It's true that asymptotic speeds are important, but remember that in the real world, the "c" in O(f(n)) = cf(n) actually matters. Code monkeys know this already, so your statement about algorithmic efficiency (I assume) works for this audience, but taken as an absolute statement, it's not necessarily correct.
There have been studies that show that people that are picked out as "attractive" by a large range of people often have the following attributes:
1) More symmetrical
2) Fewer genetic disorders
3) Smell nicer
4) Men have more testosterone (e.g. big jaw bone), women have more estrogen.
I'm not exactly sure I follow your logic, but I think your argument rests on the false assumption that out-sourcing necessitates people in the US to be unemployed permanently. People move jobs. People change skills. They move up the ladder. They get paid more. It happens. It has happened, in the past. Think about farming. We import agricultural jobs (a.k.a. outsource) from poorer countries, while they import manufactured goods, such as cars, computers, and drugs, from us and other wealthier nations.
Spain became complacent and didn't try to innovate; they just tried to sit on their wealth. The US is trying to innovate and grow faster and faster; that's hardly "grow[ing] fat".
No, but I'm saying that right now, that's what we do better than everyone else. You have to admit that the US is far better at selling, marketing, and servicing than any other country in the world. It's one of the reasons why US corporations are so much more successful at being multinational, branded corporations. Also, if you're saying that no one can do research because of the lack of people going into IT, well, it might be the indication that there is little more good research to be milked from IT.
To your second response:
First, this isn't really a response to my comment, but I'll respond to you anyway. We're not "losing talent". The people who invented transistors, the Internet, P2P, Google, and the iPod are all still here. We're still innovating by researching new fields (computer security consulting, biotech, network programming), designing new consumer devices (iPod, flat-panel TVs, Tivo), and researching new ways to innovate business structures (such as Amazon, Ebay, and Craig's List). That kind of thing isn't going anywhere. It's not a zero-sum game here.
You imply that the iPod HAD to be invented in the US, but as the programmers and designers in India acquire more experience and skill, they're going to start solving problems on their own and designing new products that we will no longer have the skill to think about.
You're missing the time-factor. The point is that the US created the iPod now. Do you think that at any time before this point, it was likely that someone would be able to create a product that good in India? Maybe in the future, but not yet.
Of course, they'll start innovating, too, but what's wrong with that? When they start innovating, they'll need people to help them manage their innovation. Think about the incubators that venture capital firms are starting. Think about places like Google or Microsoft, where lots of really smart people are put together to innovate together. When they innovate, we manage. We market. We service. And we do research to open new ways and jobs and services.
And when they start catching up to us there, then what? Of course, at a certain point, they will catch up to us, but so what? If we're so far that the rate of innovation is starting to slow, then we're getting closer to "perfection," so we can start concentrating on other things, like creating a perfect government, or living a good life. But that won't be for a very long time.
Sorry that you're out of a job, but it generally means that you're freed to move up the ladder, which you have to whether you want to or not. The world is cutthroat, and in order to stay competative, the US's only advantage is that in general, we're creative and innovative. 30 years ago, we were making spreadsheet software. Now, some people in India are doing it, so we make Internet software and services. Now, more people in China are doing that, so we start creating business-to-business software (such as Sharepoint), artificial intelligence, and computer security software.
It's nearly impossible to stop outsourcing, just like it's nearly impossible to stop free-trade. It lowers costs for everyone, so in the end, it's good, but in the meantime, we need to concentrate, not on slowing down outsourcing, but creating structures that'll help people survive to find newer, better jobs (i.e. welfare, education, and research).
Are Windows/Office any cheaper now than it was 10 years ago, adjusted for inflation? I don't have the statistics on hand, but I'd be suprised if it were true.
Well, you have to consider the fact that the newest versions of Windows and Office are substantially better than the previous versions. Is Windows XP overpriced? Maybe, but it's far more value for the money than Windows 95 was. The reason Microsoft can stay competitive is that it continually improves its products.
