The U.S. has a remarkable history of fighting people that we ourselves have trained and armed in some earlier coup. That may have something to do with the fact that meddling in other country's interest may have short-term benefit, but it can (and frequently does) backfire and produce long-term problems. Iran is a great example. We overthrow their democratically-elected government to put in our figurehead so we can get their oil. Worked great until 1979. Now we've spent the last 30 years with a country that despises us.
I know what happened in a lot of meetings I never personally attended. Participants talk, transcripts are shared, etc. I suspect this info came second or third-hand from the people under Panetta.
When Stuxnet came out, every time someone posted that it was likely the creation of Israel and/or the U.S., they were greeted by a surprising number of deniers who were trying to claim it was Russia or Saudi Arabia, or maybe that Iran *themselves* created it, etc. Of course, this was insane. But there seem to be a LOT of people out there who have their head buried in the sand when it comes to U.S./Israeli intelligence activities in Iran. I bet even now if I were to say that Mossad had assassinated all those Iranian nuclear scientists, there would be several idiots who would jump up and claim it was someone else, or that Iran had just staged the assassinations.
Having owned both a Xbox 360 and PS3, I have to say that Sony's updates are the worst. Why they take so long is beyond me. But there are a lot more of them and they take a LOT longer to download than on the 360. Not sure if Sony forces you to download the entire package every time, or if they're bandwidth just sucks. But it's annoying as hell.
Quite a while before the invention of the social safety net. What happened in between, hmm?
Between 1913 and the New Deal? Well, first there was a World War. Then the banks and Wall Street, with virtually no regulation, got completely out of control in the 1920's--crashing the stock market and destroying the economy. Then there was a massive Great Depression, with 25+% unemployment and misery. Then there was the New Deal, which created a basic safety net to at least keep people from starving.
You do know that Pinkertons often spent hard time in prison for their crimes, right?
Yeah, because there was at least some semblance of a functioning government with a justice system and prisons--all paid for with the taxes that libertarians hate so much.
Cloud computing doesn't eliminate the morons using computers.
Not to mention the fact that I have yet to see the Cloud fix a hardware problem, or deal with a user who needs some specialized software installed, or deal with a brown-out, or help string cable, or replace the drum in a printer....
It's obvious that crazyjj doesn't understand the ethos either.
No, the problem is that libertarians are hopeless utopians who think the government is all that's standing between them and wealth and happiness. In reality, it's all that's protecting you from a much worse fate.
The guy was making the valid statement that a corporation can not force you to do anything.
I think 100,000 well-armed Pinkerton Detectives would disagree. And by "disagree" I mean "bust you upside your head with a fucking baseball bat if you defied the company that hired them as its private army."
nor can they send armed police to toss me in jail
Who's going to stop them, the government that you got rid of because you don't like paying taxes?
No company has that power..... only government.
No, the only thing STOPPING the companies from having that power is government.
The US maintained a libertarian economic policy from the end of Reconstruction through 1913.
And what a paradise it was in the minds of those who know nothing about it. It was the glorious time in America when people can and frequently did starve to death right here in the good old USA, when disease epidemics wiped out significant portions of the population on a regular basis, when the rich and powerful commanded private armies and treated workers as slaves, when a single bad winter could wipe you out and reduce you and your family to starving wretches.
Nope, no safety net in that utopia. Just you and your hungry, desperate, pathetic, miserable life.
If I don't like the pay, I can quit my job and go work somewhere else.
When you do better bring a tent, gold, food, and water with you. Because the company owns your house, pays you in company script, and owns all the stores in town.
If (for some far-fetched reason) my boss shows up at my home at 3 AM and demands I give him money or he'll shoot me, I can shoot him in self defense.
Oh, did I mention that the company also has a private army and police force too? Better have a lot of bullets.
I can defend myself against 'evil corporations' by refusing to participate.
Sure, just learn to hunt and hide. And don't mess with anyone's stash or they will shoot.
I can't defend against 'evil government' by refusing anything--I'll be dead.
Did I mention earlier that the company also has a private army and police force too?
He also lived in the late-18th/early-19th century. Is that where you live?
A libertarian or jeffersonian does not want to get rid of government. That's an anarchist.
No you just want to shrink it down to where it's so ineffectual as to be non-existent in anything but name...and then not fund it.
