While money is one metric of the stats it also uses the amount of goods exported. If the Chinese or any other country was ranked #1 I seriously doubt you would not be making the same judgements you apply to the US.
What is the US censoring on the net? And everyone, from the average citizen to the government monitors the information flowing through the Internet and is usually defined as browsing. The US does not firewall Internet access like the Chinese try to do.
The vast majority of technology today was developed by the military. Looking down the wrong end of a gun tends motivate research and innovation. The Internet started as a DARPA project. Computer technology, rockets, satellites, nuclear based applications, wireless communication systems, and EM manipulation benefit from the military. The miltary is also invested in creating alternative energy technology. There are military bases in Afghanistan that are using solar power in their bases. Maintaining reliable energy is a major vulnerability for any military. So a great deal of the military budget is used for developing or enhancing new technologies. The military R&D efforts also provide a lot of domestic civilian jobs. The government does not rely on China or any other foreign country to produce their weapon systems. If the military just stops fucking around in the middle east it would lower the operational costs and even more money could be directed towards R&D.
The US admitted that a drone did crash due to mechanical failure while operating in Afghanistan. The Iranians have announced several times that they have downed a US drone but have never provided any proof. If they really have a US drone now why don't they release just 1 picture? The drone they are claiming they shot down was an unarmed recon version. The technology in these types of drones are hardly secret and even if Iran was able to build a drone with the same capabilities they will still need more than one low end satellite to control it. The US can slag the Iranian air defense system any time they want. Libya and Iraq spared no expense in building their air defenses with top of the line Russian, French, and Chinese technology and it still only took a few days for the US to destroy their systems. The US is the world leader, by a large margin, in having the ability to neutralize air defenses with minimal or any losses.
Please tell me exactly what specific actions the US did to install the Shah? Threaten to nuke them if they didn't? Threaten invasion? Stop investing money? Assassinate the existing head of state and his supporters? What they most likely did was offer money in the guise of trade deals to the Iranians who wanted to take over the government. The Iranians could have refused the money. It was the Iranians themselves who were responsible for their change in government. Also keep in mind that at the time it was England who was fighting to keep their oil assets from being nationalized by Iran. It was England who threatened a naval blockade to prevent Iranian oil exports and issued other not so subtle threats. The US had relatively little interest in Iran at the time since they had their hands full in Korea. Iran, like all the middle eastern countries are England's baby. They are the ones who went around drawing up country boarders based upon their relationships with the Arab leaders at the time.
I have always felt some amusement for the GreenPeace folks that cruise on ships using diesel engines built before any efforts were made to clean up and make the diesel engines more fuel efficient. The amount of energy needed to be extracted from the earth is directly tied to the number of people living on the planet. Organizations protesting "big oil" and other energy companies would be better off spending their time and resources to promote population control. Counting on new technologies to reduce and replace the current oil, coal, and gas energy infrastructure is a pipe dream. Any change of this magnitude will take decades to happen. In the meantime the population will continue to increase, nations will attempt to secure the energy resources using whatever means necessary, and finally WW3 will take care of reducing the world population with no guarantee that those who survive will even have a viable ecosystem to work with.
Radioactive waste would not be a problem if the world grew a set and jettisoned the nuclear waste into a space. Most of the active reactors are 20+ years old and were originally constructed without the information and technology we have today. Nuclear power has proved feasible with the proper attention paid to the details. The US military nuclear powered subs prevent radioactive harm to personnel in tightly closed environments. If a sub took battle damage the possibility of radioactive contamination would not really matter since if the damage was bad enough to damage the reactor the sub would most likely be destroyed with all hands.
Communism, Marxism, and hardcore Socialism have a tendency to begin with mass slaughter of anyone who might disagree with those "freeing" the people from their capitalist masters. The funny thing is that the most outspoken cheerleaders for these types of governments are usually the first ones to end up in front of the firing squad. The liberal and progressive minded students that agitated for the glorious Iranian revolution in 79 where shown the door when the revolution was complete. Too bad they wasted their time poking the US in the eye with the hostages and let the mullahs take control of process. We are about to see a replay of this in Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Viva Revolution!
Iran has made this claim many times and has failed to produce any evidence every time. This time they claimed the drone was still in good condition so why not publish a picture. Mean while some of their key military installations and personnel are getting destroyed with impunity.It still puzzles me that people always give Iran and other similar country the benefit of the doubt when ever they make a statement like this.
