So you're saying I should be free to enact the punishment of my own choosing instead? No need for the "rule of law" at that point, right? I'll just make it up as I go along.
I think most people would object to that sort of free-for-all.
Society bands together to protect itself, not just from those outside, but from those inside who choose to harm its' members. So, contrary to your assertion, we should punish people who don't have half-decent ethical restraints . We SHOULD make them suffer the consequences of their actions, so that, if their own ethical compass remains defective, at least the threat of punishment might be a deterent to recidivism.
So yes, if you don't pick up your dog shit, your front lawn SHOULD be turned into a public doggie comfort station, and you SHOULD have to pick up a MASSIVE AMOUNT of dog shit, so that maybe net time, you'll get your shit together and won't let your dog shit on other people's lawns.
There's plenty of room for bargaining between the prosecution and the defense in common-law criminal courts. Happens all the time. Look at the plea bargain in the Karla Homolka case.
There is always a pre-sentence report, often a psychological assessment, etc. There is no procedural difference between a case where the defendant pleads guilty and where he pleads not guilty, and the defendant can change his plea at almost any stage of the trial. Occasionally, a judge will refuse to accept a Guilty plea from the defendant, insisting he wait until the evidence has been presented.
Nice try, but not really accurate. In cases of summary convictions, there are no pre-sentencing reports, no psych assessment, etc. Also, there is no right to trial by jury for summary offences.
Canada has plenty of these dual-mode or hybrid offences, where the person can be charged for the same crime either by summary procedure (less serious) or by indictment (more serious).
In dual procedure offences, Crown counsel has the discretion to proceed by summary conviction or indictment. This discretion allows Crown counsel the flexibility of taking the specific circumstances of a case into account to ensure that in each case the interests of justice, including the public's interest in the effective enforcement of the criminal law, are best served.
19.2.1 Statement of Policy
When deciding whether to proceed summarily or by indictment, Crown counsel shall examine the circumstances surrounding the offence and the background of the accused. The following factors are of particular importance:
whether the facts alleged make the offence a serious one;
whether the accused has a lengthy criminal record or a record of criminal convictions for similar types of offences;
the sentence that will be recommended by Crown counsel in the event of a conviction;
the effect that having to testify at both a preliminary inquiry and a trial may have on victims or witnesses (if procedure by indictment is chosen, this may lead to the preferral of a direct indictment; and
whether it would not be in the public interest to have a trial by jury.
If the accused is charged with a number of offences arising out of the same transaction, Crown counsel should consider entering elections that avoid a multiplicity of litigation. Such a course may benefit the accused, by reducing his or her court appearances, as well as serving the interests of the administration of justice. This approach will be beneficial not only at the trial level, but also in the event of an appeal.
Where, based on the above criteria, Crown counsel would normally elect to proceed summarily but the limitation period for a summary proceeding has expired, Crown counsel should not elect to proceed by indictment unless:
the accused contributed significantly to the delay;
the investigative agency acted with due diligence but the investigation continued beyond the limitation period because of the complexity of the case;
the particular circumstances of the offence did not come to light until shortly before or at some time after the limitation period expired, and the offence is serious;
the accused has refused to give consent, pursuant to s. 786 of the Criminal Code, to have the matter proceed by summary conviction; or
the public interest otherwise warrants prosecution
It's only in trials by indictment that the defendant has the right to choose either a trial by judge and jury, or judge alone, so there are definitely options for how to proceed, for both the prosecution and the defence, and there's just as much bargaining going on as in the US. Bargaining, for example, to being charged via summation rather than indictment, in return for a guilty plea, and a lesser range of penalties (summary convictions are like "punishment lite"). Same as plea bargaining anywhere else.
civil annoyance - pay a fine (parking violations, let your dog crap on the sidewalk, etc.)
As a dog owner, I want people who don't pick up their dog shit to do more than just pay a fine. Put up a big sign on their lawn, declaring it to be a "public doggie comfort zone" for one year.
The punishment SHOULD fit the crime. And it should be creative, so people can't say "well,if I get caught, it's just a fine." It should have some relation to the original act, and it should benefit the community.
Driving too fast in a school zone? You just volunteered for crossing guard duty.
Beat your wife? Welcome to the Lorena Bobbitt School of Body Modification.
Rapist? We have some mine fields we need mapped out.
