Alternative energy production is being pursued. I work for an engineering firm that specializes in control systems for oil and gas pipelines and we have had to add both bio and solar energy specialists to work with some of our new and existing clients. Everything from bio-fuel, solar panels, and solar mirror technology is being investigated and test projects are being built. It's just that the conversion from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources will take a long time. It's taken 100+ years just to get the current gas and oil delivery and refining infrastructure in place to adequately service the country. It may take another 100+ years to transition to a different energy environment.
"Fossil fuels cost far too much and just punting the problem down the road for someone else to pay for is wrong."
We have spent the last 100+ years addicting ourselves to fossil fuels. We can not just stop procuring oil and gas and hope something better comes along before rising scarcity causes cost increases capable of tumbling the world economy. The most efficient electric or other alternative energy powered car could come out tomorrow and we would still need to use oil to keep all the current fossil fueled cars working. We will still need to use heating oil and gas in houses. Switching over to alternative energy of any kind will require massive infrastructure changes that will take years to enact. We will also need to create and bring online the new alternative energy infrastructure in parallel with the existing energy infrastructure.
The US should always put it's interest's ahead of any other countries. Sometimes that requires working closely with others but there are also times when the US can remain disengaged from other countries. If the rise in energy productivity follows the forecast it will have a couple of immediate consequences. Oil and Gas prices will drop as the US output is factored into the world market, the US military presence in the middle east can be drastically scaled back if not totally removed, and the US can disengage from the middle east in general letting the people in that region solve their own problems without US interference. If that course of action results in unending war and conflict in the region so be it.
"openly developed with the potential for anyone to contribute and for everyone to see"
I am continually amazed that people think just because they have the source code to an OS they can just scan the code and locate security holes. The low hanging fruit is long gone in today's popular OS's. OS security holes and weaknesses are found by combining and testing multiple executable decision trees with varying environmental factors and then analyzing the captured results which usually includes sorting through binary output, assembler output, and real time memory mapping looking for anomalies. Finding OS level security holes also requires an in-depth knowledge of the various CPU processor instruction sets, memory allocation models, and memory manipulation. To many developers equate OS development with Application development when in reality they are almost entirely different animals requiring radically differing skill sets.
"Some of us don't think that copyright makes the world a better place"
Usually by people who have never created any original content that falls under copyright. The entitlement group think permeating the web today will lead only to mediocrity and a reduction in the amount of original and innovative works being released.
"Not all. I advocate boycotting them and their works. The sooner those leaches go out of business and disappear, the sooner we'll be able to get on with life without lawyers breathing down every one's neck for not paying tithes, or buying special favours from our elected representatives."
This statement is a perfect example of the entitlement psychosis. Why don't you go stand in the corner and stamp your feet and shout gimme, gimme, gimme until the world adopts your 12-year old version of how the world works. Judging by your mindset you must like to work for free, that is assuming you are even capable of even contributing anything useful in the IT.
"I have had Office behave oddly for me in configurations"
Perhaps you need to brush up on how to create proper "configurations". The problems you mentioned look more like user setup issues than the actual software.
If you honestly think China, NK, Iran, or the Pakistani governments are no different than the US government you are extremely deluded. IP and content ownership issues emanating from the US and other countries are not the same as the blatant censorship being pushed in other countries like China, Iran, or Pakistan. Even the copyright and content related issues are the result of the current laws trying to catch up with the change over from hard copy to electronic media distribution. And you are right all the authoritarian countries are free to build their own "Internet" and wall it off from the rest of the world if they want to. The only people who will be harmed are the citizens of those countries. People have adopted an "entitlement" mindset and believe they should have free and unfettered access to any digital content they can get their hands on and heaven forbid if the content owners try to make any money for their efforts. So far content owners have been able to use advertising to generate the revenue to justify their efforts but advertising is not and never will offer a total solution. ICANN has a very limited mandate which is to manage the top level domain servers and they have did a good job. How governments or individuals utilize the domain servers are a separate issue. Giving the UN power to replace ICANN will never happen. The UN has shown it is an ineffectual organization that often does more harm than good. It's usefulness has long passed and like the League of Nations it should be shut down and replaced by another organization that better reflects today's world.
Users were able to transition from a DOS UI to a Windows UI pretty successfully. MS is threatening hardware companies? Apple dictates you use hardware built solely by them. And before any businesses start thinking about changing platforms they will need port all their current applications and data, retrain their development staff, retrain their support staff, and retrain their users. The Linux desktop needs applications. If you just want to surf the Internet or use the iffy productivity software and e-mail services please make the change.
