Moderators - can you explain why my post is flame bait? This is a serious concern - does supporting Israel, or being Israeli mean that you can't post on Slashdot?
The subject is the iPhone - the point I'm making should be damn clear: there are many, many countries which Apple will not arrange partnership agreements with cell distributors, and that means that to use the iPhone we have to unlock it. Hard to comprehend? It's not "oh, poor Israel", it's "oh, poor rest of the world!"
On the subject of US government policy and Israel: How does that relate to the iPhone, how does that relate to Apple? It is an unattributed quote, a very common feature of the Israel bashing we see on Digg, DailyKos, and Reddit on a daily basis. Do you have the slightest idea how the Israeli currency system works (hint: it's a basket currency, look it up). The quote makes no sense, and I actually studied monetary economics for years - have you?
Oh for God's sake... can't you give the Israel bashing a rest? "We" in this instance refers to myself and my family. Want to ban Israeli's from Slashdot?
Not all, or even close to a majority of Israelis are the monsters that you think we are. But in this particular instance, Israel is a country that has a very significant technology export industry. For example, if you really hate Israel, please throw out your Intel based PC and leave us the hell alone. Don't you wonder why Intel chips often have code names like Banias, Merom, etc? They're designed in Israel, many are made in Israel.
Skipping the post-modernist, hip-to-be-liberal, all-purpose-activist crap, and you may want to consider that my point remains valid: if Apple bricks the iPhone to prevent unlocking than people in many countries will never have the chance to use it - which is simple stupidity.
I'm an Apple fanboy - I've used Macs since 1984, worked for Apple for a couple of years, and have promoted Apple equipment and software where I've been employed. But at this moment, I'm disgusted. There is no need to disable the unlocked iPhone's, and Jobs and crew should damn well accept that some of us actually refuse to use AT&T on principal. Think Different my a**.
I'm not going to subscribe to AT&T. AT&T, the firm that's trying to eliminate net neutrality. AT&T, the reconstituted (near) monopoly. AT&T the firm that opened their switch boxes to the NSA without hesitation and is now attempting to manipulate legislation to provide immunity from prosecution in that matter.
On a practical note, Does Mr. Jobs even recognize how expensive his bed partner is overseas? And this matter practically to myself and my family. Apple, as normal, has forgotten that Israel exists. Apple has, as far as I know, has never sold its products directly in Israel. If I want to send an iPhone to my family in Israel, should I have to sign up for AT&T and pay for their pathetic World Traveler plan? The world does exist outside the US and a few European markets.
Incidentally - my evil unlocked iPhone works perfectly on T-Mobile - without Visual Voice Mail, but gods, I'll live. So what, precisely, is the point of altering the modem firmware, except to break unlocking? Point out examples of the baseband firmware wreaking havoc on the network; explain how this change benefits users.
The iPhone is the first tablet computer I've seen that inspires the imagination. I want to write programs for it, I want to explore a new user interface. If it runs OS X, treat it like an OS X box and let us get on with writing the programs that will sell the bloody thing. Don't freeze us out while you write such amazing accomplishments as the "Wireless i-Tunes Store" while we're trying to write vertical apps for the medical profession, law, and other fields.
Job's, former AT&T hacker, has decided to repeat the folly of the early closed Mac, the early closed NeXT, and even at times the Newton. Apple made a terrible choice in its partner, and seems incapable of realizing the potential of the iPhone.
I've wondered about the same issue, but I think it's a question of misidentification more than anything else. If you look at "Progressive" blogs - DailyKos, MyLeftWing, etc. - you'll find a significant portion of the posters who are quite happy to bash Christianity and Judaism while turning a blind eye towards Islamic fundamentalism.
I wouldn't say that those self-declared "Progressives" are actually "Liberals" - they remind me of the folks in the 1950's who would argue that Stalin was a great man. All purpose-activists who don't recognize their own hypocrisy.
Chomsky is a capable linguist, and obviously a passionate man. But why do we qualify him as an expert on the Middle East? What unique insights does he have?
Israel is the nuclear armed agressor in the Middle East.
Israel's had nuclear weapons for 50 years, and has never used them against its neighbors, even when those neighbors were actively attacking the country. What were the Iraqi's in the early 1980's planning to do with their reactor? What is the point of the Iranian facility built under a mountain? Research? How incredibly naive you must be.
If you're an Israeli civilian, what would you make of the Iranian government's support of Hezbollah? What of their leadership's pronouncements that Israel would be "wiped off the map"?
It's all evil Zionist propaganda, isn't it?
