No need for that. As a programmer for the State of Oregon, I completely agree that people are the problem with government, which is why my little sub-department (Central Services, Information Services, Transportation Application Development) is incredibly busy attempting to replace as many people as possible with expert systems. The really neat thing about this is that the one most frustrating segment of people in government (bureaucrats) are the easiest people to replace with software; all you need to do is interpret the law and translate it to C#, ASP.NET, or some other technology that allows the public to access the data and get the proper answers.
And, in fact, as the man who got the overdose of truth serum in Life, The Universe, and Everything admitted, the question and the answer are mutually exclusive. The correct question, and the correct answer, cannot coexist in the same universe.
I have the illustrated version of the first book, complete with the African Zaphod pictures (in complete contrast to the text, which describes Zaphod as a kind of a double-above-the-waste-Blond-Greek-God), which I plan to introduce to my son when he's old enough to read it.
I just hope that after they publish part 3 of the article, Ian releases.MP3s of the original cassettes of the interview, which are likely entirely different.
I'm a bit of a luddite and not really a nerd (I don't code, don't like sci-fi, not a gadget nut, etc.)
What the heck are you doing on slashdot? You sound like my father in law- who has yet to allow his second wife to have internet in the house because he's heard all these news reports about how computers cause viruses.....
I'm not sure why DirecTV is offering this solution when it's apparent that their standard dishes can be used by these types of campers w/o much issue.
My guess- is that they're really going for the Yurt/Kamping Kabin set. You know, the kind of high tech people who pack the laptop, a BBQ Grill, and this box into a Prius, rent some rustic cabin or Yurt at a KOA or a State Park and pretend to be "Camping" just because they have to walk more than 20 feet to the communal bathhouse.
It's a state in southern Mexcio with a Mayan name that many people have different ways of spelling. Also known as Oxcaca and a bunch of other derivations, since the natives have never adopted either phonetic writing or Spanish, we'll probably never know the truth. It's been devistated by free trade agreements, with most of the farmers being forced off of their land due to a total crash in corn prices, then forced northwards to work illegally due to the following rise in American corn prices due to ethanol.
ahh yes MH42..i take it your hatred of foreigners has reduced, so now you are OK with them staying alive as long as they don't come here? What happened to your call for the genocide of about 5.99 billion people who you are sure are innately evil capitalists (except for the 10 million "good" people who are so damn good that they want to murder the rest for merely being inconvenienced)?
Hmm- me thinks you have that assbackwards....I WAS for the genocide of the 1 billion to save the 6 billion (the 10 million + all of their friends and family) before the insane immigration policies in the United States allowed a portion of that 10 million to come across the Mexico border, carring suitcase nukes and God only knows what else. Right now, Bush has so screwed up being Commander in Chief that the only real way out is for the entire United States to Convert to Islam, give up on both Marx and Capitalism, and adopt the form of economics that is written into Shariah Law (where you depend on the good and glorious Caliph's mercy for the food on your table).
And best of all- Oxcala families now have good reason to work in American-owned factories instead of migrating north to work on American farms, because their kids now have a better chance of getting a good education in Mexico than in the Luddite United States where they still use low-tech chalkboards!
Look, US based companies are at a tax disadvantage. They pay taxes on profits earned here and abroad while foreign based companies don't.
No they don't- they simply bank that money in the Caymans and don't pay taxes on it at all.
I was under the impression that the government was supposed to be responsible for education? What, its not? Oh, thats right, when you can villify a corporation its best to do so, regardless if it doesn't make a bit of sense.
Who is the government? It's just a puppet of the corporations to begin with. EVERY politician elected in the last 100 years has had their campaigns financed by corporations. Doesn't matter who you vote for; they've both already been bought and paid for.
Profits? Wow how dare they. Look, they make profits to pay for their expansion and research. Don't try and tell me that these companies are not pouring a sizeable percentage of their profits back into their business. If they don't they get supplanted by those who do or have to buy those who do. Worse they get bought by others.
Actually, if they were doing that, I'd be cheering them on. But the fact that DENMARK of all places has surpassed us in R&D shows this to be a lie as well.
We have had decades of politicians successfully embedding the idea that corporations are some kind of mad evil organization to be reviled when they make money. They point to profits but never the margin as is famously done with oil companies. They point out the millions made and such all the while hoping you don't see all the taxpayer money they waste buying votes by building bridges to nowhere and research butterfly diseases.
