It might sound very simple advice, but networking (ie. finding people with skills or resources you don't have) and making deals (get them to work for you) are the steps you have to take to get your project anywhere.
Before you jump out and start hyping your project, making connections and start signing people, you have to make your own homework. You have to put your idea of a device and it's usage into an simple and clear message that is convincing, after that make atleast some calculations about the cost of device, markets ie. to get some picture if there is any financial reason to do the project. At this stage you should put the idea forward to your friends who might have something to contribute and to give feedback about the general idea, and have someone of them jump into the project. If you are any lucky, you and your friends can do all the work to make it from concept to proto.
In some time after you have got some ground into your project, you should definately incorporate. Having an corporation shows that you are serious and it makes it more easier to sign "outsiders", ie. not your friends, to the project: rewarding outside work with equity. In example I know one small sports device maker who got few talented people from Nokia to design their devices outlook and casing by promising equity in return of design work. Also having an corporation secures your project by putting all the work of individuals to property of the company, and usually individuals are more willing to sign NDA between the company than straight with you.
Of course, if your project is just for hobby or fun, then my advice is not so usable. But if you are atleast little bit serious, I would definately suggest that you read some books about starting an firm, some books about innovations and basic marketing info.
5e is not the actual cost that the router will cost to you. Besides 5e you have to pay postage and VAT, which in my case made the total cost near 26e. 26e is not that bad, but then again, with that money you can get an basic wireless access point. Thought, if you are moving a lot and need wireless access, then joining Fon would make some sense.
In US, Toyota Corolla 1.8L Sedan 4dr SEDAN CE, costs $13,690. In Finland allmost the same car, we don't have 1.8L version here, but 1.6L, costs $31,805. Of course that price includes 22% value added tax, minus that and the price still is $26.069, in another words, in Finland the same car costs double the amount it costs in US.
In Finland a liter of gasoline costs now days $1.75 per liter, so one gallon would cost about $6.62. Also every year you have to pay mandatory car insurance which costs about $625. Also you have to have an mandatory car inspection every year in which it's made sure that your can be taken to roads, and then there are few other things that you have to pay, in order to drive a car. There are also tools in many European countries.
My point would be that US goverment is not taxing enough, and thus is encouraging to use own car, which leads to more pollution, more sickness, more accidents and more deaths. Actually I would argue that having lax car taxes in US, has lead you in a situation where you are building more and more road and highways, and having your cities turned into endless suburbans. As in here, and otherparts of Europe, usage of own car is tried to decrease, which in has and is leading to even more centralised cities, less polution, and more public transportation.
It maybe, and I believe it is, that our, European that is, goverments tend to tax us more than they should, that still doesn't mean that there should not be taxes at all, nor that we shouldn't try leave more enviromentally. Ie. I live in downtown, I don't own or use a car, if I need to get to somewhere I can either walk or bicycle, or when I have to get father away, I can use bus or train.
I definately believe that you have mixed Wartburgs with Ladas, in which case your comment about seeing them in the streets of Helsinki would be true. It's also true that Ladas where quite affordable, and I remember seeing tv-commercials of them even in 1989. On a note, Lada or Wartburg, sematics, both of them 'quality' cars from the eastern block, a popular joke about Ladas was that it was a car of the year, literally;) On a note, Finns were much poorer in the 80s than americans were, and even now our GDP per person is about 2/3 of US, thought it's now in line with the rest of the EU.
And what goes to healtcare, I believe that there isn't any place on earth where people are not complaining about the healtcare. The ugly trueth is that people want god like action from doctors and believe that everything is curable by popping a pill, and when they don't get that, they complain. It's a sad thing that your friend got hurt, but maybe it was so that there was nothing to do? Ie. my friend was freed from armed service because his arms hurted, his arms neural pathways didn't have enough shielding, and thus they would fail if he would have too much physical work. Also human failure factor is the same in every system, if your ambulance driver is not were he should be that not because of the system but of a individual. Thought on a note, there should allways be a backup, but then again, in an metropol like Stockholm, sometimes even backup is allready taken.
Universal healthcare is a good idea, even in US you have medicare and medicaid. Actually our systems don't differ so much in healtcare: ie. in both systems poor and unpriviledged get help, and in both systems working people and entepneur have health insurances, ie. I have a firm and a mandatory health insurance, which gives me a priviledge to go to a private hospital, 400 meters away from me, that's a good deal;). The problem of universal healtcare isn't that money comes from goverment, but that health service come from goverment and healthcare is not bought from competing service providers. I would definately say that there are huge problems in our healtcare specially in managing costs and administrating the whole system, and it will be only fixed by putting healtcare services to competition. In a different note, there is also problem in US system, you have some people that don't have neither medicaid or health insurance, and to hospitals and insurance companies the system is milking cow where the only direction of prices is up.
On a note, would you buy 100% what an insurance salesman or brocure would say? Their objective is to get you to get an insurance, and they will say whatever, that wont get them sued, to buy their insurance. I also would say that it's common knowledge that in any developed country you would get better treatment locally than returning to your home country and having to endure a day or days in travel.
