Public high schools base their education too much on the standardized tests. They teach the students only what they need to know to score well on the tests and therefore make the school look "good".
But then the question arises: what alternative is there to standardized tests? To simply let schools do as they please isn't an option; that's basically socialism, and it won't work (take a look at the Soviet Union for an example). You can't base it on grades because they vary so much with teachers. I've been in classes that offer no extra credit, but in others students could earn it for wearing their "school spirit" during homecoming week. Standardized tests, on the other hand, are just that: standardized. It's not quite so simple, but the tests are necessary. I don't like Bush much, but I agree that if "If you test a child on basic math and reading skills, and you are 'teaching to the test,' you are teaching math and reading."
I really doubt Chinese Workers will come anywhere near the U.S. concerning pollution, both per capita and total.
It's true that US cars are generally less fuel efficient, but my point is that even American drivers with their thirst for SUVs will not be able to outdo 1.3 billion Chinese, who are also acquiring many of the same tastes as their American counterparts. China is, of course, not there yet, but we are talking about the next decade or two. The fact that our ideas (capitalism and democracy) are being exported while their products are imported is a good thing, but it means that if you think the US is bad in terms of green house gases, you ain't seen nothing yet (most likely).
China doesn't have the oil reserves the U.S. has to back up this kind of consumption and i doubt they can spare the money to import that much if there are other ways.
They don't have the oil, but neither do we. The market for many commodities, including oil, is exploding, and the Chinese are already looking at countries like Iran to buy oil from. This creates a whole new host of problems as Bush and the Europeans start focusing their efforts on getting Iran to stop its nuclear program.
I think the gist of what you're saying is that China is not such a problem for the environment *right now*. That's true, but I'm saying that present-day developing countries like India and China (the big ones, but also the rest of the third world) will be eventually industrialized, and the problem of global warming will become much, much larger, and it won't primarily be America anymore.
The US needs to deal with pollution (we use 25% of the world's oil, after all) and the millions of people without health insurance, but China is a whole different story. As China rapidly industrializes, we're going to be dealing with well over a billion people driving their cars to work (as opposed to riding bicycles or working on farms); this contrasts with only 300 million Americans. And if you want to talk about health issues, take a look at the AIDS epidemic sweeping through China.
Firstly, it would be beneficial if the images were separated by a black space.
If you save the images and put a black space in between them with the GIMP (or another image editor), it looks sort of neat; I actually get a 3D effect. The only problem is that I have no real idea what I'm looking at. And I'm starting to get headache too, to forewarn anyone else trying.
so when you do a google search on a particular subject - you get an immediate link at the top to the related wiki entries.
Couldn't Google write its own software and do this on its own? It doesn't seem like Google would have to help out Wikipedia to do this, just like you can have Google search within individual websites (that Google never gave any bandwidth to).
But others could do this, too? So maybe Wiki can limit the ability of others to do this, and give this ability exclusively to Google?
Wikipedia is licensed under the FDL, so the Google couldn't have any kind of exclusive control over the articles, could it?
The fact that you have to run as administrator to get any work done is a security hole big enough to drive a truck through.
This is true, but let's face it. To say that this is a real example of how GNU/Linux is superior is kind of a cheap shot. If GNU/Linux were mainstream, what would the normal user do? Download goodies.tar.gz from your email, compile and su to install it. Tada, your system is screwed. This is what an "average," unsuspecting, Unix user would do. Buffer overflows and the like are legitimate vulnerabilities, but to blame Microsoft for a trojan being written is just not a legitimate criticism. Any operating system that lets the user install anything is "vulnerable" to trojans.
The worst thing you can do to somebody who "follows the rules" is ask him to be inventive.
It seems that there are lots of follow-the-rules people around. My dad used to be a physics professor at UCLA. At first he gave tests with, say, 5 hard "word problems," and if you got 2 or 3 of them right, you got an A. His students hated him for it and complained a lot. He then tried making his tests into the type that have tons of "plug and chug" problems that usually involve just number-crunching with straight-forward equations. He suddenly became more popular. If you look for yourself in the classroom, you see that this is generally true. Students hate having to think for themselves and reason out solutions for "word problems." They'd rather do 50 problems with that all use the same formula than come up with one complete solution themselves.
If this was a step toward an actual stable democracy with respect for human rights, there might be some benefit to the world. But this elections is more show than substance. Sunni regions mostly boycotted.
