You point out some of the problems. On the other hand some of the 'generic drugs' (i.e. Indian company manufactured) produced in India and sold in India are perfectly fine, and much cheaper than 'western brand name' drugs. This means that some people who otherwise would be able to afford *no medication* can have medicine. If you're earning one dollar a day and that pays for your food and clothes etc and what's left is for medicines, you can't afford the prices charged by 'western brands'. A case in point is the price of AIDS retroviral drugs sold in Africa: lawyers from western countries jumping in to prohibit local companies manufacturing and selling their own versions at more affordable prices to save the lives of their own citizens.
It's interesting - sounds like you're saying Indian drugs made for India are ok, but export ones are the problem. Do you have references? Sounds like this is something that needs to be regulated, and that some countries don't check drugs coming into their health systems?
How many use online banking? (so let's reduce the factor a bit more) How many of these users will complain instead of getting a work around? (so lets reduce it a bit further) And how much of the assets you note are in personal banking? I am going to guess a good percentage of the assets are in corporate finance.
Alas, I think the Mac users have a lot less clout than you hope. But here's hoping banks sort out their websites and make them standards compliant....
Cost in volunteer time - if there's a website - somebody built it. Volunteering is fine if a couple of hours a week but what if it needs 2 years full time work? I think volunteering is crucial and can work but often you require some paid staff to make critical things happen. I don't think the big charities are an evil conspiracy - maybe research what their model is.
An interesting organisation is the Royal National Lifeboats Association in the UK - all the ship crew are volunteers, these are the guys who save drowning seamen off UK coastlines. But their headquarters support, their R and D, these are all paid staff.
Plus - do you know the end users? can you always balance the urgency of needs? Some cases of need might not be as "attractive" as others. What touches your heart strings might not be the most urgent case. Might need neutral professional in the middle, i.e. charity workers, who are better informed about where aid should go. Personally I'd rather have full time paid professionals working out who's most needy than some wealthy semi-retired housewives half way across the planet making life or death decisions for tsunami victims or rural Pakistani villages needing shelter *now*.
there ya go, said it before, will say it again. Somalia. Complete freedom, no government. As much liberty as you want. Carry any guns you want in Somalia, buy any you want, and you got to be brave because everybody else can do too. There's the country for you. Any questions?
Only problem is all these 'rights' you are going on about. Sounds like you might need a government to uphold them;-)
Somalia is clan based, protection of aggrieved parties partly comes from that - bad news if you are from a weak clan or have no clan apparently (I welcome more information, I am just reading up a lot on Somalia at the moment to find out what happens in a country with no government).
Nobody gets shot if everybody has guns, at least that's what slashdot posters say would be the result if only the pesky government wouldn't keep infringing our god-given right to bear machine guns while popping down the shop for a pint of milk or something, anyway...;-)
I was under the impression that house companions for the elderly is actually a big driver for robot development in Japan, so you might not be far off the mark. Maybe a large number of robots will be aimed at negotiating small flats to help the elderly rather than providing a jogging companion for baby boomers. Aging population, small number of kids, help required with small jobs around the house, companion to play chess with etc.
There ya go. Somalia - dream home of libertarians the world wide. No taxes, no rules on guns, no government, money rules. Do what ever you want, carry what weaponry you want, thriving free market selling whatever you want if you've got the money. Any questions?
Treat users with respect even if they are clearly in the wrong. Don't patronise somebody if they haven't got the first idea about computers: educate, don't insult. I'm not a buddhist but the old karma idea of "what goes around, comes around" seems to play out in the long term. Being patient with somebody who's royally screwed up their computer pays off in six months time when you need them to put your expenses claim through accounts at 5pm on a Friday evening/ notice you standing in the rain by your broken down car/..../
I don't think so. I reckon the BBC will be in the game for a while yet - let me know when the local geek podcast can give me professional production value world music broadcasts, interviews with internationally renowned scientists and artists, history programmes scripted by teams of world experts..... (etc).... without adverts. All effectively for free, and online if you prefer. You can always donate and get the TV shows as well by getting a TV licence - sometimes 126.50 (UKP) a year is an *ouch* but hey divided between 5 of us in the house it doesn't feel so bad.