Since corporations are a creation of government (via issuance of a license), if anarchists got rid of government, such that it did not exist, neither would corporations exist.
Well, in that case, when your utopia comes I'm sure all those super-powerful corporations with trillions in assets will just go home and hand over power to the people.
In the 1990s, the term “digital divide” emerged to describe technology’s haves and have-nots. It inspired many efforts to get the latest computing tools into the hands of all Americans, particularly low-income families.
As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show
In other words, a bunch of do-gooders gave a bunch of computers to the noble savages who live in that neighborhood that they avoid on the way to work, assuming that these ignorant natives would use this wonderful new device to rise up out of the ghettos and become good middle-class liberals. Only the do-gooders were distressed to learn that instead of getting their degrees online and reading academic papers, their beneficiaries instead chose to use their new machines to watch nut-shot YouTube videos and play Farmville. So now they're seeking a way to force these foolish ingrates to use their computers the way the do-gooders know they're supposed to.
Who would have thought that giving a computer to someone who lives in a shithole neighborhood, with little in the way of safe local entertainment, would choose to use it for online entertainment, huh? We must educate them on the proper way to use a computer before they find Facebook and start messaging our daughters instead of using Kahn Academy courses to learn algebra!
Next you'll be telling me that the kids in the One Laptop Per Child program traded their laptops for food rather than using them to learn the Queen's English!
I'm missing something here. If it's money, where are they cutting costs?
Because a lot of companies have CEO's who are only looking to boost profits (and their bonuses) in the very short term. So they downsize and cut costs any way they can to make their companies look better on paper. And they don't worry if the companies turn out shitty product in the long-term. When the shit hits the fan, they just bail out with their golden parachutes and leave the new guy to deal with the aftermath.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would anyone place critical hardware on the internet?
They didn't. Stuxnet was apparently brought into the system physically on the infected flash drives of some Russian contractors working on it.
The U.S. has a remarkable history of fighting people that we ourselves have trained and armed in some earlier coup. That may have something to do with the fact that meddling in other country's interest may have short-term benefit, but it can (and frequently does) backfire and produce long-term problems. Iran is a great example. We overthrow their democratically-elected government to put in our figurehead so we can get their oil. Worked great until 1979. Now we've spent the last 30 years with a country that despises us.
I know what happened in a lot of meetings I never personally attended. Participants talk, transcripts are shared, etc. I suspect this info came second or third-hand from the people under Panetta.
When Stuxnet came out, every time someone posted that it was likely the creation of Israel and/or the U.S., they were greeted by a surprising number of deniers who were trying to claim it was Russia or Saudi Arabia, or maybe that Iran *themselves* created it, etc. Of course, this was insane. But there seem to be a LOT of people out there who have their head buried in the sand when it comes to U.S./Israeli intelligence activities in Iran. I bet even now if I were to say that Mossad had assassinated all those Iranian nuclear scientists, there would be several idiots who would jump up and claim it was someone else, or that Iran had just staged the assassinations.
See the difference?
As a consumer...nope.
By the time these consoles comes out 16GB of flash media will be pretty cheap.
And 50 GB of blu-ray storage is even cheaper.
Having owned both a Xbox 360 and PS3, I have to say that Sony's updates are the worst. Why they take so long is beyond me. But there are a lot more of them and they take a LOT longer to download than on the 360. Not sure if Sony forces you to download the entire package every time, or if they're bandwidth just sucks. But it's annoying as hell.
It's a last act of defiance before the corporations liquidate the EU and sell it to China.
And you sound exactly as dumb as you appear to be.
Quite a while before the invention of the social safety net. What happened in between, hmm?
Between 1913 and the New Deal? Well, first there was a World War. Then the banks and Wall Street, with virtually no regulation, got completely out of control in the 1920's--crashing the stock market and destroying the economy. Then there was a massive Great Depression, with 25+% unemployment and misery. Then there was the New Deal, which created a basic safety net to at least keep people from starving.
You do know that Pinkertons often spent hard time in prison for their crimes, right?
Yeah, because there was at least some semblance of a functioning government with a justice system and prisons--all paid for with the taxes that libertarians hate so much.
Again, who is going to enforce your lawsuit against the company?
Cloud computing doesn't eliminate the morons using computers.
