Meanwhile, you want those without jobs and who are competing against six billion others in the greatest game of musical chairs EVER, to believe you, and follow your ideology, based on a "not yet" answer?
So what is the alternative? Mandatory employment by businesses, high tariffs on foreign goods, remove ourselves from the world market? Should the US move towards economic isolationism, no imports, no exports? US companies are not the only source of jobs in the world. Should we handcuff domestic companies in the foreign markets such that they are no longer competitive?
Inherently, that's impossible. Automation still needs command and control and that's only doable as long as your pings are low.
You'll still have the issue of one person with automation being able to do the work of 1000, and what are those other 999 people supposed to do? Do you think people thought that computers, which used to be rooms full of women with slide rules, would be replaced by a $500 plastic box that is a million times faster.
Even starving Singaporean prostitutes won't want to put up shop around an automated factory with no one to talk to for years at a time.
What about those offshore data centers, I'm sure there are a few nerds around who wouldn't mind being on the moon:)
All I'm doing is pointing out that the fear of not having enough jobs has existed for hundreds of years. How do you think workers felt in the late 1800's when machines began doing the job of 100's of men? Skilled laborers, people who spent years as an apprentice, suddenly replaced by a piece of metal that required 1 button to operate. Time and time again the doomsayers have been proven wrong. The reason is because we just can't imagine what wonderful things will arise in the future.
I don't think it's false optimism to think better things will arise, it's following the trend of history.
There are no new higher value job markets that can fill the gap that the IT and manufacturing industries filled in before.
Yet. People are rather creative, and we often don't give them enough credit. Look at how transmitting numbers across phone lines has become a trillion dollar industry.
The higher value jobs you mention are coming few and far between now, and that is how it will be from now on, because every single new industry that comes out is subject to large scale automation or offshoring as soon as it emerges.
So jobs cannot move out of the country, nor can they be automated? Is that really the right approach? Should we declare Linux illegal, because it threatens the jobs of OS developers? Jobs do not exist to employ people, they exist because there is a need for a task to be accomplished.
Furthermore, what new industries could be higher on the food chain than nanotech and biotech? If we're not at the end of the industrial food chain then what could possibly be next? Picotech? Cloning? All of that is subject to immediate job market decimation by offshoring and automation.
Wow did I miss the nanotech revolution? Right now I think that industry, as well as genetics, are still in their early stages. Where the internet was probably in the 80's.
We all knew that cars would replace the horse and cart, and that there'd be a whole industry rising up to build cars.
And we replaced human welders who made those cars with robot ones. There is no giant welding robot arm industry for those people who were displaced. Sometimes it's obvious what change will bring, other times it isn't.
But after biotech and nanotech, what industries could possibly come next? See? No one has any answers now. That is a unique problem that is an anomaly in your theory that "offshoring is good for America".
Yes because in the 80's it was so easy to see the rise of the internet and IT. The thought was if the US isn't making cars, isn't making computers, isn't making electronic gizmos, isn't making clothes, isn't making any goods, the economy will be crushed.
Show me one higher value industry that will supply as many jobs as IT did... heck, show me one that will supply even half as many. Or even a quarter.
The IT industry won't evaporate completely, and in fact has an opportunity to continue growing domesticlly and globally. With globalization communications networks are becoming more complex, and businesses are looking towards custom solutions. Also, consulting businesses will be a growth market in legal, technical, and marketing fields.
The next job boom, if it ever happens, will involve building things in space or building things that'll go into space. Once industry can reach beyond the atmosphere, and especially when bases appear elsewhere, automation cannot handle that. You're going to need countless people to get it all off the ground and keep it running.
And in 100 years the same arguments will come up again. There will be people complaining about automation of those jobs in space, or that it's cheaper to manufacture on the moon than on earth (no taxes, environmental regulations).
Pray that our leaders aim for the stars or you may find yourself looking at a severe employers' market that will outlive this country
I pray that my leaders invest more in education; because the more educated we are, the more ideas we are exposed to, and the more creative we can be.
The problem is that there is an incentive to shift ANY high productivity job now and in the future.
As I pointed out the same pressures existed in the past.
But when capital and technology are mobile, those flashy new professions will flow to where labor is cheapest.
No it will flow to where production is cheapest. There are things like infrastructure, distribution, goverment regulation, etc. that also need to be considered. Already in certain areas of India there are inflationary issues, and as the middle class there increases, there will be political pressure for improved worker conditions, environmental regulation, etc..
Higher order learning is not a key advantage to exclude other groups (poor nations) from entering the game. Geniuses are born everywhere, not only in America.
