Conflicts of interest like that can be dealt with. After all, NASDAQ and the NYSE are both public companies, traded on the very exchanges which they operate.
Personally, I think there is a much better mechanism available to place bets on such things...
"Pro-rich" is such an idiotic term anyway. Heck, even Deng Xiao Ping said "to become rich is glorious," thus setting the path towards China's move away from a command economy.
Would you really want a candidate who's pro-poor??? "What we need in this county is more poverty!"
The better point is that failure is the natural consequence of taking risk, and trying to roll out new products. While Microsoft gets slammed for acquiring other companies rather than inventing everything on their own, they do try develop new products in anticipation of new opportunities (Tablet PC being the latest). Sure, some will be turkeys, but that's part being an innovative company...
Dude, whatever you're smoking, please pass it around. Or do you know somebody with $300 billion+ that they'd like to blow just to make the/. crowd giddy for a day?
And just how would it make the link to all those component suppliers? While some high-profile deals are public knowledge (i.e. Flextronics), most are private contracts between companies.
While this kid makes a funny point, one thing that's missing is the fact that a UPC barcode only links to the manufacturer or wholesale distributor of the finished good. Taking the trail back into the supply chain to contract manufacturers and raw materials suppliers would probably yield more enviro-nastiness than you'd find in consumer-oriented companies.
Besides, using the term "clone" is so vague as to be meaningless. There's a big difference between copying something directly and achieving the same results through reverse engineering.
You're leaving out the rather obvious point that infertility often has nothing to do with genetic conditions of the parents that might somehow be passed to the child...
The thing is, from the manufacturer's perspective, you have to look at the total cost of creating a product and getting it to the market where you plan to sell.
For instance, over the 80's and 90's you have seen a large influx of foreign automakers' assembly plants, because it's cheaper for them to procure parts within North America and assemble over here rather than make everything in Germany or Japan and ship it over. For something that has a low freight cost, like clothing or electronics, geography becomes less of a factor.
I think that's an attitude that's changing over time. Due to the publicity around many super-multiple births due to assisted fertility treatments, when it comes to IVF, the standard practice in the US is to implant no more than 3 embryos.
Interestingly, though, there was a lady in Indianapolis last year who had 3 embryos implanted, and ended up having quads - one embryo split into identical twins!
I think what you're seeing falls under a couple categories:
1) since these technologies have become available, people who might have just given up and assumed they can't have kids are coming forward and getting help, and
2) the procedures (beyond IVF) are improving over time so that they can help a broader class of infertility...
The NY Times also ran an article recently about the topic, that included an interesting statistic: IVF babies now account for 1% of all births in the U.S. I was genuinely surprised that it was that large a portion.
As the proud papa of IVF twins born last year, I've got to say it's an amazing process. Of course, as the male, that's easier to say. I didn't have to go through 100+ injections and get stuck with a foot-long needle to have eggs extracted, only to then get to go through pregnancy!
There are two obvious factors that favor foreign outsourcing to domestic telecommuters:
1) The outsourcer is still likely to be much cheaper. 2) The outsourcer is (presumably) an organized unit with a high degree of standardized processes, etc. that are difficult to implement across a telecommuting workforce.
While overall this is a pretty well drawn-out argument for striking out on your own, there are of course extra difficulties along the way, like:
1) Health Insurance 2) Liability 3) Accounting
Not that these factors can't be dealt with, but they are, amongst other things, stuff you normally don't have to worry about as an employee of a company.
Of course it is! Come on, a quasi-government group comes out with a report supporting restrictions on people swapping copyrighted material illegally. I'm sure that the whole reason they're doing this is to thwart OSS - in fact, if you think about it, the Broadband Stakeholder Group has the same initials (BG) as the biggest and baddest opponent of OSS out there, Bill Gates himself! Somebody call Mulder and Scully quick!
He hasn't bought the songs, but a limited license to listen to them while living in the US. If you buy a CD, you don't own the songs either, as you aren't allowed to copy them around.
Ahh... just like I really don't buy beer, I just license it for a while before returning it via the porcelain recycling receptacle. Now I get it...
* In the interests of balance, Register analysts strongly recommend that customers ignore all this shit on the grounds that one way or another it'll go away. Warning: The Register's analytical reputation can go down as well as up, and frankly we're not entirely sure about that "up".
There's an interesting point you've raised. There's an economist named Amartya Sen, who won a Nobel Prize by showing that modern famines are more often the result of a widespread loss of income, as oppossed to a drop in the amount of food produced...
One upside that can result from this is a refinement in questions that get asked of the speaker at the end of a presentation. Obvious ones can be resolved within the back-channelers, while insightful ones could rise to the top.
Heck, someone should develop a wireless/-style solution to accept potential questions and have the back-channelers rate them during the lecture, a la/. Interviews. For larger speeches where the number of attendees is high and the time for Q&A is limited, this could greatly improve the quality of the session...
Slashdot Mirror
Conflicts of interest like that can be dealt with. After all, NASDAQ and the NYSE are both public companies, traded on the very exchanges which they operate.
