.
Chinese exporters convert their dollar profits into Yuan (to pay workers and suppliers). The dollars get deposited at the central bank. Jul 15, 2003: Japan's foreign reserves currently total $496 billion, followed by China at $310 billion and Taiwan at US$170 billion, according to figures compiled in April by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Hong Kong, with 7.5 million people, has reserves of $114 billion, nearly seven times the total money in circulation in the territory. Other Asian treasuries are similarly bulging with dollars.
there is no rational reason for such big foreign reserves. unless, of course, you do not care about the value of your accumulated paper reserves, but have other goals, like GDP growth on your mind (transfer of industrial infrastructure). undervalued currency means the population does not buy much of imported goods.
since July 2003 the value of the dollar dropped by ca. 10%. so china's central bank lost say, $30 bln. they do not buy anything material with those dollars. they just reinvest them into US-bonds (as good as cash, but gives interest over time).
japan's foreign reserves are even bigger, because they tried hard to keep their economy afloat trough out the nineties. they bet on exports to the US, so they had to have a cheaper currency.
>> "a Hindu will accept a 5% wage increase in exchange for your 100% wage decrease." > Well, now you're just making numbers up. Fictious numbers do not make a persuasive argument.
of course they are made up. this is only an example.
you mentioned a "race to the top".I understand that you were arguing that for every wage decrease in the american job market (race to the bottom) there is a wage increase at the "off-shore". the whole purpose of off-shoring is to move production to a place with lower costs, which often means lower wages, but selling the product back at the primary market to people with higher wages. the race to the top must be slower than the race to the bottom, otherwise the whole concept of cost cutting would not add up.
EXAMPLE: the yearly earnings of a software project manager are $70K in the US and the average indian salary is $11K ( not made up, taken from the article). we fire the american and hire a hind. to attract him in a competitive market we give him a wage 5% above the average: $11550. for him, it's a race to the top. the company just saved $58450 per every dumped worker. just dump 17 more looser and as an CEO you just earned $1M more this year. profits hit record levels.
And the fired looser just got a 100% wage decrease. but he should not dare to use this evil, communist rethoric about a "race to the bottom". because that would be protectionist and he would "ignore the flip side of the coin: a race to the top". tough luck, try better in the next incarnation.
The game EverQuest was implicated in a Tampa-area homicide, but both the lawyer prosecuting Tony Bragg Sr. and the one defending him are minimizing its role in the circumstances surrounding the death of his son.
Prosecutor Suzanne Rossomondo agreed the game only played a small role. "It had some involvement, but more important was [Bragg's] temper and lack of patience. His neglect of the child was only brought to a head because of the game."
Littman said his client was "an irresponsible young guy who had this kid thrust upon him." The child's mother, who is estranged from Bragg, left the child with him because she had lost electric power in her home.
EverQuest was merely the preoccupation of the moment for Bragg, Littman added, saying it could have just have easily been televised football or any other occupation of men in their twenties, instead. "Bragg is sadly typical of many young people today," said Littman. "He had children before he was ready to take care of them."
Any suggestion that the game could be blamed for this death would be the "dumbest idea I've ever heard," said Littman. "Everybody's looking to blame something else. I'd only bring that up if I wanted to be laughed out of court."
neoliberal theory seems to be blinding you. They're taking the dollars because they intend to buy American goods with the dollars.
wrong. they intend to buy chinese goods, because these are cheaper, fool. Americans do the same thing at Wall Mart every day.
That we cannot import more than we export -- over the long term -- is true. To believe otherwise would mean we somehow live in a bubble where foreign countries work for us for free.
they do not do it for free. they get your jobs and know-how. they get the dollars, you get the debt.
The special interests will come up with all sorts of nonsense, all manner of jargon to support their fear mongering. They'll talk of races to the bottom, living wages, social justice and other such things.but that is what is happening.
But what they really mean is "gimme." (Read: I deserve to be making higher real wages for the same equivalent work because I am an American. no, they mean: it costs a lot more to have the same living standard in the US as in India, so please don't take from me what i need for a living.
