Actually, that's not 5 extra weeks, but 3. Americans take 2 weeks off, the French take 5.
But 3 weeks out of 52 should not make for such a differential in GDP, should it?
Well, no. But there are other political-economic factors at play. With the Euro-USD adjustment in the last 2 years, those figures may have changed dramatically. Your currency is still inflated due to political power, although it is waning.
But comparing GDPs is the diplomatic equivalent of locker room talk. I don't really care how big your is. It's all about having fun with it, right?
Besides, the GDP is a rather "Gross" (ha!) measure of economic output. If you marry your hairdresser, GDP goes down. If you have an accident, it goes up. It doesn't differentiate between desirable and undesirable activity. Imagine trying to run a company where all you cared about was how much money was changing hands. It's a flawed measure.
Back on the fun theme... compare how many people in France are happy with their jobs. I was there for almost two years. People here in North America are absurdly stressed out about trivia. If you compare Standard of Living, the French easily have us beat.
And now the big question: next time your boss offers you a raise of 6-8%, could you say "gee boss, I really appreciate the offer, and working here. However, could I have 3 extra weeks of vacation instead so I can go to the beach and take care of my kids?"
Now before you mod me a troll or flamebait, let me make this explicitly clear: I don't hate Americans as people.
Like every other powerful country before it, however, the US government has been abusing its position. This is not just about Bush! A lot of us were against Clinton too, and don't think Kerry is a whole lot better either. Mind you, Bush has a bit of a cowboy swagger on the international scene that is definitely uncouth and hurting your reputation.
Four reasons why I disliked Clinton: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Sudan and Iraq. He bombed all four based on lies. No evidence seems to indicate that Kerry would have acted differently towards Cuba or Venezuela. Or Iraq and the UN...
So, I'm not anti-American per se, merely opposed to your government accumulating far too much power. Y'know, the old "Power corrupts, absolute power..."
Ok, with that said, I believe open-source has the potential to reduce those power differentials that can lead to abuse, and I'll be delighted if Americans are also enriched by OSS.
5. "Open source benefits from anti-American sentiments."
I raise an eyebrow at Andreesen for thinking this
Please, nooo, not the eyebrow!
Has it become taboo to dare mention the fact that some people are anti-American and that this could affect their choices when dealing with American corporations?
"You're either with us or you're against us" is already bad enough... but with that kind of thinking you're doomed.
The balance of payment situation has been mentionned, but I think it also has something to do with security concerns as well as countries wanting to develop an indigenous software sector.
Basically, your whole economy is dependent on outside investments to keep running, and that's hurting your currency. Some have suggested using the Euro for petroleum sales to hurt the dollar further, possibly causing a recession in the US (obviously aiming to affect the next elections).
If you are unsure how deep anti-American sentiment runs, consider the last Pew Research Center annual survey on attitudes towards Americans. The percentage of people that think suicide bombings against the US are justifiable is just plain scary.
So while the BOP, security and protectionnism all play to a certain extent, I wouldn't underestimate the sheer resentment against the US.
Even if there's short term pain from a slashdotting, (linuxtodaying just doesn't have a good ring to it, does it?)... even if only 0.5% of people come back on a regular basis, that's a lot of money from advertising alone.
Not to mention all the people also linking from their blogs... the increase in page rank...
Ok, so I'm showing I'm as much a marketer as a geek... but since I'm paying hundreds of dollars for that traffic, I just can't understand why anyone would be so stupid as to block traffic.
Seriously, if you can not legally download the songs you want, consider that pirating them forces the record labels to get their act together.
It sends a clear and unmistakable signal to the recording industry: it's time to actually offer these songs in mp3 format.
Nota Bene: You will have to buy legal copies of those songs when they are available. But while you can't, you need not feel guilty. A music lover's got to do what a music lover's got to do...
Microchip fabrication facilities (or "fabs") are complex and energy-intensive.
Energy accounts for less than 2 percent of a chip's cost, yet electricity can be the largest single operating expense for a chipmaker, totaling millions of dollars annually at a single fab.
Despite great innovation, semiconductor manufacturing fosters a risk-averse corporate culture due to exacting process requirements, safety risks, the high cost of downtime, and brutal competition in a fast-moving marketplace.
They were able to reduce energy consumption at one plant by 60% with better design.
[rant]One of the things I don't like about these studies that tell you how much water it takes to build your car or get you a hamburger patty is that they are aimed at consumers. Maybe we should increase the cost of water and fossil fuels, or the penalties for being wasteful, so that manufacturers might get with the program and stop being such hogs.[/rant]
Actually, I would recommend people upgrade from CRT to the best LCD they can afford.
