It's inefficient because of how hard it is to find patients suitable for a clinical trial. Good science requires isolating variables. A hypothetical hospital may have a hundred cancer patients. Half of them are long-term smokers, but the drug is known (through test-tube experiments) to interact with the residual pollutants, so they're out of the trial. Of the remaining fifty, ten have been known to be unreliable with their medications.They're out, too. Of the forty left, thirty have the wrong kind of cancer. Only ten are left, and five of them are using other drugs that work with the same chemical as this drug, so (possibly fatal) interactions are likely. Three more have various outside-the-hospital factors that affect their ability to participate (they live next to a Superfund site, have a highly stressful life, etc). That leaves only two individuals that appear to be useful for the trial at this hospital.
If the trial needs more than those two people, the whole process has to be repeated at another hospital. When you include factors such as the cost of lawyers (to verify that personal information stays personal), plane tickets (to make those all-important face-to-face meetings), review board meetings (to ensure that the trial is actually going to be useful before patients are contacted), the monetary price goes way up.
The drug companies are well aware of how inefficient the process is, and solutions are under progress.
Instead of "giving back", they spend lots of money on things like my company, which helps make future research easier. If a company makes $10 billion on a cancer drug, they can either give $8 billion to the various foundations to give back to others, or make their own future research far cheaper. My company's product makes research faster, which means there can be more drugs coming out faster, and the various support organizations get more efficient use of their money.
In other words, the drug companies' "cancer research" money also goes toward all kinds of other research, indirectly.
Wow. I've written some pretty big comments, but I've never been able to cram that much finger-pointing and self-promotion into one post, while still managing to ignore fundamental issues. As anyone who's dealt with me before knows, I love flamebait! Let's play.
the 24/7 video being shot by the camera van
...which wasn't designed or intended to follow people, or catch any details other than a license plate. Technology does what it's built to do, and nothing else.
...nefarious cameras were located right at 65 to 55 speed limit change locations...
The speed limit is a limit. It is legal to slow down in the 65 zone, but it's not legal to go faster in the 55 zone. It seems these camera are set up to catch people who are breaking the law. Nefarious, indeed.
30%...10%...13-18%
Got sources?
They installed the speed cameras in October 2008, right after the collapse of the economy.
...In a brilliantly calculated move probably arranged six months earlier or so. Now if it were arranged in mid-September, you might have a point, but I've never known anything in government to move that fast for such a little reason. Of course, this is all impossible to prove with no sources.
money makers
And where does the money go, exactly? Does it go to the legislature, or does it go to supporting the paramedics, cleanup crews, and legal costs of the victims who die from collisions with people who "generally drove safely"?
Thanks for playing! Next time, try to present yourself less as a political fanatic, and more as an intelligent individual with facts and references supporting their position. I like playing with flames, but I don't like wading through political detritus. Doing so doesn't inspire me to research your cause, nor to support your position.
I have a problem with speed limits that do not make sense, and are exploited by law enforcement in order to dish out tickets to ordinarily average law abiding citizens.
In my town a reduced limit recently went into effect on a stretch of straight road going down a hill. It's impossible to slow down enough without using brakes. Police sit at the bottom of the hill, and it's enforced heavily. I routinely hear people complaining about the new limit, and brand it as the result of a greedy police force.
What's rarely mentioned is that there's several small roads along that hill, a history of a half-dozen deaths each year, and a long distance with "reduced speed ahead" signs. Just because the limit doesn't make sense to an "average" citizen, doesn't mean it's senseless to someone who goes to city meetings and pays attention to what's going on.
The difference comes from the fact that it's public money being spent on decisions based on this bad science. If a company (think Microsoft, Apple, or any other big tech firm) wants to do its own research and turn the private results into marketed products, that's fine. When it's a government spending millions of dollars on a system where nobody can effectively argue "we don't need this", that's a problem. It effectively turns government into a puppet for anyone with money, and we're already seeing this to some extent.
As an example, consider a town looking at ways to reduce the traffic jams going over to a neighboring city. A helicopter company produces a report showing that flying a helicopter is 500 times more fuel-efficient than driving a car. Anyone with knowledge of physics suspects it's fabricated, but the public at large only cares about the headlines. A car company can't even attempt to disprove the data without investing in several helicopters, a lot of fuel, and some pilots. That's probably more than they'll make from the road traffic, so they're certainly not going to even try to fight. This is not effective capitalism. It is a monopoly of information.
If the data were open, the car company could easily point out that the test helicopter they used had been, for example, modified to carry only a single small passenger and no cargo, and had most of its structural support removed.
Disclaimer: I actually have no idea how efficient helicopters are. I'm guessing that 500x is ridiculous.
