Seriously, who over the age of twenty is going to buy a DS?
Seriously? I'm 34 and waiting for the DS Lite. My brother is 30 and already has a DS (he will buy a DS Lite). My fiance's brother (future brother-in-law) is 29 and has two DS's. My step-mother is 62 and already has a DS. My dad's PhD advisor (they've been friends for 30 years) has two DS's. Don't know how old he is, but I think he knows Methusela personally...
These are kids' toys we're talking about.
You mean in the same way that Lego bricks are kids toys? Yeah, I've got a pile of those too, and I'm waiting for the new Mindstorms kit to come out soon...
I think that your definition of kids toys could use some tweaking, but that's just my opinion. Toys for grownups don't have to cost a fortune...
They are ugly, heavy, and generally have less features than similarly priced notebooks from other makers.
Ugly? highly subjective. I happen to think that Thinkpads look better than HP laptops, though not quite as nice as Apple laptops. Those are the only three brands (HP, IBM, Apple) that I find acceptable in appearance. Heavy? not nearly so subjective. In my purchasing experience (1400i, 600X, A21p, R51p, R51p) the Thinkpad was lighter than the comparable offering from Dell, Toshiba, Gateway by a pound or more. With a lower resolution screen but other specs identical, there was a Thinkpad offering (T21, T41) that saved another pound. I always found Thinkpads to be on the light end of the scale. Less Features? You're smoking something good. Screens: What I want is a high-res screen. 1600x1200 or better. IBM has been putting that screen in a sub-5lb laptop for six years. Now nobody is. In our house we still use the A21p's and R51p's with the incredible 1600x1200 screens, and I don't know how I'm going to break it to my family that nobody is making that good of a screen any more. Networking: IBM had built-in modems (winmodems, I'll grant) and 10Mb ethernet while Dell, HP, and Gateway were still shipping a Type III PCMCIA card. IBM got built-in wireless at the same time as everyone else. Keyboard: IBM has the quietest and best feel on a laptop keyboard bar none. Dell has the flimsiest and worst. Apple was close behind Dell on this point, I need to try a newer Apple and see if they've gotten better. HP used to suck really badly, but I recently tried one that felt pretty good. Mouse: Nobody in our house uses touchpads after trying out the trackpoint, but I know that people are different on this issue. IBM's have had both the touchpoint and touchpad for years and you could disable the one you didn't want to use. Toshiba used to be the same on this, but I don't know if they've stayed with it. Nobody else seems to have figured it out.
They look and realize what Apple realized almost a decade ago - PCs don't have to be ugly. So people start looking around and see what they've been missing. Color! Brightness! Good keyboards! STYLE.
Are you sure it wasn't a Dell you were looking at? Maybe a Compaq laptop? Gateway? Because IBM's have had the best screen and the best keyboard in the business for years. Apple could only aspire to the IBM keyboard and screen. Other people have already said it right. IBM backed their products with IBM-level service. Lenovo doesn't seem to be able to get even close on the service side, so it's not worth paying as much. Lenovo has discontinued the best screen in the business. Lenovo seems to have dropped manufacturing quality from their priority list.
Lenovo isn't getting any of my business until they fix these issues.
You want other players in other industries where employees come first and customers come second? Try GM in the auto industry, or United in the airline industry. Do they make/do anything you would willing buy? Didn't think so.
Your examples are unions, i.e. worst-case examples of management/employee relationships. How about Costco or Southwest Airlines? Both of those actually said that they put employees ahead of customers (pretty much preventing a union from ever forming). And yes, they do make/sell/provide things that I willingly buy.
Personally, as an entrepreneur, I'm sold on the idea. My customer service employee knows that if there's a disagreement between him and a customer, I'm going to go to bat for him. The customers are almost always satisfied, possibly because he's happier and more comfortable in his job. Also he's more likely to be here in next year or five, which costs me a LOT less in training and recruiting.
I'd enter this industry just to compete with this knucklehead. Imagine getting to come in with your sales team after the first team just told the prospect that their needs are not your companies' top priority. Buh-bye.
If my sales team actually got to the point of telling a customer this, you're more than welcome to them. As in: we just kicked them to the curb because we weren't getting any value from the relationship and we're hoping that a competitor will get saddled with them while we spend our time and effort on more profitable relationships. We might even provide some sales intel to help get you the sale:)
You are there to serve your customers, not to showboat as a whining elitist.
Actually, as a vendor, you also get to choose your customers, which basically means turning away some people/companies that you don't wish to have as customers. Usually, companies limit this to those customers that are "high maintenance" and low revenue. If he's that good at cooking steaks, he may have the luxury of turning away customers who don't like their steaks the way he thinks they should be made.
All that's necessary for him to win is to be so good in every other aspect of his business that he can afford the loss of those customers he turns away. Think "soup nazi" from Seinfeld (for a fictional example).
But businesses in service industries are not there to serve everyone without making any judgements. At least, not the great businesses. That kind of a business model inevitably leads to "lowest common denominator" service and my dollars will go looking for the better (and opinionated) chef in short order.
There are many "great chefs" in the IT industry (and elsewhere) ready to take your place, many of whom can actually be bothered to care about their customers more than themselves.
This example is particularly bad. Your IT customer says they want X. You know that X will not do what they need and will cost more than they should be paying for Y. Do you insist on Y or do you accept your pay for X and walk away when "what they asked for is not what they needed"? I say it's a sleazeball who actually takes the customer's money for useless services.
And you're right that there's another sleazeball around the corner to take their money, but at least it won't be me taking that ill-spent money and tarnishing my reputation as a result.
