wtf? that doesn't make any sense. All the DOT has to do is condemn the property. As the state isn't involved in the lease, and it's not a sale (it would be a forced taking) it should go through just fine.
The owner of the property would still get compensated (and could go to court to increase the compensation, if desired), and the lube shop _might_ be able to get something too, though this is doubtful.
Still, the DOT might have just considered it more trouble than it was worth, though I find this unlikely.
See, I don't think that companies should have the same rights that individuals have.
First, many rights are not awarded to individuals, they are inherent in the human condition. Second, given as how corporations are simply groups of individuals, I'd much rather leave things in the hands of the individuals instead of a gestalt entity.
But granting nearly every applicable right that human beings exist to what is effectively a piece of paper? That's nuts, IMHO.
And it's worth noting that traditionally businesses have been private individuals (quite admirable) or partnerships of private individuals (ditto). Corporations were usually very special cases, and are more like what we'd now think of as a publicly granted monopoly. The charters were rather difficult to get, and many had expiration dates. Corporations that didn't serve the public (the trade off for all the benefits that corporate status includes) to the satisfaction of the government could and did have their charters revoked.
At present there's a movement to decharter Phillip-Morris. To my knowledge no companies have been dechartered for a very long time, but I'd ascribe that to business convincing people that it's not even an option, rather than there being a lack of cause.
I can refute that one. I mean, there have been interfaces quite similar to Bob all over the place. General Magic had one for their PDA many moons ago, and some early work done by (IIRC) IBM in the 70's also had that sort of interface.
Generally they were limited to offices, and not kitchens, or the other useless rooms that Bob has, but I'd think that it's a ripoff.
Exactly why the less government involvement the better.
Okay, I'll accept this. I would likely have fewer problems with MS if they were never a corporation to begin with, as it most likely never could have gotten so big anyway. But given as how this is the real world, that isn't the case.
My objection to MS's behavior stands.
And while a private suit could have technically achieved the same end, it's well known by now that the party with the most money is increasingly favored - not the one who deserves justice. This isn't as much of a consideration for the govt. And they're having quite a lot of success as compared to the private cases, which are proceeding much more slowly. Justice delayed is justice denied....
You're trolling of course, but there are no checks and balances in a capitalist free market.
Fortunately, we don't live in one. The market *IS* controlled by law. This is good. If you disagree then you will cheerfully accept that I can conduct any manner of economic transaction that I like. Perhaps I'd blow up your house if you don't pay me.
Me, I'd rather control the market by some mechanism.
No, seriously, IIRC MS bought the red squiggly line, and ripped off the idea for the talking paperclip (although the paperclip itself is theirs - but not the idea of a little talking doohicky).
ATT had been prevented from entering into a significant number of markets due to their monopoly status. Internally (AFAIK) they were more than willing to be broken up, as it freed them to do new stuff.
However, this is besides the point. Antitrust law does not exist to protect companies, it exists to protect consumers. I don't know about you, but ATT charges a lot less for long distance calls now than they used to. I'm happy, and I really don't care if they have slim profit margins. They're making money - they don't have to get greedy.
Great, so we end up with a bunch of lawyers getting rich off of sueing MS. How does that help consumers? Even if they win huge class action lawsuits against MS's pricing of Windows what do consumers get? Maybe a check for $10?
The current issue is *not* a class action suit. MS is being tried for violations of antitrust law. The theory is basically that by increasing competition in the marketplace (a good thing) consumers benefit. This recognizes that the govt. can't adequetly satisfy consumers, but that some corrections have to be made to prevent the system from being abused.
Furthermore, this sort of thing isn't taken lightly. The government wasn't complaining about MS back in the 70's, when they were doing software for the Altair and the Apple. Nor in the 80's with their IBM and Mac software. Only because they've grown to become a monoply AND have abused their monopoly status in ways that are clearly defined and have been on the books for a century, are they in trouble.
So when the playing field is level, it doesn't matter if the players are equal or not. Only if a player unlevels the field do problems arise. Do you really think that any company has a chance to overshadow MS, given their historic response to such threats? I don't. This means that revolutionary new stuff might get squashed b/c MS perceives it as a threat. Everyone is harmed when we're denied innovation. MS is against innovation, as a matter of fact.
