My British motorcycle riding buddies would agree. We ride Hondas (and I upgraded from my Triumph), which we can agree on, and enjoy steaks here in the U.S., but argue amicably about a great deal of many other things. (I constantly rib him about the dual water faucet system in the U.K., which perseverses in even the most modern hotels there, while he tries hard not to linger on American politics). He likes his 911 and I miss driving my M3. I prefer HTC handsets myself, as I am a Windows guy who likes my world to sync, but I'm fairly certain he was on a Nokia. I'm a little troubled by the way that Nokia handsets seem to set off noise in speakers...but if the fertility rate hasn't dropped significantly there...I guess they're safe.
American women are as diverse as any other continents..odds are your "headquarter" visits exposed you to one of a few major metropolitan areas. Each has their stereotypical groups, but I can say that a majority of our girls are disgusted by the "noisy" minority. That being said..please send more blondes (and/or redheads). We really do need them. Plus, what red-blooded American man doesn't like an accent. Also, IMHO, taller women would help as well. The majorify of immigrants/births in this country belong to a population with 5'6" and below...:(
Not to detract from the importance of a good cell phone...but...I can tell you where my priorities lie.
BTW, you're English is excellent and you converse fluently with us Americans. Kudos.
P.S. Could you join forces with Sweden and send more blondes over here. Out stock has become significantly diluted and I question if any of ours are natural these days. I promise they will only carry Nokia phones and will have good jobs. This should help with the unemployment rate over there. I can't promise about Linux though. If they come over with computer science degrees already...then maybe. My ideas for them and "Open Source" might run a little differentlly from yours.
Unless you were the original "Anonymous Coward" who replied to my initial post in response to giafly's "Block the United States" comment, you seem to have trolled us to a point far from the original thread. I made one statement alluding to the fact that America has contributed a significant amount of financial and mental capital to the Internet and computing world you know today. Then I owned up to the need for America to do a better job solving this problem. Boy genius makes a statement that most development and innovation occurs outside the U.S. and then accuses me of being a xenophobe.
I didn't disagree with that fact that much technology development occurs outside the U.S., but I did take issue with the xenophobe comment. My statements about U.S. involvement in the history and development of the internet were only meant to re-affirm what I still believe to be true. America is ONE of the leaders in Internet technologies today and their historical contributions are significant. They continue to be one of the top 3 players in the space, despite being only 5% of the global population. I never said the only. I never made outlandish comments like "America Invented 1s and 0s" or "The only good Internet innovation of the past decade has come from America". American technology companies expansion to global markets has been as much about the improvement and refining of ideas in other places as it is about expanding markets and finding cheaper suppliers.
Then I asked someone to name a country with five other significant business which contributed as much to computers. (i.e. with relation to the Internet). You could have chosen Japan or Taiwan, or possibly a few others. You might have been able to draw up five companies in those countries who have had computer roots going back to the 70s/80s (or earlier) as the five or so I mentioned. You gave us one company. Nokia. A cell phone company. An interesting leap. Technology...yes. Computer/Internet...small correlation that is growing. Relevance to spam and the technologies that enable it...almost zero. But I played your game and showed you how Nokia (and all other major cell phone companies) rely, in part, on American technology companies as well for their core functionalities. Are these chipsets developed/produced outside the U.S. today? Most certainly. Would the world feel the effects if the American portions of Motorola, Intel, Qualcomm & TI were suddenly cut out of the loop. Most certainly..just as the price of everything electronic would easily double or triple if China decided to close its door. I then tried to remind you that the only reason I bring this up is because people often seem to get caught up in America bashing because of our politics, and completely dis the capitalistic roots of modern enterprise. If you expect people to look to history to learn lessons about war and politics, you should do the same for business, technology, education, finance and other aspects of the modern geopolitical stage. I don't have a problem with admiting that our modern computing is dependent on the contributions of many countries. As an example, had it not been for the cheap labor in Asia and later in India, hardware would not be nearly as advanced or affordable as it is today..and the software end-result would have suffered as well. But there is a reason why most occurances of corporate espionage of technology occurs in the direction of U.S. to some other country and not the other way around. Seems to me you have a heaping plate of crow to eat. Its OK to admit that America has a lot of smart people and a lot of great ideas. Doing so doesn't nullify or discount the contributions of others.