The problem here is that there are many more amateur photographers than professional photographers (defined as those who actually sell their images). The amateur photographers got just as bitten as the pros in this case by Nikon.
One very tiny reason I don't mind having Canon gear.
Read this article which is a recent Slashdot Thread: [link snip]
I did read the article and the discussion around it. Personally, I find his reasoning to be shaky and his references to climate models to be disingenuous. There are a lot of climate models, but very few are effective at predicting even historical data (give it data up to 2000, does it provide any predictions that match 2000-2005?). Though they are being continuously improved, there is a limitation to predictive accuracy based on the same limitations that meteorologists have: the earth's weather system is highly chaotic.
Where do you get your numbers on the amount of CO2 released by humans.
Well, you forced me to do some more research and what I thought was a slam-dunk fact (ten thousand to one proportion) turned out to be fairly shaky and almost certainly incorrect.
My older source and the newer sources differ substantially. The older source states 10,000:1 human:natural and 110MT CO2/year from volcanoes (implied 1100GT/year from humans). Source #1 states a long-term average of 500MT CO2/year from volcanoes and a recent average of 17.6GT CO2/year from humans. Source #2 provides recent human emission totals of 5GT to 6.5GT C/year from humans (equivalent to 16.4GT to 21.3GT CO2/year).
I think that the older source took the amount of human CO2 emissions over the past 200 years (though Source #3 states that total human CO2 emissions are 500GT CO2, so that's not enough to fully explain his error). Based on newer and better researched data, I've now updated my statements to reflect that humans release 32 times as much CO2 as volcanoes on average.
You also mention that volcano eruptions cause the Earth's temperature to drop because the sulphur compounds reflect heat. You then say that mankind releases 8181 times more that that.
Clearly an error. Humans release about 10MT SO2/year. Volcanos release on average 2.5MT SO2/year, though individual eruptions release much more than others (El Cichien 8.5MT, Pinatubo 17MT, Mt. St. Helens 212 KT). Also, the exact kind of sulphur "stuff" released and where it ends up makes a huge difference on whether it has any impact on global temperatures. Some volcanoes, like Tambora release lots of SO2 to the upper atmosphere, which causes an optically dense haze that blocks some of the sun's radiation. The SO2 in the upper atmosphere and the haze it creates can persist for more than two years. Other volcanoes, like Mt. St. Helens, release more ash, which does create more clouds in the months following the eruption, but is almost entirely washed out of the atmosphere within six months.
Most human emissions of SO2 occur in the lower atmosphere, and contribute heavily to smog and haze close to the ground, but are more quickly removed from the air by rain than the SO2 delivered to the upper atmosphere by volcanoes. Also, because the haze is lower to the ground (often at ground level), the optical scattering from the haze doesn't reflect nearly as much back out (most of the radiation is captured in one way or another by the time it reaches ground level).
To me, the biggest remaining issue is to show a caus
Okay, so let me get this straight. Some Saudi author found some bestiality porn on the intarweb and determined that because a woman was having sex with a dog/donkey, she must have already been married to the dog/donkey because that's the only way to have sex. Dammit! He's got us. With that kind of trailblazing fact-finding, there's just no way to hide the fact that all western women are married to dogs or donkeys!
If you really want to pop his cork, send him some two on one bestiality porn. Ask if she's married to both critters.
The Islamic world has basically zero chance of economic significance (outside of the sale of resources like oil) because they forbid loans with interest, because they marginalize half of their population out of the economy, and ultimately: because quranic law is essentially anti-commerce.
Sure, they'll have a substantial population for as long as the resources last (and food aid after that), and there will be some casualties here and there, when some of those upset with the imbalance (of their own making) head off to kill some infidels. However, to be completely realistic, India and China are much larger long-term threats to US hegemony than the whole of the Muslim world.
They have Indian development offices, but not outsourced.
Though the challenges and benefits are different when you hire your own employees in an offshore office instead of contracting with a offshore bodyshop in another country, both are a part of the practice of "offshoring".
At least in the common parlance as well as the jargon of software development in the US, they are the same. You may be using a different jargon in which they are distinct.
What would the state have to gain by promoting global warming?
The more important question is: what benefit does any elected representative obtain from expensive policy decisions that can only have measurable effect after they are long gone?
The answer is: they know they did the right thing when they destroyed their chance of being re-elected.
The apparent paradox you raise occurs when the long-lived "state" doesn't act like a long-lived being with long-term interests because the actors making decisions for the state (elected representatives, appointed judges and burecrats, etc.) don't actually have a long-term interest in the success of the state or the nation.
This is the fundamental problem of designing governments. You can try to align the interests of the people who make up governments with the people they govern, but there will always be discrepancies that eventually cause the government to work against the interests of the governed. So far, anyway. I would love to be shown a counter-example within my lifetime...
There is no way Global Warming can cause higher and lower tempertatures. Either the Earth is getting hotter or it is getting colder.
You're sounding stupider by the minute. The distribution of heat energy on the surface of the earth is not some sort of linear "hot at the equator, cold at the poles" situation. The ocean and air move around and carry heat all over the place, but how they move energy around depends a great deal on oceanic and surface geography.
The Gulf Stream, in particular, pumps enormous amounts of heat from the tropics into the North Atlantic and is responsible for London, England feeling a lot like New York City, USA despite being at the same latitude as Calgary, Canada. There are other currents (google for "thermal conveyer") that do the same sorts of things in the Pacific and Indian oceans.