(Of course, I can't think of a single product that they invented - everything's ripped off or bought from someone else)
Personally, I don't think that a breakup is the best way to go. I'd rather see MS carefully overseen by the government for 10 or 20 years, and prevented from entering into new markets. This will give the new markets time to develop without fear from MS. Additionally their influence in other areas (e.g. OEM pricing) would have to be equalized so that they could not exert pressure by those means. This would permit them to innovate all they wanted in the markets they already have. But not in any others - until they had competition anyway.
But I do not believe Microsoft is without fault, I just don't think it's the government's place to spank 'em.
Well why the hell not? MS wouldn't have all of the perks of being a corporation if not for the government. And it's not as though antitrust legislation is new - it's been around for a hundred years. MS could afford lawyers early on. Bill's always been rich, and his dad's a big name lawyer. They knew the rules, and they still chose to break em. I have no sympathy for people that expect to get away with breakin' the law.
naw, these kinds of things (Baudot codes, ASCII, EBDIC... shudder) were typically put together under very tight constraints.
For a very long time there wasn't considered to be enough bandwidth to transmit upper and lower case, much less anything else.
ASCII-1967 was actually pretty good - a lot of people put some work into it. In fact, it even has accents - while nowadays we'd want a character to contain it's own accent, when you're dealing with teletypes, the sequence of [letter] [backspace] [accent] works great.
Meanwhile Unicode is something like 16bits per character and IIRC it's still missing some stuff.
and i bet that there are cable modems in your town too.
those prices are typically the result of cable modems and dsl competing against each other. in areas where only one presently exists the prices are usually higher.
Communism ideally is nice enough for those people that want to practice it. There's a fair number of communes and kibbutzes in the world even today. This is Communism #1.
Communism as practiced by the USSR, PRC, and at least 99.44% of all countries claiming to be communist is radically different. Instead, it's more of a fascist dictatorship, not very stable, and frequently attempting to expand their influence wherever it'll take hold. This is Communism #2.
I have no problems with the former, as long as people can freely enter it, or leave it, and as long as people's freedoms are respected.
I have immense problems with the latter, as it's fundementally opposed to anyone's liberties except for the ruling clique, and has been demonstrated to fail in most cases when other options are available or at least to achieve stasis.
The Red Scares of the 50's had a minute amount of justification (there really were a number of spies in western governments) but most of the people who are well known for having been persecuted as Communists were idiots that couldn't see that the Russians were not living in Communism #1, but were actually practicing Communism #2. (additionally, a fair number of them had been active years earlier, and had since seen the light)
Mostly I pity them for being so easily fooled. But blame the Russians for redefining and practicing Communism #2, not the US.
I don't buy it. At least, not for the origins of the Cold War. The US was extraordinarily isolationist at that time. Roosevelt had to go through hell to get us involved in WWII in time to actually save Europe from Hitler. (who would have beaten Britain sooner or later if not for our support)
But as the war began to close, and ideas were banged around for what would happen with Europe, there was a pretty common expectation of what Russia would try to do.
Basically it was felt that they would try to expand their borders, or at least their sphere of influence whenever possible, if only to gain some sense of security. This has been a traditional Russian goal for centuries, at any rate, so it's not suprising. It's tougher when coupled with communism since to a communist a fight to overthrow capitalists is seen as historically inevitable. And the Russians in the 40's, particularly Stalin, did have some degree of belief in what they were doing.
However, it was thought, while they do a lot of saber rattling, Stalin at any rate liked to keep his options open until the very last second. This had already been demonstrated in the events leading up to the Nazi-Soviet pact in the 30's, and Russia's rapid attempt to enter the Pacific Theater in the closing days of the war.
In order to avoid a repeat of the inter-war period (especially as atomic bombs made it impossible to want another full-scale war) Europe, particularly Germany would have to be rebuilt.
So we ended up meeting in the middle- our intention was to help *any* European country rebuild (even in the east, though Stalin wouldn't allow them to take it) in order for them to be sufficiently free and strong as to preserve their independence.
Stalin took control of the East, expanding the USSR's borders, and instituting one-party governments which could be controlled by Moscow.
But the idealism which the US was operating under (not too far removed from Wilson) _was_ clearly there. It permeates most of the major policy discussions and directives of the time.
Kennan wrote about the goals Russia had, and the requirements that Russia would have to fulfill in order for there to be any kind of real peace (an end to Russian exapansion, an end to the communist doctrine that could be used to prop that expansion up).
In attempting to set up the Atlantic Alliance (NATO) were constantly pushing the idea that it was intended to fight against any country that attacked a treaty member - not against any peaceful country, no matter who they might be.
