I love how a government of 500 million people claims to be the victim of a company of 100,000. It just boggles the mind.
The fact of the matter is that open source, at least in the eyes of European policy makers, is about kicking the Americans out of the software business in Europe. Yet another example of how free trade is a failure.
Definitely, am supporting protectionist candidates in the United States.
No, not needed. If you don't know Hollywood is liberal, you may as well not even know what color the sky is.
You're right in that Bush didn't care about his own popularity, what mattered to him was his business buddies and the so called conservative Christians.
No, because Bush alienated his conservative christian buddies on free trade and illegal immigration. In fact, I'd be some conservative christians voted for Obama because they were hoping he would clamp down on free trade. Obviously, he's not going to. Instead, his plan is to tax the guys that run walmart, and everyone else will be unemployed. That's some America.
I wonder if you could use this effect to make a sort of a propulsion system for a small submarine. If you don't have a propeller at all, and were just spinning water around, it could be very quiet.
Falcon, you are right. Republicans do support strong IP legislation for the benefit of Hollywood and I've never understood why.
When it comes down to the brass tacks, both political parties basically fight for federal dollars and rights for their constituencies. In the case of Republicans, they really don't have any constituencies in the media business. They have Clint, Arnold and the late Charleton, but all of those guys are more libertarian Republicans than the core conservative Republicans. Charleton supported black civil rights big time in his day, Clint has put out a number of thoughtful movies that celebrate freedom and challenge stereotypes and Arnold's always been about America as an economic proposition. Incidentally, those are the kind of Republicans I like.
But that's really about it. The bulk of today's Hollywood is never going to approve of Orin Hatch, who was at the time the real leader of the Republican IP movement. If you are going to be a conservative in an environment where the media business is out to get you, and you generally demonize media all the time, then why support legislation that you perceive will help it? Democrats have no problem going after Republican bedrocks of oil, mining and agriculture. Why should Republicans stick up for Michael Moore and Barbara Streisand? Did they really think that Babs would suddenly say, "oh, I like Republicans now that I can get Yentil royalties for 70 years after I'm dead?" None of these artists have the right to their works anyway for that long.
If Republicans REALLY wanted to attract Hollywood's support, what they need to do is put legislation on the table that gives the actual Actors, Actresses, Writers and Directors, all a share of the cut of the sales of internet downloads, DVDs, iTunes, and more. They could have supported the strike, for one thing. All the owners getting striked against are all Democrats - like Speilberg, Geffen, Katzenberg and more... taking some money out of their pockets to give to the actual people that make the films would have split Hollywood politically.
But alas, it's not just that the Republicans of the last 15 years have been unable to keep to their own promise of limited government, they haven't even been good politicians! IT's one thing to look at a policy and say a candidate or a party is stupid. But when that party isn't even capable of seeing and then doing what it needs to do to attract support, then, my friend, is really when you have to say that they are all idiots.
I mean, I know you hate Bush, but as a politician, there are so many things he could have done at any given time to improve his own situation. Bush always had it in his head that if he did his policies successfully, then his personal popularity didn't matter. But what he didn't get, is that, in a democracy, you have to be popular to succeed.
As the room for innovation in the IT world shrinks, Microsoft will have to fall back to the patent portfolio
You think the room for innovation in the IT world shrinks. It doesn't shrink. If anything, there's more room for innovation than ever as more people recognize the value of software. It's just that, its a lot harder to understand where to innovate than it was before, but the rewards are there.
Microsoft's problem isn't so much that there's no more room to innovate then, its that, its not as sure as where to go as it was in the past. Linux shows that you can't just rest on the complexity of a product and hope people can't figure out how to make it. Even if every single Microsoft patent holds, that basically means the core of their business expires within a decade, and a lot of it has expired already.
Even though patents exist, even though they exist for what some may say too long, they are only a delay against the inevitable. If Microsoft does not leverage their know-how into new products and new services, successfully, reinventing its own core technologies and assumptions, then it will die.
I was always under the impression that Germany pretty much canceled all strategic bombing development as soon as Udet showed up the Luftwaffe. They didn't see the need for strategic bombing as the German doctrine was that if you threw all the aircraft into tactical support for the Wermacht, the army would wind up just taking over the country.