Also, please note that I didn't initially bring Finland into the argument, only Linux. And while Linus IS Finnish, I don't consider Linux to be a Finnish operating system. Its roots from Unix and its growth to a significant player in the OS marketplace has relied on multinational contributions since the beginning. Some other coward acted as if
You can, in fact, live off historical significance. Unless you're blonde hairs & blue eyes..odds are you wouldn't be around today if the "insignificant" USA hadn't stepped up to the plate. You would have been either a statistic of Hitler or of Stalin. You brought it up..I'm just pointing out what should be obvious.
No argument about scumbags. But, you'll get yours soon enough. You'll be walking down the street with your fancy Finnish Fone and it will be barraged with advertisments from stores, vending machines, and those famous European escorts. You'll have you own problems to deal with soon enough. Capitalism breeds greed, there is no doubt about it, but it is a philosophical argument as to which is worse...greedy capitalists who try to take more than their share or lazy socialists who try to work less than their share.
No doubt cell phones are important, but odds are you posted this message with a computer..not your cell phone. And that computer costs more b/c it does more. And at the heart of that computer is an Intel or AMD chip. And the OS (statistically speaking) is Windows. You cannot deny that, no matter how much nationalism you possess. In time, Linux "might" knock Windows out of the pole position, but you can be fairly certain that it won't be 100% freeware. People expect and deserve to be rewarded for their hard work, regardless of nationality. But your phone has a long way to go; the technology is limited and will be for quite some time. I'm sure at some point in the future it will be possible to carry a handheld device that either has approx. 100% voice recognition or VR motion sensing capabilities that will allow us to be screen and input device free (relatively speaking)..but that day is quite a few years away.
My comment about TI and Qualcomm stands. They are the leading producers of chips for all phones, regardless of technology. (G3/CDMA/etc.) I wouldn't have wasted your time pointing it out otherwise.
I have traveled the world extensively, as my passport stamps will prove. Haven't made it to Finland yet though; nothing personal but "World's Largest Cell Phone Producer" and "Home of Linus" doesn't seem to be a big enough draw for me.
Americans are constantly adjusting to a new place. While we are one of the few military superpowers, we are certainly having to compete as an economic one. India has promise as being "good" competition but China should scare any/all people of the free world. Until they improve conditions for all their people, we are all guilty of exploiting their "cheap" work force and its people, especially when it comes to technology.
The point of my original post was to point out that "Block the United States" was a small-minded view, a completely unhelpful solution, and that should such an outrageously unlikely event occur, one would be cutting themselves off from a signigicant source of innovation and capital in technology production. (way more than the 5% population we represent). All along I've been accepting of "America's" short comings and additional responsibility here, whereas you seem to think that Finland got to be the world's largest cell phone producer all by itself. When your billion dollar industry starts to affect our trillion dollar budgets...look me up again.
Linux has only become competition to Unix and/or Windows after some companies decided to pick it up, customize it a little, and put an 800 number behind it for real support. (Any real company running significant business apps isn't going to have an IT department that googles for support answers or relies on a e-mail reply from Linus.) Linux is a significant and stable OS for most home users and small businesses, but when real businesses transacting millions of dollars of business a day want an OS, they look elsewhere for their needs. However, it didn't become a buzz word until it developed a significant GUI (inspired by Apple, XWindows, and Microsoft Windows) and even now I challenge you to find a a major computer vendor that sells majority of linux systems (by volume). Another 5-10 years and it will be a different argument.
