It is still cheaper to use manual labor then robotics to manufacture products like this. I thought robotics were supposed to make products cheaper to manufacture. Ah, it may be the cost of replacement parts.;)
I don't mean to take anything away from the Japanese who are clearly leading in the robotics industry. Especially with technologies like this, humanoid robots like Asimo, and even those creepy robots that have the bad latex skin, these are all really impressive displays of Japan's prowess in this field. More importantly, the control mechanisms are being refined at both the software and hardware interconnects, so this isn't just "robotics", but rather the whole field covers a much broader scope than merely software or just hardware.
Why isn't the U.S. leading in this area? Why have we decided that we're happy enough building Facebook applications? It's sad to see that we aren't as focused on building real systems that will have an actual physical impact on our surroundings. We took Laertes' ridiculous admonition "to thine own self be true" and turned ourselves and our energies into the very worst of what we are as a nation. We have become exactly what the Japanese saw 20 years ago: a nation of lazy, overpaid workers. And, I hate to say it, we are paying the price for that with our jobs.
I always thought that one of the goals of innovation and technology is to make life easier (physically). Just because fewer folks in the US have their own gardens for food, or chop their own wood for heat in the winter, doesn't make us more or less lazy then those in the past. Some would see it as better time management. Assuming that the person utilizing these technologies is working towards something other then gaining 1000 friends on facebook. Regardless of where it originates.
However, as tech grows, and you logically look to the future of mankind, robots and software will be able to accomplish all that mankind "works" at. Manual labor will be a thing of the past at some point. Albeit long into the future. As soon as it is cheaper to pay for a robot to do manual labor, human manual labor (brick laying, welding, construction, farming, etc..) will no longer be required. So does that mean mankind will be judged in society for only their creativity at that point or leisure skills? I don't know. But I will probably be long gone by the time that happens.
Awesome, we need to have a completely anonymous leak site to even know how corrupt our government even is. What a statement!
I always find it interesting that folks are so quick to jump on the band wagon on stuff like this. I mean you suspect everything from any government (and rightfully so), along with any large corporation, but the moment one source puts out one piece of potential evidence everyone is all over how corrupt the entire process is. Really? The whole process of government? Wow. Well, good luck with that.
Let the facts come out and be reviewed. Cover up or not, that too shall be vetted. Perhaps there is more here then what is in the video. We still only see one side of a story here.
"Social Sentry draws only on publicly posted information on Facebook and Twitter;"
Talk about a cash cow. Trolling public information that may or may not be your employee is risky (duplicate names). Perhaps this will remind folks that use social networks to set their security settings up is a good thing.
I don't want to sound negative, but I was always worried about Oracle buying Sun, for how it would impact negatively on Sun's business. For me the Oracle web site is so convoluted that it stinks of 'we designed this so that you to pay use to find it'. Everything feels designed to nickle and dime everything you try doing with them. This is based on experience of having get specific updates to fix certain known issues. If you don't agree with my perspective, I would gladly appreciate hearing about your experience.
I am a Java developer and I hope that they don't extend this to Java or any other Sun technologies with a more 'open' culture.
I agree. I cringe every time I venture into the quagmire of oracle.com to obtain a CPU or look up information/patches for an older version of oracle. Sun's site was much easier to navigate through for patch clusters or specific patches themselves. Now that sun's site is folded into oracle's site, finding hardware information has become a pain. I did find that going to sunsolve still is the way to go though.
Business see that the Government is now ready to invest in nuclear power and come up with some long term research project that will probably end up getting funded by said government. Yes, $Bill has thrown in his few coins, but I'm sure none of the investors will do it with out any potential for a return in 5 years. Smart business.
Being physically located in China or not has nothing to do with China blocking them. China could block them if they kept up shop in China, or they could not block them even though they no longer have employees in China.
By removing themselves physically from China they might risk upsetting China (so that they are blocked) but that is not a certainty, and they ensure the physical safety of their employees.
I believe that their servers are located in China so that all requested searches go to those specific servers and the authorities then would have rights over said hardware should they deem it necessary to gain access to them. If all the data was/is housed anywhere else it would be very difficult for the Chinese government to gain _legal_ access to the data.
Truth. If you have a family, stay in your job, unless you're already rich.
One could argue that the US health insurance system is set up to avoid having people do what you're trying to do.
If you live in fear you will never be happy. Family or not. Risk is part of the game. However, if proper research is done you will increase your chances of success. Fear is why folks get screwed. I say go for it.
