Thanks for setting the record straight on the title. The more I read articles on the Internet, the more I see misleading, over-stated article titles meant to grab extra attention. Frankly I'm getting tired of it.
Its a brand new technology, which means that the initial models have to absorb or get allocated a lot of the development costs, and therefore the price restricts the models for only those who can afford it and have a genuine need for it.
On occasion, Cringely is a journalist, yes. Maybe one in ten articles he writes is journalism, and to be fair his newer content is more journalistic because after 9 years, he has told many of his insider stories. But journalists are supposed to be impartial (no jokes about Fox News please), and Cringely never makes that claim, and reveals his opinions frequently. So I'd classify his stories more as op-ed at best.
There are plenty of bloggers that write interesting stories that aren't accused of being journalists, so why single out this blogger and hold him to a standard that he doesn't hold himself to?
I find it interesting that people have clung to the "US" bit so much that they feel the need to point out that IBM doesn't have 150k US employees, instead of pointing out that IBM does have well over 300,000 workers internationally, which is more relevant.
I worked at Nortel Networks, a company that had 105k - 110k employees in 2001. In the first 4 months of 2001 the company fired 27k people. In the rest of the 8 months of the year, they fired another 26k people. They fired even more in 2002. Overall, the company fired 57,000 people, over half the company.
IBM has 150k people to fire, and it can do so with ease. The "US" reference is irrelevant, since even 50,000 US workers would be a huge amount of people, but possible.
As for Cringely, he isn't a journalist. He's never claimed to be one, and his 9 years of weekly articles speaks to this. Cringely is a tech insider and writer who writes about interesting topics, and wrote this article not to report it, but in the hopes that IBM employees, and the publicity his articles garner, could help to prevent IBM from making a mistake. And he is right to do so - at Nortel the CEO wiped out half the company and walked away with a 9-figure compensation for inducing mass unemployment and wiping out billions of value and spinoff value when the tech sector of the TSE crashed.
The effects of 150k layoffs in the US would be very bad, and that's what he hopes to stop, because the way they do it is slow and steady, and if people don't figure it out ahead of time, they find out when it's too late. So in that respect, his article is very worthwhile and commendable.
Ask a company about its competition, and they will trash the competition.
Let's get serious here... asking Microsoft what it thinks of its competition? Such an interview has no value. The response will always be negative. Ask Microsoft about any of its competition, and the response will always be the same.
Oh please... sell an unbranded product? How many cell phone manufacturers do this? Get real.
As for Apple and GSM - their decision to go US-first represents how poorly they understand the cell phone market. Europe and Asia represent a far larger and more sophisticated market for the iPhone, so the decision to start it in the US was short-sighted and will lead to a less successful product.
Sounds like someone from Digg came to Slashdot to post the article. This is precisely the kind of tabloid-esque, inaccurate title for an article that Digg is now plagued with.
"I watched the last five minutes and that was certainly not the impression I got.
Perhaps others will disagree but I find you response skewed."
Perhaps you didn't get the impression, but as someone who has been an Apple enthusiast and one who respects Jobs immensely, I have read a lot of literature about Jobs in my time. I've also seen just about every Macworld keynote there is.
During this presentation, beyond just the five minutes, what I saw was Jobs off his A-game. He wasn't as funny as usual, and he missed some great setups for jokes. During the last 5 minutes, or maybe it's about 10, he thanks the iPhone team and talks about families and their sacrifice as if he's talking about the troops overseas, tells a story about Woz and him back in the day, he dips into history to talk about milestone products, like the Mac and the iPod, he thanks and hugs John Mayer (never seen him hug anyone on stage before), and after he's finished thanking the families of Apple employees, I think he even is bordering on tears.
Now you may not have seen this, but I am certain of a lot of these queues, and it points to an unusual Jobs, definitely not the usual Jobs. It could be a number of things, but think of it this way: the options thing could mean that Jobs would be kicked out of Apple a second time, and the first time was borderline devastating for him, a second time, during the peak of Apple's success, would likely be as bad. This is why I made the conclusion that I did.
You mean now Steve Jobs is paying attention to the law, because in another case it's threatening to publicly humiliate him in the worst way: having him fired from Apple for options backdating, when he is already wealthy many times over, and any money that he or others would have made on the options is paltry compared to the humiliation he would suffer in the eyes of Gates and other "enemies", not to mention a lot of America.
