Rather than dragging us down, we need to bring them up
And how do we do that? Handouts?
How can we in the western world seriously look at India or China (or sub-saharan Africa for that matter) and say "Um, yeah. Look, we understand that you want jobs, you want to work, etc. But we're not going to patronize you unless you start an EPA and a Department of Labor." Nobody wants to live in third-world conditions, and absent our intervention to keep them there, eventually they'll turn to other countries with money, or start producing for their domestic markets. And, after a century of industrialization, a couple of revolutions, etc, they'll have unions and environmental lobbies. But, not until they've got jobs, food, and enough people to create a leisure class with the time and resources to tilt at those windmills.
Outsourcing to the developing world is a huge opportunity to free up labor in the US. Look at unemployment - even with the flight of jobs offshore, it's down near historic lows. AND we've got an unspoken guest worker program thanks to floods of undocumented workers. The jobs of the last century - heck, the jobs of the last 20 years - aren't where our kids (or even ourselves) will continue to make our money.
It's also an opportunity to jump-start countries like India and China. Increased employment in those countries generates wealth not only with the folks doing outsourced jobs, but also for the people who feed, house, and provide other services in-country. Shortening the timeline to above mentioned leisure-class, and environmental and labor reform.
But what do we have to sell?
That's the billion-dollar question now, isn't it?
To paraphrase Neal Stephenson - 1) Entertainment 2) Code (as in new code, new memes - not repackaging of the same set of solutions) 3) High-speed pizza delivery
From TFA:"This could be a new kind of burst, or we might be seeing a gamma-ray burst from an entirely different angle," said Swift scientist John Nousek at Penn State University.
Hey, maybe Lucas was onto something when he "retouched" the trilogy.
What's that spiel that they read at the end of a baseball game? "The accounts of this game may not be rebroadcast or redistributed without the express written consent of Major League Baseball?"
That being out there, I think that there's an important step being missed - that MLB is compiling the stats on their own dime, and only objecting to folks re-using the information without compensation. But in the case, as presented, the fantasy sites are freeloading off of a dataset that MLB puts out as, well, marketing or something.
Were the fantasy sites sending their own people to each and every baseball game armed with a pad to take the box score, then taking that information back to the ranch, collecting, and processing the stats on their own, they might have a leg to stand on.
It's not the facts themselves that are being owned, it's the compilation and presentation that are in question.
Doesn't the fact that most laptops use a separate DC power supply kind of obviate the need for a surge protector? Any power spike that comes across is going to be sucked up by the transformer, and in the off chance that the power supply gets toasted, there's 3 hours of battery in even my 3 year old iBook dual USB, and $50 gets me a new power supply ($80 if I want one with an apple on it).
$50 is small change to avoid dragging around another thing with a cord in my satchel.
Hopefully there's no Illudium Q36 Explosive Space Modulator awaiting up there.
'Specially with the recent passage of Mel Blanc...
Re:Open Source Vehicles
on
VW Goes USB
·
· Score: 2
There was, once, a time when cars did run open. Things like carborators, manual transmissions, non-ABS brakes, distributors, etc.
The difference between then and now is that these "open" systems required tweaking and tuning every few weeks or months to maintain proper operation, as opposed to newer "closed" cars, which for all practical purposes could be run for years (oil changes possibly excepted) without needing to look under the hood.
They may have been easier to repair, but it's a far stretch to say they "worked better".
what can we do to help stop, slow down or perhaps (if possible?) reverse this trend?
What to do?
Biodiesel - it's got a greater energy output than the energy required to create it (like 3 gallons BD out for 1 gallon BD in), will work with existing technology (assuming that VW can start cranking out diesel Rabbits again), and works with existing infrastructure.
"But doesn't biodiesel exacerbate the CO2 situation?" Negative, ghostrider - it's global warming neutral - any C02 released burning BD was sucked out of the atmosphere to grow the soybeans/whatever.
But what if the true purpose of learning history is it to prepare the student for making political decisions in the future. A game that teaches the consequences of political/governmental decisions may be more powerful than a historically-accurate docu-game. The student would be able to try alternative histories and learn the likely consequences (better or worse) of not sticking to history's script. A game, such as SimCity, could form the basis for some powerful lessons in civics and government.
But wouldn't this be extremely driven by the game developer's views on both history and human interaction? It's entirely plausible to envision games in which economics engines are tweaked such that the famines under Stalin don't occur or in which the US Great Depression results in death on similar scale without the migration from an agrarian society to an industrial society.
Likely consequences are as based on the author's worldview in game space as they are in novel space.
Apple could be the perfect example of this - For years, Mac Users said "Hey, we've got the good stuff here, why not come have a sip?" And Apple continued to plummet towards a footnote in a computer history text.
Then, Apple releases the iPod and iTunes for Windows - suddenly people take them seriously again...
Cory Doctorow kind of addressed this in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - "in the Bitchun Society proper (after death has been "cured"), we usually outlive our detractors.
Slashdot Mirror
Rather than dragging us down, we need to bring them up
And how do we do that? Handouts?