Except for the fact that every one of those politicians has already been bought & paid for by the corporations. Who do you think fronts all that money for campaign financing?
Don't go putting the blame elsewhere. The blame starts with us. We elect politicians who don't do what we want them to do and we just reelect them. Worse many elect politicians not based on their ideas to improve society but instead on "what they can do for me", "who they can take money from because its unfair someone has more", "whom they can make laws against because they don't think like me", or far worse, which political party they are.
Doesn't matter- every name that is able to get on the ballot has already been bought & paid for. Usually by the same set of people.
It isn't the corporation that is responsible for the US slowly sinking in technology. Its the people of this country who no longer hold themselves or their government accountable. They want freedom but only so much, it usually stops when it gets hard then they run to the government to "make it alright". Build in a flood zone and get flooded, well the government can pay. Can't sell your art because it sucks, well the government can make those ignorant savages pay for it. Someone makes too much money, well the government should step in make them "contribute a fair share".
Building in a flood zone- that's shipping for you. There's a reason New Orleans was so large- and it had NOTHING to do with Mardi Gras, and everything to do with Wal*Mart importing from China. Wake up and smell the plastic....
Damn, its this reliance on government that is our failing, not some damn CEO of a company most of us will never interact with except maybe through our 401Ks.
Or through your paycheck. After all, Profit is just unpaid wages.
Do you fear stepping outside for fear of being hit by a meteorite? Ok. Yeah, we don't have an infinite supply of energy (although actually we do, I won't get into it). Anyway a system that can be projected to work for..say.. 5000 years into the future is fine for me. Because I know that by that time, we'll have explored the solar system and found ways to harness the sun's energy..figured out fusion (without knowing any physics whatsoever you have made up your mind this is impossible to do).. etc. As you know the sun is going to last for at least another 10,000 years.
Uh, you do know solar energy is not exactly energy dense, right? Even a Dyson Sphere has it's limits- even I know enough physics to know that sunlight is only 400 w/m^2. Solar isn't even enough to completely replace current American usage even if you covered the entire world in 100% efficient solar panels. Where I do support ambient energy usage wherever possible, you're still in fantasyland if you think this is sufficient for a population of 7 billion living at the same standard as the United States. The problem isn't the amount of silicon and iron- it's the sheer amount of space you'd need.
Given the inflation rate- those numbers seem about right. But when you adjust for inflation AND population, they're lower than what was spent in the 1970s and 1980s. You've got to go back a whole lot further than 2001 to see the full trend in the United States- you've got to go back before Reagan's tax revolt at least, and perhaps back to Kennedy's. The current crop of graduating Bachelor's degree holders don't remember a time when education was a priority and the United States was working hard to beat out the Soviets technologically- they're too young, their entire period of schooling has been under tax evasion from corporations.
MH42, aren't you the same guy that was about a month ago saying that we shouldn't have a prosperous economy with a high quality of life and that we should live in third world dollar-a-day standards?
Actually, I'm for four completely different economic systems- three of which would require a massive shift in the market. That doesn't neccessarily mean that I approve of companies using resources that were created by government and then refusing to pay for those resources.
Basically you got driven into a corner where it was proven that it was in fact very possible under free trade to have a global healthy economy where everyone minimally has a decent quality of life.. and then you claimed that would be an environmental disaster (without any proof btw).
Well, the lack of an infinite supply of energy would be one piece of evidence for that. But don't let me stop your fantasy of everybody being able to live like we do in the first world. I also fail to see what that has to do with corporations failing to pay for the education of the skilled workforce that they consume as one of their primary inputs.
As a typical marxist-slavist you stand for forcefully preventing people from exchanging goods and services to one an another as they choose.
Especially if that choice is the direct evasion of costs of creating those goods and services, so I guess this counts, doesn't it?
No matter the naysaying on slashdot, the United States of America is still the mightiest, richest, most powerful, most influential nation in the world. So I guess we're doing something right.
So let me get this straight. You're blaming failed State controlled education on corporations? Hmm, makes sense to me.
