Well, my personal situation provides a good illustration. I live in the Middle East, and it has not rained on my house in almost 500 days. Yet I get, on average, 25+ liters every day from every window unit. The lesson here is that desert climates can still be very humid.
Besides, population density (and poverty) coincide quite handily with humidity, if you bother to actually examine the issue. Hundreds of millions of destitute people in Africa and Asia live in areas where it is hot and humid most of the time. There are, of course, many others who live in arid climates, but in general the population density is much lower in, say, the Sahara Desert than in, say, rural Bangladesh where it is miserably humid much of time time.
Furthermore, the issue is not just water, but clean water.
Water from condensation is clean. Even in places with high amounts of rainfall, such as southeast Asia, suffer from a lack of potable water due to inconsistent supply and lack of expensive local catchment infrastructure. What we see far more often are massive catchment infrastructure like recharge dams (which recharge aquifers and, hence, wells) and use of poluted river or runoff water.
I've had an idea for a while for a solar-powered water condensor. The condensation run off from the window-unit air conditioners in my house generate about 100 liters every 24 hours. Granted, the compressors and fans use a lot of power, but I figure that you could have a big solar panel - maybe 3 or 4 square meters - on top of a 10 foot pole so kids wouldn't mess with it, and you could get several hundred watts out of it. Relatively cheap to make, simple to run, and I've seen these window units run for years without maintenance. Seems like it'd be quite doable, and with a lot less complexity and potential to wear or break than a boiler-driven generator like what Segway Boy has in mind.
Broadband is like money. Anyone who says it isn't important has never had enough of it.
If you've had access to a connection with real bandwidth - something like the 1Gbit connections you get in good university computer labs - then you know what the internet can really be like: every loads instantly, videos play with no buffering or delay, 10Mb downloads take a couple of seconds, latency for gaming hovers around 20ms, and so on. But if all you've had is Earthlink or AOL DSL (which is NOT always on, but instead basically dials up via PPPOE on demand), then you've never really experienced broadband at all.
I cannot sit idly by while someone talks up the merits of Shaun of the Dead. That has to be one of the most overhyped and overrated pieces of drivel to make it into cinema in recent years. It attempted to be a camp low-budget horror film and a brit comedy at the same time, and failed miserably at both. wooden performances, crap pacing, positively abysmal dialogue (especially for a British film) and low marks on every other aspect of film-making from lighting to editing made the experience not just disappointing but laughably bad. I've seen much better student film projects.
In fact, that's what Shaun of the Dead felt like - a failed student film. The entire thing rang false and contrived on every note. Every dialogue joke tanked, every bit of stage humor fell flat, every scene with emotional intensity rang false. Utter, utter shite. I simply cannot comprehend its blockbuster success over a hundred other far superior indy British comedies made in recent years.
I'm no phsycist, and everytime I read A Brief History of Time I coming away feeling like I understand relativity and time dilation, and of course I don't. But some things strikes me as being absent from the explanations in this thread.
The only example I've read about in books like Hawking's is where one astronaut leves earth at the speed of light and then returns. First off, he began at a common point of reference from the obersver at home, but as he travels that point of reference changes. Second, he has to accelerate up to speed and then back down when he returns.
The weapons scenarios are different. There is no mention of acceleration. So if we assume that there is a constant closing velocity between observer (A) and observed (B) of 0.9 c, with no acceleration, why would time appear to pass differently for either A or B? From both view points, with no other common points of reference (an important qualifier), each party could claim to be at rest, or doing some or all of the moving - in which case it doesn't make sense for one to age at a different rate than the other, because there is no way for them to agree on whose point of reference is correct.
Now I thought that THAT is relativity : their viewpoints only different if there in what they perceive when they look at what a THIRD party is doing
Anyway, please feel free to set me straight on this, because as I said I don't really understand it!
Faith in Google is misplaced. Google is now a publically traded company, meaning it is owned by shareholders and ruled by the bottom line. Translation: you can kiss the precious "Do No Harm" clause from their mission statement goodbye.
Hmmm, let's see... storing all user info in a searchable database on Google's servers (including all documents on users' computers if Google Desktop has its way) is in the best interest of:
a) The users, who pay nothing;
b) The advertisers that have made Google a $150 billion company;
Wow, that wikipedia article about clusters is really informative. Thanks to whoever posted it.
Yeah, I figured it wouldn't be practical for things like gaming, but for example I have database crunching stuff for the stock market that takes quite a while (few minutes) to process, and I often split it up manually between laptop and desktop to save time, but it is a pain in the ass. For things like video rendering, ripping audio and video, and that kind of thing this could be useful - and I guess that's exactly why big companies use clusters.
Well, at least now I know what Lucas is talking about when he refers to the ILM render farm! Sorry to waste everyone's time...
