"Renting" music makes plenty of sense for many people. The first thing I am going to do when I get a new job is give away my iPod nano to a friend, and buy a Napster/Rhapsody compatible MP3 player. Would I pay $15 a month for unlimited access to a comprehensive music database? Hell yes!
I like to explore music. "Exploring" music on iTunes is close to impossible. The best you can do is listen to previews and then agonize over what you want to spend your money on. My ideal way of exploring is to load up an MP3 player with a thought as to if the song is good or bad with a few hundred songs that I might like and listen to them over the course of a few days. I'll keeping the things that I like and tossing the stuff that I don't. iTunes just doesn't offer that (at least in an affordable way).
Honestly, I think that for average Joe consumer, iTunes is kicking ass because iPods are kicking ass, pure and simple. iPods are indeed spiffy devices, but being locked into DRM free and iTunes music means that I can't take advantage of true subscription services. $15 a month for unlimited access to every single song is a steal. It beats the hell out of buying the equivalent of one and a half albums a month. Maybe you can listen to the same 15 songs each month and be happy, but I can't. I want to explore music and hear new things. iTunes just isn't capable of doing that on a budget.
Google's position is that it doesn't want people gambling off of their stock. Google has thumbed its nose at the short term speculative market that tries to ride the temporary highs and lows of a stock. Google's position is that it is going to happily give long term forecasts and describe the health of the company, but it isn't going to do it in such a manner that people can speculate form quarter to quarter. They have no intention of setting and meeting quartly goals. They have stated that their goals are not quarterly and so will not be held to quarterly milestones.
In many ways, this is a GOOD thing for the health of a company. As anyone who has been apart of a publicly traded corporation knows, you are tied into the quarterly system. When you can buy supplies, capital equipment, and sell product is entirely based upon the quarterly system. There has been more then one instance where I was prevented from moving forward with a project because they didn't want to spend the money that quarter. They happily let me spend to my hearts content the day after the quarter ended though. That is NOT a healthy attitude for a company to have, but it is the attitude you NEED when your stock price is tied to quarterly reports.
Personally, I think that there is a lot of merit in what Google is trying, especially if it results in a company that is significantly more capable of long term planning. It might not work for some companies, but it might very well work for Google. Cutting themselves free from the quarterly mentality might very well give them the edge set much longer term plans and goal then their competition can.
First off, mods, grow up. If someone says something you don't like, don't mod it flamebait. Labeling stuff you disagree with as flamebait/troll makes using the slashdot mod system close to worthless when you do stupid crap like that.
Second, parent is utterly wrong, especially in this instance. The market can have artificially high prices. The market can have artificially high prices when there exists a monopoly. The music companies are not the monopoly due to their size. They are a monopoly because the government has literally given them a government enforced monopoly using copyright.
Now, giving a company a monopoly is not always a bad thing. It lets companies blow more money on developing something then they normally would be willing to. Pharmaceuticals are a good example of when a monopoly isn't such a bad idea. Giving pharmaceuticals a few years of a monopoly on a drug they develop after blowing hundreds of millions (or even billions!) of dollars not only in the R&D but appeasing government regulations is fair. Without this government enforced monopoly drug companies would be significantly wearier about blowing a few hundred million dollars to bring a drug to market, only to have the competition promptly copy it and sell it without having to recoup all the money spent in R&D.
Music is a different beast. If the music production in the US drops, we will be sad perhaps, but it won't be the end of the world. People won't die. Despite this, the music industry gets a lifetime+ monopoly on all songs produced! This is an absolutely insane state of affairs and it leads to a dramatically distorted market. The "price" set by music companies is price set by a company that knows it has a lifetime monopoly. Take the governments hand out of this mess and I will agree that the market prices are what they should be. Until that time though, the market prices are clearly being distorted due to the fact that there exists a government enforced monopoly.
Re:Assholes like you make America sicko land
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Netroots Politics
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You clearly did not understand his reasons for being against recycled paper. Do you get pissed off if a farmer harvests a crop every year? How about if he grows a crop that takes 5 years to grow and harvests that? What if the crop takes 45 years to go?
How do you harvest trees in a sustainable manner? By planting and harvesting trees in a manner to prevents soil erosion you can ensure that land remains forested (IE, not clear cutting) and healthy in a sustainable manner.
Harvesting trees, if done properly can be an environmentally neutral process. I personally don't know exactly how the two methods compare, but I could easily see how recycling trees could take an extra level of processing on a material that is already biodegradable. Paper in the environment isn't a bad thing, it just biodegrades quickly. It is the fact that old growth forests are cut down that is bad.
Now, is stating that you never buy a product with recycled material in taking it a little far? Probably. Unless you know where your paper is coming it is hard to tell if it is coming from a sustainable plot of land or from a rainforest.
The larger point is that before you jump down someone's throat because they defied "common wisdom", maybe you should step back and take a look at what they said.
Doesn't it sort of imply that something is horribly wrong with the system when you propose a "stealth escalator" as a way to dupe people into accepting that they normally wouldn't?
More to the point though, I think it is still political suicide. I don't think the "stick" approach is going to win anyone. You will just severely punish the poor while the middle class family that desperately wants to own a home outside of a city with green laws and elbow room will simply shrug off the expense.
There is no social solution.
Even if you could convince all the people of the first world to reduce consumption substantially enough to make a difference, what about the other 5 billion+ people in the world? What do you think a guy making a dollar a day is going to do when you suggest that they should hold off on that industrial revolution of theirs? He is going to tell you to go to a hell, and rightfully so. The simple fact of the matter is that we do not and never have had a sustainable system. Since we first develop agriculture and started mining we have continually been operating in an unsustainable mode.
The only real solution is to develop technology to meet our needs and make it cheap. The 5 billion+ people of the third world and rising, and rising fast. We can either work feverishly to have technology in hand that will power their rise out of extreme poverty in a less destructive manner, or we can foolishly chip away at the exponentially growing problem and utterly ignore the gathering storm. The first world needs to be the ones to find a way to make cheap and reliable solar cells or whatever. We need to either get our shit together and start working on it NOW, or we can see what it is like when 5 billion people enter into an industrial revolution over the course of a decade or two. We know how ugly a few tens of millions of people entering the industrial revolution over the course of a centaury or two was, do you really want to see 5 billion+ do it over night?
Clearly, the taxes are not substantial enough if the goal is to make people not want to commute using their cars.
Personally, I don't think you could ever do anything more then punish the poor with a large gas tax. Rich people will be more then happy to pay a few extra bucks a month to remain in their suburban homes and not be stacked up in expensive and claustrophobic apartment complexes. The poor on the other hand will simply be taxed so severely that they will not be able to afford to use cars.
If you want to get the average American to not strive for getting a nice suburban home with a green lawn and some elbow room from the neighbors, you are going to have to do it a gun point. If you try and use the force of law to get an American to do it, they will throw your ass out of office so fast that your head will spin. The entire argument that the solution to environmental problems is social is an academic argument with no basis in reality.
There certainly exist possibilities, but they are not politically viable. The American politician to try and push a substantial gas tax will be crucified. The American politician that tries to force Americans to live on top of each other using the force of law in expensive apartment buildings instead of 'sprawling' out into expansive and cheaper suburbs will be crucified.