Like, I know they had one bomber that they canceled in the early 1930s, and then there's always some talk about I think the Condor being used as a strategic bomber, but that's really cause there's just some slim pickings for German heavy aircraft. Heck, if the Germans had just bigger transports, they pull it out at Stalingrad - they weren't THAT far from making that airlift work.
Even in bomber design, the B17 was designed to make sure the bloody thing got home, the Lancaster had less then half the defensive armament but three times the bomb load, it was designed to make sure it did some bloody damage.
The Lanc, I believe, was also a newer design than the B-17... the USAAF was caught between two designs... the B-17, which was practically obsolete by the time the war began, and the B-29, which was basically way over budget and way too late. One wonders, if the B-29 had appeared on time, like, in 1943, if the war could have genuinely been won from the air. I mean, the Allies were awefully close at Big Week but were unable to keep the pressure up. With a B-29, they get fewer losses and more bombs.
The British had for almost a 500 years a fairly simple approach to warfare. It's called "shoot the enemy a lot". I'd bet that it comes from their own ancient fascination with the long bow, where, really, you had to just put as many arrows in the air as possible to win and they did win that way at Agincourt.
From that they always worked on the rate and power of their fire, whereas other nations had a more mixed set of priorities. It wasn't just about getting more hits - they also recognized the intimidating effect having a lot of stuff coming your way meant.
But even after their machine gun, you saw British military theorists like Lidell Hart advocating for what the Germans would adapt into their own blitzkreig, and the USA into its Shock and Awe. And, even their commandos and SAS, upon which all the special forces of the world are based, are also really about, "shoot the enemy a lot"...
Bottom line is, if you mess with the British, they are going to shoot you a lot. So its really easier just have them as an ally and keep them working on their bad food and good music and television.
But he had no answer when asked what the other 3/4 of the people should then do. The 3/4 of people who had no skills beyond growing, and selling spice
Well, they could do what the USA did, and dole out degrees and cubicles to everyone, pretend that selling insurance to each other creates wealth, have them all borrow trillions of dollars to build up their houses, and then bankrupt the planet.
I guess you have been hiding under a rock for the last 6+ years or so and entirely missed the whole offshoring-to-India movement? Thousands of jobs forever lost to the WalMarts of India IT.
No, I really haven't. I noticed it most when American Express offshored its customer service, and they position themselves as a premium service card. I've actually argued that of all the dumb things that McCain and Republicans did in the campaigns of the last, oh, 6 years, was to be in favor of free trade. It's politically stupid, especially for them, because, they would have the blue collar vote if they weren't, so, well anti-blue collar.
Is there any reason why someone should make more here for the same work than someone in Asia? Do you apply the same logic toward automation and the resulting cost savings?
Yeah, I would prefer to not live in a one room hut with 20 people. I like to have more than one TV. In fact, come to think of it, I really, really like electricity.
Let's see how all you pro free-trade computer people make out now. Boy, after decades of saying that auto-workers should make the same as their chinese counterparts, how will it feel to hear corporations saying the same about computer people?
You know what? It is high time the USA start caring about its country and less about the world. All we hear about is the world this and the world that and all the world does is drop stuff on our shores, reject any products we make, trash our culture, abandons us in war.
Screw the world. That's my motto.
I call on all Americans, of any political party, to purchase American products, to reject military alliances abroad, to bring our troops and our jobs with them. We have an entire section of a continent, with plenty of food and natural resources. There are 300 million of us. Let's make for ourselves, protect for ourselves, and rediscover ourselves. We can become a great producer of goods and wealth again, but for now, let's kick all the foreign goods out.
Yes, I really do mean that. Stop caring so much about your country and start caring more about your WORLD and things will get better for everyone.
And so do I. I am proud to care more for my country than the rest of the world. The rest of the world has, over the last 50 years, only meant the ruin of American cities. We have done enough.
The vast majority of people in Europe will buy "what they think is best". Whether it's made here, there or somewhere else is totally irrelevant
I doubt it. I mean, I really don't believe that at all. It never has been true and never will be true.
I don't believe in free trade.
It hasn't worked for America. So screw it. I could care less about the "global" economy. I want Americans to have jobs at home.
I think this statement best summarises where you are wrong. You do realise that most people have never owned a console
In America?
