Opulent lifestyles maybe, but there seems to be a bit more accountability in China.
Many top Chinese officials have been executed for corruption. Just google for: chinese official executed
In my opinion being executed is about as accountable as it gets. And certainly a lot more scary than being paid off with a golden parachute/handshake, or getting bailed out.
Someone might claim the executions are faked, but they (and their family) must be pretty good actors given their responses to the verdict. And even if so their lifestyle certainly would be drastically affected - hard to live like a king while resembling an executed official...
As for the topic, when I checked some years ago, China regularly tampered with DNS as part of censorship (related to national security I suppose).
The US DHS has tampered with DNS, not as extensively as China did, but since it's the DHS, I guess it's "national security" too?
If you don't piss on your hands, why do you need to scrub your hands?
it is just as clean as any other part of my body
When I go to the toilet, I usually wash my hands BEFORE touching my penis with them. I'm still rather attached to my penis:).
The problem with many toilets (not all) is bad design - they make it too hard to avoid contaminating your hands after washing them. For example, tap knobs are a daft idea. Taps that work with swing levers or similar are better. Same goes for many toilet doors. Some toilets here are better and don't have doors - for "modesty/privacy" they just have a L shaped or zig-zag corridor from the entrance.
It's not all bacteria and viruses you have to worry about. The problems are pathogenic bacteria and viruses.
The trouble is many people with pathogenic bacteria/viruses will be using those tap knobs, bathroom handles, soap dispensers etc after they've been forced to go to the toilet by those germs.
So if you design the toilets right, they'll be less likely to spread those pathogenic germs to others.
Whereas with a bad toilet design, even if you force people to wash their hands, it might not help that much in practice, and might even make things worse for the reasons I stated (plus the fact that most bacteria like water).
I'm not a huge supporter of Israel at all, but I sure understand why they do what they do. It's like you fighting with someone, if he: 1) Doesn't promise to not kill you. 2) He keeps hitting you and trying to kill you whenever you let him go (even if he promises not to).
It's pretty understandable if you put a choke-hold on him and not let go. Also no surprise they stop getting hit as much as long as they have that chokehold.
Not pleasant to watch, but from what I see many of the Palestinians and their supporters share a HUGE part of the blame for their situation.
Israel seems to get on reasonably with Egypt and Jordan, after both agreed to make peace with Israel. But the rest of the Arab/muslim nations including the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel and they want to ELIMINATE Israel completely.
So why should anyone be surprised when Israel does not want to loosen their chokehold on the Palestinians?
In July 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton convened a peace summit between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak reportedly offered the Palestinian leader approximately 95% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem,[13] and that 69 Jewish settlements (which comprise 85% of the West Bank's Jewish settlers) would be ceded to Israel. He also proposed "temporary Israeli control" indefinitely over another 10% of the West Bank territory--an area including many more Jewish settlements. According to Palestinian sources, the remaining area would be under Palestinian control, yet certain areas would be broken up by Israeli bypass roads and checkpoints. Depending on how the security roads would be configured, these Israeli roads might impede free travel by Palestinians throughout their proposed nation and reduce the ability to absorb Palestinian refugees.
Arafat rejected this offer. President Clinton reportedly requested that Arafat make a counter-offer, but he proposed none. Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami who kept a diary of the negotiations said in an interview in 2001, when asked whether the Palestinians made a counterproposal: "No. And that is the heart of the matter. Never, in the negotiations between us and the Palestinians, was there a Palestinian counterproposal."
They rejected that offer. Why don't they make a counterproposal? The Palestinians don't really want to make peace with Israel. To them peace = Israel wiped out.
Yes it's pretty nasty what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, slowly strangling someone is nasty. But what should they do? The Palestinians themselves don't really want to make peace with Israel and as long as fighting or opposing Jews ( just because they are Jews) is _considered_ part of Islam by significant numbers of them (google it), go figure how long that peace will last.
As for getting rid of Israel totally:
From a secular objective perspective being a citizen of Israel would be better than being a citizen of "Greater Palestine" ruled by Hamas or Fatah (assuming Israel is gone). Just look at how the various muslim nations rule themselves. They kill and abuse their own people rather often (Shiites vs Sunnis, tribe vs tribe etc). Please list down the muslim countries that are doing better than Israel, by modern standards. Remember many of them have oil, Israel doesn
When in doubt, kill the ones in US military uniforms. If nobody in target area is wearing a US military uniform, kill the white or black guys, and avoid killing the brown ones wearing shalwar kameez.
Whereas the US troops just have to kill the wrong person and turns out the whole village is related to him/her, either by blood or by marriage. I think they've screwed up too many times already. And genocide is not a viable option for the USA.
You can mention the product or site and still obfuscate the name.
There are so many ways to obfuscate the names. So how are you going to research it? If everyone uses obfuscated names it's going to be much harder when researching.