True, but most of the workforce is not made of geniuses. You can't just sit somebody in front of a computer and expect code to come out. Training (education)is an important aspect of a high level economy, and is something that should be focused on in the US.
US corporations today are engaged in labor arbitrage, buying low and selling high. In essence, they are sucking more wealth from the middle and lower classes than they used to.
Corporations have not changed. Historically there are cycles. The auto industry lost jobs to foreign competition, then Japanese car makers began opening plants in the US because it was cheaper.
Offshoring increases profit margins at the expense of society at large. See the current huge trade deficit.
Current? You mean the one that's existed since 1976? Not many seemed to mind in the mid-80's or mid-90's.
The nation is living on credit and future generations will have to pay for this massacre.
It depends. If the US economy did not use cheaper goods to grow, then yes there will be severe economic issues. If however, like we saw in the 90's when cheaper imported goods (specifically computers) allowed us to create new industries, then no future generations won't have to pay.
On the other hand, the unfavored social layers, in order to keep up with their living standards, are more leveraged than ever. The future does not look pretty to me.
So what would your alternative be? Goverement regulation to prevent offshoring? Higher tariffs? The goverment should be focused on ensuring trade is done in an equitable manner (eg addressing China's manipulation of their currency), not protectionism.
Being this is/., let's look at things from a technology perspective. What is the difference between replacing somebody with a computer and offshoring a job? Why do we have no issues replacing people with an inanimate objects, but we do with another person; somebody who has their own needs, possibly even a family to feed and take care of. Does the individual worker who is out on the street care whether their job is being done at a call center in India, or by a machine in somebody's office?
I can prove my point, however. We've already lost the tech industry and we are now losing the biotech industry. Recent job growth has been heavily weighted toward the low paying service industry.
Back in the day people said the US was doomed because textile jobs moved, then steel making, then auto industry, then electronics manufacturing. The same issues of globalization came up in the late 1700's, and early 1800's with Federalism. States tried to tax each other because they were worried about their own industries. We've lost industries before, and then utilized cheaper goods to create higher value jobs.
Good business plans dont require sacrifice, bad ones do
Actually sometimes good business plans do require sacrifice. Look at IBM, they had layoffs in the 1980s because they were shifting their business from hardware to services. HP's business has not been working, they may be looking at a shift.
Nothing, as somebody else pointed out these issues existed in the past.
Instead of Enron there was the S&L scandal; tech jobs were being taken by the Japanese instead of the India and China; insider trading was legal until the 60's; AT&T and the rail barons existed long before Microsoft; the military has always recruited in high schools; gas prices and inflation exploded in the 70s; and workers have always been looked at like a commodity
Think about this very carefully. People are scared there will be no future. They are fighting like 10 wild hyinas over a found carcus. We are loosing our humanity when we degrade ourseleves to fight for a basic survival.
Last time I checked cars, vacations and retirement funds were not basic survival.
Only the rules are the same anywhere, because we're all a part of the same "free market" capitalist economy.
So then the idiots say "Well then, don't take a job. Nobody's forcing you to work."
Only then how is one to eat?
You can always start your own business. Where did people get this notion that it's a right to have a job?
So--what's the solution for those who can't compete? Kill them? Let them starve? If you're born IQ 90 and simple, you deserve to be "outcompeted" by everyone else and end up jobless, homeless, and dead (because we don't believe in social welfare in the free market)? How is this different, morally, from the Nazis, eugenics, and the termination of "defective" humans?
It depends on the situation. We do have things like grants, scholarships and student loans for retraining people whose jobs have been replaced. For those "defective" people we have disability and other social systems. They are not going to get the same level of luxury as somebody working is, but it will be enough for a decent lifestyle.
Especially CEOs making more in one year than anyone needs to live comfortably for an entire LIFETIME, in a nation based on a Judeo-Christian faith that claims to believe in sacrifice and brotherhood, that claims to support individual "freedom." Freedom for who?
Who defines what is "enough"? You? Cable TV is a luxury, a new car is a luxury. The drive of greed helps as well as hurts. You don't need both parents working to earn $60k a year to live. You do, however, if you want to have that house in the 'burbs, the 2 SUVs in the garage, a TV in every room.
By its actions clearly the bookstore intended a sale to take place. The customers didn't steal the books.
It's a stretch, but by breaching the contract, it could be argued the store sold "stolen" goods. The consumer then would have no right to such goods even if purchased in good faith. The publisher can require the book to be returned, or at least have a temporary injunction issued until the legal status of the books can be determined.