Even people that don't own consoles often buy video games for their kids, and a lot of kids have had some kind of video game. Just look at some of the US console sales. They are into the millions. Even if people didn't have them, they are aware of them.
And, right now, PCs are just about everywhere. Most people know what browsers are, in the USA.
That's right. I will never, ever, ever buy a German or any other foreign car, no matter what they put on the lot in front of me. It doesn't matter how safe, how big, how fast, how reliable. It's not American.
I grew up in Ohio. All I heard was that free trade would ultimately help the American manufacturing industry get back on its base and for decades I've just watched good cities turn into dumps, factories shut down, schools turn into crackhouses, and, the ruin is too much. The midwest, where I come from, is predicated on American manufacturing, and I can't even count how many people have had their lives ruined because of all the work that has been lost. For what? To have a German car? That's just insane. It's just not worth it.
As it is, if I could buy an American TV, I would. If I could buy an American bed, I would. If I could buy American stuff, I do. I buy American whereever I can. I might even quit drinking Budweiser because its not American any more... but there's still a ton of Americans working for A.B. so its ok to support them.
About the only thing I will really not be too concerned about the origin is wine. The French and Italians are simply unstoppable when it comes to wine and I think that, I could do that.
I use Firefox because well, I like it. But yeah, when I decide to develop for Windows versus Linux, or advocate either, Windows does goes a slant because it is an American company that makes it.
The way I see it, plenty of Europeans, and most asian countries will never buy an American product no matter what the USA produces, so, to hell with them. Even though I am a Republican, I strongly support my government's efforts to get GM and Ford back on their feet, and if it means I have to have national health care to get a competitive advantage with European manufacturers, I'll sign on. I don't care about ideology any more. Even a socialist sympathizing half-communist union organizer is more American than anyone from another country. WE still watch the same movies, still follow the same sports teams, speak the same language, have the same history, have a similar culture - (the best liberals I know are actually very christian in culture if not in belief, not-too-shockingly), and well, are Americans. IF they lose economically, I lose. If I win, they win. No other country is sending their kids off to Iraq or Afghanistan in the numbers we did, but I betchya any car worker in the USA has family that fought in any of America's wars and their family probably saved my family's life and vice versa.
Nation matters, and if the American people are to be united, they will need to come around to see that how the government decides to tax and distribute wealth is actually a very small portion of what our lives are about. We Americans have way more in common amongst ourselves than our political parties and international friends would have us believe.
I know a lot of people with 3 series BMWers, and they do last a long time, and are a fun drive, but man, they are in the shop a long time. Every time I talk to my friends with a BMW or a Porsche or a Jetta, they are in the shop for something. Fantastic cars when they work, for sure, but, they are as tempermental as the people that make them.
For easy to work on, nothing will ever top an early 1970s American car with a V8 engine. They were simple, roomy under the hood, and pretty easy to get to.
But, if I didn't care about nationality, and reliability was as a premium, and I was looking for a small car, I would buy a Japanese car. German cars have good engineering, but Japanese engineering is nearly as good and they are better built. Lexus is just hands down better than Mercedes, any day of the week.
As it is, on the reliability scale, the most reliable thing you can own is an American car or truck with a V8 engine. For safety, again we turn to early 1970s American cars with body on frame and heavier steel construction.
Today, Germans may well be kings of the 6, but Ford and GM are both making some good 6's these days, and the Japanese are the kings of the 4, and the USA is the king of the V8, although one could make an argument that Australians know how to use the American V8 pretty well. My 2004 GTO was a great car to drive so long as there was no snow on the roads.
Everyone here seems to be acting as if consumers don't understand how to download, install or use some alternative program. Yet, everyone has been buying programs for video game consoles for almost 30 years, and has been buying software for PCs for nearly as long. Yet, somehow consumers are to notice that there is a choice in browsers.
For the EU, if they are looking to protect their way into developing a domestic desktop industry, the problem is that the ideology that permeates the continent, utterly precludes that from happening. Why would a European pay for Opera, when FireFox and Chrome are both open and free. Even though on some level I'm a bit bothered by the idea of the EU trying to protect themselves against the one industry Americans are actually good it, by the same token, I will never in my life buy a German car, simply because it is not American, so I can't say that I blame them for it.
