This only affects CONSUMERS -- not corporations. Unless we're dealing with a class action lawsuit, this wont come to all that much.
Furthermore, if it comes to it, watch how fast most Baby Bells will spin off divisions to shield the profits.
Unlike the british experiment, I doubt we'll find these robots in a parking lot. (*evil grin*)
However, this does raise a question; When these robots get to the point of being able to really _play_ soccer, what happens when they slam into each other? They have to be able to get back up, re-orient themselves, etc. Raises the question of Asimov's three laws....could they decide to actually harm another robot on purpose to impair its playing ability? (Red card on B-001-05-NZ18 !)
My God Newsforge is Polite!
on
ICANN Updates
·
· Score: 2, Funny
"Perhaps ICANN, which controls the whole domain name schmear, will listen, although there's no way to be sure. ICANN's record of listening to the voice of the general Internet populace is, at best, spotty. "
Wow. I must admit I am impressed. That statement is rather politically correct, even for NewsForge. Last time I checked, the official Keiretsu opinion of ICANN was "Incompetant Callous And Nothing New".... but I may stand corrected on that one.
(yeah...the bacronym is my own creation, but its a nice summary)
I am sick of hearing the win-win line of approach.
What about the fact that it takes low level american jobs and exports them for profit. Profit pocketed by a large corporation in lieu of the workers in the US who are now jobless.
It may be win-win, but what about the fact that it is also lose-lose? Lose to the citizens of Ghana who are being paid less than their services are really worth and lose to the American/Canadians who are unemployed.
(i didn't really like my karma anyway)
*sigh*
Re:The Digital Dilemma -- Our Exploitation
on
Ghana's Digital Dilemma
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I honestly wasn't meaning to troll.
There was nothing I wanted you to "bite" on.
My point was, Ford Motor Co singlehandedly advanced living conditions when it set its wage at 5$ a day. It was an unprecedented move and it raised the living conditions of ALL its workers. Henry Ford was a brilliant industrialist. He knew that if he gave his workers something far better than they'd ever seen or ever gotten anywhere else, he'd reap the rewards.
Again, corporate America seeing only the short term profits. What if they paid all these people 2$ a day + bonuses for piece work? That would be _more than double_ the police man's salary. Plus, since when have government officials been "highly paid?" New York City police officers (and I have 3 friends who currently are) don't exactly make a fortune.
If nothing else, we should take a lesson from our own history.
PDA's and other hand-held devices can be a huge boon to anyone who has the capacity to use them. Sure, students who already know how to use a computer and _type_ will benefit from the technology. However, what about students who lack that. We haven't reached the point where all students in all public schools have computer access or even a relevant amount of computer knowledge. To a certain extent; this is overkill.
I don't quite think this will turn into glorified note passing; Given the chance to roll their own apps, I think this could result in a number of great projects. I know that if I had been handed some form of PDA with wireless capability in high school, my friends and I would have developed some form of networked app/network game. (Ahh, the joys of having time to code in homeroom) However, the amount of experimentation that would be allowed with the device would be called into question; You'd need a really progressive school system to allow that type of innovation.
I think the most important point that/.'ers should take from this article is in the second page.
"Local Ghanaian supervisors do much the same. Thomas Fabyan, smartly dressed in black suede shoes, khaki pants and a pressed white shirt buttoned to the neck, prods and cajoles his typists to push their limits. Fabyan sits in the corner of a large open room, with tall windows that overlook the city and give glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean. Along with a colleague, Fabyan is responsible for 275 employees who work over three shifts, round the clock. These typists are paid piece rate: the more records they complete, the greater their pay. The fastest workers can earn nearly three dollars a day, while the slowest take home little more than a dollar, still slightly higher than the pay of a local policeman."
Essentially, we are giving Ghana better technology so we can find yet another way to leverage minimum wage differentials across the globe to increase the profits of an American Company. (Aetna) What are these "high tech" workers using their technology for? They are processing scanned documents into a database; They are doing outsourced data entry work! What normally would go for (at least) 6.00 an hour (more in most places) in the states is happening at _dollars per day_. This has nothing to do with "giving technology to the masses" -- it is a corporate strategy to get more "bang for their buck"
-my US $0.02 (In Ghana thats $0.000000002)
Correct; however, this does have some implications. Many an open source app has been ported to Windows (froth Ethereal) and this could lead to the first competition to apple's QuickTime Pro. (Is anyone else sick of "upgrade now?") Regardless, this actually might _HELP_ apple more than hurt it; Its better to be talked about -- (there's no such thing as "bad" publicity) and quite frankly, with MS's newest push for WMA/AVI with XP & WMP, a little controversy over Quicktime might do apple good. (With apologies to Eminem, open source zealotry, the creators of ethereal, and anyone else I may have offended)
No Source Was Harmed In the Writing Of This Post
Moon From Earth: 240000 miles.