Actually, I'm blaming failing state controled services IN ALL ARENAS on corporations not paying for the services they use. Education of workers should be a primary value of any long range thinking company that needs skilled workers- yet for the past 20 years we've had a tax revolt removing money from the schools and making sure corporations pay a significantly lower percentage than they did in the 1950s. Education is just the most visible. Crime is second. But as a state worker working for Oregon Department of Transportation- I have to say roads and shipping are not far behind.
Interesting that the link seems to claim exactly the opposite that you're stating- so which is it? Are we growing jobs in a variety of sectors, roughly half above and half below the average wage? Or if we lose our technology lead, will we end up doing each other's laundry (only having service jobs paying far below $15/hr)? Me, I'm in the second camp with what you're apparently saying in this message, but the link throws me off on what you are saying.
When a society decides that corporations are priviledged citizens, corporations decide that profit and Tax Evasion matter more than Education, how can the country NOT fall behind in technology?
It's not just a lack of code reuse but also a lack of automated testing. After being at Atari for six years as a lead tester, a lot of job interviewers were amazed when I told them that I had no automated testing experience since video games weren't designed that way. It's manual testing all the way. You turn on the console or PC, play the game from beginning to end, and see what crashes or looks ugly.
I've had a lot of experience with automated testing of UIs- I'm a business programmer- and I've got to say, I'm quite underwhelmed with the concept. A good human tester will test things that no automated test programmer ever thought to test.
Having said that- I find it hard to believe that the game industry suffers from a lack of good manual testers; you'd think there'd be a certain class of geeks who would pay to have that job.
There might be. Though I thought the more common method was to dope with your own blood (store a pint away on a non-training day, for re-infusion the day of the race)?
Even wrong can be interesting. I've learned a lot from this thread- turns out code reuse isn't as prevelant in the gaming industry as it appeared to be to me (I happen to be the type of person who HATES First Person Shooter games- and DOOM3's engine seems to have taken over 95% of the gaming industry).
Slashdot Mirror
No need for that. As a programmer for the State of Oregon, I completely agree that people are the problem with government, which is why my little sub-department (Central Services, Information Services, Transportation Application Development) is incredibly busy attempting to replace as many people as possible with expert systems. The really neat thing about this is that the one most frustrating segment of people in government (bureaucrats) are the easiest people to replace with software; all you need to do is interpret the law and translate it to C#, ASP.NET, or some other technology that allows the public to access the data and get the proper answers.
And, in fact, as the man who got the overdose of truth serum in Life, The Universe, and Everything admitted, the question and the answer are mutually exclusive. The correct question, and the correct answer, cannot coexist in the same universe.
I have the illustrated version of the first book, complete with the African Zaphod pictures (in complete contrast to the text, which describes Zaphod as a kind of a double-above-the-waste-Blond-Greek-God), which I plan to introduce to my son when he's old enough to read it.
I just hope that after they publish part 3 of the article, Ian releases .MP3s of the original cassettes of the interview, which are likely entirely different.
I don't understand why making it portable would double the power consumption.
Your TIVO doesn't have a built in screen, is my guess- backlight on that LCD could double the power consumption.
I'm a bit of a luddite and not really a nerd (I don't code, don't like sci-fi, not a gadget nut, etc.)
What the heck are you doing on slashdot? You sound like my father in law- who has yet to allow his second wife to have internet in the house because he's heard all these news reports about how computers cause viruses.....
I'm not sure why DirecTV is offering this solution when it's apparent that their standard dishes can be used by these types of campers w/o much issue.
My guess- is that they're really going for the Yurt/Kamping Kabin set. You know, the kind of high tech people who pack the laptop, a BBQ Grill, and this box into a Prius, rent some rustic cabin or Yurt at a KOA or a State Park and pretend to be "Camping" just because they have to walk more than 20 feet to the communal bathhouse.
It's a state in southern Mexcio with a Mayan name that many people have different ways of spelling. Also known as Oxcaca and a bunch of other derivations, since the natives have never adopted either phonetic writing or Spanish, we'll probably never know the truth. It's been devistated by free trade agreements, with most of the farmers being forced off of their land due to a total crash in corn prices, then forced northwards to work illegally due to the following rise in American corn prices due to ethanol.
ahh yes MH42 ..i take it your hatred of foreigners has reduced, so now you are OK with them staying alive as long as they don't come here? What happened to your call for the genocide of about 5.99 billion people who you are sure are innately evil capitalists (except for the 10 million "good" people who are so damn good that they want to murder the rest for merely being inconvenienced)?
