People who believe that eliminating taxation and reverting to 19th-century ideas free markets are a panacea for all the world's problems, pretty much.
Seems to me that the backwards 19th century was a lot less bloody than its more progressive 20th. Strictly in terms of saving lives and defending mother earth, racist imperialist male dominated societies seem to be a lot better for the planet. Really, if you want to save the earth, take away the women's right to vote.:-)
it's just a cranky old behemoth that's getting slowly bled away, and other than a few clever tricks like trying to destroy an international standards body isn't showing much imagination at all.
Slowly being bled away? Microsoft is reporting more revenues than ever in its financial statements.
. There's individual universities doing cancer research without funding from the NCI, drug companies doing their own research, and so on. What I was shooting for was a single government agency that represented research at a national level.
Unless a government agency at the federal level was actually empowered to put research lines on a project plan, screen out scientists whose plans fail, and do a lot of other things that would be politicized, I see no reason for it.
I think cancer cures are a product that people generally want, so the free market will invest in research for it, and it does.
Basically everyone I've known who has died, has died of cancer. It drives me crazy that we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars to avenge the deaths of 3,000 people, while under four billion is spent on fighting cancer
Except, your facts are wrong. We spend about 200 billion a year on cancer. You don't include private enterprise. There is a reason health care is so expensive and cancer is among the top reasons why. The average cost per cancer treatment is over a million dollars per patient. Multiply that by all the people who have gotten cancer and been treated, good or bad for it, and you'd find that we're spending about 200 billion dollars a year on cancer in one way, shape or form.
But Britain out-producing Germany in the run up and during the war cannot be totally attributed to Democracy vs. Dictatorship.
I can give you that point, based on the word "totally".
Fact is, Britain at the time was the Empire of the world. Its battleships had been patrolling the world seas virtually uncontended since Trafalgar, for more than a century.
Actually, the Germans did contend with the British for sea power leading nearly up until World War I. World War I really was Germany's chance, but in the lead up to the war, Britian turned on the jets and launched 8 battleships in one year, and guaranteed itself mastery of the waves. Germany never challenged Britian on the seas. Ironically, if Germany had been as aggressive navally during World War II as she was in World War I, she would have certainly knocked the British down a peg.
The technical know-how of the British Naval Engineers can not be compared to that of Germans who had lost all their colonies after the Great War, and had no real experience of warfare prior to WWII
I think you meant to write that sentence differently. Germany from World War II and before meant Prussian leadership (which really no longer exists today in the way that it did). Prussia had a long and worthy tradition in battle going at least to Napolean. But certainly modern Germany crushed the French in 1870, knocked the Russians out of World War I, and damned near beat a combined British and French army... except, again, the Royal Navy starved them...
Really, one could argue that, in World War II, Hitler was really refighting World War I... and probably thought that, if they beat the French + UK, (which they could not do before), they should easily knock the Russians out (which they did before). Unfortunately for him, while the French did get worse, the British and Russians did get better, and Germany going into the war did not address an underlying cause of her defeat in World War I - crushing naval inferiority.
Your comparison of German vs. Russian, American and even British defence force are thus, a bit misleading. In 1939, Russia and USA were not among the allied forces, and Hitler assumed that it would be himself and Italy vs. an already captured Austria, some german
Well, here's the thing. Anyone who had taken the time to read Mein Kampf would have seen that Hitler essentially arguing (and predicting), that he would a) first avenge Versaille against France, and then b) take over Russia and take the land for Germans.
So yeah, circa 1939, its true, Poland was the belligerant, with UK + France entering, but UK entered really because they did wake up, if a bit late, to the idea that Hitler meant what he wrote in that book. The idea was that if Poland could hang on, the allies could stop Germany in its tracks, but Poland collapsed much too quickly, the Norway plan failed, and then, France collapsed. For the allies, everything really just went wrong early in the war.