Meanwhile, that smart kid at a competing lab who has the intelligence to make an even better discovery doesn't see the data and can't run the experiment/analysis until it's far too late, and the world has committed itself to bad policies based on bad science. Fifty years later, they correct the mistake at great expense, and say it was all based on the best we could do at the time.
Closed research considered harmful.
I'm not going to comment on whether this specific case is valid or not, but openness is requisite!
See, SCO wants the Unix copyrights. They don't want to pay for them, so they planned to sue for them. The whole earlier mess was just to make sure they didn't already have the copyrights. Now they can't be accused of wasting the court's time.
Agreed. I like programming. Also in high school, I wrote programs in a notebook while sitting through boring classes. No endorphins there, but it became a habit to think about my programs. Habits and addictions are related, but not the same thing.
Primarily, I was volunteering in a primary school. I was also getting robbed, harassed, and poisoned. I saw the culture, and I still stand by my earlier statements.
Note: For clarity, assume all references to 'man' include women, children, etc. I prefer clarity to absolute political correctness.
Because I know that with her driver at least I won't end up robbed and clubbed to death in a ditch along the road.
That's a measurement of quality. Choosing her cab because of the driver's reputation is a valid decision. What isn't valid would be to choose her cab because she's family, even though you know they kill and rob others. That's nepotism.
Capitalism doesn't work, its just the best non-working form of economics currently available to us
That's pretty close to working. The alternatives are worse. Yes, extreme capitalism (Wal-mart, oil companies, etc) cause some local problems, but you must also consider the benefit of having large companies with lots of money available. As an example, consider the Coca-cola bottling plant in (Accra or Kumasi... I don't recall offhand) Ghana. It was founded from an American company, with American money, and now it provides stable jobs, with above-average pay.
Taking care of ones family, or even giving them preference in private purchasing decisions, is not the same as corruption!
The key word there is "private". I don't care where the town's leader buys his bread. I don't care if the town leader gives his personal money to a friend who needs it. I care about who the town leader pays with government (or aid) money. The public money should go to whoever best serves the public, not whoever is the closest kin to the leader. I'm not suggesting family should be abandoned.
*no* government leader will *ever* win the respect of his people, if he/she does not respect family first.
If the town leader gives his personal money to a friend who needs it, I'd vote for him in the next election. Respect and nepotism are very different. A leader who shows he will take care of all his followers deserves to be in charge. A leader who shows that only his close friends will benefit has no place as a leader.
Note that my original comment mentioned a "real democracy", referring to the ideal concept of a democratic republic. To my knowledge, there is no nation which actually implements an ideal democracy. The USA is close, but still screwed up. An ideal democracy would require more processing than has been previously feasible.
One (wo)man one vote is the cornerstone of Democracy.
Or in other words, "No man is worth any more than any other man." Taking this concept further leads us to "No man has power above any other", which implies "No man is exempt to the laws that govern any other." That's the logic that's been followed over the past 200 years in the USA to grant women the right to vote, abolish slavery, and outlaw discrimination.
With only an equality of votes, you end up with a state where the ruler declares elections be repeated until he wins.
What the people of Africa... want from a leader is stabillity and self-restraint.
Like I said earlier, democracy works well for that. If you can get the democracy working to the point where power is turned over without significant trouble, you can be sure that the government will change at a consistent rate. Likewise, a leader who wants to be reelected can't be a tyrant. This all depends on having a democracy in place where elections work.
Education is the answer you claim? Geez, have you ever visited an African school?
Yes. I saw starving children being beaten almost daily for six months. Education is still the best answer. Note that I say 'education', not 'attending a place named a school'. The buildings where adults beat chil
I'm not saying that helping a family member is bad. What's bad is the choice of promoting the family over following economics. If a family member sells a product, but a competitor offers better quality at a lower price, buy from the competitor, especially when foreign aid is paying the bill. Capitalism works. Support quality, and quality will improve.
Choosing economics over family is also a contributing factor to the public's confidence in a leader. What good is a leader who takes your taxes/aid, and only supports his own family's business with it? Why should the leader's family be granted special privilege over others?
The equal application of rule of law is the cornerstone of a real democracy. The leaders are chosen from the people, and (ideally) hold no special power beyond what the people grant them. If 2/3rds of the people can't read the issues, fund education. Just before my visit, Ghana held public elections. Party allegiance was more important than any issues, but that's mostly irrelevant at this stage of development. If you want stability, you need a leader that holds the public's confidence, and that depends mainly on being trusted to support all the people, rather than just one small group. Democracy works well for that. What the leaders actually do is often a moot point.
