If we have more protection of employees, higher salaries, less working hours, it will definitely make massive unemployment.
I think this a fallacy promoted by those who want to maintain profit margins. If this were true, then we should expect to see mass unemployment in most western countries where these protections apply. But we don't. And while it's true that many jobs have gone to China, one could make the case that the average Chinese worker is actually worse off in terms of quality of life compared to the western worker, who is only marginally so, if at all.
The great paradox of the Chinese economic boom is how it has so failed to significantly raise the living standards of the population as a whole. The reason it has failed is because of lack of protection and fair compensation for employees. There is little domestic demand for goods as people have little money and less time to buy them. Western economies were similar for decades, with successive booms doing little to improve the lot of the average man until labour laws came into force, primarily after the second world war.
Industrial relations are an extremely important part of any economy, and it is vital that a balance be achieved there. China has so far failed to achieve this balance. The consequences for failing to do so may be dire indeed.
I don't like playing cultural imperialist, but something about current Asian cultures seems to me to be broken
It's not the culture, it's the demographics.
Take China. Population 1.3 billion. But only 500 million of those are really taking part in the new economy. The other 800 million live in rural poverty. In fact, most of the 500 million who aren't, typically don't fare much better.
What does this mean in practical terms? It means that unless you are incredibly well educated, connected or monied, you are very, very expendable. There are literally ten people lined up behind you waiting for the same job, which means unless you are prepared to work enormous hours, under extreme pressure, in terrible conditions, you won't get it.
I had a talk with someone recently back from a business trip to Shanghai. Their group took a short walk through the city one evening, between the rows of shining new skyscrapers that carpet the metropolitan area. As they walked, they could see into offices where employees could be seen through the windows, sleeping on the desks they had been working at all day. How are you supposed to compete with that?
China is witnessing the kind of rapid capitalism not seen in the world since the 1890's. An economy where labour is cheap and people are treated worse and paid less because there are so many others, literally hungry enough to so the same for even less than that. The kind of capitalism that gave rise to theories like Say's Law, which held you could never have massive unemployment because there would always be people willing to work for a bowl of rice a day.
And do you know what the most ironic thing about this whole state of affairs is? China has never actually had a communist revolution.
Jesus Christ Kid! Wake up and smell the Coffee! It's the Noughties! I'm not paying you to think about flower power and peace among the animals.
1. Consider the value of a human life, starting with your own, and compare it to the value of the secrecy of some cellphone prototype
Consider this mac: Supply and Demand!! If there's one thing that human history has taught us, it's that people are cheap, but profits are forever. You know how many guys like this guy there are? You know how many iPhone prototypes there are? You don't need to do a lot 'a math to see how this is gonna work out. Man, I could tell you stories about coffee beans and Nicaraguans in the 80's. Fucking great times!
2. Consider your other options. Your bosses were mean to you: sue them, find another job, learn to live with it. Are any of these better than jumping out of the fucking window?
Holy shit! The only time you need to you to jump out a window is when the stock is at 5c and your pretty sure the guy is like, your spitting image. The lesson here is that if the pressure is this fucking high, you need a safety valve, otherwise known as a fall guy. In fact, I'm betting this guy was that guy! Sweet play.
3. Consider the safety and mental wellbeing of the people who might be minding their own business and walking their children to school as your dumb skull slams into the pavement in front of them. If you've got to kill yourself, please don't get other people involved.
You know, you should be thinking about other people. You should be thinking about how to make money off of 'em, or else get them outta your way. You see a bus load of traumatised kids. I see a several lifetimes worth of prescription medication sales. You see tragedy, I see opportunity.
Shit happens, deal with it. It's all part of the game. Wen just bought a new sports car. Hu just sealed the Intel deal. Yao just jumped out of ten story window. Who cares! It's all just gossip material to spend over Espresso lattes. The second you stop to moralise over rights, wrongs, lifes, deaths; is the second you stop making money. You gotta straighten those suspenders, up the sperm count on the deal, and keep kickin' ass, so people know your the hardest asshole around.