When the planetary climate changes, unpredictable things happen to those heat transfer systems, and when one stops, or a different one begins, sudden dramatic warming or cooling of certain locations will happen (is happening). Now that you've been told, stop acting ignorant on the subject.
1 volcano eruption relases more greenhouse gasses than all of mankind for the last 50 years.
Too bad your assertion is completely and utterly incorrect. Which volcanic eruption were you thinking of? Are you referring to some primordial eruption hundreds of millions of years ago (because one of those might get close).
Did you just trust the AM talk radio host you listened to (who didn't check his facts either)?
Two facts are relevant here.
First: volcanic eruptions almost always decrease global temperature because the sulphur aresols tend to reflect more heat than is trapped by the CO2. If it weren't for volcanoes, we'd be that much worse off on climate change.
Second: average total volcanic activity for the last 20 years has been 110 million tons of CO2 and 80 million tons of sulphur-based gases per year (that's million with an 'm'). Human contributions of CO2 over the last 20 years were about 900 billion tons of CO2 per year (that's billion with a 'b'). Factor of 8181. Similar factors for sulphur and nitrogen compounds. As in humans released more than eight thousand times as much greenhouse gases as volcanoes did over the same time period.
More than eight thousand times as much greenhouse gases over the last twenty years. Humans more than volcanoes.
The largest volcano in the last 10,000 years was Tambora in 1815, which released about 2 billion tons of CO2 along with hundreds of billions of tons of sulphur aresols, causing the "year without a summer" in 1816. The largest volcano in the past ten thousand years released less than 0.5% of the CO2 humans released in 2005.
You're so badly misinformed, you can't even tell when you're being fed nonsense or an actual fact. If you want to fix the fact that you look like an idiot in this discussion (or any other on climate change) that's what you need to work on first. Good luck to you.
Most of them have long since lost that creative spark by the time they're thirty anyway.
Interesting supposition, except for the troublesome little observation that truly* creative people get more creative with age. Like most skills, the more you practice it, the better you get.
Perhaps what you meant was, "Most of them (creative people working in game companies) have long since burned out by the time they're thirty anyway." which I would agree with.
And that's exactly the problem we're all talking about, so welcome aboard!
Regards, Ross
I say "truly creative people" because there are people who have a knack for drawing but have no passion, and yeah, those people get bored and are constantly griping, even in the best of circumstances.
I often travel to the US and work from there (mostly San Francisco), and I can say that India is going to be defining work trends in the coming years. Americans are very "old school".
Be careful that you don't get the selection of US companies you work with confused with all US companies. I have contracted for companies that have extensive offshore dev/qa/analysis efforts and for companies that don't think it makes much strategic sense. The work environment at companies which consider more than just dollars are (predictably) much more interesting, motivating, trusting, etc...
I agree that India is way ahead of the Fortune 500 on how to do software work. So are lots of companies right here in the US. (in my experience, they're usually the ones with very few MBA's on staff)
Ultimately, what Paul forgot to do was to separate "Patents" from "IP Law". The situation he describes is the situation without any "IP Law", i.e. without trade secret laws, without copyright laws and without patent laws (trademark laws aren't all that relevant to this question).
If we eliminate software patents, we are left with software copyrights and software trade secrets, which suffice to explain, as you said, the advancement in first years of the computer industry up to the 90s.
And, as another poster mentioned, we don't have to agree that being against software (and business process) patents means that you're automatically against all patents. His argument, namely that the patent office "prior art" test is so badly broken that software patents end up being worse than other kinds of patents merely underscores the real argument:
When you say that you are against software patents, you're really saying that you're against the current implementation of software patents that many of us have to deal with. There may actually be some better implementation of software patents that would actually promote software development better than copyright protection alone has done.
Not sure that I see how, but I concede that it's possible.
Sulphur compounds tend to result in global cooling. CO2, methane, a few others tend to result in global warming. Any volcanic eruption will release it's own balance of sulphur vs. other debris, which will change the effect of that eruption on the atmosphere.
Here's one article that I read today on that exact same topic. It may be the same thing you've already read.
The full quote says that while it is impossible to destroy all life on earth, it is completely possible to make it impossible for humans to survive.
You're right that I made the mistake of equating "destroying the earth" with "making the earth uninhabitable by humans" or the even less suprising "significantly altering the earth".
In my defense, so did the person I responded do, and I intended to respond to that person's rhetoric: (it's impossible that humans are significantly altering the earth [para]).
Global warming is all about funding. It is simply a scare tactic by "scientists" to get money to study something that really isn't a problem.
If current arctic melting trends continue, you'll be able to visit the North pole in a boat by 2015. Not an icebreaker, mind you, just a normal boat with a 1000 mile range. A 32ft sailboat will do just fine.
That means the temporary cessation of the Gulf Stream current, which is largely responsible for moderate temperatures in the US northeast, Newfoundland, the British Isles, and Norway which will become very cold in the winter within one or two years. That's "temporary" as in less than several thousand years, probably only a few hundred years.
It's unknown if that also means the melting of part or all of the Greenland ice cap, which will result in increased sea levels, not only from the liberated water, but the reduced weight of the ice on Greenland will cause that very large island and it's surrounding shelf to rise a few feet, displacing water over the rest of the planet.
But you're right. We shouldn't bother to study if any of these things are implied by what we've already observed in the arctic over the past twenty years. It's just scientists trying to keep their huge mansions and luxury cars.
There were areas in the United States last summer that had record high temperatures. This of course was due to global warming. There were areas in the United States this past winter that had record low temperatures. According to "scientists", this too is caused by global warming. They have it both ways.