BTW, Linux is based on/modeled/inspired by UNIX..which was invented where? America. It was first programmed for the Intel X86 architechture. American. Linux was part of the GNU project, started by Richards Stallman who is...American. Only time will tell if parts of Linux code is pirated from other Unix such as SCO, but the continuing legal issues only highlight the fact that free things end up costing more than you'd expect.
You missed the point, same as the last clown. America has historical significance in the computing world, and is still considered the biggest player in the internet from several fronts. In fact, many people still bitch b/c American retains control over key core Internet routers. China and India have sheer numbers to compensate, but on a per capita basis, U.S. expenditures on computers is significanly higher than most other countries. We were here first and we've shared with the world. World, using eqully impressive brains (if not equally impressive capital) now contribute significantly. My point was, exclude the U.S. from mail routing and you'll be cutting your legs out from underneath you. Sure, you can still pull yourself around on your arms or use a wheel chair, but it wouldn't be the same.
Mobile phones have been weak in the U.S. ever since inception. This is partly b/c we have such a strong land-line infrastructure. I've heard that there is more fibre in the U.S. than in the rest of the world, but lack citation to point it out as fact. Many other countries have used mobile phones b/c that's all they have. If they tried to get copper/DSL/Cable to all the residencies, their local telcos would go bankrupt. (Ours are now offering entry level DSL for $15/month. FIOS and other fibre offerings are now bringing 15MB+ to the home for less than $100/month) Now matter how cool a cell phone gets, it won't replace the beauty of raw data througput pulling down movies/ISOs/VLF (Very Large Files) in minutes instead of hours/days that most of the rest of the world currently enjoys. Plus, why can't they figure out how to simply billing in the rest of the world. Most mobile operators I've experienced South/Central America, Caribbean, UK, and Europe all have confusing rates which are constantly changing, all varying depending on if you're calling another mobile phone, a land line, and one of 3 time options. Nevermind that the U.S. enjoys free long distance to all of its massive continent while Europeans are paying different rates to 20+ countries all in near proximity. I think I just threw up a bit in my mouth thinking about it...
But, if we must, lets look at the heart of cell phones.
Qualcomm is 90% of CDMA phones. Qualcomm is US company. Quite a few video components rely on TI components. (Texas Instruments...wonder where that was founded?)
Suck it. If it makes you feel any better, you should realize that many of the "Americans" working for our companies here are 1st generation foreign nationals who came here for the superior education and stayed on for the superior pay and lifestyle. We import your best and brightest all the time. Its the American way.
Just because our politicians blow doesn't mean the rest of our hard work goes unnoticed or unrewarded.
Simply pointing out that the Internet was invented in the U.S. and that most capital used to fund major free Internet resources (Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc..etc..) all occur in the U.S. Multinationals contribute and improve many of the ideas. Often times they invent the ideas. But it is U.S. corporations backing them which turns them massive, often with the hopes of using paid advertising to point you to products or services and using cookies to help define and understand Internet usage.
There is a long list of things which started in U.S. but have since made its way to other countries for revision and improvement...in part because of cheaper labor force and the ability to copy things given to them.
Tell me, where did Intel start it humble beginning? Or Motorola? Or AMD? Microsoft? Apple? Cisco? Gee, who owns the servers that this very message is being entered into? Why don't you give me a list of five foreign started companies who have as much influence in the computer world today. During the weeks it takes you to do that, I'll still be here in the U.S. enjoying the extra spending cash that us capitalists enjoy versus our socialist couterparts, playing on my computer made cheaper by third world duplication robots, on a reliable OS made possible because I actually paid for it.
No arguing where the parts are manufactured these days...but...where's the competition? Windows runs on more than 90% of computer system in the world. Seems to me that America has securely lodged itself in the history books as the origin of modern computing and a significant contributor. And while you can b!tc# about Microsoft..imagine how much cheaper it would be for everyone if the Chinese actually paid for all the copies they use?
Take that and shove it up your xenophobic accusations?
