The calls I make from my home phone have the time of the call and the phone number called recorded.
The calls I made from my mobile had the time of the call, my location and the phone number called recorded.
All the websites I visit, have the domain name recorded.
All the emails I sent have the time of sending and the receipient recorded.
When I pay by credit card, the location, time and amount of the transaction are recorded.
When I cycle into town, I go past about six cameras - I'm recorded by each one.
All of this information is available to the State without any form of judicial oversight. A policeman on a whim could keep a very close watch on my life.
So I'm not being paranoid here - this list *IS* the list of the monitoring conducted on all of us.
I've committed no crime. I'm totally innocent.
Why am I being monitored? why does the State have to keep records of who I talk to and when I talk to them and where I am when I talk to them? am I suspected of something? I'm not. So why? because I *might* do something? that's outrageous! and in fact it's proper tantamout to suspecting me of something - it is suspected that I *might* commit a crime, which is just a weaker version of we *do* suspect you comitted a crime.
What people don't realise is that although the State has always recorded plenty of information on us, the game has changed because of computers. Computers plus surveillance isn't just more of the same; it's something utterly new and *different*.
> The way government research grants usually work as follows: there is a pot of money and a solicitation for > projects on a certain topic, theme or general research thrust. People then submit proposals and depending on the > size of the pot and the number of proposals submitted, a certain percentage of them are funded. The fact that > this project got funded is indicative that it was "better" than other, unfunded proposals that we don't get to > read about on Slashdot.
You're making a relative comparison. You're saying - there's all these research projects, this one got funded, the projects compete between themselves and the better projects get funding - THEREFORE this is a worthwhile use of the research budget.
What I'm saying is that the research budget is too large if this sort of project gets funding.
The RISKS digest carried this news a few years ago.
It's been long known that;
1. some providers can download arbitrary software to some phones 2. a phone can be running that software while appearing not to be making a call
The potential for abuse is obvious.
I gave up my mobile phone about a month ago now. I read through a full list of the ways in which the British State monitors me. When you read them all at once, it has quite an impact. The simple question I have is this: I am completely innocent. I have commited no crimes and am not suspected of committing any crimes.
So, we have this satellite. It spends all it's time looking at stuff on the Earth - okay, that's cool. It's being used all the time and I'm prepared to accept it's useful and needed. Not a problem.
Ah, but wait. Apparently, if the satellite is looking at something uninteresting, the cost of the time lost is a problem - so it would be good if the satellite could know to look at more interesting things.
But wait - isn't it always looking at stuff it's been told to look at?
Well, either it is - in which case we've got this AI heuristics which is going to be right sometimes and wrong sometimes and every now and then it's going to interrupt what it's been *told* to do on the chance that the heuristic is right. That *ain't* how you run a multi-million dollar resource.
But if it isn't always looking at stuff, then doesn't that seem like we have excess capacity? which gets back to my feeling that this seems like a gratitious satellite, if we can afford to be monkeying around wiht it's *expensive* observation time based on the output of an AI heuristic, ESPECIALLY when a human is going to come along very shortly afterwards *anyway* and tell it to look at the right thing.
> There will always be more important things to do than those currently being done for as long as people > have individual opinions.
Weasel words.
If 10 million dollars is spent running a satellite when the research it's doing can be done on the ground and people are starving, then there really IS more important stuff for that money to be spent on.
> In this case, the purpose of this satellite is specifically to look around for things that are out of > the ordinary, and as such there is nothing more important for their team to do with their resources > because this is exactly what they wanted to do.
I'm saying they shouldn't have been given that money in the first place, because what they're doing isn't worth the money they've been given, considering the other things that money could be spent on.
> Many times science for the sake of science has yielded unexpected and highly beneficial results that can > have practical applications. Think microwaves. And also the way they are using AI and networking with > other satellites may in itself become useful in the future. I can imagine this satellite working > together with the early warning systems currently being deployed to warn against future tsunamis for > example.
So why don't we give them 100 billion dollars and let them do research with that?
Obviously, because it's disproportionate. You don't spend THAT much money on this, because you need the money for other things and also the benefits you'll get become progressively more expensive to have obtained because it cost you so much more in the first place.
And my point is that these maybe's and could-have's are NO way to seriously justify millions of dollars of spending. If you're going to spend serious money, you better have a bloody good idea of what you're spending it on and why - and given how expensive satallites are, this does not seem like a good, efficient way of converting millions of dollars into lots of research - it seems like a bad, inefficient way to convert millions of dollars into just a little bit of research.
