What does any of this have to do with "maximizing return on investment and shareholder value", by using "outsourcing and immigration of technical professionals"? It's all about short-term profiteering and perceptions. Get with the program, citizen... lest you show up on a Homeland Security list that you really don't want to be on, hint hint.
I always wondered what it would be like to live in the Dark Ages.
So have I. I've played D& D... and despite the fantasy aspect to it, one thing you pick up quick in a ME environment is that you'd better be armed or you're going to be just another fatality statistic.
Strangely enough, I see the same future for America. With the government -- Democrat or Republican -- working more and more as a enforcement arm for corporations, people will have no choice but to eventually fend for themselves.
Remember all those militia "freaks"? They were simply prophets who came too early.
You're not paranoid when the evidence strongly suggests a draft is going to happen, namely:
1. SSS activity for reserve draft boards
2. bill already went through Congress for draft
3. war going on
4. lots of official statements about needing more troops
5. more wars being planned
... and finally:
6. any interest whatsoever in tracking college students
If you call this "paranoia", then I can only wonder what you consider solid enough evidence for any social change?
Cell Phone UI Problem #1: Do you type in the phone number, THEN push the call/green/phone/whatever button... or do you push the call/green/phone/whatever button, THEN type in the phone number?
People look at me like I'm crazy when I ask these kinds of questions. But it's part of the basic problem of interfacing the equipment to the user. Rarely is an interface thing "obvious"... these things are mostly a matter of convention derived some arbitrary device like a market leader.
I became reasonably functional in the blasted cellphone I was issued by my workplace, simply by playing with the buttons, which led to menus, which led to functions, which led to my customization of ring tones, ring volumes, etc. This alone speaks of reasonably good design, I must say grudgingly. I only "had" to crack the manual to find out the voicemail password.
Granted, but my cynicism implied that there won't be a real "public domain". Corporations will own virtually everything. Their money is moving right now to acquire the rights to everything.
Lawsuits? How about asking yourself: how complicated are the atoms of the usual variety of brisant explosives? Answer: not much. Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen. You can get these elements from electrolysis of water (H2, O2), from the air (O2, N2), from common household chemicals like ammonia (NH4), and finally from the messy molecules of bulk items like common sugar.
So, with a deskfabber in hundreds of thousands of bedrooms owned by mischievious teenagers, you'll have the world's largest arms race in a jiffy. After the C4 specs are posted to the Internet, at least tens of thousands of these little fuckers will have tons of C4 made within 30 days. It'll be a July Fourth to remember... except that it will go on every goddamn day.
(If I had had a deskfabber, I would have made explosives. I'm sure at least 50% of the hands-on techies here on Slashdot would have done the same.)
The endless July Fourth would go on until someone notices that clever little teenager, taking his fabber down to the river, just below the runoff from the tailings from that old uranium mine....
Sure. What say we have chunks sitting around in our matter pool, roughly sized 1000^3 atoms.
Chunk density can vary considerably, depending on what you want to do with it. But the more defined a chunk is, the longer it takes to build said chunk. Then you're back to the "how long does it take to lay 1 billion atoms" problem. And you'll still need billions of those chunks.
But with your avg 1-billion-atom chunk, if you can lay 1 billion of those every second, you'd be able to build at 10^18 atoms per second, hence about 10^5 seconds to achieve a mol -- almost 3 hours. Everybody will have access to gorgeous wedding rings, built to almost fantastical specs (say, interwoven threads of spun diamond, platinum and emerald).
I can see that there should be levels of nanomanufacture, where the highest rates of deposition will be done by the "chunkers". After high-rate deposition, high-speed cutters will whip through the (likely) sheets of material and cut them into the desired chunks. These masses of resulting chunks will go on into several distribution streams for whatever use someone has in mind.
I don't envision high-speed deposition at the end-fab point, however... as you imply.
Amazing! All that, and you conveniently forgot to mention the instance of intellectual property theft outlined in the book. Said IP is the "killer issue" which will make desktop fabricators completely impossible to legally use, or that they will be so regulated and locked down that they will be almost useless to use as far as geeks are concerned (or about as interesting as running a toaster).
If you're some nobody, like the nuke worker Karen Silkwood, or the reporter Casolero, then sure... your death may well be arranged. But if you are a member of the elite, then there's little risk. Movements of money like this is merely part of the "Great Game" of playing with the vacuous notion of electrons that allegedly stand for labor time, railroad cars of lumber, ships full of crude oil, etc. Paying each other off is a matter of you and me honoring a $50 bet on last week's ball game.