How can we in the western world seriously look at India or China (or sub-saharan Africa for that matter) and say "Um, yeah. Look, we understand that you want jobs, you want to work, etc. But we're not going to patronize you unless you start an EPA and a Department of Labor." Nobody wants to live in third-world conditions, and absent our intervention to keep them there, eventually they'll turn to other countries with money, or start producing for their domestic markets. And, after a century of industrialization, a couple of revolutions, etc, they'll have unions and environmental lobbies. But, not until they've got jobs, food, and enough people to create a leisure class with the time and resources to tilt at those windmills.
Outsourcing to the developing world is a huge opportunity to free up labor in the US. Look at unemployment - even with the flight of jobs offshore, it's down near historic lows. AND we've got an unspoken guest worker program thanks to floods of undocumented workers. The jobs of the last century - heck, the jobs of the last 20 years - aren't where our kids (or even ourselves) will continue to make our money.
It's also an opportunity to jump-start countries like India and China. Increased employment in those countries generates wealth not only with the folks doing outsourced jobs, but also for the people who feed, house, and provide other services in-country. Shortening the timeline to above mentioned leisure-class, and environmental and labor reform.
But what do we have to sell?
That's the billion-dollar question now, isn't it?
To paraphrase Neal Stephenson -
1) Entertainment
2) Code (as in new code, new memes - not repackaging of the same set of solutions)
3) High-speed pizza delivery
Like Mr. X's page?
From TFA:"This could be a new kind of burst, or we might be seeing a gamma-ray burst from an entirely different angle," said Swift scientist John Nousek at Penn State University.
Hey, maybe Lucas was onto something when he "retouched" the trilogy.
Transmutate elements ... Hey, this gives me a business model:
... (Hey, don't need a step 3 here!)
1. BUild tabletop fusion reactor.
2. Turn lead into gold.
3.
4. Profit!
What's that spiel that they read at the end of a baseball game? "The accounts of this game may not be rebroadcast or redistributed without the express written consent of Major League Baseball?"
That being out there, I think that there's an important step being missed - that MLB is compiling the stats on their own dime, and only objecting to folks re-using the information without compensation. But in the case, as presented, the fantasy sites are freeloading off of a dataset that MLB puts out as, well, marketing or something.
Were the fantasy sites sending their own people to each and every baseball game armed with a pad to take the box score, then taking that information back to the ranch, collecting, and processing the stats on their own, they might have a leg to stand on.
It's not the facts themselves that are being owned, it's the compilation and presentation that are in question.
Doesn't the fact that most laptops use a separate DC power supply kind of obviate the need for a surge protector? Any power spike that comes across is going to be sucked up by the transformer, and in the off chance that the power supply gets toasted, there's 3 hours of battery in even my 3 year old iBook dual USB, and $50 gets me a new power supply ($80 if I want one with an apple on it).
$50 is small change to avoid dragging around another thing with a cord in my satchel.
Same reason that tin-foil hats are preferred to plastic hats?
Hopefully there's no Illudium Q36 Explosive Space Modulator awaiting up there.
'Specially with the recent passage of Mel Blanc...
There was, once, a time when cars did run open. Things like carborators, manual transmissions, non-ABS brakes, distributors, etc.
The difference between then and now is that these "open" systems required tweaking and tuning every few weeks or months to maintain proper operation, as opposed to newer "closed" cars, which for all practical purposes could be run for years (oil changes possibly excepted) without needing to look under the hood.
They may have been easier to repair, but it's a far stretch to say they "worked better".
Is how long it will take them to make bicycles out of the stuff...
what can we do to help stop, slow down or perhaps (if possible?) reverse this trend?
What to do?
Biodiesel - it's got a greater energy output than the energy required to create it (like 3 gallons BD out for 1 gallon BD in), will work with existing technology (assuming that VW can start cranking out diesel Rabbits again), and works with existing infrastructure.
"But doesn't biodiesel exacerbate the CO2 situation?" Negative, ghostrider - it's global warming neutral - any C02 released burning BD was sucked out of the atmosphere to grow the soybeans/whatever.
But what if the true purpose of learning history is it to prepare the student for making political decisions in the future. A game that teaches the consequences of political/governmental decisions may be more powerful than a historically-accurate docu-game. The student would be able to try alternative histories and learn the likely consequences (better or worse) of not sticking to history's script. A game, such as SimCity, could form the basis for some powerful lessons in civics and government.
But wouldn't this be extremely driven by the game developer's views on both history and human interaction? It's entirely plausible to envision games in which economics engines are tweaked such that the famines under Stalin don't occur or in which the US Great Depression results in death on similar scale without the migration from an agrarian society to an industrial society.
Likely consequences are as based on the author's worldview in game space as they are in novel space.
Apple could be the perfect example of this - For years, Mac Users said "Hey, we've got the good stuff here, why not come have a sip?" And Apple continued to plummet towards a footnote in a computer history text.
...
Then, Apple releases the iPod and iTunes for Windows - suddenly people take them seriously again
Cory Doctorow kind of addressed this in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - "in the Bitchun Society proper (after death has been "cured"), we usually outlive our detractors.
I don't see how you can ever have enough nukes. Nukes are very, very scary. A nation with 20,000 of them is a very, very scary nation. That's the kind of nation I want to live in, so long as it is under rational, constitutional government.
I, for one, welcome our Martian Overlords.