I was mentioning China for two reasons. And definitely NOT because China is a haven of freedom (which it obviously is not).
Don't forget that such "trusted hardware" also makes it harder for law-enforcement agencies to spy on you... unless they have some kind of "master key". Which they will obviously demand, and get.
However, if the system is designed with many "master key" loopholes built-in (as many countries will ask for their own "master key"), it means some geeks somewhere will manage to find a way to crack the DRM. So this kinda defeats the purpose of the device.
Besides, the other factor is that China also has the "not invented here" syndrome. And I'm not so sure they'd like to know the NSA also has a "master key" to extract whatever data the Chinese government has on its DRM-enabled PCs.
To put it in a nutshell, this sounds like "yet another American cartel thinking the world will just shut up and follow". And yet, gone are the days the US basically was the Internet. Europe (although I'm afraid it'd eventually go the DRM route, too), and China are forces to be reckoned with nowadays.
Yeah, well, that's great and all but you won't be doing anything on the net unless you are running trusted hardware.
You do know there are other countries than the US on the net, right? I for one have a hard time imagining China letting its citizen use such a DRM'ed computer. Or will the DHS? It could be used by terrorists! Hence, governments will ask for loopholes to be added into it. Hence, hackers will find a nice hack around this. The very minute a loophole is built in, it becomes worthless as far as DRM go.
The dollar's fall is unrelated to the state of the economy. Monetary policies in both contries are controlled by the government. So why has the dollar fallen? Because interest rates are low. And interest rates are staying low - normally a falling currency results in the interest rates coming back up.
because foreign investors are leaving the USA, lest the continuing fall of the dollar further deprecates their investments
because America pissed off Arab and European investors, so they do not want to return to the US even if they could
because foreign central banks are swapping dollars for euros as their reserve currency
because Americans burn twice as much oil per capita as Europeans.
and last but not least, because the EU seems to be trying to do something about its debt, whereas the USA does not seem to care.
That was the short answer. For a more detailed answer, read on below:
Currency fluctuations are mostly due to the balance of payments, in which the trade balance, the foreign investment balance, and the budget balance play the main roles. All of which look very bad for America at the moment.
The trade deficit is a basket case. The US industry is dead, killed by the quarterly profit craze. CEOs preferred outsourcing to competing on quality, unlike Europe (and Japan), which chose to compete on quality and features, instead of giving up on their industry. The fact that the US is to 90% a service industry has a huge impact on the trade deficit. Indeed, international trade is mostly about the trade of goods, which are made by the industrial sector. Which America gave up on. As a result, America is buying high-end European goods, but it has hardly anything to offer to Europe that Europe does not do better already. Which bodes ill for the dollar. Usually, a falling currency usually stabilizes as its exports get cheaper. However, this won't happen for the US, as it cannot get cheaper than China, while the quality of Chinese goods is constantly improving. Unless American engineers somehow manage to wrestle some power back from marketers, bean counters and lawyers in corporate America, the American industry is done for.
The food industry is also traditionally a strong American export; however, it also is a strong European export. Besides, it is standardizing on GM crops, which are mostly forbidden or unwanted in Europe. So, you can also write agriculture off as far as trans-Atlantic trade is concerned.
Having already written off the trade balance, how is the budget balance looking? To keep it short, hopelessly bad at least until 2008, that's for sure. And in 2011, the US goverment will have to start paying back the debt from the Reagan years (which I bet it'll default on).
And now, for the foreign investment balance. Let's start with a bit of history. Back in 1999, when the Euro was introduced, it quickly fell against the dollar. Indeed, at the height of the dot-com bubble, investing in the US sounded more rewarding than in Europe. So, many European investors bought dollars to invest into American assets. However, when the bubble burst, they retreated hastily and sold whatever investment they had to cover their losses. Notice how the euro started rebounding right when the bubble burst? Right now, European investors might look at the GDP growth figures. But they will not return to America before a long while. Given the probability that the dollar will continue its fall, no investment in the
Re:Neoliberal Tyranny of Enforced Competition
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In Canada, almost 50% of every dollar we make goes to the government.
It's simple math that explains why families changed from single-parent earners to double-parent earners. If you take away half of a family's income, then twice as many people in that family have to work.
Ermmm... and what does the government do with that money? Make a huge stash and burn it?
Of course not. It returns to your pocket, indirectly. In forms of unemployment/health benefits or pensions, or highways, or public transportation systems, or protection against crime or fire., or..