After all, it's also not really their money, anyway. How much would YOU care if you lost a $50 bet, if that $50 came out of your "household general fund" that is actually owned by your city's population in the form of shares? Not much, I'd say.
Not that I watch TV at all, but is this how Hollywood is really running TV these days? Ditch the starring actors before they ask for more money?
I've run my understanding about the current "reality show" fad (which seems to have settled into a modus operandi rather than a fad) as being a response to a writers' strike. So perhaps what you say makes sense along those lines.
Hell, I made myself do that, pard. After all th' ruckus on Slashdot, I done gone an' figgered there was sumptin' to the durned thing. Good lookin' series, I reckon. {tip o' the hat}
There's no need to adapt. The timeline itself was a modern alternate. Nixon was the current President, the US won the Vietnam War, and the soviets were under repression from fear like a fucking spring. This could easily be put into a movie form with no reference to terrorists whatsoever. Now, pass dos' katies before I guts ya!
Rorschach should instead be cast with William H. Macy. I've always been impressed with Macy, and I think that with appropriate study he could bring the role to striking life. Rorschach was a man under intense self control, which in my opinion Macy has striven for in several of his prior roles.
What were we talking about again? I have a photo that I must have taken of the screen at the time, but there was screenglare, it got overexposed, and I can't tell anymore. {tattoos on arm:} "Get glare shield."
Punisher - sucked, but I was fairly and pleasingly surprised with how closely they at least TRIED to capture Frank Castle
Superman movies - REALLY sucked, very insipid.
Batman movies - UNGODLY SUCKAGE. My view on Batman was forever reset by Frank Miller's Dark Knight. The casting for Batman/Bruce in each of the modern Batman movies was simply appalling (Keaton? Aaagh!). Hey, Hollywood: Robin was a CHILD, you freakin' dumbasses!
(Oh well. So much for superhero movies. At least Lord of the Rings was done right, and the cable version of Dune was easily closer to Herbert's originals.)
Oh, sure, try to make me feel better by pointing out how enormously -- nay, googolplexianly HUGE a bureaucracy can get. Great psychological maneuver on your part. I can't take it anymore. cha-clikBLAM%^...$%^.$....^.$%.644.5.g.4.5%$[NO CARRIER]
Yes, but only as a misdemeanor. However, the anal probe issue is being made a FELONY by our current Christian fundamentalist regime. Advice to abductees: when offered the anal probe, take a rain check.
Re:Personal black boxes arent automatically bad.
on
Spies Riding Shotgun
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· Score: 1
The only real test of these systems is what happens when one of your state Senators is in an accident. If all of a sudden his blackbox is reported as "unavailable", then you can figure out what to do with yours yourself. Hints: blowtorch, hammer/chisel, hand drill, etc.
Speaking from Toledo OH (birth-1985, 1997-today), and having lived around Boston (1990-1997), I must call into question what you say. I returned to my hometown Toledo in 1997, after 7 years of hanging around "rude" Massholes. I must state quite clearly that I have never been so poorly treated in my adult life, than I have been in Toledo in the last 7 years. In comparison, Massachusetts was a GREAT place, and it's too bad that I had to figure this out in retrospect.
What I'm sure doesn't really help is the terrible economic sinkhole Toledo OH is in. It could well be that Toledo (a Democrat stronghold) is much less "nice" a place than Cinci (a Republican stronghold, if my information is correct) or Boston simply because the population here is almost paralyzed by a "fear of falling" (i.e. falling into poverty). I have never ever seen elsewhere a population of people who -- across most socio-economic classes -- nest in their homes as if they were afraid to face the outside world. The word that best sums up Toledo's social scene is "insular".
But viewpoints of nicety all depend, of course. When pressed for an opinion in public, people are often quoted as saying they like Toledo's overall environment and comfort. Considering how many are unemployed or are otherwise in deep financial trouble, I have strong doubts about the validity (and even sanity) of such testimonials.
Cinci has a "home ownership" rate of about 35%, while Toledo's is almost 70%. This implies Cinci is renter's town. This could mean that Cinci is filled with young professionals and that the "scene" is hopping and interesting, which can increase how "nice" the area is.
But overall, if Toledo is in any way representative of how "nice" the Midwest is, I'm more than willing to return to my spiritual hometown of Boston. Sometimes I was lonely in Boston, but I never felt mistreated overall, I actually had some dates -- yes, and actual sex with women * -- and I was never as utterly miserable there as I am here. Give me a Masshole anyday.
