I think you miss the point. When the statement of a government official (we all know government officials always tell the truth, don't we) is clearly contradicted by documented date and objective analysis of that data, then it's time to cry bullshit.
For far too long bureaucrats, politicians and corporate leaders have cynically played on the sometimes-misplaced national pride of Americans to short-circuit justified criticism and move attention away from real problems. Whenever I want to refocus a debate in a way that favours my view, I simply say this: "Well, the American people have the best (fill in whatever you want) in the world." The Americans in the room will all nod gravely and accept whatever claim I've just made, no matter how outrageous. I've just convinced them that everything is mostly OK, and all that needs doing is a little fine-tuning. I now own the debate, because I've defined most of the situation to suit myself. Whatever useless little make-work project I then suggest to make things "even better" will be enough to make "the American people" believe the problem is as good as solved.
If you don't believe me, try this some time and watch it work. Don't worry about the occasional person smart enough to catch you. They'll be perceived as one of those left-wing nay-sayers who never has anything good to say about The Greatest Country In The World, Ever. In today's climate, they might even wind up on an FBI Watch List.
If you've ever seen what a basic machine gun and other weapons misleadingly classified as "small arms" can do to an unarmed, unprotected human body, you might be more inclined to extend a little sympathy to those millions of Chinese folks. Personally, I think I might be a bit of a coward about getting my guts blown out through my spine for choosing to shake my fist at a soldier who happens to like the government just fine.
Absolutely right, but when a significant percentage of the music produced today suffers from the lack of dynamic range, the difference between a high quality and low quality mp3 file doesn't seem to be significant to the people playing it. And in my experience, people used to listening to the "squashed" stuff would rather have a thousand teensy little low-quality files than a hundred good ones. The incredible increase in storage capacity hasn't moved them to re-do their mp3 files (or ogg, or whatever) to CD or near-CD quality. I have to assume that the improvement they get just isn't worth the trouble.
My files are all at 320 kbps because I figured I'd rather have too much quality than too little. It's come in handy a couple of times when music was needed and the files wound up being put through a pub's sound system. And as it happens, I'm currently transferring my vinyl to digital. Some I'm doing myself, but the ones that really matter are being given to a friend of mine who's a professional.
I'll assume you have some idea of just how much of the US economy is based off-shore. It would not be possible to simply repudiate that part of the debt held by one country and not involve the rest of the international trade/banking system.
I imagine the first thing that would happen is that US liquid assets abroad would be frozen, and eventually confiscated to pay creditors. American-registered corporations could expect to have some portion of their assets taken, or perhaps their firm assets (oil pipelines, factories, etc.) simply nationalized by the host countries. The US is a net importer of so many resources and products in so many sectors I couldn't begin to enumerate them. Especially in the resource sector, suppliers are in a much stronger position in such cases. Do you think the governments China or Saudi Arabia have to beg their people to deal with the drop in revenue while new markets are developed and the US is frozen out? Payment up-front would be the rule of the day, especially for materials, products and services your manufacturing and supply sectors need to continue operations. Attempts to access international credit would be unlikely at best until repayment of current debts had been arranged.
Problems like this go back long before Bush and Cheney (though they've refined the whole arrogance/prickishness thing to the status of art): one set of rules for the United States, another set for everybody else. And yet, for some reason, Americans feel hurt and a little bewildered when they find out how unpopular they are in the rest of the world. The comfortable answer is, "Everybody envies us because we're just so absolutely wonderful". The actual answer is that this kind of behaviour makes it easy to be disliked.
Americans have long made a point of passing themselves off as Canadians when traveling abroad (even to the point of wearing the Maple Leaf). Unfortunately they persist in acting like Americans, which is giving Canadians a bad name, especially in Europe. Or (as has happened to me in England on two occasions) you get politely grilled about All Things Canadian and eventually asked flat-out to show some ID proving you're from the Bigger Colder Place.
I'm not sure how to fix the problem when the overwhelming majority of Americans don't even believe that there is one, but it really needs to be addressed unless the United States wants to become increasingly isolated and ignored on the international stage.