The US or any other country should not get involved in either supporting or vilifying the Iranian government. Just ignore them and treat them as a non-entity when it comes to any international cooperation. I don't believe a military solution is warranted unless the Iranian government does something stupid such as attempting to close the Hormuz strait or targeting any US interests using their 3rd party proxies. It's up to the Iranians themselves to forge their own destiny but so far their efforts have been weak and ineffective. The last time the Iranian public got serious about instituting governmental changes was in 1979 but the naive students and short sighted progressives were marginalized by the islamist with little trouble. The protesters deserve the government they got because they did not bother to think ahead or have a plan for a new government framework after their glorious revolution. Storming the barricades might be exciting and look impressive on TV but you are not going to create a viable government once the riots burn out. The hardline Islamists played the protesters for fools in 1979. While the protesters were busy holding US hostages and spouting clever slogans the Islamists were actually organizing themselves to take over the government. If the Iranian public wants a change in government they will have to accept that people will die and sacrifices will need to be endured. The general public vastly outnumbers the government soldiers and civilian militias but the majority never use this advantage to institute any changes. People go on about Muslim extremists being a tiny minority within the Muslim community so why don't these non-violent Muslims actually make an attempt to nullify the violent extremists in their midst? If they don't try to stand up to the minority damaging the entire Muslim faith then don't expect any sympathy, understanding, or help from anyone.
The lion share of conflicts across the middle east and northern Africa can be laid at the feet of the English and the French. The English handed out fiefdoms to the Arab elite to secure their access to their oil. Today people assert that the US was responsible for the Iranian change of government in 1953 but it was the Iranians themselves who enacted the change of government in the country. Nobody had a gun pointed at their heads. And it was not the US who sent warships to block Iranian from exporting their oil. No country is happy when their international assets are nationalised and that was exactly what Iran was planning at the time. The US had very little invested in Iran at the time and were more worried about the Korean war and Russian expansion at the time to really care.
People tend to assume that the US military is as lethal and over bearing as it is today and can dictate terms but that is really not the case today. Every international border in the world is drawn in blood. Sometimes the borders have been re-drawn more than once requiring even more blood.I think Iran and the other middle eastern countries would be in much better position if the Ayatollahs and religious extremists had not used religious dogma as the basis of administering the state.
No they didn't. That patch of ground has been the home of Jews, Muslims, and Christians for over 2000 years. If the Arabs had 2 brain cells to rub together they would have signed the Balfour Agreement in 1948, carefully marshaled their military resources, and then attacked. Instead they rushed in and told those Arabs living in the line of attack to abandon their homes but plan to return in a week or so after all the Jews were dead. That worked out pretty good for them didn't it? They should have especially been circumspect about trying to attack the Jews in any fashion in 1948. The Jews were in no mood to put up with any shit from anyone at the time since the entire world had turned their back on them during the war. The Arabs repeated the same mistake in 67 and 73. If you go to war and end up losing why should the victor return the spoils of the war? Losers are not entitled to any "do overs" just because they lost.
The Palestinians today cannot even reconcile and organize their own internal governments but for some reason they think they deserve a state. Just what the world needs, another shit hole Arab country looking for handouts while blaming the "west" or anyone else handy for all of their problems. Hopefully the UN will upgrade Palestine's member status so the US automatic defunding law can finally kick in full. And ponder this: If the Arabs were ever able to militarily defeat the Jews do you honestly believe there would be a single living Jew left in Israel after the war? Would you even care?
Iran would lose any confrontation with Isreal regardless of any US involvement. Iran may bluster about having 200K missile but unless they have the same number of launch platforms they certainly couldn't use the quantity of missiles.
Isreal has been at Defcon 4 for 40+ years and are not known to be timid when the bullets and bombs start flying. Iran on the other hand vastly overstates their war fighting assets and rely on incendiary propaganda from their government and military leaders.The middle eastern countries are terrified of Isreal when it comes to open warfare. They are lucky the US is in the position to restrain Israel's military ambitions. Isreal could depopulate Gaza and the West Bank and there is not a single country in the world who would do anything other than pass a non-binding UN statement.
I am not Jewish and really don't care about Isreal or any of the other countries in that region. However, the Arabs launched wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973 and got their asses handed to them. There are no "do overs" just because you want a second shot.
