As others have pointed out, this just means the mail gets generated when you go to read it.
Better, I think, is when you send a mail the server on the other end gives your computer a little mathematical task to accomplish, taking maybe five seconds of CPU time. That way a spammer can only send out 12 mails per minute by tying up 100% of his CPU. A side benefit would be zombies nets would impact the computer owners so much thay'd have to deal with the problem.
Only companies with gobs of money sunk into hardware would be able to spam you, and that would change the economics to the point that it wouldn't be worth it to spam people unless you had a truly spectacular response rate.
I suppose if Pfizer gave out Viagra for free it would help a lot too...
Not really, although the very first airships were just that. The problem is you can only go fast enough such that the pressure on the leading, er, edge matches the pressure on the inside of the envelop. What that means is for a fabric balloon you'll get a flat spot at the "bow". Probably squeeze out some of the hot air and cost you lift. At any rate, the instability will make it very difficult to keep the fan pointed in the right direction.
Blimps get around the problem by having a sealed envelope and using overpressure such that the internal pressure at the bow is more than the pressure exerted by the surrounding air. They maintain the helium pressure using small balloons inside the blimp called "ballutes". The ballute pressure is usually maintained by redirecting some of the engine thrust. At any rate, the amount of overpressure limits a blimp's maximum speed, since the nose will collapse if your airspeed is too high. A higher internal pressure means a shorter envelop life as well as a sturdier (and thus heavier) envelope. Also, a blimp doesn't handle inclement weather very well, since it causes deformations in the envelope shape.
Rigid airships (like the one in the article) get around the pressure problem by having an external frame to take the load of pushing ambient air out of the way. The frame will also resist distortions caused by stray gusts of wind. In theory a rigid airship can go much faster than a blimp, both because the frame prevents distortion and also because the frame can be made in a much more aerodynamic shape. Although I doubt the one in the article is in any sort of contention for a speed record. If memory serves, the Hindenbury had a maximum speed of about 84 MPH, which was pretty good for 1937.
Well, not necessarily the lowest cost, but certainly the most value for their money. I don't blame them in the slightest. What makes Americans so special that we should be immune to competition? Do you really think if American companies refused to hire workers in foreign countries your job would be safe? Of course not! Those companies would become purely regional players, and all international business would go to more nimble foreign companies.
You can rail all you want against "Benedict Arnold" CEOs, pace John Edwards, but the reality is if these companies have to compete in the global marketplace for customers they simply must get the best value for their dollar.
And it doesn't worry me in the slightest, because I've been around long enough to know I can compete. First of all, like I said earlier, as those economies grow the playing field will even out. Am I worried about Japanese programmers taking my job? No. They cost too much. Same with Brits, Germans, and programming denizens of any other first world country. They might be as efficient as I am, but they cost just as much so there's no reason for my company to employ them. Besides, they live in countries with economies that create jobs, so my company would have to compete with the likes of BAE, SAP, and Sony for talent.
Secondly, this kind of work reqires a fair amount of infrastructure. I can't compete with an Indian guy getting paid 20% of my salary all other things being equal. But all other things aren't equal. He has to contend with spotty power, bad roads, a near-socialist business environment that requires bribes on top of high taxes, a mediocre education system except the very top universities, poor public health and sanitation (more sick days), etc. All these problems can be addressed, but it costs money. When India gets all those problems sorted out it'll be a first world country, and that guy in Delhi will make as much as me, not just because he can produce what I produce, but also because his country's economy will need his services.
I'm sure companies would love to hire people in Rwanda to do my job for $0.50/hour. But they can't, because the skilled labor pool doesn't exist and the infrastructure doesn't exist. When Rwanda has competitive infrastructure and labor, programmers in Rwanda will make what I make.
Lastly, not every company is large enough to get outsourcing right. It's all well and good for Oracle, which is large enough to invest billions, to create a city-within-a-city in Mumbai for its operations. But most companies have much smaller IT departments. It costs money to set up outsourcing arrangements, and the fewer programmers you have the less you save by dealing with the headaches. They could buy hours from one of the Anderson-style consulting companies, but I've spent enough time cleaning up those messes to think most companies probably realize what a mistake that is.
