I don't trust you. Its not that I don't trust some criminal who might be after my money. I don't trust YOU. My neighbor, my friend, my fellow citizen. Because I watched you vote.
Well maybe if you'd stop leaning over my shoulder while I vote, I'd stop poking through your trash bin.
For the last time: this is not a race issue. The people displaced don't give a fig what color the outsource labor is -- it's often Eastern Europeans anyway. The displacees are angry because, well, they lost their jobs.
I personally admit to having installed AutoCAD without having bought it but I never could have justified buying it in the first place due to the high cost so how could they say they lost a sale?
It depends on why you bought it. If you are a hobbyist who just likes to draw wireframe diagrams of desks & the like, you may not have deprived anyone of a sale. The whole business still does smack of sneaking into the theater, though.
If you are someone who for whatever reason simply must draw CADdy diagrams, you have deprived someone of a sale. Here's the catch: it's probably not AutoCAD... it's WimpyCAD, the low-powered low-priced alternative you would have ended up buying if you couldn't afford AutoCAD.
"the area bombed last night is classified...we don't want to give the enemy important information" remarks we see. Like the enemy doesn't know they were bombed...
They actually might not, or they might know the details very well. All they have is fragmentary reports from the Southern Front (or wherever) with frightened, confused soldiers yelling "bombs everywhere".
Eventually, they'll sort it out, but there is value to the attackers in how long that will take. If the Pentagon releases a nice, color-coded map of exactly where they dropped the bombs (they do know exactly what was hit, what with precision armaments), it *will* help the enemy du jour.
The moral: don't expect perfect self-knowledge among the other side. There is value in obscurity during warfare.
What's wrong with RH? It's made the most headway in developing a true alternative to M$.
That's exactly the problem... it has become popular enough that it has lost its edgy geek cachet. It's like a new indie band: by the time you've heard of it, it's no longer avant-garde. "Bob, did you hear about that new band?" "Yeah, they were cool till they got together."
Generally, Sales blames any lost sale on the feature that the other guy has and you don't. Thats why the emphasis is on adding features over quality, its to take away the sales excuse, not to satisfy customer demand.
I think Sales is right. Bob has a list of 10 features that your software MUST HAVE, else he won't buy the software. Jim has another list (not the same 10). Aunt Tillie has a list of 20 -- she was always particular.
Point being, it makes a lot of sense for your software to implement the union of everyone's list; otherwise you're just throwing away sales. It is Marketing's job to plumb the customer's mind for feature requests, and find out which ones are common enough to warrant inclusion. Sales' job is to educate potential customers as to what you offer, and in particular things the customer does need and might not have thought of yet (that is, things on your feature checklist that ain't on the competitor's list, heh heh).
How well-designed the product is under the hood is entirely irrelevant to the customer, as long as it meets minimal standards of data integrity and not crashing.
And believe me... the customer does indeed know what he wants, way better than the programmer. The customer is the guy who actually "uses the product in anger"; that is, he depends on it to get work done. Listen to him. He will tell you how to crush the competition.
The cost of a minimum standard of living (i.e. food, rent, and enough of the basics to get by) is provided for all people [...] Of course, the very idea of this tends to bring capitalists out in red blotches
Yes, and thanks an awful lot for making me break out in itchy hives.
If you want to get ahead and call the shots and not get treated like dirt...take the risk and strike out on your own. You may fail, but you will never succeed working for somebody else....
What you're saying is true, and good advice, but is not the whole story. Based on life circumstance, a worker may have a different level of risk-tolerance. F'rinstance... say you have two children and a homemaker wife. You want to be a lot more careful about your personal safety net than a bachelor with milk-crate furniture. You could make the argument that your duty to them -- keeping them fed & housed & happy -- is more important than going for the brass ring. The potential payoff is lower, but more certain.
Okay, so you do want to strike out on your own anyway. To create a business, or become a contractor. Still possible, but you have to prepare much more thoroughly... how many months worth of income do you have stashed away? Have you lined up your financing/contract/peruvian grower ahead of time? Maybe Mrs. gets a job to pad the cushion account (there's a breakeven point where the new job's income balances the extra expense of daycare, business clothing, etc).
Actually, the best advice I can give to someone in that situation is the advice I would give to anyone: buy and read "The Millionaire Next Door". Or save the dough and listen to my summary: Live not within but WELL BELOW your means. Take the leftover capital, and accumulate it. That's why we call it Capitalism, baby!
Okay, now you have your huge stash of money. Now you can become a contractor, or start your business, or invest the cash in muni bonds.
2. Minimum wage is a fucking joke. The only people willing to work for that are high school students because they don't have to pay the rent. Nobody can actually live off of minimum wage.
This raises an interesting question... what is the minimum wage for, anyway? That is, what standard of living is it intended to support? One person living alone? A guy whose wife also gets min. wage? A guy whose wife doesn't work? A guy supporting a wife and a kid? Two kids? Three? What part of town are they supposed to live in?