Prime example, Steve fucking Jobs. Guy's such a ball buster that he's got subcontractors breakin' down apartment doors and throwing suckers outta windows just to keep the latest indigo and cyan iDink case covers an international fucking secret. And people still think he's Michael Jackson! You will never have those stones.
So, Put it all on AAPL, Bernanke's got the kettle on. And get yourself a dog!
Your argument reduces to; "Many current funding models rely on monopoly control of information, therefore, not everything should be in the public domain."
My retort: "Evolve or Die". We had museums long before we gift shops with photographs.
If he created his own photos, he could post them. The only question is whether or not a straight copy of a work can be copyrighted on its own... which is why the museum is arguing that artistry went into creating them.
So, you're saying that when something is copyrighted, I can't copy it. But when something isn't copyrighted, I also can't copy it because in order to make a copy I'd really be making a new work, which would require me to use the original artistry or owners artistry in some way first?
Personally, I think that in the digital age, as copyright becomes an increasingly irrational concept, we're going to see more and more thinking like this as copyright proponents have to put their minds through increasingly illogical intellectual arguments. Their version of reality is going to diverge quite significantly from the real one.
From personal experience with people who have actually contributed to the black market, the penis from the tiger bred in captivity is not as effective as one taken from the wild.
From personal experience, since 0>0 is false, I still do not see the logic. You could give these guys shavings from a slashdotters toenails and they'd never be able to tell the difference.
This is the part I never understand. What on earth are they poaching the tigers for? Tigers are actually a fairly common animal in captivity.
The only explanation I can come up with is that there are people who will pay money to their own, or own the skin of, one of the last $ANIMAL simply because it is the last, and for no other reason. I think there was a Star Trek episode about that.
The Source engine is a great engine and the results frankly impress me a lot more than Unreal engine. Bioshock was an incredible game, but the look and feel of HL2 and it's subsequent episodes/tech demos were far more impressive visually.
You're taking LSD. Or at least you'd have to be to come to that conclusion.
Every single Valve game, with the exception of Team Fortress 2, is an aesthetic trainwreck, devoid of almost all visual appeal. Desaturated greys and browns dominate, and the landscapes generally resemble gravel strew tundra or concrete fortresses. Half Life 2 itself is set in an eastern European soviet housing, and looks it throughout. Flair on characters consists of things like glasses, a cigar, or perhaps a moustache. Everything is dirty, dilapidated and dank.
Compare to Unreal Tournament 3. The first level is set in a gilded temple complex, lavishly decorated in an eastern style. From there you proceed to space stations, ice caps, futuristic robot factories, desert temples and underground mines. Every level is covered with fantastic architecture and neon lighting. Colours are vibrant and varied. Characters are as eccentric as those from a comic book.
This doesn't say anything for the gameplay mind. Valve's testing process still produces better play, though other companies are improving. But it does point to a consistent problem with Valve's ethos that has finally caught up with their engine. Their visual style is boring, and the (lack of) capabilities of the Source engine reflect that. Even Team Fortress 2 and Portal are still relatively dry in their visuals.
Epic Games by contrast have moved the industry in another aesthetic direction with their new engine and the games made using it, Gears of War and UT3. Other companies are following suit, with lighting effects, water effects, shaders and all more colour saturation all round becoming more common. Crytec and others are following much the same line(NaughtyDog has always produced vibrant titles). Designers are now wowing players with scenes that delight the eye.
It should be stressed that such scenes are in fact "unrealistic". The Source engine typically produces scenes which more closely resemble the real world. Which is its primary problem. People are playing games to escape the real world. I can recall commentary from the beginning of HL2:Episode 1 in which the designers rave on about new effects that allowed, I think, higher lighting contrast in the scene. Alyx's face and features could be seen whilst the sun was setting or some such thing. I recall recalling how completely underwhelming the final presentation actually was the first time around.