What you don't see is that the US's greatest asset is that it is innovative, creating new jobs and new possibilities. We used to manufacture computer chips and hardware. Now, other countries manufacture hardware and chips, and we do more software and networking. Now, other countries get the software and networking, and we start doing more service work. Soon, other countries will do more service work, and we will move on to higher-margin things like design: think iPod. Not possible to create that kind of idea elsewhere, not yet anyway.
Economics is all a big race. Yes, it's a depressing rat race, but that's how the world is, and the rat-race ultimately improves our lives by lowering costs (how cheap is a computer now compared to 10 years ago?), improving living standards (our lives are improved by the Internet, no?), and creating new progress and opportunities for growth (the growth of the Internet allowed things like Amazon and Dell to boom).
Um, it doesn't cost our standard of living. We lower costs, which means that ultimately prices will decline (think what happened to hardware), which means that we eventually move towards more innovative jobs. Consider what happened to IBM: it used to be a computer-manufacturing company. Now it manufactures chips and provides "business solutions" (i.e. IT services). The new job (on average) will pay more, since it demands higher skills that aren't available elsewhere.
Why is it a problem to outsource university level jobs? I mean, other countries' universities are becoming better and better, and more and more competitive with the quality of US universities, which means that the skill level of people in other countries is becoming more and more comparable (consider the decline of the US's proportions of scientific publiciations). So, some jobs inevitably go overseas, since other country-personnel can be "just as good." And the fact that they're poorer means that to them, these are great jobs, and worth more to them than it is to us. So, it goes overseas, cause they're willing to work for less.
Uh, dude, cost is a driving force, and quality is a feature that people pay for. Why do people buy Tylenol instead of generic acetomenophen? They believe in the brand name, which signifies a certain amount of quality. To some people, that tiny extra amount of quality control isn't worth the price, so they buy generic. That's why, for instance, Apple is able to sell so many iPods for such a high margin of profit. If the extra quality that an American IT worker (read: job-skills) can offer is worth the difference in price, the job stays here.
That's why outsourcing CEOs isn't worth it. In general, the US is very good at business management, and people believe in the ability of those like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. There aren't that many CEO names coming from other countries, which is why those jobs aren't going overseas.
Yes, but that's different from Sapir-Whorf. They could easily, once they actually learn the difference between a Dutchman and an Englishman, coin a word for it. And even if they don't coin a word for it, they can learn the difference.
Sapir-Whorf's changing of causality results in such bizarre conclusions as "translation is impossible" and "coining new words is impossible." Contrary to Sapir-Whorf, language cannot determine thought; it can certainly aid or influence thought, however, which is one reason it can be so distructive. It's really a memory thing; if there are two words to refer to the Dutch and the English, then you might think that there must be a reason for such a distinction, and so you will latch onto any differences between the two people.
Plus the fact that at the bottom, the email says, "This is a promotional email..." when the content of the email is about a billing error. Clearly a mismatch of information.
Ok, so the Motley Fool technically isn't a magazine, but it has regular online articles and various email newsletters, so I consider it as equivalent to an electronic magazine. The way they present investment material is excellent.
For world-news analysis, I like to read the Harvard International Review. It's a smaller magazine that, because it's a quarterly academic magazine, tends to be less sensationalist and more about analysis of world events by many famous and influential people (like Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama, Wesley Clarke, Dick Cheney, Nelson Mandela, Francis Fukuyama, Noam Chomsky, Alberto Fujimori, etc.), but also by academics and those who devote their lives to research. It has a fairly balanced presentation along with actual information. Since it's a quarterly, it tends to sit back and look at the bigger picture, to find trends. It really is an awesome magazine to get a fuller understanding about what's happening in the world.
Isn't this sort of obvious? In tonal compositions, notes keep returning to their "center" (that is, the tonic, the dominant, and so forth), so you hear certain notes often, whereas in atonal composition, there is no center tone and therefore nothing to "return" to. I mean, if you consider the pure tone row, it's just the 12 chromatic notes arranged in a row, so of course it has a flat statistical progression.