I agree. I think at least it would be good if we could have consistency! I am afraid we are too far gone down the path to get any form of consistency now but it would be nice to at least aim at having that:-) My favourite url? http://the.british.museum/ !!!
My criticism is that.asia would be a poorly defined TLD. There are many opinions about what constitutes "asia" - is Australia included? how about Israel? what about eastern Russia?
The existing.com may be poorly policed but that's a different issue: perhaps ICANN needs to learn lessons about how to hand out TLDs. The new.eu seems to be allocated with a little more caution as we speak.
Also I think the hierarchy of domains needs to be sorted out. It would be a lot easier if all USA based sites used.us for a start. Should.asia sites have country.asia? like.cn.asia? if so should US companies have.com.us.[continent - I guess.na?] ?
anarchocapitalism? wtf? care to point me at some references? It sounds really scary - no authority, physical ownership is all. Does that mean the biggest scariest most violent thugs with the biggest guns rule and everybody else gets to be their slaves? who looks after the non-violent and physically weak? What would be the closest modern example? Somalia?
I think you could get sworn at by a whole range of generations if you went round Wales telling people they were in England, you'd certainly get some vile language thrown at you.
In the UK diesel is close to 6 dollars a gallon so 3.17 or even 4 dollars for biodiesel would be just fine:-)
As far as biodiesel costing more energy to produce than it gives, is that not true of all forms of energy? for example how much does gasoline cost if you factor in the cost of production in Saudia Arabia, shipping by tanker half way across the world and local distribution? does this 'complete life cycle analysis' change the balance?
Also regardless of this what about the use of waste vegetable oils? In the UK there is a lot of attention on small scale recycling of catering industry oils that are otherwise poured away into municipal dump sites. Surely by recycling already used oil, giving it twice the use, you reduce its energy production-to-use cost? ( I say small scale but I am guessing in a country of 50 million people efficient collection and reuse of commercial waste vegetable oils actually adds up to quite a large volume).
... for people on low budgets who don't have techie / warez friends and so can't get hold of an unlicenced copy of Windows, or don't want to run an unlicenced copy of Windows. I know a few people who are short of money and get quite excited when they see offers for recycled no-OS 100 dollar computers, because it means they can finally get a computer. When I tell them - what about the cost of the Windows OS that you want -they get quite shocked when they realised you're supposed to pay. Yes I'd love them all to run linux flavours but some of them want to run Windows (e.g. they want to get familiar with how Windows works at home so they can be better at the jobs they do at work, etc).
hmmm, complex, do we now get to see George Bush and Tony Blair tell us drugs are ok as long as you're one of the good guys? Maybe the crackheads who live down the road from me in that smashed up house are actually ultra elite commandos keeping me safe from the Axis of Evil Unknown But They Are Really There Terrorists which are all around us these days? maybe they're a bit like the the rangers in Lord of the Rings, I think they are outcasts but actually their curious ways and p*ssing in our hedge is just a cover while they protect us innocent little people from the evil threat which will surely destroy civilisation if it wasn't for them?
yup and of the 30 of a 100 of 70,000 only one gets updated more than 3 times. Seriously, do people really believe that at some point in the near future everybody on the planet will be keeping an online diary (and maintaining it)? Soon microsoft will package some sort of blog tool with new OS's and the blog-fanatics will go crazy proclaiming a million new blogs a day. I predict it will flatten at at somewhere near the number of people who keep a paper diary. What percentage of the global population is that?
"The $100 laptop is not about writing school reports.... It's "here's what you can do, here's the tools to do it, and here's how it can be done - come join us."
Good point. I'd go further though and say if these are to work, they should be about the people using them appropriating them for their own means - not "join us" but rather "join with each other and find your own way, develop your own solutions". "Join us" sounds a little too much like nineteenth century missionary activities - "here, starving dirty savage, take these gifts from us and you can become like us, almost as good us, in our image". "Joining us" might be one solution, certainly on several dimensions, for example skills and knowledge sharing, but I'd emphasise as you do in your post the hope that the computers are appropriated by the communities and developed independently as soon as possible.
