Late getting in here, but the way to save it is to generate a net alternative Epi3 and have it out BEFORE Lucas' version. Rip the special effects out of the other movies and computer games and don't worry that the parts don't all look the same - focus on plot, characters, dialog, etc. Make it "open source" - anyone can get it and tweak it. There'll be a hundred stupid paradies and a dozen decent alternative plot variations by the time the "real" Epi3 comes out. Then the Epi3 footage will be pirated and edited to put a higher gloss on the best of the FanFiction movies.
>Since 1983, GDP in real terms has only increased by about 18%
Odd - a table I google up says US GDP in 1983 was about $5.5Trillion, vs about $10Trillion today. That's an 82% gain, not 18%.
>production is MOVING not dramatically INCREASING.
While developed nations like the US saw about 2.5x increase in GDP from 1970-2002, China and other rapidly developing nations saw about 9x increase. Doesn't sound like a zero-sum game to me.
In case you're wondering, no, the less developed nations did not pay the price - generally their GDPs (only) about doubled from 1970 to 2002, and were pretty much insignificant compared to the GDPs of the developed and developing nations.
The problem is that there is so much real world evidence against your position. As a previous poster pointed out, a lot of money flows into a country via the exploited workers' wages, making the country wealthier. Within about 20 years of a new country being "exploited" by capitalism, the exploited country is vastly better off economically - not just the owners, but the workers as well.
Is that because the corporations are a bunch of generous guys? No, of course not - they're paying the least they think they can get away with. But economics - including the collective bargaining power of unions, but hardly dominated by it - forces them to pay better wages. Meanwhile the costs of goods and services produced fall due both to the cheap labor AND the productive multiplier effect of automation. The whole world, including the exploited country, benefits from that.
Free market believers don't do this. Some people who claim to be for free markets do, but those peole are self-serving hypocrits. But lumping all free-market advocates into that category is incorrect as well.
On the other hand, free market advocates DO defend the right of workers to NOT join unions if they so choose.
I agree - I've been doing this pretty consistently (to the dismay of the grammatically constipated) for about 25 years now. I'm not going to inflate my writing with "he or she" or "his or her" or some nonsense word like "s/he" when I can use a perfectly functional and commonly understood "they" or "their".
If someone doesn't like it, they can go stick their head in a lake.
The publishing industry needs to wake up and realize it is providing a service, not selling products.
I'm not buying until they get a universal standard DRM - none of this proprietary stuff - that lets me access any 'content' on any device upon which it can be presented (home PC, work PC, car stereo, beach via a portable player, etc) more easily than with a CD or DVD.
I want to read a bit of an ebook off my PC screen, click once to buy it, pick up my handheld reader and find the book already on screen ready to read, jump in my car and have my car stereo read on from where I left off, get to the beach and have it come up on my black-out videoshades as I lie in the sun.
Now THAT I'd pay money for, because they're providing me SERVICE. Content? That's just something they pay people to produce to make their service desirable.
Why not satisfy him once and for all and rename it to "LiGNUx" - but keep the same pronunciation?
OK - haha - but seriously, do we have to keep hearing this issue over and over? Obviously Stallman deserves a big credit, and the form he prefers is to insure that GNU is not overlooked in the naming of Linux.
So - henceforth - "Lignux - the g is silent".
To you it sounds pointless and silly and wastefully kludgy. The same sort of snide remarks were made about graphical displays and color monitors and mice. Such attitudes overlooked that people LIKED working with computers that had those features.
The proposal is not a data retrieval system - it's a memory retrieval system. And it isn't oriented to bringing up that memo you wrote last week - it's to bring back your images of your wedding or vacation of 20 years ago.
And just a data point - my wife think's it's a cool idea. So maybe this is one of those things that women will understand and want more than men. (You know - women - those odd creatures that press flowers, save invitations from weddings, make shadow boxes, save children's teeth, etc? A digital memory box may very well be a highly desirable consumer product.)
This sort of nonsense could be prevented if the monopolies on broadband internet to the home were broken. It's the monopoly attitude that defines customers as enemies that need to be regulated by law in order to protect the service.
A non-monopolized wireless service seems like the way to go - multiple ISPs competing to carry your data. But existing broadband ISPs are not likely to impose such a network on themselves.
Perhaps 802.11a and some software could be used to hack together a network. It'd have to be really easy for any Joe Consumer to install it. And it'd need to have a utilitarian as well as political justification - perhaps position it as a backup network, for when one's main internet service goes down. The small phone ISPs who are getting frozen out by cable and DSL service could provide the first ISPs for the network.
Obviously the monopolists would fight back - trying to regulate the wireless service out of existence. But since they aren't providing the wireless service, nor does it interfere with their services, it'd be more obvious to lawmakers what they're up to.
On the positive side
on
Droning On
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Drone craft ought to cut shipping costs and times.
Eventually they would reduce the cost (and risk) of human flight.
For extra safety, provide human monitoring of take-off and landing. Not remote control - just the ability to tell a drone that it is doing something stupid and needs to take evasive action, abort a landing, etc.
Full remote control should be rare - e.g give the drone a one-use key that a ground controller has to request from a high security facility in order to take control.
... Microsoft can integrate the feature into Outlook (as can other email software packages), so a fee-based service really isn't needed.
Just make the Turing-test generator a plug-in, and if SPAM starts to get bad again, frustrated hackers will generate new harder tests and distribute them for free.
It will not eliminate spam - just increase the costs, so that spammers change to using more focused mailing lists. Still, it should mean a great reduction in the volume of SPAM.