A true professional should be recommending the technology that best fits the needs of your customer. Choosing technology based solely on who made is short sighted. Most hardcore geeks suffer from a sever case of tunnel vision when it comes to pushing their pet technologies. They usually pay no attention to how much work it would take to actually implement their favorite technology platform.
And damn near every carrier has introduced their own modifications. And while they do submit their changes back into the community most of those changes are useless without the right hardware platform.
Well one of the biggest US based rare earth mining operations has already re-opened and went into production 2 Years ago. If it is cheaper to import commodities such as rare earths, gas, or oil that is the way it will go but import costs have been steadily rising which makes going back to domestic sources profitable once more. Plus these mines and extraction companies are commercial enterprises and they invest their money on the expectation of future profits.
Also don't forget that the US not only has the top GDP in the world it is also ranked at the top manufacturer rankings as well. A lot of folks are predicting China's GDP will surpass the US but it is starting to sound like the claims that Linux will surpass MS on the desktop any day now. More US manufacturing jobs are being lost due to automation and better processes than are being lost by shipping the jobs overseas.
China is losing the one thing that has improved help grow their economy and that is low labor costs when compared to more developed countries. Manipulating their currency is another factor but they have just about reached the limits of their manipulations. A couple of years ago China has went from a long stretch of export but have started posting deceits around 4 years ago.
Why can't Australia make their own decisions and handle their own problems instead of blaming the US? Damn near every country in the world blames their problems on the US so they can avoid admitting their own mistakes. It's much easier to blame someone else for your problems then it is to actually work on solving your own internal problems. Some countries are worse than others but no country passes up the opportunity to shift blame so they can feel good about themselves. The number one goal of every government in the world is to look after it's own first and every other country comes in a distant second place. Of course this causes people denounce US involvement and in the next breath complain that the US is not getting involved.
If your witnesses saw Zimmerman getting his ass kicked then the Florida law totally supports the right to defend yourself. Just because the other guy brings a knife to a gunfight doesn't matter. Also Zimmerman was working for the HOA at the time which had recently been subjected to multiple break-ins. He had a gun permit and if the witnesses and Zimmerman's documented back of the head injuries he walks and the self righteous mob calling for Zimmerman's head can fuck off.
I did not say anything about conventional extraction although there are also deposits that can be accessed by conventional means.
They can estimate the amount of gas or oil in non-conventional sources such as shale. The shale reserves in Colorado and surrounding areas contain more untapped oil than any OPEC supplier. The US uses approximately 14 million BPD and is already pumping around 10 million BPD and steadily increasing.
The original Lotus 1-2-3 and Word Perfect were original DOS based and were very good applications at the time. When they attempted to create a Windows version they were definitely at a disadvantage compared to MS however you cannot argue that if one company develops a Word Processor or Spreadsheet program it is wrong for another company to do the same. This took place in the very early stages of the Windows OS which frankly sucked. MS was hardly a considered a monopoly at the time because their OS was relatively new and did not command a monopoly over the other OS's at the time. I didn't even look at the MS OS platform until after 3.11 and even that was pitiful compared to the Unix/AIX platforms I was focusing on at the time.
But I chose software design and development as a career and working on the MS platform has helped me make a decent living. It still is today even though I also work in Linux and the LAMP stack when needed.
MS's masterstroke that helped create their dominance was their emphasis on providing developers with the tools to build applications for their platform. They still cater to developers today to help make sure people continue creating applications that run in the MS ecosystem. There are 10,000's of MS platform developers and people who support MS applications. Moving off the MS platform to something else requires a lot of work to re-architect and re-build Windows applications that will function on another OS platform. Developer training, support staff training, and user training create for a new OS platform is very expensive and time consuming for most businesses.
Or just re-open the closed rare earth mines in the US. Rare Earths are really not that "rare". The US closed it's most productive mines for environmental reasons and because it was cheaper to purchase from abroad. Same reason domestic oil production was reduced. Of course the US is now pumping approximately 10 million BPD and is expected to surpass Saudi Arabia in as little as 4 years using newer extraction methods is also something to look forward. China's economic forecasts have always been predicated on best case scenarios as well as their government making the optimum decisions every time but their government is no more immune to stupid decisions than any other government in the world.
