That's the big irony. It's the liberal hot-spots like New York and California that are net payers into the tax pool, and regions like the South and Midwest that are the net beneficiaries.
The major cities are so much more productive than the outlying regions, it's incredible. Do you (speaking rhetorically to the parent, since I'm echoing rather than criticizing) have any idea just how much work people do in New York and San Francisco and Chicago and LA? It's Republican-voting red-state flyover-country that's nursing on the government teat.
As far as the original topic goes, don't mistake the insouciant California manner with stupidity. (After all - it was a really good paper.)
Great for oncoming generations - if you can start a convincing literacy program - but that doesn't help the adults who aren't literate. Adult illiteracy isn't an easy nut to crack for people who have leisure time to play with; in the rural third world, it's a huge hurdle.
Marshall McLuhan used to say that we were heading into a post-literate age - that new media technologies would make literacy, if not obsolete, at least not the totalizing pre-requisite it used to be.
In a lot of rural environments, the information needs may not actually require a lot of literacy. A symbolic/representational language could be sufficient to enable them to derive a lot of benefits from the device. Illiteracy in much of the world is an artifact of the infrastructure, not the raw intelligence or creativity or dilligence of the people there. It's entirely appropriate that new technologies are developed that can augment their productivity and increase their power in the market.
I think Ricardo's evaluation of the situation is completely outdated, and doesn't take into account the advantages of developing economic diversity domestically, nor does it account for differences in technological development. It is not good for a country to export raw materials and import finished ones. And in this case, it may be better to invest in the development of a native software industry.
However, some people take vacations, or go on project, or the such. Some people even sleep, and a window of vulnerability of only a few hours can create a serious problem. Your advice is perfect for those situations which need it the least - where the system is regularly serviced by a nearly-constantly-available administrator. This by no means covers all situations.
To be able to view and write to the widest possible number of formats, I have to run a Windows machine. This includes things like the Sorenson codec, etc. That, and, of course, games.
Re:Not a film person, but...
on
Film Gimp
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· Score: 2
If I recall correctly, the product that eventually became Adobe Photoshop was originally used for film editing by Industrial Light and Magic; however, when the technology for the editor was sold to Adobe for still image editing, one of the legal conditions on the transaction was that Photoshop per se *never* include video editing functionality, perhaps due to some pending deal about Premiere.
My recollection on the details is unclear, perhaps someone else can fill it in. But the point is that still editing and video editing are by their nature convergent tasks.
Re:make, just don't view
on
Film Gimp
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· Score: 2
You have no idea how huge, disparate, and tiered film production is. Even within a studio, there are miles of distance between production and legal departments. But the production houses that actually do editing and other post-production work are usually subcontractors, at 2 removes from the movie studios themselves.
Not a film person, but...
on
Film Gimp
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Is it strictly correct to call this a movie editor, or should it be called a frame editor or something, since it's not for true editing or compositing (like Avid), but for frame-by-frame clean-up?
Re:$5 to anyone who proves this statement wrong-
on
The Economics of Spam
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· Score: 2
I agree. While I hate spam (yay, spamassassin), she's got ethics of a sort. And she's far better than the senior managers of an Enron, a WorldCom, or a Monsanto, yet I suspect no one challenges *their* childraising.
Star Wars isn't a bad film because the plot was taken from Hidden Fortress, Star Wars is a bad film because the script is horrid and jejune, the dialogue embarassing, the acting wooden, and the cinematography ham-fisted. The overall plot was acceptable and the pacing was good, and the FX were innovative. That's as far as I'll grant it. He was indebted to Kurosawa, but not nearly indebted enough.
MIT is actually more "corrupt" than many other institutions, because it goes much farther in searching for support from the corporate sector than any other major higher-learning education I've ever looked at. The different labs are almost like fund-raising SWAT teams.
As far as this sort of thing goes, the UC system is a lot more immune to the suasions of the almighty buck.
Re:What is it with the Japanese and robots?
on
Skateboarding AIBO
·
· Score: 2
I can't believe I missed this thread -
Anyway, a week later, I'll contribute that one reason that Japan has worked so hard on robotics is that for much of its post-war history, it has had a labor shortage (consider the size of its economy relative to the size of its population, and that becomes clear), and it doesn't have the room to invite immigrant populations into its small space. The two paths to keeping productivity up are moving production off-shore, and automating as much as possible. While there is plenty of the first strategy, there's a general distrust of the quality of products made outside of Japan, and a preference for the second.
Provide an example. As far as I know, (IANAL, but I actually know what a lot of hate crime legislations actually look like) the burden of proof is always on the prosecutor to show that hate was the motive. Simple difference is never proof.
First of all, hate speech laws and hate crime laws are two very different things. I support hate crime laws, if well-designed, and am opposed to this and other restrictions on speech. (Usually, I support the "European way" of going about things, but this sort of thing is definitely where I part company.)