> I really don't think a satellite that scans the whole earth and pinpointing changes relevant to its > mission is that out of line.
There are MANY satellites which monitor the entire planet, 24/7.
My point is that the report seems to be that this satellite is being used to experiment with AI heuristics.
It's all good and well to do research, but it's not all good and well to do needlessly expensive research. Firing a satellite into orbit and running it is VERY expensive. The more you spend doing this, the less you have to spend on other research, which now simply doesn't get done. (And that's if you spend it on research; what about the 2.9 billion people who live on less than $2 a day?)
More to the point, it's actually an example of an abuse of economic freedom. I pay taxes - a whacking great big chunk of my income is taken from me. Why do I pay so much? what's the money used for? turns out some of it is being used to fire what seems to be entirely excessive hardware into space. I'm not happy with having so much money taken from me for things like this! but what choice do I have? none at all. My economic freedom - my ability to own what I earn from my own work - is compromised, for the State comes along and dispossesses me of a whacking great big chunk of my work; and it seems some of that money is being very inefficiently used. The people spending my money aren't the person who had to do the work to earn that money.
> God forbid they actually do some *research* and *invent* something *useful* ?
Research is an essential aspect of progress. However, all because research is essential does not mean ALL research is essential, or that any given research is an efficient use of the finite resources available with which to conduct research.
More to the point, research is not the issue here, despite the fact you're raised it as THE issue. There are a zillion ways to develop AI heuristics. There is no need whatsoever to spend millions of dollars developing them in a spacecraft when you can spend thousands of dollars and develop them in a computer, with attached sensors, in a lab.
The issue here is that there is a finite amount of money and this seems to be a rather gratitious and extremely expensive satellite.
> How can you say that it wouldn't be great for them to have a network of satellites that watch the globe > for this activity tirelessly day and night, rather than having some poor tired geologists staring at > seismometeres ?
I doubt there is a single geologist, tired or otherwise, staring at seisometers, waiting for something to happen. I suspect they are all computer monitored and the geologists, being rather bright, have so arranged matters that they are warm and comfy in bed.
> I'm sure you're against educating people in the third world because other people are starving etc.
You think that because you don't understand where I'm coming from and have projected a set of opinions you dislike on to me.
What are we doing with so many satellites in orbit we can spare one look at targets generated by AI heuristics? these things costs millions of dollars a year to run. I don't see that the *possibility* of managing to look at an interesting event before being actually commanded to do so is a proportional use of that money. There are MUCH more essential things to spend millions of dollars on.
IME, when a company goes from being small, well run and efficient, to bloated, bureaucratic and hopelessly *hopelessly* stupid, the FIRST thing they do is switch to Lotus Notes and Perforce.
It's like old people moving to Florida buying an RV.
There's an arcade game, where you have a dozen jack-in-the-box little heads which pop up, and a hammer, and your goal is to hit as many heads as you can as quickly as you can, as they pop up again a little while after you've hit them down.
Imagine a video iPod with a nice little screen (640x480) and enough store for your entire video and music collection.
You can carry it with you anywhere.
Useful?
I can usefully take music with me, because I can *listen* while I physically perform other tasks - like being at the gym, sitting down at work while I code.
But *video?*
Video is much less useful, because to *watch* you can't be doing other things - your eyes are occupied.
So I think it's only useful for being portable in situations where you have to sit and *wait* and cannot do other things.
For me that means just one thing; waiting for the bus and maybe when I'm on the bus, if it doesn't make me feel ill.
For others, I can only imagine similar situations, e.g. being stuck on a mode of transport.
The Russian State almost hasn't changed; the difference between now and then is that modern Russia is interested in making money.
They're still a bunch of fuckers. If you make it so they don't like you - for example, by objecting to human rights abuses, massive corruption and injustice - they'll kill you for it.
Absolutely nothing new in this article, except that the latest team are going to be releasing their findings soon. Basically, it's a page filler, some entertainment, not news at all.
Really, we need a new word, for news which isn't functional information, but just amusing/entertaining.
I wish they'd bloody well get round to publishing the full translation of the text, though!
> In other words, that would be an indication (we'll see if it continues) of no nearby methane "tipping point".
I'm confused - how do you draw this conclusion from what happened?
No one has any idea of the mechanism which has kicked in which is now absorbing methane emissions.
For all we know, there could be a huge "inbreath" of methane before the methane tipping point - this could be the final warning! of course, I've just pulled that out of a hat, but you get my point - if the mechanism is not understand, how can you *conclude* "therefore methane tipping point can't be near".