And what is wrong with the US government favoring US based companies? China's 2 big problems are their willingness to steal any technology they can get their hands on and use currency manipulation to control their export prices in the global market. That being said I don't believe China is an enemy of the US. China already has it's hand full with a huge population that is becoming more assertive as their economy grows. China is not immune when it comes to their citizens reaching a point where they start challenging the status quo. Dirt poor peasants are easy to control but citizens who have seen their economic status improve are another matter. Plus both the US and China are dependent on one another for trade so why rock the boat? The US might import a lot of Chinese products but China imports a large amount of agriculture and food products from the US. Chinese food imports from the US have increased by a factor of 5 just over the past 5 years alone. And put aside all the BS about China lending the US money. The fact is that China invests their money in the US by purchasing US Treasury certificates and bonds because they realize that the US still offers solid returns on their investments in a stable financial system. And all the numb nuts claiming China "owns" the US are full of shit. China only holds about 5-6% of all outstanding government bonds and treasury certificates. And in the unlikely event the US cannot not make good on the Chinese investments or hostilities breakout China better have one hell of a collection agency if they expect to get any of their money back.
The really interesting back doors the US government and tech companies might employ are those related to the military technology they sell to other countries. The first time a non-US country tries to use an American F-15 they purchased to target and shoot an American F-15 would most likely see their missile make a big U-turn and target the aircraft who fired the missile. There are key systems in the weapon systems the US sells to foreign countries that require all maintenance, repair, and replacement parts to be provided by the US.
Linux provided an alternative however it is so fragmented with multiple distributions that developing applications that work across all distributions can be difficult and present a major drawback. Also the most popular Linux license allows companies or individuals to make their own custom enhancements without releasing them back into the open source community as long as they do not sell or distribute their changes outside of the their enterprise. Google might have started with a "Linux" base but the current incarnation they use bares little resemblance to anything you might might find in the open source depositories. The same thing applies to their vaunted database system. They published some open source version of their value-pair database system but it also bares little resemblance to what they actually use internally. For companies that do not sell or market software applications and hardware running their OS to the general public the open source libraries are nothing more than places to find and extract code to use in their internal applications without publishing their changes back to the community.
"Just the thing to irritate the same sheeple who once raised Microsoft up to the dizzying heights of world's most valuable company."
It was not the "sheeple" it was the total lack of any competition at the dawn of the personal computer and desktop era. At the time Apple might have offered a better product but their insistence on controlling the hardware made their products quite a bit more expensive than the MS products targeted at commodity hardware. And you can add up all the complaints against MS but it's dominance evidently allowed both the companies and the users to actually be productive. If MS products did not provide any value as it relates to providing functionality it would not have risen to the top to begin with. MS was fortunate to arrive on the scene when the major software companies were still clueless about the future of desktop computing. By the time they got a clue they were already in a deep hole. The early MS partnerships with IBM and even the Apple contractual agreements with Xerox gave away many favorable advantages to MS at the time because they did not take personal computing seriously and instead concentrated on the big Iron and mid-range market. Plus when people make an argument that MS stole all of it's technology they totally discount the fact that most of the technology MS acquired (and even Apple) was purchased from the companies and individuals who created the technology. Most of the companies and products that could have competed opted for cashing out by selling their technology so they could move on to something else. The same thing happens today and MS is not the only big company who purchases companies and technologies from 3rd parties. There are a lot of software start ups today who do what they do so they can sellout to the deep pocket corporations. That is their goal and it is not a bad business model. Most of them have no intention of actually getting into the advertising, sales, distribution, and customer support needed to compete with MS.
"Microsoft and Sony spend billions on R&D just so that they can "win"
Well it's a good thing they have the money to actually do R&D to discover new technologies and ways to apply them. It takes a lot of resources to move R&D forward and there are a lot of times when the money is spent the end result will not recoup the time and money invested. ". Instead of working together, and lowering their expenses they have their ego, pride, and greed so far up their ass that they would rather waste people's lives redeveloping the _same_ thing just so that the other guy is forced to "play the game."
And if they did this how many seconds would it take for peanut gallery to start a crusade against monopolies? Competition is a good motivator to push advances.
"Just _how_ many devices/things do we _really_ _need_ ? i.e. How _many_ printers do we need to chose from? Cars? Game Consoles? Computers? Laptops? Tablets? etc."
You only need the devices YOU want. Nobody is forcing you to buy every new or upgraded gadget as soon as it hits the market.