****** Linux started its humble roots near socialist/communist goverments. Big surprise there. People always want something for nothing. When it comes time to put food on the table and expect results, it takes a capitalistic mentality. When you expect everyone to enjoy the fruits and labors of a few, you fail as miserably as the Soviet Union. Maybe that explains Germany and Japan's massive comeback after World War II? They actually took to heart the things that made U.S. and the other Allies better and then applied those lessons in their own lives.
"Route-around" the United States and the Internet as you know it would cease to exist. Computers would still be text based and people would be dialing in to BBS services to transfer their emails.
That being said...U.S. could do a lot more to help stop this problem. We seem to have a real issue with prosecuting "white collar" crime.
The Spamhaus Project would get much better results if they used all their spamming knowledge to bring U.S. government (House/Senate) email systems to their knees for a week. While most of our congressmen don't read their own email (much less know how to operate a computer), they'd be aware if their aids were unable to get them info b/c they were to busy weeding through serious spam.
If people had to pay for their email address, they'd respect it a lot more and we would seriously cut down on abuse.
I never have spam issues. My real email address is rarely used..only for friends and legitimate sites(Secure businesses w/ encryption, like my credit card). My real email address is from a privately registered domain, which costs me only $20/yr. When I sign up for anything else (including this site), I use one of my free accounts. I don't check them frequently and I only whitelist domains I expect to see. The problem with "free" email addresses is that they end up costing us all. If all users paid for their email, then companies would have a real vested interest in stopping spam. If someone even had to pay $1 for their hotmail/yahoo/gmail account, it would severly limit the rampant abuse of the system. While I fiercely defend the freedom of the internet, I also respect the need for bars to check IDs and pornography to be sold underneath black covers or in stores which are limited to adults. Research, development & implementation of anti-spam initiatives have cost this country hundreds of millions of dollars. Think of it as the most basic form of tax which would allow us to keep riff-raff off our super information highway.Obviously there would need to be a few details worked out, but there isn't any reason why the major ISPs could allow users to create their own privately registered domain for the "free" email account that comes with service. Additionally, they need to better educate new users about email. I finally convinced my parents to upgrade to DSL from dial-up last year and I created them a private domain for a new email account when they made the switch. 6 months later and they are still spam free; they are constantly thanking me for all the time saved because they are no longer wading through junk email.
My guess is that most experienced and/or properly educated internet users do this or something similar. Truth is, if you want a quality, reliable product you have to pay for it. Imagine if yahoo or google had $1 for each of their 10s of Millions of accounts. That'd be a lot of legal capital to pursue and hunt down spammers, not to mention the ability to create a class action lawsuit which would carry more weight. Now, imagine if they got $10 or $20 per account. I'm definately not proposing a per email charge here..simply requiring that some small charge be levied so that email accounts are only created by those who want them used for legitimate and expected communication.
Our lives are already overloaded with advertising from marketers who are desperately looking for ways to justify their jobs. Thank the powers for video recorders that allow us to skip commercials and pop up blockers that have reclaimed the web.
That being said...if someone wants to create a vigilante task force that hunts down and punishes top spammers, I'd gladly volunteer. There are just as many legal ways to harass these people and make their lives difficult as hell w/o resorting to violence. Unfortunately, the odds are that this guy did more than spam people (those who take the easy/lazy/annoying way of doing business probably also cheat/lie/scam as well..) and so the person(s) commiting this crime probably did not sleep better that night knowing their inbox would be a little less full.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't know how to send a PM.
a p/index.html
We've been upstaged:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/07/20/superfast.net.
My British motorcycle riding buddies would agree. We ride Hondas (and I upgraded from my Triumph), which we can agree on, and enjoy steaks here in the U.S., but argue amicably about a great deal of many other things. (I constantly rib him about the dual water faucet system in the U.K., which perseverses in even the most modern hotels there, while he tries hard not to linger on American politics). He likes his 911 and I miss driving my M3. I prefer HTC handsets myself, as I am a Windows guy who likes my world to sync, but I'm fairly certain he was on a Nokia. I'm a little troubled by the way that Nokia handsets seem to set off noise in speakers...but if the fertility rate hasn't dropped significantly there...I guess they're safe.
