Seriously, do you think is new? Did you hunt? Help a cow deliver a calf? Helping build the house? Make bread? Fix your own car and fully understand it, not clip in a new chip? Build your own radio?
I will tell you something very simple. My mother knew vi (no, not vim) better then I. To me it is the editor of choice in the shell, for her it was the latest tech. Used it NOT to edit some config files but to do office work in. Mail.
You are the pandered child to the generation before you.
True introverts can't understand true extroverts and vice versa.
An introvert gains energy during solo moments and looses it during social gatherings. An extrovert is drained of energy alone and gains it during social events.
So, a company meeting will leave the introvert drained and the extrovert charged up. Even if the meeting goes well, what happens AFTERwards is the real issue. The extrovert will be rearing to go and act on all the things discussed. The introvert wants to take a nap.
It doesn't even matter much when you do it. In the evening the introvert will be exhausted from the day of social interaction and be REALLY exhausted afterwards, while the extrovert has no where to spent all his pent up energy. Do it early and your introvert will be drained during the working day.
So, get rid of introverts? Pity they are often more stable, less easy to corrupt and in any case, most developers are introverts.
Most managers are extroverts. See the problem?
It is even worse for developers who like to get into the zone. No good with a manager who needs constant social interaction.
Just check, how many coders do you know with a cat vs managers with a dog?
So installing Fink is your definition of just works? Odd definition. That is like saying your car you have to hand crank while someone holds the choke "just works".
Fink is a lot of things, just works isn't one of them. It is a 3rd party app so if you need it on your mac, then your mac doesn't just work.
Let me guess, you say the taste of a dish is just right after you added a ton of ketchup?
Are we so beaten by the PC experience that we think installing a 3rd party app with the command line on top of another OS is what is supposed to be a smooth experience?
Never book a cruise. You will be so disappointed they don't actually chain you to the oars.
A dutch consumer watchdog raised a (false) alarm about exploding soda bottles. Nobody bought them anymore and the company went under. To bad it turned out to be a lie.
And what would you buy instead? MS (lied so often in court the fanboys don't even bother denying it anymore) or Apple (just what is that location file for)
And what about the people who stole groceries? What are they? 1 manager, how many thieving customers?
This is actually a useful social study and most liberals will NOT like the result. This "experiment" shows that a large number of people will ONLY obey the rules of society if somebody is standing behind them with a heavy stick.
Yes, a lot of people will behave. For the rest, we need armed police and guard dogs. Pity. If only there was some method of getting rid of the assholes. But we can't and so to counter 1 asshole, we need the entire justice system. (Because while not everyone paid, a few will also simply have left without taking anything)
If you ever handle an event or social place, you will know just how annoying the dickheads are, managers or otherwise. You can do so many things in a world without dickheads. For instance, you hate 3g coverage and price? No problem just use my Wifi. I don't mind you downloading email or browsing on it. Oh wait, I got to use a password because 1 dickhead in thousands will use it to break the law. No easy free roaming wifi for everyone else.
What about if they hadn't investigated and he had been a pedo and he had then raped a kid?
Don't expect the privacy freaks to ever acknowledge these cases. The police is evil right up to the point they demand a swat raid on their neighbours dog for barking.
When you get right down to the core, this is little kiddies who want to see the world burn rage against the man. It is 16 year old boys hating their dad for being a wage slave AND not giving them enough allowance.
It is the other side of slashdot. Away from the conservatives (most engineers are, we are good with numbers and less good with emotions) and into hormone land. The demographic that has an x-box and who think they are engineers because they fix computers at wal-mart.
You will note many claims of IP's not being tied to a single person. Except that it was, they had the right guy, the owner of the router. So, they identified the right IP, yet a large number of posts claims IP's can't be traced to the right person... reason doesn't work on these people. But don't worry, their kind grows up to be the worsed kind of conservative. So they balance each other out.
Trust me, you seen nothing yet. The grand parent is actually fairly sensible in contrast. Still needs a bullet in his head, but in comparison, he is only slightly frothing at the mouth. Pedo's will use any rationalization for their actions.
I fear less from a well trained swat team then a patrol officer with a gun. The swat team knows they can kill you in a second so will restrain itself. The single police officer might fear for his life and shoot sooner.
For all the cry baby's. This is how real life works. This is the real system. It ain't pretty, it don't always work and it sucks even if it works to be caught in its gears but it is the best we got.
The alternative? Saudi Arabia perhaps were a prince can do anything and not be arrested until the police has evidence except that gathering evidence itself is not allowed? How many of those wanting less of a police state have bought a ticket so Somalia?
Pray you never get caught in the system in any way and your life will be queit and peaceful and you will happily vote for the guy voting for tax cuts (but never delivering them for you) and not be worried about the effects on the system.
