Google could be able to include advanced searching functionality into such a site, making it extremely useful. Imagine, for instance, the ability to hum a few chords of a song you just heard on the radio, but don't know the name of or the singer. They could find the song, or at least potential matches, and offer them up for sale.
That alone could give them a massive edge over Apple, Sony, and other online music retailers. It is a very difficult task to do well, but it may be within Google's reach, considering all the talent they have working for them.
While it is important to offer penalties that are felt by the corporations or businesses, you likewise don't want to punish them so much that they go out of business.
If a small company, perhaps 50 people, has a database of even just 50,000 credit card numbers stolen, the fines you suggest could easily ruin the company. That could lead to at least 50 people who are now unemployed, and potentially many more as the effect ripples through the economy.
Of course, that's just a small company. Take a large one, employing 40,000, and cause a similar failure. Now you've probably done far more damage to many more lives than was caused by the original data theft.
The safest thing for many companies to do, especially smaller ones, it institute the use of OpenBSD. While it doesn't provide 100% protection, by any means, it does offer a far higher level of security than is offered by most other operating systems.
Even if a company can't transition their entire network to OpenBSD, switching servers that require a high level of security over to OpenBSD is often a very good idea. In the remote chance that a security breach does happen (perhaps due to a misconfigured MySQL installation, a PHP flaw, an ftpd exploit, etc.), at least they could say that they had put some effort towards using highly secure systems.
But you can't just "ignore errors" when trying to write actual software, rather than just describing the appearance of a rendered document.
Even then, we must make a distinction between HTML and web browsers. HTML itself, especially XHTML, is strictly defined. Either a document is valid HTML, or it is not. It is web browsers, however, which often allow for invalid HTML, for a variety of reasons.
I doubt he was the only boy around that age who could skate and "act". Go to any English mall and you'll see a large number of kids that age performing stunts far beyond what is depicted in that video.
Remember, there was very little actual acting. He scribbles on the board, throws down the chalk, jumps on his skateboard, skates down the street, and then leaps onto the chesterfield. No dialogue at all, even! They could have likely picked any 10-year-old skateboarding chav from any British mall to play that role.
This is the sort of technology that could be very useful for cooling computer componentry. Such fabric could be used to potentially create a "tubing" that could be used to vent the heat from a CPU directly outside a system's case, without the heat transferring to the air within the system.
Even more importantly, such tubing could prove very useful for massive data centres or hosting complexes. The heat from computers could be collected and put to other uses. Some have theorized that it could even be used to generate power, if not used to heat rooms.
Of course, there are many non-computing uses for such a material. It could prove very useful in automobile engines, helping to keep certain components cool while also being used to pipe unwanted heat away from other machinery.
And beyond that, heating ducts made of such a material may prove useful in homes. If they manage to retain the heat better than existing ducting, we could see a tremendous drop in home heating expenses. Likewise, curtains made of this material may further help keep homes in hot climates colder, by insulating against heat.
Indeed, it is likely we will see clothing such as this used by firefighters quite soon, for instance. While that isn't everybody, it would start to bring such textiles into everyday usage.
If such materials are too expensive to be used for consumer-grade clothing, we may initially see it used for items such as cooking gloves. Eventually the technology will be developed further, and likely will become economically feasible for widespread use.
If I had to make a guess as to how long it would take, I would be inclined to think three to five years for more generalized applications, and widespread availability no more than five years after that.
Using systems like OpenBSD and Solaris, it is quite easy to provide an employee with a desktop that will not only vastly increase their productivity, but will also eliminate problems such as this.
Employees won't even be able to install Google Desktop on such systems. That alone is likely a better option than just telling them not to install such software, or threatening them with legal action if they do proceed to do so. Far less costly, too.
We constantly hear theories regarding the origins of life. That is not a bad thing; science depends on debate, discussion, analysis, and theorizing.
We tend to forget, however, that the one thing we do know with regards to the origins of multicellular life is that we don't truly know the origins of multicellular life. And it is quite possible that we will never have such answers.
A company shouldn't just have a stated "No Google Desktop" policy. They should run systems which make it virtually impossible for their employees to even install such software.
OpenBSD or Solaris desktops can make for a very secure corporate network. Google Desktop won't run on such systems. Likewise, the systems will be protected from other, potentially-malicious software that may prove harmful to a Windows system.
Running such a network strikes at the very root of the problem, which complements the policy you mentioned quite well.
One particularly good way of achieving such a policy is a transition to an OpenBSD or Solaris-based network of desktops.