I have to disagree to some extent. The problem of respect for the occupying forces (which arises through the perception of fairness) is at the center of the strategy of "winning hearts and minds" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Regardless of the military merits of this strategy, which are worth debating separately, the practical consequence of adopting the strategy is that the perception of fairness is important, both in the occupied countries and at home for political reasons. Right or wrong, fairness is not merely for sporting events.
The hearts and minds are being won. How? By giving cold hard cash to the folks over there. Welcome to the western world where cash is king and all else is secondary. Not that I totally disagree with this philosophy, for I too have bills to pay and desire creature comforts. War is only unfair if you don't get paid.
Could these actions have been all started by Google's largest competitor Microsoft? I mean it's not out of the realm of possibilities to think that MS would love to have the Chinese market all to themselves, by having a back room deal with the Chinese Govt to target Google.
I was just providing an example of a numbering system for a large location that everyone in said location uses.
However, this would be silly to do IMO (like the SSN). You get owned on one account and you are owned everywhere. There are advantages to having different systems for different resources.
Jeff Rothschild, the vice president of technology at Facebook, said in a recent presentation that Facebook has 230 engineers supporting data for more than 300 million users. He says Facebook seeks to maintain a ratio of one engineer for 1 million or more users. Facebook is vague about exactly how many servers it has, saying it's "more than 30,000." But at 30,000 servers and 230 engineers, that's a ratio of about 130 servers per admin.
Microsoft says it has automated its data center operations to the point where its admins can each manage between 1,000 and 2,000 servers. That matters, as the company may pack more than 300,000 servers into its new container data center in Chicago. It expects to support that facility with about 30 employees, including admins and facility maintenance staff.
"Number of servers per admin" is to limited to be properly measured, even in your examples. Can one admin manage 5000 *nix boxes that are all identical, running a clustered web server? Sure. Given the proper engineering and tools, it's very possible. Now throw in a bunch of other applications that users request or a business requires and now you will need more staff. Also, supporting a bunch of pizza boxes or supporting one piece of heavy iron can make a difference is trying to measure this number. I know of a couple of folks who admin one box. Granted, they are either a large SUN and IBM hardware, running databases, web servers, and numerous applications, but look at their job requirement in a slanted way and it would look as though they are responsible for only one system. While another admin can have a couple of thousand desktops all identical and simple. And their value would still be relative to whomever the users are.
How about encasing the lights in a large Plexiglas oval bulb. The snow should just mostly fall off and as long as the housing unit of the light is black, the heat created by radiation should assist melting any snow on the top of the Plexiglas bulb. Now, I'm sure there would be issues with this as well, but it could be a possible solution.
If somebody can offer a service at a cheaper more efficient price, why not? All this humbug about salaries that one "deserves" to get is purely protectionist and doesn't benefit anybody. Offering cheaper overall inputs provide better value for all Americans to enjoy. If you're peddling global free trade, you've got to be willing to accept that labour needs to move freely and capitalism dictates that the person who can do it cheaper and offers an apple to apple comparison of quality will win. It's pure economics. If somebody can do something cheaper than you can, and is willing to do it, then there is nothing wrong with it.
I agree with this in theory. However, it's not the fact that there are a bunch of "Lazy Americans" (which there are plenty of hard working Americans BTW) who want their cake and be able to eat it too, it's the fact that the only commodity being banked on by companies are how to reduce salaries for the 97% of their worker base while the "Big C's" (CEO, CIO, CTO, CFO, etc..) keep their bonus' going up. It's about disparaging differences. I don't mind someone who has built a company up to keep a lions share, however, people with a backbone understand that without hardworking people in the company throughout the ranks, they would be no where and have no company. You are either Pimping or being Pimped now days.
Why doesn't any of this "globalization" affect health care? Where are my lower premiums or cost of health care when globalization is supposed to lower prices while raising service? I mean if you say it works for IT why not health care? Or how about food prices, they too are still going up even though there are many foods imported from all over the world. I guess your argument would be that they would be even higher if everything was left to grow only in the U.S. and sold in the U.S.
...the blue people ever since they revealed what they were doing with the natives.
The takeover of the Native Americans, and the slavery of Africans, were the two most savage acts the United States every did. There was no way even a futuristic United States would allow such actions to proceed. I wouldn't be surprised after they went home there was some type of investigation and charges filed against the CEO and other people within the company for genocide. This is why we need to remember out past, or we will be doomed to repeat it.
A long time ago when we justified the hostile takeover of Native Americans, we considered them as "savages." Guess who the real savages were?
Like the posters before me have said, this isn't a statement on anti-technology, but how technology needs to be responsibly used.