Perhaps you haven't heard the news? Actually, even the Sunnis have turned out in large numbers. In the Al Anbar province, which is predominantly Sunni, they overwhelmed by the big turnout. This isn't show, this is real democracy in action. There's no problem with being against the war and not "cheering," but let's face it: the elections were a success. It doesn't mean this war is over by a long shot, but it is definitely a "step toward an actual stable democracy with respect for human rights."
lasindi
While we claim that one can only steal physical property, it is they who claim that the concept of stealing is a quaint little old thing and needs to be "updated" to include puffs of electrons and sequences of integer numbers.
The idea behind copyright is that these "puffs of electrons and sequences of integer numbers" took time and effort to produce, and that those who do the work to create it should be rewarded by the people who use it. If I counterfeit money, have I actually "stolen" money from someone else? No, but that doesn't mean that it's not immoral. It's the wrong thing to do, because if I can counterfeit money freely, it means that the people who actually work for money are no longer rewarded for their work. Simply seeing intellectual property as "puffs of electrons" is a far too simplistic view, just like calling money nothing more than ink and paper would be; you have to see it as the product of someone's work. If it's good work, the author(s) should be compensated for it.
Look, the enemy of the Iraqi insurgency is not just the US. Who did Al Zarqawi declare war on? Democracy. Not (specifically) the US, not even people collaborating with the US, but all of democracy. In other words, they couldn't care less what Iraqis want, they want power for themselves. This is what separates the rebels of Europe fighting the Nazis from the insurgency in Iraq. In Europe, they were fighting for the freedom of the people who the Nazis were oppressing; in Iraq, Al Qaida is fighting democracy, which is the way people can secure their rights in a country. How anyone can sympathize with people fighting democracy to greedily take power for themselves is beyond me.
I agree that Bush and company has really fscked up with post-major-combat Iraq (and that's part of why these elections are going to be far from perfect), but my point remains that these insurgents are not fighting for an Iraq government that's for-the-people-by-the-people. What we have in place right *now* is a puppet government, but after the election it's somewhat difficult to have a puppet government if Americans don't have a vote. Of course, you can come up with conspiracy theories if you like. I took a look at the prisonplanet.com site you linked to; there are such ludicrous stories on there that go as far as speculating that the US planned the tsunami in Asia.
Who is behind most of the attacks in Iraq? Al Zarqawi. Who has Bin Laden designated as his deputy in Iraq? Al Zarqawi. We know for a fact that Al Qaida and Al Qaida-related groups are coordinating many, if not most, of the attacks in Iraq. What the Bush administration said about Al Qaida being in Iraq before the war has, more or less, turned out to be balogna, but there's no question that Al Qaida is there now. Don't forget that Bin Laden's stated goal is Islamic world domination. I haven't said anything pro-invasion-of-Iraq at all. All I'm saying is that I'm astonished that you all hope that the insurgents manage to derail the elections. The elections will, after all, express the real voice of the Iraqi people, not Zarqawi's suicide bombers.
I never said anything about whether or not the war in Iraq was legitimate. What I said was that war is *sometimes* legitimate, and I suppose you agree with me on that.
Lots of people opposed the war, but the fact is, we are there now. The insurgents in Iraq are nothing at all like the rebels in Europe who fought the Nazis. The terrorists in Iraq don't just kill American soldiers, they kill humanitarian workers who opposed the war, they bomb the UN (which opposed the war), and they kill random civilians in Iraqi cities. If they were targetting only US soldiers, you might have a point, but the goal of these fighters is to take Iraq for Al Qaida. I find it hard to believe that you'd rather see Bin Laden rule Iraq than the Iraqi people through elections.
Even in the case where both sides have robots it's a really bad thing, because wars are the instruments of oppression.
I know I'm getting suckered into a flame war here, but I'll play along. Wars can and sometimes are the "instruments of oppression," but to say that war is never a solution to anything is ridiculous. How would you have solved the problem of Hitler in World War II? Diplomacy? Well, Chamberlain wasn't altogether too successful. Was D-Day an "instrument of oppression?" War is a terrible thing, but sometimes it's a necessary evil. Having robots on our side would be a very good thing; fewer coalition and Iraq national guard/police killed in the process of fighting insurgents. I don't see how saving these lives could possibly wrong.
