Most of the opponents of off-shoring seem to subscribe to the lump of labor fallacy (yes, that's shrill liberal Paul Krugman). Jobs are not in fixed supply because a job is not an object or an item, but a transaction. Quick proof that giving a job to somebody doesn't destroy a job from somebody else? The fact that our unemployment rate did not permanently increase when women entered the labor force.
Learned that example from the "Contemporary Economic Issues" lecture by Tim Taylor, available from The Teaching Company (one of many reasons I was inspired to switch from embedded software engineering and now am currently pursuing a Master's in econ). So far, I've found that software engineering is comparatively simple and straightforward when compared to most social sciences. After all, people are much more unpredictable and harder to explain than machines, and this whole thread seems to be a result of commenters here forgetting that.
And how about another example that strikes closer to home. The unemployment rate also did not increase permanently when computers were invented. After all, computers (and the software that runs on them) have allowed firms to get much greater productivity from fewer workers. Indeed, much more than productivity gains from off-shoring (which runs into communication issues). So maybe we should destroy all the computers and give everybody in the world more jobs!
If money is speech, then are you saying that bribery should be legal?
BTW, the BCRA was of great help in weakening the two parties by moving campaign contributions away from undisclosed soft money contributions under complete control of the parties and towards fully-disclosed 527 contributions which are not under control of the parties, thus decentralizing power.
I think most everybody is latching on to how cellphones are not the best way to use this technology. Indeed, I think checking the user's fingerprints would make more sense from both a security and usability standpoint.
Face recognition software will more likely find a better niche scanning lots of people from a distance, like at airports. Or, ala Minority Report, department stores. I think the implications of viable face-recognition technology are kinda scary.
I personally have both a MT blog and a LJ for this exact reason: to keep the material separate. I'm hoping a merger will help make these a little easier to manage by letting me choose a single posting interface.
Instant runoff, while a big improvement over Plurality, sometimes gets rid of viable candidates with broad (but not intense) support in the first round.
Better systems for single-seat races are Approval or Condorcet (which you can find more about at ElectionMethods.org)
and Proportional Representation would be great for Congress (our checks and balances work pretty well, so there's no need to move to a Parliamentary system). Another informative site (albeit somewhat confusing to navigate) is Accurate Democracy.
This is not something either party wants, so it will be a long, uphill battle. But neither party wanted campaign finance reform either, so enough popular support can get anything done (although 527s are bad, they're not as bad as soft money, and indeed, at least they help pull power away from the two big parties).
I only watched about 2 seasons of B5, but my impression of JMS is that while he's great at grand story arcs, he's not that strong at scripting dialogue. And the camerawork/editing wasn't too good either, but I dunno if that was him or that his budget couldn't afford good directors/editors.
My ideal would be JMS with Joss Whedon. Have JMS plan out a multi-season story arc, and let Joss script and direct the episodes. Doesn't matter what the premise is, Trek or whatnot. They could make it about that shrimp dimension, and it'd probably still be pretty compelling.
Dunno whether either one would be willing to sacrifice enough creative control to make this work, though.
Aside from the problem of valuing life, people tend to have a tough time weighing costs to society. Especially comparing cases which involve a large amount of harm to a few to cases involving a small amount of harm to many. The human instinct is to empathize by imagining how the harm must feel, and thus we weigh the former cases more heavily.
This causes all sorts of problems. Like tariffs and subsidies, which hurt a lot of people a little but benefit a few greatly.
It seems to me that very few craps player stick with the pass/come & odds bets. The place bets are just too tempting when "a roller gets hot," and the house advantage for those is larger.
But I think you get a lot of fun for your money, which is the whole point of gambling.
As others are pointing out, the difference between the price of gas in Europe and the USA are mostly due to taxes.
I was under the impression that a big part of it is the deal we have with the Saudis (not to blame the current administration, cuz I think it's been this way for a long time). In exchange for defending their borders, they sell us oil at a lower price.
Not to mention situational stats, like how they do vs. lefties or righties, with runners in scoring position. Or whether a player is on a hot streak or cold streak.
Plus having the rosters and recent game history is pretty handy, say during pitching changes where you can check what arms are available and critique the manager's choices, even for the opposing team that you're not so familiar with. Ditto for pinch hitters and double-switches.
And during a pennant race, you can keep better track of how the other contender's game is going.
For some reason, many companies keep inept management in place, I suspect because the next management level up is equally inept.
Another reason this happens is because in corporate culture, if you do well, you get promoted. This means people keep getting promoted until they get to a position where they aren't doing a good job anymore. And then the companies let them stay there because demoting them back to the position where they were doing a good job would likely cause them to jump ship (if not for the pay cut, then for the stigma).
