I find it interesting that my employer is showing more sales and more customer loyalty than the "American" manufacturer.
Doesn't that have to do more with the "Made-in-America" laws that got passed a while back requiring n% of a car to be made/assembled in the U.S. so that the company can receive significant tax breaks and being able to call their product "Made-in-America"?
Amen brother. And when they've exploited those 4 billion others, and every country on the earth has a population with a decent overall standard of living, whom will they "exploit" then?
That's not too hard to figure out. The "rich" people pull out all of their jobs from one country & move them to a cheap one. The country that they left behind collapses into economic, and possibly political turmoil. The "rich" people can even help things along by selling everyone weapons.
Then, when most of the inhabitants of the old country have hit refugee status, the rich people move all the jobs back to that country (now that the inhabitants are willing to do anything just to survive), and receive the kudos for being so generous. In the country that they're leaving, the process starts again.
Of course, I'm not saying that this is what is actually happening (or the motivation for it), but it _is_ a possible scenario where your optimistic "everyone gets a decent standard of living" view doesn't work out.
NPR did a story on companies who had moved some manufacturing jobs to Mexico (ala Perot's giant sucking sound). While they were there, there were happy workers. Within a decade after moving to Mexico, they've been moving their factories to China. Now there's a lot of unhappy workers in Mexico who have ended up worse-off than they were before the factories arrived (since they can no longer scratch out a living on their farms, and the entire local economy ended up depending almost entirely on the income from those factories).
The UN is doing a lot of "little" stuff (distributing aid, fighting diseases, etc) just fine, given its limited resources.
However it isn't a good example of a distributed decision-making system, since 1) the people participating in it aren't really all that representative of the "common" people of the world, so the decision-making power hasn't really been distributed, and 2) a relatively small number of countries have the power to completely block any major decisions of the U.N. which they don't like. There aren't too many organizations which are going to look very competent or useful with such an arrangement.
Just ask them to describe what they did, stop them a bit into it, ask for more detail on X, stop them a bit into that, ask for yet more detail some part of X.
Ugh, that's always bad for me - without the source code in front of me (or some other kind of triggering details), I usually remember only general things about my previous work, not the details. Of course, it could just be an excuse for having a bad memory...
And just which leader would you want to see running the planet?
I know this was meant to be funny, but why exactly do we need a "leader"? Shouldn't it be possible to design a distributed decision-making system which doesn't require a "leader" as a focus?
Given today's news stories, both of our nations need to take a long, hard look at how the rest of the world (no pun intended) must look at us.
When I think about how people in other nations look at Americans now, I get depressed. 5 or 6 years ago, I had a lot of fun traveling around meeting people in a lot of different countries (for work). In general, they were friendly & generally had good feelings toward Americans (a few of them explained that "Americans" had an "honest" and "naive" (gullible?) attitude about life which they found appealing - apparently I fit this stereotype pretty well:-).
The last few contacts I've had though - brrr...I felt like a low-on-the-totem-pole wannabe gang member being shunned by the "civilized" members of the school. It's difficult to tell how this new attitude toward Americans might be affecting our sales; I'm pretty sure it doesn't help. It's _really_ terrifying to hear our so-called "leaders" (and the sheeple who bleat their praises) being _proud_ of being able to cause that kind of reaction in the rest of the world.
D'oh - that's what I get for throwing a stupid comment out. For some reason, I completely forgot about the behavior of the militant Hindus. For a people who follow all sorts of ridiculous rules to avoid killing cows, they sure do seem to be willing to kill humans. I guess non-Hindu humans rank lower on the cosmic karma scale than cows.
Not sure how the standard "religious" arguments fit in with the Japanese oppression during WWII - my impression of that was that their behavior was more of a military/racial superiority complex rather than any fundamental religious reason.
For what it's worth, my mother is Korean & her parents (my grandparents) have regaled me with many & utterly horrible stories about their experiences during the occupancy of Korea by Japan. They usually end with a generalization of a schizoid Japanese society where the typical Japanese citizens were nice & polite, but their _leaders_ were bloodthirsty bigots - and the nice & polite citizens generally follow those bigots like sheep.
But you have to admit that over all that it might could be seen as less respectful for a Taiwanese company to name a Computer Zen than for a western company.
Nah, only the members of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious families tend to get anal about people using their "sacred names". I think it has something to do with the don't-take-his-name-in-vain indoctrination, whereas most of the Eastern religions/ways-of-life tend to roll their eyes (or ignore) such childish responses.