Being an armchair scientist can be fun, but why in the world do you think that all the scientists have missed something so simple as the effect of the sun on global warming
I would say its pretty simple. There's not actually that many scientists that are building climate simulation engines and the result is so vague that it is easy to experimentally verify. The basic output is that the earth is getting warmer since the industrial revolution coincident with a rise in CO2, and that really means, to people in the field, to look for signs of warming, and to look for CO2, and then also to then try to understand the effects.
My skepticism is with the model. Wall Street models were quite successful too, but they never actually ran them in a regime of falling housing prices to see what would happen. Woops, and I think the same sort of woops is extremely likely in climate software. This to me isn't a failing of the climate scientist community per se, as much as I think it is actually a failure of the software community as it is simply too hard to create complicated models, and scientists are notoriously the worst of all programmers.
My bet on sunspots is really well, indicative of some unknown or seemingly benign assumption turning out to be wrong. I'm looking forward to seeing the results from this CO2 satellite as, if the manmade theory is right, we should really see CO2 plumes rising up from, well, the USA, and spreading throughout the world. If they time it right, we should see highways without traffic without CO2, and highways with traffic, with more CO2, and that CO2 should not be consumed by anything on the way. I understand that they've already got a pretty good amount of evidence that says that the CO2 in the air is from human activities largely because of some weird radio thing, but, the graphic evidence of that, and where these concentrations are, is what's interesting. We should expect to see local fluctuations in temperature in CO2 plume areas, I would think. You should be able to take all the temperature data, match it up to all the CO2 plumes, and see anomolies fall off as the concentration of CO2 falls off around where the CO2 is introduced, even if only a small amount. But of course, there could be surprises. It could turn out that there is some massive unknown source of CO2 bubbling up out of the unexplored regions of the earth. It could turn out that the CO2 coming from the USA is getting consumed by the USA due to some new thing that they discover. It could actually turn out that the USA is actually covering up what should be a fairly big and natural sinking of CO2 caused by sunspots, and we should otherwise be in an ice age, if it were not for our SUVs. It could actually be something new, beautiful and unimaginably cool, and that, my friend, is why we give scientists billions of dollars, to make us wonder, more than to answer questions.
First off, we have to assume that a mutation leading to a certain flu free human is even possible. I'm not a bio guy by any stretch of the imagination but I would be willing to bet that there are some transformations from one gene to another that are essentially impossible.
Secondly, is there really considerable selection pressure to keep us from dying of the flu? That's really the question. It might actually be that dying from the flu could have been a positive force for humanity in some weird way. Like, if you have too many kids for a local eco-system to support - the flu comes along. If you have too many old people, the flu comes along. If a group of humans didn't have the flu, they might well succumb under their own weight. Those humans, as a whole, then breed anew and spread and conquer those other humans who are all weak and starving.
So, far from flu resistance evolving, I'd say, I doubt that a resistance to the flu could evolve, and, even if it could, then it might well be that we have been selected to die from the flu.
But there is considerable selection pressure to stop us dying of flu. Less so the development of flight
First off, we have to assume that a mutation leading to a certain flu free human is even possible. I'm not a bio guy by any stretch of the imagination but I would be willing to bet that there are some transformations from one gene to another that are essentially impossible.
Secondly, is there really considerable selection pressure to keep us from dying of the flu? That's really the question. It might actually be that dying from the flu could have been a positive force for humanity in some weird way. Like, if you have too many kids for a local eco-system to support - the flu comes along. If you have too many old people, the flu comes along. If a group of humans didn't have the flu, they might well succumb under their own weight. Those humans, as a whole, then breed anew and spread and conquer those other humans who are all weak and starving.
So, far from flu resistance evolving, I'd say, if anything, it might well be that we have been selected to die from the flu.
The thing that Gould missed was that yeah, some smart people, were clued into the Earth being round, but by and large most people were pretty stupid. I mean, before we go and bestow great piles of brains on our middle ages ancestors, we do need to be reminded that even some of the kings could not read. Like some Vikings, they were going to sail off the edge of the planet...
Slashdot Mirror
I love how a government of 500 million people claims to be the victim of a company of 100,000. It just boggles the mind.
The fact of the matter is that open source, at least in the eyes of European policy makers, is about kicking the Americans out of the software business in Europe. Yet another example of how free trade is a failure.
