There is a vast difference between "found some keyword hits on google", vs., "I have used XYZ extensively and let me tell you what they don't mention on the homepage." It's no different than if you asked around work for a good auto mechanic and somebody said, "hey dummy, they're right here in the yellowpages!"
Vigilant parents, obviously. Public teachers, curriculums, even school library holdings are scrutinized very closely and debated frequently and loudly. Even Obama's address to school kids last year was controversial in some quarters - even before it happened.
No, it has an LED backlight for its LCD screen. LED backlights are better than the older fluorescent type because they are brighter, more efficient, and last longer. On the other hand, at least on my T400, the LED backlight has a bit of strobing effect. But perhaps newer LED backlights do not.
Is Apple really the issue here? I would think the telcos are the ones afraid of digital convergence. (By which I mean not charging for voice separate from texting separate from "data" and so on).
Cellphones need network neutrality - just let me pay by the byte. Then let me do what I want - tether to a laptop, select the bitrate for my voice calls, run apache on my phone for that matter. Tracfone is still around (it's what I and my wife use), so evidently not everybody hates metered services.
The China/Japan analogy is an interesting, and I would like to read more about it if you have a cite.
It shouldn't give us too much comfort though. Japan's per capita GDP is only 20% lower than in the US, which I think is pretty impressive given their lack of natural resources and aged population. Let's look at what happens if Chinese productivity does level off where Japan's did: China has over ten times the population of Japan (1.33e9/1.28e8). Japan's GDP is $4.9e12, multiplied by 10 is $4.9e13; US is $1.4e13. So if China's productivity reaches that of Japan's, Chinese GDP would be 3.5x that of the US.
Your point about strong competition from India is perfectly valid, but of course the question isn't which one we'll be competing with - it's both. Not to mention the EU.
Of course in many ways it's not a zero-sum game, but with natural resources and geopolitical power, it is. I think gas prices are headed straight back through the roof in the next couple years as the global economy recovers, and we're still poorly prepared. Japan might not have many Steve Jobs, but they are going to make a killing on the Prius.
Funny, because in 1999 I was year away from finishing my BS in CS (love saying that) and I got a tech support job to help pay some bills paying ~$20k/yr ($10/hr).
Well, there was a big difference between 1999 and 2000. I graduated in 98 and seemingly everbody was hiring, with a BS for CS going for right about $47K at various large companies. It was really one of the nicest times in my life, coming out of school with so many opportunities, it felt like I was right in the middle of something huge. I miss it. My younger brother graduated about 5 years later into a completely different environment, so I freely admit the role of luck this.
The doomsday predictions have already come true in large measure. American manufacturing is devastated, leaving millions of Americans out of the job at this moment. There is a new underclass of working poor and outright unemployed in the US due mainly to Chinese competition. Not prediction, but fact.
Second, nobody expects China's population to outproduce Americans on a per-capita basis anytime soon. Their standard of living won't match ours anytime soon (that's not even possible until we move past the coal/oil-based economy, and even then would require China to take more land from other countries). But per-capita standard of living isn't the whole point; size does matter. They can outcompete is scientifically, militarily, and for natural resources overall, even with lower per-capita productivity.
the one-child per family policy is going to come back to bite them in the ass eventually when there are more retirees than there are workers.
All nations have to deal with aging demographics. The population pyramid scheme can't continue forever, it simply gets too crowded. China is dealing with it; Americans still seem confused by it and think maybe the solution is massive immigration, or that it's just something wrong with how Social Security is managed.
Sure, parity is the natural course of things due to comparative advantage. But to Americans, who are accustomed to consuming a vastly disproportionate quantity of both natural resources and manufactured goods from what amounts to an overseas underclass, parity is a terrifying proposition.
No, it was a big boat, but it only saved 8 people and not 18,500. It was a close call; unfortunately Cain's seed was not among them so black people went extinct (despite what so-called "scientists" may tell you).
Let's say my wireless router only supports IPv4 and all my lan addresses are IPv4. Will I have to change anything to access IPv6 servers when they start cropping up?
What you said doesn't contradict what I said. The compromise of the bill on its way through Congress was an integral part of the process of failure. I'm not terribly excited about what's left.
So here we are, stuck with a horribly expensive system with no prospect of fixing it.
