I don't know if the same numbers apply to the USA, but over here most boys have seen a pornographic film by the age of around 8.
Perhaps this is the crux of the issue. Most boys in the US grow to be 13 or 14 before seeing a pornographic film... although it depends on what you mean by pornographic. Some people define it as simply seeing the full frontal nudity of a member of the opposite sex. Others define it as seeing 2 people engaging in sexually explicit activity (to be blunt, when you see the penis penetrate the vagina, for instance). For the former, I'd say 8-10, but 13-15 for the latter.
Americans, in general, are more prudish than Europeans. I personally see this as both a positive and a negative. It's a positive because it seems to be working. More married couples now are staying together rather than getting divorced, teenage pregnancy is decreasing, drug use is down, average income is up, unemployment is low (compared to most European countries), etc. It's a negative because I feel it's one of the primary issues that segregates America from the rest of the world. Perhaps if we didn't censor the F word on TV, or allowed topless beaches, we wouldn't have quite as many differences between living here and living in Europe.
Regardless, parents in the US are more overprotective of their children than any other country that I can think of. They've passed laws to stop all lanes of traffic when a school bus turns on its flashing lights, for instance. One of the aspects of this overprotectiveness is wanting to protect the children from the "evils" of sexuality... thus, the Super Bowl incident.
If it helps to understand, Americans aren't only overprotective of children. In fact, they're overprotective of everyone, and everything. The main theme seems to be "I know what's best for you better than you do." Ironically, while America is supposed to be the bastion of freedom in the world, this idea of protecting everyone else from themselves is the complete polar opposite of freedom. To protect someone, you do so by placing restrictions on them... thereby destroying the concept of freedom.
Sadly, I don't think there's a good example of a country that has it right yet. America is too prudish, while other countries place restrictions in other ways... like increasing tax rates for different salaries, or prefering one group of people to another. Hopefully, in the future, we can create a world where each of us has true freedom... I doubt it though.
Unfortunately, this year, we had commercials that warn about four hour erections and Janet's boob. (Personally, I didn't need the former and preferred the latter).
I disagree. I could do a lot more with a 4-hour erection than I could with Janet Jackson's boob.
In other words, might work, but it's a lot of screwing around compared to inflating a cuff around someone's arm.
Oh, I never said it would be easier than doing it the traditional way. The question that was posed was whether it was possible to measure someone's blood pressure without actually touching them... in the vein (forgive the pun) of Star Trek. So, the answer seems to be yes, it may be possible, but it's not practical...... yet. In the future, we may be able to pump a certain type of radiation through someone and detect all sorts of ailments, including high or low blood pressure. At that point, it may become both possible, and practical.
In other words - they didn't really spend much forethought into how jedis should work in the game, they just slapped it in there and let the gamers sort it out - at cost.
I agree that the game sucks, no doubt about that. I played it for a surprisingly long 2-3 months before they shot the economy to hell by cutting the mission rewards in half. However, I think they thought about how jedi's would play in their perfect world, not how REAL players WANT to play as a jedi. They assumed that jedi players would walk around with a gun equipped, like everyone else, hunting like everyone else, except if the need arose, they could get out their lightsaber and deal some massive damage. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) they turned out to be completely, 100%, entirely WRONG.
I might still be playing it if they hadn't royally fucked up the economy. They say it's a player-controlled economy? Then let me charge 50,000 credits for my gun on the auction house. Final Fantasy XI lets me... I can charge however much I want... and amazingly, I've been playing that for more than 3 months. Go figure.
Blood pressure, though...since BP is measured by finding the two points where (1) the pressure in the cuff blocks all flow, and (2) the pressure in the cuff blocks no flow, I can't see an easy way to get that without actually blocking and unblocking said flow.
Correct me if I'm wrong... but isn't blood pressure simply a measurement of pressure exerted by the blood inside a person's veins (or arteries)? If so, wouldn't it be possible to shoot a stream of a specific type of atom or electron through the vein (technically through the arm) and measure how long it takes to get the other side, or how many of them get to the other side? For an analogy, I'm imagining a piece of paper with a flashlight behind it. With 1 sheet of paper, you can see the light pretty well. Keep adding sheets, and eventually the light disappears completely. Maybe that's a flawed analogy, but given that we have lots of equipment for measuring electroncs (X-ray or CAT scan anyone?), why can't we apply the same type of physics to measuring blood pressure?
My skills aren't the problem. The problem is that I can't afford to work for 6-10K a year!