Definitely, am supporting protectionist candidates in the United States.
Citation needed.
No, not needed. If you don't know Hollywood is liberal, you may as well not even know what color the sky is.
You're right in that Bush didn't care about his own popularity, what mattered to him was his business buddies and the so called conservative Christians.
No, because Bush alienated his conservative christian buddies on free trade and illegal immigration. In fact, I'd be some conservative christians voted for Obama because they were hoping he would clamp down on free trade. Obviously, he's not going to. Instead, his plan is to tax the guys that run walmart, and everyone else will be unemployed. That's some America.
I wonder if you could use this effect to make a sort of a propulsion system for a small submarine. If you don't have a propeller at all, and were just spinning water around, it could be very quiet.
Falcon, you are right. Republicans do support strong IP legislation for the benefit of Hollywood and I've never understood why.
When it comes down to the brass tacks, both political parties basically fight for federal dollars and rights for their constituencies. In the case of Republicans, they really don't have any constituencies in the media business. They have Clint, Arnold and the late Charleton, but all of those guys are more libertarian Republicans than the core conservative Republicans. Charleton supported black civil rights big time in his day, Clint has put out a number of thoughtful movies that celebrate freedom and challenge stereotypes and Arnold's always been about America as an economic proposition. Incidentally, those are the kind of Republicans I like.
But that's really about it. The bulk of today's Hollywood is never going to approve of Orin Hatch, who was at the time the real leader of the Republican IP movement. If you are going to be a conservative in an environment where the media business is out to get you, and you generally demonize media all the time, then why support legislation that you perceive will help it? Democrats have no problem going after Republican bedrocks of oil, mining and agriculture. Why should Republicans stick up for Michael Moore and Barbara Streisand? Did they really think that Babs would suddenly say, "oh, I like Republicans now that I can get Yentil royalties for 70 years after I'm dead?" None of these artists have the right to their works anyway for that long.
If Republicans REALLY wanted to attract Hollywood's support, what they need to do is put legislation on the table that gives the actual Actors, Actresses, Writers and Directors, all a share of the cut of the sales of internet downloads, DVDs, iTunes, and more. They could have supported the strike, for one thing. All the owners getting striked against are all Democrats - like Speilberg, Geffen, Katzenberg and more... taking some money out of their pockets to give to the actual people that make the films would have split Hollywood politically.
But alas, it's not just that the Republicans of the last 15 years have been unable to keep to their own promise of limited government, they haven't even been good politicians! IT's one thing to look at a policy and say a candidate or a party is stupid. But when that party isn't even capable of seeing and then doing what it needs to do to attract support, then, my friend, is really when you have to say that they are all idiots.
I mean, I know you hate Bush, but as a politician, there are so many things he could have done at any given time to improve his own situation. Bush always had it in his head that if he did his policies successfully, then his personal popularity didn't matter. But what he didn't get, is that, in a democracy, you have to be popular to succeed.
As the room for innovation in the IT world shrinks, Microsoft will have to fall back to the patent portfolio
You think the room for innovation in the IT world shrinks. It doesn't shrink. If anything, there's more room for innovation than ever as more people recognize the value of software. It's just that, its a lot harder to understand where to innovate than it was before, but the rewards are there.
Microsoft's problem isn't so much that there's no more room to innovate then, its that, its not as sure as where to go as it was in the past. Linux shows that you can't just rest on the complexity of a product and hope people can't figure out how to make it. Even if every single Microsoft patent holds, that basically means the core of their business expires within a decade, and a lot of it has expired already.
Even though patents exist, even though they exist for what some may say too long, they are only a delay against the inevitable. If Microsoft does not leverage their know-how into new products and new services, successfully, reinventing its own core technologies and assumptions, then it will die.
I was always under the impression that Germany pretty much canceled all strategic bombing development as soon as Udet showed up the Luftwaffe. They didn't see the need for strategic bombing as the German doctrine was that if you threw all the aircraft into tactical support for the Wermacht, the army would wind up just taking over the country.
Like, I know they had one bomber that they canceled in the early 1930s, and then there's always some talk about I think the Condor being used as a strategic bomber, but that's really cause there's just some slim pickings for German heavy aircraft. Heck, if the Germans had just bigger transports, they pull it out at Stalingrad - they weren't THAT far from making that airlift work.
