he was happy, he was not {getting drunk, doing drugs, making babies, killing, thieving, raping, pillaging}
Are we supposed to spot the one which does not fit in? I found it. Making babies. Am I a genius?
Come on. When you typed "making babies" in a list of disasters that include "killing, raping, doing drugs etc...", didn't anything stop you? Didn't the thought occur that creating life is not as bad as destroying it?
And the worst is that your post has like 6 replies and nobody seemed shocked by that. Am I the only one?
Here's a question: Why do you think a President ought to be chosen by popular vote?
I dunno, maybe because that's what democracy is about. The people... vote... for their leader...
But that's not my main point. The really interesting part of your post is the following:
Plainly, the Founding Fathers thought otherwise
So what? I mean of course the founding fathers were great and wise people and the constitution they wrote should be held in great respect and everything. But finding out what the founding fathers thought does not close the discussion. There are many reasons why the founding fathers could have thought that way. Maybe, at the time the constitution was framed, the objective was to bring together 13 very independant-minded states and the US of A didn't actually make much sense as a nation. Maybe the founding fathers made the best decision considering the situation of their time and since the US have changed in 2 centuries, the best solution would be different today. Maybe the founding fathers were just yielding to the political pressure of current state leaders. Or maybe it served their own political agenda. Maybe they made a mistake... They were only mortals after all...
This quasi-religious worship of their constitution is one of the greatest mysteries I face when it comes to understanding Americans (I'm French BTW). Most Americans I know have a lot of self-confidence. They believe that whatever the opposition, they will find a way to prevail. As a society, America always question status-quo. Businesses innovate and reinvent themselves or they die. I think that Americans, maybe more than other people, have this capacity to change their way of doing things just because the world has changed and there's a better way. I really admire that.
Yet, when it comes to the constitution, this boldness and self-confidence disappear. It's as if Americans said to themselves:"the founding fathers were better and wiser people than we'll ever be; there's no point in criticising, let alone trying to improve their work". To try a daring analogy with programming, it's like believing that Linus' code is always bug-free and the single best and most elegant solution to a problem.
I don't know where this contradiction comes from. Maybe it's from something they teach you at school. I don't know. But I think it's worrying because it blocks progress. During the middle ages, in the chaos that followed the fall of the Roman Empire, huge chunks of human knowledge were lost. Fortunately, some books written by Greek or Roman scientists and philosophers were salvaged and cherished like the treasure they were by generations of monks. This prevented Europe from getting 2 millenia backwards. But at some point it became a 2-edged sword. There was so much respect for the Ancients that knowledge could only match them, not beat them. Noone could advance a theory beyond the point where Aristotle or Archimedes left it because it would have meant that he was better than Aristotle or Archimedes. And that was unthinkable. As a consequence (and also for a lot of other reasons), scientific progress was extremely slow during the middle ages.
Similarly, I think that political systems should evolve and improve. I'll try another geeky analogy : the constitution is democracy's firewall; whatever the skill, wisdom and insight the founders had, the constitution is bound to have holes or vulnerabilities. More to the point, if it was adapted to the USA of the 1780's maybe it's partly obsolete today.
I'm rereading this post and realize that I'm a bit harsh to the parent. Your post was actually insightful since it invited the reader to question his beliefs. Also it doesn't even explicitely state that the current situation is good because the founding fathers thought so. Lastly, I don't advocate dumping the US constitution or amending it thoughtlessly; I just feel that critical thought is always a good thing, even (especially) in relation to the constitution.
Look, I dislike communism as much as any other guy, but I can't follow you when you infer that a communist can't be a patriot.
Honest, IMHO communists are mistaken and communism has brought more wrong than good to the world. Yet one cannot deny that communists have shown themselves to be fierce patriots throughout history. During WWII, communists have formed the backbones of many resistance groups in most occupied countries (Poland, Russia, Yugoslavia, France...)
