That cell phones are capable of damaging biology doesn't come as a surprise to me. Two friends, one close and the other just someone I've known from the OSS community, may have been amoungst the first test cases for heavy cell phone use. One friend recently died of brain cancer. The other friend is in the end stage of dying from brain cancer. In both cases, the cancer is/was on the side of the brain where the phone was used. Which is why I don't own a cell phone. YMMV.:-(
... without vote assurance, how is this a Democracy?
Seems that the US is no better than all those Banana Republicans, sorry, I mean Banana Republics that our "liberal" media loves to trash and our beloved Emperor, er, pResident loves to bring "democracy" to...:-(
Apparently total exports from US companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002 as well. So maybe this outsourcing thing isn't so bad after all...
I read Tom's comments on how he saw Pepsi and other companies expanding into South Asian markets and I think he missed at least one important point. How can he compare Pepsi's (and other low-tech companies and functions) expansion into South Asia to technology jobs outsourcing? It seems a little under-educated. Here's what I mean.
For Pepsi to move into India probably required the construction of new manufacturing and distribution facilities. Production continued in Pepsi's traditional markets and probably had little impact on peoples jobs in places such as the US. There was probably little or no job "outsourcing" required to add carmel coloring and sugar to filtered water and CO2. Pepsi's overall headcount probably increased and the net effect on the US economy was job stability (unless or until the colored fizzy sugar water is imported from overseas).
Now let's take a look at our favorite industry, computer technology. IBM, Microsoft, HP, Motorola, municipal governments, and many other groups are moving (notice I did not say expanding) jobs to India. The jobs here in the US are replaced by (perhaps several) jobs in South Asia. The net effect on the US economy is job loss.
I think this gets to the nub of why Tom is wrong. Just like with textile, steel, glass, and automobile manufacturing, jobs lost to overseas labor remain jobs lost. BushCo likes to talk about the "freeing up" of the US economy to "do other things". Nice theory. In practice the gap between the have's and the have-not's (investors/boardmembers/managers and labor) in this country is ever widening.
This may come as a bit of a surprise, but the "new economy" was a ruse. It was a way of separating your investment dollars from your wallet and giving it to the IPO underwriters, investment bankers, and Vulture Caplitalists. PBS Frontline ran a series of programs that illustrate this point very well.
One of the key indicators of just how well the ruse worked is that 60% of the working public was in one way or another invested in "Wall Street" during the late 1990's. The last time this many of the "regular working public" invested was during the 1920's.
Another, perhaps clearer indicator of how well the ruse worked is looking at just how much money was drained from the US economy (ie: your wallets and mine): $3.3trillion.
It's tragic, really. The technology was in some cases quite good. eBay roars along. Dell digitized their entire business model. And governments around the world have started to adopt Open Source works as the foundation from which to build upon. But greed extracted a huge price on the economy and our ability to reinvest those dollars in continued Research and Development.
Look into information on the India state governments of Kerala and (if memory serves) Andra Pradesh. Similarly, there are heavy democratic socialist leanings in the state of Karnatika. These should get you started. There are others.
Outsourcing software development was "in vogue" in 1992 at the engineering company where I worked at the time. I trained my replacement for three months. He and his team of three returned to India. I was shown the door and the black asphalt beyond the sidewalk.
It's coming back around. Only when corporate leaders (followers?) understand that this isn't making them as much money nor as quickly as they thought they would will any jobs return. But then I think of steel, glass, textile, photographic equipment, TVs, and I wonder.
Maybe we're nothing but expendable resources in a protected capitalist system? Ya. That's it. Nice dream, eh?
Back in the early part of the previous century, few middle class, and certainly no upper class people complained when textile, glass production, steel, and later manufacturing were shipped off shore. Many people just smiled and wagged their heads whenever Unions complained about jobs going overseas. Some people warned that off-shore job movement would sink the US economy.
Fast forward to the present. Who's complaining now? It appears to be whoever is left in the middle class. The upper class still doesn't care. One difference this time is that the middle class is largely un-unionized and therefore un-represented during job/salary reviews and other decision making activities.