In a single year, my LCD uses at least 100kWh less than a CRT. 1kWh ~= 2lbs/1KG of coal, so the CO2 emissions in manufacture are offset by a ~ 3 year life span.
But that's not all. In the summer in most office buildings, you have to add the air conditionning costs- those CRT hogs create a lot of waste heat, so you have to waste even more energy to remove that heat. You can also have a smaller batter and/or UPS.
While the energy costs alone won't justify the cost of replacing your CRTs, the increase in productivity certainly will. Better contrast has meant fewer headaches for me, and I can read much faster off my LCD (granted, 1600*1200) than I can on most flickering CRTs.
Even a 1% increase in productivity -assuming it's not all wasted on slashdot- is worth quite a bit more money than the LCD for any professional.
So, a cheap productivity boost with a small or positive environmental footprint... In my ideal world, the old machines would be recycled with an efficient OS and an LCD screen:)
Or is that a tongue? Maybe what that frenchman really meant was he gave up... but what a weird expression.
Make fun of him and he'll answer it's no weirder than "bull's shit". (Damn, those robot really do have sex with their expressions, don't they?)
Uhm, so yeah... these robotic helpers had better have a large list of expressions, and better yet, develop a way of learning new expressions in any given (sub-)culture. Or you will come to understand every single one of the horrible puns above.
And then, we can start having real fun learning cultures, starting with everyday etiquette. Maybe a robot can tell you that asking a Parisian woman for her number is interpreted as "You've got nice shoes. Let's fuck." After a couple slaps, I'm sure most/.ers will try another tack, unless that rocks their boats, fills their boots or what-have-you.
After language, expressions and etiquette, there are even more amusing misunderstandings. One of my favorite such stories involved my parents. While grocery shopping, dad mentionned he'd like some pumpkin. Mom made an amazing pie, but he thought this was an incredibly stupid idea, and tasted bad with all those spices. What's wrong with pumpkin soup, he asked?
So, I'm really happy these robots are getting developed... I'm just a bit skeptical as to how many barriers they'll strike down:)
Here we have the strongest military in human history, with some of the most advanced gadgetry ever devised. So why the hell are people still "hauling a 70-pound pack across miles of rugged terrain"?
This article has generated an incredible amount of discussion, and there's one word I'd like to introduce: "Patronizing".
So, some guy 10 or 20 years older than me can tell me what to do just by virtue of being older? Can tell me my ideals are all crap because I'm still wet behind the ears? 'F off!
Now, judging from the first paragraph, the young one could certainly be a bit more diplomatic:
You came up to me and told me how the stuff I was talking about was mostly useless
Telling people their work is useless doesn't seem like a very skillful way to start a discussion. And responding that you're just too young too understand isn't exactly a helpful answer either.
Basically, there's a lot of ego mixed in to ideological debates, further adding to the confusion.
There are some anti-social nuts on both sides of this argument. Some that would have me coding for free to stay ethical, others that feel a need to hoard billions they can't ever spend.
FOSS is practical for me. I've released very small amounts of code when it could help others, and I've gotten good feedback which has helped me improve my code and my coding ability. I also benefit tremendously from using free software, and I'm capable of producing useful, value-creating code for my customers.
Linus released his OS in part because he was too lazy to finish it all himself- and that's an admirable quality in a geek. We're all richer for it.
I suggest we shrug off as a nuisance both the condescending "realists" and the strident "idealists", and stay a practical course that's working just fine. If we ignore them, they might not go away, but at least we won't get sucked down to their level:)
Yep. It's quite embarassing to see that on a per-capita basis, we're #1.
This doesn't surprise me... some of our ISPs, at least in the Atlantic, are not doing anything about known spammers using their service. Pretty f'in shameful.
As I see it, the US has many different objectives in foreign policy, and many administrations competing to get their objectives considered. The explanation given for any policy is only the one that seems most palatable for the public: WMDs, bringing democracy, fighting communists or terrorists.
It is pretty safe to assume that at least some people in a US administration had interests in common with Khomeini. If he looked like he could disrupt and weaken Iran, he would be a natural ally: the overarching US strategy has been to divide and conquer.
our administration would probably like to have a revolution occur there due to the hardships
Buddy, have you only been reading history written by your good Uncle Sam?
Go back to 1953, when British and US intelligence agencies removed Mossadegh from power, only to give power to the capitalist-friendly Shah. Mossadegh had nationalized the oil industry after failing to negotiate higher royalties, and so had to go. Oh, and he was a nasty commie.