If I somehow get my hands on an original Picasso and it is legally mine, then I am well within my rights to spray Beluga caviar all over it and utterly destroy it in that way, because it is my property.
Legally true in some countries, not true in others. I would vote for that to be illegal. Just because you made some money doing something or other should not give you the right to ruin something unique you could never have created yourself and which will otherwise give joy to many generations to come.
The right to property is a useful contrivance of law, and it promotes productivity. But worshipping it as an absolute principle that automatically overrides every other leads to absurdities, as absolutism always does.
To get the iPhone, I would need to sign up for a VERY expensive and long term contract. There is no way I'm spending a thousand dollars a year for a friggin phone.
Who modded this flaimbait? From ATT's own website, only the very cheapest plan (maximum 15-minutes-per-day average) is under $1000 / year, not counting the upfront price and miscellaneous ripoff fees I'm sure they add to the monthly bill. Overtime on that plan is 45 cents per minute (vs tracfone minutes at 20 cents per minute with no plan after the one-time $20 "double minutes" add-on).
The iPhone Unlimited Plan plus Unlimited Texts is $150 / month = $1800 / year (plus initial costs and miscellaneous monthly ripoff costs.) Wow!
In the US, we do whatever rich special interests tell us to do. Look at the health care industry, and still reform is apparently about to fail. It's disgusting.
Oh yes, the tax preparation services will fight this tooth and nail.
Almost every year about this time I post some sort of rant about how wasteful it is that we don't even have a free, official online tax-filing website. It would save filers tons of time, it would save the IRS tons of money. But the tax preparers don't care about that (after all, $1 of intentional government inefficiency is 25 cents of income for them) and somehow, though I can't figure out how, this tiny special interest has the power to dictate government policy.
Using a phrase an ambiguous as "actual work" strikes me as coming from someone with class envy. How do you even define "actual work?" Physical work? Mental work? Smart work? Should someone that works in a physically demanding job receive better tax benefits than someone that "only" had to work behind a desk all day?
You used the example of housing inflation as income. Let's take the example of two people who both take a job for the same company doing the same thing but in different cities. They buy homes, and both pay off their mortgages in 30 years. But one city had rampant housing inflation, so that person retires rich. The other city went into decline, so that person has very little. It's not a matter of smart work vs hard work or anything like that. It's mostly luck.
At the least, I think "actual work" is something that produces wealth. I don't begrudge great wealth to people who either work hard or have a great idea that makes everybody more efficient, because that's not a zero-sum game; they aren't taking anything from anybody. (Though I don't pity people like the google founders or Donald Trump from having to pay some taxes either, since they are the ones reaping the most benefit from law and order... it's street thugs who'd have about the same standard of living in Somalia as here).
But people who get wealth by getting the govermnet to appropriate natural resources or tax money to themselves, or who get money through deception, or through inheritance, or these bankers getting rich making loans they know are irresponsible but don't care because the system puts the costs on other people... none of that is admirable. I doubt I could fix it all even if I were king for a day. But I don't have to respect it.
They have also created more jobs than you ever will, contributed more to the long-term economic value of the country, etc...
Maybe, maybe not. If google hand't edged out the other search engines, google jobs would just be in those other companies now instead. Since google won, it is most likely somewhat better company, and thus added more to the economy. But since it's basically a winner-takes-all situation, the winners get not only the extra value they added over the second-place finisher, but the whole market.
Until Bush's tax cuts expire later this year and Obama doesn't renew them and then NOBODY invests in the stock market because the risk just isn't worth it when 35% of your investment gains are taken away.
I wish, but it won't happen. Taxing capital gains less than actual work is ridiculous, and results in higher taxes of other forms. It's one more way that our law funnels money away from workers and into wallstreet. And people fall for it because they have a few bucks in the market, even though most capital (including stocks) is owned by a small percentage of the population, and most people will never make most of their income from stocks.
Sane investment would never make you 10 billion in the first place. If the google founders had cashed out ther google stock every time it got over $10,000 and put it into lower-risk investments, they would have got market-rate returns and little more.
The only way to make billions is to go very, very long... and win. Of course, with that strategy you will almost always lose.