:(
American women are as diverse as any other continents..odds are your "headquarter" visits exposed you to one of a few major metropolitan areas. Each has their stereotypical groups, but I can say that a majority of our girls are disgusted by the "noisy" minority. That being said..please send more blondes (and/or redheads). We really do need them. Plus, what red-blooded American man doesn't like an accent. Also, IMHO, taller women would help as well. The majorify of immigrants/births in this country belong to a population with 5'6" and below...
Not to detract from the importance of a good cell phone...but...I can tell you where my priorities lie.
BTW, you're English is excellent and you converse fluently with us Americans. Kudos.
P.S. Could you join forces with Sweden and send more blondes over here. Out stock has become significantly diluted and I question if any of ours are natural these days. I promise they will only carry Nokia phones and will have good jobs. This should help with the unemployment rate over there. I can't promise about Linux though. If they come over with computer science degrees already...then maybe. My ideas for them and "Open Source" might run a little differentlly from yours.
Unless you were the original "Anonymous Coward" who replied to my initial post in response to giafly's "Block the United States" comment, you seem to have trolled us to a point far from the original thread. I made one statement alluding to the fact that America has contributed a significant amount of financial and mental capital to the Internet and computing world you know today. Then I owned up to the need for America to do a better job solving this problem. Boy genius makes a statement that most development and innovation occurs outside the U.S. and then accuses me of being a xenophobe.
I didn't disagree with that fact that much technology development occurs outside the U.S., but I did take issue with the xenophobe comment. My statements about U.S. involvement in the history and development of the internet were only meant to re-affirm what I still believe to be true. America is ONE of the leaders in Internet technologies today and their historical contributions are significant. They continue to be one of the top 3 players in the space, despite being only 5% of the global population. I never said the only. I never made outlandish comments like "America Invented 1s and 0s" or "The only good Internet innovation of the past decade has come from America". American technology companies expansion to global markets has been as much about the improvement and refining of ideas in other places as it is about expanding markets and finding cheaper suppliers.
Then I asked someone to name a country with five other significant business which contributed as much to computers. (i.e. with relation to the Internet). You could have chosen Japan or Taiwan, or possibly a few others. You might have been able to draw up five companies in those countries who have had computer roots going back to the 70s/80s (or earlier) as the five or so I mentioned. You gave us one company. Nokia. A cell phone company. An interesting leap. Technology...yes. Computer/Internet...small correlation that is growing. Relevance to spam and the technologies that enable it...almost zero. But I played your game and showed you how Nokia (and all other major cell phone companies) rely, in part, on American technology companies as well for their core functionalities. Are these chipsets developed/produced outside the U.S. today? Most certainly. Would the world feel the effects if the American portions of Motorola, Intel, Qualcomm & TI were suddenly cut out of the loop. Most certainly..just as the price of everything electronic would easily double or triple if China decided to close its door. I then tried to remind you that the only reason I bring this up is because people often seem to get caught up in America bashing because of our politics, and completely dis the capitalistic roots of modern enterprise. If you expect people to look to history to learn lessons about war and politics, you should do the same for business, technology, education, finance and other aspects of the modern geopolitical stage. I don't have a problem with admiting that our modern computing is dependent on the contributions of many countries. As an example, had it not been for the cheap labor in Asia and later in India, hardware would not be nearly as advanced or affordable as it is today..and the software end-result would have suffered as well. But there is a reason why most occurances of corporate espionage of technology occurs in the direction of U.S. to some other country and not the other way around. Seems to me you have a heaping plate of crow to eat. Its OK to admit that America has a lot of smart people and a lot of great ideas. Doing so doesn't nullify or discount the contributions of others.