Even in bomber design, the B17 was designed to make sure the bloody thing got home, the Lancaster had less then half the defensive armament but three times the bomb load, it was designed to make sure it did some bloody damage.
The Lanc, I believe, was also a newer design than the B-17... the USAAF was caught between two designs... the B-17, which was practically obsolete by the time the war began, and the B-29, which was basically way over budget and way too late. One wonders, if the B-29 had appeared on time, like, in 1943, if the war could have genuinely been won from the air. I mean, the Allies were awefully close at Big Week but were unable to keep the pressure up. With a B-29, they get fewer losses and more bombs.
The British had for almost a 500 years a fairly simple approach to warfare. It's called "shoot the enemy a lot". I'd bet that it comes from their own ancient fascination with the long bow, where, really, you had to just put as many arrows in the air as possible to win and they did win that way at Agincourt.
From that they always worked on the rate and power of their fire, whereas other nations had a more mixed set of priorities. It wasn't just about getting more hits - they also recognized the intimidating effect having a lot of stuff coming your way meant.
But even after their machine gun, you saw British military theorists like Lidell Hart advocating for what the Germans would adapt into their own blitzkreig, and the USA into its Shock and Awe. And, even their commandos and SAS, upon which all the special forces of the world are based, are also really about, "shoot the enemy a lot"...
Bottom line is, if you mess with the British, they are going to shoot you a lot. So its really easier just have them as an ally and keep them working on their bad food and good music and television.
But he had no answer when asked what the other 3/4 of the people should then do. The 3/4 of people who had no skills beyond growing, and selling spice
Well, they could do what the USA did, and dole out degrees and cubicles to everyone, pretend that selling insurance to each other creates wealth, have them all borrow trillions of dollars to build up their houses, and then bankrupt the planet.
I guess you have been hiding under a rock for the last 6+ years or so and entirely missed the whole offshoring-to-India movement? Thousands of jobs forever lost to the WalMarts of India IT.
No, I really haven't. I noticed it most when American Express offshored its customer service, and they position themselves as a premium service card. I've actually argued that of all the dumb things that McCain and Republicans did in the campaigns of the last, oh, 6 years, was to be in favor of free trade. It's politically stupid, especially for them, because, they would have the blue collar vote if they weren't, so, well anti-blue collar.
Is this what we want all of America to be? I don't think Americans should think so.
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Yep, free trade is working great. The evidence is there for everyone to see!
Looks like you've got a winner of a plan there.
Retard.
Kick the foreign occupiers companies out.
Every job has a cost - the opportunity cost. Reduce that cost and you increase wealth.
It's whose wealth is being increased, is the question that we're asking here.
Is there any reason why someone should make more here for the same work than someone in Asia? Do you apply the same logic toward automation and the resulting cost savings?
Yeah, I would prefer to not live in a one room hut with 20 people. I like to have more than one TV. In fact, come to think of it, I really, really like electricity.
Let's see how all you pro free-trade computer people make out now. Boy, after decades of saying that auto-workers should make the same as their chinese counterparts, how will it feel to hear corporations saying the same about computer people?
Stop caring so much about your country
You know what? It is high time the USA start caring about its country and less about the world. All we hear about is the world this and the world that and all the world does is drop stuff on our shores, reject any products we make, trash our culture, abandons us in war.
Screw the world. That's my motto.
I call on all Americans, of any political party, to purchase American products, to reject military alliances abroad, to bring our troops and our jobs with them. We have an entire section of a continent, with plenty of food and natural resources. There are 300 million of us. Let's make for ourselves, protect for ourselves, and rediscover ourselves. We can become a great producer of goods and wealth again, but for now, let's kick all the foreign goods out.
Yes, I really do mean that. Stop caring so much about your country and start caring more about your WORLD and things will get better for everyone.
And so do I. I am proud to care more for my country than the rest of the world. The rest of the world has, over the last 50 years, only meant the ruin of American cities. We have done enough.
The vast majority of people in Europe will buy "what they think is best". Whether it's made here, there or somewhere else is totally irrelevant
I doubt it. I mean, I really don't believe that at all. It never has been true and never will be true.
I don't believe in free trade.
It hasn't worked for America. So screw it. I could care less about the "global" economy. I want Americans to have jobs at home.