Regarding the inflammatory statements about various atrocities, what's your point? Do you think it took too long for 197 disparate countries with different views to agree on what to do? Do you think that any country showing signs of difficulty should have their government replaced by the UN immediately? Should the UN interfere in the financial enterprise of an independent entity?
The UN is not, and should not be, an empire. I don't know anybody who views genocide as "little children quarreling", but I do know many who think people should solve their own problems. I believe the UN generally holds the same position.
Interesting. I was unaware of this, but as you said, there's no solid evidence. Personally, I still think it's just an interrupted habit causing discomfort, but I'll keep an eye out for more research.
It's important to note that other companies are taking in Microsoft's losses. Sure, those companies are law firms, manufacturing, grocery stores, and myriad others, but every dollar that Microsoft loses ends up back in the pocket of someone else. A big loss for a company that can afford it is just the thing to help bring up the economy!
It's a habit. No more and no less. There's obviously nothing chemical causing the "addiction", and this study is useless to profile whether someone follows the normal trend for psychological dependence.
Dropping anything normal for 24 hours is weird. I had a friend in high school (one of them cross-country folks) who would run a few miles each morning before school. One day he didn't, and there was a marked difference in his personality until he ran home (a distance of 5 miles) afterwards. He seemed mentally slower to respond than normal, yet craved physical activity. Was he "addicted" to running?
I think it's more likely that when habits are interrupted, it's just discomforting. Replace the Internet connection with something else (like a trip to an amusement park, sans cell phone), and you'll find that these "signs" disappear.
I'm sure it's possible to become addicted to everything, including the services the Internet provides. The human mind is a crazy thing. I sincerely doubt it happens anywhere near often enough to be concerned about. These rehab centers are just exploiting fears.
I volunteered in Ghana for six months last year. Ghana's one of the wealthiest countries in Africa, and it's still royally screwed.
The first problem is simply the result of Mother Nature: Many regions lack sufficient resources to live. Try growing crops in an ever-advancing Sahara. There's barely enough food to live on, let alone sell off elsewhere for profit. Where there is food, there's no building materials, or no electricity, or something else. There are very few places where everything needed is all in one place.
The solution is transportation, right? Again, it's not that easy. The current national borders are more or less arbitrary, drawn by colonists with only a vague understanding of local culture. In reality, there are many tribes everywhere, each with its own ancestral feuds and allegiances. In trying to force tribes together, war becomes constant. Some shipments leave for their destination and never arrive.
Furthermore, whichever tribe controls the government has a major influence on what areas are repaired. Africa's environment is harsh. If you think potholes in Detroit are bad, try going down a road that is 100 miles of six-inch washboarding. The government could fix it with a bit of chain and a tractor once a month, but they don't, because another road elsewhere has their attention. After a while, vital roads are simply lost, and communities lose commerce.
The solution is money, right? If we just send enough aid, every road can be fixed. Still not that simple. Partly because everyone's broke, partly due to the lack of unity, and partly just due to human failure, corruption is rampant. The Western world has a long history of serving the kingdom/colony/country, even when it means taking a bit of harm to oneself. In Africa, the family comes first. If your family wants something, it is the single most important priority. Most of the foreign aid that is sent over disappears into family pockets, and rarely actually contributes to the intended project.
For example, consider a road-building project. If a manager goes to Africa to build a road, he'll have a hundred men claiming they'll make the best road. Of course they'll outbid each other, but since they've been collaborating beforehand, even the lowest bid is far more expensive than it should be. Once the builder is selected, he has to purchase materials. By amazing coincidence, he has a brother in the next village that has exactly what's needed. The price is high, but the quality is supposedly much better than anything available locally. During construction, there is an inspector that must approve every detail of the project. He'll never travel down the road, so he's willing to allow a few mistakes in exchange for a small bribe. Try fixing the mistakes (whether they actually exist or not), and that's when it's discovered that those high-quality materials weren't so great after all. More money gets spent on new materials, and the old materials mysteriously vanish.
Surely, with enough money entering Africa, something good is coming out, right? I hate to say it, but again, it's not that simple. There is a heavy emphasis on looking nice, and no emphasis on actually being functional. School children are required to have uniforms, but may not have a pencil or notebook. The school may have a gate, but no walls. Money that could go toward actual improvement is instead spent on showing off how much money a family has.
Even when a family does try to improve themselves, the culture as a whole is against them. The bribes are always needed, and the harsh environment mandates continual repair.
The only real solution is for large regions to band together, decide they want to enter the modern world, and campaign to convince their people to improve their ethic. The first thing to go must be the nepotism. Work should be done to benefit the country as a whole, not just the family. Next should be the appearance. Africans must not be afraid to show what they need, and should strive to achieve mediocrity before greatness.
