>> ^Xax:

Looks amazing... why don't games look anywhere near this good?


Because consoles are holding us back. Not much you can do with 512mb of ram and 5 year old technology.

One day there will be a device the size of a hearing aid, controlled by thinking, which works as a computer headset, hands-free cell phone, mp3 player, and digital radio, all in one.

They managed to control the new iPod shuffle with only 1 button, plus 2 for volume. Distinguishing between 3-4 different signals in a brain-computer interface is already old technology.

I think it's difficult to dispute that you weren't arguing against free trade in your previous post even if that wasn't your intention. The first paragraph seems clearly about it when you talk about being up in arms about your job going overseas, and I think in the second you misunderstand how capitalism works. But anyway, I don't think that we disagree on a great deal then. Like I stated in my original post, I believe in necessary government regulation and oversight in a capitalist economy, preventing deterimental effects like market failure, and financial, environmental or other crises.
>> ^Asmo:

>> ^RedSky:
Well, at this point you're simply arguing against free trade.
Would I be infuriated to lose a job because a firm has chosen to use cheaper labour from overseas? Sure. I go about preventing this from happening by studying about and working in an area that requires technical knowledge that cannot be easily substituted. As a comparison, would you be for sticking to old technologies purely because there are workers only trained in them? Should be have avoided embracing computation simply because previous generations were unfamiliar with them and stuck to letters and typewriters? Obviously given that these factors are mostly out of people's control, specific and unemployment assistance should be and is provided in most highly developed countries. The countries which don't have generous unemployment benefits are usually the ones that simply can't afford them. Typically though, they're the biggest relative beneficiaries of free trade though.
The better question should be, are willing up to give up the drastically lower prices, product variety and willing to scare of businesses who bring employment? Because you can bet that if you restrict companies from laying off workers in favor of cheaper employment overseas, they'll move overseas in droves to countries which do not and you'll have created a self fulfilling prophecy.
Free trade works two ways as well, which people seem to blissfully forget. Where do you think developing countries go to get their technical expertise?
Free trade leads to lower prices not higher profits. When all firms lower their wage costs, this creates the incentive to lower prices and capture more market share. Once one company in an industry does that, everyone follows suit. If that doesn't happen, it's a failure of competition policy and anti-trust and has nothing to do with free trade.
No offence, but I honestly think you should take Economics 101, or at least Wikipedia the basic concepts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand


None taken, but you've become so impressed with your own rhetoric (and wandered off in to free trade) that you've ignored the key element...
Exploitation. Foreign outsourcing was an example of 'free' trade (rather than 'fair' trade). But exploitation wears many coats. Usury rates on credit cards combined with stagnant wages, for example. Or sub prime mortgages for another. Destroying the environment to squeeze the last few drops of resources out.
And this is the core of the penultimate capitalist ideal (as opposed to individual flavours). Accumulate wealth. The more corners you cut, the faster you can accumulate wealth. Then you die and someone else get's it. Yay, you win.
Regulation, fair trade, competition laws etc are all ideals forced upon capitalists because people generally recognise that capitalism without checks = a disaster (BP + gulf, Union Carbide/Bhopal disaster etc). There is nothing wrong with working and expecting fair recompense for your labours but too often these labours aren't honest. They game the system and exploit (there's that word again) not only the workers but the customers as well so the man in the middle can make as much cash as possible.
ps. For the record, I don't have an issue with fair trade and the commensurate rise in prices if quality rises with it. That's the whole point of fair trade, not increasing wages for sweatshop quality.