Somehow, I have this feeling that anything which reduces the amount of outrage at a war is a bad thing. Why? Cause wars are bad things. Why? Cause killing people is a bad thing.
Ummmm, OK, if we were to replace human soldiers with robots, the amount of killing *people* would go *down*. But you want people to get angry about killing, so you let more get killed, but... Kind of paradoxical (not "insightful"), isn't it?
If Intel is faster (and currently it is), why wouldn't you buy it?
I agree with the main thrust of your post (that one ought to go for the best product no matter who makes it), but I'm not sure you can say Intel is any more on the bleeding edge than AMD is. From my experience, you can get a considerably faster AMD CPU for the same amount of money; more bang for your buck. Also, AMD is kicking some serious Intel butt in the 64-bit department, as x86-64 becomes the standard and Itanium is tossed to the wayside.
Well, we get a new version of the GIMP, and now a new version of Linux! I'm very pleased. I hope that 2.6.10 does multitasking a little better. I've found that 2.6.9 gives a few too many CPU cycles to demanding processes (thereby slowing down the mouse cursor and music and other stuff that I wish wouldn't be affected by something like compiling a program). Anybody else have such experiences?
lasindi
Given the "free speech zones" (a cage within a cage surrounded by barbed wire at the DNC, the "no-protest" areas, and the arrests of people with unpopular opinions)
Come on. I'm all for free speech, and I think you should be able to have whatever opinion, however unpopular it may be, that you want, but what these protestors want to do is actually disrupt the convention itself; that is, they want to restrict the rights of the Democrats to express themselves. And the arrests of the 3 protestors were done because these protestors were acting unlawful/violent; otherwise, if it were for merely protesting, there would have been far more people hauled away. And while they have the right (that has been protected in this case) to say whatever they want, just think about how silly they're being; they're protesting against the war at a convention where the delegates are over 90% anti-war. They're just out to make some trouble.
It's like saying you can't modify your car or your house or your clothes! Would Ford sue you for removing the rev limiter from your Focus?
It sounds like the submitter is quite astonished that someone would do something like this. Really, it's no different from a proprietary license that says you can't modify, reverse engineer, decompile, or try to get the source code in any way. The way that this is different is that people didn't know before that it was illegal. Now they do. So from now on, someone who clicks "I Agree [not to do anything with my proprietary software]" shouldn't be at all surprised or insulted about this if they choose to buy a PS2.
But we know what the answer to proprietary software was; the rise of GNU/Linux and other free software. Perhaps we'll see a free gaming console emerge (how about GNU Cube?) in the future?
Actually owning or renting the aircraft may be cheaper, but will it be cheaper to learn to fly? It costs several thousand dollars just to get a Private Pilot's License; such costs also cause prospective pilots to shy away from flying.
I also wonder if health insurance companies will treat sport pilots differently. My insurance specifically excludes flights in private aircraft that aren't scheduled commercial carriers. Would insurance companies start covering this if lots people begin to use it?
Unless all of our western intelligence agencies have failed miserably, al-Quaeda people only began moving in Iraq as a direct result of Gulf War 2...
Uh, they seem to have failed miserably as far as weapons of mass destruction are concerned. I supported the war, and don't blame anyone in particular for this apparent intelligence failure since everyone, including the French and Germans, believed Saddam had WMD before the war.
Sorry that I'm not going to join in the chorus of bashing on the agreement here, but I'm surprised at how negative the response to this agreement is. I'm all-out for free-trade, too. I run Linux, I hate Micro$oft, I write free software under the GPL, etc., but your views on this agreement should not only be based on its impact on IP laws. Globalization is the future and history has shown that over the long-run, it's always beneficial to everyone. Competition promotes higher quality products, and when governments try to restrict it, economies collapse.
What's the most ironic is how many argue that poorer countries are hurt by free trade. So many protesters at every WTO meeting claim that they are protecting those in third-world countries. If you want to force poor companies in poor countries with poor people to compete under the same labor laws as rich companies in rich countries immediately, you'll never get anywhere. As money flows into poor countries through trade, the standard of living rises and labor laws gradually conform to industrialized standards. Also, when protectionists cry out about workers in developed countries losing jobs, and how terrible their lives have become, let's remember that this job went to someone much poorer. If the worker in a developing country who got the job hadn't gotten it, he/she would be in far worse shape than his/her wealthier counterpart.