If you watched the last 5 minutes of the Macworld 2007 Keynote speech by Steve, what you see is a guy scared that he is going to lose his position, which is why he spends those 5 minutes thanking people at Apple, thanking John Mayer, and just otherwise looking very emotional and inwardly scared.
I'd bet, barring a hearing with the government in which they say "No, you need not charge for this", that Apple will charge $5 bucks. It's a waste of money. Our wireless speeds are far faster than any internet connection they will be hookedup to, unless you're at a University campus. Why bother spending for it? It won't yield any extra download or upload speed.
I love the number of articles springing up, claiming that 2007 will be the year that DRM dies. None of these articles mention alternatives, either, it's beautiful.
Without DRM in the age of digital music purchases, it's even easier to share music illegally... you don't need to rip music anymore, it's ripped for you. You could even have straight-to-torrent scripts.
Without restrictions on music, we will resort right back to the pre-DRM days. Nothing has changed. People still don't want to have to pay for music, and there are still file sharing services available to do it. Eventually, as people resume illegally distributing music, their friends will start doing it. The labels haven't done a thing to improve the quality of music, people are still unwilling to buy 2-4 good songs amongst 12 total on an album, and this will only lead to illegal downloading.
So the question is - do the people spreading anti-DRM FUD actually expect DRM to disappear? If so, they are guilty of believing their own hype, and in doing so have fooled themselves.
I'll be there to refer back to these articles and laugh.:)
I have to laugh when I hear anybody claim that DRM is dying. Are you kidding me? Have these fools forgotten the reason why DRM exists to begin with? Has it been over four years since the heady days of illegal sharing run rampant? It sounds like people are forgetting that before DRM, and still to this day, illegal sharing of music was exploding.
So now someone from a record ranking service claims that DRM is dead? Please forgive me for quoting "Thank You for Smoking", but he (the author) hardly sounds like a credible expert.
The guy writing the article claims that if digital music sales slump, record executives will hit the panic button. His conclusion is that this will somehow cause them to abandon DRM?
The "places to watch" list says nothing about any firm change to go with DRM-free music. He puts Amazon first on the list, and claims, at the end of the paragraph, that Amazon has the power to force a DRM strategy shift. What's holding them back? Actually, he answers that for us:
The online retailer reportedly is itching to get into digital downloads but is holding out for a DRM-free service. So they are holding off on what they supposedly have the power to do? My BS alarm is on 5 bells after reading that.
I've got a company to put in place of Amazon on his list:
APPLE
Look for 2007 to be business as usual, but look for killer jokes about abandoning DRM at the water cooler, too. One last suggestion: music labels seem to be so scared that CD sales are slipping, and if digital music sales begin slipping, it means the sky is falling. What have the labels done to stop this by looking internally, rather than trying music-with-control and now abandoning it?
- Have they considered that sales are slipping because they are still trying to force us to buy 6-10 crap songs for every 2-4 hits? (Stadium Arcadium anyone?) - Have they started requiring that newly-signed artists have a good voice that requires no digital retouching, and have the ability to write thought-provoking music? - Have they cut down on the number of "me too" bands they support? - Have they caught on that education levels are rising, and people are more media-savvy than ever before in their target audience?
I've got a hypothesis I want one of these anti-DRM people to prove or disprove:
Music sales are slumping because the labels continue to shun talented artists in favor of crafting mega stars and enforcing little or no quality standards in the music that they publish.
There was a report that Apple and Cisco were in negotiations over the use of the name until yesterday, so chances are, this is Cisco going "OMG... cash cow ahead, release the legal hounds!". They held out on agreeing to license the name to Apple because they know that they can now sue for millions.
Anyone know what the Cisco iPhone is? It's a Skype phone. That's it.
I found this on Cisco's site after searching for "iPhone" on their search engine:
"News Release Cisco's Official Comments on the Apple iPhone Announcement
SAN JOSE Calif., January 9, 2007 - Given Apple's numerous requests for permission to use Cisco's iPhone trademark over the past several years and our extensive discussions with them recently, it is our belief that with their announcement today, Apple intends to agree to the final document and public statement that were distributed to them last night and that addressed a few remaining items. We expect to receive a signed agreement today."