The fact that you don't understand why both statements are true and important tells everyone reading this a lot more than I could possibly point out by explaining it to you. So I'll just quote your incredulity and close my argument here.
Of course, when you suddenly decide that only CO2 emissions are "greenhouse gas" for volcanoes, but CO2 is part of a number of gasses when mankind is doing it, you can get some pretty small numbers coming out.
Actually, it's my understanding that volcanic sulphur oxides are much larger contributors to climate change than CO2, and even including them, humans still dramatically outproduced volcanoes in the last century.
Greenland is named so in part because when Leif Erickson found it the land was warm and productive...who was responsible for the global warming in 1000AD? Leif wasn't much of an SUV driver.
First, it wasn't that green. He was trying to sell it as an attractive new home to Icelanders and took some liberties in his description (you could see multiple glaciers from almost any place on land during a clear day). Point taken, however, that it was much more verdant in those days than any time until just recently.
Further, you will notice that I limited my statement to the last 100 years, the time frame of events most likely to contribute to the current warming trend.
As you mention, I don't think you cleanly fit on the US "conservative <-> liberal" axis. There are vanishingly few categories in this world that fit cleanly onto a single axis. Especially politics, though Ann Coulter doesn't quite grok that...
You don't mention anything about what people are doing in the privacy of their own home, but that could just be because you don't care, in which case you're to the left on that topic.
Based on your SS tax recommendation, you aren't that wealthy, so much of the Republican agenda probably doesn't impress you (your military funding point backs this up).
Based on your quick mention of welfare, you aren't poor, and dealing with poverty doesn't seem to be a big concern of yours, so several parts of the Democrat agenda probably don't impress you.
Actually, you sound fairly libertarian, though not a part of the anarchist sub-group. In a longer discussion, this is also how I describe myself. One thing that you may find interesting to consider is how social "safety nets" like welfare, SS, and medicare/medicade actually help the middle class and wealthy by promoting social stability. If the poor aren't really that poor, they are less likely to really disrupt the economy with revolutions. Look at Central/South America for several examples that may substantiate this assertion.
Are you claiming that the opposing views DON'T have an agenda?
Depends on who you mean by "opposing views". If you mean environmentalists, then no. If you mean scientists, then I would say that they do their best not to let their opinions drive their research and scientific statements.
If you're going to make scientific statements and expect them to be treated as credible, you do need to at least try to set your agenda to one side. The book the ggp is quoting from was clearly a tract written to discount the impact of humans on the earth's climate. No matter what the facts actually are.
To more substantively respond to your post. I agree that McCain is not perfect, for many of the reasons you mention. However, I wonder how many of his votes that you and I object to are based on his own principles, how many are the result of the necessity of compromise, and how many are because he's bought and paid for.
His own conscience and the compromise votes (presumably in pursuit of longer term goals in line with his conscience) aren't the problem, IMHO. How much he's bought and paid for is the core issue, and I have to admit that I don't see a whole lot of evidence of that.
In my final analysis, with all of McCain's questionable statements and votes, he still seems to be the best of the current crop, and if we are going to have a Republican president, I'd really rather it was him than any of the other contenders.
Hmm, except that McCain is giving a speech at the opening for =Jerry Falwell's= new evangelical college...
That is a little suprising, although I do believe that McCain needs to avoid offending the religious right to get past the primaries. I sincerely hope that he doesn't sell his soul to that devil in order to retain their support.
I say he's just as corrupt as the rest of them and you're one of the people who supported them.
How did you reach the conclusion that I supported "them"? I haven't been able to vote for a Republican at the national level in many years.
In the last election, I voted for Badnarik, though if I had still lived in Ohio where the vote was close (I now live in California), I would have voted for Kerry. Not because he's better than Bush, but because he's not Bush.
But I'd love to continue the discussion: how could I support "them" less?
To quote something I have read in a book - "to beleive that the human race has the power or even the potential to destroy the earth is absolute arogance".
It sounds like the author of that book had an agenda. And wasn't very well informed.
Volocanoes are responsible for "global warming". If the gases that they spew are more plentiful that all that humans can put out in 100 years then they are far more responsible.
Except that volcanic eruptions over the last 100 years only account for 4% of the total greenhouse gas emissions over that same period. Which goes back to my point. You'll need to find a better book to quote.
It's rather amazing what conclusions you can reach when you decide the results before you begin your "research". Most of what the right-wing comes out with is based on this kind of "research".
It's so strange. Politically, I'm in the middle-right myself. Lately, however, I find that I have more in common with the statements coming from the left than the right-wing nutjobs, who seem to have not only inhaled, but gargled the bong water. My most sincere hope is that McCain can carry the Republican ticket, and we can wrest the Republican party back from the lunatic fringe. Wasn't the Republican party supposed to be the one defending personal liberties? So why in hell is the current president & cronies leading the charge to destroy our Constitutional freedoms?
(I know the answer: neo-cons are actually fascists at heart. It was a rhetorical question.)
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, who over the age of twenty is going to buy a DS?
Seriously? I'm 34 and waiting for the DS Lite.
My brother is 30 and already has a DS (he will buy a DS Lite).
My fiance's brother (future brother-in-law) is 29 and has two DS's.
My step-mother is 62 and already has a DS.
My dad's PhD advisor (they've been friends for 30 years) has two DS's. Don't know how old he is, but I think he knows Methusela personally...
These are kids' toys we're talking about.