"Shell" of space: Earth's Radius (~4000) + 240000
[4/3 * 244000^3 * pi] - [4/3 4000^3 * pi].
Thats still an awfully large volume of space compared to the actual size of the earth itself.
Near-misses are going to be awful lot more common than an actual head-on collision.
Enough sensationalism people.
Didn't anyone else see the movie "Time Machine"? (The recent remake of HG Wells....) Especially the section where we discuss if we have "Gone Too Far" and [SPOILER WARNING] they begin drilling/explosions for the lunar colony, they crack the moon up and destabilize its orbit? IANA Astrophysicist nor am I a geologist (lunologist?) and am not certain of the validity of that scenario, but doesn't anyone else find the prospect of drilling into the surface of the moon frightning? Isn't there enough space junk in our atmosphere already? Just wait until the Space Station is ready to be broken up for re-entry. All we need is one nice chunk hitting a major metropolitan area. (Hello Iridium....)
I wasn't referring to Lem.
I was referring to the crappy amazon.com review,
in which they throw together a bizarre amalgamation of diverse (and oftentimes contradictory) writers and put them in a genre which they had little or no (or inverse) contact with.
As A Sci-Fi fan, I was a little taken aback.
From the amazon review.... "It is as if Jorge Luis Borges, Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and Orwell got together to write a sci-fi novel..."
Now, call me old fashioned, but I'm more of a RH/Pohl/Asimov/Smith fan.
If Borges, Kafka, Vonnegut and Orwell got together to write a scifi novel, we'd have a surrealist oppressive society trying to decide how paranoid to be about it's own growing internal facism.
Quick exerpt... ---snip--- For their part, the non-settling states said additional disclosure of the source code that would allow rival software to work with the Windows operating system was their most important demand. "If you forced us to articulate the single highest priority -- that's it," states' attorney Steve Kuney told the judge.
---snip---
As far as Microsoft's priorities with respect to the proposed remedies are concerned, Sullivan said its top priority is to make sure the company is not forced to reveal more of its source code, insisting that doing so would substantially harm the company and give and unfair advantage to competitors, arguments that Gates and other Microsoft executives have made repeatedly in the past.
---snip---
Hello? Essentially, Microsoft says it's top priority is NOT doing what the states feel is the topmost remedy to the entire situation.
Again, DOJ and MS lock horns head on and it will come down to the Judge.
Slashdot Mirror
This only affects CONSUMERS -- not corporations. Unless we're dealing with a class action lawsuit, this wont come to all that much. Furthermore, if it comes to it, watch how fast most Baby Bells will spin off divisions to shield the profits.
Unlike the british experiment, I doubt we'll find these robots in a parking lot. (*evil grin*)
However, this does raise a question; When these robots get to the point of being able to really _play_ soccer, what happens when they slam into each other? They have to be able to get back up, re-orient themselves, etc. Raises the question of Asimov's three laws....could they decide to actually harm another robot on purpose to impair its playing ability? (Red card on B-001-05-NZ18 !)
I am sick of hearing the win-win line of approach. What about the fact that it takes low level american jobs and exports them for profit. Profit pocketed by a large corporation in lieu of the workers in the US who are now jobless. It may be win-win, but what about the fact that it is also lose-lose? Lose to the citizens of Ghana who are being paid less than their services are really worth and lose to the American/Canadians who are unemployed. (i didn't really like my karma anyway) *sigh*
I honestly wasn't meaning to troll. There was nothing I wanted you to "bite" on. My point was, Ford Motor Co singlehandedly advanced living conditions when it set its wage at 5$ a day. It was an unprecedented move and it raised the living conditions of ALL its workers. Henry Ford was a brilliant industrialist. He knew that if he gave his workers something far better than they'd ever seen or ever gotten anywhere else, he'd reap the rewards. Again, corporate America seeing only the short term profits. What if they paid all these people 2$ a day + bonuses for piece work? That would be _more than double_ the police man's salary. Plus, since when have government officials been "highly paid?" New York City police officers (and I have 3 friends who currently are) don't exactly make a fortune. If nothing else, we should take a lesson from our own history.
