Hmm. I thought that if the offspring weren't sterile, then the parents aren't different species -- they are, instead, subspecies. I'm sure there's some grey area in the definition, any geneticists care to help out?
Shoot, look at human albinos. Not sterile, and not a different species. But historically, some populations of humans refused to allow them to reproduce (or even to live, in some cases). My questions: did the researchers artificially inseminate the hybrids with sperm from the original species? Did this produce offspring, and were they both viable and fertile?
If the answer to these questions is yes, than this is just an example of preferential mating within subspecies, which IIRC has long been known to happen.
Good point, and of course those issues are not settled yet in so many places. Looking back, I should have stated 'stable infrastructure' (which implies ~stable government) instead of 'stable power grid'. Though RYO applies to governments as well as power grids in this day and age -- we'll be moving from banana republics to tech republics as we use up (by developing) existing cheap labor markets in areas with stable government already.
I think the key there is the emulator. While you've spelled it out more clearly than I did, it;s basically the same premise that I was looking at -- smooth running of Vista apps, run an XP-emulator for legacy apps (which I mentioned in a later post, forgot in my OP). While it can run those legacy apps, performance will suffer, but there is an easy transition to VistaNG apps.
Unless of course, you have the inside track with a host of devs for Vista apps.
Or, of course, MS fixes this bug ('feature'?) in Vista. Which, according to my absurd theory in my OP in this thread, they wouldn't do -- the idea is to encourage migration to the alternative.
Makes a lot of sense. As you say (I think), eventually all the investment in developing nations will result in few (and smaller) labor markets where there is a cost advantage for employers -- and at that point, what we'll likely find is that government regulations on labor and taxation will be the biggest deciding factor for where to outsource to. Even now, government policies and regulations play a large role -- one of the reasons Brazil and Russia labor markets are so attractive is the lack of government 'interference' with employment (IIRC).
In terms of what's best for everybody, I disagree with you, though. I think the marginal effect on quality of life is much greater in the third world than here in the US, and from a purely moral standpoint, there's a greater humanitarian return on hiring labor overseas than here. As long as the ROI is greater there than here, it works for the employer as well. But that's from a 'We're all one people' standpoint, sans nationalism. And of course, it also assumes that the consumers of your product either don't care about your hiring practices, or don't know about them. This is, I think, where it gets tricky -- look at what consumer preference did for American-manufactured goods in the 1980s -- this is quite possible with tech jobs in the coming decade(s), especially as more people become employed by the tech industry.
That said, tech jobs are inherently portable, so we're unlikely to see tech outsourcing destroying the economies of entire regions the same way manufacturing outsourcing did in the 70s and 80s (and continues to do today).
How much do you personally contribute to those companies' bottom lines?
If you're not spending big bucks, making them a lot of money, don't expect top-notch service -- it's too expensive. Re: Amex, get a corporate account -- the support is much better.
Ditto for Dell, I don't know about Apple.
At any rate, you get what you pay for... and every time you pay a little less than expected, keep in mind that part of what you're NOT paying for is better service.
You think that won't change with the Vista propensity to ask you for permission every time it wants to blow its own nose? Usability issues will force devs to write apps that play well with Vista running under restricted accounts. MS still has enough of a monopoly to force this issue.
I disagree -- it's not the number of people, it's the number of people in the excess labor pool that counts.
especially unchecked HIV
Good point. Though the HIV/AIDS problem has two effects on the labor pool -- reduces gross labor available, but increases un(der)employed labor, as markets dry up for more traditional produced goods.
Corporations should stop jerking people's lives around by moving jobs here and there
Not at all. Corporations should do what is in their best interests. If you, as a supplier of labor, are not mobile, that makes you less valuable to a company, and deservedly so.
they're either going to have to start helping more with solving these basic problems which keep very poor people around the world from improving themselves
You think the Gates Foundation efforts to stop the spread of HIV in Africa are completely altruistic? It's pretty cynical to think that developing another labor market is the primary reason for the efforts, but it's a not-so-coincidental side effect in my book.
or they're going to have to pay programmers a lot more cash for their services.
Nonsense. I know it's frustrating to realize you have to compete with labor in the Third World, but welcome to the 21st century. It happened to manufacturing in the US last century, and it's happening to technology now. Like it or not, it IS the future -- so you better figure out a way to make yourself more valuable than developers elsewhere.
You write that as if it's a joke. Sub-Saharan Africa is a big emerging supplier of tech labor, in the position that India was 20 years ago. We're already seeing major efforts in Nigeria, don't think for a minute that much of the rest of Africa won't follow.