I have never been a cop, but I have been a soldier. Granted in a country of peace and we had standing orders not to lock and load. But raids on arms stores do happen. We had an alert one night on guard duty. Not allowed to load the weapon for safety. We all did because NONE of us wanted to die that night. And what I said above is true, when you know you can defend yourself in a split second you wait longer. Nothing happened of course, just a false alarm. But I don't blame any cop not taking a chance.
And what we forget in this story that a lot of the liberatarians seem to forget is that they had the right IP, the guy was NOT shot and he was cleared. The system worked. Not perfectly? Since when has this been a perfect world? Grow up and realize this is the real world, not some 12yr olds fantasy world created by kids who want to see the world burn.
They read the numbers on the cheque the advertisers cut them thanks to mindless drones who continue to post on the site creating content to sell ad impressions.
So that is IBM/HP/Red Hat exactly? I know how I find security of mind. It is when my accountant chokes on the bill and gasps while clutching his heart, "there isn't enough money in the world to pay this hourly rate". Then I know I went right and got an IBM guy in to do the job.
Seriously, how do you expect me to sleep well at night with some MSCE guy charging minimum wage? Dammit, your bill got to bleed the company dry. That is a sign of quality.
So you count only the building cost of the nuclear reactor vs the operational cost of a coal burning facility?
How about the operating cost of the nuclear reactor INCLUDING the security measures needed to safe guard the nuclear material for all its life span? How about the dismanteling costs?
My my, you certainly spread the FUD fast and hard. Are you either that stupid you do this by accident or so morally corrupt you can't even think someone will see through this?
What about if there really IS a fire? Am I going to be silenced as well then?
History is rife with examples where the powers that be wanted to silence the person pointing out the fire in the theater. Imagine for instance 10 years ago, how would the same government of Japan have reacted to someone claiming the protection at Fukushima were in-adequate? A false alarm OR the truth? We know now. The state claimed the defences were adequate. They claimed doubters were wrong. They lied.
It is all to easy to claim speech must be silenced for the common good. The common good however might not be what you think it is.
Yes, of course clearly spreading false alarm is wrong. But do you trust the state to be able to truly separate false alarm from inconvenient truths?
You see it endlessly, 1984 gets trotted out so often by people who clearly never read it but think that it is real in a real universe were Orwell is NOT a greater dictator then ever could exist in the real world. Every writer does this, they control the universe of their fiction with absolute control. Not a raindrop falls but under their control. And somehow, the moral they want to tell is borne out by all the action of their actors. My my, how amazing. A guy wanting to warn about the dangers off to much observation, finding it proven in his own novel. Gee, well, that is a warning to me!
Anyone who warns of 1984 is useless. You might as well use the three little pigs to proof building a house out of wood is a bad idea. Oh wait, lots do and it is perfectly safe. But did the stone using piggy check whether his house is in an earthquake zone? Didn't think so.
Books allow an author to create a setting and then write what HE thinks should happen. There are countless books written where the author wants to warn of something like what happens if slavery is abolished or women are given the vote. Any number of terrible ideas!
Orwell had an agenda, you are basically claiming that evidence can be found in a bought piece of research that doesn't even have to pretend to be research.
Try living in the real world, that is where the real stuff is happening and we tend to ignore people living in a land of fiction.
Bungie was a Mac company. You heard of them? Little project they did, called Halo. Cornerstone game for the xbox.
Good thing they did too. The game was supposed to be on the PC as well, where it would have been laughed of the charts for being an overly simplistic shooter.On the Xbox it scored big because there was nothing else and MS bankrolled them all the way.
And while Sendo was getting it hard up the ass, they could buy plenty of lube with the cash to got in exchange.
Getting the shaft is how a lot of people make their living. Money makes up for a lot of things.
Sure, Nokia MIGHT have made a come back with MeeGo. But now they got cash now. Surely that is all that matters? Right? RIGHT?!?
The N95 was once the most popular phone. Then the iPhone happened. Then the iPhone was the most popular phone and Android happened, Then RIM introduces Ping and (at least in Holland) they sell a bundle.
People have zero brand loyalty or memory in the phone market. They buy whatever they want to, based either on some personal preference or because their cronies got one. It is funny with the RIM's. Both a business elite phone AND a phone for youngsters (Ping is cheaper then SMS apparently or easier, god knows, or cares)
Don't count Nokia out yet. MS might have had a long loosing streak but... well, they are used to it.
What is often missing is that Nokia got 1.00.000.000 in the deal. That funds a LOT of development. MS bought the 360 (which I note an awful lot of so called nerds here have got) with its Windows/Office income. It can buy a phone. If not this round, then the next and the next and the next.
There are worse places to be then at the end of a MS cash dump.