What are you basing all this on? (A recent batman movie perhaps?) The vast majority of hungry people in Haiti right now are NOT acting as you believe to be inevitable. Moreover, from the reporting I've read, the hungry people are not the most likely to be violent. The problem that's really worrying people is the gangs - the people that were already criminals vying for power before the disaster, and who (for that reason) are armed, and a number of whom escaped from prison when it crumbled in the quake. They're not hoarding to fill their bellies, they're hoarding because when food is scarce, food is power. You might say they vindicate your theories, but again, they were already at it before the quake, and they are not most of the people in Haiti.
This is not a knock on the student in question, since I'm much older than that and never discovered a pulsar.
But.
My impression, which may be very wrong, is that space is so huge, you can point a decent telescope in any direction and discover something, albeit only to a level of detail at which it is indistinguishable from a million other somethings. Thus the quest of astrophysics is not just to discover a new thing, but something new and novel.
(I have often wondered what the earth would look like if we could see every footprint ever planted by mankind. How many "first tracks" I have made?)
Slashdot Mirror
There is a vast difference between "found some keyword hits on google", vs., "I have used XYZ extensively and let me tell you what they don't mention on the homepage." It's no different than if you asked around work for a good auto mechanic and somebody said, "hey dummy, they're right here in the yellowpages!"
Vigilant parents, obviously. Public teachers, curriculums, even school library holdings are scrutinized very closely and debated frequently and loudly. Even Obama's address to school kids last year was controversial in some quarters - even before it happened.
I am aware of its problems, but for me FlashBlock Firefox plugin is the solution because I can still play whatever flash I do want.
Seek help, your reality is 60% distorted and it's spreading fast.
It's not a feature, it's a bug.
No, it has an LED backlight for its LCD screen. LED backlights are better than the older fluorescent type because they are brighter, more efficient, and last longer. On the other hand, at least on my T400, the LED backlight has a bit of strobing effect. But perhaps newer LED backlights do not.
Cellphones need network neutrality - just let me pay by the byte. Then let me do what I want - tether to a laptop, select the bitrate for my voice calls, run apache on my phone for that matter. Tracfone is still around (it's what I and my wife use), so evidently not everybody hates metered services.
It shouldn't give us too much comfort though. Japan's per capita GDP is only 20% lower than in the US, which I think is pretty impressive given their lack of natural resources and aged population. Let's look at what happens if Chinese productivity does level off where Japan's did: China has over ten times the population of Japan (1.33e9/1.28e8). Japan's GDP is $4.9e12, multiplied by 10 is $4.9e13; US is $1.4e13. So if China's productivity reaches that of Japan's, Chinese GDP would be 3.5x that of the US.
Your point about strong competition from India is perfectly valid, but of course the question isn't which one we'll be competing with - it's both. Not to mention the EU.
Of course in many ways it's not a zero-sum game, but with natural resources and geopolitical power, it is. I think gas prices are headed straight back through the roof in the next couple years as the global economy recovers, and we're still poorly prepared. Japan might not have many Steve Jobs, but they are going to make a killing on the Prius.
Well, there was a big difference between 1999 and 2000. I graduated in 98 and seemingly everbody was hiring, with a BS for CS going for right about $47K at various large companies. It was really one of the nicest times in my life, coming out of school with so many opportunities, it felt like I was right in the middle of something huge. I miss it. My younger brother graduated about 5 years later into a completely different environment, so I freely admit the role of luck this.
Second, nobody expects China's population to outproduce Americans on a per-capita basis anytime soon. Their standard of living won't match ours anytime soon (that's not even possible until we move past the coal/oil-based economy, and even then would require China to take more land from other countries). But per-capita standard of living isn't the whole point; size does matter. They can outcompete is scientifically, militarily, and for natural resources overall, even with lower per-capita productivity.
All nations have to deal with aging demographics. The population pyramid scheme can't continue forever, it simply gets too crowded. China is dealing with it; Americans still seem confused by it and think maybe the solution is massive immigration, or that it's just something wrong with how Social Security is managed.
Sure, parity is the natural course of things due to comparative advantage. But to Americans, who are accustomed to consuming a vastly disproportionate quantity of both natural resources and manufactured goods from what amounts to an overseas underclass, parity is a terrifying proposition.
Academic publications aren't just a sign of "efficiency," they're a sign of innovation and creativity, too.
It might be worth it.
No, it was a big boat, but it only saved 8 people and not 18,500. It was a close call; unfortunately Cain's seed was not among them so black people went extinct (despite what so-called "scientists" may tell you).