Don't limit yourself to the history of the United States please. There is plenty of shame to go around the World for every empire or power that ever existed. Then you will realize that it wasn't necessarily "The United States did this or did that bad thing" but it is "Humans quest for power has no limits on one another."
The housing and banking failures where put on to faulty software because it did not stop the idiot carbon-based units from committing acts of stupidity.
So there are programmer(s) unable to predict future unforeseen events in his/her/their code and it's considered a failure. You can never predict the actions of idiots.
Your analogy (no pun intended;) is not functional. Banning an object is different then banning an act. Two completely different things here. Based on your analogy, you _CANNOT_ be homosexual without practicing sodomy.
You could still practice Christianity without a Bible or cross (the latter really is just a symbol anyways) as long as the books are told word of mouth from one generation to the next, you can still follow and practice Christianity. I know many Christians who have never read the Bible nor owned one, yet the consider themselves Christians. I also know homosexuals who have never practiced sodomy. They are called lesbians.
The laws were often enforced solely (when they were enforced) against gay males, so it makes it an issue.
Not to mention that your argument is essentially the same as saying that the government could ban the Bible and crosses, and that wouldn't impair religion because you could still believe whatever you like.
As long as the law does not specify a certain religion, race, gender, age, or sexual orientation, then there isn't a problem (which it's not). How the law is enforced is the issue for the judges to ensure it it equally enforced. We are talking the written letter of the law here and it is written with out bias.
And are you saying that you can not be homosexual without committing sodomy?
Yeah, because the US is the bastion of freedom for homo-sexuals. Tell me again in wich nation the people voted to make homosexuals 2nd class citizens?
Sometimes you got to think a little bit clearer before you comment. And China is pretty open about homosexual rights because they are not christians and as such do not have the WESTERN view that it is a sin.
I don't know any law in the US that states that it is illegal to be homosexual.
And why link just the Christian religion to frowning upon the homosexual lifestyle. I do believe there are many religions who frown upon homosexuality. Your statement could be read as though you hate a particular religion because of their views. Do you not see the irony in that?
Slashdot Mirror
It is still cheaper to use manual labor then robotics to manufacture products like this. I thought robotics were supposed to make products cheaper to manufacture. Ah, it may be the cost of replacement parts. ;)
Maybe it's all the cocaine the bills have absorbed over time!
Don't forget about the amount of fecal matter on there. Now there's some nose candy for you.
I don't mean to take anything away from the Japanese who are clearly leading in the robotics industry. Especially with technologies like this, humanoid robots like Asimo, and even those creepy robots that have the bad latex skin, these are all really impressive displays of Japan's prowess in this field. More importantly, the control mechanisms are being refined at both the software and hardware interconnects, so this isn't just "robotics", but rather the whole field covers a much broader scope than merely software or just hardware.
Why isn't the U.S. leading in this area? Why have we decided that we're happy enough building Facebook applications? It's sad to see that we aren't as focused on building real systems that will have an actual physical impact on our surroundings. We took Laertes' ridiculous admonition "to thine own self be true" and turned ourselves and our energies into the very worst of what we are as a nation. We have become exactly what the Japanese saw 20 years ago: a nation of lazy, overpaid workers. And, I hate to say it, we are paying the price for that with our jobs.
I always thought that one of the goals of innovation and technology is to make life easier (physically). Just because fewer folks in the US have their own gardens for food, or chop their own wood for heat in the winter, doesn't make us more or less lazy then those in the past. Some would see it as better time management. Assuming that the person utilizing these technologies is working towards something other then gaining 1000 friends on facebook. Regardless of where it originates.
However, as tech grows, and you logically look to the future of mankind, robots and software will be able to accomplish all that mankind "works" at. Manual labor will be a thing of the past at some point. Albeit long into the future. As soon as it is cheaper to pay for a robot to do manual labor, human manual labor (brick laying, welding, construction, farming, etc..) will no longer be required. So does that mean mankind will be judged in society for only their creativity at that point or leisure skills? I don't know. But I will probably be long gone by the time that happens.
Awesome, we need to have a completely anonymous leak site to even know how corrupt our government even is. What a statement!
I always find it interesting that folks are so quick to jump on the band wagon on stuff like this. I mean you suspect everything from any government (and rightfully so), along with any large corporation, but the moment one source puts out one piece of potential evidence everyone is all over how corrupt the entire process is. Really? The whole process of government? Wow. Well, good luck with that.
Let the facts come out and be reviewed. Cover up or not, that too shall be vetted. Perhaps there is more here then what is in the video. We still only see one side of a story here.
