You see this with a lot of schools. They become massive unmanageable compounds.
If the school is so big that you can't find your students in a reasonable amount of time even though they're on campus then your school is just too damn big.
Beyond that, there is a huge issue in our education system with putting the burden of attendance on the school or the teachers. How exactly is it the teacher's responsibility to make sure the students are in the class room? That is either the responsibility of the student or the parent. And if the student fails to show up or the parent fails to deliver the student... Fine. Find another school because you're expelled.
"But But, that will leave exceptionally stupid and disruptive children without even a marginal education."... And? So we should screw up the whole education system and force teachers to go play hide and go seek with various students just to raise an F- student up to a D- student? Not worth it.
Any meaningful test can be failed. If you cannot fail a test then it isn't a test. Life is full of tests. Will you get a job? Will you form some sort of life long relationship with someone else? Will you support yourself? Will you take care of your health? etc. The same is true in your professional career and the same is true in your education. Tests. Which you pass and fail. And not showing up to class is a failing grade.
End of story. Does that mean the school loses money due to poor attendance? Sure. But that's an accounting issue. Calculate things AFTER attendance not before. Then you don't lose anything. Or at least set your attendance projections at something more realistic. Scale back your projections by whatever percentage you over shot last year and you'll probably be closer to the ACTUAL attendance this year. What is the big problem.
You are not going to be able to save every kid. Stupidity is incurable. Get over it.
AI could previously "solve" these problems but their solutions were bad. Think of it like trying to find the shortest path between two points with your GPS.
Is the GPS program always right? Not always. Sometimes it will have you detour around things for no reason or fail to grasp that various short cuts exist or it won't understand that certain roads need to be avoided at certain times of day or days of the week. A human driver familiar with the area will know all these things and will plot a MORE optimal path from point A to point B.
Orbital trajectories are similar. Yes, there is no traffic or school days in space. However, taking advantage of all the gravitational forces to minimize travel time and fuel consumption is not simple. Computers have typically been very bad or at least poorly programmed to take advantage of these effects.
What this new AI does is take all of that into account properly.
I don't think this is actually that big of an accomplishment. No offense to the development team. But this wasn't exactly a pressing need since its only used for deep space probes. So it would understandable if the give-o-f*ck meter was running on empty for some time.
Threatening with jail wouldn't get them anywhere. They'd call their lawyers
These companies were made to agree either because they were paid or guilted into it. Remember, many companies might have been very cooperative to help track terrorists in the wake of 9/11. Most Americans were outraged by those attacks and what pervaded was a feeling of powerlessness. If you walked up to any of those people and offered them a way to make a difference most would have said "yes." It is not a coincidence that military recruitment spiked after 9/11.
Regardless how they were made to agree. The deal is now being "renegotiated"... and it doesn't look like the government can afford to pay the price required to maintain it.
THAT was MS's killer app. Your old legacy windows programs on the tablet. Don't tell me they can't put a version of windows on an inexpensive tablet. Some linux gurus got windows XP to run on an android phone. With some optimization there is no reason windows 8 couldn't have run on that platform. Or baring that... scrap the arm processor entirely and try out one of the new ultra efficient x86 processors.
MS keeps failing to grasp this... their primary draw is STANDARDS. Why do we not switch to apple or linux? Because we're use to windows. Because we have a lot of programs that only really work on windows. Because we interact all the time with other people in the same situation and being different would either be inconvenient or expensive.
Think about it like this, at one time there was no standard for gasoline. They were all different octanes and frequently had different chemicals in them which were billed as "features" by their producers. Well... those "features" make engine performance unreliable. You'd fill up your gas tank one day and it would run fine. You'd fill up the next and you'd have no idea what would happen when you put your foot down.
Then Standard Oil came along and gobbled up all their rivals ruthlessly and replaced everything with STANDARD fuel blends. Consistency.
Engine designers built their engines around the assumption that consumers would pour one of the standard fuels into their cars... and nothing else.
It became easier to design the engines knowing that they didn't have to be that tolerant to weird fuel blends. And the consumer got the confidence that if they followed some pretty basic rules they'd get reliable service out of their engine.
This is largely the secret to Microsoft's success. Standards. A lot of it is chicken and egg stuff. You become big, you make the rules, everyone uses those rules. But even microsoft's rise to power was about standards. There was once many operating systems. Many many many operating systems. Practically every computer manufactuer was pitching their own operating system.
The rise of google OS and Mac OS and I OS and linux frankly speaks to Microsoft's stupidity.
Google offers a reliable super cheap very efficient OS. The licensing appears to be about zero.
Mac OS offers a very pretty but reliable experience. iOS is the same thing on the phone/tablet.
And linux is sort of whatever you want it to be... which is both fantastic and daunting to many.
MS needs to grasp what their place is in the software ecosystem and fill it before they're eaten alive by rivals or "time".
How do you think the government got these companies to sign these agreements in the first place?
They were given contracts or their existing contracts were threatened if they didn't sign.
Now that its out in the open their conventional customers are threatening to stop buying their products which would spell doom for most of those companies.
Its about money. And when push comes to shove, the government can't afford to replace the private sector customer's lost with government bids. And that the deal is likely going to undergo some strain as the tech companies make it painfully clear that they're not happy with the deal.
The only difference between a tradesman and a businessmen is degree. They're in the same boat.
As to profit motive, everyone wants something better for their family. Possibly he's just subsisting but is subsistence ethically superior then seeking to better yourself? I don't see how that makes any sense.
The point is... these institutions and systems are very old. The current versions are more evolved but they're basically very similar... its reptiles versus birds. Both need to eat and raise their young. You do that or die.