PS. on scandinavian countries, ie. Finland, most of the goverment money comes from income taxes that are in some cases insane. An average citizen usually pays 15-30% of his/her income to taxes, and if you get paid little bit better, getting over 60k euros or more, you may end up paying over 50% taxes. The taxes that we pay buy us a lot of things, but my personal opinion is that with efficient management of goverment funds and prioritazing of services, we could have allmost everything that we now have, with universal tax of 20% or so. But well... the goverment is same in everywhere in the world, spending what it can, that still doesn't mean that we should just give up and get an laizez-faire system.
PS. an another reason why scandinavian countries have choosen wellfare-system is that it 'outsources' poor away: everybody gets education, money when unemployed and healtcare when sick -> you don't have beggars in the streets. I myself feel very bad if I see human
As a Finn I was just wondering, at what time where you in sweden?
Because when Wartburg was a popular car in Finland, it would date to 1950s, that would make you a really old slashdotter. Mayby you are mixing Wartburg with Lada? Lada was a soviet made car which was also imported to Finland, but it was never popular, and if you mixed those two, then it would date you to 1980s.
Thought, you are quite right about the fact that having and driving a car in both Sweden and Finland is very expensive, but that's because the car taxes double the cars price and gasolines price, which btw. is just right, because personal driving is expensive to goverment (roads) and to enviroment (polution) and thus taxes should be taken to compensate those costs. Now days there thought is talk about moving to strictly taxing gasoline, and not cars, that would be logical, and it would make people think more about having a own car when a liter would cost from 2 to 3. The reason why americans are driving SUVs is because US goverment is subsidizing personal driving, by not taxing car owners the cost that are associated with using cars.
On a note, I too think that scandinavian countries tax too much, and there is too much goverment control, our unemployment rate is too high, and the official numbers are cleaned by putting people in to education and to early pension. Thought, I think that american system isn't the answer, thought it has some good points, the society should take care of it's weaks and unfortunates, and provide a minimum level of living, that is the only way in which we can say that everybody is in the same line in life and that people try and take risk in their lifes, without worrying ending up in the street.
PS. The most popular car in Finland in now days is Toyota, same too in america, or it will be soon;-)
A few days ago I remember reading an article from a magazine (Helsingin Sanomat, if I remember corretly), where an expert on China, said that about 1/3 of graduating students wont find jobs, and academic unemployment is a growing issue. Also in the same article he said that many universities make up or fix their graduate employment statistics to lure better students. So fixing the problem of students cheating by opening up more schools, isn't the answer.
What I haven't understood in US school system, why everybody goes to high school? In example in Finland after the 9th grade (when you are 16), people can choose either to go to a voculabary school or go to high school. Those people who are noot good or interested on more academic subjects, or have bad grades, go to voculabary school and will learn a profession, and those with more interestest to academic subjects go to high school. I think the system in principle is better suited for all, because it lets everybody to consentrate on what they like and where they are good at.
On a note, the system we have is not perfect. Different kind of problems arrise, one is categorization of people in to two groups, and the other is letting people with too low grades to high school. Also, one can go to a collage or university after voculabary school, so having a split up of people doesn't mean that their future path are dictated then (actually I know one person who went to trade school, then got more interested and went to university to graduate to masters in marketing (University of Vaasa), and after that went to get an masters degree from electical engineering (Helsinki University of Technology), that's hardcore;-)
And yeah, splitting people in to two groups in US would probably mean fewer headaches for those who suffer from being bullied, because usually, atleast in here, most of the bullies don't have good grades, and don't continue at high school, if at all.
Taxing emails and text messages is great idea, but hey, there is even better opportunity to raise money for goverment. Lets tax SEX!!! Think about it, just in EU tens of millions of people are having sex everyday, some even have sex multiple times in a day! And you know there is moral justification for it, it costs society real money when people have sex, the hospitals are crowded with women giving birth, people being sick because sexually transmitted diseases, and lot's of other! Sex costs money! It would be fair, if people having sex would pay to society the costs of having sex!
And also it should be noted, that ability to have sex isn't equal with everybody, that's not fair! People who have more sex should be taxed progressively to make society fair and people more equal with each other!
Then again average Linux user is a bit different from average Windows user. Where as average Linux usually has some clue what the system is doing, what it should be doing, and how to make it doing what you want, where as average Windows user knows how to start PC and knows, or has clue, on how to start Internet browser or Word.
I would argue that the only reason that I don't have problems with my machine, commodity PC with Fedora 4, is that when problem arrises, I work with it until it's solved, if I wouldn't do so, my computer wouldn't be usable.
On a site node, on my machine Linux works much better than Windows with certified drivers: something to do with using SB128PCI which uses some non-standard ways to use PCI-bus, and some other problem with NVidia card and motherboard which don't play together in Windows, no 3D-gaming with it, only in Lixux under Cedega...
But yeah, I'm little of the track, but my argument is that Linux users aren't so clueless than Windows users which explains quite much why Linux systems work where as Windows systems tend to wank.
