..what you say is correct, but there are other aspects to consider. A US company competes in a global marketplace, they're competing against products made all over the world. If for example an Indian company makes a piece of software similar to your entirely "made in the USA" product, their costs will have been much lower, they'll be able to sell it for less and nobody will buy your software - you're completely screwed. Outsourcing allows you to lower your costs, which isn't just trying managements evil attempt to fire you.
Outsourcing also allows other advantages, you can exist as a small startup company in the US with a core R&D team and a great idea. When you've designed the product you can suddenly have a team of 100 in Bangalore coding like banshees for 6 months to make it a reality - and when you've got your product you can wave them goodbye. Without outsourcing you'd either be trapped as a small company, have taken years to code the same yourself - and miss your window of opportunity, have been bankrupted taking on US contractors or have taken on employees and either kept them on afterwards (bankruptcy) or laid them off. Because of outsourcing you're now a small company, with a great product you're selling around the world, making a tonne of money and paying a lot of tax into the US system.
Point I was trying to make is that outsourcing isn't right or wrong, good or bad, it's another tool and if you refuse to accept it exists or use it if available you'll be screwed.
now I understand your point a bit more. The very idea a small ball of a few cells should even be considered human had honestly not even entered my head. Being an average European I'm always slightly bewildered by this debate seeing as we don't have it.
and surely the machines will then form an alliance with the super-humans to enable us to fight off the invasion of the acid-blooded aliens.
Sometimes I just don't think things through properly.
Do you actually have a grasp on the subject?
They're not cloning humans to create a new master-race of perfect beings (it'd be far cheaper just to educate the ones we do have - but I digress). They wish to create stem cells - that's all. Just cells.
You then completely muddy the water with your final point, either deliberately, or because you couldn't be bothered reading/understanding the original article - THEY'RE NOT TRYING TO CREATE CLONED PEOPLE (you got that now?) Secondly, just because something fails doesn't mean we should stop trying. Are you under the impression that all the great advances in the history of mankind just sortof worked first time? NASA just decided to shoot Neil into space on a whim one day and it came off?
you might as well chastise Intel every time they bring out a more powerful CPU. I mean I've seen terminator and consider myself an expert, it'll all end in man's subservience to our new electronic overlords. Also I'd like to take this opportunity to express my disgust at these new spinning jennys which will cost us all our jobs.
Janus was custodian of the universe and guardian of keys, locks and portals. Had two faces to indicate watchfulness and also to represent looking both into the past and future.
There will undoubtedly be a downside, otherwise we wouldn't have evolved the prodction of myostatin. As the article points out it may be that the deficiency in myostatin activates proto-muscular cells, which are an 'emergency backup', and thus could cause problems later on. Or it might just be that the body regulates the amount of muscle to what's actually needed - inefficient to build and maintain muscle that there's no use for. Since nowadays there's no shortage of food, then maybe he'll just be able to stuff his face and look like an Adonis *sulks*
is possibly the worst piece of hardware I've ever bought. I returned the fourth one and was arguing with the retailer over whether it was indeed faulty, or whether a 1300 functioning correctly did indeed reject 90% of DVD-Rs and randomly trash the 10% it recognised.
Currently they've got the drive, I refuse to accept it back and I bought myself a Plextor last month.
I think the moral of the story is that you get what you pay for and realise what your time is actually worth.
Rescue an unloved genuine arcade cabinet, pop in a PC made out of all those bits and pieces you have lying around your house and join them together with bits from http://www.ultimarc.com/ Appreciate that special aroma in your home and the genuine cigartte burns around the joysticks.
In the UK at least there is a company called Shazam (http://www.shazam.com). You just dial 2580 on your mobile phone (numbers straight down the middle, ideal when a little worse for wear) and point your phone at pretty much any piece of music playing for 10 seconds or so. You then receive a txt message a few seconds later that tells you exactly what the tune is. It really is quite incredible to see it working and it's been implented beautifully.
Never again do I have to sit in a bar trying to work out wtf that nice tune the bar's playing is.
I code at work, I'm told what I have to do, I have to write endless documentation, put exception handlers everywhere, argue over spec etc etc - it's not much fun, but it pays the bills.
At home I can code what I like, when I like, I can create a buggy mess if I want. It's cathartic, it works out all those little gripes that build up over your day. It'll do cool things, it's FUN.
These two things do mesh together though, as much as I'd hate to admit it, my code occasionally falls over and I go back and put those exception handlers in. I look at a mess of code with screwy indentation I made a month ago and wonder what it actually does before gutting it and rewriting it. On the other side due to code tinkering in my spare time I have more marketable skills and am a better coder. I sat down with an O'Reilly book on weekend and made www.bobpitch.com - the site's never going to make me any money, but the skills I've aquired will get stuck on my CV and if anybody questions my abilities I can just point to something physical which *I made* - gives me a warm fuzzy glow just thinking about it.
and fondly remember playing demos for games like GTA and System Shock, getting hugely addicted and practically camping outside my games shop to buy on their day of release.