Sounds like a spectacularly uninteresting result to me. Language has something called a topic, so people tend to return to that. Tonal music has something called a key, so people will return to that too. Hence, maybe there's a correlation in pattern. That still doesn't make them the "same", as some other people have asserted.
It's not like Republicans haven't done the same. They gut those same social programs (as in, the Many Children Left Behind Act, for instance) to fund their corporations (every member of the Cabinet has made millions), so both sides are in the wrong.
Please, tell me, what kind of film doesn't address an agenda? Even a film with a mere recitation of facts has an agenda; the person who picks and chooses the facts to put on screen, and which facts to emphasize, has an agenda, conscious or unconscious. Take the Pentagon Papers; even if it's pure fact that the US issued something like that, it is opinionated in that the press chose to publish it in the first place. Thus, either you're saying that there are no documentaries (which is bunk), or you have to concede that documentaries inherently have an opinion to them.
I mean, if you look at one of the best documentaries ever made, "Hearts and Minds", which was anti-Vietnam, most of it is just clips of prominent figures saying stuff juxtaposed to clips of the war.
Of course, Michael Moore specifically referred to his work as "non-fiction" rather than a documentary, so this conversation itself (and your attack on it) is bunk.
One of the problems with Open Sourcing a lot of this is that either companies will have to sign on to begin this, which is unlikely until it's become established in the industry by some other means, or people will have to work on Open Source out of their own generosity to begin with. This is fine with programming, but if you try to do biotech with this, you run into all sorts of practical issues not found in the virtual reality of programming. In order to do research and publish, you have to have a lab and materials, all of which are rarely priced towards individuals. In general, you can program with a machine that's under $1000 dollars.
Now, Open Sourcing knowledge may be a good or bad thing. In general, though, drug companies do research for patents, yes, but they also publish, so it's not like the academic community is getting cut out of the knowledge that drug companies have. Some of the most effective and innovative synthetic procedures for organic chemistry, for instance, were researched at Merck and published into the academic community.
They are Duplos; when Craig Silverstein came to Harvard to speak about Google, he told us that they used the Duplos because they were more cost-effective than the Legos, since they were bigger for cheaper.
Firstly, although I think that humans are different from other animals and life forms, I do not necessarily believe that humans are better. The one thing that I think distinguishes human beings from animals is language; all of our civilizations are built upon the basis of our ability to share complex thoughts and observations. Language assists in cognitive functions, and it also allows the creation of writing, which in turn allows the creation of even more complexity within our societies.
Still, I am not a vegetarian. Firstly, though I value life in and of itself, I do not discourage the killing of other life forms for the benefit of ourselves. Does that mean I'm inconsistent? No, not necessarily. The taboo against murder is a complex combination of many different factors (which is why it is hard to define exactly when it is or is not "right" to kill someone else). These factors include the fact that we ourselves are human, and therefore we value humans more than other species simply from self-identification. There is an innate survival instinct, and when we project this survival instinct upon those whose images are in our likeness, we find a tendency to avoid killing them. Also, there is the more rational, less instinctual taboo against murder simply for the sake of societal order. It is a utilitarian social contract for everyone to agree that murder should be discouraged as a means for an end.
We could, but it wouldn't be as valuable, since sheep and fish stem cells don't have the same integrability into human bodies that human stem cells do.
Slashdot Mirror
It's true that asymptotic speeds are important, but remember that in the real world, the "c" in O(f(n)) = cf(n) actually matters. Code monkeys know this already, so your statement about algorithmic efficiency (I assume) works for this audience, but taken as an absolute statement, it's not necessarily correct.
There have been studies that show that people that are picked out as "attractive" by a large range of people often have the following attributes:
1) More symmetrical
2) Fewer genetic disorders
3) Smell nicer
4) Men have more testosterone (e.g. big jaw bone), women have more estrogen.