Flexy budgets with reward mechanism could be the answer.
And now a little explanation. We have two kinds of people in organization, those who allocate resources and those who use them. Because resources are usually scarce, it's is most important to people who allocate them, that they get the exact right amount of resources to right places. To people who actually use resources, the stable availability from year to year of those resources is a key to success.
What I suggest is that we would reward resource allocating people on basis on how accurate their allocations where, it the allocations where bigger or smaller than needed, they would loose their rewards. If the people who use resources, can get their job done with lower amount of resources than they were allocated, they would be rewarded, if they used the exact amount of resources or more, they would loose their rewards.
Basicly the system would be build on competition, where those who can be accurate and use their resources effectively would succeed. Of course to make the system actually work you would have to make quite much work with setting up parameters, and also integrating this basicly resource balacing reward system work with other reward and balancing systems in use.
If problems start at tempetures above 80F, and you keep your temperature about around 75F, you have less time available if and when some system or enviroment changes suddenly making your tempeture rise. If you by default have set the tempeture to 60F, you will get lot more time react before you run to 1) problems and 2) to serious problems. So, to asses risk, I would prefer to having more colder place, than a place being near a limit where after problems arise.
Just my two cents.
The world's first commercial W-CDMA service, FOMA, was launched by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in 2001. FOMA is not compatible with UMTS. But the effort for migrating the FOMA specifications to UMTS are indicated by Japan.
So, are you sure that it works in other parts of the world?
And back to the technology part, if Japanese phones would be technologically superior to other phones, then why Nokia is the world leader in mobile phones, and why Motorola and Samsung are the followers? Could it be that the technology in Japan isn't more advanced, and availability of certain features in phones is more contributed to Japanese consumers wanting more advanced features than to superior technological knowhow?
Here are few examples of population density, on how many persons live in a km: Japan (337/km^2), USA (30/km), Germany (230/km^2) and Finland (15/km^2). In all of these countries the technology has to scale from densily populated ares to lower density areas. The thing that I claim is that in Japan even the rural areas are more populated than in the rest of world, thus allowing, and requiring building the mobile phone networks differently, thus allowing usage of different technologies and different solutions. So, the technology isn't ahead in Japan.
And when speaking about megapixel cameras and other features in phones, one has to remember that these technologies are all commodized. The reason why there are 3megapixel phones in Japan but not here is more contributed to Japanese consumers wanting more features than to more advanced technologies in use. You are right in that the technologies are more available to consumers, but there isn't no reason why they couldn't be available in the rest of the world, if consumers wanted.
In Japan, they use different technology solutions, not more advanced technology in mobile phones.
The situation in Japan differs much from situation in other parts of the world, namely population density in Japan is much higher and there aren't many areas in Japan where there isn't high population density. What this means is that you have to build your whole mobile phone network differently, you have to have lot's of base station and they have to operate in much smaller area, thus leading to lower power usage in both base stations and in mobile phones. Because power requirements are lower, Japanese mobile phones have been a lot smaller for decades. They don't have any magical technology that the rest of the world hasn't, they just a different situation with different needs.
It should also be noted that the markets have proved that Japanese don't have more advanced technology, if they would have, they would have stormed the markets allready.
Well, if there wouldn't be imbesil idiots running rampant in many organizations that think that they are next of god, then there would be no problem about discussing pays, but as there are, it's a good idea not to talk about your pay, otherwise you will get the idiots raise their voices "i want a raise too! i make as good code as him! i make more lines!!!".
Really, carrier paths sucks big time. What you need to is give up from titles and putting people in ordering people in organizational hierarchy. You may ask why! Well, things and needs change in organization leading people going up and down in organizational ladder, the problem becomes when you give somebody title like "lead software services manager", they just wont accept willingly modding them down.
That's why you must first give up from most of the titles and instead use following: junior engineer, engineer and senior engineer. You also need to change to project organization where you can easily put the most able body to do the job. In this way, people don't get offended when they are changed to do different job, and also when discussing about work related things, people can't just say "hey! I'm the lead developer I know these things", instead they have to rationalize and try to communicate to others with out authority given by title.
Oh, and last thing, you make your employees sign a Non Disclosure Agreement concerning their pay, or just talk all to them in this way "you know you are one the best people around here, and I would be glad that if you didn't discuss about your pay".
You should first define how rich capitalist countries are exploiting the poorer ones. The matter of fact is that todays rich countries are rich because they have for the last three to four hundred years been building their infrastructure. Infrastructure here defined as 1) govermental, 2) educational, 3) farming, 4) industrial production and 5) trasportation. Because this infrastructure is in place, countries having it have much larger ability to produce agricultural goods, industrial goods and services. Being rich is the product of producing more.
If you look at the poor countries in Africa and in South-America what you can see that they don't have had stabilized goverments for a long time, they haven't educated their population (ie. in Finland public teaching to read and write was started by church in 16th century), farmers haven't been educated by the goverment on how to farm (in Finland the Swedish crown started educating farmers by introducing potato and making everybody to farm it), industrial production hasn't started because goverment and local law and order haven't been adequate, and especially in Africa there isn't enough good roads to transport goods.