When protectionists speak of races to the bottom, they ignore the flip side of the coin: a race to the top).wrong again , fool. a Hindu will accept a 5% wage increase in exchange for your 100% wage decrease. otherwise the offshoring would not be generating any cost cutting. american wages will stagnate while corporate profits will go up. this means the social division of the GDP will become more unequal.
We can rack up debt in the way of trade deficits. Debt which will doubtlessly have to be paid off eventually. i'm sure there are some countries of the 3rd world which will tell you about the benefits of debt exceeding their GDP, because they had a fiscal crisis and their currency got grilled.
But sooner or later the dollar will fall against foreign currencies -- as it is currently, btw -- and foreigners will begin to receive repayment of their loans to us, by way of American exports.so if the REAL value of the paper dollars they have received for their products is falling, didn't they, like, work for you for free?
As American exports increase,they wont. Chinese exports will increase. so too will employment, barring commensurate increases in productivity. maybe those service jobs, knowledge workers? like, the porn industry will be a growth sector. and also security. CEOs need protection from the begging mobs.
Today I use modern languages including Visual Basic
you have to deal with this rubbish, too? i'm currently working with VS.NET. it has auto-creators, which generate some needed code. That is fine, but the name choice!? look at this real example:
Friend WithEvents DataSet11 As WindowsApplication1.DataSet1
well, DataSet1 (character "1" at the end ) is a Class, and DataSet11 (eleven) is a variable.
the difference is one frickin character, which actually looks like a typo. it could as well be lowercase("L") or uppercase("i"):
Private companies will not fund risky projects with only long-term benefits. Let's say you develop the rocket technology. If you make a tiny mistake the rocket will explode during testing. No company will take the risk because it would go broke before the technology is mature.
Government projects have the advantage, that the government simply cannot go broke. DoD and DoEnergy pockets are very deep. If nine rockets explode during lift-off, but only the 10th succeeds fully, thats fine. There is no profit motive in national security. Only if the same goals can be achived through cheaper means will the project be scrapped.
OTOH, the private sector is better at making the technology cheaper.
the decision-maker felt safer going with the industry standard because he could say, "That is what our competition is using."
Peter Drucker, the Guru of All Managers, said that the worst thing a company can make is to copy the competition. It gives you no advantage over your competition. You strategy is to rely on mistakes they make otherwise, which is a poor strategy.
to counter your quotes:
Unfortunately, what I see happening is either hand-waving that it's not as bad as you think it is or the other side that says, "Well, there are privacy concerns, and we don't want this all in the hands of government." There's a balance point, and I'm tired of polarized arguments instead of some kind of level of cooperation between the public, private and academic segments, which we ask: What is the right balance point here?
Obviously, as a business person he thinks that the commercial way is the best. but that doesn't mean he is evil. every individual thinks that his groups way is the best solution to any problem. bureaucrats do, academics do, priests do, communists do (did) and so on.
Carter and Brzezinski provoked USSR into going into Afghanistan by suppling mujahedins A HALF YEAR BEFORE the russian intervention.
France was at war with Germany before they attacked them in 1940. There was no trust.
SovietRussia and Germany had The Molotow-Ribbentrop Pact which declared how they would divide Poland (my country) between themselves. The Nazis attacked on the 1 September 1939. SR invaded on September 17th after Hitlers explicit request. So on this they very much trusted each other for good reasons.
Please notice, that I do not say those attacks were something good. But all three of your statements are fundamentally flawed. Please don't rewrite history any more.
BTW: the French deserve to be called "surrender monkeys" precisely because of september 1939. we were their allies in 1939, and they did nothing to help. What about opening a western front , you cowards?
It is no space opera. Lem always wrote 'serious' sci-fi. This one is about the contact with a multi-parts species and the lack of means to communicate. There is no happy end, there is no sad end either.
Polen produziert mehr Kartoffeln als Deutschland! Damals hatten wir nicht genug Ammunition wegen der schwachen Industrie. Diesmal wird es anders. Möchte jemand eine Wiederholung des Ostfronts?:)
P.S. Nicht verzagen, Grüße an alle Geschichtekenner!
Slashdot Mirror
Could this be a sign of the beginning of the end of spam?