I'm no dinosaur, but I'm old enough to appreciate some of the advantages of old tech. Example: While I value the portability of mp3's (my PDA has a bunch of them on it), I'm somewhat sad that a lot of younger people seem to think they can compete with what I hear when I get home and crank up my 30-year-old, high-end stereo system. A lot of today's music is so squashed down and distorted to get the high volume levels that even really good tunes wind up sounding like crap. And how many of those mp3 files have little micro-skips in them? Believe me, plugging them into a good system won't make them sound any better.
Once you've heard a song mixed properly, with the loudness supplied my a big, honking amp, you find it very hard even to put up with some radio stations and CD's. I'm far from alone in this opinion, and I'm confident there will be a ready market for big systems and, yes, even turntables, for a long time to come.
I can see it now. An elevator in a high rise office building reaches the main floor. When the door opens, a car full of unconscious people is revealed. Subsequent investigation proves that the exhaust fan failed two floors below a stop on Floor 99, where the offices of the Beerf, Art & Ghasper Pickled Egg & Sausage Supply, Ltd. are located.
I think the old saying was, "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good".
...There's a sucker born every minute. Given Microsoft's track record, how likely is this scenario: You "rent" a significant chunk of the Windows 7 OS. Coincidentally, you start using a number of dependent applications that are cheap or free. Aren't you going to look like quite the idiot when they jack up the rental cost of W7 once you're well and truly stuck in? It's the same business model the cable and cell companies have been using for years to rape our wallets.
I really, really, REALLY hope Linux gets its act together soon. At least for us non-technical types who don't have time to throw out all the stuff we learned a little at a time about the Windows environment.
Wouldn't the cost of continuing the Rover missions for as long as they were able to keep moving amount to about 5 minutes of funding for the Iraq invasion?
There are times when real science transcends mere mathematics. So kindly quit making sense, shut up, and drink this (if I were nearby, a beer would be in your immediate future).
The single most elementary premise upon which a free society is based is that the state has absolutely no right to interfere in any way whatsoever with a citizen who is going about his legal business. None. Any infringement on this standard is the beginning of the end, because it places the welfare of the state above the welfare of the people who are supposed to be its masters.
Yes, sometimes terrorists and common criminals will take advantage of this freedom to inflict damage. That's part of the price you pay. If you aren't willing to pay, or even have your children pay, then pack up and move to Communist China. You and your children will be safe there, as long as you keep your mouths shut.
I can go on for ages with reasons why people who are supposed to be your servants, like politicians, cops and bureaucrats, are always so anxious to persuade you that just a little tiny surrender will save the children and kittens and puppies. It won't, and they'll want more. And more. And more.
And never forget that this one of those cases where mutual accommodation is possible in only one direction. If I impose rigorous privacy laws, I can agree that you don't value privacy and leave you to whatever lifestyle pleases you. You aren't affected in any way, because you can still give as much information as you want to anybody you want to have it. On the other hand, when you impose your anti-privacy laws, there's no room for me to be left alone with my choice.
Please don't confuse extrinsic attacks on the system with an inherent systemic problem. All democracies are prey to the former, whether the assault is by money laundering or good old-fashioned ballot box stuffing. In fact, I'd suggest to you that the lengths these parties go to in their attempts to circumvent the system prove its worth. You don't legalize murder just because you can't prevent all of them from happening.
And although your crack about working politicians being a real problem is funny and glib (I wish I'd thought of it), it doesn't answer my observation. In the US, the system itself requires politicians to vaccuum up money and whore themselves out to the people who gave it to them. The Canadian system makes that less likely. That isn't to say that we haven't had our share of scumbags, liars and thieves. However, I suspect an extensive sociological study would find that a disproportionate number of such people are attracted to politics, law and religion.
You misunderstand how the system works. Taxpayer funding for elections works just fine in Canada and other civilized countries. Ensuring fairness is trivially easy, and it cuts those idiotic two-year American campaigns to a matter of weeks. And our politicians actually do real work, instead of spending every moment trying to raise more money so they can outspend their rivals in the next election.
There's still problems in Canada relating to lobbyists and special interests, and the system (though better than the US system) still has many flaws. But any slight tendency to favour existing parties is easily overcome. Canada's Green Party is knocking roadblocks aside right this minute, and will likely elect one or more candidates in the next federal election.
I agree with you that sacrificing civil liberties for security won't make you safe. And the cure is definitely worse than the disease.