You're correct. Your skills may not be problem. It seems the problem is that you place a higher value on your skills than potential employers might. That is a problem... but could it also be possible that you've been developing skills in anticipation of getting paid a certain amount that just isn't sustainable for any employer that hopes to make a profit? Is it possible that you're seeing only one side of the financial story -- your side -- without taking a moment to examine the financial advantages to the company by hiring cheaper employees, thereby increasing profit margins, and allowing the company to hire more salesmen and pay their current employees better? Finally, is it at all possible that when a company makes a profit, it's really not a bad thing... that perhaps with the extra profit gained, they'll increase health insurance benefits, give more vacation time, hire more employees, increase productivity, raise their stock price, increase salaries of US-resident employees, and lower the price of their products? If the answer to any of those questions is "yes, it's possible", then I submit that it may not be the company's problem... that the problem might be your slightly skewed view of the economy, your view of your skills, and/or your view of your economic value to a company.
However, no matter what the previous answers were, my suggestion still stands. You've already taken steps to ensure that you have a job in the future by learning Java and C++, along with your currently-marketed skill of COBOL. Might I suggest learning more about new technologies or other programming languages, to ensure that you'll always be in a position to demand the compensation you want, rather than settling for what the company thinks you're worth?
Re:We need to start taxing companies who do this.
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Need a Job? Move to India
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This isn't irony and none of these jobs are offshored. Heinz is a global company with global markets. These foreign companies serve their local markets.
Then maybe you could give me an example of a non-global company that is sending jobs to India?
But if I lose my job, I won't worry about a cheap optical mouse.
If you lose your job, it's because you weren't proving yourself to be worth your price to the company you worked for. My advice would be to use the time between eating mice to go to the library, get some books, and learn new skills to position yourself better for your next job. Maybe if you have more skills than necessary, you'll get an even better-paying job that'll last longer because they see potential in you.
By the way, I was unemployed for 2 months last year... and I learned XML, and how to better administer a Windows/Linux mixed environment, which led to my hiring at my current job. How about you?
Better to have slightly higher priced products and a population that earns enough money to afford them than slightly cheaper products that are bought in drastically lower numbers because the wages aren't there to support demand.
Is it really? Apparently you don't understand enough about economics to make a serious contribution to the argument.
Maybe I should use an example.
Let's say I have a computer software company that I just started. I have an idea for a piece of software that'll make me a lot of money, but I'm not much of a programmer, and I don't have enough time to invest into writing it. So, I contact several programming firms in the country and get bids for them to write the new software for me. It turns out that they all come in at between $15,000 and $20,000... but I only have $10,000 that I'm willing to invest in my company right now. So, I contact a few firms in India. Since the cost of doing business is far less over there, one firm comes back with a bid of $8,000. I agree, and they write the software for me. Since I saved a little money from the $10,000 I had budgeted, I can hire a salesmen for month or so. That effectively doubles the amount of time I can spend selling.
At the end of the first month, I find that I've sold twice as many copies of the software than I expected, which allows me to hire a second and third salesmen. At the end of the second month, I have twice as many as the first month, which allows me to start looking for a technical support person for the software that's already been sold. By the end of the first year, I could easily accumulate an employee roster of 15-20 people, not including myself. If I wouldn't have been able to have the software written in India, I wouldn't be able to have 15-20 employees within a year. In fact, I may not be able to have any employees for a long time, since I would have had to borrow money to get the software written to begin with. So, in place of those 10 programmers here that didn't get a job because I sent my software project to India, I now have 15 or 20 employees feeding the economy.
This is a hypothetical situation that is applicable to ALL companies currently sending jobs to India. They do so because the cost of doing business there is much less than the cost here. The money they save is put back into the company, which feeds more growth, and more employees.
Couldn't those companies who hire workers who AREN'T disgustingly overpaid then offer more competitive prices, which (in theory) should increase the pressue on those who decide to spike up their prices?
Sure. Define "disgustingly overpaid" (in dollar amounts please, not percentages or statistics).
Re:We need to start taxing companies who do this.
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Need a Job? Move to India
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I was listening to talk radio the other night, and I'm not sure whose show it was (I was just skimming through), but they were saying that one presidential candidates was proposing a tax to these big companies for outsourcing work to make up for unemployment.