Own a home with a lawn and having some space from the neighbors is probably the pinnacle of the American dream. Telling Americans they can't have that is a good way to get thrown out of office. The US doesn't have the political capacity to make any such proposed changes. In a totalitarian system like China they might very well be able to enact draconian policies like the "one child" policy, but they don't have to worry about the fickle masses getting pissed and voting for someone who will do what they want. In a place like Europe where significantly more people are dependent upon the government for jobs and money, they might be able to enact some social change to a limited extent. In the US, you are talking about a complete impossibility.
The solution to this environmental problem is not social. The solution lies in allowing people to live as they want without destroying the environment in the process. Instead of pouring money into social programs to change people and crippling the economy by burdening it with more expenses, the solution is to make reasonable changes when it is possible and work towards a technological solution. Dump money into R&D and really drive for technological solutions. We NEED technological solutions. Humanity is not and never has been "sustainable". We can't throw on the breaks and try and become sustainable now. The only thing we can do is do what we do best. Plow forward and try and solve problems as they come.
I am not advocating whole sale clear cutting of the rainforest and dumping as much CO2 as possible into the atmosphere. Environmental regulations are very important for buying time and trying to minimize negative effects on the environment. My point is that regulations can only slow down the process, not stop it. The solution lies in technology.
I can't even begin to count the number of filed lawsuits, proposed laws, and stupid shit some official with no power to enact law has said that has made it as news on Slashdot. People, this isn't important news. This stuff doesn't matter.
People sue over the stupidest things all the time and promptly have their case thrown out or simply end up loosing on a later date. That isn't a failure of the court system; that is simply how it works. Everyone gets make their case, no matter how stupid and inane it is. I could go sue CNN over their theft of my copyright of the word "the". Even though you can't copyright the word "the", and even if you could I still wouldn't own it, it would get posted on Slashdot like it is news. We would have a spam of posts decrying the end of the world is coming because of patents, and ignore the fact that my case is going to be thrown out as soon as a judge looks at it.
The same happens with these proposed laws. They are proposed laws, nothing more. When a state or nation enacts a law that affects geeks, THEN report it. Maybe if it is a really large and important law you might report on it before hand. A proposed French P2P doesn't even come close to meeting this criteria, nor was the proposed treat video games as porn law in Utah. Proposals are nothing more then that. Proposals. If this is passed as a law, then sure, it is news. Until then, this is just more Slashdot clutter.
The issue is not which nation is more of a threat. Israel is no threat to the US. The problem is that Israel, like almost every single nation in the world (including the US) spies on everyone else. It is just a fact of life. Governments spy on other governments, even friendly ones. You can bet your bottom dollar that Israel has spies in the US, and the US has spies in Israel right now.
Security and spying, while related, are two very different things. Everyone spies, but not everyone is looking to bomb the other guy. This has nothing to do with Israel. It could just have easily been Britian or even Canada that wanted to buy this company, and they still would have been blocked simply because we (rightfully) don't trust other governments to hold positions where they can spy on us.
The reason why people scream "correlation does not imply causation!" over and over is because people seem to fail to understand what it means. No, they are not saying that it disproves causation. What they ARE saying is that you can't cite a correlation and then act on it like it is the result of causation, which is exactly lawmakers are trying to do. There are all sorts of correlations in this world, but you would be a fool to act on them without proof of causation.
One correlation is that the more melanin (the pigment that gives you dark skin) an American has, the more likely they are to be convicted for a violent act. You are a fucking idiot if you propose giving people with high melanin levels a drug to help bring their melanin levels down as a method of drastically reducing crime.
This foolish line of thinking is exactly what lawmakers are using. First, they are talking about a correlation without any understanding of how strong the correlation is. There might very well be a correlation between being blond haired and having higher test scores. However, if your average test score is 0.01% higher, it isn't worth looking into any further. Second, they are utterly failing to realize that even if there is a strong correlation, even if it is a significant difference (which has not been shown by the way), that STILL doesn't mean there is a causal effect at work. It could very well be that pressing buttons, sitting for long periods of time, or simply playing any game increases aggression. Has anyone bothered to see if the violence of the video game has anything to do with higher levels of aggression, or if it is simply that the violent video games they tried are more competitive then the non-violent games they tried.
I am sure UT2004 leaves me feeling more aggressive then Barney Math Fun Time, but it isn't because of a few pixels of gore. It is because in one game I am competing and the other I am being put to sleep with basic math problems.
The logic fallacies that these studies have are not minor little loop holes. They are great big gaping chasms. Further, I imagine that the people leading these studies realize the massive fallacies in their studies, but they are money pandering shit heads with an agenda who will do anything for a buck. Show me REAL science that proves a causal link, then we can start talking about "saving the children" for "pandering to suburban mom" vote. Until then, this is all political smoke and mirrors being put on by politicians too stupid to understand basic science, or politicians who are pandering for votes through intellectual dishonest. Either way, it makes me sick.
Contracting for the government the government is like bartering with retarded children whose parents keep giving them hundred dollar bills.
I have been on the "milking the government for all its worth" end. From what I have seen, I wish that the government would how to operate more like a business, at least when it comes to contracting out work. I am not saying that businesses don't try and screw each other, but when they do someone tends to get pissed off and start looking for skulls to break, that or that business goes out of business. With the government though, they don't give two shits what is you do so long as you keep updating your progress report to make it LOOK like you are doing something. I find that they utterly real results and goals.
Most of the time I think it is simply apathy on the part of the government workers. Granted this is just an outsider's perspective, but it seems like there is no one that gives a shit anywhere in the chain of command. If I were to start handing out money to a contractor who wasn't doing anything, my boss would come down on my head, his boss would come down on his head... so on and so forth. In a well operation corporation, someone cares if you are blowing company resources. Certainly I have worked with companies where the level of caring is not up to standards, but even the worst companies seem to care more then government agencies.
How do you make government agencies operate more like businesses where somewhere along the line someone gives a shit? I have no clue. What I do know is that government agencies pay out the ass for all contracting work and no one inside of those agencies seems to give a damn.
...now we just need to create a moon base from scratch, create an inter planetary spaceship that can haul enough food and water to keep a few astronauts alive for a few months, build a ship that will keep the crew alive if a solar storm hits them on the way, get the ship to stop, drop the astronauts into a hostile gravity well, do some science, get back up out of the hostile gravity well, get back into the ship, turn it around, and survive the voyage home. Oh yeah, one more thing I forgot. They need to fund this, the subcontractors, the workers, and the deal with a cost of a few thousand dollars per kilogram sent up.
But hey, at least they got the hard part out of the way; figuring out names.
This post is a perfect example. It took my a hell of a lot less time to spit out a dozen or so challenges they still face then it did to think up a good title. Way to go NASA! You are almost there.