What are the major requirements for locations to which you want to outsource tech jobs?
- A stable power grid (if it's not there, build a small one yourself) - An oversupply of labor with high population growth (to keep that oversupply rolling) - A sufficient percentage of English-speaking workers.
The rest is training and, for large companies, will pay off quickly. I'm sure I've left off a couple items, but African countries, Indonesia and other PacRim countries, and SE Asia are where tech labor outsourcing is heading next.
This is a positive for these countries (standard of living will increase) and, in the long run, a positive for the US and other western powers (greater influence in those areas, long-term economic benefits).
Exactly, which is why MS needs to offer both Vista and the alternative. The Vista dev protocols would ensure compatibility with the new OS, so new and upgraded apps would be fine. I'm not talking about a immediate release of the new OS, I'm talking 3-4 years down the road when Vista has a larger marketshare and there are fewer legacy apps that don't work with the new OS. Alternatively, a WinXP and WinME emulator could be included as an optional install, which would allow use of legacy apps without breaking the 'streamlined' philosophy of the new OS.
The next build of Windows will not be fully backwards-compatible. That's the only solution to the complexity issues MS is facing.
Not to be ridiculously, totally, farcically speculous, but here's a scenario for you:
Vista ships at $$$, with extreme requirements. Adoption is very low, due to all the problems that have been rehashed here at slashdot over the past months. However, Vista is fully backwards-compatible (or as near as possible).
MS releases another OS that looks like Vista but is not backwards compatible (though probably compatible with Vista). Price (at least cost of use) is an order of magnitude (ok, an order of magnitude in binary) lower than Vista.
Users who need interoperability with older Windows versions pay for Vista (these'll be primarily businesses). Everyone else can buy the non-backwards-compatible version.
Of course, Vista would have had to have been built with this in mind. And of course, this would break so much currently-deployed software that it would kill MS in the short run. But, it would help explain MS's interest in ODF.
Finally, this would have to have been in development for years now, and there hasn't been a peep from Redmond (officially or not), so it's pretty much a garbage theory. But, in the long run, the only way MS can get rid of the bloat is to get rid of backwards compatibility.
And of course, never mind the fact that I totally misread your post -- please ignore my previous response, I dunno why I have Gates on the brain this morning.
Regardless, we should all be keeping an eye on Jobs. It's only a matter of time before he consolidates his power base into the single largest converged media empire on the planet.
Ted Turner 2010? Rupert Murdoch 2020? I'd welcome Gates to the party, since there is little enough major competition in media currently.
I'd look instead for Gates to get involved in politics -- not in an elected capacity, but instead in an advisory or diplomatic capacity. Hosting dinner with Hu Jintao recently just foresahdows deeper involvement, as I see it.
I don't think Gates is looking towards further empire-building (though I bet he won't be upset if the directors of his various business interests are very successful). I think he's focusing on philanthropy and politics -- a modern-day Morgan, but with a focus on technology instead of banking.
But most people in the US just see it as weakness.
And this was made very clear in Saturday's match against Italy. Maybe the US players are not confident of their set pieces, but many times someone dribbling into space was tripped up, recovered their balance and played on -- while Italian players took a dive if they were breathed on (as most European teams do). I do think the match was overly physical, but I think you're absolutely right -- the American fan doesn't want to see 'his' players taking a dive.
When I used value in that sentence, I was referring to market value.
Well, since the OP wasn't referring to market value, that just confuses the issue. In this case, you applied a default of 'market' to value, even though the OP and myself were not discussing market value, but instead, 'intrinsic value', whatever that is.
No, the OP is absolutely false. Intrinsic value does not exist when discussing microeconomics, as he was by discussing pricing.
Whether or not the market value, that is, the value assigned by the purchasers and sellers of the good, is higher for the books than for the pdfs, the pdf and the book have no intrinsic value.
Sure, some people prefer (and would therefore value higher, and pay more for) bound physical copies over pdfs. My point, though, was that there is no intrinsic value in an object. My personal valuation was just used as an example of that.
"In a sense, you could say that the less valuable product, in this case, has more utility to you."
Not at all. I could say that the pdf is less valuable to me. Or I could say that I value the hardbound copies less than most people. I think that you're confusing 'market value' with 'value' -- 'market' defines who is assigning the value in that case. So I could say that I believe the pdf version to have a higher value than the market value -- or rather, that the market undervalues the pdf version.