And to boot, it might be a better allocation of resources. In Stuttgart, Germany, where I live, I can take of one the 20 underground lines, or rent a city-owned car or van wherever in the city (to haul stuff around, when the underground isn't enough). I can dash through the Autobahn or ride the high-speed train to go to other European cities. I can go anywhere, but I do not need to own a car.
And you know what? All of this wouldn't have happened without taxes! If taxes were lower, a city of 500,000 would not have been able to afford 20 underground lines and a fleet of public cars. If taxes were lower, there would be no ICE or TGV. If taxes were lower, I would have to own a car - a family would have to own two cars - like in the US.
There have been a number of people who patent really good ideas, but the companies just wait for these patents to expire if the person isn't willing to be "exploited".
The do this, because even if the person *could* extend the patent, they can't, because they're not making money from the invention, so it's usually just as good to throw the money into the toilet as to renew a non-income-generating patent. Amen to that. My great-grandfather was a railway engineer. After watching so many workers get crushed as they'd couple cars together, he invented the automatic system that is still used to do so nowadays (in France at least).
The train companies refused to use this obviously-useful invention, and preferred to let their employees die. Of course, when he couldn't afford to pay the fees anymore, the system was rolled out within a year.
In Germany, the employee's invention & patent is owned by the employee.
Wrong. While it might be true in theory, in practice employment contracts hand over ownership of inventions to the employer, just like in the US.
I'm working at Porsche and, while we're all getting a nice bonus for each accepted patent, the company keeps ownership of whatever innovation I might come up with.
If you still think diesels stink, think again. In my country, even BMW sales are over 80% diesel.
A nice example of modern Diesel engineering is the VW Phaeton V10 Tdi. It has 313 HP and, while officially electronically limited to 250 kph (155 mph), was tested at over 290 kph (180 mph) when it was released one year ago. It does 0-100 kph (0-62 mph) in 6.9 seconds (not too shabby for a 3 metric ton car). And yet, it still gets 27.7 mpg.
To put it in a nutshell, I don't quite get what this hybrid frenzy is about. Soot emissions used to be a problem, but the latest cars get a soot filter that tackles it. On the other hand, batteries are an additional weight, and once at the end of their lives, are an environmental nightmare. Or could it be all about oil companies being too lazy to invest into cleaner gas-oil (like they sell in Europe)?
If you're an American looking for a new car, I strongly suggest you gave the few imported diesel VWs, Audis or Mercedeses a try before you go the gasoline route.
I don't know about you folks, but I'm tired of this patent crap.
It's not a bug. It's a feature.
Face it, the American industry is unable to compete on the merits of its products alone. European and Japanese companies design better products, and achieve a much better build quality. Chinese companies cannot be beaten on costs, and their quality is rapidly improving, too.
So, if you're a CEO, how do you face this hopeless situation? You might want to compete on price, and outsource your manufacturing to China, and your services to India. The "only" issue is: how long will it take for the local subcontractors to start making the same product without giving you a cut? You might want to compete on quality. The problem here is that, unlike most German or Japanese companies, in which a sizeable share of directors have an engineering background, most American companies are led by marketers, accountants, or lawyers that don't know a single thing about what they're selling - yet they do not want to give up their power to those nerdy engineers.
In other words: the American economy is shafted. But wait, there is one field on which America remains unrivaled! Lawsuits!
Thus, as it was impossible to gain a real competitive advantage, corporate America decided to give itself an artificial one. Thus, the entire IP nonsense was born.
Of course, the Chinese never intended to buy this crap - and it now appears that Europe doesn't want it, either. As a consequence, it will only add an unnecessary burden on the already beleagered American economy.
Most companies look at things from the perspective of "What is the latest fad that that we could we could belatedly join (and obviously, utterly fail to understand)?" I'm sure AOL is not different. I'd say that someone noticed everyone else is doing it, quickly came up with a few shiny Powerpoint slides right before bonus time and presented it to the managment team and was able to convince them that if everyone is doing it, somehow, someway there was enough potential there for them to make money so they decided to do it.
No, you don't get it. It is not a bug, it is a feature.
Face it, the American economy as a whole is unable to compete on the merits of its products alone (to use the good old car industry cliché, just compare a Chevy with a Toyota, or even a Corvette with a 911: PHB design at its best). So some CEOs got together and thought that if they are unable to get a "natural" edge, they should give themselves artificial advantages - pulled out of thin air so to speak. Thus the whole IP nonsense was born.
Of course, the Chinese were never going to buy it. And thankfully, the EU isn't either. So it looks like the US economy is only going to bury itself in its own grave a bit deeper.