Hmm- me thinks you have that assbackwards....I WAS for the genocide of the 1 billion to save the 6 billion (the 10 million + all of their friends and family) before the insane immigration policies in the United States allowed a portion of that 10 million to come across the Mexico border, carring suitcase nukes and God only knows what else. Right now, Bush has so screwed up being Commander in Chief that the only real way out is for the entire United States to Convert to Islam, give up on both Marx and Capitalism, and adopt the form of economics that is written into Shariah Law (where you depend on the good and glorious Caliph's mercy for the food on your table).
But construction paper requires trees. What do you want them to do, cut down the rainforest?
And best of all- Oxcala families now have good reason to work in American-owned factories instead of migrating north to work on American farms, because their kids now have a better chance of getting a good education in Mexico than in the Luddite United States where they still use low-tech chalkboards!
It means you (the "Personal Computer user") have to put more paper in the Letter Tray. It's companion error is "PC Load Legal".
Look, US based companies are at a tax disadvantage. They pay taxes on profits earned here and abroad while foreign based companies don't.
No they don't- they simply bank that money in the Caymans and don't pay taxes on it at all.
I was under the impression that the government was supposed to be responsible for education? What, its not? Oh, thats right, when you can villify a corporation its best to do so, regardless if it doesn't make a bit of sense.
Who is the government? It's just a puppet of the corporations to begin with. EVERY politician elected in the last 100 years has had their campaigns financed by corporations. Doesn't matter who you vote for; they've both already been bought and paid for.
Profits? Wow how dare they. Look, they make profits to pay for their expansion and research. Don't try and tell me that these companies are not pouring a sizeable percentage of their profits back into their business. If they don't they get supplanted by those who do or have to buy those who do. Worse they get bought by others.
Actually, if they were doing that, I'd be cheering them on. But the fact that DENMARK of all places has surpassed us in R&D shows this to be a lie as well.
We have had decades of politicians successfully embedding the idea that corporations are some kind of mad evil organization to be reviled when they make money. They point to profits but never the margin as is famously done with oil companies. They point out the millions made and such all the while hoping you don't see all the taxpayer money they waste buying votes by building bridges to nowhere and research butterfly diseases.
Except for the fact that every one of those politicians has already been bought & paid for by the corporations. Who do you think fronts all that money for campaign financing?
Don't go putting the blame elsewhere. The blame starts with us. We elect politicians who don't do what we want them to do and we just reelect them. Worse many elect politicians not based on their ideas to improve society but instead on "what they can do for me", "who they can take money from because its unfair someone has more", "whom they can make laws against because they don't think like me", or far worse, which political party they are.
Doesn't matter- every name that is able to get on the ballot has already been bought & paid for. Usually by the same set of people.
It isn't the corporation that is responsible for the US slowly sinking in technology. Its the people of this country who no longer hold themselves or their government accountable. They want freedom but only so much, it usually stops when it gets hard then they run to the government to "make it alright". Build in a flood zone and get flooded, well the government can pay. Can't sell your art because it sucks, well the government can make those ignorant savages pay for it. Someone makes too much money, well the government should step in make them "contribute a fair share".
Building in a flood zone- that's shipping for you. There's a reason New Orleans was so large- and it had NOTHING to do with Mardi Gras, and everything to do with Wal*Mart importing from China. Wake up and smell the plastic....
Damn, its this reliance on government that is our failing, not some damn CEO of a company most of us will never interact with except maybe through our 401Ks.
Or through your paycheck. After all, Profit is just unpaid wages.
Do you fear stepping outside for fear of being hit by a meteorite? Ok. Yeah, we don't have an infinite supply of energy (although actually we do, I won't get into it). Anyway a system that can be projected to work for ..say .. 5000 years into the future is fine for me. Because I know that by that time, we'll have explored the solar system and found ways to harness the sun's energy ..figured out fusion (without knowing any physics whatsoever you have made up your mind this is impossible to do) .. etc. As you know the sun is going to last for at least another 10,000 years.