The Linksys iPhone is also a "featured product" on Cisco's site right now, which seems like a desperate attempt to get any attention amongst the public over its own iPhone. Apple, in one day, gained more public awareness of its iPhone than Cisco or LinkSys ever did.:)
I've had a Gigabyte board with solid-state capacitors for more than 3 months now, it's based on the 965 chipset, so I was a bit confused why this article made it sound like this was a new innovation.
My parents just left. Their strategy was to turn the water off, and heat the house at 60 degrees to ensure that they save money on heating, while still not risking the pipes bursting. They have a neighbor go over to water plants every few days, and that makes a lot of sense. If you need to leave your house for an extended period, make sure a friend or trustworthy neighbor is checking up on it every once in a while.
I myself didn't go on vacation so I check up as well as the neighbor. The house is probably checked once every two days.
So leaving your house is just fine, remember to turn off all the lights when you leave, check all doors and lock up, and things will be just fine.
Wow. This is hilarious. If you think that 2% is a small number now, go back in time to pre-Industrial revolution times. Back then the number of people in control of the world's wealth, and property, was less than 1%, much less.
And even amongst those 2% of people today, you will find the same ratio - the majority of wealth among the 2% wealthiest people of the world is concentrated in the top 1%. While you might show up in the top 2% or 10% globally, Investor Billionaires, Sultans and Princes of the Middle East, and the sons of international financiers from the 1600s and 1700s eclipse you by leaps and bounds. Once you get into the billion-dollar net-worth range, the field is small enough that we're talking about no more people than an American football team.
And AliasTheRoot - that site isn't bullshit. You just need to consider what your money could do for others, instead of for yourself. Hell, the entire "1st world" needs to do that.
You can't afford a home in YOUR area. Go to Wisconsin and you could afford a home in a rural area without any major financial hardship. One country over, Mexico, you could afford a mansion, body guards, a driver, a grotto, and house servants to relieve you of every household chore but assisting you in going to the washroom; actually, people would still gladly wipe your ass for what we consider pocket change: it beats making your living in a garbage dump fighting for scraps.
And even further south of Mexico, in certain Central American nations, that same money could afford even more.
Across the pond, in a country like Bangladesh or India, you can literally buy entire villages. You could be the personal saviour of hundreds of people there.
So don't think of yourself when wondering how you could be one of the wealthiest human beings on this planet - look to the impoverished nations for where that money has its real impact. Yeah, that's how dirt poor millions of people are. And eventually, as the world's food supply shrinks, that poverty could result in major regional conflict.
While $10 bucks buys a Starbucks coffee here, in the third world it buys an AK-47 with thousands of bullets. That's no lie - AK-47s literally cost less than Starbucks coffee in the third world. If you think you can't afford much, a group of gun-wielding Militia-men in Darfur has so much power that, with about $1000 US, they can form a roving band of raping, murdering, looting, ethnic cleansing militia.
My point is - Kim Jong Il is almost certainly the richest man in North Korea. Do you honestly expect that he won't be able to get whatever he wants regardless of what sanctions do?
And my follow-on point is - if these sanctions won't affect Kim Jong Il, who will they affect? Innocent people, that's who.
Sanctions do not work on the most powerful people in a country, because those people have power and money and have access to the black market. I'll give an example - Cuban products are sanctioned by the US government. But did you also know that some of the largest purchases of Cuban cigars from Canadian companies are by people in Langley, VA? And by large purchases, I mean hundreds of cigars. Well beyond what any one person, or group of friends, could possibly smoke. (Canadians can import Cuban products)
That is what I am trying to say - you cannot stop powerful people from getting what they want through sanctions. Sanctions against North Korea will only affect innocent people.
The defense complex gives us video of how precise their "precision bombs" are. "Precision bomb" is an oxymoron. A bomb, by definition, is designed for area effect. No matter how much precision is applied to a bomb, the one thing it cannot do is eliminate all risk to those not targeted by the humans dropping the bombs.
Sanctions are exactly the same. No matter what the sanctions, innocent people will get screwed over.
And it is the same with war, with North Korea, with Iraq, with every single sanction and conflict, public or undisclosed, that has ever existed in the world - there are always unintended casualties.
Think of it - US sanctions to target ONE person. This is the precision-guided bomb in trade form. You can dream and laugh about "putting Kim Jong Il on a diet" all you want; you are living in ignorant bliss if you find that amusing, because the reality is that the significant, unpalatable dark side of this, which you will never see covered by an intimidated, kowtow-ing media, is innocent people and families paying dearly for the sanctions that, we are told, will target the wealthiest, most connected man in North Korea. How long will sanctions last when North Korea threatens to sell nuclear secrets (along with a picture of a PS3) on eBay?
