Yep. Many of the top planners have been snuffed. Many of the money-ways have been stopped. Yep. Not completely, but certainly more than if Clinton had continued ignoring them.
What a wildly improbable if you've got there. Clinton was the one at least trying to find, capture or kill bin Laden (and was accused of wagging the dog for it). The current administration sat on their hands until 9/11. And you suggest that Clinton would have gone passive after 9/11?
And since you mention money, who was the congressman most responsible for the shutdown of BCCI in 1991, the money laundering bank for drug traffickers and terrorists? That's right, John Kerry. A bit of a doofus sometimes, but he made a difference back before even the first WTC bombing.
As for many of the top planners being snuffed...maybe so. Give Bush a C on that count if you like. Gotta get something for taking out the #3 guy in al Qaeda so many times.
I don't think the current crop of "hybrids" really deserve the term. They have a single energy source and a second storage medium they use internally. Some people modify their hybrids to allow them to be electrically charged, which is great. I haven't heard a good reason not to include this on every hybrid. Think that would be just as inefficient? Check out this report from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: http://www.pnl.gov/news/release.asp?id=204
If all the cars and light trucks in the nation switched from oil to electrons, idle capacity in the existing electric power system could generate most of the electricity consumed by plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A new study for the Department of Energy finds that "off-peak" electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 84 percent of the country's 220 million vehicles if they were plug-in hybrid electrics.
Of course, lots of very powerful people will fight that tooth and nail.
We're all at a great big table at a restaurant. The drunken schoolboys have been running up an enormous tab for the table that will eventually have to be settled. Then they start a fight and the bouncers throw them out. Now someone responsible at the table is going to have to ask everyone to cough up a few extra bucks to cover their debt.
Who do you blame, the ones that spent the money or the ones asking you to pitch in to pay for it? I'd call it a Dine 'n Dash scheme if they weren't kicked out instead of running away on their own.
I think the timing was meant to keep their base optimistic and voting. Rumsfeld stepping down is taken by most as an admission of failure, and some of the Republican base were living in a bubble where things in Iraq were improving and Republicans would keep control of Congress. The rosy electoral predictions from top Republicans were for the same reason - to keep morale as high as possible among their base and thereby limit the loss of seats as much as possible.
Well, there have been forced abortions and other atrocious conditions for workers in the Northern Mariana Islands. How does that happen in a place legally allowed to put "Made in the USA" on its labels? Well, that's easy - just buy off a few congresscritters through Jack Abramoff.
Yes, good point. There hasn't been such a consolidation of power in the U.S. government like this before in my lifetime and I hope it doesn't happen again. So you don't even have to care about the stated policies of the right or left and still come to the conclusion that the Republicans need a check on their power.
Also, I'm tired of the argument that all politicians are corrupt. Two points - the first is that I do think that it's rare for politicians to make it through the election meat grinder without compromising their morals at least a little and taking some cheap shots. I wish negative campaigning weren't so effective, but that generally doesn't rise to what I'd call corruption. Second point is that I do think corruption is higher in politics than in the general population because of the power. And the more power, the more entitled they feel in lining their friends pockets and taking a little for themselves too. But that doesn't mean they're all corrupt.
You don't get K Street, no-bid contracts and gargantuan levels of pork when there is sufficient balance in government. You can and should assume that Democrats would be as corrupt in the Republicans' shoes. William Jefferson and Alan Mollohan are corrupt Democrats, and there would be many more like them if their party controlled the Executive Branch, the House, the Senate and had filled 7 of the 9 Supreme Court positions. So vote for some balance. Demand some accountability. And don't fall for the "blame game" sidestep. It's called accountability.
First off, the web is not just content, its also links. Second, the project in question recommended writing about the article and linking to it. Now, I'm trying to understand why you think one person's link to an article is legitimate and another's is not.
I'm sure it's gotten to be a fairly complicated algorithm, but one of the basics of PageRank from way back, as I understand it, is that popular sites (as measured by how many links lead to that site) are given more weight. Makes sense and seems to work. Putting a link on your site and getting the weight due to that is just fine in my book. The link on the Slashdot home page to Everything is sure to carry more weight than a link on a page you created yesterday and nobody links to. So it's not a special interest, it's on a popular site and has a weight appropriate to that popularity. If Slashdot links to things nobody wants to read or link to, its weight diminishes. One way to "game the system" is to create farms of sites linking to each other, artificially inflating their rankings to produce a weight higher than deserved. Other factors could be involved too. Maybe frequent updates to a site affect the weight as well and you could make automated random updates to your sites. Google is in an algorithmic battle against people who do that.
