The same reasoning seems to imply that laws against interracial marriage are not an equal rights issue either. These laws were the norm until the 1960's, and were supported by a large majority of the population.
Likewise, laws defining marriage as only between same sex persons would not be an equal rights problem either.
Similarly, a law banning all religion except one would not be an equal right issue, since anyone is allowed to follow that faith. I could go on.
Look, the "anyone can marry someone of the opposite sex" line is clever, and formally correct in a way, but it assumes that marriage is not in any way about love, intimacy, or sex. It advocates that people should marry someone they don't love. And conservatives don't believe any of those things, except when they drag out this argument.
If you read the article you'll see that voting is mandatory in only Belgium, Greece and Luxembourg, which is less than 5% of Europe.
My perhaps biggests pet peeve with Americans is their tendency to assume Europe is one homogenous place. In reality it is 50 very different countries, and there is hardly anything you can say about it that is not completely wrong about some of those countries.
If we've used up all the manpower from a 1000 million Indian population, I don't think the 10 million in the Czech republic is going to be much of a buffer of low paid programmers.
India and China makes up more than half the poor world. If they get rich, there aren't all that many poor pockets left.
What the states control is not so much if you can drive, but where you can drive. In most jurisdictions you can drive any car as much as you like on your private property. And you can drive on someone elses private property if it's OK with them. What's the issue is if you can drive on the roads owned by the government. Just like any other road owner, they can decide who gets to drive on their roads.
The real issue here is if it's good to have the government own all roads. I don't think so.
I happened to catch the Art Bell show for the first time recently, and between the paranormal sex talk he mentioned that he hadn't even been allowed to read the script yet. He had a guest on that somehow had read it, but couldn't discuss it due to NDA issues.
When you move the intellectual (IT type) jobs over seas there is NO PRODUCT which can then be decreased in price.
How can that be? If the intellectual worker isn't contributing to producing anything that can be sold, why is the company employing him in the first place?
You are essentially saying that manufacturing costs have no impact on consumer prices. To be consistent you would have to claim that consumer prices would not rise if manufacturing costs increased. You could disprove that just looking at manufacturing costs and consumer prices for pretty much any good, and observe at the canny resemblance. But I'll try with a concrete math example.
Let's say Volvo sells 100.000 cars a year for $30k that they spend $25k to manufacture. That brings in $500M. They could lower the price to 29k and sell 120.000 cars and make $480M, or they could raise the price to $31k, sell 80.000 cars and make $480M. Clearly they picked the selling price $30k to maximize their profit.
Now let's say they figure out a way to make the cars for $23k. Selling 100.000 cars will now bring in $700M. But selling 120.000 cars for $29k will make $720M. So they lower the price. It's really quite simple if you look at it the right way.
The common misunderstanding here is that people think Volvo won't pass on their savings since they're greedy bastards. In actual fact, they will pass on their savings because they are greedy bastards, and will make more profit doing so!
No, there won't be a price drop. Prices are established by the market, not arbitrarily set by the manufacturer. A Ford Focus will cost as much as people are willing to pay for it, given demand and supply. Moving the plant to El Salvador changes neither supply nor demand. You aren't opening a new consumer base, and you aren't getting yourself a way to fulfill previously unfilled demand. It only lowers the price of making the good, thus increasing the profit margin.
Put in those terms, prices for a single manufacturers goods are arbitrarily set by it. How much it will sell at that price is determined by the market. That is how lowering costs does increase supply at a certain price.
2. America is one of the few nations in the world where the power going out or setting firest makes the news, in most of the world it happens daily.
That may be true in parts of the Third World, but only there.
The number of Americans who lump the entire planet into one homogenous "rest of the world" location with Sudanese human rights, Mexican labor conditions, French hygiene, and Indian driving skills is... well it's bigger than it should be, I tell you!
Moving to California from Sweden, it's been a little shocking how crappy the electricity system performed here, even before The Summer of Gray.
One useful thing that could be done on the moon is fossil hunting. Not from any Moon organisms, but stuff from Earth!
When big enough meteors hit Earth, material is thrown into space. Some of that will land on the moon. We have found several pieces of Mars rock on Earth that came that route.