What's more, the benefits of sanctions on North Korea are being sold to us by the same US administration that sold us on going after Saddam and his WMDs. It fooled us then, and I see it fooling far too many people now.
Time to coin a new term: American Alzheimer's Disease - the disease that afflicts the memory of a large number of American citizens, causing them to forget the lies of their public officials such that, after an expensive, expansive PR campaign, citizens simply lose all memory of past lies, and let the same men commit the same crimes all over again.
And in fact, some large modern ships do make use of sail power to increase efficiency. There was also a German team that investigated the use of kites on large sailing ships.
The one question that comes to mind is - what about cavitation? Cavitation is a bad thing for giant tanker propellers, now you're saying you're going to line the entire sub-surface hull with them? And what happens if the bubbles at the front end collapse or the bubble generator stops suddenly, while the ones in the rear continue?
What about bubbles and sails together?
Or what about an entirely different take on transportation? Ground effect airships? The Russians built a giant ground-effect airship, and ground effect transportation has the capability to fill in some of the gap between ocean-based and air-based transportation: to bring airplane speeds to cargoes far in excess of any plane, or to speed up small sea cargo transports by up to an order of magnitude.
Asking company executives about the products of their competitors, like this interview does, is utterly pointless. You never get an objective opinion - all they see is a chance to communicate their brand, their marketing, and their FUD to the general public to try to sway opinions. Big Business is no more serious in an interview than politicians are - they will lie, cheat, and steal their way to get you to throw your bucks their way. Trashing Google's decision - Google is eating Microsoft's Internet lunch. You think Microsoft is going to applaud them for it?
Ask someone not employed by Microsoft what they think of YouTube. Don't ask competitors, ask outsiders.
This topic wasn't raised - the very notion that cliques are only men and only men hold the power of social groups is ridiculous, and detracts from the merit of the question.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for setting the record straight on the title. The more I read articles on the Internet, the more I see misleading, over-stated article titles meant to grab extra attention. Frankly I'm getting tired of it.
Its a brand new technology, which means that the initial models have to absorb or get allocated a lot of the development costs, and therefore the price restricts the models for only those who can afford it and have a genuine need for it.
Maybe, but then I wouldn't be claiming to be a Nortel employee.
On occasion, Cringely is a journalist, yes. Maybe one in ten articles he writes is journalism, and to be fair his newer content is more journalistic because after 9 years, he has told many of his insider stories. But journalists are supposed to be impartial (no jokes about Fox News please), and Cringely never makes that claim, and reveals his opinions frequently. So I'd classify his stories more as op-ed at best.
There are plenty of bloggers that write interesting stories that aren't accused of being journalists, so why single out this blogger and hold him to a standard that he doesn't hold himself to?
I find it interesting that people have clung to the "US" bit so much that they feel the need to point out that IBM doesn't have 150k US employees, instead of pointing out that IBM does have well over 300,000 workers internationally, which is more relevant.
I worked at Nortel Networks, a company that had 105k - 110k employees in 2001. In the first 4 months of 2001 the company fired 27k people. In the rest of the 8 months of the year, they fired another 26k people. They fired even more in 2002. Overall, the company fired 57,000 people, over half the company.
IBM has 150k people to fire, and it can do so with ease. The "US" reference is irrelevant, since even 50,000 US workers would be a huge amount of people, but possible.
As for Cringely, he isn't a journalist. He's never claimed to be one, and his 9 years of weekly articles speaks to this. Cringely is a tech insider and writer who writes about interesting topics, and wrote this article not to report it, but in the hopes that IBM employees, and the publicity his articles garner, could help to prevent IBM from making a mistake. And he is right to do so - at Nortel the CEO wiped out half the company and walked away with a 9-figure compensation for inducing mass unemployment and wiping out billions of value and spinoff value when the tech sector of the TSE crashed.
The effects of 150k layoffs in the US would be very bad, and that's what he hopes to stop, because the way they do it is slow and steady, and if people don't figure it out ahead of time, they find out when it's too late. So in that respect, his article is very worthwhile and commendable.