Could this be a sign of the beginning of the end of sendmail?
BETTER YET, why don't we put a giant 'laser' on the Moon ?
that way, GWB could get his Moon Base! AYMoonBABTU!
as this is a fusion of two well documented projects I propose to change the name from MADMAN to EVILMAN or maybe DR. EVILDOER.
if that was the case, such a puppet would have the combined intelligence of a team of hired PhDs, would be unbeatable in discussions. there would be some lag, naturally.
Oops! Known reserves of oil, coal and natural gas have never been higher, and show every sign of increasing.
what a f*c@$ng pile of bullshit!
show every sign of increasing? like what, they grow themselves? show me that coal mine which magically fills itself back to full because i have to see it.
or maybe i got the wrong information and the earth actually is flat so its surface is infinite. that way, we can always go forward and discover ever more coal deposits and will do so forever?
Humans have evolved in a sub-tropical environment. They are not designed for cool temperate or sub-arctic conditions.
proposal: Send only robots to these latitudes on Earth
there is a difference between:
warm clothes <-> space suit
calorious food <-> life supply system
Or offer to replace a single trained geologist on a field trip to a site in the Rockies with fifty Spirit robots parachuted randomly into the Rocky mountains. No contest.
the robots will visit 50 times more places. the human will visit only one area. if the goal is to make pictures or take back samples, then robots win. if there is a task that robots can not fulfill today, then we shall work on more sophisticated robots. they do not need to be smart. all they have to do is to stay alive (dumb animal IQ level). humans will do the complicated tasks through "remote presence". they do it now (Spirit and Opportunity).
How long will it be before we can get a robot that can climb down lava pipes and into tunnels?
there are robots designed to crawl through canalisation pipes to inspect them. seen them on some science programme. humans in atmospheric suits will not climb between sharp rocks. they could depressurize.
final thought: if we could separate the human mind from the body, than we are ready for deep space exploration. some kind of transhuman. it sounds like sci-fi (Stanislaw Lem wrote such a story), but so did "man on mars". imagine if HAL 9000 was in fact a human's copied/transplanted mind/brain (but A.I. would be easier to research/develop).
final thought #2: how about sending a human into mars orbit first? no fuel for a return from the surface needed, which dramatically decreases the cost. International Mars Orbit Station ? We do have THAT technology today.
observation: humans have evolved in a atmospheric environment. they are not designed for vacuum environment. they are fragile and need extensive life support systems.
proposal: send ONLY beings designed for space travel.
Robots are cheaper, we could be doing 10 times as much science for the same cost. I know that some experiments can only be done by humans today. the right decision is to improve robotics. A.I. , visual object recognition, self-repair ability, robotic hand. this research would have a positive impact on civilian aplications, too (working in hazardous environment, like nuclear reactors and dumps).
The ISS is an expensive political project. It is hard to kill it, because of international involvment. but it should be killed, because it is using up resources, which could be spent much better.
> China does not accept U.S. dollars for their goods. They may very well convert their dollars into Yuan and buy Chinese products. But as I covered elsewhere in this thread, at some point, those dollars are coming home, unless they're being used for decoration.
Chinese exporters convert their dollar profits into Yuan (to pay workers and suppliers). The dollars get deposited at the central bank.
Jul 15, 2003:
Japan's foreign reserves currently total $496 billion, followed by China at $310 billion and Taiwan at US$170 billion, according to figures compiled in April by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Hong Kong, with 7.5 million people, has reserves of $114 billion, nearly seven times the total money in circulation in the territory. Other Asian treasuries are similarly bulging with dollars.
there is no rational reason for such big foreign reserves. unless, of course, you do not care about the value of your accumulated paper reserves, but have other goals, like GDP growth on your mind (transfer of industrial infrastructure). undervalued currency means the population does not buy much of imported goods.
for comparison: The UK Government's net reserves rose by $621 million in December 2003, bringing the end-December total to $17,903 million
since July 2003 the value of the dollar dropped by ca. 10%. so china's central bank lost say, $30 bln. they do not buy anything material with those dollars. they just reinvest them into US-bonds (as good as cash, but gives interest over time).
japan's foreign reserves are even bigger, because they tried hard to keep their economy afloat trough out the nineties. they bet on exports to the US, so they had to have a cheaper currency.
