Personally, I feel that when you have paid your debt to society you should be no longer have to keep paying for the rest of your life with this public humiliation.
Personally, I feel that society decides how much of a debt is owed, not you, and society has decided that these sorts of things are part and parcel thereof.
You're right to be skeptical. This happens with every movie that's even remotely successful - someone sues, claiming that the idea was stolen from them. Spielberg and Universal had something like a dozen lawsuits filed against them over Jurassic Park, IIRC.
If you were to sit down tonight and write a completely original script that wound up being a blockbuster, I practically guarantee you'd get sued by someone over it. And the vast majority of such suits get tossed out as quickly as they're filed, because they're almost invariably completely worthless on their merits. Maybe there's something to this one over the Matrix, but the track record for these sorts of things is pretty dismal.
You must not have kids - trust me, grandma will not be happy with sixty-second, postage-stamp sized videos;)
More seriously, that's a solution for some people, in some cases, but it doesn't obviate removable media by any stretch of the imagination - at the moment. Maybe someday, but not now, and not any time real soon, most likely. There will continue to be a place for cheap, portable, disposable, easy-to-use media that's accessible to as many people as possible, just as a lowest-common-denominator, if nothing else. Right now, videotape is the lowest common denominator for video distribution - I can pick ten random residential addresses in the continental United States to send a VHS videotape to, and know that it's likely that at least 9 of the 10 of them will be able to watch it. If I make it internet-only, I just cut that potential audience at least in half, and if I make it broadband-only, I just cut it by about 5/6'ths.
And DVD is already taking the place of videotape as that lowest common denominator. Maybe someday, when everyone has A) a computer, and; B) a fast connection, and; C) there's something resembling a universal format for digital video, then removable media will be obsolete, but I don't see that happening any time soon...
Re:DVD-Rs go 8x
on
DVD-Rs go 8x
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
What will you say when you can hook your iPod into your TV and watch movies from it? The parent is dead on: removable media is obsolete and outdated.
So when I want to send my mother a video of her grandson's birthday party, I'll just drop my iPod in the mail for her? Don't think so...
Ah, that's enough information, then. I assume that the article you mention was either this one, or one similar to it. In which case, we should remember that it's strictly discussing productivity growth rates, not absolute measures of productivity itself. And even when the suggested corrections are made, the US still has a higher rate of growth than Europe.
That will become a huge problem once China and the rest of the world stops buying US treasury bonds.
LOL - I almost missed this one.
Yes, yes - we all know that European politicians would dearly love for the euro to become the world's de facto reserve currency. And then they'll discover that 35 hour work weeks are still too long, and wouldn't it be nice to have 27 hour work week, and just think of how many jobs that'll create, and spending 28% of GDP on welfare really isn't enough, so let's boost it to 35%, and of course we'll have to raise the tax burden to 65% of GDP instead of 60%, and so forth and so on and on and on. Or something like that, and the charming phenomenon of "Euro-sclerosis" will once again rear its head, and oh yes, no doubt, they'll be beating a path to your door to buy euro-bonds then...;)
Nevertheless, I notice you're not exactly rushing out to find any numbers of your own to support your currently-unsupported contentions about productivity - data that is admittedly imperfect is still orders of magnitude better than no data at all, when it comes to picking and choosing between my flawed numbers and your anecdotes. Pick the measurement you prefer and pick the observer you prefer - my prediction is that the relative relationships I've outlined will be borne out, even if the absolute measurements are different.
Once again, I'm not jingoistic, but I seem to detect a tendency of american statisticians to make their numbers look more impressive.
Should be easy enough to find out if most European economists and statisticians reach differing conclusions, then. I tend to doubt you'll find much, but I'm always willing to entertain new ideas.
Actually, GDP per working hour (productivity) is on par in Western Europe and the US. Far higher in economies such as Sweden, Norway, Finland and The Netherlands.
Except that it isn't. The numbers for 2001 are the easiest to lay my hands on at the moment, so in Sweden, for example, the average number of hours worked per person in 2001 was 1,603, and the per capita GDP was about $24,700 (purchasing-power parity adjusted). That works out to about $15.40 per hour per worker. Contrast with the US, which had 1,821 hours per year per worker, and a per capita GDP of $36,300, or about $19.93 per hour per worker - productivity almost 30% higher than in Sweden, by that measure. Netherlands: $25,800 per capita, 1346 hours per worker per year = $19.16 per hour per worker, or close to par with the US but certainly not "far higher". Of the countries you listed, the only one that's somewhat higher than the US is Norway, which is hardly a surprise given that the Norwegians are floating on a pool of oil.