This foolish choice was also likely done to protect the iTunes Store. Third party authors would have had every opportunity to sell music, video, games, whatnot to iPhone owners bypassing Apple's own offerings. By locking down the device, we're stuck with the Store, and can also spend $1.99 on some goddamn stupid ringtone.
I'm disgusted by Apple's decision to lock down the phone. Until reading that there'd be no SDK, I'd spent time this week researching some of the new features in Cocoa, working on how to get the iSight going, even looking at comparable (likely comparable) telephony API's. I want to develop for this tablet computer, and we won't get an opportunity to.
$500 and two years with Cingular - all for a device which I'm not authorized to alter? Lovely
Much as I detest Cingular, Apple likely had little choice but to partner with one of the major cell phone carriers. Apple could, of course, had sold the iPhone without a SIM and had the customers install their own.
That would have been a marketing / tech support / and logistical mess, with different networks providing different data plans, features, connectivity, and even basic networks (GSM versus whatever the hell's out there). Partnering with Cingular makes life ever so much easier for Apple. Not only that, it prevents Cingular / ATT from partnering with some vaporware future Microsoft product that could steal Apple's thunder.
I'm not going to defend Cingular's horrific record. They're awful, no doubt. But all the wireless firms are awful right now. Given that Steve divested Apple of the awesome Imaging group, the nifty Newton, and other business units it would be surprising if Apple wanted to get into the cell phone provisioning business.
On another note, I'm already looking at how to rewrite a few Widgets to work on the iPhone...
Your fault for not being financially solvent. So smug, so self assured. You know, bad things happen. And in an economy where wages are stagnant, gas and health care costs rise, and you can be outsourced in a second - financial solvency becomes much, much harder.
Here's some things that can blast your smugness damn fast:
Divorce. Say goodbye to your reserves with your first visit to an attorney. My case - $30,000 + down the tube.
Catastrophic illness while unemployed, no health insurance. Thousands of bucks.
Long term unemployment. Welcome to tech reality. It takes a long time to find a job. Six months is optimistic. I've had friends waiting eighteen months.
And it's really easy to buy a cheap home after prices have gone up 9-10% per year for the last decade. Average price of a home is well over 200k across the country. Where should you live, a cardboard box? Don't say rent - in many areas you can't find a good home to rent.
Things are messed up, my friend. Your planning is at risk to economic fate. Don't judge everyone so quickly.
Folks are in denial of the seriousness of the energy crisis, and the realities of energy production. They assume that some miracle, somehow, will provide them with the energy to drive out and live in in their beautiful second homes, free of any aesthetic and environmental problems. They want to be close to some idyllic nature, free of stress. And the reason they can be in denial is that energy production - through the magic of long distance ac/dc wires - shifts production burdens to some poor sap somewhere else.
Consider the opposition to wind: why build a wind farm near some lovely guest home on the Cape when you can build a coal plant in West Virginia? The poor folks (and WV is a very poor state), will take the coal plant and see their homes turn grey, their mountains cut to shreds, their lungs turn black. And Cape Cod will be sunny, pretty, free from harm, at the cost of someone else's life.
I realize this sounds extreme, but look at the coal / oil / hydrocarbon executives who lobby Congress for tax breaks for gas and coal production, freedom from pollution controls, etc. and then spend the weekends in Bozeman, Montana. They don't see the effects of the damage they're doing, as, well - they get to live in an idyllic mountain valley.
Until we can develop fusion, energy production will be ugly. Sad, but true. Windmills are not at all perfect, but are hell of a lot better, IMHO, than some coal plant choking the lungs of those folks who cannot afford a second home in luxury land. I wish those who always say NIMBY! would accept some responsibility for their own choices, and recognize the need to share the burden of energy production.
This is an economic case of externalities being allocated to those with the least political power, the least influence, the least chance of fighting back. Putting the plant on the cheapest land may be accounting wise efficient, but may be bad policy. We either have the windmills, or the coal plant, or the nuke, but somewhere power must be generated.
GDP is a pretty damn poor measure of economic peformance. GDP is a measure of aggregate economic activity, with no description of how that economic activity (income) is spread out amongst the population. Not to mention that it doesn't show how income is produced - is a service job at Wal-Mart as good for our economy as a job at GM producing cares? There are far more problems with using GDP as your golden measure.
What has effectively happened in our economy- and you probably know this considering you spat out a trend from 1970 to 2004 is that real income per person has remained fairly flat. In other words, the economy has grown but the normal worker has not seen the benefits. Go read Krugman over at the NY Times. Or better yet, read the source material Where did the productivity go? which describes what's happened to our economy.