Hate crime laws are about the use of a criminal act (say, vandalism, or assault, or murder) as a way of directly intimidating and threatening a wider population (gay people, white people, black people, Jewish people). The reasonable idea is that when committing a hate crime, you are engaged in an act of assault against a larger population than the immediate victim of your attack. There's a difference betwee toilet-papering a neighbhor's house and toilet-papering a neighbor's house and leaving a placard that says "Jews go away," and that difference is fairly recognized by the law. Speech that is a direct threat on a group should be treated as speech that is a direct threat on an individual - saying "Let's all get together and beat up tsg" should be consider conspiracy of some sort of another, and saying "Let's all get together and beat up a bunch of Muslims" should be treated likewise.
Where I part company with the European model is the idea that promulgating racist or other 'hate' based ideologies should be restricted. Publishing copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion may make a lot of people nervous, but it's not a direct threat, and it clearly should be handled in the "marketplace of ideas." Likewise with Holocaust revisionism and eugenic theories. The attempt to annihilate the idea of Nazism, frankly, could make it stronger - and European "resistance" (in the sense of resistance to a disease) to racism and bigotry could weaken if it isn't tested and strengthened in the arena of discourse. This is a bad trend, and I hope it can be reversed.
Most of my favorite music (experimental electronic composition, musique concrete, noise, electronic minimalism) is very obscure, put out on tiny independent labels. But my listening and buying habits really don't occupy the concerns of the EMI's of the world. They are quite happy making billions and billions of dollars selling boy-bands and overnight-pop-sensations and formula-metal to the 99 percent of the CD-buying public that isn't club-crawling for the newest thing.
Here's the reality: a principled few may boycott. But can there said to be competition for music? If people like Band X's music, and Band X's music comes out on Label A, then a boycott of Label A is going to mean nothing for fans of Band X, and that's the end of the story. This isn't like cars, or beverages, or hard drives, or CPU's.
Which isn't to say that a platform can't fail - vis. the Mini Disk. But there's a difference between a platform failing and trying to imagine that simple competitive pressue exists for musical content.
Little more than half of the cost of an employee is his/her wage. Benefits, payroll taxes, training costs, facility costs, and administrative and support costs make up the rest.
I'm pretty sure that many steel companies make rails. The size of rail that is commonly used has nothing to do with competition in the marketplace from providers of those rails.
It would if there was a patent on any given gauge. Where vendor choice means platform choice, you get the exact same network effects as you would with competing rail gauges. My point is that you don't want competition between standards, at least not for very long - the ongoing erosion of productivity isn't worth it.
Is it always? How much competition would you like in the type of gauge for rail travel? Or fuel for cars? (What I mean by the latter is, if only one third of all gas stations was likely to carry the fuel that your car meant - I *do* want innovation in the design of energy sources for vehicles, but I want it to be standardized within a reasonable amount of time!)
These are two different issues. One is the use of resources, and the other is privacy. It may be appropriate for an employer to ask about an employee's use of the phone for non-business related calls, or to lock down th desktop to prevent unauthorized software installation. That is a separate issue from the question of actually spying on the content of phone or IM communications.
Great. The reliability and security of Microsoft on the server back-end, and the ease-of-use, consistency, and interapplication compatibility of Unix on the client.
Slashdot Mirror
Extropians, actually.
The major cities are so much more productive than the outlying regions, it's incredible. Do you (speaking rhetorically to the parent, since I'm echoing rather than criticizing) have any idea just how much work people do in New York and San Francisco and Chicago and LA? It's Republican-voting red-state flyover-country that's nursing on the government teat.
As far as the original topic goes, don't mistake the insouciant California manner with stupidity. (After all - it was a really good paper.)
Logical conclusion: neither you nor the original story submitter actually read the article.
Marshall McLuhan used to say that we were heading into a post-literate age - that new media technologies would make literacy, if not obsolete, at least not the totalizing pre-requisite it used to be.
In a lot of rural environments, the information needs may not actually require a lot of literacy. A symbolic/representational language could be sufficient to enable them to derive a lot of benefits from the device. Illiteracy in much of the world is an artifact of the infrastructure, not the raw intelligence or creativity or dilligence of the people there. It's entirely appropriate that new technologies are developed that can augment their productivity and increase their power in the market.
I think Ricardo's evaluation of the situation is completely outdated, and doesn't take into account the advantages of developing economic diversity domestically, nor does it account for differences in technological development. It is not good for a country to export raw materials and import finished ones. And in this case, it may be better to invest in the development of a native software industry.
However, some people take vacations, or go on project, or the such. Some people even sleep, and a window of vulnerability of only a few hours can create a serious problem. Your advice is perfect for those situations which need it the least - where the system is regularly serviced by a nearly-constantly-available administrator. This by no means covers all situations.
