Thats what it comes down to isn't it? Currently our economy is criticaly dependant on Arab Oil. Iran and Iraq are both threating to choke the supply to punish the US for supporting Israel. I doubt that they will, but consider what the effects would be if Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and Iraq cut supply and we got $50 a barrell oil? Yikes
7 Years ago a group of secluded nuts at Waco killed themselves. On a daily basis we see mainstream Arabs killing the enemmies childeren to try to force them to surrender. Must be why Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize.
"hegemony" = We have an inferiotity complex
on
Globalism Post 9/11
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· Score: 1
The United States system of fairness, work ethic, innovation and competition makes us extremely successful. The Arab world's general tendance towards backwardsness and corruption for the past 500 years has put them at a severe disadvantage. Anyone with half a brain comes to the US to be a GTA! These courtries see the US as completely invalidating Islam and are reacting accordingly.
The rest of the world was dumping?:-) Your correct that this is a departure, but put it in context. The reason that it was significant is because it is unusual. The norm is openness. I didn't say the the US was perfect (I didn't even say the best) I just said significantly better than most.
The tarriff is bad econ, and will probably be removed. The steel producers are a small influential group, but the number of firms that buy steel products is huge. They are making they displeasusre known and the administration is listening.
What we are seeing is that fair, open systems with industrious citizens are much more successful that corrupt or backward regimes with lazy citizens. Much of the world resentment is derived from this success. It's obvious that the Muslims see it as invalidating their religeon. The United States exists as a refutation of Islam. Additionaly much of Europe restents us for our work ethic, they refer to it as "ruthless efficiency" on the BBC. Italy is the perfect example of how a generaly "lazy" culture that encourages unemployment and low levels of output is falling futher and further behind the rest of the world. The message to these other ultures is clear, their reaction hasn't been paticularly prudent.
2.1 Billion incoming cash. 5.2 Billion Cash on Hand.
I think MSFT is solid.
I mean use a little intuition. Every beige box sold means $40 in revenue from windows. What's the Marginal Cost of another copy of windows $2? Now add in Office or Works. Then add all the copies of NT server that are sold, all the CAL's. All the Exchange servers, all the Exchaneg CALS. All the SQL servers, all the SQL CALs. Thats a honkin lot of revenue, and very little marginal cost. MS in making money hand over fist. That's what monopolies do, maximise the difference between marginal revenue and marginal cost. MS can keep cranking out licences and were stuck buying them.
MS growth may slow, (although one could argue that vast international markets lay untapped), but they aren't about to colapse Enron style.
You're going to be very tempted to nuke the USA before the system is in place and you lose the opportunity.
What would be the point of nuking the US before SDI was operational? We're still operating under MAD. If they were to launch a first strike now, they would only ensure their own destruction.
Safeguard was a bit before my time (60's?) but wasn't it designed to protect our ICBM's?
Folowing your argument that a defensive technology like SDI destablizes the world would suggest that we arm all the nations of the world with nukes so that all parties live in fear of the each other.
Make your ad hominem attacks all you like. Building a DEFENSIVE system is not jingoistic or xenophobic, it merely reflects the sad state of affairs that the proliferation of nukes and icbms is getting ready to explode (pun intentended) and not taking action to defend oneself is foolish idealism.
Because Bill Clinton gave Loral (large campaign donner) Washington Post Story permission to sell this technology to our good friends the Chinese, they'll soon be able to deliver highly enriched Uranium right to your doorstep! The Democrats and Europeans think that playing defense is unsportsmanlike and that a shield is unnecessary. Thankfully Bush,Rumsfeld et al think differently and were are moving ahead on the project.
Frankly I don't see why companies like supernews and other usenet providers aren't held accountable. No they can't be responsible for any paticular post, but why should they be allowed to carry groups like alt.binaries.kiddy-porn? Groups whose sole purpose is to traffic illegal material.
This is a large customer threatening (sorta) to take their buisness elsewhere. When large high profile customers raise a stink vendors take notice. This is exactly how the security problem will get fixed. Hopefully other large clients will follow suit.
Ever heard the saying "The sqeeky wheel gets the grease"?
People just want to be able to rip a DVD and burn a copy that is playable on their DVD player. It really doesn't matter what you call it. As soon as somebody comes out with one of those and the media is $5 then I'll buy one.