That is sports equipment. By your anology, I would as a regular person want my game of baseball/soccer (whatever suits you) with mates to include rigerous dope testing... we would pass with ease. We are far to drunk to piss in a metal trough, let alone a cup.
Nuclear arms production is at a low. For that matters arms production in general is at such a low that Europe is running out of bombs to drop.
Reagan era we still thought the nukes would fly any second. Next decade? Worried about them falling apart and maybe a dirty nuke by some towelheads. Nuclear arms race? Finished.
What most industry pundits never seem to get is that people got a finite amount of money to spend. And we got a LOT more to spend it on. Just how much does your phone cost again? Your iPad?
And what pundits also forget is time. DVD did NOT catch on. It wasn't until you could buy a player for under a hundred that they started to sell and then only when the actual DVD's came of their premium price. VHS hung on for a long time afterwards as well.
Blu-ray is still relatively new and still expensive. It isn't just the movies and the player but what good is HD on a non-HD tv? A REAL HD TV with enough quality to make it apparent? And then, does it matter on most movies?
I am not one of those people who claims he can't see the difference because I can, very clearly. On HD movies. But most stuff I actually watch is old crap. Red dwarf on Blu-Ray? Why?
Will Blu-Ray win eventually? Maybe, if downloading doesn't take over. More and more quality TV's will be sold and become available second hand, players will become cheaper and the movies will go in the discount bin. That is what happened to DVD and for that matter VHS. People always forget that new formats take a LONG time to take over. The past always happened faster. The 100 year war? Lasted a weekend.
Yes, this guy is in advertising. He is the b-ark but for some reason, he figured it out. Well? Advertising has been around for a long time and has always about getting people to buy more widgets they don't need. There really is no difference between the guy who came up with Soaps to sell soap and the guy who invented the monkey gif ad.
If this guy hates his job, there are plenty others. It is hardly as if the whole world is just working for facebook.
If ANYTHING, this guys attitude "my job is just selling ads, therefor the entire world is about selling ads" is the problem. No, the whole world is NOT you. Don't throw a hissy fit because you found out you work in advertising. Oh and the guy in the example? Now runs a data analysis company. Gosh, he was so upset about this job selling advertising he went into data mining. Two guesses what he mines for.
But there are still countless companies doing real work, just as they have been doing while advertising agencies have been around.
Just accept, most of us lead utterly meaningless lives. The b-ark better be really big.
Trade to be done in non-us dollars. That will hurt the US very very badly.
The oldest man just died recently, at 114 years of age. This means that he was born before 1900. When he was born and for a long time in his life, the British still had an empire. You wanna bet they didn't trade or loan money in USD? Who would use money from some backwards place filled with barbarous people with barely any history?
And then, the world changed. The US rose up to be the new super power. Pact Britannica, replaced by Pact USA. Not british warschips but American carriers patrolled the oceans, protecting trade... as long as it followed their rule. It is not without coincidence that oil is traded in dollars and some dare suggest that America's wrat was raised when certain oil producing countries dared consider trading in Euro's instead of dollars. Look it up and see just how many seconds it took for the US to declare the leaders in power a danger to western civilization.
All true? Partly. It is not like Saddam did not do plenty else to cause upset. Maybe it was just the straw that broke the camels back or one of the many straws already on the back. Who knows.
What is important here is that this old man saw the world change, saw certainties wiped away AND then replaced by new certainties. Many above post that US dollars are just the way things are. Yes, they are. For as long as they have been alive at least. But there are those who knew different realities in their youth, realities that seemed just as sure and to be able to last forever. Go ahead, travel back to the 1897 and declare the british empire will crumble in London. Don't worry if your timemachine can't travel forwards in time, I don't think you are going to need a return trip.
The BRICS countries are HUGE together and have tasted the downside of US dominance. Together they control more then half the world population. More resources then anyone else, more production then anyone else, more market then anyone else. And they realize this and are stirring. Should the US be worried? About as worried as the brits pre-WW1 should have been before the pound. Once the symbol of stability, now toilet paper.
And the brits didn't learn, they still cling to their ideas of empire and that the pound will beat everything else. That is why they didn't join the Euro and still beat themselves on the chest about it despite mass unemployment and mass debt that is tearing their society apart from the inside.
Is trade in another currency then dollars going to hurt the US? Yes and no. Yes because a lot of the value of the dollar hangs on the fact that it is used by everyone for trade. If this changes, a LOT of dollars will appear on the market because the need to have a huge pile in reserve to buy stuff (like oil) will disappear. Simply put, Holland needs a pile of dollars now if it wants to buy oil and a healthy reserve for emergency purchases whatever they might be. If oil trade changes to Euro's, then it doesn't need a pile of dollars anymore and even its reserves can go down since it already holds Euro's in reserve. That will lower the perceived value of dollars and might bring it down to the real value.