Slashdot Mirror
Alternative energy production is being pursued. I work for an engineering firm that specializes in control systems for oil and gas pipelines and we have had to add both bio and solar energy specialists to work with some of our new and existing clients. Everything from bio-fuel, solar panels, and solar mirror technology is being investigated and test projects are being built. It's just that the conversion from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources will take a long time. It's taken 100+ years just to get the current gas and oil delivery and refining infrastructure in place to adequately service the country. It may take another 100+ years to transition to a different energy environment.
"Fossil fuels cost far too much and just punting the problem down the road for someone else to pay for is wrong."
We have spent the last 100+ years addicting ourselves to fossil fuels. We can not just stop procuring oil and gas and hope something better comes along before rising scarcity causes cost increases capable of tumbling the world economy. The most efficient electric or other alternative energy powered car could come out tomorrow and we would still need to use oil to keep all the current fossil fueled cars working. We will still need to use heating oil and gas in houses. Switching over to alternative energy of any kind will require massive infrastructure changes that will take years to enact. We will also need to create and bring online the new alternative energy infrastructure in parallel with the existing energy infrastructure.
The US should always put it's interest's ahead of any other countries. Sometimes that requires working closely with others but there are also times when the US can remain disengaged from other countries. If the rise in energy productivity follows the forecast it will have a couple of immediate consequences. Oil and Gas prices will drop as the US output is factored into the world market, the US military presence in the middle east can be drastically scaled back if not totally removed, and the US can disengage from the middle east in general letting the people in that region solve their own problems without US interference. If that course of action results in unending war and conflict in the region so be it.
"openly developed with the potential for anyone to contribute and for everyone to see"
I am continually amazed that people think just because they have the source code to an OS they can just scan the code and locate security holes. The low hanging fruit is long gone in today's popular OS's. OS security holes and weaknesses are found by combining and testing multiple executable decision trees with varying environmental factors and then analyzing the captured results which usually includes sorting through binary output, assembler output, and real time memory mapping looking for anomalies. Finding OS level security holes also requires an in-depth knowledge of the various CPU processor instruction sets, memory allocation models, and memory manipulation. To many developers equate OS development with Application development when in reality they are almost entirely different animals requiring radically differing skill sets.
"Some of us don't think that copyright makes the world a better place"
Usually by people who have never created any original content that falls under copyright. The entitlement group think permeating the web today will lead only to mediocrity and a reduction in the amount of original and innovative works being released.
"Not all. I advocate boycotting them and their works. The sooner those leaches go out of business and disappear, the sooner we'll be able to get on with life without lawyers breathing down every one's neck for not paying tithes, or buying special favours from our elected representatives."
This statement is a perfect example of the entitlement psychosis. Why don't you go stand in the corner and stamp your feet and shout gimme, gimme, gimme until the world adopts your 12-year old version of how the world works. Judging by your mindset you must like to work for free, that is assuming you are even capable of even contributing anything useful in the IT.
"I have had Office behave oddly for me in configurations"
Perhaps you need to brush up on how to create proper "configurations". The problems you mentioned look more like user setup issues than the actual software.
If you honestly think China, NK, Iran, or the Pakistani governments are no different than the US government you are extremely deluded. IP and content ownership issues emanating from the US and other countries are not the same as the blatant censorship being pushed in other countries like China, Iran, or Pakistan. Even the copyright and content related issues are the result of the current laws trying to catch up with the change over from hard copy to electronic media distribution. And you are right all the authoritarian countries are free to build their own "Internet" and wall it off from the rest of the world if they want to. The only people who will be harmed are the citizens of those countries. People have adopted an "entitlement" mindset and believe they should have free and unfettered access to any digital content they can get their hands on and heaven forbid if the content owners try to make any money for their efforts. So far content owners have been able to use advertising to generate the revenue to justify their efforts but advertising is not and never will offer a total solution. ICANN has a very limited mandate which is to manage the top level domain servers and they have did a good job. How governments or individuals utilize the domain servers are a separate issue. Giving the UN power to replace ICANN will never happen. The UN has shown it is an ineffectual organization that often does more harm than good. It's usefulness has long passed and like the League of Nations it should be shut down and replaced by another organization that better reflects today's world.