My belief is that when the country is really in danger, all patriots are welcome, whatever their religion, skin color or political affiliation. Before that time, there's no way to know who really is a patriot.
products (or services) are generated as a direct result of investors buying stock
This is only true at the IPO or when any newly created stock is issued on the market. After the stock is issued, the company doesn't see a dime on transactions between investors. I'm too lazy to search for it but it once read that the money actually raised on stock market represented a tiny fraction of the transactions volume (far less than 1%). In other words, when 1 billion is exchanged on the market, only less than 10 millions actually go to companies. Of course, these exchanges are supposed to provide the liquidity that the initial investors relied on when they made their initial investment (still with me). Yet, this is debatable and saying that products are developped as a direct result of investors buying stock is abusive.
and more importantly, it is not a zero sum game
I call logical fallacy here. You're considering the stock transaction together with the company's value creation to determine the sum of the game. The stock transaction itself is in effect a zero-sum game (actually a negative-sum game because of brokers' fees and other transactions costs). In your exemple, the fact that person Y makes a profit has nothing to do with the transaction itself. If the transaction had not taken place, that profit would still had been there, but for person X, the original owner of the stock. The transaction has only transferred value from person X to person Y, no value has been created by the transaction.
There's also one very important thing you did not mention in your post. That is information asymmetry. In most cases, an individual investor knows far less than banks professionals about what makes the value of a given stock. Taking Google for example, any/.er knows about their technology and business. We believe that Google has a solid business that will continue to grow profitably. Great! Even if we're right on this, will Google grow enough to justify the 30Bn valuation? The answer is : we don't have a clue.
Repeat after me: the stock market is *not* gambling.
How do you define gambling? For me, it's a money transaction which is useless, random and zero-sum. I have explained why I think buying on the stock market is 99%+ useless and it's also very close to random for an individual investor. If you take into account the transactions fees, it looks very similar to slot machines with their 95% redistribution rates. But you also have to consider the information asymmetry.
The bottom line is: for an individual investor, buying on the stock market is VERY similar to playing a rigged slot machine.
I certainly don't hear a whole lot of French people complaining about the well-documented practice of French airlines assisting French corporations in industrial espionage.
I'm not new here, I should not be surprised. Everytime there's a political discussion, some neo-con starts bashing the French for the most unlikely reason.
I thought I had seen it all. According to our well-documented accusers, we sold weapons to Saddam during the embargo, we sold him nuclear weapons, we stole Iraq oil, we're antisemitic, we hate Americans, we've killed Rwandan babies, we protect Serbian fascists, we don't bath... But what I had not yet heard is that our airlines (that would be Air France, I guess) practice industrial espionage. Wow, that's a serious accusation! Bear in mind, next time you're on an Air France flight that your French competitor will know whether you chose beef or chicken!!!
Of course, nobody can never show any evidence for such well-documented facts. It doesn't seem to matter. The French apparently committed a deadly sin when they tried to prevent the US from doing (what IMHO is) a huge mistake in Irak. So anything goes against them. It doesn't matter if it makes sense or not, it's true as long as it bashes the French.
Some of these accusations might be true though. I'm perfectly aware that my country has not always be on the right side and that we've had our share of dark hours or shameful years. I just feel that as a whole, the balance is positive. Maybe I'm even wrong here. And I'm ready to discuss that with anyone interested in an honest debate. But all this constant hatred against the French is something else entirely, and frankly it's frightening.
I do not fear for my country. We've been through worse situations than being bad-mouthed by O'Reilly or some anonymous geek on Slashdot. No, I fear for the US. A country I and most French people love, whatever you're told on Fox News. You know, we're not perfect in France. Our words and actions are not guided by God, more by plain old human experience. And one lesson we learned from being occupied by the Nazis for 4 years: If you let yourself hate someone solely based on his religion, color or nationality, you're on a very, very dangerous slope.
Then there's Spain. I find the phrase "undermine political credibility in Europe" to be a laughable concept when an entire country changes its majority party in a radical direction because of a single terrorist bombing.
Yeah. I always thought that the US reaction to 9/11 was such an impressive display of nuance, balance and wisdom.
Can any knowledgable slashdotter answer a simple question: Why is it difficult to produce large OLED display? I understand that it more or less amounts to printing the pixels onto a substrate. If one can make 17" OLED display, where is the engineering complexity in making a 40" display?
