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In the [Californian] November 2002 election, representatives supported by 24 percent of voters gained the power to pass laws in the legislature.

Florida's 22nd District is 90 miles long and never more than 3 miles wide. It consists of every beach house lining Route A1A along Florida's Gold Coast from West Palm Beach to Miami Beach

Let people vote for whomever and how many candidates as they want. Ranking is unnecessary.

I am unclear on how your proposed system works. If I can "vote" as many times as I want, for as many candidates as I want, then how do you decide who wins?

Vote Early, Vote Often? What you really want in an ideal voting system is a way to maximise concordance and transitivity. In the US, with blatant gerrymandering, these two aims are absolutely frustrated.

I suspect you are talking about the Big-Mac index, which is used to examine purchasing power parity, or lack thereof.

What I find most curious is the incredibly rapid turnaround in opinion seen on Slashdot. During the dot-com boom, everyone was happy to see Open Source, a truly global phenomenon, bloooming. But now I see this strange bifurcation of views. Open Source software created by people from all over the globe is still good. On the other hand global commerce, in which the lowest-cost providers of goods and services win, is being villified.

So when a Chinese company (operating in non-democratic government) manufactures the inexpensive hardware that powers your gaming PC, that's fine. But when Indian programmers (operating in a democratic society) start beating out American programmers for jobs, there are some sort of insidious forces at work?

When principals butt up against pocketbooks is the time when you see what people truly believe.

correct but only one piece of the puzzle ...

Economist, Expect the unexpected talking about Why Innovation Fails , Carl Franklin

The new Indian middle class growing up on technological jobs are actually least likely support the caste system or have religious hatred.

Last week's Economist had a very interesting article comparing early European coffee-houses to today's Internet.

One of their points was that while hotspots in cafes are a good idea, it's unlikely they will make anyone a lot of money, since in places where there is competition among coffee houses, a proprietor would likely give away the access just like they buy magazines and don't charge the customers to read them.

Put another way, I can set up good wireless in my urban cafe for less than a hundred bucks a month. It won't take me long to figure out that I can sell a lot more $3 coffees by giving it away.

Especially if the Giant Faceless Corporation down the street is charging people ten bucks an hour for the same thing.

The article is titled "the Internet in a cup" and is available on the paid section of the economist online: link.
But then, you could probably drop down to the cafe and read it for free...

... such as the Little Ice Age. Take a gander at this article from The Economist 12/20/2003; find it here. Not conclusive, by any means, but food for thought.

Quote:
"Three times in the past 2,000 years, there have been periods of cooling (most recently, the "little ice age" of the 17th and 18th centuries). These, he notes, followed the three largest known periods of plague, when the human population shrank in various parts of the world. The first period was a series of plagues that racked the Roman empire from the third to the sixth centuries. The second was the Black Death and its aftermath. The third was the epidemic of smallpox and other diseases that reduced the population of the Americas from some 50m to about 5m in the centuries after Europeans arrived, and which coincided with the little ice age. In each case, a lot of previously farmed land turned back into forest, sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and cooling the climate. As environmentalists are wont to observe, mankind is part of nature. These observations show just how intimate the relationship is."

but face it guys: the world is - or should be - on track for greater equilibrium, which - in the u.s. - means a lower standard of living all around. get your big screen tv's now.

Hi, dude.

I'm not trying to discourage you from writing reviews. I can tell you enjoyed this book, but your writing style distracts from your message. Please omit phrases that take up space without adding meaning.

Enough about the background, though.

the text was well written [...] and easy to read

This is not a fun topic if you don't know what you are doing

Here's an excerpt from the Economist Style Guide:

Some words add nothing but length to your prose. Use adjectives to make your meaning more precise and be cautious of those you find yourself using to make it more emphatic.
[...]
Industrial action is usually industrial inaction, industrial disruption or a strike. A courtesy call is generally a sales offer or an uninvited visit. A substantially finished bridge is an unfinished bridge. Someone with high name-recognition is well known. Something with reliability problems probably does not work.