If you don't produce more in your generation then was produced in the previous generation then the population will stagnate or your population will starve.
If the population increases AND people don't starve then it means we've increased production... which means someone is making a profit in capital if nothing else.
As to business not being essential... Only if we wanted to live like animals. Human society... with a human population anything like what we have now requires business.
Tell you what sport... you hate business? Get off the internet. Never use electricity again. Take off any clothes you didn't personally make out of raw materials you didn't personally gather.
And walk off into nature. Enjoy life without commerce.
If you don't die or die out through failing to reproduce... what will your descendants look like in 50,000 years? And what will mine look like if continue in society?
Its rather obvious that society is an advantage and commerce is essential for it. So rather then belly aching the essential... would you rather suggest ways to improve the system so its better without destroying us all?
Large organizations can be held accountable if you can show that members of that company broke the law.
What you cannot hold accountable are shareholders. Their liability is limited to their investment.
Would you hold a little old lady that invested in an oil company criminally accountable should the oil company do something criminal? Obviously not. However, if a member of that company can be proven to have done something criminal then you can absolutely hold him accountable.
When people whine about not being able to hold companies accountable for actions it is a misunderstanding as to how corporations work. Shareholders are protected because they simply don't have enough to do with actual decisions to be held accountable. People physically there physically doing a criminal act though? Totally prosecutable.
So chartered companies are bad but individuals running businesses is good?
There is no ethical difference. The only difference is that psychologically some people have a hard time relating to impersonal organizations.
But the same thing can be said of cities or national governments.
Why don't we have a chieftain that knows each and every one of us by name? Why do we accept leaders that might not have ever come within 100 miles of us in our entire lives?
Grasp that corporations are not evil. They're just impersonal. And they're impersonal because frequently they're not dealing with people they know well. Keep all business between known associates and things follow an older pattern. There are human relationships. But allow a structured organization to interact with an almost random collection of customers, venders, and other assorted people... and very quickly the most important thing will be the system because at that point the system will be the only thing keeping anything together.
You presume my perspective is stupid when it was pretty clearly not.
Let me clarify the situation for you.
The goat herd tending his flock 2000 years ago was a businessmen. He was out there every day busting his ass protecting that herd from predators, thieves, the elements, and the stupidity of the live stock itself.
Why did he do it? To feed his family. To provide for his community. To make a profit.
That is business.
You can hate on it all you like but its life. Without business we're dead.
Now you want to say you're only against modern business and not some idealized and naive conception of older business models? Its the same thing really. The means are more complicated and organized. 2000 years ago you wouldn't be able to travel 2000 miles, show up for a want ad, and get a job on the basis of references or credentials. Businesses then were much smaller because they couldn't grow. They literally couldn't maintain cohesion beyond a certain size.
Today we have huge corporations because we CAN. And that unfortunately subordinates us systems of organization instead of human relationships which was the old model's basis.
You might prefer human relationships. In all honestly, I think I prefer them too. But they're less efficient and less capable of dealing with large organizations. Its the difference between the city and the villiage.
Do you hate cities? Because they're very much the same thing as big business is to small business. As you scale up you get more informal and more systematic. You don't know everyone's name. The personal relationships stop governing interpersonal relations and the RULES start to become the most important thing.
Love it or hate it. This is how we feed ourselves.
You might not like business or its obsessions but it is a vital institution.
Without it, who would pay for the universities or the scientists? Business pays for it all one way or another.
It puts the food on your table.
The heat in your home.
The electricity in the wires.
The clothes on your back.
The fuel in your car.
Everything.
Its about as vital to human society as your digestive tract is to your body.
Is the excrement that comes out the far end the most glamorous or sweet smelling thing ever? No. But it is vital.
And that obsession is merely the hunger pangs of the stomach. Does it ever stop? No. It is an ongoing need.
Why does the scientific community not care as much for such things? Because to a great extent they're shielded from it. That said, they aren't totally shielded from it. Most of them have to pitch grant proposals. The old "publish or perish" imperatives of their trade.
Best of luck gaining entry to the Ivory tower, friend. But know it was built by everyone else on our dime. And whatever glories or accomplishments achieved by academia... they did not happen without sacrifice from the rest of society.
The reality is that most of this stuff was and is fine so long as it remains on private systems. A hundred million computers scattered all over the planet are a lot harder to target then a few centralized datacenters.
MS office has had issues with security for ages. But all of it was controllable because you could just "not" download viruses. Or "not" horribly infect yourself with malware. But when its all on the cloud that isn't an option anymore. The hackers have ONE target and when they penetrate it... they f' over EVERYONE using the system. That's a big difference.
I get what MS wants to do here... they want to get people to stop pirating their software by using a cloud based software system.
The problem is that their model is less useful and actually puts a burden of responsibility upon them to secure our data that they're not willing or able satisfy. As a result, I think you'll find a lot of these companies retreating from this idea as it becomes clear that customers won't put up with it.
Your choice MS... how little market share do you want? Because it can go lower.
Its an option on some. Very few offer it because security was not taken seriously.
They are now saying customers don't trust them. Well... This is a step you can take to offer that trust.
Make the providers literally incapable of betraying you. It will make the technology less efficient and less user friendly. The customer can choose. Trust the provider and accept lower security for easier use and possibly lower fees. Or don't trust them and accept some of the management burden on yourself along with possibly higher fees due to using up more of their resources to provide you with segmented technology.
Its all a trade off between reliability, security, and efficiency.
Wrong, that only ensures different backdoors are inserted.
Furthermore, you are forgetting that many of the programs are directly hacked by State trained and funded cyberwarfare teams. They will breach your system unless you've built it to very paranoid specs.
