Their licensing is attractive to these smaller companies, compared to VMware (at least the higher-end vSphere offerings).
Why are you comparing the higher end vSphere options and then complaining about the cost? If all you need is fast, easy-to-manage virtualization, use the free ESXi. And you can upgrade it any time to get more features.
What about hydro dams that have burst? What about geothermal plants that have caused quakes? What about coal / oil plants that pollute daily? What about their supporting mines that have issues-- havent we had 3-4 MAJOR coal mine problems in the last year?
Let me ask you this, if you add up Nuke deaths over the last 20 years, and then compare to one of the following...
*Coal mine deaths
*Hydro dam deaths
*natural gas related deaths (gathering of, processing of, use of) ... which do you think comes out with least number of deaths? Hint, its not any of the alternatives.
Possibly you could respond that wind and solar are better; and in some ways they are, except for their price and reliability, and their efficiency (arent current solar cells like 10% efficient?). Regardless, if theyre better, then we need to build THOSE, not continue mining coal (with all the deaths and pollution caused by the mining alone), and then burning it in non-zero emission plants while simultaneously complaining about how evil nuclear is. If we were to replace all existing power sources with nuclear tomorrow, we would have fewer deaths yearly, cheaper energy, and basically no pollution-- keep in mind "nuclear waste" is basically "stuff with energy still in it that we could harness right now if we chose".
IANAL, but AFAIK "case law" and "precedent" is supposed to simply be either A) interpreting and clarifying existing law, or B) abolishing existing law on reasons (ie, for constitutionality reasons).
It is NOT (again, AFAIK, IIRC, IANAL) supposed to be about creating new law-- that is what we call legislation, and that is what we have legislators for. There is a reason we have 3 branches in our government, and it wasnt to consolidate 2 roles of the government into the Judicial branch.
Desler's statement was that the WebGL standard originates "from Mozilla". Statement is false.
Why do you feel the need to defend something so obviously wrong? Noones playing the blame game in this thread, theyre just fighting gross misinformation.
The previous story was about how a plugin-- which by all counts is installed on >90% of machines-- had a flaw, and was exploitable on any of those machines. Google, in an attempt to ensure timely application of plugin updates, bundled that plugin with Chrome (which is one of the reasons I have started looking at MSI rollouts of Chrome-- if theyre going to have flash no matter what I say, at least it will be up to date).
Fair enough to call the software package "Chrome" vulnerable, while technically the package "Firefox" is not; but in reality, users will not notice the difference. If you are watching youtube (or Hulu) videos in a browser, you are susceptible to the attack. The exploit, AFAICT, was not on any "google" code, but with the bundled Adobe code.
So while technically Vupen is right that it is a Chrome exploit, it is also more directly an Adobe exploit, and affects everyone using Adobe Flash. To make the story about Chrome, when most people running Flash are susceptable, is quite misleading, and I think Google was right to step up and point out that while it is a "Chrome package" exploit, and it isnt really a Chrome-exclusive flaw, nor is it reflective of the code within Chrome itself.
Also, Its rather amusing to find slashdot defending the claims of a company who makes statements like this... "We will not help Google in finding the vulnerabilities... Nobody knows how we bypassed Google Chrome's sandbox except us and our customers, and any claim is a pure speculation."
Ive never been precisely clear on why "passing instructions directly to the GPU" is different than youtube / h.264 "passing data directly to be decoded by GPU" or JIT'd javascript "being passed directly to the CPU". Surely it is possible to do such things securely? Its not like WebGL allows, for example, access to the GPU BIOS, or overclocking functions, or fan speed, and presumably they would limit the other things that can be done.
I mean, games like WoW display data on the graphics card that is pulled over the network; the fact that they have a trusted client that sanity-checks the incoming graphical data makes it safe (though I know its more than that, the rendering is done locally).
Ive heard a lot of back and forth about "but it allows shader level access" (and ive never been super clear on shader vs normal painting), can someone break down how it could be safe and how it could be unsafe?
Yes, I do-- there are several songs on Pandora that I liked enough to purchase off of Amazon, and one or two not available on amazon that I bought from iTunes. Guess it makes me old fashioned, but I believe that the artists-- who willingly signed on to some of these labels-- should be compensated; and its not for me to decide whether they made the right or wrong decision in choosing a label. I support the artist, so I pay for their work.