You should damn well listen to the refrain and understand the numbers - something is going seriously wrong in America. The middle class is falling apart under increasing costs (college, health care, no pensions) while the absolute top has received nearly all of the benefits of outsourcing, increased productivity, and the last thirty years of economic growth.
So, Samsung hired away a good software developer. Possibly an excellent developer / designer. But the real brains behind iPod are Jonathon Ive's design team, and Steve Job's and the business team that market the iPod. Somehow I doubt it'd be easy to steal them.
And PlaysForSure is so damn Orwellian that it's well - so damn Orwellian. I'd hope the Times would do a better job explaining the joys of MS's attempt to force us to a subscription model (or at least away from Apple.
Responding to the parent, trying to stop some of the B-S.
Explain how Israel's nuclear weapons are illegal. When did Israel agree not to have nuclear weapons? Should Israel, which faces countries which demand daily that it be wiped off the map, give up its only real strategic weapons system?
Sorry, I'm one of the bad guys - Israeli. The Iranians have made it perfectly clear that as soon as they complete the development of nuclear weapons, they will use them. Against my family, against civilians. Israel has (in theory) had nuclear weapons for nearly fifty years and we have never threatened any nation with annihilation.
As for the US propaganda campaign, they should've learned from our mistakes - and we have made terrible mistakes. Seperate from the occupation, secure territory, and let the Muslim world be what it is.
Please don't take offense with this, but Tapestry seems to be an open source version of NeXT's - then Apple's WebObjects web application development system. Even the Tapestry documentation acknowledges this.
WebObjects performed poorly in the marketplace due to Apple's stunning inability to market it's strengths - the exact same strengths the article is describing. Many people, including Apple employees - (myself in the past) - lobbied for WO to be made open source. We failed. Good to see that the ideas live on.
To be fair, when I hear a reference to the "Original Author of Tapestry" I do think its only fair to refer to the staff at NeXT, then Apple who developed this wonderful system. Tapestry is impressive in its own right, but seems more an extension of WO design principals rathen than a unique work. Such is the history of software design, so all's fair in the end.
And yes, I own your book, and think it's very well done. Tapestry is a great system, and can be recommended - but let's not forget the original inspiration.
This was predicted years ago. When Monsanto and other firms first started applying for patents for "terminator" genes (plants that will not generate viable seeds for the next years crop) and for plants specifically resistant to the use of "Roundup" many biologists warned of the danger of cross-polinization. Monsanto, et. al., and their political backers scoffed at the suggestion.
It gets far worse. Let's say a GM crop was planted next to your farm. Due to wind, bees, eh, nature the GM plants spread to your field, and soon you're growing GM plants. And then you're sued for stealing the GM crop. For the basics of wacky Monsanto GM chaos see Organic Consumers.
So, if Monsanto, et. al. want to own and control the GM crops - and the GM crops now spread to destructive speices, what do you think the odds are that the firms responsible for creating this mess will have any liability?
This is probably one of the most important stories of the year... not to be too dramatic, but possibly the most important story in the last ten. The US government is conducting warrentless wiretaps on its citizens, collecting information in a vest unsupervised net.
This news came to the fore the day before Christmas. And folks, it's on Slashdot Christmas Eve. How many people are paying attention to this? The New York Times is already in hot water for holding the initial story for a year. Now more and more facts are coming out, during a time when few people watch the news, Congress is out of session, and the president and his staff can be on vacation. It's on Slashdot, and I'm checking Slashdot as I'm watching Red Sleigh Down (South Park) on Comedy Central... how many Slashdot readers are looking at the site? No offesnse to the rest of the worl...
Jesus, this story may damn well disappear into the *void that's American political memory.
People, I pray that this story - the Orwellian degradation of our liberties, the expansion of the police state, the emergence of fascism as corporations and security institutions work together - does not fade away. Write your congressional representatives, write the paper, bug your friends and family, but don't ignore this issue.
There's definitely an advantage to conducting your human trials in places where people aren't breathing down your neck.
Ever frakkin' wonder why the FDA dares to breath down peoples necks? Do you think that people should be informed of the risks of the test; the potential for long term harm. Do you want pharmaceutical companies to document the positive and the adverse reactions of medical testing?
Thank God we've found poor, uneducated people living in a country with a rampant caste system - where the poor are of even less spiritual value than the elite! Testing can proceed apace. And don't worry, the ends do justify the means.