Certainly if civilization is about to collapse because we have no oil that qualifies as a time to use last ditch attempts, like diverting massive portions of the Earth's usable land to farming to keep our machines running. While that certainly is an option, it isn't a terribly appealing one. It should rightly remain as an "oh shit" option. The gas crunch going on is still not that bad and easily manageable. Many old wells are reopening up as oil prices rise. Most oil is never mind because it is not economical to do so. As the prices rise, new sources of oil suddenly become economical. Civilization is in no danger of collapsing any time soon. Jumping the gun and using destructive technologies is not the proper response. Certainly oil is not a destruction free form of energy, but neither is turning over large portions of the Earth's surface to farming.
As for E-85, kill corn subsidies and propose it again. If you can still propose E-85 after you stop throwing tax payer money at farmers, I'll be more then happy to watch it sink or swim on its own accord. As it stands, E-85 very well could be DRAINING energy from the economy, with this drain being covered up by corn subsidies. If E-85 is not affordable after you kill off corn subsidies, that should be a big blinking sign that you are probably sucking energy out of the system.
While burning off the forest has something to do with it, Australia was pretty much fucked from the get go. All of the mechanism used to naturally restore soil are not present in Australia. Namely, they receive almost no ash from active volcanoes, no glaciers have mixed up the land, and there almost no slow uplifting of the crust. Australia was pretty much screwed from the get-go. Its environment is extremely fragile. Burning down all of the trees certainly didn't help, but in a fertile continent where all three forces are at work like North America they could have recovered. Australia's "wheat belt" is completely devoid of nutrients. Nearly every single last drop of nutrition that Australian farms receive come from fertilizers. Without fertilizers, Australia would be incapable of any farming in all but a few tiny regions.
As it is, Australian grown foods are utterly uncompetitive in the world market because they have to spend so much money keeping their farms alive. Often times it is cheaper ship goods in from Brazil on the other side of the world then it is to buy locally.
Like it or not its part of the literary and cultural heritage that makes us who we are as much as these single celled organisms are a part of who we are. I think you should embrace it and be proud of it rather than trying to marginalize it or think you are above being connected to it or you are a hypocrite.
Like it or not, slavery, discrimination, and whole sale genocide is part of the cultural heritage of almost every single civilization as well. That goes double and triple for ancient civilizations. I am more then happy to acknowledge those facts, but you better believe I will merrily try and marginalize them in modern society. Just because something is apart of our cultural heritage doesn't mean that it should be revered; and it certainly doesn't mean that it should play any role in science.
No one has an issue with looking back on history and studying the crazy things we used to believe in or even acknowledging the things that people still believe in. That said our mysticism, alive and kicking or long since dead, has no place in science. It has a place in cultural and historical studies, not in a discussion around science.
Until ID zealots can meet even the most basic criteria to have their mysticism (and it is by definition mysticism) considered science, they absolutely should be ignored as the agenda pushing zealots that they are. They should be treated roughly like the drunk bum on the side of the street raving about the stars aligning to bring about the end of the world... they should be flatly ignored.
$2.50 NOW, not after the entire world is desperatly trying to burn gallons of this stuff inside of their cars. It is like pointing to the car that runs on fast food grease and saying "hey look! Its free!". Sure, it is free now. It wouldn't be if suddenly you need a few million gallons of the stuff to be pumped out at the worlds gas stations every few seconds. Trying to run the world off soybeans is an invitation to slash and burn the rain forest for farmland and kill everything in the rivers with fertilizer.
I have a plan for a truck that can drive thousands of miles on less then one gallon! Granted, it is a gallon of plutonium, but less then one gallon!
While it is commendable that these kids put together a working car that runs off soybean oil, this isn't a case of "the man" ((TM)) ignoring innovation for evil gasoline powered cars. Soybeans just are not competitive with gasoline. In fact, the entire idea of using crop land to meet our energy issues is a horrible idea in general.
Don't take me for a tree hugging hippy when I say this, but farming is a necessary evil. Don't get me wrong, I love farmed foods. I merrily buy my vegetables without bothering to glance if it is organic or not. I do recognize though that there is a price that comes with this. Very little land in the world can renew itself year after year. Farming by its very definition sucks up nutrients from the ground to be hauled off. Even organic farming is grossly destructive to the ground. More then one civilization in the world has simply collapsed because the soil died. There are entire continents, namely Australia, where there is absolutely no natural soil renewal. Farming almost always has a very high ecological cost. This isn't a trivial cost that we associated with other renewable energies like windmills where a handful of birds die. These are very serious nation threatening costs.
Certainly you can use fertilizers to keep the soil alive. With good farming practices like what are seen in the US and much of the first world you can keep the land fertile almost indifferently. Even so, these nations pay a heavy cost to keep their farmland fertile and watered. The environmental damage outside of the farm can be serious. When lesser educated farms in third world nations use these methods to keep the soil alive the result can be catastrophe for the environment.
We don't want more land to go to farming. We don't want more third world nations to burn down their trees to try and feed the agro business. Resorting to farming as a source of energy should be the last resort we fall back on, not the first. Algae, solar collector making, and wind power to make more fuel? Great. Creating a greater demand for farm land to make more fuel? Terrible idea.
So, congratulations to these kids for making a fun proof of concept, but this isn't the future of fuel.
what advise was actually given them? And who specifically gave that advice to them? I'm not sure that any 'governance training' was offered or accepted.
And ultimately if any 'advice' was actually offered the responsibility should be on those who took action.
If you want to know "who" passed along terrible advice, the IMF and the US treasury by association can take a fair amount of blame. The US treasury has a massive amount of influence and control over the IMF and is really the only nation in the world that has veto power over its actions. They advocated a 'market fundamentalist' approach most of the remnants the USSR that went down the path of liberalization, including Russia, obliged and followed their advice. Russia followed the IMF's advice almost to the T. There is absolutely no doubt in anyone's mind that Russia listened to their advice as they followed their formula almost to the letter.
Even the IMF admits that its interventions in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union were an utter failure. I don't place a lot of blame on them. In hindsight rapid liberalization is a poor idea. When Russia liberalized they sold off nearly all state owned property without setting up a fair framework to sell it and keep capital within the nation. The bidding process for state property was horribly flawed and resulted a few powerful people snapping up state industries at bargain bin prices. To make matters worse, instead of rehabilitating state owned industries and pruning them to make them efficient as it was hoped, they had their capital stripped and sold. The money from these sales was then quickly moved out of the country for fear of devaluation of the Russia currency. In short, it was a complete cluster fuck. There was massive unemployment, dramatic wage cuts, whole sale looting of Russian industry, and in general a big mess was made.
The proper course of action would have to had a transitional period instead throwing a people who had nearly a centaury of collectivist rule into full scale anarcho-capitalism. Don't get me wrong. I am a big believer in globalization and capitalism, but I am not so bedazzled with it that I think that stripping a former communist nation's industrial base over night is a good thing.
And specifically how is Russia now any different that the US was in the first half of the 20th century?
Do you want a list? The state controls nearly all media. A massive amount of power has accumulated into the executive branch of the government. No, I don't mean G.W. "massive" amount. The executive branch picks governors of Russia providences and has very few checks and balances placed upon it by other branches of government. Political freedom is desperately low. During the last election the lead candidate was kidnapped, drugged, and ended up finishing his failed campaign outside of Russia because he was afraid to do it inside Russia. The US has never had any of the above problems even beginning to approach the scale that Russia is dealing with.