>> ^RedSky:

Well, at this point you're simply arguing against free trade.
Would I be infuriated to lose a job because a firm has chosen to use cheaper labour from overseas? Sure. I go about preventing this from happening by studying about and working in an area that requires technical knowledge that cannot be easily substituted. As a comparison, would you be for sticking to old technologies purely because there are workers only trained in them? Should be have avoided embracing computation simply because previous generations were unfamiliar with them and stuck to letters and typewriters? Obviously given that these factors are mostly out of people's control, specific and unemployment assistance should be and is provided in most highly developed countries. The countries which don't have generous unemployment benefits are usually the ones that simply can't afford them. Typically though, they're the biggest relative beneficiaries of free trade though.
The better question should be, are willing up to give up the drastically lower prices, product variety and willing to scare of businesses who bring employment? Because you can bet that if you restrict companies from laying off workers in favor of cheaper employment overseas, they'll move overseas in droves to countries which do not and you'll have created a self fulfilling prophecy.
Free trade works two ways as well, which people seem to blissfully forget. Where do you think developing countries go to get their technical expertise?
Free trade leads to lower prices not higher profits. When all firms lower their wage costs, this creates the incentive to lower prices and capture more market share. Once one company in an industry does that, everyone follows suit. If that doesn't happen, it's a failure of competition policy and anti-trust and has nothing to do with free trade.
No offence, but I honestly think you should take Economics 101, or at least Wikipedia the basic concepts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand



None taken, but you've become so impressed with your own rhetoric (and wandered off in to free trade) that you've ignored the key element...

Exploitation. Foreign outsourcing was an example of 'free' trade (rather than 'fair' trade). But exploitation wears many coats. Usury rates on credit cards combined with stagnant wages, for example. Or sub prime mortgages for another. Destroying the environment to squeeze the last few drops of resources out.

And this is the core of the penultimate capitalist ideal (as opposed to individual flavours). Accumulate wealth. The more corners you cut, the faster you can accumulate wealth. Then you die and someone else get's it. Yay, you win.

Regulation, fair trade, competition laws etc are all ideals forced upon capitalists because people generally recognise that capitalism without checks = a disaster (BP + gulf, Union Carbide/Bhopal disaster etc). There is nothing wrong with working and expecting fair recompense for your labours but too often these labours aren't honest. They game the system and exploit (there's that word again) not only the workers but the customers as well so the man in the middle can make as much cash as possible.

ps. For the record, I don't have an issue with fair trade and the commensurate rise in prices if quality rises with it. That's the whole point of fair trade, not increasing wages for sweatshop quality.

Well, at this point you're simply arguing against free trade.

Would I be infuriated to lose a job because a firm has chosen to use cheaper labour from overseas? Sure. I go about preventing this from happening by studying about and working in an area that requires technical knowledge that cannot be easily substituted. As a comparison, would you be for sticking to old technologies purely because there are workers only trained in them? Should be have avoided embracing computation simply because previous generations were unfamiliar with them and stuck to letters and typewriters? Obviously given that these factors are mostly out of people's control, specific and unemployment assistance should be and is provided in most highly developed countries. The countries which don't have generous unemployment benefits are usually the ones that simply can't afford them. Typically though, they're the biggest relative beneficiaries of free trade though.

The better question should be, are willing up to give up the drastically lower prices, product variety and willing to scare of businesses who bring employment? Because you can bet that if you restrict companies from laying off workers in favor of cheaper employment overseas, they'll move overseas in droves to countries which do not and you'll have created a self fulfilling prophecy.

Free trade works two ways as well, which people seem to blissfully forget. Where do you think developing countries go to get their technical expertise?

Free trade leads to lower prices not higher profits. When all firms lower their wage costs, this creates the incentive to lower prices and capture more market share. Once one company in an industry does that, everyone follows suit. If that doesn't happen, it's a failure of competition policy and anti-trust and has nothing to do with free trade.

No offence, but I honestly think you should take Economics 101, or at least Wikipedia the basic concepts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microeconomics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_debate>> ^Asmo:

Of course not but outsourcing to foreign countries means someone local loses their job, right? What's the difference in service apart from the language barrier? Would you take a massive paycut to ensure your job didn't go overseas? I think you'd be rather up in arms about it.
In your attempts to simplify it down to "oh well, they need jobs too" you've ignored the core root of capitalism. The only thing that changes for the company is they get greater profits while they exploit people (and perhaps a few complaints about language barriers). The workers are doing the same job but getting paid far less. Working longer, harder for less money in, for the most part, worse conditions. And local workers are now unemployed (which for the most part ain't the cushy dole train available in Aus).
Where's the regulatory oversight now?