If the perceived value of the dollar now is equal to the real value, then the US won't be hurt. Nobody really knows but many doubt it is. On the other hand, IF the US "collapses" it could stop being the world police man, go back on itself and save a fortune on its military budget. If the dollar is worth less, then importing makes far less sense, US might start producing on its own shores again.
US bankers and the superrich won't like it. But the people of the US might be better off.
That is why I compared what we are facing to the previous employment revolutions. No way to stop it but if we are prepared for the hurt, it might hurt less. Denial of the incoming pain is not going to work.
So, I agree with you, we must change and we can't just pretend the world isn't changing.
The US turned into a service economy, now even the service jobs are being taken away.
Another poster above complains about the saving of GM for the low skill jobs... but that is what the majority of people do. The majority is NOT working on the next generation chip technology or moon rocket (oh wait, that is China isn't it, my bad).
There are several key industries in which people work:
Food production, read farmers. This was once the mass employer but also a poor employer. Crops especially needed massive amounts of labour but only in certain times of the year. Seasonal labour is not all that great to have. But it still employed a great many AND also added some extra cash for people with tiny farms suitable only for feeding themselves. But now, food production is left to a handful and employment in the sector itself is very low.
Food preperation. Quick, when did you last buy bread (US people, read on, I ate what you think of as bread, go stand in the corner and be ashamed and remember this, bread does NOT bounce!) from a baker who had his hands involved in the process? Wanna bet most bread comes from a factory paying very low wages? Luckily enough people still out so some people still make their money from food preperation but the time every few thousand people had their own bakery, butcher and grocer is long gone.
Resource gathering. Often not really represented as a seperate group, I am talking about the miners and loggers here. Well, you can watch swamp loggers. A dozen men hauling of a dozen truck loads of wood in a day. Very impressive but not exactly going to put the masses to work is it? And very dependent on everyone else, if nobody is using wood to build houses, then no trees need to be cut down.
Production. Factory work, either heavily automated or shipped abroad. Try to find anything in your house that is not made in China. Can you? Was on a US bus recently, most used ropes to call for a stop (looped through a metal thingy labelled marked in China) but one used buttons, grey bulges of smooth plastic with a red button. Exactly the same as in use in many Dutch busses... wanna bet their origin? Yes, this is low skilled work most of the time and it doesn't pay much. But millions upon millions once employed funded the moon landings with their taxes. A termite mound stands tall on the back of countless tiny worker backs. With the industrial revolution, this was the backbone of the economy.
Service. This was the great new hope. What people who favored outsourcing thought would keep people employed when production went away. Sure, the iPad is not produced here but it must be sold here (how people are going pay for it if they don't have a job was never answered, or maybe it was seeing the recent crisis with debt). And now those jobs are indeed going away as well. Amazon does not employ the same number of people and certainly not at the same wage as the bookstores it is so busily replacing. Sure, it means cheaper books but also more people unable to find a decent job or indeed a job at all.
?????. What else is there? When farming went away as a mass employer, industry took over. When industry left, service took over. If service goes away... what is left? Government jobs? The army? Sex? No, these "industries" can only exist on the back of an employed society making enough money to afford them.
But slashdot is a very bad place to discuss this. Most here have higher level jobs which are not YET affected all that much. Except, who is going to pay you in the future? Game developer? Who can afford a new console and 60 bucks per game if they got to combine 2 jobs or more at below minimum wage to just make ends meet? Regular developer? Your jobs are already being outsourced. IT support? Cost cutting already outsourced those jobs as well.
But we still think we are safe. Somehow, magic new tech development is to employ around a billion people (the entire "west" is affected, not just the US) with no new line of work in sight.
This is not about a paid moon trip but about a states ambitions to power itself from a backwater nation to a world power.
So money is not counted in a way that makes sense on a small individual scale. It is not like if the claim is made that it costs 1 billion dollar that Bill Gates could buy 6 rocket developments. And as to what it is worth. Well, what is GPS worth? The US launched it with tax payers money and the research leading up to it also was payed by the tax payer, but at what total cost and for what total benefit? Even foreign benefit?
The press likes to print big numbers because simple people think money at this level still is real. But government has one advantage business doesn't have. It gets to take back a lot of your salary right at the start and then often also a large portion whenever you spend. So even a simple salary isn't exactly the same as it is for normal business.
Suffice it to say, a lot, no it won't break China's bank and no, you can't fly on it. But the real cost to the US will be that China has a manned space program and the US won't. And that is something the Chinese might find very amusing.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, do you think is new? Did you hunt? Help a cow deliver a calf? Helping build the house? Make bread? Fix your own car and fully understand it, not clip in a new chip? Build your own radio?