You mean in the same way that Lego bricks are kids toys? Yeah, I've got a pile of those too, and I'm waiting for the new Mindstorms kit to come out soon...
I think that your definition of kids toys could use some tweaking, but that's just my opinion. Toys for grownups don't have to cost a fortune...
Regards,
Ross
They are ugly, heavy, and generally have less features than similarly priced notebooks from other makers.
Ugly? highly subjective. I happen to think that Thinkpads look better than HP laptops, though not quite as nice as Apple laptops. Those are the only three brands (HP, IBM, Apple) that I find acceptable in appearance.
Heavy? not nearly so subjective. In my purchasing experience (1400i, 600X, A21p, R51p, R51p) the Thinkpad was lighter than the comparable offering from Dell, Toshiba, Gateway by a pound or more. With a lower resolution screen but other specs identical, there was a Thinkpad offering (T21, T41) that saved another pound. I always found Thinkpads to be on the light end of the scale.
Less Features? You're smoking something good.
Screens: What I want is a high-res screen. 1600x1200 or better. IBM has been putting that screen in a sub-5lb laptop for six years. Now nobody is. In our house we still use the A21p's and R51p's with the incredible 1600x1200 screens, and I don't know how I'm going to break it to my family that nobody is making that good of a screen any more.
Networking: IBM had built-in modems (winmodems, I'll grant) and 10Mb ethernet while Dell, HP, and Gateway were still shipping a Type III PCMCIA card. IBM got built-in wireless at the same time as everyone else.
Keyboard: IBM has the quietest and best feel on a laptop keyboard bar none. Dell has the flimsiest and worst. Apple was close behind Dell on this point, I need to try a newer Apple and see if they've gotten better. HP used to suck really badly, but I recently tried one that felt pretty good.
Mouse: Nobody in our house uses touchpads after trying out the trackpoint, but I know that people are different on this issue. IBM's have had both the touchpoint and touchpad for years and you could disable the one you didn't want to use. Toshiba used to be the same on this, but I don't know if they've stayed with it. Nobody else seems to have figured it out.
They look and realize what Apple realized almost a decade ago - PCs don't have to be ugly. So people start looking around and see what they've been missing. Color! Brightness! Good keyboards! STYLE.
Are you sure it wasn't a Dell you were looking at? Maybe a Compaq laptop? Gateway? Because IBM's have had the best screen and the best keyboard in the business for years. Apple could only aspire to the IBM keyboard and screen. Other people have already said it right. IBM backed their products with IBM-level service. Lenovo doesn't seem to be able to get even close on the service side, so it's not worth paying as much. Lenovo has discontinued the best screen in the business. Lenovo seems to have dropped manufacturing quality from their priority list.
Lenovo isn't getting any of my business until they fix these issues.
Regards,
Ross
You want other players in other industries where employees come first and customers come second? Try GM in the auto industry, or United in the airline industry. Do they make/do anything you would willing buy? Didn't think so.
:)
Your examples are unions, i.e. worst-case examples of management/employee relationships. How about Costco or Southwest Airlines? Both of those actually said that they put employees ahead of customers (pretty much preventing a union from ever forming). And yes, they do make/sell/provide things that I willingly buy.
Personally, as an entrepreneur, I'm sold on the idea. My customer service employee knows that if there's a disagreement between him and a customer, I'm going to go to bat for him. The customers are almost always satisfied, possibly because he's happier and more comfortable in his job. Also he's more likely to be here in next year or five, which costs me a LOT less in training and recruiting.
I'd enter this industry just to compete with this knucklehead. Imagine getting to come in with your sales team after the first team just told the prospect that their needs are not your companies' top priority. Buh-bye.
If my sales team actually got to the point of telling a customer this, you're more than welcome to them. As in: we just kicked them to the curb because we weren't getting any value from the relationship and we're hoping that a competitor will get saddled with them while we spend our time and effort on more profitable relationships. We might even provide some sales intel to help get you the sale
Regards,
Ross
You are there to serve your customers, not to showboat as a whining elitist.
Actually, as a vendor, you also get to choose your customers, which basically means turning away some people/companies that you don't wish to have as customers. Usually, companies limit this to those customers that are "high maintenance" and low revenue. If he's that good at cooking steaks, he may have the luxury of turning away customers who don't like their steaks the way he thinks they should be made.
All that's necessary for him to win is to be so good in every other aspect of his business that he can afford the loss of those customers he turns away. Think "soup nazi" from Seinfeld (for a fictional example).
But businesses in service industries are not there to serve everyone without making any judgements. At least, not the great businesses. That kind of a business model inevitably leads to "lowest common denominator" service and my dollars will go looking for the better (and opinionated) chef in short order.
There are many "great chefs" in the IT industry (and elsewhere) ready to take your place, many of whom can actually be bothered to care about their customers more than themselves.
This example is particularly bad. Your IT customer says they want X. You know that X will not do what they need and will cost more than they should be paying for Y. Do you insist on Y or do you accept your pay for X and walk away when "what they asked for is not what they needed"? I say it's a sleazeball who actually takes the customer's money for useless services.
And you're right that there's another sleazeball around the corner to take their money, but at least it won't be me taking that ill-spent money and tarnishing my reputation as a result.
Regards,
Ross
The problem here is that there are many more amateur photographers than professional photographers (defined as those who actually sell their images). The amateur photographers got just as bitten as the pros in this case by Nikon.
One very tiny reason I don't mind having Canon gear.