None of that is intended to denigrate buying indy.
Must make your wallet proud that they've all come to rely on this unnecessary point of failure in such a short time
A decade ago a number of these shops would have had to work longer hours and service fewer people; many of these places wouldnt have been able to do the work they do. Computers enable more work to get done in a shorter period of time.
Really, I cant believe Im having to explain to someone why, despite the drawbacks, computer filing is superior to paper filing (not that you shouldnt have hard copies of really important things). Its like explaining to someone why having to get an oil change periodically and the potential for gas tank explosions on a car doesnt mean that the horse and buggy system is better. LAN backbones (switches) go down once every 10 years or so in small offices, and take about 5 minutes to fix.
Everyone there knows how he behaves,
Er, yes, thats why he continued to be voted in for so many years.
And every regime from the US to NK has elements in power which are trying to censor the Internet: the difference is that the US doesn't feel a pressing need to because it has the resources to drown out dissent.
When you start comparing the US to NK, youre really stretching. The existence of "Loose change", "birther" blogs, et al shows just how far off base you are. And "has the resources to drown out the dissent".... do I smell a conspiracy theory here? What exactly are you implying here, that farmville is a government operation?
Would people like you declare that Thatcher had miraculously increased the number of university undergraduates overnight?
No, and Im not aware that any nationwide program of that nature was instituted in the US, so thats a complete non-sequitor (unless you intend to show that Cuba's Universities are quantifiably better than the US's...). I think when you pull out "socialism gives better education", it is fair game to respond "where is there higher university enrollment/graduation?"
You've clearly never experienced an authoritarian regime. Not knowing how bad it is is rarely the problem - it's just so easy for lazy, self-righteous Internet armchair revolutionaries to think they're doing their part by shifting a few bits, so they overstate the importance of this kind of information.
No, I havent, thank God. I do know that when you have someone controlling all sources of information, you tend to get people who have a hard time fighting back. And how can you say that information doesnt make a difference, given the recent spat of uprisings in Africa and the Middle East recently? Why are the leaders there so keen to shut down the internet?
And for the record, I dont think I'm "doing my bit"; I do think however that the rebels in Libya right now would remark that the internet is pretty useful for diseminating information.
Do I really need to answer this one? If you are still asserting that the average American's knowledge of how stuff around him works and how to fix it compares to, say, 40 years ago, please say so.
It may be more specialized, but yes, I am. I can set up a communications system enabling folks to travel 8000 miles, and still be able to pull up invoices from 3 months ago on a device the size of a wallet. Somewhere else in this country are IC engineers designing chips the size of a quarter that can process information for these devices. Somewhere else in Asia are workers in a fab plant working a system that deals with nano-scale electronics to produce these chips. Yes, I would say that our knowledge today compares favorably with that of 40 years ago. And its not exactly like we've ceased to have bike repairmen.
As for that article, could it be that the phenomenal success and increase in productivity of our society has meant that it now costs less to "make a new one" than to repair the old? This is
Lobbying is no guarentee of anything, and you cant just send 10million made out to "Congress" and get a law changed; it takes time if it even happens, and in the mean time you still have those regulations to deal with (that is, if you dont want to get hit with those fines).
ANd THAT, folks, is what we call rabid fanatacism.
Im not even clear who you would prefer to Google. Apple? Microsoft? Or Mozilla, who is constantly inking deals with (and receiving their funding from) Google?
I go back and forth, but Chrome out-of-box seems just "better", with its extension, autofill, prefs, etc sync built in-- Adblock and IeTab prefs on one computer are synced to everywhere. I am unaware of similar capabilities in firefox.
As for speed, firefox startup and tab-tearing seem slower, which are major factors for me. FF4 IS much closer to chrome all-around, though.
The Internet is "the linchpin of basically every productive endeavor in every world power right now"?
You missed the part about world powers. My assertion was that world powers rely on it; perhaps that would be a bit much for the PRC, (since they have so many farmers who do without), but I would stand by my statement for the rest of the world powers.
As for "sheltered", I do IT for a living, and all of the companies I work with-- from missions organizations, to auto shops, to dentist / podiatrist / general MD offices, to law firms, to economists, all can do nothing when their network backbone (switch) goes down. Why do you think OLPC is putting a focus on mesh networking in Africa?