Back in the days of "multiple brands of DOS", Microsoft didn't hold a monopoly. While they built up their market share, they didn't pressure the retailers that much, and their competitors felt very little aggression. It was really only the OEMs that they harassed.
The turning point in the user market came with the popularity of the web. Microsoft again found themselves without any entry into a booming market. Previously, they'd taken skeleton systems and added innovative features, legitimately creating useful platforms (MS-DOS, several flavors of BASIC, etc). This time, though, they created a product with the singular goal of becoming the only platform.
IE started with only basic features already offered by the myriad other browsers. Its innovation only came in response to other browsers, and none of the additional features were actually useful enough to make people choose IE over anything else. Microsoft turned to a tactic they've continued to exploit to this day: bundling.
Bundling does reduce switching. but it's important to pay attention to when the bundling occurs. The first thing most users do (in my experience) when they get a new computer is start downloading all their well-known programs. Personally, I (on Windows) head straight for Chrome, Pidgin, and Tweak UI. WinZip and ACDSee fall into this category now. They have a stable base of loyal fans.
Back during the first browser war, Netscape and IE were both competing for new users. When users were looking for a browser, it was because they were just starting out on the Web. Having no knowledge of what else there was, they stuck with what they had. Is it any wonder that IE's market share only really rose dramatically after IE4 was released, when they began bundling it with Windows 98? I don't think the "channels" feature was that impressive. Previous versions were bundled with service releases, which wouldn't have as much of an effect on new PC buyers.
Now that the market for new users has cooled somewhat, the competition is back to focusing on functionality. Bundling will not likely work again so successfully.
Apart from a few promos, I haven't seen any music being restricted to playing only on the iPod. Likewise, they aren't bullying stores into selling the iPod exclusively. If you develop for both the iPhone and Android, you generally don't run the risk of losing Apple's blessing. Installing iTunes does not remove Zune software.
Apple may have a monopoly in music players, but they aren't abusing their market share. They're only abusing their users, and that's just fine.
Restriction is not anticompetitive. If you don't like Apple's terms, you're free to use anything else, like Windows, Linux, BSD, etc. If you don't want Apple's hardware, but something else. If you don't want Google reading your emails, use Hotmail.
The problem with Microsoft is that the average consumer doesn't (or didn't, before the famous iMac ads) know anything else exists, and Microsoft used its market share and financial assets to keep it that way.
Microsoft was a monopoly because it was (in the early nineties) practically the only OS available. Everything else was a special-order job. You couldn't just go into a major store and get a Mac.
Being a monopoly is not inherently bad. Google's near-monopoly on searching is not bad. What is bad is when that market share gets abused to stifle competition. As a textbook example, consider the old phone system: small local carriers weren't allowed to hook their systems to the big carriers. Because they couldn't connect, they couldn't attract customers, no matter how innovative their system might be. This is a perfect case where a monopoly halts innovation.
Microsoft's Windows situation was similar. They bundled IE with Windows and made removal extremely difficult. They ensured that IE appeared to be a vital component of Windows, though it was shown repeatedly that there was no real dependency. No matter how innovative Netscape Navigator was, IE gained its market share simply by being the default.
The concern here is that Google's bundling of services might be affecting competition. For example, other advertising companies might be considered useless, since they can't approach the visibility of Google's services. Likewise, Google's constant promoting of its other services may be impacting the ability for other companies to gain a competitive foothold.
Personally, I don't see what Google does as anything close to the anticompetitive practices Microsoft followed. That's just my opinion, though, and more facts might come in later...
Re:cost of acquisition is everything, huh?
on
Ubuntu on a Dime
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· Score: 1
It's also just likely that you simply don't realize what's a cost unless you take an opposing view to your own. I don't see anyone arguing that Linux is free of all costs, or even the best choice in all cases.
All business decisions (even for home users) should be based on a comprehensive evaluation of all the costs involved. Putting forth a complete comparison with references to reputable external sources is useful. In fact, it's remarkably similar to what usually gets published in "leading journals". Making a one-sided claim that Linux has extra costs (and implying that Windows does not share these costs) is flamebait, just as is any one-sided slander against Windows.
In academic terms, you must realize that negative and indecisive results are still valid research. Exploratory research, evaluating all aspects of a given theory, is also valid research. Finding negative results and conveniently omitting them from the report is dishonest at best and fraud at worst.
I've always found it interesting how we assume that aliens will follow time at the same rate we do. As far as aliens are concerned, this could be a really really high frequency, and we humans move really fast. I'm not implying any physics screweyness... just the speed at which we move and process things happening.
Slashdot Mirror
The definition is a very nebulous concept.