To be able to view and write to the widest possible number of formats, I have to run a Windows machine. This includes things like the Sorenson codec, etc. That, and, of course, games.
My recollection on the details is unclear, perhaps someone else can fill it in. But the point is that still editing and video editing are by their nature convergent tasks.
You have no idea how huge, disparate, and tiered film production is. Even within a studio, there are miles of distance between production and legal departments. But the production houses that actually do editing and other post-production work are usually subcontractors, at 2 removes from the movie studios themselves.
Is it strictly correct to call this a movie editor, or should it be called a frame editor or something, since it's not for true editing or compositing (like Avid), but for frame-by-frame clean-up?
I agree. While I hate spam (yay, spamassassin), she's got ethics of a sort. And she's far better than the senior managers of an Enron, a WorldCom, or a Monsanto, yet I suspect no one challenges *their* childraising.
Star Wars isn't a bad film because the plot was taken from Hidden Fortress, Star Wars is a bad film because the script is horrid and jejune, the dialogue embarassing, the acting wooden, and the cinematography ham-fisted. The overall plot was acceptable and the pacing was good, and the FX were innovative. That's as far as I'll grant it. He was indebted to Kurosawa, but not nearly indebted enough.
I agree with the observation, but to Lucas' credit (grr, I hate crediting Lucas with anything) he has, indeed, stated his debt to Kurosawa many times.
As far as this sort of thing goes, the UC system is a lot more immune to the suasions of the almighty buck.
Anyway, a week later, I'll contribute that one reason that Japan has worked so hard on robotics is that for much of its post-war history, it has had a labor shortage (consider the size of its economy relative to the size of its population, and that becomes clear), and it doesn't have the room to invite immigrant populations into its small space. The two paths to keeping productivity up are moving production off-shore, and automating as much as possible. While there is plenty of the first strategy, there's a general distrust of the quality of products made outside of Japan, and a preference for the second.
Provide an example. As far as I know, (IANAL, but I actually know what a lot of hate crime legislations actually look like) the burden of proof is always on the prosecutor to show that hate was the motive. Simple difference is never proof.
Hate crime laws are about the use of a criminal act (say, vandalism, or assault, or murder) as a way of directly intimidating and threatening a wider population (gay people, white people, black people, Jewish people). The reasonable idea is that when committing a hate crime, you are engaged in an act of assault against a larger population than the immediate victim of your attack. There's a difference betwee toilet-papering a neighbhor's house and toilet-papering a neighbor's house and leaving a placard that says "Jews go away," and that difference is fairly recognized by the law. Speech that is a direct threat on a group should be treated as speech that is a direct threat on an individual - saying "Let's all get together and beat up tsg" should be consider conspiracy of some sort of another, and saying "Let's all get together and beat up a bunch of Muslims" should be treated likewise.
Where I part company with the European model is the idea that promulgating racist or other 'hate' based ideologies should be restricted. Publishing copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion may make a lot of people nervous, but it's not a direct threat, and it clearly should be handled in the "marketplace of ideas." Likewise with Holocaust revisionism and eugenic theories. The attempt to annihilate the idea of Nazism, frankly, could make it stronger - and European "resistance" (in the sense of resistance to a disease) to racism and bigotry could weaken if it isn't tested and strengthened in the arena of discourse. This is a bad trend, and I hope it can be reversed.
Most of my favorite music (experimental electronic composition, musique concrete, noise, electronic minimalism) is very obscure, put out on tiny independent labels. But my listening and buying habits really don't occupy the concerns of the EMI's of the world. They are quite happy making billions and billions of dollars selling boy-bands and overnight-pop-sensations and formula-metal to the 99 percent of the CD-buying public that isn't club-crawling for the newest thing.
Which isn't to say that a platform can't fail - vis. the Mini Disk. But there's a difference between a platform failing and trying to imagine that simple competitive pressue exists for musical content.
Little more than half of the cost of an employee is his/her wage. Benefits, payroll taxes, training costs, facility costs, and administrative and support costs make up the rest.
It would if there was a patent on any given gauge. Where vendor choice means platform choice, you get the exact same network effects as you would with competing rail gauges. My point is that you don't want competition between standards, at least not for very long - the ongoing erosion of productivity isn't worth it.
Is it always? How much competition would you like in the type of gauge for rail travel? Or fuel for cars? (What I mean by the latter is, if only one third of all gas stations was likely to carry the fuel that your car meant - I *do* want innovation in the design of energy sources for vehicles, but I want it to be standardized within a reasonable amount of time!)
These are two different issues. One is the use of resources, and the other is privacy. It may be appropriate for an employer to ask about an employee's use of the phone for non-business related calls, or to lock down th desktop to prevent unauthorized software installation. That is a separate issue from the question of actually spying on the content of phone or IM communications.
Welcome to hell.
That is also very astute. When one console game takes up to 80 hours to finish, just how many are most people going to play in a year?