You underestimate the importance of MNCs and FDI if you think that this does not make a difference.
Countries clamor for investment from top firms, and go a long way to accommodating them. China may be big, but they are just as dependent on such investments. If it were cut and dry, they would have given Google the finger a long, long time ago.
If enough corporations started doing that, then other developing countries start looking ripe and interesting. It does not take much for a country to go from plum, juicy investment targets to stark and dangerous entities that no one would touch with a ten-foot pole.
Just under ten years ago, the Asian economies were all the rage -- and before that, Latin American countries. China could just as easily be an also-ran if they pushed too hard. After all, even the USSR fell, for all its (supposed) might, and that's in recent memory.
As someone who's studying international relations, I can tell you right now that a good chunk of what you do in IPE (international political economy) is deal with game theory. This is especially true for folks who take a quantitative approach to looking at the world.
You would be absolutely amazed at how much of the seminal work in economics and political science with real world applicability involves game theory. Hell, you'd be hard-pressed to find any half decent class on the topic that doesn't talk about Nash or Pareto equilibria.
So yeah it is a security issue, but on the scale of the next 50 or 100 years. I don't think it is appropriate for the CIA to work on issues over that time scale.
Why, of course. Long term thinking? Who needs that? I mean, it's not like long term thinking like agriculture helped anyone, right?
And who needs enough data to look for patterns and all that good stuff? That involves brain cells. I forget that we're in a country where we think with our guts.
Wow, I had no idea. I've heard stories re: some of what you mentioned above - GM and Raytheon kicking the dead remains of HH - however, I had not realized that they were the root cause, as opposed to the straw.
I'd always heard that the degeneration of HH had a major role to play in what happened to Hughes, mostly because his personality was what helped Hughes propel ahead in those days.
And I can totally believe what you say about Raytheon - I used to work at Los Alamos, and similar stories abound. The only half-decent player in that space was Lockheed Martin, and even they weren't necessarily the most reliable. Either way, it's a sad story. Thanks for sharing it.
My thoughts exactly. I remember opening Compaqs to explore what was inside, and getting really bad cuts from the sharp things everywhere.
On another note, what about Hughes?
Under Howard Hughes, the company was doing fantastic. They did some great stuff, and came up with some pretty awesome inventions.
And then, Howard went batshit crazy, and the company went downhill. Hughes still does some pretty cool stuff, but it's nothing like that it used to be.
Another company, of course, is Bell Labs.
Through nothing short of government greed and interference, the fantastic company that gave us transistors, lasers, information theory, radio astronomy, Unix and C was broken up, and eventually destroyed everything that they stood for.
Today, AT&T, Alcatel-Lucent, and baby-Bells are nothing short of a joke.
There is no innovation to speak of, nothing approaching the scale of Bell Labs in any case. It was a sad, sad day.
Personally, I feel that had Hughes and Bell Labs survived today, we may have had more technological advances than we do today.
I think that's the sort of thinking that pervades Texas. I live in Boston and my client is in Texas. Just yesterday, it was barely snowing, and everyone slowed down about 20 mph for no apparent reason.
Just because the weather is bad does not mean you shouldn't drive. Otherwise, you wouldn't ever get out in the winter in New England.
That way, he'll either write Haikus and become a rock star programmer, or write Haikus and go raving mad and prove the rest of Hilbert's unsolved problems.
Either way, you'll have Haikus, either as errors or from your brother. You can't go wrong with that!
Seriously? The IRA, Basque separatists, LTTE - they're all Muslims, eh? What about Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber? They're Muslims, too?
And if individuals do it it is terrorism and if nation states do it, it is "war"? Please turn off Fox news and try educating yourself about the world for a change.
I think he means "minor annoyance," as in an attempt to change our everyday life (flying isn't every day for most people).
But it is, for enough of us. Just last year, I flew ~150,000 miles on just American Airlines (and probably a similar amount on 3 or 4 other airlines).
Anybody in consulting or sales easily travels a few hundred thousand miles a year - and I'd bet dollars to donuts that that number is not insignificant.