Of course there is absolutely no argument for the courts to prevent somebody from talking about the book. I'm a believer in copyrights, but there are limits when it comes to restricting free speech. The court should not be in a position of prior restriant. At best the publisher can sue for libel later on and have the burden of proof to show that the person's words had a quantifiable and unfounded (almost impossible to prove) impact on sales.
You have to know this and that, but you don't need to know about the principle behind this and that, because that's what other people will learn -- oh, and by the way... don't bother with the principles.
As the world gets more complex this will happen more and more. While some basic concepts need to be understood, others we can use without fully understanding. As specialization increases we will have layers of knowledge. For example should all programmers study years to understand the physics of microprocessors before they are allowed to code? Do little kids need to know how to compute pi to the 10,000th digit before they are allowed to compute the area of a circle?
Allow me to explain. A shortage of labor is a normal market force, and government should not intervene to counteract this force. Two of the effects of a shortage is (1) to boost wages and (2) improve working conditions.
The first problem with your arguement is definition of what constitutes the "market." Just like in thermo when you can arbitrarily define what constitutes a system, in economics you can do the same when it comes to a market. If you define the labor market as all the workers in the US then allowing foreign workers does disrupt the natural equilibrium. However, if you define the labor market as all the people in the world, then in fact goverment requirement of H1B visas are actually an artificial restriction on the free market, and workers and jobs should freely be able to move across national borders.
However, Washington rarely fixes shortages of jobs by, for example, creating more government jobs. The interests of Washington are not aligned with the hopes and aspirations of middle America.
Goverment jobs are not the hope and aspiration of middle america.
We should close the American market to (relatively) non-free markets like India, China, and Mexico. Further, the American market should be flung wide open to (relatively) free markets like Eastern/Western Europe, Canada, and Japan. Free trade is good -- only when we are trading with other societies that maintain (relatively) free markets.
I agree, free trade can only work between countries if both sides are free. The US is as guilty as other countries about protectionism of specific industries. Unfortunately, free trade though may work from an economic standpoint, doesn't necessarily work politically.
In a sort of dramatic irony, part of the reason that some of the more ambitious features of SWG fell flat is because the players, driven by greed and the desire to be first at something,
Damn those players for being human.
They should be blaming themselves for the failures in SWG's design, instead of blaming the designers. It's really the players' fault tht eliminating "the grind" is probably the biggest challenge in MMOGs.
Sounds like Sony logic of "it's a beautiful design, it's the user's fault it doesn't work." Which is more likely to change the behavior of hundreds of thousands of players, or the design of the game? Sure it's a challenge to remove the grind from games, but that's the job of the designers to figure out.
I challenge you to find any real world religion well represented by fictional book, music, or video game.
Books: I would characterize the Bible as a mix of fiction and history relating to religion. Video game: I thought Darklands did a good job handling the religious aspects of medieval Germany
Considering that PhD's are overqualified to teach CS 101, asking those types of questions are a straight insult.
Why take it as an insult? Perhaps the interviewer is forced to ask the question regardless of the candidate. It could also just be a test of arrogance, sometimes in the real world you're asked to do jobs that you might consider beneath you. Don't think a manager wants an employee that says "PhD's don't fill out TPS reports" Besides if it's an easy question just answer and move on.
Morons do not get PhD's.
No, but people with no practical knowledge sometimes do. At least in physical sciences you can spend your graduate career focused on theory and similuation, without any actual hands-on experimentation. I'm assuming CS might have something similar where stuff is just described on paper with no actual coding done.
And no hand holding will get you that far.
There are some PhD's who just do what their professor tells them, that's what I mean by hand holding. Doesn't mean the person getting the degree is stupid, they've just never had to think creatively.
He has a record that speaks for itself. He jumped through enough hoops to get the PhD, and he erroneously believed they recognized his established experience, given that they contacted him.
And how many times have/.'ers complained about somebody who had great credentials but didn't actually know anything. There are some PhD's earned their degree by being handheld by a professor and just following what he says. They may know what they researched well, but the insight needed to expand just isn't there.
Further, some of these technical interviews are there to identify if a person has the skills for a specific job. Somebody can have a PhD in chemical engineering and published articles on polymers, so would sound like a wonderful candidate. However, they may not fit into the specific job because they focused on polymer reaction simulation, and not on high temp polymer behavior, or understand the mechanical properties.
Science is not faith-based but fact-based. Faith has no room in the scientific process.
A certain degree of faith is included in the scientific process. Science and religion both share the common root of philosophy. The difference between religion and science is religion is based on blind faith, science is based on tempered faith.