Chances are, that candidate is John Kerry. His wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is the owner of (or one of the owners of) the Heinz Ketchup company... which has 57 factories, out of 79 total, overseas. Ironic, really, that the Heinz 57 Ketchup company has 57 varieties of outsourcing. Here's my link for an article that says so.
I personally think (in my opinion) that's a wonderful idea. Maybe companies would think twice and start giving jobs back to those unemployed.
Perhaps you should elaborate a bit and say those companies should give those jobs to the unemployed people in the United States. It's rather difficult to give a job to someone that's already employed.
After all, you could pay someone from India $5 less an hour to do it, but.. you'll end up paying that back in taxes, so you won't really save much.
Great idea! That way, when the company has to spend $10 million more per year, they'll really understand the value of American labor! Then, when you have to pay $50 for an optical computer mouse, or $1000 extra for a middle-of-the-line new computer, you'll understand why the company decided that maybe it should save some money to begin with.
If you want to destroy the economy, a great way to start is by concentrating on the 10,000 workers that got paid more than they're worth, rather than concentrating on the 170,000,000 people in the country that already have other jobs. I'm sorry if this seems cruel, but if you ever start a business, you'll understand. As the article above quotes Adam Smith (the founder of Modern Economics), "It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy."
That'll definitely come in handy if he ever decides to "Kill Bill." Otherwise, he'd be better off spending the money elsewhere, I feel. Tax deferred investments are very popular these days.
OK, then you spend your money on tax defered investments. In the meantime, with my well-paying job, and my retirement account (which will grow to more than enough by my retirement), I'll spend my extra money on things that I like... and I like collecting swords. That's where I've decided I get the most enjoyment out of spending my disposable income. I also collect DVD's. I have more of them than I do swords, but really only because swords are larger, and I don't have that much room.
Funny thing. You could have substituted adventure for RPG six years ago.
Although that's true, there's always been a pent-up demand for good RPG's. On the other hand, adventure games (in the vein of King's Quest, Monkey Island, etc.) don't have much demand at all. Look at The Longest Journey a couple years ago. It was a GREAT game, but the sales sucked, because nobody really wants to play adventure games anymore.
My point is that although you could have substituted RPG for Adventure games 6 years ago, you also could have said the same thing, every year, between then and now, about the PC adventure market.
I'm not saying we need people to ruin your game by exploits and the like, but PKing, taking items and the like, it's part of the game; without it, posession of the items would feel shallow, living in a static world.
Then how do you explain Final Fantasy XI's popularity? There isn't PvP in it... yet...
The idea in and of itself is not evil, it's the implimentation that needs to be considered.
I absolutely agree. My point was that the government is the one that's going to be implementing this, and at the moment, the government seems to take whatever they want from the people they're meant to govern... sometimes to the severe detriment of the concepts and principles that made this country great in the first place. Keep this in mind: The government is the only organization that has the power to use force to take what they want from you. If you don't submit to their will, you could be thrown in jail. No other person or organization has quite that kind of power (at least, not without the fear of reciprication).
I personaly do not mind so much the money that is wasted. If done correctly, it flows back into the economy.
It may flow back into the economy later, but that doesn't help ME when they take 30% of my paycheck, that I work very hard for. In fact, there's a VERY good chance I'll never see a penny of that money again, since it "flowed back" into someone else's pocket.
Technology seems to throw solutions at us that are sometimes in search of a problem and sometimes present some serious ethical and moral challenges.
I'd like to make one small correction. Technology itself isn't throwing solutions that are ethically and morally questionable... It's the people that use technology in ethically and morally questionable ways that should be examined. In this case, it's Big Brother watching everything you do online to see if you're breaking any laws.
One time, I was in high school, and a friend of mine was scolded for using the word "rape" in a sentence that referred to something besides the obvious definition. In an attempt to support him, I did a search on "rape definition" and one of the sites that came up had ad banners for porn sites. The teacher saw that, and thought I was looking up porn at school, and it took me a long time of explaining to convince her that I wasn't. Imagine if I would have done a search on "kiddie porn" just to verify that it meant individuals under 18, not just individuals under 12 or 16, and the government saw that I looked at a site with ad banners depicting 17-year-olds doing the nasty. I had a hard enough time convincing a teacher in her early 30's that I didn't intend for that site to come up... let alone a judge and jury of my "peers".