Whatever! Ever hear of frequent flier miles?
on
Loki Aftermath Looks Bad
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I got a free flight to Hawaii by using my CC and having the company reimburse me.
The moral is, don't expected to get paid by a company that doesn't make any money.
The issue is stimulating the economy. On the fiscal side this can be done through cutting taxes, or increasing spending, or some combination of the two. Cutting taxes does raise output, by how much depends on a variety of factors. People generaly save part and spend part of any income left after taxes. The fraction spent is called the marginal propensity to consume or MPC. So if your income went up by $10 and you spent $7 and saved $3 your MPC would be.7 .
Ok now since a a dollar earned by me results in me spending MPC*$1 someone will get that MPC*$1, that person will spend MPC*MPC*$1 which someone else will get and spend MPC*MPC*MPC*$1. After a little Math you can see that this is a geometric series and that the total income earned after 1 new dollar is 1/(1-MPC) . This is called the multiplier.
The alternative is to increase govt spending. This can work too, the only problem is that if the government has to run a deficit to pay for it they will have to borrow. The goverment is borrowing from the same pool of money that every one else is, meaning the Demand for money increases meaning interest rates go up. This can lead to crowding out of public borrowing, meaning it is harder for companied to get the money they need to expand their operations.
However sometimes running a deficit is a good thing. It was a stupid idea for the government to think that the budget should remain balanced during the Depression. If there was ever a time for the government to spend like mad, that was it.
The reason towns and states are having such a difficult time is because the economy is so weak. Unemployed people pay 0 taxes, and people making less than they used to pay less taxes. The states got caught up in the late 90's bubble just like everyone else. The thought that the good times would go on forever, and that they could spend all sorts of money, instead of saving the money for a rainy day.
My problem with the people who want a Mars trip is that they are being dishonest. There is no great science to be discovered, it's really just an ego trip for Star Trek fans.
I compare it to the sky scraper craze of the 60's and 70's. Would it be cool to keep on building skyscrapers to 150 200 300 stories? Sure. But after the Sears Tower we asked: "What's the point of this again?" and we realized there wasn't one other than ego. $10 Billion dollars is alot to spend on an ego trip to mars. I'd rather the government bought 150,000 corvettes and we could all zoom around racetracks.
It's called deterence. All they are really saing is that during the cold war our nukes were pointed at Russia and China. Now they are pointed at Russia China Iran Iraq Lybia Syria N. Korea and France. For deterence to be effective, your enemy has to know you have the weapons pointed at them. If the French don't know our missles are pointed at them, then how can they know to be afraid?
"Fighting Terrorists" -- I won't argue with you much on this one. I'd only point out that our military is 1/2 the size it once was while China's is getting larger by the day.
"Fix Economy" -- You are right the economy is a multi-trillion dollar living organism and as you know every organism needs food. Right now the economy is anemic. Both monetary policy (Fed Reserve) and fiscal policy (taxes and spending) should be employed to correct this. The Fiscal side, cutting taxes and increasing discretionary spending, says that we should run a deficit (as we are) in order to get more money out there.
"Fight Crime" -- Actually Clintons 100,000 new cops policy has been a tremendous success. In case you haven't noticed violent crime has been going down ever since the program started. I even saw the conservatives in England calling for a simmilar program over there. Sorry but the federal government CAN do a lot to fight crime.
"Cut Taxes" I agree the tax cut was too small. It should have been much larger. Cutting taxes is one aspect of "fixing the economy".
"Reduce Deficit" - Stupid idea at this point of weak growth. As we have seen the deficit will take care of itself once the economy picks up and people start paying more taxes.
"Explore Mars" -- Sorry but I don't see the need to conduct a multibillion dollar goeology experiment in space. What do we hope to gain? So we get there and find out the soil is really 32% Iron and we originaly though it was 31% Wowee! Or maybe we find out it had water 100 million years ago, good, next time I'm time travelling and looking for a glass of water I'll stop by Mars.
I'm just pointing out that the science being performed is mainly in the area of Geology, a rather pointless science except when it comes to looking for gold and oil.
Money spent going to Mars would be much better spent developing fiber optics, improving gasoline engines, learning how to build more efficient batteries, researching fusion... Sciences with a real payoff, not geology.
Slashdot Mirror
Have trouble in Trig?