I think you may be misunderstanding the problem a bit. Most people don't understand that there's a difference between a scientific theory (such as gravitation or evolution) and an English teacher's theory about what James Joyce meant in certain passages of Finnegan's Wake. And when you get to religious fundamentalists, the problem's even worse. They understand that science delivers results, time after time. They expect their TV sets to work when they turn them on, and they don't stand under precariously-balanced rocks, expecting that somehow God will stop gravity from working because they're so holy. What they don't understand is that some grade school drop-out who calls himself a preacher doesn't get to have the same input into a high school science curriculum as a guy who won Canada's highest science award. It's the methodology of science that needs to be communicated better, and the idea that you're not saying something isn't true because it can't be proved to scientific standards.
Forgive the brevity of the (incomplete) argument...I'm super rushed. I hope the sense of it gets through.
You think the automobile industry functions in a free market? Your naivety is touching. Wasn't it Lee Iacocca who simply marched up to Capitol Hill and demanded that U.S. taxpayers bail Chrysler out because they didn't dare let it fail?
Price and value are running the show? Oh, please! I suppose you also believe it was all those demonstrations where consumers demanded cars that sustain $2,500 damage in 5 mile per hour collisions that forced the auto companies to deliver such technological wonders to the clamoring masses.
And have you noticed that Volkswagen and Mercedes have trouble selling cars with diesel engines? Not all gas stations offer a diesel pump.
I would assume the term is used in the same sense that Super 8mm was used to denote a higher-quality image than that typically provided by Standard 8 mm on similar technology. The difference came from film/image management rather than objective lens improvement. I won't bore you with the details, but if you RTFA, you'll notice that the analogy applies quite nicely.
Your simplistic analysis and comment leads me to believe that you misunderstood the reference.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you miss the point. When the statement of a government official (we all know government officials always tell the truth, don't we) is clearly contradicted by documented date and objective analysis of that data, then it's time to cry bullshit.
For far too long bureaucrats, politicians and corporate leaders have cynically played on the sometimes-misplaced national pride of Americans to short-circuit justified criticism and move attention away from real problems. Whenever I want to refocus a debate in a way that favours my view, I simply say this: "Well, the American people have the best (fill in whatever you want) in the world." The Americans in the room will all nod gravely and accept whatever claim I've just made, no matter how outrageous. I've just convinced them that everything is mostly OK, and all that needs doing is a little fine-tuning. I now own the debate, because I've defined most of the situation to suit myself. Whatever useless little make-work project I then suggest to make things "even better" will be enough to make "the American people" believe the problem is as good as solved.
If you don't believe me, try this some time and watch it work. Don't worry about the occasional person smart enough to catch you. They'll be perceived as one of those left-wing nay-sayers who never has anything good to say about The Greatest Country In The World, Ever. In today's climate, they might even wind up on an FBI Watch List.
What a colorful, charming way to end the whole shebang!
If you've ever seen what a basic machine gun and other weapons misleadingly classified as "small arms" can do to an unarmed, unprotected human body, you might be more inclined to extend a little sympathy to those millions of Chinese folks. Personally, I think I might be a bit of a coward about getting my guts blown out through my spine for choosing to shake my fist at a soldier who happens to like the government just fine.
I see we're at that point in the orbit where the moderators totally lack a sense of humour again.
It was a joke, people. Get it? A joke.
"...he wonders what bad news could be coming..."
When the general public will find out about Vista. the number of copies in use will fall so low it won't be worth the time to write malware for.
At that point, who needs a U.S. General Manager/Chief Security Advisor?
Absolutely right, but when a significant percentage of the music produced today suffers from the lack of dynamic range, the difference between a high quality and low quality mp3 file doesn't seem to be significant to the people playing it. And in my experience, people used to listening to the "squashed" stuff would rather have a thousand teensy little low-quality files than a hundred good ones. The incredible increase in storage capacity hasn't moved them to re-do their mp3 files (or ogg, or whatever) to CD or near-CD quality. I have to assume that the improvement they get just isn't worth the trouble.
My files are all at 320 kbps because I figured I'd rather have too much quality than too little. It's come in handy a couple of times when music was needed and the files wound up being put through a pub's sound system. And as it happens, I'm currently transferring my vinyl to digital. Some I'm doing myself, but the ones that really matter are being given to a friend of mine who's a professional.