> Right. And even though we don't need to do something right now,
TBH, I think we're way too late *already*. I think we're screwed right now, we just don't know it yet.
So here we are, currently doing basically bugger all about global warming, but with plenty of computer simulations and estimates about how much warming will happen in how many years, and plenty of politics going on about who should pay for it, and what about second world countries, and AFAICS it's basically a game of how long can be put off doing something about this, because it's going to cost plenty of money and we don't seem to need to be doing it just right now...
Now, out of the blue, something *utterly* unexpected, inexplicable and major happens - the rate of methane emission levels out; and no one has a *CLUE* why.
Well, I can hear this ticking noise...
I sure hope we figure out interplanetry colonization soon.
> Privacy advocates warn that such personal data, once in a database, is bound to be misused
Of course it will be misused; you can make money out of it.
Younger adults don't care because they have no knowledge or perception of the risks involved with the digitization of private data.
Going from analog records to digital records is NOT "more of the same"; it is qualitively different, because of the orders of magnitude improvement in the ease of accessing and searching the data.
It's never been part of debate to simply and only assert "this is wrong" and then walk off.
If you're going to disagree, you HAVE to justify yourself, otherwise you're just blowing smoke.
> Price fixing. Gasoline prices at different gasoline stations are an example. If you watch prices of any > good/service closely you'll see that it takes only one company to raise prices then others also raise their > prices shortly afterwards. There's no 'real' price competition.
There are alternative explanations for this. For example, it might be that competition is extremely strong in that field, and that *actual* underlying factors (say, increases in oil prices) apply pressure fairly equally across all retailers; one of them of course ends up upping prices first, but the others, perforce, soon follow.
> > If you're paid half what you were before, but prices have dropped to only a quarter of what they were > > before, hasn't spending gone up?
> Spending would go up, but we don't live in Fantasy Land where your scenario would happen. Prices will go up, > workes pay goes up sporadically at best, but prices always outstrip pay raises (unless your an officer in a > company).
Doesn't this mean we're all getting poorer, year on year?
And yet, looking around me, well, I see lots of people buying houses and cars and Playstation 3s and going on holiday...
In fact, of course, prices can be rising and still people can be getting richer in real terms.
Consider; imagine a hundred years ago the price of all things is 1 Oinky and everyone is paid 1000 Oinkys per year. After a hundred years of inflation, everyone is now paid 10,000 Oinkys per year and most things are now only 5 Oinkys each, because the economy is more productive; it produces more with less, so it can charge less for goods and services. As such, real wealth has doubled. However, imagine that some things (PS3s:-) are difficult to make and they now cost 8 Oinkys to make. People complain bitterly about how expensive PS3s are!
Of course, in fact, compared to before, PS3 are cheaper now than ever before; but in relation to other goods, they degree to which they have become cheaper over time hasn't been so extreme.
People don't notice relative stuff over time; they only notice relative stuff in the current instance of time.
> Competition between landlords depends on the market.
Yes, but it's not competition in the sense of the word as applied to Wurbles or other commodities, and you put your finger on the very difference;
> But I agree they'll charge the highest price the market can > bear. That price has absolutely nothing to do with the landowner's bills.
The price for Wurbles is dictated by the cost of making them, plus profit.
The price of a rent is dictated essentially by what the tenant can pay - it bears no relation to the cost to the landlord of renting the property.
> "Value" doesn't have to be "created" for something to be more valuable.
I could be wrong, but I think you are confounding nominal and actual value.
The nominal value of a product - it's dollar price - can increase or decrease without actual wealth needing to be created.
The *actual* value of a product - the toil and trouble it would take an individual to aquire that product by himself - can only change with the ACTUAL creation or destruction of value.
Wurbles could arbitrarily be made very valuable - in nominal terms. Their dollar price might be set to 1000 dollars per Wurble. Of course, no one would buy them, because it would be obvious that their real value was no longer in line with their nominal value. That very fact illustrates that no real value has been created; only nominal value.
> Like that Twilight Zone episode where one guy forces another to trade bars of gold for sips from a > canteen--sometimes a shortage makes things more valuable.
That's an example of a monopoly, where the seller charges the highest rate the market can bear. It doesn't tell you anything about the real value of water.
> Your argument simplifies the issue since it focuses on one segment of society; why not apply your logic to people > working at Walmart? Surely, we can reduce the wages from their $7/hr level if we give evereyone south of the > border a work visa (or setup that guest worker program).
Why not? the logic is the same. Increase competition for labour, wages go down, the prices of products and services goes down, real wealth increases while nominal wealth decreases.