The same feelings are in any number of National Security Council documents. Consider our reaction to the Czech coup in 1948 - the country was already materially under Russia's control, but the loss of her political freedom was the real loss to US eyes.
So please do realize that a lot of Americans, particularly in the 40s and 50s really were idealistic, viewing the fight against the Nazis and the Russians as a moral issue.
The problem you're talking about was the unfortunate side effect of the containment policy. If we had to react against any Russian expansion, we'd sooner or later (sooner - South Korea was hardly a beacon of freedom or democracy) have to back someone we'd normally not want to deal with to fight a greater evil. There's really no answer to this problem; it's inevitable. But at least it set the stage for a slower rise to democracy later on (as is beginning to happen in some parts of the world) by giving them time to grow without being trampled by the Communists.
Of course, there have been plenty of banana republics set up by Americans when abroad, much to my disgust. But given as how the Russians generally backed people trying to overthrow real bastards, these guys were often the same people who were involved in American business interests.
Nor was this particularly helped by the loss of quite a bit of our idealism, particularly at high levels. What's really sad is to think that the CIA et al might just have become jaded, rather than being the natural gathering spots for unprincipled people.
But I don't think that the US has ever wanted world domination. We've wanted people to be able to choose for themselves, without any outside pressure other than looking at historical example (e.g. you'd have to be pretty naive to trust Stalin), how they want to live. That's the foundation of it all. But we're not frickin' perfect.
Still, would you have prefered what *did* happen, or would you have preferred that we pulled out of Europe and let the Russians expand westwards? There's not a hell of a lot of other options here.
Here's my distillation of the story as drawn from last summer's reading: _Infinite Loop_ which is about Apple, and _Dealers of Lightning_ which is about PARC.
In the early-mid 70's Jef Raskin started hanging out at PARC and saw the early work on their projects there (the Alto, Smalltalk, etc.)
In '77 he joined up at Apple, and in '79 Apple management had a plan for three computers: The Apple III, which would be the immediate successor to the Apple II; The Lisa, which would be so awesome as to not only dominate the microcomputer market but start making inroads into minicomputers; and Annie, which would be what we would now think of as a gaming console.
Annie was handed off to Raskin, but he counter-proposed a significant departure from traditional computing and which was basically the origin of the Macintosh. But then he ended up on the Lisa project. He took the Lisa team on a tour of PARC which strongly influenced that project to go the GUI route. This was at about the time of the Apple IPO.
But before that, Xerox was permitted to invest in the company pre-IPO, for some undefined technology among other things. This ended up being the basis for the Apple tours.
Raskin and Jobs got along like Bill Gates and the DOJ, and when Jobs started messing around with the Lisa project (Jobs is pretty certainly one of the worst bosses in history, and I'm a big Apple fan which tells you a lot!) Raskin ended up on a very isolated Macintosh team that he more or less started and tried to keep away from Jobs' negative influence.
Eventually though, Raskin set up Jobs to see PARC (which he and the Woz had both been disinterested in before), so as to give him a better idea of what he was trying to do. (hint: it wasn't much like how the Mac turned out)
Some of the people at PARC weren't dumb, and they knew that they were giving away the keys to the castle, but they had orders from up on high.
This tour even more thoroughly cemented how the Lisa would be, and as it started lurching towards failure just like the Apple III (The Lisa cost $10,000 in 1983, although it was very nice in a lot of ways) Jobs jumped ship to the Mac, and booted Raskin out.
Jobs never really understood the stuff from PARC though. This is most telling in the way that he adamantly refused to provide for networking on the Mac, eventhough networks were a staple at PARC. And how Apple almost ignored the Laser Printer and DTP until a couple of smart guys at Apple, Aldus and Adobe rammed it down their throats, incidentally saving the Mac and Apple.
So to sum up: Xerox came up with a lot; Apple never implemented half of it; Apple did pay for it; anyway, the Alto was a significantly different sort of machine than the Mac. More like an underpowered minicomputer than an underpowered microcomputer;)
The US is _also_ to blame that the Cold War began in the first place.
What the hell are you talking about?