The mafia and political machines had direct control over local politicians and had vast influence over national policies even through the mid 60s. So if Russia takes a few more years to evolve its court system and remove criminal control, is it 'wrong'? Is it hard to imagine that a vast political and social change should take some time. And why should outsiders (you say 'we' when referencing the US) pass moral judgments? Especially since the US had their own problems with organized crime so very long after their independence.
The US "problem" with organized crime in its past doesn't even fit on the same scale as Russia's problem. Russia organized crime is powerful enough to almost be considered another branch of the government. Russia is taking some steps to fix their problems with organized crime, but it will take decades to undo the damage done when organized crime looted the nation after the collapse of communism.
You are right that the US refused to ever engage in much negotiation with the USSR. Yes, negotiations could have certainly reduced tensions. Increasing aid to the USSR probably could have gone a long ways to cooling things down. The US did not engage in much negotiation with the USSR until it was on the brink of collapse was because peaceful coexistence was never the goal.
The USSR had to build walls to keep its people in. The US and Western Europe has never had to do such a thing in the last half of the past centaury. In fact, if the US and Western Europe are building walls it is to keep people out. When you have to build walls to keep your people from fleeing your government, that should be a dead giveaway that you are fucking something up. The US had no intention of letting the Soviet Union expand or even continue to hold onto its walled up section of the world. The US actively sought to put an end to the Soviet domination through direct confrontation on political, economic, and military level.
If there is any travesty in how the US handled the USSR it, it was during the collapse of the USSR. Simply put, we gave them well intention but absolutely horrible advice. We pushed them to liberalize their economy as fast as possible and it resulted in the economic ruin that to this day they are still recovering from. They liberalized their economy long before all the pieces that needed for liberalization were in place. The country was essentially looted by an oligarchy when it was collapsed. Our push for speedy liberalization is the reason why Russia teeters on the brink of falling back into being an authoritarian nightmare again. If it wasn't for their economic ruin, they very likely would have become a successful liberal democracy well on its way towards true first world status. It certainly wasn't malicious as no one wanted Russia to succeed after the collapse of the Soviet Union more then the US did, but it was utterly wrong and flawed in hindsight. The proper course of action would have been to have advised political and social liberalization, but of pushed for slow and well planned market liberalization.
ussr was invited by the afghan administration to help them against amin who has murdered the prime minister, declared himself ruler of afghanistan and started a reign of terror.
Talk about revisionist history. The Afghan administration that "invited" the USSR was an administration funded entirely by the USSR to start their own little communist revolution in Afghanistan. This administration, even with the material backing of the Soviet Union, utterly failed and was wiped out. As they were being wiped out this communist revolution administration "invited" the USSR in. This wasn't some democratically elected administration that was taken out by a few rebels. This was a rigged communist uprising funded entirely by the USSR that was torn down by the people of Afghanistan. Granted, what they ended up building after removing the Soviet's wasn't all pleasant, making it sound like the peaceful democracy of Afghanistan called in Soviet help to restore their legitimate democracy is a complete fallacy.
I should also point out that the USSR was "invited" to put down multiple more black and white pro-democracy uprisings on Eastern Europe by their respective Soviet controlled governments. The USSR was "invited" to come build the Berlin wall and lock down their borders so that people couldn't flee across country lines to get away from the Soviet controlled governments. During the time that the USSR was building walls all around its little empire to keep people in , the US, even with its liberal immigration policy was building walls to keep people out. That fact alone should tell something.
There actually was a ground level confrontation. Multiple times the US and Germany sent ground convoys to Berlin against the expressed consent of the USSR. At one point it resulted in a many hour stand off as the convoy refused to produce papers authorizing their presence. Further, the USSR also threatened to start shooting down airplanes that were violating East German airspace. The US told them pretty point black that doing so would result in open armed conflict. The Berlin airlift was an extremely tense time. I would not underplay how close the continued supply of Berlin almost resulted in war.
How about hand to hand combat.. tried it lately.. or just calling your self brave by killing people who have nothing to do with anything with missile (who is the terrorist).
Launching a cruise missile instead of challenging people to hand to hand combat isn't brave. It is smart.
As far as the size of the US military goes, the US military is what stood between the USSR and the rest of the world for half a centaury. The sacrifices that the American people made to keep the USSR where it was and hold the line against such a juggernaut seems to have been quickly forgotten. The US put itself directly in the way of the USSR. As the Cuban missile crises showed, the US was more then willing to risk complete annihilation in a fight to keep the USSR at bay.
Now, I am not claiming that US isn't a big ugly leviathan that makes nations fall apart when it sneezes wrong. I am not arguing that in its pursuit to keep the USSR at bay that innocent people were not hurt, nor that the US has not committed its share of evils in the name of a greater good. Anyone who tries to paint the actions of the largest economy and military in the world in terms of pure right and wrong is deluding themselves. The US is and always has been run by humans, flawed creatures as they are. I have no doubt that if it could all be done over again there are things that we would never do again because the turned out to cause so much human suffering.
My point is that despite its mistakes, the US was there for the rest of the world with its big ugly and unwieldy military. That big ugly military that slaughtered innocent people in Vietnam also bought millions of people time to escape Vietnam (many of them to the US) before it descended into the hell hole that it became. The US military was there to repulse North Korea from South Korea and held the line even after a million Chinese came pouring over the border. South Korea is happy little fairytale land that it is today and not the seventh level of hell that North Korea is because the US military was there. The threat of the US military is what kept the USSR from making West Germany and France look like East Germany and Poland.
My point? Yeah yeah, the US military is big and deadly. Where ever it goes and whatever it does people die. That said, it stood as a shield for half a centaury against far more malevolent forces and saved the lives of countless hundreds of millions. Maybe in this new centaury it has worn out its usefulness. Maybe all of the challengers have been beaten and the US can set down the shield and sword and get on with more productive things.
Then again, I bet at the very least the people of Taiwan sleep a little bit better at night knowing that US military leviathan is still lumbering around.
I think this is a bold and positive step. Unfortunately, I believe that they have left a loop hole that needs to be immediately covered. Namely, while we can protect our children from violent video games, there are still now laws in place to protect our children from violent books. There are literally thousands of mystery books out there teaching our children how to be perfect killers. There are thousands of books glorifying war, death conflict, and even sexual perversion. I think must act immediately to step up an American Censorship board to keep violent books out of the hands of our children. I believe that all books containing 'adult content' should be separated out from books safe for children. Further, schools should have an absolute ban on violent and mature books.
If we don't act now, school shootings will continue to rise, the violent murders will continue to increase, and our children will continue to live shorter and shorter lives in this terrible and violent world.
Google is not a bubble. Google is profitable. No, they are not just profitable, they are MASSIVLY profitable. Their P/E is around 75 at the moment, which while a little high, is what you expect from a rapidly growing company. A P/E in the 70's is what completely reasonable for a company that is very profitable and expanding. It shows that people have an expectation that google will continue to make money well into the future. Google is not a.com start up with no way to make profit outside of investment. Hell, Google wasn't even pubically traded until what, a year ago?
The larger point is that Google makes money - lots of it. Google is not a bubble. Google is a fucking titan.