And looking at the larger economies of Europe, they really aren't on a par at all - France: $25,400 per capita GDP, 1,532 hours per worker per year = $16.57 per worker per hour. Germany: $26,200 per capita GDP, 1,467 hours per worker per year = $17.85 per worker per hour. UK: $24,700 per capita GDP, 1,711 hours per worker per year = $14.43 per worker per hour.
This is all readily verifiable - I drew the hours-worked numbers from the OECD and the per capita GDP estimates from the 2002 World Factbook.
Factor in both these things and Europe has higher productivity and probably that obtuse concept: "Quality of life".
Well, I think I've adequately addressed productivity, but "quality of life" is an inherently subjective measure, by any definition. There's nothing inherently inferior about European workers, by any stretch of the imagination - the major difference is in cultural values, I think. We value different things, and the choices we make reflect those values. And so long as we're all happy with those choices, and we understand that both parties have made certain trade-offs in pursuit of those choices...well, who am I to complain?;)
Over the past three years, living standards, as measured by GDP per person, have risen by 5.8 percent in the European Union but by only 1 percent in the United States.
And if your per capita GDP goes from $1 per year up to $2 a year, you'll have a 100% increase in your standard of living, making those Europeans look like a gang of lazy bums - of course, the elephant in the living room in such a case is that your absolute standard of living is still abysmal by comparison. And then the follow-up question is whether such percentage gains are really sustainable over time - in my hypothetical, they certainly aren't, and the jury is still out, I think, on whether such gains are sustainable for Europe as well. In any case, the fact remains that the per capita GDP in France and Germany, for example, is still about 70% of what it is in the United States. They ought to be increasing faster, considering how far they have to go in order to catch up.
Once a critical mass of FFV ownership were achived, and a critical mass of ethanol fueling stations and production infrastructure existed, I don't see any reason that the government should or would continue to subsidize it's production, and think of all the taxpayer dollars saved by not having to deploy our military every time the oil supply is threatened.
Probably not as much as you think. You're going to wind up deploying to many of the same regions anyway, for the very simple reason that radical Islamists (as opposed to moderate Islam) hate you regardless of whether or not you buy oil. It does not require billions of dollars of oil wealth to purchase five coach-class tickets and a set of box cutters, and then steer the plane into a building.
In terms of arguing that oil is cheaper, it's only cheaper when you ignore the sociopolitical impact and costs that are hidden at the pump because they are incurred at the federal government level, in the way your taxpayer dollars and the wealth of the First World is allocated to defense spending.
That's all fine and good, but at this point you're arguing in an informational vacuum, so to speak. Unless and until you can put a number on the hidden costs and sociopolitical costs you assert exist, and a number on the benefits you assert will be reaped, you simply have no way of knowing whether or not the presumed benefits even exist, let alone whether they outweigh the costs involved. And there is very definitely a cost here - making energy more expensive literally makes everything else produced more expensive as well, which means a reduction in everybody's standard of living, not to mention the opportunity cost associated with paying more for energy.
Now, it may be the case the the benefits outweigh those costs, as you suggest, but at this point, I don't know that - and no offense, but neither, I suspect, do you. And I think it's important to really know, as much as is possible, that the benefits aren't completely imaginary, especially when we know that the costs are very real.
But the unfortunate reality right now is that the economics of pumping shit out of the ground is very, very hard to compete with. The cost basis of oil (formed mostly by transportation, corruption and cronyism) vs. any harvested biological feedstocks used to make ethanol or biodiesel may be closer to competitive these days, but it's unlikely that the harvested feedstocks will ever win out by a large enough margin to encourage the capital investment necessary to switch over the huge established infrastructure without substantial government intervention.
Assuming, arguendo, that I accept that this is really a problem in the first place, then the only thing substantial government intervention will do will be to make something that's inevitable anyway more expensive. Eventually, whether it's 50 or 500 years from now, the world will run out of oil to pump out of the ground, and as oil gets scarcer and scarcer, the price will rise. Eventually, the comparative economics will be such that resources that are currently uneconomic by comparison, will be economically viable, which they aren't now. And at that point, if and when biodiesels or ethanol or fuel cells or whatever become cheaper than scarce oil, you won't need substantial government intervention to get people to change - they'll do it all by themselves. The only thing trying to speed that day up does is make it more expensive in the long run by forcing people to spend money that they currently don't have to spend, and would generally prefer not to spend if someone wasn't making them do so.