Regards,
Ross
Read this article which is a recent Slashdot Thread: [link snip]
I did read the article and the discussion around it. Personally, I find his reasoning to be shaky and his references to climate models to be disingenuous. There are a lot of climate models, but very few are effective at predicting even historical data (give it data up to 2000, does it provide any predictions that match 2000-2005?). Though they are being continuously improved, there is a limitation to predictive accuracy based on the same limitations that meteorologists have: the earth's weather system is highly chaotic.
Where do you get your numbers on the amount of CO2 released by humans.
Well, you forced me to do some more research and what I thought was a slam-dunk fact (ten thousand to one proportion) turned out to be fairly shaky and almost certainly incorrect.
One older source:
http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articl eID=000D4121-91C5-1CD1-B4A8809EC588EEDF&catID=3&to picID=22
Newer source #1:
http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/frequent_quest ions/grp6/question1375.html
Newer source #2:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Global_Carbon_E mission_by_Type.png
Newer source #3:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87
My older source and the newer sources differ substantially. The older source states 10,000:1 human:natural and 110MT CO2/year from volcanoes (implied 1100GT/year from humans). Source #1 states a long-term average of 500MT CO2/year from volcanoes and a recent average of 17.6GT CO2/year from humans. Source #2 provides recent human emission totals of 5GT to 6.5GT C/year from humans (equivalent to 16.4GT to 21.3GT CO2/year).
I think that the older source took the amount of human CO2 emissions over the past 200 years (though Source #3 states that total human CO2 emissions are 500GT CO2, so that's not enough to fully explain his error). Based on newer and better researched data, I've now updated my statements to reflect that humans release 32 times as much CO2 as volcanoes on average.
You also mention that volcano eruptions cause the Earth's temperature to drop because the sulphur compounds reflect heat. You then say that mankind releases 8181 times more that that.
Clearly an error. Humans release about 10MT SO2/year. Volcanos release on average 2.5MT SO2/year, though individual eruptions release much more than others (El Cichien 8.5MT, Pinatubo 17MT, Mt. St. Helens 212 KT). Also, the exact kind of sulphur "stuff" released and where it ends up makes a huge difference on whether it has any impact on global temperatures. Some volcanoes, like Tambora release lots of SO2 to the upper atmosphere, which causes an optically dense haze that blocks some of the sun's radiation. The SO2 in the upper atmosphere and the haze it creates can persist for more than two years. Other volcanoes, like Mt. St. Helens, release more ash, which does create more clouds in the months following the eruption, but is almost entirely washed out of the atmosphere within six months.
Most human emissions of SO2 occur in the lower atmosphere, and contribute heavily to smog and haze close to the ground, but are more quickly removed from the air by rain than the SO2 delivered to the upper atmosphere by volcanoes. Also, because the haze is lower to the ground (often at ground level), the optical scattering from the haze doesn't reflect nearly as much back out (most of the radiation is captured in one way or another by the time it reaches ground level).
To me, the biggest remaining issue is to show a caus
Uh-huh.
Okay, so let me get this straight. Some Saudi author found some bestiality porn on the intarweb and determined that because a woman was having sex with a dog/donkey, she must have already been married to the dog/donkey because that's the only way to have sex. Dammit! He's got us. With that kind of trailblazing fact-finding, there's just no way to hide the fact that all western women are married to dogs or donkeys!
If you really want to pop his cork, send him some two on one bestiality porn. Ask if she's married to both critters.
The Islamic world has basically zero chance of economic significance (outside of the sale of resources like oil) because they forbid loans with interest, because they marginalize half of their population out of the economy, and ultimately: because quranic law is essentially anti-commerce.
Sure, they'll have a substantial population for as long as the resources last (and food aid after that), and there will be some casualties here and there, when some of those upset with the imbalance (of their own making) head off to kill some infidels. However, to be completely realistic, India and China are much larger long-term threats to US hegemony than the whole of the Muslim world.
Regards,
Ross
They have Indian development offices, but not outsourced.
Though the challenges and benefits are different when you hire your own employees in an offshore office instead of contracting with a offshore bodyshop in another country, both are a part of the practice of "offshoring".
At least in the common parlance as well as the jargon of software development in the US, they are the same. You may be using a different jargon in which they are distinct.
Regards,
Ross
What would the state have to gain by promoting global warming?
The more important question is: what benefit does any elected representative obtain from expensive policy decisions that can only have measurable effect after they are long gone?
The answer is: they know they did the right thing when they destroyed their chance of being re-elected.
The apparent paradox you raise occurs when the long-lived "state" doesn't act like a long-lived being with long-term interests because the actors making decisions for the state (elected representatives, appointed judges and burecrats, etc.) don't actually have a long-term interest in the success of the state or the nation.
This is the fundamental problem of designing governments. You can try to align the interests of the people who make up governments with the people they govern, but there will always be discrepancies that eventually cause the government to work against the interests of the governed. So far, anyway. I would love to be shown a counter-example within my lifetime...
Regards,
Ross
There is no way Global Warming can cause higher and lower tempertatures. Either the Earth is getting hotter or it is getting colder.
You're sounding stupider by the minute. The distribution of heat energy on the surface of the earth is not some sort of linear "hot at the equator, cold at the poles" situation. The ocean and air move around and carry heat all over the place, but how they move energy around depends a great deal on oceanic and surface geography.
The Gulf Stream, in particular, pumps enormous amounts of heat from the tropics into the North Atlantic and is responsible for London, England feeling a lot like New York City, USA despite being at the same latitude as Calgary, Canada. There are other currents (google for "thermal conveyer") that do the same sorts of things in the Pacific and Indian oceans.