Anyways, I put in my pro-globalization ten cents. Free trade is important, and if there are little imperfections we don't like we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water.
Slashdot Mirror
According to these statistics Firefox is already over 20% marketshare. Why is there such a discrepancy between the two?
lasindi
Public high schools base their education too much on the standardized tests. They teach the students only what they need to know to score well on the tests and therefore make the school look "good".
But then the question arises: what alternative is there to standardized tests? To simply let schools do as they please isn't an option; that's basically socialism, and it won't work (take a look at the Soviet Union for an example). You can't base it on grades because they vary so much with teachers. I've been in classes that offer no extra credit, but in others students could earn it for wearing their "school spirit" during homecoming week. Standardized tests, on the other hand, are just that: standardized. It's not quite so simple, but the tests are necessary. I don't like Bush much, but I agree that if "If you test a child on basic math and reading skills, and you are 'teaching to the test,' you are teaching math and reading."
lasindi
I really doubt Chinese Workers will come anywhere near the U.S. concerning pollution, both per capita and total.
It's true that US cars are generally less fuel efficient, but my point is that even American drivers with their thirst for SUVs will not be able to outdo 1.3 billion Chinese, who are also acquiring many of the same tastes as their American counterparts. China is, of course, not there yet, but we are talking about the next decade or two. The fact that our ideas (capitalism and democracy) are being exported while their products are imported is a good thing, but it means that if you think the US is bad in terms of green house gases, you ain't seen nothing yet (most likely).
China doesn't have the oil reserves the U.S. has to back up this kind of consumption and i doubt they can spare the money to import that much if there are other ways.
They don't have the oil, but neither do we. The market for many commodities, including oil, is exploding, and the Chinese are already looking at countries like Iran to buy oil from. This creates a whole new host of problems as Bush and the Europeans start focusing their efforts on getting Iran to stop its nuclear program.
I think the gist of what you're saying is that China is not such a problem for the environment *right now*. That's true, but I'm saying that present-day developing countries like India and China (the big ones, but also the rest of the third world) will be eventually industrialized, and the problem of global warming will become much, much larger, and it won't primarily be America anymore.
lasindi
The US needs to deal with pollution (we use 25% of the world's oil, after all) and the millions of people without health insurance, but China is a whole different story. As China rapidly industrializes, we're going to be dealing with well over a billion people driving their cars to work (as opposed to riding bicycles or working on farms); this contrasts with only 300 million Americans. And if you want to talk about health issues, take a look at the AIDS epidemic sweeping through China.
lasindi
Firstly, it would be beneficial if the images were separated by a black space.
If you save the images and put a black space in between them with the GIMP (or another image editor), it looks sort of neat; I actually get a 3D effect. The only problem is that I have no real idea what I'm looking at. And I'm starting to get headache too, to forewarn anyone else trying.
lasindi
so when you do a google search on a particular subject - you get an immediate link at the top to the related wiki entries.
Couldn't Google write its own software and do this on its own? It doesn't seem like Google would have to help out Wikipedia to do this, just like you can have Google search within individual websites (that Google never gave any bandwidth to).
But others could do this, too? So maybe Wiki can limit the ability of others to do this, and give this ability exclusively to Google?
Wikipedia is licensed under the FDL, so the Google couldn't have any kind of exclusive control over the articles, could it?
lasindi
The fact that you have to run as administrator to get any work done is a security hole big enough to drive a truck through.
This is true, but let's face it. To say that this is a real example of how GNU/Linux is superior is kind of a cheap shot. If GNU/Linux were mainstream, what would the normal user do? Download goodies.tar.gz from your email, compile and su to install it. Tada, your system is screwed. This is what an "average," unsuspecting, Unix user would do. Buffer overflows and the like are legitimate vulnerabilities, but to blame Microsoft for a trojan being written is just not a legitimate criticism. Any operating system that lets the user install anything is "vulnerable" to trojans.
lasindi
The worst thing you can do to somebody who "follows the rules" is ask him to be inventive.