PS - good luck with your writing.

Actually this is probably a better gauge on inflation than the fictitious numbers they're feeding us from the goverment statistics.

If you want a real-world measurement, The Economist uses a Big Mac index, tracking the price of Big Mac's not just in the US but around the world, as a means of measuring inflationary trends and foreign currency movements...

The world has gotten a lot smaller since Nelly Bly's 1889-90 trip around the world. Goods and services travel around the globe readily; some are now all but universal. Various organizations act to strengthen "free trade" between countries. But the DVD region codes are a method for not only protecting copyright, but limiting who you can sell your initial copy to, unless they have a region-free DVD player.

With the routine shipping of items around the globe (I've ordered obscure computer hardware from Australian PC dealers a couple times), this attempt to control the release of movies at different times in different countries seems doomed in a not overlong timeframe.

Among other things, the article makes the very good point that there are two ways to use biometrics: for identification (i.e., who is this J. Random Person), and for authentication (i.e., is this really Rich, as he claims to be).

Tests of face recognition for the first purpose have basically been miserable failures, as far as I can see. (As I'm sure most Slashdotters know, facial recognition is computationally a vey hard problem, even though we clever apes do it all the time.) For the second application, face recognition or fingerprints would seem more promising, since one is comparing them with, in effect, a known right answer.

The article also points out that all of this is being sold as a way to "increase security" -- but it would have done exactly nothing to prevent 9/11, since the hijackers entered the US and traveled as themselves.

/Rich

Among other things, the article makes the very good point that there are two ways to use biometrics: for identification (i.e., who is this J. Random Person), and for authentication (i.e., is this really Rich, as he claims to be).

Tests of face recognition for the first purpose have basically been miserable failures, as far as I can see. (As I'm sure most Slashdotters know, facial recognition is computationally a vey hard problem, even though we clever apes do it all the time.) For the second application, face recognition or fingerprints would seem more promising, since one is comparing them with, in effect, a known right answer.

The article also points out that all of this is being sold as a way to "increase security" -- but it would have done exactly nothing to prevent 9/11, since the hijackers entered the US and traveled as themselves.

/Rich

indeed. their www site has an article, 'A Nation Apart',, discussing the idea of American exceptionalism. one of the most fascinating articles ive read recently.

One of the Economist's annual prizes for innovation went to Raymond Damadian for his role in creating NMR. But another fascinating article about who was responsible for creating NMR explains how Raymond Damadian missed out on the Nobel prize.

One of the Economist's annual prizes for innovation went to Raymond Damadian for his role in creating NMR. But another fascinating article about who was responsible for creating NMR explains how Raymond Damadian missed out on the Nobel prize.

"Both Howard Brush Dean III and George Walker Bush hail from the same White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (Wasp) establishment: a world of blue blood and old money, of private schools and deb balls, of family connections and inherited first names. Their fathers and grandfathers were educated at the same Ivy League university, Yale. One of Mr Bush's grandmothers was a bridesmaid for one of Dr Dean's (they had been at finishing school together). Dr Dean's father worked as a stockbroker at Dean Witter Reynolds, and the young Howard grew up on Hook Pond in East Hampton and on Park Avenue. He was educated at St George's in Newport, a posh boarding school, and then at Yale, where he overlapped for a year with Mr Bush, who had been to Andover."

I don't see a description. All I see is an assertion.

OK, did a little more google. Here are a couple of real source articles.


And you are forgetting that I already stated that fingerprints were a bad example. For fingerprints, fine, they're already being used, and they're easy to copy. So let's not use them for anything else. But that's a strawman argument against a single implementation of biometrics.