I think this statement best summarises where you are wrong. You do realise that most people have never owned a console
In America?
Even people that don't own consoles often buy video games for their kids, and a lot of kids have had some kind of video game. Just look at some of the US console sales. They are into the millions. Even if people didn't have them, they are aware of them.
And, right now, PCs are just about everywhere. Most people know what browsers are, in the USA.
German car...never..
That's right. I will never, ever, ever buy a German or any other foreign car, no matter what they put on the lot in front of me. It doesn't matter how safe, how big, how fast, how reliable. It's not American.
I grew up in Ohio. All I heard was that free trade would ultimately help the American manufacturing industry get back on its base and for decades I've just watched good cities turn into dumps, factories shut down, schools turn into crackhouses, and, the ruin is too much. The midwest, where I come from, is predicated on American manufacturing, and I can't even count how many people have had their lives ruined because of all the work that has been lost. For what? To have a German car? That's just insane. It's just not worth it.
As it is, if I could buy an American TV, I would. If I could buy an American bed, I would. If I could buy American stuff, I do. I buy American whereever I can. I might even quit drinking Budweiser because its not American any more... but there's still a ton of Americans working for A.B. so its ok to support them.
About the only thing I will really not be too concerned about the origin is wine. The French and Italians are simply unstoppable when it comes to wine and I think that, I could do that.
I use Firefox because well, I like it. But yeah, when I decide to develop for Windows versus Linux, or advocate either, Windows does goes a slant because it is an American company that makes it.
The way I see it, plenty of Europeans, and most asian countries will never buy an American product no matter what the USA produces, so, to hell with them. Even though I am a Republican, I strongly support my government's efforts to get GM and Ford back on their feet, and if it means I have to have national health care to get a competitive advantage with European manufacturers, I'll sign on. I don't care about ideology any more. Even a socialist sympathizing half-communist union organizer is more American than anyone from another country. WE still watch the same movies, still follow the same sports teams, speak the same language, have the same history, have a similar culture - (the best liberals I know are actually very christian in culture if not in belief, not-too-shockingly), and well, are Americans. IF they lose economically, I lose. If I win, they win. No other country is sending their kids off to Iraq or Afghanistan in the numbers we did, but I betchya any car worker in the USA has family that fought in any of America's wars and their family probably saved my family's life and vice versa.
Nation matters, and if the American people are to be united, they will need to come around to see that how the government decides to tax and distribute wealth is actually a very small portion of what our lives are about. We Americans have way more in common amongst ourselves than our political parties and international friends would have us believe.
but works? Come one...that's a bit unrealistic.
I know a lot of people with 3 series BMWers, and they do last a long time, and are a fun drive, but man, they are in the shop a long time. Every time I talk to my friends with a BMW or a Porsche or a Jetta, they are in the shop for something. Fantastic cars when they work, for sure, but, they are as tempermental as the people that make them.
For easy to work on, nothing will ever top an early 1970s American car with a V8 engine. They were simple, roomy under the hood, and pretty easy to get to.
But, if I didn't care about nationality, and reliability was as a premium, and I was looking for a small car, I would buy a Japanese car. German cars have good engineering, but Japanese engineering is nearly as good and they are better built. Lexus is just hands down better than Mercedes, any day of the week.
As it is, on the reliability scale, the most reliable thing you can own is an American car or truck with a V8 engine. For safety, again we turn to early 1970s American cars with body on frame and heavier steel construction.
Today, Germans may well be kings of the 6, but Ford and GM are both making some good 6's these days, and the Japanese are the kings of the 4, and the USA is the king of the V8, although one could make an argument that Australians know how to use the American V8 pretty well. My 2004 GTO was a great car to drive so long as there was no snow on the roads.
Everyone here seems to be acting as if consumers don't understand how to download, install or use some alternative program. Yet, everyone has been buying programs for video game consoles for almost 30 years, and has been buying software for PCs for nearly as long. Yet, somehow consumers are to notice that there is a choice in browsers.
For the EU, if they are looking to protect their way into developing a domestic desktop industry, the problem is that the ideology that permeates the continent, utterly precludes that from happening. Why would a European pay for Opera, when FireFox and Chrome are both open and free. Even though on some level I'm a bit bothered by the idea of the EU trying to protect themselves against the one industry Americans are actually good it, by the same token, I will never in my life buy a German car, simply because it is not American, so I can't say that I blame them for it.
