Hard drives are cheap. The information that was on them was priceless.
A decent 20G drive costs what, $30 now? When someone's drive fails, they're usually so devasted (unless they had a comprehensive backup in place) that a consolation like, "Well, I was able to save your hard drive that didn't do the job it was supposed to do in the first place" just doesn't make the person feel all that better.
If I was in that situation, I'd probably go ahead and buy a new hard drive unless it was on a machine I really didn't care about, and then why am I bothering to keep it switched on?
Otherwise, why keep a piece of hardware that I know failed in the past? It might not have been the hardware's fault, but why take any chances?
Besides, it's a perfect opportunity to get a newer, more stable drive with more capacity for the same or lower price than I paid for the old drive.
For a while, people thought antibiotics were the solution to everything.
So, they were used all the time.
Now, there are tons and tons of resistent bacteria.
If the use of antibiotics had been more controlled and cautious, this might not have happened.
Noone is saying that GM doesn't have a place in our future. Just that there are dangers associated with it, and that we need to take these dangers seriously.
In fact, I propose that we should just GIVE UP trying to solve any hard problem... Nature already does it better in most cases anyway, right?
Hmmm...if there isn't a new problem, we don't really need to solve it. The food supply is a poltiical and social problem, not a technological one.
And, in many cases, nature still does do a better job than we humans. Remember, most of the "solutions" that technology creates are to resolve problems that human technology created in the first place: antidepressants and weight-loss medicine come to mind.
Hmmm... I don't know what you're smoking, but your comments don't seem to have anything to do with what the parent was saying.
Basically, parent was saying that the license should be like the GPL -- you can't use the information and then make it into something proprietary. Otherwise, Monsanto could take the knowledge offered for free and then make a killing selling the GMOs to farmers.
There's no question that Monsanto has a right to protect its own bio-patents. But maybe then Monsanto shouldn't be allowed to use the Open-Source GM information?
Let's say someone develops an open-source variety of corn that features larger, juicier kernels. Monstanto turns around and puts this new gene in its Roundup Ready corn. Because their GM information is closed, there's no real way to know with 100% certainty that they used the open source info in their proprietary crop. And they certainly won't be making their bio-patent for the crop available to ensure that it wasn't stolen from the other crop.
Now, granted, there are probably DNA fingerprints that could be used to say within a percentage of certainty that the gene used in the Open Source crop and spliced into the Roundup crop were one and the same, but it's not clear to me that this would be absolute proof.
In reality, to avoid this, it's actually in Monsanto's interest to avoid open source patents in its crops entirely. Otherwise, they'll leave themselves open for infringement suits on crops that are even similar to GMO crops but that they developed in house. If I were the CEO of Monsanto, I would congratulate this group and announce publicly that in order to keep my patents secure and unquestionable, Monstanto would not use or review any open source GMO patents.
I see open source GM being very useful for governments and NGOs in developing countries who, with large up-front funding, could begin developing crops for use by their citizens.
3) Move cautiously in a new technology, and always for the right reasons.
From what I've learned so far in my life, preventing a problem is generally cheaper than solving it once it's happened.
We already have indicators that GM is problematic: some species of insect have died eating GM crops; there has been cross-pollination with other crops, sometimes with unexpected results; GM crops have in some cases shown to be of lower quality than normal crops.
With the prolific use of Roundup, there are now Roundup resistant weeds. What will the next step be?
Keep in mind, right now there is no agency regulating or overseeing GM crops. None. Roundup-Ready soybeans are classified, not as a food, but as a pesticide.
Until there is a regulatory agency that can adequately monitor the effects of GM crops and their safety, and until there is labelling of GM crops (which a vast majority of the public supports), I think opposing GM is a good idea in general because it's largely controlled by large corporations.
I believe that free markets work for certain things, but for others they are less than ideal. For example, most of the public schools that are/were run by private companies really suck -- they're using old textbooks and lousy teachers, all to keep up their bottom line.
There are some things in life that shouldn't be profitable enterprises. Monitoring food safety is one. I think that we shouldn't be putting our faith in Monsanto that they're looking out for our food safety.
I think the idea of open-source GM is very appealing. As long as agrobusiness controls GM science, I will be in the opposition group, because I don't believe that these corporations are looking out for our safety interests. Unless they're basically a fiscally irresponsible company, then they're spending the absolute minimum required (legally and proactively to avoid lawsuits) in order to ensure that people won't get really sick from, say, eating a burger made out of GM soy.
As long as agribusiness controls seed, it controls farmers and, ultimately, the food supply. If seed is non-GM or open source GM, then the farmers control the seed and the supply. But if GM remains closed, and there are enough mergers so that there are only two giants left, then for at least a year or two, they could completely control our food supply (until, hopefully, another company was able to rise up to compete against them).
So, although I'm nervous about the potential health and ecological risks of GM food, I'm terrified about Monstanto or an equivalent taking control of the food supply. Imagine if we had a Microsoft of food. That would suck.
That's why, although I'm nervous about GMOs in general, this article is a good sign.
While this is obviously beneficial to the farmer and the consumer, it will seriously hinder the survival of this tomato variety in the willd: regular tomato plants will spend less energy on producing fruit and will be able to release their seeds much sooner (because the fruit spoils faster) than the fancy GM variety.
