You can't compete ; China is willing to allow it's workforce to get treated like crap.
About the only thing that you can do is raise import tariffs to the point where domestic product looks like a good deal - but this isn't going to happen because of the enormous power bloc that's founded on the profits of yoking the global labour pool. "Globalization" is an odd term... some people perceive it as the homogenizing of consumer culture on a global scale but the man behind the curtain is the army of low-paid workers required to support it.
The only real solution that avoids the endless spiral of the labour pool further into poverty is to wind back the clock and live by bartering products locally, which mitigates the imbalances caused by regional labour cost differences at the cost of reintroducing the imbalances caused by geographical differences in local wealth and losing the inherent efficiencies of a global economy. Then you just get the poor people invading you for your resources.. and go around the spiral again.
So another kind of globalization might work ; if similar goods were available everywhere for the same cost, everyone would have a similar standard of living, but the only way that's going to happen is if you have both energy and manufacturing technologies..
That everyone can use
That are acceptable everywhere
That use commonly available resources
That use only minimal amounts of rare resources
That produce enough energy to meet comfortable needs
Which means no dirty manufacturing plants, no dirty energy production, no detrimental working conditions. If you follow this spiral you end up with robot factories (who wants to work - it's detrimental to [my enjoyment | my payroll budget]), producing 100% recyclable consumer goods to order from clean or recycled materials with no unrecoverable by-products, powered by fusion (with a good PR campaign), or solar, or whatever people will tolerate in their back yard. At which point you're either socialists or a human zoo kept for the amusement of a few immortal plutocrats, because there will be no need for humans to do labour work for anything other than recreational purposes (or used as a means to keep the population under control - work or starve... hmmm, sounds familiar).
Unlike the older systems which just spewed an analogue output to a green CRT, in more modern systems there is lots of software processing the input. It wouldn't be too far of a stretch to imagine that there are inputs which could cause glitches in that software, even if there isn't actually a dedicated killswitch.
You just suggested the opposite of what he wanted... Gentoo is great if you want to learn a whole lot about Linux fast, because you're going to have to know to get it working.
Yes, the community is great. I'm very happy with the time I spent on Gentoo but I wouldn't recommend it except for two cases - support of hardware from the bleeding edge kernel branches (the original reason I used it was for TV tuners), and learning a lot about the innards of Linux.
I think the point is that they've had a large number of alphas and a beta already, which is what they've used for getting testing feedback... and that RC is the image they intend to release. Which means they've made all the code changes they've scheduled for release, and they'll only change it if something disastrous becomes apparent, and anything disastrous is pretty much going to be immensely obvious to someone within a few days.
Whereas the Windows 7 RC was available for no charge (not the normal state of affairs) has been going since May and has received patches on a regular basis. So clearly not what they intended to release.
So which one is the publicity stunt (and an extended beta test), and which one is the Release Candidate (ie - a build that's intended to be released)?
For all these anecdotal experiences, there are more the other way ;
e.g. - the documents I'm working with which have Tracked Changes in the really don't work very well, especially where tables are concerned. I've yet to see it get the formatting of bullet points just right. Mutliple columns don't work too well. Etc....
I love the idea there is an alternative, and that it's Free Software (albeit the weak and watery LGPL). But the sad reality is that it's not that good at interoperating with MS Office.
I'm actually hoping that it's performance on MOO-XML documents is better - at least the data structures are spelt out more readably, if not exactly clearly.
They could prevent unauthorized plugins and addons from running without a digital signature from a trusted key... but the the problem with that is that with the source available that would last all of a about 20 minutes before someone hacked that bit out and rebuilt the browser. It might even fork the project.
Particularly with the p-B reaction, you lose all the net power to brehmstrahllung.
The design is supposed to mitigate this ; the magnetic fields involved are allegedly strong enough to prevent enough of the electrons hopping up to the quantum state they need to get to in order to emit X-ray photons. In addition, the design includes a photoelectric collector to harvest the X-rays that do get emitted (supposed to be 40% of the energy yield).
I'm no expert but I'm watching this keenly. Out of the fusion approaches this one seems the most elegant to me ; no heat-engine step to reduce it's efficiency, solid-state energy collection, reactors that are a sensible size and not some enormous aircraft-carrier sized construction of doom. And the fact that it isn't founded on the impossible conceit of containing the uncontainable in a steady state helps it image a lot in my eyes.
And if it turns out to be impossible... well, you could probably pay for the whole project out of the tea and biscuits kitty at ITER. They should fund a new project like this every year, just on the off-chance that one of them works.
.. firstly, I'd get myself checked out. How the hell did I end up working for that creepy old despot....
But secondly, I'd disallow search engines in all the robots.txt files, and then start looking for another job. Perhaps someone would be willing to hire me for being the guy who halved the traffic to his servers in mere days.