I'm a little hesitant over buying games without playing them first and have been gutted numerous times with games not living up to their promise.
Nowadays I just seem to download the full version as their are no demos. The problem with this is when you've downloaded a great game, it's quite hard to motivate yourself to go out and pay the cash for exactly the same game. It's not that I object to paying the developer, it's paying the shop, the distributor - people whose service I didn't really even want.
Maybe services such as Steam will overcome this problem, I hope so.
the people in charge of the security at the lab? Which do you consider more dangerous:
#1 Script Kiddie being hacking server to store films on.
#2 Running a nuclear lab with so little security a script kiddie can break in.
you're absolutely correct. Use the spamnet to gather potentially dangerous IPs and then distribute them. Allow the mail server admin to decide what to do with the information. P2P model would allow a large net to be thrown and then also prevent a single attack point for those wishing to stop the distribution of the list.
The p2p DDos attack has a beauty about it, I was thinking of the bodies own immune system. An antigen is spotted (spam) it's location is tagged and then everything piles on to smother, engulf and destroy it. Current solutions always seem to fall into two categories; Blacklist the spammer (which isn't working) or cleanup the mess he makes before it hits people's inboxes (merely cosmetic) - I'm entirely discounting the whole "Let's redesign the email system" as it'll never work.
People are quite happy to install quasi-legal software such as Kazaa currently. Make is spyware and bundle it with freeware, naked celeb videos and "Click here to install" whatsits on websites. The stupid people click to install the problem, the stupid people then click to zap it.
coule be developed a bit more. We all install a spamhole on our PC and then they all P2P themselves together to form, what I have decided to call, a 'Spamnet'
When one of our servers detects a spammer it communicates this to all it's little peer friends and they launch a DDOS for a few minutes. If the same spammer hits the same (or another) node in the Spamnet he gets hit for longer etc.
It's not a perfect idea (and probably illegal) but it would certainly get the attention of whoever is responsible.
who know less than yourself. Economics is all about balance. You lower the value of your currency to lower the relative price of your goods on foreign markets and make importing goods more expensive. This decreases your deficit and follows through to a surplus. The foreigners who pay for your goods need dollars (if we take the US as an example) as you export more and more these dollars are in shorter supply so their price relative to the purchasers currency rises. This is how the cycle is supposed to work.
The problem the US is facing is that the dollar is devaluing and the defecit isn't shrinking. Some reasons for this are the US expenditure on little foreign excursions to the Gulf which don't come cheaply and a lack of confidence in the dollar on the exchange markets. This lack of confidence is due to people thinking it's going to have to fall further and them predicting they'll lose money if they buy it now - this is not a good thing - this is how stock-market crashes and the like happen. Of course there is hope for all economies, the lower your currency goes the more attractive more and more services you offer to the world become. Maybe we'll start seeing US made Nike trainers - I hope your children have quick fingers.
It wasn't a very sound policy move (and I believe this was pointed out at the time). When the tariff was introduced the electoral swing states just happened to be the ones with the steel mills, the processors paid the price of buying those votes.
it's only the EU that's not appreciating the US lurching about planet. The EU is the largest single financial entity the US has to deal with however so obviously can exert more muscle than another single country.
but US is running at a defecit i.e. is importing more than they're exporting. Dollar is slipping against the Euro, the same dollar is bringing in less and less 'product'. You could increase your deficit and bring more stuff in which is ultimately going to end in disaster as more and more dollars bring in less and less, or reverse the deficit by exporting more product (the sensible option). To export your products you need people to buy them, you don't want your main customer (Europe) imposing great big embargoes, restrictive taxes etc. That's why you should want to keep them happy. The EU knows it's in a strong position and (if we ever stop bickering with each other) will use this.
could do a lot 'if they wanted to'. They could nuke Europe if they wanted to - it's not could to happen, but they could.
There is a very large difference between the EU allowing the US to jam and the US jamming against the wishes of the EU. We in Europe are getting quite uppity with the US, especially their foreign policy and breaking our new toy would not be looked on kindly. The EU collectively has a lot of clout with the US, for example the import tariffs imposed on steel imported to the US are going to be removed due to pressure brought by Europe. The dollar is currently at an all time low against the Euro and the lower it gets the more influence we have.
Reducing the number of adverts seen by 10% would increase the impact of the adverts that are seen. Similarly increasing the number of adverts just dilutes the effect of the advert. Maybe we'll end with a two-tier system, much the same way as we do with some software where you can pay to have advertising banners removed.
Slashdot Mirror
You just need to learn how to type.
