Yahoo Japan is somewhat separate from the main company. I doubt this deal will affect them.
On a side note Yahoo's Japanese search isn't as great as people make it out to be. Here's an amusing exercise (For those who know Japanese):
Go to Yahoo Japan and type in 'Kousoku Basu' (Obviously in Kanji+Kana). Look through the results and note carefully that Yahoo's own (very comprehensive) domestic bus search + booking service doesn't come up. At least not in the first 4 pages of results I looked at. Also for amusement note that Rakutens does. If you want the yahoo page you have to type 'Kokunai Kousoku Basu' (Again Kanji+Kana). In which case it's the first result after the advertising.
Seriously you'd think Yahoo would be able to get their own house in order and promote their own services.
That's quite true and maybe if it was an issue of crime prevention then the police would care. However, it's not, they don't and the original comparison is still disingenuous.
This is stupid. Most of the people with open wifi are either A. unaware that it's open or B. unaware of the risks. It's not an informed choice. Giving to charity is. Huge difference between a service that plenty of people will appreciate and stupidity (warning people who donate to charity that they'll no longer have the money) which no one will appreciate.
I know this is Slashdot and this is a story related to police so one can expect little rational thought and a lot of police=evil and state is controlling you posts, but come on, really, you can't imagine what issues might be associated with running (probably unaware) an open wifi network?
Here's a few for you:
1. Windows systems with open file sharing broadcasting themselves across the network. I.e: the typical home computer. Open WiFi network and anyone can login and access your files.
2. Risk of your network being used for nefarious activities. Most people would be horrified of the idea of someone using their internet connection to download child-pornography or to commit fraud. Police are right open wifi access provides a way to anonymise activity that is illegal and should be stopped.
3. This is Australia - almost all internet connections have download limits. On a good plan you just get shaped you for excessive usage. However, on things like beginner plans while you're charged little for the basic plan, there are huge fees for over-usage. These beginner plans often have limits in the range of 400mb-1gb before excess usage fees kick in. So basically, anyone making use of your internet connection could end up costing you a lot.
4. Why the hell should they use your internet connection without your permission? I think most people would be pissed off with the idea of people using their net connection without their permission.
See a little bit of thought and you can see all sorts of reasons why most people would probably care about the fact that they're running an open wifi network and consider it a service to have the risks explained. But this is slashdot, were voices of contempt for authority, especially police, will drown out logical thought -_-.
And in the market you just end up with a different group of people profiteering...
There's a definite social cost to pollution. It's destructive for our health, in the case of green house gases they're widely held to be a major destablising force towards the global climate and in the case of oil and so on it creates dependencies on non-renewable resource in hostile countries which cost huge amounts to secure. Now these costs aren't factored into the market and are borne by society as a whole, which if we go back to econ101 and game theory is the classical Nash equilibrium and case for proper regulations to properly marketise the costs of pollution. It would seem to me that is what is happening.
Oh I forgot to mention. Here in Japan yahoo is also a major broadband provider, which probably helps with getting people to use yahoo.co.jp as their home page.
Also mobile-phone (cell-phone, keitai whatever you want to call it:) access is great on yahoo. I've use it for yahoo.com and yahoo.com.au and have been able to check my emails on with no probs for years:) Accessing the Japanese yahoo mobile site with my current Japanese mobile is also a significantly nicer experience than accessing the google site.
For one mail - Even when gmail came out with all the hype about 1gb of storage space, I stuck with yahoo and the puny 4mb it was offering, for the simple reason that changing mail address is a pita. Now I'm not sure if there is even a storage limit at all. I also now have multiple yahoo address all redirecting to my main one. That way I have an address with my real name for things like resumes.etc.
There are lots of other services though. Yahoo auctions is extremely popular in Japan. I've never heard anyone mention e-bay here.
The Yahoo Japan travel service is also pretty popular and convenient. I've booked night bus tickets between Osaka and Tokyo several times through it. Could search and compare prices, all the form details are stored with my yahoo ID and you can use the payment systems at convenience stores here to pay in cash rather than giving out your credit card details:)
Another big one is the biggest of the job-hunting sites here (rikunabi) is linked to yahoo. You login with your Yahoo Japan ID.
Then there's TV guides, news, shopping, weather etc. Through yahoo sports you can get live updated coverage of sporting events. Great for things where you don't want to sit watching it but do want to track the score:).