Just like the sounds in Sim City. Scroll over empty space - nothing. Over the city - cars and car horns.
I'd like to suggest an axiom for writers:
Ask a company about its competition, and they will trash the competition.
Let's get serious here... asking Microsoft what it thinks of its competition? Such an interview has no value. The response will always be negative. Ask Microsoft about any of its competition, and the response will always be the same.
Oh please... sell an unbranded product? How many cell phone manufacturers do this? Get real.
As for Apple and GSM - their decision to go US-first represents how poorly they understand the cell phone market. Europe and Asia represent a far larger and more sophisticated market for the iPhone, so the decision to start it in the US was short-sighted and will lead to a less successful product.
Sounds like someone from Digg came to Slashdot to post the article. This is precisely the kind of tabloid-esque, inaccurate title for an article that Digg is now plagued with.
That show sucks. Absolute crap.
"I watched the last five minutes and that was certainly not the impression I got.
Perhaps others will disagree but I find you response skewed."
Perhaps you didn't get the impression, but as someone who has been an Apple enthusiast and one who respects Jobs immensely, I have read a lot of literature about Jobs in my time. I've also seen just about every Macworld keynote there is.
During this presentation, beyond just the five minutes, what I saw was Jobs off his A-game. He wasn't as funny as usual, and he missed some great setups for jokes. During the last 5 minutes, or maybe it's about 10, he thanks the iPhone team and talks about families and their sacrifice as if he's talking about the troops overseas, tells a story about Woz and him back in the day, he dips into history to talk about milestone products, like the Mac and the iPod, he thanks and hugs John Mayer (never seen him hug anyone on stage before), and after he's finished thanking the families of Apple employees, I think he even is bordering on tears.
Now you may not have seen this, but I am certain of a lot of these queues, and it points to an unusual Jobs, definitely not the usual Jobs. It could be a number of things, but think of it this way: the options thing could mean that Jobs would be kicked out of Apple a second time, and the first time was borderline devastating for him, a second time, during the peak of Apple's success, would likely be as bad. This is why I made the conclusion that I did.
You mean now Steve Jobs is paying attention to the law, because in another case it's threatening to publicly humiliate him in the worst way: having him fired from Apple for options backdating, when he is already wealthy many times over, and any money that he or others would have made on the options is paltry compared to the humiliation he would suffer in the eyes of Gates and other "enemies", not to mention a lot of America.
If you watched the last 5 minutes of the Macworld 2007 Keynote speech by Steve, what you see is a guy scared that he is going to lose his position, which is why he spends those 5 minutes thanking people at Apple, thanking John Mayer, and just otherwise looking very emotional and inwardly scared.
I'd bet, barring a hearing with the government in which they say "No, you need not charge for this", that Apple will charge $5 bucks. It's a waste of money. Our wireless speeds are far faster than any internet connection they will be hookedup to, unless you're at a University campus. Why bother spending for it? It won't yield any extra download or upload speed.
Damnit! Another stealth upgrade from Apple? Sarbane! Oxley! Get in here!
I love the number of articles springing up, claiming that 2007 will be the year that DRM dies. None of these articles mention alternatives, either, it's beautiful.
:)
Without DRM in the age of digital music purchases, it's even easier to share music illegally... you don't need to rip music anymore, it's ripped for you. You could even have straight-to-torrent scripts.
Without restrictions on music, we will resort right back to the pre-DRM days. Nothing has changed. People still don't want to have to pay for music, and there are still file sharing services available to do it. Eventually, as people resume illegally distributing music, their friends will start doing it. The labels haven't done a thing to improve the quality of music, people are still unwilling to buy 2-4 good songs amongst 12 total on an album, and this will only lead to illegal downloading.
So the question is - do the people spreading anti-DRM FUD actually expect DRM to disappear? If so, they are guilty of believing their own hype, and in doing so have fooled themselves.
I'll be there to refer back to these articles and laugh.
So now someone from a record ranking service claims that DRM is dead? Please forgive me for quoting "Thank You for Smoking", but he (the author) hardly sounds like a credible expert.
The guy writing the article claims that if digital music sales slump, record executives will hit the panic button. His conclusion is that this will somehow cause them to abandon DRM?