For that matter, why do you think Zimbabwe is such a ghetto? Do you realize that if the people actually had access to information about just how bad Mugabe was, information NOT controlled by him, they might actually break free? Why do you think the repressive PRC government has been so terrified of unfettered access to the internet? Why are most of the repressive authoritarian governments in the world looking to set up their own "great firewall of China"-- could it be that information allows people to realize how bad things are?
something which is effectively 15 years old
Yea, and screw the printing press, its 500 years old. What is your point? The infrastructure certainly isnt 15 years old, Im fairly certain the 1995 backbones couldnt handle a fraction of the traffic we throw at it today.
No, I made it quite clear that most universities in the US are a joke. Saying "I have gone to university in the US" means very little unless you have gone to one of the better ones.
Sounds like a "no true scotsman argument", to me. I showed you how our enrollment is better in the US, and you reply "but Cuba has better enrollment in REAL Universities"?
Can you show to them what happened to the QoL of the average citizen in the USSR after the fall of the Union?
No, because Im not sure where to begin on such a broad claim. If you have something to show in that regard, Id LOVE to see it, but I rather imagine there is a reason people historically and currently continue to emmigrate out of many of these socialist countries and immigrate into capitalist countries.
What makes you think there's anything wrong with "even travel 100 miles" of Cuban transportation?
Because You really cant travel 100 miles ON an island thats only 265 sq miles; you have to leave the country, and given the mean income there I dont see that as happening very often. So let me ask you, can you show me any statistics that show any amount of tourism being done overseas by Cubans? Or will you simply state that thats "wasteful, and therefore a right that Cubans dont need"?
Even better, people in Cuba actually know how to fix shit.
Yes, because we have no nuclear engineers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, network engineers, mechanics, doctors, farmers, etc in our country. Theres no way I have ever been in a high school shop with tons of others, who, because of the wealth of our school's county, can have access to bandsaws, grinders, and lathes-- and certainly were not able to benefit from FIRST robotics competitions. I mean, speaking of claims with no citations, where is your source that "people in this country cant fix things"? Yes, Im sure that all these consumers get their wealth to consume through doing absolutely nothing. Certainly they dont have a profession that they go to every day. Or will you try to convince me that the entire workforce is non-productive? You might as well state that because we no longer have horse and buggy shops, our equestrian skills as a country are poor and make it a poor country.
Well, I think that about sums it up, then. If you think the next iteration of human communication is overrated (despite being the linchpin of basically every productive endeavor in every world power right now), then I begin to grasp why you see Cuba as a shining star of freedom. Nevermind that I think even the most basically educated adult would find your statement preposterous, and not for "farmville" reasons...
You also utterly failed to refute the University enrollment, or information access, or transportation, or ANY of the other QoL references; it seems QoL for you means "not dying, and having guarenteed income (even if that income is tiny"-- even though, as you continue to fail to address, our life expectancy exceeds theirs. Im really not sure what measure of life you think gives Cuba the edge over us.
I also begin to think ive just been trolled, but oh well.
Double post, thought id leave this right here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Cuba Sounds like a paradise, I have more bandwidth in my apartment @ $15 a month (split with roomates) than the entire nation of Cuba.
Its not internet anger, its frustration that someone may come across this, and their emotions and desires for a utopia may convince them that socialism really can fix the world despite all the examples and realities to the contrary.
People are greedy and "not good" inherently; socialism relies, at its core, on altruism for the sake of others, and I dont think you will have a critical mass of those to have a truly competitive (in terms of quality of life) society unless you start talking about really small populations (so, perhaps a small town of 1000 could get away with it; but the US could not). Capitalism recognizes that people are motivated really well by greed, comfort, and security, and so offers those as a motivation to work hard and excel. In other words, one relies on an attribute that is notoriously rare in this world we live in, and the other recognizes the sad reality of it and harnesses our nature to bring about a successful society.
(1) Income per household is not a reasonable comparison with GDP per capita;
Pull out whatever statistics you want, its not going to change the reality that the large majority of US citizens have way more buying power than the majority of Cubans. See, the thing with a mean income of $9000 is, the worst "outlier" you could have dragging the number down is $0, you cant exactly have negative income. I would be interested to see the breakdown of income brackets, but I cannot imagine that they are going to support your implied claim that Cubans arent poorer than US citizens by any reasonable comparison.