* RAAANT TIIIME! Why is it that the natural bodyform of a Midwestern woman is pear-shaped? I'd rather have sex with a chimpanzee than with such goddamned fatasses. When I go to a public places with some crowds, I'd often see big groups of bulbous ladies. They obviously feel no peer pressure to lose weight and become sexy. Gawd, this is just awful.
Likewise, the people who buy the most expensive, most luxurious items -- the Beemer and Rolls-Royce crowd we both envy but only one of us is jealous enough of to support theft to get those riches -- would pay the most taxes on those items, b/c they tend to buy those items in the greatest quantities.
If you somehow think that the wealthy won't capitalize on many loopholes that will essentially annul their NST contribution, you're living in a fantasy world.
Which car gets you the largest tax deduction?: [_] Toyota Corolla, [_] Ford Explorer. Yes, you should have placed a checkmark next to the Explorer. This is happening now. Just imagine the loopholes that Congress would put into the NST law that would allow the wealthy to escape most of the NST for the things they buy.
If all it took was spending thousands to fix the paperwork to make their purchases look like "business production" expenses, then the wealthy will do it. Corporations do that now.
The NST will only make sense if applied uniformly. But the same could be said for an income tax... applied as a flat tax, with no exceptions. And we can see how THAT fared.
The GOP does this since it's the right arm of the American Corporate War Party. The Democrats are merely the left arm. And both arms wield clubs with which they beat the hell out of the working man.... who, in finest dumbass tradition, continues to vote 99% for the ACWP.
The idea that "...it's only a 25 minute commute..." is simply absurd.
Yeah, great idea there, Chief. We just gotta remember to relocate all the businesses in each region into 30-mile diameter industrial megaparks, so when you lose you fucking job in one, you can just find another one in that big circle.
Or, we can do away with property taxes, to allow you to keep your home during times of unemployment, instead of being under constant pressure to earn money to avoid becoming homeless.
I'd also suggest that we force businesses to stay put for decades, allowing people to move near them and continue to be employed. But that's just getting silly, right?
Slashdot Mirror
What does any of this have to do with "maximizing return on investment and shareholder value", by using "outsourcing and immigration of technical professionals"? It's all about short-term profiteering and perceptions. Get with the program, citizen ... lest you show up on a Homeland Security list that you really don't want to be on, hint hint.
I always wondered what it would be like to live in the Dark Ages.
... and despite the fantasy aspect to it, one thing you pick up quick in a ME environment is that you'd better be armed or you're going to be just another fatality statistic.
So have I. I've played D& D
Strangely enough, I see the same future for America. With the government -- Democrat or Republican -- working more and more as a enforcement arm for corporations, people will have no choice but to eventually fend for themselves.
Remember all those militia "freaks"? They were simply prophets who came too early.
You're not paranoid when the evidence strongly suggests a draft is going to happen, namely:
... and finally:
1. SSS activity for reserve draft boards
2. bill already went through Congress for draft
3. war going on
4. lots of official statements about needing more troops
5. more wars being planned
6. any interest whatsoever in tracking college students
If you call this "paranoia", then I can only wonder what you consider solid enough evidence for any social change?
Cell Phone UI Problem #1: Do you type in the phone number, THEN push the call/green/phone/whatever button ... or do you push the call/green/phone/whatever button, THEN type in the phone number?
... these things are mostly a matter of convention derived some arbitrary device like a market leader.
People look at me like I'm crazy when I ask these kinds of questions. But it's part of the basic problem of interfacing the equipment to the user. Rarely is an interface thing "obvious"
I became reasonably functional in the blasted cellphone I was issued by my workplace, simply by playing with the buttons, which led to menus, which led to functions, which led to my customization of ring tones, ring volumes, etc. This alone speaks of reasonably good design, I must say grudgingly. I only "had" to crack the manual to find out the voicemail password.
Granted, but my cynicism implied that there won't be a real "public domain". Corporations will own virtually everything. Their money is moving right now to acquire the rights to everything.
Lawsuits? How about asking yourself: how complicated are the atoms of the usual variety of brisant explosives? Answer: not much. Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen. You can get these elements from electrolysis of water (H2, O2), from the air (O2, N2), from common household chemicals like ammonia (NH4), and finally from the messy molecules of bulk items like common sugar.
... except that it will go on every goddamn day.
....