To be honest I'm surprised yahoo isn't more popular in the west. For most of what people want to do on the web you don't really need search and having a central hub to deal with it all actually makes a lot of sense.
No we don't;). I don't think you get how big Texas is.
Anna Creek Station (Largest in Australia): 24,000km2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_station)
Texas: 696,241 km2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas)
That said Anna Creek Station is still bigger than a number of nations. E.g. Wales, Israel,.etc.
conservatism is the reduction of government.
Conservatism has nothing to do with reduction of government. It is by definition maintenance of the status quo and being weary of change. Significant moves towards reductions in the size of the government and similar would go very much against the status quo of the last century or so. Thus, since you're wanting to affect significant change that would make you very much a liberal:)
Do the words "Federal Reserve" mean anything to you? We have no shortage of regulation; we were regulated right into this mess, the same way the Soviets regulated their economy into the collapse of their empire.
That's a rather definite statement given that there isn't even yet any concrete agreement amongst economists. It would seem rather non-coincidental that as the post-Great Depression regulations separating commercial and investment banks were removed, risk taking by commercial banks significantly increased. Nor would it seem coincidental that without proper regulation of separation between credit ratings agencies and investment banks, that conflicts of interest leading to wildly inaccurate ratings arose.
Really? Where does it say that in the constitution? I don't see "managing the economy" among the enumerated powers granted to the executive.
No, he did however pretty much win the election on economic concerns.
Not at all. We're at the end of a bubble, and Obama's only idea is to try to re-inflate it. That only delays and worsens the correction. You can't solve a debt crisis with more debt.
Except that's exactly what main-stream economists are saying is what needs to be done. You're welcome to disagree but I don't blame Obama for taking the advise of main stream economists, and launching an economic stimulus package in line with other nations.
Guess again. Better rhetoric, same or worse actions. Increases in the military budget, more troops in Afghanistan, backpedalling like crazy on troop reductions in Iraq, and of course he wants to keep doling out taxpayer money to bribe other countries to do what he says. It's the same old policy.
Well Obama didn't put America into Iraq or Afghanistan, however it would seem like a fundamentally bad idea to leave a job half done. Personally I think consistent interference in foreign affairs post WWII has been a disaster for America. However, pulling out of the messes you've helped create doesn't solve that. What might however help is significantly less dependence on Middle Eastern oil, which is one thing that this bill directly encourages.
More generally the Obama administration has been taking a significantly different approach to fighting terrorism. There's been a definite shift in rhetoric from treating it as a global problem, to simply dealing with it on a localised level. There's been moves to a much more conciliatory and cooperative tone in diplomacy as well. No more 'axis of evil' statements and chest beating confrontationalism. Notice the improving relations with Russia and the avoidance of confrontation with Iran. North Korea is being an unfortunate annoyance, however that can be attributed to a combination of factors. The new South Korean administration eliminated the Sun-shine policy and took a more confrontational stand. The Bush administration was extremely confrontational and certain internal circumstances have changed. However the administration has chosen to deal with North Korea through international institutions and regional cooperation, without any confrontational rhetoric, which if you listen to North Korea commentators was exactly the right thing to do.
Maybe that's because your living in a desert. There was an article up just the other day about rust-belt cities looking at returning large tracks of suburban land to nature because there's basically nobody living there.
Anyway, the size of Britain as a whole doesn't have anything to do with people's ability to commute by bike or similar to work. It's the density of towns and cities that mater. America has plenty of big, cities. A bit of proper urban planning and more willingness to bike amongst the citizens and you could reduce your car dependence and health costs.
Oh and what on earth does "out-socialist" mean. Perhaps you're conflating the British governments love of surveillance and censorship with socialism...
Oh and for the record, just because you're on the internet doesn't mean you have to act like a jerk. It certainly doesn't help your argument when you write like an angry teenager.
I don't really get all the Obama hate. Like people are somehow surprised that a politician doesn't live up to all his promises within the first few months of taking office. You don't get anywhere in politics without compromising. That's the unfortunate reality.