As you said, the abuse potential for this technology is almost limitless, especially given the PATRIOT Act, and similar legislation. It is for reasons like this that I don't trust the government... whether it's with my activities on the internet (which are completely legit, except the occasional MP3 download), my tax dollars (how much do you think THIS will cost? $20 billion seem like enough?), or just generally my freedom. I'm not advocating any political stance... I'm just saying that if we're scared of the government abusing a power that we give them, why do we continue to give them such power?
If he's gaining in the polls, on a longer trend, it's because a lot of conservatives (think Reagan Democrat types, not Kudlow types) are mad at Bush over his illegal alien amnesty plan and the budget deficits.
Sadly, I'm one of them... although I don't live in NH. Even more sadly, I don't have any other option for my vote. I don't approve of Bush's handling of a lot of things, chiefly his spending of money that isn't his to spend, but he'll get my vote simply because of the tax cuts and the war on terrorism. Lieberman is my next option, but he probably won't make it to November, unfortunately. Even though he's the most fiscally responsible, he's still $35 billion over Bush's spending, even if all the tax cuts were repealed. (A side note, the federal income tax returns were higher in 2002, after the tax cuts, than they were in 2001... so I don't see how repealing them would do any good anyway.)
I'm kinda confused by that. I consider all my friends' sisters impenetrable. If I considered them to be penetrable, wouldn't THAT be the problem? Oh, wait. There is that one...
Well, most of my friends that have sisters, I'd consider to be very penetrable... but if I ever said so, I'd get my ass kicked (unless they're a really cool friend who invites me to "break in" their sister). I just thought for reasons of family values and whatnot, I wouldn't remark on anyone's sister being "impenetrable"... it just might look bad to have to explain to a 13-yr-old.
In case you weren't familiar with those, the WhiteWater scandals were shown to be completely baseless.
Baseless? Only if you define baseless as "Having plenty of evidence from several sources, but the papers that prove the wrongdoing are sitting in the suspect's private office, and mysteriously disappear when we look for them". Did you forget that they sat for over 2 years in Hillary's office and were only discovered when a janitor or someone handed them over without her knowledge? Do some more research, or post links supporting your claim.
Thanks for your uneducated opinion but I'll take the PEW Research Center's opinion over yours every day of the week.
I never said that everyone does that, and I never said that it doesn't work... I just said that I don't know if I'd say it works, which means that it's my opinion that there are more factors involved than those being mentioned. One of those factors, I believe, is the fact that over the past 5 years, most people have already downloaded all the songs they care to. To prove my hypothesis, let's conduct an experiment. Let's break into every computer in the country and delete every MP3, Ogg, and WMA file found, then wait a month or so, and see if the number of music downloads increases dramatically.
Oh, and by the way, I think we could actually discuss my point without the unnecessary sarcasm and insults. I have a valid point that I don't think anyone else has researched to any great extent.
And since file-sharing was down dramatically recently, before the recent court ruling, it works.
I don't know if I'd say it works. I know a lot of people, like myself, have stopped downloading songs because we simply don't know of any other songs to download. All the songs on the radio right now either suck, or I already have them. Occasionally, I'll download a song, but like a good little son of a bitch, I don't enable Sharing... I just download the one song, and shut Kazaa off.
I feel we're still a few months away from really good compatibility with windows apps.
No offense to the Linux junkies out there, but I've been hearing this same line for the last 5 years or so. Linux isn't compatible with any Windows apps right now, because you can't put in the CD and install it in an easy way like you can with Windows. Every time I hear someone spout off a line about how easy, or advanced Linux is, I always pose a question like "You can play games in Linux? How long does it take to figure out what to change and where?" And I always get the same response. "Well, it took a while... and I had to follow a few tips from a couple websites... but it works great now!" That's not working. That's tinkering until you rig it enough to work for the most part. Even some programs written for Linux don't work perfectly in Linux, because of all the different possible configurations. Choice is good, but too much choice lets people with indecision, and ultimately, disconcern. The myriad choices available for Linux are causing people, usually the people we're trying to win over to Linux, to become frustrated at the number of answers they get when they ask a simple question ("What web browser should I use?"). They also get frustrated when they try to do something that's easy in Windows, but nearly impossible to do in Linux (tell me again, how do you edit the Gnome menu?).
Anyone know of a utility like this (like a doomsday device one or somthing, so this guy could have been protected).
Not only have I heard of it, I've seen it. At the beginning of The Core, when that far-too-skinny kid that was also in Road Trip gets (ominous tone) "the knock". Except, in this case, it wasn't so much a disk, as it was a giant hand-held electomagnet device...