I don't say that the western countries wouldn't have exploited in the past poor countries, but what I'm claiming is that most of the poor countries would be poor or poorer with even with rich capitalist countries. Some countries like China, Thailand, South-Korea, Indonesia and Malesia have made quite much progress because they have quite long roots in history that give them some edge to other countries in govermental, educational and trasportation infrastructure.
Otherwise, if the whole world would be rich, we would have much bigger production and much more effective production system, which would propably lead to a situation where it would be even more cheaper to go to McD.
News flash, you wont survive life!!! We are all going to die!!!
So, basicly it's about optimizing my satisfactory level, which atleast now says to take the burger and life expectancy of about 75 years. I rather live my life doing things I want and like, than doing things that give me more years to live. What globalization is doing, is giving me more freedom to choose how I spend my life, and how comfortably I can live. That's quite big thing.
Oh, and I weight about 75kg (190cm height) and last thing I checked my cholesterol count was good. And actually some doctors think that having cholesterol isn't that bad thing, but that could also be explained about goverment wanting people not to live so much after going to retirement.
Option D: We all get rich, and our culture is taken over by corporations "Dude! You gotta a Dell!"
As it now seems, US and Europe are staying in current track, China is developing and joins club of rich and developed countries, and others are following. I also suspect that China changes their system to true democracy in sometime. And when you think a little bit, what is common with all rich democracys, is wanting to enjoy comfortable life and live in peace.
In the end, I believe that option D takes us into a world where you can't tell where one country ends and anothers begins, you got the same businesses everywhere and you can choose the lifestyle that you want, ranging from Feng-Shui crazy Californians to 'ghetto super star' chinease living like 50 Cent. Sounds good to me.
Now, if you excuse me, I will go to McD to enjoy fruits of global world.;)
I live in Finland, in mid-sized town in the west cost. It's true that in Finland you can get basic broadband connection cheaply, 20e - 30e per month, and get speedier connections with just adding little more cash, ie. 8M/1M 60e, 12M/1M 69e, 24M/1M 89e. Sounds nice? Well it isn't that nice. In reality when you order 8M/1M connection you will in reality get a connection ranging from 2M to 4M. The connection itself can really deliver that 8M, but the pipes to the outside world arrent usually that fast. Actually one of my friends works at one of leading telcos in Finland, and he said that their standard answer to any question on why a customer doesn't get full speeds is "you live to far away"/"your lines are bad", just to avoid confessing that they really trick people ordering faster lines than they can deliver.
So in short, I don't think that the US situation is that bad, because the reality in other parts of the world, atleast in Finland, isn't that good.
PCI cards, hard- and opticaldrives have one thing called standards. You can but any pci-card to a machine and it works, same goes with other components except with processors. Processors have different support architecture that they need, with different components to use and they have different sockets. So having two suppliers of processors would leed to more engineering work (more motherboards), more components ned for those motherboards, their inventories would just explode. There is economical reason for having just one provider of processors, two could cost dearly.
I think this move by Disney and Apple will also have more drastic implications in another front, namely battle between Apple and labels on pricing of records in iTunes. iTunes first was just a big record store, but now by adding music videos and televisions shows, iTunes is becoming a content portal, a first stop to anybody who wants content from popular music to hit tv-shows.
The important thing here is that Apple is broadening their value generation base, they aren't anymore just a record store. They gather audience from music lovers to people wanting to watch tv, this makes iTunes have more people using it, and it makes iTunes more interesting market, giving Apple more power to negotiate with content producers. The move also makes sure that Microsoft and others have to play catch up with Apple, if they want to be a part of future content and media distribution landscape.
More speculative thing is, is Apple trying to build slowly vertically integrated media platform where people can computers, content players, software and services all come from Apple? Atleast to me it looks like it. The major question now is, can Apple and Jobs this time play it right and crap a near monopoly in content area, making Apple the next decades Microsoft?
What I would like to see in the next version of GPL is definition and terms of usage on when a program is linking to a GPL code and when it's using it as a service. In example if you use only MySQL, which is GPL, as database for you application, MySQL has defined this as linking, so making your own application also GPL. The thing goes complicated because developers of PostgreSQL haven't seen the matter as same. So in my intepretion I could use PostgreSQL as my database but not MySQL...
To clarify. If I would use MySQLs code or directly call it's classes then my application should be covered by GPL. But when I'm issuing SQL-commands via JDBC my application should not be covered by GPL. As a developer and a found of startup I would really like to have clarification to my issues...
P.S. In my case I solved the situation by making my application work with several different databases, that isn't linking anymore, it's using a services.
Actually nazis used municipal records to identify and locate jews when they invided the Dutch. Before the WW2 the Dutch govermant had most advanced system on keeping records of it citizens. When nazis took over the country, they used this system for their benefit. That's the reason why so large percentage (75%) of Netherlanding jews died (104000 out of 140000).