The thing that really screwed Hitler up was the British. He could never really wrap his head around the idea that a generally pacifist, liberal people like the British, that have such mastery of the seas, and their own empire, would actually risk everything to stop the Germans from embarking on a genocide. There was really no need for the British to declare war on Germany because of an invasion of Poland, and I don't think Hitler, in his warped mind, ever understood, or believed, that sometimes, great nations just do things because they are right.
Are you seriously suggesting that the Iowa class is just so great
It was a joke. But, in all seriousness, most naval buffs would say that Iowa one on one would make short work of Bizmark.
And more on-topic -- a big reason the Germans didn't invest in a lot of carriers and battleships is that it was rather pointless to do so.
You may have followed up my ridiculous comment with one of your own!
Without a Navy, Germany had to worry about potential landings in any number of places, from Norway to Italy, to even several places in France. With a Navy, that whole problem goes away.
To elaborate : if the Germans had a real blue water navy in World War II, and held control of the oceans, there's no American resupply of the British, no British reinforcements in Africa, and certainly no D-Day. The German cession of the blue water to the Allies ultimately doomed in the west. Had Germany a Navy, she hangs onto Africa, doesn't get invaded, and probably gets to move some 100 divisions to the East to fight against the Red Army. For that matter, Italy doesn't get invaded, and the Germans get to commit all of THOSE divisions to the eastern front.
The USA and British did their best to either disable or convince the French Navy to join the allied cause, for a reason.
The result of this was that German equipment, where it was not being built by slave labor, was extremely well-made
That's actually not true. German stuff wasn't made anywhere near the quality with the allies at the time. You color your characterization of American manufacturing with experiences based on cars of the 1970s. The fact is, until the Japanese came along in the 1980s, American manufactured stuff, was the best quality stuff in the world, and, was better by far.
Seriously, have a look at how many German tanks and aircraft kept breaking down, even before the advent of slave labor. German quality sucked, and then it got worse.
The whole myth of German quality in World War II came about because of pissed off Sherman tank drivers going up against Tiger tanks, which, were better armoured tanks. Seriously, as much as everyone prattles on about the quality of German Steel, those fans can find 50k tons of German Steel in the Bizmarck at the bottom of the Atlantic, but American face hardened Bethlehem Steel is still sitting pretty in the USS New Jersey (BB-62).
*sighs* Germany's problem with production was that it kept trying to produce the best and strongest, which is no way to win a war you're in the middle of.
But that's NOT TRUE at all. If it were true anywhere, it would be only true in the case of tanks, where the contractors were heavy machine makers and so treated each tank as a hand crafted thing. But even then, the Russian T-34 was a far better tank than the Panzers Germany entered the war with.
Beyond that, Germany sacrificed a lot for expediency. The entire U-Boat war was a concession to not build the best. The famed type XXI U-Boat, which could have been a game changer, was kept on the drawing boards to build the earlier designs. Germany cancelled construction of potential aircraft carriers, never built additional battleships... her whole naval strategy was to fight a sort of a guerilla war.
German infantry, for example, went to battle with a bolt action rifle, whereas her Yankee counterparts had the superior M1 Garand. And, you say, the "best"... German logistics trains relied in large part on steam locomotive engine and horse drawn transportation. Last time I checked, a truck was better than horse. The careful researcher will also note that the USA, incidentally, developed steam locomotives that significantly outperformed their German counterparts.
And have a look at aircraft, again.... the BF-109 and Spitfire were fairly close aircraft going into the war and throughout the Battle of Britain, but, again, the Germans had no equivalent to the Lancaster Bomber.
It goes on and on and on... Really, we have to look at the German Armed Forces for what they were. It had some modern tactics to help it early on, but, ultimately the whole thing was a mishmash of some misapplied high tech propaganda pieces to mask the overall inferiority of the whole thing. None of German's high tech weapons - the King Tiger, the V1 and V2, the ME-262, and the type XXI U-Boat, did a damned thing to change the outcome of the war, and her low tech weapons were simply not up to scratch.