Killed your mother-in-law? Gee, that's a toughie. How about $10 plus time served.
(just joking... $10 might be too high... )
Seriously, make slum lords live in their buildings, make the banksters who did the fraudulent mortgages live in the communities they've wrecked, etc., because fines are not punishment, they're the price you pay for permission to continue to shit on people.
No you can't... but you used to be able to compromise an ATM with nothing more than a 3x5 index card and a 25-cent plastic comb.
Thieves would fold the 3x5 card in half like a small folder, and shove it in the money slot, with the fold towards the outside.
People would try to withdraw money, but the money would collect inside the "folder". People assume the machine is defective, and go elsewhere.
PROFIT: Thief uses plastic comb to tease out the 3x5 card, now stuffed with victims' money
One of my friends fell victim to a similar scam that uses adhesive tape (works *sometimes* since they fixed it so the "card trick" no longer works - the thief doesn't care if it mostly doesn't work and jams up the machine or doesn't successfully intercept the money - they just go to another machine).
He says that the telcos bought some of his hacked modems to use as test/diagnostic equipment. If he has invoices and receipts, then he may have a legit defense.
Why would they (service personnel) want hacked modems? Maybe to be able to alter the MAC on the test machine at will to clone a client's modesm's MAC address so they can determine that the clients' modems' MAC address is routable from the customer's location, and that maybe the clients' modem is defective after all...
Since they have to put in a location, it's not that hard to get the correct international exchange, as well as the list 3 or 4-digit local exchanges. I did it in one afternoon, and the testers and end users bitched because they could no longer enter 555-234-1111 - all but the last 4 digits had to match the state/province/territory.
Did the same with postal codes/zip coded. No more fake zip codes. More complaints from testers and end users.
End result - I got shit for - get this - slowing down testing!
*kisses karma goodbye* The difference is more like Toyota not honoring a warranty of a Camry that's been reported stolen, or conversely saying that Toyota should process the recall of an unregistered Camry with a scraped off serial number. Yes, a Camry could potentially endanger other drivers if not properly serviced, but ultimately I find it difficult to fault Toyota for not fixing a car that the driver has no business driving to begin with.
And well you SHOULD kiss your karma goodbye - this is a really bad car analogy.
Toyota made it, and they received their profit for it when it was sold, including the money that they put aside for future warranty claims. They're not any more out of pocket if someone else swipes it then brings it in for service. This is not at all the same scenario as someone using a copy of software that was never paid for.
So, to sum up the differences:
stolen car: manufacturer got paid for value of warranty work; unlicensed software: manufacturer didn't get paid;
stolen car: repairs done under warranty will benefit the rightful owner if the vehicle is recovered; unlicensed software: repairs benefit all licensed users;
Piracy helped make Microsoft the monopoly it is today... they reaped the benefits, let them pay the price.
They *could* stop most piracy, but at the cost of much more inconvenience to their paying customers; they've made the business decision of accepting a certain trade-off here as part of the "cost of maintaining their monopoly". If they want more control, they can always do like Apple, and make their own hardware stack - and forfeit a large part of their existing market share. Life is full of compromises - right now, they've made the one that maximizes their profits.
And store owners should not stop a 15 year old from buying condoms. It happens in a lot of places.
Try being the one to break it to your neighbor's that their kid asked you to get them condoms
I usually hand the condoms to the parents and let them know their kids was asking for them.
That's a serious breech of trust... if kids are going to have sex and they can't talk to their parents about it, why close the door to future communications with a responsible adult by "ratting them out"?
If they're asking about condoms, at least they're trying to be responsible. More responsible than many adults, I might add.
Also, if you're a pharmacist or doctor, telling the parents is illegal, at least over here.
As for condoms sold in outlets other than pharmacies, they are often expired, or seconds sold through the "grey market" , or cheap imports that don't meet ISO standards for burst strength. Pharmacies can return old stock for credit, and they have high inventory turnover rates, so the likelihood of getting expired/repackaged/altered packaging product is pretty much nil. Not so for those who buy from grey-market suppliers.
Because, as I pointed out, warm water on the top will kill the life there. It's the same as with hot water from nuclear power generators - you can't just flush it into the environment - it can't hold enough oxygen in solution to sustain marine life, and at the higher temps, the organsms need more 02, so it's a double whammy for them. Add in the algae blooms and you've got massive dead zones.