OK, I'm not a computer guy, but here's an idea - it's probably not new, but even so it may be worth thinking about:
What about having the network augment the user's computer? I mean, there are a lot of idle CPUs out there, right? What if your apps were designed to run on your own system just fine, but could tap into free CPU time as needed, SETI@home-style?
Now even to a non-computer person like me, security is obviously an issue here, but it seems like this could work pretty well on a company's in-house network, or over a LAN in your house, or whatever. Assuming the bandwidth was there in the network connections and the software could support it, couldn't you sort of turn your desktop and laptop into a dual-CPU machine - at least partly anyway?
And what about all those idle GPUs out there? They could be put to use in the same way too.
OK kids, one more ride because I simply can't resist, but after this we're really done.
they simply can't afford to sustain the financial burden of employing a US workforce. You can thank the unions for that, BTW.
Ah, so that's why GM destroyed Flint by outsourcing all those tens of thousands of jobs to Mexico. Except that there's this one minor detail you omitted from the story, called 'record profits'.
The most obvious fact of all is that socialism results in poverty.
That is correct. It is also irrelevant. Unless, of course, by mentioning this obvious fact you mean to imply I am a commie for thinking it is immoral, unethical, and just plain evil for anyone to exploit child labor and sweatshops anywhere in the world for any reason, even in countries full of poor brown people that aren't currently enjoying the benefits of a 'booming economy' (I know, I know, they just need more Fords and Rockefellers. The Phillipines only has 4 billionaires - if only it had a few more, good ol' trickle-down would take care of everything. The fact that they have rampant corruption and zero human rights or labor regulation has nothing to do with it...).
Speaking of trickle-down, I am reminded of how well that all worked out in the past - say, South Carolina circa 1825. Just how much benefit was trickling down to those slaves and indentured servants in that 'booming economy' I wonder, what with all the competition amongst companies and land owners to see who could pay the highest wages? You see, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that when you keep poor people in poverty with slave wages then they can't exert any buyer power (or any other kind of power) over you, and that is an awfully nice position to be in. Oh, and I forgot, when the slaves were emancipated and when child labor was abolished, well, the US economy went straight into the toilet, didn't it?
You, like so many others, buy into the entire argument that capitalism is somehow a brand new idea, but the truth is that there have been capitalists as long as there has been currency. The reason why capitalism is so successful in modern society is because it is tempered by democracy and regulation. Without those moderating influences, you simply have mercantalism, feudalism, and serfdom; you get the Phillipines or Yemen where you have a few billionaires and a hundred million men, women, and children struggling to earn a couple dollars a day. But if you'd experienced any of this firsthand instead of being an armchair philosopher whose never been outside of America, I wouldn't need to explain it to you using such small words.
Competition for labor is what raised prices, eh? Well, of course, silly me! Obviously employers are simply crawling all over one another in competition to see who can pay their workers the highest wages! The market is so magically ethical and just, regulation like minimum wage is just there for show - all we really need are more saints like Ford and Rockefeller!
I was going to ask you to help clarify why, to take just one recent example, GM moved 50,000 jobs to Mexico when they had a perfectly good black ghetto in Detroit to supply them with child labor, but it all makes sense now that you've enlightened me - how our pure and just corporations and their exalted leaders always Do the Right Thing, how sweatshops, child labor and slavery are OK for those noble corporations to exploit just so long as they are legal in someone else's backyard. Come to think of it, I'm glad our great companies are fighting the evils of regulation like minimum wage, overtime, workplace safety, and child labor by decimating communities at home with massive layoffs and taking their investment capital to places where people really know how to do business, like Manila and Jakarta.
We're done. I'm finished stating facts that are obvious to any thinking person. The truth has pwned you utterly without any of my help at all.
the reason why people move from subsistence farming to factory jobs, is because the jobs are in fact better than what they leave behind
Of course...Now why didn't that occur to me? Maybe because it's a pile of pure steaming bullshit, just like the rest of your tired and busted fundie argument. Of course people in Brazil, Guatemala, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and dozens of other countries cheerfully forfeit land that has been in their families for centuries in order to go work in sweatshops. It has certainly has nothing to with state-sanctioned industrialization of agriculture by multinational corporations...
If people were being forced to work in the factories, you'd have a point, but that practice is mostly confined to the Socialist Workers' Paradises of China and North Korea.
Wow, you've nailed it yet again. Sweatshops are only a bad thing if you literally chain the kids to their work tables! If it's just a matter of people being so desperately poor that they have no other options and there are no government regulations to protect them from extortion, huzzah! But wait a minute... we no longer tolerate them in western countries... I wonder why that could be? Oh, I forgot, you addressed that too: investment in machinery and automation made labor more efficient, and then all our Noble Corporations voluntarily abandoned their practices of paying people $1 a day for 16 hour days in favor of minimum wage and overtime! Silly me! It had nothing to do with collective bargaining power imposing regulation upon industry.