When the planetary climate changes, unpredictable things happen to those heat transfer systems, and when one stops, or a different one begins, sudden dramatic warming or cooling of certain locations will happen (is happening). Now that you've been told, stop acting ignorant on the subject.
1 volcano eruption relases more greenhouse gasses than all of mankind for the last 50 years.
Too bad your assertion is completely and utterly incorrect. Which volcanic eruption were you thinking of? Are you referring to some primordial eruption hundreds of millions of years ago (because one of those might get close).
Did you just trust the AM talk radio host you listened to (who didn't check his facts either)?
Two facts are relevant here.
First: volcanic eruptions almost always decrease global temperature because the sulphur aresols tend to reflect more heat than is trapped by the CO2. If it weren't for volcanoes, we'd be that much worse off on climate change.
Second: average total volcanic activity for the last 20 years has been 110 million tons of CO2 and 80 million tons of sulphur-based gases per year (that's million with an 'm'). Human contributions of CO2 over the last 20 years were about 900 billion tons of CO2 per year (that's billion with a 'b'). Factor of 8181. Similar factors for sulphur and nitrogen compounds. As in humans released more than eight thousand times as much greenhouse gases as volcanoes did over the same time period.
More than eight thousand times as much greenhouse gases over the last twenty years. Humans more than volcanoes.
The largest volcano in the last 10,000 years was Tambora in 1815, which released about 2 billion tons of CO2 along with hundreds of billions of tons of sulphur aresols, causing the "year without a summer" in 1816. The largest volcano in the past ten thousand years released less than 0.5% of the CO2 humans released in 2005.
You're so badly misinformed, you can't even tell when you're being fed nonsense or an actual fact. If you want to fix the fact that you look like an idiot in this discussion (or any other on climate change) that's what you need to work on first. Good luck to you.
Regards,
Ross
Exactly.
Most of them have long since lost that creative spark by the time they're thirty anyway.
Interesting supposition, except for the troublesome little observation that truly* creative people get more creative with age. Like most skills, the more you practice it, the better you get.
Perhaps what you meant was, "Most of them (creative people working in game companies) have long since burned out by the time they're thirty anyway." which I would agree with.
And that's exactly the problem we're all talking about, so welcome aboard!
Regards,
Ross
I say "truly creative people" because there are people who have a knack for drawing but have no passion, and yeah, those people get bored and are constantly griping, even in the best of circumstances.
I often travel to the US and work from there (mostly San Francisco), and I can say that India is going to be defining work trends in the coming years. Americans are very "old school".
Be careful that you don't get the selection of US companies you work with confused with all US companies. I have contracted for companies that have extensive offshore dev/qa/analysis efforts and for companies that don't think it makes much strategic sense. The work environment at companies which consider more than just dollars are (predictably) much more interesting, motivating, trusting, etc...
I agree that India is way ahead of the Fortune 500 on how to do software work. So are lots of companies right here in the US. (in my experience, they're usually the ones with very few MBA's on staff)
Regards,
Ross
Ultimately, what Paul forgot to do was to separate "Patents" from "IP Law". The situation he describes is the situation without any "IP Law", i.e. without trade secret laws, without copyright laws and without patent laws (trademark laws aren't all that relevant to this question).
If we eliminate software patents, we are left with software copyrights and software trade secrets, which suffice to explain, as you said, the advancement in first years of the computer industry up to the 90s.
And, as another poster mentioned, we don't have to agree that being against software (and business process) patents means that you're automatically against all patents. His argument, namely that the patent office "prior art" test is so badly broken that software patents end up being worse than other kinds of patents merely underscores the real argument:
When you say that you are against software patents, you're really saying that you're against the current implementation of software patents that many of us have to deal with. There may actually be some better implementation of software patents that would actually promote software development better than copyright protection alone has done.
Not sure that I see how, but I concede that it's possible.
Regards,
Ross
There have been a few sci-fi novels written that deal with such a scenario. Anyone want to mention their favorite?
Lacey and His Friends is very dark, but very interesting.
Regards,
Ross
Sulphur compounds tend to result in global cooling. CO2, methane, a few others tend to result in global warming. Any volcanic eruption will release it's own balance of sulphur vs. other debris, which will change the effect of that eruption on the atmosphere.
Here's one article that I read today on that exact same topic. It may be the same thing you've already read.
Regards,
Ross
The full quote says that while it is impossible to destroy all life on earth, it is completely possible to make it impossible for humans to survive.
You're right that I made the mistake of equating "destroying the earth" with "making the earth uninhabitable by humans" or the even less suprising "significantly altering the earth".
In my defense, so did the person I responded do, and I intended to respond to that person's rhetoric: (it's impossible that humans are significantly altering the earth [para]).
Unfortunate choice of quotes, however.
Regards,
Ross
Global warming is all about funding. It is simply a scare tactic by "scientists" to get money to study something that really isn't a problem.
If current arctic melting trends continue, you'll be able to visit the North pole in a boat by 2015. Not an icebreaker, mind you, just a normal boat with a 1000 mile range. A 32ft sailboat will do just fine.
That means the temporary cessation of the Gulf Stream current, which is largely responsible for moderate temperatures in the US northeast, Newfoundland, the British Isles, and Norway which will become very cold in the winter within one or two years. That's "temporary" as in less than several thousand years, probably only a few hundred years.
It's unknown if that also means the melting of part or all of the Greenland ice cap, which will result in increased sea levels, not only from the liberated water, but the reduced weight of the ice on Greenland will cause that very large island and it's surrounding shelf to rise a few feet, displacing water over the rest of the planet.