Actually, according to France Telecom, DSL was invented in BellCore Labs in 1987.:)
[pedantic]While DSL was indeed invented at BellCore Labs, ADSL was actually invented by Paul Spruyt, a Belgian working at Alcatel (which is indeed a French company).[/pedantic]
I think that if the US are getting this only now, this is not because of a technical impossibility, but rather because of the lack of competition. The company that introduced TV over ADSL in France, Free, has always been known for offering the lowest prices AND the fastest speeds. For instance, my brother in France is getting 8Mb/s down / 1Mb/s up ADSL + TV + VOIP (including a modem/router/WAP and a VOIP phone) for a mere EUR 30 a month. Depending on the area, you can even get up to 25 Mb/s for the same price. Then I moved to Germany, where I'm getting ass-raped for my 3Mb/s down / 384kb/s up connection.:(
It only takes one company to break the illicit price-agreement cartel. But alas, sometimes that company never comes.
The "biblical" flood is actually just a retelling of a story from the epic of Gilgamesh; as such, it likely refers to the flooding of the Persian gulf.
The most recent theories actually ascribe the widespread Great Flood stories in the Middle East to creation of the Black Sea.
The Black Sea was originally a lake that was fully separate from the Mediterranean Sea. At the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago, the sea level rose in a dramatic way, and sea water started pouring over a pass now known as the Bosporus at a tremendous speed.
The National Geographic has an informative article on this theory.
From the article:
the water hit the Black Sea with 200 times the force of Niagara Falls. Each day the Black Sea rose about six inches (15 centimeters)
Imagine such a catastrophe. No wonder descriptions of the event remained in human memories for millennia to come.
The EU is about as democratic as the former Soviet Union. The European Parliament is almost powerless, and the national governments are almost powerless against new European legislation.
I have a newsflash for you. You are a victim of the old trick that has been repeatedly used by national politicians to pass necessary, but painful reforms: "the EU made me do it". What they don't tell you is that they made the EU make them do it.
The so-called "democratic deficit" in the EU is a myth. The EU executive is currently shared between the European Commission and the European Council. The Council is made of all of the elected national heads of government, or the appropriate ministers (depending on the issue). As for the Commission, it is appointed by the heads of government, which is hardly less democratic than, for instance, the (directly elected) French President appointing a Prime Minister from the majority party in the Parliament. Moreover, just as a national government, the European Commission has to be approved by the Parliament. Remember how Mr Santer was forced to resign, or how Mr Barroso was forced to remove contested Commissioners because he'd have failed the confidence vote otherwise?
If you remember the EU software patent debacle, the non-democratic decision (i.e. not giving a flying f#ck about the EU Parliament) was made by the European Council, i.e. the government of the member states that the EU citizens themselves elected!
It is high time the disinformation stopped. While I would welcome a major increase in the Parliament's powers, the EU executive is definitely held accountable. The current situation is not a "democratic deficit", but rather excessive powers in the hand of national heads of state.
By the way, I'd trust the Commission much more than my own national government... Give me a Prodi over a Chirac or a Berlusconi any day.
That's actually pretty easy - but for one thing: above everything else, media corporations want to retain CONTROL. Control, as in being able to screw both artists and consumers.
Because of the fear to lose control, the **AA have been pushing for unidirectional (server>client) "solutions" to P2P file sharing. This is a waste of resources. P2P has got to exist, because it is the most efficient distribution system (remember the original raison d'etre of BitTorrent). This is also preventing legal offerings from entering the market. After all, if legal online music shops are barely turning a profit at $10 an album, how do you expect a legal movie shop to be profitable at twice the price for 10 times the amount of data?
But you have to dig out why copyright infringement over the Internet continues, despite the DRM, despite legal threats. An often-overlooked fact is that the p2p problem is not only about artists, the **AA and the freeloading public: it is also about the ISPs.
ISPs want consumers to upgrade to their fastest (and most expensive) offerings. Indeed, the killer app of broadband is unlimited free music, movies and TV shows. Without those, we might as well stick to 256k ISDN/cable/DSL (or even dialup). ISPs are the first beneficiaries of widespread copyright infringement, and the most vocal to push the mainstream public to do it. Just a couple months ago, T-Online in Germany was running a massive campaign promising unlimited entertainment to your home. Of course, this "unlimited entertainment" is 95% pirate, and Deutsche Telekom knows it. But they don't give a damn about the **AA. To telcos and ISPs, piracy is all about redirecting revenue that used to be spent on music and movies towards them.
A second often-overlooked fact is that not all consumers/freeloaders are equal. There are actually two kinds of consumers: geeks with broadband, and everyone else. Geeks don't care about the **AA. The more the **AA tighten their grip, the more geeks slip through their fingers, as they move onto more secure networks. DRM? It will be cracked. Huge amounts of data to transfer? University networks are blazing fast.