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"Renting" music makes plenty of sense for many people. The first thing I am going to do when I get a new job is give away my iPod nano to a friend, and buy a Napster/Rhapsody compatible MP3 player. Would I pay $15 a month for unlimited access to a comprehensive music database? Hell yes!
I like to explore music. "Exploring" music on iTunes is close to impossible. The best you can do is listen to previews and then agonize over what you want to spend your money on. My ideal way of exploring is to load up an MP3 player with a thought as to if the song is good or bad with a few hundred songs that I might like and listen to them over the course of a few days. I'll keeping the things that I like and tossing the stuff that I don't. iTunes just doesn't offer that (at least in an affordable way).
Honestly, I think that for average Joe consumer, iTunes is kicking ass because iPods are kicking ass, pure and simple. iPods are indeed spiffy devices, but being locked into DRM free and iTunes music means that I can't take advantage of true subscription services. $15 a month for unlimited access to every single song is a steal. It beats the hell out of buying the equivalent of one and a half albums a month. Maybe you can listen to the same 15 songs each month and be happy, but I can't. I want to explore music and hear new things. iTunes just isn't capable of doing that on a budget.
Google's position is that it doesn't want people gambling off of their stock. Google has thumbed its nose at the short term speculative market that tries to ride the temporary highs and lows of a stock. Google's position is that it is going to happily give long term forecasts and describe the health of the company, but it isn't going to do it in such a manner that people can speculate form quarter to quarter. They have no intention of setting and meeting quartly goals. They have stated that their goals are not quarterly and so will not be held to quarterly milestones.
In many ways, this is a GOOD thing for the health of a company. As anyone who has been apart of a publicly traded corporation knows, you are tied into the quarterly system. When you can buy supplies, capital equipment, and sell product is entirely based upon the quarterly system. There has been more then one instance where I was prevented from moving forward with a project because they didn't want to spend the money that quarter. They happily let me spend to my hearts content the day after the quarter ended though. That is NOT a healthy attitude for a company to have, but it is the attitude you NEED when your stock price is tied to quarterly reports.
Personally, I think that there is a lot of merit in what Google is trying, especially if it results in a company that is significantly more capable of long term planning. It might not work for some companies, but it might very well work for Google. Cutting themselves free from the quarterly mentality might very well give them the edge set much longer term plans and goal then their competition can.
First off, mods, grow up. If someone says something you don't like, don't mod it flamebait. Labeling stuff you disagree with as flamebait/troll makes using the slashdot mod system close to worthless when you do stupid crap like that.
Second, parent is utterly wrong, especially in this instance. The market can have artificially high prices. The market can have artificially high prices when there exists a monopoly. The music companies are not the monopoly due to their size. They are a monopoly because the government has literally given them a government enforced monopoly using copyright.
Now, giving a company a monopoly is not always a bad thing. It lets companies blow more money on developing something then they normally would be willing to. Pharmaceuticals are a good example of when a monopoly isn't such a bad idea. Giving pharmaceuticals a few years of a monopoly on a drug they develop after blowing hundreds of millions (or even billions!) of dollars not only in the R&D but appeasing government regulations is fair. Without this government enforced monopoly drug companies would be significantly wearier about blowing a few hundred million dollars to bring a drug to market, only to have the competition promptly copy it and sell it without having to recoup all the money spent in R&D.
Music is a different beast. If the music production in the US drops, we will be sad perhaps, but it won't be the end of the world. People won't die. Despite this, the music industry gets a lifetime+ monopoly on all songs produced! This is an absolutely insane state of affairs and it leads to a dramatically distorted market. The "price" set by music companies is price set by a company that knows it has a lifetime monopoly. Take the governments hand out of this mess and I will agree that the market prices are what they should be. Until that time though, the market prices are clearly being distorted due to the fact that there exists a government enforced monopoly.
You clearly did not understand his reasons for being against recycled paper. Do you get pissed off if a farmer harvests a crop every year? How about if he grows a crop that takes 5 years to grow and harvests that? What if the crop takes 45 years to go?
How do you harvest trees in a sustainable manner? By planting and harvesting trees in a manner to prevents soil erosion you can ensure that land remains forested (IE, not clear cutting) and healthy in a sustainable manner.
Harvesting trees, if done properly can be an environmentally neutral process. I personally don't know exactly how the two methods compare, but I could easily see how recycling trees could take an extra level of processing on a material that is already biodegradable. Paper in the environment isn't a bad thing, it just biodegrades quickly. It is the fact that old growth forests are cut down that is bad.
Now, is stating that you never buy a product with recycled material in taking it a little far? Probably. Unless you know where your paper is coming it is hard to tell if it is coming from a sustainable plot of land or from a rainforest.
The larger point is that before you jump down someone's throat because they defied "common wisdom", maybe you should step back and take a look at what they said.
Doesn't it sort of imply that something is horribly wrong with the system when you propose a "stealth escalator" as a way to dupe people into accepting that they normally wouldn't?
More to the point though, I think it is still political suicide. I don't think the "stick" approach is going to win anyone. You will just severely punish the poor while the middle class family that desperately wants to own a home outside of a city with green laws and elbow room will simply shrug off the expense.
There is no social solution.
Even if you could convince all the people of the first world to reduce consumption substantially enough to make a difference, what about the other 5 billion+ people in the world? What do you think a guy making a dollar a day is going to do when you suggest that they should hold off on that industrial revolution of theirs? He is going to tell you to go to a hell, and rightfully so. The simple fact of the matter is that we do not and never have had a sustainable system. Since we first develop agriculture and started mining we have continually been operating in an unsustainable mode.
The only real solution is to develop technology to meet our needs and make it cheap. The 5 billion+ people of the third world and rising, and rising fast. We can either work feverishly to have technology in hand that will power their rise out of extreme poverty in a less destructive manner, or we can foolishly chip away at the exponentially growing problem and utterly ignore the gathering storm. The first world needs to be the ones to find a way to make cheap and reliable solar cells or whatever. We need to either get our shit together and start working on it NOW, or we can see what it is like when 5 billion people enter into an industrial revolution over the course of a decade or two. We know how ugly a few tens of millions of people entering the industrial revolution over the course of a centaury or two was, do you really want to see 5 billion+ do it over night?
Clearly, the taxes are not substantial enough if the goal is to make people not want to commute using their cars.
Personally, I don't think you could ever do anything more then punish the poor with a large gas tax. Rich people will be more then happy to pay a few extra bucks a month to remain in their suburban homes and not be stacked up in expensive and claustrophobic apartment complexes. The poor on the other hand will simply be taxed so severely that they will not be able to afford to use cars.
If you want to get the average American to not strive for getting a nice suburban home with a green lawn and some elbow room from the neighbors, you are going to have to do it a gun point. If you try and use the force of law to get an American to do it, they will throw your ass out of office so fast that your head will spin. The entire argument that the solution to environmental problems is social is an academic argument with no basis in reality.
There certainly exist possibilities, but they are not politically viable. The American politician to try and push a substantial gas tax will be crucified. The American politician that tries to force Americans to live on top of each other using the force of law in expensive apartment buildings instead of 'sprawling' out into expansive and cheaper suburbs will be crucified.