(2) Income per household does not translate into better quality of life when moving to a country without a comprehensive state welfare system because people have to pay for decent housing, healthcare, etc. out of their own pocket;
How many people in Cuba have commodity computers less than 5 years old? How many can even afford a Mac? How many have internet above ADSL speeds? How many have plumbing? How many go to University (from the relevant Wiki articles, it looks like the US has 30x the population of Cuba, and 100x the university enrollment)? How many people can afford to go on a vacation where they leave the country, or even travel 100 miles from home?
These are relevant QoL stats, and again I think you wont find any numbers which show Cuba as better off in this regard. In every way that seems to be relevant, INCLUDING the much touted healthcare, the US STILL comes out ahead-- despite suffering from "wealthy nation" diseases like obesity, hypertension, heart disease, etc.
Go without? No, the argument of socialism is that workers should control the means of production. But as far as your argument is concerned, it would be more accurate to posit that x% of people should have less so that the remaining (100-x)% don't suffer horribly. Also, if you think a soup kitchen or a shelter comes up to the quality of a welfare state then I wonder whether you've ever left the USA.
I have not been to a welfare state (If I went to Cuba, it would be on goodwill, not vacation), but I have been to the inner city-- I go there often. I am aware of what poverty in the US looks like, and as sad as it is, the poor in this country are better off poor in the US in 2011 than they are well-to-do in pretty much anywhere in the world 50 years ago. "Suffer horribly" is gross hyperbole for folks who have access to mass transit, reliable food, easy and free information (newspapers go for less than 5 minutes wages at Burger King, and library internet is free), and all the benefits of the health system we have-- if you go into cardiac arrest and have no money, you will still be treated, and I imagine that you would be even if hospitals were not required to.
In fact, you might argue that there are "welfare state" elements to our own society; and I think that that is OK to a certain extent. But I would argue that when it goes too far-- when the poor are guarenteed all they need to live with the comforts they want, without working, it disincentivizes doing anything at all, and if you cant recognize that people will not work without a motivation to do so, then I cant help you.
You fine them into oblivion so that it no longer makes economic sense to skip that maintenance plan. You plan the fines and fees so that doing regular maintenance, building a smart, safe plant, etc is incentivized. You make darn sure that maintenance is being run with independent audits.
You DONT say "[entire power generation sector] is unfeasible because management problems are hard".
I mean, why shouldnt I say "I like the idea of Hydroelectric dams, I just dont trust a for-profit company not to flood a valley and cost thousands of lives?"
Up-to-date designs don't matter shit if operators decide to skip regular maintenance and fake the protocols.
The same is true of a hydro-electric power plant, or a geothermal plant.
Plants that are designed with the state of the art in mind today WILL become obsolete in 10, 50, 100 years at which point greedy operators will push to continue their operation and corrupt politicians will gladly oblige.
Yes, I hear dams are easily replaced every 30 years or so.
Saying "they are obsolete" has nothing to do with whether they are safe; the issue is proper maintenance. If "proper maintenance" gets too expensive, well, then the plant will get shut down. The important thing is to make sure proper maintenance is DONE.
Alternative answer-- it means crappily maintained facilities will perform crappily in event of a disaster.
next up-- wind turbines on a rusty crappily maintained wind farm could come loose in high winds and cause secondary damage. Poorly maintained hydro- plants could cause massive loss of life if dam fails. Poorly installed geothermal plants can cause earthquake.
This isnt an argument against nuclear, its an argument about fining the hell out of people who poorly maintain their facilities (be it coal mines, nuclear facilities, oil rigs, hydroplants, etc).
I would really really hope that even politicians would be above pulling the photos out around reelection. There has to be a maturity line that you dont cross....
Slashdot Mirror
Why not run ESXi, since it is a zillion times nicer to use, has more features, and has a lot more history as a reliable hypervisor to boot?
Their licensing is attractive to these smaller companies, compared to VMware (at least the higher-end vSphere offerings).
Why are you comparing the higher end vSphere options and then complaining about the cost? If all you need is fast, easy-to-manage virtualization, use the free ESXi. And you can upgrade it any time to get more features.