Does the rest of the world even produce anything worth copyrighting? And the US got their power by developing the basic infrastructure that made the Internet feasible in the first place. If people outside of the US are so upset nothing is stopping them from creating their own separate Internet and doing what ever the fuck they want to.
I'm still wondering how a country that touts a communist style government (and China is not the only country that does this) is able to produce billionaires and a wealthy social class that mirrors US and European social hierarchical class structures.. China's rhetoric is always focused on running a government that is solely dedicated to making sure everything is shared equally for the "people".
Artist of old also received "stipends" or "commissions" for the work they produced. And everyone clamoring for free music and films seem to forget there is already a mechanism in place to obtain these songs and movies. It's commonly referred to as radio or TV. Before the Internet people recorded from these mediums for free. That ability still exists. And how would someone be able to justify investing millions of dollars to create a film and then have it eleased for free to anyone who wants to copy it? How would musicians justify spending money on professional recording studios and instruments if they know the end product is going to be instantly free to anyone who wants it?
People have all different kinds of talent. For those artists that a mediocre it never becomes more than a hobby. But your right fuck art. Waste of time and energy. And if you decide to have kids you better figure out how to support them before you have them and cut your whining bullshit. Unless of course you don't know where babies come from in the first place. I contribute over $3000 a year in county taxes for education even though I do not have any kids.
Copyright infringement may not be theft in a classic criminal court proceeding but it is a violation that can end up in Civil Court. Eliminate copyrights and you remove a great deal of the motivation for authors, musicians, and film makers to create and publish anything of worth. Authors can't focus all their attention on their writing projects if they have to commit time towards making an income from other jobs just to insure they can afford a living quarters, food, computers, and an Internet connection to to distribute their work. Musicians incur the same expenses as well as things like studio time, instruments, sound engineers, and other support personnel needed to produce their work. Entertainment film production can cost millions of dollars for equipment, actors, props, support personnel, CGI, and all of the other things needed to produce a quality film. Software related copyrights are in a "gray area" but those who create the software have invested their time and required an income to support their work.
I can totally understand people not wanting to work for a computer security company or government agency but it is always up to the individual to decide what they want to do without sacrificing any of their principles. I shocked myself 2 weeks ago when a company offered me a job that involved working with the tech platform I was most interested in, agreed to a 30% salary increase on top of a 6 figure salary I am currently making, and cutting my commute time by half. However, I chose to pass on the offer because this company relied solely on the misfortune of others to make a profit. The more people who defaulted on their mortgages the more money this company made and that was their sole revenue source for a 3 Billion a year company. I just couldn't get behind anything like that. 20 years ago I would have been asking how soon I could start but I guess a persons perspective can change quite a bit over 20 years although that doesn't mean all the changes are good.
For those who are truly interested in testing the boundaries of computer security there are dozens of legitimate companies that do nothing but this type of work. If you know your shit it is also very high paying. If you are truly exceptional any government security or military agency will search out your services under the strategy of "fighting fire with fire". They even accept people who have skirted ot flat out broken the boundaries of law in the past. And the best part is that these type of jobs do not fall under the governments pay pay scale system.
Too many people confuse the right to privacy with the right of anonymity. Personal information on people existed prior to the Internet and IP addresses. Things like phone books, marriage records, birth certificates, home/auto loans, and property deeds which can be obtained at any local government that keeps track of property taxes. Utility bills, drivers licenses, education records, insurance policies, and bank records have been available easily with or without any subpoena for over the past 50+ years. Earn no income that is subject to state or federal taxes otherwise that information will also be available in hard copy. The Internet just makes collecting this information faster. If you really want privacy unplug, store your money in your mattress, use cash and barter for all financial transactions , never enter into any type of agreement that requires more than a handshake, move to the wilderness and be prepared to turn off any anything that shows up in infrared when the satellites make their pass over your place. If this all seems too much of bother you could just stop posting your life story on Face book. If someone wants your information they don't need the Internet to get it. We have finally entered into the era where a lot of people have never had to live without access to the Internet and unfortunately these people are turning out to be the biggest morons on the planet. If you want true facts good luck finding them on the Internet, If you want a real education stop using Internet searches to find your answers and do real research that *gasp* might rely on using hard copy books. The Internet was supposed to herald the age of free and easy information exchange unfortunately the majority of that free information is bullshit and all around mis-information that has only increased the amount of acrimony and animosity in the world.
