Say a BIG THANK YOU on their 17th birthday! There is no philosophy or politics or any other shit here … just plain STABLE software! …

update: just upgraded to squeeze from lenny. Since squeeze is still ‘testing’ i had to do a bit of removal and addition of applications. Result a gnome install with a RAM foot print of 135 MB on a 4GB machine. Blazing!

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US generally has been a consumer oriented society; this means people consume more than they can produce. This is actually an interesting premise. We are now talking about consuming goods versus producing them. Now consuming by its very nature is limited by a boundary of limitation of resource to consume more. Whether its food grain or some leisure activity, there always is a constraint involved. Production on the other hand is limitless, except perhaps by availability of capital.

Miniature Utopian View

Assuming there is no machinery, no monetary capital and no competition for the particular product involved and the unit of production is achieved purely by labour; a case of old fashioned farming except with limitless arable land. The man can produce as much food as he wants but starts with 100 units; but his village’s capacity to consume is limited; say 50 units. So he will tend to try and sell the 50 units of extra food to the neighbouring village. If the consumption capacity for the neighbouring village is 25 units. He can decide to sell it to a village further away or he could decide to produce only 75 units next time.

Basically, he chose his market; The market did not choose him.Hold This Thought.

So the producer has to keep seeking new markets provided he decides to grow. A consumer on the other hand will be hard pressed to move out of his realm and seek pleasures of consumption unless the object is a necessity or an addiction. So food units will do just fine and we might be happy enough to go abroad and import but perfumes and iphones are a different ballgame altogether.

The producers will gladly bring the products to the consumer and thus for the consumer due to regular use, the “Good To Have” becomes a “Need To Have” So air conditioning becomes a necessity, bottled water becomes a necessity, coke becomes a necessity. All these products are supported by an income which is in turn generated by working for a ‘producer’ company.

Labour Rates

Now bring in a complication, Labour rate. Labour rates do not follow logic most of the time as its tied to human emotion and aspirations. So eventually you have a situation where growth in labour rates have outgrown viability. Thus production for consumption at the same location is no longer feasible.

Now the producer has three options,

1. Seek out other markets
2. Reduce production.
3. Reduce Labour

But he cannot reduce production as his Cost Of Production still involves rising labour costs. He cannot reduce labour as it leads to really messy situations. So he does the next best thing and seeks newer markets where he has to compete with another producer.

The Other Market

Our producer cannot sell his product at a lower price as this would trigger a smuggling of goods back into his home market thus cannibalizing his sales back home. Besides his cost of production would not change unless he shifts manufacturing abroad to locations with lower labour rates. A case of outsourcing. So he stops producing in his home country altogether and beings to import from a foreign location.

So now we have lost jobs and job creation abroad to balance this off. Result – Increase in unemployment in the home country. Some of this employment is offset by a rising consumption driven sector, Service Sector!

Since labour rates have increased, this has also triggered a corresponding increase in consumption also by people who have not taken part in production. Wife and kids for instance. This consumption had to be supported with services and newer life style products. If we assume production of even these products has completely shifted outside, we have a pure service sector economy.

The Service Sector

The service sector drives the economy going forward. Eventually the service sector faces the same dilemma faced by producers earlier. But they cannot shift abroad except a few back-office functions. The service has to be provided here, directly to the consumer. But the back office jobs go away, more job loss and another round of job creation abroad. This time there is no other sector to even partly support the job losses. This is where we came in.

Current US Situation

The consumption coupled with peer pressure has risen to individual consumer debt levels to alarming proportions. A slight change in your income could actually spell a huge lifestyle change. This retrograde never really goes down with essentially a human characteristic. You need to blame someone for your plight! Civil unrest.

Solution

If US has to improve, they have to get back to their basics. Think about reducing your production costs. Produce and produce more and see if the world wants your product. History seems to think you actually can sell ice to an Eskimo. So there you go, as simple as that.

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From comments at /.

You have to design the car so that the user doesn’t get the idea of looking into the fuel tank with a lighter, or if he does get that idea, that he can’t do it. No matter how silly it sounds. This is why our society works, because we can safely use tools without having to be experts in them.

Another one,

If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law. — Roy Santoro

Funny!

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The comments on this post at Smashing Apps has me irritated. Firefox and Chrome Fanboys keep yelling with the utmost of ignorance. People keep yapping about tabs, about addons and about features which Opera has had for years and years.

Opera Browser Features

So just to get things straight.

1. Opera introduced tabs to the world.
2. Those thing called private Tabs, now in Opera, expect in chrome in future releases, probably in two years.
3. Opera introduced labels for emails instead of folders.
4. Opera introduced mouse gestures, you have them as an addon for other browsers because somebody saw the implementation in opera and thought it would be a cool thing for firefox. You have them there because somebody was smart enough to invent it.
5. Speed dial was invented by Opera
6. Userscripts were enabled in Opera long before Firefox thought about Greasemonkey
7. See if any other browsers implement ACID 3 test better than Opera yet. Just because the others began harping about them now has made Micorosoft lookup and notice and do something about it in IE9 previews.
8. Opera already has voice based browsing. Expect an implementation in firefox and chrome in about two years and in IE in about five.
9. M2 mail client is on of the best i have used, Gmail does not have a patch on it. Not yet anyway. One hindrance they do have lack of PGP support. I want to know how many people in percentage terms know what PGP means. Most just don’t care.
10. The idea that browsers could make the web better just by being faster was again introduced by Opera by claiming it was the fastest browser in the world. The other browsers didn’t gave up on speed wars against Opera until Google came up with Chrome! Iam glad they did, they woke up a ‘mildly drowsy’ browser Giant, Opera!
11. Try the content blocking feature in opera (you only have to right click!), you will never want to try ad blocking again!
12. ADDONS Screw up your browser, get over it! The code is almost always never reliable.
13. USE their developer tools, equivalent firefox tools still do not have live preview.
14. Memory Management – Firefox woke up now when it no longer is much of an issue with gigs of RAM cheaper and cheaper.
15. Smaller file size, tighter code. Feel the interface, firefox still does not have it. Try chrome in Linux, clunky and broke as hell!
16. One keystroke shortcuts. Opera is still the only browser will this one. Try fingering through your tabs with one key button. You will never want to open tabs in other browsers again.
17. BONUS POINT – Torrent integration
18. BONUS POINT – IRC chat integration
19. BONUS POINT – Complete interface reconfigurability – Wide Screen? – Place your tabs on the right/left for greater real estate. Don’t want the tabs? Remove them and use the windows panel instead. Or just keyboard shortcuts. Or right mouse button with scroll.



20. BONUS POINT – Opera Link is the best thing out there. Not just your bookmarks, but your history, your notes, your speed dial, your searches. It stores everything!!

For the record browsing experience involves a whole combination of factors like newer tabs, mouse gestures, shortcuts, amount of javascript, your internet connection, multiple tabs, customizable interface, themes etc etc. Every single feature i have stated was invented by Opera.

I wouldn’t claim that the Opera browser will give you the perfect experience, every user will have their own barometer. But if you want the latest innovations in a neat little package, opera is for you.If you use opera for a few days, am pretty sure you will hate going back!

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Forget what the critics and the “I only follow critics” people say.

Its a good movie; Watch it! You will be glad you did!

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While i normally like the things google comesup in their seach prompter, the search below takes the cake.

Please note the little question about Americans. Wow! The world does not seem to have a good opinion about them.

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For those of you who still want to learn or atleast relive some of those days from school; presenting Academic Earth; wonderful wonderful lectures!

Something to think about by Guy Kawasaki

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