If people want to change things, here are several things to consider:
Corporate law specifically states that actions taken or products produced by corporations must be in the public interest. Yes, it says that. So a good question to ask is Is it in the public interest to put them out of work by moving their jobs overseas?
Corporate leaders currently earn over 600 times the average salary of their employees. Moving jobs off-shore is likely to make a small percentage of the US population even more wealthy.
Yes, it's still about the economy. For all his other failings, Henry Ford had an interesting idea that his employees should be paid well enough to be able to afford one of his products.
Until corporate officers are encouraged to employ people from the country that issues their charters, the gap between the have's and the have nots in the US will continue to grow.
I know that the Indian Government has been fighting the Naxals for decades. Other separatist groups agitate from time to time. Other than that, I tend to view India as the most democratic nation in all of Asia. They are usually very idealistic and many times push these ideal into their implementation of democracy.
The reality of the US form of capitalism hits the geek-sector. Hard. Welcome to corporate greed.
For examples of how you will be treated and how successful you may or may not be in fighting greed, review the histories of the former US-based textile, glass, steel, automobile, and furniture industries. And don't believe that just because we're all in technology that we're somehow immune to the effects of corporate greed.
In the meantime, Microsoft (http://www.washtech.org/docs/html_ppts/01.php), IBM (http://www.washtech.org/wt/news/industry/display. php?ID_Content=4591), CNF, Intel, Motorola, HP, and other companies are draining the economy of decent paying jobs...
It's called capitalism. It works. Get used to it. If offshoring makes sense, companies will do it.
No, it's called
greed. And if we just get used to it, as you put it so well, then we are nothing but sheep to the machine of greed.
Capitalism only works as long as people have jobs that pay living wages that, in turn, allow them to participate in the local economy. If their jobs have been moved offshore, so has their ability to participate in the economy and that aforementioned "capitalism" collapses.
"... and I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he had nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again..."- Bill O'Reilly - Fox News
Corporate managers have been exporting jobs for quite a few years now. There are increasingly fewer reasons for companies to remain loyal to their country of origin. The passage of NAFTA and GATT further dissolve any remaining loyalities. But perhaps we are near the end of the pendulum swing to the Right?
The current situation is very similar to the 1890's when large Trusts controlled the work force and, ultimately, the US economy. William Harding was President and his position had been bought and paid for by the controlling Trusts. He ran the country literally for the benefit of the wealthy few.
It took a few years for voters to realize that it was to their direct benefit to look through the smoky media babble (media at that time was controlled and concentrated in the hands of the wealthy few) and to elect officials who acted in the larger public interest. In the end, it was the government that put people to work and food on their tables. Many people I have talked to who lived through the 1920's and 1930's remember fondly the government and the role it took to support the "common man".
After the Great War (WWII), corporate interests again gained control of the government. We see this very clearly now with President Bush's ties to Harken Energy and Enron, Dick Cheney's ties to Halliburton, Army Chief of staff's ties to Enron, and Rumsfeld's and Rove's board positions and ties to international corporate interests. They clearly stated as they took power that they intended on running our government like a business.
When a company like IBM says they will move jobs offshore, it's with the full knowledge that the government will not stop nor hinder that movement. The article points out that an engineers union is attempting to recruit members around this very issue. Might it be time to seriously consider this kind of protection for our livelihoods? Might it be time to mobilize our overwhelming numbers to demand what is right? Or will we simply roll over and let what happens happen because we believe we can change nothing and that corporations have the "right" to do whatever they want?
As a resident of the fine state of Oregon I fail to see how the State Legislature is going to fund the proposal. Currently, Oregon ranks in the bottom three or four states in funding education. And it charges more to register a Toyota Prius than it does Urban Tanks (SUVs).
Like many states in this union, Oregon is experiencing a huge budget shortfall. Too many people out of work (we have the highest unemployment of any state) and too few tax payers. Included is the somewhat interesting fact that 60% of the corporations who operate in this state pay the $10 minimum in taxes.
So where is the money coming from to pay for the proposed changes?
I don't understand how forcing a LEC to share their infrastructure promotes growth. It does the opposite... Forcing businesses to share what they build is only going to make them not build it in the first place. Letting them keep what they build will encourage competition and give multiple carriers a fair shot at the same market...