And if that day never comes, for whatever reason, and oil continues to be the cheapest source of energy available...so what? I've yet to see anyone explain why expensive energy is inherently better than cheap energy. Certainly we can take steps to mitigate the pollution issues associated with fossil fuels, but if it still turns out that oil is the cheapest energy source available, what then is the incentive to switch?
I don't like plexi though, not just for aesthetic reasons, but also for fish health.
I've noticed the same thing. Every time I really give plex a whirl, I can't help but notice that acrylic tanks seem to get dirtier faster than glass. And for whatever reason, acrylic seems to facilitate algae growth better than glass does, so maintaining plex always feels like it takes more effort than glass does. That's why I prefer glass myself - then again, I don't live near a highly active airbase.
Now, how in the fuck did we get off on a tangent about fish care on a thread about the Concorde?;)
If it's something you're really concerned about, perhaps you ought to consider plexiglass instead of glass. I know plex can scratch, but it's probably better to have a slightly scratched tank full of live fish than it is to have a carpet full of dead ones;)
What's wrong with a working business model that's paid for by taxpayers?
Nothing, as long as it's my business model, and not yours. Not to mention that "working" is rarely defined as "loses money hand-over-fist" as Concorde did.
Although not obvious, you lose the ability to use nbtstat -a on the IP address to get local user name.
...if you disable Messenger. Somebody needs to mod you up - I had quite forgotten about that, mostly since I never use it, but you're absolutely right. If you rely on this, you may not want to disable Messenger.
I know this is going to sound highly unusual for Windows, but you don't actually have to restart once you stop the service. Rebooting gets to be a bit reflexive after a while, but stopping and starting services is one of the few cases in a Microsoft OS where you don't have to feed the reboot monkey;)
You don't lose much at all - the only dependency I know of is the Alerter service, which does administrative alerts locally and remotely. You won't be able to send those popup messages to remote users any more if they have Messenger disabled, which is fine by me, becase they're annoying as all hell anyway - it has the lovely side-effect of preventing those stupid popup spam messages, as an earlier reply alluded to, even if you don't have a firewall blocking it. Which you really should have anyway;)
If you don't use that - and I don't, since it's not exactly hard to roll scripts that handle administrative alerts in other ways - you can probably pretty safely disable Messenger.
It could probably be somewhat simpler to disable it, but it's not all that bad. What they could do better is making sure that people know the difference between the Messenger service and the MSN Messenger app, as you seem to suggest.
Anyway, in case anyone's reading this and doesn't know how to disable Messenger, go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative tools -> Services. Right-click on Messenger and pull up the properties sheet. On the "general" tab, select "disabled" for "Startup type". Then hit the "Stop" button right under that on the "general" tab to stop the service if it's currently running. That's for 2K - I assume XP is similar.
It is of note that Apple is getting 4x the bang, for 1/7 the buck, from which can easily be calculated 28 bangs per buck.
I do believe that you, sir, didn't bother reading the article.
It is of note that this $38 million is the cost of the entire UT clustering project over the next five years, not simply the cost of this initial 300 node system. The article clearly states that another 200 nodes will be added within the next year. Considering that nobody here appears to know what the final UT product will actually look like, nor does it appear that anyone here knows how much the VT cluster will cost over the next five years, it is painfully obvious that this article is simply being used as a pretext for trash-talking by various fanboys, without the benefit of any real factual information to support such.
Good thing we issued the Sacajawea dollar - everybody's using that, right?
If by "everybody" you mean "the Post Office", then yeah, everybody's using them;)
Seriously, that's the only place I see them in regular use - stick a $20 nill into the self-serve stamp machine for a $7.40 book of stamps, and you'll get a half-pound of Sacajaweas and Susan B's back as change.
Slashdot Mirror
Schrodinger thought it was pretty funny - he had this story about a cat he used to tell...
Personally, I feel that society decides how much of a debt is owed, not you, and society has decided that these sorts of things are part and parcel thereof.
"It's a Small World" is one of those rides that would be greatly improved by handing shotguns to the riders as they board...
If you were to sit down tonight and write a completely original script that wound up being a blockbuster, I practically guarantee you'd get sued by someone over it. And the vast majority of such suits get tossed out as quickly as they're filed, because they're almost invariably completely worthless on their merits. Maybe there's something to this one over the Matrix, but the track record for these sorts of things is pretty dismal.
More seriously, that's a solution for some people, in some cases, but it doesn't obviate removable media by any stretch of the imagination - at the moment. Maybe someday, but not now, and not any time real soon, most likely. There will continue to be a place for cheap, portable, disposable, easy-to-use media that's accessible to as many people as possible, just as a lowest-common-denominator, if nothing else. Right now, videotape is the lowest common denominator for video distribution - I can pick ten random residential addresses in the continental United States to send a VHS videotape to, and know that it's likely that at least 9 of the 10 of them will be able to watch it. If I make it internet-only, I just cut that potential audience at least in half, and if I make it broadband-only, I just cut it by about 5/6'ths.