While such systems of course aren't suitable for all users, they do provide an environment for getting basic work done (eg. email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.) that is far less vulnerable to the problems that plague many Windows installations.
You don't have to worry about Google Desktop when using OpenBSD or Solaris. As of this time, it's just plain a non-issue.
Best of all, you don't have to harp on your employees do not do this, or not do that. They just won't be able to do such things, period.
Real wage depends directly on productivity. Labour, like other resources, is paid its marginal product. So the nominal values you pulled out of your ass do not correlate with the original scenario.
And no, India and China cannot outdo the US for a large number of services and products. It is unlikely that an American consumer will go all the way to India for a haircut, for instance. Likewise, an American consumer likely won't order a pizza from a pizzeria in India or China.
We must remember that the media itself consists of corporations. Just take the case of NBC. It's owned by General Electric. General Electric is also well-known for their manufacturing of military products.
We all know that war is often very profitable for both those who manufacture the supplies consumed during conflict, as well as for those who report on said conflict. Therefore it seems unlikely that those who are benefitting the most from a rather pro-war administration (if not an entire system) will stand against it.
Such an initiative would require the corporate mass media of the US to in turn speak out against itself. Again, it's doubtful that it would do it, at least to the extent where real change may happen.
Products like this lead to a serious problem for many software developers, especially those who feel that quality and security are paramount concerns when deploying a product or service.
I cannot, in good conscious, recommend the use of PHP for anything serious, due to its poor history of flaws. I especially cannot recommend the use of it for a product that will be collecting sensitive or private information from users, especially when said information is financial in nature.
Thus while it may provide a quick and easy solution, it only ends up causing problems for those of us developers who care about creating solid, secure, and quality systems. The cost of even one individual's private information being thieved due to an insecure system (potentially caused by poorly written PHP software) far outweighs the ease of use benefits.
Go ahead, change the numbers around all you want. As long as you stick with possible values (ie. non-negative values), the facts remain the same. Namely that fact that one nation cannot always be the best at producing everything.
Campaign financing reforms are useless. They won't solve any problems. First of all, the money will still find its way to politicians. Sure, go ahead and cap donations at some fixed amount. Now the politicians will receive funding via other avenues, likely unbeknownst to the public.
Second of all, we'd likely see a situation where only the rich could afford to run for office. In many places that's already the case, even without reforms.
The only solution is a well-informed, intellectual citizenry. Unfortunately, the mass media in the US does not lead to such a populace. Most of the people have little incentive to take an active role in monitoring who is financing the politicians, and thus do not base their votes accordingly.
No, not everything can be made cheaper somewhere else.
Suppose it takes China 10 h to produce a computer, and 2 h to produce a car . It takes America 2 h to produce a computer, and 1 h to produce a car. America has an absolute advantage over China, as they can produce more computers and cars in a fixed amount of time.
In the US, 1 computer costs 2 cars. In China, 1 computer costs 5 cars. In the US, 1 car costs 0.5 computers. In China, 1 car costs only 0.2 computers. As we can see, China gives up fewer computers for each car produced than the US does.
Thus, even though the US can produce both goods faster, and can hence produce more goods in a fixed period of time, it still costs them more to produce a car (in terms of computers). Thus China should focus on producing cars, while the US manufactures computers, because they each have a comparative advantage in that area.
Now, that's very basic trade economics. It doesn't necessarily apply well to the real world, but such examples do show us that one country can never produce everything for less than another nation. Even if both nations have the same productivity, the result is that neither has a comparative advantage nor an absolute advantage over the other.
But you are affected by it, albeit indirectly. I'm not sure what sort of software development you do, but it's quite likely that you would be affected.
If you write consumer-grade software, it must be considered that you won't necessarily make money if all your customers have been laid off from their manufacturing jobs, and thus cannot pay for your software.
If you write the software that is used by (downsizing or bankrupting) manufacturers, you'll likewise be hurt. If there are no robotics to write control systems for, or few businesses requiring server and accounting software, due to an exodus of manufacturing, you suffer.
If you develop software in an academic setting, you'll likewise feel the pinch. People who aren't working likely won't be able to afford higher education. Of course, a place like Canada sports heavily subsidized university-level education. If people aren't working, or they are and making very little, they the tax revenue collected by the governments decreases. That will lead to smaller amounts going towards subsidizing higher education, for instance. For such a developer, that may translate to lower wages, or even job loss.
Everyone is connected when it comes to the economy. If Joe Neighbor loses his job, it can end up harming your prosperity, too.
It's not about trading what one has in surplus. The theory is that one trades in the goods in which one has a comparative advantage. That is, you trade in the goods that cost you the least to produce.
