Bill and Hillary Clinton thought Iraq had WMD. Al Gore thought Iraq had WMD. Ted Kennedy thought Iraq had WMD. John Kerry thought Iraq had WMD. Plenty of other Democrats thought Iraq had WMD. Even the French thought Iraq had WMD.
It turns out that Iraq probably didn't have WMD.
There is a difference between a mistake and a lie. If the best intelligence availble told Bush that Iraq had WMD and he repeated that, then it is a mistake, not a lie. Clinton and others who had access to the same intellegence came to the same conclusion. It would only be a lie if intelligence told him Iraq had no WMD, but he said it anyway.
I think Bush owes the American people an apology and some heads need to roll at the CIA, but Bush did not LIE about WMD. Given the information that he had, I would have probably done the same thing if I were in his shoes.
As an example of how lying by *ordinary* people is treated, has anyone heard of Martha Stewart?
The charges against Martha Stewart are a bunch of trumped up baloney.
Martha Stewart was accused of insider trading.
Martha Stewart Inc. stock price plummets.
Martha Stewart denies insider trading.
The Feds have no case against her for insider trading. What she is being charged with is securities fraud. In other words, the Feds say that she lied about insider trading, that they cannot prove, in order to boost the stock price of Martha Stewart Inc.
I recieved much of my college education on Ultra 5's.
They were exciting and new back in 1999 when I started. The computer lab had a row of Ultra 5's, a few Ultra 1's, some SparcStation 4,5,10, & 20's and even a few SparcClassics (!). There were also some Solaris/Intel machines. The U-5's were definitely the machines you wanted.
Eventually the U-5's replaced all the older machines before being phased out themselves by the SunBlades. All in all, they were not bad machines, but the video seriously left something to be desired. And the 128MB of RAM in the older machines just didn't cut it by the end. Considering what a comparable Wintel Box would have cost at the time and how long they would have lasted, the U-5's were not a bad deal. There are probably many still around the department and in the labs today.
I had couple of medieval castles, a small space fleet, a city under the bed, and probably a few hundred bricks and plates on the floor of my room.
Legos teach math and creativity. (3 plates = 1 brick. If you don't have a 4x2 brick, several other combinations will work.) Build whatever you want. Hours of fun.
Legos may be expensive, but given how many hours of enjoyment they give for the amount of money you spend they are a much better deal than some dumb action figure or another video game system.
Actually, the Pirate legos are what started the specialization trend back in 1989. Unlike Castle, Space, or Town, Pirate System had considerably more specialized parts. The Pirate Ship could only be a pirate ship, the cannon would always be a cannon, and the pirates would only be pirates.
IMHO, Pirate System was when Lego jumped the shark. There was some good stuff after that, but it had already started heading downhill.
I remember the good old "Light & Sound" fire engine (1987). Mostly generic parts except the battery box and siren which would either play a European or American type siren.
For some reason, my mother never got me new batteries when the original set died.
In the heyday of Lego, (late 1980's-early 1990's IMHO) you had a few specialized parts and mostly rather generic parts. You could build many different things out of a kit, sometimes even coming up with things better that what the kit was intended for. For example, I was able to build a church for my Lego town out of leftover castle parts.
Now it's all specialized crap. You can only build one thing that looks halfway decent. What's the fun in that?
For the U.S. to become an appealing source of labor again, its standard of living must fall to that of the third world. I don't see how that benefits anyone except the owners of these corporations.
It finally took globalization for Americans to realize how truly dirt poor the rest of the world is.
Short term, wages will be set at the minimum level. Long term, production will increase and everyone will enjoy a higher standard of living.
Already we are starting to see the benefits of international trade in the form of less expensive goods and higher standards of living. My mother-in-law used to make her own clothes because the American made textiles were too expensive. Now imported textiles are so cheap that it is no longer cost effective to make your own. People may not make as much (excluding artificial inflation), but what we make goes further.
If the problem is that someone has too small of a piece of the pie, the solution isn't to cut the pie differently, because then you are taking pie from someone else. The solution is to make the pie bigger. Everyone wins.
This is what completely amazes me in the world we live in, Joe Millionaire really believes that paying family providers a salary 1/100000th of his own is a COST.
If you don't like it, go work somewhere else. Or start your own company.
No one is forcing you to take that job. If you do take the job, it is because it is better than the alternative.
Good CEO's are worth the money, but lots aren't and they get paid anyway.
No CEO should make over $1 million in base salary.
I'm all for stock options and potential bonuses out the ying-yang, but the amount of compensation that the CEO takes home should be directly related to the company's performance.
And if they are, they will very quickly learn that they get what they pay for with labor.
