By that logic Debian and Gentoo aren't linux either as they simply use the kernel in a another project. Hell, nothing short of the kernel itself would count if you want to be pedantic enough. So if you accept Debian and Gentoo then its pretty idiotic to nto accept OpenSSH by the same logic, actually the later is more important to linux as a whole than the former two.
I'm assuming Wikipedia runs on Linux and other GPL software and it's content is GPL licensed if I remember. OpenSSH is present on most linux systems I assume and the BSD license is GPL compatible and all that.
Let me put the numbers in proportion for you: if Branson took one third of his net worth (percentage-wise, not too out of line with what the residents of the county just did for his little corporate venture) and divided it amongst ALL the people of the county, he would effectively raise the median income by 50%....your point being? His wealth isn't sitting as giant gold bricks in his house you know, right? Most of it is invested in companies and thus using it would hurt those companies. Other parts of it may be tied to banks and removing that would impede the banks ability to give out loans.
It is far from clear that 200,000 people can become prosperous within the first 10 or 20 years from this project.
Prosperous? What kind of idiot are you.
It's an investment, they don't need to each make half a million on it. As long as it pays of better than other types of investments they could make then it was worth it. They'll be getting both regular and very rich tourists, the later are likely to spend some money.
It can't get that far - long before it did, Indians would start outsourcing to US.
Outsourcing only works if the country in question has a stable economy, trained workers and people who will work for low wages. After your scenario none of these would be true. No trained worked would have been educated due to lack of need for them thus creating few people to be used for outsourcing, heck the whole education system would likely have collapsed given how things are heading. No one would be willing to work either due to the social and cultural system that would form as no one would have needed to work for a while.
I doubt that even the US government would survive a total destruction of the economy, in the sense that almost everyone is employed and the great depression looks pleasant. We're dependent on imports and one our main export is money right now (thats how we maintain a trade deficit for so long, banks use dollars as reserves but that need not stay that way), can't buy much when your currency is in 1000% inflation. Your scenario would simply make it even worse. Sure after maybe 30 years they might come true but like I said the US would then be a third world nation.
Our prosperity does not depend on the rest of the world being in poverty.
I never said that, I simply said that if we outsource too much (ie: do what your original post said) it may very well kill the US economy in the long run (combined with other factor). All your scenario would do is mean that everyone else's prosperity would be partially due to the poverty of the US.
If we do this to perfection, none of us will have to work anymore, because machines and people in India will be doing all our work for us, and we'll still have the same amount of stuff.
Until the people in India make their own companies which out compete the US in quality and cost (lower costs of management, etc.) Then the US economy ceases to exist, the dollar is dropped by the world's banks and thus tanks, and there isn't anyone left in the US who has the now needed skills. Aka "how to go from first to third world in 20 years."
It's a very inexpensive console (compared to the competition) and nintendo has historically released "fun group games" on their consoles. A lot of people could care less about HD (I mean not many even have HD tvs) or even the shiny level of their game graphics.
If I understand correctly the reason he can't be pardoned right now is because the president (or whomever) got kicked out by the coup is also being charged with lesse-majesty.
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Just because we've arrived at the point where we respect no one and find few things worth fighting for doesn't mean that everyone else has to follow our lead. If everyone did we'd have avoided at least one massive war the last century as there'd be no nationalism to fuel certain movements.
Also just because not everyone in the US blindly respects the same person doesn't mean that each individual doesn't have respect for some figure or another.
Just because people want the Wii does not mean people really want the controller. I mean, by that logic just because you buy a Dell means that you want all the spyware/crapware that is loaded on by default.
His statement is meant as I see it to say "do people who are interested in an xbox really want such a controlled including both the consumers and game developers." The Wii is if nothing else not geared to the same market and it forces such a controller on developers. Neither of these implies that xbox owners (or even Wii owners as I said above) want this controller or that developers would incorporate it into games of their own will.
Their incomes would affect the figures for average industry income, yet average incomes have long been stagnant. Not really given how damn massive a field CS/IT are and just how many different jobs there are. I work with mostly CS people and they have had no trouble finding a job and the salaries aren't exactly shabby here. Then again these aren't code-monkey level jobs and ability to think quickly/grasp new concepts is a big part of the hiring process.