Christ, you do such a good job of making my 'brainwashed' case for me, I don't know why I bother.
I don't believe you because I'm an anthropologist who has lived and worked in developing countries for more than a decade, and yours is the tired and busted argument of every republican economist since the first world war, the same rationalization used by rich businessmen back through southern plantation owners to the landed gentry of feudal Europe and beyond.
Here's a summary of your argument: "It's better to have a terrible job than no job at all; therefore, these people are lucky; and just look at them - they are proud to work for our great, rich companies."
The reason why that is a load of shite is that we had the same situation at home from before the industrial revolution to the beginning of the 20th Century. Collective bargaining power - what we call unions - are what got rid of child labor and sweatshops in western countries. Before that, child labor was prevalent, along with indentured servitude and slavery. The republican idiots of the time used exactly the same argument you're using (stop me if this sounds familiar):
"It's better to have a terrible job than no job at all; therefore, these people are lucky; and just look at them - they are proud to work for our great, rich companies."
You've been brainwashed. The propaganda engine now in support of global free trade is fuelled by the same wealthy elite that owned slaves 200 years ago. It's obviously working, otherwise no person with a functioning brain would fail to see that the horrendous conditions of a totally unregulated and lawless 'free' global labor market are precisely what workers in western countries have fought so hard for over 100 years to overcome at home, let alone sing the same sad song of excuses and rationalization.
I certainly agree with you that what you call 'contest' style compensation is ineffective at best, and immoral and unethical at worst. Take it to the most macroscopic scale: the labor market worldwide. Workers in Bangladesh and the Phillipines are in 'contest' (ie: free-market competition) with workers in the US and Europe, and like you said, it's a brilliant scheme for the corporations who get to pay the lowest possible wages to those who have the highest productivity (productivity here meaning 10-year-old kids working 16 hour days in sweatshops).
Within our own countries, labor laws and unions product workers from such abuses - and I'm guessing you could have easily taken your case to a union with the possibility that you employer's practices were downright unlawful. But international law makes no such concessions, instead favoring the holy grail of 'free trade' and 'free markets', including of course the totally unregulated labor market.
What Apple is doing is quite different. They are showing genuinely generous appreciation for what is an entirely voluntary effort, and they are certainly under no obligation to do so. Comparing the two situations is comparing apples to oranges (pun fully intended).
Faith in Google is misplaced. Google is now a publically traded company, meaning it is owned by shareholders and ruled by the bottom line. Translation: you can kiss the precious "Do No Harm" clause from their mission statement goodbye.
Hmmm, let's see: storing searchable copies of all the documents belonging to every user on Google's servers is in the best interest of: a) The users, who pay nothing; b) The advertisers that have made Google a $150 billion company; c) The shareholders; d) The CIA and NSA.
You put your finger right on it. Leave science alone except for those parts which you want to change. Anyone with a functioning brain can see right through that crap.
It's the same as what's happening with the ridiculous uproar over the cartoons poking fun at Islam. People like the fundy in the parent comment say things that, superficially, sound reasonable, like, "free speech is a big responsibility and you can't use it to offend others." Well who defines what is offensive? Who are 'others'?
Translation: you're free to say anything, except for those things which you are not free to say. It's asinine. That's like saying you have freedom of religion, except that you can't practice paganism. Or wicca. Or Shintoism.
It's Henry Ford's freedom of choice: you can have any color you like, as long as it's black.
Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite whose life cycle seems to revolve mostly around cats, but it has the ability to affect other mammals as well, including otters and humans, according to the current wikipedia entry. I remembered reading a while back that this parasite alters human behavior by creating tiny cysts in brain tissue. Well, anyway, here's the behavior-altering section from wikipedia:
"Toxoplasma is one of a number of parasites which require alteration of host's behaviour for their life cycle[1]. The changes observed are likely due to the presence of cysts in the brain, which produce or induce production of a neurotransmitter, possibly dopamine[2], therefore acting similarly to dopamine reuptake inhibitor type antidepressants.
A slightly increased car accident rate, and reaction time slowed by a few percent have been observed (specifically, the infected lose concentration more quickly than the controls in the second and third minute)[3]. "If our data are true then about a million people a year die just because they are infected with toxoplasma," the researcher Jaroslav Flegr told The Guardian[4]. The data shows that the risk decreases with time after infection, however all older drivers are generally able to compensate for longer reaction time[5]. Ruth Gilbert, medical coordinator of the European Multicentre Study on Congenital Toxoplasmosis, told BBC News Online these findings could be due to chance, or due to social and cultural factors associated with toxoplasma infection[6].