As far as I can tell, this project is playing by the rules. The offline equivalent of the project in question is just simply speaking up and getting your friends to say the same thing - like starting a cheer in a crowded stadium. Using a megaphone, or the PA system, on the other hand, would be cheating.
They are changing the web. We are the web - you, me and everyone producing content. And if you've got a popular blog and want to link to something you agree with, that's your right. What that project is doing is getting like-minded people to link to the same story that they all agree with, instead of everyone writing about and linking to different but similar stories.
In this case, I haven't seen reports of mass-producing sites that all link to each other to simulate popular sites and then using that position to optimize search results. That's a bit like astroturfing (creating fake grassroots organizations) and is crossing the line. Also note that in this case the links go to mainstream, factual articles, not hit pieces without evidence that they wrote themselves.
So, my points:
1. Using your popular site to promote a story is ok, even if you get your friends to do the same; attempting to trick Google's algorithms into giving your site more respect than it is due is not. 2. Publicizing an article full of facts, and opinions based on those facts is ok; making stuff up to influence an election is not.
If I see evidence of either of those tricks, I'll condemn it. Having concern about this sort of thing is good, but so far I've seen nothing wrong with it.
When you can't make your product fast enough for all the demand, you're not charging enough. If you charge more, you can use that to increase manufacturing capacity. I'm sure someone at AMD understands that, so maybe they were caught off guard and are backfilling orders and have decided just to not reduce the price as early as they would have.
Works great on my unlocked Nokia E61. Great screen, qwerty keyboard, decent joystick, quad-band GSM, EDGE, 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth. Normal (non-WAP) browsing is quite usable too. More 3G coverage would be nice though.
There's a new group founded last month, with 14 Nobel Laureates on its board, that is advocating for "evidence-based debate and decision-making in politics". Sounds like a good goal.
I understand and agree with the concern about appearing partisan. There are plenty of non-partisan reasons to be pro-open source and anti-corruption.
I did want to point out that Daily Kos isn't as far left as its reputation though. A year or two ago it was further left in relation to the U.S. public, but now it's almost mainstream. Of course, it's a large population and has its share of radicals and a few brave Republicans.
Well it is, at least, illegal in Texas state house races. Delay got caught funneling corporate money to Washington and then back to Texas again as non-corporate money in his scheme to take over the Texas state house.
As they say, it corrupts absolutely. The Republicans have had the Senate, the House, the Executive branch and the Judiciary for nearly 6 years. That's too much for any party. Vote Democratic this time for a check on that power. Then push for all you're worth to get some real change - publically financed elections and some sort of vote ranking / instant runoff voting.
Publically financed elections would save lots of money. Politicians would have to convince the voters to vote for them by words and actions instead of their fund-raising prowess. They would no longer be indebted to big money interests, but to each voter equally. They would not have to spend half their lives chasing the big money and instead could spend it talking to and working for their constituents.
Vote ranking / instant runoff voting would allow us to vote for a third party without throwing away our votes. That would bring real choice to the system.
Public financing would probably have to come first, as both major parties will protect their duopoly as long as they need their party's support to finance their election. So far Maine and Arizona have public finance laws on the books and more are coming.
expecting it all for nothing at the expense of the bandwidth's provider
You seem to be implying that people are passing traffic across a bandwidth provider's network against that provider's will. That does happen sometimes (oops, accidentally left that wifi unprotected), but usually a bandwidth provider makes a conscious decision to offer it for free, charge someone for it, or come to a mutually beneficial agreement with another party to exchange traffic at no charge. Nobody's being taken advantage of against their will.
In the coffee shop case, it sounds like they've decided not to take the steps to limit a customer's use. That's understandable since they likely don't have the expertise in-house, it's not central to their business and it probably works ok much of the time. Of course, limiting a customer's bandwidth has nothing to do with Network Neutrality. NN is about limiting the abuse of monopoly or duopoly power.
No consideration given to the ISP? Their peerings don't just happen; they are negotiated, contracts are signed and only then are peerings implemented. I don't know how the "no consideration" fallacy could have sprouted and become so widespread if not for the powerful lobbying machines trying to spin the public to their side.
Take a look at the candy bowl from the opposite view and you can just as easily see a Google or YouTube providing the candy and a middleman (ISP) taking it and selling it to other kids (customers). And that's fine, as every candy transaction is happening according to the agreement between the 2 parties (e.g. settlement-free peering, paid transit, ISP/customer relationship, etc).
The proliferation of computers is making datacenters more important, not less. Who needs standalone computers? Of course there are uses for them, but most systems are moving to be more connected, not less. And what do they connect to? Odds are they're tied back to central servers somewhere that need to have high availability, hence the need for datacenters. It's cheaper than every company buying their own redundant power, backup systems, diverse fiber paths and 24/7 support staff.