The Shah used torture, repressed and killed scores of communists and lefties, leaving all dissent to right-wing anti-American religious nuts. Remember the Iran hostage crisis? That was the first modern Islamic fundamentalist revolution.
The US and Brits destabilized democracy, by taking away non-violent options for people's legitimate aspirations, they made violence all but inevitable. We reap what we sow. (Note: this is not to say I agree with violence, far from it).
So, with that little historical perspective, you can understand why I seriously doubt the administration would encourage a revolution because of the hardships the population faces: they have caused it to further their economic interests.
Now if you told me they wanted to destabilize them because of the fundies, well, that would be believable:)
This is tangentially related, but the seven areas in which he measures benefits to a business of going green can give you ideas about selling OSS to businesses.
There's a good chance we could make a case for OSS in the three main drivers he identified:
Employee retention: recruiting, training and getting a new employee to the previous one's productivity level can cost a lot of money. Ask HR and bean counters about valuing this. I for one would rather work in an OSS friendly environment (yes, let workers contribute back).
Lower production costs: M$ concentrates on TCO, which is sometimes true, but look at how OSS can be used or modified to let you improve productivity in ways that proprietary apps can't.
Increase market share: if they make that commitment, they should milk it for all the PR they can, presenting themselves as an innovative, responsible, cutting edge company. (Giving back is also cheap PR)
One last, important point: the author pointed out how many of these companies (and he only surveyed high-tech ones) kept finding high-ROI opportunities. Go after the low-hanging fruit, stuff that makes a measurable impact in under a year. You'll get better at finding them.
With low-power digital ink and efficient CPU, the last place to look will be the HDD.
The prices _range_ from $89.99 to $5,999, and will likely drop fast, just like other gadgets.
Given you don't want to use flash memory for frequent writes, it think it could be used for those files that rarely get overwritten. Might cost $100 to put a copy of the OS and a few other files on what is essentially a second, low-power drive.
My dream of course: having a silent laptop that can be used anywhere (screen views in broad daylight), won't heat up too much (see Man burns penis with laptop), and has a couple days of autonomy on either a normal battery or with fuel-cell power.
I think there's a market for that, and as the components get cheaper, it's only a matter of time.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, that's not 5 extra weeks, but 3. Americans take 2 weeks off, the French take 5.
But 3 weeks out of 52 should not make for such a differential in GDP, should it?
Well, no. But there are other political-economic factors at play. With the Euro-USD adjustment in the last 2 years, those figures may have changed dramatically. Your currency is still inflated due to political power, although it is waning.
But comparing GDPs is the diplomatic equivalent of locker room talk. I don't really care how big your is. It's all about having fun with it, right?
Besides, the GDP is a rather "Gross" (ha!) measure of economic output. If you marry your hairdresser, GDP goes down. If you have an accident, it goes up. It doesn't differentiate between desirable and undesirable activity. Imagine trying to run a company where all you cared about was how much money was changing hands. It's a flawed measure.
Back on the fun theme... compare how many people in France are happy with their jobs. I was there for almost two years. People here in North America are absurdly stressed out about trivia. If you compare Standard of Living, the French easily have us beat.
And now the big question: next time your boss offers you a raise of 6-8%, could you say "gee boss, I really appreciate the offer, and working here. However, could I have 3 extra weeks of vacation instead so I can go to the beach and take care of my kids?"
Now before you mod me a troll or flamebait, let me make this explicitly clear: I don't hate Americans as people.
Like every other powerful country before it, however, the US government has been abusing its position. This is not just about Bush! A lot of us were against Clinton too, and don't think Kerry is a whole lot better either. Mind you, Bush has a bit of a cowboy swagger on the international scene that is definitely uncouth and hurting your reputation.
Four reasons why I disliked Clinton: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Sudan and Iraq. He bombed all four based on lies. No evidence seems to indicate that Kerry would have acted differently towards Cuba or Venezuela. Or Iraq and the UN...
So, I'm not anti-American per se, merely opposed to your government accumulating far too much power. Y'know, the old "Power corrupts, absolute power..."
Ok, with that said, I believe open-source has the potential to reduce those power differentials that can lead to abuse, and I'll be delighted if Americans are also enriched by OSS.
Please, nooo, not the eyebrow!
Has it become taboo to dare mention the fact that some people are anti-American and that this could affect their choices when dealing with American corporations?
"You're either with us or you're against us" is already bad enough... but with that kind of thinking you're doomed.
Some good points have been made already.