Studies argue about the influence of the parasite on personality. There are claims of toxoplasma causing antisocial attitude in men and promiscuity[7] (or even signs of higher intelligence[8]) in women, and greater susceptibility to schizophrenia and manic depression[9] in all infected persons. A review of research focused on the schizophrenia connection confirms an association but does not confirm a causal relationship [10]."
Maybe women like cats because their toxoplasmosis infections make them smarter! Or maybe it's just because women can identify with creatures that are obsessed with their appearance, are impossible to understand, predict, or order around, and look down their nose in scorn at all of the huffing and panting and howling and slobbering we direct at them...
I think a lot of educated people take the entire fundie/theist/ID issue too literally.
First, the majority of people do not understand evolution by natural selection. As a result, most people are hesitant to put all of their chips in evolution's corner when the apparent consequences (burning in eternal hellfire) are so severe. Most people opt out of evolution because they subconsciously view that course as the safe bet. If they turn out to be wrong, so what? No consquences. But if it turns out the Bible bashers have it right, well, the idea of burning in hell forever kind of sucks.
Second, the swell in support for orthodox and conservative theism has very little to do with the facts on either side of the debate. It merely has to do with sides. People are tribal. People are not analyzing all of the available data and drawing the most logical conclusions, they are simply picking sides and defending their camp come hell or high water (pun fully intended). A recent study in the news (source, anyone?) said that the parts of the brain responsible for rational thought shut off when people are defending their 'side' - in this case it was political, but the point is made just the same.
Third, recognize religion for what it is: the opiate of the masses. That really does say it all. Religion provides a security blanket for people who are more concerned with comfort than with truth. The truth is that we evolve from amino acids, none of the details in any orthodox religion's doctrine could be considered accurate or correct by any stretch of the imagination, and there is certainly no bearded-guy-in-the-clouds-who-smites-sinners-God (or angels, demons, fairies, elves, or anything else supernatural) actively participating in our physical reality. It is also true that it is impossible to prove the negative corollory that some sort of entity did not create the cosmos, or that the cosmos does not have some purpose, because the assumptions involved (like the flow of time, cause and effect, etc) render definitions useless, making strict atheism a similarly baseless belief. The truth is that agnosticism (we don't know one way or the other) is the only view about God which makes any logical sense.
The truth is harsh; it hurts, its awesome and terrifying, and it doesn't give a shit whether you like it or believe it or not. The truth really will set you free (John:23). But people don't want to be free. They want to be safe. That's why we have the PATRIOT act. In short, the truth makes people uncomfortable, and there is definitely a profound movement in modern western society towards the supreme prioritization of comfort above all other considerations.
Lastly, the people that we should really be concerned about are not the people who are uninformed and apathetic - the majority of laymen - but rather the people who ARE inteligent and educated and who nevertheless staunchly defend the right-wing religious agenda. These are people who are so terrified of the truth, that they will do anything to make it go away. These are the Bin Ladens of the world, folks. These are the people who would blindly destroy our plante before accepting the painful truth; who would push the Button and blame/credit God before long before accepting responsibility for their own lives. These people are the problem, and that is where we should be focusing our efforts.
I'll be the first to admit this may be a dumb idea, but what about posting more stories and then modding stories themselves up and down? Good stories with useful links would stay on the main page longer (still in chronological order), whereas those that get modded down could expire sooner and get bumped. If users like the stories, then the invisible hand of market dynamics comes into play and then who cares where they come from.
I suspect introducing a new standard to displace/replace DVD could backfire. As other posters have pointed out, DVD represented a paradigm shift in quality and features beyond VHS and other analog formats. It was revolutionary. HD DVD is more evolutionary. The reason why this might backfire is because the digital nature of media makes computers the ultimate fallback hardware.
Here's what I mean. My old CD players won't play DVDs. My old DVD players won't play DVD-Rs or MP3s. But guess what will play everything? My computer. I finally got around to hooking up my computer to my home theater projector to watch a TV episode I recorded (don't worry, I always buy the box sets when they come out), and I'm hooked. Now I am seriously considering ripping my entire DVD collection so that it is instantly available. No more farting around loading discs, wading through slow menus, and all that crap. As companies like MS and Google push hardware and software that are designed to support every media format, pushing yet another new format on people could encourage them to do what I do but in an illegitimate way: pirate movies and TV and just play them off your computer. If you think of DVD Audio or Super Audio CDs, you have a prior example as an illustration. I don't own any DVD Audio or SACDs, but I've pulled stuff down from the web just to test it out. I didn't hear any difference because I'm not an audiophile, but if all of a sudden there was a shift away from traditional CDs to DVDA or SACDs that made my old ones stop working, I would simply rip everything onto my computer and run it all through my iPod. I can see a lot of this analogy holding for HD-DVD or whatever replaces DVD.