Once something similar is bundled with an OS it can be buggy as you like, but it'll still decimate your market.
..what you say is correct, but there are other aspects to consider. A US company competes in a global marketplace, they're competing against products made all over the world. If for example an Indian company makes a piece of software similar to your entirely "made in the USA" product, their costs will have been much lower, they'll be able to sell it for less and nobody will buy your software - you're completely screwed. Outsourcing allows you to lower your costs, which isn't just trying managements evil attempt to fire you. Outsourcing also allows other advantages, you can exist as a small startup company in the US with a core R&D team and a great idea. When you've designed the product you can suddenly have a team of 100 in Bangalore coding like banshees for 6 months to make it a reality - and when you've got your product you can wave them goodbye. Without outsourcing you'd either be trapped as a small company, have taken years to code the same yourself - and miss your window of opportunity, have been bankrupted taking on US contractors or have taken on employees and either kept them on afterwards (bankruptcy) or laid them off. Because of outsourcing you're now a small company, with a great product you're selling around the world, making a tonne of money and paying a lot of tax into the US system. Point I was trying to make is that outsourcing isn't right or wrong, good or bad, it's another tool and if you refuse to accept it exists or use it if available you'll be screwed.
now I understand your point a bit more. The very idea a small ball of a few cells should even be considered human had honestly not even entered my head. Being an average European I'm always slightly bewildered by this debate seeing as we don't have it.
and surely the machines will then form an alliance with the super-humans to enable us to fight off the invasion of the acid-blooded aliens. Sometimes I just don't think things through properly.
Do you actually have a grasp on the subject? They're not cloning humans to create a new master-race of perfect beings (it'd be far cheaper just to educate the ones we do have - but I digress). They wish to create stem cells - that's all. Just cells. You then completely muddy the water with your final point, either deliberately, or because you couldn't be bothered reading/understanding the original article - THEY'RE NOT TRYING TO CREATE CLONED PEOPLE (you got that now?) Secondly, just because something fails doesn't mean we should stop trying. Are you under the impression that all the great advances in the history of mankind just sortof worked first time? NASA just decided to shoot Neil into space on a whim one day and it came off?
you might as well chastise Intel every time they bring out a more powerful CPU. I mean I've seen terminator and consider myself an expert, it'll all end in man's subservience to our new electronic overlords. Also I'd like to take this opportunity to express my disgust at these new spinning jennys which will cost us all our jobs.
Janus was custodian of the universe and guardian of keys, locks and portals. Had two faces to indicate watchfulness and also to represent looking both into the past and future.
There will undoubtedly be a downside, otherwise we wouldn't have evolved the prodction of myostatin. As the article points out it may be that the deficiency in myostatin activates proto-muscular cells, which are an 'emergency backup', and thus could cause problems later on. Or it might just be that the body regulates the amount of muscle to what's actually needed - inefficient to build and maintain muscle that there's no use for. Since nowadays there's no shortage of food, then maybe he'll just be able to stuff his face and look like an Adonis *sulks*
is possibly the worst piece of hardware I've ever bought. I returned the fourth one and was arguing with the retailer over whether it was indeed faulty, or whether a 1300 functioning correctly did indeed reject 90% of DVD-Rs and randomly trash the 10% it recognised. Currently they've got the drive, I refuse to accept it back and I bought myself a Plextor last month. I think the moral of the story is that you get what you pay for and realise what your time is actually worth.
Rescue an unloved genuine arcade cabinet, pop in a PC made out of all those bits and pieces you have lying around your house and join them together with bits from http://www.ultimarc.com/
Appreciate that special aroma in your home and the genuine cigartte burns around the joysticks.
In the UK at least there is a company called Shazam (http://www.shazam.com). You just dial 2580 on your mobile phone (numbers straight down the middle, ideal when a little worse for wear) and point your phone at pretty much any piece of music playing for 10 seconds or so. You then receive a txt message a few seconds later that tells you exactly what the tune is. It really is quite incredible to see it working and it's been implented beautifully. Never again do I have to sit in a bar trying to work out wtf that nice tune the bar's playing is.
I code at work, I'm told what I have to do, I have to write endless documentation, put exception handlers everywhere, argue over spec etc etc - it's not much fun, but it pays the bills.
At home I can code what I like, when I like, I can create a buggy mess if I want. It's cathartic, it works out all those little gripes that build up over your day. It'll do cool things, it's FUN.
These two things do mesh together though, as much as I'd hate to admit it, my code occasionally falls over and I go back and put those exception handlers in. I look at a mess of code with screwy indentation I made a month ago and wonder what it actually does before gutting it and rewriting it. On the other side due to code tinkering in my spare time I have more marketable skills and am a better coder. I sat down with an O'Reilly book on weekend and made www.bobpitch.com - the site's never going to make me any money, but the skills I've aquired will get stuck on my CV and if anybody questions my abilities I can just point to something physical which *I made* - gives me a warm fuzzy glow just thinking about it.
and fondly remember playing demos for games like GTA and System Shock, getting hugely addicted and practically camping outside my games shop to buy on their day of release.