> You also oversimplify the problem by assuming that people who come on H1B visas are equally capable as those you > would find in the local market.
In what way would this fundamentally alter the argument made?
> Finally, you assume that programmers are paid too much,
I *assert* they are paid too much, *because* competition for their labour is artifically restricted.
> and that's why the floodgates should be open in order to increase supply.
I assert competition should exist because it's better for everyone, and that right now, programmers are stiffing everyone else (in fact, including themselves, but they don't realise it).
> Unfortunately, when it comes to knowledge workers, the issue is a bit more complicated than merely supply & > demand numbers.
In what way?
I have to say, you've stated a lot but you've explained nothing.
I think you do make a valid point about safety and working conditions.
OTOH, it's not all sweetness and light in the US and Europe; indeed, excessive unionization and workplace regulation has significant reduced the rate at which economic growth progresses and this has made us all needlessly poorer than we would otherwise have been.
But I feel - surely this is more an issue about Governments? the Chinese State is callous, corrupt and brutually uncaring towards its people. *THAT* is the root of the problem there.
> since at the end of the day most Chinese won't be seeing the benefits.
This I utterly dispute. Hundreds of millions of Chinese are far, far better off now than they have ever been before. If you're living on a dollar a day in rural China and you move to the city and get a job, your health and safety might be appalling but your living standards have just gone through the roof.
> So I was pretty much done with the grandparent when he started talking "Wurbles". > Increasing wages sometimes leads to inflation, and sometimes it doesn't.
Well, when you have time to *explain* why this could be so, I'll be interested in reading it.
> You're contradicting Ricardo, aren't you? You'll charge whatever people will pay to use your land.
Rent is a different kettle of fish. Competition between businesses in the marketplaces is pretty effective, but competition between landlords is pretty weak. Landlords more or less hold a monopoly over their tenants. Monopolies charge the highest prices the market can bear. Wurbles and rent are not comparable; they operate differently.
> Your analysis is broken in countless ways
You're so kind:-)
> We aren't just raising wages for Wurble-workers, we're reducing the number of Wurble-workers. (Or actually, > failing to artificially increase the number).
Sounds reasonable.
> That makes each Wurble-workers more valuable to the economy.
No-o-o-o...not in the way you're thinking.
The thing is this; each job commands a certain level of renumeration. That level relates to the skill required to do the job, the experience of the individual, how unpleasent the job might be, etc. But there is a natural and proper level of renumeration which is based on the *work done*.
This level of renumeration may be artifically raised or lowered, depending on shortages or gluts of individuals with that skill, but it doesn't mean that work *itself* is more or less valuable.
I can see your point that with a shortage of those workers, that work is worth more, and you're right in one sense, and that sense is representated by the fact their wages go up. People are willing to pay more for that skill than they otherwise would, because they must, or they wouldn't be able to hire the person they want.
But all this means is that the cost of doing business has aritifically risen. No extra actual *value* has been created.
> All the other workers and firms may raise their prices, but it's not necessarily rational for them to do so--in > fact, a shortage or Wurble-producing workers could cause a surplus of Wurble-retail workers, Wurble-processing > factories, and land on which we could build Wurble-processing factories.
You're talking about secondary effects. I'm talking about primary effects. Wages rise elsewhere because for their given skill set, workers expect the appropriate renumeration. If the price of goods rises artifically (Wurbles cost more due to an arbitrary pay rise) they will need to be paid more (increase in nominal wealth) for their real wealth (appropriate renumeration) to remain the same. It's certainly true to say if, for example, half the engineers in the US were banned from work, that not only would programmer wages rise (and then I'd have to explain that this would cause other prices to rise) but there would be huge knock-on effects; those effects would be pretty bad, probably a rise in unemployment and financial strain on a lot of industries which might well lead to pay cuts, but those are entirely seperate mechanisms which I've not been discussing here.
> Corporations will use any reason to raise prices, including no reason at all.
Yes and no. Businesses try to make as much money as possible. If they *can* raise prices, they will. However, the fact that usually plenty of other people are selling similar products means they *cannot* raise prices, because if they did, they wouldn't make much money at all.
> Less pay means less spending which leads to a slower economy.
If you're paid half what you were before, but prices have dropped to only a quarter of what they were before, hasn't spending gone up?
Slashdot Mirror
The calls I make from my home phone have the time of the call and the phone number called recorded.
The calls I made from my mobile had the time of the call, my location and the phone number called recorded.
All the websites I visit, have the domain name recorded.
All the emails I sent have the time of sending and the receipient recorded.
When I pay by credit card, the location, time and amount of the transaction are recorded.