I will tell you something very simple. My mother knew vi (no, not vim) better then I. To me it is the editor of choice in the shell, for her it was the latest tech. Used it NOT to edit some config files but to do office work in. Mail.
You are the pandered child to the generation before you.
And yet, it still works out.
True introverts can't understand true extroverts and vice versa.
An introvert gains energy during solo moments and looses it during social gatherings. An extrovert is drained of energy alone and gains it during social events.
So, a company meeting will leave the introvert drained and the extrovert charged up. Even if the meeting goes well, what happens AFTERwards is the real issue. The extrovert will be rearing to go and act on all the things discussed. The introvert wants to take a nap.
It doesn't even matter much when you do it. In the evening the introvert will be exhausted from the day of social interaction and be REALLY exhausted afterwards, while the extrovert has no where to spent all his pent up energy. Do it early and your introvert will be drained during the working day.
So, get rid of introverts? Pity they are often more stable, less easy to corrupt and in any case, most developers are introverts.
Most managers are extroverts. See the problem?
It is even worse for developers who like to get into the zone. No good with a manager who needs constant social interaction.
Just check, how many coders do you know with a cat vs managers with a dog?
So installing Fink is your definition of just works? Odd definition. That is like saying your car you have to hand crank while someone holds the choke "just works".
Fink is a lot of things, just works isn't one of them. It is a 3rd party app so if you need it on your mac, then your mac doesn't just work.
Let me guess, you say the taste of a dish is just right after you added a ton of ketchup?
Are we so beaten by the PC experience that we think installing a 3rd party app with the command line on top of another OS is what is supposed to be a smooth experience?
Never book a cruise. You will be so disappointed they don't actually chain you to the oars.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exota-affaire
A dutch consumer watchdog raised a (false) alarm about exploding soda bottles. Nobody bought them anymore and the company went under. To bad it turned out to be a lie.
And what would you buy instead? MS (lied so often in court the fanboys don't even bother denying it anymore) or Apple (just what is that location file for)
And what about the people who stole groceries? What are they? 1 manager, how many thieving customers?
This is actually a useful social study and most liberals will NOT like the result. This "experiment" shows that a large number of people will ONLY obey the rules of society if somebody is standing behind them with a heavy stick.
Yes, a lot of people will behave. For the rest, we need armed police and guard dogs. Pity. If only there was some method of getting rid of the assholes. But we can't and so to counter 1 asshole, we need the entire justice system. (Because while not everyone paid, a few will also simply have left without taking anything)
If you ever handle an event or social place, you will know just how annoying the dickheads are, managers or otherwise. You can do so many things in a world without dickheads. For instance, you hate 3g coverage and price? No problem just use my Wifi. I don't mind you downloading email or browsing on it. Oh wait, I got to use a password because 1 dickhead in thousands will use it to break the law. No easy free roaming wifi for everyone else.
What about if they hadn't investigated and he had been a pedo and he had then raped a kid?
Don't expect the privacy freaks to ever acknowledge these cases. The police is evil right up to the point they demand a swat raid on their neighbours dog for barking.
When you get right down to the core, this is little kiddies who want to see the world burn rage against the man. It is 16 year old boys hating their dad for being a wage slave AND not giving them enough allowance.
It is the other side of slashdot. Away from the conservatives (most engineers are, we are good with numbers and less good with emotions) and into hormone land. The demographic that has an x-box and who think they are engineers because they fix computers at wal-mart.
You will note many claims of IP's not being tied to a single person. Except that it was, they had the right guy, the owner of the router. So, they identified the right IP, yet a large number of posts claims IP's can't be traced to the right person... reason doesn't work on these people. But don't worry, their kind grows up to be the worsed kind of conservative. So they balance each other out.
Trust me, you seen nothing yet. The grand parent is actually fairly sensible in contrast. Still needs a bullet in his head, but in comparison, he is only slightly frothing at the mouth. Pedo's will use any rationalization for their actions.
I fear less from a well trained swat team then a patrol officer with a gun. The swat team knows they can kill you in a second so will restrain itself. The single police officer might fear for his life and shoot sooner.
For all the cry baby's. This is how real life works. This is the real system. It ain't pretty, it don't always work and it sucks even if it works to be caught in its gears but it is the best we got.
The alternative? Saudi Arabia perhaps were a prince can do anything and not be arrested until the police has evidence except that gathering evidence itself is not allowed? How many of those wanting less of a police state have bought a ticket so Somalia?
Pray you never get caught in the system in any way and your life will be queit and peaceful and you will happily vote for the guy voting for tax cuts (but never delivering them for you) and not be worried about the effects on the system.
I have never been a cop, but I have been a soldier. Granted in a country of peace and we had standing orders not to lock and load. But raids on arms stores do happen. We had an alert one night on guard duty. Not allowed to load the weapon for safety. We all did because NONE of us wanted to die that night. And what I said above is true, when you know you can defend yourself in a split second you wait longer. Nothing happened of course, just a false alarm. But I don't blame any cop not taking a chance.