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I don't know if the same numbers apply to the USA, but over here most boys have seen a pornographic film by the age of around 8.
Perhaps this is the crux of the issue. Most boys in the US grow to be 13 or 14 before seeing a pornographic film... although it depends on what you mean by pornographic. Some people define it as simply seeing the full frontal nudity of a member of the opposite sex. Others define it as seeing 2 people engaging in sexually explicit activity (to be blunt, when you see the penis penetrate the vagina, for instance). For the former, I'd say 8-10, but 13-15 for the latter.
Americans, in general, are more prudish than Europeans. I personally see this as both a positive and a negative. It's a positive because it seems to be working. More married couples now are staying together rather than getting divorced, teenage pregnancy is decreasing, drug use is down, average income is up, unemployment is low (compared to most European countries), etc. It's a negative because I feel it's one of the primary issues that segregates America from the rest of the world. Perhaps if we didn't censor the F word on TV, or allowed topless beaches, we wouldn't have quite as many differences between living here and living in Europe.
Regardless, parents in the US are more overprotective of their children than any other country that I can think of. They've passed laws to stop all lanes of traffic when a school bus turns on its flashing lights, for instance. One of the aspects of this overprotectiveness is wanting to protect the children from the "evils" of sexuality... thus, the Super Bowl incident.
If it helps to understand, Americans aren't only overprotective of children. In fact, they're overprotective of everyone, and everything. The main theme seems to be "I know what's best for you better than you do." Ironically, while America is supposed to be the bastion of freedom in the world, this idea of protecting everyone else from themselves is the complete polar opposite of freedom. To protect someone, you do so by placing restrictions on them... thereby destroying the concept of freedom.
Sadly, I don't think there's a good example of a country that has it right yet. America is too prudish, while other countries place restrictions in other ways... like increasing tax rates for different salaries, or prefering one group of people to another. Hopefully, in the future, we can create a world where each of us has true freedom... I doubt it though.
Unfortunately, this year, we had commercials that warn about four hour erections and Janet's boob. (Personally, I didn't need the former and preferred the latter).
I disagree. I could do a lot more with a 4-hour erection than I could with Janet Jackson's boob.
In other words, might work, but it's a lot of screwing around compared to inflating a cuff around someone's arm.
Oh, I never said it would be easier than doing it the traditional way. The question that was posed was whether it was possible to measure someone's blood pressure without actually touching them... in the vein (forgive the pun) of Star Trek. So, the answer seems to be yes, it may be possible, but it's not practical...... yet. In the future, we may be able to pump a certain type of radiation through someone and detect all sorts of ailments, including high or low blood pressure. At that point, it may become both possible, and practical.
In other words - they didn't really spend much forethought into how jedis should work in the game, they just slapped it in there and let the gamers sort it out - at cost.
I agree that the game sucks, no doubt about that. I played it for a surprisingly long 2-3 months before they shot the economy to hell by cutting the mission rewards in half. However, I think they thought about how jedi's would play in their perfect world, not how REAL players WANT to play as a jedi. They assumed that jedi players would walk around with a gun equipped, like everyone else, hunting like everyone else, except if the need arose, they could get out their lightsaber and deal some massive damage. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) they turned out to be completely, 100%, entirely WRONG.
I might still be playing it if they hadn't royally fucked up the economy. They say it's a player-controlled economy? Then let me charge 50,000 credits for my gun on the auction house. Final Fantasy XI lets me... I can charge however much I want... and amazingly, I've been playing that for more than 3 months. Go figure.
Blood pressure, though...since BP is measured by finding the two points where (1) the pressure in the cuff blocks all flow, and (2) the pressure in the cuff blocks no flow, I can't see an easy way to get that without actually blocking and unblocking said flow.
Correct me if I'm wrong... but isn't blood pressure simply a measurement of pressure exerted by the blood inside a person's veins (or arteries)? If so, wouldn't it be possible to shoot a stream of a specific type of atom or electron through the vein (technically through the arm) and measure how long it takes to get the other side, or how many of them get to the other side? For an analogy, I'm imagining a piece of paper with a flashlight behind it. With 1 sheet of paper, you can see the light pretty well. Keep adding sheets, and eventually the light disappears completely. Maybe that's a flawed analogy, but given that we have lots of equipment for measuring electroncs (X-ray or CAT scan anyone?), why can't we apply the same type of physics to measuring blood pressure?
My skills aren't the problem. The problem is that I can't afford to work for 6-10K a year!