Also not everyone agrees with your "facts": http://money.cnn.com/2004/02/05/pf/college/lucrati ve_degrees/index.htm?cnn=yes
The rest of your post is a bunch of bizarre anecdotes, dismissal of cited facts and ridiculous generalizations, "Most Americans... are lazy idiots." Many people would agree and as should be clear those are just my observations.
If you really think those kinds of claims equal a supporting argument, then clearly you've indulged in this terrible education system you rail against. *looks about* Last I checked this is slashdot, this is me amusing myself. I really don't need to support myself and my posts have about as much of an argument in them as yours.
Most sane people who have been within 100 feet of the US pre-college education system will quickly tell you its a shit hole. And guess where the US born college candidates come from?
Like I said before, if you want hard data than simply look at the composition of any good school at any level. If you want to see how bad the pre-college system is then just go look at the failure rate of students on state tests and then go read the tests, remember that every time too many students fail they make the test easier.
In a free market, if demand increases while supply remains constant, than prices will rise. Yet we've seen near static wage levels in the computer industry since the end of the dot-bomb years. This empirical evidence shows that there are plenty of Americans available to fill these spots. Quantity does not mean quality, 100 monkeys can't do the job of 1 human. You can't magically create properly raised children with work discipline, intelligence/critical thinking and 20 years of proper education.
If you can think (as in be creative not just an intelligent primate) and have work ethics than you would not be unemployed.
No, there is nothing terribly wrong with our education system. There is something wrong and has been wrong for a while now. It's also not education as much as society and culture. You can't fix the later with laws as we're in a democracy and those idiots we wish to remove are the ones in charge. Also they tried to improve education in the 70s or 80s (Soviet scare, etc.) and got half way through reforms before the public lost interest (and so for 20+ years all those half assed solutions stayed unfinished).
Most Americans not counting recent immigrants or their children (or even up to their children's children) are lazy idiots. I went to a very good public school and either Eastern Europeans and Asians are genetically superior (in which case we should allow unlimited immigration to improve the gene pool) or American parents (and as a result their children) are utter fuckups. These are educated people that are being imported, ones who are much better at the job than any American. Go look at graduate schools in technical fields, electrical engineering is filled with asians on student viasas (and the rest are also asians but already have visas/citizenship).
It is the incentive system that has something seriously wrong with it. Not really, the people I work with seem to be quite happy with it. Then again they are good at what they do.
The guys going into college know that the job market for computer engineers sucks, so they've been studying other disciplines, enrollment in computer science courses is at record lows all across the country but general college enrollment is climbing. Or you could look at it as that during the boom a lot of people who were not cut out for CS/IT went into it for the money. These people are now unable to find jobs as they're morons. The job market in turn has returned to the pre-boom days as has the school system. You can't magically create better students and candidates out of thin air, not everyone is cut out for such work or capable of putting themselves into it (hating your job is not good). So no, if there aren't any candidates for a job now letting all the idiots in likely won't change things.
Make it an attractive career, not one where the suits take advantage of the geeks, and you'll see plenty of increased interest. But if the industry continues to undercut its current people, they will eventually find themselves in a situation where they really do need tons of H1Bs for their talent and not for their effect on wages. There are plenty of job opportunities, just because any "can barely get an English lit degree" moron can't go into cs and get a job later doesn't mean much.
Hell, no one wants to be statistician despite it being absurdly easy to get into good graduate programs, the classes are easy (or hard but for a MS you can go with the easy ones) and the pay is very nice (and if you want to you can do lots of cs as well).
Or they'll find that other countries need these guys more than the US does because we've lost our edge. Our edge has been immigrants for the last 40 years, go look at any EE program or magnet middle/high school.
Graduate school is, if you're really good you may not even have to TA/RA (ie: get a non-department fellowship). Undergrad varies, good universities are essentially no longer a question of money (free ride up to family income of $40+k now I think). If you're willing to actually work at it and take massive loans then they're not much of a question no matter where you go. Admissions are the real problem, not directly but indirectly (ie: better middle/high schools, better resources for filling out college apps, better access to extracurriculars, etc.). So yes, it's perfectly accessible to anyone except that like everything else in life its not as easy for everyone. Also, many other nations have free education period for those who qualify academically. This does however assume your family isn't so poor as to require you to work since you're 16 (or 10 in other countries I guess) to not starve.