When I cycle into town, I go past about six cameras - I'm recorded by each one.
All of this information is available to the State without any form of judicial oversight. A policeman on a whim could keep a very close watch on my life.
So I'm not being paranoid here - this list *IS* the list of the monitoring conducted on all of us.
I've committed no crime. I'm totally innocent.
Why am I being monitored? why does the State have to keep records of who I talk to and when I talk to them and where I am when I talk to them? am I suspected of something? I'm not. So why? because I *might* do something? that's outrageous! and in fact it's proper tantamout to suspecting me of something - it is suspected that I *might* commit a crime, which is just a weaker version of we *do* suspect you comitted a crime.
What people don't realise is that although the State has always recorded plenty of information on us, the game has changed because of computers. Computers plus surveillance isn't just more of the same; it's something utterly new and *different*.
> The way government research grants usually work as follows: there is a pot of money and a solicitation for
> projects on a certain topic, theme or general research thrust. People then submit proposals and depending on the
> size of the pot and the number of proposals submitted, a certain percentage of them are funded. The fact that
> this project got funded is indicative that it was "better" than other, unfunded proposals that we don't get to
> read about on Slashdot.
You're making a relative comparison. You're saying - there's all these research projects, this one got funded, the projects compete between themselves and the better projects get funding - THEREFORE this is a worthwhile use of the research budget.
What I'm saying is that the research budget is too large if this sort of project gets funding.
The RISKS digest carried this news a few years ago.
It's been long known that;
1. some providers can download arbitrary software to some phones
2. a phone can be running that software while appearing not to be making a call
The potential for abuse is obvious.
I gave up my mobile phone about a month ago now. I read through a full list of the ways in which the British State monitors me. When you read them all at once, it has quite an impact. The simple question I have is this: I am completely innocent. I have commited no crimes and am not suspected of committing any crimes.
SO WHY AM I BEING WATCHED?
> Right, why spend millions of dollars on satellites that are now able to directly benefit mankind
I wrote specifically about THIS ONE SATELLITE.
You have IGNORED THAT, and FABRICATED the assertion that I am against spending money on ALL satellites.
I wish you well in your career in politics.
So, we have this satellite. It spends all it's time looking at stuff on the Earth - okay, that's cool. It's being used all the time and I'm prepared to accept it's useful and needed. Not a problem.
Ah, but wait. Apparently, if the satellite is looking at something uninteresting, the cost of the time lost is a problem - so it would be good if the satellite could know to look at more interesting things.
But wait - isn't it always looking at stuff it's been told to look at?
Well, either it is - in which case we've got this AI heuristics which is going to be right sometimes and wrong sometimes and every now and then it's going to interrupt what it's been *told* to do on the chance that the heuristic is right. That *ain't* how you run a multi-million dollar resource.
But if it isn't always looking at stuff, then doesn't that seem like we have excess capacity? which gets back to my feeling that this seems like a gratitious satellite, if we can afford to be monkeying around wiht it's *expensive* observation time based on the output of an AI heuristic, ESPECIALLY when a human is going to come along very shortly afterwards *anyway* and tell it to look at the right thing.
> There will always be more important things to do than those currently being done for as long as people
> have individual opinions.
Weasel words.
If 10 million dollars is spent running a satellite when the research it's doing can be done on the ground and people are starving, then there really IS more important stuff for that money to be spent on.
> In this case, the purpose of this satellite is specifically to look around for things that are out of
> the ordinary, and as such there is nothing more important for their team to do with their resources
> because this is exactly what they wanted to do.
I'm saying they shouldn't have been given that money in the first place, because what they're doing isn't worth the money they've been given, considering the other things that money could be spent on.
> Many times science for the sake of science has yielded unexpected and highly beneficial results that can
> have practical applications. Think microwaves. And also the way they are using AI and networking with
> other satellites may in itself become useful in the future. I can imagine this satellite working
> together with the early warning systems currently being deployed to warn against future tsunamis for
> example.
So why don't we give them 100 billion dollars and let them do research with that?
Obviously, because it's disproportionate. You don't spend THAT much money on this, because you need the money for other things and also the benefits you'll get become progressively more expensive to have obtained because it cost you so much more in the first place.
And my point is that these maybe's and could-have's are NO way to seriously justify millions of dollars of spending. If you're going to spend serious money, you better have a bloody good idea of what you're spending it on and why - and given how expensive satallites are, this does not seem like a good, efficient way of converting millions of dollars into lots of research - it seems like a bad, inefficient way to convert millions of dollars into just a little bit of research.