Thats what it comes down to isn't it? Currently our economy is criticaly dependant on Arab Oil. Iran and Iraq are both threating to choke the supply to punish the US for supporting Israel. I doubt that they will, but consider what the effects would be if Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and Iraq cut supply and we got $50 a barrell oil? Yikes
7 Years ago a group of secluded nuts at Waco killed themselves. On a daily basis we see mainstream Arabs killing the enemmies childeren to try to force them to surrender. Must be why Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize.
The United States system of fairness, work ethic, innovation and competition makes us extremely successful. The Arab world's general tendance towards backwardsness and corruption for the past 500 years has put them at a severe disadvantage. Anyone with half a brain comes to the US to be a GTA! These courtries see the US as completely invalidating Islam and are reacting accordingly.
The rest of the world was dumping? :-) Your correct that this is a departure, but put it in context. The reason that it was significant is because it is unusual. The norm is openness. I didn't say the the US was perfect (I didn't even say the best) I just said significantly better than most.
The tarriff is bad econ, and will probably be removed. The steel producers are a small influential group, but the number of firms that buy steel products is huge. They are making they displeasusre known and the administration is listening.
Since when?
What we are seeing is that fair, open systems with industrious citizens are much more successful that corrupt or backward regimes with lazy citizens. Much of the world resentment is derived from this success. It's obvious that the Muslims see it as invalidating their religeon. The United States exists as a refutation of Islam. Additionaly much of Europe restents us for our work ethic, they refer to it as "ruthless efficiency" on the BBC. Italy is the perfect example of how a generaly "lazy" culture that encourages unemployment and low levels of output is falling futher and further behind the rest of the world. The message to these other ultures is clear, their reaction hasn't been paticularly prudent.
All you need to look at are these pages:
http://biz.yahoo.com/fin/l/m/msft_qb.html Balance Sheet
http://biz.yahoo.com/fin/l/m/msft_qc.html Cash Flow
Note:
2.1 Billion incoming cash. 5.2 Billion Cash on Hand.
I think MSFT is solid.
I mean use a little intuition. Every beige box sold means $40 in revenue from windows. What's the Marginal Cost of another copy of windows $2? Now add in Office or Works. Then add all the copies of NT server that are sold, all the CAL's. All the Exchange servers, all the Exchaneg CALS. All the SQL servers, all the SQL CALs. Thats a honkin lot of revenue, and very little marginal cost. MS in making money hand over fist. That's what monopolies do, maximise the difference between marginal revenue and marginal cost. MS can keep cranking out licences and were stuck buying them.
MS growth may slow, (although one could argue that vast international markets lay untapped), but they aren't about to colapse Enron style.
More power to them. I guess pissing their money away on nonsense like that instead of feeding their people is one way of controlling the population.
You were one of the ones who argued that the Pershing II's in Europe would be destabalizing.
No I don't understand:
You're going to be very tempted to nuke the USA before the system is in place and you lose the opportunity.
What would be the point of nuking the US before SDI was operational? We're still operating under MAD. If they were to launch a first strike now, they would only ensure their own destruction.
Safeguard was a bit before my time (60's?) but wasn't it designed to protect our ICBM's?
Folowing your argument that a defensive technology like SDI destablizes the world would suggest that we arm all the nations of the world with nukes so that all parties live in fear of the each other.
Make your ad hominem attacks all you like. Building a DEFENSIVE system is not jingoistic or xenophobic, it merely reflects the sad state of affairs that the proliferation of nukes and icbms is getting ready to explode (pun intentended) and not taking action to defend oneself is foolish idealism.
And China is 125th on that list, behind such economic powerhouses as Kazakhstan, Tonga, and Gabon.
China is interested in space flight as a method of improving their ICBMs. They could give a rat's ass about Mars.
Because Bill Clinton gave Loral (large campaign donner) Washington Post Story permission to sell this technology to our good friends the Chinese, they'll soon be able to deliver highly enriched Uranium right to your doorstep! The Democrats and Europeans think that playing defense is unsportsmanlike and that a shield is unnecessary. Thankfully Bush,Rumsfeld et al think differently and were are moving ahead on the project.
FSP and Kermit are the only way to go.
Following Internet protocol. Asking for an RFC from the IETF instead of congress passing an unworkable law.
Frankly I don't see why companies like supernews and other usenet providers aren't held accountable. No they can't be responsible for any paticular post, but why should they be allowed to carry groups like alt.binaries.kiddy-porn? Groups whose sole purpose is to traffic illegal material.