Well, that's an improvement over the U.S. system. I would still distrust the centralized control, though. How independent of political motive is the Judiciary, and how immune to bribery are they? In the U.S., state election officials (Secretaries of State) have been very partisan is some suspicious cases. And the Supreme Court that eventually decided the 2000 election was heavily Republican-appointed (7 of 9).
If you don't have access to the source code of the voting machines, you're giving up control of your election to a private party. A small group of people at that company will give you some numbers to tell you who won, but you'll have nothing but their word on it. On a smaller scale, anyone who knows a security hole can crack a particular voting machine. Most polling precincts have at least some honest people. Or if not honest, at least they're split into 2 or more camps that watch each other. But with a centralized, secret system, how many people would need to be bought off? A few billion dollars can buy a lot of people that would be honest if they had less power and temptation.
Agreed, eldavojohn. The push for warrantless wiretapping is NOT about "fighting terrorism". The legal, constitutional version requires notifying a court and obtaining a warrant within a few days of the wiretapping. So in both cases the "fighting terrorism" was done, but in the legal version the courts are there to make sure that's ALL it's being used for. The push is to provide a wedge issue for the election and to try to provide legal justification for past actions that may come to light once those that give a damn about the constitution get subpoena power.
In the upcoming election, the Republicans have nothing to fear but the absence of fear itself. So don't be afraid. Don't be very afraid.
Lots of people do dumb things in their youth. Just evaluate the person as they currently are. There are certainly circumstances that would be hard to overlook for certain positions, but to forever eliminate from consideration anyone who ever did anything illegal with a computer seems a bit nuts. Would you refuse to hire someone that got caught shoplifting as a kid? What percentage of your coworkers did something dumb as a kid, whether they got caught or not?
What exactly do they want to improve on, to leapfrog the U.S.? Make it available to more people? Is there anyone in the U.S. that can't get access - at a local library if nothing else? Make it more mobile, so you have access anywhere you happen to be at the moment? I get EDGE service most places I want to be already here. Make it faster? A few megabits per second at home seems like enough to me. Not enough to stream HD content, but probably will be able to by the time I get around to buying an HDTV. For companies, they can get 10gig ethernet connections from lots of providers.
Maybe the idea is IPv6 or multicast. Nice stuff, but I don't see how it would even be noticeable to most end users.
China can duplicate or slightly improve on current network infrastructure, but it seems like their innovation will still be hampered by strict controls on information (news, web sites). I've been there and wasn't unable to reach any of my normal sites (including Slashdot), but that was a few years ago and I've heard the crackdowns are periodic anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
What a wildly improbable if you've got there. Clinton was the one at least trying to find, capture or kill bin Laden (and was accused of wagging the dog for it). The current administration sat on their hands until 9/11. And you suggest that Clinton would have gone passive after 9/11?
And since you mention money, who was the congressman most responsible for the shutdown of BCCI in 1991, the money laundering bank for drug traffickers and terrorists? That's right, John Kerry. A bit of a doofus sometimes, but he made a difference back before even the first WTC bombing.
As for many of the top planners being snuffed...maybe so. Give Bush a C on that count if you like. Gotta get something for taking out the #3 guy in al Qaeda so many times.
Of course, lots of very powerful people will fight that tooth and nail.
My analogy:
We're all at a great big table at a restaurant. The drunken schoolboys have been running up an enormous tab for the table that will eventually have to be settled. Then they start a fight and the bouncers throw them out. Now someone responsible at the table is going to have to ask everyone to cough up a few extra bucks to cover their debt.
Who do you blame, the ones that spent the money or the ones asking you to pitch in to pay for it? I'd call it a Dine 'n Dash scheme if they weren't kicked out instead of running away on their own.
What a horrible sentiment!
Just say no to political dynasties. Yes, that goes for Hillary too.
I think the timing was meant to keep their base optimistic and voting. Rumsfeld stepping down is taken by most as an admission of failure, and some of the Republican base were living in a bubble where things in Iraq were improving and Republicans would keep control of Congress. The rosy electoral predictions from top Republicans were for the same reason - to keep morale as high as possible among their base and thereby limit the loss of seats as much as possible.
Well, there have been forced abortions and other atrocious conditions for workers in the Northern Mariana Islands. How does that happen in a place legally allowed to put "Made in the USA" on its labels? Well, that's easy - just buy off a few congresscritters through Jack Abramoff.