Gee, the South Koreans can have cloning by having one of their lab assistants donate her eggs - amongst numerous other problems with that particular series of experiments.
The current distortion of the copyright system (endless extensions to copyright, multinational corporations going after individuals) is beginning to defeat the entire frakkin' point of having copyright in the first place: the encouragement of ideas to advance literature, music, science, and technology.
From the Wired article:
One of Ritter's recent brainstorms -- an application that queries lyrics data online to help music fans choose tracks based on themes, like "love" or "breakup" -- may now remain only an idea, he says.
An apology from Warner Chapell (dear God how many components of the Time Warner omni-media complex exist?) doesn't eliminate the reality that they would rather use copyright to ensure that technology develops only the way they want it to, extending their cartel into the far future. They've already won on the legal front - copyright extensions far past the death of the author - now they blatantly want to control technology through legal terror.
So why doesn't he have such a program in the United States? Funny, though, I've never seen the American - or Canadian, or British version - of the Code4Bill contest. Guess expensive developers aren't really wanted at Microsoft.
How are we supposed to motivate college students to enter computer science when the (sadly) premier computer software maker stages competitions to find the very same programmers who may well replace American workers. What bloody hypocrisy Gates has to complain about the state of American CS while at the same time doing his damn best to destroy it.
Bill can recruit programmers from anywhere he wants. But he can try to find the best here, too.
For all the slashdot crowd here comparing egg donation to sperm donation or, heaven forbid, having to work long hours, a basic interjection of reality (though IANAMD)
1) Egg donation is a surgical procedure. A painful surgical procedure. A single egg is not magically transported from the woman's body - essentially a surgical procedure akin to a biopsy is peformed. Yes, modern surgical methods are better, but the pain is real, the risk of surgery is real, which leads to:
2) Egg donation potentially impacts fertility. This is a delicate procedure, and things can go wrong.
Donating one's eggs to scientific research is a noble action, and I deeply respect the person who does so. But it's a serious matter, and the merest appearnace that outside pressure was applied to influence a worker to donate her eggs calls into question the ethics of the project team itself.
If you take a look at Apple's developer tools - specifically, XCode 2.1 and above, you'll find that building binaries for both platforms is fairly easy. I think that Apple not only wanted to allow developers to build binaries for Intel and PPC, but to allow itself some time for the transition. Apple hasn't locked itself into a position where it must switch to Intel on a certain date. This is a good thing.
Really, if we can consider Mac OS X as simply OpenStep 4 (or whatever), then the CPU - to a very large extant - becomes just another part of the machine. With the exception of low level hardware driver experts, do you really care what bridge / Firewire / USB chip is used? Think the same way about the CPU, and you have Apple's apparent perspective on using Intel chips - the OS is fairly independant from the CPU, the developer tools can target multiple platforms, and consumers really won't have too much to worry about.
IBM was founded, built, financed, and supported by Western countries, principally the US, UK, Japan, and Germany. The US, especially, protects IBM's intellectual property, provides a secure environment for business, and enormous amounts of government contracts. The great bulk of IBM's customers are in the West.
I honestly believe that IBM - and all of the firms so happily laying off their employees in order to find cheaper labour - are acting in an immoral manner. Outsourcing is destroying lives, destroying economies, for the sole point of increasing corporate profits - profits that go, essentially, to a very small percentage of the population. For goodness sake, having a 401k growing at 4% doesn't really matter that much when you're laid off.
IBM is not trying to help Indian workers - IBM is simply trying to cut it's labor costs. Globalization has accomplished the dream of so many capitalists - labor is now a commodity, and labor is powerless.
The American - and Western European - middle class is evaporating before our eyes. When the middle class jobs are sent overseas, the entire structure of our society is in danger. We'll became lands where the few with massive wealth dominate the increasingly poor masses. Democracy depends on a healthy middle class. Destroying that democracy is indeed immoral.
So competition means having European workers work at Indian wages, despite IBM being highly profitable?
So you want governments and corporations to work together to ensure that the highest goal is ensuring that corporations are profitable?
Do you truly understand what your saying? Workers have fought for literally centuries to be treated with some degree of respect. Corporations are now making record profits, and still seem to find it necessary to replace their workers with cheaper labor? What the hell is it for? What exactly is the point of all this - we'll all be back to 6:00 AM to 9:00 PM hours, with no vacation, at half the wage so that the elite have growth of their profits.
Capitalism works because people assume that they have a chance of advancing, that the lives of their children will be better. If globalization simply means a gross reduction of wages and transfer of assets to the wealthy, capitalism will lose popular support. How many former IBM employees are going to be praising outsourcing?