They are the ones making the bulk of the contributions to Symbian^3 and Symbian^4, so I would assume that they have at least a passing interest in the platform.
That about sums it up - a "passing interest", as in, on the wane.
Nokia doesn't trust its Symbian mobile operating system any more and plans to equip many of its smartphones with the mostly open source Maemo operating system it uses in its Internet tablets, according to undisclosed Nokia sources speaking to the Financial Times in Germany (FTD). The Finnish company completed acquisition of Symbian just four months ago. So guys, that was 264m well spent.
FTD quotes a source close to Nokia saying: "Symbian is much too cumbersome to keep up with modern operating systems. We have to react." Nokia hasn't provided an official response; a Nokia spokesman only said that they don't comment on industry speculation. But this is clearly dynamite stuff. If it is true, it would actually be a smart move; the investment in Symbian hasn't yet borne fruit, and Nokia is steadily losing market share to former niche players RIM and Apple, and soon Android.
A first device, the Nokia N900 or "Rover" is expected for Amsterdam's Maemo Summit in October 2009.
The FTD names Symbian's old code as the reason for its poor performance. The software is based on Psion's Epoc OS which was developed in the 90s. Symbian now consist of 20 million lines of code, that's nearly as much as Windows XP has. Experts say that new central functions are very difficult to implement. This explains why Nokia needed so much time to come up with a touchscreen competitor for the iPhone.
The Nokia N97 from June 2009 required heavy tweaking on the Symbian software. It's touchscreen OS still looks aged and the handling is far from easy and not always logical. Another pain for Nokia is Google's Android OS. Devices like T-Mobile G1 and HTC Magic are selling very well. The HTC Hero with its Palm Pre like Sense UI is expected to be incredibly popular device which Nokia will struggle to compete with. Only Nokia's hardware with strong batteries and good cameras is still an advantage.
Since June it's obvious that Nokia has bigger plans for Maemo. They have announced a strategic relationship with Intel to "shape next era of mobile computing innovation". The effort also includes "technology development and cooperation in several open source software initiatives in order to develop common technologies for use in the Moblin and Maemo platform projects, which will deliver Linux-based operating systems for these future mobile computing devices".
Nokia wants to make the former geek OS a "mainstream platform", said Maemo manager Quim Gil in July on a developer summit in Gran Canaria.
It wouldn't be the first time that Nokia makes an acquisition just to throw it away. In the last four years Nokia spent billions to buy companies like Intellisync, Sega.com, Loudeye, Twango, Enpocket, Oz Communications, Gate5, Starfish Software, Navteq, Avvenu, Plazes and Cellity. Navteq alone cost $8 billion but it's difficult to recognize a strategy in this buying frenzy. The mobile company solution from Intellisync, which cost $430 million, has been discontinued after three years and sacrificed in favour of Microsoft's Mail for Exchange.
Symbian will only be used in down-market dumb phones.
FFS, just ask your friends if they're planning on having any kids when the job market is crap. There's plenty of evidence that bad economic times or reduced earnings result in people postponing starting families, so obviously, when the good times return, they breed.
Japan's economy has been in the shitter for more than a decade. Just search for "japan lost decade". They're still not out of it; 2 decades later asset prices haven't recovered. The US is going to have the same problem - at least a lost decade, probably a lost generation, in terms of economic growth. The problem was the same, and we're seeing the same refusal to mark to market and clear out bad debts. The government continues to try to prop up real estate prices, but it simply can't be done.
The Chinese made it quite clear during the first half of the decade that $10T was their limit; they are now in the process of diversifying their holdings; so are other countries, who are now investigating ways to abandon the greenback as a reserve currency. China has been quite vocal about it; the increase in the US debt (projected to hit $20 trillion) is a disaster.
The US can't pay it off without a significant reduction in the standard of living. It's the same as any other debt - paying it down means less cash for other spending.
Thanks for bringing Italy up - it's exactly the sort of example I'm talking about. It's public debt is rated AA2, two levels below AAA. Do you really want the US to have its' debt downgraded, which is seen as more likely nowadays? Every notch down costs billions in interest points, with further impacts on state and municipal bonds (California is already junk..)
Forecast: Even without a downgrade, there will be less appetite for US dollars, since they no longer hold their value over even the medium term. Less demand means higher interest rates. Debt spirals are an ugly thing to watch.