Someone with the freedom to express your opinion to a large number of other people, which would have only a few decades ago, been unheard of on this scale for anyone except those who earned media outlets.
No-one should use computers for voting. Only a small percentage of the population groks them well enough to audit them. Everyone understands pencil and paper.
A lot of the systems I see these days throw GUIDs (128-bit integers) around like confetti, using them for identifiers on everything.
On 32-bit they suck, since they are 4 times larger than the native integer datatype. On 64-bit they suck less. I'm guessing on 128-bit native processors, they'd suck about half as much again.
There is a market for this, especially for selling Windows to entities utterly obsessed with tracking every object on Earth (basically, big corporate marketing departments and governments). Governments want to put GUIDs in banknotes. Corporations want to put GUIDs in EVERYTHING. Some of them already do.
Hydrogen vehicles are just oil-company shilling anyway. The major source of hydrogen gas today - not electrolysis, it's cracking hydrogen from oil. Hence the massive grin on George W's face as he endorsed the things.
Sure, they burn clean. But they are fraught with engineering problems. You can't confine enough of the stuff to have a decent range. If you get your hydrogen from electrolysis rather than oil (which is the only "green" way), they are significantly less efficient than a battery electric vehicle. And the distribution infrastructure would have to be significantly reworked.
You wouldn't even need the 500 mile battery (unless you do that 685 miles all in one journey instead of spread out over 2 weeks). You don't define the size of "a tank"... but you'll get better mileage out of an electric car, for the money.
Even if they build enormous gasoline power stations to make up the shortfall, the electric car is still much more efficient than an ICE, so you'd end up spending less even if you paid for your electricity what you paid for gas, pro rata.
And people worried about the microwaves from the phone affecting their sperm count....
I quite like the idea of the thermocouple based generators that are rumoured to be possible. But I'd rather the source of heat wasn't something that made my junk glow in the dark.
Of your list, regardless of the actual merits of the suggestions, 1, 2, and 4 would require a lot of upstream.
I have 10Mbit/s down, 512Kbit/s up. Most residential packages are this way, since they were rigged that way by the providers, who decided that what they liked the idea of was everyone consuming a lot of their content but not uploading things.
I have no quarrel with any of these applications. I'd cheer on a law passed to implement no. 6. But the overwhelming evidence is that this is not what people use their bandwidth for. If it was, I'd be far more on the side of the consumers of the service.
As it is, my point stands - most people don't use this kind of bandwidth to build a hut in the global village, they use it to consume yet more of the stuff that big media is telling them to consume ; they just don't pay the producer for it.
I think the comment has some grounding ; for the vast majority of people, what the hell do you need 20Mbit/s or even 50Mbit/s of bandwidth for?
I've seem people complain bitterly because they were unable to use their full bandwidth 24/7. Now, it annoys me when I don't get my contracted bandwidth speed, if I want a large file soon, but these guys are whining because they don't get their full speed 24/7.
What the hell kind of person can USE all that data? That's several HD video streams, 24/7. Multiple full-size computer games. Enough pr0n to make your NEIGHBOURS sore. Either that, or you're running a datacentre in your basement.
I'm on 10Mbit/s now, but I was happy enough with 2. If I wanted a big file, I'd schedule it overnight. My need for high-bandwidth comes in bursts and it annoys me to have the service degraded by people who are either using it to copy more copyrighted material than they can actually use, without paying for it, or people who should be paying for a business connection.
ISPs make a point of saying how many movies, games, tracks, you can download, and sell bandwidth packages designed to appeal to people with large bandwidth appetites, then act all shocked and shaken when people use their service for what the marketers say it's for.
A: I would respond to them by saying, just look at the facts over the past six months, at the number of vulnerabilities announced and the number of patches that had to made to Bind and freeware products. And Nominum has not had a single known vulnerability in its software
To rephrase :
"Look at all these vulnerabilities in BIND that were detected before they were exploited, announced, and promptly patched, whereas we haven't patched or even detected any vulnerabilities in Nominum.
Because we weren't looking. Why waste money improving your product when no-one can see the sources and point out any flaws!"
Slashdot Mirror
You can't compete ; China is willing to allow it's workforce to get treated like crap.
About the only thing that you can do is raise import tariffs to the point where domestic product looks like a good deal - but this isn't going to happen because of the enormous power bloc that's founded on the profits of yoking the global labour pool. "Globalization" is an odd term... some people perceive it as the homogenizing of consumer culture on a global scale but the man behind the curtain is the army of low-paid workers required to support it.