When, precisely has Russia *not* tried to expand its borders? Particularly if there's a nearby power vacuum? (e.g. anyone who's not able to protect themselves militarily or is not sufficiently within someone else's sphere of influence to be protected by them)
Stalin started the cold war. It's unfortunate that Roosevelt, Truman and their people didn't sufficiently realize this earlier or we might have stopped the Russians further east. (this was Churchill's intent, but he was losing his power at that time, and we tended to ignore him anyway)
I beg to differ. While it is the place of individuals to control their government, it _is_ the place of governments to control corporations.
This is b/c corporations only exist thanks to the government allowing them to. Their charters can be revoked by the government as well, although this hasn't happened in a long time (roughly around the same time that truly giant monopolies started to appear, ~100 years ago). But corporations are only supposed to exist when it's good for society in general - not just to make money. Look at how hard it used to be to have a corporation in the 18th and 19th centuries.
I'd much rather encourage partnerships, where the owners of the business are somewhat more responsible for it. Corporations tend to get away with far too much. And they really _do_ concentrate too much power these days. I say, if you can't vote, you can't lobby.
First off, the rights in the Bill of Rights aren't granted by the government - they're merely acknowledged. These are rights which are deemed to be inherent just by virtue of being a person. Nor is it a comprehensive list of rights. Sadly, they are often infringed upon, but no matter how common oppression might be, that's never an excuse for it.
Furthermore, much of the point of the 2nd amendment (along with virtually all of the rest of the Bill of Rights) is to ensure that an oppressive government can't assume power. The spark that finally ignited the Revolutionary War was an attempt by the British military to sieze a cache of weapons stored at Concord, MA. In that war, a very disorganized coalition of guerrillas with some outside assistance managed to take down one of the stronger militaries at that time. This was very much in the minds of the framers of the Constitution, given as how they had just lived through it.
The 2nd amendment is (imho) the ultimate check on the government. If it ever becomes sufficiently oppressive (remember that the 18th century American revolutionaries represented a minority of the population - many people were neutral, played both sides, or were loyal to England) it is no longer a legitimate government. It then deserves to be overthrown.
While it's absurd to think that lots of small arms are enough to achieve this, in the sorry event that it becomes necessary, when combined with guerrilla tactics and as much of the military as respects the Constitution and the people above any particular illegal order or commander, there may be a fighting chance. After all, the government can't afford to kill everyone - who would support their needs?
(more recently, Viet Nam defeated us through smart tactics, perseverance, outside help and America lacking freedom of movement; Afghanistan defeated the USSR similarly; and it took two atomic bombs, which were new at the time, to keep Japan from doing this to the US in WWII)
While not every other country operates under this principle (China used to have periodic rebellions whenever it was time for a new dynasty to assume power and that's pretty similar), we're hardly the only country where arms are commonplace. Switzerland and Israel come to mind immediately.
But I don't think that anyone seriously believes that people hunt with assault rifles. You get assault rifles because you're worried that one day you won't be able to get assault rifles, but that you'll need them.
As for Columbine - you did know that their original plan was to set off a propane bomb and kill a very large amount of people right away? Substitute propane for black powder and it's still within the realm of possibility for 18th century wackos to get about the same effect. Do you propose to make propane illegal too?
Civilians don't need the big big guns under normal circumstances, I'll grant. But the only circumstances when they are necessary are the exact ones where they're impossible to get. Me, I have too little confidence in people to assume that the government would run legitimately in the absence of a check and balance system. So I'll pile on all the checks and balances I can get, thanks.
Yes, but a lot depends on the specifics of the crack. If you've got a system where anyone can redistribute a file, and anyone who uses it automatically pays for that use there is a serious problem when someone redirects the payment to themselves.
Frankly the system that was in place earlier in the 20th century was more or less decent, when coupled with common sense. Sadly we are in a bit of a common sense drought in certain circles, and the copyright laws have been getting more and more oppressive to the public (which is pretty contradictory as these laws are there for the public, not for the artists)
actually, let's please not drop things on Microsoft. satisfying as it might be, I live way too close to feel safe about it. (but no, I don't work for Chairman Bill)
doesn't matter. the iridium sats were placed into a particularly low orbit b/c of the technical difficulty in making a handheld phone that can punch up to orbit. and even so, the handsets are friggin' giant.
iridium was always going to burn, and the sats were always going to have to be replaced on a pretty frequent basis. instead, they'll burn and will not be replaced. but they would not be very useful for anyone who they were donated to for very long.
well don't forget that england used to be part of the Roman Empire. Seems like the Italians should be getting in on this action. And the Mongols and the Macedonians.