Also everyone fixates on Germany's atrocities and death camps but they were pikers compared to the USSR. The USSR didn't even try to target any specific ethnic or religious group. They were equal opportunity killers. Stalin ended up having to scour his gulags to free all the scientists he put there before they started fighting the Germans. One of the most well known prisoners was the architect of Russia's main line battle tank. The USSR took about 2.5 million German POWs and only around 10% of them ever returned after the war and it took many years after the war ended for even these people to return. No wonder the surrendering Germans couldn't run fast enough towards the western allies to surrender.
Please work on your reading comprehension. Native Americans? It is 2011 not 1620 which is when the first Europeans got to the US and immediately started fighting and scamming the natives. The real fighting targeting the natives was committed by Europeans such as England, Spain, and France. The Spanish wiped out entire cultures in South America during their colonization period. I am not saying the US did not kill any natives but trying to use those attacks in today's world is ridiculous. If you want to start hop scotching back thru time there is not a single country or tribe who does not have blood on their hands. Every country or territory border on the planet was drawn and re-drawn in blood.
"civilians slaughtered by the US armed forces during the Vietnam conflict"
My post was about the military killing it's OWN civilians to maintain control. And sure the US has killed civilians during combat but that tends to happen when you are fighting people who launch their attacks hiding behind their woman and children. It happens when they use schools, hospitals, and religious locations to store their munitions and artillery launch sites. And why is it that intelligent people such as yourself never complain about anyone except the US when civilians are killed in combat? Turkey makes weekly air raids into northern Iraq to pound the PKK and Kurds and the breakdown of military versus civilian casualties is never mentioned. Does Turkey have a civilian avoiding smart bomb? People blame millions of deaths in IRAQ on the US but never mention that it was Saddam Hussein who confiscated the international aid after the first Iraq war which caused their citizens to suffer? Why do you never hear anyone decrying the brutality of the Taliban and the other self declared terrorists organizations that do not even make the slightest pretense of targeting only military targets? Why do people never acknowledge that in Iraq and Afghanistan that their own militarises and "freedom fighters" have killed more civilians than the US by a wide margin? Well none of this matters since my post was about domestic conflicts not international conflicts.
Slashdot Mirror
Do your own research. The info is easy to find and is from multiple sources.
While money is one metric of the stats it also uses the amount of goods exported. If the Chinese or any other country was ranked #1 I seriously doubt you would not be making the same judgements you apply to the US.
What is the US censoring on the net? And everyone, from the average citizen to the government monitors the information flowing through the Internet and is usually defined as browsing. The US does not firewall Internet access like the Chinese try to do.
"The fact is that consumers killed US manufacturing" The US is still ranked the #1 manufacturer in the world.
What allies?
The vast majority of technology today was developed by the military. Looking down the wrong end of a gun tends motivate research and innovation. The Internet started as a DARPA project. Computer technology, rockets, satellites, nuclear based applications, wireless communication systems, and EM manipulation benefit from the military. The miltary is also invested in creating alternative energy technology. There are military bases in Afghanistan that are using solar power in their bases. Maintaining reliable energy is a major vulnerability for any military. So a great deal of the military budget is used for developing or enhancing new technologies. The military R&D efforts also provide a lot of domestic civilian jobs. The government does not rely on China or any other foreign country to produce their weapon systems. If the military just stops fucking around in the middle east it would lower the operational costs and even more money could be directed towards R&D.
The US admitted that a drone did crash due to mechanical failure while operating in Afghanistan. The Iranians have announced several times that they have downed a US drone but have never provided any proof. If they really have a US drone now why don't they release just 1 picture? The drone they are claiming they shot down was an unarmed recon version. The technology in these types of drones are hardly secret and even if Iran was able to build a drone with the same capabilities they will still need more than one low end satellite to control it. The US can slag the Iranian air defense system any time they want. Libya and Iraq spared no expense in building their air defenses with top of the line Russian, French, and Chinese technology and it still only took a few days for the US to destroy their systems. The US is the world leader, by a large margin, in having the ability to neutralize air defenses with minimal or any losses.
Please tell me exactly what specific actions the US did to install the Shah? Threaten to nuke them if they didn't? Threaten invasion? Stop investing money? Assassinate the existing head of state and his supporters? What they most likely did was offer money in the guise of trade deals to the Iranians who wanted to take over the government. The Iranians could have refused the money. It was the Iranians themselves who were responsible for their change in government. Also keep in mind that at the time it was England who was fighting to keep their oil assets from being nationalized by Iran. It was England who threatened a naval blockade to prevent Iranian oil exports and issued other not so subtle threats. The US had relatively little interest in Iran at the time since they had their hands full in Korea. Iran, like all the middle eastern countries are England's baby. They are the ones who went around drawing up country boarders based upon their relationships with the Arab leaders at the time.