"Social Sentry draws only on publicly posted information on Facebook and Twitter;"
Talk about a cash cow. Trolling public information that may or may not be your employee is risky (duplicate names). Perhaps this will remind folks that use social networks to set their security settings up is a good thing.
I don't want to sound negative, but I was always worried about Oracle buying Sun, for how it would impact negatively on Sun's business. For me the Oracle web site is so convoluted that it stinks of 'we designed this so that you to pay use to find it'. Everything feels designed to nickle and dime everything you try doing with them. This is based on experience of having get specific updates to fix certain known issues. If you don't agree with my perspective, I would gladly appreciate hearing about your experience.
I am a Java developer and I hope that they don't extend this to Java or any other Sun technologies with a more 'open' culture.
I agree. I cringe every time I venture into the quagmire of oracle.com to obtain a CPU or look up information/patches for an older version of oracle. Sun's site was much easier to navigate through for patch clusters or specific patches themselves. Now that sun's site is folded into oracle's site, finding hardware information has become a pain. I did find that going to sunsolve still is the way to go though.
Business see that the Government is now ready to invest in nuclear power and come up with some long term research project that will probably end up getting funded by said government. Yes, $Bill has thrown in his few coins, but I'm sure none of the investors will do it with out any potential for a return in 5 years. Smart business.
Being physically located in China or not has nothing to do with China blocking them. China could block them if they kept up shop in China, or they could not block them even though they no longer have employees in China.
By removing themselves physically from China they might risk upsetting China (so that they are blocked) but that is not a certainty, and they ensure the physical safety of their employees.
I believe that their servers are located in China so that all requested searches go to those specific servers and the authorities then would have rights over said hardware should they deem it necessary to gain access to them. If all the data was/is housed anywhere else it would be very difficult for the Chinese government to gain _legal_ access to the data.
If his blog is running on a Sun box.
Truth. If you have a family, stay in your job, unless you're already rich.
One could argue that the US health insurance system is set up to avoid having people do what you're trying to do.
If you live in fear you will never be happy. Family or not. Risk is part of the game. However, if proper research is done you will increase your chances of success. Fear is why folks get screwed. I say go for it.
I have to disagree to some extent. The problem of respect for the occupying forces (which arises through the perception of fairness) is at the center of the strategy of "winning hearts and minds" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Regardless of the military merits of this strategy, which are worth debating separately, the practical consequence
of adopting the strategy is that the perception of fairness is important, both in the occupied countries and at home for political reasons. Right or wrong, fairness is not merely for sporting events.
The hearts and minds are being won. How? By giving cold hard cash to the folks over there. Welcome to the western world where cash is king and all else is secondary. Not that I totally disagree with this philosophy, for I too have bills to pay and desire creature comforts. War is only unfair if you don't get paid.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/28/afghanistan.taliban.pay/index.html
Could these actions have been all started by Google's largest competitor Microsoft? I mean it's not out of the realm of possibilities to think that MS would love to have the Chinese market all to themselves, by having a back room deal with the Chinese Govt to target Google.
I was just providing an example of a numbering system for a large location that everyone in said location uses.
However, this would be silly to do IMO (like the SSN). You get owned on one account and you are owned everywhere. There are advantages to having different systems for different resources.
Like a social security number or tax id?
Jeff Rothschild, the vice president of technology at Facebook, said in a recent presentation that Facebook has 230 engineers supporting data for more than 300 million users. He says Facebook seeks to maintain a ratio of one engineer for 1 million or more users. Facebook is vague about exactly how many servers it has, saying it's "more than 30,000." But at 30,000 servers and 230 engineers, that's a ratio of about 130 servers per admin.
Microsoft says it has automated its data center operations to the point where its admins can each manage between 1,000 and 2,000 servers. That matters, as the company may pack more than 300,000 servers into its new container data center in Chicago. It expects to support that facility with about 30 employees, including admins and facility maintenance staff.
"Number of servers per admin" is to limited to be properly measured, even in your examples. Can one admin manage 5000 *nix boxes that are all identical, running a clustered web server? Sure. Given the proper engineering and tools, it's very possible. Now throw in a bunch of other applications that users request or a business requires and now you will need more staff. Also, supporting a bunch of pizza boxes or supporting one piece of heavy iron can make a difference is trying to measure this number. I know of a couple of folks who admin one box. Granted, they are either a large SUN and IBM hardware, running databases, web servers, and numerous applications, but look at their job requirement in a slanted way and it would look as though they are responsible for only one system. While another admin can have a couple of thousand desktops all identical and simple. And their value would still be relative to whomever the users are.