Fingerprints do make a convenient strawman, but unfortunately they are still the dominant form of biometric systems. Look around you, count the products or services that propose to rely on biometrics. The majority (60% according to the latest article linked from slashdot) is fingerprint based. The next largest group is facial recognition, which is also not very secure. The rest (hand, iris, voice, writing) may or may not be better, I do not know. Combination systems are very rare today. Don't you think the strawman arguments are valid while the strawman is real? :)


If an ATM used [fingerprints], and your fingerprints were stolen, there's no way you could be personally held responsible unless you were somehow negligent. This protection is being used by the bank, not by the person, so there isn't "anything else that might be protected by that ID," as far as the victim is concerned.

So fine, the fingerprint is for the protection of the bank, and I won't be liable if their system turns out to be less then secure. There is also no harm done if the bank is the only one entity in my lifetime (or in the lifetime of a given technology) that uses that biometric. But there are not enough unique biometric systems that each bank, each id card, each company could use an independent measurement, so there will be inevitable overlaps.

If [birth certificates, passports, etc.] were required day to day, they wouldn't be sufficient to "steal my identity." Actually, the whole concept of "stealing someone's identity" is rather ridiculous. For instance, this article talks about stealing people's identity's, but what actually happened is people stole a bunch of cash from an ATM.

This is a good argument. As long as the compromised systems are compartmentalized (ie. one bank and their atms) then such a compromise is not a big deal. The problem comes if multiple systems will depend on the same biometric id.


The way I think about them is like a public/private key system that you cannot change. Biometrics are easy to recognize, but hard to reproduce. That's the key to their security.

As long as they are difficult to reproduce, I agree. In my opinion though there is a limited window when that is true. Once someone figures out how to do it, then that given biometric will become weaker.

Keep in mind that the difficulty only exists for physical attacks, where a person is trying to impersonate you in front of a trusted system. Biometric signatures offer no protection against electronic attacks. If these rigged ATMs can copy the PIN number and magnetic card info in a re-usable form, then they can also copy your biometric signature.

No one is forcing people to use biometrics on anything.

Oh, good, I'm relieved. :) "use it at your own risk" (whether that risk is lower or higher then alternatives) is fine with me.

The private key is "me," perhaps. But the public key, which I give out is not me. It's the parts of me that are recorded in those particular conditions at that particular time. And that's not going to be the same among different systems.

Unlike in public key cryptography, it only matters if someone can produce a good imitation of your public "image

There was a good Lexington column (registration/subsription required) in The Economist that made this point. I think the Brits mean less partisan like the Supreme Court or some other non-electable, permenant appointment.

The Economist has several articles over the past couple of years about this topic. Some probably require subscriptions, but they are excellent articles.

Tom DeLay's chef d'oeuvre

How to rig an election

This really got kicked into high-gear once it was decided (and I forget exactly what the history is on who made the decision to do so) that minorities should get some majority districts. Since in most states this is a difficult proposition. Even where segregation is prevelant, it is too localized to make it easy to build geographic regions where any given minority has a clear majority. So complicated census databases were put to use, with all manner of data. As near as I can tell, (and I'm not electoral historian by any means) this is where the whole thing started.

Gerrymandering (named for a political cartoon from the early years of the US, where a particularly serpentine congressional district was given fangs, wings, and a forked tongue and called the 'Dread Gerry-Mander!' after the politician responsible for drawing that district) was fairly difficult and rare in American politics prior to this point, because people would point to a map and say 'that's ridiculous!' But once there were these minority districts, the politicians could accuse their accusers of racism, and go about happily shoring up their political futures.

Seems we need to get a computer program, with no voting pattern databases, to solve the problem as an optimization problem.

The Economist has several articles over the past couple of years about this topic. Some probably require subscriptions, but they are excellent articles.

Tom DeLay's chef d'oeuvre

How to rig an election

This really got kicked into high-gear once it was decided (and I forget exactly what the history is on who made the decision to do so) that minorities should get some majority districts. Since in most states this is a difficult proposition. Even where segregation is prevelant, it is too localized to make it easy to build geographic regions where any given minority has a clear majority. So complicated census databases were put to use, with all manner of data. As near as I can tell, (and I'm not electoral historian by any means) this is where the whole thing started.