But as effective as that plan is... it lacks subtly. I would much rather the government have to resort to plan D rather then simply secretly take all my data at will.
I do think we should keep in mind that they only acquire the content by buying it from producers. And I think we all agree that artists, engineers, and authors deserve to be paid for their work... otherwise they won't be able to do it as anything but a hobby.
I do agree that the publishing business should move more and more to a direct marketing approach. That is... you wrote a book... you host a website that sells the ebook... people click on the link... money shows up in the author's bank account minus some sort of profit sharing fee from the distributor. Something around 10-20 percent would be reasonable.
It would be really easy for most of the content distributors to provide simple easy to use systems for content producers to host and sell their content. And from that, content distributors could take a cut. But the producer would maintain control over it at all times.
The point is not for any one thing to make you 100 percent bullet proof.
The point is to make getting your data without your approval annoying, inefficient, and incomplete.
When we over centralize and give our hosting companies total access to our data then there is only one place the "men in black" need to go to get everything. They don't need to force hack anything because the company will just give up the security keys.
Break things up while avoiding big companies that it becomes unlikely that your host will have any "deal" with the NSA or FBI.
Furthermore, no reason for the host to even be able to give the NSA what they want. Use them to HOST your data... not manage its encryption.
There are methods of encryption that can't be breached or are so difficult to breach that they'll be secure for generations. That's good enough. When the NSA wants your data they're going to have a very short attention span about it. Tell them it will take 10 years of super computer time to break something and they'll opt for plan B... which might be actually sending you a court summons or something.
Point being... we're making it too easy for the NSA by over centralizing and placing too much trust in our hosts. Reverse that policy and the NSA will find very little they can exploit.
Air gapping isn't good enough because that only concerns hacking.
What about intentional collusion between your service provider and a third party? THAT is at least half the problem.
Many companies do have good security that would give the NSA a hard time. BUT all the NSA has to do is make a phone call and the company just hands over the data.
That is unacceptable. As a result, systems need to be set up in such a way that information is decentralized thus making it harder for any one source to compromise you entirely. And the information must be encrypted using private encryption keys that the company doesn't have access to... That is, they store and transfer your data but they don't decrypt it. It decrypts and is encrypted on your systems.
Its really all about control and "what is possible"... To make ourselves secure, we need to make it more and more impossible to get data. Make it theoretically unlikely or literally impossible for them to breach your data without basically blackjacking you and then water boarding the information out of you.
There are systems that cannot be breached. They are generally very inefficient but we have processing power, storage, and bandwidth to spare. Especially concerning high security data we can afford to make our systems literally unhackable.
Corporations... US or otherwise never want to pay people because they're human beings and human beings would rather get something for nothing.
Right? If I were giving away free sandwiches wouldn't you take the free sandwich? Of course. Its free. So this "US corporation" garbage ignores that this feature is build into humanity itself and is not an artifact of American business culture.
Furthermore, we weren't always screwed up. So if this feature were the cause all along we NEVER would have had a better labor market. Since the labor market is worse now then it was before, you can't cite this as being the causal element.
You might not like my argument. But unlike your own it is logical. Your argument ignores known variables and is self contradictory.
I regret is that is ideologically painful for you. But you're basically mathematically wrong. Its not possible.
Furthermore, your argument would only hold true if all US corporations were a singular entity that was entirely uniform. They can't be. Companies and their policies vary from one to another and then industries vary.
What we are seeing today is an across the board issue throughout all industries and throughout all companies. There is no one company or group of companies that could have that effect.
The only organization capable of effecting every US industry in every state at the same time is the US federal government. Name another.
Look, I'm not saying I have all the answers. Maybe I've missed something. But do not cite things as being the cause when their scope is not sufficient to cause the observed result.
There is only one common denominator. The US federal government. Its screwed up in every state not in every country.
No one industry or institution could explain such a broad disruption short of the only organization with that scope in our society.
I know this is controversal and I know a lot of people are just going to reflexively reject this point. But US labor laws are killing us.
A good example is the ban on IQ tests to offer people jobs. It sounds like a silly thing that doesn't matter. But there was a time when employers screened job applications with an IQ test. Then the federal government made that illegal because it discriminates against people that fail IQ tests... mostly people unfit to fill the position.
So what did companies do in response? They said " this job requires a college education"... even though it really doesn't. But that gets the company what it wants. A screened job application because people with college educations are much less likely to be idiots.
There are literally thousands of examples of US labor laws having unintended consequences and ultimately screwing over American workers. What is more sad is that most of these laws were written with the intention of protecting US workers.
But consider for example the latest genius idea of forcing US employers to provide healthcare to employees and then mandating that that healthcare be of a pretty high quality? Instant hiring freeze. Reduction in work hours. More part time labor. etc.
THIS is what is killing us. Remove most of these laws and just let people work out their own arrangements with employeers. People will get jobs. And in getting jobs they'll get work experience which will make them valuable.
Short of that... we're all on welfare that will be funded by currency devaluation... and the US becomes a banana republic.
As to the friendship between governments. It is no more superficial the the friendships between people. Untrustworthy people make untrustworthy friends. It does not mean governments cannot be trusted friends it merely means that some governments with the people running them make poor friends.
That is it an individual issue and not a question of all governments. You're painting with an overly large brush here and it isn't justifiable.
As to the coup attempt, the US didn't organize it. Members of the coup reached out to the US and asked for the blessing of the US government which was likely given. Why would we not bless it? Chavez went out of his way to annoy us long before that. We were not putting him out of power. We were not involved. We merely knew about it and said we'd be fine with it. For that we don't earn more ire from him. And what did he do to his country? Look at it. His country is basically the Saudi Arabia of South America and they're so incompetent that they're still going broke. Its beyond pathetic. A retarded five year old could run the country better then those twits. So yes, we were okay with someone less "special" running Venezuela.