It's true that people without skills come out losers in a global economy. But for the right half of the bell curve I don't see this as a big problem. If I worked as a replaceable part on an assembly line I'd be worried about my job. I'm not. Am I worried about the social consequences of an economy that can only employ nerds and janitors? Sure, but that's a different subject.
Yes but Japan is screwed, all those non performing loans, an inefficient banking system. Japan is on the bring of another recession. I'm currently working in Japan and the signs don't look good.
Well, okay, but that wasn't my point. Japan will have to be in a recession for the next century before it can seriously be considered a third-world country. The point was jobs got outsourced to Japan, but now that the Japanese economy is large Japanese workers get paid too much for American companies to consider using them for outsourcing. In fact, Japanese companies are competing with American companies for Chinese and Indian labor.
I don't see how the banking problems (which are mostly over, by the way) have anything to do with outsourcing. The recession that started in 1989 is purely the result domestic inefficiency and boneheaded moves on the part of the Japanese government.
And China's doing just fine. The Chinese economy is growing so fast the loan problem won't be as serious as it was in Japan.
Jesus god what a load of nonsense. Unemployment in IT is low because they already tossed a few hundred thousand people out of work.
That's just wrong, unless you're considering call center people or sales dweebs "IT". And those people didn't get laid off because of outsourceing, they got laid off because we had a bubble and it burst. Skilled technical people, like programmers and system administrators, never had an unemployment rate over 4% even during the worst of the bust. So lets see a source on that.
And if you're happy with 13 hr time lags for development and support and then, maybe a partial understanding of English then more power to you. Let's hire deaf mute children in Sudan.
Neither you nor the poster immediately above clearly has ever had to implement anything globally.
Wrong again. I was team lead on a project which depended heavily on programming talent in Latvia. I worked with people in a farflung timezone who didn't know English at all. Documents got translated from English to Russian to Latvian, then the reply was translated in the other direction.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Are you trying to say outsourcing doesn't work? Clearly it does, or companies wouldn't still be doing it to the point that the Indian technical labor pool was entirely employed.
My father would say this is the difference between his generation and mine. In his day, people's word actually meant something. Even if those people worked for a corporation there was a sense of personal responsibility in your daily dealings.
But that's my point. From 1945 through the mid '70s companies could afford to act that way because the economy was growing at a pretty good clip. But when you have a recession, companies cut payrolls - it's just a fact of life. How many jobs did his father have? Companies can't afford to keep people they don't need on the payroll.
The new American rules are no different than the old American rules - There never was any such thing as job stability. When I graduated from college in the late '80s with an EE degree companies were laying off engineers by the thousands. This was long before outsourcing. Stability is a temporary condition during economic good times which persists because labor is in tight supply. As soon as the economy becomes "normal" again (or bad), that stability dissappears.
People for whom stability is a primary concern should consider owning a business or working for the goverment. By the way, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect professionals to save some portion of their income for a rainy day. I don't think it was ever unreasonable.
BTW I agree 100% with your last paragraph (although I would have phrased it "take the cash, not the promises"). Promises companies (and governments) make aren't really binding, since even if your boss is supremely ethical he's making promises on behalf of a corporation, and corporations are only as ethical as the people at the top. I once worked for a company that was handing out stock options for an IPO that was supposed to happen in six months. For years. That company never did go public - instead it was bought by another company and the options were converted at a very unfavorable multiple, rendering them worthless. Personally I laughed when they offered me options at salary negotiation time. No thanks - show me the money.
There are so many flaws in this thinking I don't know where to start.
First of all, CEOs don't reap what they sow. They'll only be CEO for a few years, they'll make a shitload of money, and when they leave they'll get an even bigger shitload of money as a golden parachute. You can't blame someone for taking that kind of work, and the long term implications of what they do won't affect them. Somebody will reap what they sow, but it won't be the CEOs.
Secondly, when did they "kill the industry" in the US? I'm working in "the industry", and this job gives me the most dollars-per-effort ratio of anywhere I've ever worked. Unemployment in IT in the US is what, 2%? That's hardly a dead industry.