The economic crisis was the product of brain-dead management practices driven by short-term greed and insufficient regulation to prevent it. Look at the nations who's banks are in good shape. They all have proper regulation. The recession is a product of a deeper problem. Thanks mostly to the availability of extremely cheap credit from Japan, in the first half of the decade there was a huge global housing boom (read: bubble). In the US this was exasperated by almost non-existent management of interest rates. The ultimate result is that we're now entering into a long delayed economic realignment.
Neither of these is Obama's fault, however it has become his responsibility to try and revive the American economy. Any economist will tell you that the instruments available to a politician to affect the economy are rather limited. Interest rates are the most commonly used, however they can't be lowered anymore. Given that, bringing forward spending and upgrading infrastructure and so seems like quite a reasonable option to take. It's what almost every other nation of any significance is doing. The US stimulus isn't even the biggest in terms of GDP. Given that there isn't even universal agreement amongst economists on the best route to take, the criticisms of the Slashdot armchair libertarian economists are hardly worth the time spent reading them. It could take years before we can really get a good idea of whether it was the right decision or not, and when it finally does come it will be looking at it with the benefit of hindsight judgment, in absence of which it's probably best to follow conventional mainstream economic wisdom, IMHO.
My apologies for the long post. I could talk about a few other areas where Obama is making a difference - e.g. Foreign policy. But I won't:) Anyway it strikes me as rather odd that Obama gets accused of being an empty suit doing nothing in a thread full of people complaining about a massive change he's about to introduce... Christ people make up your mind!
Could you specify what significant pieces of functionality are missing from Firefox which are present in Safari/Chrome/IE? Personally I have FlashBlock, NoScript and CacheViewer installed. All of which provide functionality not present in the other major browsers. Perhaps it might have been more accurate to say that the thing that hogs memory in Firefox is all the extensions people use to add functionality not present in any major browser.
Firefox 3.0 (FlashBlock, No-Script, CacheViewer) on OS-X with 10 tabs open - Slashdot, Yahoo, Google, Wikipedia x 7 and real memory usage is at about 128mb. I'd look at what extensions you're running and if any of the sites you have open are using Flash.
Personally I think the oft-talked about Firefox memory issues are just a symptom of people with a tonne of extension installed opening hundreds of tabs and acting surprised when it uses a lot of memory. Oh and throw in a generous dosage of Flash-related issues.
Public rail had a great solution to this. It's called tickets. Private rail is funded the exact same way only the private company is also searching to maximize their profits, which generally means cutting corners and raising prices. Rail privatization efforts in Australia have been equally disastrous. In fact I'd be interested to see any examples of where selling of tax payer funded infrastructure to private companies has been a good idea.
That aside, the government already spends huge amounts funding roads - in other words people who want to compute by car. So why shouldn't people who want to compute by train also get some support. Either can be taken to be critical infrastructure.
Yes because all welfare recipients are lazy, don't want to work and are happy to have the government take your hard earned dollars and give it to them....
I'm not American and I don't live in America. I do however receive welfare payments from my own government (Australian government). My family is lower-middle class, living in a regional town. The closest university is 1.5 hours drive away, which meant that in order to go to uni I had to leave home. My family couldn't afford to support me living on my own, but thanks to government support I've been able to go to a very good uni. On top of the support for living expenses I also receive a low-interest, deferred payment loan from the government to pay my tuition fees. Once I start working I'll of course pay that back. Personally I believe that making sure that the quality of education available to people depends not on their family background but on the ability of the individual is one of the fundamental pillars of a free society.
I can think of plenty of other examples of reasons why people might receive welfare other than being lazy. We don't live in a fair world and people do fall on hard times, irrespective of whether they're hard working or lazy, and I can't see why it's such a bad thing that the government does support these people through hard times.
Oh and American spends about 4% of GDP on its military (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_United_States). Most western countries spend about 2%. Take the EU for example at roughly half the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_European_Union) while having a larger GDP than the US. If American military spending was in line with the rest of the western world you could have the bailout paid for in a few years. Then plenty of money left for infrastructure upgrades, genuine nation building and further paying down the deficit before the interest repayments seriously weigh down the US governments spending ability. Also I know it sounds pretty left wing, but you know, maybe people would hate you less if you weren't bombing their countries? Maybe these countries could reach stability if you weren't propping up dictatorships and toppling unfavorable governments... Call me crazy but I think you'd be a lot more secure if you spent less on your military and kept to yourselves.