It seems that there are lots of follow-the-rules people around. My dad used to be a physics professor at UCLA. At first he gave tests with, say, 5 hard "word problems," and if you got 2 or 3 of them right, you got an A. His students hated him for it and complained a lot. He then tried making his tests into the type that have tons of "plug and chug" problems that usually involve just number-crunching with straight-forward equations. He suddenly became more popular. If you look for yourself in the classroom, you see that this is generally true. Students hate having to think for themselves and reason out solutions for "word problems." They'd rather do 50 problems with that all use the same formula than come up with one complete solution themselves.
lasindi
Hopefully he learns his lesson.
If you're going to break the rules/law DON'T TELL ANYONE ABOUT IT EVER!
Or perhaps the lesson is that you shouldn't break rules/laws that are completely legitimate and correct, as in this case.
If this was a step toward an actual stable democracy with respect for human rights, there might be some benefit to the world. But this elections is more show than substance. Sunni regions mostly boycotted.
Perhaps you haven't heard the news? Actually, even the Sunnis have turned out in large numbers. In the Al Anbar province, which is predominantly Sunni, they overwhelmed by the big turnout. This isn't show, this is real democracy in action. There's no problem with being against the war and not "cheering," but let's face it: the elections were a success. It doesn't mean this war is over by a long shot, but it is definitely a "step toward an actual stable democracy with respect for human rights." lasindi
While we claim that one can only steal physical property, it is they who claim that the concept of stealing is a quaint little old thing and needs to be "updated" to include puffs of electrons and sequences of integer numbers.
The idea behind copyright is that these "puffs of electrons and sequences of integer numbers" took time and effort to produce, and that those who do the work to create it should be rewarded by the people who use it. If I counterfeit money, have I actually "stolen" money from someone else? No, but that doesn't mean that it's not immoral. It's the wrong thing to do, because if I can counterfeit money freely, it means that the people who actually work for money are no longer rewarded for their work. Simply seeing intellectual property as "puffs of electrons" is a far too simplistic view, just like calling money nothing more than ink and paper would be; you have to see it as the product of someone's work. If it's good work, the author(s) should be compensated for it.
lasindi
Look, the enemy of the Iraqi insurgency is not just the US. Who did Al Zarqawi declare war on? Democracy. Not (specifically) the US, not even people collaborating with the US, but all of democracy. In other words, they couldn't care less what Iraqis want, they want power for themselves. This is what separates the rebels of Europe fighting the Nazis from the insurgency in Iraq. In Europe, they were fighting for the freedom of the people who the Nazis were oppressing; in Iraq, Al Qaida is fighting democracy, which is the way people can secure their rights in a country. How anyone can sympathize with people fighting democracy to greedily take power for themselves is beyond me.
I agree that Bush and company has really fscked up with post-major-combat Iraq (and that's part of why these elections are going to be far from perfect), but my point remains that these insurgents are not fighting for an Iraq government that's for-the-people-by-the-people. What we have in place right *now* is a puppet government, but after the election it's somewhat difficult to have a puppet government if Americans don't have a vote. Of course, you can come up with conspiracy theories if you like. I took a look at the prisonplanet.com site you linked to; there are such ludicrous stories on there that go as far as speculating that the US planned the tsunami in Asia.
Who is behind most of the attacks in Iraq? Al Zarqawi. Who has Bin Laden designated as his deputy in Iraq? Al Zarqawi. We know for a fact that Al Qaida and Al Qaida-related groups are coordinating many, if not most, of the attacks in Iraq. What the Bush administration said about Al Qaida being in Iraq before the war has, more or less, turned out to be balogna, but there's no question that Al Qaida is there now. Don't forget that Bin Laden's stated goal is Islamic world domination. I haven't said anything pro-invasion-of-Iraq at all. All I'm saying is that I'm astonished that you all hope that the insurgents manage to derail the elections. The elections will, after all, express the real voice of the Iraqi people, not Zarqawi's suicide bombers.
I never said anything about whether or not the war in Iraq was legitimate. What I said was that war is *sometimes* legitimate, and I suppose you agree with me on that.
Lots of people opposed the war, but the fact is, we are there now. The insurgents in Iraq are nothing at all like the rebels in Europe who fought the Nazis. The terrorists in Iraq don't just kill American soldiers, they kill humanitarian workers who opposed the war, they bomb the UN (which opposed the war), and they kill random civilians in Iraqi cities. If they were targetting only US soldiers, you might have a point, but the goal of these fighters is to take Iraq for Al Qaida. I find it hard to believe that you'd rather see Bin Laden rule Iraq than the Iraqi people through elections.