Putting the warm water on top will immediately result in large algae blooms and dead zones (higher temperatures encourage algae growth at the immediate surface, blocking sunlight and hence the plant life at lower levels dies, it also result in less 02 dissolved in water, at the same time increasing metabolic demand for 02, so most marine animals die off), so the warm water has to be stored deeper - which means eventually, a thermal inversion, and all that gase from the decomposition of dead stuff that was held in solution because of the high pressure now bubbles off, with disasterous consequences. This is why we can't just sequester CO2 by pumping it deep into the ocean. Dammed if you do, damned if you don't.
It's not only immigrants whose birth rates go up when they feel more economically secure. Or do you believe it's only immigrants who bought McMansions because they thought they could now afford to have larger families because of the phony economic boom?
The economist article is actually quite unoriginal. A much earlier study (in the '70s, so you'd have actually had to read it from dead-tree journals) showed the same effect in Argentina (and you can't claim immigration had an effect there). Populations are complex systems, and exhibit non-linear behaviour. Anyone who expected a straight line or simple curve was either naive, willfully ignorant, or whistling past the graveyard.
We already represent a disproportional amount of the biomass on this planet. Fresh water is going to be a major problem within the next 20 years, not just in the 3rd world, but in the United States as well. There are already shortages, and it's going to get worse, not better. Even if ALL immigrants were shot at the border, it won't solve the problem, since the population will still increase. The US has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy, and its' disproportionately the kids of fundies who are having kids, since they're denied both access to birth control and abortion.
Symbian != Nokia. The "roadmap" you are referring to has nothing to do with Nokia's future plans... Nokia has nothing planned for anything past Symbian S60.
Simple - it's not what you claimed it was, and you're trolling when you misrepresent speculation on future outcomes as established fact, or, in this case, you misread and/or misunderstood the speculative nature of the supposed balancing out.
Want to really make life better for women around the world? Have men get pregnant. Immediately, abortion would be available on demand, and forced sex that leads to unwanted pregnancies would be punishable by slow death over a firepit.
We've already got too many people as is. Either we reduce our numbers on our own initiative, or we'll find that we're in a situation where we don't have options. It's the same as the deficit - the tipping point was $10 trillion. Once that was passed, the only way to "fix" the deficit was to invoke massive inflation, to "inflate away" the debt... and that's what we're seeing. Expect the dollar to drop by more than half its' value over the next decade (considering that it lost about 95% of its' value in the last 50 years, it's just "business as usual, just more so").
A number of clients are guys who enjoy playing computer games, and for a variety of reasons some have no incentive to try and improve their speech. The issue is it can obviously inhibit options for jobs/other aspects of life etc.
They've learned it's better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you're a fool, rather than speak and prove it.
Also, if they have no incentive, why are they clients? They must have SOMETHING that's motivating them.
This wouldn't be a problem if copyrights expired in a relatively 'short' time. 7 or 14 years might be too short, but life plus 50 years is far too long.
Look at the good side, Sunshine - it probably prevents a lot of crappy sequels by others hoping to cash in.
He wasn't all that good a writer. When I was younger, I thought he was awesome. But, as I got older, I saw Asimov's plots to be more and more predictable, and his characters one-dimensional. There are plenty of writers today who would bury Asimov if he weren't already dead.
I think it's a Good Thing(TM) that the movie didn't slavishly imitate the stories. Go back and read them - unlike, say, Stranger in a Strange Land, they aged badly, and the last few stories were... boring. If the horse wasn't already dead, it was taking a good flogging.
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So you're saying I should be free to enact the punishment of my own choosing instead? No need for the "rule of law" at that point, right? I'll just make it up as I go along.
I think most people would object to that sort of free-for-all.
Society bands together to protect itself, not just from those outside, but from those inside who choose to harm its' members. So, contrary to your assertion, we should punish people who don't have half-decent ethical restraints . We SHOULD make them suffer the consequences of their actions, so that, if their own ethical compass remains defective, at least the threat of punishment might be a deterent to recidivism.
So yes, if you don't pick up your dog shit, your front lawn SHOULD be turned into a public doggie comfort station, and you SHOULD have to pick up a MASSIVE AMOUNT of dog shit, so that maybe net time, you'll get your shit together and won't let your dog shit on other people's lawns.