No matter what, though, there is no intrinsic value of any item -- as you say, it's perception of value -- especially when referring to microeconomics (as the OP was, by talking about pricing) you cannot discuss value without identifying who is assigning the value.
And I forgot to mention, Bluette is also a big reason why little old ladies often have blue-ish hair -- they use it to make white hair look brighter, even silvery. When they don't rinse it out all the way, it leaves too much blue tint in.
It works because of irradiation (not the irradiation most slashdotters would think of, but the color theory irradiation). This is the same reason that black is slimming -- it's just an optical illusion that takes advantage of how the human eye perceives color and dark/light contrasts.
This was actually a pretty annoying problem for me when I last painted the interior of my house -- blue painters' tape on the walls made an off-white ceiling paint seem brilliant white when I cut in the edges... when the tape came off, the ceiling seemed very beige, especially for the rooms with yellow-toned walls. I had to repaint the damn ceiling bright white.
Back to the bluing -- grain & feed stores are a good place to find it, it's used to make horses' manes and tails brighter, particularly grey horses. I spent many, many hours growing up rinsing Bluette solution out of horse tails...
Of ocurse, now that I re-read my OP, notice the second condition of the argument? The one after the ampersand? Something about physical restraints on the movement of the ice?
Please include the full set of arguments when quoting.
"PDFs are not as handy for a casual read, like when you are in the bathroom."
Yech. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want to be flipping through a book that my GM's been reading on the crapper. I know, the book is probably perfectly clean, but given what my current GM looks like, the visual is disturbing.
Besides, now I'm going to be thinking of unique items like Ragnar's +2 Plunger of Clog Slaying, or Charmin's +5 Vorpal Toilet Paper.
You're right, of course -- I didn't mention that it's the side of the glass that keeps the ice from reaching it's lowest-energy configuration. Though, there are formations where the ice cannot reach its lowest-energy arrangement without a 'bump' from an external force -- some threshold has to be overcome. This is witness a lot when icebergs roll.
While your post is mostly spot-on, just wanted to clear this up:
"It's the reason that white shirts turn yellowish as well - until bleached (but don't try to bleach your computer)."
White shirts that turn yellowish do so for a couple reasons, and human sweat is only a small portion of it. Yellow spots under the pits? That's due more to the aluminum (aluminium to those who prefer) salts in your antiperspirant than to body oils -- though people who do not use antiperspirant will notice browning from oils, just at a slower pace). Ring around the collar? Largely due from fatty acids in naturally occurring sebum (oil) from the hair follicles. Generally yellowing of the entire shirt? Typically due to the effect of detergents and hot water in the wash.
In re: bleaching of white shirts -- don't do it without checking the care tag! Bleach will often make white shirts MORE yellow, depending on the materials used in the shirt.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm. I thought that if the offspring weren't sterile, then the parents aren't different species -- they are, instead, subspecies. I'm sure there's some grey area in the definition, any geneticists care to help out?
Shoot, look at human albinos. Not sterile, and not a different species. But historically, some populations of humans refused to allow them to reproduce (or even to live, in some cases). My questions: did the researchers artificially inseminate the hybrids with sperm from the original species? Did this produce offspring, and were they both viable and fertile?
If the answer to these questions is yes, than this is just an example of preferential mating within subspecies, which IIRC has long been known to happen.
They're from the other percentage of workers :)
The white paper is probably spot-on: Kill the adults, destroy the eggs. Lather, rinse, repeat for each breeding cycle.
It might cost a lot, but it is possible. The most expensive part will be eradicating isolated resevoirs of breeding populations.
As to what you do after you trap them: make fertilizer out of them.
Good point, and of course those issues are not settled yet in so many places. Looking back, I should have stated 'stable infrastructure' (which implies ~stable government) instead of 'stable power grid'. Though RYO applies to governments as well as power grids in this day and age -- we'll be moving from banana republics to tech republics as we use up (by developing) existing cheap labor markets in areas with stable government already.
I think the key there is the emulator. While you've spelled it out more clearly than I did, it;s basically the same premise that I was looking at -- smooth running of Vista apps, run an XP-emulator for legacy apps (which I mentioned in a later post, forgot in my OP). While it can run those legacy apps, performance will suffer, but there is an easy transition to VistaNG apps.
Well, only time will tell :)
Unless of course, you have the inside track with a host of devs for Vista apps.