Those who want to dictate to others are trash
Well, liberals do want to dictate to others...
Being an armchair scientist can be fun, but why in the world do you think that all the scientists have missed something so simple as the effect of the sun on global warming
I would say its pretty simple. There's not actually that many scientists that are building climate simulation engines and the result is so vague that it is easy to experimentally verify. The basic output is that the earth is getting warmer since the industrial revolution coincident with a rise in CO2, and that really means, to people in the field, to look for signs of warming, and to look for CO2, and then also to then try to understand the effects.
My skepticism is with the model. Wall Street models were quite successful too, but they never actually ran them in a regime of falling housing prices to see what would happen. Woops, and I think the same sort of woops is extremely likely in climate software. This to me isn't a failing of the climate scientist community per se, as much as I think it is actually a failure of the software community as it is simply too hard to create complicated models, and scientists are notoriously the worst of all programmers.
My bet on sunspots is really well, indicative of some unknown or seemingly benign assumption turning out to be wrong. I'm looking forward to seeing the results from this CO2 satellite as, if the manmade theory is right, we should really see CO2 plumes rising up from, well, the USA, and spreading throughout the world. If they time it right, we should see highways without traffic without CO2, and highways with traffic, with more CO2, and that CO2 should not be consumed by anything on the way. I understand that they've already got a pretty good amount of evidence that says that the CO2 in the air is from human activities largely because of some weird radio thing, but, the graphic evidence of that, and where these concentrations are, is what's interesting. We should expect to see local fluctuations in temperature in CO2 plume areas, I would think. You should be able to take all the temperature data, match it up to all the CO2 plumes, and see anomolies fall off as the concentration of CO2 falls off around where the CO2 is introduced, even if only a small amount. But of course, there could be surprises. It could turn out that there is some massive unknown source of CO2 bubbling up out of the unexplored regions of the earth. It could turn out that the CO2 coming from the USA is getting consumed by the USA due to some new thing that they discover. It could actually turn out that the USA is actually covering up what should be a fairly big and natural sinking of CO2 caused by sunspots, and we should otherwise be in an ice age, if it were not for our SUVs. It could actually be something new, beautiful and unimaginably cool, and that, my friend, is why we give scientists billions of dollars, to make us wonder, more than to answer questions.
First off, we have to assume that a mutation leading to a certain flu free human is even possible. I'm not a bio guy by any stretch of the imagination but I would be willing to bet that there are some transformations from one gene to another that are essentially impossible.
Secondly, is there really considerable selection pressure to keep us from dying of the flu? That's really the question. It might actually be that dying from the flu could have been a positive force for humanity in some weird way. Like, if you have too many kids for a local eco-system to support - the flu comes along. If you have too many old people, the flu comes along. If a group of humans didn't have the flu, they might well succumb under their own weight. Those humans, as a whole, then breed anew and spread and conquer those other humans who are all weak and starving.
So, far from flu resistance evolving, I'd say, I doubt that a resistance to the flu could evolve, and, even if it could, then it might well be that we have been selected to die from the flu.
But there is considerable selection pressure to stop us dying of flu. Less so the development of flight
First off, we have to assume that a mutation leading to a certain flu free human is even possible. I'm not a bio guy by any stretch of the imagination but I would be willing to bet that there are some transformations from one gene to another that are essentially impossible.
Secondly, is there really considerable selection pressure to keep us from dying of the flu? That's really the question. It might actually be that dying from the flu could have been a positive force for humanity in some weird way. Like, if you have too many kids for a local eco-system to support - the flu comes along. If you have too many old people, the flu comes along. If a group of humans didn't have the flu, they might well succumb under their own weight. Those humans, as a whole, then breed anew and spread and conquer those other humans who are all weak and starving.
So, far from flu resistance evolving, I'd say, if anything, it might well be that we have been selected to die from the flu.
The thing that Gould missed was that yeah, some smart people, were clued into the Earth being round, but by and large most people were pretty stupid. I mean, before we go and bestow great piles of brains on our middle ages ancestors, we do need to be reminded that even some of the kings could not read. Like some Vikings, they were going to sail off the edge of the planet...