DRM is obviously going to play a critical role in all this. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.
I suspect introducing a new standard to displace/replace DVD could backfire. As other posters have pointed out, DVD represented a paradigm shift in quality and features beyond VHS and other analog formats. It was revolutionary. HD DVD is more evolutionary. The reason why this might backfire is because the digital nature of media makes computers the ultimate fallback hardware.
Here's what I mean. My old CD players won't play DVDs. My old DVD players won't play DVD-Rs or MP3s. But guess what will play everything? My computer. I finally got around to hooking up my computer to my home theater projector to watch a TV episode I recorded (don't worry, I always buy the box sets when they come out). Now I am seriously considering ripping my entire DVD collection so that it is instantly available. No more farting around loading discs, wading through slow menus, and all that crap. As companies like MS and Google push hardware and software that are designed to support every media format, pushing yet another new format on people could encourage them to do what I do but in an illegitimate way: pirate movies and TV and just play them off your computer. If you think of DVD Audio or Super Audio CDs, you have a prior example as an illustration. I don't own any DVD Audio or SACDs, but I've pulled stuff down from the web just to test it out. I didn't hear any difference because I'm not an audiophile, but if all of a sudden there was a shift away from traditional CDs to DVDA or SACDs that made my old ones stop working, I would simply rip everything onto my computer and run it all through my iPod. I can see a lot of this analogy holding for HD-DVD or whatever replaces DVD.
DRM is obviously going to play a critical role in all this. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.
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Besides, population density (and poverty) coincide quite handily with humidity, if you bother to actually examine the issue. Hundreds of millions of destitute people in Africa and Asia live in areas where it is hot and humid most of the time. There are, of course, many others who live in arid climates, but in general the population density is much lower in, say, the Sahara Desert than in, say, rural Bangladesh where it is miserably humid much of time time.
Furthermore, the issue is not just water, but clean water.
Water from condensation is clean. Even in places with high amounts of rainfall, such as southeast Asia, suffer from a lack of potable water due to inconsistent supply and lack of expensive local catchment infrastructure. What we see far more often are massive catchment infrastructure like recharge dams (which recharge aquifers and, hence, wells) and use of poluted river or runoff water.
I've had an idea for a while for a solar-powered water condensor. The condensation run off from the window-unit air conditioners in my house generate about 100 liters every 24 hours. Granted, the compressors and fans use a lot of power, but I figure that you could have a big solar panel - maybe 3 or 4 square meters - on top of a 10 foot pole so kids wouldn't mess with it, and you could get several hundred watts out of it. Relatively cheap to make, simple to run, and I've seen these window units run for years without maintenance. Seems like it'd be quite doable, and with a lot less complexity and potential to wear or break than a boiler-driven generator like what Segway Boy has in mind.
If you've had access to a connection with real bandwidth - something like the 1Gbit connections you get in good university computer labs - then you know what the internet can really be like: every loads instantly, videos play with no buffering or delay, 10Mb downloads take a couple of seconds, latency for gaming hovers around 20ms, and so on. But if all you've had is Earthlink or AOL DSL (which is NOT always on, but instead basically dials up via PPPOE on demand), then you've never really experienced broadband at all.
In fact, that's what Shaun of the Dead felt like - a failed student film. The entire thing rang false and contrived on every note. Every dialogue joke tanked, every bit of stage humor fell flat, every scene with emotional intensity rang false. Utter, utter shite. I simply cannot comprehend its blockbuster success over a hundred other far superior indy British comedies made in recent years.
The only example I've read about in books like Hawking's is where one astronaut leves earth at the speed of light and then returns. First off, he began at a common point of reference from the obersver at home, but as he travels that point of reference changes. Second, he has to accelerate up to speed and then back down when he returns.
The weapons scenarios are different. There is no mention of acceleration. So if we assume that there is a constant closing velocity between observer (A) and observed (B) of 0.9 c, with no acceleration, why would time appear to pass differently for either A or B? From both view points, with no other common points of reference (an important qualifier), each party could claim to be at rest, or doing some or all of the moving - in which case it doesn't make sense for one to age at a different rate than the other, because there is no way for them to agree on whose point of reference is correct.
Now I thought that THAT is relativity : their viewpoints only different if there in what they perceive when they look at what a THIRD party is doing
Anyway, please feel free to set me straight on this, because as I said I don't really understand it!
Huzzah!
Hmmm, let's see ... storing all user info in a searchable database on Google's servers (including all documents on users' computers if Google Desktop has its way) is in the best interest of:
a) The users, who pay nothing;
b) The advertisers that have made Google a $150 billion company;
c) The shareholders;
d) The CIA and NSA.
