"This is somewhat reassuring when you consider that both extremes of the scale - US and Soviet - pound their citizens with propaganda."
Actually the most economically free countries in the world are Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Ireland, and Denmark. The US is now ranked #9, not at the extreme end of the scale at all.
It might be that happier populations prefer more socialism (or can stand it, anyway).
However you may also want to look at happiness versus economic freedom, where research shows a positive relationship between national levels of happiness and economic freedom. GDP per capita also exerts a strong positive influence on happiness.
Indeed, the world is getting richer. Since 2000, 28 countries have moved from "poor" to "middle income".
The percent of people in the world living on less than $1.25 a day has fell from 52% to 26% between 1981 and 2005. In China alone, 600 million people have left the under $1.25 per day income line during that period.
The best thing you can do to help the poor people of the planet is to buy something. It is likely that is was either built by people poorer than you, or that at least the raw materials were mined or processed by people poorer than you, and they are benefiting from your commerce, and you are benefitting as well.
The second best thing you can do is to fully appreciate free market capitalism and espouse it publicly, because the poorest countries are those with the least economic freedom and most government regulation of the economy.
Now, picture what will happen if robots remove the jobs in China. People will be out of work, there will be no replacement jobs, and all hell will break loose over there.
Indeed, look at what happened in the US when internal combustion engines took the jobs of nearly 90% of all farm workers in the US between 1880 anf 1950!
Oh yeah, they found something else to do...
Re:How Good is "Good Enough?"
on
Beyond HDTV
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· Score: 1
I have a 42" and sit about 10' away, and can EASILY tell the difference between 720 and 1080.
Yes, 720p60 is awesome, 1080i30 sucks because it is interlaced, and 1080p24 sucks because it is too slow a frame rate - but that has nothing to do with resolution:)
Re:Let me know when companies will stream it...
on
Beyond HDTV
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· Score: 1
"1080p24 (24frames per second) is about 4-8Mb/s when streamed from something like youtube, however a bluray disk can stream at ~54Mb/s."
The reality is that 20 Mbps is plenty for the highest-quality H.264 encoded 1080p24 material. And as the encoders get better, I suspect it will work down to 10-15 Mbps, opening up more of the disc for "additional materials".
HD is really good enough...
on
Beyond HDTV
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· Score: 2
1080 isn't a number picked out of the air. This is the number of scan lines a typical eye can resolve at a viewing distance of 3 picture heights from the screen. You won't be able to see any more detail, and many people can barely perceive the resolution increase of 1080 line HD over 480 line SD (although the higher-quality digital video image and 16:9 aspect ratio is perceivable to most people).
Unless video screens become much larger (like taking up your whole wall), most people are not going to be sitting closer than 3 picture heights to a video screen.
Now I 100% can imagine a whole wall screen of "OLED wallpaper", but until that is practical, UHDTV will not have much utility.
What will have utility is non-glasses-based 3D displays (aka autostereoscopic). These could use UHDTV 2D panels to generate multiple views projected through the room with lenses or through a parallax barrier.
During that time you really think they didn't do a through checking of patents that might apply?
Two possibilities: 1) Google is huge and arrogant and maybe they didn't do a great job at this and/or 2) given the complexity of modern video codecs, it is tough to do a good job of working this out, especially given that VP8's definition has mainly been source code.
Given that WebM was specifically designed to not infringe any patents, I for one would be very surprised if it "steps all over" a large number of patents.
WebM was not developed within an ISO recognized standards development organization. It never had a hope of being patent-free: the process was not open, not due-process, and for that reason and others the folks who might have been willing to donate their IP to the effort were not properly motivated.
There is one, and only one video codec that was developed in an open standards process specifically to be non-royalty, and that is JPEG 2000 Part 1 aka ISO/IEC 15444-1. During the development process of JPEG 2000 Part 1, an agreement was reached with over 20 large organizations holding many patents to allow use of their intellectual property in connection with JPEG 2000 without payment of license fees or royalties.
That is a major reason why JPEG 2000 is the basis of Digital Cinema.