Quality is certainly a factor in price and any company with any sense would take this into account when choosing any part of production, including labor. Outsourcing programmers to India may be cost effective. Outsourcing tech support, which has to deal with large numbers of American English speaking customers may cost more than it saves.
Case in point: I do not buy the cheapest brand of gas for my car. Instead, I always buy name brand gas, even if it costs more. Why? Because I get better gas mileage off of the name brand stuff, making it a better total value. However, there are many things that I do buy off brand because they are a better value.
If companies are not factoring total value into the equation, then let them go extinct. Better companies will inevitably take their place.
Remember, it's not how much you make, it's how much you can afford.
With the same experience in the same field at the same job, I could make considerably more money in another area of the U.S. However, I wouldn't take the job because the cost of living is higher in those areas. My standard of living would go down, even though I would make more money.
Free trade does bring American wages down. But it also brings prices down as well. Not too long ago, when the U.S. textile industry was thriving, many people in the U.S. made their own clothes because store bought clothes were so expensive. Now clothes are imported and so inexpensive it is no longer cost effective to make them, the people in the third world have better (though not great) employment, and nearly all those textile workers have better jobs. (Let's face it, Milliken still has a high turnover rate for it's employees. The jobs that were lost weren't the best jobs in America.) A few people were hurt in the short run, but everyone benefits in the long run.
I used to have a K-1000 until it was stolen. Don't get me wrong, it was a great camera, but it has very few features for the price.
After I lost the K-1000, I was able to get a Yashica FX-103 Program (auto exposure with manual override) on e-bay with two zoom lenses for considerably less than a K-1000 with a 50mm.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't know about Gaelic football, didn't think about Rugby.
There was no standardized spelling in Middle English
Let's face it, there's no standardized (or is it standardised?)spelling of Modern English.
Color/Colour
Defence/Defense
Center/Centre
And don't forget that three different sports called "football" in the English speaking world.
English is terribly unstandardized.
"Bush lied about WMD"
Really?
Bill and Hillary Clinton thought Iraq had WMD.
Al Gore thought Iraq had WMD.
Ted Kennedy thought Iraq had WMD.
John Kerry thought Iraq had WMD.
Plenty of other Democrats thought Iraq had WMD.
Even the French thought Iraq had WMD.
It turns out that Iraq probably didn't have WMD.
There is a difference between a mistake and a lie. If the best intelligence availble told Bush that Iraq had WMD and he repeated that, then it is a mistake, not a lie. Clinton and others who had access to the same intellegence came to the same conclusion. It would only be a lie if intelligence told him Iraq had no WMD, but he said it anyway.
I think Bush owes the American people an apology and some heads need to roll at the CIA, but Bush did not LIE about WMD. Given the information that he had, I would have probably done the same thing if I were in his shoes.
The charges against Martha Stewart are a bunch of trumped up baloney.
Martha Stewart was accused of insider trading.
Martha Stewart Inc. stock price plummets.
Martha Stewart denies insider trading.
The Feds have no case against her for insider trading. What she is being charged with is securities fraud. In other words, the Feds say that she lied about insider trading, that they cannot prove, in order to boost the stock price of Martha Stewart Inc.
I recieved much of my college education on Ultra 5's.
They were exciting and new back in 1999 when I started. The computer lab had a row of Ultra 5's, a few Ultra 1's, some SparcStation 4,5,10, & 20's and even a few SparcClassics (!). There were also some Solaris/Intel machines. The U-5's were definitely the machines you wanted.
Eventually the U-5's replaced all the older machines before being phased out themselves by the SunBlades. All in all, they were not bad machines, but the video seriously left something to be desired. And the 128MB of RAM in the older machines just didn't cut it by the end. Considering what a comparable Wintel Box would have cost at the time and how long they would have lasted, the U-5's were not a bad deal. There are probably many still around the department and in the labs today.
If you are in the U.S., blame the exchange rate. Euros have gone from $0.80 to $1.25 in the past couple of years.
The toy that defined my childhood.
I had couple of medieval castles, a small space fleet, a city under the bed, and probably a few hundred bricks and plates on the floor of my room.
Legos teach math and creativity. (3 plates = 1 brick. If you don't have a 4x2 brick, several other combinations will work.) Build whatever you want. Hours of fun.
Legos may be expensive, but given how many hours of enjoyment they give for the amount of money you spend they are a much better deal than some dumb action figure or another video game system.
You could take a Lego person, tear off his hair, pull of his legs, rip off his hands and decapitate him.
And after all this, he'd still be smiling.
I built a Church out of my Castle pieces and put it right in the middle of my Lego town.
They were definitely specialized pieces, but you were far from limited in what you could do with them.
As I said from an earlier post, expanding Castle, Town, and Space, to Castle, Town, Space, and PIRATE was when Lego jumped the shark.
Pirate started the trend to more specialized pieces, and Lego has gone downhill ever since.