I'll assume you have some idea of just how much of the US economy is based off-shore. It would not be possible to simply repudiate that part of the debt held by one country and not involve the rest of the international trade/banking system.
I imagine the first thing that would happen is that US liquid assets abroad would be frozen, and eventually confiscated to pay creditors. American-registered corporations could expect to have some portion of their assets taken, or perhaps their firm assets (oil pipelines, factories, etc.) simply nationalized by the host countries. The US is a net importer of so many resources and products in so many sectors I couldn't begin to enumerate them. Especially in the resource sector, suppliers are in a much stronger position in such cases. Do you think the governments China or Saudi Arabia have to beg their people to deal with the drop in revenue while new markets are developed and the US is frozen out? Payment up-front would be the rule of the day, especially for materials, products and services your manufacturing and supply sectors need to continue operations. Attempts to access international credit would be unlikely at best until repayment of current debts had been arranged.
I could go on. I trust you get the point.
Then you'd better start learning Mandarin, because the Chinese own one hell of a big chunk of your national debt.
Problems like this go back long before Bush and Cheney (though they've refined the whole arrogance/prickishness thing to the status of art): one set of rules for the United States, another set for everybody else. And yet, for some reason, Americans feel hurt and a little bewildered when they find out how unpopular they are in the rest of the world. The comfortable answer is, "Everybody envies us because we're just so absolutely wonderful". The actual answer is that this kind of behaviour makes it easy to be disliked.
Americans have long made a point of passing themselves off as Canadians when traveling abroad (even to the point of wearing the Maple Leaf). Unfortunately they persist in acting like Americans, which is giving Canadians a bad name, especially in Europe. Or (as has happened to me in England on two occasions) you get politely grilled about All Things Canadian and eventually asked flat-out to show some ID proving you're from the Bigger Colder Place.
I'm not sure how to fix the problem when the overwhelming majority of Americans don't even believe that there is one, but it really needs to be addressed unless the United States wants to become increasingly isolated and ignored on the international stage.
I'm no dinosaur, but I'm old enough to appreciate some of the advantages of old tech. Example: While I value the portability of mp3's (my PDA has a bunch of them on it), I'm somewhat sad that a lot of younger people seem to think they can compete with what I hear when I get home and crank up my 30-year-old, high-end stereo system. A lot of today's music is so squashed down and distorted to get the high volume levels that even really good tunes wind up sounding like crap. And how many of those mp3 files have little micro-skips in them? Believe me, plugging them into a good system won't make them sound any better.
Once you've heard a song mixed properly, with the loudness supplied my a big, honking amp, you find it very hard even to put up with some radio stations and CD's. I'm far from alone in this opinion, and I'm confident there will be a ready market for big systems and, yes, even turntables, for a long time to come.
I can see it now. An elevator in a high rise office building reaches the main floor. When the door opens, a car full of unconscious people is revealed. Subsequent investigation proves that the exhaust fan failed two floors below a stop on Floor 99, where the offices of the Beerf, Art & Ghasper Pickled Egg & Sausage Supply, Ltd. are located.
I think the old saying was, "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good".
.....the Bush administration puts an end to Spirit and Opportunity.
I really, really, REALLY hope Linux gets its act together soon. At least for us non-technical types who don't have time to throw out all the stuff we learned a little at a time about the Windows environment.
Wouldn't the cost of continuing the Rover missions for as long as they were able to keep moving amount to about 5 minutes of funding for the Iraq invasion?
There are times when real science transcends mere mathematics. So kindly quit making sense, shut up, and drink this (if I were nearby, a beer would be in your immediate future).
Cheers!
The single most elementary premise upon which a free society is based is that the state has absolutely no right to interfere in any way whatsoever with a citizen who is going about his legal business. None. Any infringement on this standard is the beginning of the end, because it places the welfare of the state above the welfare of the people who are supposed to be its masters.
Yes, sometimes terrorists and common criminals will take advantage of this freedom to inflict damage. That's part of the price you pay. If you aren't willing to pay, or even have your children pay, then pack up and move to Communist China. You and your children will be safe there, as long as you keep your mouths shut.