Own a home with a lawn and having some space from the neighbors is probably the pinnacle of the American dream. Telling Americans they can't have that is a good way to get thrown out of office. The US doesn't have the political capacity to make any such proposed changes. In a totalitarian system like China they might very well be able to enact draconian policies like the "one child" policy, but they don't have to worry about the fickle masses getting pissed and voting for someone who will do what they want. In a place like Europe where significantly more people are dependent upon the government for jobs and money, they might be able to enact some social change to a limited extent. In the US, you are talking about a complete impossibility.
The solution to this environmental problem is not social. The solution lies in allowing people to live as they want without destroying the environment in the process. Instead of pouring money into social programs to change people and crippling the economy by burdening it with more expenses, the solution is to make reasonable changes when it is possible and work towards a technological solution. Dump money into R&D and really drive for technological solutions. We NEED technological solutions. Humanity is not and never has been "sustainable". We can't throw on the breaks and try and become sustainable now. The only thing we can do is do what we do best. Plow forward and try and solve problems as they come.
I am not advocating whole sale clear cutting of the rainforest and dumping as much CO2 as possible into the atmosphere. Environmental regulations are very important for buying time and trying to minimize negative effects on the environment. My point is that regulations can only slow down the process, not stop it. The solution lies in technology.
I can't even begin to count the number of filed lawsuits, proposed laws, and stupid shit some official with no power to enact law has said that has made it as news on Slashdot. People, this isn't important news. This stuff doesn't matter.
People sue over the stupidest things all the time and promptly have their case thrown out or simply end up loosing on a later date. That isn't a failure of the court system; that is simply how it works. Everyone gets make their case, no matter how stupid and inane it is. I could go sue CNN over their theft of my copyright of the word "the". Even though you can't copyright the word "the", and even if you could I still wouldn't own it, it would get posted on Slashdot like it is news. We would have a spam of posts decrying the end of the world is coming because of patents, and ignore the fact that my case is going to be thrown out as soon as a judge looks at it.
The same happens with these proposed laws. They are proposed laws, nothing more. When a state or nation enacts a law that affects geeks, THEN report it. Maybe if it is a really large and important law you might report on it before hand. A proposed French P2P doesn't even come close to meeting this criteria, nor was the proposed treat video games as porn law in Utah. Proposals are nothing more then that. Proposals. If this is passed as a law, then sure, it is news. Until then, this is just more Slashdot clutter.
The issue is not which nation is more of a threat. Israel is no threat to the US. The problem is that Israel, like almost every single nation in the world (including the US) spies on everyone else. It is just a fact of life. Governments spy on other governments, even friendly ones. You can bet your bottom dollar that Israel has spies in the US, and the US has spies in Israel right now.
Security and spying, while related, are two very different things. Everyone spies, but not everyone is looking to bomb the other guy. This has nothing to do with Israel. It could just have easily been Britian or even Canada that wanted to buy this company, and they still would have been blocked simply because we (rightfully) don't trust other governments to hold positions where they can spy on us.
The reason why people scream "correlation does not imply causation!" over and over is because people seem to fail to understand what it means. No, they are not saying that it disproves causation. What they ARE saying is that you can't cite a correlation and then act on it like it is the result of causation, which is exactly lawmakers are trying to do. There are all sorts of correlations in this world, but you would be a fool to act on them without proof of causation.
One correlation is that the more melanin (the pigment that gives you dark skin) an American has, the more likely they are to be convicted for a violent act. You are a fucking idiot if you propose giving people with high melanin levels a drug to help bring their melanin levels down as a method of drastically reducing crime.
This foolish line of thinking is exactly what lawmakers are using. First, they are talking about a correlation without any understanding of how strong the correlation is. There might very well be a correlation between being blond haired and having higher test scores. However, if your average test score is 0.01% higher, it isn't worth looking into any further. Second, they are utterly failing to realize that even if there is a strong correlation, even if it is a significant difference (which has not been shown by the way), that STILL doesn't mean there is a causal effect at work. It could very well be that pressing buttons, sitting for long periods of time, or simply playing any game increases aggression. Has anyone bothered to see if the violence of the video game has anything to do with higher levels of aggression, or if it is simply that the violent video games they tried are more competitive then the non-violent games they tried.
I am sure UT2004 leaves me feeling more aggressive then Barney Math Fun Time, but it isn't because of a few pixels of gore. It is because in one game I am competing and the other I am being put to sleep with basic math problems.
The logic fallacies that these studies have are not minor little loop holes. They are great big gaping chasms. Further, I imagine that the people leading these studies realize the massive fallacies in their studies, but they are money pandering shit heads with an agenda who will do anything for a buck. Show me REAL science that proves a causal link, then we can start talking about "saving the children" for "pandering to suburban mom" vote. Until then, this is all political smoke and mirrors being put on by politicians too stupid to understand basic science, or politicians who are pandering for votes through intellectual dishonest. Either way, it makes me sick.
Contracting for the government the government is like bartering with retarded children whose parents keep giving them hundred dollar bills.
I have been on the "milking the government for all its worth" end. From what I have seen, I wish that the government would how to operate more like a business, at least when it comes to contracting out work. I am not saying that businesses don't try and screw each other, but when they do someone tends to get pissed off and start looking for skulls to break, that or that business goes out of business. With the government though, they don't give two shits what is you do so long as you keep updating your progress report to make it LOOK like you are doing something. I find that they utterly real results and goals.
Most of the time I think it is simply apathy on the part of the government workers. Granted this is just an outsider's perspective, but it seems like there is no one that gives a shit anywhere in the chain of command. If I were to start handing out money to a contractor who wasn't doing anything, my boss would come down on my head, his boss would come down on his head... so on and so forth. In a well operation corporation, someone cares if you are blowing company resources. Certainly I have worked with companies where the level of caring is not up to standards, but even the worst companies seem to care more then government agencies.
How do you make government agencies operate more like businesses where somewhere along the line someone gives a shit? I have no clue. What I do know is that government agencies pay out the ass for all contracting work and no one inside of those agencies seems to give a damn.
...now we just need to create a moon base from scratch, create an inter planetary spaceship that can haul enough food and water to keep a few astronauts alive for a few months, build a ship that will keep the crew alive if a solar storm hits them on the way, get the ship to stop, drop the astronauts into a hostile gravity well, do some science, get back up out of the hostile gravity well, get back into the ship, turn it around, and survive the voyage home. Oh yeah, one more thing I forgot. They need to fund this, the subcontractors, the workers, and the deal with a cost of a few thousand dollars per kilogram sent up.
But hey, at least they got the hard part out of the way; figuring out names.
This post is a perfect example. It took my a hell of a lot less time to spit out a dozen or so challenges they still face then it did to think up a good title. Way to go NASA! You are almost there.
Certainly if civilization is about to collapse because we have no oil that qualifies as a time to use last ditch attempts, like diverting massive portions of the Earth's usable land to farming to keep our machines running. While that certainly is an option, it isn't a terribly appealing one. It should rightly remain as an "oh shit" option. The gas crunch going on is still not that bad and easily manageable. Many old wells are reopening up as oil prices rise. Most oil is never mind because it is not economical to do so. As the prices rise, new sources of oil suddenly become economical. Civilization is in no danger of collapsing any time soon. Jumping the gun and using destructive technologies is not the proper response. Certainly oil is not a destruction free form of energy, but neither is turning over large portions of the Earth's surface to farming.