Interesting - I don't understand your line of thinking - interested to hear more. Is the argument that automated page turning is *cheaper* so it's a pity that the project spends a lot on labour charges (manual scanning)? Or is the argument that the automated page turning is easier on the fragile old books? I'd appreciate if you could offer more details about the technology - the company's demo video shows a vacuum device lifting pages, but both examples are with modern books. Honest question: surely the advantage here is a low labour cost method of scanning huge numbers of pages (like the telephone directory example they show). But if you have fragile books, surely the advantage of a human is that they can see that individual pages might be particularly fragile, maybe even needing support or repair to scan, while the pre-set vacuum device will plough on regardless, it won't be able to make a decision on the quality of the pages. Does it have any sensing devices built in? My experience of older books (e.g. nineteenth century) is that in some cases the paper can be very brittle.
I think the decline will be more insidious. I also think that the Chinese/ Indians/ Martians whoever will be wise enough not to pick a straight fight so it won't come to that. Luckily the world was sensible enough not to try to beat the USSR in a straight military fight, too many realised that would be too messy, to put it politely. I think the same will happen next time round. I think the next shift in global power will be more subtle and is already happening - the shift in the next generation of key industries to another country/ region, with it finance and wealth, bringing national shifts in influence. I'm from the UK - in the medieval period England was one of the big countries because it had sheep, and wool, a major trade.. who cares about wool these days?
I also think that the USA is fortunate compared to many countries that it hasn't experienced a modern war on its own soil and so there is a more Victorian attitude towards war (it's something that happens in far off exotic countries, you wave the brave boys off in their shining armour and they either march proudly back as heroes or at least in tidy coffins). I think most countries are a little more reticent about sabre rattling and if a power struggle is to happen they will try other alternatives first. Nobody in their right mind would try to take on the no.1 nuclear power in the world if there are more clever ways to win ground.
Slashdot Mirror
Because they are thinking of building another one. Nice to find out what went wrong with the last one, avoid the same mistakes, eh?
You point out some of the problems. On the other hand some of the 'generic drugs' (i.e. Indian company manufactured) produced in India and sold in India are perfectly fine, and much cheaper than 'western brand name' drugs. This means that some people who otherwise would be able to afford *no medication* can have medicine. If you're earning one dollar a day and that pays for your food and clothes etc and what's left is for medicines, you can't afford the prices charged by 'western brands'. A case in point is the price of AIDS retroviral drugs sold in Africa: lawyers from western countries jumping in to prohibit local companies manufacturing and selling their own versions at more affordable prices to save the lives of their own citizens.
It's interesting - sounds like you're saying Indian drugs made for India are ok, but export ones are the problem. Do you have references? Sounds like this is something that needs to be regulated, and that some countries don't check drugs coming into their health systems?
How many use online banking? (so let's reduce the factor a bit more)
How many of these users will complain instead of getting a work around? (so lets reduce it a bit further)
And how much of the assets you note are in personal banking? I am going to guess a good percentage of the assets are in corporate finance.
Alas, I think the Mac users have a lot less clout than you hope. But here's hoping banks sort out their websites and make them standards compliant....
Cost in volunteer time - if there's a website - somebody built it. Volunteering is fine if a couple of hours a week but what if it needs 2 years full time work? I think volunteering is crucial and can work but often you require some paid staff to make critical things happen. I don't think the big charities are an evil conspiracy - maybe research what their model is.
An interesting organisation is the Royal National Lifeboats Association in the UK - all the ship crew are volunteers, these are the guys who save drowning seamen off UK coastlines. But their headquarters support, their R and D, these are all paid staff.
Plus - do you know the end users? can you always balance the urgency of needs? Some cases of need might not be as "attractive" as others. What touches your heart strings might not be the most urgent case. Might need neutral professional in the middle, i.e. charity workers, who are better informed about where aid should go. Personally I'd rather have full time paid professionals working out who's most needy than some wealthy semi-retired housewives half way across the planet making life or death decisions for tsunami victims or rural Pakistani villages needing shelter *now*.
there ya go, said it before, will say it again. Somalia. Complete freedom, no government. As much liberty as you want. Carry any guns you want in Somalia, buy any you want, and you got to be brave because everybody else can do too. There's the country for you. Any questions?