The tomato plants don't have to be able to reproduce themselves in order to spread their genetic code -- all they need to do is release pollen.
And studies have shown that cross-pollination with non-GMO crops can happen, but that often the changes placed in the DNA are dominant traits, meaning that they will be passed down via the pollen.
This has caused a nightmare in the organic farming community, because it's now possible that GMO strains can contaminate their crops, removing their organic status. And once they're contaminated, it's not easy to decontaminate them.
Re:Not just developing countries
on
The Sub-$100 Laptop?
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· Score: 4, Informative
These would be invaluable in things like health clinics, where a wealth of information could suddenly be made available, for much less than the cost of purchasing a set of books on medicine and diseases.
The point is that this technology is needed there; at the current price point, it's completely out of reach of the consumer. Offering these laptops at a reasonable price means that finally those who need these laptops can purchase them.
I sincerely doubt that these laptops will be used primarily for recreational purposes, so someone who really does need them might willingly take out a loan in order to purchase one.
NGOs, for one, will certainly be snapping these up. These notebooks will make their work so much easier.
Perhaps it might be useful to offer laptops to lower income westerners (I'm thinking particularly of urban and rural poor), but lower middle class westerners can suck it up and use a credit card if they really want a laptop. Even Apple has laptops starting for less than $1000.
The "intermittent power access" is why they're using laptops rather than desktops, which, if you think about it, would be much cheaper anyway. Laptops need less power overall, and you can plug them in during the 2-3 hours of scheduled "uptime" on the local grid. For clinics running off of generators, desktops, which would put a huge drain on the electricity, were probably just not possible (or, if they were, it might be one desktop computer for a dozen or more people). With laptops, they can now use several.
So there are a lot of benefits to offering these inexpensive laptops. While this is certainly a commercial offering and not a "donation" to developing countries, it is nevertheless a very beneficial thing being done. Although technology is not the "answer to the problem", it can be an invaluable tool for the real solutions. I believe that the available of inexpensive laptops just might transform developing countries as much as the introduction of wireless phones has.
I'll second Freecycle. It's really great and it's wonderful to see items (of all kinds) headed for a landfill that get put to use.
Incidentally, you'd be shocked just how many people eagerly gobble up items like scrap lumber, flooring, infant supplies, etc. Just because it's leftovers doesn't mean it's still not wanted or needed.
Parent got one flamebait, one interesting, and one insightful. How come overall moderation is -1?
Are Offtopic, Flamebait, and Troll the only moderations that count numerically anymore? Do we have to use "Underrated" forever now? WTF?/waiting to be modded offtopic
So why am I beating everyone over the head with this? Well, it's saying even their high-end, easy to open Dual G5 machines have to be upgraded at Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider! Yet no one seems to be harping about this...ever. So why is everyone pointing it out about the Mini? The original iMacs were hard to open also, yet opening them and upgrading the memory didn't void the warranty.
Well, while scalability might work on most farms, it doesn't on hog farms. Basically, hog farms right now are a scary, scary source of pollution, and recommended practices there are neither adequately regulated or enforced. If they were, the hog factories would be unable to sell pork at a lower price than the small, more ecologically sound family farms.
In my opinion, efficiency is only one reason that larger companies/organizations are able to add similar services or goods for reduced prices. Cutting corners is another. Evading normal regulation is another. Special subsidies, tax breaks, or investment from government is another. Engaging in unethical business practices is another.
I don't debate that big boxes are excellent places to buy something for 43 cents less than anywhere else in town. What I object to is the idea that the economy is effectively a level playing field, that all companies that are successful must be so only because of free market competition, and that all this economic growth is necessarily a positive thing.
Huh. For some reason a lot of people seem to think that my argument is that outsourcing to other countries is bad and will worsen the quality of life in the western world.
My main point is to argue against people who think that globalization is necessarily a naturally occurring and necessary phenomenon that will benefit all people equally. Instead, I think that globalization will lead to an *increase* of concentration of wealth. Currently the concentration of wealth is mostly in the western countries. When globalization has spread worldwide and is evenly distributed, so to speak, concentration of wealth will be instead in a group of rich elites in each of these countries, each of whom has more in common with elites in other countries than with their fellow citizens. The last feature of globalization will be the multinational person, someone who is wealthy enough and mobile enough to have no real ties, allegiance, or responsibility to any one nation, and who lives, in a sense, outside of the law.
This is what I think will happen. I don't think that globalization will lead to a big shiny wonderful world where everyone has a decent standard of living. In the United States, If you look at households earning under $40k/year and individuals earning under $20k/year, they aren't doing so hot. Most of these people are saving negative money (i.e., they're in constant debt), don't have health insurance, and are really struggling to make ends meet. $20k is a fortune in China, but not in the US.
We'll have to settle for something in-between. Oh I don't know, something like what the Spanish or Canadians have. Oddly enough not owning a 5 tonne SUV doesn't seem to make the Europeans think that they've got a "poorer standard of living" compared to Americans.
I personally think that both of the countries you mention have a better quality of life than most Americans. For some bizarre reason you assume that I think owning an SUV is good. Read my later postings. My point is that it's consumerism that will poison globalization. People won't just raise their standard of living -- they'll become more and more dependent on purchasing goods and services in order to have a decent quality of life, and the costs of even just the bare essentials would skyrocket.