Gerrymandering (named for a political cartoon from the early years of the US, where a particularly serpentine congressional district was given fangs, wings, and a forked tongue and called the 'Dread Gerry-Mander!' after the politician responsible for drawing that district) was fairly difficult and rare in American politics prior to this point, because people would point to a map and say 'that's ridiculous!' But once there were these minority districts, the politicians could accuse their accusers of racism, and go about happily shoring up their political futures.

Seems we need to get a computer program, with no voting pattern databases, to solve the problem as an optimization problem.

if rates are very high and you cut them, here is what happens: lower taxes = better economy, cause people have more money to spend on goods and services = more jobs = MORE TAX REVENUE.

What you're referring to is the Laffer Curve, but the tricky part of applying that to the US is that nobody really knows where the tipping point is, where a reduction in rates actually generates more revenue. This argument was popular during the Reagan years, but the tax cuts of that time didn't increase revenues. Among the developed nations, the US has a relatively low tax rate, so you'd be better off looking for that effect in some place like Germany or France...

No, Microsoft have cut their own throats. Even The Economist is talking about liability now. Between installation of XP and downloading the 45MB+ of patches comes 1000 skr1pt k1dd1ez all queueing up to 0wn your machine.

My Linux was cut less than six months ago so I have some holes to fix. I haven't found one remastered copy of XP with the patches rolled up and it has been out for over 18 months!

Christ, I have seen pirate editions of XP in the market near Metro Avtovar, St. Petersburg) with the patches rolled up -- why the hell can't Microsoft do it?

Ask, for instance, Dan Geer, an expert on software security and a top executive of @Stake, a security consulting firm. In September, he led a group that wrote a report blaming Microsoft's virtual "monoculture" in operating systems for the internet's frailty. No sooner was the report published than he found himself out of a job. @Stake, which counts Microsoft among its customers, "fired me by press release, retroactively and in public," he says.

The gist of Mr Geer's argument is that Microsoft has over the years created "unacceptable levels of complexity" in its computer code. It has done so because its main objective has been to lock users into its software by tying the Windows operating system together with applications such as Word, Explorer and Outlook. Complexity is "the enemy of security", says Mr Geer's report, since "the defender has to counter all possible attacks; the attacker only has to find one unblocked means of attack." Moreover, complexity feeds on itself since "fixing a known flaw is likely to introduce a new, unknown flaw."

Ask, for instance, Dan Geer, an expert on software security and a top executive of @Stake, a security consulting firm. In September, he led a group that wrote a report blaming Microsoft's virtual "monoculture" in operating systems for the internet's frailty. No sooner was the report published than he found himself out of a job. @Stake, which counts Microsoft among its customers, "fired me by press release, retroactively and in public," he says.

The gist of Mr Geer's argument is that Microsoft has over the years created "unacceptable levels of complexity" in its computer code. It has done so because its main objective has been to lock users into its software by tying the Windows operating system together with applications such as Word, Explorer and Outlook. Complexity is "the enemy of security", says Mr Geer's report, since "the defender has to counter all possible attacks; the attacker only has to find one unblocked means of attack." Moreover, complexity feeds on itself since "fixing a known flaw is likely to introduce a new, unknown flaw."

You are quite right. He's never explicitly said the word communist. In fact, there's only one article that ever links him to that word, and it's not even a direct quote of anything. He does, however, like to wrap his entire lawsuit in the American flag. He likes to claim that Free and Open Source Software will destroy the American economy (I'm getting real tired of that complaint from everyone who has a problem with new technology), and millions of jobs. Everyone will be poor, and all IT jobs will be exported to India, China, and other foreign countries (Darl needs a reality check on this -- it's happening NOW). His retoric is that FOSS developers are communists or socialists, but explicitly avoids saying it because it would be a little too hard to take it seriously. The entire "GPL preempted by the constitution" and "they're violating export control laws" in their legal claims exist for no other reason than to make these developers look like very bad people who are trying to subvert the USA into something bad.