;-)
Only problem is all these 'rights' you are going on about. Sounds like you might need a government to uphold them
Somalia is clan based, protection of aggrieved parties partly comes from that - bad news if you are from a weak clan or have no clan apparently (I welcome more information, I am just reading up a lot on Somalia at the moment to find out what happens in a country with no government).
Nobody gets shot if everybody has guns, at least that's what slashdot posters say would be the result if only the pesky government wouldn't keep infringing our god-given right to bear machine guns while popping down the shop for a pint of milk or something, anyway... ;-)
I was under the impression that house companions for the elderly is actually a big driver for robot development in Japan, so you might not be far off the mark. Maybe a large number of robots will be aimed at negotiating small flats to help the elderly rather than providing a jogging companion for baby boomers. Aging population, small number of kids, help required with small jobs around the house, companion to play chess with etc.
There ya go. Somalia - dream home of libertarians the world wide. No taxes, no rules on guns, no government, money rules. Do what ever you want, carry what weaponry you want, thriving free market selling whatever you want if you've got the money. Any questions?
Treat users with respect even if they are clearly in the wrong. Don't patronise somebody if they haven't got the first idea about computers: educate, don't insult. I'm not a buddhist but the old karma idea of "what goes around, comes around" seems to play out in the long term. Being patient with somebody who's royally screwed up their computer pays off in six months time when you need them to put your expenses claim through accounts at 5pm on a Friday evening/ notice you standing in the rain by your broken down car/..../
Is there an English translation please? my apologies, I'm very poor at languages :-(
Also would you know if they post overseas?
I have to admit I quite like the idea of a tiny memory stick....
I don't think so. I reckon the BBC will be in the game for a while yet - let me know when the local geek podcast can give me professional production value world music broadcasts, interviews with internationally renowned scientists and artists, history programmes scripted by teams of world experts..... (etc).... without adverts. All effectively for free, and online if you prefer. You can always donate and get the TV shows as well by getting a TV licence - sometimes 126.50 (UKP) a year is an *ouch* but hey divided between 5 of us in the house it doesn't feel so bad.
why is it bad in modern diesel engines? what's the difference?
I agree. I think at least it would be good if we could have consistency! I am afraid we are too far gone down the path to get any form of consistency now but it would be nice to at least aim at having that :-) My favourite url? http://the.british.museum/ !!!
My criticism is that .asia would be a poorly defined TLD. There are many opinions about what constitutes "asia" - is Australia included? how about Israel? what about eastern Russia?
.com may be poorly policed but that's a different issue: perhaps ICANN needs to learn lessons about how to hand out TLDs. The new .eu seems to be allocated with a little more caution as we speak.
.us for a start. Should .asia sites have country.asia? like .cn.asia? if so should US companies have .com.us.[continent - I guess .na?] ?
The existing
Also I think the hierarchy of domains needs to be sorted out. It would be a lot easier if all USA based sites used
anarchocapitalism? wtf? care to point me at some references? It sounds really scary - no authority, physical ownership is all. Does that mean the biggest scariest most violent thugs with the biggest guns rule and everybody else gets to be their slaves? who looks after the non-violent and physically weak? What would be the closest modern example? Somalia?
why is is that every slashdot post about property or rights eventually turns to guns? ;-)
I think you could get sworn at by a whole range of generations if you went round Wales telling people they were in England, you'd certainly get some vile language thrown at you.
As far as biodiesel costing more energy to produce than it gives, is that not true of all forms of energy? for example how much does gasoline cost if you factor in the cost of production in Saudia Arabia, shipping by tanker half way across the world and local distribution? does this 'complete life cycle analysis' change the balance?
Also regardless of this what about the use of waste vegetable oils? In the UK there is a lot of attention on small scale recycling of catering industry oils that are otherwise poured away into municipal dump sites. Surely by recycling already used oil, giving it twice the use, you reduce its energy production-to-use cost? ( I say small scale but I am guessing in a country of 50 million people efficient collection and reuse of commercial waste vegetable oils actually adds up to quite a large volume).