A surplus of a particular good will end up being eliminated by market forces. If the supply exceeds the demand, then the price will lower until there is no more surplus.
Please keep in mind that the Democrats are, much like the Republicans, funded by the very corporations and wealthy individuals who gain the most from outsourcing. Voting for them is basically a vote for the status quo.
You obviously misunderstood the point. It is not about a direct comparison between American internment camps and spammers being able to buy their spam into peoples' inboxes.
It's a matter of taking some action to remedy a situation, only to have it backfire and cause numerous more problems than it was originally intended to solve.
What I don't think you realize is that both the free democracy and the free market have failed, for what might be considered the very same reasons: monopoly and oligopoly. A republic does not do well when one must basically choose between two choices, both of which are extremely similar and financially backed by corporations and the wealthy. Likewise, a free market fails when oligopoly and monopoly become the standard. Regardless, the failure is the same: a lack of true choice, and a lack of true competition.
In the near future we may see more emphasis being placed on strict functional languages, such as Haskell, for such massively multithreaded and parallel development at the commodity level. Many of the issues associated with concurrent development with traditional imperative or imperative OO languages can be avoided via stateless computation.
Even a language like Erlang may begin to gain widespread popularity among game developers, as they begin to see the benefits that it brings when writing multithreaded applications.
With more industry support behind such technology, we may witness a computing revolution. It has been decades in the making, but its time is quickly coming upon us.
Indeed. Their attitude towards Microsoft, Sony, and the recording industry highlights how truly un-free market the Republicans (and Democrats) are.
While the free market is a truly remarkable beast, it at times does fail. Even the most diehard libertarian recognizes that fact, and accepts that sometimes extramarket forces are needed to correct such failures.
Corporations are often considered a free market aberration. They allow for monopolistic and oligopolistic situations to arise, and such situations are often not good for any market. We end up seeing situations where one company (or a small group of companies) can basically hold an entire industry hostage, not to mention wronging their customers repeatedly.
That is why those who truly support the free market do support government intervention. The market has failed, such failure is obvious, and thus it does require some help to get working again. Unfortunately, it is doubtful we will see the current administration, let alone any in the near future, taking the necessary actions.
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Google could be able to include advanced searching functionality into such a site, making it extremely useful. Imagine, for instance, the ability to hum a few chords of a song you just heard on the radio, but don't know the name of or the singer. They could find the song, or at least potential matches, and offer them up for sale.
That alone could give them a massive edge over Apple, Sony, and other online music retailers. It is a very difficult task to do well, but it may be within Google's reach, considering all the talent they have working for them.
While it is important to offer penalties that are felt by the corporations or businesses, you likewise don't want to punish them so much that they go out of business.
If a small company, perhaps 50 people, has a database of even just 50,000 credit card numbers stolen, the fines you suggest could easily ruin the company. That could lead to at least 50 people who are now unemployed, and potentially many more as the effect ripples through the economy.
Of course, that's just a small company. Take a large one, employing 40,000, and cause a similar failure. Now you've probably done far more damage to many more lives than was caused by the original data theft.
The safest thing for many companies to do, especially smaller ones, it institute the use of OpenBSD. While it doesn't provide 100% protection, by any means, it does offer a far higher level of security than is offered by most other operating systems.
Even if a company can't transition their entire network to OpenBSD, switching servers that require a high level of security over to OpenBSD is often a very good idea. In the remote chance that a security breach does happen (perhaps due to a misconfigured MySQL installation, a PHP flaw, an ftpd exploit, etc.), at least they could say that they had put some effort towards using highly secure systems.
But you can't just "ignore errors" when trying to write actual software, rather than just describing the appearance of a rendered document.
Even then, we must make a distinction between HTML and web browsers. HTML itself, especially XHTML, is strictly defined. Either a document is valid HTML, or it is not. It is web browsers, however, which often allow for invalid HTML, for a variety of reasons.
I'm from Britain, but I spent some time in Saskatoon a long while back.
I doubt he was the only boy around that age who could skate and "act". Go to any English mall and you'll see a large number of kids that age performing stunts far beyond what is depicted in that video.
Remember, there was very little actual acting. He scribbles on the board, throws down the chalk, jumps on his skateboard, skates down the street, and then leaps onto the chesterfield. No dialogue at all, even! They could have likely picked any 10-year-old skateboarding chav from any British mall to play that role.
This is the sort of technology that could be very useful for cooling computer componentry. Such fabric could be used to potentially create a "tubing" that could be used to vent the heat from a CPU directly outside a system's case, without the heat transferring to the air within the system.