Germany had an army that entered the war with tanks that weren't even as good as their French counterparts, a fighter aircraft that only matched the best the British could produce, had no real logistics support, a navy that lacked the capital ships to challenge its obvious rival, radar and signals intelligence nowhere near as advanced as her British counterparts. German communications was so bad that not only were all of their tactical communications read by the allies, the Germans didn't even realize that they were being read, despite obvious failures.
d) Don't do anything - let extremely dangerous men go free because being forced to reveal the information would be even more damaging
Is the correct answer. In the absence of a trial and the admission of evidence to open court, the state has not proved that the man involved is actually extremely dangerous. The government cannot have it both ways. If it "knows" the guy is dangerous, then it can bring him or her to trial.
The best way to fight terrorism, is with terrorism. Yes, terrorism is an act of war. The best analog of terrorism is the state sponsored piracy of western nations in the days of sail. All the nations practiced piracy as a means to fight that were short of war. Civilian ships, merchant vessels, were the targets of plunder and destruction. It seems that the way to handle terrorists then, in an era where all the nations support them, or are too weak to prevent terrorists, then, we have to have terrorists ourselves, and engage in tit for tat terrorism with probable enemies.
Instead of invading countries with the US Marines and US Army, we instead have our own Uncle Sam Brigade to fight the Al Quds Brigades, our Bedrock to fight their "Base". The USA would deny it funds the terrorist organizations, but, if Al Qaeda hit an American target, then, the Uncle Sam Brigade would in turn blow up an Islamic religious site, or perhaps steal an oil tanker or two. There are people in American Prisons that could, no doubt, be recruited for this work.
. We can see Communism practiced on board of Enterprise in Star Trek, for example. Crew members can replicate anything they want and build whatever they like; use Holodecks as much as they want
It's funny, but, as much as StarFleet goes on about how they have eliminated scarcity, they never seem to have enough starships to go up against heavyweight enemies like the Borg or the Dominion. And, in TOS, Harry Mudd made "money", somehow. And, somehow, Federation personel would have to come up with that Latinum to visit DS9's bar! Surely the Ferengi do not take goodwill as payment!
China proves that Fascism, not Socialism, works. China is a vindication of everything the post-Socialist Fascist movement thought was in need of change in Socialist ideology to make it work. As a result, China has many of the benefits of capitalism, but has the state control of the means of production that Socialism provides.
No, it doesn't, by any stretch of the imagination. All China has proved that some organized method of industrialization proves an increase in the standard of living and wealth of a nation. Really, prior to the mid 1980s, China was so screwed up that just about means of exporting goods to the USA would improve them.
Seriously... this sort of myth was really born of the "Hitler Miracle", about, how the Nazi regime supposedly turned the German economy around in the midst of the Great Depression. Sure, Nazi propaganda would have us believe the in the midth of Hitler's German economic juggernaut, but the truth is, if you look at the statistics - EVEN THE BRITISH WERE OUT PRODUCING THE GERMANS. I won't belabor the point of American production, because the Americans had population and other advantages over Germany. Instead, let's look at the British, whom had less population, less natural resources, and still managed to produce more aircraft and more warships than the Germans, ultimately cutting Germany off from the sea and then taking Germany out of the air.
Essentially, all Germany could do was build a bunch of U-Boats that were just facelift improvements from World War I designs (the "modern" U-Boat came way too late to make a difference). Germany built two primary battleships - Bizmarck and Tirpitz. By contrast, the British built 5 battleships of the KGV class, more than a few aircraft carriers, and plenty of not only fighters, but also four engine heavy bombers. Germany could never build 4 engine bombers in number, becuase despite having an entire continent at her disposal, the Germans always had engine shortages...
And, why was that?
It's because fascism is a crooked and corrupt institution, and crooked institutions are not efficient. Tales of Nazi looting of other countries abound, but there was massive disorganization, massive crime... really, just imagine a bunch of thugs in a command economy, telling corporate bosses what to produce for war armaments... eventually, the whole thing would collapse... as indeed, it would have, under its own weight, had not the weight of a few million Allied soldiers and thousands of tons of Allied bombs not helped it along.