Just another reason why if it's not a PDA or a tablet, you should be using a wire.
Or using WPA or VPN which amazingly enough I already have with any non-shitty firewall or access point. Then I don't need to worry about tripping on a cable or moving it out of the way when I vacuum. So no it's not another reason unless you're an idiot.
If someone wants my data badly enough to use a unknown to almost everyone super/quantum computer to crack my long pass-phrase then they've already broken into my house and installed undetectable hardware snooping devices (you known since that actually has a chance of working and all).
No endless stream of internal combustion engines with associated CO2 emissions and other nastyness.
In the US due to lack of density you'd likely get diesel trains so you still get CO2.
The Dallas light rail system (DART) which opened up a few years ago started on a good note - the major problem was too many people wanting to ride it from too far out.
Welcome to the concept of express lines.
The US is lamentably far behind
The US is not population dense as a whole and gas is cheap. Trains are simply not economical.
I hope someday we can muster the political will to build a rail infrastructure the way we have built a highway infrastructure, because there may well come a time when raw materials are too expensive to make building massive car fleets and replacing them every few years economically viable.
We'll run out of oil long before we run out of raw materials to build cars with. Also cars can last for quite a while, just because we want the new shinny thing doesn't mean we must have it. Trains need to be replaced as well every so often.
See thats not hard to do however in reality the question is: "How long are they going to 'love' 80-hour weeks doing the work of a trained monkey?"
They're no more "making games" than the guy who tightened bolts in a car on the factory floor back in the day "made cars." Short of self-delusion or lottery player sort of reality distortion (that they'll get more creative control before going insane and burning out) they'd be about as close to "making games" as a code-monkey is in any other field.
More teachers don't do much when you don't have space for extra classrooms. My elementary school turned the auditorium into classrooms before I got there and did the same to the library while I was there. I'm sure they'd have done the same to the outside cement yard area if the historic status of the building didn't prevent most external modifications. A high school near where I lived had those mobile classrooms outside the building for a decade or so now.
Not to mention that given the quality (or rather lack there of) of teachers I've seen during my school years the less students interact closely with them the less school shootings we'll have. Quantity does not equal quality and shitty teachers are much worse than overcrowded classrooms imho.
One teacher for example never read homeworks, apparently it took her 9 months to realize one kid's homeworks consisted entirely of "You're a bitch" (and similar phrases). Another one had three petitions started to get her fired but none had any impact despite large numbers of signatures (thank you union). I still remember one time having to explain something in chemistry to the class because the teacher was too incompetent to do so, keep in mind that this was one of the rare moments that I wasn't sleep in that class. Hell, my middle school math teacher was so utterly bad (and the school so utterly unhelpful) that I learned calculus (and passed the AP exam) mostly so I'd never have to deal with her kind ever again.
Maybe he cares more about his kids not being shot for saying something against the goverment once they grow up? Maybe he cares about them living and raising a family in a free country? Maybe he cares about the hundreds of worse and more likely things that can happen to them than a perv (who btw are if I remember most likely a family member, so how often does your daughter visit uncle bob or grampa willy) or a terrorist?
I sure hope you never let your kids get in a car or leave the house at all, given how many ways they can die in those situations. Hell, stuff them in a clean room for their whole lives so that a disease won't kill them. Actually given the massive number of genetic disorders just conceiving kids is condemning to early death or lifelong suffering at a much higher rate that any sexual predator or terrorist ever could. I recommend you go get a vasectomy asap for the sake of your unborn children.
Except that the mechanism by which we pass genes onto our offspring leads to mutation (crossovers can happen in the middle of genes). Even if we only had crossovers that didn't alter genes it is still possible to have speciation as genes don't function alone but in groups.
Now without crossovers at all (or other mutations), where you literally get a single chromosome from each parent you'd likely get less diversity with time. Sooner or later a small group of chromosomes will come out ahead and all the previous alleles on other chromosomes will be gone.