The same clueless people would have even more difficulty researching obfuscated names than the clueful, so they'll just be as screwed as before, while those with a clue would have to work harder to figure out obfuscated names. So what's the net benefit of your suggestion?
It should be pretty obvious that obfuscation is a stupid idea.
Did the rest of the world ever buy most of their oil/grain/Intel CPUs/beef in Zimbabwe dollars? Did the rest of the world ever lend Zimbabwe lots of money payable in _Zimbabwe_dollars_? Does the rest of the world live in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe?
The rest of the world lives at least partly in the US Gov's Zimbabwe.
The US will lose its advantage if the rest of the world starts moving away from the US dollars. But until then, it's not the same.
Maybe after making enough "oh noes" noises about capacity and "strain to the system" they might be able to charge users higher at night too. And if the system collapses they can say "ooh we did make worrying sounds about it, so don't be too hard on us".
I guess I'm too cynical;).
The article says:
Not since air conditioning spread across the country in the 1950s and 1960s has the power industry faced such a growth opportunity.
What did the US power industry bunch say back then? Or did they "just shut up and do their jobs"?
You miss one very very important point in the US case. The "petro-dollar".
Lots of countries hold billions (or more) of US dollars and use it to buy/sell stuff - like oil, electronics, grain, beef etc. Lots of countries lend money in US dollars, some even have lent trillions to the USA.
Printing money is basically taxing everyone holding net positive amounts of your currency (whether in cash or as net creditors - like Japan, China).
If the US Gov handed some of the created money to its own citizens then it's not so bad, because it means that the US Gov gets richer, the rest of the world holding US dollars get poorer, and the US citizens somewhere in between (depends on how much they get). And a lot of wealth is relative - so if the rest of the world is more screwed than the US citizens, the US citizens are more likely to be able to buy stuff from them rather cheaply (like bread and circuses, oh wait make that large TVs).
The net debtors don't benefit that much - because it takes a while for most to realize "something has changed" and be able to charge higher prices, plus when inflation goes up, interest rates often go up too. The US on the other hand is able to create the currency it owes much of its debt in so go figure;).
It's not as complex as some financiers and economists like to pretend.
But when you realize what's actually happening, it's pretty disgusting on many levels.
So the government and corporations listen to them?
That's good news isn't it? After all, I've been hearing lots of people claiming that the Government and Corporations are ignoring the people and screwing them.:)
fierce opposition by just about everyone over air quality concerns.
Funny though, I keep hearing US people say the politicians aren't listening to them and just listening to Corporations. So which corporations opposed that? Not that I'm for building coal plants. I think nuclear is the way to go, but might be wise to look for a suitable nonuranium tech, because I believe China has already started grabbing as many cheap uranium supplies as it can.
On threads where I've commented I've tried to encourage people not to name the specific product or company in their rant, but too many clueless people out there.
Heck, the Times article just boosted the guy's profile even more! There wasn't just one mention of the company, but many, increasing the rank.
So the guy is an ass, but all the clueless people who want to blame someone else ( Google ) and not do research on a company but just buy whatever is claimed to be the cheapest
1) How are you going to check the reputation of the seller/product if everyone does what you suggest and not name names? 2) Search engines like Google and Bing don't simply rank by "number of mentions".
You don't seem that clueful yourself.
There will always be clueless people (and he wants to only do business with the weak and/or clueless). The real problem is cops and regulators aren't doing their jobs and stopping him- assuming he really made threatening and fraudulent phone calls.
Remarkably, this punctuality has been a feature of Japan's rail services--day in, day out-- for decades now, regardless of rain and wind. This is a record that spans 45 years for the Shinkansen service and nearly a century (since the late 1910s) for other JR lines. 1
Some countries may laugh at this apparent obsession with punctuality, attributing such fastidiousness to Japanese passengers' maniacal preoccupation with time.
But the real reason that trains run on time is not because of demanding passengers but because it suits the adaptation strategies of the railroad companies. That is, it enables the operators to achieve the safest and most efficient railroad system.
In any country, a system in which all trains run according to schedule is the simplest to manage. 2 This is because it enables rail operators to achieve maximum carrying capacity with the given equipment and with the least likelihood of error.
Most efficient perhaps, but safest? I'm not sure, they still get disasters (but no idea how many per passenger-mile or passenger-trip):
It was perhaps with this in mind that the 23-year-old engineer, Ryujiro Takami, headed for Osaka on Monday morning. Takami, believed to have died in the crash, had only 11 months of experience, and he had been reprimanded once for overshooting a platform by 100 meters.
On Monday morning, at Itami station outside Osaka, Takami overshot the platform again, forcing him to back up and lose 90 seconds.
Apparently aware that he would be reprimanded again, he persuaded the conductor at the back of the train to report that he had overrun the platform by eight meters. Today, officials said that the length was actually 40 meters, the equivalent of two cars.