And that's ultimately what's going to happen with China. Already, rumours abound about problems in the Chinese banking sector, there's inflation being swept under the rug, and there's all sorts of inefficiencies creeping in that are just swept under the rug.
Bottom line is, fascist regimes always produce good economic results, only because we believe them when they tell us that we do. At some point, freedom really -does- matter, and that will catch up to China.
You're right, of course - arrest records should be sealed until a verdict is reached, and then destroyed upon acquittal. I wonder what religious rightist or corporate statist argument that runs up against?
Oh please, look at how many left wingers have no problem tarring and feathering their political enemies in unison. Have you been to Kos lately?
know that I am going to say is going to be very popular but here goes anyway
I think a federal investment in public WIFI in all major urban areas would pay for itself in a few years, given greater economic and educational opportunity.
A long, long time ago, I actually worked at that Progressive place in Mayfield, I think. The managers there are a bunch of thuggish, halfwitted and dishonest assholes that just loved to lord power all over people. The whole corporate culture was a crock of shit. I will never, ever, own Progressive insurance of any kind, as long as I live.
People that think that Halliburton is evil have never worked for Progressive.
I think the people of the United States should declare me to be the Dictator of North America. This burden would be heavy, and I think I would deserve payment in equal to 10% of the Federal Budget, per year, for my services, and to maintain my staff and personal guard.
As your Emperor, I would, in general, put all the artists to work by inspiring them to build giant statues and banners of me, everywhere.
Now, as your Emperor, I would make great use of all of this "junk". I would mash and melt it all down, as much as possible, and use the material to construct a one mile high pyramid, sited near Cleveland OH, that would be designed to be my funeral tomb for all eternity, except that I wouldn't use it at all.
I'm thinking Golden Arches, instead of Golden Mask. I'd probably put like a fast food concessions are in the middle of it, instead of my sarcophagus.
Because if they live & got your license, you're guilty of Attempted Vehicular Manslaughter
The highways are filled with cameras. They would see this biker start kicking my car, and then they would see me either pull a gun on the guy, or drive over. Self defense, in either way. I'd walk, as should anyone else in this situation. Vigilantism as advocated by the original biker poster is completely unacceptable.
Since Jobs came back to Apple, the company's revenues, share price and market cap have all risen dramatically. Anyone that invested in Apple when the future of the company was in doubt, when Jobs first arrived back in the 1990s, would have done quite handsomely by now. I wish I would have bought stock in the company back then.
To argue that somehow Jobs did something to hurt Apple stock is ridiculous. I might just have to go out and buy a Mac in protest!
I've found that, if you just leave the linksys wireless router on, remote users can get access to the router itself, which, is undesirable. However, I definitely agree with the sentiment of everyone just sharing bandwidth. Is there a good FAC out there for configuring a wifi so that people can use it, but also keeping traffic so that they just use your cable line and not your other computers.. at least until you start serving up your own wifi access page.
Ok, just to toss this out there, but, why do you need a theory that links gravity into the standard model when there is, as of yet, no known force that actually effects gravity. There's no battery operated anti-gravity machine, so, why unify something that isn't?
Sounds to me like all this is a just some mathemeticians tacking on a few extra dimensions, making it internally consistent, and calling that new. I think if you sat down and worked it out though, there's probably an infinite number of theories of everything that can actually intersect all the data out there, so its really not like there's just "one".
Slashdot Mirror
People who believe that eliminating taxation and reverting to 19th-century ideas free markets are a panacea for all the world's problems, pretty much.
:-)
Seems to me that the backwards 19th century was a lot less bloody than its more progressive 20th. Strictly in terms of saving lives and defending mother earth, racist imperialist male dominated societies seem to be a lot better for the planet. Really, if you want to save the earth, take away the women's right to vote.
it's just a cranky old behemoth that's getting slowly bled away, and other than a few clever tricks like trying to destroy an international standards body isn't showing much imagination at all.