The GP poster is wrong, as I explain here.
There's plenty of room for bargaining between the prosecution and the defense in common-law criminal courts. Happens all the time. Look at the plea bargain in the Karla Homolka case.
Nice try, but not really accurate. In cases of summary convictions, there are no pre-sentencing reports, no psych assessment, etc. Also, there is no right to trial by jury for summary offences.
Canada has plenty of these dual-mode or hybrid offences, where the person can be charged for the same crime either by summary procedure (less serious) or by indictment (more serious).
Here's the Federal Prosecution Service Handbook.
It's only in trials by indictment that the defendant has the right to choose either a trial by judge and jury, or judge alone, so there are definitely options for how to proceed, for both the prosecution and the defence, and there's just as much bargaining going on as in the US. Bargaining, for example, to being charged via summation rather than indictment, in return for a guilty plea, and a lesser range of penalties (summary convictions are like "punishment lite"). Same as plea bargaining anywhere else.
He's obviously running one of those hacked, uncapped cable modems!
As a dog owner, I want people who don't pick up their dog shit to do more than just pay a fine. Put up a big sign on their lawn, declaring it to be a "public doggie comfort zone" for one year.
The punishment SHOULD fit the crime. And it should be creative, so people can't say "well,if I get caught, it's just a fine." It should have some relation to the original act, and it should benefit the community.
Driving too fast in a school zone? You just volunteered for crossing guard duty.
Beat your wife? Welcome to the Lorena Bobbitt School of Body Modification.
Rapist? We have some mine fields we need mapped out.
Killed your mother-in-law? Gee, that's a toughie. How about $10 plus time served. ... $10 might be too high ... )
(just joking
Seriously, make slum lords live in their buildings, make the banksters who did the fraudulent mortgages live in the communities they've wrecked, etc., because fines are not punishment, they're the price you pay for permission to continue to shit on people.
In Soviet Russia, prison teaches YOU!
Oh wait, that applies everywhere ...
No you can't ... but you used to be able to compromise an ATM with nothing more than a 3x5 index card and a 25-cent plastic comb.
One of my friends fell victim to a similar scam that uses adhesive tape (works *sometimes* since they fixed it so the "card trick" no longer works - the thief doesn't care if it mostly doesn't work and jams up the machine or doesn't successfully intercept the money - they just go to another machine).
He says that the telcos bought some of his hacked modems to use as test/diagnostic equipment. If he has invoices and receipts, then he may have a legit defense.
Why would they (service personnel) want hacked modems? Maybe to be able to alter the MAC on the test machine at will to clone a client's modesm's MAC address so they can determine that the clients' modems' MAC address is routable from the customer's location, and that maybe the clients' modem is defective after all ...
Since they have to put in a location, it's not that hard to get the correct international exchange, as well as the list 3 or 4-digit local exchanges. I did it in one afternoon, and the testers and end users bitched because they could no longer enter 555-234-1111 - all but the last 4 digits had to match the state/province/territory.
Did the same with postal codes/zip coded. No more fake zip codes. More complaints from testers and end users.
End result - I got shit for - get this - slowing down testing!
And well you SHOULD kiss your karma goodbye - this is a really bad car analogy.
Toyota made it, and they received their profit for it when it was sold, including the money that they put aside for future warranty claims. They're not any more out of pocket if someone else swipes it then brings it in for service. This is not at all the same scenario as someone using a copy of software that was never paid for.
So, to sum up the differences:
Piracy helped make Microsoft the monopoly it is today ... they reaped the benefits, let them pay the price.
They *could* stop most piracy, but at the cost of much more inconvenience to their paying customers; they've made the business decision of accepting a certain trade-off here as part of the "cost of maintaining their monopoly". If they want more control, they can always do like Apple, and make their own hardware stack - and forfeit a large part of their existing market share. Life is full of compromises - right now, they've made the one that maximizes their profits.
That's a serious breech of trust ... if kids are going to have sex and they can't talk to their parents about it, why close the door to future communications with a responsible adult by "ratting them out"?
If they're asking about condoms, at least they're trying to be responsible. More responsible than many adults, I might add.
Also, if you're a pharmacist or doctor, telling the parents is illegal, at least over here.