You didn't answer my question. PROFESSIONAL economists who don't have an axe to grind seem to think the economy is improving, and instead of addressing that, you site specious arguments.

a) Professional economists rarely agree on anything, b) read this. It's from that rabidly socialist commie axe-to-grind newsmag the Economist, and even THEY think American fiscal policy has some issues that have not been addressed by the administration. These issues cannot be ignored without consequences. You must pay the piper eventually.

Interesting quote:

In their most recent poll, members of the National Association of Business Economists described the federal deficit as the biggest problem facing America's economy. A bipartisan coalition of three economic think-tanks--the Committee for Economic Development, the Concord Coalition and the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities--recently declared that, without a change in course, the next decade might be the "most fiscally irresponsible" in the country's history.

Look man, despite what you seem to think, people can wish for the same goal -- a healthy, robust American economy -- and differ about how best to pursue that goal. This does not mean they have "an axe to grind". The Bush administration is not removed from criticism, and trying to defend it against any and all criticism, however justified that criticism might be, just winds up hurting both the President and the country as a whole.

Read the letters section of this week's Economist, the USPTO claims "Patent reform pending".

Just admit you hate the US.
Unfortunately for you I don't hate US, nor any country from Europe, as you seems to do.

Usually I would not reply this kind of message, since it seems like a troll answer, but I must do that to make my position clear: I do not like most US government actions taken in under-developed countries in the last 200 years. It doesn't mean I like the way my country is being used by its own politicians, specifically the last dictartorship period (1964-1990), specially the seventies. The same opinion about many european countries in the past.

But there is something I have nothing against: the US people. Why? I have a business visa that allowed me to really know american people, some of them I confess are good friends of mine.

So let me come back to the topic: many of you already knows about Order 39 of Mr. Bremer. If you do not, just google it ;-) This is the kind of action I'm talking about
In the other hand, I really do like the UN plans for the International Year of Rice 2004 and many other UN initiatives. Supporting poor countries in producing their own food is a good solutions instead of distributing food. Anyway I think US may continue this kind of action while not effectively helping to restore peace, nor giving conditions to make the country economicaly independent, what really solves the problem. UN did not have very good results on both in the past, the Security Council is powerful enougth to not care about it. But other members of UN are trying hard on those priorities and I'll give them a chance. Even some people from US staff at UN are trying to do the right thing. And I subscribe to their ideas and efforts.

About da Silva efforts in being an administratively responsible president, I agree that it's not good to see a few billion dollars going to other country for the sole purpose of paying licenses instead of being spent on the internal economy. If Brazil did not have so many problems related to poverty to solve, it would not be a big issue, but it's not the case.

Another issue about poverty: most poor countries were very rich colonies and also the most productive ones. Sadly almost every good administered colony usually became a very poor country, which went through (and still suffers from) dictatorship and civil war periods.

If you trust its reporting, you can see that its main two cash cows are sliding and more and more is spent on marketing. I'd speculate that even some of the non-marketing line items include activities that other companies would consider marketing.

Keep in mind that other hype engines, Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, to name a few, also showed nice profits -- until their books got a proper going over. Given that it's a company found guilty of illegal anti-comptetitive activities and during the trial video testimony was forged and several contradictions in executive testimonies leave a suspicion of perjury and there is a history of cooking the books to hide an $18 billion loss, I'd be suspicious of any self-reported figures. But, hey, it's your money.

Even if the oft-cited-but-still-unseen money in the bank is real, it could disappear in security penalties, false advertising fines or anti-trust action. $1 trillion is a lot larger than $50 billion. Or, even if it is real and does not disappear in fines, then it could be used up trying to get vapourware such as .not and leghorn to market by 2006. Three years is too long for businesses to suffer with tools that are not ready for the Internet when most have enterprise level drop-in GNU/Linux, BSD, or Mac OS X replacements which are Internet ready now.