Slowly being bled away? Microsoft is reporting more revenues than ever in its financial statements.
There's no sales tax.
-ever-.
. There's individual universities doing cancer research without funding from the NCI, drug companies doing their own research, and so on. What I was shooting for was a single government agency that represented research at a national level.
Unless a government agency at the federal level was actually empowered to put research lines on a project plan, screen out scientists whose plans fail, and do a lot of other things that would be politicized, I see no reason for it.
I think cancer cures are a product that people generally want, so the free market will invest in research for it, and it does.
Basically everyone I've known who has died, has died of cancer. It drives me crazy that we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars to avenge the deaths of 3,000 people, while under four billion is spent on fighting cancer
Except, your facts are wrong. We spend about 200 billion a year on cancer. You don't include private enterprise. There is a reason health care is so expensive and cancer is among the top reasons why. The average cost per cancer treatment is over a million dollars per patient. Multiply that by all the people who have gotten cancer and been treated, good or bad for it, and you'd find that we're spending about 200 billion dollars a year on cancer in one way, shape or form.
My automatic update keeps demanding that I install IE7. Any way to shut this off?
But Britain out-producing Germany in the run up and during the war cannot be totally attributed to Democracy vs. Dictatorship.
I can give you that point, based on the word "totally".
Fact is, Britain at the time was the Empire of the world. Its battleships had been patrolling the world seas virtually uncontended since Trafalgar, for more than a century.
Actually, the Germans did contend with the British for sea power leading nearly up until World War I. World War I really was Germany's chance, but in the lead up to the war, Britian turned on the jets and launched 8 battleships in one year, and guaranteed itself mastery of the waves. Germany never challenged Britian on the seas. Ironically, if Germany
had been as aggressive navally during World War II as she was in World War I, she would have certainly knocked the British down a peg.
The technical know-how of the British Naval Engineers can not be compared to that of Germans who had lost all their colonies after the Great War, and had no real experience of warfare prior to WWII
I think you meant to write that sentence differently. Germany from World War II and before meant Prussian leadership (which really no longer exists today in the way that it did). Prussia had a long and worthy tradition in battle going at least to Napolean. But certainly modern Germany crushed the French in 1870, knocked the Russians out of World War I, and damned near beat a combined British and French army... except, again, the Royal Navy starved them...
Really, one could argue that, in World War II, Hitler was really refighting World War I... and probably thought that, if they beat the French + UK, (which they could not do before), they should easily knock the Russians out (which they did before). Unfortunately for him, while the French did get worse, the British and Russians did get better, and Germany going into the war did not address an underlying cause of her defeat in World War I - crushing naval inferiority.
Your comparison of German vs. Russian, American and even British defence force are thus, a bit misleading. In 1939, Russia and USA were not among the allied forces, and Hitler assumed that it would be himself and Italy vs. an already captured Austria, some german
Well, here's the thing. Anyone who had taken the time to read Mein Kampf would have seen that Hitler essentially arguing (and predicting), that he would a) first avenge Versaille against France, and then b) take over Russia and take the land for Germans.
So yeah, circa 1939, its true, Poland was the belligerant, with UK + France entering, but UK entered really because they did wake up, if a bit late, to the idea that Hitler meant what he wrote in that book. The idea was that if Poland could hang on, the allies could stop Germany in its tracks, but Poland collapsed much too quickly, the Norway plan failed, and then, France collapsed. For the allies, everything really just went wrong early in the war.
The thing that really screwed Hitler up was the British. He could never really wrap his head around the idea that a generally pacifist, liberal people like the British, that have such mastery of the seas, and their own empire, would actually risk everything to stop the Germans from embarking on a genocide. There was really no need for the British to declare war on Germany because of an invasion of Poland, and I don't think Hitler, in his warped mind, ever understood, or believed, that sometimes, great nations just do things because they are right.