The best thing you can do is teach locals about economics and the benefits of economic freedom. Education could lead to political change. They could learn how to be a bit more like Botswana and less like Zimbabwe.
"Please ask someone old enough to remember the many, many private pension raids and bankruptcies in the 1960's & 70's. "
Indeed, I would neither trust a government nor a private company for defined benefit plans. Organizations both public and private lack the ability to maintain future planning for individuals. I would prefer to control my investments that I own myself.
"The fundamental problem with Social Security is that it is essentially a forced investment in US government Treasury bills. "
As a retirement plan, I'd argue the fundamental problem with Social Security is that you are not invested in anything - you simply receive a legislated amount from the government at a certain point whose details can change at any time. The retirement age has risen (and will keep rising), benefits will change (they have been lowered before by legislation), and your benefits will become more taxed (as they have been), lowering your actual "return on investment".
People will argue that "Social Security is a safety blanket, not a retirement plan" which is fine, let's just all remember that.
"If a large sector of America is unemployed, why are we importing labor?"
Most unemployed Americans are not competing with H1-B candidates. Americans with a 4-year college degree had an unemployment rate of 4.7% in 2010, compared with an unemployment rate of 14.9% for those without a high school degree.
Of all unemployed Americans in 2010, 52% had a high school degree only or less education, and 80% had less than a Bachelor's Degree.
"Further, just because they may apply for permanent residence does not mean it will be easy for them to get it: it is far more than just a formality."
Indeed, just because a person is obviously technologically competent enough for a company to go through all the red tape to get an H1-B for them, and that they've been successfully working in the US for several years and obviously doing OK here, then gee, why should we keep them here when we can just as easily ship them back off to India to be our overseas competition?
I'm happy we were not as STUPID as we are today with all of our immigration phobia when my unskilled immigrant ancestors came to the US and basically walked down a gangplank (before it all got tougher starting in 1920).
"Workers under H1B may be appealing to some degree because they are cheaper and more over-workable, but they can be counted in the thousands, and they still help the economy by spending what they earn."
Workers overseas also help the US economy by spending what they earn. For example, Avatar grossed $204 million in China. Apple had $1.3 billion in China sales last year (most of which is realized by the American design & development teams).
But more importantly, overseas workers also help the US economy by providing us with cheaper final products, enhancing our personal life, and also providing cheaper inputs for American industry (see the Chinese steel tariff incident, which raised steel prices for American auto manufacturers).
"'because they understand the procurement process better than anyone else.' He added: 'It's not because they provide better technology.'""
This is another example of Regulatory Capture, where private entities use the regulatory process created for the public interest to forward their private interests.
Whenever we open up complex regulatory regimes (such as the incredibly insane Federal government procurement process, campaign finance regulations, etc.), inevitably someone will figure out how to game the system for their private benefit.
The best regulations are simple ones, as complexity breeds gaming. Complex regulations also encourage corruption on the government side as well.
"Furthermore, we got phone service to these rural communities"
This occurred mainly because governments allowed/encouraged the creation of the nationwide AT&T monopoly, and AT&T used crosssubsidies derived from its monopoly control of the continental long distance network to price local access artificially low as a barrier to entry. Despite this, true geographical "Universal Service" in telephony did not arise in the US until the 1960's.
Slashdot Mirror
"This is somewhat reassuring when you consider that both extremes of the scale - US and Soviet - pound their citizens with propaganda."
Actually the most economically free countries in the world are Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Ireland, and Denmark. The US is now ranked #9, not at the extreme end of the scale at all.
"Predictably, the mixed economies which have tried to balance known approaches tend to be the happiest. "
Since 50% of happiness is inherited, one has to be cautious about causality.
It might be that happier populations prefer more socialism (or can stand it, anyway).
However you may also want to look at happiness versus economic freedom, where research shows a positive relationship between national levels of happiness and economic freedom. GDP per capita also exerts a strong positive influence on happiness.
"Is that inflation adjusted?"
Yes. The World Bank's definition of extreme poverty is $1.25/day purchasing power parity in 2005 dollars ($1.50/day in 2011 dollars).