The regulations you seem so eager to dismantle didn't stop the very companies you defend from laying enough fiber in the city of Portland, Oregon to reach every man, woman, and child in the entire US.
Perhaps you miss the point? Too much media control in the hands of the few goes against the clearly written charter of the FCC. There was a time, in the not so distant past, when the "airwaves" belonged to you and I, and not to someone sitting on top of a very large pile of money.
Here in Portland, OR we have KBOO. It is entirely community funded, staffed, and operated. It is amazing how different the news, content, and programming is from corporate controlled media.
San Fransisco and LA have KPFA and perhaps one or two other radio outlets that are operated similarly to the way KBOO is. But nationwide our options for true community controlled media has become very very limited.
There are several reasons why corporate control of our airwaves remains an issue that is important to understand:
FM/AM tuners remain a widely accepted standard for reception. Those in our society who are not wired, as many on/. are, use whatever technology is cheap and widely available. This makes radio listening somewhat different than newspaper reading.
Local news and information can easily be sanitized or completely ignored by companies like ClearChannel (particularly true when they don't generate content locally)
All bandwidth used to be a public resource. Protecting this used to be the charter of the FCC. Airwaves were to be used for the public interest and not as a simple money generator for a handful of people or companies
It amazes me how little the citizens of this country care about being controlled or manipulated. Perhaps it has come down to the power that can be purchased by a few people who have large sums of money and big desires that remain unfulfilled.
If you are a terror to many, then beware of many. --Ausonius
And of course, a really slick and easy installation process.
Does anyone else find this extremely funny?:)
Well, now that you ask: Yes.
One of the things we did was build a functional Makefile on top of the std. RedHat v7.2 distro and the available RPMs.
Would anyone like to know how long it takes us to clone entirely new instances of fully functional ready to use in all it's glory SourceForge v2.6 (with all the goodies corrected and fixed up)?
Why pay for SourceForge? Or Collab.net, for that matter.
We downloaded the last snapshot of what was to become SourceForge v2.6, fixed it, enhanced it (still are, in fact), deployed it, servicing over 700 people, and kept it alive for over 300 continous days with no interruptions.
Cost? One engineer 3/4 time and a small rackmount server attached to a bunch of filers.
Oh, and we got Unicode working so that we can engage our Japanese and Chinese business partners in their native languages. Sanskrit anyone?
Great stuff, this! We look forward to contributing back to GForge and taking advantage of the fun things they appear ready to deliver.
Perhaps you will recall that the former Soviet Union was able to strike and wipe out one of our intel-sats using a particle beam. So yes, these can be used over quite a distance.
The DoD has had laser guided munitions for decades. Since Vietnam, in fact.
Lasers to knock out 'metal things' have been around for decades as well. The difficult part has been tracking very high speed objects from a distance.
There was a big Navy project to put a laser on a ship. I have no idea if that was ever put into operation.
There was the 'Star Wars' Alpha program that was run during the Regean military buildup. And King George the Second appears to be trying to breath life back into the project.
What makes this news item 'interesting' is that the DoD seldom comments on successes like this unless program funding is at stake or some politico needs to be impressed.
Slashdot Mirror
That cell phones are capable of damaging biology doesn't come as a surprise to me. Two friends, one close and the other just someone I've known from the OSS community, may have been amoungst the first test cases for heavy cell phone use. One friend recently died of brain cancer. The other friend is in the end stage of dying from brain cancer. In both cases, the cancer is/was on the side of the brain where the phone was used. Which is why I don't own a cell phone. YMMV. :-(
Seems that the US is no better than all those Banana Republicans, sorry, I mean Banana Republics that our "liberal" media loves to trash and our beloved Emperor, er, pResident loves to bring "democracy" to ... :-(
Set them free. Freedom is a good thing, right? :-)
Instead of assuming that having amygdala leads to certain behaviours, what if increased amygdala is an outcome of behaving in a compassionate manner?
I read Tom's comments on how he saw Pepsi and other companies expanding into South Asian markets and I think he missed at least one important point. How can he compare Pepsi's (and other low-tech companies and functions) expansion into South Asia to technology jobs outsourcing? It seems a little under-educated. Here's what I mean.