Sadly, some of us don't have much of a choice - our jobs require us to travel, and our industries are such that travel is inevitable.
I travel at least twice a week - could be as much as five or more, depending on the week. And so, while I would love to not travel, all things remaining equal, it's not a choice that I have (and no, taking a massive pay cut or moving cities or switching industries is a non-choice).
I would just say that porn is not the same as information.
Porn by its very definition has a different purpose than an image that's supposed to be informative. I mean, could you get it off with a picture of a tribal woman from East Africa? Umm, I suppose - but that's not the point of the image. By that definition, you could get it off with an abstract drawing of nudity, and I'm sure that Chinese glamor/pop magazines have hotter (and relatively scantily clad) women to look at.
I thought the article was talking about blocking porn, not necessarily every nude picture of a human on the Internet.
Dude, no scotch drinking person I know would ever waste a bottle lying around, especially not when you could never get to it (say, the moon). Heck, what better place to get trashed than on the moon itself? Screw the mission.
Jocks won wars back when mankind was throwing spears at each other. Once we got guns that could out-range the strongest spear-thrower, the jocks were obsolete.
In many airlines, it is mandatory to book two seats if you are considered a "person of size".
In some cases, I feel bad (especially if it is medical condition or something). In other cases, especially if it is self-inflicted because the person just let themselves go, well, too bad.
Oh, you're lucky. My wife has to fly to China 4 times a year. It's 16 hours both ways.
She's been stuck next to extremely fat people more than once, for the entire trip.
I fly at least twice a week. I wouldn't count myself "lucky" given the average size of an American, or the average size of a seat. Except when I'm not flying economy, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure there's a Daniel Jackson joke in there somewhere...
Did it ever strike you that what the Chinese government is doing is against their very own constitution?
No?
You underestimate the importance of MNCs and FDI if you think that this does not make a difference.
Countries clamor for investment from top firms, and go a long way to accommodating them. China may be big, but they are just as dependent on such investments. If it were cut and dry, they would have given Google the finger a long, long time ago.
If enough corporations started doing that, then other developing countries start looking ripe and interesting. It does not take much for a country to go from plum, juicy investment targets to stark and dangerous entities that no one would touch with a ten-foot pole.
Just under ten years ago, the Asian economies were all the rage -- and before that, Latin American countries. China could just as easily be an also-ran if they pushed too hard. After all, even the USSR fell, for all its (supposed) might, and that's in recent memory.
International diplomacy is a game with rules.
You're a funny guy.
As someone who's studying international relations, I can tell you right now that a good chunk of what you do in IPE (international political economy) is deal with game theory. This is especially true for folks who take a quantitative approach to looking at the world.
You would be absolutely amazed at how much of the seminal work in economics and political science with real world applicability involves game theory. Hell, you'd be hard-pressed to find any half decent class on the topic that doesn't talk about Nash or Pareto equilibria.
Why, of course. Long term thinking? Who needs that? I mean, it's not like long term thinking like agriculture helped anyone, right?
And who needs enough data to look for patterns and all that good stuff? That involves brain cells. I forget that we're in a country where we think with our guts.
Wow, I had no idea. I've heard stories re: some of what you mentioned above - GM and Raytheon kicking the dead remains of HH - however, I had not realized that they were the root cause, as opposed to the straw.
I'd always heard that the degeneration of HH had a major role to play in what happened to Hughes, mostly because his personality was what helped Hughes propel ahead in those days.
And I can totally believe what you say about Raytheon - I used to work at Los Alamos, and similar stories abound. The only half-decent player in that space was Lockheed Martin, and even they weren't necessarily the most reliable. Either way, it's a sad story. Thanks for sharing it.
My thoughts exactly. I remember opening Compaqs to explore what was inside, and getting really bad cuts from the sharp things everywhere.
On another note, what about Hughes?
Under Howard Hughes, the company was doing fantastic. They did some great stuff, and came up with some pretty awesome inventions.
And then, Howard went batshit crazy, and the company went downhill. Hughes still does some pretty cool stuff, but it's nothing like that it used to be.