The train, carrying about 580 passengers, began running abnormally fast after leaving Itami station, passengers reported, so much so that the scenery outside whizzed by. The train was scheduled to arrive at Amagasaki station at 9:20 a.m., in time for many passengers to connect to another train leaving at 9:23.
Seems like JR made the mistake of getting someone too inexperienced or untrained or incompetent to do the job- he made mistakes and then compounded them with a fatal mistake.
That said, it doesn't seem that hard to prevent the train from going too fast at some points.
And if your penalty for speeding (or unsafe train driving) is higher than your penalty for being late then you'd rather be late than speed, and I'm sure the trains are monitored. So bad management also shares part of the blame.
Yeah, maybe instead of the Fed Reserve printing trillions of dollars and handing them over to "sorry we can't tell you", they should have printed trillions to actually fix/build stuff - roads, power stations, power distribution, broadband etc. Can't outsource all of these jobs to India and Mexico too.
Maybe that'll cause inflation, but heck at least you all will get something out of it. Rather than just making a few rich people richer and still getting inflation.
Worried? Build more capacity then. It's not like your customers have been or will be getting all that electricity for free (or even cheap in some cases).
By Chrome can I assume you mean the Google Chrome browser? In that case, does your browser have tabs displayed? If it does, then what's the big difference between having "ugly" task buttons displayed and equally "ugly" tabs displayed? Why are you having those ugly tabs when you could give 100% real estate to a web page?
Now see what I'm talking about? The reason for those ugly tabs is very similar to the reason for ugly task buttons.
Where you see ugly clutter, I see exposed functionality.
I'm fine with GUI designers catering for people like you who don't like all that ugliness. But nowadays it seems like too many GUI designers are trying to get rid of functionality, and making things slower and more difficult for people like me.
p.s. if you ever use MS Windows maybe you can get a small screen and dedicate half of it to a super huge task bar (windows doesn't let you drag it out more), and then move it out of the way of your two big screens. Or maybe put an app just to do that with thumbnails of app windows on that screen - a permanent "Expose".;)
I do understand that some people might want the "taskbar" to go away completely so that'll be a valid _option_ but any talk of getting rid of it without _replacing_ it with something better would be as stupid as having a Desktop GUI web browser that does tabs but has no actual tab "buttons/headers" to actually click on.
Assuming enough screen space, how many people would want their browser tabs to be on autohide (or even removed totally - requiring them to go to another "screen/mode" to switch tabs), despite browser tabs taking up screen space, and thus them not getting a full screen of the browser page as a default. How would such a feature help them?
A web browser for a device with a tiny screen might be a different case. But I'm talking about desktop GUIs.
And it is just beautiful to have all real estate 100% for the applications; with a 'panel' (desktop==dashboard) directly underneath; instead of invading the screen.
Maybe you need a bigger screen with higher resolution, or more screens.
To me the panel/taskbar is one of the applications I want to see. I use it very often - when switching from window to window amongst many different windows.
As such it would be counterproductive for me to hide it.
Hiding it makes sense if screen space is so limited that it takes up a significant part of the screen, but once a screen gets big enough, hiding the taskbar makes about as much sense as taking the trouble to hide the screen bezel.
It's slower to have to "jump through hoops" (extra clicks/actions or pauses) just to switch to a different window, compared to just being able to quickly click on the relevant taskbar button and have the desired window foregrounded without any unnecessary delay.
For that reason I find OS X's Expose slower. Yes it may be cool to see the thumbnails of all the windows appear etc, but in the end it is slower than just immediately clicking on the desired window's button.
Same for having to move to another desktop then only being able to switch to another window. What does having to do so add to productivity?
It's like a game cutscreen. Might be nice the first few times, but after a while, some people like me just prefer to skip the cutscreen and get to the "real stuff". The cutscreen just gets in the way.
Or a gun that does a fancy animation/motion before firing. People who need to shoot stuff fast, would consider that a flaw. The gun would need to have significant advantages for people to put up with the flaw.
One of the main changes to my mind is that it does not have a window list on a panel. You switch applications by visiting the Activity "overlay" and then clicking on the window you wish to switch to. This doesn't really affect me much in practise, I usually use alt+tab to switch windows anyway, where it does affect me is for applications that change the window title, e.g. messenger or gmail, I now have to cycle through alt+tab to check for people replying to me etc.
Rather than a window list the panel now lists the name of the currently focused application. It seems a bit useless, most applications have the application name as part of the window list and I'm not likely to forget the name of an application I've started.
Just wanted to share a personal experience with GNOME Shell. One of its new and unique attributes is not having the window list or any sort of persistent widget that shows running apps or opened windows. This has benefits, in theory, like helping the user focus on the foreground task.