Slashdot Mirror
wtf? that doesn't make any sense. All the DOT has to do is condemn the property. As the state isn't involved in the lease, and it's not a sale (it would be a forced taking) it should go through just fine.
The owner of the property would still get compensated (and could go to court to increase the compensation, if desired), and the lube shop _might_ be able to get something too, though this is doubtful.
Still, the DOT might have just considered it more trouble than it was worth, though I find this unlikely.
btw, ianal.
Aah...
See, I don't think that companies should have the same rights that individuals have.
First, many rights are not awarded to individuals, they are inherent in the human condition. Second, given as how corporations are simply groups of individuals, I'd much rather leave things in the hands of the individuals instead of a gestalt entity.
But granting nearly every applicable right that human beings exist to what is effectively a piece of paper? That's nuts, IMHO.
And it's worth noting that traditionally businesses have been private individuals (quite admirable) or partnerships of private individuals (ditto). Corporations were usually very special cases, and are more like what we'd now think of as a publicly granted monopoly. The charters were rather difficult to get, and many had expiration dates. Corporations that didn't serve the public (the trade off for all the benefits that corporate status includes) to the satisfaction of the government could and did have their charters revoked.
At present there's a movement to decharter Phillip-Morris. To my knowledge no companies have been dechartered for a very long time, but I'd ascribe that to business convincing people that it's not even an option, rather than there being a lack of cause.
I can refute that one. I mean, there have been interfaces quite similar to Bob all over the place. General Magic had one for their PDA many moons ago, and some early work done by (IIRC) IBM in the 70's also had that sort of interface.
Generally they were limited to offices, and not kitchens, or the other useless rooms that Bob has, but I'd think that it's a ripoff.
Okay, I'll accept this. I would likely have fewer problems with MS if they were never a corporation to begin with, as it most likely never could have gotten so big anyway. But given as how this is the real world, that isn't the case.
My objection to MS's behavior stands.
And while a private suit could have technically achieved the same end, it's well known by now that the party with the most money is increasingly favored - not the one who deserves justice. This isn't as much of a consideration for the govt. And they're having quite a lot of success as compared to the private cases, which are proceeding much more slowly. Justice delayed is justice denied....
You're trolling of course, but there are no checks and balances in a capitalist free market.
Fortunately, we don't live in one. The market *IS* controlled by law. This is good. If you disagree then you will cheerfully accept that I can conduct any manner of economic transaction that I like. Perhaps I'd blow up your house if you don't pay me.
Me, I'd rather control the market by some mechanism.
No, seriously, IIRC MS bought the red squiggly line, and ripped off the idea for the talking paperclip (although the paperclip itself is theirs - but not the idea of a little talking doohicky).
ATT had been prevented from entering into a significant number of markets due to their monopoly status. Internally (AFAIK) they were more than willing to be broken up, as it freed them to do new stuff.
However, this is besides the point. Antitrust law does not exist to protect companies, it exists to protect consumers. I don't know about you, but ATT charges a lot less for long distance calls now than they used to. I'm happy, and I really don't care if they have slim profit margins. They're making money - they don't have to get greedy.
The current issue is *not* a class action suit. MS is being tried for violations of antitrust law. The theory is basically that by increasing competition in the marketplace (a good thing) consumers benefit. This recognizes that the govt. can't adequetly satisfy consumers, but that some corrections have to be made to prevent the system from being abused.
Furthermore, this sort of thing isn't taken lightly. The government wasn't complaining about MS back in the 70's, when they were doing software for the Altair and the Apple. Nor in the 80's with their IBM and Mac software. Only because they've grown to become a monoply AND have abused their monopoly status in ways that are clearly defined and have been on the books for a century, are they in trouble.
So when the playing field is level, it doesn't matter if the players are equal or not. Only if a player unlevels the field do problems arise. Do you really think that any company has a chance to overshadow MS, given their historic response to such threats? I don't. This means that revolutionary new stuff might get squashed b/c MS perceives it as a threat. Everyone is harmed when we're denied innovation. MS is against innovation, as a matter of fact.
(Of course, I can't think of a single product that they invented - everything's ripped off or bought from someone else)
Personally, I don't think that a breakup is the best way to go. I'd rather see MS carefully overseen by the government for 10 or 20 years, and prevented from entering into new markets. This will give the new markets time to develop without fear from MS. Additionally their influence in other areas (e.g. OEM pricing) would have to be equalized so that they could not exert pressure by those means. This would permit them to innovate all they wanted in the markets they already have. But not in any others - until they had competition anyway.