When you drop a rock, you believe it will fall. This belief is based on huge amounts of historical evidence. However, science doesn't actually dictate what will happen to the rock, it merely gives a reasonable prediction based on our knowledge. One of the biggest mistakes people make in science is to say we observe X because of theory Y, because theory doesn't dictate behavior. All we can say is we observe X, which is consistant with the prediction of theory Y.
Faith also gives birth to our new ideas. Einstein's faith that the universe neither expanded nor contracted led him to create the cosmological constant. Even the idea that we somehow can explain the behavior of the universe is based in faith. Since we can't know everything, we must make assumptions. In the absence of knowledge all we have is faith.
Scientists working on string theory do so because of faith. String theory is unfalsifiable, and it explains no known phenomenon that isn't already explained by another theory. I would argue string theory right now sits in the same ballpark as creationism. The difference is that those working on string theory will reformulate if they have conflicting observations. While creationists will tend to dismiss or give alternate explainations on conflicting observations.
And it totally misses the point. Even if games don't "force" people do to anything, they can still be dangerous if they encourage certain behavior, or make certain behavior seem better than it actually is.
Games provide an outlet where there are no consequences; as such they can reveal underlying desires or curiosity in people. I've found the games people play and how they play them is more a reflection of the player, and not so much influenced by the game. For example in GTA getting enjoyment from going around and shooting people randomly is more driven by some feelings already existing in the player. Doing so makes the game harder, as you keep having cops show up to stop you. You have the freedom to do so, but it's up to the player to decide whether it's fun or not.
Games may give you a non-violent choice, but they make the violent choice more fun! Who doesn't want to have fun?
Once again the "fun" lays in the hands of the player. RPGs often give you the choice between good and evil paths. I have more fun following the noble path. While somebody else may have more fun slaughtering the serfs in the fields and taking their possessions. The game hasn't changed, the player has. Many stealth-action games let you bust in and kill everybody, but you also have the option to sneak in and accomplish your mission. Some people enjoy the gunfight, other people enjoy the tension of stealth.
I'm really surprised at people who try to make the sale of games to minors an issue of free speech. Restricting the sale of cigarettes and booze and porn to minors is not a violation of free speech, and neither is restricting the sale of computer games.
I agree. Restriction of games is not the same as banning. It just gives parents a tool to help parent their children.
And, like the tobacco industry or the auto industry, they'll keep claiming that "there's no evidence our product kills people" because they don't want to know.
The problem with your analogy is that the auto or tobacco industry issues are based in basic science. The impact of games is much more difficult to quantify, since it is only part of a number of psychological influences.
They work when you have a relatively small population base, but not when the population is in the billions. (And not when patents keep getting extended to longer and longer periods of time.)
Patents haven't been extended, copyrights have.
During the 1800s there were no improvements to the pistol for about 20 years due to patent restrictions. Patents are supposed to promote science and industry, but often have the opposite effect.
Even in the 20th century handguns haven't really been innovated upon. This is not because of patents, but because there is no market.
If there is a real need for a product, there are many ways to innovate around a patent (excluding software patents which is just screwed up and doesn't really represent what patents should be). That's why even though Viagra is patented there are like a dozen similar drugs a few years later. I work in electronics manufacturing, there is a huge movement towards lead-free processing. Patented alloys makes it difficult, but there are lots of ways around them. In general the shared information of patents outweighs the restriction. All patents do is make you think a little harder.(once again software patents excluded).
I would agree the time of patent protection is outdated due to the time to market differences of the 18th and 21st century.
Electricity, Lightbulb, Radio, Car, Plane, (the list goes on)...These are MAJOR innovations compared with the relatively minor ones of a P4 processor, the iPod, etc...Think of things in categories
I would categorize those inventions as our ability to manipulate the world around us. Now we are manipulating how we interact and even who we are. Look where healthcare was in the 19th century, now we are at the beginning of genetic manipulation and controlling our own evolution (that's pretty major). The internet has changed not just how we communicate but how we interact. Communities don't just represent associations based on physical location, but rather intellectual interests.
We can see on the horizon some facinating things that may change humanity completely. Genetic engineering, the merging of people and machines, and even the evolution of machine intelligence may fundamentally change our perception of what life is.
Slashdot Mirror
Meanwhile, you want those without jobs and who are competing against six billion others in the greatest game of musical chairs EVER, to believe you, and follow your ideology, based on a "not yet" answer?
:)
So what is the alternative? Mandatory employment by businesses, high tariffs on foreign goods, remove ourselves from the world market? Should the US move towards economic isolationism, no imports, no exports? US companies are not the only source of jobs in the world. Should we handcuff domestic companies in the foreign markets such that they are no longer competitive?