It's just worth noting that one of its potential downsides is it violates the user's mental model, which makes it undesirable, even if it *may* help increase productivity. With a window list, it's clear to the user where the window goes when it's minimized and how to show it again. In GNOME Shell, the only clear way to tell if a window is minimized is to check if it can't be seen in the workspace, but it's shown in the Overview or Window Switcher (alt+tab). Teling which windows are minimized or not may not have real benefits, but it may be too disorienting for users.
Personally I think they've lost their marbles. How does that help productivity at all? Especially in the cases where you need to use more than one window to do your work?
In China this would be pointless because why would the government care what their people thought?
The Chinese government cares a lot about what their people think, that's why they have a lot of censorship. The Chinese government is well aware of history and of what happened to previous Chinese governments. Piss off too many (e.g. the peasants) and you die.
FWIW, a lot of the Chinese people support their own government (just look at the patriots out in full force during the Olympics).
Why? 1) The censorship and brainwashing. Control what people see and that affects what they think, and that's how you keep them supporting you. 2) Because there have actually been significant positive changes. Railways and highways have been built, many of the poor have benefited from those. Sure there's lots of bad stuff happening, but they can just look at a lot of other countries and go "We're doing better" or "we're doing pretty good given the hand we've been dealt". 3) They can see that at least some parts of the Government are trying to improve things for China, and not just a corrupt few. They're in the process of building very many nuclear reactors so that they don't have to burn so much coal and have so much pollution.
You can see that many of the Chinese leaders are trying though. Wish my Government (in Malaysia) was even trying to improve the country- so far they've been doing a lot of stupid/bad things. The guy at the top says lots of nice stuff, but so far it's just been talk, whereas his underlings say and do pretty bad stuff.
"Forbes awarded the humble dabba-wallahs a 6 Sigma performance rating, a term used in quality assurance if the percentage of correctness is 99.9999999 or more. In other words, for every six million tiffins delivered, only one fails to arrive. This error rate means in effect that a tiffin goes astray only once every two months."
That said, Forbes' percentage of correctness isn't that high, so they might have got that wrong;).
Ignore this paragrpah: Slashdot says: Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 36.4). Vestibulum venenatis mauris sit amet augue condimentum convallis. Donec hendrerit fringilla velit id sagittis. Nullam vitae metus sit amet justo malesuada congue. Aliquam eleifend metus sit amet lacus tincidunt nec lacinia dui malesuada. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Nam iaculis, lectus nec auctor sollicitudin, arcu ante commodo nunc, in aliquam elit risus at mi. Nullam tempor aliquam accumsan. Nulla facilisi. Donec ac risus in leo rhoncus euismod. Aenean placerat, ipsum eget accumsan rhoncus, erat elit consectetur metus, eget hendrerit lorem arcu ac metus. Nam non turpis ut odio cursus sodales sit amet at diam. Integer a mauris eu lorem placerat imperdiet eget sed erat. Phasellus viverra mauris quis arcu commodo vehicula. Sed vestibulum porttitor semper. Integer nisl massa, aliquet in tempus nec, mattis ut orci.
Try this instead: 1) whois torrent-finder.com (or http://www.who.is/whois/torrent-finder.com/ if you don't have a cli whois that works)
Whois Server Version 2.0
Domain names in the.com and.net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information.
>>> Last update of whois database: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 04:02:40 UTC <<<
NOTICE: The expiration date displayed in this record is the date the
[lots of legalese deleted]
including mining this data for your own personal or commercial purposes.
Please note: the registrant of the domain name is specified in the "registrant" field. In most cases, GoDaddy.com, Inc. is not the registrant of domain names listed in this database.
Registrant:
Torrent Finder
15 Alexandria St.
N/A
Alexandria, 55555
Egypt
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: TORRENT-FINDER.COM
Created on: 30-Dec-05
Expires on: 30-Dec-11
Last Updated on: 04-Oct-10
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Opulent lifestyles maybe, but there seems to be a bit more accountability in China.
Many top Chinese officials have been executed for corruption. Just google for: chinese official executed
In my opinion being executed is about as accountable as it gets. And certainly a lot more scary than being paid off with a golden parachute/handshake, or getting bailed out.
Someone might claim the executions are faked, but they (and their family) must be pretty good actors given their responses to the verdict. And even if so their lifestyle certainly would be drastically affected - hard to live like a king while resembling an executed official...
As for the topic, when I checked some years ago, China regularly tampered with DNS as part of censorship (related to national security I suppose).
The US DHS has tampered with DNS, not as extensively as China did, but since it's the DHS, I guess it's "national security" too?
If you don't piss on your hands, why do you need to scrub your hands?
it is just as clean as any other part of my body
When I go to the toilet, I usually wash my hands BEFORE touching my penis with them. I'm still rather attached to my penis :).
The problem with many toilets (not all) is bad design - they make it too hard to avoid contaminating your hands after washing them. For example, tap knobs are a daft idea. Taps that work with swing levers or similar are better. Same goes for many toilet doors. Some toilets here are better and don't have doors - for "modesty/privacy" they just have a L shaped or zig-zag corridor from the entrance.