And what we forget in this story that a lot of the liberatarians seem to forget is that they had the right IP, the guy was NOT shot and he was cleared. The system worked. Not perfectly? Since when has this been a perfect world? Grow up and realize this is the real world, not some 12yr olds fantasy world created by kids who want to see the world burn.
They read the numbers on the cheque the advertisers cut them thanks to mindless drones who continue to post on the site creating content to sell ad impressions.
Mindless drone 593017, signing off.
So that is IBM/HP/Red Hat exactly? I know how I find security of mind. It is when my accountant chokes on the bill and gasps while clutching his heart, "there isn't enough money in the world to pay this hourly rate". Then I know I went right and got an IBM guy in to do the job.
Seriously, how do you expect me to sleep well at night with some MSCE guy charging minimum wage? Dammit, your bill got to bleed the company dry. That is a sign of quality.
So you count only the building cost of the nuclear reactor vs the operational cost of a coal burning facility?
How about the operating cost of the nuclear reactor INCLUDING the security measures needed to safe guard the nuclear material for all its life span? How about the dismanteling costs?
My my, you certainly spread the FUD fast and hard. Are you either that stupid you do this by accident or so morally corrupt you can't even think someone will see through this?
What about if there really IS a fire? Am I going to be silenced as well then?
History is rife with examples where the powers that be wanted to silence the person pointing out the fire in the theater. Imagine for instance 10 years ago, how would the same government of Japan have reacted to someone claiming the protection at Fukushima were in-adequate? A false alarm OR the truth? We know now. The state claimed the defences were adequate. They claimed doubters were wrong. They lied.
It is all to easy to claim speech must be silenced for the common good. The common good however might not be what you think it is.
Yes, of course clearly spreading false alarm is wrong. But do you trust the state to be able to truly separate false alarm from inconvenient truths?
This is why the paranoid and idiots should NOT breed.
A: This is google, they got more bandwidth.
B: To save bandwidth from people downloading movies, they put the movies on site where you can download them...
Go kick your parents, they are really to blame.
What is the use of one man standing in front of a tank? That one man stood. You would have folded. That man may be dead but he is a man. You are not.
Sometimes a symbolic action has value. Just to show not all people fold as easily as you do.
You see it endlessly, 1984 gets trotted out so often by people who clearly never read it but think that it is real in a real universe were Orwell is NOT a greater dictator then ever could exist in the real world. Every writer does this, they control the universe of their fiction with absolute control. Not a raindrop falls but under their control. And somehow, the moral they want to tell is borne out by all the action of their actors. My my, how amazing. A guy wanting to warn about the dangers off to much observation, finding it proven in his own novel. Gee, well, that is a warning to me!
Anyone who warns of 1984 is useless. You might as well use the three little pigs to proof building a house out of wood is a bad idea. Oh wait, lots do and it is perfectly safe. But did the stone using piggy check whether his house is in an earthquake zone? Didn't think so.
Books allow an author to create a setting and then write what HE thinks should happen. There are countless books written where the author wants to warn of something like what happens if slavery is abolished or women are given the vote. Any number of terrible ideas!
Orwell had an agenda, you are basically claiming that evidence can be found in a bought piece of research that doesn't even have to pretend to be research.
Try living in the real world, that is where the real stuff is happening and we tend to ignore people living in a land of fiction.
Bungie was a Mac company. You heard of them? Little project they did, called Halo. Cornerstone game for the xbox.
Good thing they did too. The game was supposed to be on the PC as well, where it would have been laughed of the charts for being an overly simplistic shooter.On the Xbox it scored big because there was nothing else and MS bankrolled them all the way.
And while Sendo was getting it hard up the ass, they could buy plenty of lube with the cash to got in exchange.
Getting the shaft is how a lot of people make their living. Money makes up for a lot of things.
Sure, Nokia MIGHT have made a come back with MeeGo. But now they got cash now. Surely that is all that matters? Right? RIGHT?!?
The N95 was once the most popular phone. Then the iPhone happened. Then the iPhone was the most popular phone and Android happened, Then RIM introduces Ping and (at least in Holland) they sell a bundle.
People have zero brand loyalty or memory in the phone market. They buy whatever they want to, based either on some personal preference or because their cronies got one. It is funny with the RIM's. Both a business elite phone AND a phone for youngsters (Ping is cheaper then SMS apparently or easier, god knows, or cares)
Don't count Nokia out yet. MS might have had a long loosing streak but... well, they are used to it.
What is often missing is that Nokia got 1.00.000.000 in the deal. That funds a LOT of development. MS bought the 360 (which I note an awful lot of so called nerds here have got) with its Windows/Office income. It can buy a phone. If not this round, then the next and the next and the next.