You're correct. Your skills may not be problem. It seems the problem is that you place a higher value on your skills than potential employers might. That is a problem... but could it also be possible that you've been developing skills in anticipation of getting paid a certain amount that just isn't sustainable for any employer that hopes to make a profit? Is it possible that you're seeing only one side of the financial story -- your side -- without taking a moment to examine the financial advantages to the company by hiring cheaper employees, thereby increasing profit margins, and allowing the company to hire more salesmen and pay their current employees better? Finally, is it at all possible that when a company makes a profit, it's really not a bad thing... that perhaps with the extra profit gained, they'll increase health insurance benefits, give more vacation time, hire more employees, increase productivity, raise their stock price, increase salaries of US-resident employees, and lower the price of their products? If the answer to any of those questions is "yes, it's possible", then I submit that it may not be the company's problem... that the problem might be your slightly skewed view of the economy, your view of your skills, and/or your view of your economic value to a company.
However, no matter what the previous answers were, my suggestion still stands. You've already taken steps to ensure that you have a job in the future by learning Java and C++, along with your currently-marketed skill of COBOL. Might I suggest learning more about new technologies or other programming languages, to ensure that you'll always be in a position to demand the compensation you want, rather than settling for what the company thinks you're worth?
This isn't irony and none of these jobs are offshored. Heinz is a global company with global markets. These foreign companies serve their local markets.
Then maybe you could give me an example of a non-global company that is sending jobs to India?
But if I lose my job, I won't worry about a cheap optical mouse.
If you lose your job, it's because you weren't proving yourself to be worth your price to the company you worked for. My advice would be to use the time between eating mice to go to the library, get some books, and learn new skills to position yourself better for your next job. Maybe if you have more skills than necessary, you'll get an even better-paying job that'll last longer because they see potential in you.
By the way, I was unemployed for 2 months last year... and I learned XML, and how to better administer a Windows/Linux mixed environment, which led to my hiring at my current job. How about you?
Better to have slightly higher priced products and a population that earns enough money to afford them than slightly cheaper products that are bought in drastically lower numbers because the wages aren't there to support demand.
Is it really? Apparently you don't understand enough about economics to make a serious contribution to the argument.
Maybe I should use an example.
Let's say I have a computer software company that I just started. I have an idea for a piece of software that'll make me a lot of money, but I'm not much of a programmer, and I don't have enough time to invest into writing it. So, I contact several programming firms in the country and get bids for them to write the new software for me. It turns out that they all come in at between $15,000 and $20,000... but I only have $10,000 that I'm willing to invest in my company right now. So, I contact a few firms in India. Since the cost of doing business is far less over there, one firm comes back with a bid of $8,000. I agree, and they write the software for me. Since I saved a little money from the $10,000 I had budgeted, I can hire a salesmen for month or so. That effectively doubles the amount of time I can spend selling.
At the end of the first month, I find that I've sold twice as many copies of the software than I expected, which allows me to hire a second and third salesmen. At the end of the second month, I have twice as many as the first month, which allows me to start looking for a technical support person for the software that's already been sold. By the end of the first year, I could easily accumulate an employee roster of 15-20 people, not including myself. If I wouldn't have been able to have the software written in India, I wouldn't be able to have 15-20 employees within a year. In fact, I may not be able to have any employees for a long time, since I would have had to borrow money to get the software written to begin with. So, in place of those 10 programmers here that didn't get a job because I sent my software project to India, I now have 15 or 20 employees feeding the economy.
This is a hypothetical situation that is applicable to ALL companies currently sending jobs to India. They do so because the cost of doing business there is much less than the cost here. The money they save is put back into the company, which feeds more growth, and more employees.
Couldn't those companies who hire workers who AREN'T disgustingly overpaid then offer more competitive prices, which (in theory) should increase the pressue on those who decide to spike up their prices?
Sure. Define "disgustingly overpaid" (in dollar amounts please, not percentages or statistics).
I was listening to talk radio the other night, and I'm not sure whose show it was (I was just skimming through), but they were saying that one presidential candidates was proposing a tax to these big companies for outsourcing work to make up for unemployment.
Chances are, that candidate is John Kerry. His wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is the owner of (or one of the owners of) the Heinz Ketchup company... which has 57 factories, out of 79 total, overseas. Ironic, really, that the Heinz 57 Ketchup company has 57 varieties of outsourcing. Here's my link for an article that says so.