The balance of payment situation has been mentionned, but I think it also has something to do with security concerns as well as countries wanting to develop an indigenous software sector.
Basically, your whole economy is dependent on outside investments to keep running, and that's hurting your currency. Some have suggested using the Euro for petroleum sales to hurt the dollar further, possibly causing a recession in the US (obviously aiming to affect the next elections).
If you are unsure how deep anti-American sentiment runs, consider the last Pew Research Center annual survey on attitudes towards Americans. The percentage of people that think suicide bombings against the US are justifiable is just plain scary.
So while the BOP, security and protectionnism all play to a certain extent, I wouldn't underestimate the sheer resentment against the US.
Even if there's short term pain from a slashdotting, (linuxtodaying just doesn't have a good ring to it, does it?)... even if only 0.5% of people come back on a regular basis, that's a lot of money from advertising alone.
Not to mention all the people also linking from their blogs... the increase in page rank...
Ok, so I'm showing I'm as much a marketer as a geek... but since I'm paying hundreds of dollars for that traffic, I just can't understand why anyone would be so stupid as to block traffic.
Mod me a parasite but...
Seriously, if you can not legally download the songs you want, consider that pirating them forces the record labels to get their act together.
It sends a clear and unmistakable signal to the recording industry: it's time to actually offer these songs in mp3 format.
Nota Bene: You will have to buy legal copies of those songs when they are available. But while you can't, you need not feel guilty. A music lover's got to do what a music lover's got to do...
Dude, just cause there was a human error doesn't mean there also wasn't a bunch of programming errors. Or a hack. Or hacks.
You're entirely too trusting for me to trust you with voting machines!
Some of the highlights:
They were able to reduce energy consumption at one plant by 60% with better design.
[rant]One of the things I don't like about these studies that tell you how much water it takes to build your car or get you a hamburger patty is that they are aimed at consumers. Maybe we should increase the cost of water and fossil fuels, or the penalties for being wasteful, so that manufacturers might get with the program and stop being such hogs.[/rant]
Actually, I would recommend people upgrade from CRT to the best LCD they can afford.
:)
In a single year, my LCD uses at least 100kWh less than a CRT. 1kWh ~= 2lbs/1KG of coal, so the CO2 emissions in manufacture are offset by a ~ 3 year life span.
But that's not all. In the summer in most office buildings, you have to add the air conditionning costs- those CRT hogs create a lot of waste heat, so you have to waste even more energy to remove that heat. You can also have a smaller batter and/or UPS.
While the energy costs alone won't justify the cost of replacing your CRTs, the increase in productivity certainly will. Better contrast has meant fewer headaches for me, and I can read much faster off my LCD (granted, 1600*1200) than I can on most flickering CRTs.
Even a 1% increase in productivity -assuming it's not all wasted on slashdot- is worth quite a bit more money than the LCD for any professional.
So, a cheap productivity boost with a small or positive environmental footprint... In my ideal world, the old machines would be recycled with an efficient OS and an LCD screen
Why did the duck cross the street?
/.ers will try another tack, unless that rocks their boats, fills their boots or what-have-you.
:)
"I give my language to the cat".
Or is that a tongue? Maybe what that frenchman really meant was he gave up... but what a weird expression.
Make fun of him and he'll answer it's no weirder than "bull's shit". (Damn, those robot really do have sex with their expressions, don't they?)
Uhm, so yeah... these robotic helpers had better have a large list of expressions, and better yet, develop a way of learning new expressions in any given (sub-)culture. Or you will come to understand every single one of the horrible puns above.
And then, we can start having real fun learning cultures, starting with everyday etiquette. Maybe a robot can tell you that asking a Parisian woman for her number is interpreted as "You've got nice shoes. Let's fuck." After a couple slaps, I'm sure most
After language, expressions and etiquette, there are even more amusing misunderstandings. One of my favorite such stories involved my parents. While grocery shopping, dad mentionned he'd like some pumpkin. Mom made an amazing pie, but he thought this was an incredibly stupid idea, and tasted bad with all those spices. What's wrong with pumpkin soup, he asked?
So, I'm really happy these robots are getting developed... I'm just a bit skeptical as to how many barriers they'll strike down
Uhm, yeah, I figured that much. But why the hell are people still physically carrying it on them?
It's not like wheels are high-tech or anything... or that we couldn't figure out how to get transport units that can follow you in rugged terrain...
Here we have the strongest military in human history, with some of the most advanced gadgetry ever devised. So why the hell are people still "hauling a 70-pound pack across miles of rugged terrain" ?
This justification does not pass the giggle test.