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It might sound very simple advice, but networking (ie. finding people with skills or resources you don't have) and making deals (get them to work for you) are the steps you have to take to get your project anywhere.
Before you jump out and start hyping your project, making connections and start signing people, you have to make your own homework. You have to put your idea of a device and it's usage into an simple and clear message that is convincing, after that make atleast some calculations about the cost of device, markets ie. to get some picture if there is any financial reason to do the project. At this stage you should put the idea forward to your friends who might have something to contribute and to give feedback about the general idea, and have someone of them jump into the project. If you are any lucky, you and your friends can do all the work to make it from concept to proto.
In some time after you have got some ground into your project, you should definately incorporate. Having an corporation shows that you are serious and it makes it more easier to sign "outsiders", ie. not your friends, to the project: rewarding outside work with equity. In example I know one small sports device maker who got few talented people from Nokia to design their devices outlook and casing by promising equity in return of design work. Also having an corporation secures your project by putting all the work of individuals to property of the company, and usually individuals are more willing to sign NDA between the company than straight with you.
Of course, if your project is just for hobby or fun, then my advice is not so usable. But if you are atleast little bit serious, I would definately suggest that you read some books about starting an firm, some books about innovations and basic marketing info.
Spain part of the third world, and proud of it.
5e is not the actual cost that the router will cost to you. Besides 5e you have to pay postage and VAT, which in my case made the total cost near 26e. 26e is not that bad, but then again, with that money you can get an basic wireless access point. Thought, if you are moving a lot and need wireless access, then joining Fon would make some sense.
Just to compare prices...
In US, Toyota Corolla 1.8L Sedan 4dr SEDAN CE, costs $13,690. In Finland allmost the same car, we don't have 1.8L version here, but 1.6L, costs $31,805. Of course that price includes 22% value added tax, minus that and the price still is $26.069, in another words, in Finland the same car costs double the amount it costs in US.
In Finland a liter of gasoline costs now days $1.75 per liter, so one gallon would cost about $6.62. Also every year you have to pay mandatory car insurance which costs about $625. Also you have to have an mandatory car inspection every year in which it's made sure that your can be taken to roads, and then there are few other things that you have to pay, in order to drive a car. There are also tools in many European countries.
My point would be that US goverment is not taxing enough, and thus is encouraging to use own car, which leads to more pollution, more sickness, more accidents and more deaths. Actually I would argue that having lax car taxes in US, has lead you in a situation where you are building more and more road and highways, and having your cities turned into endless suburbans. As in here, and otherparts of Europe, usage of own car is tried to decrease, which in has and is leading to even more centralised cities, less polution, and more public transportation.
It maybe, and I believe it is, that our, European that is, goverments tend to tax us more than they should, that still doesn't mean that there should not be taxes at all, nor that we shouldn't try leave more enviromentally. Ie. I live in downtown, I don't own or use a car, if I need to get to somewhere I can either walk or bicycle, or when I have to get father away, I can use bus or train.
I definately believe that you have mixed Wartburgs with Ladas, in which case your comment about seeing them in the streets of Helsinki would be true. It's also true that Ladas where quite affordable, and I remember seeing tv-commercials of them even in 1989. On a note, Lada or Wartburg, sematics, both of them 'quality' cars from the eastern block, a popular joke about Ladas was that it was a car of the year, literally ;) On a note, Finns were much poorer in the 80s than americans were, and even now our GDP per person is about 2/3 of US, thought it's now in line with the rest of the EU.
;). The problem of universal healtcare isn't that money comes from goverment, but that health service come from goverment and healthcare is not bought from competing service providers. I would definately say that there are huge problems in our healtcare specially in managing costs and administrating the whole system, and it will be only fixed by putting healtcare services to competition. In a different note, there is also problem in US system, you have some people that don't have neither medicaid or health insurance, and to hospitals and insurance companies the system is milking cow where the only direction of prices is up.
And what goes to healtcare, I believe that there isn't any place on earth where people are not complaining about the healtcare. The ugly trueth is that people want god like action from doctors and believe that everything is curable by popping a pill, and when they don't get that, they complain. It's a sad thing that your friend got hurt, but maybe it was so that there was nothing to do? Ie. my friend was freed from armed service because his arms hurted, his arms neural pathways didn't have enough shielding, and thus they would fail if he would have too much physical work. Also human failure factor is the same in every system, if your ambulance driver is not were he should be that not because of the system but of a individual. Thought on a note, there should allways be a backup, but then again, in an metropol like Stockholm, sometimes even backup is allready taken.
Universal healthcare is a good idea, even in US you have medicare and medicaid. Actually our systems don't differ so much in healtcare: ie. in both systems poor and unpriviledged get help, and in both systems working people and entepneur have health insurances, ie. I have a firm and a mandatory health insurance, which gives me a priviledge to go to a private hospital, 400 meters away from me, that's a good deal
On a note, would you buy 100% what an insurance salesman or brocure would say? Their objective is to get you to get an insurance, and they will say whatever, that wont get them sued, to buy their insurance. I also would say that it's common knowledge that in any developed country you would get better treatment locally than returning to your home country and having to endure a day or days in travel.