Because its not a myth. By and large, it is easy to bring goods into the USA because the USA has a tradition of a generally free trading country. Do a google and see what's involved into bringing goods from the USA into Japan, and then see what's involved in vice versa. If they wanted to bring in more competition and other goods, you'd see those doors being opened. But they aren't.
The US has a long history of imposing trade barriers on Japan. Generally they came in the form of "VER"s (Voluntary Export Restriction). Basically an export quota which blanket covers a particular industry. In the 60's there was US Textile makers complaining to the US government and the US government pounding their chest and issuing threats on the behalf of the textile makers until the Japanese makers agreed to export quotas. In the 80's it was automobiles and Japanese car makers were forced to setup factories in the US. In the 90's Bush Snr was threatening to extend US anti-trust laws to attempt to prosecute the 6 large Japanese corporate keiretsu. Never mind that they weren't actually monopolies and that a lot of the US academics of the time seemed to mix up the various keiretsu type and not actually understand what on earth they were talking about.
That's just dealing with past US-Japan trade relations. There's also the significant subsidies and protections afford to the agricultural sector. Then there's the new stimulus plan signaling a new round of protectionist trade policies...
The US doesn't practice what it preaches and Japan has made significant efforts to remove non-tariff barriers to trade after the collapse of the 80's-Mid 90's bubble economy. Japanese protectionism is an old-story and the iphone is failing because the Japanese don't want to buy it.
Each state in Australia has a different education system however in NSW (New South Wales) at least where I went to school scores are adjusted to reflect the difficulty of the course. Extension 2 maths and Extension 1 maths are amongst the best weighted courses in the entire system (slightly below Extension Ancient Greek I believe...) and unless you're really good with languages are pretty much a req. for a 95+ university entrance ranking. In the top schools there is often so much demand for those courses that they have to limit numbers. On the other hand General Maths the lowest scaling maths course is an utter-waste of time if you're serious about going to university. Thus it's entirely logical that a school would encourage a student to do at least advanced maths or nothing at all.
Anyway all that is talking about the HSC (Higher School Certificate) which makes up the final two years of school. Bellow that in NSW at least *ALL* students are required to take mathematics with schools generally placing students in different level classes based on their results.
Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Japan is somewhat separate from the main company. I doubt this deal will affect them.
On a side note Yahoo's Japanese search isn't as great as people make it out to be. Here's an amusing exercise (For those who know Japanese):
Go to Yahoo Japan and type in 'Kousoku Basu' (Obviously in Kanji+Kana). Look through the results and note carefully that Yahoo's own (very comprehensive) domestic bus search + booking service doesn't come up. At least not in the first 4 pages of results I looked at. Also for amusement note that Rakutens does. If you want the yahoo page you have to type 'Kokunai Kousoku Basu' (Again Kanji+Kana). In which case it's the first result after the advertising.
Seriously you'd think Yahoo would be able to get their own house in order and promote their own services.
That's quite true and maybe if it was an issue of crime prevention then the police would care. However, it's not, they don't and the original comparison is still disingenuous.
This is stupid. Most of the people with open wifi are either A. unaware that it's open or B. unaware of the risks. It's not an informed choice. Giving to charity is. Huge difference between a service that plenty of people will appreciate and stupidity (warning people who donate to charity that they'll no longer have the money) which no one will appreciate.
I know this is Slashdot and this is a story related to police so one can expect little rational thought and a lot of police=evil and state is controlling you posts, but come on, really, you can't imagine what issues might be associated with running (probably unaware) an open wifi network?
Here's a few for you:
1. Windows systems with open file sharing broadcasting themselves across the network. I.e: the typical home computer. Open WiFi network and anyone can login and access your files.
2. Risk of your network being used for nefarious activities. Most people would be horrified of the idea of someone using their internet connection to download child-pornography or to commit fraud. Police are right open wifi access provides a way to anonymise activity that is illegal and should be stopped.
3. This is Australia - almost all internet connections have download limits. On a good plan you just get shaped you for excessive usage. However, on things like beginner plans while you're charged little for the basic plan, there are huge fees for over-usage. These beginner plans often have limits in the range of 400mb-1gb before excess usage fees kick in. So basically, anyone making use of your internet connection could end up costing you a lot.
4. Why the hell should they use your internet connection without your permission? I think most people would be pissed off with the idea of people using their net connection without their permission.