As to comical insults, its a minor issue that doesn't need to be blown up. Bolivia's offense to the matter is overblown and out of proportion. Their reaction to the matter is comical in the context of who they are, what was done, the circumstances of the matter, etc. Remember Gaddaffi? Remember his military uniform? Here's an image of it from the web: http://en.rian.ru/images/16275/50/162755026.jpg
Its comical and cartoonish. He might as well wear a pope hat, carry a king's scepter, and begin every sentence with "do you know who I am!?!" Its silly.
And if you think the US could claim diplomatic immunity in their territory given similar circumstances you're kidding yourself.
As to there being no irrelevant people. We can't all be relevant. That would imply that we have to take into consideration everyone all the time. And NO ONE does that. It is literally impossible for the human mind to keep in mind all those people at all times. What we do is try to prioritize people based on how important they are to us for various reasons. If you are so far down the queue that no one bothers regarding you then you are de facto irrelevant. That isn't an opinion. It is reality.
As to respecting all nations or countries, you do not. Would you respect a nation that regarded ritualistic cannibalism? Of course not. What if a nation had the religious belief that all other people's are in fact breakfast cereals?
When you respect everything you respect nothing. Respect is a relative quality like light and dark. You respect and disrespect. When everything is light there is no dark and light loses its meaning. Respect only has value in relation to things you disrespect. You cannot respect everything and have respect mean anything.
So no, neither of us respect all nations or countries. You might regard all nations or countries as having rights. But all rights have a context and limitations. Cite any right and I can come up with a context where you'll violate it. It might be an extreme example but the rights are not absolute.
Ultimately, all rights must be secured individually by every person, citizen, company, nation, group of nations, etc. If you cannot protect your rights then you'll find them violated. Why do Americans often find their own rights ignored by their government when they have some of the strongest protections for civil liberties in law? Because Americans sometimes don't protect their rights. And when they don't protect them or are unable to protect them they are sometimes violated. The same goes for everyone and everything.
There is a US company in France for example that wants to close a tire factory. The local labor union says the tire company has no right to close the factory and must keep it open indefinitely even though it loses money. Clearly
The group of people known as the government are however capable of having friends and enemies. You stated that government can't have friends which is nonsense.
Most of the EU nations are classed as friends by the United States government. Not only in policy but in the manner in which the US government treats them.
As to you never saying the government is not made up of people, you did try to abstract them to being non-human which would include not being made up of people.
As to diplomatic immunity... its been abused many times in the past:
Funny list of some extreme examples. The point of it is not to let you f' over other countries. The point is to smooth over little issues and facilitate cooperation.
Smuggling people out of a country is not a little issue. Use it to avoid parking tickets or minor fines. But if you're playing a bigger game no one is going to blink at going right through it.
Now did the Bolivian president smuggle Snowden out by plane? No he didn't. The whole thing was clearly pretty embarrassing for everyone. But do you think a US diplomatic plane could leave Bolivia with a wanted criminal? Unlikely.
Again... regrettable. However, the overblown offense of the Bolivians is frankly as tiresome as it is sad.
The United States is subjected to worse offenses against our national dignity then that on a daily basis. Chavez for example called Bush the devil and suggested the place he stood not long ago still smelled of sulfur. To which American comedians suggested that Bush might have had an Egg Salad sandwich for lunch.
But that sort of thing is frankly ongoing. To say nothing of the mindless anti americanism we're treated to throughout the world.
Look at the Egyptian protesters. Both sides blame America somehow. The Muslim Brotherhood which Obama helped get into power by respecting the democratic process by which they obtained power blame Obama/The United States for losing power to a military coup. At the same time, the military faction blames the US for helping the Muslim brotherhood and otherwise opposing their coup which they see as righteous for various reasons.
THAT is what most opposition to the US looks like throughout the world. Both sides blaming the US without any real evidence of it. We're the international scapegoat of the incompetent. If your government is badly run or you're otherwise in danger of losing power due to incompetence... Blame the US. Its our fault they're stupid. We apparently picked them out of their mother's arms when they were babies and promptly dropped them on their heads.
And despite the ongoing mindless stupidity and unjustifiable hostility... We continue to work peacefully and constructively with powers that frankly don't deserve that much respect. Why? We have no choice. We can't choose the planet we live on and we unfortunately live on planet Earth which appears to be populated by morons.
Is the US perfect? Hardly. But we're not a banana republic yet. We are not strategically beholden to anyone. We are one of the few independent nations left on this planet. Secure in our own power and truly sovereign in our own territory. That is an accomplishment few other nations can claim. We have also maintained the same government since the 18th century. Through invasion, war, civil war, world war, world war again, the cold war, and now whatever you want to call these terrorist attacks. We have prevailed through it all. We have survived problems political, economic, social, and religious that have laid low lesser nations. And we have done it all without devolving into a police state or a dictatorship.
We have also stood by our allies. There are few powers on earth that are worth having as friends. And despite all of that... you want to spit on our faces because we conduct a global intelligence network that lik
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You see this with a lot of schools. They become massive unmanageable compounds.
If the school is so big that you can't find your students in a reasonable amount of time even though they're on campus then your school is just too damn big.
Beyond that, there is a huge issue in our education system with putting the burden of attendance on the school or the teachers. How exactly is it the teacher's responsibility to make sure the students are in the class room? That is either the responsibility of the student or the parent. And if the student fails to show up or the parent fails to deliver the student... Fine. Find another school because you're expelled.