> I really don't think a satellite that scans the whole earth and pinpointing changes relevant to its
> mission is that out of line.
There are MANY satellites which monitor the entire planet, 24/7.
My point is that the report seems to be that this satellite is being used to experiment with AI heuristics.
It's all good and well to do research, but it's not all good and well to do needlessly expensive research. Firing a satellite into orbit and running it is VERY expensive. The more you spend doing this, the less you have to spend on other research, which now simply doesn't get done. (And that's if you spend it on research; what about the 2.9 billion people who live on less than $2 a day?)
More to the point, it's actually an example of an abuse of economic freedom. I pay taxes - a whacking great big chunk of my income is taken from me. Why do I pay so much? what's the money used for? turns out some of it is being used to fire what seems to be entirely excessive hardware into space. I'm not happy with having so much money taken from me for things like this! but what choice do I have? none at all. My economic freedom - my ability to own what I earn from my own work - is compromised, for the State comes along and dispossesses me of a whacking great big chunk of my work; and it seems some of that money is being very inefficiently used. The people spending my money aren't the person who had to do the work to earn that money.
> God forbid they actually do some *research* and *invent* something *useful* ?
Research is an essential aspect of progress. However, all because research is essential does not mean ALL research is essential, or that any given research is an efficient use of the finite resources available with which to conduct research.
More to the point, research is not the issue here, despite the fact you're raised it as THE issue. There are a zillion ways to develop AI heuristics. There is no need whatsoever to spend millions of dollars developing them in a spacecraft when you can spend thousands of dollars and develop them in a computer, with attached sensors, in a lab.
The issue here is that there is a finite amount of money and this seems to be a rather gratitious and extremely expensive satellite.
> How can you say that it wouldn't be great for them to have a network of satellites that watch the globe
> for this activity tirelessly day and night, rather than having some poor tired geologists staring at
> seismometeres ?
I doubt there is a single geologist, tired or otherwise, staring at seisometers, waiting for something to happen. I suspect they are all computer monitored and the geologists, being rather bright, have so arranged matters that they are warm and comfy in bed.
> I'm sure you're against educating people in the third world because other people are starving etc.
You think that because you don't understand where I'm coming from and have projected a set of opinions you dislike on to me.
What are we doing with so many satellites in orbit we can spare one look at targets generated by AI heuristics? these things costs millions of dollars a year to run. I don't see that the *possibility* of managing to look at an interesting event before being actually commanded to do so is a proportional use of that money. There are MUCH more essential things to spend millions of dollars on.
That hunk of complete crap!
Jesus Christ on a stick.
IME, when a company goes from being small, well run and efficient, to bloated, bureaucratic and hopelessly *hopelessly* stupid, the FIRST thing they do is switch to Lotus Notes and Perforce.
It's like old people moving to Florida buying an RV.
There's an arcade game, where you have a dozen jack-in-the-box little heads which pop up, and a hammer, and your goal is to hit as many heads as you can as quickly as you can, as they pop up again a little while after you've hit them down.
Imagine a video iPod with a nice little screen (640x480) and enough store for your entire video and music collection.
You can carry it with you anywhere.
Useful?
I can usefully take music with me, because I can *listen* while I physically perform other tasks - like being at the gym, sitting down at work while I code.
But *video?*
Video is much less useful, because to *watch* you can't be doing other things - your eyes are occupied.
So I think it's only useful for being portable in situations where you have to sit and *wait* and cannot do other things.
For me that means just one thing; waiting for the bus and maybe when I'm on the bus, if it doesn't make me feel ill.
For others, I can only imagine similar situations, e.g. being stuck on a mode of transport.
The Russian State almost hasn't changed; the difference between now and then is that modern Russia is interested in making money.
They're still a bunch of fuckers. If you make it so they don't like you - for example, by objecting to human rights abuses, massive corruption and injustice - they'll kill you for it.
Absolutely nothing new in this article, except that the latest team are going to be releasing their findings soon. Basically, it's a page filler, some entertainment, not news at all.
Really, we need a new word, for news which isn't functional information, but just amusing/entertaining.
I wish they'd bloody well get round to publishing the full translation of the text, though!
> In other words, that would be an indication (we'll see if it continues) of no nearby methane "tipping point".
I'm confused - how do you draw this conclusion from what happened?
No one has any idea of the mechanism which has kicked in which is now absorbing methane emissions.
For all we know, there could be a huge "inbreath" of methane before the methane tipping point - this could be the final warning! of course, I've just pulled that out of a hat, but you get my point - if the mechanism is not understand, how can you *conclude* "therefore methane tipping point can't be near".