The Source engine is finally showing, not its age, but its direction. The direction chosen by Valve for the engine has taken it away from the mainstream path of brighter and more interesting visual scenes towards duller and more realistic displays. But brighter and more interesting scenes, along with musical scores, that give the player a feast for the senses as well as for the mind, are the way that the industry is moving. Thankfully.
Unless Valve take steps to add such capabilities to the engine and, more importantly, develop a game that demonstrates those capabilities, the Source engine is going to be left behind over the next 3 years.
* a file is a container for storing paper
* a folder is a container for storing paper
I don't think so. How many times have you heard someone say: "Put that paper in the file" or indeed, "Put those papers in the folder". You'll find people are more likely to say: "Do you have those files?", or "What's in that folder?".
A file was always a ordered collection of papers/photos/data on a singular topic. A folder was always a place where you put papers and files. The file/folder analogy in computing is actually a very good one, and the only people who are ever confused by it are the find of people who would be confused by real files and folders anyway.
The problem isn't actually with the system. It's actually with users who cannot and will not adopt any method or organisation over their own files. Admittedly, the default folders most programs obnoxiously set complicates things, but the proof of the pudding is when you ask someone where their files are and they give you a helpless stare. Sometimes they have been using computers, and these very files, for years. yet they have absolutely no idea what a file is, where their files are, or even of their existence outside of the context of the exact program that manipulates them.
As they proceed to recite the unique set of incantations they use to access a particular file type, you begin to see why "cloud computing" and web based software is not going to be a huge leap for these users.
There's no new evidence because the police have been sitting on it all since 2005.
A mountain of gossip and scandal has been illegally amassed for over 10 years by these people. CEOs, MPs and even the royal family have been bugged. Do you honestly think that Police commissioners have escaped with their secrets intact?
A police inquiry has already been ruled out. The Crown Prosecution Service "review", will amount to just that. Any parliamentary inquiry will likely be muted, and satisfied with only the resignation of the Tory's PR man Andy Coulson (Former News of the World Editor) as a tit for tat retribution for the resignation of Labor's PR man Damian McBride. Those bugged will be paid off(some already have been) with settlements that will hardly dint Rupert Murdoch's News International's $21 billion chest. The press complaints commission is the industry's "self regulation" body, paid for by the newspapers themselves.
They will get away with this.
This skullduggery that News International paid private investigators to carry out; hacking, wire fraud, misrepresentation, etc, has been going on for at least a decade. One of the victims mentioned, Charlotte Coleman's, died in 2001 when they paid for someone to obtain a list of friends and family from her parents phone. Victims include TV celebrities, Royal family members, CEOs and members of parliament. These people paid someone to put a camera in a room where Max Mosley(67) was having sex. They printed some of it next to the regular outrages they print every single day. There is absolutely no limit to what these people will do.
They will get away with this.
The culture that brought this about is worst at the News of the World newsroom, but it is by no means confined to that place. It's pervasive throughout Murdoch's publications, and probably beyond. News International papers, the Mirror, the Daily Mail, the Observer, the list goes on. Steve Whittamore's(the private investigator) papers show over 13,000 from over 300 journalists. And this is all from only one such man. Who knows how many other investigators exist, an industrialized cottage industry for illegal snooping.
They will get away with this. The culture runs too deep, and is too established. Too many newspapers are in on it. Too many people have too much dirt and are all too ready to print it if anyone tries to reign in a media that has grown so grossly over-mighty. Nothing is sacred, no one is safe, and no one can defend themselves from the hounds that the moguls can set upon them. What chance does anyone have if CEOs and MPs phones are being tapped?
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, Your Fourth Estate.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it'll be faster at any rate.
You're free to make your own alphabet as well and use it on all your documents!