"What's the point... of handling errors that should never happen? You just double the size of your code, cause schedules to be missed, make maintenance more difficult and increase the probability of a grotesque coding error."
Well, I know you were being humorous, but the point wasn't about errors that weren't happening, but about errors that *were* happening that the developer assumed would never happen.
Most of these projects are pretty complicated; your individual module interacts with a bunch of other modules (software or otherwise) written by other people who may not give your module valid inputs. In my experience, if you check all your inputs, these bugs'll be found faster, the project as a whole will be more maintainable, and grotesque coding errors will be caught faster.
So basically, those typical excuses only come from namby pamby programmers.:)
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Very well said.
Most of the opponents of off-shoring seem to subscribe to the lump of labor fallacy (yes, that's shrill liberal Paul Krugman). Jobs are not in fixed supply because a job is not an object or an item, but a transaction. Quick proof that giving a job to somebody doesn't destroy a job from somebody else? The fact that our unemployment rate did not permanently increase when women entered the labor force.
Learned that example from the "Contemporary Economic Issues" lecture by Tim Taylor, available from The Teaching Company (one of many reasons I was inspired to switch from embedded software engineering and now am currently pursuing a Master's in econ). So far, I've found that software engineering is comparatively simple and straightforward when compared to most social sciences. After all, people are much more unpredictable and harder to explain than machines, and this whole thread seems to be a result of commenters here forgetting that.
And how about another example that strikes closer to home. The unemployment rate also did not increase permanently when computers were invented. After all, computers (and the software that runs on them) have allowed firms to get much greater productivity from fewer workers. Indeed, much more than productivity gains from off-shoring (which runs into communication issues). So maybe we should destroy all the computers and give everybody in the world more jobs!
BTW, the BCRA was of great help in weakening the two parties by moving campaign contributions away from undisclosed soft money contributions under complete control of the parties and towards fully-disclosed 527 contributions which are not under control of the parties, thus decentralizing power.
Face recognition software will more likely find a better niche scanning lots of people from a distance, like at airports. Or, ala Minority Report, department stores. I think the implications of viable face-recognition technology are kinda scary.
I personally have both a MT blog and a LJ for this exact reason: to keep the material separate. I'm hoping a merger will help make these a little easier to manage by letting me choose a single posting interface.
Better systems for single-seat races are Approval or Condorcet (which you can find more about at ElectionMethods.org) and Proportional Representation would be great for Congress (our checks and balances work pretty well, so there's no need to move to a Parliamentary system). Another informative site (albeit somewhat confusing to navigate) is Accurate Democracy.
This is not something either party wants, so it will be a long, uphill battle. But neither party wanted campaign finance reform either, so enough popular support can get anything done (although 527s are bad, they're not as bad as soft money, and indeed, at least they help pull power away from the two big parties).
My ideal would be JMS with Joss Whedon. Have JMS plan out a multi-season story arc, and let Joss script and direct the episodes. Doesn't matter what the premise is, Trek or whatnot. They could make it about that shrimp dimension, and it'd probably still be pretty compelling.
Dunno whether either one would be willing to sacrifice enough creative control to make this work, though.
This causes all sorts of problems. Like tariffs and subsidies, which hurt a lot of people a little but benefit a few greatly.
But I think you get a lot of fun for your money, which is the whole point of gambling.
I was under the impression that a big part of it is the deal we have with the Saudis (not to blame the current administration, cuz I think it's been this way for a long time). In exchange for defending their borders, they sell us oil at a lower price.
Yeesh, it'd be bad enough to just get the Mariah Carey, but Mariah immediately followed by Wham! would definitely do me in!
Plus having the rosters and recent game history is pretty handy, say during pitching changes where you can check what arms are available and critique the manager's choices, even for the opposing team that you're not so familiar with. Ditto for pinch hitters and double-switches.
And during a pennant race, you can keep better track of how the other contender's game is going.
Another reason this happens is because in corporate culture, if you do well, you get promoted. This means people keep getting promoted until they get to a position where they aren't doing a good job anymore. And then the companies let them stay there because demoting them back to the position where they were doing a good job would likely cause them to jump ship (if not for the pay cut, then for the stigma).
"What's the point... of handling errors that should never happen? You just double the size of your code, cause schedules to be missed, make maintenance more difficult and increase the probability of a grotesque coding error."
:)
Well, I know you were being humorous, but the point wasn't about errors that weren't happening, but about errors that *were* happening that the developer assumed would never happen.
Most of these projects are pretty complicated; your individual module interacts with a bunch of other modules (software or otherwise) written by other people who may not give your module valid inputs. In my experience, if you check all your inputs, these bugs'll be found faster, the project as a whole will be more maintainable, and grotesque coding errors will be caught faster.
So basically, those typical excuses only come from namby pamby programmers.