So, with a deskfabber in hundreds of thousands of bedrooms owned by mischievious teenagers, you'll have the world's largest arms race in a jiffy. After the C4 specs are posted to the Internet, at least tens of thousands of these little fuckers will have tons of C4 made within 30 days. It'll be a July Fourth to remember
(If I had had a deskfabber, I would have made explosives. I'm sure at least 50% of the hands-on techies here on Slashdot would have done the same.)
The endless July Fourth would go on until someone notices that clever little teenager, taking his fabber down to the river, just below the runoff from the tailings from that old uranium mine
Sure. What say we have chunks sitting around in our matter pool, roughly sized 1000^3 atoms.
... as you imply.
Chunk density can vary considerably, depending on what you want to do with it. But the more defined a chunk is, the longer it takes to build said chunk. Then you're back to the "how long does it take to lay 1 billion atoms" problem. And you'll still need billions of those chunks.
But with your avg 1-billion-atom chunk, if you can lay 1 billion of those every second, you'd be able to build at 10^18 atoms per second, hence about 10^5 seconds to achieve a mol -- almost 3 hours. Everybody will have access to gorgeous wedding rings, built to almost fantastical specs (say, interwoven threads of spun diamond, platinum and emerald).
I can see that there should be levels of nanomanufacture, where the highest rates of deposition will be done by the "chunkers". After high-rate deposition, high-speed cutters will whip through the (likely) sheets of material and cut them into the desired chunks. These masses of resulting chunks will go on into several distribution streams for whatever use someone has in mind.
I don't envision high-speed deposition at the end-fab point, however
Amazing! All that, and you conveniently forgot to mention the instance of intellectual property theft outlined in the book. Said IP is the "killer issue" which will make desktop fabricators completely impossible to legally use, or that they will be so regulated and locked down that they will be almost useless to use as far as geeks are concerned (or about as interesting as running a toaster).
If you're some nobody, like the nuke worker Karen Silkwood, or the reporter Casolero, then sure ... your death may well be arranged. But if you are a member of the elite, then there's little risk. Movements of money like this is merely part of the "Great Game" of playing with the vacuous notion of electrons that allegedly stand for labor time, railroad cars of lumber, ships full of crude oil, etc. Paying each other off is a matter of you and me honoring a $50 bet on last week's ball game.
After all, it's also not really their money, anyway. How much would YOU care if you lost a $50 bet, if that $50 came out of your "household general fund" that is actually owned by your city's population in the form of shares? Not much, I'd say.
I'm sure Mr Macy needs a paycheck like most everyone else.
Not that I watch TV at all, but is this how Hollywood is really running TV these days? Ditch the starring actors before they ask for more money?
I've run my understanding about the current "reality show" fad (which seems to have settled into a modus operandi rather than a fad) as being a response to a writers' strike. So perhaps what you say makes sense along those lines.
Hell, I made myself do that, pard. After all th' ruckus on Slashdot, I done gone an' figgered there was sumptin' to the durned thing. Good lookin' series, I reckon. {tip o' the hat}
There's no need to adapt. The timeline itself was a modern alternate. Nixon was the current President, the US won the Vietnam War, and the soviets were under repression from fear like a fucking spring. This could easily be put into a movie form with no reference to terrorists whatsoever. Now, pass dos' katies before I guts ya!
Ah, just sling it onto the Crank File. After the new year, we'll just clean it all out and start anew.
Rorschach should instead be cast with William H. Macy. I've always been impressed with Macy, and I think that with appropriate study he could bring the role to striking life. Rorschach was a man under intense self control, which in my opinion Macy has striven for in several of his prior roles.
What were we talking about again? I have a photo that I must have taken of the screen at the time, but there was screenglare, it got overexposed, and I can't tell anymore. {tattoos on arm:} "Get glare shield."
Punisher - sucked, but I was fairly and pleasingly surprised with how closely they at least TRIED to capture Frank Castle
Superman movies - REALLY sucked, very insipid.
Batman movies - UNGODLY SUCKAGE. My view on Batman was forever reset by Frank Miller's Dark Knight. The casting for Batman/Bruce in each of the modern Batman movies was simply appalling (Keaton? Aaagh!). Hey, Hollywood: Robin was a CHILD, you freakin' dumbasses!
(Oh well. So much for superhero movies. At least Lord of the Rings was done right, and the cable version of Dune was easily closer to Herbert's originals.)
One of Watchmen's great strengths is its interconnections. How is Hollywood NOT going to screw that up? I mean, movies like Memento are a rarity.