Are you seriously suggesting that the Iowa class is just so great
It was a joke. But, in all seriousness, most naval buffs would say that Iowa one on one would make short work of Bizmark.
And more on-topic -- a big reason the Germans didn't invest in a lot of carriers and battleships is that it was rather pointless to do so.
You may have followed up my ridiculous comment with one of your own!
Without a Navy, Germany had to worry about potential landings in any number of places, from Norway to Italy, to even several places in France. With a Navy, that whole problem goes away.
To elaborate : if the Germans had a real blue water navy in World War II, and held control of the oceans, there's no American resupply of the British, no British reinforcements in Africa, and certainly no D-Day. The German cession of the blue water to the Allies ultimately doomed in the west. Had Germany a Navy, she hangs onto Africa, doesn't get invaded, and probably gets to move some 100 divisions to the East to fight against the Red Army. For that matter, Italy doesn't get invaded, and the Germans get to commit all of THOSE divisions to the eastern front.
The USA and British did their best to either disable or convince the French Navy to join the allied cause, for a reason.
The result of this was that German equipment, where it was not being built by slave labor, was extremely well-made
That's actually not true. German stuff wasn't made anywhere near the quality with the allies at the time. You color your characterization of American manufacturing with experiences based on cars of the 1970s. The fact is, until the Japanese came along in the 1980s, American manufactured stuff, was the best quality stuff in the world, and, was better by far.
Seriously, have a look at how many German tanks and aircraft kept breaking down, even before the advent of slave labor. German quality sucked, and then it got worse.
The whole myth of German quality in World War II came about because of pissed off Sherman tank drivers going up against Tiger tanks, which, were better armoured tanks. Seriously, as much as everyone prattles on about the quality of German Steel, those fans can find 50k tons of German Steel in the Bizmarck at the bottom of the Atlantic, but American face hardened Bethlehem Steel is still sitting pretty in the USS New Jersey (BB-62).
*sighs* Germany's problem with production was that it kept trying to produce the best and strongest, which is no way to win a war you're in the middle of.
But that's NOT TRUE at all. If it were true anywhere, it would be only true in the case of tanks, where the contractors were heavy machine makers and so treated each tank as a hand crafted thing. But even then, the Russian T-34 was a far better tank than the Panzers Germany entered the war with.
Beyond that, Germany sacrificed a lot for expediency. The entire U-Boat war was a concession to not build the best. The famed type XXI U-Boat, which could have been a game changer, was kept on the drawing boards to build the earlier designs. Germany cancelled construction of potential aircraft carriers, never built additional battleships... her whole naval strategy was to fight a sort of a guerilla war.
German infantry, for example, went to battle with a bolt action rifle, whereas her Yankee counterparts had the superior M1 Garand. And, you say, the "best"... German logistics trains relied in large part on steam locomotive engine and horse drawn transportation. Last time I checked, a truck was better than horse. The careful researcher will also note that the USA, incidentally, developed steam locomotives that significantly outperformed their German counterparts.
And have a look at aircraft, again.... the BF-109 and Spitfire were fairly close aircraft going into the war and throughout the Battle of Britain, but, again, the Germans had no equivalent to the Lancaster Bomber.
It goes on and on and on... Really, we have to look at the German Armed Forces for what they were. It had some modern tactics to help it early on, but, ultimately the whole thing was a mishmash of some misapplied high tech propaganda pieces to mask the overall inferiority of the whole thing. None of German's high tech weapons - the King Tiger, the V1 and V2, the ME-262, and the type XXI U-Boat, did a damned thing to change the outcome of the war, and her low tech weapons were simply not up to scratch.