As for condoms sold in outlets other than pharmacies, they are often expired, or seconds sold through the "grey market" , or cheap imports that don't meet ISO standards for burst strength. Pharmacies can return old stock for credit, and they have high inventory turnover rates, so the likelihood of getting expired/repackaged/altered packaging product is pretty much nil. Not so for those who buy from grey-market suppliers.
Because, as I pointed out, warm water on the top will kill the life there. It's the same as with hot water from nuclear power generators - you can't just flush it into the environment - it can't hold enough oxygen in solution to sustain marine life, and at the higher temps, the organsms need more 02, so it's a double whammy for them. Add in the algae blooms and you've got massive dead zones.
That about sums it up - a "passing interest", as in, on the wane.
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/08/11/nokia-ditching-symbian-for-maemo-german-ft-reports/ Nokia ditching Symbian for Maemo, German FT reports
by Markus Goebel on August 11, 2009
Nokia doesn't trust its Symbian mobile operating system any more and plans to equip many of its smartphones with the mostly open source Maemo operating system it uses in its Internet tablets, according to undisclosed Nokia sources speaking to the Financial Times in Germany (FTD). The Finnish company completed acquisition of Symbian just four months ago. So guys, that was 264m well spent.
FTD quotes a source close to Nokia saying: "Symbian is much too cumbersome to keep up with modern operating systems. We have to react." Nokia hasn't provided an official response; a Nokia spokesman only said that they don't comment on industry speculation. But this is clearly dynamite stuff. If it is true, it would actually be a smart move; the investment in Symbian hasn't yet borne fruit, and Nokia is steadily losing market share to former niche players RIM and Apple, and soon Android.
A first device, the Nokia N900 or "Rover" is expected for Amsterdam's Maemo Summit in October 2009.
The FTD names Symbian's old code as the reason for its poor performance. The software is based on Psion's Epoc OS which was developed in the 90s. Symbian now consist of 20 million lines of code, that's nearly as much as Windows XP has. Experts say that new central functions are very difficult to implement. This explains why Nokia needed so much time to come up with a touchscreen competitor for the iPhone.
The Nokia N97 from June 2009 required heavy tweaking on the Symbian software. It's touchscreen OS still looks aged and the handling is far from easy and not always logical. Another pain for Nokia is Google's Android OS. Devices like T-Mobile G1 and HTC Magic are selling very well. The HTC Hero with its Palm Pre like Sense UI is expected to be incredibly popular device which Nokia will struggle to compete with. Only Nokia's hardware with strong batteries and good cameras is still an advantage.
Since June it's obvious that Nokia has bigger plans for Maemo. They have announced a strategic relationship with Intel to "shape next era of mobile computing innovation". The effort also includes "technology development and cooperation in several open source software initiatives in order to develop common technologies for use in the Moblin and Maemo platform projects, which will deliver Linux-based operating systems for these future mobile computing devices".
Nokia wants to make the former geek OS a "mainstream platform", said Maemo manager Quim Gil in July on a developer summit in Gran Canaria.
It wouldn't be the first time that Nokia makes an acquisition just to throw it away. In the last four years Nokia spent billions to buy companies like Intellisync, Sega.com, Loudeye, Twango, Enpocket, Oz Communications, Gate5, Starfish Software, Navteq, Avvenu, Plazes and Cellity. Navteq alone cost $8 billion but it's difficult to recognize a strategy in this buying frenzy. The mobile company solution from Intellisync, which cost $430 million, has been discontinued after three years and sacrificed in favour of Microsoft's Mail for Exchange.
Symbian will only be used in down-market dumb phones.
FFS, just ask your friends if they're planning on having any kids when the job market is crap. There's plenty of evidence that bad economic times or reduced earnings result in people postponing starting families, so obviously, when the good times return, they breed.
Japan's economy has been in the shitter for more than a decade. Just search for "japan lost decade". They're still not out of it; 2 decades later asset prices haven't recovered. The US is going to have the same problem - at least a lost decade, probably a lost generation, in terms of economic growth. The problem was the same, and we're seeing the same refusal to mark to market and clear out bad debts. The government continues to try to prop up real estate prices, but it simply can't be done.
The Chinese made it quite clear during the first half of the decade that $10T was their limit; they are now in the process of diversifying their holdings; so are other countries, who are now investigating ways to abandon the greenback as a reserve currency. China has been quite vocal about it; the increase in the US debt (projected to hit $20 trillion) is a disaster.