Slashdot Mirror
Late getting in here, but the way to save it is to generate a net alternative Epi3 and have it out BEFORE Lucas' version. Rip the special effects out of the other movies and computer games and don't worry that the parts don't all look the same - focus on plot, characters, dialog, etc. Make it "open source" - anyone can get it and tweak it. There'll be a hundred stupid paradies and a dozen decent alternative plot variations by the time the "real" Epi3 comes out. Then the Epi3 footage will be pirated and edited to put a higher gloss on the best of the FanFiction movies.
I wonder if the humidity is high enough that a bit of ice might accumulate outside around the hole?
>Since 1983, GDP in real terms has only increased by about 18%
Odd - a table I google up says US GDP in 1983 was about $5.5Trillion, vs about $10Trillion today. That's an 82% gain, not 18%.
>production is MOVING not dramatically INCREASING.
While developed nations like the US saw about 2.5x increase in GDP from 1970-2002, China and other rapidly developing nations saw about 9x increase. Doesn't sound like a zero-sum game to me.
In case you're wondering, no, the less developed nations did not pay the price - generally their GDPs (only) about doubled from 1970 to 2002, and were pretty much insignificant compared to the GDPs of the developed and developing nations.
The problem is that there is so much real world evidence against your position. As a previous poster pointed out, a lot of money flows into a country via the exploited workers' wages, making the country wealthier. Within about 20 years of a new country being "exploited" by capitalism, the exploited country is vastly better off economically - not just the owners, but the workers as well.
Is that because the corporations are a bunch of generous guys? No, of course not - they're paying the least they think they can get away with. But economics - including the collective bargaining power of unions, but hardly dominated by it - forces them to pay better wages. Meanwhile the costs of goods and services produced fall due both to the cheap labor AND the productive multiplier effect of automation. The whole world, including the exploited country, benefits from that.
Free market believers don't do this. Some people who claim to be for free markets do, but those peole are self-serving hypocrits. But lumping all free-market advocates into that category is incorrect as well.
On the other hand, free market advocates DO defend the right of workers to NOT join unions if they so choose.
when it can wash and fold the clothes and put them away.
I agree - I've been doing this pretty consistently (to the dismay of the grammatically constipated) for about 25 years now. I'm not going to inflate my writing with "he or she" or "his or her" or some nonsense word like "s/he" when I can use a perfectly functional and commonly understood "they" or "their".
If someone doesn't like it, they can go stick their head in a lake.
Exactly right - Slashdot the spammers.
The publishing industry needs to wake up and realize it is providing a service, not selling products.
I'm not buying until they get a universal standard DRM - none of this proprietary stuff - that lets me access any 'content' on any device upon which it can be presented (home PC, work PC, car stereo, beach via a portable player, etc) more easily than with a CD or DVD.
I want to read a bit of an ebook off my PC screen, click once to buy it, pick up my handheld reader and find the book already on screen ready to read, jump in my car and have my car stereo read on from where I left off, get to the beach and have it come up on my black-out videoshades as I lie in the sun.
Now THAT I'd pay money for, because they're providing me SERVICE. Content? That's just something they pay people to produce to make their service desirable.
Why not satisfy him once and for all and rename it to "LiGNUx" - but keep the same pronunciation? OK - haha - but seriously, do we have to keep hearing this issue over and over? Obviously Stallman deserves a big credit, and the form he prefers is to insure that GNU is not overlooked in the naming of Linux. So - henceforth - "Lignux - the g is silent".
Those of you being snide need to think again.
To you it sounds pointless and silly and wastefully kludgy. The same sort of snide remarks were made about graphical displays and color monitors and mice. Such attitudes overlooked that people LIKED working with computers that had those features.
The proposal is not a data retrieval system - it's a memory retrieval system. And it isn't oriented to bringing up that memo you wrote last week - it's to bring back your images of your wedding or vacation of 20 years ago. And just a data point - my wife think's it's a cool idea. So maybe this is one of those things that women will understand and want more than men. (You know - women - those odd creatures that press flowers, save invitations from weddings, make shadow boxes, save children's teeth, etc? A digital memory box may very well be a highly desirable consumer product.)
This sort of nonsense could be prevented if the monopolies on broadband internet to the home were broken. It's the monopoly attitude that defines customers as enemies that need to be regulated by law in order to protect the service.
A non-monopolized wireless service seems like the way to go - multiple ISPs competing to carry your data. But existing broadband ISPs are not likely to impose such a network on themselves.
Perhaps 802.11a and some software could be used to hack together a network. It'd have to be really easy for any Joe Consumer to install it. And it'd need to have a utilitarian as well as political justification - perhaps position it as a backup network, for when one's main internet service goes down. The small phone ISPs who are getting frozen out by cable and DSL service could provide the first ISPs for the network.
Obviously the monopolists would fight back - trying to regulate the wireless service out of existence. But since they aren't providing the wireless service, nor does it interfere with their services, it'd be more obvious to lawmakers what they're up to.
Drone craft ought to cut shipping costs and times.
Eventually they would reduce the cost (and risk) of human flight.
For extra safety, provide human monitoring of take-off and landing. Not remote control - just the ability to tell a drone that it is doing something stupid and needs to take evasive action, abort a landing, etc.
Full remote control should be rare - e.g give the drone a one-use key that a ground controller has to request from a high security facility in order to take control.
... Microsoft can integrate the feature into Outlook (as can other email software packages), so a fee-based service really isn't needed. Just make the Turing-test generator a plug-in, and if SPAM starts to get bad again, frustrated hackers will generate new harder tests and distribute them for free. It will not eliminate spam - just increase the costs, so that spammers change to using more focused mailing lists. Still, it should mean a great reduction in the volume of SPAM.