It's not all bacteria and viruses you have to worry about. The problems are pathogenic bacteria and viruses.
The trouble is many people with pathogenic bacteria/viruses will be using those tap knobs, bathroom handles, soap dispensers etc after they've been forced to go to the toilet by those germs.
So if you design the toilets right, they'll be less likely to spread those pathogenic germs to others.
Whereas with a bad toilet design, even if you force people to wash their hands, it might not help that much in practice, and might even make things worse for the reasons I stated (plus the fact that most bacteria like water).
I think the OP was talking about the OICW: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_Individual_Combat_Weapon_program
Similar purpose but a different weapon from the one in this article.
I'm not a huge supporter of Israel at all, but I sure understand why they do what they do. It's like you fighting with someone, if he:
1) Doesn't promise to not kill you.
2) He keeps hitting you and trying to kill you whenever you let him go (even if he promises not to).
It's pretty understandable if you put a choke-hold on him and not let go. Also no surprise they stop getting hit as much as long as they have that chokehold.
Not pleasant to watch, but from what I see many of the Palestinians and their supporters share a HUGE part of the blame for their situation.
Israel seems to get on reasonably with Egypt and Jordan, after both agreed to make peace with Israel. But the rest of the Arab/muslim nations including the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel and they want to ELIMINATE Israel completely.
So why should anyone be surprised when Israel does not want to loosen their chokehold on the Palestinians?
See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict#Camp_David_Summit_.282000.29
In July 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton convened a peace summit between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak reportedly offered the Palestinian leader approximately 95% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem,[13] and that 69 Jewish settlements (which comprise 85% of the West Bank's Jewish settlers) would be ceded to Israel. He also proposed "temporary Israeli control" indefinitely over another 10% of the West Bank territory--an area including many more Jewish settlements. According to Palestinian sources, the remaining area would be under Palestinian control, yet certain areas would be broken up by Israeli bypass roads and checkpoints. Depending on how the security roads would be configured, these Israeli roads might impede free travel by Palestinians throughout their proposed nation and reduce the ability to absorb Palestinian refugees.
Arafat rejected this offer. President Clinton reportedly requested that Arafat make a counter-offer, but he proposed none. Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami who kept a diary of the negotiations said in an interview in 2001, when asked whether the Palestinians made a counterproposal: "No. And that is the heart of the matter. Never, in the negotiations between us and the Palestinians, was there a Palestinian counterproposal."
They rejected that offer. Why don't they make a counterproposal? The Palestinians don't really want to make peace with Israel. To them peace = Israel wiped out.
Hamas (and Fatah) certainly don't want peace with Israel, as long as they follow their own charter, any peace they make with Israel can only be temporary: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic/?c=1598&a=97061
Just go see what they want.
Yes it's pretty nasty what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, slowly strangling someone is nasty. But what should they do? The Palestinians themselves don't really want to make peace with Israel and as long as fighting or opposing Jews ( just because they are Jews) is _considered_ part of Islam by significant numbers of them (google it), go figure how long that peace will last.
As for getting rid of Israel totally:
From a secular objective perspective being a citizen of Israel would be better than being a citizen of "Greater Palestine" ruled by Hamas or Fatah (assuming Israel is gone). Just look at how the various muslim nations rule themselves. They kill and abuse their own people rather often (Shiites vs Sunnis, tribe vs tribe etc). Please list down the muslim countries that are doing better than Israel, by modern standards. Remember many of them have oil, Israel doesn
The Taliban in Afghanistan have it easier.
When in doubt, kill the ones in US military uniforms. If nobody in target area is wearing a US military uniform, kill the white or black guys, and avoid killing the brown ones wearing shalwar kameez.
Whereas the US troops just have to kill the wrong person and turns out the whole village is related to him/her, either by blood or by marriage. I think they've screwed up too many times already. And genocide is not a viable option for the USA.
Surely it's not series.
You can mention the product or site and still obfuscate the name.
There are so many ways to obfuscate the names. So how are you going to research it? If everyone uses obfuscated names it's going to be much harder when researching.
The same clueless people would have even more difficulty researching obfuscated names than the clueful, so they'll just be as screwed as before, while those with a clue would have to work harder to figure out obfuscated names. So what's the net benefit of your suggestion?
It should be pretty obvious that obfuscation is a stupid idea.
Did the rest of the world ever buy most of their oil/grain/Intel CPUs/beef in Zimbabwe dollars?
Did the rest of the world ever lend Zimbabwe lots of money payable in _Zimbabwe_dollars_?
Does the rest of the world live in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe?
The rest of the world lives at least partly in the US Gov's Zimbabwe.
The US will lose its advantage if the rest of the world starts moving away from the US dollars. But until then, it's not the same.