See a little bit of thought and you can see all sorts of reasons why most people would probably care about the fact that they're running an open wifi network and consider it a service to have the risks explained. But this is slashdot, were voices of contempt for authority, especially police, will drown out logical thought -_-.
And in the market you just end up with a different group of people profiteering...
There's a definite social cost to pollution. It's destructive for our health, in the case of green house gases they're widely held to be a major destablising force towards the global climate and in the case of oil and so on it creates dependencies on non-renewable resource in hostile countries which cost huge amounts to secure. Now these costs aren't factored into the market and are borne by society as a whole, which if we go back to econ101 and game theory is the classical Nash equilibrium and case for proper regulations to properly marketise the costs of pollution. It would seem to me that is what is happening.
Oh I forgot to mention. Here in Japan yahoo is also a major broadband provider, which probably helps with getting people to use yahoo.co.jp as their home page.
:) access is great on yahoo. I've use it for yahoo.com and yahoo.com.au and have been able to check my emails on with no probs for years :) Accessing the Japanese yahoo mobile site with my current Japanese mobile is also a significantly nicer experience than accessing the google site.
Also mobile-phone (cell-phone, keitai whatever you want to call it
For one mail - Even when gmail came out with all the hype about 1gb of storage space, I stuck with yahoo and the puny 4mb it was offering, for the simple reason that changing mail address is a pita. Now I'm not sure if there is even a storage limit at all. I also now have multiple yahoo address all redirecting to my main one. That way I have an address with my real name for things like resumes .etc.
:)
:).
There are lots of other services though. Yahoo auctions is extremely popular in Japan. I've never heard anyone mention e-bay here.
The Yahoo Japan travel service is also pretty popular and convenient. I've booked night bus tickets between Osaka and Tokyo several times through it. Could search and compare prices, all the form details are stored with my yahoo ID and you can use the payment systems at convenience stores here to pay in cash rather than giving out your credit card details
Another big one is the biggest of the job-hunting sites here (rikunabi) is linked to yahoo. You login with your Yahoo Japan ID.
Then there's TV guides, news, shopping, weather etc. Through yahoo sports you can get live updated coverage of sporting events. Great for things where you don't want to sit watching it but do want to track the score
To be honest I'm surprised yahoo isn't more popular in the west. For most of what people want to do on the web you don't really need search and having a central hub to deal with it all actually makes a lot of sense.
No we don't ;). I don't think you get how big Texas is.
Anna Creek Station (Largest in Australia): 24,000km2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_station)
Texas: 696,241 km2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas)
That said Anna Creek Station is still bigger than a number of nations. E.g. Wales, Israel, .etc.
conservatism is the reduction of government. Conservatism has nothing to do with reduction of government. It is by definition maintenance of the status quo and being weary of change. Significant moves towards reductions in the size of the government and similar would go very much against the status quo of the last century or so. Thus, since you're wanting to affect significant change that would make you very much a liberal :)
Do the words "Federal Reserve" mean anything to you? We have no shortage of regulation; we were regulated right into this mess, the same way the Soviets regulated their economy into the collapse of their empire.
That's a rather definite statement given that there isn't even yet any concrete agreement amongst economists. It would seem rather non-coincidental that as the post-Great Depression regulations separating commercial and investment banks were removed, risk taking by commercial banks significantly increased. Nor would it seem coincidental that without proper regulation of separation between credit ratings agencies and investment banks, that conflicts of interest leading to wildly inaccurate ratings arose.
Really? Where does it say that in the constitution? I don't see "managing the economy" among the enumerated powers granted to the executive.
No, he did however pretty much win the election on economic concerns.
Not at all. We're at the end of a bubble, and Obama's only idea is to try to re-inflate it. That only delays and worsens the correction. You can't solve a debt crisis with more debt.
Except that's exactly what main-stream economists are saying is what needs to be done. You're welcome to disagree but I don't blame Obama for taking the advise of main stream economists, and launching an economic stimulus package in line with other nations.
Guess again. Better rhetoric, same or worse actions. Increases in the military budget, more troops in Afghanistan, backpedalling like crazy on troop reductions in Iraq, and of course he wants to keep doling out taxpayer money to bribe other countries to do what he says. It's the same old policy.