Not to mention the fact that I have yet to see the Cloud fix a hardware problem, or deal with a user who needs some specialized software installed, or deal with a brown-out, or help string cable, or replace the drum in a printer....
and in a libertarian world, corporations would be bound by the same rules and notions as any other company
Rules that are going to be enforced by the army and police, who are going to be paid with what exactly?
It's obvious that crazyjj doesn't understand the ethos either.
No, the problem is that libertarians are hopeless utopians who think the government is all that's standing between them and wealth and happiness. In reality, it's all that's protecting you from a much worse fate.
The guy was making the valid statement that a corporation can not force you to do anything.
I think 100,000 well-armed Pinkerton Detectives would disagree. And by "disagree" I mean "bust you upside your head with a fucking baseball bat if you defied the company that hired them as its private army."
nor can they send armed police to toss me in jail
Who's going to stop them, the government that you got rid of because you don't like paying taxes?
No company has that power..... only government.
No, the only thing STOPPING the companies from having that power is government.
The US maintained a libertarian economic policy from the end of Reconstruction through 1913.
And what a paradise it was in the minds of those who know nothing about it. It was the glorious time in America when people can and frequently did starve to death right here in the good old USA, when disease epidemics wiped out significant portions of the population on a regular basis, when the rich and powerful commanded private armies and treated workers as slaves, when a single bad winter could wipe you out and reduce you and your family to starving wretches.
Nope, no safety net in that utopia. Just you and your hungry, desperate, pathetic, miserable life.
If I don't like the pay, I can quit my job and go work somewhere else.
When you do better bring a tent, gold, food, and water with you. Because the company owns your house, pays you in company script, and owns all the stores in town.
If (for some far-fetched reason) my boss shows up at my home at 3 AM and demands I give him money or he'll shoot me, I can shoot him in self defense.
Oh, did I mention that the company also has a private army and police force too? Better have a lot of bullets.
I can defend myself against 'evil corporations' by refusing to participate.
Sure, just learn to hunt and hide. And don't mess with anyone's stash or they will shoot.
I can't defend against 'evil government' by refusing anything--I'll be dead.
Did I mention earlier that the company also has a private army and police force too?
Thomas Jefferson was a libertarian.
He also lived in the late-18th/early-19th century. Is that where you live?
A libertarian or jeffersonian does not want to get rid of government. That's an anarchist.
No you just want to shrink it down to where it's so ineffectual as to be non-existent in anything but name...and then not fund it.
Since corporations are a creation of government (via issuance of a license), if anarchists got rid of government, such that it did not exist, neither would corporations exist.
Well, in that case, when your utopia comes I'm sure all those super-powerful corporations with trillions in assets will just go home and hand over power to the people.
FTFA:
In the 1990s, the term “digital divide” emerged to describe technology’s haves and have-nots. It inspired many efforts to get the latest computing tools into the hands of all Americans, particularly low-income families.
As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show
In other words, a bunch of do-gooders gave a bunch of computers to the noble savages who live in that neighborhood that they avoid on the way to work, assuming that these ignorant natives would use this wonderful new device to rise up out of the ghettos and become good middle-class liberals. Only the do-gooders were distressed to learn that instead of getting their degrees online and reading academic papers, their beneficiaries instead chose to use their new machines to watch nut-shot YouTube videos and play Farmville. So now they're seeking a way to force these foolish ingrates to use their computers the way the do-gooders know they're supposed to.
Who would have thought that giving a computer to someone who lives in a shithole neighborhood, with little in the way of safe local entertainment, would choose to use it for online entertainment, huh? We must educate them on the proper way to use a computer before they find Facebook and start messaging our daughters instead of using Kahn Academy courses to learn algebra!
Next you'll be telling me that the kids in the One Laptop Per Child program traded their laptops for food rather than using them to learn the Queen's English!
I'm missing something here. If it's money, where are they cutting costs?
Because a lot of companies have CEO's who are only looking to boost profits (and their bonuses) in the very short term. So they downsize and cut costs any way they can to make their companies look better on paper. And they don't worry if the companies turn out shitty product in the long-term. When the shit hits the fan, they just bail out with their golden parachutes and leave the new guy to deal with the aftermath.
That's right! Jealous?
REDUCE the number of H1B visas
Good luck getting a Congress that's owned by the corporations to support that one.
And probably expected you to be on call 24/7 to boot.
there are enough people willing to be slaves.
Yeah, all you have to do is get them H1B visas.