Protip: ESXi is utterly free.
What about hydro dams that have burst? What about geothermal plants that have caused quakes? What about coal / oil plants that pollute daily? What about their supporting mines that have issues-- havent we had 3-4 MAJOR coal mine problems in the last year?
Let me ask you this, if you add up Nuke deaths over the last 20 years, and then compare to one of the following...
... which do you think comes out with least number of deaths? Hint, its not any of the alternatives.
*Coal mine deaths
*Hydro dam deaths
*natural gas related deaths (gathering of, processing of, use of)
Possibly you could respond that wind and solar are better; and in some ways they are, except for their price and reliability, and their efficiency (arent current solar cells like 10% efficient?). Regardless, if theyre better, then we need to build THOSE, not continue mining coal (with all the deaths and pollution caused by the mining alone), and then burning it in non-zero emission plants while simultaneously complaining about how evil nuclear is. If we were to replace all existing power sources with nuclear tomorrow, we would have fewer deaths yearly, cheaper energy, and basically no pollution-- keep in mind "nuclear waste" is basically "stuff with energy still in it that we could harness right now if we chose".
As for perspective why shouldn't people drive 50 year old cars that pollute like a bastard and leak oil once in a while?
Because they wont pass safety or emissions inspections, and the same should be true of plants.
Honestly, its like people dont WANT to find a solution.
IANAL, but AFAIK "case law" and "precedent" is supposed to simply be either A) interpreting and clarifying existing law, or B) abolishing existing law on reasons (ie, for constitutionality reasons).
It is NOT (again, AFAIK, IIRC, IANAL) supposed to be about creating new law-- that is what we call legislation, and that is what we have legislators for. There is a reason we have 3 branches in our government, and it wasnt to consolidate 2 roles of the government into the Judicial branch.
Unfortunately (fortunately?) it is not the job of lawyers or judges to legislate. Their job is to interpret the existing law correctly.
They sometimes (often) deviate from that into declaring new laws, but that is NOT their job, and we are better off when they dont.
Desler's statement was that the WebGL standard originates "from Mozilla". Statement is false.
Why do you feel the need to defend something so obviously wrong? Noones playing the blame game in this thread, theyre just fighting gross misinformation.
The previous story was about how a plugin-- which by all counts is installed on >90% of machines-- had a flaw, and was exploitable on any of those machines. Google, in an attempt to ensure timely application of plugin updates, bundled that plugin with Chrome (which is one of the reasons I have started looking at MSI rollouts of Chrome-- if theyre going to have flash no matter what I say, at least it will be up to date).
Fair enough to call the software package "Chrome" vulnerable, while technically the package "Firefox" is not; but in reality, users will not notice the difference. If you are watching youtube (or Hulu) videos in a browser, you are susceptible to the attack. The exploit, AFAICT, was not on any "google" code, but with the bundled Adobe code.
So while technically Vupen is right that it is a Chrome exploit, it is also more directly an Adobe exploit, and affects everyone using Adobe Flash. To make the story about Chrome, when most people running Flash are susceptable, is quite misleading, and I think Google was right to step up and point out that while it is a "Chrome package" exploit, and it isnt really a Chrome-exclusive flaw, nor is it reflective of the code within Chrome itself.
Also, Its rather amusing to find slashdot defending the claims of a company who makes statements like this...
"We will not help Google in finding the vulnerabilities... Nobody knows how we bypassed Google Chrome's sandbox except us and our customers, and any claim is a pure speculation."
Ive never been precisely clear on why "passing instructions directly to the GPU" is different than youtube / h.264 "passing data directly to be decoded by GPU" or JIT'd javascript "being passed directly to the CPU". Surely it is possible to do such things securely? Its not like WebGL allows, for example, access to the GPU BIOS, or overclocking functions, or fan speed, and presumably they would limit the other things that can be done.
I mean, games like WoW display data on the graphics card that is pulled over the network; the fact that they have a trusted client that sanity-checks the incoming graphical data makes it safe (though I know its more than that, the rendering is done locally).
Ive heard a lot of back and forth about "but it allows shader level access" (and ive never been super clear on shader vs normal painting), can someone break down how it could be safe and how it could be unsafe?
What DRM are you referring to?