Or, of course, MS fixes this bug ('feature'?) in Vista. Which, according to my absurd theory in my OP in this thread, they wouldn't do -- the idea is to encourage migration to the alternative.
Makes a lot of sense. As you say (I think), eventually all the investment in developing nations will result in few (and smaller) labor markets where there is a cost advantage for employers -- and at that point, what we'll likely find is that government regulations on labor and taxation will be the biggest deciding factor for where to outsource to. Even now, government policies and regulations play a large role -- one of the reasons Brazil and Russia labor markets are so attractive is the lack of government 'interference' with employment (IIRC).
In terms of what's best for everybody, I disagree with you, though. I think the marginal effect on quality of life is much greater in the third world than here in the US, and from a purely moral standpoint, there's a greater humanitarian return on hiring labor overseas than here. As long as the ROI is greater there than here, it works for the employer as well. But that's from a 'We're all one people' standpoint, sans nationalism. And of course, it also assumes that the consumers of your product either don't care about your hiring practices, or don't know about them. This is, I think, where it gets tricky -- look at what consumer preference did for American-manufactured goods in the 1980s -- this is quite possible with tech jobs in the coming decade(s), especially as more people become employed by the tech industry.
That said, tech jobs are inherently portable, so we're unlikely to see tech outsourcing destroying the economies of entire regions the same way manufacturing outsourcing did in the 70s and 80s (and continues to do today).
How much do you personally contribute to those companies' bottom lines?
If you're not spending big bucks, making them a lot of money, don't expect top-notch service -- it's too expensive. Re: Amex, get a corporate account -- the support is much better.
Ditto for Dell, I don't know about Apple.
At any rate, you get what you pay for... and every time you pay a little less than expected, keep in mind that part of what you're NOT paying for is better service.
You think that won't change with the Vista propensity to ask you for permission every time it wants to blow its own nose? Usability issues will force devs to write apps that play well with Vista running under restricted accounts. MS still has enough of a monopoly to force this issue.
Good point. Though the HIV/AIDS problem has two effects on the labor pool -- reduces gross labor available, but increases un(der)employed labor, as markets dry up for more traditional produced goods.
Not at all. Corporations should do what is in their best interests. If you, as a supplier of labor, are not mobile, that makes you less valuable to a company, and deservedly so.
You think the Gates Foundation efforts to stop the spread of HIV in Africa are completely altruistic? It's pretty cynical to think that developing another labor market is the primary reason for the efforts, but it's a not-so-coincidental side effect in my book.
Nonsense. I know it's frustrating to realize you have to compete with labor in the Third World, but welcome to the 21st century. It happened to manufacturing in the US last century, and it's happening to technology now. Like it or not, it IS the future -- so you better figure out a way to make yourself more valuable than developers elsewhere.
What are the major requirements for locations to which you want to outsource tech jobs?
- A stable power grid (if it's not there, build a small one yourself)
- An oversupply of labor with high population growth (to keep that oversupply rolling)
- A sufficient percentage of English-speaking workers.
The rest is training and, for large companies, will pay off quickly. I'm sure I've left off a couple items, but African countries, Indonesia and other PacRim countries, and SE Asia are where tech labor outsourcing is heading next.
This is a positive for these countries (standard of living will increase) and, in the long run, a positive for the US and other western powers (greater influence in those areas, long-term economic benefits).
Exactly, which is why MS needs to offer both Vista and the alternative. The Vista dev protocols would ensure compatibility with the new OS, so new and upgraded apps would be fine. I'm not talking about a immediate release of the new OS, I'm talking 3-4 years down the road when Vista has a larger marketshare and there are fewer legacy apps that don't work with the new OS. Alternatively, a WinXP and WinME emulator could be included as an optional install, which would allow use of legacy apps without breaking the 'streamlined' philosophy of the new OS.
The next build of Windows will not be fully backwards-compatible. That's the only solution to the complexity issues MS is facing.
Not to be ridiculously, totally, farcically speculous, but here's a scenario for you:
Vista ships at $$$, with extreme requirements. Adoption is very low, due to all the problems that have been rehashed here at slashdot over the past months. However, Vista is fully backwards-compatible (or as near as possible).
MS releases another OS that looks like Vista but is not backwards compatible (though probably compatible with Vista). Price (at least cost of use) is an order of magnitude (ok, an order of magnitude in binary) lower than Vista.
Users who need interoperability with older Windows versions pay for Vista (these'll be primarily businesses). Everyone else can buy the non-backwards-compatible version.