I personally think (in my opinion) that's a wonderful idea. Maybe companies would think twice and start giving jobs back to those unemployed.
Perhaps you should elaborate a bit and say those companies should give those jobs to the unemployed people in the United States. It's rather difficult to give a job to someone that's already employed.
After all, you could pay someone from India $5 less an hour to do it, but.. you'll end up paying that back in taxes, so you won't really save much.
Great idea! That way, when the company has to spend $10 million more per year, they'll really understand the value of American labor! Then, when you have to pay $50 for an optical computer mouse, or $1000 extra for a middle-of-the-line new computer, you'll understand why the company decided that maybe it should save some money to begin with.
If you want to destroy the economy, a great way to start is by concentrating on the 10,000 workers that got paid more than they're worth, rather than concentrating on the 170,000,000 people in the country that already have other jobs. I'm sorry if this seems cruel, but if you ever start a business, you'll understand. As the article above quotes Adam Smith (the founder of Modern Economics), "It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy."
That'll definitely come in handy if he ever decides to "Kill Bill." Otherwise, he'd be better off spending the money elsewhere, I feel. Tax deferred investments are very popular these days.
OK, then you spend your money on tax defered investments. In the meantime, with my well-paying job, and my retirement account (which will grow to more than enough by my retirement), I'll spend my extra money on things that I like... and I like collecting swords. That's where I've decided I get the most enjoyment out of spending my disposable income. I also collect DVD's. I have more of them than I do swords, but really only because swords are larger, and I don't have that much room.
Funny thing. You could have substituted adventure for RPG six years ago.
Although that's true, there's always been a pent-up demand for good RPG's. On the other hand, adventure games (in the vein of King's Quest, Monkey Island, etc.) don't have much demand at all. Look at The Longest Journey a couple years ago. It was a GREAT game, but the sales sucked, because nobody really wants to play adventure games anymore.
My point is that although you could have substituted RPG for Adventure games 6 years ago, you also could have said the same thing, every year, between then and now, about the PC adventure market.
I'm not saying we need people to ruin your game by exploits and the like, but PKing, taking items and the like, it's part of the game; without it, posession of the items would feel shallow, living in a static world.
Then how do you explain Final Fantasy XI's popularity? There isn't PvP in it... yet...
The idea in and of itself is not evil, it's the implimentation that needs to be considered.
I absolutely agree. My point was that the government is the one that's going to be implementing this, and at the moment, the government seems to take whatever they want from the people they're meant to govern... sometimes to the severe detriment of the concepts and principles that made this country great in the first place. Keep this in mind: The government is the only organization that has the power to use force to take what they want from you. If you don't submit to their will, you could be thrown in jail. No other person or organization has quite that kind of power (at least, not without the fear of reciprication).
I personaly do not mind so much the money that is wasted. If done correctly, it flows back into the economy.
It may flow back into the economy later, but that doesn't help ME when they take 30% of my paycheck, that I work very hard for. In fact, there's a VERY good chance I'll never see a penny of that money again, since it "flowed back" into someone else's pocket.
Technology seems to throw solutions at us that are sometimes in search of a problem and sometimes present some serious ethical and moral challenges.
I'd like to make one small correction. Technology itself isn't throwing solutions that are ethically and morally questionable... It's the people that use technology in ethically and morally questionable ways that should be examined. In this case, it's Big Brother watching everything you do online to see if you're breaking any laws.
One time, I was in high school, and a friend of mine was scolded for using the word "rape" in a sentence that referred to something besides the obvious definition. In an attempt to support him, I did a search on "rape definition" and one of the sites that came up had ad banners for porn sites. The teacher saw that, and thought I was looking up porn at school, and it took me a long time of explaining to convince her that I wasn't. Imagine if I would have done a search on "kiddie porn" just to verify that it meant individuals under 18, not just individuals under 12 or 16, and the government saw that I looked at a site with ad banners depicting 17-year-olds doing the nasty. I had a hard enough time convincing a teacher in her early 30's that I didn't intend for that site to come up... let alone a judge and jury of my "peers".
As you said, the abuse potential for this technology is almost limitless, especially given the PATRIOT Act, and similar legislation. It is for reasons like this that I don't trust the government... whether it's with my activities on the internet (which are completely legit, except the occasional MP3 download), my tax dollars (how much do you think THIS will cost? $20 billion seem like enough?), or just generally my freedom. I'm not advocating any political stance... I'm just saying that if we're scared of the government abusing a power that we give them, why do we continue to give them such power?