As for E-85, kill corn subsidies and propose it again. If you can still propose E-85 after you stop throwing tax payer money at farmers, I'll be more then happy to watch it sink or swim on its own accord. As it stands, E-85 very well could be DRAINING energy from the economy, with this drain being covered up by corn subsidies. If E-85 is not affordable after you kill off corn subsidies, that should be a big blinking sign that you are probably sucking energy out of the system.
While burning off the forest has something to do with it, Australia was pretty much fucked from the get go. All of the mechanism used to naturally restore soil are not present in Australia. Namely, they receive almost no ash from active volcanoes, no glaciers have mixed up the land, and there almost no slow uplifting of the crust. Australia was pretty much screwed from the get-go. Its environment is extremely fragile. Burning down all of the trees certainly didn't help, but in a fertile continent where all three forces are at work like North America they could have recovered. Australia's "wheat belt" is completely devoid of nutrients. Nearly every single last drop of nutrition that Australian farms receive come from fertilizers. Without fertilizers, Australia would be incapable of any farming in all but a few tiny regions.
As it is, Australian grown foods are utterly uncompetitive in the world market because they have to spend so much money keeping their farms alive. Often times it is cheaper ship goods in from Brazil on the other side of the world then it is to buy locally.
Like it or not its part of the literary and cultural heritage that makes us who we are as much as these single celled organisms are a part of who we are. I think you should embrace it and be proud of it rather than trying to marginalize it or think you are above being connected to it or you are a hypocrite.
Like it or not, slavery, discrimination, and whole sale genocide is part of the cultural heritage of almost every single civilization as well. That goes double and triple for ancient civilizations. I am more then happy to acknowledge those facts, but you better believe I will merrily try and marginalize them in modern society. Just because something is apart of our cultural heritage doesn't mean that it should be revered; and it certainly doesn't mean that it should play any role in science.
No one has an issue with looking back on history and studying the crazy things we used to believe in or even acknowledging the things that people still believe in. That said our mysticism, alive and kicking or long since dead, has no place in science. It has a place in cultural and historical studies, not in a discussion around science.
Until ID zealots can meet even the most basic criteria to have their mysticism (and it is by definition mysticism) considered science, they absolutely should be ignored as the agenda pushing zealots that they are. They should be treated roughly like the drunk bum on the side of the street raving about the stars aligning to bring about the end of the world... they should be flatly ignored.
$2.50 NOW, not after the entire world is desperatly trying to burn gallons of this stuff inside of their cars. It is like pointing to the car that runs on fast food grease and saying "hey look! Its free!". Sure, it is free now. It wouldn't be if suddenly you need a few million gallons of the stuff to be pumped out at the worlds gas stations every few seconds. Trying to run the world off soybeans is an invitation to slash and burn the rain forest for farmland and kill everything in the rivers with fertilizer.
I have a plan for a truck that can drive thousands of miles on less then one gallon! Granted, it is a gallon of plutonium, but less then one gallon!
While it is commendable that these kids put together a working car that runs off soybean oil, this isn't a case of "the man" ((TM)) ignoring innovation for evil gasoline powered cars. Soybeans just are not competitive with gasoline. In fact, the entire idea of using crop land to meet our energy issues is a horrible idea in general.
Don't take me for a tree hugging hippy when I say this, but farming is a necessary evil. Don't get me wrong, I love farmed foods. I merrily buy my vegetables without bothering to glance if it is organic or not. I do recognize though that there is a price that comes with this. Very little land in the world can renew itself year after year. Farming by its very definition sucks up nutrients from the ground to be hauled off. Even organic farming is grossly destructive to the ground. More then one civilization in the world has simply collapsed because the soil died. There are entire continents, namely Australia, where there is absolutely no natural soil renewal. Farming almost always has a very high ecological cost. This isn't a trivial cost that we associated with other renewable energies like windmills where a handful of birds die. These are very serious nation threatening costs.
Certainly you can use fertilizers to keep the soil alive. With good farming practices like what are seen in the US and much of the first world you can keep the land fertile almost indifferently. Even so, these nations pay a heavy cost to keep their farmland fertile and watered. The environmental damage outside of the farm can be serious. When lesser educated farms in third world nations use these methods to keep the soil alive the result can be catastrophe for the environment.
We don't want more land to go to farming. We don't want more third world nations to burn down their trees to try and feed the agro business. Resorting to farming as a source of energy should be the last resort we fall back on, not the first. Algae, solar collector making, and wind power to make more fuel? Great. Creating a greater demand for farm land to make more fuel? Terrible idea.
So, congratulations to these kids for making a fun proof of concept, but this isn't the future of fuel.
what advise was actually given them? And who specifically gave that advice to them? I'm not sure that any 'governance training' was offered or accepted.
And ultimately if any 'advice' was actually offered the responsibility should be on those who took action.
If you want to know "who" passed along terrible advice, the IMF and the US treasury by association can take a fair amount of blame. The US treasury has a massive amount of influence and control over the IMF and is really the only nation in the world that has veto power over its actions. They advocated a 'market fundamentalist' approach most of the remnants the USSR that went down the path of liberalization, including Russia, obliged and followed their advice. Russia followed the IMF's advice almost to the T. There is absolutely no doubt in anyone's mind that Russia listened to their advice as they followed their formula almost to the letter.
Even the IMF admits that its interventions in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union were an utter failure. I don't place a lot of blame on them. In hindsight rapid liberalization is a poor idea. When Russia liberalized they sold off nearly all state owned property without setting up a fair framework to sell it and keep capital within the nation. The bidding process for state property was horribly flawed and resulted a few powerful people snapping up state industries at bargain bin prices. To make matters worse, instead of rehabilitating state owned industries and pruning them to make them efficient as it was hoped, they had their capital stripped and sold. The money from these sales was then quickly moved out of the country for fear of devaluation of the Russia currency. In short, it was a complete cluster fuck. There was massive unemployment, dramatic wage cuts, whole sale looting of Russian industry, and in general a big mess was made.
The proper course of action would have to had a transitional period instead throwing a people who had nearly a centaury of collectivist rule into full scale anarcho-capitalism. Don't get me wrong. I am a big believer in globalization and capitalism, but I am not so bedazzled with it that I think that stripping a former communist nation's industrial base over night is a good thing.
And specifically how is Russia now any different that the US was in the first half of the 20th century?
Do you want a list? The state controls nearly all media. A massive amount of power has accumulated into the executive branch of the government. No, I don't mean G.W. "massive" amount. The executive branch picks governors of Russia providences and has very few checks and balances placed upon it by other branches of government. Political freedom is desperately low. During the last election the lead candidate was kidnapped, drugged, and ended up finishing his failed campaign outside of Russia because he was afraid to do it inside Russia. The US has never had any of the above problems even beginning to approach the scale that Russia is dealing with.