Personally, I think there is a much better mechanism available to place bets on such things...
"Pro-rich" is such an idiotic term anyway. Heck, even Deng Xiao Ping said "to become rich is glorious," thus setting the path towards China's move away from a command economy.
Would you really want a candidate who's pro-poor??? "What we need in this county is more poverty!"
The better point is that failure is the natural consequence of taking risk, and trying to roll out new products. While Microsoft gets slammed for acquiring other companies rather than inventing everything on their own, they do try develop new products in anticipation of new opportunities (Tablet PC being the latest). Sure, some will be turkeys, but that's part being an innovative company...
All I had to do was hit the cup - although I have heard of a guy that missed!
So when will we see /. Hacks ???
Dude, whatever you're smoking, please pass it around. Or do you know somebody with $300 billion+ that they'd like to blow just to make the /. crowd giddy for a day?
OT, I know, but how would a hostile takeover solve the "Microsoft monopoly threat"? Sounds like one giant replacing another...
And just how would it make the link to all those component suppliers? While some high-profile deals are public knowledge (i.e. Flextronics), most are private contracts between companies.
While this kid makes a funny point, one thing that's missing is the fact that a UPC barcode only links to the manufacturer or wholesale distributor of the finished good. Taking the trail back into the supply chain to contract manufacturers and raw materials suppliers would probably yield more enviro-nastiness than you'd find in consumer-oriented companies.
How does that song go?
Countin' flowers on the wall
that don't bother me at all
playing solitaire 'til dawn
with a deck of 51...
Besides, using the term "clone" is so vague as to be meaningless. There's a big difference between copying something directly and achieving the same results through reverse engineering.
You're leaving out the rather obvious point that infertility often has nothing to do with genetic conditions of the parents that might somehow be passed to the child...
The thing is, from the manufacturer's perspective, you have to look at the total cost of creating a product and getting it to the market where you plan to sell.
For instance, over the 80's and 90's you have seen a large influx of foreign automakers' assembly plants, because it's cheaper for them to procure parts within North America and assemble over here rather than make everything in Germany or Japan and ship it over. For something that has a low freight cost, like clothing or electronics, geography becomes less of a factor.
I think that's an attitude that's changing over time. Due to the publicity around many super-multiple births due to assisted fertility treatments, when it comes to IVF, the standard practice in the US is to implant no more than 3 embryos.
Interestingly, though, there was a lady in Indianapolis last year who had 3 embryos implanted, and ended up having quads - one embryo split into identical twins!
I think what you're seeing falls under a couple categories:
1) since these technologies have become available, people who might have just given up and assumed they can't have kids are coming forward and getting help, and
2) the procedures (beyond IVF) are improving over time so that they can help a broader class of infertility...
They're not that much more common that they would throw the statistics off by much (most likely something near 0.8% as opposed to 1%).
The NY Times also ran an article recently about the topic, that included an interesting statistic: IVF babies now account for 1% of all births in the U.S. I was genuinely surprised that it was that large a portion.
As the proud papa of IVF twins born last year, I've got to say it's an amazing process. Of course, as the male, that's easier to say. I didn't have to go through 100+ injections and get stuck with a foot-long needle to have eggs extracted, only to then get to go through pregnancy!
There are two obvious factors that favor foreign outsourcing to domestic telecommuters:
1) The outsourcer is still likely to be much cheaper.
2) The outsourcer is (presumably) an organized unit with a high degree of standardized processes, etc. that are difficult to implement across a telecommuting workforce.
While overall this is a pretty well drawn-out argument for striking out on your own, there are of course extra difficulties along the way, like:
1) Health Insurance
2) Liability
3) Accounting
Not that these factors can't be dealt with, but they are, amongst other things, stuff you normally don't have to worry about as an employee of a company.
Of course it is! Come on, a quasi-government group comes out with a report supporting restrictions on people swapping copyrighted material illegally. I'm sure that the whole reason they're doing this is to thwart OSS - in fact, if you think about it, the Broadband Stakeholder Group has the same initials (BG) as the biggest and baddest opponent of OSS out there, Bill Gates himself! Somebody call Mulder and Scully quick!
He hasn't bought the songs, but a limited license to listen to them while living in the US. If you buy a CD, you don't own the songs either, as you aren't allowed to copy them around.
Ahh... just like I really don't buy beer, I just license it for a while before returning it via the porcelain recycling receptacle. Now I get it...
There's an interesting point you've raised. There's an economist named Amartya Sen, who won a Nobel Prize by showing that modern famines are more often the result of a widespread loss of income, as oppossed to a drop in the amount of food produced...
Flaws? I thought they were features...
One upside that can result from this is a refinement in questions that get asked of the speaker at the end of a presentation. Obvious ones can be resolved within the back-channelers, while insightful ones could rise to the top.
/-style solution to accept potential questions and have the back-channelers rate them during the lecture, a la /. Interviews. For larger speeches where the number of attendees is high and the time for Q&A is limited, this could greatly improve the quality of the session...
Heck, someone should develop a wireless