I think this a fallacy promoted by those who want to maintain profit margins. If this were true, then we should expect to see mass unemployment in most western countries where these protections apply. But we don't. And while it's true that many jobs have gone to China, one could make the case that the average Chinese worker is actually worse off in terms of quality of life compared to the western worker, who is only marginally so, if at all.
The great paradox of the Chinese economic boom is how it has so failed to significantly raise the living standards of the population as a whole. The reason it has failed is because of lack of protection and fair compensation for employees. There is little domestic demand for goods as people have little money and less time to buy them. Western economies were similar for decades, with successive booms doing little to improve the lot of the average man until labour laws came into force, primarily after the second world war.
Industrial relations are an extremely important part of any economy, and it is vital that a balance be achieved there. China has so far failed to achieve this balance. The consequences for failing to do so may be dire indeed.
It's not the culture, it's the demographics.
Take China. Population 1.3 billion. But only 500 million of those are really taking part in the new economy. The other 800 million live in rural poverty. In fact, most of the 500 million who aren't, typically don't fare much better.
What does this mean in practical terms? It means that unless you are incredibly well educated, connected or monied, you are very, very expendable. There are literally ten people lined up behind you waiting for the same job, which means unless you are prepared to work enormous hours, under extreme pressure, in terrible conditions, you won't get it.
I had a talk with someone recently back from a business trip to Shanghai. Their group took a short walk through the city one evening, between the rows of shining new skyscrapers that carpet the metropolitan area. As they walked, they could see into offices where employees could be seen through the windows, sleeping on the desks they had been working at all day. How are you supposed to compete with that?
China is witnessing the kind of rapid capitalism not seen in the world since the 1890's. An economy where labour is cheap and people are treated worse and paid less because there are so many others, literally hungry enough to so the same for even less than that. The kind of capitalism that gave rise to theories like Say's Law, which held you could never have massive unemployment because there would always be people willing to work for a bowl of rice a day.
And do you know what the most ironic thing about this whole state of affairs is? China has never actually had a communist revolution.
Jesus Christ Kid! Wake up and smell the Coffee! It's the Noughties! I'm not paying you to think about flower power and peace among the animals.
Consider this mac: Supply and Demand!! If there's one thing that human history has taught us, it's that people are cheap, but profits are forever. You know how many guys like this guy there are? You know how many iPhone prototypes there are? You don't need to do a lot 'a math to see how this is gonna work out. Man, I could tell you stories about coffee beans and Nicaraguans in the 80's. Fucking great times!
Holy shit! The only time you need to you to jump out a window is when the stock is at 5c and your pretty sure the guy is like, your spitting image. The lesson here is that if the pressure is this fucking high, you need a safety valve, otherwise known as a fall guy. In fact, I'm betting this guy was that guy! Sweet play.
You know, you should be thinking about other people. You should be thinking about how to make money off of 'em, or else get them outta your way. You see a bus load of traumatised kids. I see a several lifetimes worth of prescription medication sales. You see tragedy, I see opportunity.
Shit happens, deal with it. It's all part of the game. Wen just bought a new sports car. Hu just sealed the Intel deal. Yao just jumped out of ten story window. Who cares! It's all just gossip material to spend over Espresso lattes. The second you stop to moralise over rights, wrongs, lifes, deaths; is the second you stop making money. You gotta straighten those suspenders, up the sperm count on the deal, and keep kickin' ass, so people know your the hardest asshole around.
Prime example, Steve fucking Jobs. Guy's such a ball buster that he's got subcontractors breakin' down apartment doors and throwing suckers outta windows just to keep the latest indigo and cyan iDink case covers an international fucking secret. And people still think he's Michael Jackson! You will never have those stones.
So, Put it all on AAPL, Bernanke's got the kettle on. And get yourself a dog!
Fuck. The correct english word is fuck. Remember to stress that fricative for best effect.
Our chief weapon is obscurity!