"But But, that will leave exceptionally stupid and disruptive children without even a marginal education."... And? So we should screw up the whole education system and force teachers to go play hide and go seek with various students just to raise an F- student up to a D- student? Not worth it.
Any meaningful test can be failed. If you cannot fail a test then it isn't a test. Life is full of tests. Will you get a job? Will you form some sort of life long relationship with someone else? Will you support yourself? Will you take care of your health? etc. The same is true in your professional career and the same is true in your education. Tests. Which you pass and fail. And not showing up to class is a failing grade.
End of story. Does that mean the school loses money due to poor attendance? Sure. But that's an accounting issue. Calculate things AFTER attendance not before. Then you don't lose anything. Or at least set your attendance projections at something more realistic. Scale back your projections by whatever percentage you over shot last year and you'll probably be closer to the ACTUAL attendance this year. What is the big problem.
You are not going to be able to save every kid. Stupidity is incurable. Get over it.
Its more complicated then that.
AI could previously "solve" these problems but their solutions were bad. Think of it like trying to find the shortest path between two points with your GPS.
Is the GPS program always right? Not always. Sometimes it will have you detour around things for no reason or fail to grasp that various short cuts exist or it won't understand that certain roads need to be avoided at certain times of day or days of the week. A human driver familiar with the area will know all these things and will plot a MORE optimal path from point A to point B.
Orbital trajectories are similar. Yes, there is no traffic or school days in space. However, taking advantage of all the gravitational forces to minimize travel time and fuel consumption is not simple. Computers have typically been very bad or at least poorly programmed to take advantage of these effects.
What this new AI does is take all of that into account properly.
I don't think this is actually that big of an accomplishment. No offense to the development team. But this wasn't exactly a pressing need since its only used for deep space probes. So it would understandable if the give-o-f*ck meter was running on empty for some time.
Threatening with jail wouldn't get them anywhere. They'd call their lawyers
These companies were made to agree either because they were paid or guilted into it. Remember, many companies might have been very cooperative to help track terrorists in the wake of 9/11. Most Americans were outraged by those attacks and what pervaded was a feeling of powerlessness. If you walked up to any of those people and offered them a way to make a difference most would have said "yes." It is not a coincidence that military recruitment spiked after 9/11.
Regardless how they were made to agree. The deal is now being "renegotiated"... and it doesn't look like the government can afford to pay the price required to maintain it.
THAT was MS's killer app. Your old legacy windows programs on the tablet. Don't tell me they can't put a version of windows on an inexpensive tablet. Some linux gurus got windows XP to run on an android phone. With some optimization there is no reason windows 8 couldn't have run on that platform. Or baring that... scrap the arm processor entirely and try out one of the new ultra efficient x86 processors.
MS keeps failing to grasp this... their primary draw is STANDARDS. Why do we not switch to apple or linux? Because we're use to windows. Because we have a lot of programs that only really work on windows. Because we interact all the time with other people in the same situation and being different would either be inconvenient or expensive.
Think about it like this, at one time there was no standard for gasoline. They were all different octanes and frequently had different chemicals in them which were billed as "features" by their producers. Well... those "features" make engine performance unreliable. You'd fill up your gas tank one day and it would run fine. You'd fill up the next and you'd have no idea what would happen when you put your foot down.
Then Standard Oil came along and gobbled up all their rivals ruthlessly and replaced everything with STANDARD fuel blends. Consistency.
Engine designers built their engines around the assumption that consumers would pour one of the standard fuels into their cars... and nothing else.
It became easier to design the engines knowing that they didn't have to be that tolerant to weird fuel blends. And the consumer got the confidence that if they followed some pretty basic rules they'd get reliable service out of their engine.
This is largely the secret to Microsoft's success. Standards. A lot of it is chicken and egg stuff. You become big, you make the rules, everyone uses those rules. But even microsoft's rise to power was about standards. There was once many operating systems. Many many many operating systems. Practically every computer manufactuer was pitching their own operating system.
The rise of google OS and Mac OS and I OS and linux frankly speaks to Microsoft's stupidity.
Google offers a reliable super cheap very efficient OS. The licensing appears to be about zero.
Mac OS offers a very pretty but reliable experience. iOS is the same thing on the phone/tablet.
And linux is sort of whatever you want it to be... which is both fantastic and daunting to many.
MS needs to grasp what their place is in the software ecosystem and fill it before they're eaten alive by rivals or "time".
How do you think the government got these companies to sign these agreements in the first place?
They were given contracts or their existing contracts were threatened if they didn't sign.
Now that its out in the open their conventional customers are threatening to stop buying their products which would spell doom for most of those companies.
Its about money. And when push comes to shove, the government can't afford to replace the private sector customer's lost with government bids. And that the deal is likely going to undergo some strain as the tech companies make it painfully clear that they're not happy with the deal.
The only difference between a tradesman and a businessmen is degree. They're in the same boat.
As to profit motive, everyone wants something better for their family. Possibly he's just subsisting but is subsistence ethically superior then seeking to better yourself? I don't see how that makes any sense.
The point is... these institutions and systems are very old. The current versions are more evolved but they're basically very similar... its reptiles versus birds. Both need to eat and raise their young. You do that or die.
If you don't produce more in your generation then was produced in the previous generation then the population will stagnate or your population will starve.
If the population increases AND people don't starve then it means we've increased production... which means someone is making a profit in capital if nothing else.
As to business not being essential... Only if we wanted to live like animals. Human society... with a human population anything like what we have now requires business.
Tell you what sport... you hate business? Get off the internet. Never use electricity again. Take off any clothes you didn't personally make out of raw materials you didn't personally gather.
