The last time Switzerland had to fend off a super power they were also considered too small to make it.
But alas, this is now 531 years ago, when in 1477 they fend of Karl the Brave from Burgund with the largest armored knight army of its time and caused the end of Burgund as a state in the Battle at Murrgarten.
Quite interesting philosophy about treaties and contracts. If this is how you think treaties should work, it's fine by me. But I would never ever go into negotiations with a country with this philosophy.
It actually explains something in my professional past. I was working for an american company doing business in Germany. I think we had a pretty decent product, we had skilled service people, we had great support by the american engineering, and we had comparatively competent sales engineers. But customers didn't stay with us very long, and later on we didn't even get new customers.
In Germany there seems to be much emphasis on staying true to an once signed contract (or treaty). If you can't fulfill the obligations, you renegotiate, you try to make amendments to the contract, or you try to get the contract ended. Never go and say the contract or several clauses within the contract are no longer binding to you for whatever reasons. If you do, you might even get this approved by a court, but you will no longer be in business later on. At best you will be considered somewhat wacky, but in general you will be regarded a notorious lyer no one wants to do business with. And there will be no difference made if it's a country instead of a business partner.
Sorry to ask, but what are contracts with the U.S. actually good for when they can weazle out of any obligations by pointing at "the specifics of the type of governing structure", whenever the issue comes up? If the contracts don't have any binding value, then they don't have any value at all.
Don't negiotate contracts with the U.S. then. There is really no point in fulfilling your side of the contract anyway, because whenever you need the U.S. to fulfill their part, they won't.
Pacta sunt servanda. This is also valid for the U.S.. It is solely their problem how they manage to serve them, and how to get the parties within the U.S. to comply. Other countries shouldn't care.
I think consistent, reliable, updated software is rare. Your database you speak of sounds like a one-off thing. What if someone finds a security hole? Or wants an additional feature? You'll either ignore the request, tell them to fix it, or be annoyed but fix it yourself. For free. What if there are 100 features/bugs that need to be worked on? What you describe is exactly not software vor charity. You want a service. It may be delivered via software, but it is not software itself.
The EU doesn't have a constitution. The attempt to give the EU a constitution was derailed when the people of France and the Netherlands didn't agree to the proposed constitution. Now there is a newly formulated EU base contract all the rage, but this one is not even through the parliaments of the member states yet.
So... you're boycotting a company which is following the laws of the country it is based in rather than registering your name with a registrar in a country that doesn't have these laws.
Are they really that stupid? No, Wikileaks is asking to boycott a registrar that overzealously interprets a court order, which orders the shutdown of one domain. Said domain wasn't even registered with the registrar, so the court order wasn't even affecting the registrar.
But instead of just ignoring a paper that didn't matter to them, they shut down a different domain, which wasn't mentioned in the court order at all.
Yes, I think so. Living in a transparent society has nothing to do with living in a society where everybody acts rational. If you are in a mob, you are pretty sure you are acting right, even though you still act irrational.
Keep in mind that in this hypothetical situation, GP's actions are also transparent. This gives him a very strong incentive to act reasonably, justly, and proportionately. Sadly, this is not the case. Mobs are a wellknown counterexample: They act very public, every member of a mob feels proud to be a member, but they act completely irrational and disproportional.
It seems so. From TFA:
Lawyers for the intervening parties in the case had threatened to try to recover legal fees in the case under a California law intended to prevent frivolous lawsuits, said Paul Alan Levy, a lawyer at Public Citizen who argued against the judges order at the hearing on Friday.
Ironically U.S. cars fare quite bad in european safety tests, while european cars normally are quite bad in U.S. ones. So yes, it's possible that the safety standards are in part intended to keep the other respective manufacturers off the home market.
I remember the Chrysler PT Cruiser being hailed for one of the most safe cars in U.S. tests, while at the same time being blamed one of the worst at european tests.
I have my doubts about exactly that theory. I for instance am quite ignorant about brands. I wouldn't be able to make a difference between a pair of brand name sunglasses and a counterfeit one, because I simply don't know the brand names. So if I am on vacation, and my glasses break, I just go for new ones, and I would surely take a pair which I like, and where the price looks reasonable to me. I simply have no clue what brand name sunglasses are supposed to cost.