For Pepsi to move into India probably required the construction of new manufacturing and distribution facilities. Production continued in Pepsi's traditional markets and probably had little impact on peoples jobs in places such as the US. There was probably little or no job "outsourcing" required to add carmel coloring and sugar to filtered water and CO2. Pepsi's overall headcount probably increased and the net effect on the US economy was job stability (unless or until the colored fizzy sugar water is imported from overseas).
Now let's take a look at our favorite industry, computer technology. IBM, Microsoft, HP, Motorola, municipal governments, and many other groups are moving (notice I did not say expanding) jobs to India. The jobs here in the US are replaced by (perhaps several) jobs in South Asia. The net effect on the US economy is job loss.
I think this gets to the nub of why Tom is wrong. Just like with textile, steel, glass, and automobile manufacturing, jobs lost to overseas labor remain jobs lost. BushCo likes to talk about the "freeing up" of the US economy to "do other things". Nice theory. In practice the gap between the have's and the have-not's (investors/boardmembers/managers and labor) in this country is ever widening.
One of the key indicators of just how well the ruse worked is that 60% of the working public was in one way or another invested in "Wall Street" during the late 1990's. The last time this many of the "regular working public" invested was during the 1920's.
Another, perhaps clearer indicator of how well the ruse worked is looking at just how much money was drained from the US economy (ie: your wallets and mine): $3.3trillion.
It's tragic, really. The technology was in some cases quite good. eBay roars along. Dell digitized their entire business model. And governments around the world have started to adopt Open Source works as the foundation from which to build upon. But greed extracted a huge price on the economy and our ability to reinvest those dollars in continued Research and Development.
I hope this helps.
It's coming back around. Only when corporate leaders (followers?) understand that this isn't making them as much money nor as quickly as they thought they would will any jobs return. But then I think of steel, glass, textile, photographic equipment, TVs, and I wonder.
Maybe we're nothing but expendable resources in a protected capitalist system? Ya. That's it. Nice dream, eh?
Back in the early part of the previous century, few middle class, and certainly no upper class people complained when textile, glass production, steel, and later manufacturing were shipped off shore. Many people just smiled and wagged their heads whenever Unions complained about jobs going overseas. Some people warned that off-shore job movement would sink the US economy.
Fast forward to the present. Who's complaining now? It appears to be whoever is left in the middle class. The upper class still doesn't care. One difference this time is that the middle class is largely un-unionized and therefore un-represented during job/salary reviews and other decision making activities.
If people want to change things, here are several things to consider:
Corporate law specifically states that actions taken or products produced by corporations must be in the public interest. Yes, it says that. So a good question to ask is Is it in the public interest to put them out of work by moving their jobs overseas?
Corporate leaders currently earn over 600 times the average salary of their employees. Moving jobs off-shore is likely to make a small percentage of the US population even more wealthy.
Yes, it's still about the economy. For all his other failings, Henry Ford had an interesting idea that his employees should be paid well enough to be able to afford one of his products.
Until corporate officers are encouraged to employ people from the country that issues their charters, the gap between the have's and the have nots in the US will continue to grow.
If someday digital can match the dynamic range and resolution of silver prints, then I may reconsider. Until then, Luddites Unite!
I wonder how long the block will last?
I believe the correct syntax is
SCO == TOAST
For examples of how you will be treated and how successful you may or may not be in fighting greed, review the histories of the former US-based textile, glass, steel, automobile, and furniture industries. And don't believe that just because we're all in technology that we're somehow immune to the effects of corporate greed.
In the meantime, Microsoft (http://www.washtech.org/docs/html_ppts/01.php), IBM (http://www.washtech.org/wt/news/industry/display. php?ID_Content=4591), CNF, Intel, Motorola, HP, and other companies are draining the economy of decent paying jobs...
Capitalism only works as long as people have jobs that pay living wages that, in turn, allow them to participate in the local economy. If their jobs have been moved offshore, so has their ability to participate in the economy and that aforementioned "capitalism" collapses.