Even more importantly, such tubing could prove very useful for massive data centres or hosting complexes. The heat from computers could be collected and put to other uses. Some have theorized that it could even be used to generate power, if not used to heat rooms.
Of course, there are many non-computing uses for such a material. It could prove very useful in automobile engines, helping to keep certain components cool while also being used to pipe unwanted heat away from other machinery.
And beyond that, heating ducts made of such a material may prove useful in homes. If they manage to retain the heat better than existing ducting, we could see a tremendous drop in home heating expenses. Likewise, curtains made of this material may further help keep homes in hot climates colder, by insulating against heat.
How are you defining 'regular clothes'?
Indeed, it is likely we will see clothing such as this used by firefighters quite soon, for instance. While that isn't everybody, it would start to bring such textiles into everyday usage.
If such materials are too expensive to be used for consumer-grade clothing, we may initially see it used for items such as cooking gloves. Eventually the technology will be developed further, and likely will become economically feasible for widespread use.
If I had to make a guess as to how long it would take, I would be inclined to think three to five years for more generalized applications, and widespread availability no more than five years after that.
Using systems like OpenBSD and Solaris, it is quite easy to provide an employee with a desktop that will not only vastly increase their productivity, but will also eliminate problems such as this.
Employees won't even be able to install Google Desktop on such systems. That alone is likely a better option than just telling them not to install such software, or threatening them with legal action if they do proceed to do so. Far less costly, too.
We constantly hear theories regarding the origins of life. That is not a bad thing; science depends on debate, discussion, analysis, and theorizing.
We tend to forget, however, that the one thing we do know with regards to the origins of multicellular life is that we don't truly know the origins of multicellular life. And it is quite possible that we will never have such answers.
A company shouldn't just have a stated "No Google Desktop" policy. They should run systems which make it virtually impossible for their employees to even install such software.
OpenBSD or Solaris desktops can make for a very secure corporate network. Google Desktop won't run on such systems. Likewise, the systems will be protected from other, potentially-malicious software that may prove harmful to a Windows system.
Running such a network strikes at the very root of the problem, which complements the policy you mentioned quite well.
One particularly good way of achieving such a policy is a transition to an OpenBSD or Solaris-based network of desktops.
While such systems of course aren't suitable for all users, they do provide an environment for getting basic work done (eg. email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.) that is far less vulnerable to the problems that plague many Windows installations.
You don't have to worry about Google Desktop when using OpenBSD or Solaris. As of this time, it's just plain a non-issue.
Best of all, you don't have to harp on your employees do not do this, or not do that. They just won't be able to do such things, period.
Real wage depends directly on productivity. Labour, like other resources, is paid its marginal product. So the nominal values you pulled out of your ass do not correlate with the original scenario.
And no, India and China cannot outdo the US for a large number of services and products. It is unlikely that an American consumer will go all the way to India for a haircut, for instance. Likewise, an American consumer likely won't order a pizza from a pizzeria in India or China.
We must remember that the media itself consists of corporations. Just take the case of NBC. It's owned by General Electric. General Electric is also well-known for their manufacturing of military products.
We all know that war is often very profitable for both those who manufacture the supplies consumed during conflict, as well as for those who report on said conflict. Therefore it seems unlikely that those who are benefitting the most from a rather pro-war administration (if not an entire system) will stand against it.
Such an initiative would require the corporate mass media of the US to in turn speak out against itself. Again, it's doubtful that it would do it, at least to the extent where real change may happen.
Products like this lead to a serious problem for many software developers, especially those who feel that quality and security are paramount concerns when deploying a product or service.
I cannot, in good conscious, recommend the use of PHP for anything serious, due to its poor history of flaws. I especially cannot recommend the use of it for a product that will be collecting sensitive or private information from users, especially when said information is financial in nature.
Thus while it may provide a quick and easy solution, it only ends up causing problems for those of us developers who care about creating solid, secure, and quality systems. The cost of even one individual's private information being thieved due to an insecure system (potentially caused by poorly written PHP software) far outweighs the ease of use benefits.
Go ahead, change the numbers around all you want. As long as you stick with possible values (ie. non-negative values), the facts remain the same. Namely that fact that one nation cannot always be the best at producing everything.
There was recently a review of Patterns in Game Design. It got a 4.
Campaign financing reforms are useless. They won't solve any problems. First of all, the money will still find its way to politicians. Sure, go ahead and cap donations at some fixed amount. Now the politicians will receive funding via other avenues, likely unbeknownst to the public.