There is of course no shortage of Earth rock on Earth itself, but it's been exposed to the environment for billions of years, and a lot of the interesting stuff has been destroyed. Anything that's spent the same time on the Moon would be in almost pristine condition. Even if it's only minerals it would be very interesting, but there should also be vegetation, bacteria, insects and maybe ever bigger organisms there, all freeze dried and vacuum preserved!
Of course, most US territory was a neighboring country before it got incorporated to it...
The Birthday Card Coalition
on
Weapons in Space
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Sure, but don't kid yourself about how they got there.
It's less of a coalition and more like paying for the boss' birthday present. Even if they think he is a jackass, most people put in a few bucks and write a phony greeting on the card. Especially, as in this case, if the boss has made it clear that anyone who doesn't contribute will face problems in the work place.
Some governments decided that good relations with the US was more important than other considerations, and ponyed up some troops. But the population of every single country in the "alliance" is/was strongly against the war, including the UK. All in all, a pretty funny way of fighting for democracy, IMHO...
Some of those countries received quite substantial monetary favors in exchange for their support, which is why it's been called "The coalition of the billing'.
You're right that if shoplifting decreased only at Drug Fair stores, they would have little reason to lower prices. But if it happened in all stores regardless of brand, you would probably see prices shrink by almost exactly the same percentage. Due to competition.
This is where some "cynics" claim that in reality the store owners would just pocket the difference. That is the same as saying that store prices are not affected by shoplifting at all. And that would mean that if shoplifting increased, the stores would not raise their prices either, which is pretty absurd.
A friend worked at Kinko's, and somehow their clock was always 10 minutes early. So when she arrived at work on the hour, the record showed she was 10 minutes late. Then she got in trouble over tardiness.
I don't know that any time was shaved, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was and she never noticed.
surely you can concede that morality has nothing to do with capitalism
Capitalism is founded on the moral principles of respect for private property, rule of law and freedom of association.
Your question probably reflects that these principles are so ingrained in your society that you can't even imagine them not being respected. That is a product of capitalism.
What you describe would be an awesome deal for the US. You get goods and services from India, and only send very cheaply produced pieces of papers with numbers printed on them in return.
Many aspects of economic science is counterintuitive. It really pays off to actually study it to learn the facts. What you hear in the media and from friends is probably 90% wrong.
Builder.com competes on a global marketplace. Programmers all over the world are on the web and at least read English well, and they will read the web site that gives the best content, regardless of what country the server happens to be in.
So I think it just makes sense that the writers for this global readership be global as well. If anything, it's strange it hasn't happened sooner.
Programmers of any country are rarely eloquent speakers and passionate writers even in their native tongue. The skillsets just don't seem to mix that well.
I would assume the writing will be done by professional writers, and that's a whole other kettle of rice.
Can anyone explain what threat someone who has been searched and has no weapons pose on a US flight today? The cockpit doors are locked, the passengers are ready to overwhelm anyone who tries anything, and there is probably an air marshall with a gun on board.
And there hasn't been a single hijacking attempt since Sept 2001. This looks a lot like a very expensive and intrusive solution to a problem that just doesn't exist.
It would be different on Mars because there is hardly any atmosphere for the meteorites to burn in.
Mars has about 0.5% of Earths atmosphere. I suspect that means that virtually every rock that would burn in our atmosphere to become a "shooting star", ends up instead hitting the ground and becomes a "crater".
You're right, of course, but also missing the point.
The purpose of a 'Flammable' warning label is not to make a statement about chemical science, but to warn people that the content can be dangerous around fires.
And that's an entirely real danger with oxygen canisters.
If it shouldn't have a 'Flammable' label, what's the alternative? No warning at all? A minor chemical textbook printed on the canister?
Read what you write...
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 3, Funny
water (and so ice) can stop radiation quite effectively
Yeah, but that also means that a world like Europa that may be made up almost entirely of water, and has much more water than all the oceans of Earth put together, has to be extremely immune to radioactive damage.
I don't know why envrionmentalists aren't happer that NASA is removing radioactive material from this planet. I mean, a lot of people complain about it, but only NASA is actually doing something about it.
Slashdot Mirror
The same reasoning seems to imply that laws against interracial marriage are not an equal rights issue either. These laws were the norm until the 1960's, and were supported by a large majority of the population.
Likewise, laws defining marriage as only between same sex persons would not be an equal rights problem either.