Yes, I do-- there are several songs on Pandora that I liked enough to purchase off of Amazon, and one or two not available on amazon that I bought from iTunes. Guess it makes me old fashioned, but I believe that the artists-- who willingly signed on to some of these labels-- should be compensated; and its not for me to decide whether they made the right or wrong decision in choosing a label. I support the artist, so I pay for their work.
None of that is intended to denigrate buying indy.
Must make your wallet proud that they've all come to rely on this unnecessary point of failure in such a short time
A decade ago a number of these shops would have had to work longer hours and service fewer people; many of these places wouldnt have been able to do the work they do. Computers enable more work to get done in a shorter period of time.
Really, I cant believe Im having to explain to someone why, despite the drawbacks, computer filing is superior to paper filing (not that you shouldnt have hard copies of really important things). Its like explaining to someone why having to get an oil change periodically and the potential for gas tank explosions on a car doesnt mean that the horse and buggy system is better. LAN backbones (switches) go down once every 10 years or so in small offices, and take about 5 minutes to fix.
Everyone there knows how he behaves,
Er, yes, thats why he continued to be voted in for so many years.
And every regime from the US to NK has elements in power which are trying to censor the Internet: the difference is that the US doesn't feel a pressing need to because it has the resources to drown out dissent.
When you start comparing the US to NK, youre really stretching. The existence of "Loose change", "birther" blogs, et al shows just how far off base you are. And "has the resources to drown out the dissent".... do I smell a conspiracy theory here? What exactly are you implying here, that farmville is a government operation?
Would people like you declare that Thatcher had miraculously increased the number of university undergraduates overnight?
No, and Im not aware that any nationwide program of that nature was instituted in the US, so thats a complete non-sequitor (unless you intend to show that Cuba's Universities are quantifiably better than the US's...). I think when you pull out "socialism gives better education", it is fair game to respond "where is there higher university enrollment/graduation?"
You've clearly never experienced an authoritarian regime. Not knowing how bad it is is rarely the problem - it's just so easy for lazy, self-righteous Internet armchair revolutionaries to think they're doing their part by shifting a few bits, so they overstate the importance of this kind of information.
No, I havent, thank God. I do know that when you have someone controlling all sources of information, you tend to get people who have a hard time fighting back. And how can you say that information doesnt make a difference, given the recent spat of uprisings in Africa and the Middle East recently? Why are the leaders there so keen to shut down the internet?
And for the record, I dont think I'm "doing my bit"; I do think however that the rebels in Libya right now would remark that the internet is pretty useful for diseminating information.
Do I really need to answer this one? If you are still asserting that the average American's knowledge of how stuff around him works and how to fix it compares to, say, 40 years ago, please say so.
It may be more specialized, but yes, I am. I can set up a communications system enabling folks to travel 8000 miles, and still be able to pull up invoices from 3 months ago on a device the size of a wallet. Somewhere else in this country are IC engineers designing chips the size of a quarter that can process information for these devices. Somewhere else in Asia are workers in a fab plant working a system that deals with nano-scale electronics to produce these chips. Yes, I would say that our knowledge today compares favorably with that of 40 years ago. And its not exactly like we've ceased to have bike repairmen.
As for that article, could it be that the phenomenal success and increase in productivity of our society has meant that it now costs less to "make a new one" than to repair the old? This is
Lobbying is no guarentee of anything, and you cant just send 10million made out to "Congress" and get a law changed; it takes time if it even happens, and in the mean time you still have those regulations to deal with (that is, if you dont want to get hit with those fines).
ANd THAT, folks, is what we call rabid fanatacism.
Im not even clear who you would prefer to Google. Apple? Microsoft? Or Mozilla, who is constantly inking deals with (and receiving their funding from) Google?
I go back and forth, but Chrome out-of-box seems just "better", with its extension, autofill, prefs, etc sync built in-- Adblock and IeTab prefs on one computer are synced to everywhere. I am unaware of similar capabilities in firefox.
As for speed, firefox startup and tab-tearing seem slower, which are major factors for me. FF4 IS much closer to chrome all-around, though.
The Internet is "the linchpin of basically every productive endeavor in every world power right now"?