As for the other consumers, they are indeed a target. They don't let their computers run 24/7. This is especially an issue since broadband connections are typically highly asymetrical, which conflicts with the first rule of p2p: average download speed == average upload speed. In other words, if your upload speed is only a fourth of your download speed, you have to upload four times longer than you do download. If you aren't used to letting run your computer 24/7, you're getting less value out of p2p file sharing. And if you're not getting as much value out of illegal offerings, then you are a target for legal offerings.
The **AA know they can't win the DRM battle against geeks. But what matters is whether they can keep milking the average consumer. The purpose of DRM is not to make it impossible to get free content, but to make it inconvenient enough to Joe Sixpack. Which is all fine and dandy, but the risk is that the very second an obscure hacker cracks a DRM scheme, geeks will leak the fresh de-DRMed works to mainstream illegal networks.
To fix the p2p problem as you called it, the only way is to make "geeks with broadband" PROFIT from p2p (instead of suing them)! You can't win if potential pirates and uploading nodes are fighting you; however if you can make it more profitable for them to fight for you instead of fighting against you, then you'll win.
So my proposal is following: a p2p client metering uploads and downloads. When you download a movie, you'll pay the MPAA's share, and the uploaders' share. Once you have completed the download, you start collecting credits as an uploader, hence you're making your money back.
Consequences:
- potential infringers ("geeks with broadband") will remain on the legal network, and stay away from illegal networks. Indeed, every person that illegally downloads a work stored on th
And debt does not have to only be paid back after 30 years, only the principal does (for T-bonds). So we're paying the interest right now.
That is my point. Right now, the government is still able to afford paying interest (and even this is open to discussion, given the current government debt), but it will be unable to pay the principal when the 30 years are up.
Whether the US government does default on its debt, or whether it prints so enough money to technically avoid bankruptcy that is becomes worthless, it doesn't matter: the dollar will be worthless anyway.
The US is basically an Argentina on steroids. We're headed straight to a worldwide recession that we will make the 1930's pale in comparison., and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush are to blame for this.
The US deficit is mostly financed with short-terms T-bills, and 30 year-T-bonds. In other words, it was wayyy too soon to claim that Reagan proved deficits don't matter, as Dick Cheney once said. The sad truth is that unless the federal government financial politics turn around in a spectacular way, it will be unable to pay the debt of the Reagan years.
Now, remember, the US started getting voluntarily into huge deficits under Reagan. The key to understanding the coming Great Recession is that debt only has to be paid back 30 years later.
1981 + 30 = 2011. The US will default on its debt in 5 to 10 years.
Judgement Day cannot be stopped. Merely postponed.
You're mistaking Saab and Volvo. Volvo is owned by Ford, Saab by GM. GM also owns Daewoo and Saturn, and has shares in Isuzu and Subaru. You're right on the other brands, though.
(not counting Holden, which is only available in Autralia, Opel in continental Europe and Vauxhall in the British Isles).
I agree with this. IE is strictly forbidden at the company I work at. Guess which browser that is installed on every computer? Netscape 7.2.
It'd have made more sense to use Firefox or Mozilla (no goddammed AIM plugin!). However, while our IT department was savvy enough to know better about IE, management wanted a known name before making the jump.
His findings: low gravity and ultrathin atmosphere are bitches.
For one, the ultrathin atmosphere (air density 1% of the Earth's) requires huge wings and a very high speed to generate enough lift.
Taking-off and landing are almost impossible. The planes needs a speed of 400 knots to take off. Landing is very... hard because low gravity prevents you from using brakes, and low air density from using reverse thrust.
Of course, the Gashopper isn't supposed to take off or land (it could not anyway). However, it'd still need massive horsepower and huge wings - all of which make it hard to cram the Mars plane into a space probe. Bottom line: if the plane has been successfully tested on Earth, it is unlikely to work on Mars.
Disclaimer: I am not a Mars aerospace engineer. But that guy's findings were definitely interesting.
"Ah! I see you bought one of them there high quality German made SUVs. Good show."
"No dude, It's a Mercedes. They're made in Aaaaalabama, Yee Ha!. Don't you know anything?"
Poor example. The Alabama factory has abysmal quality standards (for a Mercedes that is).
In Europe, the Mercedes M-Class is available with gasoline or diesel engines. Since almost all gasoline Mercedeses M are sold in America, whereas almost all diesel Mercedeses M are sold in Europe, gasoline Mercedeses M are made in Alabama, whereas diesel ones are made in Austria. Curiously, the top-of-the-line ML500 has crap quality when compared with the entry-level ML270 CDI. The ML500 is made in America, and it shows.