Unless your rent is subsidized or you live in a particularly cheap part of the country, it isn't easy to survive on, say, $1,000 per month. In China you can probably survive with $300/month.
I'd agree with most of your comments except the one about the mom and pops.
Often, a Walmart will approach a city or regional planning board and play them a little song and dance about tax revenue for that region going up from their sales (as well as an increase in jobs). The local government generally helps subsidize the building of the Walmart and gives it a few tax breaks for the first 1-2 years or so.
Well, guess what. Research has shown that in the long run, Walmarts have either a neutral or negative effect on the economy of that region.
Walmart also frequently will build a store, then build a larger SuperStore in a municipality just down the road. This way, they get the same initial perks they had at the last place. Then, they close the old store down.
Local businesses put more money into the local economy than non-local businesses. According to some calculations, a dollar spent in a local business effectively becomes 5 dollars because the local business in turn purchases goods and services locally as well. When you spend a dollar at Walmart, most of that money goes directly towards the Walmart corporation, not the local community.
Walmart isn't the only big box engaged in these practices, but it is the biggest, and that's why it gets the most attention.
It's true that prices are better at Walmart pretty much across the board. It's also true that there are times when being able to provide a good at the lowest price does not make you necessarily the best company to purchase that product from. In the long run, I believe that big box stores will have a negative effect on our economic health, quality of life, and the environment.
There are some changes that are natural developments of the changing economy, and others that are forced through.
-being extremely egocentric about this little slice of time we live in.
I know everyone since Plato has been saying everything is going to hell in a handbasket and that things are getting worse, but I think that there is evidence that the economic progression that is currently occurring is not 100% positive in nature.
Basically, I think that capitalism when unchecked can really put a large group into a seriously miserable condition.
If you look at the Industrial Revolution, it was pretty much terrible for everyone but the factory owners for quite a while. Now, of course, we understand that the industrialization of the world is an overall benefit to society. The reason it didn't stay bad was, basically, labor. They mandated positive working conditions, rules against child labor, and the 40 hour week. Without these things, the Industrial Revolution would still be something that was mostly bad for most people.
I think while we are watching these changes occur around us, we need to continue to watch how people are being negatively affected and what we can do to absorb or alleviate those effects. And we need to stay aware of instances where business practices are negative or dangerous, and oppose those practices.
I imagine a lot of the water use is from flush toilets. If someone could design a water efficient toilet that actually worked, I could save more water.
In countries that value conserving resources, toilets have two buttons: one for "small flushes" (you know, pee pee) and one for "large flushes." It makes perfect sense, and it isn't difficult to design. Unless it's a drought season, people routinely flush whenever anything goes in the toilet, and it's always the same amount of water, every time. Doesn't make sense.
The alternative of putting bricks or bottles or bags in your tank is fine until you really need the power of the additional water; then you have people needing to flush 2 or 3 times when one "large flush" would have done the trick.
Third-world countries don't use a lot of water, but then, they have little good water to use.
Most water isn't used for drinking, so it doesn't necessarily need to be of super high quality. That being said, cleaning up the water supply in developing countries is probably in the top ten of things to do to save lives. Many more people die of water-borne microbes per year than died during the recent Tsunami. Unfortunately, only disasters get real attention. People don't pay much attention to long term unliveable conditions. Hopefully, the money for this Tsunami relief will continue to be sent to SE Asia and can perhaps be leveraged to set up new systems providing cleaner water and better waste disposal systems.
There is nothing in theory or in practice that says capitalism requires constant growth.
In practice, when growth slows, there's a recession. Not negative growth, mind you, just less growth than usual.
Unless you sell a good or service that is used up (such as food, shampoo, or phone cards), the good or service you provide is semi-permanent. That is, if someone goes to a website company and purchases a website, they won't need another website from them next week or the week after.
But the website company still needs to write out a paycheck to each employee every month. To do that, they need to keep making websites in order to get paid. But in a non-growth economy, eventually all companies that wanted them would have websites that were working and up-to-date. The website company couldn't even turn to their former clients for work, because those companies weren't growing, so didn't need any new development on their sites. At which point the website design company would go out of business.
Since it was out of business, it wouldn't need to print up business cards anymore. The company that printed the business cards would go out of business, because there were no new businesses walking in to make business cards.
Also, don't forget population growth. We need growth in the economy to provide jobs for those entering the work force. There aren't as many people retiring as there are entering the workforce.
Fuel, shmuel. People have been arguing about oil for the past 60 years or so.
Water is the new hotness.
The average Westerner uses something on the order of 100-1000 times the water that someone in a developing country does. Now, imagine everyone in the world using water at developed-nation levels.
Since water is necessary for nearly every business practice, as the use of water skyrockets, it will force a chain reaction to other prices.
Sure, water recycles, but not that fast. Not thousands of gallons a day for billions of people fast.
Food is another biggie. Sure, there's plenty to feed the world now, but that's because few countries eat meat at the level that developed nations do. Doubling the amount of meat consumption worldwide would multiply world grain needs by a much larger factor (I think the equation is something like 1 pound of beef = 10 pounds of grain).