Germany had an army that entered the war with tanks that weren't even as good as their French counterparts, a fighter aircraft that only matched the best the British could produce, had no real logistics support, a navy that lacked the capital ships to challenge its obvious rival, radar and signals intelligence nowhere near as advanced as her British counterparts. German communications was so bad that not only were all of their tactical communications read by the allies, the Germans didn't even realize that they were being read, despite obvious failures.
d) Don't do anything - let extremely dangerous men go free because being forced to reveal the information would be even more damaging
Is the correct answer. In the absence of a trial and the admission of evidence to open court, the state has not proved that the man involved is actually extremely dangerous. The government cannot have it both ways. If it "knows" the guy is dangerous, then it can bring him or her to trial.
The best way to fight terrorism, is with terrorism. Yes, terrorism is an act of war. The best analog of terrorism is the state sponsored piracy of western nations in the days of sail. All the nations practiced piracy as a means to fight that were short of war. Civilian ships, merchant vessels, were the targets of plunder and destruction. It seems that the way to handle terrorists then, in an era where all the nations support them, or are too weak to prevent terrorists, then, we have to have terrorists ourselves, and engage in tit for tat terrorism with probable enemies.
Instead of invading countries with the US Marines and US Army, we instead have our own Uncle Sam Brigade to fight the Al Quds Brigades, our Bedrock to fight their "Base". The USA would deny it funds the terrorist organizations, but, if Al Qaeda hit an American target, then, the Uncle Sam Brigade would in turn blow up an Islamic religious site, or perhaps steal an oil tanker or two. There are people in American Prisons that could, no doubt, be recruited for this work.
. We can see Communism practiced on board of Enterprise in Star Trek, for example. Crew members can replicate anything they want and build whatever they like; use Holodecks as much as they want
It's funny, but, as much as StarFleet goes on about how they have eliminated scarcity, they never seem to have enough starships to go up against heavyweight enemies like the Borg or the Dominion. And, in TOS, Harry Mudd made "money", somehow. And, somehow, Federation personel would have to come up with that Latinum to visit DS9's bar! Surely the Ferengi do not take goodwill as payment!
China proves that Fascism, not Socialism, works. China is a vindication of everything the post-Socialist Fascist movement thought was in need of change in Socialist ideology to make it work. As a result, China has many of the benefits of capitalism, but has the state control of the means of production that Socialism provides.
No, it doesn't, by any stretch of the imagination. All China has proved that some organized method of industrialization proves an increase in the standard of living and wealth of a nation. Really, prior to the mid 1980s, China was so screwed up that just about means of exporting goods to the USA would improve them.
Seriously... this sort of myth was really born of the "Hitler Miracle", about, how the Nazi regime supposedly turned the German economy around in the midst of the Great Depression. Sure, Nazi propaganda would have us believe the in the midth of Hitler's German economic juggernaut, but the truth is, if you look at the statistics - EVEN THE BRITISH WERE OUT PRODUCING THE GERMANS. I won't belabor the point of American production, because the Americans had population and other advantages over Germany. Instead, let's look at the British, whom had less population, less natural resources, and still managed to produce more aircraft and more warships than the Germans, ultimately cutting Germany off from the sea and then taking Germany out of the air.
Essentially, all Germany could do was build a bunch of U-Boats that were just facelift improvements from World War I designs (the "modern" U-Boat came way too late to make a difference). Germany built two primary battleships - Bizmarck and Tirpitz. By contrast, the British built 5 battleships of the KGV class, more than a few aircraft carriers, and plenty of not only fighters, but also four engine heavy bombers. Germany could never build 4 engine bombers in number, becuase despite having an entire continent at her disposal, the Germans always had engine shortages...
And, why was that?
It's because fascism is a crooked and corrupt institution, and crooked institutions are not efficient. Tales of Nazi looting of other countries abound, but there was massive disorganization, massive crime... really, just imagine a bunch of thugs in a command economy, telling corporate bosses what to produce for war armaments... eventually, the whole thing would collapse... as indeed, it would have, under its own weight, had not the weight of a few million Allied soldiers and thousands of tons of Allied bombs not helped it along.
And that's ultimately what's going to happen with China. Already, rumours abound about problems in the Chinese banking sector, there's inflation being swept under the rug, and there's all sorts of inefficiencies creeping in that are just swept under the rug.