Maybe after making enough "oh noes" noises about capacity and "strain to the system" they might be able to charge users higher at night too. And if the system collapses they can say "ooh we did make worrying sounds about it, so don't be too hard on us".
I guess I'm too cynical ;).
The article says:
Not since air conditioning spread across the country in the 1950s and 1960s has the power industry faced such a growth opportunity.
What did the US power industry bunch say back then? Or did they "just shut up and do their jobs"?
You miss one very very important point in the US case. The "petro-dollar".
;).
Lots of countries hold billions (or more) of US dollars and use it to buy/sell stuff - like oil, electronics, grain, beef etc. Lots of countries lend money in US dollars, some even have lent trillions to the USA.
Printing money is basically taxing everyone holding net positive amounts of your currency (whether in cash or as net creditors - like Japan, China).
If the US Gov handed some of the created money to its own citizens then it's not so bad, because it means that the US Gov gets richer, the rest of the world holding US dollars get poorer, and the US citizens somewhere in between (depends on how much they get). And a lot of wealth is relative - so if the rest of the world is more screwed than the US citizens, the US citizens are more likely to be able to buy stuff from them rather cheaply (like bread and circuses, oh wait make that large TVs).
The net debtors don't benefit that much - because it takes a while for most to realize "something has changed" and be able to charge higher prices, plus when inflation goes up, interest rates often go up too. The US on the other hand is able to create the currency it owes much of its debt in so go figure
It's not as complex as some financiers and economists like to pretend.
But when you realize what's actually happening, it's pretty disgusting on many levels.
So the government and corporations listen to them?
:)
That's good news isn't it? After all, I've been hearing lots of people claiming that the Government and Corporations are ignoring the people and screwing them.
As your link says:
Westinghouse's readiness to transfer the technology for its AP1000 to China was a major factor in its selection.
Oh well, wait a while and buy your tech back from China. Hey the iPhone's designed in the US and made in China, too.
Might have some evil French tech included though: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-24/china-builds-french-designed-nuclear-reactor-for-40-less-areva-ceo-says.html
As for:
fierce opposition by just about everyone over air quality concerns.
Funny though, I keep hearing US people say the politicians aren't listening to them and just listening to Corporations. So which corporations opposed that? Not that I'm for building coal plants. I think nuclear is the way to go, but might be wise to look for a suitable nonuranium tech, because I believe China has already started grabbing as many cheap uranium supplies as it can.
On threads where I've commented I've tried to encourage people not to name the specific product or company in their rant, but too many clueless people out there.
Heck, the Times article just boosted the guy's profile even more! There wasn't just one mention of the company, but many, increasing the rank.
So the guy is an ass, but all the clueless people who want to blame someone else ( Google ) and not do research on a company but just buy whatever is claimed to be the cheapest
1) How are you going to check the reputation of the seller/product if everyone does what you suggest and not name names?
2) Search engines like Google and Bing don't simply rank by "number of mentions".
You don't seem that clueful yourself.
There will always be clueless people (and he wants to only do business with the weak and/or clueless). The real problem is cops and regulators aren't doing their jobs and stopping him- assuming he really made threatening and fraudulent phone calls.
Japan does have quite efficient rail travel despite having train cars with lots of people.
http://www.japanechoweb.jp/economy/jew0210
Remarkably, this punctuality has been a feature of Japan's rail services--day in, day out-- for decades now, regardless of rain and wind. This is a record that spans 45 years for the Shinkansen service and nearly a century (since the late 1910s) for other JR lines. 1
Some countries may laugh at this apparent obsession with punctuality, attributing such fastidiousness to Japanese passengers' maniacal preoccupation with time.
But the real reason that trains run on time is not because of demanding passengers but because it suits the adaptation strategies of the railroad companies. That is, it enables the operators to achieve the safest and most efficient railroad system.
In any country, a system in which all trains run according to schedule is the simplest to manage. 2 This is because it enables rail operators to achieve maximum carrying capacity with the given equipment and with the least likelihood of error.
Most efficient perhaps, but safest? I'm not sure, they still get disasters (but no idea how many per passenger-mile or passenger-trip):
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/27/world/asia/27iht-japan.html
It was perhaps with this in mind that the 23-year-old engineer, Ryujiro Takami, headed for Osaka on Monday morning. Takami, believed to have died in the crash, had only 11 months of experience, and he had been reprimanded once for overshooting a platform by 100 meters.
On Monday morning, at Itami station outside Osaka, Takami overshot the platform again, forcing him to back up and lose 90 seconds.
Apparently aware that he would be reprimanded again, he persuaded the conductor at the back of the train to report that he had overrun the platform by eight meters. Today, officials said that the length was actually 40 meters, the equivalent of two cars.