How about encasing the lights in a large Plexiglas oval bulb. The snow should just mostly fall off and as long as the housing unit of the light is black, the heat created by radiation should assist melting any snow on the top of the Plexiglas bulb. Now, I'm sure there would be issues with this as well, but it could be a possible solution.
Given that he has several books on security, his opinion carries some weight.
I'm a developer, does that mean I can work in real estate?
As long as it virtual....sure, knock yourself out.
If somebody can offer a service at a cheaper more efficient price, why not? All this humbug about salaries that one "deserves" to get is purely protectionist and doesn't benefit anybody. Offering cheaper overall inputs provide better value for all Americans to enjoy. If you're peddling global free trade, you've got to be willing to accept that labour needs to move freely and capitalism dictates that the person who can do it cheaper and offers an apple to apple comparison of quality will win. It's pure economics. If somebody can do something cheaper than you can, and is willing to do it, then there is nothing wrong with it.
I agree with this in theory. However, it's not the fact that there are a bunch of "Lazy Americans" (which there are plenty of hard working Americans BTW) who want their cake and be able to eat it too, it's the fact that the only commodity being banked on by companies are how to reduce salaries for the 97% of their worker base while the "Big C's" (CEO, CIO, CTO, CFO, etc..) keep their bonus' going up. It's about disparaging differences. I don't mind someone who has built a company up to keep a lions share, however, people with a backbone understand that without hardworking people in the company throughout the ranks, they would be no where and have no company. You are either Pimping or being Pimped now days.
Why doesn't any of this "globalization" affect health care? Where are my lower premiums or cost of health care when globalization is supposed to lower prices while raising service? I mean if you say it works for IT why not health care? Or how about food prices, they too are still going up even though there are many foods imported from all over the world. I guess your argument would be that they would be even higher if everything was left to grow only in the U.S. and sold in the U.S.
...the blue people ever since they revealed what they were doing with the natives.
The takeover of the Native Americans, and the slavery of Africans, were the two most savage acts the United States every did. There was no way even a futuristic United States would allow such actions to proceed. I wouldn't be surprised after they went home there was some type of investigation and charges filed against the CEO and other people within the company for genocide. This is why we need to remember out past, or we will be doomed to repeat it.
A long time ago when we justified the hostile takeover of Native Americans, we considered them as "savages." Guess who the real savages were?
Like the posters before me have said, this isn't a statement on anti-technology, but how technology needs to be responsibly used.
Don't limit yourself to the history of the United States please. There is plenty of shame to go around the World for every empire or power that ever existed. Then you will realize that it wasn't necessarily "The United States did this or did that bad thing" but it is "Humans quest for power has no limits on one another."
The housing and banking failures where put on to faulty software because it did not stop the idiot carbon-based units from committing acts of stupidity.
So there are programmer(s) unable to predict future unforeseen events in his/her/their code and it's considered a failure. You can never predict the actions of idiots.
Your analogy (no pun intended ;) is not functional. Banning an object is different then banning an act. Two completely different things here. Based on your analogy, you _CANNOT_ be homosexual without practicing sodomy.
You could still practice Christianity without a Bible or cross (the latter really is just a symbol anyways) as long as the books are told word of mouth from one generation to the next, you can still follow and practice Christianity. I know many Christians who have never read the Bible nor owned one, yet the consider themselves Christians. I also know homosexuals who have never practiced sodomy. They are called lesbians.
The laws were often enforced solely (when they were enforced) against gay males, so it makes it an issue.
Not to mention that your argument is essentially the same as saying that the government could ban the Bible and crosses, and that wouldn't impair religion because you could still believe whatever you like.
As long as the law does not specify a certain religion, race, gender, age, or sexual orientation, then there isn't a problem (which it's not). How the law is enforced is the issue for the judges to ensure it it equally enforced. We are talking the written letter of the law here and it is written with out bias.
And are you saying that you can not be homosexual without committing sodomy?
It essentially was until 2003 in a lot of places.
You are referencing an act that can be accomplished by both heterosexuals and homosexuals, not being homosexual in itself.
Yeah, because the US is the bastion of freedom for homo-sexuals. Tell me again in wich nation the people voted to make homosexuals 2nd class citizens?
Sometimes you got to think a little bit clearer before you comment. And China is pretty open about homosexual rights because they are not christians and as such do not have the WESTERN view that it is a sin.
I don't know any law in the US that states that it is illegal to be homosexual.
And why link just the Christian religion to frowning upon the homosexual lifestyle. I do believe there are many religions who frown upon homosexuality. Your statement could be read as though you hate a particular religion because of their views. Do you not see the irony in that?
And here I thought The Final Countdown movie was going to be real life!