Well Obama didn't put America into Iraq or Afghanistan, however it would seem like a fundamentally bad idea to leave a job half done. Personally I think consistent interference in foreign affairs post WWII has been a disaster for America. However, pulling out of the messes you've helped create doesn't solve that. What might however help is significantly less dependence on Middle Eastern oil, which is one thing that this bill directly encourages.
More generally the Obama administration has been taking a significantly different approach to fighting terrorism. There's been a definite shift in rhetoric from treating it as a global problem, to simply dealing with it on a localised level. There's been moves to a much more conciliatory and cooperative tone in diplomacy as well. No more 'axis of evil' statements and chest beating confrontationalism. Notice the improving relations with Russia and the avoidance of confrontation with Iran. North Korea is being an unfortunate annoyance, however that can be attributed to a combination of factors. The new South Korean administration eliminated the Sun-shine policy and took a more confrontational stand. The Bush administration was extremely confrontational and certain internal circumstances have changed. However the administration has chosen to deal with North Korea through international institutions and regional cooperation, without any confrontational rhetoric, which if you listen to North Korea commentators was exactly the right thing to do.
Maybe that's because your living in a desert. There was an article up just the other day about rust-belt cities looking at returning large tracks of suburban land to nature because there's basically nobody living there. Anyway, the size of Britain as a whole doesn't have anything to do with people's ability to commute by bike or similar to work. It's the density of towns and cities that mater. America has plenty of big, cities. A bit of proper urban planning and more willingness to bike amongst the citizens and you could reduce your car dependence and health costs. Oh and what on earth does "out-socialist" mean. Perhaps you're conflating the British governments love of surveillance and censorship with socialism... Oh and for the record, just because you're on the internet doesn't mean you have to act like a jerk. It certainly doesn't help your argument when you write like an angry teenager.
I don't really get all the Obama hate. Like people are somehow surprised that a politician doesn't live up to all his promises within the first few months of taking office. You don't get anywhere in politics without compromising. That's the unfortunate reality.
The economic crisis was the product of brain-dead management practices driven by short-term greed and insufficient regulation to prevent it. Look at the nations who's banks are in good shape. They all have proper regulation. The recession is a product of a deeper problem. Thanks mostly to the availability of extremely cheap credit from Japan, in the first half of the decade there was a huge global housing boom (read: bubble). In the US this was exasperated by almost non-existent management of interest rates. The ultimate result is that we're now entering into a long delayed economic realignment.
Neither of these is Obama's fault, however it has become his responsibility to try and revive the American economy. Any economist will tell you that the instruments available to a politician to affect the economy are rather limited. Interest rates are the most commonly used, however they can't be lowered anymore. Given that, bringing forward spending and upgrading infrastructure and so seems like quite a reasonable option to take. It's what almost every other nation of any significance is doing. The US stimulus isn't even the biggest in terms of GDP. Given that there isn't even universal agreement amongst economists on the best route to take, the criticisms of the Slashdot armchair libertarian economists are hardly worth the time spent reading them. It could take years before we can really get a good idea of whether it was the right decision or not, and when it finally does come it will be looking at it with the benefit of hindsight judgment, in absence of which it's probably best to follow conventional mainstream economic wisdom, IMHO.
My apologies for the long post. I could talk about a few other areas where Obama is making a difference - e.g. Foreign policy. But I won't :) Anyway it strikes me as rather odd that Obama gets accused of being an empty suit doing nothing in a thread full of people complaining about a massive change he's about to introduce... Christ people make up your mind!
Could you specify what significant pieces of functionality are missing from Firefox which are present in Safari/Chrome/IE? Personally I have FlashBlock, NoScript and CacheViewer installed. All of which provide functionality not present in the other major browsers. Perhaps it might have been more accurate to say that the thing that hogs memory in Firefox is all the extensions people use to add functionality not present in any major browser.
Firefox 3.0 (FlashBlock, No-Script, CacheViewer) on OS-X with 10 tabs open - Slashdot, Yahoo, Google, Wikipedia x 7 and real memory usage is at about 128mb. I'd look at what extensions you're running and if any of the sites you have open are using Flash. Personally I think the oft-talked about Firefox memory issues are just a symptom of people with a tonne of extension installed opening hundreds of tabs and acting surprised when it uses a lot of memory. Oh and throw in a generous dosage of Flash-related issues.