I know that we (bombarded by advertisements and brand name awareness) are supposed to know all the brand names and the associated prices. I call that bullshit. I just don't care. I never have. And I never will. I am buying functionality, not brands. If a pair of sunglasses works for me I don't care about the name that is printed on them. I wouldn't pay more if I remember an ad I saw for the name.
Not exactly. While a ZIP file contains the same information as the unpacked file, a hash just contains a fingerprint which is sufficient to correctly identify a file. If I send you the ISBN of a book I read, you are able to correctly identify the book and get it yourself. But in now way I have send you a copy or a compressed copy of the book.
Information increases its value if it is connected to other information. Many inventions happen when separate, wellknown concepts were put together for the first time. No, I am not talking about "business method performed on the Internet", because this connection is very simple. Putting two things together of which one is all the rage is easy.
But in a cloud of possible dots finding the right ones and connect them actually creates value, and if the number of possible dots increases, the value of the single dot may be negligible, but the combination of the right ones gets more and more value. The process thus is twofold: Make every dot as connectible as possible, and find a way to spot valuable connections. Construction kits for children like LEGO show how you do it for the single dot. Every piece of LEGO can connect to every other piece (ok, sometimes with the help of a third piece, but the overall structure itself remains the same).
I hear often complain that open source software is "not innovative", and then it points out that it wasn't able to invent a single new type of building block for software. That complaint got it all wrong. LEGO also didn't invent a single new connector since the introduction of LEGO Tecnic. And when was the last time a new type of brick was invented? Often the invention of a new type of dot means that you can't connect it to anything. So the invention itself is completely worthless until you invent a way to actually connect it to something.
Many a commercial software has its value because of its combination of wellknown "dots". Photoshop is the standard because it combines Hundreds of wellknown algorithms in a unique way. SAP R/3 even is completely "open source" in a way meaning that everyone with developer rights on a SAP R/3 system can look into the complete source code of every subroutine and function block, and change it at will. But SAP R/3 draws its value from the fact that it implements so many different business concepts and business logics. Every single of it is well known, but only with a system like R/3 you get them bundled together.
And even Microsoft seldom was innovative, but it was always a good integrator. Microsoft software is not valuable because it implements things not found somewhere else. Microsoft's business was to present enough connected dots, so everyone could find something to use.
Slashdot Mirror
The last time Switzerland had to fend off a super power they were also considered too small to make it.
But alas, this is now 531 years ago, when in 1477 they fend of Karl the Brave from Burgund with the largest armored knight army of its time and caused the end of Burgund as a state in the Battle at Murrgarten.
Quite interesting philosophy about treaties and contracts. If this is how you think treaties should work, it's fine by me. But I would never ever go into negotiations with a country with this philosophy.
It actually explains something in my professional past. I was working for an american company doing business in Germany. I think we had a pretty decent product, we had skilled service people, we had great support by the american engineering, and we had comparatively competent sales engineers. But customers didn't stay with us very long, and later on we didn't even get new customers.
In Germany there seems to be much emphasis on staying true to an once signed contract (or treaty). If you can't fulfill the obligations, you renegotiate, you try to make amendments to the contract, or you try to get the contract ended. Never go and say the contract or several clauses within the contract are no longer binding to you for whatever reasons. If you do, you might even get this approved by a court, but you will no longer be in business later on. At best you will be considered somewhat wacky, but in general you will be regarded a notorious lyer no one wants to do business with. And there will be no difference made if it's a country instead of a business partner.
Even though he is currently Bishop of Rome and lives within Italy (but not in Italy), he is bavarian ;)
Sorry to ask, but what are contracts with the U.S. actually good for when they can weazle out of any obligations by pointing at "the specifics of the type of governing structure", whenever the issue comes up? If the contracts don't have any binding value, then they don't have any value at all.
Don't negiotate contracts with the U.S. then. There is really no point in fulfilling your side of the contract anyway, because whenever you need the U.S. to fulfill their part, they won't.
Pacta sunt servanda. This is also valid for the U.S.. It is solely their problem how they manage to serve them, and how to get the parties within the U.S. to comply. Other countries shouldn't care.
No, it's not coconut, it's pineapple that's so dangerous, as we can read in Terry Pratchett's "Last Continent".
Given that GTK stands for "GIMP Tool Kit", it is actually not surprising.
You also won't complain about the fact that you have get a car body with every sedan you buy.
al-QaidA?
What did you expect from IPvSex?
It still grows at an exponential rate because you get also interest on the interest of last year.