Third, I don't know if you remember the bubble years, but turnover was pretty damn high in the US at that time. I recall the conventional wisdom was you'd make the most money if you moved on after two years, and lots of people did. I stayed at one company for four years and the only original coworkers who were there when I left were people who couldn't leave until their green card came through. When it did they left that day. Turnover is a sign of a good job market. People will stay in crappy jobs if there isn't anything else available.
If outsourcing moves on to other countries, so what? We went through the same thing with Japan. As countries emerge from the third world their economies create more demand for these kinds of skills than supply. In another generation American companies will be competing with Indian companies for high-tech workers in Africa, but due to cultural and time zone issues there will still be jobs in the US for people with skills.
'As the body of evidence accumulates, people can become more reassured that these devices are safe, but the final word is not there yet,' Muscat added.
I would think not. If the final word was "there", the government would have no reason to continue funding his research. One thing I've noticed about these kinds of studies is the automatic "... but more study is needed" caveat at the end of every article. Perhaps I'm getting cynical in my old age, but is it really possible that no scientific study is ever conclusive enough to not require further study?
If you think it's bizarre we don't tax capital gains as income, you're not old enough to remember the '70s. Back then everyone's assets were doubling in value purely due to inflation. So you'd buy a house for 20 grand, sell it five years later for 40 grand and pay taxes on the difference. But you really never "made" any money, since that 40 grand represented purely inflationary gains a was still only 20 grand's worth of buying power when you bought the house.
Even at today's historically low inflation rates if you hold on to assets for a couple decades they'll double in price without gaining any value at all. So your asset has to appreciate at the inflation rate plus the tax rate on the inflationary gains for you to break even.
These are the same people who've been saying "Apple must raise prices. The current prices are unsustainable" for years, and yet they aren't getting paid more. Apple's in the driver's seat for these kinds of negotiations unless Zune really takes off, so I wouldn't worry about it. In the article he says it would be "nice to have". Well, sure, we'd all love a raise.
This is a business negotiation between two companies. I don't really care if Apple agrees to split the profit on iPods or not, but it won't change what I'm willing to pay for an iPod.
I'm sure 3D Realms would love to see Steam hived off into another company, but what's in it for Valve? Also, I don't see much difference between lining Valve's pockets or doing the same for any other distributor. Is giving money to VU or EA that much better, even supposing they move to online distribution? Especially since they're gonna take a bigger bite than Valve.
Personally, I think Steam will soon be in a position similar to iTunes, and this is what worries 3D Realms. Companies will have to start coming to Valve in order to get full distribution of their products, and Valve will have a lot of clout regarding information and pricing. There's a network effect here: Nobody wants to sign up for ten different services, so if you pick one you want to pick the one with the best selection. So it all gets reinforced over time.
As for me, I love Steam. I haven't had any problems with it, and I like getting updates automatically. I also like the idea of having all my games available on a new computer without having to hunt down a piece of plastic and then going on the web to find updates.
I don't expect to see that many A Line games showing up as first runs on Steam because it is feedign the "competitor"...
I dunno. Call of Duty 2 is on there now, and that's a pretty big game. I suppose that's not exactly first run now, but it's getting a lot closer. They've been expanding their "stable" of games at a pretty good clip recently.
I agree the fast food diet isn't healthy, but I don't see how you could actually starve while eating big macs and fries. I have read about cases where very fat people have starved to death, but in every case I've seen it's because they faced an acute calorie shortage because of circumstances or some crazy crash diet. The malnutrition poor people in America face results in quality-of-life problems, not actual starvation.
This idea "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer" is a myth, nothing more. The reality is the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting richer as well. While it's true the rich are getting richer much faster than the poor, you don't spend percentages. Poor people in this country are better off than they've ever been. Certainly the gap between rich and poor is getting wider, but as far as I'm concerned that's not a problem as long as poor people are doing better in absolute terms.
Today, the expenditures per person of the lowest-income one-fifth (or quintile) of households equal those of the median American household in the early 1970s, after adjusting for inflation.
Yes, the middle class in America is disappearing. But they're not moving down, they're moving up.
First of all, this article, like the last one, doesn't say anything about starvation. It says hunger. You're a technical guy, so let me put it this way, okay? Hunger != Starvation for the purposes of government studies. What they're saying is that 15.4% of New Yorkers said they didn't think they had enough food at least one time over a three year period. That doesn't necessarily mean they didn't get enough calories to be healthy, it means that they didn't get enough calories to be sated. At least once. How many times? We don't know from these numbers.