PS. on scandinavian countries, ie. Finland, most of the goverment money comes from income taxes that are in some cases insane. An average citizen usually pays 15-30% of his/her income to taxes, and if you get paid little bit better, getting over 60k euros or more, you may end up paying over 50% taxes. The taxes that we pay buy us a lot of things, but my personal opinion is that with efficient management of goverment funds and prioritazing of services, we could have allmost everything that we now have, with universal tax of 20% or so. But well... the goverment is same in everywhere in the world, spending what it can, that still doesn't mean that we should just give up and get an laizez-faire system.
PS. an another reason why scandinavian countries have choosen wellfare-system is that it 'outsources' poor away: everybody gets education, money when unemployed and healtcare when sick -> you don't have beggars in the streets. I myself feel very bad if I see human
As a Finn I was just wondering, at what time where you in sweden?
;-)
Because when Wartburg was a popular car in Finland, it would date to 1950s, that would make you a really old slashdotter. Mayby you are mixing Wartburg with Lada? Lada was a soviet made car which was also imported to Finland, but it was never popular, and if you mixed those two, then it would date you to 1980s.
Thought, you are quite right about the fact that having and driving a car in both Sweden and Finland is very expensive, but that's because the car taxes double the cars price and gasolines price, which btw. is just right, because personal driving is expensive to goverment (roads) and to enviroment (polution) and thus taxes should be taken to compensate those costs. Now days there thought is talk about moving to strictly taxing gasoline, and not cars, that would be logical, and it would make people think more about having a own car when a liter would cost from 2 to 3. The reason why americans are driving SUVs is because US goverment is subsidizing personal driving, by not taxing car owners the cost that are associated with using cars.
On a note, I too think that scandinavian countries tax too much, and there is too much goverment control, our unemployment rate is too high, and the official numbers are cleaned by putting people in to education and to early pension. Thought, I think that american system isn't the answer, thought it has some good points, the society should take care of it's weaks and unfortunates, and provide a minimum level of living, that is the only way in which we can say that everybody is in the same line in life and that people try and take risk in their lifes, without worrying ending up in the street.
PS. The most popular car in Finland in now days is Toyota, same too in america, or it will be soon
A few days ago I remember reading an article from a magazine (Helsingin Sanomat, if I remember corretly), where an expert on China, said that about 1/3 of graduating students wont find jobs, and academic unemployment is a growing issue. Also in the same article he said that many universities make up or fix their graduate employment statistics to lure better students. So fixing the problem of students cheating by opening up more schools, isn't the answer.
What I haven't understood in US school system, why everybody goes to high school? In example in Finland after the 9th grade (when you are 16), people can choose either to go to a voculabary school or go to high school. Those people who are noot good or interested on more academic subjects, or have bad grades, go to voculabary school and will learn a profession, and those with more interestest to academic subjects go to high school. I think the system in principle is better suited for all, because it lets everybody to consentrate on what they like and where they are good at.
;-)
On a note, the system we have is not perfect. Different kind of problems arrise, one is categorization of people in to two groups, and the other is letting people with too low grades to high school. Also, one can go to a collage or university after voculabary school, so having a split up of people doesn't mean that their future path are dictated then (actually I know one person who went to trade school, then got more interested and went to university to graduate to masters in marketing (University of Vaasa), and after that went to get an masters degree from electical engineering (Helsinki University of Technology), that's hardcore
And yeah, splitting people in to two groups in US would probably mean fewer headaches for those who suffer from being bullied, because usually, atleast in here, most of the bullies don't have good grades, and don't continue at high school, if at all.
Just my two euro cents
Taxing emails and text messages is great idea, but hey, there is even better opportunity to raise money for goverment. Lets tax SEX!!! Think about it, just in EU tens of millions of people are having sex everyday, some even have sex multiple times in a day! And you know there is moral justification for it, it costs society real money when people have sex, the hospitals are crowded with women giving birth, people being sick because sexually transmitted diseases, and lot's of other! Sex costs money! It would be fair, if people having sex would pay to society the costs of having sex!
And also it should be noted, that ability to have sex isn't equal with everybody, that's not fair! People who have more sex should be taxed progressively to make society fair and people more equal with each other!
Then again average Linux user is a bit different from average Windows user. Where as average Linux usually has some clue what the system is doing, what it should be doing, and how to make it doing what you want, where as average Windows user knows how to start PC and knows, or has clue, on how to start Internet browser or Word.
I would argue that the only reason that I don't have problems with my machine, commodity PC with Fedora 4, is that when problem arrises, I work with it until it's solved, if I wouldn't do so, my computer wouldn't be usable.
On a site node, on my machine Linux works much better than Windows with certified drivers: something to do with using SB128PCI which uses some non-standard ways to use PCI-bus, and some other problem with NVidia card and motherboard which don't play together in Windows, no 3D-gaming with it, only in Lixux under Cedega...
But yeah, I'm little of the track, but my argument is that Linux users aren't so clueless than Windows users which explains quite much why Linux systems work where as Windows systems tend to wank.