Public rail had a great solution to this. It's called tickets. Private rail is funded the exact same way only the private company is also searching to maximize their profits, which generally means cutting corners and raising prices. Rail privatization efforts in Australia have been equally disastrous. In fact I'd be interested to see any examples of where selling of tax payer funded infrastructure to private companies has been a good idea.
That aside, the government already spends huge amounts funding roads - in other words people who want to compute by car. So why shouldn't people who want to compute by train also get some support. Either can be taken to be critical infrastructure.
Yes because all welfare recipients are lazy, don't want to work and are happy to have the government take your hard earned dollars and give it to them....
I'm not American and I don't live in America. I do however receive welfare payments from my own government (Australian government). My family is lower-middle class, living in a regional town. The closest university is 1.5 hours drive away, which meant that in order to go to uni I had to leave home. My family couldn't afford to support me living on my own, but thanks to government support I've been able to go to a very good uni. On top of the support for living expenses I also receive a low-interest, deferred payment loan from the government to pay my tuition fees. Once I start working I'll of course pay that back. Personally I believe that making sure that the quality of education available to people depends not on their family background but on the ability of the individual is one of the fundamental pillars of a free society.
I can think of plenty of other examples of reasons why people might receive welfare other than being lazy. We don't live in a fair world and people do fall on hard times, irrespective of whether they're hard working or lazy, and I can't see why it's such a bad thing that the government does support these people through hard times.
Oh and American spends about 4% of GDP on its military (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_United_States). Most western countries spend about 2%. Take the EU for example at roughly half the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_European_Union) while having a larger GDP than the US. If American military spending was in line with the rest of the western world you could have the bailout paid for in a few years. Then plenty of money left for infrastructure upgrades, genuine nation building and further paying down the deficit before the interest repayments seriously weigh down the US governments spending ability. Also I know it sounds pretty left wing, but you know, maybe people would hate you less if you weren't bombing their countries? Maybe these countries could reach stability if you weren't propping up dictatorships and toppling unfavorable governments... Call me crazy but I think you'd be a lot more secure if you spent less on your military and kept to yourselves.
Because its not a myth. By and large, it is easy to bring goods into the USA because the USA has a tradition of a generally free trading country. Do a google and see what's involved into bringing goods from the USA into Japan, and then see what's involved in vice versa. If they wanted to bring in more competition and other goods, you'd see those doors being opened. But they aren't.
The US has a long history of imposing trade barriers on Japan. Generally they came in the form of "VER"s (Voluntary Export Restriction). Basically an export quota which blanket covers a particular industry. In the 60's there was US Textile makers complaining to the US government and the US government pounding their chest and issuing threats on the behalf of the textile makers until the Japanese makers agreed to export quotas. In the 80's it was automobiles and Japanese car makers were forced to setup factories in the US. In the 90's Bush Snr was threatening to extend US anti-trust laws to attempt to prosecute the 6 large Japanese corporate keiretsu. Never mind that they weren't actually monopolies and that a lot of the US academics of the time seemed to mix up the various keiretsu type and not actually understand what on earth they were talking about.
That's just dealing with past US-Japan trade relations. There's also the significant subsidies and protections afford to the agricultural sector. Then there's the new stimulus plan signaling a new round of protectionist trade policies...
The US doesn't practice what it preaches and Japan has made significant efforts to remove non-tariff barriers to trade after the collapse of the 80's-Mid 90's bubble economy. Japanese protectionism is an old-story and the iphone is failing because the Japanese don't want to buy it.
Each state in Australia has a different education system however in NSW (New South Wales) at least where I went to school scores are adjusted to reflect the difficulty of the course. Extension 2 maths and Extension 1 maths are amongst the best weighted courses in the entire system (slightly below Extension Ancient Greek I believe...) and unless you're really good with languages are pretty much a req. for a 95+ university entrance ranking. In the top schools there is often so much demand for those courses that they have to limit numbers. On the other hand General Maths the lowest scaling maths course is an utter-waste of time if you're serious about going to university. Thus it's entirely logical that a school would encourage a student to do at least advanced maths or nothing at all. Anyway all that is talking about the HSC (Higher School Certificate) which makes up the final two years of school. Bellow that in NSW at least *ALL* students are required to take mathematics with schools generally placing students in different level classes based on their results.