Unfortunately, consumerism has boosted demand, particularly "brand" demand, to the point where people are willing to pay fairly inflated prices for goods (most people are still pretty cheap when it comes to services, though). Consider a pair of jeans. In the past 20 years, the cost for producing a jean has gone down (or at worst remained the same), because none of them are made in the US anymore and textile labor is cheaper than air. A pair of jeans might cost as little as a few bucks to make in a sweatshop-type factory. But you're now paying much more for a pair of jeans. If clothing companies had to compete with one another on price (competing on quality is general a non-issue; these clothes are pretty much all made from similar materials by similar workers), the price for jeans would be maybe $15. In truth, most jeans are the same except for small differences in style. However, most people identify with specific brands and are willing to pay a premium. This is all due to advertising; most of the real expense of the average Nike shoe or Levi jean is advertising, not manufacture.
What about soda? The average cost for a 2-liter bottle is now $1.50-$2.00. That $2 for water, some carbonation, and a little bit of sugar. Oh, and lots and lots of advertising.
What does this mean? It means that advances in technology (except when they actually improve the quality or features of a product) always benefit the company, not the consumer, because most companies aren't pressured to keep prices low unless they have to.
And they don't have to, because even people who don't have money have "plenty" of money, thanks to credit cards.
Man, I could go on (obviously), but I have to get back to, uh, work.:)
I remember being on a trans-pacific flight with this manager for a major corporation. He had been in China overseeing some project.
He said they're moving out of China soon.
Why?
Because the labor (these are specialized workers) is too expensive. That's right, China is too expensive.
It's true that the wage that the Chinese engineers are asking for has gone up. But that's a natural factor of supply and demand. Eventually, they are going to actual start demanding to be paid what they're worth to the company. However, their wage is still significantly lower than the one that the US engineers received way before the outsourcing occurred. So assuming that all other parts of the equation are the same, the company is still making more profit after *salary* (excluding other expenses) than it did when it wasn't outsourcing at all.
Nonetheless, this company is going to move to another country where the workers can be paid significantly less, thus maintaining their huge post-salary profit margin (again, discounting expenses in other areas).
Why are the doing this?
Because globalization has made it significantly easier to do so.
Because of globalization, it's now possible to start up a working factory, shop, or headquarters pretty much anywhere in the world. This means that you can specifically target the most impoverished countries, countries where the average person makes a 10th, 100th, or 1000th of what an American might, and set those people to work.
Now, in a non-growth system, where companies maintained their size and scope, companies would be able to hop back and forth between countries at whim. Whenever country A became too expensive, they'd simply move to country B until it became too expensive, then hop back to country A (now desperate for work).
However, capitalism cannot exist without constant growth. So, one side effect of this global offsourcing behavior is that as the salaries grow for the workers, so do their spending habits. They then, in turn, cause growth in their country's economy and increase demand for supplies and services, forcing the businesses to hire more workers to supply this demand.
As a result, eventually there will be no country where the workers haven't gone through this process, so there will be no place to turn to for "cheaper" labor. This, of course, assumes consistent growth.
Of course, this does pose a problem: currently, we're using up resources on a grand scale. And if our population growth continues as the average consumption of individuals go up, we may end up seeing a problem with a shortage of resources. This will cause prices for items to go up, which means that the increased salaries will have decreased worth (this is pretty much the case now in the US: you can live like a king in Beijing on $20,000 but in New York you'd barely be scraping by).
Therefore, only those with salaries at a higher order of magnetude will still live comfortably. In other words, CEOs and other financial elite. So, the gap between the wealthy and non-wealthy will continue to grow.
So, I do think that people who point to offshoring as being a tool to benefit those at the top are pretty much dead on.
Actually, I don't recall the specific incident, but I believe that Microsoft's certificate was compromised, so that someone was able to sign malware with Microsoft Corporation as the author. Anyone needing karma want to post the informative link to the news story?
Maybe, but aside from Final Cut Pro, most of their software products are dirt cheap. They may have made some money on some of their software. Their power app, iTunes, is free because of its tie-in with the iTunes Music Store and the revenue from iPods.
I do think that Apple shines on software, but their entire company is pretty much centered on hardware sales. So to change that would be pretty hard. And as soon as you license a computer platform, that's it.
Let's look at IBM, shall we? They licenced the PC format. Everyone kept saying how this was a beneficial thing for IBM. Well, it was, in a way. But now, their hardware department is *gone*. Apple's has still stuck around, primarily because they've got a deathgrip on their hardware, and the software they design is just appealing enought to keep people coming back.
If you look at what Microsoft is trying to move into -- developing more media-centric software and trying to move out of being seen as mostly "officeware" -- I just don't think they're as successful, on a technology or marketing level, as Apple is.
Man, if only they could have done something with HyperCard. That could have been the powerapp to end all powerapps. If they had developed it through the growth of the Internet and made it have a flash-like player, it would probably be the #1 tool for developing online apps.
Oh, and if they want to play god, then don't do it from a tax-free organization. Also, if they are tax free then all of their patents should be in the public domain.
Public universities issue patents all the time. They even have foundations set up for that very purpose.
Slashdot Mirror
Hard drives are cheap. The information that was on them was priceless.
A decent 20G drive costs what, $30 now? When someone's drive fails, they're usually so devasted (unless they had a comprehensive backup in place) that a consolation like, "Well, I was able to save your hard drive that didn't do the job it was supposed to do in the first place" just doesn't make the person feel all that better.