It's inefficient because of how hard it is to find patients suitable for a clinical trial. Good science requires isolating variables. A hypothetical hospital may have a hundred cancer patients. Half of them are long-term smokers, but the drug is known (through test-tube experiments) to interact with the residual pollutants, so they're out of the trial. Of the remaining fifty, ten have been known to be unreliable with their medications.They're out, too. Of the forty left, thirty have the wrong kind of cancer. Only ten are left, and five of them are using other drugs that work with the same chemical as this drug, so (possibly fatal) interactions are likely. Three more have various outside-the-hospital factors that affect their ability to participate (they live next to a Superfund site, have a highly stressful life, etc). That leaves only two individuals that appear to be useful for the trial at this hospital.
If the trial needs more than those two people, the whole process has to be repeated at another hospital. When you include factors such as the cost of lawyers (to verify that personal information stays personal), plane tickets (to make those all-important face-to-face meetings), review board meetings (to ensure that the trial is actually going to be useful before patients are contacted), the monetary price goes way up.
The drug companies are well aware of how inefficient the process is, and solutions are under progress.
Instead of "giving back", they spend lots of money on things like my company, which helps make future research easier. If a company makes $10 billion on a cancer drug, they can either give $8 billion to the various foundations to give back to others, or make their own future research far cheaper. My company's product makes research faster, which means there can be more drugs coming out faster, and the various support organizations get more efficient use of their money.
In other words, the drug companies' "cancer research" money also goes toward all kinds of other research, indirectly.
Wow. I've written some pretty big comments, but I've never been able to cram that much finger-pointing and self-promotion into one post, while still managing to ignore fundamental issues. As anyone who's dealt with me before knows, I love flamebait! Let's play.
the 24/7 video being shot by the camera van
...which wasn't designed or intended to follow people, or catch any details other than a license plate. Technology does what it's built to do, and nothing else.
...nefarious cameras were located right at 65 to 55 speed limit change locations...
The speed limit is a limit. It is legal to slow down in the 65 zone, but it's not legal to go faster in the 55 zone. It seems these camera are set up to catch people who are breaking the law. Nefarious, indeed.
30%...10%...13-18%
Got sources?
They installed the speed cameras in October 2008, right after the collapse of the economy.
...In a brilliantly calculated move probably arranged six months earlier or so. Now if it were arranged in mid-September, you might have a point, but I've never known anything in government to move that fast for such a little reason. Of course, this is all impossible to prove with no sources.
money makers
And where does the money go, exactly? Does it go to the legislature, or does it go to supporting the paramedics, cleanup crews, and legal costs of the victims who die from collisions with people who "generally drove safely"?
Thanks for playing! Next time, try to present yourself less as a political fanatic, and more as an intelligent individual with facts and references supporting their position. I like playing with flames, but I don't like wading through political detritus. Doing so doesn't inspire me to research your cause, nor to support your position.
I have a problem with speed limits that do not make sense, and are exploited by law enforcement in order to dish out tickets to ordinarily average law abiding citizens.
In my town a reduced limit recently went into effect on a stretch of straight road going down a hill. It's impossible to slow down enough without using brakes. Police sit at the bottom of the hill, and it's enforced heavily. I routinely hear people complaining about the new limit, and brand it as the result of a greedy police force.
What's rarely mentioned is that there's several small roads along that hill, a history of a half-dozen deaths each year, and a long distance with "reduced speed ahead" signs. Just because the limit doesn't make sense to an "average" citizen, doesn't mean it's senseless to someone who goes to city meetings and pays attention to what's going on.
The sensor just allows the robot to know when it's stabbing someone. Whether it wants to or not is still up for debate.
The difference comes from the fact that it's public money being spent on decisions based on this bad science. If a company (think Microsoft, Apple, or any other big tech firm) wants to do its own research and turn the private results into marketed products, that's fine. When it's a government spending millions of dollars on a system where nobody can effectively argue "we don't need this", that's a problem. It effectively turns government into a puppet for anyone with money, and we're already seeing this to some extent.
As an example, consider a town looking at ways to reduce the traffic jams going over to a neighboring city. A helicopter company produces a report showing that flying a helicopter is 500 times more fuel-efficient than driving a car. Anyone with knowledge of physics suspects it's fabricated, but the public at large only cares about the headlines. A car company can't even attempt to disprove the data without investing in several helicopters, a lot of fuel, and some pilots. That's probably more than they'll make from the road traffic, so they're certainly not going to even try to fight. This is not effective capitalism. It is a monopoly of information.
If the data were open, the car company could easily point out that the test helicopter they used had been, for example, modified to carry only a single small passenger and no cargo, and had most of its structural support removed.
Disclaimer: I actually have no idea how efficient helicopters are. I'm guessing that 500x is ridiculous.