Secondly, are you really so innocent as to accept without corroboration the statistics provided by advocacy groups? Lots of times these "studies" are nothing more than press releases. When they aren't, they're not done by statisticians but rather people who needed your help to pass basic math in college. Reporters don't know any better, since they never took statistics either. The time frame for the numbers is suspicious, since you can show anything you want with historical data as long as you pick the right time period.
Thirdly, I know this may come as a shock to people in the Big Apple, but New York != America. If that many people are having trouble in NYC they need to consider living somewhere else before asking the rest of us to pay their way.
Finally, did you see the part where the article says "...city employees will visit food pantries and soup kitchens during the holidays to help residents fill out food stamp applications"? The programs are in place, but, like I said in my last post, they're not applying. If they were really starving don't you think they'd apply for food stamps?
Doc, those people aren't starving. When the government says some people "have hunger" or "food insecurity", it's really the literal meaning. Sometimes they're hungry. That's not the same thing as starving - if you ever see a TV segment on this the thing that will jump out at you is most of them are grossly fat.
So no, 12% of Americans are not starving. Additionally, the government is getting these statistics from bureaucrats that want a bigger budget, who in turn are asking people on public assistance, in effect, if they want more money. So this number is very suspect even for what it is.
If you dig deeper you'll find these are people who are "falling through the cracks", and by that I don't mean there aren't programs to help them, I mean they aren't doing what they need to do to get the assistance that's available. So money isn't the solution to this problem.
Not true. Haven't you ever watched "Cops"? Every once in awhile they taser somebody two or three times and he doesn't go down. In this case they used the taser in a mode which doesn't fire the darts and operates at lower energy - essentially it's a stun wand. Of course, it sounds worse if you say "taser" (with an "s", mind you).
The guy was clearly looking for trouble - is it so surprising he found it? Of course the right thing for the cops to do would be to call for backup and then carry him to jail, but I don't think anyone should get prosecuted or charged for this.
That's the great thing about Google Earth - it's a poor man's satellite recon.
If I were fighting some brush war on a shoestring budget, you can bet I'd be using Google Earth to figure out where my opponent's weaknesses are. Old intelligence is way better than no intelligence.
They're all going to quit and go work a McJob instead.
If the private funding for these researchers dries up, many of them will be in McJobs. Medical research isn't like other kinds of science research - it's profitable, so companies put money into it. I question your 95% figure - do you have a source or is that a flourish? Medical labs are expensive - even if the researcher is willing to work for free drug development is still expensive.
There is no excuse for taking my tax dollars for research, and then forcing me to pay Pheizer or Merks for the results of that research. All research at public universities or using government money should be public domain.
Universities don't usually pay for the most expensive part of drug development, which is the clinical trials. The world is full of drugs that work fine in the test tube, but without the clinical trials the patents are pretty much worthless. There's a lot more to this than just what the university researcher does.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that government money should produce public research, but if we want to make patents public the government should either pay the entire cost of the research or buy the patent from the patent-holders. But look at it this way - would you rather have 100 drugs that are expensive for a few years (20? I don't know how long) and then go generic, or 20 drugs that immediately go generic? That's really the kind of trade-off under discussion here. I suspect if you went 100% government funding after a couple of generations your generic drugs would be behind the generic drugs produced by business-government partnerships.
If the government is going to fund a drug development cycle completely, it should concentrate on things that don't make money like malaria, schistosomiasis , and vaccinations.
Say that to yourself again, really slow this time. What about writing novels, movie scripts, or what about those individuals in police agencies and federal agencies that think about planning crimes to prevent them. What you are saying is that it is illegal to think about carrying a crime out. There should be nothing illegal about that. However, if you go about carrying those plans out, then it becomes a crime. Or at least that is how it should be.
This is simply daft. I will tell you exactly what is illegal (at least in the US): It is illegal to agree to commit a crime. That's it. Doesn't matter if you have a plan or not. If you and your buddies get together one Friday and decide you're gonna blow up the mayor's mailbox, you have broken the law regardless of whether or not you carry out your plan.