The EU doesn't have a constitution. The attempt to give the EU a constitution was derailed when the people of France and the Netherlands didn't agree to the proposed constitution.
Now there is a newly formulated EU base contract all the rage, but this one is not even through the parliaments of the member states yet.
Are they really that stupid? No, Wikileaks is asking to boycott a registrar that overzealously interprets a court order, which orders the shutdown of one domain. Said domain wasn't even registered with the registrar, so the court order wasn't even affecting the registrar.
But instead of just ignoring a paper that didn't matter to them, they shut down a different domain, which wasn't mentioned in the court order at all.
I believe you, and I find your point pretty interesting. :)
I still think that transparency does not force rational behaviour, as stated by the parent.
Yes, I think so. Living in a transparent society has nothing to do with living in a society where everybody acts rational. If you are in a mob, you are pretty sure you are acting right, even though you still act irrational.
Just look the test criteria and results up at NCAP's test site. Here are the results of the Chrysler PT Cruiser as tested in 2002.
Ironically U.S. cars fare quite bad in european safety tests, while european cars normally are quite bad in U.S. ones. So yes, it's possible that the safety standards are in part intended to keep the other respective manufacturers off the home market.
I remember the Chrysler PT Cruiser being hailed for one of the most safe cars in U.S. tests, while at the same time being blamed one of the worst at european tests.
I have my doubts about exactly that theory. I for instance am quite ignorant about brands. I wouldn't be able to make a difference between a pair of brand name sunglasses and a counterfeit one, because I simply don't know the brand names. So if I am on vacation, and my glasses break, I just go for new ones, and I would surely take a pair which I like, and where the price looks reasonable to me. I simply have no clue what brand name sunglasses are supposed to cost.
I know that we (bombarded by advertisements and brand name awareness) are supposed to know all the brand names and the associated prices. I call that bullshit. I just don't care. I never have. And I never will. I am buying functionality, not brands. If a pair of sunglasses works for me I don't care about the name that is printed on them. I wouldn't pay more if I remember an ad I saw for the name.
Not exactly. While a ZIP file contains the same information as the unpacked file, a hash just contains a fingerprint which is sufficient to correctly identify a file. If I send you the ISBN of a book I read, you are able to correctly identify the book and get it yourself. But in now way I have send you a copy or a compressed copy of the book.
Information increases its value if it is connected to other information. Many inventions happen when separate, wellknown concepts were put together for the first time. No, I am not talking about "business method performed on the Internet", because this connection is very simple. Putting two things together of which one is all the rage is easy.
But in a cloud of possible dots finding the right ones and connect them actually creates value, and if the number of possible dots increases, the value of the single dot may be negligible, but the combination of the right ones gets more and more value. The process thus is twofold: Make every dot as connectible as possible, and find a way to spot valuable connections. Construction kits for children like LEGO show how you do it for the single dot. Every piece of LEGO can connect to every other piece (ok, sometimes with the help of a third piece, but the overall structure itself remains the same).
I hear often complain that open source software is "not innovative", and then it points out that it wasn't able to invent a single new type of building block for software. That complaint got it all wrong. LEGO also didn't invent a single new connector since the introduction of LEGO Tecnic. And when was the last time a new type of brick was invented? Often the invention of a new type of dot means that you can't connect it to anything. So the invention itself is completely worthless until you invent a way to actually connect it to something.
Many a commercial software has its value because of its combination of wellknown "dots". Photoshop is the standard because it combines Hundreds of wellknown algorithms in a unique way. SAP R/3 even is completely "open source" in a way meaning that everyone with developer rights on a SAP R/3 system can look into the complete source code of every subroutine and function block, and change it at will. But SAP R/3 draws its value from the fact that it implements so many different business concepts and business logics. Every single of it is well known, but only with a system like R/3 you get them bundled together.
And even Microsoft seldom was innovative, but it was always a good integrator. Microsoft software is not valuable because it implements things not found somewhere else. Microsoft's business was to present enough connected dots, so everyone could find something to use.
Because it's money, it has to be discrete. Thus it's countable.
No, the issue at hand is that U.S. or U.S.-style copyright law does not apply in Canada. And that's (according to IIPA) is all Canada's fault.
In the Magna Carta (where the wording comes from) it meant "people of the same rank".
AIDS doesn't kill you. It's the inability, that comes with AIDS, to combat the virus of the 24-h-flu, that kills you.