Because Jim was born a girl.
Your argument reduces to; "Many current funding models rely on monopoly control of information, therefore, not everything should be in the public domain."
My retort: "Evolve or Die". We had museums long before we gift shops with photographs.
So, you're saying that when something is copyrighted, I can't copy it. But when something isn't copyrighted, I also can't copy it because in order to make a copy I'd really be making a new work, which would require me to use the original artistry or owners artistry in some way first?
Personally, I think that in the digital age, as copyright becomes an increasingly irrational concept, we're going to see more and more thinking like this as copyright proponents have to put their minds through increasingly illogical intellectual arguments. Their version of reality is going to diverge quite significantly from the real one.
From personal experience, since 0>0 is false, I still do not see the logic. You could give these guys shavings from a slashdotters toenails and they'd never be able to tell the difference.
Which would be notable, if that was the only thing it was regulating.
This is the part I never understand. What on earth are they poaching the tigers for? Tigers are actually a fairly common animal in captivity.
The only explanation I can come up with is that there are people who will pay money to their own, or own the skin of, one of the last $ANIMAL simply because it is the last, and for no other reason. I think there was a Star Trek episode about that.
But then... how would you live?
You're taking LSD. Or at least you'd have to be to come to that conclusion.
Every single Valve game, with the exception of Team Fortress 2, is an aesthetic trainwreck, devoid of almost all visual appeal. Desaturated greys and browns dominate, and the landscapes generally resemble gravel strew tundra or concrete fortresses. Half Life 2 itself is set in an eastern European soviet housing, and looks it throughout. Flair on characters consists of things like glasses, a cigar, or perhaps a moustache. Everything is dirty, dilapidated and dank.
Compare to Unreal Tournament 3. The first level is set in a gilded temple complex, lavishly decorated in an eastern style. From there you proceed to space stations, ice caps, futuristic robot factories, desert temples and underground mines. Every level is covered with fantastic architecture and neon lighting. Colours are vibrant and varied. Characters are as eccentric as those from a comic book.
This doesn't say anything for the gameplay mind. Valve's testing process still produces better play, though other companies are improving. But it does point to a consistent problem with Valve's ethos that has finally caught up with their engine. Their visual style is boring, and the (lack of) capabilities of the Source engine reflect that. Even Team Fortress 2 and Portal are still relatively dry in their visuals.
Epic Games by contrast have moved the industry in another aesthetic direction with their new engine and the games made using it, Gears of War and UT3. Other companies are following suit, with lighting effects, water effects, shaders and all more colour saturation all round becoming more common. Crytec and others are following much the same line(NaughtyDog has always produced vibrant titles). Designers are now wowing players with scenes that delight the eye.
It should be stressed that such scenes are in fact "unrealistic". The Source engine typically produces scenes which more closely resemble the real world. Which is its primary problem. People are playing games to escape the real world. I can recall commentary from the beginning of HL2:Episode 1 in which the designers rave on about new effects that allowed, I think, higher lighting contrast in the scene. Alyx's face and features could be seen whilst the sun was setting or some such thing. I recall recalling how completely underwhelming the final presentation actually was the first time around.
The Source engine is finally showing, not its age, but its direction. The direction chosen by Valve for the engine has taken it away from the mainstream path of brighter and more interesting visual scenes towards duller and more realistic displays. But brighter and more interesting scenes, along with musical scores, that give the player a feast for the senses as well as for the mind, are the way that the industry is moving. Thankfully.
Unless Valve take steps to add such capabilities to the engine and, more importantly, develop a game that demonstrates those capabilities, the Source engine is going to be left behind over the next 3 years.
If the construction of the Pyramids was possible in 2500 BC.... ...wouldn't they be common today?
Surely technology has skyrocketed since then.
Does anyone really remember what 'state of the art' was in 2500 BC? They didn't even have cranes.