Second of all, we'd likely see a situation where only the rich could afford to run for office. In many places that's already the case, even without reforms.
The only solution is a well-informed, intellectual citizenry. Unfortunately, the mass media in the US does not lead to such a populace. Most of the people have little incentive to take an active role in monitoring who is financing the politicians, and thus do not base their votes accordingly.
No, not everything can be made cheaper somewhere else.
Suppose it takes China 10 h to produce a computer, and 2 h to produce a car . It takes America 2 h to produce a computer, and 1 h to produce a car. America has an absolute advantage over China, as they can produce more computers and cars in a fixed amount of time.
In the US, 1 computer costs 2 cars. In China, 1 computer costs 5 cars. In the US, 1 car costs 0.5 computers. In China, 1 car costs only 0.2 computers. As we can see, China gives up fewer computers for each car produced than the US does.
Thus, even though the US can produce both goods faster, and can hence produce more goods in a fixed period of time, it still costs them more to produce a car (in terms of computers). Thus China should focus on producing cars, while the US manufactures computers, because they each have a comparative advantage in that area.
Now, that's very basic trade economics. It doesn't necessarily apply well to the real world, but such examples do show us that one country can never produce everything for less than another nation. Even if both nations have the same productivity, the result is that neither has a comparative advantage nor an absolute advantage over the other.
But you are affected by it, albeit indirectly. I'm not sure what sort of software development you do, but it's quite likely that you would be affected.
If you write consumer-grade software, it must be considered that you won't necessarily make money if all your customers have been laid off from their manufacturing jobs, and thus cannot pay for your software.
If you write the software that is used by (downsizing or bankrupting) manufacturers, you'll likewise be hurt. If there are no robotics to write control systems for, or few businesses requiring server and accounting software, due to an exodus of manufacturing, you suffer.
If you develop software in an academic setting, you'll likewise feel the pinch. People who aren't working likely won't be able to afford higher education. Of course, a place like Canada sports heavily subsidized university-level education. If people aren't working, or they are and making very little, they the tax revenue collected by the governments decreases. That will lead to smaller amounts going towards subsidizing higher education, for instance. For such a developer, that may translate to lower wages, or even job loss.
Everyone is connected when it comes to the economy. If Joe Neighbor loses his job, it can end up harming your prosperity, too.
It's not about trading what one has in surplus. The theory is that one trades in the goods in which one has a comparative advantage. That is, you trade in the goods that cost you the least to produce.
A surplus of a particular good will end up being eliminated by market forces. If the supply exceeds the demand, then the price will lower until there is no more surplus.
Please keep in mind that the Democrats are, much like the Republicans, funded by the very corporations and wealthy individuals who gain the most from outsourcing. Voting for them is basically a vote for the status quo.
You obviously misunderstood the point. It is not about a direct comparison between American internment camps and spammers being able to buy their spam into peoples' inboxes.
It's a matter of taking some action to remedy a situation, only to have it backfire and cause numerous more problems than it was originally intended to solve.
What I don't think you realize is that both the free democracy and the free market have failed, for what might be considered the very same reasons: monopoly and oligopoly. A republic does not do well when one must basically choose between two choices, both of which are extremely similar and financially backed by corporations and the wealthy. Likewise, a free market fails when oligopoly and monopoly become the standard. Regardless, the failure is the same: a lack of true choice, and a lack of true competition.
In the near future we may see more emphasis being placed on strict functional languages, such as Haskell, for such massively multithreaded and parallel development at the commodity level. Many of the issues associated with concurrent development with traditional imperative or imperative OO languages can be avoided via stateless computation.
Even a language like Erlang may begin to gain widespread popularity among game developers, as they begin to see the benefits that it brings when writing multithreaded applications.
With more industry support behind such technology, we may witness a computing revolution. It has been decades in the making, but its time is quickly coming upon us.
Indeed. Their attitude towards Microsoft, Sony, and the recording industry highlights how truly un-free market the Republicans (and Democrats) are.
While the free market is a truly remarkable beast, it at times does fail. Even the most diehard libertarian recognizes that fact, and accepts that sometimes extramarket forces are needed to correct such failures.
Corporations are often considered a free market aberration. They allow for monopolistic and oligopolistic situations to arise, and such situations are often not good for any market. We end up seeing situations where one company (or a small group of companies) can basically hold an entire industry hostage, not to mention wronging their customers repeatedly.
That is why those who truly support the free market do support government intervention. The market has failed, such failure is obvious, and thus it does require some help to get working again. Unfortunately, it is doubtful we will see the current administration, let alone any in the near future, taking the necessary actions.