If I was in that situation, I'd probably go ahead and buy a new hard drive unless it was on a machine I really didn't care about, and then why am I bothering to keep it switched on?
Otherwise, why keep a piece of hardware that I know failed in the past? It might not have been the hardware's fault, but why take any chances?
Besides, it's a perfect opportunity to get a newer, more stable drive with more capacity for the same or lower price than I paid for the old drive.
A better analagy:
For a while, people thought antibiotics were the solution to everything.
So, they were used all the time.
Now, there are tons and tons of resistent bacteria.
If the use of antibiotics had been more controlled and cautious, this might not have happened.
Noone is saying that GM doesn't have a place in our future. Just that there are dangers associated with it, and that we need to take these dangers seriously.
Consider Thalidomide.
In fact, I propose that we should just GIVE UP trying to solve any hard problem... Nature already does it better in most cases anyway, right?
Hmmm...if there isn't a new problem, we don't really need to solve it. The food supply is a poltiical and social problem, not a technological one.
And, in many cases, nature still does do a better job than we humans. Remember, most of the "solutions" that technology creates are to resolve problems that human technology created in the first place: antidepressants and weight-loss medicine come to mind.
Hmmm... I don't know what you're smoking, but your comments don't seem to have anything to do with what the parent was saying.
Basically, parent was saying that the license should be like the GPL -- you can't use the information and then make it into something proprietary. Otherwise, Monsanto could take the knowledge offered for free and then make a killing selling the GMOs to farmers.
There's no question that Monsanto has a right to protect its own bio-patents. But maybe then Monsanto shouldn't be allowed to use the Open-Source GM information?
Let's say someone develops an open-source variety of corn that features larger, juicier kernels. Monstanto turns around and puts this new gene in its Roundup Ready corn. Because their GM information is closed, there's no real way to know with 100% certainty that they used the open source info in their proprietary crop. And they certainly won't be making their bio-patent for the crop available to ensure that it wasn't stolen from the other crop.
Now, granted, there are probably DNA fingerprints that could be used to say within a percentage of certainty that the gene used in the Open Source crop and spliced into the Roundup crop were one and the same, but it's not clear to me that this would be absolute proof.
In reality, to avoid this, it's actually in Monsanto's interest to avoid open source patents in its crops entirely. Otherwise, they'll leave themselves open for infringement suits on crops that are even similar to GMO crops but that they developed in house. If I were the CEO of Monsanto, I would congratulate this group and announce publicly that in order to keep my patents secure and unquestionable, Monstanto would not use or review any open source GMO patents.
I see open source GM being very useful for governments and NGOs in developing countries who, with large up-front funding, could begin developing crops for use by their citizens.
How about:
3) Move cautiously in a new technology, and always for the right reasons.
From what I've learned so far in my life, preventing a problem is generally cheaper than solving it once it's happened.
We already have indicators that GM is problematic: some species of insect have died eating GM crops; there has been cross-pollination with other crops, sometimes with unexpected results; GM crops have in some cases shown to be of lower quality than normal crops.
With the prolific use of Roundup, there are now Roundup resistant weeds. What will the next step be?
Keep in mind, right now there is no agency regulating or overseeing GM crops. None. Roundup-Ready soybeans are classified, not as a food, but as a pesticide.
Until there is a regulatory agency that can adequately monitor the effects of GM crops and their safety, and until there is labelling of GM crops (which a vast majority of the public supports), I think opposing GM is a good idea in general because it's largely controlled by large corporations.
I believe that free markets work for certain things, but for others they are less than ideal. For example, most of the public schools that are/were run by private companies really suck -- they're using old textbooks and lousy teachers, all to keep up their bottom line.
There are some things in life that shouldn't be profitable enterprises. Monitoring food safety is one. I think that we shouldn't be putting our faith in Monsanto that they're looking out for our food safety.
I think the idea of open-source GM is very appealing. As long as agrobusiness controls GM science, I will be in the opposition group, because I don't believe that these corporations are looking out for our safety interests. Unless they're basically a fiscally irresponsible company, then they're spending the absolute minimum required (legally and proactively to avoid lawsuits) in order to ensure that people won't get really sick from, say, eating a burger made out of GM soy.
As long as agribusiness controls seed, it controls farmers and, ultimately, the food supply. If seed is non-GM or open source GM, then the farmers control the seed and the supply. But if GM remains closed, and there are enough mergers so that there are only two giants left, then for at least a year or two, they could completely control our food supply (until, hopefully, another company was able to rise up to compete against them).
So, although I'm nervous about the potential health and ecological risks of GM food, I'm terrified about Monstanto or an equivalent taking control of the food supply. Imagine if we had a Microsoft of food. That would suck.
That's why, although I'm nervous about GMOs in general, this article is a good sign.
While this is obviously beneficial to the farmer and the consumer, it will seriously hinder the survival of this tomato variety in the willd: regular tomato plants will spend less energy on producing fruit and will be able to release their seeds much sooner (because the fruit spoils faster) than the fancy GM variety.
The tomato plants don't have to be able to reproduce themselves in order to spread their genetic code -- all they need to do is release pollen.
And studies have shown that cross-pollination with non-GMO crops can happen, but that often the changes placed in the DNA are dominant traits, meaning that they will be passed down via the pollen.