Also, please note that I didn't initially bring Finland into the argument, only Linux. And while Linus IS Finnish, I don't consider Linux to be a Finnish operating system. Its roots from Unix and its growth to a significant player in the OS marketplace has relied on multinational contributions since the beginning. Some other coward acted as if
You can, in fact, live off historical significance. Unless you're blonde hairs & blue eyes..odds are you wouldn't be around today if the "insignificant" USA hadn't stepped up to the plate. You would have been either a statistic of Hitler or of Stalin. You brought it up..I'm just pointing out what should be obvious.
No argument about scumbags. But, you'll get yours soon enough. You'll be walking down the street with your fancy Finnish Fone and it will be barraged with advertisments from stores, vending machines, and those famous European escorts. You'll have you own problems to deal with soon enough. Capitalism breeds greed, there is no doubt about it, but it is a philosophical argument as to which is worse...greedy capitalists who try to take more than their share or lazy socialists who try to work less than their share.
No doubt cell phones are important, but odds are you posted this message with a computer..not your cell phone. And that computer costs more b/c it does more. And at the heart of that computer is an Intel or AMD chip. And the OS (statistically speaking) is Windows. You cannot deny that, no matter how much nationalism you possess. In time, Linux "might" knock Windows out of the pole position, but you can be fairly certain that it won't be 100% freeware. People expect and deserve to be rewarded for their hard work, regardless of nationality. But your phone has a long way to go; the technology is limited and will be for quite some time. I'm sure at some point in the future it will be possible to carry a handheld device that either has approx. 100% voice recognition or VR motion sensing capabilities that will allow us to be screen and input device free (relatively speaking)..but that day is quite a few years away.
My comment about TI and Qualcomm stands. They are the leading producers of chips for all phones, regardless of technology. (G3/CDMA/etc.) I wouldn't have wasted your time pointing it out otherwise.
I have traveled the world extensively, as my passport stamps will prove. Haven't made it to Finland yet though; nothing personal but "World's Largest Cell Phone Producer" and "Home of Linus" doesn't seem to be a big enough draw for me.
Americans are constantly adjusting to a new place. While we are one of the few military superpowers, we are certainly having to compete as an economic one. India has promise as being "good" competition but China should scare any/all people of the free world. Until they improve conditions for all their people, we are all guilty of exploiting their "cheap" work force and its people, especially when it comes to technology.
The point of my original post was to point out that "Block the United States" was a small-minded view, a completely unhelpful solution, and that should such an outrageously unlikely event occur, one would be cutting themselves off from a signigicant source of innovation and capital in technology production. (way more than the 5% population we represent). All along I've been accepting of "America's" short comings and additional responsibility here, whereas you seem to think that Finland got to be the world's largest cell phone producer all by itself. When your billion dollar industry starts to affect our trillion dollar budgets...look me up again.
Graphics? WTF? Who said anything about graphics?
Linux has only become competition to Unix and/or Windows after some companies decided to pick it up, customize it a little, and put an 800 number behind it for real support. (Any real company running significant business apps isn't going to have an IT department that googles for support answers or relies on a e-mail reply from Linus.) Linux is a significant and stable OS for most home users and small businesses, but when real businesses transacting millions of dollars of business a day want an OS, they look elsewhere for their needs. However, it didn't become a buzz word until it developed a significant GUI (inspired by Apple, XWindows, and Microsoft Windows) and even now I challenge you to find a a major computer vendor that sells majority of linux systems (by volume). Another 5-10 years and it will be a different argument.
BTW, Linux is based on/modeled/inspired by UNIX..which was invented where? America. It was first programmed for the Intel X86 architechture. American. Linux was part of the GNU project, started by Richards Stallman who is...American. Only time will tell if parts of Linux code is pirated from other Unix such as SCO, but the continuing legal issues only highlight the fact that free things end up costing more than you'd expect.