Well why the hell not? MS wouldn't have all of the perks of being a corporation if not for the government. And it's not as though antitrust legislation is new - it's been around for a hundred years. MS could afford lawyers early on. Bill's always been rich, and his dad's a big name lawyer. They knew the rules, and they still chose to break em. I have no sympathy for people that expect to get away with breakin' the law.
You bastard! Fix the link ;)
naw, these kinds of things (Baudot codes, ASCII, EBDIC... shudder) were typically put together under very tight constraints.
For a very long time there wasn't considered to be enough bandwidth to transmit upper and lower case, much less anything else.
ASCII-1967 was actually pretty good - a lot of people put some work into it. In fact, it even has accents - while nowadays we'd want a character to contain it's own accent, when you're dealing with teletypes, the sequence of [letter] [backspace] [accent] works great.
Meanwhile Unicode is something like 16bits per character and IIRC it's still missing some stuff.
and i bet that there are cable modems in your town too.
those prices are typically the result of cable modems and dsl competing against each other. in areas where only one presently exists the prices are usually higher.
once again, competition is a good thing.
Don't be stupid.
Communism ideally is nice enough for those people that want to practice it. There's a fair number of communes and kibbutzes in the world even today. This is Communism #1.
Communism as practiced by the USSR, PRC, and at least 99.44% of all countries claiming to be communist is radically different. Instead, it's more of a fascist dictatorship, not very stable, and frequently attempting to expand their influence wherever it'll take hold. This is Communism #2.
I have no problems with the former, as long as people can freely enter it, or leave it, and as long as people's freedoms are respected.
I have immense problems with the latter, as it's fundementally opposed to anyone's liberties except for the ruling clique, and has been demonstrated to fail in most cases when other options are available or at least to achieve stasis.
The Red Scares of the 50's had a minute amount of justification (there really were a number of spies in western governments) but most of the people who are well known for having been persecuted as Communists were idiots that couldn't see that the Russians were not living in Communism #1, but were actually practicing Communism #2. (additionally, a fair number of them had been active years earlier, and had since seen the light)
Mostly I pity them for being so easily fooled. But blame the Russians for redefining and practicing Communism #2, not the US.
I don't buy it. At least, not for the origins of the Cold War. The US was extraordinarily isolationist at that time. Roosevelt had to go through hell to get us involved in WWII in time to actually save Europe from Hitler. (who would have beaten Britain sooner or later if not for our support)
But as the war began to close, and ideas were banged around for what would happen with Europe, there was a pretty common expectation of what Russia would try to do.
Basically it was felt that they would try to expand their borders, or at least their sphere of influence whenever possible, if only to gain some sense of security. This has been a traditional Russian goal for centuries, at any rate, so it's not suprising. It's tougher when coupled with communism since to a communist a fight to overthrow capitalists is seen as historically inevitable. And the Russians in the 40's, particularly Stalin, did have some degree of belief in what they were doing.
However, it was thought, while they do a lot of saber rattling, Stalin at any rate liked to keep his options open until the very last second. This had already been demonstrated in the events leading up to the Nazi-Soviet pact in the 30's, and Russia's rapid attempt to enter the Pacific Theater in the closing days of the war.
In order to avoid a repeat of the inter-war period (especially as atomic bombs made it impossible to want another full-scale war) Europe, particularly Germany would have to be rebuilt.
So we ended up meeting in the middle- our intention was to help *any* European country rebuild (even in the east, though Stalin wouldn't allow them to take it) in order for them to be sufficiently free and strong as to preserve their independence.
Stalin took control of the East, expanding the USSR's borders, and instituting one-party governments which could be controlled by Moscow.
But the idealism which the US was operating under (not too far removed from Wilson) _was_ clearly there. It permeates most of the major policy discussions and directives of the time.
Kennan wrote about the goals Russia had, and the requirements that Russia would have to fulfill in order for there to be any kind of real peace (an end to Russian exapansion, an end to the communist doctrine that could be used to prop that expansion up).
In attempting to set up the Atlantic Alliance (NATO) were constantly pushing the idea that it was intended to fight against any country that attacked a treaty member - not against any peaceful country, no matter who they might be.
The same feelings are in any number of National Security Council documents. Consider our reaction to the Czech coup in 1948 - the country was already materially under Russia's control, but the loss of her political freedom was the real loss to US eyes.