... for people on low budgets who don't have techie / warez friends and so can't get hold of an unlicenced copy of Windows, or don't want to run an unlicenced copy of Windows. I know a few people who are short of money and get quite excited when they see offers for recycled no-OS 100 dollar computers, because it means they can finally get a computer. When I tell them - what about the cost of the Windows OS that you want -they get quite shocked when they realised you're supposed to pay. Yes I'd love them all to run linux flavours but some of them want to run Windows (e.g. they want to get familiar with how Windows works at home so they can be better at the jobs they do at work, etc).
hmmm, complex, do we now get to see George Bush and Tony Blair tell us drugs are ok as long as you're one of the good guys? Maybe the crackheads who live down the road from me in that smashed up house are actually ultra elite commandos keeping me safe from the Axis of Evil Unknown But They Are Really There Terrorists which are all around us these days? maybe they're a bit like the the rangers in Lord of the Rings, I think they are outcasts but actually their curious ways and p*ssing in our hedge is just a cover while they protect us innocent little people from the evil threat which will surely destroy civilisation if it wasn't for them?
which is? Iceland possibly for oldest parliament? New Zealand and other contenders for Universal Suffrage? Other contenders?
yup and of the 30 of a 100 of 70,000 only one gets updated more than 3 times. Seriously, do people really believe that at some point in the near future everybody on the planet will be keeping an online diary (and maintaining it)? Soon microsoft will package some sort of blog tool with new OS's and the blog-fanatics will go crazy proclaiming a million new blogs a day. I predict it will flatten at at somewhere near the number of people who keep a paper diary. What percentage of the global population is that?
Good point. I'd go further though and say if these are to work, they should be about the people using them appropriating them for their own means - not "join us" but rather "join with each other and find your own way, develop your own solutions". "Join us" sounds a little too much like nineteenth century missionary activities - "here, starving dirty savage, take these gifts from us and you can become like us, almost as good us, in our image". "Joining us" might be one solution, certainly on several dimensions, for example skills and knowledge sharing, but I'd emphasise as you do in your post the hope that the computers are appropriated by the communities and developed independently as soon as possible.
Interesting - I don't understand your line of thinking - interested to hear more. Is the argument that automated page turning is *cheaper* so it's a pity that the project spends a lot on labour charges (manual scanning)? Or is the argument that the automated page turning is easier on the fragile old books? I'd appreciate if you could offer more details about the technology - the company's demo video shows a vacuum device lifting pages, but both examples are with modern books. Honest question: surely the advantage here is a low labour cost method of scanning huge numbers of pages (like the telephone directory example they show). But if you have fragile books, surely the advantage of a human is that they can see that individual pages might be particularly fragile, maybe even needing support or repair to scan, while the pre-set vacuum device will plough on regardless, it won't be able to make a decision on the quality of the pages. Does it have any sensing devices built in? My experience of older books (e.g. nineteenth century) is that in some cases the paper can be very brittle.
I think the decline will be more insidious. I also think that the Chinese/ Indians/ Martians whoever will be wise enough not to pick a straight fight so it won't come to that. Luckily the world was sensible enough not to try to beat the USSR in a straight military fight, too many realised that would be too messy, to put it politely. I think the same will happen next time round. I think the next shift in global power will be more subtle and is already happening - the shift in the next generation of key industries to another country/ region, with it finance and wealth, bringing national shifts in influence. I'm from the UK - in the medieval period England was one of the big countries because it had sheep, and wool, a major trade.. who cares about wool these days?
I also think that the USA is fortunate compared to many countries that it hasn't experienced a modern war on its own soil and so there is a more Victorian attitude towards war (it's something that happens in far off exotic countries, you wave the brave boys off in their shining armour and they either march proudly back as heroes or at least in tidy coffins). I think most countries are a little more reticent about sabre rattling and if a power struggle is to happen they will try other alternatives first. Nobody in their right mind would try to take on the no.1 nuclear power in the world if there are more clever ways to win ground.