The "places to watch" list says nothing about any firm change to go with DRM-free music. He puts Amazon first on the list, and claims, at the end of the paragraph, that Amazon has the power to force a DRM strategy shift. What's holding them back? Actually, he answers that for us: The online retailer reportedly is itching to get into digital downloads but is holding out for a DRM-free service. So they are holding off on what they supposedly have the power to do? My BS alarm is on 5 bells after reading that.
I've got a company to put in place of Amazon on his list: APPLE
Look for 2007 to be business as usual, but look for killer jokes about abandoning DRM at the water cooler, too. One last suggestion: music labels seem to be so scared that CD sales are slipping, and if digital music sales begin slipping, it means the sky is falling. What have the labels done to stop this by looking internally, rather than trying music-with-control and now abandoning it?
- Have they considered that sales are slipping because they are still trying to force us to buy 6-10 crap songs for every 2-4 hits? (Stadium Arcadium anyone?)
- Have they started requiring that newly-signed artists have a good voice that requires no digital retouching, and have the ability to write thought-provoking music?
- Have they cut down on the number of "me too" bands they support?
- Have they caught on that education levels are rising, and people are more media-savvy than ever before in their target audience?
I've got a hypothesis I want one of these anti-DRM people to prove or disprove:
Music sales are slumping because the labels continue to shun talented artists in favor of crafting mega stars and enforcing little or no quality standards in the music that they publish.
There was a report that Apple and Cisco were in negotiations over the use of the name until yesterday, so chances are, this is Cisco going "OMG... cash cow ahead, release the legal hounds!". They held out on agreeing to license the name to Apple because they know that they can now sue for millions.
h tml
:)
Anyone know what the Cisco iPhone is? It's a Skype phone. That's it.
I found this on Cisco's site after searching for "iPhone" on their search engine:
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2007/corp_010907b.
"News Release
Cisco's Official Comments on the Apple iPhone Announcement
SAN JOSE Calif., January 9, 2007 - Given Apple's numerous requests for permission to use Cisco's iPhone trademark over the past several years and our extensive discussions with them recently, it is our belief that with their announcement today, Apple intends to agree to the final document and public statement that were distributed to them last night and that addressed a few remaining items. We expect to receive a signed agreement today."
The Linksys iPhone is also a "featured product" on Cisco's site right now, which seems like a desperate attempt to get any attention amongst the public over its own iPhone. Apple, in one day, gained more public awareness of its iPhone than Cisco or LinkSys ever did.
I've had a Gigabyte board with solid-state capacitors for more than 3 months now, it's based on the 965 chipset, so I was a bit confused why this article made it sound like this was a new innovation.
My parents just left. Their strategy was to turn the water off, and heat the house at 60 degrees to ensure that they save money on heating, while still not risking the pipes bursting. They have a neighbor go over to water plants every few days, and that makes a lot of sense. If you need to leave your house for an extended period, make sure a friend or trustworthy neighbor is checking up on it every once in a while.
I myself didn't go on vacation so I check up as well as the neighbor. The house is probably checked once every two days.
So leaving your house is just fine, remember to turn off all the lights when you leave, check all doors and lock up, and things will be just fine.
Wow. This is hilarious. If you think that 2% is a small number now, go back in time to pre-Industrial revolution times. Back then the number of people in control of the world's wealth, and property, was less than 1%, much less.
And even amongst those 2% of people today, you will find the same ratio - the majority of wealth among the 2% wealthiest people of the world is concentrated in the top 1%. While you might show up in the top 2% or 10% globally, Investor Billionaires, Sultans and Princes of the Middle East, and the sons of international financiers from the 1600s and 1700s eclipse you by leaps and bounds. Once you get into the billion-dollar net-worth range, the field is small enough that we're talking about no more people than an American football team.
And AliasTheRoot - that site isn't bullshit. You just need to consider what your money could do for others, instead of for yourself. Hell, the entire "1st world" needs to do that.
You can't afford a home in YOUR area. Go to Wisconsin and you could afford a home in a rural area without any major financial hardship. One country over, Mexico, you could afford a mansion, body guards, a driver, a grotto, and house servants to relieve you of every household chore but assisting you in going to the washroom; actually, people would still gladly wipe your ass for what we consider pocket change: it beats making your living in a garbage dump fighting for scraps.
And even further south of Mexico, in certain Central American nations, that same money could afford even more.
Across the pond, in a country like Bangladesh or India, you can literally buy entire villages. You could be the personal saviour of hundreds of people there.