A good definition of copyright infringement is simply the copying of information which you have not been given permission to copy by the copyright holders. There is no "stealing" to be found.
The performer can pay the songwriter what they think the song was worth, or the songwriter would pay the performer what they thought it was worth to perform the song that they wrote.
Or they could collaborate, each expecting a certain % of the resultant revenue. Or, if they need funds, they could either find a sponsor or get a loan to finance the initial performance. Etc, etc.
In other words, _all_ of the typical ways that two people can do business with each other - there's nothing special about this kind of business transaction just because it's the entertainment biz.
Re:"Clear Skies" Initiative
on
Global Dimming
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· Score: 1
And that soot was one of the biggest issues the US had with the treaty!
I really don't believe anything the Bush administration says about the Kyoto treaty.
Even if the developing countries agreed to the "global" cap idea on pollution, the Bush administration would find another reason why the U.S. won't support the treaty. The _real_ problem they have with the treaty is that it will cost polluters (i.e., cronies & campaign contributors) a lot of money to clean up their own messes.
When someone else can take my idea and sell it without compensation to me?
Why would someone have to "sell" you back your own idea? Just because they're using your idea, doesn't mean you lost it. It just means that you'll have to be better at implementing your own idea than they are. And if the idea is so easy to implement that you can't do it better than someone who stole it, then 1) it probably wasn't that much of an idea in the first place, no matter how clever you think you are, or 2) they have more resources than you, in which case it is probably better for society that they be the one implementing the idea instead of you anyway.
Also, why should you be able to stop someone else from coming up with the same idea just because you had it first?
Without patent law, we stifle innovation.
Hardly. Productive companies/individuals will always look for an advantage over their competition, patent laws or not. The only problem that would occur without patent law is that you'd have a lot of companies instituting draconian measures trying to protect their "trade secrets".
Nah, there will always be a market for busty pop stars. I think it has something to do with that effect of most men's brains shutting down when they see a sexy female.
Of course, most men don't exactly care _which_ busty pop star they're looking at..
No, my analogy is fine - if you look at the value of writing code as a service, not the resultant code as a product. I think it's greedy that so many people think they should get paid over and over for something they create once.
Slashdot Mirror
That's all we need - bacteria & fungi which collect critical masses of uranium out of the soil.
Doesn't that have to do more with the "Made-in-America" laws that got passed a while back requiring n% of a car to be made/assembled in the U.S. so that the company can receive significant tax breaks and being able to call their product "Made-in-America"?
That's not too hard to figure out. The "rich" people pull out all of their jobs from one country & move them to a cheap one. The country that they left behind collapses into economic, and possibly political turmoil. The "rich" people can even help things along by selling everyone weapons.
Then, when most of the inhabitants of the old country have hit refugee status, the rich people move all the jobs back to that country (now that the inhabitants are willing to do anything just to survive), and receive the kudos for being so generous. In the country that they're leaving, the process starts again.
Of course, I'm not saying that this is what is actually happening (or the motivation for it), but it _is_ a possible scenario where your optimistic "everyone gets a decent standard of living" view doesn't work out.
NPR did a story on companies who had moved some manufacturing jobs to Mexico (ala Perot's giant sucking sound). While they were there, there were happy workers. Within a decade after moving to Mexico, they've been moving their factories to China. Now there's a lot of unhappy workers in Mexico who have ended up worse-off than they were before the factories arrived (since they can no longer scratch out a living on their farms, and the entire local economy ended up depending almost entirely on the income from those factories).
The UN is doing a lot of "little" stuff (distributing aid, fighting diseases, etc) just fine, given its limited resources.
However it isn't a good example of a distributed decision-making system, since 1) the people participating in it aren't really all that representative of the "common" people of the world, so the decision-making power hasn't really been distributed, and 2) a relatively small number of countries have the power to completely block any major decisions of the U.N. which they don't like. There aren't too many organizations which are going to look very competent or useful with such an arrangement.
Ugh, that's always bad for me - without the source code in front of me (or some other kind of triggering details), I usually remember only general things about my previous work, not the details. Of course, it could just be an excuse for having a bad memory...
I know this was meant to be funny, but why exactly do we need a "leader"? Shouldn't it be possible to design a distributed decision-making system which doesn't require a "leader" as a focus?
When I think about how people in other nations look at Americans now, I get depressed. 5 or 6 years ago, I had a lot of fun traveling around meeting people in a lot of different countries (for work). In general, they were friendly & generally had good feelings toward Americans (a few of them explained that "Americans" had an "honest" and "naive" (gullible?) attitude about life which they found appealing - apparently I fit this stereotype pretty well :-).