And walk off into nature. Enjoy life without commerce.
If you don't die or die out through failing to reproduce... what will your descendants look like in 50,000 years? And what will mine look like if continue in society?
Its rather obvious that society is an advantage and commerce is essential for it. So rather then belly aching the essential... would you rather suggest ways to improve the system so its better without destroying us all?
Just a suggestion.
Large organizations can be held accountable if you can show that members of that company broke the law.
What you cannot hold accountable are shareholders. Their liability is limited to their investment.
Would you hold a little old lady that invested in an oil company criminally accountable should the oil company do something criminal? Obviously not. However, if a member of that company can be proven to have done something criminal then you can absolutely hold him accountable.
When people whine about not being able to hold companies accountable for actions it is a misunderstanding as to how corporations work. Shareholders are protected because they simply don't have enough to do with actual decisions to be held accountable. People physically there physically doing a criminal act though? Totally prosecutable.
So chartered companies are bad but individuals running businesses is good?
There is no ethical difference. The only difference is that psychologically some people have a hard time relating to impersonal organizations.
But the same thing can be said of cities or national governments.
Why don't we have a chieftain that knows each and every one of us by name? Why do we accept leaders that might not have ever come within 100 miles of us in our entire lives?
Grasp that corporations are not evil. They're just impersonal. And they're impersonal because frequently they're not dealing with people they know well. Keep all business between known associates and things follow an older pattern. There are human relationships. But allow a structured organization to interact with an almost random collection of customers, venders, and other assorted people... and very quickly the most important thing will be the system because at that point the system will be the only thing keeping anything together.
You presume my perspective is stupid when it was pretty clearly not.
Let me clarify the situation for you.
The goat herd tending his flock 2000 years ago was a businessmen. He was out there every day busting his ass protecting that herd from predators, thieves, the elements, and the stupidity of the live stock itself.
Why did he do it? To feed his family. To provide for his community. To make a profit.
That is business.
You can hate on it all you like but its life. Without business we're dead.
Now you want to say you're only against modern business and not some idealized and naive conception of older business models? Its the same thing really. The means are more complicated and organized. 2000 years ago you wouldn't be able to travel 2000 miles, show up for a want ad, and get a job on the basis of references or credentials. Businesses then were much smaller because they couldn't grow. They literally couldn't maintain cohesion beyond a certain size.
Today we have huge corporations because we CAN. And that unfortunately subordinates us systems of organization instead of human relationships which was the old model's basis.
You might prefer human relationships. In all honestly, I think I prefer them too. But they're less efficient and less capable of dealing with large organizations. Its the difference between the city and the villiage.
Do you hate cities? Because they're very much the same thing as big business is to small business. As you scale up you get more informal and more systematic. You don't know everyone's name. The personal relationships stop governing interpersonal relations and the RULES start to become the most important thing.
Love it or hate it. This is how we feed ourselves.
You might not like business or its obsessions but it is a vital institution.
Without it, who would pay for the universities or the scientists? Business pays for it all one way or another.
It puts the food on your table.
The heat in your home.
The electricity in the wires.
The clothes on your back.
The fuel in your car.
Everything.
Its about as vital to human society as your digestive tract is to your body.
Is the excrement that comes out the far end the most glamorous or sweet smelling thing ever? No. But it is vital.
And that obsession is merely the hunger pangs of the stomach. Does it ever stop? No. It is an ongoing need.
Why does the scientific community not care as much for such things? Because to a great extent they're shielded from it. That said, they aren't totally shielded from it. Most of them have to pitch grant proposals. The old "publish or perish" imperatives of their trade.
Best of luck gaining entry to the Ivory tower, friend. But know it was built by everyone else on our dime. And whatever glories or accomplishments achieved by academia... they did not happen without sacrifice from the rest of society.
The reality is that most of this stuff was and is fine so long as it remains on private systems. A hundred million computers scattered all over the planet are a lot harder to target then a few centralized datacenters.
MS office has had issues with security for ages. But all of it was controllable because you could just "not" download viruses. Or "not" horribly infect yourself with malware. But when its all on the cloud that isn't an option anymore. The hackers have ONE target and when they penetrate it... they f' over EVERYONE using the system. That's a big difference.
I get what MS wants to do here... they want to get people to stop pirating their software by using a cloud based software system.
The problem is that their model is less useful and actually puts a burden of responsibility upon them to secure our data that they're not willing or able satisfy. As a result, I think you'll find a lot of these companies retreating from this idea as it becomes clear that customers won't put up with it.
Your choice MS... how little market share do you want? Because it can go lower.
Its an option on some. Very few offer it because security was not taken seriously.
They are now saying customers don't trust them. Well... This is a step you can take to offer that trust.
Make the providers literally incapable of betraying you. It will make the technology less efficient and less user friendly. The customer can choose. Trust the provider and accept lower security for easier use and possibly lower fees. Or don't trust them and accept some of the management burden on yourself along with possibly higher fees due to using up more of their resources to provide you with segmented technology.
Its all a trade off between reliability, security, and efficiency.
Wrong, that only ensures different backdoors are inserted.
Furthermore, you are forgetting that many of the programs are directly hacked by State trained and funded cyberwarfare teams. They will breach your system unless you've built it to very paranoid specs.
That's probably around plan D.
But as effective as that plan is... it lacks subtly. I would much rather the government have to resort to plan D rather then simply secretly take all my data at will.
I do think we should keep in mind that they only acquire the content by buying it from producers. And I think we all agree that artists, engineers, and authors deserve to be paid for their work... otherwise they won't be able to do it as anything but a hobby.