Bottom line is, fascist regimes always produce good economic results, only because we believe them when they tell us that we do. At some point, freedom really -does- matter, and that will catch up to China.
You're right, of course - arrest records should be sealed until a verdict is reached, and then destroyed upon acquittal. I wonder what religious rightist or corporate statist argument that runs up against?
Oh please, look at how many left wingers have no problem tarring and feathering their political enemies in unison. Have you been to Kos lately?
know that I am going to say is going to be very popular but here goes anyway
I think a federal investment in public WIFI in all major urban areas would pay for itself in a few years, given greater economic and educational opportunity.
A long, long time ago, I actually worked at that Progressive place in Mayfield, I think. The managers there are a bunch of thuggish, halfwitted and dishonest assholes that just loved to lord power all over people. The whole corporate culture was a crock of shit. I will never, ever, own Progressive insurance of any kind, as long as I live.
People that think that Halliburton is evil have never worked for Progressive.
We also know that UCLA has recently sued over the non-licensed usage of it's patents by a number of software technology firms, including Microsoft.
I think we need to stop providing federal money to universities that act like patent trolls.
I think the people of the United States should declare me to be the Dictator of North America. This burden would be heavy, and I think I would deserve payment in equal to 10% of the Federal Budget, per year, for my services, and to maintain my staff and personal guard.
As your Emperor, I would, in general, put all the artists to work by inspiring them to build giant statues and banners of me, everywhere.
Now, as your Emperor, I would make great use of all of this "junk". I would mash and melt it all down, as much as possible, and use the material to construct a one mile high pyramid, sited near Cleveland OH, that would be designed to be my funeral tomb for all eternity, except that I wouldn't use it at all.
I'm thinking Golden Arches, instead of Golden Mask. I'd probably put like a fast food concessions are in the middle of it, instead of my sarcophagus.
may not agree with you about much, tj, but I surely agree with you on this. I actually got a little misty eyed...
Misty eyed? Me too. And this sort of thing that we agree on is really what's most important. All the other stuff, well, is just that, other stuff.
Have a great weekend! I'm sure we'll argue over something 'ere too long!
And yes, that entire story was just so I could "drop" that I have a wife in a slashdot post. Cunning, huh?
Your wife's recovery and you staying with her, through all of that, is the most poignant thing I have read on Slashdot, ever.
A story like yours deserves to be told, and demands that we listen.
May the winds always be at your back.
Because if they live & got your license, you're guilty of Attempted Vehicular Manslaughter
The highways are filled with cameras. They would see this biker start kicking my car, and then they would see me either pull a gun on the guy, or drive over. Self defense, in either way. I'd walk, as should anyone else in this situation. Vigilantism as advocated by the original biker poster is completely unacceptable.
Since Jobs came back to Apple, the company's revenues, share price and market cap have all risen dramatically. Anyone that invested in Apple when the future of the company was in doubt, when Jobs first arrived back in the 1990s, would have done quite handsomely by now. I wish I would have bought stock in the company back then.
To argue that somehow Jobs did something to hurt Apple stock is ridiculous. I might just have to go out and buy a Mac in protest!
I've found that, if you just leave the linksys wireless router on, remote users can get access to the router itself, which, is undesirable. However, I definitely agree with the sentiment of everyone just sharing bandwidth. Is there a good FAC out there for configuring a wifi so that people can use it, but also keeping traffic so that they just use your cable line and not your other computers.. at least until you start serving up your own wifi access page.
Ok, just to toss this out there, but, why do you need a theory that links gravity into the standard model when there is, as of yet, no known force that actually effects gravity. There's no battery operated anti-gravity machine, so, why unify something that isn't?
Sounds to me like all this is a just some mathemeticians tacking on a few extra dimensions, making it internally consistent, and calling that new. I think if you sat down and worked it out though, there's probably an infinite number of theories of everything that can actually intersect all the data out there, so its really not like there's just "one".