I have always felt some amusement for the GreenPeace folks that cruise on ships using diesel engines built before any efforts were made to clean up and make the diesel engines more fuel efficient. The amount of energy needed to be extracted from the earth is directly tied to the number of people living on the planet. Organizations protesting "big oil" and other energy companies would be better off spending their time and resources to promote population control. Counting on new technologies to reduce and replace the current oil, coal, and gas energy infrastructure is a pipe dream. Any change of this magnitude will take decades to happen. In the meantime the population will continue to increase, nations will attempt to secure the energy resources using whatever means necessary, and finally WW3 will take care of reducing the world population with no guarantee that those who survive will even have a viable ecosystem to work with.
Can you prove any of your assertions? Just 1.
Radioactive waste would not be a problem if the world grew a set and jettisoned the nuclear waste into a space. Most of the active reactors are 20+ years old and were originally constructed without the information and technology we have today. Nuclear power has proved feasible with the proper attention paid to the details. The US military nuclear powered subs prevent radioactive harm to personnel in tightly closed environments. If a sub took battle damage the possibility of radioactive contamination would not really matter since if the damage was bad enough to damage the reactor the sub would most likely be destroyed with all hands.
Greenpeace will never be satisfied until the all energy resources are eliminated.
Communism, Marxism, and hardcore Socialism have a tendency to begin with mass slaughter of anyone who might disagree with those "freeing" the people from their capitalist masters. The funny thing is that the most outspoken cheerleaders for these types of governments are usually the first ones to end up in front of the firing squad. The liberal and progressive minded students that agitated for the glorious Iranian revolution in 79 where shown the door when the revolution was complete. Too bad they wasted their time poking the US in the eye with the hostages and let the mullahs take control of process. We are about to see a replay of this in Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Viva Revolution!
Iran has made this claim many times and has failed to produce any evidence every time. This time they claimed the drone was still in good condition so why not publish a picture. Mean while some of their key military installations and personnel are getting destroyed with impunity.It still puzzles me that people always give Iran and other similar country the benefit of the doubt when ever they make a statement like this.
The US is not all powerful it's the rest of the worlds incompetence just makes it appear that way.
Does the rest of the world even produce anything worth copyrighting? And the US got their power by developing the basic infrastructure that made the Internet feasible in the first place. If people outside of the US are so upset nothing is stopping them from creating their own separate Internet and doing what ever the fuck they want to.
I'm still wondering how a country that touts a communist style government (and China is not the only country that does this) is able to produce billionaires and a wealthy social class that mirrors US and European social hierarchical class structures.. China's rhetoric is always focused on running a government that is solely dedicated to making sure everything is shared equally for the "people".
Artist of old also received "stipends" or "commissions" for the work they produced. And everyone clamoring for free music and films seem to forget there is already a mechanism in place to obtain these songs and movies. It's commonly referred to as radio or TV. Before the Internet people recorded from these mediums for free. That ability still exists. And how would someone be able to justify investing millions of dollars to create a film and then have it eleased for free to anyone who wants to copy it? How would musicians justify spending money on professional recording studios and instruments if they know the end product is going to be instantly free to anyone who wants it?
People have all different kinds of talent. For those artists that a mediocre it never becomes more than a hobby. But your right fuck art. Waste of time and energy. And if you decide to have kids you better figure out how to support them before you have them and cut your whining bullshit. Unless of course you don't know where babies come from in the first place. I contribute over $3000 a year in county taxes for education even though I do not have any kids.
Copyright infringement may not be theft in a classic criminal court proceeding but it is a violation that can end up in Civil Court. Eliminate copyrights and you remove a great deal of the motivation for authors, musicians, and film makers to create and publish anything of worth. Authors can't focus all their attention on their writing projects if they have to commit time towards making an income from other jobs just to insure they can afford a living quarters, food, computers, and an Internet connection to to distribute their work. Musicians incur the same expenses as well as things like studio time, instruments, sound engineers, and other support personnel needed to produce their work. Entertainment film production can cost millions of dollars for equipment, actors, props, support personnel, CGI, and all of the other things needed to produce a quality film. Software related copyrights are in a "gray area" but those who create the software have invested their time and required an income to support their work.