"... and I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he had nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again..." - Bill O'Reilly - Fox News
The current situation is very similar to the 1890's when large Trusts controlled the work force and, ultimately, the US economy. William Harding was President and his position had been bought and paid for by the controlling Trusts. He ran the country literally for the benefit of the wealthy few.
It took a few years for voters to realize that it was to their direct benefit to look through the smoky media babble (media at that time was controlled and concentrated in the hands of the wealthy few) and to elect officials who acted in the larger public interest. In the end, it was the government that put people to work and food on their tables. Many people I have talked to who lived through the 1920's and 1930's remember fondly the government and the role it took to support the "common man".
After the Great War (WWII), corporate interests again gained control of the government. We see this very clearly now with President Bush's ties to Harken Energy and Enron, Dick Cheney's ties to Halliburton, Army Chief of staff's ties to Enron, and Rumsfeld's and Rove's board positions and ties to international corporate interests. They clearly stated as they took power that they intended on running our government like a business.
When a company like IBM says they will move jobs offshore, it's with the full knowledge that the government will not stop nor hinder that movement. The article points out that an engineers union is attempting to recruit members around this very issue. Might it be time to seriously consider this kind of protection for our livelihoods? Might it be time to mobilize our overwhelming numbers to demand what is right? Or will we simply roll over and let what happens happen because we believe we can change nothing and that corporations have the "right" to do whatever they want?
Think about it. Seriously.
Like many states in this union, Oregon is experiencing a huge budget shortfall. Too many people out of work (we have the highest unemployment of any state) and too few tax payers. Included is the somewhat interesting fact that 60% of the corporations who operate in this state pay the $10 minimum in taxes.
So where is the money coming from to pay for the proposed changes?
The regulations you seem so eager to dismantle didn't stop the very companies you defend from laying enough fiber in the city of Portland, Oregon to reach every man, woman, and child in the entire US.
Perhaps you miss the point? Too much media control in the hands of the few goes against the clearly written charter of the FCC. There was a time, in the not so distant past, when the "airwaves" belonged to you and I, and not to someone sitting on top of a very large pile of money.
San Fransisco and LA have KPFA and perhaps one or two other radio outlets that are operated similarly to the way KBOO is. But nationwide our options for true community controlled media has become very very limited.
There are several reasons why corporate control of our airwaves remains an issue that is important to understand:
It amazes me how little the citizens of this country care about being controlled or manipulated. Perhaps it has come down to the power that can be purchased by a few people who have large sums of money and big desires that remain unfulfilled.
If you are a terror to many, then beware of many. --Ausonius
Sharing images from one's life with others is beaten out by self-absorbed game playing. WooHoo.
Is this a great culture and society or what???
SF Indy Media has a very interesting live feed here . It's a nice alternative to the korporate controlled US media outlets.
What are filers? NAS boxes?
J
Yes, NAS boxes.
Does anyone else find this extremely funny? :)
Well, now that you ask: Yes.
One of the things we did was build a functional Makefile on top of the std. RedHat v7.2 distro and the available RPMs.
Would anyone like to know how long it takes us to clone entirely new instances of fully functional ready to use in all it's glory SourceForge v2.6 (with all the goodies corrected and fixed up)?
We downloaded the last snapshot of what was to become SourceForge v2.6, fixed it, enhanced it (still are, in fact), deployed it, servicing over 700 people, and kept it alive for over 300 continous days with no interruptions.
Cost? One engineer 3/4 time and a small rackmount server attached to a bunch of filers.
Oh, and we got Unicode working so that we can engage our Japanese and Chinese business partners in their native languages. Sanskrit anyone?
Great stuff, this! We look forward to contributing back to GForge and taking advantage of the fun things they appear ready to deliver.
Food for thought -
Lasers to knock out 'metal things' have been around for decades as well. The difficult part has been tracking very high speed objects from a distance.
There was a big Navy project to put a laser on a ship. I have no idea if that was ever put into operation.
There was the 'Star Wars' Alpha program that was run during the Regean military buildup. And King George the Second appears to be trying to breath life back into the project.
What makes this news item 'interesting' is that the DoD seldom comments on successes like this unless program funding is at stake or some politico needs to be impressed.
Regards.