IMHO the current min. wage setup is flawed, because 6.25/hr (or whatever these days) means one thing in East Prarie Hamlet, SD and something altogether different in San Francisco. Shouldn't min. wage vary per local cost of living?
Then again, if I make min wage why should I expect to live in Manhattan anyway?
Undergrads at most universities build their own CPUs. It's just a matter of coughing up the $$ to fabricate them.
At Berkeley in the early 90's we were still doing this. So the guy's claim is hardly unique.
That said... It is pretty hard, and is something to be proud of. This guy's accomplishment is going past a basic fetch-ALU-store implementation and actually building something useful on top. Also, his documentation is superb. This last is a jewel beyond price in professional IT.
Making your own CPU has great pedagogical value too... it really demystifies what goes on inside the machine, and gets you ready for ars technica digests!;)
Tout it all you want, but look closely at all those perl modules and c libraries around.
Most of them are under the GPL.
This is indeed a danger (read "consequence" if you will) of the GPL... it is creating a separate "public domain" which never feeds back into the orginal public domain as we know it today.
That is why the really successful GPL creations are relatively monolithic and generic: Linux, Apache & the like can be deployed as-is as a backdrop for what you're really trying to do. It's much harder to take someone else's utility class (*koffkoff* readline *koffkoff*) if it is GPL.
Note: the lots-of-little-programs approach of Linux does dovetail nicely with GPL tools, hence: host> cat | grep | awk | myprogram |... | mail |...
Objectivism holds that there is nothing wrong with charity, so long as one is pursuing one's own values in providing it. As Ayn Rand said, charity is a marginal issue: it is not especially noble to engage in it, but if pursued prudently and seriously, and not at the cost of other important values, it can be a source of good for one's society and ultimately one's self. Objectivists tend to view their donations to causes as investments in some kind of improvement: a better culture, a better city, etc. But like investments, these require attention to make sure they are paying off.
Now I am not the guy to preach hard-core Randianism, but do note that they are not as butt-cheek-clenched stingy as you suggest. Their big issue is not with charity per se, rather forced charity, and the idea that someone else is entitled to their dough.
Now, this does not mean that I'm some sort of crazy Randian loony. Charity is a vitally important thing, and it is quite immoral not to help out those who are worse off. It is good for me to give $20 to a beggar; it is bad for me to clap a gun to your head and make you give him $20. The former is voluntary; the latter is compulsory. The former is charity; the latter is socialism.
Please note that the example you give here actually is a tenet of Randiness... they're all for uncoerced private charity (it's your money, see), and hate forced wealth redistribution.
Sometimes the Randites go off the deep end, but if you can just get them to cut down on the coffee & cigs a little bit they're pretty reasonable.
I don't get their newsletters or anything, but I credit them with curing me of socialist leanings in college. Hats off to the Berkeley Objectivism Club!
The problem with corporations is that we tolerate, neigh EXPECT immoral and unethical actions out of them. The corporate structure exits specifically to sheild it's members (and investors) from any direct responsibility.
I think you have it backward here. It's not that we expect immoral behavior from corporations, but that we don't expect charity from them. Acme corp doesn't care about the local economy. Why should they? It's not their job. It's not their responsibility. What obligation do they have to employ Americans?
Acme corp actually can't fail to consider offshore outsourcing; if they do, then Evil-Acme corp down the road will outsource, and eat their lunch. In other words, if anybody can outsource, everyone has to, or the stragglers will be eaten. Messily.
Personally, I'm undecided on whether offshore outsourcing is Good or Evil. But if you are worried about the US economy as a whole, look to the federal gov't. That is their job. If they (with appropriate citizen input) decide that offshoring is bad for the US economy as a whole, they will outlaw it. That sort of thing is what governments are good at, and private enterprise (good for a variety of other things) is not.
Summary: Don't blame the corps, it's not their responsibility. Take this up with your elected representative.
Funny how the price of drugs went sky-high the moment the Feds started letting them advertside on TV...
Those ads would be way more effective if they'd tell us what the damn product does. #*&@$*&#@ Purple Pill my butt.
Of course, even this can backfire. I saw a commercial for some (ahem) herpes medicine, that featured a young, shapely blonde snuggling around with her beau at some nature park, and couldn't help thinking "Well how do you think you got herpes in the first place, chickadee?";)
Re:Permaculture Chickens and Cows
on
Chicken Run
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The Chinese have been making an art of it for thousands of years, with complicated interlocking cultivation systems, where the waste from one part is always recycled in some other part.
This is currently illegal in the United States, because doing this promotes the lifecycle of certain parasites.
People, and I mean the general public, are starting to wake up to the fact the word processing pretty much hit a peak with Word 97.
I used to think this until I used MS Word 2002. The change history features have gotten MUCH better... now, you see the updated text in the normal view, and in the right margin you see little bubbles (with arrows back to the relevant part of the text) explaining who did each change. I was actually impressed.