Now, in point of fact prosecutors in the US usually don't charge people with conspiracy unless they've done something in furtherance of the conspiracy, since the conspirators can always claim (with some justification) that they were just talking shit. Now, if they actually do something to move the conspiracy along, like, oh, I don't know, buy night-vision equipment or books with the technical details they need to carry out the plot, then the police will certainly charge them.
You would not get charged with conspiracy for writing a movie script or anything like that - that's just paranoia. Crime novels and scripts are a dime a dozen, and nobody ever gets charged with a crime for writing one.
Conspiracy isn't a new crime, either. It's been a crime since God was a kid.
Slashdot Mirror
As others have pointed out, this just means the mail gets generated when you go to read it.
Better, I think, is when you send a mail the server on the other end gives your computer a little mathematical task to accomplish, taking maybe five seconds of CPU time. That way a spammer can only send out 12 mails per minute by tying up 100% of his CPU. A side benefit would be zombies nets would impact the computer owners so much thay'd have to deal with the problem.
Only companies with gobs of money sunk into hardware would be able to spam you, and that would change the economics to the point that it wouldn't be worth it to spam people unless you had a truly spectacular response rate.
I suppose if Pfizer gave out Viagra for free it would help a lot too...
Not really, although the very first airships were just that. The problem is you can only go fast enough such that the pressure on the leading, er, edge matches the pressure on the inside of the envelop. What that means is for a fabric balloon you'll get a flat spot at the "bow". Probably squeeze out some of the hot air and cost you lift. At any rate, the instability will make it very difficult to keep the fan pointed in the right direction.
Blimps get around the problem by having a sealed envelope and using overpressure such that the internal pressure at the bow is more than the pressure exerted by the surrounding air. They maintain the helium pressure using small balloons inside the blimp called "ballutes". The ballute pressure is usually maintained by redirecting some of the engine thrust. At any rate, the amount of overpressure limits a blimp's maximum speed, since the nose will collapse if your airspeed is too high. A higher internal pressure means a shorter envelop life as well as a sturdier (and thus heavier) envelope. Also, a blimp doesn't handle inclement weather very well, since it causes deformations in the envelope shape.
Rigid airships (like the one in the article) get around the pressure problem by having an external frame to take the load of pushing ambient air out of the way. The frame will also resist distortions caused by stray gusts of wind. In theory a rigid airship can go much faster than a blimp, both because the frame prevents distortion and also because the frame can be made in a much more aerodynamic shape. Although I doubt the one in the article is in any sort of contention for a speed record. If memory serves, the Hindenbury had a maximum speed of about 84 MPH, which was pretty good for 1937.
No. Zeppelin is not a generic term - it's a company originally founded by Count Zeppelin. The term you're looking for is "rigid airship".
Scientist 1: If he bleeds, we can kill him.
I suppose, if by "generally not good for the economy" you mean "a huge effing disaster". Deflation is an economy-killer.
Or maybe your grandfather was just lucky. Both my grandads had to change not only jobs but careers a couple times in the '30s.
Well, not necessarily the lowest cost, but certainly the most value for their money. I don't blame them in the slightest. What makes Americans so special that we should be immune to competition? Do you really think if American companies refused to hire workers in foreign countries your job would be safe? Of course not! Those companies would become purely regional players, and all international business would go to more nimble foreign companies.
You can rail all you want against "Benedict Arnold" CEOs, pace John Edwards, but the reality is if these companies have to compete in the global marketplace for customers they simply must get the best value for their dollar.
And it doesn't worry me in the slightest, because I've been around long enough to know I can compete. First of all, like I said earlier, as those economies grow the playing field will even out. Am I worried about Japanese programmers taking my job? No. They cost too much. Same with Brits, Germans, and programming denizens of any other first world country. They might be as efficient as I am, but they cost just as much so there's no reason for my company to employ them. Besides, they live in countries with economies that create jobs, so my company would have to compete with the likes of BAE, SAP, and Sony for talent.