Why? Becase manufacturers will always produce at the lowest quality they can get away with. Since American customers apparently have lower expectations than European customers, they get an inferior quality.
The reason the American manufacturing sector is dead is not higher manufacturing costs (vs China), but rather that it is run by managers with an accounting or marketing background (whereas in Japan or Germany, many top managers have an engineering background). Those people consider a dollar put into advertising to be worth more than a dollar put into the product or the process.
To return a tad more ontopic, Dells and IBMs may be manufactured in the same factories. However, this does not imply they are built to the same quality standards. They are built to the quality standards their respective client (and indirectly, their respective end users) demand.
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I was mentioning China for two reasons. And definitely NOT because China is a haven of freedom (which it obviously is not).
Don't forget that such "trusted hardware" also makes it harder for law-enforcement agencies to spy on you... unless they have some kind of "master key". Which they will obviously demand, and get.
However, if the system is designed with many "master key" loopholes built-in (as many countries will ask for their own "master key"), it means some geeks somewhere will manage to find a way to crack the DRM. So this kinda defeats the purpose of the device.
Besides, the other factor is that China also has the "not invented here" syndrome. And I'm not so sure they'd like to know the NSA also has a "master key" to extract whatever data the Chinese government has on its DRM-enabled PCs.
To put it in a nutshell, this sounds like "yet another American cartel thinking the world will just shut up and follow". And yet, gone are the days the US basically was the Internet. Europe (although I'm afraid it'd eventually go the DRM route, too), and China are forces to be reckoned with nowadays.
You do know there are other countries than the US on the net, right?
I for one have a hard time imagining China letting its citizen use such a DRM'ed computer. Or will the DHS? It could be used by terrorists!
Hence, governments will ask for loopholes to be added into it. Hence, hackers will find a nice hack around this. The very minute a loophole is built in, it becomes worthless as far as DRM go.
The "real" Roland Piquepaille is rpiquepa.
The user "Roland Piquepaille" is an imposter.
You do know that interest rates are the same, if not lower in the Euro zone than in the US?
So, why is the dollar falling?
Short answer: The dollar is falling:
That was the short answer. For a more detailed answer, read on below:
Currency fluctuations are mostly due to the balance of payments, in which the trade balance, the foreign investment balance, and the budget balance play the main roles. All of which look very bad for America at the moment.
The trade deficit is a basket case. The US industry is dead, killed by the quarterly profit craze. CEOs preferred outsourcing to competing on quality, unlike Europe (and Japan), which chose to compete on quality and features, instead of giving up on their industry.
The fact that the US is to 90% a service industry has a huge impact on the trade deficit. Indeed, international trade is mostly about the trade of goods, which are made by the industrial sector. Which America gave up on.
As a result, America is buying high-end European goods, but it has hardly anything to offer to Europe that Europe does not do better already. Which bodes ill for the dollar. Usually, a falling currency usually stabilizes as its exports get cheaper. However, this won't happen for the US, as it cannot get cheaper than China, while the quality of Chinese goods is constantly improving.
Unless American engineers somehow manage to wrestle some power back from marketers, bean counters and lawyers in corporate America, the American industry is done for.
The food industry is also traditionally a strong American export; however, it also is a strong European export. Besides, it is standardizing on GM crops, which are mostly forbidden or unwanted in Europe. So, you can also write agriculture off as far as trans-Atlantic trade is concerned.
Having already written off the trade balance, how is the budget balance looking?
To keep it short, hopelessly bad at least until 2008, that's for sure. And in 2011, the US goverment will have to start paying back the debt from the Reagan years (which I bet it'll default on).
And now, for the foreign investment balance.
Let's start with a bit of history. Back in 1999, when the Euro was introduced, it quickly fell against the dollar. Indeed, at the height of the dot-com bubble, investing in the US sounded more rewarding than in Europe. So, many European investors bought dollars to invest into American assets. However, when the bubble burst, they retreated hastily and sold whatever investment they had to cover their losses. Notice how the euro started rebounding right when the bubble burst?
Right now, European investors might look at the GDP growth figures. But they will not return to America before a long while. Given the probability that the dollar will continue its fall, no investment in the
Ermmm... and what does the government do with that money? Make a huge stash and burn it?
Of course not. It returns to your pocket, indirectly. In forms of unemployment/health benefits or pensions, or highways, or public transportation systems, or protection against crime or fire., or..