Meanwhile, that smart kid at a competing lab who has the intelligence to make an even better discovery doesn't see the data and can't run the experiment/analysis until it's far too late, and the world has committed itself to bad policies based on bad science. Fifty years later, they correct the mistake at great expense, and say it was all based on the best we could do at the time.
Closed research considered harmful.
I'm not going to comment on whether this specific case is valid or not, but openness is requisite!
See, SCO wants the Unix copyrights. They don't want to pay for them, so they planned to sue for them. The whole earlier mess was just to make sure they didn't already have the copyrights. Now they can't be accused of wasting the court's time.
Agreed. I like programming. Also in high school, I wrote programs in a notebook while sitting through boring classes. No endorphins there, but it became a habit to think about my programs. Habits and addictions are related, but not the same thing.
Primarily, I was volunteering in a primary school. I was also getting robbed, harassed, and poisoned. I saw the culture, and I still stand by my earlier statements.
Note: For clarity, assume all references to 'man' include women, children, etc. I prefer clarity to absolute political correctness.
Because I know that with her driver at least I won't end up robbed and clubbed to death in a ditch along the road.
That's a measurement of quality. Choosing her cab because of the driver's reputation is a valid decision. What isn't valid would be to choose her cab because she's family, even though you know they kill and rob others. That's nepotism.
Capitalism doesn't work, its just the best non-working form of economics currently available to us
That's pretty close to working. The alternatives are worse. Yes, extreme capitalism (Wal-mart, oil companies, etc) cause some local problems, but you must also consider the benefit of having large companies with lots of money available. As an example, consider the Coca-cola bottling plant in (Accra or Kumasi... I don't recall offhand) Ghana. It was founded from an American company, with American money, and now it provides stable jobs, with above-average pay.
Taking care of ones family, or even giving them preference in private purchasing decisions, is not the same as corruption!
The key word there is "private". I don't care where the town's leader buys his bread. I don't care if the town leader gives his personal money to a friend who needs it. I care about who the town leader pays with government (or aid) money. The public money should go to whoever best serves the public, not whoever is the closest kin to the leader. I'm not suggesting family should be abandoned.
*no* government leader will *ever* win the respect of his people, if he/she does not respect family first.
If the town leader gives his personal money to a friend who needs it, I'd vote for him in the next election. Respect and nepotism are very different. A leader who shows he will take care of all his followers deserves to be in charge. A leader who shows that only his close friends will benefit has no place as a leader.
Note that my original comment mentioned a "real democracy", referring to the ideal concept of a democratic republic. To my knowledge, there is no nation which actually implements an ideal democracy. The USA is close, but still screwed up. An ideal democracy would require more processing than has been previously feasible.
One (wo)man one vote is the cornerstone of Democracy.
Or in other words, "No man is worth any more than any other man." Taking this concept further leads us to "No man has power above any other", which implies "No man is exempt to the laws that govern any other." That's the logic that's been followed over the past 200 years in the USA to grant women the right to vote, abolish slavery, and outlaw discrimination.
With only an equality of votes, you end up with a state where the ruler declares elections be repeated until he wins.
What the people of Africa ... want from a leader is stabillity and self-restraint.
Like I said earlier, democracy works well for that. If you can get the democracy working to the point where power is turned over without significant trouble, you can be sure that the government will change at a consistent rate. Likewise, a leader who wants to be reelected can't be a tyrant. This all depends on having a democracy in place where elections work.
Education is the answer you claim? Geez, have you ever visited an African school?
Yes. I saw starving children being beaten almost daily for six months. Education is still the best answer. Note that I say 'education', not 'attending a place named a school'. The buildings where adults beat chil
I'm not saying that helping a family member is bad. What's bad is the choice of promoting the family over following economics. If a family member sells a product, but a competitor offers better quality at a lower price, buy from the competitor, especially when foreign aid is paying the bill. Capitalism works. Support quality, and quality will improve.
Choosing economics over family is also a contributing factor to the public's confidence in a leader. What good is a leader who takes your taxes/aid, and only supports his own family's business with it? Why should the leader's family be granted special privilege over others?
The equal application of rule of law is the cornerstone of a real democracy. The leaders are chosen from the people, and (ideally) hold no special power beyond what the people grant them. If 2/3rds of the people can't read the issues, fund education. Just before my visit, Ghana held public elections. Party allegiance was more important than any issues, but that's mostly irrelevant at this stage of development. If you want stability, you need a leader that holds the public's confidence, and that depends mainly on being trusted to support all the people, rather than just one small group. Democracy works well for that. What the leaders actually do is often a moot point.