Do the math people.
Yeah, I figured it wouldn't be practical for things like gaming, but for example I have database crunching stuff for the stock market that takes quite a while (few minutes) to process, and I often split it up manually between laptop and desktop to save time, but it is a pain in the ass. For things like video rendering, ripping audio and video, and that kind of thing this could be useful - and I guess that's exactly why big companies use clusters.
Well, at least now I know what Lucas is talking about when he refers to the ILM render farm! Sorry to waste everyone's time ...
What about having the network augment the user's computer? I mean, there are a lot of idle CPUs out there, right? What if your apps were designed to run on your own system just fine, but could tap into free CPU time as needed, SETI@home-style?
Now even to a non-computer person like me, security is obviously an issue here, but it seems like this could work pretty well on a company's in-house network, or over a LAN in your house, or whatever. Assuming the bandwidth was there in the network connections and the software could support it, couldn't you sort of turn your desktop and laptop into a dual-CPU machine - at least partly anyway?
And what about all those idle GPUs out there? They could be put to use in the same way too.
Just a thought.
I'm from Flint, dumbass.
they simply can't afford to sustain the financial burden of employing a US workforce. You can thank the unions for that, BTW.
Ah, so that's why GM destroyed Flint by outsourcing all those tens of thousands of jobs to Mexico. Except that there's this one minor detail you omitted from the story, called 'record profits'.
The most obvious fact of all is that socialism results in poverty.
That is correct. It is also irrelevant. Unless, of course, by mentioning this obvious fact you mean to imply I am a commie for thinking it is immoral, unethical, and just plain evil for anyone to exploit child labor and sweatshops anywhere in the world for any reason, even in countries full of poor brown people that aren't currently enjoying the benefits of a 'booming economy' (I know, I know, they just need more Fords and Rockefellers. The Phillipines only has 4 billionaires - if only it had a few more, good ol' trickle-down would take care of everything. The fact that they have rampant corruption and zero human rights or labor regulation has nothing to do with it...).
Speaking of trickle-down, I am reminded of how well that all worked out in the past - say, South Carolina circa 1825. Just how much benefit was trickling down to those slaves and indentured servants in that 'booming economy' I wonder, what with all the competition amongst companies and land owners to see who could pay the highest wages? You see, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that when you keep poor people in poverty with slave wages then they can't exert any buyer power (or any other kind of power) over you, and that is an awfully nice position to be in. Oh, and I forgot, when the slaves were emancipated and when child labor was abolished, well, the US economy went straight into the toilet, didn't it?
You, like so many others, buy into the entire argument that capitalism is somehow a brand new idea, but the truth is that there have been capitalists as long as there has been currency. The reason why capitalism is so successful in modern society is because it is tempered by democracy and regulation. Without those moderating influences, you simply have mercantalism, feudalism, and serfdom; you get the Phillipines or Yemen where you have a few billionaires and a hundred million men, women, and children struggling to earn a couple dollars a day. But if you'd experienced any of this firsthand instead of being an armchair philosopher whose never been outside of America, I wouldn't need to explain it to you using such small words.
Now we are really done.
I was going to ask you to help clarify why, to take just one recent example, GM moved 50,000 jobs to Mexico when they had a perfectly good black ghetto in Detroit to supply them with child labor, but it all makes sense now that you've enlightened me - how our pure and just corporations and their exalted leaders always Do the Right Thing, how sweatshops, child labor and slavery are OK for those noble corporations to exploit just so long as they are legal in someone else's backyard. Come to think of it, I'm glad our great companies are fighting the evils of regulation like minimum wage, overtime, workplace safety, and child labor by decimating communities at home with massive layoffs and taking their investment capital to places where people really know how to do business, like Manila and Jakarta.
We're done. I'm finished stating facts that are obvious to any thinking person. The truth has pwned you utterly without any of my help at all.
Of course...Now why didn't that occur to me? Maybe because it's a pile of pure steaming bullshit, just like the rest of your tired and busted fundie argument. Of course people in Brazil, Guatemala, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and dozens of other countries cheerfully forfeit land that has been in their families for centuries in order to go work in sweatshops. It has certainly has nothing to with state-sanctioned industrialization of agriculture by multinational corporations...
If people were being forced to work in the factories, you'd have a point, but that practice is mostly confined to the Socialist Workers' Paradises of China and North Korea.