Suck it.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/200608 28031933.html
m l, but that would cost money...something I know linux lovers are loathe to hand out. Here's a free one for you though:e nt.tsp?contentId=4605&navigationId=12046&templateI d=6123
old data...Motorola is a close second. However, I now consider Motorola a global company.
Thus, more recently:
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/item/?ci=29705
You missed the point, same as the last clown. America has historical significance in the computing world, and is still considered the biggest player in the internet from several fronts. In fact, many people still bitch b/c American retains control over key core Internet routers. China and India have sheer numbers to compensate, but on a per capita basis, U.S. expenditures on computers is significanly higher than most other countries. We were here first and we've shared with the world. World, using eqully impressive brains (if not equally impressive capital) now contribute significantly. My point was, exclude the U.S. from mail routing and you'll be cutting your legs out from underneath you. Sure, you can still pull yourself around on your arms or use a wheel chair, but it wouldn't be the same.
Mobile phones have been weak in the U.S. ever since inception. This is partly b/c we have such a strong land-line infrastructure. I've heard that there is more fibre in the U.S. than in the rest of the world, but lack citation to point it out as fact. Many other countries have used mobile phones b/c that's all they have. If they tried to get copper/DSL/Cable to all the residencies, their local telcos would go bankrupt. (Ours are now offering entry level DSL for $15/month. FIOS and other fibre offerings are now bringing 15MB+ to the home for less than $100/month) Now matter how cool a cell phone gets, it won't replace the beauty of raw data througput pulling down movies/ISOs/VLF (Very Large Files) in minutes instead of hours/days that most of the rest of the world currently enjoys. Plus, why can't they figure out how to simply billing in the rest of the world. Most mobile operators I've experienced South/Central America, Caribbean, UK, and Europe all have confusing rates which are constantly changing, all varying depending on if you're calling another mobile phone, a land line, and one of 3 time options. Nevermind that the U.S. enjoys free long distance to all of its massive continent while Europeans are paying different rates to 20+ countries all in near proximity. I think I just threw up a bit in my mouth thinking about it...
But, if we must, lets look at the heart of cell phones.
Qualcomm is 90% of CDMA phones. Qualcomm is US company.
Quite a few video components rely on TI components. (Texas Instruments...wonder where that was founded?)
I'd ask you to take a look at a vendor market share report, http://www.marketresearch.com/map/prod/1334374.ht
http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbugencont
TI has largest market share followed by Qualcomm in 2nd place. So, Nokia's first place hold on the cell phone market is dependent on the chipsets from 2 American companies, and wireless technologies, while collaborative, require significant technical innovations.
Suck it. If it makes you feel any better, you should realize that many of the "Americans" working for our companies here are 1st generation foreign nationals who came here for the superior education and stayed on for the superior pay and lifestyle. We import your best and brightest all the time. Its the American way.
Just because our politicians blow doesn't mean the rest of our hard work goes unnoticed or unrewarded.
Can't argue with that.
Simply pointing out that the Internet was invented in the U.S. and that most capital used to fund major free Internet resources (Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc..etc..) all occur in the U.S. Multinationals contribute and improve many of the ideas. Often times they invent the ideas. But it is U.S. corporations backing them which turns them massive, often with the hopes of using paid advertising to point you to products or services and using cookies to help define and understand Internet usage.
There is a long list of things which started in U.S. but have since made its way to other countries for revision and improvement...in part because of cheaper labor force and the ability to copy things given to them.
Tell me, where did Intel start it humble beginning? Or Motorola? Or AMD? Microsoft? Apple? Cisco? Gee, who owns the servers that this very message is being entered into? Why don't you give me a list of five foreign started companies who have as much influence in the computer world today. During the weeks it takes you to do that, I'll still be here in the U.S. enjoying the extra spending cash that us capitalists enjoy versus our socialist couterparts, playing on my computer made cheaper by third world duplication robots, on a reliable OS made possible because I actually paid for it.