Regarding the inflammatory statements about various atrocities, what's your point? Do you think it took too long for 197 disparate countries with different views to agree on what to do? Do you think that any country showing signs of difficulty should have their government replaced by the UN immediately? Should the UN interfere in the financial enterprise of an independent entity?
The UN is not, and should not be, an empire. I don't know anybody who views genocide as "little children quarreling", but I do know many who think people should solve their own problems. I believe the UN generally holds the same position.
Interesting. I was unaware of this, but as you said, there's no solid evidence. Personally, I still think it's just an interrupted habit causing discomfort, but I'll keep an eye out for more research.
...which is roughly 300 megabytes to download, and requires a dedicated gigabyte of memory to run.
It's important to note that other companies are taking in Microsoft's losses. Sure, those companies are law firms, manufacturing, grocery stores, and myriad others, but every dollar that Microsoft loses ends up back in the pocket of someone else. A big loss for a company that can afford it is just the thing to help bring up the economy!
It's a habit. No more and no less. There's obviously nothing chemical causing the "addiction", and this study is useless to profile whether someone follows the normal trend for psychological dependence.
Dropping anything normal for 24 hours is weird. I had a friend in high school (one of them cross-country folks) who would run a few miles each morning before school. One day he didn't, and there was a marked difference in his personality until he ran home (a distance of 5 miles) afterwards. He seemed mentally slower to respond than normal, yet craved physical activity. Was he "addicted" to running?
I think it's more likely that when habits are interrupted, it's just discomforting. Replace the Internet connection with something else (like a trip to an amusement park, sans cell phone), and you'll find that these "signs" disappear.
I'm sure it's possible to become addicted to everything, including the services the Internet provides. The human mind is a crazy thing. I sincerely doubt it happens anywhere near often enough to be concerned about. These rehab centers are just exploiting fears.
I volunteered in Ghana for six months last year. Ghana's one of the wealthiest countries in Africa, and it's still royally screwed.
The first problem is simply the result of Mother Nature: Many regions lack sufficient resources to live. Try growing crops in an ever-advancing Sahara. There's barely enough food to live on, let alone sell off elsewhere for profit. Where there is food, there's no building materials, or no electricity, or something else. There are very few places where everything needed is all in one place.
The solution is transportation, right? Again, it's not that easy. The current national borders are more or less arbitrary, drawn by colonists with only a vague understanding of local culture. In reality, there are many tribes everywhere, each with its own ancestral feuds and allegiances. In trying to force tribes together, war becomes constant. Some shipments leave for their destination and never arrive.
Furthermore, whichever tribe controls the government has a major influence on what areas are repaired. Africa's environment is harsh. If you think potholes in Detroit are bad, try going down a road that is 100 miles of six-inch washboarding. The government could fix it with a bit of chain and a tractor once a month, but they don't, because another road elsewhere has their attention. After a while, vital roads are simply lost, and communities lose commerce.
The solution is money, right? If we just send enough aid, every road can be fixed. Still not that simple. Partly because everyone's broke, partly due to the lack of unity, and partly just due to human failure, corruption is rampant. The Western world has a long history of serving the kingdom/colony/country, even when it means taking a bit of harm to oneself. In Africa, the family comes first. If your family wants something, it is the single most important priority. Most of the foreign aid that is sent over disappears into family pockets, and rarely actually contributes to the intended project.
For example, consider a road-building project. If a manager goes to Africa to build a road, he'll have a hundred men claiming they'll make the best road. Of course they'll outbid each other, but since they've been collaborating beforehand, even the lowest bid is far more expensive than it should be. Once the builder is selected, he has to purchase materials. By amazing coincidence, he has a brother in the next village that has exactly what's needed. The price is high, but the quality is supposedly much better than anything available locally. During construction, there is an inspector that must approve every detail of the project. He'll never travel down the road, so he's willing to allow a few mistakes in exchange for a small bribe. Try fixing the mistakes (whether they actually exist or not), and that's when it's discovered that those high-quality materials weren't so great after all. More money gets spent on new materials, and the old materials mysteriously vanish.
Surely, with enough money entering Africa, something good is coming out, right? I hate to say it, but again, it's not that simple. There is a heavy emphasis on looking nice, and no emphasis on actually being functional. School children are required to have uniforms, but may not have a pencil or notebook. The school may have a gate, but no walls. Money that could go toward actual improvement is instead spent on showing off how much money a family has.
Even when a family does try to improve themselves, the culture as a whole is against them. The bribes are always needed, and the harsh environment mandates continual repair.
The only real solution is for large regions to band together, decide they want to enter the modern world, and campaign to convince their people to improve their ethic. The first thing to go must be the nepotism. Work should be done to benefit the country as a whole, not just the family. Next should be the appearance. Africans must not be afraid to show what they need, and should strive to achieve mediocrity before greatness.