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Moderators - can you explain why my post is flame bait? This is a serious concern - does supporting Israel, or being Israeli mean that you can't post on Slashdot?
The subject is the iPhone - the point I'm making should be damn clear: there are many, many countries which Apple will not arrange partnership agreements with cell distributors, and that means that to use the iPhone we have to unlock it. Hard to comprehend? It's not "oh, poor Israel", it's "oh, poor rest of the world!"
On the subject of US government policy and Israel: How does that relate to the iPhone, how does that relate to Apple? It is an unattributed quote, a very common feature of the Israel bashing we see on Digg, DailyKos, and Reddit on a daily basis. Do you have the slightest idea how the Israeli currency system works (hint: it's a basket currency, look it up). The quote makes no sense, and I actually studied monetary economics for years - have you?
Oh for God's sake... can't you give the Israel bashing a rest? "We" in this instance refers to myself and my family. Want to ban Israeli's from Slashdot?
Not all, or even close to a majority of Israelis are the monsters that you think we are. But in this particular instance, Israel is a country that has a very significant technology export industry. For example, if you really hate Israel, please throw out your Intel based PC and leave us the hell alone. Don't you wonder why Intel chips often have code names like Banias, Merom, etc? They're designed in Israel, many are made in Israel.
Skipping the post-modernist, hip-to-be-liberal, all-purpose-activist crap, and you may want to consider that my point remains valid: if Apple bricks the iPhone to prevent unlocking than people in many countries will never have the chance to use it - which is simple stupidity.
I'm an Apple fanboy - I've used Macs since 1984, worked for Apple for a couple of years, and have promoted Apple equipment and software where I've been employed. But at this moment, I'm disgusted. There is no need to disable the unlocked iPhone's, and Jobs and crew should damn well accept that some of us actually refuse to use AT&T on principal. Think Different my a**.
I'm not going to subscribe to AT&T. AT&T, the firm that's trying to eliminate net neutrality. AT&T, the reconstituted (near) monopoly. AT&T the firm that opened their switch boxes to the NSA without hesitation and is now attempting to manipulate legislation to provide immunity from prosecution in that matter.
On a practical note, Does Mr. Jobs even recognize how expensive his bed partner is overseas? And this matter practically to myself and my family. Apple, as normal, has forgotten that Israel exists. Apple has, as far as I know, has never sold its products directly in Israel. If I want to send an iPhone to my family in Israel, should I have to sign up for AT&T and pay for their pathetic World Traveler plan? The world does exist outside the US and a few European markets.
Incidentally - my evil unlocked iPhone works perfectly on T-Mobile - without Visual Voice Mail, but gods, I'll live. So what, precisely, is the point of altering the modem firmware, except to break unlocking? Point out examples of the baseband firmware wreaking havoc on the network; explain how this change benefits users.
The iPhone is the first tablet computer I've seen that inspires the imagination. I want to write programs for it, I want to explore a new user interface. If it runs OS X, treat it like an OS X box and let us get on with writing the programs that will sell the bloody thing. Don't freeze us out while you write such amazing accomplishments as the "Wireless i-Tunes Store" while we're trying to write vertical apps for the medical profession, law, and other fields.
Job's, former AT&T hacker, has decided to repeat the folly of the early closed Mac, the early closed NeXT, and even at times the Newton. Apple made a terrible choice in its partner, and seems incapable of realizing the potential of the iPhone.
I've wondered about the same issue, but I think it's a question of misidentification more than anything else. If you look at "Progressive" blogs - DailyKos, MyLeftWing, etc. - you'll find a significant portion of the posters who are quite happy to bash Christianity and Judaism while turning a blind eye towards Islamic fundamentalism.
I wouldn't say that those self-declared "Progressives" are actually "Liberals" - they remind me of the folks in the 1950's who would argue that Stalin was a great man. All purpose-activists who don't recognize their own hypocrisy.
Chomsky is a capable linguist, and obviously a passionate man. But why do we qualify him as an expert on the Middle East? What unique insights does he have?
Israel is the nuclear armed agressor in the Middle East. Israel's had nuclear weapons for 50 years, and has never used them against its neighbors, even when those neighbors were actively attacking the country. What were the Iraqi's in the early 1980's planning to do with their reactor? What is the point of the Iranian facility built under a mountain? Research? How incredibly naive you must be. If you're an Israeli civilian, what would you make of the Iranian government's support of Hezbollah? What of their leadership's pronouncements that Israel would be "wiped off the map"? It's all evil Zionist propaganda, isn't it?