This has caused a nightmare in the organic farming community, because it's now possible that GMO strains can contaminate their crops, removing their organic status. And once they're contaminated, it's not easy to decontaminate them.
These would be invaluable in things like health clinics, where a wealth of information could suddenly be made available, for much less than the cost of purchasing a set of books on medicine and diseases.
The point is that this technology is needed there; at the current price point, it's completely out of reach of the consumer. Offering these laptops at a reasonable price means that finally those who need these laptops can purchase them.
I sincerely doubt that these laptops will be used primarily for recreational purposes, so someone who really does need them might willingly take out a loan in order to purchase one.
NGOs, for one, will certainly be snapping these up. These notebooks will make their work so much easier.
Perhaps it might be useful to offer laptops to lower income westerners (I'm thinking particularly of urban and rural poor), but lower middle class westerners can suck it up and use a credit card if they really want a laptop. Even Apple has laptops starting for less than $1000.
The "intermittent power access" is why they're using laptops rather than desktops, which, if you think about it, would be much cheaper anyway. Laptops need less power overall, and you can plug them in during the 2-3 hours of scheduled "uptime" on the local grid. For clinics running off of generators, desktops, which would put a huge drain on the electricity, were probably just not possible (or, if they were, it might be one desktop computer for a dozen or more people). With laptops, they can now use several.
So there are a lot of benefits to offering these inexpensive laptops. While this is certainly a commercial offering and not a "donation" to developing countries, it is nevertheless a very beneficial thing being done. Although technology is not the "answer to the problem", it can be an invaluable tool for the real solutions. I believe that the available of inexpensive laptops just might transform developing countries as much as the introduction of wireless phones has.
Most maps I've seen don't have this information.
I'll second Freecycle. It's really great and it's wonderful to see items (of all kinds) headed for a landfill that get put to use.
Incidentally, you'd be shocked just how many people eagerly gobble up items like scrap lumber, flooring, infant supplies, etc. Just because it's leftovers doesn't mean it's still not wanted or needed.
Okay: quick question.
/waiting to be modded offtopic
Parent got one flamebait, one interesting, and one insightful. How come overall moderation is -1?
Are Offtopic, Flamebait, and Troll the only moderations that count numerically anymore? Do we have to use "Underrated" forever now? WTF?
Andy Inhakto... Inhanitko?
:-)
Did you mean: Ihnatko
How long does it take you to google? It took me 0.19 seconds.
I sold mine at $12.
(Banging head against wall)
I mean, I did buy at $8 or so. It's not like I didn't make *any* profit on it.
So why am I beating everyone over the head with this? Well, it's saying even their high-end, easy to open Dual G5 machines have to be upgraded at Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider! Yet no one seems to be harping about this...ever. So why is everyone pointing it out about the Mini? The original iMacs were hard to open also, yet opening them and upgrading the memory didn't void the warranty.
cough, cough
Well, while scalability might work on most farms, it doesn't on hog farms. Basically, hog farms right now are a scary, scary source of pollution, and recommended practices there are neither adequately regulated or enforced. If they were, the hog factories would be unable to sell pork at a lower price than the small, more ecologically sound family farms.
In my opinion, efficiency is only one reason that larger companies/organizations are able to add similar services or goods for reduced prices. Cutting corners is another. Evading normal regulation is another. Special subsidies, tax breaks, or investment from government is another. Engaging in unethical business practices is another.
I don't debate that big boxes are excellent places to buy something for 43 cents less than anywhere else in town. What I object to is the idea that the economy is effectively a level playing field, that all companies that are successful must be so only because of free market competition, and that all this economic growth is necessarily a positive thing.
Huh. For some reason a lot of people seem to think that my argument is that outsourcing to other countries is bad and will worsen the quality of life in the western world.
My main point is to argue against people who think that globalization is necessarily a naturally occurring and necessary phenomenon that will benefit all people equally. Instead, I think that globalization will lead to an *increase* of concentration of wealth. Currently the concentration of wealth is mostly in the western countries. When globalization has spread worldwide and is evenly distributed, so to speak, concentration of wealth will be instead in a group of rich elites in each of these countries, each of whom has more in common with elites in other countries than with their fellow citizens. The last feature of globalization will be the multinational person, someone who is wealthy enough and mobile enough to have no real ties, allegiance, or responsibility to any one nation, and who lives, in a sense, outside of the law.
This is what I think will happen. I don't think that globalization will lead to a big shiny wonderful world where everyone has a decent standard of living. In the United States, If you look at households earning under $40k/year and individuals earning under $20k/year, they aren't doing so hot. Most of these people are saving negative money (i.e., they're in constant debt), don't have health insurance, and are really struggling to make ends meet. $20k is a fortune in China, but not in the US.
We'll have to settle for something in-between. Oh I don't know, something like what the Spanish or Canadians have. Oddly enough not owning a 5 tonne SUV doesn't seem to make the Europeans think that they've got a "poorer standard of living" compared to Americans.
I personally think that both of the countries you mention have a better quality of life than most Americans. For some bizarre reason you assume that I think owning an SUV is good. Read my later postings. My point is that it's consumerism that will poison globalization. People won't just raise their standard of living -- they'll become more and more dependent on purchasing goods and services in order to have a decent quality of life, and the costs of even just the bare essentials would skyrocket.