No arguing where the parts are manufactured these days...but...where's the competition? Windows runs on more than 90% of computer system in the world. Seems to me that America has securely lodged itself in the history books as the origin of modern computing and a significant contributor. And while you can b!tc# about Microsoft..imagine how much cheaper it would be for everyone if the Chinese actually paid for all the copies they use?
Take that and shove it up your xenophobic accusations?
******
Linux started its humble roots near socialist/communist goverments. Big surprise there. People always want something for nothing. When it comes time to put food on the table and expect results, it takes a capitalistic mentality. When you expect everyone to enjoy the fruits and labors of a few, you fail as miserably as the Soviet Union. Maybe that explains Germany and Japan's massive comeback after World War II? They actually took to heart the things that made U.S. and the other Allies better and then applied those lessons in their own lives.
Now you should do the same.
"Route-around" the United States and the Internet as you know it would cease to exist. Computers would still be text based and people would be dialing in to BBS services to transfer their emails.
That being said...U.S. could do a lot more to help stop this problem. We seem to have a real issue with prosecuting "white collar" crime.
The Spamhaus Project would get much better results if they used all their spamming knowledge to bring U.S. government (House/Senate) email systems to their knees for a week. While most of our congressmen don't read their own email (much less know how to operate a computer), they'd be aware if their aids were unable to get them info b/c they were to busy weeding through serious spam.
If people had to pay for their email address, they'd respect it a lot more and we would seriously cut down on abuse.
I never have spam issues. My real email address is rarely used..only for friends and legitimate sites(Secure businesses w/ encryption, like my credit card). My real email address is from a privately registered domain, which costs me only $20/yr. When I sign up for anything else (including this site), I use one of my free accounts. I don't check them frequently and I only whitelist domains I expect to see. The problem with "free" email addresses is that they end up costing us all. If all users paid for their email, then companies would have a real vested interest in stopping spam. If someone even had to pay $1 for their hotmail/yahoo/gmail account, it would severly limit the rampant abuse of the system. While I fiercely defend the freedom of the internet, I also respect the need for bars to check IDs and pornography to be sold underneath black covers or in stores which are limited to adults. Research, development & implementation of anti-spam initiatives have cost this country hundreds of millions of dollars. Think of it as the most basic form of tax which would allow us to keep riff-raff off our super information highway.Obviously there would need to be a few details worked out, but there isn't any reason why the major ISPs could allow users to create their own privately registered domain for the "free" email account that comes with service. Additionally, they need to better educate new users about email. I finally convinced my parents to upgrade to DSL from dial-up last year and I created them a private domain for a new email account when they made the switch. 6 months later and they are still spam free; they are constantly thanking me for all the time saved because they are no longer wading through junk email.
My guess is that most experienced and/or properly educated internet users do this or something similar. Truth is, if you want a quality, reliable product you have to pay for it. Imagine if yahoo or google had $1 for each of their 10s of Millions of accounts. That'd be a lot of legal capital to pursue and hunt down spammers, not to mention the ability to create a class action lawsuit which would carry more weight. Now, imagine if they got $10 or $20 per account. I'm definately not proposing a per email charge here..simply requiring that some small charge be levied so that email accounts are only created by those who want them used for legitimate and expected communication.
Our lives are already overloaded with advertising from marketers who are desperately looking for ways to justify their jobs. Thank the powers for video recorders that allow us to skip commercials and pop up blockers that have reclaimed the web.
That being said...if someone wants to create a vigilante task force that hunts down and punishes top spammers, I'd gladly volunteer. There are just as many legal ways to harass these people and make their lives difficult as hell w/o resorting to violence. Unfortunately, the odds are that this guy did more than spam people (those who take the easy/lazy/annoying way of doing business probably also cheat/lie/scam as well..) and so the person(s) commiting this crime probably did not sleep better that night knowing their inbox would be a little less full.