Wow, you've nailed it yet again. Sweatshops are only a bad thing if you literally chain the kids to their work tables! If it's just a matter of people being so desperately poor that they have no other options and there are no government regulations to protect them from extortion, huzzah! But wait a minute ... we no longer tolerate them in western countries ... I wonder why that could be? Oh, I forgot, you addressed that too: investment in machinery and automation made labor more efficient, and then all our Noble Corporations voluntarily abandoned their practices of paying people $1 a day for 16 hour days in favor of minimum wage and overtime! Silly me! It had nothing to do with collective bargaining power imposing regulation upon industry.
Christ, you do such a good job of making my 'brainwashed' case for me, I don't know why I bother.
Here's a summary of your argument: "It's better to have a terrible job than no job at all; therefore, these people are lucky; and just look at them - they are proud to work for our great, rich companies."
The reason why that is a load of shite is that we had the same situation at home from before the industrial revolution to the beginning of the 20th Century. Collective bargaining power - what we call unions - are what got rid of child labor and sweatshops in western countries. Before that, child labor was prevalent, along with indentured servitude and slavery. The republican idiots of the time used exactly the same argument you're using (stop me if this sounds familiar):
"It's better to have a terrible job than no job at all; therefore, these people are lucky; and just look at them - they are proud to work for our great, rich companies."
You've been brainwashed. The propaganda engine now in support of global free trade is fuelled by the same wealthy elite that owned slaves 200 years ago. It's obviously working, otherwise no person with a functioning brain would fail to see that the horrendous conditions of a totally unregulated and lawless 'free' global labor market are precisely what workers in western countries have fought so hard for over 100 years to overcome at home, let alone sing the same sad song of excuses and rationalization.
Within our own countries, labor laws and unions product workers from such abuses - and I'm guessing you could have easily taken your case to a union with the possibility that you employer's practices were downright unlawful. But international law makes no such concessions, instead favoring the holy grail of 'free trade' and 'free markets', including of course the totally unregulated labor market.
What Apple is doing is quite different. They are showing genuinely generous appreciation for what is an entirely voluntary effort, and they are certainly under no obligation to do so. Comparing the two situations is comparing apples to oranges (pun fully intended).
Shoot me for stating the obvious, but this sets a good example for other companies to follow, not just in tech but across all industries.
Hmmm, let's see: storing searchable copies of all the documents belonging to every user on Google's servers is in the best interest of: a) The users, who pay nothing; b) The advertisers that have made Google a $150 billion company; c) The shareholders; d) The CIA and NSA.
Do the math people.
It's the same as what's happening with the ridiculous uproar over the cartoons poking fun at Islam. People like the fundy in the parent comment say things that, superficially, sound reasonable, like, "free speech is a big responsibility and you can't use it to offend others." Well who defines what is offensive? Who are 'others'?
Translation: you're free to say anything, except for those things which you are not free to say. It's asinine. That's like saying you have freedom of religion, except that you can't practice paganism. Or wicca. Or Shintoism.
It's Henry Ford's freedom of choice: you can have any color you like, as long as it's black.
"Toxoplasma is one of a number of parasites which require alteration of host's behaviour for their life cycle[1]. The changes observed are likely due to the presence of cysts in the brain, which produce or induce production of a neurotransmitter, possibly dopamine[2], therefore acting similarly to dopamine reuptake inhibitor type antidepressants. A slightly increased car accident rate, and reaction time slowed by a few percent have been observed (specifically, the infected lose concentration more quickly than the controls in the second and third minute)[3]. "If our data are true then about a million people a year die just because they are infected with toxoplasma," the researcher Jaroslav Flegr told The Guardian[4]. The data shows that the risk decreases with time after infection, however all older drivers are generally able to compensate for longer reaction time[5]. Ruth Gilbert, medical coordinator of the European Multicentre Study on Congenital Toxoplasmosis, told BBC News Online these findings could be due to chance, or due to social and cultural factors associated with toxoplasma infection[6]. Studies argue about the influence of the parasite on personality. There are claims of toxoplasma causing antisocial attitude in men and promiscuity[7] (or even signs of higher intelligence[8]) in women, and greater susceptibility to schizophrenia and manic depression[9] in all infected persons. A review of research focused on the schizophrenia connection confirms an association but does not confirm a causal relationship [10]."
Maybe women like cats because their toxoplasmosis infections make them smarter! Or maybe it's just because women can identify with creatures that are obsessed with their appearance, are impossible to understand, predict, or order around, and look down their nose in scorn at all of the huffing and panting and howling and slobbering we direct at them...
First, the majority of people do not understand evolution by natural selection. As a result, most people are hesitant to put all of their chips in evolution's corner when the apparent consequences (burning in eternal hellfire) are so severe. Most people opt out of evolution because they subconsciously view that course as the safe bet. If they turn out to be wrong, so what? No consquences. But if it turns out the Bible bashers have it right, well, the idea of burning in hell forever kind of sucks.