The last few contacts I've had though - brrr...I felt like a low-on-the-totem-pole wannabe gang member being shunned by the "civilized" members of the school. It's difficult to tell how this new attitude toward Americans might be affecting our sales; I'm pretty sure it doesn't help. It's _really_ terrifying to hear our so-called "leaders" (and the sheeple who bleat their praises) being _proud_ of being able to cause that kind of reaction in the rest of the world.
Hey, as long as it's a single one-way trip (with no additional supply runs), I'm willing to spend my tax dollars on it.
Okay, I'll bite - what did this "friend" do to you that you had to provide a link to her website (which has several videos) on Slashdot?
D'oh - that's what I get for throwing a stupid comment out. For some reason, I completely forgot about the behavior of the militant Hindus. For a people who follow all sorts of ridiculous rules to avoid killing cows, they sure do seem to be willing to kill humans. I guess non-Hindu humans rank lower on the cosmic karma scale than cows.
Not sure how the standard "religious" arguments fit in with the Japanese oppression during WWII - my impression of that was that their behavior was more of a military/racial superiority complex rather than any fundamental religious reason.
For what it's worth, my mother is Korean & her parents (my grandparents) have regaled me with many & utterly horrible stories about their experiences during the occupancy of Korea by Japan. They usually end with a generalization of a schizoid Japanese society where the typical Japanese citizens were nice & polite, but their _leaders_ were bloodthirsty bigots - and the nice & polite citizens generally follow those bigots like sheep.
Nah, only the members of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious families tend to get anal about people using their "sacred names". I think it has something to do with the don't-take-his-name-in-vain indoctrination, whereas most of the Eastern religions/ways-of-life tend to roll their eyes (or ignore) such childish responses.
Just keep trying, they'll eventually show up.
So when you're saving messages for your filter, the best thing to do with those "random word" messages is to just delete them?
Yes, you are wrong.
A good definition of copyright infringement is simply the copying of information which you have not been given permission to copy by the copyright holders. There is no "stealing" to be found.
Unfortunate, since in a lot of companies, the CEO is the individual who is doing the least amount of productive work.
The performer can pay the songwriter what they think the song was worth, or the songwriter would pay the performer what they thought it was worth to perform the song that they wrote.
Or they could collaborate, each expecting a certain % of the resultant revenue. Or, if they need funds, they could either find a sponsor or get a loan to finance the initial performance. Etc, etc.
In other words, _all_ of the typical ways that two people can do business with each other - there's nothing special about this kind of business transaction just because it's the entertainment biz.
I really don't believe anything the Bush administration says about the Kyoto treaty.
Even if the developing countries agreed to the "global" cap idea on pollution, the Bush administration would find another reason why the U.S. won't support the treaty. The _real_ problem they have with the treaty is that it will cost polluters (i.e., cronies & campaign contributors) a lot of money to clean up their own messes.
Why bother? It's easier to patent it, let someone else implement it, then sue them for all they're worth.
To compete in the marketplace. Duh.
Why would someone have to "sell" you back your own idea? Just because they're using your idea, doesn't mean you lost it. It just means that you'll have to be better at implementing your own idea than they are. And if the idea is so easy to implement that you can't do it better than someone who stole it, then 1) it probably wasn't that much of an idea in the first place, no matter how clever you think you are, or 2) they have more resources than you, in which case it is probably better for society that they be the one implementing the idea instead of you anyway.
Also, why should you be able to stop someone else from coming up with the same idea just because you had it first?
Hardly. Productive companies/individuals will always look for an advantage over their competition, patent laws or not. The only problem that would occur without patent law is that you'd have a lot of companies instituting draconian measures trying to protect their "trade secrets".
Nah, there will always be a market for busty pop stars. I think it has something to do with that effect of most men's brains shutting down when they see a sexy female.
Of course, most men don't exactly care _which_ busty pop star they're looking at..
No, my analogy is fine - if you look at the value of writing code as a service, not the resultant code as a product. I think it's greedy that so many people think they should get paid over and over for something they create once.
No, my sentence structure is reasonable - if you look at writing code as a service, not the resultant code as a product.
If I break rocks for a month, why shouldn't I have the exclusive right to break rocks? Hmmm, it doesn't sound quite as convincing that way.
Interesting reading - although it does sound like the background for an infomercial, at least they're providing references.
Got links?