And to boot, it might be a better allocation of resources. In Stuttgart, Germany, where I live, I can take of one the 20 underground lines, or rent a city-owned car or van wherever in the city (to haul stuff around, when the underground isn't enough). I can dash through the Autobahn or ride the high-speed train to go to other European cities. I can go anywhere, but I do not need to own a car.
And you know what? All of this wouldn't have happened without taxes! If taxes were lower, a city of 500,000 would not have been able to afford 20 underground lines and a fleet of public cars. If taxes were lower, there would be no ICE or TGV. If taxes were lower, I would have to own a car - a family would have to own two cars - like in the US.
Higher taxes? I'm actually saving money!
I painted 100 "Grove 4 Life" tags all over the town, now where is my AK 47? :(
Wrong. While it might be true in theory, in practice employment contracts hand over ownership of inventions to the employer, just like in the US.
I'm working at Porsche and, while we're all getting a nice bonus for each accepted patent, the company keeps ownership of whatever innovation I might come up with.
If you still think diesels stink, think again. In my country, even BMW sales are over 80% diesel.
A nice example of modern Diesel engineering is the VW Phaeton V10 Tdi. It has 313 HP and, while officially electronically limited to 250 kph (155 mph), was tested at over 290 kph (180 mph) when it was released one year ago. It does 0-100 kph (0-62 mph) in 6.9 seconds (not too shabby for a 3 metric ton car). And yet, it still gets 27.7 mpg.
To put it in a nutshell, I don't quite get what this hybrid frenzy is about. Soot emissions used to be a problem, but the latest cars get a soot filter that tackles it. On the other hand, batteries are an additional weight, and once at the end of their lives, are an environmental nightmare.
Or could it be all about oil companies being too lazy to invest into cleaner gas-oil (like they sell in Europe)?
If you're an American looking for a new car, I strongly suggest you gave the few imported diesel VWs, Audis or Mercedeses a try before you go the gasoline route.
It's not a bug. It's a feature.
Face it, the American industry is unable to compete on the merits of its products alone. European and Japanese companies design better products, and achieve a much better build quality. Chinese companies cannot be beaten on costs, and their quality is rapidly improving, too.
So, if you're a CEO, how do you face this hopeless situation?
You might want to compete on price, and outsource your manufacturing to China, and your services to India. The "only" issue is: how long will it take for the local subcontractors to start making the same product without giving you a cut?
You might want to compete on quality. The problem here is that, unlike most German or Japanese companies, in which a sizeable share of directors have an engineering background, most American companies are led by marketers, accountants, or lawyers that don't know a single thing about what they're selling - yet they do not want to give up their power to those nerdy engineers.
In other words: the American economy is shafted. But wait, there is one field on which America remains unrivaled! Lawsuits!
Thus, as it was impossible to gain a real competitive advantage, corporate America decided to give itself an artificial one. Thus, the entire IP nonsense was born.
Of course, the Chinese never intended to buy this crap - and it now appears that Europe doesn't want it, either. As a consequence, it will only add an unnecessary burden on the already beleagered American economy.
You mean, like drug dealers, weapon importers or human traffickers?
It'll only push spammers underground.
Please explain how you expect people stealing other people's computers to send their spam to suddenly care about the law.
Most companies look at things from the perspective of "What is the latest fad that that we could we could belatedly join (and obviously, utterly fail to understand)?" I'm sure AOL is not different. I'd say that someone noticed everyone else is doing it, quickly came up with a few shiny Powerpoint slides right before bonus time and presented it to the managment team and was able to convince them that if everyone is doing it, somehow, someway there was enough potential there for them to make money so they decided to do it.
No, you don't get it. It is not a bug, it is a feature.
Face it, the American economy as a whole is unable to compete on the merits of its products alone (to use the good old car industry cliché, just compare a Chevy with a Toyota, or even a Corvette with a 911: PHB design at its best). So some CEOs got together and thought that if they are unable to get a "natural" edge, they should give themselves artificial advantages - pulled out of thin air so to speak.
Thus the whole IP nonsense was born.
Of course, the Chinese were never going to buy it. And thankfully, the EU isn't either. So it looks like the US economy is only going to bury itself in its own grave a bit deeper.
[pedantic]While DSL was indeed invented at BellCore Labs, ADSL was actually invented by Paul Spruyt, a Belgian working at Alcatel (which is indeed a French company).[/pedantic]
I think that if the US are getting this only now, this is not because of a technical impossibility, but rather because of the lack of competition.