> Hehe, fun. Name calling.
yey, got humour!
>> "a Hindu will accept a 5% wage increase in exchange for your 100% wage decrease."
> Well, now you're just making numbers up. Fictious numbers do not make a persuasive argument.
of course they are made up. this is only an example.
you mentioned a "race to the top".I understand that you were arguing that for every wage decrease in the american job market (race to the bottom) there is a wage increase at the "off-shore". the whole purpose of off-shoring is to move production to a place with lower costs, which often means lower wages, but selling the product back at the primary market to people with higher wages. the race to the top must be slower than the race to the bottom, otherwise the whole concept of cost cutting would not add up.
EXAMPLE: the yearly earnings of a software project manager are $70K in the US and the average indian salary is $11K ( not made up, taken from the article). we fire the american and hire a hind. to attract him in a competitive market we give him a wage 5% above the average: $11550. for him, it's a race to the top. the company just saved $58450 per every dumped worker. just dump 17 more looser and as an CEO you just earned $1M more this year. profits hit record levels.
And the fired looser just got a 100% wage decrease. but he should not dare to use this evil, communist rethoric about a "race to the bottom". because that would be protectionist and he would "ignore the flip side of the coin: a race to the top". tough luck, try better in the next incarnation.
The game EverQuest was implicated in a Tampa-area homicide, but both the lawyer prosecuting Tony Bragg Sr. and the one defending him are minimizing its role in the circumstances surrounding the death of his son.
Prosecutor Suzanne Rossomondo agreed the game only played a small role. "It had some involvement, but more important was [Bragg's] temper and lack of patience. His neglect of the child was only brought to a head because of the game."
Littman said his client was "an irresponsible young guy who had this kid thrust upon him." The child's mother, who is estranged from Bragg, left the child with him because she had lost electric power in her home.
EverQuest was merely the preoccupation of the moment for Bragg, Littman added, saying it could have just have easily been televised football or any other occupation of men in their twenties, instead. "Bragg is sadly typical of many young people today," said Littman. "He had children before he was ready to take care of them."
Any suggestion that the game could be blamed for this death would be the "dumbest idea I've ever heard," said Littman. "Everybody's looking to blame something else. I'd only bring that up if I wanted to be laughed out of court."
They're taking the dollars because they intend to buy American goods with the dollars.
wrong. they intend to buy chinese goods, because these are cheaper, fool. Americans do the same thing at Wall Mart every day.
That we cannot import more than we export -- over the long term -- is true. To believe otherwise would mean we somehow live in a bubble where foreign countries work for us for free.they do not do it for free. they get your jobs and know-how. they get the dollars, you get the debt.
The special interests will come up with all sorts of nonsense, all manner of jargon to support their fear mongering. They'll talk ofraces to the bottom, living wages, social justice and other such things. but that is what is happening.
But what they really mean is "gimme." (Read: I deserve to be making higher real wages for the same equivalent work because I am an American. no, they mean: it costs a lot more to have the same living standard in the US as in India, so please don't take from me what i need for a living.
When protectionists speak of races to the bottom, they ignore the flip side of the coin: a race to the top). wrong again , fool. a Hindu will accept a 5% wage increase in exchange for your 100% wage decrease. otherwise the offshoring would not be generating any cost cutting. american wages will stagnate while corporate profits will go up. this means the social division of the GDP will become more unequal.
We can rack up debt in the way of trade deficits. Debt which will doubtlessly have to be paid off eventually. i'm sure there are some countries of the 3rd world which will tell you about the benefits of debt exceeding their GDP, because they had a fiscal crisis and their currency got grilled.But sooner or later the dollar will fall against foreign currencies -- as it is currently, btw -- and foreigners will begin to receive repayment of their loans to us, by way of American exports. so if the REAL value of the paper dollars they have received for their products is falling, didn't they, like, work for you for free?
As American exports increase, they wont. Chinese exports will increase. so too will employment, barring commensurate increases in productivity. maybe those service jobs, knowledge workers? like, the porn industry will be a growth sector. and also security. CEOs need protection from the begging mobs.
it's the Karma Police.