Unless your rent is subsidized or you live in a particularly cheap part of the country, it isn't easy to survive on, say, $1,000 per month. In China you can probably survive with $300/month.
I'd agree with most of your comments except the one about the mom and pops.
Often, a Walmart will approach a city or regional planning board and play them a little song and dance about tax revenue for that region going up from their sales (as well as an increase in jobs). The local government generally helps subsidize the building of the Walmart and gives it a few tax breaks for the first 1-2 years or so.
Well, guess what. Research has shown that in the long run, Walmarts have either a neutral or negative effect on the economy of that region.
Walmart also frequently will build a store, then build a larger SuperStore in a municipality just down the road. This way, they get the same initial perks they had at the last place. Then, they close the old store down.
Local businesses put more money into the local economy than non-local businesses. According to some calculations, a dollar spent in a local business effectively becomes 5 dollars because the local business in turn purchases goods and services locally as well. When you spend a dollar at Walmart, most of that money goes directly towards the Walmart corporation, not the local community.
Walmart isn't the only big box engaged in these practices, but it is the biggest, and that's why it gets the most attention.
It's true that prices are better at Walmart pretty much across the board. It's also true that there are times when being able to provide a good at the lowest price does not make you necessarily the best company to purchase that product from. In the long run, I believe that big box stores will have a negative effect on our economic health, quality of life, and the environment.
There are some changes that are natural developments of the changing economy, and others that are forced through.
-being extremely egocentric about this little slice of time we live in.
I know everyone since Plato has been saying everything is going to hell in a handbasket and that things are getting worse, but I think that there is evidence that the economic progression that is currently occurring is not 100% positive in nature.
Basically, I think that capitalism when unchecked can really put a large group into a seriously miserable condition.
If you look at the Industrial Revolution, it was pretty much terrible for everyone but the factory owners for quite a while. Now, of course, we understand that the industrialization of the world is an overall benefit to society. The reason it didn't stay bad was, basically, labor. They mandated positive working conditions, rules against child labor, and the 40 hour week. Without these things, the Industrial Revolution would still be something that was mostly bad for most people.
I think while we are watching these changes occur around us, we need to continue to watch how people are being negatively affected and what we can do to absorb or alleviate those effects. And we need to stay aware of instances where business practices are negative or dangerous, and oppose those practices.
I imagine a lot of the water use is from flush toilets. If someone could design a water efficient toilet that actually worked, I could save more water.
In countries that value conserving resources, toilets have two buttons: one for "small flushes" (you know, pee pee) and one for "large flushes." It makes perfect sense, and it isn't difficult to design. Unless it's a drought season, people routinely flush whenever anything goes in the toilet, and it's always the same amount of water, every time. Doesn't make sense.
The alternative of putting bricks or bottles or bags in your tank is fine until you really need the power of the additional water; then you have people needing to flush 2 or 3 times when one "large flush" would have done the trick.
Third-world countries don't use a lot of water, but then, they have little good water to use.
Most water isn't used for drinking, so it doesn't necessarily need to be of super high quality. That being said, cleaning up the water supply in developing countries is probably in the top ten of things to do to save lives. Many more people die of water-borne microbes per year than died during the recent Tsunami. Unfortunately, only disasters get real attention. People don't pay much attention to long term unliveable conditions. Hopefully, the money for this Tsunami relief will continue to be sent to SE Asia and can perhaps be leveraged to set up new systems providing cleaner water and better waste disposal systems.
There is nothing in theory or in practice that says capitalism requires constant growth.
In practice, when growth slows, there's a recession. Not negative growth, mind you, just less growth than usual.
Unless you sell a good or service that is used up (such as food, shampoo, or phone cards), the good or service you provide is semi-permanent. That is, if someone goes to a website company and purchases a website, they won't need another website from them next week or the week after.
But the website company still needs to write out a paycheck to each employee every month. To do that, they need to keep making websites in order to get paid. But in a non-growth economy, eventually all companies that wanted them would have websites that were working and up-to-date. The website company couldn't even turn to their former clients for work, because those companies weren't growing, so didn't need any new development on their sites. At which point the website design company would go out of business.
Since it was out of business, it wouldn't need to print up business cards anymore. The company that printed the business cards would go out of business, because there were no new businesses walking in to make business cards.
Also, don't forget population growth. We need growth in the economy to provide jobs for those entering the work force. There aren't as many people retiring as there are entering the workforce.
Fuel, shmuel. People have been arguing about oil for the past 60 years or so.
:)
Water is the new hotness.
The average Westerner uses something on the order of 100-1000 times the water that someone in a developing country does. Now, imagine everyone in the world using water at developed-nation levels.
Since water is necessary for nearly every business practice, as the use of water skyrockets, it will force a chain reaction to other prices.
Sure, water recycles, but not that fast. Not thousands of gallons a day for billions of people fast.
Food is another biggie. Sure, there's plenty to feed the world now, but that's because few countries eat meat at the level that developed nations do. Doubling the amount of meat consumption worldwide would multiply world grain needs by a much larger factor (I think the equation is something like 1 pound of beef = 10 pounds of grain).