The only real solution that avoids the endless spiral of the labour pool further into poverty is to wind back the clock and live by bartering products locally, which mitigates the imbalances caused by regional labour cost differences at the cost of reintroducing the imbalances caused by geographical differences in local wealth and losing the inherent efficiencies of a global economy. Then you just get the poor people invading you for your resources.. and go around the spiral again.
So another kind of globalization might work ; if similar goods were available everywhere for the same cost, everyone would have a similar standard of living, but the only way that's going to happen is if you have both energy and manufacturing technologies ..
Which means no dirty manufacturing plants, no dirty energy production, no detrimental working conditions. If you follow this spiral you end up with robot factories (who wants to work - it's detrimental to [my enjoyment | my payroll budget]), producing 100% recyclable consumer goods to order from clean or recycled materials with no unrecoverable by-products, powered by fusion (with a good PR campaign), or solar, or whatever people will tolerate in their back yard. At which point you're either socialists or a human zoo kept for the amusement of a few immortal plutocrats, because there will be no need for humans to do labour work for anything other than recreational purposes (or used as a means to keep the population under control - work or starve... hmmm, sounds familiar).
I imagine they will ; this is Google, after all.
Unlike the older systems which just spewed an analogue output to a green CRT, in more modern systems there is lots of software processing the input. It wouldn't be too far of a stretch to imagine that there are inputs which could cause glitches in that software, even if there isn't actually a dedicated killswitch.
You just suggested the opposite of what he wanted... Gentoo is great if you want to learn a whole lot about Linux fast, because you're going to have to know to get it working.
Yes, the community is great. I'm very happy with the time I spent on Gentoo but I wouldn't recommend it except for two cases - support of hardware from the bleeding edge kernel branches (the original reason I used it was for TV tuners), and learning a lot about the innards of Linux.
I think the point is that they've had a large number of alphas and a beta already, which is what they've used for getting testing feedback... and that RC is the image they intend to release. Which means they've made all the code changes they've scheduled for release, and they'll only change it if something disastrous becomes apparent, and anything disastrous is pretty much going to be immensely obvious to someone within a few days.
Whereas the Windows 7 RC was available for no charge (not the normal state of affairs) has been going since May and has received patches on a regular basis. So clearly not what they intended to release.
So which one is the publicity stunt (and an extended beta test), and which one is the Release Candidate (ie - a build that's intended to be released)?
For all these anecdotal experiences, there are more the other way ;
e.g. - the documents I'm working with which have Tracked Changes in the really don't work very well, especially where tables are concerned. I've yet to see it get the formatting of bullet points just right. Mutliple columns don't work too well. Etc....
I love the idea there is an alternative, and that it's Free Software (albeit the weak and watery LGPL). But the sad reality is that it's not that good at interoperating with MS Office.
I'm actually hoping that it's performance on MOO-XML documents is better - at least the data structures are spelt out more readably, if not exactly clearly.
They could prevent unauthorized plugins and addons from running without a digital signature from a trusted key... but the the problem with that is that with the source available that would last all of a about 20 minutes before someone hacked that bit out and rebuilt the browser. It might even fork the project.
Particularly with the p-B reaction, you lose all the net power to brehmstrahllung.
The design is supposed to mitigate this ; the magnetic fields involved are allegedly strong enough to prevent enough of the electrons hopping up to the quantum state they need to get to in order to emit X-ray photons. In addition, the design includes a photoelectric collector to harvest the X-rays that do get emitted (supposed to be 40% of the energy yield).
I'm no expert but I'm watching this keenly. Out of the fusion approaches this one seems the most elegant to me ; no heat-engine step to reduce it's efficiency, solid-state energy collection, reactors that are a sensible size and not some enormous aircraft-carrier sized construction of doom. And the fact that it isn't founded on the impossible conceit of containing the uncontainable in a steady state helps it image a lot in my eyes.
And if it turns out to be impossible... well, you could probably pay for the whole project out of the tea and biscuits kitty at ITER. They should fund a new project like this every year, just on the off-chance that one of them works.
That graph plots transistor count, which is not a direct indicator of performance.
Benchmarks are a far more useful metric as they are usually designed to simulate actual load.
The lame-brained pursuit of mere numbers is of course, a sign of management rather than engineering.
s/earned/owned/
Oops
.. firstly, I'd get myself checked out. How the hell did I end up working for that creepy old despot....
But secondly, I'd disallow search engines in all the robots.txt files, and then start looking for another job. Perhaps someone would be willing to hire me for being the guy who halved the traffic to his servers in mere days.
who am I to say he's a F*#@#ing idiot
Someone with the freedom to express your opinion to a large number of other people, which would have only a few decades ago, been unheard of on this scale for anyone except those who earned media outlets.
No-one should use computers for voting. Only a small percentage of the population groks them well enough to audit them. Everyone understands pencil and paper.