Flexy budgets with reward mechanism could be the answer.
And now a little explanation. We have two kinds of people in organization, those who allocate resources and those who use them. Because resources are usually scarce, it's is most important to people who allocate them, that they get the exact right amount of resources to right places. To people who actually use resources, the stable availability from year to year of those resources is a key to success.
What I suggest is that we would reward resource allocating people on basis on how accurate their allocations where, it the allocations where bigger or smaller than needed, they would loose their rewards. If the people who use resources, can get their job done with lower amount of resources than they were allocated, they would be rewarded, if they used the exact amount of resources or more, they would loose their rewards.
Basicly the system would be build on competition, where those who can be accurate and use their resources effectively would succeed. Of course to make the system actually work you would have to make quite much work with setting up parameters, and also integrating this basicly resource balacing reward system work with other reward and balancing systems in use.
If problems start at tempetures above 80F, and you keep your temperature about around 75F, you have less time available if and when some system or enviroment changes suddenly making your tempeture rise. If you by default have set the tempeture to 60F, you will get lot more time react before you run to 1) problems and 2) to serious problems. So, to asses risk, I would prefer to having more colder place, than a place being near a limit where after problems arise. Just my two cents.
A quate from Wikipedia
The world's first commercial W-CDMA service, FOMA, was launched by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in 2001. FOMA is not compatible with UMTS. But the effort for migrating the FOMA specifications to UMTS are indicated by Japan.
So, are you sure that it works in other parts of the world?
And back to the technology part, if Japanese phones would be technologically superior to other phones, then why Nokia is the world leader in mobile phones, and why Motorola and Samsung are the followers? Could it be that the technology in Japan isn't more advanced, and availability of certain features in phones is more contributed to Japanese consumers wanting more advanced features than to superior technological knowhow?
How rural is your rural?
Here are few examples of population density, on how many persons live in a km: Japan (337/km^2), USA (30/km), Germany (230/km^2) and Finland (15/km^2). In all of these countries the technology has to scale from densily populated ares to lower density areas. The thing that I claim is that in Japan even the rural areas are more populated than in the rest of world, thus allowing, and requiring building the mobile phone networks differently, thus allowing usage of different technologies and different solutions. So, the technology isn't ahead in Japan.
And when speaking about megapixel cameras and other features in phones, one has to remember that these technologies are all commodized. The reason why there are 3megapixel phones in Japan but not here is more contributed to Japanese consumers wanting more features than to more advanced technologies in use. You are right in that the technologies are more available to consumers, but there isn't no reason why they couldn't be available in the rest of the world, if consumers wanted.
In Japan, they use different technology solutions, not more advanced technology in mobile phones.
The situation in Japan differs much from situation in other parts of the world, namely population density in Japan is much higher and there aren't many areas in Japan where there isn't high population density. What this means is that you have to build your whole mobile phone network differently, you have to have lot's of base station and they have to operate in much smaller area, thus leading to lower power usage in both base stations and in mobile phones. Because power requirements are lower, Japanese mobile phones have been a lot smaller for decades. They don't have any magical technology that the rest of the world hasn't, they just a different situation with different needs.
It should also be noted that the markets have proved that Japanese don't have more advanced technology, if they would have, they would have stormed the markets allready.
Well, if there wouldn't be imbesil idiots running rampant in many organizations that think that they are next of god, then there would be no problem about discussing pays, but as there are, it's a good idea not to talk about your pay, otherwise you will get the idiots raise their voices "i want a raise too! i make as good code as him! i make more lines!!!".
Really, carrier paths sucks big time. What you need to is give up from titles and putting people in ordering people in organizational hierarchy. You may ask why! Well, things and needs change in organization leading people going up and down in organizational ladder, the problem becomes when you give somebody title like "lead software services manager", they just wont accept willingly modding them down.
That's why you must first give up from most of the titles and instead use following: junior engineer, engineer and senior engineer. You also need to change to project organization where you can easily put the most able body to do the job. In this way, people don't get offended when they are changed to do different job, and also when discussing about work related things, people can't just say "hey! I'm the lead developer I know these things", instead they have to rationalize and try to communicate to others with out authority given by title.
Oh, and last thing, you make your employees sign a Non Disclosure Agreement concerning their pay, or just talk all to them in this way "you know you are one the best people around here, and I would be glad that if you didn't discuss about your pay".
You should first define how rich capitalist countries are exploiting the poorer ones. The matter of fact is that todays rich countries are rich because they have for the last three to four hundred years been building their infrastructure. Infrastructure here defined as 1) govermental, 2) educational, 3) farming, 4) industrial production and 5) trasportation. Because this infrastructure is in place, countries having it have much larger ability to produce agricultural goods, industrial goods and services. Being rich is the product of producing more.
If you look at the poor countries in Africa and in South-America what you can see that they don't have had stabilized goverments for a long time, they haven't educated their population (ie. in Finland public teaching to read and write was started by church in 16th century), farmers haven't been educated by the goverment on how to farm (in Finland the Swedish crown started educating farmers by introducing potato and making everybody to farm it), industrial production hasn't started because goverment and local law and order haven't been adequate, and especially in Africa there isn't enough good roads to transport goods.