I can go on for ages with reasons why people who are supposed to be your servants, like politicians, cops and bureaucrats, are always so anxious to persuade you that just a little tiny surrender will save the children and kittens and puppies. It won't, and they'll want more. And more. And more.
And never forget that this one of those cases where mutual accommodation is possible in only one direction. If I impose rigorous privacy laws, I can agree that you don't value privacy and leave you to whatever lifestyle pleases you. You aren't affected in any way, because you can still give as much information as you want to anybody you want to have it. On the other hand, when you impose your anti-privacy laws, there's no room for me to be left alone with my choice.
"The chip's power consumption is so low that devices with the chip may even be able to be recharged using the owner's body heat."
Except, probably, my ex. She'd have to to crawl up onto a rock and bask for a couple of hours before something like that would work for her.
Would that be, um, flour? The universe is held together by flour?
(Thought I should attempt to reflect the Luddite perspective. Everybody else commenting on this post is being far too intelligent and rational.)
Please don't confuse extrinsic attacks on the system with an inherent systemic problem. All democracies are prey to the former, whether the assault is by money laundering or good old-fashioned ballot box stuffing. In fact, I'd suggest to you that the lengths these parties go to in their attempts to circumvent the system prove its worth. You don't legalize murder just because you can't prevent all of them from happening.
And although your crack about working politicians being a real problem is funny and glib (I wish I'd thought of it), it doesn't answer my observation. In the US, the system itself requires politicians to vaccuum up money and whore themselves out to the people who gave it to them. The Canadian system makes that less likely. That isn't to say that we haven't had our share of scumbags, liars and thieves. However, I suspect an extensive sociological study would find that a disproportionate number of such people are attracted to politics, law and religion.
You misunderstand how the system works. Taxpayer funding for elections works just fine in Canada and other civilized countries. Ensuring fairness is trivially easy, and it cuts those idiotic two-year American campaigns to a matter of weeks. And our politicians actually do real work, instead of spending every moment trying to raise more money so they can outspend their rivals in the next election.
There's still problems in Canada relating to lobbyists and special interests, and the system (though better than the US system) still has many flaws. But any slight tendency to favour existing parties is easily overcome. Canada's Green Party is knocking roadblocks aside right this minute, and will likely elect one or more candidates in the next federal election.
I agree with you that sacrificing civil liberties for security won't make you safe. And the cure is definitely worse than the disease.
I think you may be misunderstanding the problem a bit. Most people don't understand that there's a difference between a scientific theory (such as gravitation or evolution) and an English teacher's theory about what James Joyce meant in certain passages of Finnegan's Wake. And when you get to religious fundamentalists, the problem's even worse. They understand that science delivers results, time after time. They expect their TV sets to work when they turn them on, and they don't stand under precariously-balanced rocks, expecting that somehow God will stop gravity from working because they're so holy. What they don't understand is that some grade school drop-out who calls himself a preacher doesn't get to have the same input into a high school science curriculum as a guy who won Canada's highest science award. It's the methodology of science that needs to be communicated better, and the idea that you're not saying something isn't true because it can't be proved to scientific standards.
Forgive the brevity of the (incomplete) argument...I'm super rushed. I hope the sense of it gets through.
You think the automobile industry functions in a free market? Your naivety is touching. Wasn't it Lee Iacocca who simply marched up to Capitol Hill and demanded that U.S. taxpayers bail Chrysler out because they didn't dare let it fail?
Price and value are running the show? Oh, please! I suppose you also believe it was all those demonstrations where consumers demanded cars that sustain $2,500 damage in 5 mile per hour collisions that forced the auto companies to deliver such technological wonders to the clamoring masses.
And have you noticed that Volkswagen and Mercedes have trouble selling cars with diesel engines? Not all gas stations offer a diesel pump.
I would assume the term is used in the same sense that Super 8mm was used to denote a higher-quality image than that typically provided by Standard 8 mm on similar technology. The difference came from film/image management rather than objective lens improvement. I won't bore you with the details, but if you RTFA, you'll notice that the analogy applies quite nicely.
Your simplistic analysis and comment leads me to believe that you misunderstood the reference.
If not for beer, I'd be a genius, instead of merely brilliant.
Snake 'n' Pygmy Pie!