Users were able to transition from a DOS UI to a Windows UI pretty successfully. MS is threatening hardware companies? Apple dictates you use hardware built solely by them. And before any businesses start thinking about changing platforms they will need port all their current applications and data, retrain their development staff, retrain their support staff, and retrain their users. The Linux desktop needs applications. If you just want to surf the Internet or use the iffy productivity software and e-mail services please make the change.
The US or any other country should not get involved in either supporting or vilifying the Iranian government. Just ignore them and treat them as a non-entity when it comes to any international cooperation. I don't believe a military solution is warranted unless the Iranian government does something stupid such as attempting to close the Hormuz strait or targeting any US interests using their 3rd party proxies. It's up to the Iranians themselves to forge their own destiny but so far their efforts have been weak and ineffective. The last time the Iranian public got serious about instituting governmental changes was in 1979 but the naive students and short sighted progressives were marginalized by the islamist with little trouble. The protesters deserve the government they got because they did not bother to think ahead or have a plan for a new government framework after their glorious revolution. Storming the barricades might be exciting and look impressive on TV but you are not going to create a viable government once the riots burn out. The hardline Islamists played the protesters for fools in 1979. While the protesters were busy holding US hostages and spouting clever slogans the Islamists were actually organizing themselves to take over the government. If the Iranian public wants a change in government they will have to accept that people will die and sacrifices will need to be endured. The general public vastly outnumbers the government soldiers and civilian militias but the majority never use this advantage to institute any changes. People go on about Muslim extremists being a tiny minority within the Muslim community so why don't these non-violent Muslims actually make an attempt to nullify the violent extremists in their midst? If they don't try to stand up to the minority damaging the entire Muslim faith then don't expect any sympathy, understanding, or help from anyone.
The lion share of conflicts across the middle east and northern Africa can be laid at the feet of the English and the French. The English handed out fiefdoms to the Arab elite to secure their access to their oil. Today people assert that the US was responsible for the Iranian change of government in 1953 but it was the Iranians themselves who enacted the change of government in the country. Nobody had a gun pointed at their heads. And it was not the US who sent warships to block Iranian from exporting their oil. No country is happy when their international assets are nationalised and that was exactly what Iran was planning at the time. The US had very little invested in Iran at the time and were more worried about the Korean war and Russian expansion at the time to really care.
People tend to assume that the US military is as lethal and over bearing as it is today and can dictate terms but that is really not the case today.
Every international border in the world is drawn in blood. Sometimes the borders have been re-drawn more than once requiring even more blood.I think Iran and the other middle eastern countries would be in much better position if the Ayatollahs and religious extremists had not used religious dogma as the basis of administering the state.
No they didn't. That patch of ground has been the home of Jews, Muslims, and Christians for over 2000 years. If the Arabs had 2 brain cells to rub together they would have signed the Balfour Agreement in 1948, carefully marshaled their military resources, and then attacked. Instead they rushed in and told those Arabs living in the line of attack to abandon their homes but plan to return in a week or so after all the Jews were dead. That worked out pretty good for them didn't it? They should have especially been circumspect about trying to attack the Jews in any fashion in 1948. The Jews were in no mood to put up with any shit from anyone at the time since the entire world had turned their back on them during the war. The Arabs repeated the same mistake in 67 and 73. If you go to war and end up losing why should the victor return the spoils of the war? Losers are not entitled to any "do overs" just because they lost.
The Palestinians today cannot even reconcile and organize their own internal governments but for some reason they think they deserve a state. Just what the world needs, another shit hole Arab country looking for handouts while blaming the "west" or anyone else handy for all of their problems. Hopefully the UN will upgrade Palestine's member status so the US automatic defunding law can finally kick in full.
And ponder this: If the Arabs were ever able to militarily defeat the Jews do you honestly believe there would be a single living Jew left in Israel after the war? Would you even care?
Iran would lose any confrontation with Isreal regardless of any US involvement. Iran may bluster about having 200K missile but unless they have the same number of launch platforms they certainly couldn't use the quantity of missiles.
Isreal has been at Defcon 4 for 40+ years and are not known to be timid when the bullets and bombs start flying. Iran on the other hand vastly overstates their war fighting assets and rely on incendiary propaganda from their government and military leaders.The middle eastern countries are terrified of Isreal when it comes to open warfare. They are lucky the US is in the position to restrain Israel's military ambitions. Isreal could depopulate Gaza and the West Bank and there is not a single country in the world who would do anything other than pass a non-binding UN statement.