> Right. And even though we don't need to do something right now,
TBH, I think we're way too late *already*. I think we're screwed right now, we just don't know it yet.
So here we are, currently doing basically bugger all about global warming, but with plenty of computer simulations and estimates about how much warming will happen in how many years, and plenty of politics going on about who should pay for it, and what about second world countries, and AFAICS it's basically a game of how long can be put off doing something about this, because it's going to cost plenty of money and we don't seem to need to be doing it just right now...
Now, out of the blue, something *utterly* unexpected, inexplicable and major happens - the rate of methane emission levels out; and no one has a *CLUE* why.
Well, I can hear this ticking noise...
I sure hope we figure out interplanetry colonization soon.
You know - just in case.
One of the ways to improve signal to noise is to cut down on the NOISE.
> Privacy advocates warn that such personal data, once in a database, is bound to be misused
Of course it will be misused; you can make money out of it.
Younger adults don't care because they have no knowledge or perception of the risks involved with the digitization of private data.
Going from analog records to digital records is NOT "more of the same"; it is qualitively different, because of the orders of magnitude improvement in the ease of accessing and searching the data.
> I didn't know this was an essay test.
:-) are difficult to make and they now cost 8 Oinkys to make. People complain bitterly about how expensive PS3s are!
It's never been part of debate to simply and only assert "this is wrong" and then walk off.
If you're going to disagree, you HAVE to justify yourself, otherwise you're just blowing smoke.
> Price fixing. Gasoline prices at different gasoline stations are an example. If you watch prices of any
> good/service closely you'll see that it takes only one company to raise prices then others also raise their
> prices shortly afterwards. There's no 'real' price competition.
There are alternative explanations for this. For example, it might be that competition is extremely strong in that field, and that *actual* underlying factors (say, increases in oil prices) apply pressure fairly equally across all retailers; one of them of course ends up upping prices first, but the others, perforce, soon follow.
> > If you're paid half what you were before, but prices have dropped to only a quarter of what they were
> > before, hasn't spending gone up?
> Spending would go up, but we don't live in Fantasy Land where your scenario would happen. Prices will go up,
> workes pay goes up sporadically at best, but prices always outstrip pay raises (unless your an officer in a
> company).
Doesn't this mean we're all getting poorer, year on year?
And yet, looking around me, well, I see lots of people buying houses and cars and Playstation 3s and going on holiday...
In fact, of course, prices can be rising and still people can be getting richer in real terms.
Consider; imagine a hundred years ago the price of all things is 1 Oinky and everyone is paid 1000 Oinkys per year. After a hundred years of inflation, everyone is now paid 10,000 Oinkys per year and most things are now only 5 Oinkys each, because the economy is more productive; it produces more with less, so it can charge less for goods and services. As such, real wealth has doubled. However, imagine that some things (PS3s
Of course, in fact, compared to before, PS3 are cheaper now than ever before; but in relation to other goods, they degree to which they have become cheaper over time hasn't been so extreme.
People don't notice relative stuff over time; they only notice relative stuff in the current instance of time.
> Competition between landlords depends on the market.
Yes, but it's not competition in the sense of the word as applied to Wurbles or other commodities, and you put your finger on the very difference;
> But I agree they'll charge the highest price the market can
> bear. That price has absolutely nothing to do with the landowner's bills.
The price for Wurbles is dictated by the cost of making them, plus profit.
The price of a rent is dictated essentially by what the tenant can pay - it bears no relation to the cost to the landlord of renting the property.
> "Value" doesn't have to be "created" for something to be more valuable.
I could be wrong, but I think you are confounding nominal and actual value.
The nominal value of a product - it's dollar price - can increase or decrease without actual wealth needing to be created.
The *actual* value of a product - the toil and trouble it would take an individual to aquire that product by himself - can only change with the ACTUAL creation or destruction of value.
Wurbles could arbitrarily be made very valuable - in nominal terms. Their dollar price might be set to 1000 dollars per Wurble. Of course, no one would buy them, because it would be obvious that their real value was no longer in line with their nominal value. That very fact illustrates that no real value has been created; only nominal value.
> Like that Twilight Zone episode where one guy forces another to trade bars of gold for sips from a
> canteen--sometimes a shortage makes things more valuable.
That's an example of a monopoly, where the seller charges the highest rate the market can bear. It doesn't tell you anything about the real value of water.
> Your argument simplifies the issue since it focuses on one segment of society; why not apply your logic to people
> working at Walmart? Surely, we can reduce the wages from their $7/hr level if we give evereyone south of the
> border a work visa (or setup that guest worker program).