Once national investments and the larger funds have divested, there won't be any pretense to pretend that the company is viable.

As the Economist notes, executive compensation has gone up enormously while profits have not (see the graph at the bottom). This isn't to say that the average CEO doesn't work hard or have valuable skills. But there are lot of CEO's who are overpaid at the expense of both shareholders and workers.

Very true but as the econmoist points out it may be a long drawn out battle.
I believe the example of Honeywell and GE used by another poster was an instance where preventative action was taken before the merger was consumated, whereas what we are talking about here is breaking up something which already exists (referring here to the established windows product rather than breaking up MS which doesn't appear in the articles list of remedies considered).

Google News rocks! Here's some better articles about the same thing:

New Scientist
Nature
The Economist

I've been wondering when someone was going to try this for quite a while. "Dumping", selling a product below cost in order to force your competitors out of business, is illegal for good reasons.

I'm not sure whether it's illegal or not (as so many of our economics-related laws are irrational), but if it is, it is most definitely not illegal for good reason. Economists tend to get hot under the collar whenever their government engages in the economically self-destructive practice of protectionism under the spectre of dumping. Any first year economics student can explain precisely why dumping is good for the economy that is being dumped into in essentially every real world situation[1]. Any Linux enthusiast can as easily explain why the same is true of operating systems[2].

Consider the example of Netscape - Microsoft has spent nearly ten years attempting to dump it out of existence. Microsoft's price for IE remains at zero (not to mention their correlary anti-competitive attacks), and still Netscape lives on (and a host of other browsers, including ones with non-zero prices have poppoed up). And that's just looking at the browser producers - the rest of the world, the browser consumers, like 99.99% of the population and a similar percentage of businesses, are ECSTATIC about the browser wars. How different would the world today be if Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, Konquerer, and IE all cost $99, and had never been free?

[1] DUMPING

Selling something for less than the cost of producing it. This may be used by a DOMINANT FIRM to attack rivals, a strategy known to ANTITRUST authorities as PREDATORY PRICING. Participants in international trade are often accused of dumping by domestic FIRMS charging more than rival IMPORTS. Countries can slap duties on cheap imports that they judge are being dumped in their markets. Often this amounts to thinly disguised PROTECTIONISM against more efficient foreign firms.

In practice, genuine predatory pricing is rare - certainly much rarer than anti-dumping actions - because it relies on the unlikely ability of a single producer to dominate a world market. In any case, consumers gain from lower PRICES; so do companies that can buy their supplies more cheaply abroad.

That is - unless IBM's Linux division has a maintainable monopoly on the OS market (it does not), and the ability to raise its price (it does not), and the ability to drive its competition out (OK, guilty), and there are significant barriers to reentry to the OS market (there are none), claiming dumping is specious at best.

[2] Having the ability to run a variety of operating systems without having to pay for each license makes it easier for the user to satisfy his or her wants. On the business side, a vastly greater number of businesses are OS consumers than are OS producers - thus the business world as a whole *LOVES* OS dumping (if it can be called that).

Some reasons why Microsoft owes many of us money.

In case you haven't heard, Microsoft (MSFT) has been deeply unprofitable since 1996, when it began to rely on holes in the GAAP accounting standards that allowed it to report historic profits in its NASDAQ filings up until this very day, so making it look like the hottest business since ACME, Inc.. Large fund managers bought into it to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, making MS at its peak ($700B) which for comparison made it the largest component of the S&P 500, the equivalent of the 16th largest country or ~1.5% of the GDP of Earth. Heh, and we thought it was Windows.