So don't think of yourself when wondering how you could be one of the wealthiest human beings on this planet - look to the impoverished nations for where that money has its real impact. Yeah, that's how dirt poor millions of people are. And eventually, as the world's food supply shrinks, that poverty could result in major regional conflict.
While $10 bucks buys a Starbucks coffee here, in the third world it buys an AK-47 with thousands of bullets. That's no lie - AK-47s literally cost less than Starbucks coffee in the third world. If you think you can't afford much, a group of gun-wielding Militia-men in Darfur has so much power that, with about $1000 US, they can form a roving band of raping, murdering, looting, ethnic cleansing militia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict
My point is - Kim Jong Il is almost certainly the richest man in North Korea. Do you honestly expect that he won't be able to get whatever he wants regardless of what sanctions do?
And my follow-on point is - if these sanctions won't affect Kim Jong Il, who will they affect? Innocent people, that's who.
Sanctions do not work on the most powerful people in a country, because those people have power and money and have access to the black market. I'll give an example - Cuban products are sanctioned by the US government. But did you also know that some of the largest purchases of Cuban cigars from Canadian companies are by people in Langley, VA? And by large purchases, I mean hundreds of cigars. Well beyond what any one person, or group of friends, could possibly smoke. (Canadians can import Cuban products)
That is what I am trying to say - you cannot stop powerful people from getting what they want through sanctions. Sanctions against North Korea will only affect innocent people.
This is a sheer, utter joke.
The defense complex gives us video of how precise their "precision bombs" are. "Precision bomb" is an oxymoron. A bomb, by definition, is designed for area effect. No matter how much precision is applied to a bomb, the one thing it cannot do is eliminate all risk to those not targeted by the humans dropping the bombs.
Sanctions are exactly the same. No matter what the sanctions, innocent people will get screwed over.
And it is the same with war, with North Korea, with Iraq, with every single sanction and conflict, public or undisclosed, that has ever existed in the world - there are always unintended casualties.
Think of it - US sanctions to target ONE person. This is the precision-guided bomb in trade form. You can dream and laugh about "putting Kim Jong Il on a diet" all you want; you are living in ignorant bliss if you find that amusing, because the reality is that the significant, unpalatable dark side of this, which you will never see covered by an intimidated, kowtow-ing media, is innocent people and families paying dearly for the sanctions that, we are told, will target the wealthiest, most connected man in North Korea. How long will sanctions last when North Korea threatens to sell nuclear secrets (along with a picture of a PS3) on eBay?
What's more, the benefits of sanctions on North Korea are being sold to us by the same US administration that sold us on going after Saddam and his WMDs. It fooled us then, and I see it fooling far too many people now.
Time to coin a new term: American Alzheimer's Disease - the disease that afflicts the memory of a large number of American citizens, causing them to forget the lies of their public officials such that, after an expensive, expansive PR campaign, citizens simply lose all memory of past lies, and let the same men commit the same crimes all over again.
And in fact, some large modern ships do make use of sail power to increase efficiency. There was also a German team that investigated the use of kites on large sailing ships.
The one question that comes to mind is - what about cavitation? Cavitation is a bad thing for giant tanker propellers, now you're saying you're going to line the entire sub-surface hull with them? And what happens if the bubbles at the front end collapse or the bubble generator stops suddenly, while the ones in the rear continue?
What about bubbles and sails together?
Or what about an entirely different take on transportation? Ground effect airships? The Russians built a giant ground-effect airship, and ground effect transportation has the capability to fill in some of the gap between ocean-based and air-based transportation: to bring airplane speeds to cargoes far in excess of any plane, or to speed up small sea cargo transports by up to an order of magnitude.
I don't believe this person. It seems way too "set up".
Asking company executives about the products of their competitors, like this interview does, is utterly pointless. You never get an objective opinion - all they see is a chance to communicate their brand, their marketing, and their FUD to the general public to try to sway opinions. Big Business is no more serious in an interview than politicians are - they will lie, cheat, and steal their way to get you to throw your bucks their way. Trashing Google's decision - Google is eating Microsoft's Internet lunch. You think Microsoft is going to applaud them for it?
Ask someone not employed by Microsoft what they think of YouTube. Don't ask competitors, ask outsiders.
This topic wasn't raised - the very notion that cliques are only men and only men hold the power of social groups is ridiculous, and detracts from the merit of the question.