Secondly, this kind of work reqires a fair amount of infrastructure. I can't compete with an Indian guy getting paid 20% of my salary all other things being equal. But all other things aren't equal. He has to contend with spotty power, bad roads, a near-socialist business environment that requires bribes on top of high taxes, a mediocre education system except the very top universities, poor public health and sanitation (more sick days), etc. All these problems can be addressed, but it costs money. When India gets all those problems sorted out it'll be a first world country, and that guy in Delhi will make as much as me, not just because he can produce what I produce, but also because his country's economy will need his services.
I'm sure companies would love to hire people in Rwanda to do my job for $0.50/hour. But they can't, because the skilled labor pool doesn't exist and the infrastructure doesn't exist. When Rwanda has competitive infrastructure and labor, programmers in Rwanda will make what I make.
Lastly, not every company is large enough to get outsourcing right. It's all well and good for Oracle, which is large enough to invest billions, to create a city-within-a-city in Mumbai for its operations. But most companies have much smaller IT departments. It costs money to set up outsourcing arrangements, and the fewer programmers you have the less you save by dealing with the headaches. They could buy hours from one of the Anderson-style consulting companies, but I've spent enough time cleaning up those messes to think most companies probably realize what a mistake that is.
It's true that people without skills come out losers in a global economy. But for the right half of the bell curve I don't see this as a big problem. If I worked as a replaceable part on an assembly line I'd be worried about my job. I'm not. Am I worried about the social consequences of an economy that can only employ nerds and janitors? Sure, but that's a different subject.
Well, okay, but that wasn't my point. Japan will have to be in a recession for the next century before it can seriously be considered a third-world country. The point was jobs got outsourced to Japan, but now that the Japanese economy is large Japanese workers get paid too much for American companies to consider using them for outsourcing. In fact, Japanese companies are competing with American companies for Chinese and Indian labor.
I don't see how the banking problems (which are mostly over, by the way) have anything to do with outsourcing. The recession that started in 1989 is purely the result domestic inefficiency and boneheaded moves on the part of the Japanese government.
And China's doing just fine. The Chinese economy is growing so fast the loan problem won't be as serious as it was in Japan.
Wrong again. I was team lead on a project which depended heavily on programming talent in Latvia. I worked with people in a farflung timezone who didn't know English at all. Documents got translated from English to Russian to Latvian, then the reply was translated in the other direction.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Are you trying to say outsourcing doesn't work? Clearly it does, or companies wouldn't still be doing it to the point that the Indian technical labor pool was entirely employed.
But that's my point. From 1945 through the mid '70s companies could afford to act that way because the economy was growing at a pretty good clip. But when you have a recession, companies cut payrolls - it's just a fact of life. How many jobs did his father have? Companies can't afford to keep people they don't need on the payroll.
The new American rules are no different than the old American rules - There never was any such thing as job stability. When I graduated from college in the late '80s with an EE degree companies were laying off engineers by the thousands. This was long before outsourcing. Stability is a temporary condition during economic good times which persists because labor is in tight supply. As soon as the economy becomes "normal" again (or bad), that stability dissappears.
People for whom stability is a primary concern should consider owning a business or working for the goverment. By the way, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect professionals to save some portion of their income for a rainy day. I don't think it was ever unreasonable.
BTW I agree 100% with your last paragraph (although I would have phrased it "take the cash, not the promises"). Promises companies (and governments) make aren't really binding, since even if your boss is supremely ethical he's making promises on behalf of a corporation, and corporations are only as ethical as the people at the top. I once worked for a company that was handing out stock options for an IPO that was supposed to happen in six months. For years. That company never did go public - instead it was bought by another company and the options were converted at a very unfavorable multiple, rendering them worthless. Personally I laughed when they offered me options at salary negotiation time. No thanks - show me the money.
There are so many flaws in this thinking I don't know where to start.
First of all, CEOs don't reap what they sow. They'll only be CEO for a few years, they'll make a shitload of money, and when they leave they'll get an even bigger shitload of money as a golden parachute. You can't blame someone for taking that kind of work, and the long term implications of what they do won't affect them. Somebody will reap what they sow, but it won't be the CEOs.
Secondly, when did they "kill the industry" in the US? I'm working in "the industry", and this job gives me the most dollars-per-effort ratio of anywhere I've ever worked. Unemployment in IT in the US is what, 2%? That's hardly a dead industry.