Who cares? The biggest funds involved were retirement funds of large social programs across the US, who automatically invest in S&P components at rates proportional to the components' value. MS paid for its bottom line with those peoples' money, so much so that pentioners are majority owners of MS today. Too bad for them that the bottom fell out of MS stock and their savings are worthless. But it did help create two of the richest personal accounts on Earth.

You could argue that this was all legal and that they won the king of the hill prize. Perhaps. But is it ethical to block GAAP reforms via corporate shills in Congress (e.g. Joe Lieberman) so your huge losses won't be exposed? Enron execs are being hung out to dry for being only slightly on the other side of that thin line in the sand. No, it's likely MS knew what it was up to. As Bill Parish, who broke the story, tells:

"Microsoft's perspective is best reflected by Bob Herbold, Chief Operating Officer, to whom the CFO reports. Bob very sincerely replied, "Bill, everyone is doing it.""

Feb 1997
Wired: The Doomslayer

Aug 2nd 2001
Economist: The truth about the environment

Mann, Bradley & Hughes (authors of the definitive 1998 study attacked by McIntyre and McKitrick) responded today with:

"McIntyre and McKitrick ("MM") have [...] used neither the data nor the procedures of MBH98. Thus, it is entirely understandable that they do not obtain the same result. Their effort has no bearing on the work of MBH98, and is no way a "correction" of that study as they claim. On the contrary, their analysis appears seriously flawed and amounts to a gross misrepresentation of the work of MBH98."

Scientific observers await the peer review of the MM publication to determine whose science-fu is stronger. Meanwhile, greenhouse deniers have yet to pull rabbits out of their (*ahem*) hats to explain how the Workweek Causes Climate Changes. Or they can join Timothy in celebrating propaganda like the obviously corrupt Economist. Just remember to wear your sunscreen.

Ah, that's enough information, then. I assume that the article you mention was either this one, or one similar to it. In which case, we should remember that it's strictly discussing productivity growth rates, not absolute measures of productivity itself. And even when the suggested corrections are made, the US still has a higher rate of growth than Europe.

Haven't you read that the PDA is dead?
PDA, RIP

I think people forget to mention that the Swiss take their arms very seriously. To the point that unaccounted for, missing ammo (gov't issued) will result in severe criminal penalties. Ergo, citizens don't go shooting willie-nillie.

Nevertheless, here is info from a quite balanced publication. Economist and Economist Engaging some of the thoughts addressed.

I think people forget to mention that the Swiss take their arms very seriously. To the point that unaccounted for, missing ammo (gov't issued) will result in severe criminal penalties. Ergo, citizens don't go shooting willie-nillie.

Nevertheless, here is info from a quite balanced publication. Economist and Economist Engaging some of the thoughts addressed.

I agree with the parent, As a college student, I would welcome an economic resurgence, hell I may even admit bush was right. I think that the turnaound can only be claimed if the unemployment rate goes down.

As for spending, GW Bush is the most profligate president since the vietnam war. (Article login req.) I am most concerned with the fact that while we may have recovery now, will we have social security when my mother retires, will my family be able to afford insurance, will I see my social security? While I am all for Keynesian Economics I would realy like to see that we have enough money to take care of our elderly and have enough prosperity to share with my generation and the gernerations to come.

The Economist also have an article today on the subject of Goggle.

The article speculates a possible $15bn Goggle IPO, and argues that this would be risky, because unlike Yahoo, Lycos, MSN etc, Goggle have only a single product, and can easily be displaced by a couple of clever computer geeks, just like the founders of Goggle did with Alta vista.

Worryingly, they argue that Goggle should head into the paid for search search market in order to increase their current $150 m profit. ($150m is clearly not enough to justify a $15bn market cap).

They also cite Google's perceived 'goodness' compared with Microsoft, as an advantage in any battle against MS, and a barrier against any takeover.

There's an interesting article in this week's Economist about Google. No mention there about possible mergers but alot of talk about Microsoft as the main threat to Google.

Go cure cancer or something useful!