I am not Jewish and really don't care about Isreal or any of the other countries in that region. However, the Arabs launched wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973 and got their asses handed to them. There are no "do overs" just because you want a second shot.
A true professional should be recommending the technology that best fits the needs of your customer. Choosing technology based solely on who made is short sighted. Most hardcore geeks suffer from a sever case of tunnel vision when it comes to pushing their pet technologies. They usually pay no attention to how much work it would take to actually implement their favorite technology platform.
And damn near every carrier has introduced their own modifications. And while they do submit their changes back into the community most of those changes are useless without the right hardware platform.
Well one of the biggest US based rare earth mining operations has already re-opened and went into production 2 Years ago. If it is cheaper to import commodities such as rare earths, gas, or oil that is the way it will go but import costs have been steadily rising which makes going back to domestic sources profitable once more. Plus these mines and extraction companies are commercial enterprises and they invest their money on the expectation of future profits.
Also don't forget that the US not only has the top GDP in the world it is also ranked at the top manufacturer rankings as well. A lot of folks are predicting China's GDP will surpass the US but it is starting to sound like the claims that Linux will surpass MS on the desktop any day now. More US manufacturing jobs are being lost due to automation and better processes than are being lost by shipping the jobs overseas.
China is losing the one thing that has improved help grow their economy and that is low labor costs when compared to more developed countries. Manipulating their currency is another factor but they have just about reached the limits of their manipulations. A couple of years ago China has went from a long stretch of export but have started posting deceits around 4 years ago.
Why can't Australia make their own decisions and handle their own problems instead of blaming the US? Damn near every country in the world blames their problems on the US so they can avoid admitting their own mistakes. It's much easier to blame someone else for your problems then it is to actually work on solving your own internal problems. Some countries are worse than others but no country passes up the opportunity to shift blame so they can feel good about themselves. The number one goal of every government in the world is to look after it's own first and every other country comes in a distant second place. Of course this causes people denounce US involvement and in the next breath complain that the US is not getting involved.
If your witnesses saw Zimmerman getting his ass kicked then the Florida law totally supports the right to defend yourself. Just because the other guy brings a knife to a gunfight doesn't matter. Also Zimmerman was working for the HOA at the time which had recently been subjected to multiple break-ins. He had a gun permit and if the witnesses and Zimmerman's documented back of the head injuries he walks and the self righteous mob calling for Zimmerman's head can fuck off.
I did not say anything about conventional extraction although there are also deposits that can be accessed by conventional means.
They can estimate the amount of gas or oil in non-conventional sources such as shale. The shale reserves in Colorado and surrounding areas contain more untapped oil than any OPEC supplier. The US uses approximately 14 million BPD and is already pumping around 10 million BPD and steadily increasing.
The original Lotus 1-2-3 and Word Perfect were original DOS based and were very good applications at the time. When they attempted to create a Windows version they were definitely at a disadvantage compared to MS however you cannot argue that if one company develops a Word Processor or Spreadsheet program it is wrong for another company to do the same. This took place in the very early stages of the Windows OS which frankly sucked. MS was hardly a considered a monopoly at the time because their OS was relatively new and did not command a monopoly over the other OS's at the time. I didn't even look at the MS OS platform until after 3.11 and even that was pitiful compared to the Unix/AIX platforms I was focusing on at the time.
But I chose software design and development as a career and working on the MS platform has helped me make a decent living. It still is today even though I also work in Linux and the LAMP stack when needed.
MS's masterstroke that helped create their dominance was their emphasis on providing developers with the tools to build applications for their platform. They still cater to developers today to help make sure people continue creating applications that run in the MS ecosystem. There are 10,000's of MS platform developers and people who support MS applications. Moving off the MS platform to something else requires a lot of work to re-architect and re-build Windows applications that will function on another OS platform. Developer training, support staff training, and user training create for a new OS platform is very expensive and time consuming for most businesses.
Or just re-open the closed rare earth mines in the US. Rare Earths are really not that "rare". The US closed it's most productive mines for environmental reasons and because it was cheaper to purchase from abroad. Same reason domestic oil production was reduced. Of course the US is now pumping approximately 10 million BPD and is expected to surpass Saudi Arabia in as little as 4 years using newer extraction methods is also something to look forward. China's economic forecasts have always been predicated on best case scenarios as well as their government making the optimum decisions every time but their government is no more immune to stupid decisions than any other government in the world.