PDA's and other hand-held devices can be a huge boon to anyone who has the capacity to use them. Sure, students who already know how to use a computer and _type_ will benefit from the technology. However, what about students who lack that. We haven't reached the point where all students in all public schools have computer access or even a relevant amount of computer knowledge. To a certain extent; this is overkill. I don't quite think this will turn into glorified note passing; Given the chance to roll their own apps, I think this could result in a number of great projects. I know that if I had been handed some form of PDA with wireless capability in high school, my friends and I would have developed some form of networked app/network game. (Ahh, the joys of having time to code in homeroom) However, the amount of experimentation that would be allowed with the device would be called into question; You'd need a really progressive school system to allow that type of innovation.
I think the most important point that /.'ers should take from this article is in the second page.
"Local Ghanaian supervisors do much the same. Thomas Fabyan, smartly dressed in black suede shoes, khaki pants and a pressed white shirt buttoned to the neck, prods and cajoles his typists to push their limits. Fabyan sits in the corner of a large open room, with tall windows that overlook the city and give glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean. Along with a colleague, Fabyan is responsible for 275 employees who work over three shifts, round the clock. These typists are paid piece rate: the more records they complete, the greater their pay. The fastest workers can earn nearly three dollars a day, while the slowest take home little more than a dollar, still slightly higher than the pay of a local policeman."
Essentially, we are giving Ghana better technology so we can find yet another way to leverage minimum wage differentials across the globe to increase the profits of an American Company. (Aetna) What are these "high tech" workers using their technology for? They are processing scanned documents into a database; They are doing outsourced data entry work! What normally would go for (at least) 6.00 an hour (more in most places) in the states is happening at _dollars per day_. This has nothing to do with "giving technology to the masses" -- it is a corporate strategy to get more "bang for their buck"
-my US $0.02 (In Ghana thats $0.000000002)
Sorry....but obligatory... So now we have networks in space.... So isnt it only a matter of time before we have an orbital beowulf cluster? ;)
Correct; however, this does have some implications. Many an open source app has been ported to Windows (froth Ethereal) and this could lead to the first competition to apple's QuickTime Pro. (Is anyone else sick of "upgrade now?") Regardless, this actually might _HELP_ apple more than hurt it; Its better to be talked about -- (there's no such thing as "bad" publicity) and quite frankly, with MS's newest push for WMA/AVI with XP & WMP, a little controversy over Quicktime might do apple good. (With apologies to Eminem, open source zealotry, the creators of ethereal, and anyone else I may have offended) No Source Was Harmed In the Writing Of This Post
Didn't anyone else see the movie "Time Machine"? (The recent remake of HG Wells....) Especially the section where we discuss if we have "Gone Too Far" and [SPOILER WARNING] they begin drilling/explosions for the lunar colony, they crack the moon up and destabilize its orbit? IANA Astrophysicist nor am I a geologist (lunologist?) and am not certain of the validity of that scenario, but doesn't anyone else find the prospect of drilling into the surface of the moon frightning? Isn't there enough space junk in our atmosphere already? Just wait until the Space Station is ready to be broken up for re-entry. All we need is one nice chunk hitting a major metropolitan area. (Hello Iridium....)
I wasn't referring to Lem. I was referring to the crappy amazon.com review, in which they throw together a bizarre amalgamation of diverse (and oftentimes contradictory) writers and put them in a genre which they had little or no (or inverse) contact with. As A Sci-Fi fan, I was a little taken aback.
"It is as if Jorge Luis Borges, Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and Orwell got together to write a sci-fi novel..."
Now, call me old fashioned, but I'm more of a RH/Pohl/Asimov/Smith fan.
If Borges, Kafka, Vonnegut and Orwell got together to write a scifi novel, we'd have a surrealist oppressive society trying to decide how paranoid to be about it's own growing internal facism.
Quick exerpt...
---snip---
For their part, the non-settling states said additional disclosure of the source code that would allow rival software to work with the Windows operating system was their most important demand. "If you forced us to articulate the single highest priority -- that's it," states' attorney Steve Kuney told the judge.
---snip---
As far as Microsoft's priorities with respect to the proposed remedies are concerned, Sullivan said its top priority is to make sure the company is not forced to reveal more of its source code, insisting that doing so would substantially harm the company and give and unfair advantage to competitors, arguments that Gates and other Microsoft executives have made repeatedly in the past.
---snip---
Hello? Essentially, Microsoft says it's top priority is NOT doing what the states feel is the topmost remedy to the entire situation.
Again, DOJ and MS lock horns head on and it will come down to the Judge.
Dear god let us have a resolution already.
At least mandrake lacks the Lindows "M$-interoperability" clause.....but as of yet, they make no claims dealing with ease of use.
FSCK and scandisk don't exactly look the same....
Wait till a Wal-marter gets their first kernel panic -- at least they were USED to the BSODs.
nuff said =)