Yes, good point. There hasn't been such a consolidation of power in the U.S. government like this before in my lifetime and I hope it doesn't happen again. So you don't even have to care about the stated policies of the right or left and still come to the conclusion that the Republicans need a check on their power.
Also, I'm tired of the argument that all politicians are corrupt. Two points - the first is that I do think that it's rare for politicians to make it through the election meat grinder without compromising their morals at least a little and taking some cheap shots. I wish negative campaigning weren't so effective, but that generally doesn't rise to what I'd call corruption. Second point is that I do think corruption is higher in politics than in the general population because of the power. And the more power, the more entitled they feel in lining their friends pockets and taking a little for themselves too. But that doesn't mean they're all corrupt.
You don't get K Street, no-bid contracts and gargantuan levels of pork when there is sufficient balance in government. You can and should assume that Democrats would be as corrupt in the Republicans' shoes. William Jefferson and Alan Mollohan are corrupt Democrats, and there would be many more like them if their party controlled the Executive Branch, the House, the Senate and had filled 7 of the 9 Supreme Court positions. So vote for some balance. Demand some accountability. And don't fall for the "blame game" sidestep. It's called accountability.
First off, the web is not just content, its also links. Second, the project in question recommended writing about the article and linking to it. Now, I'm trying to understand why you think one person's link to an article is legitimate and another's is not.
I'm sure it's gotten to be a fairly complicated algorithm, but one of the basics of PageRank from way back, as I understand it, is that popular sites (as measured by how many links lead to that site) are given more weight. Makes sense and seems to work. Putting a link on your site and getting the weight due to that is just fine in my book. The link on the Slashdot home page to Everything is sure to carry more weight than a link on a page you created yesterday and nobody links to. So it's not a special interest, it's on a popular site and has a weight appropriate to that popularity. If Slashdot links to things nobody wants to read or link to, its weight diminishes. One way to "game the system" is to create farms of sites linking to each other, artificially inflating their rankings to produce a weight higher than deserved. Other factors could be involved too. Maybe frequent updates to a site affect the weight as well and you could make automated random updates to your sites. Google is in an algorithmic battle against people who do that.
As far as I can tell, this project is playing by the rules. The offline equivalent of the project in question is just simply speaking up and getting your friends to say the same thing - like starting a cheer in a crowded stadium. Using a megaphone, or the PA system, on the other hand, would be cheating.
They are changing the web. We are the web - you, me and everyone producing content. And if you've got a popular blog and want to link to something you agree with, that's your right. What that project is doing is getting like-minded people to link to the same story that they all agree with, instead of everyone writing about and linking to different but similar stories.
In this case, I haven't seen reports of mass-producing sites that all link to each other to simulate popular sites and then using that position to optimize search results. That's a bit like astroturfing (creating fake grassroots organizations) and is crossing the line. Also note that in this case the links go to mainstream, factual articles, not hit pieces without evidence that they wrote themselves.
So, my points:
1. Using your popular site to promote a story is ok, even if you get your friends to do the same; attempting to trick Google's algorithms into giving your site more respect than it is due is not.
2. Publicizing an article full of facts, and opinions based on those facts is ok; making stuff up to influence an election is not.
If I see evidence of either of those tricks, I'll condemn it. Having concern about this sort of thing is good, but so far I've seen nothing wrong with it.
When you can't make your product fast enough for all the demand, you're not charging enough. If you charge more, you can use that to increase manufacturing capacity. I'm sure someone at AMD understands that, so maybe they were caught off guard and are backfilling orders and have decided just to not reduce the price as early as they would have.
Yellow and blue makes green. Red and Blue makes purple.
Works great on my unlocked Nokia E61. Great screen, qwerty keyboard, decent joystick, quad-band GSM, EDGE, 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth. Normal (non-WAP) browsing is quite usable too. More 3G coverage would be nice though.
There's a new group founded last month, with 14 Nobel Laureates on its board, that is advocating for "evidence-based debate and decision-making in politics". Sounds like a good goal.
Sure, that's Wikipedia, but I've seen the same point made several places in the mainstream media.
I understand and agree with the concern about appearing partisan. There are plenty of non-partisan reasons to be pro-open source and anti-corruption.
I did want to point out that Daily Kos isn't as far left as its reputation though. A year or two ago it was further left in relation to the U.S. public, but now it's almost mainstream. Of course, it's a large population and has its share of radicals and a few brave Republicans.
Well it is, at least, illegal in Texas state house races. Delay got caught funneling corporate money to Washington and then back to Texas again as non-corporate money in his scheme to take over the Texas state house.