I agree. Internet access is a useful enough tool to be provided to university students, but someone who is really serious about going to college doesn't need an entertainment package as part of the tuition. Humans are not robots, many of us don't function very well if all we do is study/work 18/7 for months on end. Even the workaholics I know need to relax every once in a while (weekly say) or they get a bit out of it. High suicide rates aren't good for anybody involved.
You can't force someone to learn, but you can remove prominent distractions to better help them learn. And when they graduate they won't have any nanny state to wipe their ass for them, college is supposed to teach you not just what the professor say in class. There are these things called grades and if someone slacks off those will go down thus alerting the student to a problem.
Yes because we all know that once they graduate they'll magically get all the personal responsibility and self-control that they had no chance to develop beforehand... oh wait.
They are not paying for college, their PARENTS are. Not always.
I knew many college students that I would not consider adults in any sense of the word. I can say that about any age group.
of course you are going to admit a larger chunk of lazier, more immature kids And most are that way because they had horrid parenting that didn't teach them how to be hardworking and mature. So your solution is to give them even more horrid parenting?
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By that logic Debian and Gentoo aren't linux either as they simply use the kernel in a another project. Hell, nothing short of the kernel itself would count if you want to be pedantic enough. So if you accept Debian and Gentoo then its pretty idiotic to nto accept OpenSSH by the same logic, actually the later is more important to linux as a whole than the former two.
I'm assuming Wikipedia runs on Linux and other GPL software and it's content is GPL licensed if I remember. OpenSSH is present on most linux systems I assume and the BSD license is GPL compatible and all that.
Let me put the numbers in proportion for you: if Branson took one third of his net worth (percentage-wise, not too out of line with what the residents of the county just did for his little corporate venture) and divided it amongst ALL the people of the county, he would effectively raise the median income by 50%. ...your point being? His wealth isn't sitting as giant gold bricks in his house you know, right? Most of it is invested in companies and thus using it would hurt those companies. Other parts of it may be tied to banks and removing that would impede the banks ability to give out loans.
It is far from clear that 200,000 people can become prosperous within the first 10 or 20 years from this project.
Prosperous? What kind of idiot are you.
It's an investment, they don't need to each make half a million on it. As long as it pays of better than other types of investments they could make then it was worth it. They'll be getting both regular and very rich tourists, the later are likely to spend some money.
It can't get that far - long before it did, Indians would start outsourcing to US.
Outsourcing only works if the country in question has a stable economy, trained workers and people who will work for low wages. After your scenario none of these would be true. No trained worked would have been educated due to lack of need for them thus creating few people to be used for outsourcing, heck the whole education system would likely have collapsed given how things are heading. No one would be willing to work either due to the social and cultural system that would form as no one would have needed to work for a while.
I doubt that even the US government would survive a total destruction of the economy, in the sense that almost everyone is employed and the great depression looks pleasant. We're dependent on imports and one our main export is money right now (thats how we maintain a trade deficit for so long, banks use dollars as reserves but that need not stay that way), can't buy much when your currency is in 1000% inflation. Your scenario would simply make it even worse. Sure after maybe 30 years they might come true but like I said the US would then be a third world nation.
Our prosperity does not depend on the rest of the world being in poverty.
I never said that, I simply said that if we outsource too much (ie: do what your original post said) it may very well kill the US economy in the long run (combined with other factor). All your scenario would do is mean that everyone else's prosperity would be partially due to the poverty of the US.
If we do this to perfection, none of us will have to work anymore, because machines and people in India will be doing all our work for us, and we'll still have the same amount of stuff.
Until the people in India make their own companies which out compete the US in quality and cost (lower costs of management, etc.) Then the US economy ceases to exist, the dollar is dropped by the world's banks and thus tanks, and there isn't anyone left in the US who has the now needed skills. Aka "how to go from first to third world in 20 years."
It's a very inexpensive console (compared to the competition) and nintendo has historically released "fun group games" on their consoles. A lot of people could care less about HD (I mean not many even have HD tvs) or even the shiny level of their game graphics.