The company that introduced TV over ADSL in France, Free, has always been known for offering the lowest prices AND the fastest speeds. For instance, my brother in France is getting 8Mb/s down / 1Mb/s up ADSL + TV + VOIP (including a modem/router/WAP and a VOIP phone) for a mere EUR 30 a month. Depending on the area, you can even get up to 25 Mb/s for the same price.
Then I moved to Germany, where I'm getting ass-raped for my 3Mb/s down / 384kb/s up connection.
It only takes one company to break the illicit price-agreement cartel. But alas, sometimes that company never comes.
The most recent theories actually ascribe the widespread Great Flood stories in the Middle East to creation of the Black Sea.
The Black Sea was originally a lake that was fully separate from the Mediterranean Sea. At the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago, the sea level rose in a dramatic way, and sea water started pouring over a pass now known as the Bosporus at a tremendous speed.
The National Geographic has an informative article on this theory.
From the article:
Imagine such a catastrophe. No wonder descriptions of the event remained in human memories for millennia to come.
I have a newsflash for you. You are a victim of the old trick that has been repeatedly used by national politicians to pass necessary, but painful reforms: "the EU made me do it". What they don't tell you is that they made the EU make them do it.
The so-called "democratic deficit" in the EU is a myth. The EU executive is currently shared between the European Commission and the European Council.
The Council is made of all of the elected national heads of government, or the appropriate ministers (depending on the issue).
As for the Commission, it is appointed by the heads of government, which is hardly less democratic than, for instance, the (directly elected) French President appointing a Prime Minister from the majority party in the Parliament. Moreover, just as a national government, the European Commission has to be approved by the Parliament. Remember how Mr Santer was forced to resign, or how Mr Barroso was forced to remove contested Commissioners because he'd have failed the confidence vote otherwise?
If you remember the EU software patent debacle, the non-democratic decision (i.e. not giving a flying f#ck about the EU Parliament) was made by the European Council, i.e. the government of the member states that the EU citizens themselves elected!
It is high time the disinformation stopped. While I would welcome a major increase in the Parliament's powers, the EU executive is definitely held accountable. The current situation is not a "democratic deficit", but rather excessive powers in the hand of national heads of state.
By the way, I'd trust the Commission much more than my own national government... Give me a Prodi over a Chirac or a Berlusconi any day.
That's actually pretty easy - but for one thing: above everything else, media corporations want to retain CONTROL.
Control, as in being able to screw both artists and consumers.
Because of the fear to lose control, the **AA have been pushing for unidirectional (server>client) "solutions" to P2P file sharing. This is a waste of resources. P2P has got to exist, because it is the most efficient distribution system (remember the original raison d'etre of BitTorrent).
This is also preventing legal offerings from entering the market. After all, if legal online music shops are barely turning a profit at $10 an album, how do you expect a legal movie shop to be profitable at twice the price for 10 times the amount of data?
But you have to dig out why copyright infringement over the Internet continues, despite the DRM, despite legal threats. An often-overlooked fact is that the p2p problem is not only about artists, the **AA and the freeloading public: it is also about the ISPs.
ISPs want consumers to upgrade to their fastest (and most expensive) offerings. Indeed, the killer app of broadband is unlimited free music, movies and TV shows. Without those, we might as well stick to 256k ISDN/cable/DSL (or even dialup).
ISPs are the first beneficiaries of widespread copyright infringement, and the most vocal to push the mainstream public to do it. Just a couple months ago, T-Online in Germany was running a massive campaign promising unlimited entertainment to your home.
Of course, this "unlimited entertainment" is 95% pirate, and Deutsche Telekom knows it. But they don't give a damn about the **AA. To telcos and ISPs, piracy is all about redirecting revenue that used to be spent on music and movies towards them.
A second often-overlooked fact is that not all consumers/freeloaders are equal. There are actually two kinds of consumers: geeks with broadband, and everyone else. Geeks don't care about the **AA. The more the **AA tighten their grip, the more geeks slip through their fingers, as they move onto more secure networks. DRM? It will be cracked. Huge amounts of data to transfer? University networks are blazing fast.
As for the other consumers, they are indeed a target. They don't let their computers run 24/7. This is especially an issue since broadband connections are typically highly asymetrical, which conflicts with the first rule of p2p: average download speed == average upload speed. In other words, if your upload speed is only a fourth of your download speed, you have to upload four times longer than you do download. If you aren't used to letting run your computer 24/7, you're getting less value out of p2p file sharing.
And if you're not getting as much value out of illegal offerings, then you are a target for legal offerings.
The **AA know they can't win the DRM battle against geeks. But what matters is whether they can keep milking the average consumer. The purpose of DRM is not to make it impossible to get free content, but to make it inconvenient enough to Joe Sixpack.
