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Comment: The wrong people (Score 5, Insightful) 303

by EdmundSS (#43300739) Attached to: Geeks On a Plane Proposed To Solve Global Tech Skills Crisis
CEOs and VCs are not necessarily the people who have ideas, and if they do, they *already* have the means to express them. I'd rather see 100 respected, talented, peer-voted if necessary, folks on the panel: *true* technocrats, true innovators, not financial folks; people with ideas, sometimes wacky ideas, rather than folks money; the people who turn down a promotion to management because it would take them away from the detailed problem-solving.

Comment: Re: How would you know? (Score 1) 260

So, you only receive a brief flash from the laser, and only have a few rods and cones ablated by the coherent pulse from the laser. That one-second blast has only damaged 0.01% of your vision. Ten years down the line, when half your vision is gone, why would you associate the loss with a laser?

Comment: Hunger (Score 1) 263

by EdmundSS (#41394107) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Where Should a Geek's Charitable Donations Go?
As a few others have commented, the biggest "bang for your buck" is probably to support outfits who help people in the developing world. Bootstrapping poverty-stricken but eager folk into the productive economy enables them to send their children to school. See Seeds for Development as an example of this type of organisation.

Disclaimer: I've met some of the founders of SFD.

Comment: Re: Captain Cook (Score 4, Insightful) 55

by EdmundSS (#40159945) Attached to: Everything You Need To Know About the June 5/6 Venus Transit
Cook was an enlightened captain, *generally* treating both is crew and the natives extremely well by the standards of the day. He extended our knowledge of several Pacific islands, especially New Zealand, charting them in great detail. However, their existence was generally already known about from the voyages of Ferdinand Magellan & Abel Tasman, so it's grossly unfair to blame Cook for any subsequent poor outcomes for natives in Australia & the Pacific.

Comment: Re: Off topic, but not dumping (Score 1) 577

by EdmundSS (#39865065) Attached to: Oracle and the End of Programming As We Know It

Dumping didn't scupper US steel production; excess of supply over demand did. (When there's evidence that dumping is occurring, a countervailing duty is imposed.) US steel producers, with high overheads, can't cope with low prices. Suppliers in low wage economies can.

Yes, free trade enabled that, but it also lowered the cost of pretty much everything we buy. If the US closed itself off from free-trade, the ICs and electronics would still be made elsewhere in the world, and sold cheaply almost everywhere, but to buy those goods in the US would be expensive, and condemn the rest of the economy to uncompetitiveness. Look to the closed economies of the Soviet bloc to see how well *that* idea worked...

"Facts are stupid things." -- President Ronald Reagan (a blooper from his speeach at the '88 GOP convention)

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