The mafia and political machines had direct control over local politicians and had vast influence over national policies even through the mid 60s. So if Russia takes a few more years to evolve its court system and remove criminal control, is it 'wrong'? Is it hard to imagine that a vast political and social change should take some time. And why should outsiders (you say 'we' when referencing the US) pass moral judgments? Especially since the US had their own problems with organized crime so very long after their independence.
The US "problem" with organized crime in its past doesn't even fit on the same scale as Russia's problem. Russia organized crime is powerful enough to almost be considered another branch of the government. Russia is taking some steps to fix their problems with organized crime, but it will take decades to undo the damage done when organized crime looted the nation after the collapse of communism.
And so how should the US have 'hand
You are right that the US refused to ever engage in much negotiation with the USSR. Yes, negotiations could have certainly reduced tensions. Increasing aid to the USSR probably could have gone a long ways to cooling things down. The US did not engage in much negotiation with the USSR until it was on the brink of collapse was because peaceful coexistence was never the goal.
The USSR had to build walls to keep its people in. The US and Western Europe has never had to do such a thing in the last half of the past centaury. In fact, if the US and Western Europe are building walls it is to keep people out. When you have to build walls to keep your people from fleeing your government, that should be a dead giveaway that you are fucking something up. The US had no intention of letting the Soviet Union expand or even continue to hold onto its walled up section of the world. The US actively sought to put an end to the Soviet domination through direct confrontation on political, economic, and military level.
If there is any travesty in how the US handled the USSR it, it was during the collapse of the USSR. Simply put, we gave them well intention but absolutely horrible advice. We pushed them to liberalize their economy as fast as possible and it resulted in the economic ruin that to this day they are still recovering from. They liberalized their economy long before all the pieces that needed for liberalization were in place. The country was essentially looted by an oligarchy when it was collapsed. Our push for speedy liberalization is the reason why Russia teeters on the brink of falling back into being an authoritarian nightmare again. If it wasn't for their economic ruin, they very likely would have become a successful liberal democracy well on its way towards true first world status. It certainly wasn't malicious as no one wanted Russia to succeed after the collapse of the Soviet Union more then the US did, but it was utterly wrong and flawed in hindsight. The proper course of action would have been to have advised political and social liberalization, but of pushed for slow and well planned market liberalization.
ussr was invited by the afghan administration to help them against amin who has murdered the prime minister, declared himself ruler of afghanistan and started a reign of terror.
Talk about revisionist history. The Afghan administration that "invited" the USSR was an administration funded entirely by the USSR to start their own little communist revolution in Afghanistan. This administration, even with the material backing of the Soviet Union, utterly failed and was wiped out. As they were being wiped out this communist revolution administration "invited" the USSR in. This wasn't some democratically elected administration that was taken out by a few rebels. This was a rigged communist uprising funded entirely by the USSR that was torn down by the people of Afghanistan. Granted, what they ended up building after removing the Soviet's wasn't all pleasant, making it sound like the peaceful democracy of Afghanistan called in Soviet help to restore their legitimate democracy is a complete fallacy.
I should also point out that the USSR was "invited" to put down multiple more black and white pro-democracy uprisings on Eastern Europe by their respective Soviet controlled governments. The USSR was "invited" to come build the Berlin wall and lock down their borders so that people couldn't flee across country lines to get away from the Soviet controlled governments. During the time that the USSR was building walls all around its little empire to keep people in , the US, even with its liberal immigration policy was building walls to keep people out. That fact alone should tell something.
There actually was a ground level confrontation. Multiple times the US and Germany sent ground convoys to Berlin against the expressed consent of the USSR. At one point it resulted in a many hour stand off as the convoy refused to produce papers authorizing their presence. Further, the USSR also threatened to start shooting down airplanes that were violating East German airspace. The US told them pretty point black that doing so would result in open armed conflict. The Berlin airlift was an extremely tense time. I would not underplay how close the continued supply of Berlin almost resulted in war.
How about hand to hand combat .. tried it lately.. or just calling your self brave by killing people who have nothing to do with anything with missile (who is the terrorist).
Launching a cruise missile instead of challenging people to hand to hand combat isn't brave. It is smart.
As far as the size of the US military goes, the US military is what stood between the USSR and the rest of the world for half a centaury. The sacrifices that the American people made to keep the USSR where it was and hold the line against such a juggernaut seems to have been quickly forgotten. The US put itself directly in the way of the USSR. As the Cuban missile crises showed, the US was more then willing to risk complete annihilation in a fight to keep the USSR at bay.
Now, I am not claiming that US isn't a big ugly leviathan that makes nations fall apart when it sneezes wrong. I am not arguing that in its pursuit to keep the USSR at bay that innocent people were not hurt, nor that the US has not committed its share of evils in the name of a greater good. Anyone who tries to paint the actions of the largest economy and military in the world in terms of pure right and wrong is deluding themselves. The US is and always has been run by humans, flawed creatures as they are. I have no doubt that if it could all be done over again there are things that we would never do again because the turned out to cause so much human suffering.
My point is that despite its mistakes, the US was there for the rest of the world with its big ugly and unwieldy military. That big ugly military that slaughtered innocent people in Vietnam also bought millions of people time to escape Vietnam (many of them to the US) before it descended into the hell hole that it became. The US military was there to repulse North Korea from South Korea and held the line even after a million Chinese came pouring over the border. South Korea is happy little fairytale land that it is today and not the seventh level of hell that North Korea is because the US military was there. The threat of the US military is what kept the USSR from making West Germany and France look like East Germany and Poland.
My point? Yeah yeah, the US military is big and deadly. Where ever it goes and whatever it does people die. That said, it stood as a shield for half a centaury against far more malevolent forces and saved the lives of countless hundreds of millions. Maybe in this new centaury it has worn out its usefulness. Maybe all of the challengers have been beaten and the US can set down the shield and sword and get on with more productive things.
Then again, I bet at the very least the people of Taiwan sleep a little bit better at night knowing that US military leviathan is still lumbering around.
Who wants to take bets on how many morons miss the knee deep sarcasim of the above post and think it is the real thing?
I think this is a bold and positive step. Unfortunately, I believe that they have left a loop hole that needs to be immediately covered. Namely, while we can protect our children from violent video games, there are still now laws in place to protect our children from violent books. There are literally thousands of mystery books out there teaching our children how to be perfect killers. There are thousands of books glorifying war, death conflict, and even sexual perversion. I think must act immediately to step up an American Censorship board to keep violent books out of the hands of our children. I believe that all books containing 'adult content' should be separated out from books safe for children. Further, schools should have an absolute ban on violent and mature books.
If we don't act now, school shootings will continue to rise, the violent murders will continue to increase, and our children will continue to live shorter and shorter lives in this terrible and violent world.
Google is not a bubble. Google is profitable. No, they are not just profitable, they are MASSIVLY profitable. Their P/E is around 75 at the moment, which while a little high, is what you expect from a rapidly growing company. A P/E in the 70's is what completely reasonable for a company that is very profitable and expanding. It shows that people have an expectation that google will continue to make money well into the future. Google is not a .com start up with no way to make profit outside of investment. Hell, Google wasn't even pubically traded until what, a year ago?
The larger point is that Google makes money - lots of it. Google is not a bubble. Google is a fucking titan.