Hey, some of us wait for our old technology to break beyond reasonable repair before buying new stuff.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Are there not other ways to do motion graphics without Flash's model of frames and tweens?

IMO the only way Flash will survive is to open the FLA and make it a web standard. While the SWF runtime is open and lots of programs can make one (eg. Swift3D) - Adobe nee Macromedia has always maintained tight control over the FLA source.

To be honest, even that probably won't save Flash. the wind is blowing towards search-engine readable HTML - and plug-ins feel like old technology.

>> ^rougy:
I need to look into that, but I don't think Flash is going anywhere.
Unless I'm missing something, I don't see any frames or tweens yet.
I personally think Flash would do well to release "low caliber" versions of Flash editors for free so that people can get in there and play with the basics.
I'm a huge Flash enthusiast, but the main thing that prohibits its popularity is, in large part, the price of the editor.

Here's what I said to Pprt:

dude, farmers' crops were going bad before they could sell it all. People were getting sick from food-borne illness.
Yes, in 2009.
They don't have electricity in most of the places where this is needed. Whether it is old technology or not, don't you think it's a good thing that they are making use of it now?
It's a happy thing, not a "hey check how impressive this 'discovery' is" thing.

>> ^Pprt:
Are we supposed to be impressed that Africans discovered insulation and clay pottery? This is 2009.

Verily, good for them.

It's just surreal that Northeners are impressed by this neolithic technology.

In reply to this comment by laura:
dude, farmers' crops were going bad before they could sell it all. People were getting sick from food-borne illness.
Yes, in 2009.
They don't have electricity in most of the places where this is needed. Whether it is old technology or not, don't you think it's a good thing that they are making use of it now?
It's a happy thing, not a "hey check how impressive this 'discovery' is" thing.

In reply to this comment by Pprt:
Are we supposed to be impressed that Africans discovered insulation and clay pottery? This is 2009.

dude, farmers' crops were going bad before they could sell it all. People were getting sick from food-borne illness.
Yes, in 2009.
They don't have electricity in most of the places where this is needed. Whether it is old technology or not, don't you think it's a good thing that they are making use of it now?
It's a happy thing, not a "hey check how impressive this 'discovery' is" thing.

In reply to this comment by Pprt:
Are we supposed to be impressed that Africans discovered insulation and clay pottery? This is 2009.

I'd like to see the camera based tech in a mouse, but he should not get too far ahead of himself there as well. He claims that "momentum in a scrollwheel" has not existed in a mouse before yet the Logitech G9 has been out for a few years with this feature. Whoops.

R&D is good though. The scrollwheel itself was the last major addition to the average computer mouse and its a decade old technology now. I'm not lopping in optical/laser technology since this has only improved tracking rather than the actual interface.

If you are seeing this.. then it is OLD technology.

Yeah, let's just shoot the messenger. IGN said it was HD, so I relayed the info. turns out you can DOWNLOAD a 720p version, but they're streaming a ~480p one. And yeah, I now what HD means (720p/1080p+); this time I just didn't verify whether they were streaming as advertised (not that I think it's a criminal offense - I don't think a lot of sifters browse videosift on FullHD displays).

>> ^joedirt:
STOP using "HD" if you don't know what it means.
This is not HD, it is high quality or 640x360 High-Resolution which is just marginally as good as NTSC. (or 40 year old technology).

STOP using "HD" if you don't know what it means.

This is not HD, it is high quality or 640x360 High-Resolution which is just marginally as good as NTSC. (or 40 year old technology).

That was over 20 years ago... they are all on old technologies called VHS tapes. It's nothing like the stuff you see today... I promise.

;-)