The US can't pay it off without a significant reduction in the standard of living. It's the same as any other debt - paying it down means less cash for other spending.
Thanks for bringing Italy up - it's exactly the sort of example I'm talking about. It's public debt is rated AA2, two levels below AAA. Do you really want the US to have its' debt downgraded, which is seen as more likely nowadays? Every notch down costs billions in interest points, with further impacts on state and municipal bonds (California is already junk ..)
Forecast: Even without a downgrade, there will be less appetite for US dollars, since they no longer hold their value over even the medium term. Less demand means higher interest rates. Debt spirals are an ugly thing to watch.
Actually, it's because it's back-to-school season. Ask any parent.
This would have been a good stunt to get people to buy Motorola Droids so they can use the free google maps geolocation, etc.
Putting the warm water on top will immediately result in large algae blooms and dead zones (higher temperatures encourage algae growth at the immediate surface, blocking sunlight and hence the plant life at lower levels dies, it also result in less 02 dissolved in water, at the same time increasing metabolic demand for 02, so most marine animals die off), so the warm water has to be stored deeper - which means eventually, a thermal inversion, and all that gase from the decomposition of dead stuff that was held in solution because of the high pressure now bubbles off, with disasterous consequences. This is why we can't just sequester CO2 by pumping it deep into the ocean. Dammed if you do, damned if you don't.
It's not only immigrants whose birth rates go up when they feel more economically secure. Or do you believe it's only immigrants who bought McMansions because they thought they could now afford to have larger families because of the phony economic boom?
The economist article is actually quite unoriginal. A much earlier study (in the '70s, so you'd have actually had to read it from dead-tree journals) showed the same effect in Argentina (and you can't claim immigration had an effect there). Populations are complex systems, and exhibit non-linear behaviour. Anyone who expected a straight line or simple curve was either naive, willfully ignorant, or whistling past the graveyard.
We already represent a disproportional amount of the biomass on this planet. Fresh water is going to be a major problem within the next 20 years, not just in the 3rd world, but in the United States as well. There are already shortages, and it's going to get worse, not better. Even if ALL immigrants were shot at the border, it won't solve the problem, since the population will still increase. The US has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy, and its' disproportionately the kids of fundies who are having kids, since they're denied both access to birth control and abortion.
Symbian != Nokia. The "roadmap" you are referring to has nothing to do with Nokia's future plans ... Nokia has nothing planned for anything past Symbian S60.
Simple - it's not what you claimed it was, and you're trolling when you misrepresent speculation on future outcomes as established fact, or, in this case, you misread and/or misunderstood the speculative nature of the supposed balancing out.
Want to really make life better for women around the world? Have men get pregnant. Immediately, abortion would be available on demand, and forced sex that leads to unwanted pregnancies would be punishable by slow death over a firepit.
We've already got too many people as is. Either we reduce our numbers on our own initiative, or we'll find that we're in a situation where we don't have options. It's the same as the deficit - the tipping point was $10 trillion. Once that was passed, the only way to "fix" the deficit was to invoke massive inflation, to "inflate away" the debt ... and that's what we're seeing. Expect the dollar to drop by more than half its' value over the next decade (considering that it lost about 95% of its' value in the last 50 years, it's just "business as usual, just more so").
They've learned it's better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you're a fool, rather than speak and prove it.
Also, if they have no incentive, why are they clients? They must have SOMETHING that's motivating them.
Us, Robot
We, Robot
He, Robot
She, Robot (or She, Fembot for the trekkie in you)
It, Robot
That, Robot
Soviet, Robot, Writes, I!
Look at the good side, Sunshine - it probably prevents a lot of crappy sequels by others hoping to cash in.
<spock> And yet so many people seem to have have a one-track mind ... fascinating ... </spock>
I for one await our future x86 robot butlers, where nothing can go wrong go wrong go wro ...
He wasn't all that good a writer. When I was younger, I thought he was awesome. But, as I got older, I saw Asimov's plots to be more and more predictable, and his characters one-dimensional. There are plenty of writers today who would bury Asimov if he weren't already dead.
I think it's a Good Thing(TM) that the movie didn't slavishly imitate the stories. Go back and read them - unlike, say, Stranger in a Strange Land, they aged badly, and the last few stories were ... boring. If the horse wasn't already dead, it was taking a good flogging.