You missed the part about world powers. My assertion was that world powers rely on it; perhaps that would be a bit much for the PRC, (since they have so many farmers who do without), but I would stand by my statement for the rest of the world powers.
As for "sheltered", I do IT for a living, and all of the companies I work with-- from missions organizations, to auto shops, to dentist / podiatrist / general MD offices, to law firms, to economists, all can do nothing when their network backbone (switch) goes down. Why do you think OLPC is putting a focus on mesh networking in Africa?
For that matter, why do you think Zimbabwe is such a ghetto? Do you realize that if the people actually had access to information about just how bad Mugabe was, information NOT controlled by him, they might actually break free? Why do you think the repressive PRC government has been so terrified of unfettered access to the internet? Why are most of the repressive authoritarian governments in the world looking to set up their own "great firewall of China"-- could it be that information allows people to realize how bad things are?
something which is effectively 15 years old
Yea, and screw the printing press, its 500 years old. What is your point? The infrastructure certainly isnt 15 years old, Im fairly certain the 1995 backbones couldnt handle a fraction of the traffic we throw at it today.
No, I made it quite clear that most universities in the US are a joke. Saying "I have gone to university in the US" means very little unless you have gone to one of the better ones.
Sounds like a "no true scotsman argument", to me. I showed you how our enrollment is better in the US, and you reply "but Cuba has better enrollment in REAL Universities"?
Can you show to them what happened to the QoL of the average citizen in the USSR after the fall of the Union?
No, because Im not sure where to begin on such a broad claim. If you have something to show in that regard, Id LOVE to see it, but I rather imagine there is a reason people historically and currently continue to emmigrate out of many of these socialist countries and immigrate into capitalist countries.
What makes you think there's anything wrong with "even travel 100 miles" of Cuban transportation?
Because You really cant travel 100 miles ON an island thats only 265 sq miles; you have to leave the country, and given the mean income there I dont see that as happening very often. So let me ask you, can you show me any statistics that show any amount of tourism being done overseas by Cubans? Or will you simply state that thats "wasteful, and therefore a right that Cubans dont need"?
Even better, people in Cuba actually know how to fix shit.
Yes, because we have no nuclear engineers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, network engineers, mechanics, doctors, farmers, etc in our country. Theres no way I have ever been in a high school shop with tons of others, who, because of the wealth of our school's county, can have access to bandsaws, grinders, and lathes-- and certainly were not able to benefit from FIRST robotics competitions. I mean, speaking of claims with no citations, where is your source that "people in this country cant fix things"?
Yes, Im sure that all these consumers get their wealth to consume through doing absolutely nothing. Certainly they dont have a profession that they go to every day. Or will you try to convince me that the entire workforce is non-productive? You might as well state that because we no longer have horse and buggy shops, our equestrian skills as a country are poor and make it a poor country.
Well, I think that about sums it up, then. If you think the next iteration of human communication is overrated (despite being the linchpin of basically every productive endeavor in every world power right now), then I begin to grasp why you see Cuba as a shining star of freedom. Nevermind that I think even the most basically educated adult would find your statement preposterous, and not for "farmville" reasons...
You also utterly failed to refute the University enrollment, or information access, or transportation, or ANY of the other QoL references; it seems QoL for you means "not dying, and having guarenteed income (even if that income is tiny"-- even though, as you continue to fail to address, our life expectancy exceeds theirs. Im really not sure what measure of life you think gives Cuba the edge over us.
I also begin to think ive just been trolled, but oh well.
Double post, thought id leave this right here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Cuba
Sounds like a paradise, I have more bandwidth in my apartment @ $15 a month (split with roomates) than the entire nation of Cuba.
Its not internet anger, its frustration that someone may come across this, and their emotions and desires for a utopia may convince them that socialism really can fix the world despite all the examples and realities to the contrary.
People are greedy and "not good" inherently; socialism relies, at its core, on altruism for the sake of others, and I dont think you will have a critical mass of those to have a truly competitive (in terms of quality of life) society unless you start talking about really small populations (so, perhaps a small town of 1000 could get away with it; but the US could not).
Capitalism recognizes that people are motivated really well by greed, comfort, and security, and so offers those as a motivation to work hard and excel. In other words, one relies on an attribute that is notoriously rare in this world we live in, and the other recognizes the sad reality of it and harnesses our nature to bring about a successful society.