If I understand correctly the reason he can't be pardoned right now is because the president (or whomever) got kicked out by the coup is also being charged with lesse-majesty.
Also just because not everyone in the US blindly respects the same person doesn't mean that each individual doesn't have respect for some figure or another.
Just because people want the Wii does not mean people really want the controller. I mean, by that logic just because you buy a Dell means that you want all the spyware/crapware that is loaded on by default.
His statement is meant as I see it to say "do people who are interested in an xbox really want such a controlled including both the consumers and game developers." The Wii is if nothing else not geared to the same market and it forces such a controller on developers. Neither of these implies that xbox owners (or even Wii owners as I said above) want this controller or that developers would incorporate it into games of their own will.
Also not everyone agrees with your "facts": http://money.cnn.com/2004/02/05/pf/college/lucrat
Most sane people who have been within 100 feet of the US pre-college education system will quickly tell you its a shit hole. And guess where the US born college candidates come from?
Like I said before, if you want hard data than simply look at the composition of any good school at any level. If you want to see how bad the pre-college system is then just go look at the failure rate of students on state tests and then go read the tests, remember that every time too many students fail they make the test easier.
Instead in Europe the government creates the silly rules that companies need to follow.
If you can think (as in be creative not just an intelligent primate) and have work ethics than you would not be unemployed. No, there is nothing terribly wrong with our education system. There is something wrong and has been wrong for a while now. It's also not education as much as society and culture. You can't fix the later with laws as we're in a democracy and those idiots we wish to remove are the ones in charge. Also they tried to improve education in the 70s or 80s (Soviet scare, etc.) and got half way through reforms before the public lost interest (and so for 20+ years all those half assed solutions stayed unfinished).
Most Americans not counting recent immigrants or their children (or even up to their children's children) are lazy idiots. I went to a very good public school and either Eastern Europeans and Asians are genetically superior (in which case we should allow unlimited immigration to improve the gene pool) or American parents (and as a result their children) are utter fuckups. These are educated people that are being imported, ones who are much better at the job than any American. Go look at graduate schools in technical fields, electrical engineering is filled with asians on student viasas (and the rest are also asians but already have visas/citizenship). It is the incentive system that has something seriously wrong with it. Not really, the people I work with seem to be quite happy with it. Then again they are good at what they do. The guys going into college know that the job market for computer engineers sucks, so they've been studying other disciplines, enrollment in computer science courses is at record lows all across the country but general college enrollment is climbing. Or you could look at it as that during the boom a lot of people who were not cut out for CS/IT went into it for the money. These people are now unable to find jobs as they're morons. The job market in turn has returned to the pre-boom days as has the school system. You can't magically create better students and candidates out of thin air, not everyone is cut out for such work or capable of putting themselves into it (hating your job is not good). So no, if there aren't any candidates for a job now letting all the idiots in likely won't change things. Make it an attractive career, not one where the suits take advantage of the geeks, and you'll see plenty of increased interest. But if the industry continues to undercut its current people, they will eventually find themselves in a situation where they really do need tons of H1Bs for their talent and not for their effect on wages. There are plenty of job opportunities, just because any "can barely get an English lit degree" moron can't go into cs and get a job later doesn't mean much.
Hell, no one wants to be statistician despite it being absurdly easy to get into good graduate programs, the classes are easy (or hard but for a MS you can go with the easy ones) and the pay is very nice (and if you want to you can do lots of cs as well). Or they'll find that other countries need these guys more than the US does because we've lost our edge. Our edge has been immigrants for the last 40 years, go look at any EE program or magnet middle/high school.
Graduate school is, if you're really good you may not even have to TA/RA (ie: get a non-department fellowship). Undergrad varies, good universities are essentially no longer a question of money (free ride up to family income of $40+k now I think). If you're willing to actually work at it and take massive loans then they're not much of a question no matter where you go. Admissions are the real problem, not directly but indirectly (ie: better middle/high schools, better resources for filling out college apps, better access to extracurriculars, etc.). So yes, it's perfectly accessible to anyone except that like everything else in life its not as easy for everyone. Also, many other nations have free education period for those who qualify academically. This does however assume your family isn't so poor as to require you to work since you're 16 (or 10 in other countries I guess) to not starve.