Let's say my wireless router only supports IPv4 and all my lan addresses are IPv4. Will I have to change anything to access IPv6 servers when they start cropping up?
So here we are, stuck with a horribly expensive system with no prospect of fixing it.
Legally true in some countries, not true in others. I would vote for that to be illegal. Just because you made some money doing something or other should not give you the right to ruin something unique you could never have created yourself and which will otherwise give joy to many generations to come.
The right to property is a useful contrivance of law, and it promotes productivity. But worshipping it as an absolute principle that automatically overrides every other leads to absurdities, as absolutism always does.
Who modded this flaimbait? From ATT's own website, only the very cheapest plan (maximum 15-minutes-per-day average) is under $1000 / year, not counting the upfront price and miscellaneous ripoff fees I'm sure they add to the monthly bill. Overtime on that plan is 45 cents per minute (vs tracfone minutes at 20 cents per minute with no plan after the one-time $20 "double minutes" add-on).
The iPhone Unlimited Plan plus Unlimited Texts is $150 / month = $1800 / year (plus initial costs and miscellaneous monthly ripoff costs.) Wow!
In the US, we do whatever rich special interests tell us to do. Look at the health care industry, and still reform is apparently about to fail. It's disgusting.
Almost every year about this time I post some sort of rant about how wasteful it is that we don't even have a free, official online tax-filing website. It would save filers tons of time, it would save the IRS tons of money. But the tax preparers don't care about that (after all, $1 of intentional government inefficiency is 25 cents of income for them) and somehow, though I can't figure out how, this tiny special interest has the power to dictate government policy.
You used the example of housing inflation as income. Let's take the example of two people who both take a job for the same company doing the same thing but in different cities. They buy homes, and both pay off their mortgages in 30 years. But one city had rampant housing inflation, so that person retires rich. The other city went into decline, so that person has very little. It's not a matter of smart work vs hard work or anything like that. It's mostly luck.
At the least, I think "actual work" is something that produces wealth. I don't begrudge great wealth to people who either work hard or have a great idea that makes everybody more efficient, because that's not a zero-sum game; they aren't taking anything from anybody. (Though I don't pity people like the google founders or Donald Trump from having to pay some taxes either, since they are the ones reaping the most benefit from law and order... it's street thugs who'd have about the same standard of living in Somalia as here).
But people who get wealth by getting the govermnet to appropriate natural resources or tax money to themselves, or who get money through deception, or through inheritance, or these bankers getting rich making loans they know are irresponsible but don't care because the system puts the costs on other people... none of that is admirable. I doubt I could fix it all even if I were king for a day. But I don't have to respect it.
Maybe, maybe not. If google hand't edged out the other search engines, google jobs would just be in those other companies now instead. Since google won, it is most likely somewhat better company, and thus added more to the economy. But since it's basically a winner-takes-all situation, the winners get not only the extra value they added over the second-place finisher, but the whole market.
I wish, but it won't happen. Taxing capital gains less than actual work is ridiculous, and results in higher taxes of other forms. It's one more way that our law funnels money away from workers and into wallstreet. And people fall for it because they have a few bucks in the market, even though most capital (including stocks) is owned by a small percentage of the population, and most people will never make most of their income from stocks.
The only way to make billions is to go very, very long... and win. Of course, with that strategy you will almost always lose.
What are you basing all this on? (A recent batman movie perhaps?) The vast majority of hungry people in Haiti right now are NOT acting as you believe to be inevitable. Moreover, from the reporting I've read, the hungry people are not the most likely to be violent. The problem that's really worrying people is the gangs - the people that were already criminals vying for power before the disaster, and who (for that reason) are armed, and a number of whom escaped from prison when it crumbled in the quake. They're not hoarding to fill their bellies, they're hoarding because when food is scarce, food is power. You might say they vindicate your theories, but again, they were already at it before the quake, and they are not most of the people in Haiti.
But.
My impression, which may be very wrong, is that space is so huge, you can point a decent telescope in any direction and discover something, albeit only to a level of detail at which it is indistinguishable from a million other somethings. Thus the quest of astrophysics is not just to discover a new thing, but something new and novel.
(I have often wondered what the earth would look like if we could see every footprint ever planted by mankind. How many "first tracks" I have made?)