Of course, Vista would have had to have been built with this in mind. And of course, this would break so much currently-deployed software that it would kill MS in the short run. But, it would help explain MS's interest in ODF.
Finally, this would have to have been in development for years now, and there hasn't been a peep from Redmond (officially or not), so it's pretty much a garbage theory. But, in the long run, the only way MS can get rid of the bloat is to get rid of backwards compatibility.
And of course, never mind the fact that I totally misread your post -- please ignore my previous response, I dunno why I have Gates on the brain this morning.
I'd look instead for Gates to get involved in politics -- not in an elected capacity, but instead in an advisory or diplomatic capacity. Hosting dinner with Hu Jintao recently just foresahdows deeper involvement, as I see it.
I don't think Gates is looking towards further empire-building (though I bet he won't be upset if the directors of his various business interests are very successful). I think he's focusing on philanthropy and politics -- a modern-day Morgan, but with a focus on technology instead of banking.
No, the OP is absolutely false. Intrinsic value does not exist when discussing microeconomics, as he was by discussing pricing.
Whether or not the market value, that is, the value assigned by the purchasers and sellers of the good, is higher for the books than for the pdfs, the pdf and the book have no intrinsic value.
Sure, some people prefer (and would therefore value higher, and pay more for) bound physical copies over pdfs. My point, though, was that there is no intrinsic value in an object. My personal valuation was just used as an example of that.
"In a sense, you could say that the less valuable product, in this case, has more utility to you."
Not at all. I could say that the pdf is less valuable to me. Or I could say that I value the hardbound copies less than most people. I think that you're confusing 'market value' with 'value' -- 'market' defines who is assigning the value in that case. So I could say that I believe the pdf version to have a higher value than the market value -- or rather, that the market undervalues the pdf version.
No matter what, though, there is no intrinsic value of any item -- as you say, it's perception of value -- especially when referring to microeconomics (as the OP was, by talking about pricing) you cannot discuss value without identifying who is assigning the value.
And I forgot to mention, Bluette is also a big reason why little old ladies often have blue-ish hair -- they use it to make white hair look brighter, even silvery. When they don't rinse it out all the way, it leaves too much blue tint in.
It works because of irradiation (not the irradiation most slashdotters would think of, but the color theory irradiation). This is the same reason that black is slimming -- it's just an optical illusion that takes advantage of how the human eye perceives color and dark/light contrasts.
This was actually a pretty annoying problem for me when I last painted the interior of my house -- blue painters' tape on the walls made an off-white ceiling paint seem brilliant white when I cut in the edges... when the tape came off, the ceiling seemed very beige, especially for the rooms with yellow-toned walls. I had to repaint the damn ceiling bright white.
Back to the bluing -- grain & feed stores are a good place to find it, it's used to make horses' manes and tails brighter, particularly grey horses. I spent many, many hours growing up rinsing Bluette solution out of horse tails...
Of ocurse, now that I re-read my OP, notice the second condition of the argument? The one after the ampersand? Something about physical restraints on the movement of the ice?
Please include the full set of arguments when quoting.
"PDFs are not as handy for a casual read, like when you are in the bathroom."
Yech. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want to be flipping through a book that my GM's been reading on the crapper. I know, the book is probably perfectly clean, but given what my current GM looks like, the visual is disturbing.
Besides, now I'm going to be thinking of unique items like Ragnar's +2 Plunger of Clog Slaying, or Charmin's +5 Vorpal Toilet Paper.
You're right, of course -- I didn't mention that it's the side of the glass that keeps the ice from reaching it's lowest-energy configuration. Though, there are formations where the ice cannot reach its lowest-energy arrangement without a 'bump' from an external force -- some threshold has to be overcome. This is witness a lot when icebergs roll.
While your post is mostly spot-on, just wanted to clear this up:
"It's the reason that white shirts turn yellowish as well - until bleached (but don't try to bleach your computer)."
White shirts that turn yellowish do so for a couple reasons, and human sweat is only a small portion of it. Yellow spots under the pits? That's due more to the aluminum (aluminium to those who prefer) salts in your antiperspirant than to body oils -- though people who do not use antiperspirant will notice browning from oils, just at a slower pace). Ring around the collar? Largely due from fatty acids in naturally occurring sebum (oil) from the hair follicles. Generally yellowing of the entire shirt? Typically due to the effect of detergents and hot water in the wash.
In re: bleaching of white shirts -- don't do it without checking the care tag! Bleach will often make white shirts MORE yellow, depending on the materials used in the shirt.