Back in the days of "multiple brands of DOS", Microsoft didn't hold a monopoly. While they built up their market share, they didn't pressure the retailers that much, and their competitors felt very little aggression. It was really only the OEMs that they harassed.
The turning point in the user market came with the popularity of the web. Microsoft again found themselves without any entry into a booming market. Previously, they'd taken skeleton systems and added innovative features, legitimately creating useful platforms (MS-DOS, several flavors of BASIC, etc). This time, though, they created a product with the singular goal of becoming the only platform.
IE started with only basic features already offered by the myriad other browsers. Its innovation only came in response to other browsers, and none of the additional features were actually useful enough to make people choose IE over anything else. Microsoft turned to a tactic they've continued to exploit to this day: bundling.
Bundling does reduce switching. but it's important to pay attention to when the bundling occurs. The first thing most users do (in my experience) when they get a new computer is start downloading all their well-known programs. Personally, I (on Windows) head straight for Chrome, Pidgin, and Tweak UI. WinZip and ACDSee fall into this category now. They have a stable base of loyal fans.
Back during the first browser war, Netscape and IE were both competing for new users. When users were looking for a browser, it was because they were just starting out on the Web. Having no knowledge of what else there was, they stuck with what they had. Is it any wonder that IE's market share only really rose dramatically after IE4 was released, when they began bundling it with Windows 98? I don't think the "channels" feature was that impressive. Previous versions were bundled with service releases, which wouldn't have as much of an effect on new PC buyers.
Now that the market for new users has cooled somewhat, the competition is back to focusing on functionality. Bundling will not likely work again so successfully.
Apart from a few promos, I haven't seen any music being restricted to playing only on the iPod. Likewise, they aren't bullying stores into selling the iPod exclusively. If you develop for both the iPhone and Android, you generally don't run the risk of losing Apple's blessing. Installing iTunes does not remove Zune software.
Apple may have a monopoly in music players, but they aren't abusing their market share. They're only abusing their users, and that's just fine.
But they'll find some really nice pictures of foreign countries! Surely that counts for something, right? Right?
I like how the Wikipedia artice states "Big Business ... We get in their way..." (summarized for your amusement)
Restriction is not anticompetitive. If you don't like Apple's terms, you're free to use anything else, like Windows, Linux, BSD, etc. If you don't want Apple's hardware, but something else. If you don't want Google reading your emails, use Hotmail.
The problem with Microsoft is that the average consumer doesn't (or didn't, before the famous iMac ads) know anything else exists, and Microsoft used its market share and financial assets to keep it that way.
Microsoft was a monopoly because it was (in the early nineties) practically the only OS available. Everything else was a special-order job. You couldn't just go into a major store and get a Mac.
Being a monopoly is not inherently bad. Google's near-monopoly on searching is not bad. What is bad is when that market share gets abused to stifle competition. As a textbook example, consider the old phone system: small local carriers weren't allowed to hook their systems to the big carriers. Because they couldn't connect, they couldn't attract customers, no matter how innovative their system might be. This is a perfect case where a monopoly halts innovation.
Microsoft's Windows situation was similar. They bundled IE with Windows and made removal extremely difficult. They ensured that IE appeared to be a vital component of Windows, though it was shown repeatedly that there was no real dependency. No matter how innovative Netscape Navigator was, IE gained its market share simply by being the default.
The concern here is that Google's bundling of services might be affecting competition. For example, other advertising companies might be considered useless, since they can't approach the visibility of Google's services. Likewise, Google's constant promoting of its other services may be impacting the ability for other companies to gain a competitive foothold.
Personally, I don't see what Google does as anything close to the anticompetitive practices Microsoft followed. That's just my opinion, though, and more facts might come in later...
Possibly.
It's also just likely that you simply don't realize what's a cost unless you take an opposing view to your own. I don't see anyone arguing that Linux is free of all costs, or even the best choice in all cases.
All business decisions (even for home users) should be based on a comprehensive evaluation of all the costs involved. Putting forth a complete comparison with references to reputable external sources is useful. In fact, it's remarkably similar to what usually gets published in "leading journals". Making a one-sided claim that Linux has extra costs (and implying that Windows does not share these costs) is flamebait, just as is any one-sided slander against Windows.
In academic terms, you must realize that negative and indecisive results are still valid research. Exploratory research, evaluating all aspects of a given theory, is also valid research. Finding negative results and conveniently omitting them from the report is dishonest at best and fraud at worst.
I've always found it interesting how we assume that aliens will follow time at the same rate we do. As far as aliens are concerned, this could be a really really high frequency, and we humans move really fast. I'm not implying any physics screweyness... just the speed at which we move and process things happening.