A lot of the systems I see these days throw GUIDs (128-bit integers) around like confetti, using them for identifiers on everything.
On 32-bit they suck, since they are 4 times larger than the native integer datatype. On 64-bit they suck less. I'm guessing on 128-bit native processors, they'd suck about half as much again.
There is a market for this, especially for selling Windows to entities utterly obsessed with tracking every object on Earth (basically, big corporate marketing departments and governments). Governments want to put GUIDs in banknotes. Corporations want to put GUIDs in EVERYTHING. Some of them already do.
Dons tinfoil hat and asbestos apron
(CIA World Factbook)
Oil - proved reserves:
136.2 billion bbl based on Iranian claims (1 January 2008 est.)
country comparison to the world: 3
Want to know why western nations are starting to get all shock-horror about the Iranian bomb? Follow the money.
Hydrogen vehicles are just oil-company shilling anyway. The major source of hydrogen gas today - not electrolysis, it's cracking hydrogen from oil. Hence the massive grin on George W's face as he endorsed the things.
Sure, they burn clean. But they are fraught with engineering problems. You can't confine enough of the stuff to have a decent range. If you get your hydrogen from electrolysis rather than oil (which is the only "green" way), they are significantly less efficient than a battery electric vehicle. And the distribution infrastructure would have to be significantly reworked.
You wouldn't even need the 500 mile battery (unless you do that 685 miles all in one journey instead of spread out over 2 weeks). You don't define the size of "a tank"... but you'll get better mileage out of an electric car, for the money.
Even if they build enormous gasoline power stations to make up the shortfall, the electric car is still much more efficient than an ICE, so you'd end up spending less even if you paid for your electricity what you paid for gas, pro rata.
radioisotope thermoelectric generators
And people worried about the microwaves from the phone affecting their sperm count....
I quite like the idea of the thermocouple based generators that are rumoured to be possible. But I'd rather the source of heat wasn't something that made my junk glow in the dark.
Of your list, regardless of the actual merits of the suggestions, 1, 2, and 4 would require a lot of upstream.
I have 10Mbit/s down, 512Kbit/s up. Most residential packages are this way, since they were rigged that way by the providers, who decided that what they liked the idea of was everyone consuming a lot of their content but not uploading things.
I have no quarrel with any of these applications. I'd cheer on a law passed to implement no. 6. But the overwhelming evidence is that this is not what people use their bandwidth for. If it was, I'd be far more on the side of the consumers of the service.
As it is, my point stands - most people don't use this kind of bandwidth to build a hut in the global village, they use it to consume yet more of the stuff that big media is telling them to consume ; they just don't pay the producer for it.
Even if you are a perfect driver, you still have to worry about the other guy.
If a Malibu did this, imagine what would happed to you if an SUV hit the Bel-Air. Ok, you'd probably suffer less, you'd be chunky salsa....
I think the comment has some grounding ; for the vast majority of people, what the hell do you need 20Mbit/s or even 50Mbit/s of bandwidth for?
I've seem people complain bitterly because they were unable to use their full bandwidth 24/7. Now, it annoys me when I don't get my contracted bandwidth speed, if I want a large file soon, but these guys are whining because they don't get their full speed 24/7.
What the hell kind of person can USE all that data? That's several HD video streams, 24/7. Multiple full-size computer games. Enough pr0n to make your NEIGHBOURS sore. Either that, or you're running a datacentre in your basement.
I'm on 10Mbit/s now, but I was happy enough with 2. If I wanted a big file, I'd schedule it overnight. My need for high-bandwidth comes in bursts and it annoys me to have the service degraded by people who are either using it to copy more copyrighted material than they can actually use, without paying for it, or people who should be paying for a business connection.
ISPs make a point of saying how many movies, games, tracks, you can download, and sell bandwidth packages designed to appeal to people with large bandwidth appetites, then act all shocked and shaken when people use their service for what the marketers say it's for.
I notice that amongst the younger ladies, they are either blimps or sticks now. There's no happy medium. Scrawny toothpick legs everywhere.
I too would much rather that "healthy" was the new sexy. Athletes and dancers, not people who can live on tic-tacs and (three) cheerios.
diabetes and an erection
Make the most of it, diabetes causes peripheral vascular disease!
A: I would respond to them by saying, just look at the facts over the past six months, at the number of vulnerabilities announced and the number of patches that had to made to Bind and freeware products. And Nominum has not had a single known vulnerability in its software
To rephrase :
"Look at all these vulnerabilities in BIND that were detected before they were exploited, announced, and promptly patched, whereas we haven't patched or even detected any vulnerabilities in Nominum.
Because we weren't looking. Why waste money improving your product when no-one can see the sources and point out any flaws!"
(bet those hackers sure are looking now).