No long-term revenue source in that...

Read the Economist survey on illicit drugs.

The vast majority of drug users aren't physically dependent as compared to the legally available nicotine or alcohol which certainly causes more deaths(per annum in US, ~450000 for nicotine, ~81000 for alcohol, ~14000 for illicit drugs combined). As for addiction, Health magazine has this chart.

The hard but unavoidable fact to come to terms with is that you can't eliminate drug use, only control it. Best way to control it is to legalize it, so 1)quality-control is assured. No more harmful adulterants or unknown purity dosages. 2)Much cheaper on the taxpayer and the drug user

Go cure cancer or something useful!

No long-term revenue source in that...

Read the Economist survey on illicit drugs.

The vast majority of drug users aren't physically dependent as compared to the legally available nicotine or alcohol which certainly causes more deaths(per annum in US, ~450000 for nicotine, ~81000 for alcohol, ~14000 for illicit drugs combined). As for addiction, Health magazine has this chart.

The hard but unavoidable fact to come to terms with is that you can't eliminate drug use, only control it. Best way to control it is to legalize it, so 1)quality-control is assured. No more harmful adulterants or unknown purity dosages. 2)Much cheaper on the taxpayer and the drug user

Take a look also at this article. In 1997 we consumed in form of oil 400 years worth of "primary production" of Earth.
I guess now we consume even more. We really out to have some respect to the Earth, plants and animals.

" ROMANTICS in the coal-mining industry (or, at least, their public-relations flacks) sometimes refer to the black rock that powered the industrial revolution as "buried sunshine". As far as the energy in it is concerned, that is precisely true. It is all the result of photosynthesis. But, perhaps surprisingly, just how much photosynthesis it results from has never been the subject of enquiry.

That has now changed. Jeffrey Dukes, of the University of Massachusetts, in Boston, has attempted to do the sums and work out how much photosynthetic effort lies behind the useful energy that people are able to extract from coal, oil and natural gas--fossil fuels that ultimately derive from the bodies of long-deceased organisms.

Full story...

The Economist also had a large section devoted to ways that governments could use to break out from the tyranny of oil. From that article:

" THE Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil." This intriguing prediction is often heard in energy circles these days. If greens were the only people to be expressing such thoughts, the notion might be dismissed as Utopian. However, the quotation is from Sheikh Zaki Yamani, a Saudi Arabian who served as his country's oil minister three decades ago. His words are rich in irony. Sheikh Yamani first came to the world's attention during the Arab oil embargo of the United States, which began three decades ago this week and whose effects altered the course of modern economic and political history. Coming from such a source, the prediction, one assumes, can hardly be a case of wishful thinking."

" ROMANTICS in the coal-mining industry (or, at least, their public-relations flacks) sometimes refer to the black rock that powered the industrial revolution as "buried sunshine". As far as the energy in it is concerned, that is precisely true. It is all the result of photosynthesis. But, perhaps surprisingly, just how much photosynthesis it results from has never been the subject of enquiry.

That has now changed. Jeffrey Dukes, of the University of Massachusetts, in Boston, has attempted to do the sums and work out how much photosynthetic effort lies behind the useful energy that people are able to extract from coal, oil and natural gas--fossil fuels that ultimately derive from the bodies of long-deceased organisms.

Full story...

The Economist also had a large section devoted to ways that governments could use to break out from the tyranny of oil. From that article:

" THE Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil." This intriguing prediction is often heard in energy circles these days. If greens were the only people to be expressing such thoughts, the notion might be dismissed as Utopian. However, the quotation is from Sheikh Zaki Yamani, a Saudi Arabian who served as his country's oil minister three decades ago. His words are rich in irony. Sheikh Yamani first came to the world's attention during the Arab oil embargo of the United States, which began three decades ago this week and whose effects altered the course of modern economic and political history. Coming from such a source, the prediction, one assumes, can hardly be a case of wishful thinking."