And what is wrong with the US government favoring US based companies? China's 2 big problems are their willingness to steal any technology they can get their hands on and use currency manipulation to control their export prices in the global market. That being said I don't believe China is an enemy of the US. China already has it's hand full with a huge population that is becoming more assertive as their economy grows. China is not immune when it comes to their citizens reaching a point where they start challenging the status quo. Dirt poor peasants are easy to control but citizens who have seen their economic status improve are another matter. Plus both the US and China are dependent on one another for trade so why rock the boat? The US might import a lot of Chinese products but China imports a large amount of agriculture and food products from the US. Chinese food imports from the US have increased by a factor of 5 just over the past 5 years alone. And put aside all the BS about China lending the US money. The fact is that China invests their money in the US by purchasing US Treasury certificates and bonds because they realize that the US still offers solid returns on their investments in a stable financial system. And all the numb nuts claiming China "owns" the US are full of shit. China only holds about 5-6% of all outstanding government bonds and treasury certificates. And in the unlikely event the US cannot not make good on the Chinese investments or hostilities breakout China better have one hell of a collection agency if they expect to get any of their money back.
The really interesting back doors the US government and tech companies might employ are those related to the military technology they sell to other countries. The first time a non-US country tries to use an American F-15 they purchased to target and shoot an American F-15 would most likely see their missile make a big U-turn and target the aircraft who fired the missile. There are key systems in the weapon systems the US sells to foreign countries that require all maintenance, repair, and replacement parts to be provided by the US.
Linux provided an alternative however it is so fragmented with multiple distributions that developing applications that work across all distributions can be difficult and present a major drawback. Also the most popular Linux license allows companies or individuals to make their own custom enhancements without releasing them back into the open source community as long as they do not sell or distribute their changes outside of the their enterprise. Google might have started with a "Linux" base but the current incarnation they use bares little resemblance to anything you might might find in the open source depositories. The same thing applies to their vaunted database system. They published some open source version of their value-pair database system but it also bares little resemblance to what they actually use internally. For companies that do not sell or market software applications and hardware running their OS to the general public the open source libraries are nothing more than places to find and extract code to use in their internal applications without publishing their changes back to the community.
"Just the thing to irritate the same sheeple who once raised Microsoft up to the dizzying heights of world's most valuable company."
It was not the "sheeple" it was the total lack of any competition at the dawn of the personal computer and desktop era. At the time Apple might have offered a better product but their insistence on controlling the hardware made their products quite a bit more expensive than the MS products targeted at commodity hardware. And you can add up all the complaints against MS but it's dominance evidently allowed both the companies and the users to actually be productive. If MS products did not provide any value as it relates to providing functionality it would not have risen to the top to begin with. MS was fortunate to arrive on the scene when the major software companies were still clueless about the future of desktop computing. By the time they got a clue they were already in a deep hole. The early MS partnerships with IBM and even the Apple contractual agreements with Xerox gave away many favorable advantages to MS at the time because they did not take personal computing seriously and instead concentrated on the big Iron and mid-range market. Plus when people make an argument that MS stole all of it's technology they totally discount the fact that most of the technology MS acquired (and even Apple) was purchased from the companies and individuals who created the technology. Most of the companies and products that could have competed opted for cashing out by selling their technology so they could move on to something else. The same thing happens today and MS is not the only big company who purchases companies and technologies from 3rd parties. There are a lot of software start ups today who do what they do so they can sellout to the deep pocket corporations. That is their goal and it is not a bad business model. Most of them have no intention of actually getting into the advertising, sales, distribution, and customer support needed to compete with MS.
"Microsoft and Sony spend billions on R&D just so that they can "win"
Well it's a good thing they have the money to actually do R&D to discover new technologies and ways to apply them. It takes a lot of resources to move R&D forward and there are a lot of times when the money is spent the end result will not recoup the time and money invested.
". Instead of working together, and lowering their expenses they have their ego, pride, and greed so far up their ass that they would rather waste people's lives redeveloping the _same_ thing just so that the other guy is forced to "play the game."
And if they did this how many seconds would it take for peanut gallery to start a crusade against monopolies? Competition is a good motivator to push advances.
"Just _how_ many devices/things do we _really_ _need_ ? i.e. How _many_ printers do we need to chose from? Cars? Game Consoles? Computers? Laptops? Tablets? etc."
You only need the devices YOU want. Nobody is forcing you to buy every new or upgraded gadget as soon as it hits the market.