If he's gaining in the polls, on a longer trend, it's because a lot of conservatives (think Reagan Democrat types, not Kudlow types) are mad at Bush over his illegal alien amnesty plan and the budget deficits.
Sadly, I'm one of them... although I don't live in NH. Even more sadly, I don't have any other option for my vote. I don't approve of Bush's handling of a lot of things, chiefly his spending of money that isn't his to spend, but he'll get my vote simply because of the tax cuts and the war on terrorism. Lieberman is my next option, but he probably won't make it to November, unfortunately. Even though he's the most fiscally responsible, he's still $35 billion over Bush's spending, even if all the tax cuts were repealed. (A side note, the federal income tax returns were higher in 2002, after the tax cuts, than they were in 2001... so I don't see how repealing them would do any good anyway.)
Like a bibliography, here are my references:
Democratic Candidate Budget Information
I'm kinda confused by that. I consider all my friends' sisters impenetrable. If I considered them to be penetrable, wouldn't THAT be the problem? Oh, wait. There is that one...
Well, most of my friends that have sisters, I'd consider to be very penetrable... but if I ever said so, I'd get my ass kicked (unless they're a really cool friend who invites me to "break in" their sister). I just thought for reasons of family values and whatnot, I wouldn't remark on anyone's sister being "impenetrable"... it just might look bad to have to explain to a 13-yr-old.
In case you weren't familiar with those, the WhiteWater scandals were shown to be completely baseless.
Baseless? Only if you define baseless as "Having plenty of evidence from several sources, but the papers that prove the wrongdoing are sitting in the suspect's private office, and mysteriously disappear when we look for them". Did you forget that they sat for over 2 years in Hillary's office and were only discovered when a janitor or someone handed them over without her knowledge? Do some more research, or post links supporting your claim.
What, you mean like someone's sister ...
If I were you, I probably wouldn't be talking about someone's sister in the same sentence as the word "impenetrable".... just kinda looks bad.
Thanks for your uneducated opinion but I'll take the PEW Research Center's opinion over yours every day of the week.
I never said that everyone does that, and I never said that it doesn't work... I just said that I don't know if I'd say it works, which means that it's my opinion that there are more factors involved than those being mentioned. One of those factors, I believe, is the fact that over the past 5 years, most people have already downloaded all the songs they care to. To prove my hypothesis, let's conduct an experiment. Let's break into every computer in the country and delete every MP3, Ogg, and WMA file found, then wait a month or so, and see if the number of music downloads increases dramatically.
Oh, and by the way, I think we could actually discuss my point without the unnecessary sarcasm and insults. I have a valid point that I don't think anyone else has researched to any great extent.
And since file-sharing was down dramatically recently, before the recent court ruling, it works.
I don't know if I'd say it works. I know a lot of people, like myself, have stopped downloading songs because we simply don't know of any other songs to download. All the songs on the radio right now either suck, or I already have them. Occasionally, I'll download a song, but like a good little son of a bitch, I don't enable Sharing... I just download the one song, and shut Kazaa off.
I feel we're still a few months away from really good compatibility with windows apps.
No offense to the Linux junkies out there, but I've been hearing this same line for the last 5 years or so. Linux isn't compatible with any Windows apps right now, because you can't put in the CD and install it in an easy way like you can with Windows. Every time I hear someone spout off a line about how easy, or advanced Linux is, I always pose a question like "You can play games in Linux? How long does it take to figure out what to change and where?" And I always get the same response. "Well, it took a while... and I had to follow a few tips from a couple websites... but it works great now!" That's not working. That's tinkering until you rig it enough to work for the most part. Even some programs written for Linux don't work perfectly in Linux, because of all the different possible configurations. Choice is good, but too much choice lets people with indecision, and ultimately, disconcern. The myriad choices available for Linux are causing people, usually the people we're trying to win over to Linux, to become frustrated at the number of answers they get when they ask a simple question ("What web browser should I use?"). They also get frustrated when they try to do something that's easy in Windows, but nearly impossible to do in Linux (tell me again, how do you edit the Gnome menu?).
Anyone know of a utility like this (like a doomsday device one or somthing, so this guy could have been protected).
Not only have I heard of it, I've seen it. At the beginning of The Core, when that far-too-skinny kid that was also in Road Trip gets (ominous tone) "the knock". Except, in this case, it wasn't so much a disk, as it was a giant hand-held electomagnet device...