I don't say that the western countries wouldn't have exploited in the past poor countries, but what I'm claiming is that most of the poor countries would be poor or poorer with even with rich capitalist countries. Some countries like China, Thailand, South-Korea, Indonesia and Malesia have made quite much progress because they have quite long roots in history that give them some edge to other countries in govermental, educational and trasportation infrastructure.
Otherwise, if the whole world would be rich, we would have much bigger production and much more effective production system, which would propably lead to a situation where it would be even more cheaper to go to McD.
News flash, you wont survive life!!! We are all going to die!!!
So, basicly it's about optimizing my satisfactory level, which atleast now says to take the burger and life expectancy of about 75 years. I rather live my life doing things I want and like, than doing things that give me more years to live. What globalization is doing, is giving me more freedom to choose how I spend my life, and how comfortably I can live. That's quite big thing.
Oh, and I weight about 75kg (190cm height) and last thing I checked my cholesterol count was good. And actually some doctors think that having cholesterol isn't that bad thing, but that could also be explained about goverment wanting people not to live so much after going to retirement.
Option D: We all get rich, and our culture is taken over by corporations "Dude! You gotta a Dell!"
;)
As it now seems, US and Europe are staying in current track, China is developing and joins club of rich and developed countries, and others are following. I also suspect that China changes their system to true democracy in sometime. And when you think a little bit, what is common with all rich democracys, is wanting to enjoy comfortable life and live in peace.
In the end, I believe that option D takes us into a world where you can't tell where one country ends and anothers begins, you got the same businesses everywhere and you can choose the lifestyle that you want, ranging from Feng-Shui crazy Californians to 'ghetto super star' chinease living like 50 Cent. Sounds good to me.
Now, if you excuse me, I will go to McD to enjoy fruits of global world.
I live in Finland, in mid-sized town in the west cost. It's true that in Finland you can get basic broadband connection cheaply, 20e - 30e per month, and get speedier connections with just adding little more cash, ie. 8M/1M 60e, 12M/1M 69e, 24M/1M 89e. Sounds nice? Well it isn't that nice. In reality when you order 8M/1M connection you will in reality get a connection ranging from 2M to 4M. The connection itself can really deliver that 8M, but the pipes to the outside world arrent usually that fast. Actually one of my friends works at one of leading telcos in Finland, and he said that their standard answer to any question on why a customer doesn't get full speeds is "you live to far away"/"your lines are bad", just to avoid confessing that they really trick people ordering faster lines than they can deliver.
So in short, I don't think that the US situation is that bad, because the reality in other parts of the world, atleast in Finland, isn't that good.
PCI cards, hard- and opticaldrives have one thing called standards. You can but any pci-card to a machine and it works, same goes with other components except with processors. Processors have different support architecture that they need, with different components to use and they have different sockets. So having two suppliers of processors would leed to more engineering work (more motherboards), more components ned for those motherboards, their inventories would just explode. There is economical reason for having just one provider of processors, two could cost dearly.
I think this move by Disney and Apple will also have more drastic implications in another front, namely battle between Apple and labels on pricing of records in iTunes. iTunes first was just a big record store, but now by adding music videos and televisions shows, iTunes is becoming a content portal, a first stop to anybody who wants content from popular music to hit tv-shows.
The important thing here is that Apple is broadening their value generation base, they aren't anymore just a record store. They gather audience from music lovers to people wanting to watch tv, this makes iTunes have more people using it, and it makes iTunes more interesting market, giving Apple more power to negotiate with content producers. The move also makes sure that Microsoft and others have to play catch up with Apple, if they want to be a part of future content and media distribution landscape.
More speculative thing is, is Apple trying to build slowly vertically integrated media platform where people can computers, content players, software and services all come from Apple? Atleast to me it looks like it. The major question now is, can Apple and Jobs this time play it right and crap a near monopoly in content area, making Apple the next decades Microsoft?
What I would like to see in the next version of GPL is definition and terms of usage on when a program is linking to a GPL code and when it's using it as a service. In example if you use only MySQL, which is GPL, as database for you application, MySQL has defined this as linking, so making your own application also GPL. The thing goes complicated because developers of PostgreSQL haven't seen the matter as same. So in my intepretion I could use PostgreSQL as my database but not MySQL...
To clarify. If I would use MySQLs code or directly call it's classes then my application should be covered by GPL. But when I'm issuing SQL-commands via JDBC my application should not be covered by GPL. As a developer and a found of startup I would really like to have clarification to my issues...
P.S. In my case I solved the situation by making my application work with several different databases, that isn't linking anymore, it's using a services.
Actually nazis used municipal records to identify and locate jews when they invided the Dutch. Before the WW2 the Dutch govermant had most advanced system on keeping records of it citizens. When nazis took over the country, they used this system for their benefit. That's the reason why so large percentage (75%) of Netherlanding jews died (104000 out of 140000).