Uh, you do know solar energy is not exactly energy dense, right? Even a Dyson Sphere has it's limits- even I know enough physics to know that sunlight is only 400 w/m^2. Solar isn't even enough to completely replace current American usage even if you covered the entire world in 100% efficient solar panels. Where I do support ambient energy usage wherever possible, you're still in fantasyland if you think this is sufficient for a population of 7 billion living at the same standard as the United States. The problem isn't the amount of silicon and iron- it's the sheer amount of space you'd need.
Given the inflation rate- those numbers seem about right. But when you adjust for inflation AND population, they're lower than what was spent in the 1970s and 1980s. You've got to go back a whole lot further than 2001 to see the full trend in the United States- you've got to go back before Reagan's tax revolt at least, and perhaps back to Kennedy's. The current crop of graduating Bachelor's degree holders don't remember a time when education was a priority and the United States was working hard to beat out the Soviets technologically- they're too young, their entire period of schooling has been under tax evasion from corporations.
MH42, aren't you the same guy that was about a month ago saying that we shouldn't have a prosperous economy with a high quality of life and that we should live in third world dollar-a-day standards?
Actually, I'm for four completely different economic systems- three of which would require a massive shift in the market. That doesn't neccessarily mean that I approve of companies using resources that were created by government and then refusing to pay for those resources.
Basically you got driven into a corner where it was proven that it was in fact very possible under free trade to have a global healthy economy where everyone minimally has a decent quality of life.. and then you claimed that would be an environmental disaster (without any proof btw).
Well, the lack of an infinite supply of energy would be one piece of evidence for that. But don't let me stop your fantasy of everybody being able to live like we do in the first world. I also fail to see what that has to do with corporations failing to pay for the education of the skilled workforce that they consume as one of their primary inputs.
As a typical marxist-slavist you stand for forcefully preventing people from exchanging goods and services to one an another as they choose.
Especially if that choice is the direct evasion of costs of creating those goods and services, so I guess this counts, doesn't it?
Guess I really should have checked that link for the old man in a cave
No matter the naysaying on slashdot, the United States of America is still the mightiest, richest, most powerful, most influential nation in the world. So I guess we're doing something right.
Yeah, right. Our military can't even find one crazy old man suffering from kidney failure in a cave. Remind me again how powerful we are?
So let me get this straight. You're blaming failed State controlled education on corporations? Hmm, makes sense to me.
Actually, I'm blaming failing state controled services IN ALL ARENAS on corporations not paying for the services they use. Education of workers should be a primary value of any long range thinking company that needs skilled workers- yet for the past 20 years we've had a tax revolt removing money from the schools and making sure corporations pay a significantly lower percentage than they did in the 1950s. Education is just the most visible. Crime is second. But as a state worker working for Oregon Department of Transportation- I have to say roads and shipping are not far behind.
A fall takes time- the tax revolts didn't start until the late 1980s. 20 years is just about right.
Interesting that the link seems to claim exactly the opposite that you're stating- so which is it? Are we growing jobs in a variety of sectors, roughly half above and half below the average wage? Or if we lose our technology lead, will we end up doing each other's laundry (only having service jobs paying far below $15/hr)? Me, I'm in the second camp with what you're apparently saying in this message, but the link throws me off on what you are saying.
When a society decides that corporations are priviledged citizens, corporations decide that profit and Tax Evasion matter more than Education, how can the country NOT fall behind in technology?
It's not just a lack of code reuse but also a lack of automated testing. After being at Atari for six years as a lead tester, a lot of job interviewers were amazed when I told them that I had no automated testing experience since video games weren't designed that way. It's manual testing all the way. You turn on the console or PC, play the game from beginning to end, and see what crashes or looks ugly.
I've had a lot of experience with automated testing of UIs- I'm a business programmer- and I've got to say, I'm quite underwhelmed with the concept. A good human tester will test things that no automated test programmer ever thought to test.
Having said that- I find it hard to believe that the game industry suffers from a lack of good manual testers; you'd think there'd be a certain class of geeks who would pay to have that job.
There might be. Though I thought the more common method was to dope with your own blood (store a pint away on a non-training day, for re-infusion the day of the race)?
Even wrong can be interesting. I've learned a lot from this thread- turns out code reuse isn't as prevelant in the gaming industry as it appeared to be to me (I happen to be the type of person who HATES First Person Shooter games- and DOOM3's engine seems to have taken over 95% of the gaming industry).