Unfortunately, consumerism has boosted demand, particularly "brand" demand, to the point where people are willing to pay fairly inflated prices for goods (most people are still pretty cheap when it comes to services, though). Consider a pair of jeans. In the past 20 years, the cost for producing a jean has gone down (or at worst remained the same), because none of them are made in the US anymore and textile labor is cheaper than air. A pair of jeans might cost as little as a few bucks to make in a sweatshop-type factory. But you're now paying much more for a pair of jeans. If clothing companies had to compete with one another on price (competing on quality is general a non-issue; these clothes are pretty much all made from similar materials by similar workers), the price for jeans would be maybe $15. In truth, most jeans are the same except for small differences in style. However, most people identify with specific brands and are willing to pay a premium. This is all due to advertising; most of the real expense of the average Nike shoe or Levi jean is advertising, not manufacture.
What about soda? The average cost for a 2-liter bottle is now $1.50-$2.00. That $2 for water, some carbonation, and a little bit of sugar. Oh, and lots and lots of advertising.
What does this mean? It means that advances in technology (except when they actually improve the quality or features of a product) always benefit the company, not the consumer, because most companies aren't pressured to keep prices low unless they have to.
And they don't have to, because even people who don't have money have "plenty" of money, thanks to credit cards.
Man, I could go on (obviously), but I have to get back to, uh, work.
I remember being on a trans-pacific flight with this manager for a major corporation. He had been in China overseeing some project.
He said they're moving out of China soon.
Why?
Because the labor (these are specialized workers) is too expensive. That's right, China is too expensive.
It's true that the wage that the Chinese engineers are asking for has gone up. But that's a natural factor of supply and demand. Eventually, they are going to actual start demanding to be paid what they're worth to the company. However, their wage is still significantly lower than the one that the US engineers received way before the outsourcing occurred. So assuming that all other parts of the equation are the same, the company is still making more profit after *salary* (excluding other expenses) than it did when it wasn't outsourcing at all.
Nonetheless, this company is going to move to another country where the workers can be paid significantly less, thus maintaining their huge post-salary profit margin (again, discounting expenses in other areas).
Why are the doing this?
Because globalization has made it significantly easier to do so.
Because of globalization, it's now possible to start up a working factory, shop, or headquarters pretty much anywhere in the world. This means that you can specifically target the most impoverished countries, countries where the average person makes a 10th, 100th, or 1000th of what an American might, and set those people to work.
Now, in a non-growth system, where companies maintained their size and scope, companies would be able to hop back and forth between countries at whim. Whenever country A became too expensive, they'd simply move to country B until it became too expensive, then hop back to country A (now desperate for work).
However, capitalism cannot exist without constant growth. So, one side effect of this global offsourcing behavior is that as the salaries grow for the workers, so do their spending habits. They then, in turn, cause growth in their country's economy and increase demand for supplies and services, forcing the businesses to hire more workers to supply this demand.
As a result, eventually there will be no country where the workers haven't gone through this process, so there will be no place to turn to for "cheaper" labor. This, of course, assumes consistent growth.
Of course, this does pose a problem: currently, we're using up resources on a grand scale. And if our population growth continues as the average consumption of individuals go up, we may end up seeing a problem with a shortage of resources. This will cause prices for items to go up, which means that the increased salaries will have decreased worth (this is pretty much the case now in the US: you can live like a king in Beijing on $20,000 but in New York you'd barely be scraping by).
Therefore, only those with salaries at a higher order of magnetude will still live comfortably. In other words, CEOs and other financial elite. So, the gap between the wealthy and non-wealthy will continue to grow.
So, I do think that people who point to offshoring as being a tool to benefit those at the top are pretty much dead on.
In case you were worried by the .cx extension; don't fear -- this is a real page, not some nasty image that will burn your eyes out.
Unless, of course, you are really grossed out by an old man in a TRON suit.
Actually, I don't recall the specific incident, but I believe that Microsoft's certificate was compromised, so that someone was able to sign malware with Microsoft Corporation as the author. Anyone needing karma want to post the informative link to the news story?
Apparently he doesn't know that no one can see you on the Internet. He doesn't have to wear a mask while e-mailing.
Maybe, but aside from Final Cut Pro, most of their software products are dirt cheap. They may have made some money on some of their software. Their power app, iTunes, is free because of its tie-in with the iTunes Music Store and the revenue from iPods.
I do think that Apple shines on software, but their entire company is pretty much centered on hardware sales. So to change that would be pretty hard. And as soon as you license a computer platform, that's it.
Let's look at IBM, shall we? They licenced the PC format. Everyone kept saying how this was a beneficial thing for IBM. Well, it was, in a way. But now, their hardware department is *gone*. Apple's has still stuck around, primarily because they've got a deathgrip on their hardware, and the software they design is just appealing enought to keep people coming back.
If you look at what Microsoft is trying to move into -- developing more media-centric software and trying to move out of being seen as mostly "officeware" -- I just don't think they're as successful, on a technology or marketing level, as Apple is.
Man, if only they could have done something with HyperCard. That could have been the powerapp to end all powerapps. If they had developed it through the growth of the Internet and made it have a flash-like player, it would probably be the #1 tool for developing online apps.
Oh, and if they want to play god, then don't do it from a tax-free organization. Also, if they are tax free then all of their patents should be in the public domain.
Public universities issue patents all the time. They even have foundations set up for that very purpose.