I do agree that the publishing business should move more and more to a direct marketing approach. That is... you wrote a book... you host a website that sells the ebook... people click on the link... money shows up in the author's bank account minus some sort of profit sharing fee from the distributor. Something around 10-20 percent would be reasonable.
It would be really easy for most of the content distributors to provide simple easy to use systems for content producers to host and sell their content. And from that, content distributors could take a cut. But the producer would maintain control over it at all times.
Its all about contracts.
No.
The time of people acting like children and expecting to be taken care of is over.
You give people a choice.
Take the tech seriously and learn or accept that you're going to be vulnerable.
Choose.
Wrong. Don't give anyone access to them that doesn't need to have access and that you do not trust implicitly.
The point is not for any one thing to make you 100 percent bullet proof.
The point is to make getting your data without your approval annoying, inefficient, and incomplete.
When we over centralize and give our hosting companies total access to our data then there is only one place the "men in black" need to go to get everything. They don't need to force hack anything because the company will just give up the security keys.
Break things up while avoiding big companies that it becomes unlikely that your host will have any "deal" with the NSA or FBI.
Furthermore, no reason for the host to even be able to give the NSA what they want. Use them to HOST your data... not manage its encryption.
There are methods of encryption that can't be breached or are so difficult to breach that they'll be secure for generations. That's good enough. When the NSA wants your data they're going to have a very short attention span about it. Tell them it will take 10 years of super computer time to break something and they'll opt for plan B... which might be actually sending you a court summons or something.
Point being... we're making it too easy for the NSA by over centralizing and placing too much trust in our hosts. Reverse that policy and the NSA will find very little they can exploit.
Air gapping isn't good enough because that only concerns hacking.
What about intentional collusion between your service provider and a third party? THAT is at least half the problem.
Many companies do have good security that would give the NSA a hard time. BUT all the NSA has to do is make a phone call and the company just hands over the data.
That is unacceptable. As a result, systems need to be set up in such a way that information is decentralized thus making it harder for any one source to compromise you entirely. And the information must be encrypted using private encryption keys that the company doesn't have access to... That is, they store and transfer your data but they don't decrypt it. It decrypts and is encrypted on your systems.
Its really all about control and "what is possible"... To make ourselves secure, we need to make it more and more impossible to get data. Make it theoretically unlikely or literally impossible for them to breach your data without basically blackjacking you and then water boarding the information out of you.
There are systems that cannot be breached. They are generally very inefficient but we have processing power, storage, and bandwidth to spare. Especially concerning high security data we can afford to make our systems literally unhackable.
Seriously. We've been saying this for decades. Secure it.
Top to bottom encryption, compartmentalization, etc.
Make it so the NSA just can't tap your communication.
If no one has a problem with geo tagging individual people and removing what little privacy they have... then why not carry this farther?
Can I geo tag the man that released this software?
Wrong.
Corporations... US or otherwise never want to pay people because they're human beings and human beings would rather get something for nothing.
Right? If I were giving away free sandwiches wouldn't you take the free sandwich? Of course. Its free. So this "US corporation" garbage ignores that this feature is build into humanity itself and is not an artifact of American business culture.
Furthermore, we weren't always screwed up. So if this feature were the cause all along we NEVER would have had a better labor market. Since the labor market is worse now then it was before, you can't cite this as being the causal element.
You might not like my argument. But unlike your own it is logical. Your argument ignores known variables and is self contradictory.
I regret is that is ideologically painful for you. But you're basically mathematically wrong. Its not possible.
Furthermore, your argument would only hold true if all US corporations were a singular entity that was entirely uniform. They can't be. Companies and their policies vary from one to another and then industries vary.
What we are seeing today is an across the board issue throughout all industries and throughout all companies. There is no one company or group of companies that could have that effect.
The only organization capable of effecting every US industry in every state at the same time is the US federal government. Name another.
Look, I'm not saying I have all the answers. Maybe I've missed something. But do not cite things as being the cause when their scope is not sufficient to cause the observed result.
Again... Be logical.
Everything.
Legal labor.
Financial labor.
Manual labor.
Farm labor.
EVERYTHING.
There is only one common denominator. The US federal government. Its screwed up in every state not in every country.
No one industry or institution could explain such a broad disruption short of the only organization with that scope in our society.
I know this is controversal and I know a lot of people are just going to reflexively reject this point. But US labor laws are killing us.
A good example is the ban on IQ tests to offer people jobs. It sounds like a silly thing that doesn't matter. But there was a time when employers screened job applications with an IQ test. Then the federal government made that illegal because it discriminates against people that fail IQ tests... mostly people unfit to fill the position.
So what did companies do in response? They said " this job requires a college education"... even though it really doesn't. But that gets the company what it wants. A screened job application because people with college educations are much less likely to be idiots.
There are literally thousands of examples of US labor laws having unintended consequences and ultimately screwing over American workers. What is more sad is that most of these laws were written with the intention of protecting US workers.
But consider for example the latest genius idea of forcing US employers to provide healthcare to employees and then mandating that that healthcare be of a pretty high quality? Instant hiring freeze. Reduction in work hours. More part time labor. etc.
THIS is what is killing us. Remove most of these laws and just let people work out their own arrangements with employeers. People will get jobs. And in getting jobs they'll get work experience which will make them valuable.
Short of that... we're all on welfare that will be funded by currency devaluation... and the US becomes a banana republic.
It sounds extreme but its what is happening.
As to the friendship between governments. It is no more superficial the the friendships between people. Untrustworthy people make untrustworthy friends. It does not mean governments cannot be trusted friends it merely means that some governments with the people running them make poor friends.
That is it an individual issue and not a question of all governments. You're painting with an overly large brush here and it isn't justifiable.