...apparently has money to burn :)
[sorry, I couldn't help myself... ]
So, some guy 10 or 20 years older than me can tell me what to do just by virtue of being older? Can tell me my ideals are all crap because I'm still wet behind the ears? 'F off!
Now, judging from the first paragraph, the young one could certainly be a bit more diplomatic:
Telling people their work is useless doesn't seem like a very skillful way to start a discussion. And responding that you're just too young too understand isn't exactly a helpful answer either.
Basically, there's a lot of ego mixed in to ideological debates, further adding to the confusion.
There are some anti-social nuts on both sides of this argument. Some that would have me coding for free to stay ethical, others that feel a need to hoard billions they can't ever spend.
FOSS is practical for me. I've released very small amounts of code when it could help others, and I've gotten good feedback which has helped me improve my code and my coding ability. I also benefit tremendously from using free software, and I'm capable of producing useful, value-creating code for my customers.
Linus released his OS in part because he was too lazy to finish it all himself- and that's an admirable quality in a geek. We're all richer for it.
I suggest we shrug off as a nuisance both the condescending "realists" and the strident "idealists", and stay a practical course that's working just fine. If we ignore them, they might not go away, but at least we won't get sucked down to their level
Yup, and just cause they're out to get you doesn't mean you're not also paranoid, something I wish more people would consider once in a while
Yep. It's quite embarassing to see that on a per-capita basis, we're #1.
This doesn't surprise me... some of our ISPs, at least in the Atlantic, are not doing anything about known spammers using their service. Pretty f'in shameful.
You've obviously done some research on this.
As I see it, the US has many different objectives in foreign policy, and many administrations competing to get their objectives considered. The explanation given for any policy is only the one that seems most palatable for the public: WMDs, bringing democracy, fighting communists or terrorists.
It is pretty safe to assume that at least some people in a US administration had interests in common with Khomeini. If he looked like he could disrupt and weaken Iran, he would be a natural ally: the overarching US strategy has been to divide and conquer.
Buddy, have you only been reading history written by your good Uncle Sam?
Go back to 1953, when British and US intelligence agencies removed Mossadegh from power, only to give power to the capitalist-friendly Shah. Mossadegh had nationalized the oil industry after failing to negotiate higher royalties, and so had to go. Oh, and he was a nasty commie.
The Shah used torture, repressed and killed scores of communists and lefties, leaving all dissent to right-wing anti-American religious nuts. Remember the Iran hostage crisis? That was the first modern Islamic fundamentalist revolution.
The US and Brits destabilized democracy, by taking away non-violent options for people's legitimate aspirations, they made violence all but inevitable. We reap what we sow. (Note: this is not to say I agree with violence, far from it).
So, with that little historical perspective, you can understand why I seriously doubt the administration would encourage a revolution because of the hardships the population faces: they have caused it to further their economic interests.
Now if you told me they wanted to destabilize them because of the fundies, well, that would be believable
And as if helping 5% of 1 Billion people see better was anything to sneer at...
Wow. A Cato Institute article that quotes a Mother Jones reporter. Politics sure does make for strange bedfellows...
This is tangentially related, but the seven areas in which he measures benefits to a business of going green can give you ideas about selling OSS to businesses.
There's a good chance we could make a case for OSS in the three main drivers he identified:
One last, important point: the author pointed out how many of these companies (and he only surveyed high-tech ones) kept finding high-ROI opportunities. Go after the low-hanging fruit, stuff that makes a measurable impact in under a year. You'll get better at finding them.
The click-to-view extension for Firefox was invented for people just like you.
Now it might take a while to be able to download the extension (the site is still under heavy load), but when you can, try it out!
Well, the idea could be interesting.
With low-power digital ink and efficient CPU, the last place to look will be the HDD.
The prices _range_ from $89.99 to $5,999, and will likely drop fast, just like other gadgets.
Given you don't want to use flash memory for frequent writes, it think it could be used for those files that rarely get overwritten. Might cost $100 to put a copy of the OS and a few other files on what is essentially a second, low-power drive.
My dream of course: having a silent laptop that can be used anywhere (screen views in broad daylight), won't heat up too much (see Man burns penis with laptop), and has a couple days of autonomy on either a normal battery or with fuel-cell power.
I think there's a market for that, and as the components get cheaper, it's only a matter of time.
Hey, a geek can dream, can't (s/)he?
As some that read the news might say, "No shit, Sherlock."
If he's clueless, at least he should read the news, no?
Scanning the docs, I don't see anywhere where it says that's a problem.
Wouldn't it be possible to java -source 1.5 -target 1.4?