And DVD is already taking the place of videotape as that lowest common denominator. Maybe someday, when everyone has A) a computer, and; B) a fast connection, and; C) there's something resembling a universal format for digital video, then removable media will be obsolete, but I don't see that happening any time soon...
So when I want to send my mother a video of her grandson's birthday party, I'll just drop my iPod in the mail for her? Don't think so...
Ah, that's enough information, then. I assume that the article you mention was either this one, or one similar to it. In which case, we should remember that it's strictly discussing productivity growth rates, not absolute measures of productivity itself. And even when the suggested corrections are made, the US still has a higher rate of growth than Europe.
LOL - I almost missed this one.
Yes, yes - we all know that European politicians would dearly love for the euro to become the world's de facto reserve currency. And then they'll discover that 35 hour work weeks are still too long, and wouldn't it be nice to have 27 hour work week, and just think of how many jobs that'll create, and spending 28% of GDP on welfare really isn't enough, so let's boost it to 35%, and of course we'll have to raise the tax burden to 65% of GDP instead of 60%, and so forth and so on and on and on. Or something like that, and the charming phenomenon of "Euro-sclerosis" will once again rear its head, and oh yes, no doubt, they'll be beating a path to your door to buy euro-bonds then... ;)
Once again, I'm not jingoistic, but I seem to detect a tendency of american statisticians to make their numbers look more impressive.
Should be easy enough to find out if most European economists and statisticians reach differing conclusions, then. I tend to doubt you'll find much, but I'm always willing to entertain new ideas.
Except that it isn't. The numbers for 2001 are the easiest to lay my hands on at the moment, so in Sweden, for example, the average number of hours worked per person in 2001 was 1,603, and the per capita GDP was about $24,700 (purchasing-power parity adjusted). That works out to about $15.40 per hour per worker. Contrast with the US, which had 1,821 hours per year per worker, and a per capita GDP of $36,300, or about $19.93 per hour per worker - productivity almost 30% higher than in Sweden, by that measure. Netherlands: $25,800 per capita, 1346 hours per worker per year = $19.16 per hour per worker, or close to par with the US but certainly not "far higher". Of the countries you listed, the only one that's somewhat higher than the US is Norway, which is hardly a surprise given that the Norwegians are floating on a pool of oil.
And looking at the larger economies of Europe, they really aren't on a par at all - France: $25,400 per capita GDP, 1,532 hours per worker per year = $16.57 per worker per hour. Germany: $26,200 per capita GDP, 1,467 hours per worker per year = $17.85 per worker per hour. UK: $24,700 per capita GDP, 1,711 hours per worker per year = $14.43 per worker per hour.
This is all readily verifiable - I drew the hours-worked numbers from the OECD and the per capita GDP estimates from the 2002 World Factbook.
Factor in both these things and Europe has higher productivity and probably that obtuse concept: "Quality of life".
Well, I think I've adequately addressed productivity, but "quality of life" is an inherently subjective measure, by any definition. There's nothing inherently inferior about European workers, by any stretch of the imagination - the major difference is in cultural values, I think. We value different things, and the choices we make reflect those values. And so long as we're all happy with those choices, and we understand that both parties have made certain trade-offs in pursuit of those choices...well, who am I to complain? ;)
And if your per capita GDP goes from $1 per year up to $2 a year, you'll have a 100% increase in your standard of living, making those Europeans look like a gang of lazy bums - of course, the elephant in the living room in such a case is that your absolute standard of living is still abysmal by comparison. And then the follow-up question is whether such percentage gains are really sustainable over time - in my hypothetical, they certainly aren't, and the jury is still out, I think, on whether such gains are sustainable for Europe as well. In any case, the fact remains that the per capita GDP in France and Germany, for example, is still about 70% of what it is in the United States. They ought to be increasing faster, considering how far they have to go in order to catch up.
Probably not as much as you think. You're going to wind up deploying to many of the same regions anyway, for the very simple reason that radical Islamists (as opposed to moderate Islam) hate you regardless of whether or not you buy oil. It does not require billions of dollars of oil wealth to purchase five coach-class tickets and a set of box cutters, and then steer the plane into a building.
In terms of arguing that oil is cheaper, it's only cheaper when you ignore the sociopolitical impact and costs that are hidden at the pump because they are incurred at the federal government level, in the way your taxpayer dollars and the wealth of the First World is allocated to defense spending.