Oh, sure, try to make me feel better by pointing out how enormously -- nay, googolplexianly HUGE a bureaucracy can get. Great psychological maneuver on your part. I can't take it anymore. cha-clik BLAM%^...$%^.$....^.$%.644.5.g.4.5%$[NO CARRIER]
Yes, but only as a misdemeanor. However, the anal probe issue is being made a FELONY by our current Christian fundamentalist regime. Advice to abductees: when offered the anal probe, take a rain check.
The only real test of these systems is what happens when one of your state Senators is in an accident. If all of a sudden his blackbox is reported as "unavailable", then you can figure out what to do with yours yourself. Hints: blowtorch, hammer/chisel, hand drill, etc.
Speaking from Toledo OH (birth-1985, 1997-today), and having lived around Boston (1990-1997), I must call into question what you say. I returned to my hometown Toledo in 1997, after 7 years of hanging around "rude" Massholes. I must state quite clearly that I have never been so poorly treated in my adult life, than I have been in Toledo in the last 7 years. In comparison, Massachusetts was a GREAT place, and it's too bad that I had to figure this out in retrospect.
What I'm sure doesn't really help is the terrible economic sinkhole Toledo OH is in. It could well be that Toledo (a Democrat stronghold) is much less "nice" a place than Cinci (a Republican stronghold, if my information is correct) or Boston simply because the population here is almost paralyzed by a "fear of falling" (i.e. falling into poverty). I have never ever seen elsewhere a population of people who -- across most socio-economic classes -- nest in their homes as if they were afraid to face the outside world. The word that best sums up Toledo's social scene is "insular".
But viewpoints of nicety all depend, of course. When pressed for an opinion in public, people are often quoted as saying they like Toledo's overall environment and comfort. Considering how many are unemployed or are otherwise in deep financial trouble, I have strong doubts about the validity (and even sanity) of such testimonials.
Cinci has a "home ownership" rate of about 35%, while Toledo's is almost 70%. This implies Cinci is renter's town. This could mean that Cinci is filled with young professionals and that the "scene" is hopping and interesting, which can increase how "nice" the area is.
But overall, if Toledo is in any way representative of how "nice" the Midwest is, I'm more than willing to return to my spiritual hometown of Boston. Sometimes I was lonely in Boston, but I never felt mistreated overall, I actually had some dates -- yes, and actual sex with women * -- and I was never as utterly miserable there as I am here. Give me a Masshole anyday.
* RAAANT TIIIME! Why is it that the natural bodyform of a Midwestern woman is pear-shaped? I'd rather have sex with a chimpanzee than with such goddamned fatasses. When I go to a public places with some crowds, I'd often see big groups of bulbous ladies. They obviously feel no peer pressure to lose weight and become sexy. Gawd, this is just awful.
Likewise, the people who buy the most expensive, most luxurious items -- the Beemer and Rolls-Royce crowd we both envy but only one of us is jealous enough of to support theft to get those riches -- would pay the most taxes on those items, b/c they tend to buy those items in the greatest quantities.
... applied as a flat tax, with no exceptions. And we can see how THAT fared.
If you somehow think that the wealthy won't capitalize on many loopholes that will essentially annul their NST contribution, you're living in a fantasy world.
Which car gets you the largest tax deduction?: [_] Toyota Corolla, [_] Ford Explorer. Yes, you should have placed a checkmark next to the Explorer. This is happening now. Just imagine the loopholes that Congress would put into the NST law that would allow the wealthy to escape most of the NST for the things they buy.
If all it took was spending thousands to fix the paperwork to make their purchases look like "business production" expenses, then the wealthy will do it. Corporations do that now.
The NST will only make sense if applied uniformly. But the same could be said for an income tax
The GOP does this since it's the right arm of the American Corporate War Party. The Democrats are merely the left arm. And both arms wield clubs with which they beat the hell out of the working man. ... who, in finest dumbass tradition, continues to vote 99% for the ACWP.
The idea that "...it's only a 25 minute commute..." is simply absurd.
Yeah, great idea there, Chief. We just gotta remember to relocate all the businesses in each region into 30-mile diameter industrial megaparks, so when you lose you fucking job in one, you can just find another one in that big circle.
Or, we can do away with property taxes, to allow you to keep your home during times of unemployment, instead of being under constant pressure to earn money to avoid becoming homeless.
I'd also suggest that we force businesses to stay put for decades, allowing people to move near them and continue to be employed. But that's just getting silly, right?