As they say, it corrupts absolutely. The Republicans have had the Senate, the House, the Executive branch and the Judiciary for nearly 6 years. That's too much for any party. Vote Democratic this time for a check on that power. Then push for all you're worth to get some real change - publically financed elections and some sort of vote ranking / instant runoff voting.
Publically financed elections would save lots of money. Politicians would have to convince the voters to vote for them by words and actions instead of their fund-raising prowess. They would no longer be indebted to big money interests, but to each voter equally. They would not have to spend half their lives chasing the big money and instead could spend it talking to and working for their constituents.
Vote ranking / instant runoff voting would allow us to vote for a third party without throwing away our votes. That would bring real choice to the system.
Public financing would probably have to come first, as both major parties will protect their duopoly as long as they need their party's support to finance their election. So far Maine and Arizona have public finance laws on the books and more are coming.
In the coffee shop case, it sounds like they've decided not to take the steps to limit a customer's use. That's understandable since they likely don't have the expertise in-house, it's not central to their business and it probably works ok much of the time. Of course, limiting a customer's bandwidth has nothing to do with Network Neutrality. NN is about limiting the abuse of monopoly or duopoly power.
No consideration given to the ISP? Their peerings don't just happen; they are negotiated, contracts are signed and only then are peerings implemented. I don't know how the "no consideration" fallacy could have sprouted and become so widespread if not for the powerful lobbying machines trying to spin the public to their side.
Take a look at the candy bowl from the opposite view and you can just as easily see a Google or YouTube providing the candy and a middleman (ISP) taking it and selling it to other kids (customers). And that's fine, as every candy transaction is happening according to the agreement between the 2 parties (e.g. settlement-free peering, paid transit, ISP/customer relationship, etc).
The proliferation of computers is making datacenters more important, not less. Who needs standalone computers? Of course there are uses for them, but most systems are moving to be more connected, not less. And what do they connect to? Odds are they're tied back to central servers somewhere that need to have high availability, hence the need for datacenters. It's cheaper than every company buying their own redundant power, backup systems, diverse fiber paths and 24/7 support staff.
Well, that's an improvement over the U.S. system. I would still distrust the centralized control, though. How independent of political motive is the Judiciary, and how immune to bribery are they? In the U.S., state election officials (Secretaries of State) have been very partisan is some suspicious cases. And the Supreme Court that eventually decided the 2000 election was heavily Republican-appointed (7 of 9).
If you don't have access to the source code of the voting machines, you're giving up control of your election to a private party. A small group of people at that company will give you some numbers to tell you who won, but you'll have nothing but their word on it. On a smaller scale, anyone who knows a security hole can crack a particular voting machine. Most polling precincts have at least some honest people. Or if not honest, at least they're split into 2 or more camps that watch each other. But with a centralized, secret system, how many people would need to be bought off? A few billion dollars can buy a lot of people that would be honest if they had less power and temptation.
Agreed, eldavojohn. The push for warrantless wiretapping is NOT about "fighting terrorism". The legal, constitutional version requires notifying a court and obtaining a warrant within a few days of the wiretapping. So in both cases the "fighting terrorism" was done, but in the legal version the courts are there to make sure that's ALL it's being used for. The push is to provide a wedge issue for the election and to try to provide legal justification for past actions that may come to light once those that give a damn about the constitution get subpoena power.
In the upcoming election, the Republicans have nothing to fear but the absence of fear itself. So don't be afraid. Don't be very afraid.
Lots of people do dumb things in their youth. Just evaluate the person as they currently are. There are certainly circumstances that would be hard to overlook for certain positions, but to forever eliminate from consideration anyone who ever did anything illegal with a computer seems a bit nuts. Would you refuse to hire someone that got caught shoplifting as a kid? What percentage of your coworkers did something dumb as a kid, whether they got caught or not?
Can't seem to get to the article at the moment.
What exactly do they want to improve on, to leapfrog the U.S.? Make it available to more people? Is there anyone in the U.S. that can't get access - at a local library if nothing else? Make it more mobile, so you have access anywhere you happen to be at the moment? I get EDGE service most places I want to be already here. Make it faster? A few megabits per second at home seems like enough to me. Not enough to stream HD content, but probably will be able to by the time I get around to buying an HDTV. For companies, they can get 10gig ethernet connections from lots of providers.
Maybe the idea is IPv6 or multicast. Nice stuff, but I don't see how it would even be noticeable to most end users.
China can duplicate or slightly improve on current network infrastructure, but it seems like their innovation will still be hampered by strict controls on information (news, web sites). I've been there and wasn't unable to reach any of my normal sites (including Slashdot), but that was a few years ago and I've heard the crackdowns are periodic anyway.