There are worse places to be then at the end of a MS cash dump.
That is sports equipment. By your anology, I would as a regular person want my game of baseball/soccer (whatever suits you) with mates to include rigerous dope testing... we would pass with ease. We are far to drunk to piss in a metal trough, let alone a cup.
Nuclear arms production is at a low. For that matters arms production in general is at such a low that Europe is running out of bombs to drop.
Reagan era we still thought the nukes would fly any second. Next decade? Worried about them falling apart and maybe a dirty nuke by some towelheads. Nuclear arms race? Finished.
What most industry pundits never seem to get is that people got a finite amount of money to spend. And we got a LOT more to spend it on. Just how much does your phone cost again? Your iPad?
And what pundits also forget is time. DVD did NOT catch on. It wasn't until you could buy a player for under a hundred that they started to sell and then only when the actual DVD's came of their premium price. VHS hung on for a long time afterwards as well.
Blu-ray is still relatively new and still expensive. It isn't just the movies and the player but what good is HD on a non-HD tv? A REAL HD TV with enough quality to make it apparent? And then, does it matter on most movies?
I am not one of those people who claims he can't see the difference because I can, very clearly. On HD movies. But most stuff I actually watch is old crap. Red dwarf on Blu-Ray? Why?
Will Blu-Ray win eventually? Maybe, if downloading doesn't take over. More and more quality TV's will be sold and become available second hand, players will become cheaper and the movies will go in the discount bin. That is what happened to DVD and for that matter VHS. People always forget that new formats take a LONG time to take over. The past always happened faster. The 100 year war? Lasted a weekend.
Yes, this guy is in advertising. He is the b-ark but for some reason, he figured it out. Well? Advertising has been around for a long time and has always about getting people to buy more widgets they don't need. There really is no difference between the guy who came up with Soaps to sell soap and the guy who invented the monkey gif ad.
If this guy hates his job, there are plenty others. It is hardly as if the whole world is just working for facebook.
If ANYTHING, this guys attitude "my job is just selling ads, therefor the entire world is about selling ads" is the problem. No, the whole world is NOT you. Don't throw a hissy fit because you found out you work in advertising. Oh and the guy in the example? Now runs a data analysis company. Gosh, he was so upset about this job selling advertising he went into data mining. Two guesses what he mines for.
But there are still countless companies doing real work, just as they have been doing while advertising agencies have been around.
Just accept, most of us lead utterly meaningless lives. The b-ark better be really big.
Trade to be done in non-us dollars. That will hurt the US very very badly.
The oldest man just died recently, at 114 years of age. This means that he was born before 1900. When he was born and for a long time in his life, the British still had an empire. You wanna bet they didn't trade or loan money in USD? Who would use money from some backwards place filled with barbarous people with barely any history?
And then, the world changed. The US rose up to be the new super power. Pact Britannica, replaced by Pact USA. Not british warschips but American carriers patrolled the oceans, protecting trade... as long as it followed their rule. It is not without coincidence that oil is traded in dollars and some dare suggest that America's wrat was raised when certain oil producing countries dared consider trading in Euro's instead of dollars. Look it up and see just how many seconds it took for the US to declare the leaders in power a danger to western civilization.
All true? Partly. It is not like Saddam did not do plenty else to cause upset. Maybe it was just the straw that broke the camels back or one of the many straws already on the back. Who knows.
What is important here is that this old man saw the world change, saw certainties wiped away AND then replaced by new certainties. Many above post that US dollars are just the way things are. Yes, they are. For as long as they have been alive at least. But there are those who knew different realities in their youth, realities that seemed just as sure and to be able to last forever. Go ahead, travel back to the 1897 and declare the british empire will crumble in London. Don't worry if your timemachine can't travel forwards in time, I don't think you are going to need a return trip.
The BRICS countries are HUGE together and have tasted the downside of US dominance. Together they control more then half the world population. More resources then anyone else, more production then anyone else, more market then anyone else. And they realize this and are stirring. Should the US be worried? About as worried as the brits pre-WW1 should have been before the pound. Once the symbol of stability, now toilet paper.
And the brits didn't learn, they still cling to their ideas of empire and that the pound will beat everything else. That is why they didn't join the Euro and still beat themselves on the chest about it despite mass unemployment and mass debt that is tearing their society apart from the inside.
Is trade in another currency then dollars going to hurt the US? Yes and no. Yes because a lot of the value of the dollar hangs on the fact that it is used by everyone for trade. If this changes, a LOT of dollars will appear on the market because the need to have a huge pile in reserve to buy stuff (like oil) will disappear. Simply put, Holland needs a pile of dollars now if it wants to buy oil and a healthy reserve for emergency purchases whatever they might be. If oil trade changes to Euro's, then it doesn't need a pile of dollars anymore and even its reserves can go down since it already holds Euro's in reserve. That will lower the perceived value of dollars and might bring it down to the real value.