I can totally understand people not wanting to work for a computer security company or government agency but it is always up to the individual to decide what they want to do without sacrificing any of their principles. I shocked myself 2 weeks ago when a company offered me a job that involved working with the tech platform I was most interested in, agreed to a 30% salary increase on top of a 6 figure salary I am currently making, and cutting my commute time by half. However, I chose to pass on the offer because this company relied solely on the misfortune of others to make a profit. The more people who defaulted on their mortgages the more money this company made and that was their sole revenue source for a 3 Billion a year company. I just couldn't get behind anything like that. 20 years ago I would have been asking how soon I could start but I guess a persons perspective can change quite a bit over 20 years although that doesn't mean all the changes are good.
For those who are truly interested in testing the boundaries of computer security there are dozens of legitimate companies that do nothing but this type of work. If you know your shit it is also very high paying. If you are truly exceptional any government security or military agency will search out your services under the strategy of "fighting fire with fire". They even accept people who have skirted ot flat out broken the boundaries of law in the past. And the best part is that these type of jobs do not fall under the governments pay pay scale system.
Too many people confuse the right to privacy with the right of anonymity. Personal information on people existed prior to the Internet and IP addresses. Things like phone books, marriage records, birth certificates, home/auto loans, and property deeds which can be obtained at any local government that keeps track of property taxes. Utility bills, drivers licenses, education records, insurance policies, and bank records have been available easily with or without any subpoena for over the past 50+ years. Earn no income that is subject to state or federal taxes otherwise that information will also be available in hard copy. The Internet just makes collecting this information faster. If you really want privacy unplug, store your money in your mattress, use cash and barter for all financial transactions , never enter into any type of agreement that requires more than a handshake, move to the wilderness and be prepared to turn off any anything that shows up in infrared when the satellites make their pass over your place. If this all seems too much of bother you could just stop posting your life story on Face book. If someone wants your information they don't need the Internet to get it. We have finally entered into the era where a lot of people have never had to live without access to the Internet and unfortunately these people are turning out to be the biggest morons on the planet. If you want true facts good luck finding them on the Internet, If you want a real education stop using Internet searches to find your answers and do real research that *gasp* might rely on using hard copy books. The Internet was supposed to herald the age of free and easy information exchange unfortunately the majority of that free information is bullshit and all around mis-information that has only increased the amount of acrimony and animosity in the world.
Also everyone fixates on Germany's atrocities and death camps but they were pikers compared to the USSR. The USSR didn't even try to target any specific ethnic or religious group. They were equal opportunity killers. Stalin ended up having to scour his gulags to free all the scientists he put there before they started fighting the Germans. One of the most well known prisoners was the architect of Russia's main line battle tank. The USSR took about 2.5 million German POWs and only around 10% of them ever returned after the war and it took many years after the war ended for even these people to return. No wonder the surrendering Germans couldn't run fast enough towards the western allies to surrender.
Please work on your reading comprehension. Native Americans? It is 2011 not 1620 which is when the first Europeans got to the US and immediately started fighting and scamming the natives. The real fighting targeting the natives was committed by Europeans such as England, Spain, and France. The Spanish wiped out entire cultures in South America during their colonization period. I am not saying the US did not kill any natives but trying to use those attacks in today's world is ridiculous. If you want to start hop scotching back thru time there is not a single country or tribe who does not have blood on their hands. Every country or territory border on the planet was drawn and re-drawn in blood.
"civilians slaughtered by the US armed forces during the Vietnam conflict" My post was about the military killing it's OWN civilians to maintain control. And sure the US has killed civilians during combat but that tends to happen when you are fighting people who launch their attacks hiding behind their woman and children. It happens when they use schools, hospitals, and religious locations to store their munitions and artillery launch sites. And why is it that intelligent people such as yourself never complain about anyone except the US when civilians are killed in combat? Turkey makes weekly air raids into northern Iraq to pound the PKK and Kurds and the breakdown of military versus civilian casualties is never mentioned. Does Turkey have a civilian avoiding smart bomb? People blame millions of deaths in IRAQ on the US but never mention that it was Saddam Hussein who confiscated the international aid after the first Iraq war which caused their citizens to suffer? Why do you never hear anyone decrying the brutality of the Taliban and the other self declared terrorists organizations that do not even make the slightest pretense of targeting only military targets? Why do people never acknowledge that in Iraq and Afghanistan that their own militarises and "freedom fighters" have killed more civilians than the US by a wide margin? Well none of this matters since my post was about domestic conflicts not international conflicts.