Why not? the logic is the same. Increase competition for labour, wages go down, the prices of products and services goes down, real wealth increases while nominal wealth decreases.
> You also oversimplify the problem by assuming that people who come on H1B visas are equally capable as those you
> would find in the local market.
In what way would this fundamentally alter the argument made?
> Finally, you assume that programmers are paid too much,
I *assert* they are paid too much, *because* competition for their labour is artifically restricted.
> and that's why the floodgates should be open in order to increase supply.
I assert competition should exist because it's better for everyone, and that right now, programmers are stiffing everyone else (in fact, including themselves, but they don't realise it).
> Unfortunately, when it comes to knowledge workers, the issue is a bit more complicated than merely supply &
> demand numbers.
In what way?
I have to say, you've stated a lot but you've explained nothing.
I think you do make a valid point about safety and working conditions.
OTOH, it's not all sweetness and light in the US and Europe; indeed, excessive unionization and workplace regulation has significant reduced the rate at which economic growth progresses and this has made us all needlessly poorer than we would otherwise have been.
But I feel - surely this is more an issue about Governments? the Chinese State is callous, corrupt and brutually uncaring towards its people. *THAT* is the root of the problem there.
> since at the end of the day most Chinese won't be seeing the benefits.
This I utterly dispute. Hundreds of millions of Chinese are far, far better off now than they have ever been before. If you're living on a dollar a day in rural China and you move to the city and get a job, your health and safety might be appalling but your living standards have just gone through the roof.
> So I was pretty much done with the grandparent when he started talking "Wurbles".
> Increasing wages sometimes leads to inflation, and sometimes it doesn't.
Well, when you have time to *explain* why this could be so, I'll be interested in reading it.
> You're contradicting Ricardo, aren't you? You'll charge whatever people will pay to use your land.
:-)
Rent is a different kettle of fish. Competition between businesses in the marketplaces is pretty effective, but competition between landlords is pretty weak. Landlords more or less hold a monopoly over their tenants. Monopolies charge the highest prices the market can bear. Wurbles and rent are not comparable; they operate differently.
> Your analysis is broken in countless ways
You're so kind
> We aren't just raising wages for Wurble-workers, we're reducing the number of Wurble-workers. (Or actually,
> failing to artificially increase the number).
Sounds reasonable.
> That makes each Wurble-workers more valuable to the economy.
No-o-o-o...not in the way you're thinking.
The thing is this; each job commands a certain level of renumeration. That level relates to the skill required to do the job, the experience of the individual, how unpleasent the job might be, etc. But there is a natural and proper level of renumeration which is based on the *work done*.
This level of renumeration may be artifically raised or lowered, depending on shortages or gluts of individuals with that skill, but it doesn't mean that work *itself* is more or less valuable.
I can see your point that with a shortage of those workers, that work is worth more, and you're right in one sense, and that sense is representated by the fact their wages go up. People are willing to pay more for that skill than they otherwise would, because they must, or they wouldn't be able to hire the person they want.
But all this means is that the cost of doing business has aritifically risen. No extra actual *value* has been created.
> All the other workers and firms may raise their prices, but it's not necessarily rational for them to do so--in
> fact, a shortage or Wurble-producing workers could cause a surplus of Wurble-retail workers, Wurble-processing
> factories, and land on which we could build Wurble-processing factories.
You're talking about secondary effects. I'm talking about primary effects. Wages rise elsewhere because for their given skill set, workers expect the appropriate renumeration. If the price of goods rises artifically (Wurbles cost more due to an arbitrary pay rise) they will need to be paid more (increase in nominal wealth) for their real wealth (appropriate renumeration) to remain the same. It's certainly true to say if, for example, half the engineers in the US were banned from work, that not only would programmer wages rise (and then I'd have to explain that this would cause other prices to rise) but there would be huge knock-on effects; those effects would be pretty bad, probably a rise in unemployment and financial strain on a lot of industries which might well lead to pay cuts, but those are entirely seperate mechanisms which I've not been discussing here.
> Prices go up anyway.
Is this true?
If so, why?
> Corporations will use any reason to raise prices, including no reason at all.
Yes and no. Businesses try to make as much money as possible. If they *can* raise prices, they will. However, the fact that usually plenty of other people are selling similar products means they *cannot* raise prices, because if they did, they wouldn't make much money at all.
> Less pay means less spending which leads to a slower economy.
If you're paid half what you were before, but prices have dropped to only a quarter of what they were before, hasn't spending gone up?