Inherently, that's impossible. Automation still needs command and control and that's only doable as long as your pings are low.
You'll still have the issue of one person with automation being able to do the work of 1000, and what are those other 999 people supposed to do? Do you think people thought that computers, which used to be rooms full of women with slide rules, would be replaced by a $500 plastic box that is a million times faster.
Even starving Singaporean prostitutes won't want to put up shop around an automated factory with no one to talk to for years at a time.
What about those offshore data centers, I'm sure there are a few nerds around who wouldn't mind being on the moon
All I'm doing is pointing out that the fear of not having enough jobs has existed for hundreds of years. How do you think workers felt in the late 1800's when machines began doing the job of 100's of men? Skilled laborers, people who spent years as an apprentice, suddenly replaced by a piece of metal that required 1 button to operate.
Time and time again the doomsayers have been proven wrong. The reason is because we just can't imagine what wonderful things will arise in the future.
I don't think it's false optimism to think better things will arise, it's following the trend of history.
There are no new higher value job markets that can fill the gap that the IT and manufacturing industries filled in before.
Yet. People are rather creative, and we often don't give them enough credit. Look at how transmitting numbers across phone lines has become a trillion dollar industry.
The higher value jobs you mention are coming few and far between now, and that is how it will be from now on, because every single new industry that comes out is subject to large scale automation or offshoring as soon as it emerges.
So jobs cannot move out of the country, nor can they be automated? Is that really the right approach? Should we declare Linux illegal, because it threatens the jobs of OS developers?
Jobs do not exist to employ people, they exist because there is a need for a task to be accomplished.
Furthermore, what new industries could be higher on the food chain than nanotech and biotech? If we're not at the end of the industrial food chain then what could possibly be next? Picotech? Cloning? All of that is subject to immediate job market decimation by offshoring and automation.
Wow did I miss the nanotech revolution? Right now I think that industry, as well as genetics, are still in their early stages. Where the internet was probably in the 80's.
We all knew that cars would replace the horse and cart, and that there'd be a whole industry rising up to build cars.
And we replaced human welders who made those cars with robot ones. There is no giant welding robot arm industry for those people who were displaced. Sometimes it's obvious what change will bring, other times it isn't.
But after biotech and nanotech, what industries could possibly come next? See? No one has any answers now. That is a unique problem that is an anomaly in your theory that "offshoring is good for America".
Yes because in the 80's it was so easy to see the rise of the internet and IT. The thought was if the US isn't making cars, isn't making computers, isn't making electronic gizmos, isn't making clothes, isn't making any goods, the economy will be crushed.
Show me one higher value industry that will supply as many jobs as IT did... heck, show me one that will supply even half as many. Or even a quarter.
The IT industry won't evaporate completely, and in fact has an opportunity to continue growing domesticlly and globally. With globalization communications networks are becoming more complex, and businesses are looking towards custom solutions. Also, consulting businesses will be a growth market in legal, technical, and marketing fields.
The next job boom, if it ever happens, will involve building things in space or building things that'll go into space. Once industry can reach beyond the atmosphere, and especially when bases appear elsewhere, automation cannot handle that. You're going to need countless people to get it all off the ground and keep it running.
And in 100 years the same arguments will come up again. There will be people complaining about automation of those jobs in space, or that it's cheaper to manufacture on the moon than on earth (no taxes, environmental regulations).
Pray that our leaders aim for the stars or you may find yourself looking at a severe employers' market that will outlive this country
I pray that my leaders invest more in education; because the more educated we are, the more ideas we are exposed to, and the more creative we can be.
The problem is that there is an incentive to shift ANY high productivity job now and in the future.
.
/., let's look at things from a technology perspective. What is the difference between replacing somebody with a computer and offshoring a job? Why do we have no issues replacing people with an inanimate objects, but we do with another person; somebody who has their own needs, possibly even a family to feed and take care of. Does the individual worker who is out on the street care whether their job is being done at a call center in India, or by a machine in somebody's office?
As I pointed out the same pressures existed in the past.
But when capital and technology are mobile, those flashy new professions will flow to where labor is cheapest.
No it will flow to where production is cheapest. There are things like infrastructure, distribution, goverment regulation, etc. that also need to be considered. Already in certain areas of India there are inflationary issues, and as the middle class there increases, there will be political pressure for improved worker conditions, environmental regulation, etc.
Higher order learning is not a key advantage to exclude other groups (poor nations) from entering the game. Geniuses are born everywhere, not only in America.
True, but most of the workforce is not made of geniuses. You can't just sit somebody in front of a computer and expect code to come out. Training (education)is an important aspect of a high level economy, and is something that should be focused on in the US.