Another company, of course, is Bell Labs.
Through nothing short of government greed and interference, the fantastic company that gave us transistors, lasers, information theory, radio astronomy, Unix and C was broken up, and eventually destroyed everything that they stood for.
Today, AT&T, Alcatel-Lucent, and baby-Bells are nothing short of a joke.
There is no innovation to speak of, nothing approaching the scale of Bell Labs in any case. It was a sad, sad day.
Personally, I feel that had Hughes and Bell Labs survived today, we may have had more technological advances than we do today.
Well, in New England, they actually have those big red lights on top that flash when the other lights are coated with snow.
Basically, if the weather is bad, then all intersections turn into 4-way stops and those lights take over. I'm surprised that that's not more common.
I think that's the sort of thinking that pervades Texas. I live in Boston and my client is in Texas. Just yesterday, it was barely snowing, and everyone slowed down about 20 mph for no apparent reason.
Just because the weather is bad does not mean you shouldn't drive. Otherwise, you wouldn't ever get out in the winter in New England.
You must be new here.
Slashdot has always had a mix of geeky, good and crappy articles. If anything, it's gotten better.
It has to be Perl, of course.
That way, he'll either write Haikus and become a rock star programmer, or write Haikus and go raving mad and prove the rest of Hilbert's unsolved problems.
Either way, you'll have Haikus, either as errors or from your brother. You can't go wrong with that!
Seriously? The IRA, Basque separatists, LTTE - they're all Muslims, eh? What about Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber? They're Muslims, too?
And if individuals do it it is terrorism and if nation states do it, it is "war"? Please turn off Fox news and try educating yourself about the world for a change.
And anti-Hindu, anti-Buddhist, anti-vegan/vegetarian etc. Pretty much a foam at the mouth Christian, I suppose.
(I'd have said foam at the mouth atheist, but most atheists tend to be pretty rational, and more on the vegan/vegetarian side of the fence...)
But it is, for enough of us. Just last year, I flew ~150,000 miles on just American Airlines (and probably a similar amount on 3 or 4 other airlines).
Anybody in consulting or sales easily travels a few hundred thousand miles a year - and I'd bet dollars to donuts that that number is not insignificant.
Sadly, some of us don't have much of a choice - our jobs require us to travel, and our industries are such that travel is inevitable.
I travel at least twice a week - could be as much as five or more, depending on the week. And so, while I would love to not travel, all things remaining equal, it's not a choice that I have (and no, taking a massive pay cut or moving cities or switching industries is a non-choice).
I would just say that porn is not the same as information.
Porn by its very definition has a different purpose than an image that's supposed to be informative. I mean, could you get it off with a picture of a tribal woman from East Africa? Umm, I suppose - but that's not the point of the image. By that definition, you could get it off with an abstract drawing of nudity, and I'm sure that Chinese glamor/pop magazines have hotter (and relatively scantily clad) women to look at.
I thought the article was talking about blocking porn, not necessarily every nude picture of a human on the Internet.
How you combined the two, I do not know.
Shows how little you know about math. If your surface is curved, a straight line on the surface is automatically curved.
Look up toplogical manifolds some day.
Dude, no scotch drinking person I know would ever waste a bottle lying around, especially not when you could never get to it (say, the moon). Heck, what better place to get trashed than on the moon itself? Screw the mission.
And quite wreckless, if I might add. I bet he is quaking in his boots, though, what with the lawsuit and all.
You mean like how we Americans adhere to the metric standard? :-)
Who do you think invented the spear? ;-)
In many airlines, it is mandatory to book two seats if you are considered a "person of size".
In some cases, I feel bad (especially if it is medical condition or something). In other cases, especially if it is self-inflicted because the person just let themselves go, well, too bad.
A trade-off implies getting something in return... ;)
I fly at least twice a week. I wouldn't count myself "lucky" given the average size of an American, or the average size of a seat. Except when I'm not flying economy, of course.
Trust me, I know. I had to sit next to a rather large "blob-like" man just yesterday on a 4+ hour flight.