This foolish choice was also likely done to protect the iTunes Store. Third party authors would have had every opportunity to sell music, video, games, whatnot to iPhone owners bypassing Apple's own offerings. By locking down the device, we're stuck with the Store, and can also spend $1.99 on some goddamn stupid ringtone.
I'm disgusted by Apple's decision to lock down the phone. Until reading that there'd be no SDK, I'd spent time this week researching some of the new features in Cocoa, working on how to get the iSight going, even looking at comparable (likely comparable) telephony API's. I want to develop for this tablet computer, and we won't get an opportunity to.
$500 and two years with Cingular - all for a device which I'm not authorized to alter? Lovely
Much as I detest Cingular, Apple likely had little choice but to partner with one of the major cell phone carriers. Apple could, of course, had sold the iPhone without a SIM and had the customers install their own.
That would have been a marketing / tech support / and logistical mess, with different networks providing different data plans, features, connectivity, and even basic networks (GSM versus whatever the hell's out there). Partnering with Cingular makes life ever so much easier for Apple. Not only that, it prevents Cingular / ATT from partnering with some vaporware future Microsoft product that could steal Apple's thunder.
I'm not going to defend Cingular's horrific record. They're awful, no doubt. But all the wireless firms are awful right now. Given that Steve divested Apple of the awesome Imaging group, the nifty Newton, and other business units it would be surprising if Apple wanted to get into the cell phone provisioning business.
On another note, I'm already looking at how to rewrite a few Widgets to work on the iPhone...
Your fault for not being financially solvent. So smug, so self assured. You know, bad things happen. And in an economy where wages are stagnant, gas and health care costs rise, and you can be outsourced in a second - financial solvency becomes much, much harder.
Here's some things that can blast your smugness damn fast:
And it's really easy to buy a cheap home after prices have gone up 9-10% per year for the last decade. Average price of a home is well over 200k across the country. Where should you live, a cardboard box? Don't say rent - in many areas you can't find a good home to rent.
Things are messed up, my friend. Your planning is at risk to economic fate. Don't judge everyone so quickly.
Folks are in denial of the seriousness of the energy crisis, and the realities of energy production. They assume that some miracle, somehow, will provide them with the energy to drive out and live in in their beautiful second homes, free of any aesthetic and environmental problems. They want to be close to some idyllic nature, free of stress. And the reason they can be in denial is that energy production - through the magic of long distance ac/dc wires - shifts production burdens to some poor sap somewhere else.
Consider the opposition to wind: why build a wind farm near some lovely guest home on the Cape when you can build a coal plant in West Virginia? The poor folks (and WV is a very poor state), will take the coal plant and see their homes turn grey, their mountains cut to shreds, their lungs turn black. And Cape Cod will be sunny, pretty, free from harm, at the cost of someone else's life.
I realize this sounds extreme, but look at the coal / oil / hydrocarbon executives who lobby Congress for tax breaks for gas and coal production, freedom from pollution controls, etc. and then spend the weekends in Bozeman, Montana. They don't see the effects of the damage they're doing, as, well - they get to live in an idyllic mountain valley.
Until we can develop fusion, energy production will be ugly. Sad, but true. Windmills are not at all perfect, but are hell of a lot better, IMHO, than some coal plant choking the lungs of those folks who cannot afford a second home in luxury land. I wish those who always say NIMBY! would accept some responsibility for their own choices, and recognize the need to share the burden of energy production.
This is an economic case of externalities being allocated to those with the least political power, the least influence, the least chance of fighting back. Putting the plant on the cheapest land may be accounting wise efficient, but may be bad policy. We either have the windmills, or the coal plant, or the nuke, but somewhere power must be generated.
GDP is a pretty damn poor measure of economic peformance. GDP is a measure of aggregate economic activity, with no description of how that economic activity (income) is spread out amongst the population. Not to mention that it doesn't show how income is produced - is a service job at Wal-Mart as good for our economy as a job at GM producing cares? There are far more problems with using GDP as your golden measure.
What has effectively happened in our economy- and you probably know this considering you spat out a trend from 1970 to 2004 is that real income per person has remained fairly flat. In other words, the economy has grown but the normal worker has not seen the benefits. Go read Krugman over at the NY Times. Or better yet, read the source material Where did the productivity go? which describes what's happened to our economy.
You should damn well listen to the refrain and understand the numbers - something is going seriously wrong in America. The middle class is falling apart under increasing costs (college, health care, no pensions) while the absolute top has received nearly all of the benefits of outsourcing, increased productivity, and the last thirty years of economic growth.