Hold on now ! Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted an author/artist etc. as opposed to it belonging to the public to begin with. Its us (collectively) granting the favor here, not the other way around.
Isn't this just a little over-smug? This "belonging to the public to begin with" really just means that it is easy to copy someone else's works, not a license to sneer at content creators. They really do work hard to come up with their works.
Forgive if I'm reading you wrong, but you project an air of "we'll deign to allow you 'ownership' of 'your' work, which rightly belongs to our mighty collective".
Do not for a moment denigrate the people who create art, or imagine that they are not entitled to compensation for it. The copyright sketched out in the Constitution is an uneasy compromise between conflicting interests, based on the technologies, lifespans, & business practises of the time.
(Side note: in olden days it was damn hard to plagiarise someone's work... you just try to copy the Iliad after hearing it. Once.)
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If you are someone who for whatever reason simply must draw CADdy diagrams, you have deprived someone of a sale. Here's the catch: it's probably not AutoCAD
I mean, get your story straight, sheesh.
Eventually, they'll sort it out, but there is value to the attackers in how long that will take. If the Pentagon releases a nice, color-coded map of exactly where they dropped the bombs (they do know exactly what was hit, what with precision armaments), it *will* help the enemy du jour.
The moral: don't expect perfect self-knowledge among the other side. There is value in obscurity during warfare.
"Black is White" has already been adopted by Michael Jackson.
PETA got "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."
And my brother's fraternity has a death-lock on "No animal shall drink alcohol to excess."
Point being, it makes a lot of sense for your software to implement the union of everyone's list; otherwise you're just throwing away sales. It is Marketing's job to plumb the customer's mind for feature requests, and find out which ones are common enough to warrant inclusion. Sales' job is to educate potential customers as to what you offer, and in particular things the customer does need and might not have thought of yet (that is, things on your feature checklist that ain't on the competitor's list, heh heh).
How well-designed the product is under the hood is entirely irrelevant to the customer, as long as it meets minimal standards of data integrity and not crashing.
And believe me
Okay, so you do want to strike out on your own anyway. To create a business, or become a contractor. Still possible, but you have to prepare much more thoroughly
Actually, the best advice I can give to someone in that situation is the advice I would give to anyone: buy and read "The Millionaire Next Door". Or save the dough and listen to my summary: Live not within but WELL BELOW your means. Take the leftover capital, and accumulate it. That's why we call it Capitalism, baby!
Okay, now you have your huge stash of money. Now you can become a contractor, or start your business, or invest the cash in muni bonds.
Happy?
IMHO the current min. wage setup is flawed, because 6.25/hr (or whatever these days) means one thing in East Prarie Hamlet, SD and something altogether different in San Francisco. Shouldn't min. wage vary per local cost of living? Then again, if I make min wage why should I expect to live in Manhattan anyway?
That said... It is pretty hard, and is something to be proud of. This guy's accomplishment is going past a basic fetch-ALU-store implementation and actually building something useful on top. Also, his documentation is superb. This last is a jewel beyond price in professional IT.
Making your own CPU has great pedagogical value too
That is why the really successful GPL creations are relatively monolithic and generic: Linux, Apache & the like can be deployed as-is as a backdrop for what you're really trying to do. It's much harder to take someone else's utility class (*koffkoff* readline *koffkoff*) if it is GPL.
Note: the lots-of-little-programs approach of Linux does dovetail nicely with GPL tools, hence: host> cat | grep | awk | myprogram |
Sometimes the Randites go off the deep end, but if you can just get them to cut down on the coffee & cigs a little bit they're pretty reasonable.
I don't get their newsletters or anything, but I credit them with curing me of socialist leanings in college. Hats off to the Berkeley Objectivism Club!
Acme corp actually can't fail to consider offshore outsourcing; if they do, then Evil-Acme corp down the road will outsource, and eat their lunch. In other words, if anybody can outsource, everyone has to, or the stragglers will be eaten. Messily.
Personally, I'm undecided on whether offshore outsourcing is Good or Evil. But if you are worried about the US economy as a whole, look to the federal gov't. That is their job. If they (with appropriate citizen input) decide that offshoring is bad for the US economy as a whole, they will outlaw it. That sort of thing is what governments are good at, and private enterprise (good for a variety of other things) is not.
Summary: Don't blame the corps, it's not their responsibility. Take this up with your elected representative.
Of course, even this can backfire. I saw a commercial for some (ahem) herpes medicine, that featured a young, shapely blonde snuggling around with her beau at some nature park, and couldn't help thinking "Well how do you think you got herpes in the first place, chickadee?"
Forgive if I'm reading you wrong, but you project an air of "we'll deign to allow you 'ownership' of 'your' work, which rightly belongs to our mighty collective".
Do not for a moment denigrate the people who create art, or imagine that they are not entitled to compensation for it. The copyright sketched out in the Constitution is an uneasy compromise between conflicting interests, based on the technologies, lifespans, & business practises of the time.
(Side note: in olden days it was damn hard to plagiarise someone's work