And what is the P2/Celeron fiasco? The celeron had a smaller onchip cache, and so it was cheaper. What's the issue with that?
That impenetrable fortress of electronic communication?
This is a large customer threatening (sorta) to take their buisness elsewhere. When large high profile customers raise a stink vendors take notice. This is exactly how the security problem will get fixed. Hopefully other large clients will follow suit.
Ever heard the saying "The sqeeky wheel gets the grease"?
Besides anything good they come up with they will sell in their boxed version, will I get my money back then?
And if Redhat incorporates some of mandrakes code will redhat pay me back when redhat sells it?
People just want to be able to rip a DVD and burn a copy that is playable on their DVD player. It really doesn't matter what you call it. As soon as somebody comes out with one of those and the media is $5 then I'll buy one.
I got a free flight to Hawaii by using my CC and having the company reimburse me.
The moral is, don't expected to get paid by a company that doesn't make any money.
Ok now since a a dollar earned by me results in me spending MPC*$1 someone will get that MPC*$1, that person will spend MPC*MPC*$1 which someone else will get and spend MPC*MPC*MPC*$1. After a little Math you can see that this is a geometric series and that the total income earned after 1 new dollar is 1/(1-MPC) . This is called the multiplier.
The alternative is to increase govt spending. This can work too, the only problem is that if the government has to run a deficit to pay for it they will have to borrow. The goverment is borrowing from the same pool of money that every one else is, meaning the Demand for money increases meaning interest rates go up. This can lead to crowding out of public borrowing, meaning it is harder for companied to get the money they need to expand their operations.
However sometimes running a deficit is a good thing. It was a stupid idea for the government to think that the budget should remain balanced during the Depression. If there was ever a time for the government to spend like mad, that was it.
The reason towns and states are having such a difficult time is because the economy is so weak. Unemployed people pay 0 taxes, and people making less than they used to pay less taxes. The states got caught up in the late 90's bubble just like everyone else. The thought that the good times would go on forever, and that they could spend all sorts of money, instead of saving the money for a rainy day.
My problem with the people who want a Mars trip is that they are being dishonest. There is no great science to be discovered, it's really just an ego trip for Star Trek fans.
I compare it to the sky scraper craze of the 60's and 70's. Would it be cool to keep on building skyscrapers to 150 200 300 stories? Sure. But after the Sears Tower we asked: "What's the point of this again?" and we realized there wasn't one other than ego. $10 Billion dollars is alot to spend on an ego trip to mars. I'd rather the government bought 150,000 corvettes and we could all zoom around racetracks.
It's called deterence. All they are really saing is that during the cold war our nukes were pointed at Russia and China. Now they are pointed at Russia China Iran Iraq Lybia Syria N. Korea and France. For deterence to be effective, your enemy has to know you have the weapons pointed at them. If the French don't know our missles are pointed at them, then how can they know to be afraid?
"Fix Economy" -- You are right the economy is a multi-trillion dollar living organism and as you know every organism needs food. Right now the economy is anemic. Both monetary policy (Fed Reserve) and fiscal policy (taxes and spending) should be employed to correct this. The Fiscal side, cutting taxes and increasing discretionary spending, says that we should run a deficit (as we are) in order to get more money out there.
"Fight Crime" -- Actually Clintons 100,000 new cops policy has been a tremendous success. In case you haven't noticed violent crime has been going down ever since the program started. I even saw the conservatives in England calling for a simmilar program over there. Sorry but the federal government CAN do a lot to fight crime.
"Cut Taxes" I agree the tax cut was too small. It should have been much larger. Cutting taxes is one aspect of "fixing the economy".
"Reduce Deficit" - Stupid idea at this point of weak growth. As we have seen the deficit will take care of itself once the economy picks up and people start paying more taxes.
"Explore Mars" -- Sorry but I don't see the need to conduct a multibillion dollar goeology experiment in space. What do we hope to gain? So we get there and find out the soil is really 32% Iron and we originaly though it was 31% Wowee! Or maybe we find out it had water 100 million years ago, good, next time I'm time travelling and looking for a glass of water I'll stop by Mars.
I'm just pointing out that the science being performed is mainly in the area of Geology, a rather pointless science except when it comes to looking for gold and oil.
Money spent going to Mars would be much better spent developing fiber optics, improving gasoline engines, learning how to build more efficient batteries, researching fusion... Sciences with a real payoff, not geology.