Even in the case where both sides have robots it's a really bad thing, because wars are the instruments of oppression.
I know I'm getting suckered into a flame war here, but I'll play along. Wars can and sometimes are the "instruments of oppression," but to say that war is never a solution to anything is ridiculous. How would you have solved the problem of Hitler in World War II? Diplomacy? Well, Chamberlain wasn't altogether too successful. Was D-Day an "instrument of oppression?" War is a terrible thing, but sometimes it's a necessary evil. Having robots on our side would be a very good thing; fewer coalition and Iraq national guard/police killed in the process of fighting insurgents. I don't see how saving these lives could possibly wrong.
Somehow, I have this feeling that anything which reduces the amount of outrage at a war is a bad thing. Why? Cause wars are bad things. Why? Cause killing people is a bad thing.
... Kind of paradoxical (not "insightful"), isn't it?
Ummmm, OK, if we were to replace human soldiers with robots, the amount of killing *people* would go *down*. But you want people to get angry about killing, so you let more get killed, but
If Intel is faster (and currently it is), why wouldn't you buy it?
I agree with the main thrust of your post (that one ought to go for the best product no matter who makes it), but I'm not sure you can say Intel is any more on the bleeding edge than AMD is. From my experience, you can get a considerably faster AMD CPU for the same amount of money; more bang for your buck. Also, AMD is kicking some serious Intel butt in the 64-bit department, as x86-64 becomes the standard and Itanium is tossed to the wayside.
What about Ogg Theora? Is it not developed enough yet or did they forget about the open source codec? lasindi
Well, we get a new version of the GIMP, and now a new version of Linux! I'm very pleased. I hope that 2.6.10 does multitasking a little better. I've found that 2.6.9 gives a few too many CPU cycles to demanding processes (thereby slowing down the mouse cursor and music and other stuff that I wish wouldn't be affected by something like compiling a program). Anybody else have such experiences? lasindi
Given the "free speech zones" (a cage within a cage surrounded by barbed wire at the DNC, the "no-protest" areas, and the arrests of people with unpopular opinions)
Come on. I'm all for free speech, and I think you should be able to have whatever opinion, however unpopular it may be, that you want, but what these protestors want to do is actually disrupt the convention itself; that is, they want to restrict the rights of the Democrats to express themselves. And the arrests of the 3 protestors were done because these protestors were acting unlawful/violent; otherwise, if it were for merely protesting, there would have been far more people hauled away. And while they have the right (that has been protected in this case) to say whatever they want, just think about how silly they're being; they're protesting against the war at a convention where the delegates are over 90% anti-war. They're just out to make some trouble.
lasindi
It sounds like the submitter is quite astonished that someone would do something like this. Really, it's no different from a proprietary license that says you can't modify, reverse engineer, decompile, or try to get the source code in any way. The way that this is different is that people didn't know before that it was illegal. Now they do. So from now on, someone who clicks "I Agree [not to do anything with my proprietary software]" shouldn't be at all surprised or insulted about this if they choose to buy a PS2.
But we know what the answer to proprietary software was; the rise of GNU/Linux and other free software. Perhaps we'll see a free gaming console emerge (how about GNU Cube?) in the future?
I also wonder if health insurance companies will treat sport pilots differently. My insurance specifically excludes flights in private aircraft that aren't scheduled commercial carriers. Would insurance companies start covering this if lots people begin to use it?
Uh, they seem to have failed miserably as far as weapons of mass destruction are concerned. I supported the war, and don't blame anyone in particular for this apparent intelligence failure since everyone, including the French and Germans, believed Saddam had WMD before the war.
What's the most ironic is how many argue that poorer countries are hurt by free trade. So many protesters at every WTO meeting claim that they are protecting those in third-world countries. If you want to force poor companies in poor countries with poor people to compete under the same labor laws as rich companies in rich countries immediately, you'll never get anywhere. As money flows into poor countries through trade, the standard of living rises and labor laws gradually conform to industrialized standards. Also, when protectionists cry out about workers in developed countries losing jobs, and how terrible their lives have become, let's remember that this job went to someone much poorer. If the worker in a developing country who got the job hadn't gotten it, he/she would be in far worse shape than his/her wealthier counterpart.
Anyways, I put in my pro-globalization ten cents. Free trade is important, and if there are little imperfections we don't like we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water.