... said an anonymous coward
you have to deal with this rubbish, too?
i'm currently working with VS.NET. it has auto-creators, which generate some needed code. That is fine, but the name choice!? look at this real example:well, DataSet1 (character "1" at the end ) is a Class, and DataSet11 (eleven) is a variable.
the difference is one frickin character, which actually looks like a typo. it could as well be lowercase("L") or uppercase("i"):if the language was case-sensitive it would be enough to write
I think my Zen Master can help you, people.
I want you to pay attention to every word I say.
To focus on the sound of my voice
and to feel the energy.
The energy that begins to emerge
from deep inside of you,
to help you
to break free
of any fear that you
may be holding inside of you.
As you listen to the sound of my voice
allow my voice to be a way,
a method
That's it.
Just let go.
slooowwwww down.
allowing your brain
and your mind
to ssllloooowwww
dddoooowwwnnn...
That's it...
I agree, but my explanation is as follows:
Private companies will not fund risky projects with only long-term benefits. Let's say you develop the rocket technology. If you make a tiny mistake the rocket will explode during testing. No company will take the risk because it would go broke before the technology is mature.
Government projects have the advantage, that the government simply cannot go broke. DoD and DoEnergy pockets are very deep. If nine rockets explode during lift-off, but only the 10th succeeds fully, thats fine. There is no profit motive in national security.
Only if the same goals can be achived through cheaper means will the project be scrapped.
OTOH, the private sector is better at making the technology cheaper.
the decision-maker felt safer going with the industry standard because he could say, "That is what our competition is using."
Peter Drucker, the Guru of All Managers, said that the worst thing a company can make is to copy the competition. It gives you no advantage over your competition. You strategy is to rely on mistakes they make otherwise, which is a poor strategy.
wow! an environmentalist right-winger!
dude, arent U a business-lover?
How addictive will this game be?:
scene 1
he is sitting at the PC, she is packing her things in order to leave.
"matrix online game" playing boyfriend: Oh God, my God, Girlfriend how could you do this, you are leaving me! There is no cause for this!
leaving Girlfriend: What cause? How about the game you're still playing?
boyfriend: Ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai, woman, this is nothing, c'est rien, c'est rien du tout. It's a game, it is only a game.
---
Unfortunately, what I see happening is either hand-waving that it's not as bad as you think it is or the other side that says, "Well, there are privacy concerns, and we don't want this all in the hands of government." There's a balance point, and I'm tired of polarized arguments instead of some kind of level of cooperation between the public, private and academic segments, which we ask: What is the right balance point here?
Obviously, as a business person he thinks that the commercial way is the best. but that doesn't mean he is evil. every individual thinks that his groups way is the best solution to any problem. bureaucrats do, academics do, priests do, communists do (did) and so on.
your comments show your ignorance about history.
Carter and Brzezinski provoked USSR into going into Afghanistan by suppling mujahedins A HALF YEAR BEFORE the russian intervention.
France was at war with Germany before they attacked them in 1940. There was no trust.
SovietRussia and Germany had The Molotow-Ribbentrop Pact which declared how they would divide Poland (my country) between themselves. The Nazis attacked on the 1 September 1939. SR invaded on September 17th after Hitlers explicit request. So on this they very much trusted each other for good reasons.
Please notice, that I do not say those attacks were something good. But all three of your statements are fundamentally flawed. Please don't rewrite history any more.
BTW: the French deserve to be called "surrender monkeys" precisely because of september 1939. we were their allies in 1939, and they did nothing to help. What about opening a western front , you cowards?
It is no space opera. Lem always wrote 'serious' sci-fi. This one is about the contact with a multi-parts species and the lack of means to communicate. There is no happy end, there is no sad end either.
Polen produziert mehr Kartoffeln als Deutschland! :)
Damals hatten wir nicht genug Ammunition wegen der schwachen Industrie. Diesmal wird es anders.
Möchte jemand eine Wiederholung des Ostfronts?
P.S. Nicht verzagen, Grüße an alle Geschichtekenner!
smart and on topic.