So please do realize that a lot of Americans, particularly in the 40s and 50s really were idealistic, viewing the fight against the Nazis and the Russians as a moral issue.
The problem you're talking about was the unfortunate side effect of the containment policy. If we had to react against any Russian expansion, we'd sooner or later (sooner - South Korea was hardly a beacon of freedom or democracy) have to back someone we'd normally not want to deal with to fight a greater evil. There's really no answer to this problem; it's inevitable. But at least it set the stage for a slower rise to democracy later on (as is beginning to happen in some parts of the world) by giving them time to grow without being trampled by the Communists.
Of course, there have been plenty of banana republics set up by Americans when abroad, much to my disgust. But given as how the Russians generally backed people trying to overthrow real bastards, these guys were often the same people who were involved in American business interests.
Nor was this particularly helped by the loss of quite a bit of our idealism, particularly at high levels. What's really sad is to think that the CIA et al might just have become jaded, rather than being the natural gathering spots for unprincipled people.
But I don't think that the US has ever wanted world domination. We've wanted people to be able to choose for themselves, without any outside pressure other than looking at historical example (e.g. you'd have to be pretty naive to trust Stalin), how they want to live. That's the foundation of it all. But we're not frickin' perfect.
Still, would you have prefered what *did* happen, or would you have preferred that we pulled out of Europe and let the Russians expand westwards? There's not a hell of a lot of other options here.
Here's my distillation of the story as drawn from last summer's reading: _Infinite Loop_ which is about Apple, and _Dealers of Lightning_ which is about PARC.
;)
In the early-mid 70's Jef Raskin started hanging out at PARC and saw the early work on their projects there (the Alto, Smalltalk, etc.)
In '77 he joined up at Apple, and in '79 Apple management had a plan for three computers: The Apple III, which would be the immediate successor to the Apple II; The Lisa, which would be so awesome as to not only dominate the microcomputer market but start making inroads into minicomputers; and Annie, which would be what we would now think of as a gaming console.
Annie was handed off to Raskin, but he counter-proposed a significant departure from traditional computing and which was basically the origin of the Macintosh. But then he ended up on the Lisa project. He took the Lisa team on a tour of PARC which strongly influenced that project to go the GUI route. This was at about the time of the Apple IPO.
But before that, Xerox was permitted to invest in the company pre-IPO, for some undefined technology among other things. This ended up being the basis for the Apple tours.
Raskin and Jobs got along like Bill Gates and the DOJ, and when Jobs started messing around with the Lisa project (Jobs is pretty certainly one of the worst bosses in history, and I'm a big Apple fan which tells you a lot!) Raskin ended up on a very isolated Macintosh team that he more or less started and tried to keep away from Jobs' negative influence.
Eventually though, Raskin set up Jobs to see PARC (which he and the Woz had both been disinterested in before), so as to give him a better idea of what he was trying to do. (hint: it wasn't much like how the Mac turned out)
Some of the people at PARC weren't dumb, and they knew that they were giving away the keys to the castle, but they had orders from up on high.
This tour even more thoroughly cemented how the Lisa would be, and as it started lurching towards failure just like the Apple III (The Lisa cost $10,000 in 1983, although it was very nice in a lot of ways) Jobs jumped ship to the Mac, and booted Raskin out.
Jobs never really understood the stuff from PARC though. This is most telling in the way that he adamantly refused to provide for networking on the Mac, eventhough networks were a staple at PARC. And how Apple almost ignored the Laser Printer and DTP until a couple of smart guys at Apple, Aldus and Adobe rammed it down their throats, incidentally saving the Mac and Apple.
So to sum up:
Xerox came up with a lot; Apple never implemented half of it; Apple did pay for it; anyway, the Alto was a significantly different sort of machine than the Mac. More like an underpowered minicomputer than an underpowered microcomputer
What the hell are you talking about?
When, precisely has Russia *not* tried to expand its borders? Particularly if there's a nearby power vacuum? (e.g. anyone who's not able to protect themselves militarily or is not sufficiently within someone else's sphere of influence to be protected by them)
Stalin started the cold war. It's unfortunate that Roosevelt, Truman and their people didn't sufficiently realize this earlier or we might have stopped the Russians further east. (this was Churchill's intent, but he was losing his power at that time, and we tended to ignore him anyway)
I beg to differ. While it is the place of individuals to control their government, it _is_ the place of governments to control corporations.