So, Samsung hired away a good software developer. Possibly an excellent developer / designer. But the real brains behind iPod are Jonathon Ive's design team, and Steve Job's and the business team that market the iPod. Somehow I doubt it'd be easy to steal them.
And PlaysForSure is so damn Orwellian that it's well - so damn Orwellian. I'd hope the Times would do a better job explaining the joys of MS's attempt to force us to a subscription model (or at least away from Apple.
Responding to the parent, trying to stop some of the B-S.
Explain how Israel's nuclear weapons are illegal. When did Israel agree not to have nuclear weapons? Should Israel, which faces countries which demand daily that it be wiped off the map, give up its only real strategic weapons system?
Sorry, I'm one of the bad guys - Israeli. The Iranians have made it perfectly clear that as soon as they complete the development of nuclear weapons, they will use them. Against my family, against civilians. Israel has (in theory) had nuclear weapons for nearly fifty years and we have never threatened any nation with annihilation.
As for the US propaganda campaign, they should've learned from our mistakes - and we have made terrible mistakes. Seperate from the occupation, secure territory, and let the Muslim world be what it is.
Please don't take offense with this, but Tapestry seems to be an open source version of NeXT's - then Apple's WebObjects web application development system. Even the Tapestry documentation acknowledges this.
WebObjects performed poorly in the marketplace due to Apple's stunning inability to market it's strengths - the exact same strengths the article is describing. Many people, including Apple employees - (myself in the past) - lobbied for WO to be made open source. We failed. Good to see that the ideas live on.
To be fair, when I hear a reference to the "Original Author of Tapestry" I do think its only fair to refer to the staff at NeXT, then Apple who developed this wonderful system. Tapestry is impressive in its own right, but seems more an extension of WO design principals rathen than a unique work. Such is the history of software design, so all's fair in the end.
And yes, I own your book, and think it's very well done. Tapestry is a great system, and can be recommended - but let's not forget the original inspiration.
This was predicted years ago. When Monsanto and other firms first started applying for patents for "terminator" genes (plants that will not generate viable seeds for the next years crop) and for plants specifically resistant to the use of "Roundup" many biologists warned of the danger of cross-polinization. Monsanto, et. al., and their political backers scoffed at the suggestion.
It gets far worse. Let's say a GM crop was planted next to your farm. Due to wind, bees, eh, nature the GM plants spread to your field, and soon you're growing GM plants. And then you're sued for stealing the GM crop. For the basics of wacky Monsanto GM chaos see Organic Consumers.
So, if Monsanto, et. al. want to own and control the GM crops - and the GM crops now spread to destructive speices, what do you think the odds are that the firms responsible for creating this mess will have any liability?
This is probably one of the most important stories of the year... not to be too dramatic, but possibly the most important story in the last ten. The US government is conducting warrentless wiretaps on its citizens, collecting information in a vest unsupervised net.
This news came to the fore the day before Christmas. And folks, it's on Slashdot Christmas Eve. How many people are paying attention to this? The New York Times is already in hot water for holding the initial story for a year. Now more and more facts are coming out, during a time when few people watch the news, Congress is out of session, and the president and his staff can be on vacation. It's on Slashdot, and I'm checking Slashdot as I'm watching Red Sleigh Down (South Park) on Comedy Central... how many Slashdot readers are looking at the site? No offesnse to the rest of the worl...
Jesus, this story may damn well disappear into the *void that's American political memory.
People, I pray that this story - the Orwellian degradation of our liberties, the expansion of the police state, the emergence of fascism as corporations and security institutions work together - does not fade away. Write your congressional representatives, write the paper, bug your friends and family, but don't ignore this issue.
We've got to make
Ethics matter; ethics help assure good science.
There's definitely an advantage to conducting your human trials in places where people aren't breathing down your neck.
Ever frakkin' wonder why the FDA dares to breath down peoples necks? Do you think that people should be informed of the risks of the test; the potential for long term harm. Do you want pharmaceutical companies to document the positive and the adverse reactions of medical testing?
Thank God we've found poor, uneducated people living in a country with a rampant caste system - where the poor are of even less spiritual value than the elite! Testing can proceed apace. And don't worry, the ends do justify the means.
Gee, the South Koreans can have cloning by having one of their lab assistants donate her eggs - amongst numerous other problems with that particular series of experiments.