US corporations today are engaged in labor arbitrage, buying low and selling high. In essence, they are sucking more wealth from the middle and lower classes than they used to.
Corporations have not changed. Historically there are cycles. The auto industry lost jobs to foreign competition, then Japanese car makers began opening plants in the US because it was cheaper.
Offshoring increases profit margins at the expense of society at large. See the current huge trade deficit.
Current? You mean the one that's existed since 1976? Not many seemed to mind in the mid-80's or mid-90's.
The nation is living on credit and future generations will have to pay for this massacre.
It depends. If the US economy did not use cheaper goods to grow, then yes there will be severe economic issues. If however, like we saw in the 90's when cheaper imported goods (specifically computers) allowed us to create new industries, then no future generations won't have to pay.
On the other hand, the unfavored social layers, in order to keep up with their living standards, are more leveraged than ever. The future does not look pretty to me.
So what would your alternative be? Goverement regulation to prevent offshoring? Higher tariffs? The goverment should be focused on ensuring trade is done in an equitable manner (eg addressing China's manipulation of their currency), not protectionism.
Being this is
I can prove my point, however. We've already lost the tech industry and we are now losing the biotech industry. Recent job growth has been heavily weighted toward the low paying service industry.
Back in the day people said the US was doomed because textile jobs moved, then steel making, then auto industry, then electronics manufacturing. The same issues of globalization came up in the late 1700's, and early 1800's with Federalism. States tried to tax each other because they were worried about their own industries.
We've lost industries before, and then utilized cheaper goods to create higher value jobs.
Good business plans dont require sacrifice, bad ones do
Actually sometimes good business plans do require sacrifice. Look at IBM, they had layoffs in the 1980s because they were shifting their business from hardware to services. HP's business has not been working, they may be looking at a shift.
What has changed?
Nothing, as somebody else pointed out these issues existed in the past.
Instead of Enron there was the S&L scandal; tech jobs were being taken by the Japanese instead of the India and China; insider trading was legal until the 60's; AT&T and the rail barons existed long before Microsoft; the military has always recruited in high schools; gas prices and inflation exploded in the 70s; and workers have always been looked at like a commodity
Think about this very carefully. People are scared there will be no future. They are fighting like 10 wild hyinas over a found carcus. We are loosing our humanity when we degrade ourseleves to fight for a basic survival.
Last time I checked cars, vacations and retirement funds were not basic survival.
Only the rules are the same anywhere, because we're all a part of the same "free market" capitalist economy.
So then the idiots say "Well then, don't take a job. Nobody's forcing you to work."
Only then how is one to eat?
You can always start your own business. Where did people get this notion that it's a right to have a job?
So--what's the solution for those who can't compete? Kill them? Let them starve? If you're born IQ 90 and simple, you deserve to be "outcompeted" by everyone else and end up jobless, homeless, and dead (because we don't believe in social welfare in the free market)? How is this different, morally, from the Nazis, eugenics, and the termination of "defective" humans?
It depends on the situation. We do have things like grants, scholarships and student loans for retraining people whose jobs have been replaced. For those "defective" people we have disability and other social systems. They are not going to get the same level of luxury as somebody working is, but it will be enough for a decent lifestyle.
Especially CEOs making more in one year than anyone needs to live comfortably for an entire LIFETIME, in a nation based on a Judeo-Christian faith that claims to believe in sacrifice and brotherhood, that claims to support individual "freedom." Freedom for who?
Who defines what is "enough"? You? Cable TV is a luxury, a new car is a luxury. The drive of greed helps as well as hurts. You don't need both parents working to earn $60k a year to live. You do, however, if you want to have that house in the 'burbs, the 2 SUVs in the garage, a TV in every room.
Remember folks, outsourcing is good for the economy!
It is for the economy of India.
And if history is any indication, it is for the US as well.
The injunction only applies to you if your name is Jane or John Doe
By its actions clearly the bookstore intended a sale to take place. The customers didn't steal the books.
It's a stretch, but by breaching the contract, it could be argued the store sold "stolen" goods. The consumer then would have no right to such goods even if purchased in good faith. The publisher can require the book to be returned, or at least have a temporary injunction issued until the legal status of the books can be determined.
Of course there is absolutely no argument for the courts to prevent somebody from talking about the book. I'm a believer in copyrights, but there are limits when it comes to restricting free speech. The court should not be in a position of prior restriant. At best the publisher can sue for libel later on and have the burden of proof to show that the person's words had a quantifiable and unfounded (almost impossible to prove) impact on sales.
then it might be arguably a violation of 4th and 14th ammendment protections (IANAL)
If the laptops are issued by the school there is no expectation of privacy. The schools would also probably have the parents sign a waiver.