The train, carrying about 580 passengers, began running abnormally fast after leaving Itami station, passengers reported, so much so that the scenery outside whizzed by. The train was scheduled to arrive at Amagasaki station at 9:20 a.m., in time for many passengers to connect to another train leaving at 9:23.
Seems like JR made the mistake of getting someone too inexperienced or untrained or incompetent to do the job- he made mistakes and then compounded them with a fatal mistake.
That said, it doesn't seem that hard to prevent the train from going too fast at some points.
And if your penalty for speeding (or unsafe train driving) is higher than your penalty for being late then you'd rather be late than speed, and I'm sure the trains are monitored. So bad management also shares part of the blame.
FWIW people in management did resign: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_rail_crash#Aftermath
Yeah, maybe instead of the Fed Reserve printing trillions of dollars and handing them over to "sorry we can't tell you", they should have printed trillions to actually fix/build stuff - roads, power stations, power distribution, broadband etc. Can't outsource all of these jobs to India and Mexico too.
Maybe that'll cause inflation, but heck at least you all will get something out of it. Rather than just making a few rich people richer and still getting inflation.
Worried? Build more capacity then. It's not like your customers have been or will be getting all that electricity for free (or even cheap in some cases).
By Chrome can I assume you mean the Google Chrome browser? In that case, does your browser have tabs displayed? If it does, then what's the big difference between having "ugly" task buttons displayed and equally "ugly" tabs displayed? Why are you having those ugly tabs when you could give 100% real estate to a web page?
;)
Now see what I'm talking about? The reason for those ugly tabs is very similar to the reason for ugly task buttons.
Where you see ugly clutter, I see exposed functionality.
I'm fine with GUI designers catering for people like you who don't like all that ugliness. But nowadays it seems like too many GUI designers are trying to get rid of functionality, and making things slower and more difficult for people like me.
p.s. if you ever use MS Windows maybe you can get a small screen and dedicate half of it to a super huge task bar (windows doesn't let you drag it out more), and then move it out of the way of your two big screens. Or maybe put an app just to do that with thumbnails of app windows on that screen - a permanent "Expose".
I do understand that some people might want the "taskbar" to go away completely so that'll be a valid _option_ but any talk of getting rid of it without _replacing_ it with something better would be as stupid as having a Desktop GUI web browser that does tabs but has no actual tab "buttons/headers" to actually click on.
Assuming enough screen space, how many people would want their browser tabs to be on autohide (or even removed totally - requiring them to go to another "screen/mode" to switch tabs), despite browser tabs taking up screen space, and thus them not getting a full screen of the browser page as a default. How would such a feature help them?
A web browser for a device with a tiny screen might be a different case. But I'm talking about desktop GUIs.
And it is just beautiful to have all real estate 100% for the applications; with a 'panel' (desktop==dashboard) directly underneath; instead of invading the screen.
Maybe you need a bigger screen with higher resolution, or more screens.
To me the panel/taskbar is one of the applications I want to see. I use it very often - when switching from window to window amongst many different windows.
As such it would be counterproductive for me to hide it.
Hiding it makes sense if screen space is so limited that it takes up a significant part of the screen, but once a screen gets big enough, hiding the taskbar makes about as much sense as taking the trouble to hide the screen bezel.
It's slower to have to "jump through hoops" (extra clicks/actions or pauses) just to switch to a different window, compared to just being able to quickly click on the relevant taskbar button and have the desired window foregrounded without any unnecessary delay.
For that reason I find OS X's Expose slower. Yes it may be cool to see the thumbnails of all the windows appear etc, but in the end it is slower than just immediately clicking on the desired window's button.
Same for having to move to another desktop then only being able to switch to another window. What does having to do so add to productivity?
It's like a game cutscreen. Might be nice the first few times, but after a while, some people like me just prefer to skip the cutscreen and get to the "real stuff". The cutscreen just gets in the way.
Or a gun that does a fancy animation/motion before firing. People who need to shoot stuff fast, would consider that a flaw. The gun would need to have significant advantages for people to put up with the flaw.
Have a nice cool drink. Try not to be drunk when posting though ;).
:p.
FWIW, many of my "2 am" posts don't seem so good later in the day either
They seem to be planning changes. But I don't like their plans:
http://www.deansas.org/blog/2009/09/24/first-impressions-of-gnome-shell/
One of the main changes to my mind is that it does not have a window list on a panel. You switch applications by visiting the Activity "overlay" and then clicking on the window you wish to switch to. This doesn't really affect me much in practise, I usually use alt+tab to switch windows anyway, where it does affect me is for applications that change the window title, e.g. messenger or gmail, I now have to cycle through alt+tab to check for people replying to me etc.
Rather than a window list the panel now lists the name of the currently focused application. It seems a bit useless, most applications have the application name as part of the window list and I'm not likely to forget the name of an application I've started.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/2010-November/msg00030.html
Just wanted to share a personal experience with GNOME Shell. One of its new and unique attributes is not having the window list or any sort of persistent widget that shows running apps or opened windows. This has benefits, in theory, like helping the user focus on the foreground task.