Which is all fine and dandy, but the risk is that the very second an obscure hacker cracks a DRM scheme, geeks will leak the fresh de-DRMed works to mainstream illegal networks.
To fix the p2p problem as you called it, the only way is to make "geeks with broadband" PROFIT from p2p (instead of suing them)!
You can't win if potential pirates and uploading nodes are fighting you; however if you can make it more profitable for them to fight for you instead of fighting against you, then you'll win.
So my proposal is following: a p2p client metering uploads and downloads. When you download a movie, you'll pay the MPAA's share, and the uploaders' share. Once you have completed the download, you start collecting credits as an uploader, hence you're making your money back.
Consequences:
- potential infringers ("geeks with broadband") will remain on the legal network, and stay away from illegal networks. Indeed, every person that illegally downloads a work stored on th
That is my point. Right now, the government is still able to afford paying interest (and even this is open to discussion, given the current government debt), but it will be unable to pay the principal when the 30 years are up.
Whether the US government does default on its debt, or whether it prints so enough money to technically avoid bankruptcy that is becomes worthless, it doesn't matter: the dollar will be worthless anyway.
The US is basically an Argentina on steroids. We're headed straight to a worldwide recession that we will make the 1930's pale in comparison., and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush are to blame for this.
The US deficit is mostly financed with short-terms T-bills, and 30 year-T-bonds. In other words, it was wayyy too soon to claim that Reagan proved deficits don't matter, as Dick Cheney once said.
The sad truth is that unless the federal government financial politics turn around in a spectacular way, it will be unable to pay the debt of the Reagan years.
Now, remember, the US started getting voluntarily into huge deficits under Reagan. The key to understanding the coming Great Recession is that debt only has to be paid back 30 years later.
1981 + 30 = 2011.
The US will default on its debt in 5 to 10 years.
Judgement Day cannot be stopped. Merely postponed.
You're mistaking Saab and Volvo. Volvo is owned by Ford, Saab by GM.
GM also owns Daewoo and Saturn, and has shares in Isuzu and Subaru. You're right on the other brands, though.
(not counting Holden, which is only available in Autralia, Opel in continental Europe and Vauxhall in the British Isles).
I agree with this. IE is strictly forbidden at the company I work at.
Guess which browser that is installed on every computer? Netscape 7.2.
It'd have made more sense to use Firefox or Mozilla (no goddammed AIM plugin!). However, while our IT department was savvy enough to know better about IE, management wanted a known name before making the jump.
Sorry for replying to my own post (I did RTFA... but too fast apparently ;p), but I just noticed the plane is actually supposed to take off and land...
It's even worse than I thought. It just won't fly.
I remember some dude that had created Mars planes on a simulator, using real NASA-supplied data.
His findings: low gravity and ultrathin atmosphere are bitches.
For one, the ultrathin atmosphere (air density 1% of the Earth's) requires huge wings and a very high speed to generate enough lift.
Taking-off and landing are almost impossible. The planes needs a speed of 400 knots to take off. Landing is very... hard because low gravity prevents you from using brakes, and low air density from using reverse thrust.
Of course, the Gashopper isn't supposed to take off or land (it could not anyway). However, it'd still need massive horsepower and huge wings - all of which make it hard to cram the Mars plane into a space probe.
Bottom line: if the plane has been successfully tested on Earth, it is unlikely to work on Mars.
Disclaimer: I am not a Mars aerospace engineer. But that guy's findings were definitely interesting.
Poor example. The Alabama factory has abysmal quality standards (for a Mercedes that is).
In Europe, the Mercedes M-Class is available with gasoline or diesel engines. Since almost all gasoline Mercedeses M are sold in America, whereas almost all diesel Mercedeses M are sold in Europe, gasoline Mercedeses M are made in Alabama, whereas diesel ones are made in Austria.
Curiously, the top-of-the-line ML500 has crap quality when compared with the entry-level ML270 CDI. The ML500 is made in America, and it shows.
Why?
Becase manufacturers will always produce at the lowest quality they can get away with. Since American customers apparently have lower expectations than European customers, they get an inferior quality.
The reason the American manufacturing sector is dead is not higher manufacturing costs (vs China), but rather that it is run by managers with an accounting or marketing background (whereas in Japan or Germany, many top managers have an engineering background). Those people consider a dollar put into advertising to be worth more than a dollar put into the product or the process.
To return a tad more ontopic, Dells and IBMs may be manufactured in the same factories. However, this does not imply they are built to the same quality standards. They are built to the quality standards their respective client (and indirectly, their respective end users) demand.