I'm not exactly sure I follow your logic, but I think your argument rests on the false assumption that out-sourcing necessitates people in the US to be unemployed permanently. People move jobs. People change skills. They move up the ladder. They get paid more. It happens. It has happened, in the past. Think about farming. We import agricultural jobs (a.k.a. outsource) from poorer countries, while they import manufactured goods, such as cars, computers, and drugs, from us and other wealthier nations.
Spain became complacent and didn't try to innovate; they just tried to sit on their wealth. The US is trying to innovate and grow faster and faster; that's hardly "grow[ing] fat".
No, but I'm saying that right now, that's what we do better than everyone else. You have to admit that the US is far better at selling, marketing, and servicing than any other country in the world. It's one of the reasons why US corporations are so much more successful at being multinational, branded corporations. Also, if you're saying that no one can do research because of the lack of people going into IT, well, it might be the indication that there is little more good research to be milked from IT.
To your second response:
First, this isn't really a response to my comment, but I'll respond to you anyway. We're not "losing talent". The people who invented transistors, the Internet, P2P, Google, and the iPod are all still here. We're still innovating by researching new fields (computer security consulting, biotech, network programming), designing new consumer devices (iPod, flat-panel TVs, Tivo), and researching new ways to innovate business structures (such as Amazon, Ebay, and Craig's List). That kind of thing isn't going anywhere. It's not a zero-sum game here.
You're missing the time-factor. The point is that the US created the iPod now. Do you think that at any time before this point, it was likely that someone would be able to create a product that good in India? Maybe in the future, but not yet.
Of course, they'll start innovating, too, but what's wrong with that? When they start innovating, they'll need people to help them manage their innovation. Think about the incubators that venture capital firms are starting. Think about places like Google or Microsoft, where lots of really smart people are put together to innovate together. When they innovate, we manage. We market. We service. And we do research to open new ways and jobs and services.
And when they start catching up to us there, then what? Of course, at a certain point, they will catch up to us, but so what? If we're so far that the rate of innovation is starting to slow, then we're getting closer to "perfection," so we can start concentrating on other things, like creating a perfect government, or living a good life. But that won't be for a very long time.
It's nearly impossible to stop outsourcing, just like it's nearly impossible to stop free-trade. It lowers costs for everyone, so in the end, it's good, but in the meantime, we need to concentrate, not on slowing down outsourcing, but creating structures that'll help people survive to find newer, better jobs (i.e. welfare, education, and research).
Well, you have to consider the fact that the newest versions of Windows and Office are substantially better than the previous versions. Is Windows XP overpriced? Maybe, but it's far more value for the money than Windows 95 was. The reason Microsoft can stay competitive is that it continually improves its products.
What you don't see is that the US's greatest asset is that it is innovative, creating new jobs and new possibilities. We used to manufacture computer chips and hardware. Now, other countries manufacture hardware and chips, and we do more software and networking. Now, other countries get the software and networking, and we start doing more service work. Soon, other countries will do more service work, and we will move on to higher-margin things like design: think iPod. Not possible to create that kind of idea elsewhere, not yet anyway.
Economics is all a big race. Yes, it's a depressing rat race, but that's how the world is, and the rat-race ultimately improves our lives by lowering costs (how cheap is a computer now compared to 10 years ago?), improving living standards (our lives are improved by the Internet, no?), and creating new progress and opportunities for growth (the growth of the Internet allowed things like Amazon and Dell to boom).
Um, it doesn't cost our standard of living. We lower costs, which means that ultimately prices will decline (think what happened to hardware), which means that we eventually move towards more innovative jobs. Consider what happened to IBM: it used to be a computer-manufacturing company. Now it manufactures chips and provides "business solutions" (i.e. IT services). The new job (on average) will pay more, since it demands higher skills that aren't available elsewhere.