As to the coup attempt, the US didn't organize it. Members of the coup reached out to the US and asked for the blessing of the US government which was likely given. Why would we not bless it? Chavez went out of his way to annoy us long before that. We were not putting him out of power. We were not involved. We merely knew about it and said we'd be fine with it. For that we don't earn more ire from him. And what did he do to his country? Look at it. His country is basically the Saudi Arabia of South America and they're so incompetent that they're still going broke. Its beyond pathetic. A retarded five year old could run the country better then those twits. So yes, we were okay with someone less "special" running Venezuela.
As to comical insults, its a minor issue that doesn't need to be blown up. Bolivia's offense to the matter is overblown and out of proportion. Their reaction to the matter is comical in the context of who they are, what was done, the circumstances of the matter, etc. Remember Gaddaffi? Remember his military uniform?
Here's an image of it from the web:
http://en.rian.ru/images/16275/50/162755026.jpg
Its comical and cartoonish. He might as well wear a pope hat, carry a king's scepter, and begin every sentence with "do you know who I am!?!" Its silly.
And if you think the US could claim diplomatic immunity in their territory given similar circumstances you're kidding yourself.
As to there being no irrelevant people. We can't all be relevant. That would imply that we have to take into consideration everyone all the time. And NO ONE does that. It is literally impossible for the human mind to keep in mind all those people at all times. What we do is try to prioritize people based on how important they are to us for various reasons. If you are so far down the queue that no one bothers regarding you then you are de facto irrelevant. That isn't an opinion. It is reality.
As to respecting all nations or countries, you do not. Would you respect a nation that regarded ritualistic cannibalism? Of course not. What if a nation had the religious belief that all other people's are in fact breakfast cereals?
When you respect everything you respect nothing. Respect is a relative quality like light and dark. You respect and disrespect. When everything is light there is no dark and light loses its meaning. Respect only has value in relation to things you disrespect. You cannot respect everything and have respect mean anything.
So no, neither of us respect all nations or countries. You might regard all nations or countries as having rights. But all rights have a context and limitations. Cite any right and I can come up with a context where you'll violate it. It might be an extreme example but the rights are not absolute.
Ultimately, all rights must be secured individually by every person, citizen, company, nation, group of nations, etc. If you cannot protect your rights then you'll find them violated. Why do Americans often find their own rights ignored by their government when they have some of the strongest protections for civil liberties in law? Because Americans sometimes don't protect their rights. And when they don't protect them or are unable to protect them they are sometimes violated. The same goes for everyone and everything.
There is a US company in France for example that wants to close a tire factory. The local labor union says the tire company has no right to close the factory and must keep it open indefinitely even though it loses money. Clearly
The group of people known as the government are however capable of having friends and enemies. You stated that government can't have friends which is nonsense.
Most of the EU nations are classed as friends by the United States government. Not only in policy but in the manner in which the US government treats them.
As to you never saying the government is not made up of people, you did try to abstract them to being non-human which would include not being made up of people.
As to diplomatic immunity... its been abused many times in the past:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19591_6-most-ridiculous-abuses-diplomatic-immunity.html
Funny list of some extreme examples. The point of it is not to let you f' over other countries. The point is to smooth over little issues and facilitate cooperation.
Smuggling people out of a country is not a little issue. Use it to avoid parking tickets or minor fines. But if you're playing a bigger game no one is going to blink at going right through it.
Now did the Bolivian president smuggle Snowden out by plane? No he didn't. The whole thing was clearly pretty embarrassing for everyone. But do you think a US diplomatic plane could leave Bolivia with a wanted criminal? Unlikely.
Again... regrettable. However, the overblown offense of the Bolivians is frankly as tiresome as it is sad.
The United States is subjected to worse offenses against our national dignity then that on a daily basis. Chavez for example called Bush the devil and suggested the place he stood not long ago still smelled of sulfur. To which American comedians suggested that Bush might have had an Egg Salad sandwich for lunch.
But that sort of thing is frankly ongoing. To say nothing of the mindless anti americanism we're treated to throughout the world.
Look at the Egyptian protesters. Both sides blame America somehow. The Muslim Brotherhood which Obama helped get into power by respecting the democratic process by which they obtained power blame Obama/The United States for losing power to a military coup. At the same time, the military faction blames the US for helping the Muslim brotherhood and otherwise opposing their coup which they see as righteous for various reasons.
THAT is what most opposition to the US looks like throughout the world. Both sides blaming the US without any real evidence of it. We're the international scapegoat of the incompetent. If your government is badly run or you're otherwise in danger of losing power due to incompetence... Blame the US. Its our fault they're stupid. We apparently picked them out of their mother's arms when they were babies and promptly dropped them on their heads.
And despite the ongoing mindless stupidity and unjustifiable hostility... We continue to work peacefully and constructively with powers that frankly don't deserve that much respect. Why? We have no choice. We can't choose the planet we live on and we unfortunately live on planet Earth which appears to be populated by morons.
Is the US perfect? Hardly. But we're not a banana republic yet. We are not strategically beholden to anyone. We are one of the few independent nations left on this planet. Secure in our own power and truly sovereign in our own territory. That is an accomplishment few other nations can claim. We have also maintained the same government since the 18th century. Through invasion, war, civil war, world war, world war again, the cold war, and now whatever you want to call these terrorist attacks. We have prevailed through it all. We have survived problems political, economic, social, and religious that have laid low lesser nations. And we have done it all without devolving into a police state or a dictatorship.
We have also stood by our allies. There are few powers on earth that are worth having as friends. And despite all of that... you want to spit on our faces because we conduct a global intelligence network that lik