Indeed, the world is getting richer. Since 2000, 28 countries have moved from "poor" to "middle income".
The percent of people in the world living on less than $1.25 a day has fell from 52% to 26% between 1981 and 2005. In China alone, 600 million people have left the under $1.25 per day income line during that period.
The best thing you can do to help the poor people of the planet is to buy something. It is likely that is was either built by people poorer than you, or that at least the raw materials were mined or processed by people poorer than you, and they are benefiting from your commerce, and you are benefitting as well.
The second best thing you can do is to fully appreciate free market capitalism and espouse it publicly, because the poorest countries are those with the least economic freedom and most government regulation of the economy.
Now, picture what will happen if robots remove the jobs in China. People will be out of work, there will be no replacement jobs, and all hell will break loose over there.
Indeed, look at what happened in the US when internal combustion engines took the jobs of nearly 90% of all farm workers in the US between 1880 anf 1950!
Oh yeah, they found something else to do...
I have a 42" and sit about 10' away, and can EASILY tell the difference between 720 and 1080.
Yes, 720p60 is awesome, 1080i30 sucks because it is interlaced, and 1080p24 sucks because it is too slow a frame rate - but that has nothing to do with resolution :)
"1080p24 (24frames per second) is about 4-8Mb/s when streamed from something like youtube, however a bluray disk can stream at ~54Mb/s."
The reality is that 20 Mbps is plenty for the highest-quality H.264 encoded 1080p24 material. And as the encoders get better, I suspect it will work down to 10-15 Mbps, opening up more of the disc for "additional materials".
1080 isn't a number picked out of the air. This is the number of scan lines a typical eye can resolve at a viewing distance of 3 picture heights from the screen. You won't be able to see any more detail, and many people can barely perceive the resolution increase of 1080 line HD over 480 line SD (although the higher-quality digital video image and 16:9 aspect ratio is perceivable to most people).
Unless video screens become much larger (like taking up your whole wall), most people are not going to be sitting closer than 3 picture heights to a video screen.
Now I 100% can imagine a whole wall screen of "OLED wallpaper", but until that is practical, UHDTV will not have much utility.
What will have utility is non-glasses-based 3D displays (aka autostereoscopic). These could use UHDTV 2D panels to generate multiple views projected through the room with lenses or through a parallax barrier.
During that time you really think they didn't do a through checking of patents that might apply?
Two possibilities: 1) Google is huge and arrogant and maybe they didn't do a great job at this and/or 2) given the complexity of modern video codecs, it is tough to do a good job of working this out, especially given that VP8's definition has mainly been source code.
Given that WebM was specifically designed to not infringe any patents, I for one would be very surprised if it "steps all over" a large number of patents.
WebM was not developed within an ISO recognized standards development organization. It never had a hope of being patent-free: the process was not open, not due-process, and for that reason and others the folks who might have been willing to donate their IP to the effort were not properly motivated.
There is one, and only one video codec that was developed in an open standards process specifically to be non-royalty, and that is JPEG 2000 Part 1 aka ISO/IEC 15444-1. During the development process of JPEG 2000 Part 1, an agreement was reached with over 20 large organizations holding many patents to allow use of their intellectual property in connection with JPEG 2000 without payment of license fees or royalties.
That is a major reason why JPEG 2000 is the basis of Digital Cinema.
"Of course if Unions were the problem then the EU where unions are far more powerful would have far worse problems... they don't..."
Many European countries are open to privately run, publicly funded schools (such as Swedish Freeschools or Dutch independent schools).
Also some European governments are working on ways to sack bad teachers faster.
The best thing you can do is teach locals about economics and the benefits of economic freedom. Education could lead to political change. They could learn how to be a bit more like Botswana and less like Zimbabwe.
"should have come in using that money to dismantle the teachers' unions."
Like David & Charles Koch are doing...except everybody hates them. It is no fun to be a billionaire if everyone hates you.
I went to Camp Atari. I didn't learn anything, but the Warez were awesome! Getting disks was much better than downloading things at 300bps...