Similarly, a law banning all religion except one would not be an equal right issue, since anyone is allowed to follow that faith. I could go on.
Look, the "anyone can marry someone of the opposite sex" line is clever, and formally correct in a way, but it assumes that marriage is not in any way about love, intimacy, or sex. It advocates that people should marry someone they don't love. And conservatives don't believe any of those things, except when they drag out this argument.
If you read the article you'll see that voting is mandatory in only Belgium, Greece and Luxembourg, which is less than 5% of Europe.
My perhaps biggests pet peeve with Americans is their tendency to assume Europe is one homogenous place. In reality it is 50 very different countries, and there is hardly anything you can say about it that is not completely wrong about some of those countries.
If we've used up all the manpower from a 1000 million Indian population, I don't think the 10 million in the Czech republic is going to be much of a buffer of low paid programmers.
India and China makes up more than half the poor world. If they get rich, there aren't all that many poor pockets left.
Let's be careful with what we talk about here.
What the states control is not so much if you can drive, but where you can drive. In most jurisdictions you can drive any car as much as you like on your private property. And you can drive on someone elses private property if it's OK with them. What's the issue is if you can drive on the roads owned by the government. Just like any other road owner, they can decide who gets to drive on their roads.
The real issue here is if it's good to have the government own all roads. I don't think so.
I happened to catch the Art Bell show for the first time recently, and between the paranormal sex talk he mentioned that he hadn't even been allowed to read the script yet. He had a guest on that somehow had read it, but couldn't discuss it due to NDA issues.
When you move the intellectual (IT type) jobs over seas there is NO PRODUCT which can then be decreased in price.
How can that be? If the intellectual worker isn't contributing to producing anything that can be sold, why is the company employing him in the first place?
You are essentially saying that manufacturing costs have no impact on consumer prices. To be consistent you would have to claim that consumer prices would not rise if manufacturing costs increased. You could disprove that just looking at manufacturing costs and consumer prices for pretty much any good, and observe at the canny resemblance. But I'll try with a concrete math example.
Let's say Volvo sells 100.000 cars a year for $30k that they spend $25k to manufacture. That brings in $500M. They could lower the price to 29k and sell 120.000 cars and make $480M, or they could raise the price to $31k, sell 80.000 cars and make $480M. Clearly they picked the selling price $30k to maximize their profit.
Now let's say they figure out a way to make the cars for $23k. Selling 100.000 cars will now bring in $700M. But selling 120.000 cars for $29k will make $720M. So they lower the price. It's really quite simple if you look at it the right way.
The common misunderstanding here is that people think Volvo won't pass on their savings since they're greedy bastards. In actual fact, they will pass on their savings because they are greedy bastards, and will make more profit doing so!
No, there won't be a price drop. Prices are established by the market, not arbitrarily set by the manufacturer. A Ford Focus will cost as much as people are willing to pay for it, given demand and supply. Moving the plant to El Salvador changes neither supply nor demand. You aren't opening a new consumer base, and you aren't getting yourself a way to fulfill previously unfilled demand. It only lowers the price of making the good, thus increasing the profit margin.
Put in those terms, prices for a single manufacturers goods are arbitrarily set by it. How much it will sell at that price is determined by the market. That is how lowering costs does increase supply at a certain price.
2. America is one of the few nations in the world where the power going out or setting firest makes the news, in most of the world it happens daily.
That may be true in parts of the Third World, but only there.
The number of Americans who lump the entire planet into one homogenous "rest of the world" location with Sudanese human rights, Mexican labor conditions, French hygiene, and Indian driving skills is... well it's bigger than it should be, I tell you!
Moving to California from Sweden, it's been a little shocking how crappy the electricity system performed here, even before The Summer of Gray.
One useful thing that could be done on the moon is fossil hunting. Not from any Moon organisms, but stuff from Earth!
When big enough meteors hit Earth, material is thrown into space. Some of that will land on the moon. We have found several pieces of Mars rock on Earth that came that route.
There is of course no shortage of Earth rock on Earth itself, but it's been exposed to the environment for billions of years, and a lot of the interesting stuff has been destroyed. Anything that's spent the same time on the Moon would be in almost pristine condition. Even if it's only minerals it would be very interesting, but there should also be vegetation, bacteria, insects and maybe ever bigger organisms there, all freeze dried and vacuum preserved!