This is b/c corporations only exist thanks to the government allowing them to. Their charters can be revoked by the government as well, although this hasn't happened in a long time (roughly around the same time that truly giant monopolies started to appear, ~100 years ago). But corporations are only supposed to exist when it's good for society in general - not just to make money. Look at how hard it used to be to have a corporation in the 18th and 19th centuries.
I'd much rather encourage partnerships, where the owners of the business are somewhat more responsible for it. Corporations tend to get away with far too much. And they really _do_ concentrate too much power these days. I say, if you can't vote, you can't lobby.
Wow, you're really trolling today, huh.
First off, the rights in the Bill of Rights aren't granted by the government - they're merely acknowledged. These are rights which are deemed to be inherent just by virtue of being a person. Nor is it a comprehensive list of rights. Sadly, they are often infringed upon, but no matter how common oppression might be, that's never an excuse for it.
Furthermore, much of the point of the 2nd amendment (along with virtually all of the rest of the Bill of Rights) is to ensure that an oppressive government can't assume power. The spark that finally ignited the Revolutionary War was an attempt by the British military to sieze a cache of weapons stored at Concord, MA. In that war, a very disorganized coalition of guerrillas with some outside assistance managed to take down one of the stronger militaries at that time. This was very much in the minds of the framers of the Constitution, given as how they had just lived through it.
The 2nd amendment is (imho) the ultimate check on the government. If it ever becomes sufficiently oppressive (remember that the 18th century American revolutionaries represented a minority of the population - many people were neutral, played both sides, or were loyal to England) it is no longer a legitimate government. It then deserves to be overthrown.
While it's absurd to think that lots of small arms are enough to achieve this, in the sorry event that it becomes necessary, when combined with guerrilla tactics and as much of the military as respects the Constitution and the people above any particular illegal order or commander, there may be a fighting chance. After all, the government can't afford to kill everyone - who would support their needs?
(more recently, Viet Nam defeated us through smart tactics, perseverance, outside help and America lacking freedom of movement; Afghanistan defeated the USSR similarly; and it took two atomic bombs, which were new at the time, to keep Japan from doing this to the US in WWII)
While not every other country operates under this principle (China used to have periodic rebellions whenever it was time for a new dynasty to assume power and that's pretty similar), we're hardly the only country where arms are commonplace. Switzerland and Israel come to mind immediately.
But I don't think that anyone seriously believes that people hunt with assault rifles. You get assault rifles because you're worried that one day you won't be able to get assault rifles, but that you'll need them.
As for Columbine - you did know that their original plan was to set off a propane bomb and kill a very large amount of people right away? Substitute propane for black powder and it's still within the realm of possibility for 18th century wackos to get about the same effect. Do you propose to make propane illegal too?
Civilians don't need the big big guns under normal circumstances, I'll grant. But the only circumstances when they are necessary are the exact ones where they're impossible to get. Me, I have too little confidence in people to assume that the government would run legitimately in the absence of a check and balance system. So I'll pile on all the checks and balances I can get, thanks.
I'd rather bitch at all the corps that use that tactic, thanks.
(as your Mom told you, "Everyone else is doing it" is not a valid excuse)
Yes, but a lot depends on the specifics of the crack. If you've got a system where anyone can redistribute a file, and anyone who uses it automatically pays for that use there is a serious problem when someone redirects the payment to themselves.
Frankly the system that was in place earlier in the 20th century was more or less decent, when coupled with common sense. Sadly we are in a bit of a common sense drought in certain circles, and the copyright laws have been getting more and more oppressive to the public (which is pretty contradictory as these laws are there for the public, not for the artists)
yeah, until we start getting pop up ads permanently stuck in our field of vision.
i'll pass for now, thanks.
actually, let's please not drop things on Microsoft. satisfying as it might be, I live way too close to feel safe about it. (but no, I don't work for Chairman Bill)
doesn't matter. the iridium sats were placed into a particularly low orbit b/c of the technical difficulty in making a handheld phone that can punch up to orbit. and even so, the handsets are friggin' giant.
iridium was always going to burn, and the sats were always going to have to be replaced on a pretty frequent basis. instead, they'll burn and will not be replaced. but they would not be very useful for anyone who they were donated to for very long.
well don't forget that england used to be part of the Roman Empire. Seems like the Italians should be getting in on this action. And the Mongols and the Macedonians.
not to mention the allergy therapy faq