Everything was overly heavy and large and bulky. Most tools were made of wood and stone or copper. The Iron Age hadn't even begun.
In fact, every major advancement we achieved in any form of technology for two centuries after was due to the construction of the pyramids.
I'm just wondering why we haven't built more? No money? No interest?
Not possible?
I think that I would either love, or hate, to work in your office.
But before she can, she needs you to collect 8 pale seahorse manes and 6 crystal jellyfish extracts.
Either that or he has kids.
I don't think so. How many times have you heard someone say: "Put that paper in the file" or indeed, "Put those papers in the folder".
You'll find people are more likely to say: "Do you have those files?", or "What's in that folder?".
A file was always a ordered collection of papers/photos/data on a singular topic. A folder was always a place where you put papers and files. The file/folder analogy in computing is actually a very good one, and the only people who are ever confused by it are the find of people who would be confused by real files and folders anyway.
The problem isn't actually with the system. It's actually with users who cannot and will not adopt any method or organisation over their own files. Admittedly, the default folders most programs obnoxiously set complicates things, but the proof of the pudding is when you ask someone where their files are and they give you a helpless stare. Sometimes they have been using computers, and these very files, for years. yet they have absolutely no idea what a file is, where their files are, or even of their existence outside of the context of the exact program that manipulates them.
As they proceed to recite the unique set of incantations they use to access a particular file type, you begin to see why "cloud computing" and web based software is not going to be a huge leap for these users.
Well, most people do. And these days, that's all you need to throw someone in jail forever: The consent of the people.
It's easy to get that consent as well. You just need to own a few newspapers and get a few people to cry on television. Gets 'em every time.
Not necessarily. It all depends on who starts sleeping with Jimbo Wales first.
Trouble is, it wouldn't be you who'd end up the martyr.
There's no new evidence because the police have been sitting on it all since 2005.
A mountain of gossip and scandal has been illegally amassed for over 10 years by these people. CEOs, MPs and even the royal family have been bugged. Do you honestly think that Police commissioners have escaped with their secrets intact?
Not only that, they will get away with it too.
A police inquiry has already been ruled out. The Crown Prosecution Service "review", will amount to just that. Any parliamentary inquiry will likely be muted, and satisfied with only the resignation of the Tory's PR man Andy Coulson (Former News of the World Editor) as a tit for tat retribution for the resignation of Labor's PR man Damian McBride. Those bugged will be paid off(some already have been) with settlements that will hardly dint Rupert Murdoch's News International's $21 billion chest. The press complaints commission is the industry's "self regulation" body, paid for by the newspapers themselves.
They will get away with this.
This skullduggery that News International paid private investigators to carry out; hacking, wire fraud, misrepresentation, etc, has been going on for at least a decade. One of the victims mentioned, Charlotte Coleman's, died in 2001 when they paid for someone to obtain a list of friends and family from her parents phone. Victims include TV celebrities, Royal family members, CEOs and members of parliament. These people paid someone to put a camera in a room where Max Mosley(67) was having sex. They printed some of it next to the regular outrages they print every single day. There is absolutely no limit to what these people will do.
They will get away with this.
The culture that brought this about is worst at the News of the World newsroom, but it is by no means confined to that place. It's pervasive throughout Murdoch's publications, and probably beyond. News International papers, the Mirror, the Daily Mail, the Observer, the list goes on. Steve Whittamore's(the private investigator) papers show over 13,000 from over 300 journalists. And this is all from only one such man. Who knows how many other investigators exist, an industrialized cottage industry for illegal snooping.
They will get away with this. The culture runs too deep, and is too established. Too many newspapers are in on it. Too many people have too much dirt and are all too ready to print it if anyone tries to reign in a media that has grown so grossly over-mighty. Nothing is sacred, no one is safe, and no one can defend themselves from the hounds that the moguls can set upon them. What chance does anyone have if CEOs and MPs phones are being tapped?
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, Your Fourth Estate.