It's just worth noting that one of its potential downsides is it violates the user's mental model, which makes it undesirable, even if it *may* help increase productivity. With a window list, it's clear to the user where the window goes when it's minimized and how to show it again. In GNOME Shell, the only clear way to tell if a window is minimized is to check if it can't be seen in the workspace, but it's shown in the Overview or Window Switcher (alt+tab). Teling which windows are minimized or not may not have real benefits, but it may be too disorienting for users.
Personally I think they've lost their marbles. How does that help productivity at all? Especially in the cases where you need to use more than one window to do your work?
In China this would be pointless because why would the government care what their people thought?
The Chinese government cares a lot about what their people think, that's why they have a lot of censorship. The Chinese government is well aware of history and of what happened to previous Chinese governments. Piss off too many (e.g. the peasants) and you die.
FWIW, a lot of the Chinese people support their own government (just look at the patriots out in full force during the Olympics).
Why?
1) The censorship and brainwashing. Control what people see and that affects what they think, and that's how you keep them supporting you.
2) Because there have actually been significant positive changes. Railways and highways have been built, many of the poor have benefited from those. Sure there's lots of bad stuff happening, but they can just look at a lot of other countries and go "We're doing better" or "we're doing pretty good given the hand we've been dealt".
3) They can see that at least some parts of the Government are trying to improve things for China, and not just a corrupt few. They're in the process of building very many nuclear reactors so that they don't have to burn so much coal and have so much pollution.
As for accountability: a number of high ranking officials actually get executed for corruption or screwing up big time[1]. Sure maybe at the very top there are untouchables, but is it really so different in the US or other countries? And how high up is this US guy anyway: http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20101104/NEWS/101109939/1078&ParentProfile=1062
They're possibly even slightly afraid of the people, they abolished the agricultural tax: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-03/06/content_422126.htm
http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/1274.html
It's not that rosy, there are lots of problems and it could fall apart: http://www.china.org.cn/china/2010-01/21/content_19282590.htm
That "houses are way too expensive" problem does exist in many other countries too though.
You can see that many of the Chinese leaders are trying though. Wish my Government (in Malaysia) was even trying to improve the country- so far they've been doing a lot of stupid/bad things. The guy at the top says lots of nice stuff, but so far it's just been talk, whereas his underlings say and do pretty bad stuff.
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/09/AR2007070900689_pf.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10535226
http://www.newkerala.com/news/world/fullnews-87512.html
1 in 100? You sure? That's terrible.
Maybe should outsource to a bunch of Indians:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala#Supply_Chain
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-24-2002-20997.asp
"Forbes awarded the humble dabba-wallahs a 6 Sigma performance rating, a term used in quality assurance if the percentage of correctness is 99.9999999 or more. In other words, for every six million tiffins delivered, only one fails to arrive. This error rate means in effect that a tiffin goes astray only once every two months."
That said, Forbes' percentage of correctness isn't that high, so they might have got that wrong ;).
It's interesting that wikileaks is going after governments with impunity,
My understanding of the way wikileaks works is that OTHER people pass them the leaks. They just publish the leaks anonymously.
And so "going after" is not an accurate description of what they do.
As long as nobody passes wikileaks stuff about evil companies or oppressive nations to leak, nothing appears about them.
Ignore this paragrpah: Slashdot says: Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 36.4).
.com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information.
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Try this instead:
1) whois torrent-finder.com
(or http://www.who.is/whois/torrent-finder.com/ if you don't have a cli whois that works)
Whois Server Version 2.0
Domain names in the
Domain Name: TORRENT-FINDER.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS1.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM
Name Server: NS2.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: serverDeleteProhibited
Status: serverTransferProhibited
Status: serverUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 24-nov-2010
Creation Date: 30-dec-2005
Expiration Date: 30-dec-2011
>>> Last update of whois database: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 04:02:40 UTC <<<
NOTICE: The expiration date displayed in this record is the date the
[lots of legalese deleted]
including mining this data for your own personal or commercial purposes.
Please note: the registrant of the domain name is specified in the "registrant" field. In most cases, GoDaddy.com, Inc.
is not the registrant of domain names listed in this database.
Registrant:
Torrent Finder
15 Alexandria St.
N/A
Alexandria, 55555
Egypt
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: TORRENT-FINDER.COM
Created on: 30-Dec-05
Expires on: 30-Dec-11
Last Updated on: 04-Oct-10
Administrative Contact:
Gadelkareem, Waleed kurtubba@gmail.com
Torrent Finder
N/A
N/A
Alexandria, 55555
Egypt
20121578967 Fax -- 2034411838
Technical Contact:
Gadelkareem, Waleed kurtubba@gmail.com
Torrent Finder
N/A
N/A