Why is it a problem to outsource university level jobs? I mean, other countries' universities are becoming better and better, and more and more competitive with the quality of US universities, which means that the skill level of people in other countries is becoming more and more comparable (consider the decline of the US's proportions of scientific publiciations). So, some jobs inevitably go overseas, since other country-personnel can be "just as good." And the fact that they're poorer means that to them, these are great jobs, and worth more to them than it is to us. So, it goes overseas, cause they're willing to work for less.
That's why outsourcing CEOs isn't worth it. In general, the US is very good at business management, and people believe in the ability of those like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. There aren't that many CEO names coming from other countries, which is why those jobs aren't going overseas.
A much better book on the subject is The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker.
Sapir-Whorf's changing of causality results in such bizarre conclusions as "translation is impossible" and "coining new words is impossible." Contrary to Sapir-Whorf, language cannot determine thought; it can certainly aid or influence thought, however, which is one reason it can be so distructive. It's really a memory thing; if there are two words to refer to the Dutch and the English, then you might think that there must be a reason for such a distinction, and so you will latch onto any differences between the two people.
Plus the fact that at the bottom, the email says, "This is a promotional email..." when the content of the email is about a billing error. Clearly a mismatch of information.
Ideally, you'd need even more than 10 Gbps for the perfect user interface.
For world-news analysis, I like to read the Harvard International Review. It's a smaller magazine that, because it's a quarterly academic magazine, tends to be less sensationalist and more about analysis of world events by many famous and influential people (like Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama, Wesley Clarke, Dick Cheney, Nelson Mandela, Francis Fukuyama, Noam Chomsky, Alberto Fujimori, etc.), but also by academics and those who devote their lives to research. It has a fairly balanced presentation along with actual information. Since it's a quarterly, it tends to sit back and look at the bigger picture, to find trends. It really is an awesome magazine to get a fuller understanding about what's happening in the world.
Sounds like a spectacularly uninteresting result to me. Language has something called a topic, so people tend to return to that. Tonal music has something called a key, so people will return to that too. Hence, maybe there's a correlation in pattern. That still doesn't make them the "same", as some other people have asserted.
It's not like Republicans haven't done the same. They gut those same social programs (as in, the Many Children Left Behind Act, for instance) to fund their corporations (every member of the Cabinet has made millions), so both sides are in the wrong.
I mean, if you look at one of the best documentaries ever made, "Hearts and Minds", which was anti-Vietnam, most of it is just clips of prominent figures saying stuff juxtaposed to clips of the war.
Of course, Michael Moore specifically referred to his work as "non-fiction" rather than a documentary, so this conversation itself (and your attack on it) is bunk.
Now, Open Sourcing knowledge may be a good or bad thing. In general, though, drug companies do research for patents, yes, but they also publish, so it's not like the academic community is getting cut out of the knowledge that drug companies have. Some of the most effective and innovative synthetic procedures for organic chemistry, for instance, were researched at Merck and published into the academic community.
Doesn't Apple music store use AAC, not MP3 (as per the article)?
They are Duplos; when Craig Silverstein came to Harvard to speak about Google, he told us that they used the Duplos because they were more cost-effective than the Legos, since they were bigger for cheaper.
Still, I am not a vegetarian. Firstly, though I value life in and of itself, I do not discourage the killing of other life forms for the benefit of ourselves. Does that mean I'm inconsistent? No, not necessarily. The taboo against murder is a complex combination of many different factors (which is why it is hard to define exactly when it is or is not "right" to kill someone else). These factors include the fact that we ourselves are human, and therefore we value humans more than other species simply from self-identification. There is an innate survival instinct, and when we project this survival instinct upon those whose images are in our likeness, we find a tendency to avoid killing them. Also, there is the more rational, less instinctual taboo against murder simply for the sake of societal order. It is a utilitarian social contract for everyone to agree that murder should be discouraged as a means for an end.
We could, but it wouldn't be as valuable, since sheep and fish stem cells don't have the same integrability into human bodies that human stem cells do.