The current distortion of the copyright system (endless extensions to copyright, multinational corporations going after individuals) is beginning to defeat the entire frakkin' point of having copyright in the first place: the encouragement of ideas to advance literature, music, science, and technology.
From the Wired article:
One of Ritter's recent brainstorms -- an application that queries lyrics data online to help music fans choose tracks based on themes, like "love" or "breakup" -- may now remain only an idea, he says.An apology from Warner Chapell (dear God how many components of the Time Warner omni-media complex exist?) doesn't eliminate the reality that they would rather use copyright to ensure that technology develops only the way they want it to, extending their cartel into the far future. They've already won on the legal front - copyright extensions far past the death of the author - now they blatantly want to control technology through legal terror.
So why doesn't he have such a program in the United States? Funny, though, I've never seen the American - or Canadian, or British version - of the Code4Bill contest. Guess expensive developers aren't really wanted at Microsoft.
How are we supposed to motivate college students to enter computer science when the (sadly) premier computer software maker stages competitions to find the very same programmers who may well replace American workers. What bloody hypocrisy Gates has to complain about the state of American CS while at the same time doing his damn best to destroy it.
Bill can recruit programmers from anywhere he wants. But he can try to find the best here, too.
For all the slashdot crowd here comparing egg donation to sperm donation or, heaven forbid, having to work long hours, a basic interjection of reality (though IANAMD)
1) Egg donation is a surgical procedure. A painful surgical procedure. A single egg is not magically transported from the woman's body - essentially a surgical procedure akin to a biopsy is peformed. Yes, modern surgical methods are better, but the pain is real, the risk of surgery is real, which leads to:
2) Egg donation potentially impacts fertility. This is a delicate procedure, and things can go wrong.
Donating one's eggs to scientific research is a noble action, and I deeply respect the person who does so. But it's a serious matter, and the merest appearnace that outside pressure was applied to influence a worker to donate her eggs calls into question the ethics of the project team itself.
Entirely outside the ADC NDA...
If you take a look at Apple's developer tools - specifically, XCode 2.1 and above, you'll find that building binaries for both platforms is fairly easy. I think that Apple not only wanted to allow developers to build binaries for Intel and PPC, but to allow itself some time for the transition. Apple hasn't locked itself into a position where it must switch to Intel on a certain date. This is a good thing.
Really, if we can consider Mac OS X as simply OpenStep 4 (or whatever), then the CPU - to a very large extant - becomes just another part of the machine. With the exception of low level hardware driver experts, do you really care what bridge / Firewire / USB chip is used? Think the same way about the CPU, and you have Apple's apparent perspective on using Intel chips - the OS is fairly independant from the CPU, the developer tools can target multiple platforms, and consumers really won't have too much to worry about.
First dupe today! http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/27/ 1852243&tid=109&tid=106
IBM was founded, built, financed, and supported by Western countries, principally the US, UK, Japan, and Germany. The US, especially, protects IBM's intellectual property, provides a secure environment for business, and enormous amounts of government contracts. The great bulk of IBM's customers are in the West.
I honestly believe that IBM - and all of the firms so happily laying off their employees in order to find cheaper labour - are acting in an immoral manner. Outsourcing is destroying lives, destroying economies, for the sole point of increasing corporate profits - profits that go, essentially, to a very small percentage of the population. For goodness sake, having a 401k growing at 4% doesn't really matter that much when you're laid off.
IBM is not trying to help Indian workers - IBM is simply trying to cut it's labor costs. Globalization has accomplished the dream of so many capitalists - labor is now a commodity, and labor is powerless.
The American - and Western European - middle class is evaporating before our eyes. When the middle class jobs are sent overseas, the entire structure of our society is in danger. We'll became lands where the few with massive wealth dominate the increasingly poor masses. Democracy depends on a healthy middle class. Destroying that democracy is indeed immoral.
So competition means having European workers work at Indian wages, despite IBM being highly profitable?
So you want governments and corporations to work together to ensure that the highest goal is ensuring that corporations are profitable?
Do you truly understand what your saying? Workers have fought for literally centuries to be treated with some degree of respect. Corporations are now making record profits, and still seem to find it necessary to replace their workers with cheaper labor? What the hell is it for? What exactly is the point of all this - we'll all be back to 6:00 AM to 9:00 PM hours, with no vacation, at half the wage so that the elite have growth of their profits.
Capitalism works because people assume that they have a chance of advancing, that the lives of their children will be better. If globalization simply means a gross reduction of wages and transfer of assets to the wealthy, capitalism will lose popular support. How many former IBM employees are going to be praising outsourcing?