Third, I don't know if you remember the bubble years, but turnover was pretty damn high in the US at that time. I recall the conventional wisdom was you'd make the most money if you moved on after two years, and lots of people did. I stayed at one company for four years and the only original coworkers who were there when I left were people who couldn't leave until their green card came through. When it did they left that day. Turnover is a sign of a good job market. People will stay in crappy jobs if there isn't anything else available.
If outsourcing moves on to other countries, so what? We went through the same thing with Japan. As countries emerge from the third world their economies create more demand for these kinds of skills than supply. In another generation American companies will be competing with Indian companies for high-tech workers in Africa, but due to cultural and time zone issues there will still be jobs in the US for people with skills.
I would think not. If the final word was "there", the government would have no reason to continue funding his research. One thing I've noticed about these kinds of studies is the automatic "... but more study is needed" caveat at the end of every article. Perhaps I'm getting cynical in my old age, but is it really possible that no scientific study is ever conclusive enough to not require further study?
If you think it's bizarre we don't tax capital gains as income, you're not old enough to remember the '70s. Back then everyone's assets were doubling in value purely due to inflation. So you'd buy a house for 20 grand, sell it five years later for 40 grand and pay taxes on the difference. But you really never "made" any money, since that 40 grand represented purely inflationary gains a was still only 20 grand's worth of buying power when you bought the house.
Even at today's historically low inflation rates if you hold on to assets for a couple decades they'll double in price without gaining any value at all. So your asset has to appreciate at the inflation rate plus the tax rate on the inflationary gains for you to break even.
If my h20 splittting car has a hole in it's pipes, would it be leaking or... bleeding?
These are the same people who've been saying "Apple must raise prices. The current prices are unsustainable" for years, and yet they aren't getting paid more. Apple's in the driver's seat for these kinds of negotiations unless Zune really takes off, so I wouldn't worry about it. In the article he says it would be "nice to have". Well, sure, we'd all love a raise.
This is a business negotiation between two companies. I don't really care if Apple agrees to split the profit on iPods or not, but it won't change what I'm willing to pay for an iPod.
I'm sure 3D Realms would love to see Steam hived off into another company, but what's in it for Valve? Also, I don't see much difference between lining Valve's pockets or doing the same for any other distributor. Is giving money to VU or EA that much better, even supposing they move to online distribution? Especially since they're gonna take a bigger bite than Valve.
Personally, I think Steam will soon be in a position similar to iTunes, and this is what worries 3D Realms. Companies will have to start coming to Valve in order to get full distribution of their products, and Valve will have a lot of clout regarding information and pricing. There's a network effect here: Nobody wants to sign up for ten different services, so if you pick one you want to pick the one with the best selection. So it all gets reinforced over time.
As for me, I love Steam. I haven't had any problems with it, and I like getting updates automatically. I also like the idea of having all my games available on a new computer without having to hunt down a piece of plastic and then going on the web to find updates.
I dunno. Call of Duty 2 is on there now, and that's a pretty big game. I suppose that's not exactly first run now, but it's getting a lot closer. They've been expanding their "stable" of games at a pretty good clip recently.
I agree the fast food diet isn't healthy, but I don't see how you could actually starve while eating big macs and fries. I have read about cases where very fat people have starved to death, but in every case I've seen it's because they faced an acute calorie shortage because of circumstances or some crazy crash diet. The malnutrition poor people in America face results in quality-of-life problems, not actual starvation.
This idea "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer" is a myth, nothing more. The reality is the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting richer as well. While it's true the rich are getting richer much faster than the poor, you don't spend percentages. Poor people in this country are better off than they've ever been. Certainly the gap between rich and poor is getting wider, but as far as I'm concerned that's not a problem as long as poor people are doing better in absolute terms.
Consider this little tidbit (from here):
Yes, the middle class in America is disappearing. But they're not moving down, they're moving up.
Are you reading the articles you're quoting?
First of all, this article, like the last one, doesn't say anything about starvation. It says hunger. You're a technical guy, so let me put it this way, okay? Hunger != Starvation for the purposes of government studies. What they're saying is that 15.4% of New Yorkers said they didn't think they had enough food at least one time over a three year period. That doesn't necessarily mean they didn't get enough calories to be healthy, it means that they didn't get enough calories to be sated. At least once. How many times? We don't know from these numbers.