But you're right. We shouldn't bother to study if any of these things are implied by what we've already observed in the arctic over the past twenty years. It's just scientists trying to keep their huge mansions and luxury cars.
There were areas in the United States last summer that had record high temperatures. This of course was due to global warming. There were areas in the United States this past winter that had record low temperatures. According to "scientists", this too is caused by global warming. They have it both ways.
The fact that you don't understand why both statements are true and important tells everyone reading this a lot more than I could possibly point out by explaining it to you. So I'll just quote your incredulity and close my argument here.
Regards,
Ross
Of course, when you suddenly decide that only CO2 emissions are "greenhouse gas" for volcanoes, but CO2 is part of a number of gasses when mankind is doing it, you can get some pretty small numbers coming out.
Actually, it's my understanding that volcanic sulphur oxides are much larger contributors to climate change than CO2, and even including them, humans still dramatically outproduced volcanoes in the last century.
Greenland is named so in part because when Leif Erickson found it the land was warm and productive...who was responsible for the global warming in 1000AD? Leif wasn't much of an SUV driver.
First, it wasn't that green. He was trying to sell it as an attractive new home to Icelanders and took some liberties in his description (you could see multiple glaciers from almost any place on land during a clear day). Point taken, however, that it was much more verdant in those days than any time until just recently.
Further, you will notice that I limited my statement to the last 100 years, the time frame of events most likely to contribute to the current warming trend.
Regards,
Ross
As you mention, I don't think you cleanly fit on the US "conservative <-> liberal" axis. There are vanishingly few categories in this world that fit cleanly onto a single axis. Especially politics, though Ann Coulter doesn't quite grok that...
You don't mention anything about what people are doing in the privacy of their own home, but that could just be because you don't care, in which case you're to the left on that topic.
Based on your SS tax recommendation, you aren't that wealthy, so much of the Republican agenda probably doesn't impress you (your military funding point backs this up).
Based on your quick mention of welfare, you aren't poor, and dealing with poverty doesn't seem to be a big concern of yours, so several parts of the Democrat agenda probably don't impress you.
Actually, you sound fairly libertarian, though not a part of the anarchist sub-group. In a longer discussion, this is also how I describe myself. One thing that you may find interesting to consider is how social "safety nets" like welfare, SS, and medicare/medicade actually help the middle class and wealthy by promoting social stability. If the poor aren't really that poor, they are less likely to really disrupt the economy with revolutions. Look at Central/South America for several examples that may substantiate this assertion.
Regards,
Ross
Are you claiming that the opposing views DON'T have an agenda?
Depends on who you mean by "opposing views". If you mean environmentalists, then no. If you mean scientists, then I would say that they do their best not to let their opinions drive their research and scientific statements.
If you're going to make scientific statements and expect them to be treated as credible, you do need to at least try to set your agenda to one side. The book the ggp is quoting from was clearly a tract written to discount the impact of humans on the earth's climate. No matter what the facts actually are.
Regards,
Ross
To more substantively respond to your post. I agree that McCain is not perfect, for many of the reasons you mention. However, I wonder how many of his votes that you and I object to are based on his own principles, how many are the result of the necessity of compromise, and how many are because he's bought and paid for.
His own conscience and the compromise votes (presumably in pursuit of longer term goals in line with his conscience) aren't the problem, IMHO. How much he's bought and paid for is the core issue, and I have to admit that I don't see a whole lot of evidence of that.
In my final analysis, with all of McCain's questionable statements and votes, he still seems to be the best of the current crop, and if we are going to have a Republican president, I'd really rather it was him than any of the other contenders.
Regards,
Ross
Hmm, except that McCain is giving a speech at the opening for =Jerry Falwell's= new evangelical college...
That is a little suprising, although I do believe that McCain needs to avoid offending the religious right to get past the primaries. I sincerely hope that he doesn't sell his soul to that devil in order to retain their support.
Regards,
Ross
I say he's just as corrupt as the rest of them and you're one of the people who supported them.
How did you reach the conclusion that I supported "them"? I haven't been able to vote for a Republican at the national level in many years.
In the last election, I voted for Badnarik, though if I had still lived in Ohio where the vote was close (I now live in California), I would have voted for Kerry. Not because he's better than Bush, but because he's not Bush.
But I'd love to continue the discussion: how could I support "them" less?
Regards,
Ross
To quote something I have read in a book - "to beleive that the human race has the power or even the potential to destroy the earth is absolute arogance".
It sounds like the author of that book had an agenda. And wasn't very well informed.
Volocanoes are responsible for "global warming". If the gases that they spew are more plentiful that all that humans can put out in 100 years then they are far more responsible.
Except that volcanic eruptions over the last 100 years only account for 4% of the total greenhouse gas emissions over that same period. Which goes back to my point. You'll need to find a better book to quote.
It's rather amazing what conclusions you can reach when you decide the results before you begin your "research". Most of what the right-wing comes out with is based on this kind of "research".
It's so strange. Politically, I'm in the middle-right myself. Lately, however, I find that I have more in common with the statements coming from the left than the right-wing nutjobs, who seem to have not only inhaled, but gargled the bong water. My most sincere hope is that McCain can carry the Republican ticket, and we can wrest the Republican party back from the lunatic fringe. Wasn't the Republican party supposed to be the one defending personal liberties? So why in hell is the current president & cronies leading the charge to destroy our Constitutional freedoms?
(I know the answer: neo-cons are actually fascists at heart. It was a rhetorical question.)
Regards,
Ross