Great. A debate on zombies, with logical explainations and references to source material.
:)
I can't imagine why more women don't participate in these kinds of discussions.
You have to know this and that, but you don't need to know about the principle behind this and that, because that's what other people will learn -- oh, and by the way... don't bother with the principles.
As the world gets more complex this will happen more and more. While some basic concepts need to be understood, others we can use without fully understanding. As specialization increases we will have layers of knowledge.
For example should all programmers study years to understand the physics of microprocessors before they are allowed to code? Do little kids need to know how to compute pi to the 10,000th digit before they are allowed to compute the area of a circle?
Allow me to explain. A shortage of labor is a normal market force, and government should not intervene to counteract this force. Two of the effects of a shortage is (1) to boost wages and (2) improve working conditions.
The first problem with your arguement is definition of what constitutes the "market." Just like in thermo when you can arbitrarily define what constitutes a system, in economics you can do the same when it comes to a market.
If you define the labor market as all the workers in the US then allowing foreign workers does disrupt the natural equilibrium. However, if you define the labor market as all the people in the world, then in fact goverment requirement of H1B visas are actually an artificial restriction on the free market, and workers and jobs should freely be able to move across national borders.
However, Washington rarely fixes shortages of jobs by, for example, creating more government jobs. The interests of Washington are not aligned with the hopes and aspirations of middle America.
Goverment jobs are not the hope and aspiration of middle america.
We should close the American market to (relatively) non-free markets like India, China, and Mexico. Further, the American market should be flung wide open to (relatively) free markets like Eastern/Western Europe, Canada, and Japan. Free trade is good -- only when we are trading with other societies that maintain (relatively) free markets.
I agree, free trade can only work between countries if both sides are free. The US is as guilty as other countries about protectionism of specific industries. Unfortunately, free trade though may work from an economic standpoint, doesn't necessarily work politically.
Why on earth can't I get ye flask
In a sort of dramatic irony, part of the reason that some of the more ambitious features of SWG fell flat is because the players, driven by greed and the desire to be first at something,
Damn those players for being human.
They should be blaming themselves for the failures in SWG's design, instead of blaming the designers. It's really the players' fault tht eliminating "the grind" is probably the biggest challenge in MMOGs.
Sounds like Sony logic of "it's a beautiful design, it's the user's fault it doesn't work." Which is more likely to change the behavior of hundreds of thousands of players, or the design of the game? Sure it's a challenge to remove the grind from games, but that's the job of the designers to figure out.
I challenge you to find any real world religion well represented by fictional book, music, or video game.
Books: I would characterize the Bible as a mix of fiction and history relating to religion.
Video game: I thought Darklands did a good job handling the religious aspects of medieval Germany
Considering that PhD's are overqualified to teach CS 101, asking those types of questions are a straight insult.
Why take it as an insult? Perhaps the interviewer is forced to ask the question regardless of the candidate. It could also just be a test of arrogance, sometimes in the real world you're asked to do jobs that you might consider beneath you. Don't think a manager wants an employee that says "PhD's don't fill out TPS reports"
Besides if it's an easy question just answer and move on.
Morons do not get PhD's.
No, but people with no practical knowledge sometimes do. At least in physical sciences you can spend your graduate career focused on theory and similuation, without any actual hands-on experimentation. I'm assuming CS might have something similar where stuff is just described on paper with no actual coding done.
And no hand holding will get you that far.
There are some PhD's who just do what their professor tells them, that's what I mean by hand holding. Doesn't mean the person getting the degree is stupid, they've just never had to think creatively.
He has a record that speaks for itself. He jumped through enough hoops to get the PhD, and he erroneously believed they recognized his established experience, given that they contacted him.
/.'ers complained about somebody who had great credentials but didn't actually know anything. There are some PhD's earned their degree by being handheld by a professor and just following what he says. They may know what they researched well, but the insight needed to expand just isn't there.
And how many times have
Further, some of these technical interviews are there to identify if a person has the skills for a specific job. Somebody can have a PhD in chemical engineering and published articles on polymers, so would sound like a wonderful candidate. However, they may not fit into the specific job because they focused on polymer reaction simulation, and not on high temp polymer behavior, or understand the mechanical properties.
Science is not faith-based but fact-based. Faith has no room in the scientific process.
A certain degree of faith is included in the scientific process. Science and religion both share the common root of philosophy. The difference between religion and science is religion is based on blind faith, science is based on tempered faith.