Secondly, are you really so innocent as to accept without corroboration the statistics provided by advocacy groups? Lots of times these "studies" are nothing more than press releases. When they aren't, they're not done by statisticians but rather people who needed your help to pass basic math in college. Reporters don't know any better, since they never took statistics either. The time frame for the numbers is suspicious, since you can show anything you want with historical data as long as you pick the right time period.
Thirdly, I know this may come as a shock to people in the Big Apple, but New York != America. If that many people are having trouble in NYC they need to consider living somewhere else before asking the rest of us to pay their way.
Finally, did you see the part where the article says "...city employees will visit food pantries and soup kitchens during the holidays to help residents fill out food stamp applications"? The programs are in place, but, like I said in my last post, they're not applying. If they were really starving don't you think they'd apply for food stamps?
Doc, those people aren't starving. When the government says some people "have hunger" or "food insecurity", it's really the literal meaning. Sometimes they're hungry. That's not the same thing as starving - if you ever see a TV segment on this the thing that will jump out at you is most of them are grossly fat.
So no, 12% of Americans are not starving. Additionally, the government is getting these statistics from bureaucrats that want a bigger budget, who in turn are asking people on public assistance, in effect, if they want more money. So this number is very suspect even for what it is.
If you dig deeper you'll find these are people who are "falling through the cracks", and by that I don't mean there aren't programs to help them, I mean they aren't doing what they need to do to get the assistance that's available. So money isn't the solution to this problem.
Not true. Haven't you ever watched "Cops"? Every once in awhile they taser somebody two or three times and he doesn't go down. In this case they used the taser in a mode which doesn't fire the darts and operates at lower energy - essentially it's a stun wand. Of course, it sounds worse if you say "taser" (with an "s", mind you).
The guy was clearly looking for trouble - is it so surprising he found it? Of course the right thing for the cops to do would be to call for backup and then carry him to jail, but I don't think anyone should get prosecuted or charged for this.
That's the great thing about Google Earth - it's a poor man's satellite recon.
If I were fighting some brush war on a shoestring budget, you can bet I'd be using Google Earth to figure out where my opponent's weaknesses are. Old intelligence is way better than no intelligence.
If the private funding for these researchers dries up, many of them will be in McJobs. Medical research isn't like other kinds of science research - it's profitable, so companies put money into it. I question your 95% figure - do you have a source or is that a flourish? Medical labs are expensive - even if the researcher is willing to work for free drug development is still expensive.
Universities don't usually pay for the most expensive part of drug development, which is the clinical trials. The world is full of drugs that work fine in the test tube, but without the clinical trials the patents are pretty much worthless. There's a lot more to this than just what the university researcher does.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that government money should produce public research, but if we want to make patents public the government should either pay the entire cost of the research or buy the patent from the patent-holders. But look at it this way - would you rather have 100 drugs that are expensive for a few years (20? I don't know how long) and then go generic, or 20 drugs that immediately go generic? That's really the kind of trade-off under discussion here. I suspect if you went 100% government funding after a couple of generations your generic drugs would be behind the generic drugs produced by business-government partnerships.
If the government is going to fund a drug development cycle completely, it should concentrate on things that don't make money like malaria, schistosomiasis , and vaccinations.
This is simply daft. I will tell you exactly what is illegal (at least in the US): It is illegal to agree to commit a crime. That's it. Doesn't matter if you have a plan or not. If you and your buddies get together one Friday and decide you're gonna blow up the mayor's mailbox, you have broken the law regardless of whether or not you carry out your plan.
Now, in point of fact prosecutors in the US usually don't charge people with conspiracy unless they've done something in furtherance of the conspiracy, since the conspirators can always claim (with some justification) that they were just talking shit. Now, if they actually do something to move the conspiracy along, like, oh, I don't know, buy night-vision equipment or books with the technical details they need to carry out the plot, then the police will certainly charge them.
You would not get charged with conspiracy for writing a movie script or anything like that - that's just paranoia. Crime novels and scripts are a dime a dozen, and nobody ever gets charged with a crime for writing one.
Conspiracy isn't a new crime, either. It's been a crime since God was a kid.