I'm a little hesitant over buying games without playing them first and have been gutted numerous times with games not living up to their promise.
Nowadays I just seem to download the full version as their are no demos. The problem with this is when you've downloaded a great game, it's quite hard to motivate yourself to go out and pay the cash for exactly the same game. It's not that I object to paying the developer, it's paying the shop, the distributor - people whose service I didn't really even want.
Maybe services such as Steam will overcome this problem, I hope so.
the people in charge of the security at the lab?
Which do you consider more dangerous:
#1 Script Kiddie being hacking server to store films on.
#2 Running a nuclear lab with so little security a script kiddie can break in.
you're absolutely correct. Use the spamnet to gather potentially dangerous IPs and then distribute them. Allow the mail server admin to decide what to do with the information. P2P model would allow a large net to be thrown and then also prevent a single attack point for those wishing to stop the distribution of the list.
The p2p DDos attack has a beauty about it, I was thinking of the bodies own immune system. An antigen is spotted (spam) it's location is tagged and then everything piles on to smother, engulf and destroy it. Current solutions always seem to fall into two categories; Blacklist the spammer (which isn't working) or cleanup the mess he makes before it hits people's inboxes (merely cosmetic) - I'm entirely discounting the whole "Let's redesign the email system" as it'll never work.
People are quite happy to install quasi-legal software such as Kazaa currently. Make is spyware and bundle it with freeware, naked celeb videos and "Click here to install" whatsits on websites. The stupid people click to install the problem, the stupid people then click to zap it.
coule be developed a bit more. We all install a spamhole on our PC and then they all P2P themselves together to form, what I have decided to call, a 'Spamnet'
When one of our servers detects a spammer it communicates this to all it's little peer friends and they launch a DDOS for a few minutes. If the same spammer hits the same (or another) node in the Spamnet he gets hit for longer etc.
It's not a perfect idea (and probably illegal) but it would certainly get the attention of whoever is responsible.
who know less than yourself. Economics is all about balance. You lower the value of your currency to lower the relative price of your goods on foreign markets and make importing goods more expensive. This decreases your deficit and follows through to a surplus. The foreigners who pay for your goods need dollars (if we take the US as an example) as you export more and more these dollars are in shorter supply so their price relative to the purchasers currency rises. This is how the cycle is supposed to work.
The problem the US is facing is that the dollar is devaluing and the defecit isn't shrinking. Some reasons for this are the US expenditure on little foreign excursions to the Gulf which don't come cheaply and a lack of confidence in the dollar on the exchange markets. This lack of confidence is due to people thinking it's going to have to fall further and them predicting they'll lose money if they buy it now - this is not a good thing - this is how stock-market crashes and the like happen.
Of course there is hope for all economies, the lower your currency goes the more attractive more and more services you offer to the world become. Maybe we'll start seeing US made Nike trainers - I hope your children have quick fingers.
It wasn't a very sound policy move (and I believe this was pointed out at the time). When the tariff was introduced the electoral swing states just happened to be the ones with the steel mills, the processors paid the price of buying those votes.
it's only the EU that's not appreciating the US lurching about planet. The EU is the largest single financial entity the US has to deal with however so obviously can exert more muscle than another single country.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3253322.stm
but US is running at a defecit i.e. is importing more than they're exporting. Dollar is slipping against the Euro, the same dollar is bringing in less and less 'product'. You could increase your deficit and bring more stuff in which is ultimately going to end in disaster as more and more dollars bring in less and less, or reverse the deficit by exporting more product (the sensible option). To export your products you need people to buy them, you don't want your main customer (Europe) imposing great big embargoes, restrictive taxes etc. That's why you should want to keep them happy. The EU knows it's in a strong position and (if we ever stop bickering with each other) will use this.
could do a lot 'if they wanted to'. They could nuke Europe if they wanted to - it's not could to happen, but they could.
There is a very large difference between the EU allowing the US to jam and the US jamming against the wishes of the EU. We in Europe are getting quite uppity with the US, especially their foreign policy and breaking our new toy would not be looked on kindly.
The EU collectively has a lot of clout with the US, for example the import tariffs imposed on steel imported to the US are going to be removed due to pressure brought by Europe. The dollar is currently at an all time low against the Euro and the lower it gets the more influence we have.
Reducing the number of adverts seen by 10% would increase the impact of the adverts that are seen. Similarly increasing the number of adverts just dilutes the effect of the advert. Maybe we'll end with a two-tier system, much the same way as we do with some software where you can pay to have advertising banners removed.