I also did Camp Watonka in the Poconos, where I got early exposure to amateur radio, model rockets, rifles, and extra-circular Dungeons & Dragons!
"Please ask someone old enough to remember the many, many private pension raids and bankruptcies in the 1960's & 70's. "
Indeed, I would neither trust a government nor a private company for defined benefit plans. Organizations both public and private lack the ability to maintain future planning for individuals. I would prefer to control my investments that I own myself.
"The fundamental problem with Social Security is that it is essentially a forced investment in US government Treasury bills. "
As a retirement plan, I'd argue the fundamental problem with Social Security is that you are not invested in anything - you simply receive a legislated amount from the government at a certain point whose details can change at any time. The retirement age has risen (and will keep rising), benefits will change (they have been lowered before by legislation), and your benefits will become more taxed (as they have been), lowering your actual "return on investment".
People will argue that "Social Security is a safety blanket, not a retirement plan" which is fine, let's just all remember that.
"For us web developers whose work gets billed out at 10x what we bring home, it's obvious that we should be getting paid far more than we are now."
Maybe you should start your own company if you think you can provide the same level of service to clients at a lower price.
Of course, you might lack the sales, management, finance, and legal skills to do it.
(NB: I started my own company, it failed...)
"If a large sector of America is unemployed, why are we importing labor?"
Most unemployed Americans are not competing with H1-B candidates. Americans with a 4-year college degree had an unemployment rate of 4.7% in 2010, compared with an unemployment rate of 14.9% for those without a high school degree.
Of all unemployed Americans in 2010, 52% had a high school degree only or less education, and 80% had less than a Bachelor's Degree.
"Further, just because they may apply for permanent residence does not mean it will be easy for them to get it: it is far more than just a formality."
Indeed, just because a person is obviously technologically competent enough for a company to go through all the red tape to get an H1-B for them, and that they've been successfully working in the US for several years and obviously doing OK here, then gee, why should we keep them here when we can just as easily ship them back off to India to be our overseas competition?
I'm happy we were not as STUPID as we are today with all of our immigration phobia when my unskilled immigrant ancestors came to the US and basically walked down a gangplank (before it all got tougher starting in 1920).
"Workers under H1B may be appealing to some degree because they are cheaper and more over-workable, but they can be counted in the thousands, and they still help the economy by spending what they earn."
Workers overseas also help the US economy by spending what they earn. For example, Avatar grossed $204 million in China. Apple had $1.3 billion in China sales last year (most of which is realized by the American design & development teams).
But more importantly, overseas workers also help the US economy by providing us with cheaper final products, enhancing our personal life, and also providing cheaper inputs for American industry (see the Chinese steel tariff incident, which raised steel prices for American auto manufacturers).
update: Green Vehicles already got $187,000 from the California Energy Commission, on top of the over $500,000 from Salinas.
It turns out that Cali taxpayers may be on the hook for Salinas' failed investment:
"Salinas plans on asking the California Energy Commission to reimburse the money it lost."
Nothing scares me more than the combination of green religion with socialism.
"'because they understand the procurement process better than anyone else.' He added: 'It's not because they provide better technology.'""
This is another example of Regulatory Capture, where private entities use the regulatory process created for the public interest to forward their private interests.
Whenever we open up complex regulatory regimes (such as the incredibly insane Federal government procurement process, campaign finance regulations, etc.), inevitably someone will figure out how to game the system for their private benefit.
The best regulations are simple ones, as complexity breeds gaming. Complex regulations also encourage corruption on the government side as well.
"No two countries with a mcDonalds have ever gone to war."
Nice idea, but false:
Georgia and Russia
Israel and Lebanon (check out the "McArabia" sandwich!)
NATO vs. Serbia
"Furthermore, we got phone service to these rural communities"
This occurred mainly because governments allowed/encouraged the creation of the nationwide AT&T monopoly, and AT&T used crosssubsidies derived from its monopoly control of the continental long distance network to price local access artificially low as a barrier to entry. Despite this, true geographical "Universal Service" in telephony did not arise in the US until the 1960's.
Today there is a legislated Universal Service Fund tax on all telephony.