Actually, the Pirate legos are what started the specialization trend back in 1989. Unlike Castle, Space, or Town, Pirate System had considerably more specialized parts. The Pirate Ship could only be a pirate ship, the cannon would always be a cannon, and the pirates would only be pirates.
IMHO, Pirate System was when Lego jumped the shark. There was some good stuff after that, but it had already started heading downhill.
I remember the good old "Light & Sound" fire engine (1987). Mostly generic parts except the battery box and siren which would either play a European or American type siren.
For some reason, my mother never got me new batteries when the original set died.
Legos have always been expensive in the U.S.
Now that the dollar is way down against the euro, they are practically unaffordable.
Exactly.
In the heyday of Lego, (late 1980's-early 1990's IMHO) you had a few specialized parts and mostly rather generic parts. You could build many different things out of a kit, sometimes even coming up with things better that what the kit was intended for. For example, I was able to build a church for my Lego town out of leftover castle parts.
Now it's all specialized crap. You can only build one thing that looks halfway decent. What's the fun in that?
It's not whether you are right or wrong, it's how well you kiss ass.
This is why I did not major in English.
How many telephone switchboard operators were thrown out of a job by computers?
But how many people benefit from pennies per minute long distance rates that would be impossible under the old system?
For the U.S. to become an appealing source of labor again, its standard of living must fall to that of the third world. I don't see how that benefits anyone except the owners of these corporations.
It finally took globalization for Americans to realize how truly dirt poor the rest of the world is.
Short term, wages will be set at the minimum level. Long term, production will increase and everyone will enjoy a higher standard of living.
Already we are starting to see the benefits of international trade in the form of less expensive goods and higher standards of living. My mother-in-law used to make her own clothes because the American made textiles were too expensive. Now imported textiles are so cheap that it is no longer cost effective to make your own. People may not make as much (excluding artificial inflation), but what we make goes further.
If the problem is that someone has too small of a piece of the pie, the solution isn't to cut the pie differently, because then you are taking pie from someone else. The solution is to make the pie bigger. Everyone wins.
The Republican Party is the party of the wealthy businessman.
The Democratic Party is the party of the trial lawyers and the culturally elite.
Republican fat cats vs. Lexus Liberals. Take your pick.
This is what completely amazes me in the world we live in, Joe Millionaire really believes that paying family providers a salary 1/100000th of his own is a COST.
If you don't like it, go work somewhere else. Or start your own company.
No one is forcing you to take that job. If you do take the job, it is because it is better than the alternative.
Good CEO's are worth the money, but lots aren't and they get paid anyway.
No CEO should make over $1 million in base salary.
I'm all for stock options and potential bonuses out the ying-yang, but the amount of compensation that the CEO takes home should be directly related to the company's performance.
And if they are, they will very quickly learn that they get what they pay for with labor.
Quality is certainly a factor in price and any company with any sense would take this into account when choosing any part of production, including labor. Outsourcing programmers to India may be cost effective. Outsourcing tech support, which has to deal with large numbers of American English speaking customers may cost more than it saves.
Case in point: I do not buy the cheapest brand of gas for my car. Instead, I always buy name brand gas, even if it costs more. Why? Because I get better gas mileage off of the name brand stuff, making it a better total value. However, there are many things that I do buy off brand because they are a better value.
If companies are not factoring total value into the equation, then let them go extinct. Better companies will inevitably take their place.
Says who?
And if there are any alternatives to globalization, then please, I'd like to hear them.
Welcome to the People's Republic of Slashdot.
Fiorina, or any other CEO, tries to hire the best people for the least amount of money.
Would you do the same? If so, you are a hypocrite, if not, you are a fool.
Remember, it's not how much you make, it's how much you can afford.
With the same experience in the same field at the same job, I could make considerably more money in another area of the U.S. However, I wouldn't take the job because the cost of living is higher in those areas. My standard of living would go down, even though I would make more money.
Free trade does bring American wages down. But it also brings prices down as well. Not too long ago, when the U.S. textile industry was thriving, many people in the U.S. made their own clothes because store bought clothes were so expensive. Now clothes are imported and so inexpensive it is no longer cost effective to make them, the people in the third world have better (though not great) employment, and nearly all those textile workers have better jobs. (Let's face it, Milliken still has a high turnover rate for it's employees. The jobs that were lost weren't the best jobs in America.) A few people were hurt in the short run, but everyone benefits in the long run.
Overrated and expensive.
I used to have a K-1000 until it was stolen. Don't get me wrong, it was a great camera, but it has very few features for the price.
After I lost the K-1000, I was able to get a Yashica FX-103 Program (auto exposure with manual override) on e-bay with two zoom lenses for considerably less than a K-1000 with a 50mm.