If the perceived value of the dollar now is equal to the real value, then the US won't be hurt. Nobody really knows but many doubt it is. On the other hand, IF the US "collapses" it could stop being the world police man, go back on itself and save a fortune on its military budget. If the dollar is worth less, then importing makes far less sense, US might start producing on its own shores again.
US bankers and the superrich won't like it. But the people of the US might be better off.
That is why I compared what we are facing to the previous employment revolutions. No way to stop it but if we are prepared for the hurt, it might hurt less. Denial of the incoming pain is not going to work.
So, I agree with you, we must change and we can't just pretend the world isn't changing.
The US turned into a service economy, now even the service jobs are being taken away.
Another poster above complains about the saving of GM for the low skill jobs... but that is what the majority of people do. The majority is NOT working on the next generation chip technology or moon rocket (oh wait, that is China isn't it, my bad).
There are several key industries in which people work:
Food production, read farmers. This was once the mass employer but also a poor employer. Crops especially needed massive amounts of labour but only in certain times of the year. Seasonal labour is not all that great to have. But it still employed a great many AND also added some extra cash for people with tiny farms suitable only for feeding themselves. But now, food production is left to a handful and employment in the sector itself is very low.
Food preperation. Quick, when did you last buy bread (US people, read on, I ate what you think of as bread, go stand in the corner and be ashamed and remember this, bread does NOT bounce!) from a baker who had his hands involved in the process? Wanna bet most bread comes from a factory paying very low wages? Luckily enough people still out so some people still make their money from food preperation but the time every few thousand people had their own bakery, butcher and grocer is long gone.
Resource gathering. Often not really represented as a seperate group, I am talking about the miners and loggers here. Well, you can watch swamp loggers. A dozen men hauling of a dozen truck loads of wood in a day. Very impressive but not exactly going to put the masses to work is it? And very dependent on everyone else, if nobody is using wood to build houses, then no trees need to be cut down.
Production. Factory work, either heavily automated or shipped abroad. Try to find anything in your house that is not made in China. Can you? Was on a US bus recently, most used ropes to call for a stop (looped through a metal thingy labelled marked in China) but one used buttons, grey bulges of smooth plastic with a red button. Exactly the same as in use in many Dutch busses... wanna bet their origin? Yes, this is low skilled work most of the time and it doesn't pay much. But millions upon millions once employed funded the moon landings with their taxes. A termite mound stands tall on the back of countless tiny worker backs. With the industrial revolution, this was the backbone of the economy.
Service. This was the great new hope. What people who favored outsourcing thought would keep people employed when production went away. Sure, the iPad is not produced here but it must be sold here (how people are going pay for it if they don't have a job was never answered, or maybe it was seeing the recent crisis with debt). And now those jobs are indeed going away as well. Amazon does not employ the same number of people and certainly not at the same wage as the bookstores it is so busily replacing. Sure, it means cheaper books but also more people unable to find a decent job or indeed a job at all.
?????. What else is there? When farming went away as a mass employer, industry took over. When industry left, service took over. If service goes away... what is left? Government jobs? The army? Sex? No, these "industries" can only exist on the back of an employed society making enough money to afford them.
But slashdot is a very bad place to discuss this. Most here have higher level jobs which are not YET affected all that much. Except, who is going to pay you in the future? Game developer? Who can afford a new console and 60 bucks per game if they got to combine 2 jobs or more at below minimum wage to just make ends meet? Regular developer? Your jobs are already being outsourced. IT support? Cost cutting already outsourced those jobs as well.
But we still think we are safe. Somehow, magic new tech development is to employ around a billion people (the entire "west" is affected, not just the US) with no new line of work in sight.
IF the high street really gets replac
This is not about a paid moon trip but about a states ambitions to power itself from a backwater nation to a world power.
So money is not counted in a way that makes sense on a small individual scale. It is not like if the claim is made that it costs 1 billion dollar that Bill Gates could buy 6 rocket developments. And as to what it is worth. Well, what is GPS worth? The US launched it with tax payers money and the research leading up to it also was payed by the tax payer, but at what total cost and for what total benefit? Even foreign benefit?
The press likes to print big numbers because simple people think money at this level still is real. But government has one advantage business doesn't have. It gets to take back a lot of your salary right at the start and then often also a large portion whenever you spend. So even a simple salary isn't exactly the same as it is for normal business.
Suffice it to say, a lot, no it won't break China's bank and no, you can't fly on it. But the real cost to the US will be that China has a manned space program and the US won't. And that is something the Chinese might find very amusing.