When you drop a rock, you believe it will fall. This belief is based on huge amounts of historical evidence. However, science doesn't actually dictate what will happen to the rock, it merely gives a reasonable prediction based on our knowledge. One of the biggest mistakes people make in science is to say we observe X because of theory Y, because theory doesn't dictate behavior. All we can say is we observe X, which is consistant with the prediction of theory Y.
Faith also gives birth to our new ideas. Einstein's faith that the universe neither expanded nor contracted led him to create the cosmological constant. Even the idea that we somehow can explain the behavior of the universe is based in faith. Since we can't know everything, we must make assumptions. In the absence of knowledge all we have is faith.
Scientists working on string theory do so because of faith. String theory is unfalsifiable, and it explains no known phenomenon that isn't already explained by another theory. I would argue string theory right now sits in the same ballpark as creationism. The difference is that those working on string theory will reformulate if they have conflicting observations. While creationists will tend to dismiss or give alternate explainations on conflicting observations.
Then we could cut out all of the BS like jurors and such and just have the computer decide as it is programmed to .
Great, all we need are Diebold Judging machines running Windows. It would bring new meaning to "blue screen of death"
If programmers ran the world, the law would be clear, concise, and unambiguous.
Even with unambiguous laws you still would need somebody to arbitrate and decide. Which means it wouldn't stop this idiot.
And it totally misses the point. Even if games don't "force" people do to anything, they can still be dangerous if they encourage certain behavior, or make certain behavior seem better than it actually is.
Games provide an outlet where there are no consequences; as such they can reveal underlying desires or curiosity in people. I've found the games people play and how they play them is more a reflection of the player, and not so much influenced by the game.
For example in GTA getting enjoyment from going around and shooting people randomly is more driven by some feelings already existing in the player. Doing so makes the game harder, as you keep having cops show up to stop you. You have the freedom to do so, but it's up to the player to decide whether it's fun or not.
Games may give you a non-violent choice, but they make the violent choice more fun! Who doesn't want to have fun?
Once again the "fun" lays in the hands of the player. RPGs often give you the choice between good and evil paths. I have more fun following the noble path. While somebody else may have more fun slaughtering the serfs in the fields and taking their possessions. The game hasn't changed, the player has.
Many stealth-action games let you bust in and kill everybody, but you also have the option to sneak in and accomplish your mission. Some people enjoy the gunfight, other people enjoy the tension of stealth.
I'm really surprised at people who try to make the sale of games to minors an issue of free speech. Restricting the sale of cigarettes and booze and porn to minors is not a violation of free speech, and neither is restricting the sale of computer games.
I agree. Restriction of games is not the same as banning. It just gives parents a tool to help parent their children.
And, like the tobacco industry or the auto industry, they'll keep claiming that "there's no evidence our product kills people" because they don't want to know.
The problem with your analogy is that the auto or tobacco industry issues are based in basic science. The impact of games is much more difficult to quantify, since it is only part of a number of psychological influences.
They work when you have a relatively small population base, but not when the population is in the billions. (And not when patents keep getting extended to longer and longer periods of time.)
Patents haven't been extended, copyrights have.
During the 1800s there were no improvements to the pistol for about 20 years due to patent restrictions. Patents are supposed to promote science and industry, but often have the opposite effect.
Even in the 20th century handguns haven't really been innovated upon. This is not because of patents, but because there is no market.
If there is a real need for a product, there are many ways to innovate around a patent (excluding software patents which is just screwed up and doesn't really represent what patents should be). That's why even though Viagra is patented there are like a dozen similar drugs a few years later. I work in electronics manufacturing, there is a huge movement towards lead-free processing. Patented alloys makes it difficult, but there are lots of ways around them. In general the shared information of patents outweighs the restriction. All patents do is make you think a little harder.(once again software patents excluded).
I would agree the time of patent protection is outdated due to the time to market differences of the 18th and 21st century.
Electricity, Lightbulb, Radio, Car, Plane, (the list goes on)...These are MAJOR innovations compared with the relatively minor ones of a P4 processor, the iPod, etc...Think of things in categories
I would categorize those inventions as our ability to manipulate the world around us. Now we are manipulating how we interact and even who we are. Look where healthcare was in the 19th century, now we are at the beginning of genetic manipulation and controlling our own evolution (that's pretty major). The internet has changed not just how we communicate but how we interact. Communities don't just represent associations based on physical location, but rather intellectual interests.
We can see on the horizon some facinating things that may change humanity completely. Genetic engineering, the merging of people and machines, and even the evolution of machine intelligence may fundamentally change our perception of what life is.