Just another reason why if it's not a PDA or a tablet, you should be using a wire.
Or using WPA or VPN which amazingly enough I already have with any non-shitty firewall or access point. Then I don't need to worry about tripping on a cable or moving it out of the way when I vacuum. So no it's not another reason unless you're an idiot.
If someone wants my data badly enough to use a unknown to almost everyone super/quantum computer to crack my long pass-phrase then they've already broken into my house and installed undetectable hardware snooping devices (you known since that actually has a chance of working and all).
accidents, traffic conjestion
Trains crash and get held up sometimes too.
No endless stream of internal combustion engines with associated CO2 emissions and other nastyness.
In the US due to lack of density you'd likely get diesel trains so you still get CO2.
The Dallas light rail system (DART) which opened up a few years ago started on a good note - the major problem was too many people wanting to ride it from too far out.
Welcome to the concept of express lines.
The US is lamentably far behind
The US is not population dense as a whole and gas is cheap. Trains are simply not economical.
I hope someday we can muster the political will to build a rail infrastructure the way we have built a highway infrastructure, because there may well come a time when raw materials are too expensive to make building massive car fleets and replacing them every few years economically viable.
We'll run out of oil long before we run out of raw materials to build cars with. Also cars can last for quite a while, just because we want the new shinny thing doesn't mean we must have it. Trains need to be replaced as well every so often.
See thats not hard to do however in reality the question is:
"How long are they going to 'love' 80-hour weeks doing the work of a trained monkey?"
They're no more "making games" than the guy who tightened bolts in a car on the factory floor back in the day "made cars." Short of self-delusion or lottery player sort of reality distortion (that they'll get more creative control before going insane and burning out) they'd be about as close to "making games" as a code-monkey is in any other field.
Google free internet already exists, granted only in Mountain View but it is free wireless that covers almost the whole place.
More teachers don't do much when you don't have space for extra classrooms. My elementary school turned the auditorium into classrooms before I got there and did the same to the library while I was there. I'm sure they'd have done the same to the outside cement yard area if the historic status of the building didn't prevent most external modifications. A high school near where I lived had those mobile classrooms outside the building for a decade or so now.
Not to mention that given the quality (or rather lack there of) of teachers I've seen during my school years the less students interact closely with them the less school shootings we'll have. Quantity does not equal quality and shitty teachers are much worse than overcrowded classrooms imho.
One teacher for example never read homeworks, apparently it took her 9 months to realize one kid's homeworks consisted entirely of "You're a bitch" (and similar phrases). Another one had three petitions started to get her fired but none had any impact despite large numbers of signatures (thank you union). I still remember one time having to explain something in chemistry to the class because the teacher was too incompetent to do so, keep in mind that this was one of the rare moments that I wasn't sleep in that class. Hell, my middle school math teacher was so utterly bad (and the school so utterly unhelpful) that I learned calculus (and passed the AP exam) mostly so I'd never have to deal with her kind ever again.
Maybe he cares more about his kids not being shot for saying something against the goverment once they grow up? Maybe he cares about them living and raising a family in a free country? Maybe he cares about the hundreds of worse and more likely things that can happen to them than a perv (who btw are if I remember most likely a family member, so how often does your daughter visit uncle bob or grampa willy) or a terrorist?
I sure hope you never let your kids get in a car or leave the house at all, given how many ways they can die in those situations. Hell, stuff them in a clean room for their whole lives so that a disease won't kill them. Actually given the massive number of genetic disorders just conceiving kids is condemning to early death or lifelong suffering at a much higher rate that any sexual predator or terrorist ever could. I recommend you go get a vasectomy asap for the sake of your unborn children.
One word: Nixon.
Except that the mechanism by which we pass genes onto our offspring leads to mutation (crossovers can happen in the middle of genes). Even if we only had crossovers that didn't alter genes it is still possible to have speciation as genes don't function alone but in groups.
Now without crossovers at all (or other mutations), where you literally get a single chromosome from each parent you'd likely get less diversity with time. Sooner or later a small group of chromosomes will come out ahead and all the previous alleles on other chromosomes will be gone.