That's all fine and good, but at this point you're arguing in an informational vacuum, so to speak. Unless and until you can put a number on the hidden costs and sociopolitical costs you assert exist, and a number on the benefits you assert will be reaped, you simply have no way of knowing whether or not the presumed benefits even exist, let alone whether they outweigh the costs involved. And there is very definitely a cost here - making energy more expensive literally makes everything else produced more expensive as well, which means a reduction in everybody's standard of living, not to mention the opportunity cost associated with paying more for energy.
Now, it may be the case the the benefits outweigh those costs, as you suggest, but at this point, I don't know that - and no offense, but neither, I suspect, do you. And I think it's important to really know, as much as is possible, that the benefits aren't completely imaginary, especially when we know that the costs are very real.
Assuming, arguendo, that I accept that this is really a problem in the first place, then the only thing substantial government intervention will do will be to make something that's inevitable anyway more expensive. Eventually, whether it's 50 or 500 years from now, the world will run out of oil to pump out of the ground, and as oil gets scarcer and scarcer, the price will rise. Eventually, the comparative economics will be such that resources that are currently uneconomic by comparison, will be economically viable, which they aren't now. And at that point, if and when biodiesels or ethanol or fuel cells or whatever become cheaper than scarce oil, you won't need substantial government intervention to get people to change - they'll do it all by themselves. The only thing trying to speed that day up does is make it more expensive in the long run by forcing people to spend money that they currently don't have to spend, and would generally prefer not to spend if someone wasn't making them do so.
And if that day never comes, for whatever reason, and oil continues to be the cheapest source of energy available...so what? I've yet to see anyone explain why expensive energy is inherently better than cheap energy. Certainly we can take steps to mitigate the pollution issues associated with fossil fuels, but if it still turns out that oil is the cheapest energy source available, what then is the incentive to switch?
I've noticed the same thing. Every time I really give plex a whirl, I can't help but notice that acrylic tanks seem to get dirtier faster than glass. And for whatever reason, acrylic seems to facilitate algae growth better than glass does, so maintaining plex always feels like it takes more effort than glass does. That's why I prefer glass myself - then again, I don't live near a highly active airbase.
Now, how in the fuck did we get off on a tangent about fish care on a thread about the Concorde? ;)
If it's something you're really concerned about, perhaps you ought to consider plexiglass instead of glass. I know plex can scratch, but it's probably better to have a slightly scratched tank full of live fish than it is to have a carpet full of dead ones ;)
As in, "We've been spending our money elsewhere lately"...
Nothing, as long as it's my business model, and not yours. Not to mention that "working" is rarely defined as "loses money hand-over-fist" as Concorde did.
Gosh, I'm looking over my post, and I don't see where I said any such thing. Maybe you're thinking of someone else?
Whatever. Here's a tip for ya:
runas /user:localmachinename\administrator "mmc %SystemRoot%\system32\services.msc"
I know this is going to sound highly unusual for Windows, but you don't actually have to restart once you stop the service. Rebooting gets to be a bit reflexive after a while, but stopping and starting services is one of the few cases in a Microsoft OS where you don't have to feed the reboot monkey ;)
If you don't use that - and I don't, since it's not exactly hard to roll scripts that handle administrative alerts in other ways - you can probably pretty safely disable Messenger.
Anyway, in case anyone's reading this and doesn't know how to disable Messenger, go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative tools -> Services. Right-click on Messenger and pull up the properties sheet. On the "general" tab, select "disabled" for "Startup type". Then hit the "Stop" button right under that on the "general" tab to stop the service if it's currently running. That's for 2K - I assume XP is similar.
I do believe that you, sir, didn't bother reading the article.
It is of note that this $38 million is the cost of the entire UT clustering project over the next five years, not simply the cost of this initial 300 node system. The article clearly states that another 200 nodes will be added within the next year. Considering that nobody here appears to know what the final UT product will actually look like, nor does it appear that anyone here knows how much the VT cluster will cost over the next five years, it is painfully obvious that this article is simply being used as a pretext for trash-talking by various fanboys, without the benefit of any real factual information to support such.
...when I tell you that my daughter's tricycle is 2.5 times faster in the quarter mile than a Ferrari F-50. ;)
If by "everybody" you mean "the Post Office", then yeah, everybody's using them ;)
Seriously, that's the only place I see them in regular use - stick a $20 nill into the self-serve stamp machine for a $7.40 book of stamps, and you'll get a half-pound of Sacajaweas and Susan B's back as change.