Touche. Consider the flip side though of having your income 'equalized' by globalization, outsourcing/global competition etc. Maybe it makes sense to have the whole world on a converged currency / value system rather than today's economic borders that preserve the status quo. I can't see it happening without some serious turmoil though. Rich countries have the most to lose while the 'great equalization' takes place.

This is exactly what automation should be aiming to achieve, but we're so bloody brainwashed into capitalism loving that we don't see the potential. Isn't it a GOOD thing that we don't all have to work? Shouldn't we be able to share the wealth we've been able to create as a socitey for ourselves? Oh yea, communism is evil thats right..

Mostly CEOs (more accurately managers) with MBA degrees who have been ethnically cleansed of all humanist tendencies.

We are supposed to get sick.. it keeps us healthy! Fuck this bullshit someone please smack all the germaphobe fools in the gob and tell em to shut the hell up!

Well you can lead a horse to water but you cant make it drink. The growth in China is fed by Western manufacturing demands. They're not innovators, theyre a lowest bidder manufacturer. Take away their economy by onshoring or giving the work to other nations who will do it while adhering to environmental standards. Whenwe buy from WalMart we are only adding to the problem. Not enough value placed on the environment thats translates into costs of goods, i.e. something manufactured in China should be double the cost due to their poor environmental practices.

Agreed, the concept of a nation is irrelevant when it comes to global issues. However, I would be the first to defend the Chinese and the rest who are simply being outsourced by the West to create all our junk. Its still OUR pollution, just because they are the ones getting paid to do it doesn't make it their fault. This is CONSUMER pollution, mostly driven by CAPITALISM. Fix the two problems in caps and our problem will be resolved, in a few thousand years (when the climate goes back to normal).

Shouldnt we be hailing this as one of the greatest acheivments of our species? Think of all those lucky people who no longer need to work their asses off to produce some good or service the rest of us need! They can now be free to contribute in other ways. Write or read some books, help people in need, become involved in humanitarian policy development.. etc etc. My point being, if you dont have classes, if you dont have a failed capitalist value system whereby if everybody isnt working (think slavery) then its suffering time.. just maybe you'd see that the lack of wealth distribution is the problem, not the efficiencies that are created by the brilliant minds. Its verbal diarrhea such as the quoted article that makes my blood boil with frustration over the level of corporate capitalist right wing brainwashing that is poisoning our culture. I may not have the answers but its time to talk. Its time for real change.

An overly technical manager can be dangerous. They tend to overlook important non-technical issues as they gravitate to their comfort zone in the 1s & 0's. OTOH, a Manager who has no practical problem solving skills will be out of their depth. What you need is someone who can comprehend complex issues but knows how to deal with people and politics in a way that technical people shouldnt have to. Case in point, my previous mgr. Who was caring, fair and encouraged us to grow while guiding us and mentoring in a wise, original thinker type way. He really made you feel like you were important and valued. Now hes gone (mostly because he was much too forward thinking for our monolithic telecom operator company mentality) and we're stuck with a new mgr. who thinks its ok to use email as an IM client (papertrailer), asks for vacation schedules 12mth in advance, and doesnt mind asking people who have been working for 24 hrs to just deliver that one more thing just so he can further his own goals of corporate ladder climbing to the detrement of the very team he is supposed to be leading. Good mgrs are extremely hard to come by. If you're lucky enough to get one, be good to them and learn from them.

Bill Hicks said it best I think: http://youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo

If you choose to see the negative in everything, negative you will become. Christmas for me is about taking time out with family and having a good time. I'm sure thats what it is for the loads of non-christians I work with that also celebrate it. If you dont like the commercialist aspect, (as I don't) there are a number of options to do the giving thing, ie. gift spend limits, secret santa etc. Just get drunk and have a good time man. Chill, be happy :)

IETF has a working group called P2PSIP which is basically the same thing as mentioned here except over SIP. Basically it is an extension to SIP called REsource LOcation And Discovery (RELOAD), and it allows people to make and receive telephony/video calls over SIP/RTP over a completely decentralized infrastucture, ie. without the phone company. 911 and other stuff hasnt been worked out yet so I dont see it replacing the incumbent telcos at this time, but at the very least it seems like a nice anonymous and open alternative to Skype. What I find interesting is that the AD for this WG is Gonzalo Camarillo, a research guy for Ericsson. I can't see Ericsson or any of their customers getting too excited about any RFC's coming out of this WG. https://ietf.org/wg/p2psip/charter

Good quality instruments and recording gear are still very expensive and very necessary to sound good. Sure you can rent but at that point you're better off heading to a studio who can provide an engineer and all the gear. I think the studios might get simpler/cheaper but you still need a good desk, mics, acoustic space and instruments.. not to mention the technical expertise and experience in your engineer and then yes talented artists help a little too.

Wrong. Cellphones and cell networks are reliant on centralized nodes like RNC's, HLRs & MSC switches to setup calls and these are almost always overloaded during natural disasters. Carriers are only willing to spend enough to cover a single node failure, otherwise known as an N+1 redundancy model. With this model, a natural disaster affecting a geographical area with high population density (lets say a 'big one' earthquake in SoCal) the volume of calls that are triggered, which is vastly non-emergency "Hey Mom are you OK?" type traffic, is usually enough to prevent even 911 calls completing for an entire cell network (nationwide outage). You can experience this phenomenon each year on Dec 31st at 11:59pm when SMSCs are consistently overloaded with "Happy New Year Bob!" SMS messages. Dont for a second think that your cell phone is going to save you in any large scale emergency situation such as this.

Its Irwin not Irving you twadwaffle.. and yes he suffered one of the only ever recorded deaths caused by a sting ray ever. If it was going to happen to anyone it was gonna be him. A national hero and a pretty decent surfer too, zoo keeper uniform and all.

I usually just use the SSH interface to the ILO and drop to a console from there. Its the same as serial, but with the added advantage of not being serial (9600bps sucks!) Of course you could use IPMI/SNMP/WBEM and code up a tool if you want to be more efficient, but realistically how often do you need to do this? ILOs usually provide good event logging capabilities as well so you can see what happened, when.