Haiti was run by the US Marines 1915-1933.
Of course, most US territory was a neighboring country before it got incorporated to it...
Sure, but don't kid yourself about how they got there.
It's less of a coalition and more like paying for the boss' birthday present. Even if they think he is a jackass, most people put in a few bucks and write a phony greeting on the card. Especially, as in this case, if the boss has made it clear that anyone who doesn't contribute will face problems in the work place.
Some governments decided that good relations with the US was more important than other considerations, and ponyed up some troops. But the population of every single country in the "alliance" is/was strongly against the war, including the UK. All in all, a pretty funny way of fighting for democracy, IMHO...
Some of those countries received quite substantial monetary favors in exchange for their support, which is why it's been called "The coalition of the billing'.
You're right that if shoplifting decreased only at Drug Fair stores, they would have little reason to lower prices. But if it happened in all stores regardless of brand, you would probably see prices shrink by almost exactly the same percentage. Due to competition.
This is where some "cynics" claim that in reality the store owners would just pocket the difference. That is the same as saying that store prices are not affected by shoplifting at all. And that would mean that if shoplifting increased, the stores would not raise their prices either, which is pretty absurd.
A friend worked at Kinko's, and somehow their clock was always 10 minutes early. So when she arrived at work on the hour, the record showed she was 10 minutes late. Then she got in trouble over tardiness.
I don't know that any time was shaved, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was and she never noticed.
Sentence 3: "I told him, `That's not exactly legal,' " said Mr. Pooters, who ran the store's electronics department.
surely you can concede that morality has nothing to do with capitalism
Capitalism is founded on the moral principles of respect for private property, rule of law and freedom of association.
Your question probably reflects that these principles are so ingrained in your society that you can't even imagine them not being respected. That is a product of capitalism.
What you describe would be an awesome deal for the US. You get goods and services from India, and only send very cheaply produced pieces of papers with numbers printed on them in return.
Many aspects of economic science is counterintuitive. It really pays off to actually study it to learn the facts. What you hear in the media and from friends is probably 90% wrong.
So what you're saying is that you don't think voting can change anything, but asking the politicians on Slashdot to leave you alone can??
Apples music format is AAC, which AFAIK is not related to QuickTime in any other way than that QT can play AAC.
Builder.com competes on a global marketplace. Programmers all over the world are on the web and at least read English well, and they will read the web site that gives the best content, regardless of what country the server happens to be in.
So I think it just makes sense that the writers for this global readership be global as well. If anything, it's strange it hasn't happened sooner.
Programmers of any country are rarely eloquent speakers and passionate writers even in their native tongue. The skillsets just don't seem to mix that well.
I would assume the writing will be done by professional writers, and that's a whole other kettle of rice.
The US has more freedom of speech than anywhere else in the world, ever. That's because the First Amendment to the Constitition guarantees it.
The only exception is the things you're not allowed to say. But such a limitation is a small price to pay for unlimited freedom of speech!
Can anyone explain what threat someone who has been searched and has no weapons pose on a US flight today? The cockpit doors are locked, the passengers are ready to overwhelm anyone who tries anything, and there is probably an air marshall with a gun on board.
And there hasn't been a single hijacking attempt since Sept 2001. This looks a lot like a very expensive and intrusive solution to a problem that just doesn't exist.
It would be different on Mars because there is hardly any atmosphere for the meteorites to burn in.
Mars has about 0.5% of Earths atmosphere. I suspect that means that virtually every rock that would burn in our atmosphere to become a "shooting star", ends up instead hitting the ground and becomes a "crater".
You're right, of course, but also missing the point.
The purpose of a 'Flammable' warning label is not to make a statement about chemical science, but to warn people that the content can be dangerous around fires.
And that's an entirely real danger with oxygen canisters.
If it shouldn't have a 'Flammable' label, what's the alternative? No warning at all? A minor chemical textbook printed on the canister?
water (and so ice) can stop radiation quite effectively
Yeah, but that also means that a world like Europa that may be made up almost entirely of water, and has much more water than all the oceans of Earth put together, has to be extremely immune to radioactive damage.
I don't know why envrionmentalists aren't happer that NASA is removing radioactive material from this planet. I mean, a lot of people complain about it, but only NASA is actually doing something about it.