Second, the swell in support for orthodox and conservative theism has very little to do with the facts on either side of the debate. It merely has to do with sides. People are tribal. People are not analyzing all of the available data and drawing the most logical conclusions, they are simply picking sides and defending their camp come hell or high water (pun fully intended). A recent study in the news (source, anyone?) said that the parts of the brain responsible for rational thought shut off when people are defending their 'side' - in this case it was political, but the point is made just the same.
Third, recognize religion for what it is: the opiate of the masses. That really does say it all. Religion provides a security blanket for people who are more concerned with comfort than with truth. The truth is that we evolve from amino acids, none of the details in any orthodox religion's doctrine could be considered accurate or correct by any stretch of the imagination, and there is certainly no bearded-guy-in-the-clouds-who-smites-sinners-God (or angels, demons, fairies, elves, or anything else supernatural) actively participating in our physical reality. It is also true that it is impossible to prove the negative corollory that some sort of entity did not create the cosmos, or that the cosmos does not have some purpose, because the assumptions involved (like the flow of time, cause and effect, etc) render definitions useless, making strict atheism a similarly baseless belief. The truth is that agnosticism (we don't know one way or the other) is the only view about God which makes any logical sense.
The truth is harsh; it hurts, its awesome and terrifying, and it doesn't give a shit whether you like it or believe it or not. The truth really will set you free (John:23). But people don't want to be free. They want to be safe. That's why we have the PATRIOT act. In short, the truth makes people uncomfortable, and there is definitely a profound movement in modern western society towards the supreme prioritization of comfort above all other considerations.
Lastly, the people that we should really be concerned about are not the people who are uninformed and apathetic - the majority of laymen - but rather the people who ARE inteligent and educated and who nevertheless staunchly defend the right-wing religious agenda. These are people who are so terrified of the truth, that they will do anything to make it go away. These are the Bin Ladens of the world, folks. These are the people who would blindly destroy our plante before accepting the painful truth; who would push the Button and blame/credit God before long before accepting responsibility for their own lives. These people are the problem, and that is where we should be focusing our efforts.
Sadly, most gamers plug in to escape into an artificial reality, not into a genuinely imaginative experience.
Septical, even.
Or maybe not. I dunno.
I suspect introducing a new standard to displace/replace DVD could backfire. As other posters have pointed out, DVD represented a paradigm shift in quality and features beyond VHS and other analog formats. It was revolutionary. HD DVD is more evolutionary. The reason why this might backfire is because the digital nature of media makes computers the ultimate fallback hardware. Here's what I mean. My old CD players won't play DVDs. My old DVD players won't play DVD-Rs or MP3s. But guess what will play everything? My computer. I finally got around to hooking up my computer to my home theater projector to watch a TV episode I recorded (don't worry, I always buy the box sets when they come out), and I'm hooked. Now I am seriously considering ripping my entire DVD collection so that it is instantly available. No more farting around loading discs, wading through slow menus, and all that crap. As companies like MS and Google push hardware and software that are designed to support every media format, pushing yet another new format on people could encourage them to do what I do but in an illegitimate way: pirate movies and TV and just play them off your computer. If you think of DVD Audio or Super Audio CDs, you have a prior example as an illustration. I don't own any DVD Audio or SACDs, but I've pulled stuff down from the web just to test it out. I didn't hear any difference because I'm not an audiophile, but if all of a sudden there was a shift away from traditional CDs to DVDA or SACDs that made my old ones stop working, I would simply rip everything onto my computer and run it all through my iPod. I can see a lot of this analogy holding for HD-DVD or whatever replaces DVD. DRM is obviously going to play a critical role in all this. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.
Here's what I mean. My old CD players won't play DVDs. My old DVD players won't play DVD-Rs or MP3s. But guess what will play everything? My computer. I finally got around to hooking up my computer to my home theater projector to watch a TV episode I recorded (don't worry, I always buy the box sets when they come out). Now I am seriously considering ripping my entire DVD collection so that it is instantly available. No more farting around loading discs, wading through slow menus, and all that crap. As companies like MS and Google push hardware and software that are designed to support every media format, pushing yet another new format on people could encourage them to do what I do but in an illegitimate way: pirate movies and TV and just play them off your computer. If you think of DVD Audio or Super Audio CDs, you have a prior example as an illustration. I don't own any DVD Audio or SACDs, but I've pulled stuff down from the web just to test it out. I didn't hear any difference because I'm not an audiophile, but if all of a sudden there was a shift away from traditional CDs to DVDA or SACDs that made my old ones stop working, I would simply rip everything onto my computer and run it all through my iPod. I can see a lot of this analogy holding for HD-DVD or whatever replaces DVD.
DRM is obviously going to play a critical role in all this. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.