(1) Income per household is not a reasonable comparison with GDP per capita;
Pull out whatever statistics you want, its not going to change the reality that the large majority of US citizens have way more buying power than the majority of Cubans. See, the thing with a mean income of $9000 is, the worst "outlier" you could have dragging the number down is $0, you cant exactly have negative income. I would be interested to see the breakdown of income brackets, but I cannot imagine that they are going to support your implied claim that Cubans arent poorer than US citizens by any reasonable comparison.
(2) Income per household does not translate into better quality of life when moving to a country without a comprehensive state welfare system because people have to pay for decent housing, healthcare, etc. out of their own pocket;
How many people in Cuba have commodity computers less than 5 years old? How many can even afford a Mac? How many have internet above ADSL speeds? How many have plumbing? How many go to University (from the relevant Wiki articles, it looks like the US has 30x the population of Cuba, and 100x the university enrollment)? How many people can afford to go on a vacation where they leave the country, or even travel 100 miles from home?
These are relevant QoL stats, and again I think you wont find any numbers which show Cuba as better off in this regard. In every way that seems to be relevant, INCLUDING the much touted healthcare, the US STILL comes out ahead-- despite suffering from "wealthy nation" diseases like obesity, hypertension, heart disease, etc.
Go without? No, the argument of socialism is that workers should control the means of production. But as far as your argument is concerned, it would be more accurate to posit that x% of people should have less so that the remaining (100-x)% don't suffer horribly. Also, if you think a soup kitchen or a shelter comes up to the quality of a welfare state then I wonder whether you've ever left the USA.
I have not been to a welfare state (If I went to Cuba, it would be on goodwill, not vacation), but I have been to the inner city-- I go there often. I am aware of what poverty in the US looks like, and as sad as it is, the poor in this country are better off poor in the US in 2011 than they are well-to-do in pretty much anywhere in the world 50 years ago. "Suffer horribly" is gross hyperbole for folks who have access to mass transit, reliable food, easy and free information (newspapers go for less than 5 minutes wages at Burger King, and library internet is free), and all the benefits of the health system we have-- if you go into cardiac arrest and have no money, you will still be treated, and I imagine that you would be even if hospitals were not required to.
In fact, you might argue that there are "welfare state" elements to our own society; and I think that that is OK to a certain extent. But I would argue that when it goes too far-- when the poor are guarenteed all they need to live with the comforts they want, without working, it disincentivizes doing anything at all, and if you cant recognize that people will not work without a motivation to do so, then I cant help you.
Chromium works fine with adblock and has for the last year or so. It is also significantly faster than Firefox.
You fine them into oblivion so that it no longer makes economic sense to skip that maintenance plan. You plan the fines and fees so that doing regular maintenance, building a smart, safe plant, etc is incentivized. You make darn sure that maintenance is being run with independent audits.
You DONT say "[entire power generation sector] is unfeasible because management problems are hard".
I mean, why shouldnt I say "I like the idea of Hydroelectric dams, I just dont trust a for-profit company not to flood a valley and cost thousands of lives?"
Up-to-date designs don't matter shit if operators decide to skip regular maintenance and fake the protocols.
The same is true of a hydro-electric power plant, or a geothermal plant.
Plants that are designed with the state of the art in mind today WILL become obsolete in 10, 50, 100 years at which point greedy operators will push to continue their operation and corrupt politicians will gladly oblige.
Yes, I hear dams are easily replaced every 30 years or so.
Saying "they are obsolete" has nothing to do with whether they are safe; the issue is proper maintenance. If "proper maintenance" gets too expensive, well, then the plant will get shut down. The important thing is to make sure proper maintenance is DONE.
Alternative answer-- it means crappily maintained facilities will perform crappily in event of a disaster.
next up-- wind turbines on a rusty crappily maintained wind farm could come loose in high winds and cause secondary damage. Poorly maintained hydro- plants could cause massive loss of life if dam fails. Poorly installed geothermal plants can cause earthquake.
This isnt an argument against nuclear, its an argument about fining the hell out of people who poorly maintain their facilities (be it coal mines, nuclear facilities, oil rigs, hydroplants, etc).
I would really really hope that even politicians would be above pulling the photos out around reelection. There has to be a maturity line that you dont cross....