I don't know. Does having the number one military in the world count as having "no force"? Sure. If this military, mighty as it can be, can't achieve the political goals given to it, it has no "force".
This really isn't an opportunity to score cheap political points. I'm making empirical observations in the realm of game theory; forcing your political opinions inappropriately into the mix makes you look irrational and incapable of holding an adult conversation... at best.
Really? You start your post with a trollish and wrong premise (0% of resources); you pull out of your ass another moronic and unsupported statement (no will) then you build all of your "argument" on these two obviously wrong premises and you expect to be taken seriously? Do you really think that by not naming European countries, you would prevent your post from falling into the realm of partisan rubbish? That's pathetically childish.
See, you've rather missed the point (...) Having force doesn't mean you have to use it.
YOU miss the point. All your post relies on the assumption that not willing to use force at a given moment means having no force nor will. The fact that it seems easy to trash a third world country's military does not mean that it's in your best interest.
he never would have had the opportunity to "choose" not to go to war. The enemy would simply have chosen for him.
Nonsense. The choice to go to war has nothing to do with force. In WWII, the US had force, yet the decision to go to war was made by Japan.
Or, in the case of the continent I mentioned, you are stuck negotiating only with carrots and not with sticks, and regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the respective positions, that's not a strong position.
Sigh. Where to begin? I'll try to be nice and explain to you. When you negociate, the first thing to do is to list your objectives and estimate their respective importance for you. Then you list your tools and their respective cost to you. Then you estimate the same for your enemy. Then starts the game theory thingy. The Europeans' goal was to prevent Iraq from being a threat and they knew (from experience) the terrifying cost of a colonial war. They considered that economic pressure and weapons inspections would be sufficient to reach their goals (and they have been proven right so far, no WMD). Nobody knows what were the US's goal and clearly the US underestimated the cost (human, monetary, political...) of the war and overestimated what the military tool could achieve.
What you don't realize is that the US lost these negociations against Saddam. They paid what they got (what did they get again?) an insane price.
One last point since you seem to like game theory and negociations. Do you think that Iraq has made the bargaining position of the US stronger or weaker in future similar negociations (North Korea)?
facilitated by a healthy dose of taking inappropriate credit
Are you referring to the US who have been shamelessly taking credit for beating the nazis for 60 years and going? Yes, there was a country called USSR. Yes, they were involved in the war before the US. Yes, they lost 10 millions soldiers to the nazis. Yes, they caused 90% of German casualties in the war.
no will + no force = no bargaining position
The world is lucky that the US were not ruled by 12 years old bullies during the Cuba crisis. Kennedy then showed that you can have will AND force, yet decide not to go to war and yet still have a strong bargaining position. Good ole times...
In a given market, there are two ways to have power: either you own the product, or you own the customers. Depending on your industry's maturity and rate of innovation, the balance shifts between the two. If Dell can assemble products that compare with HP's just by using parts from HP's competitors, that means that HP is not innovating enough. Or maybe all major improvements have already been invented in the printer business.
Michael Dell says that his company is not a technology company, it's a logistics service provider. He's right, of course. Logistics become a key issue when products become commodities. Ironically, the frantic race to hardware performance only stresses the critical importance of the logistics.
Just watch Iraq. The US have an overwhelming military advantage there. Nothing in the whole country can even dent an Abrams tank. The US soldiers have the best protection, the best fire power, the best communications, recon etc... Yet they are slowly losing control of the situation.
Those futuristic weapons are designed to fight 20th century's wars, not today's or tomorrow's wars. What's the use of a gun that fires a million rounds per minute when you're trying to control a riot? How can space darts help you identify the terrorist hiding in the crowd?
Overwhelming weapon superiority does not work in Iraq; I don't think further increasing this superiority will work better.
It's obvious that Free software will cause the business in proprietary software fall sooner or later. It's just not news. The question is: is it a BAD thing?
I agree that it is not a BAD thing for mankind. But is it a BAD thing for the US? Come to think about it, can you name one major non-US software companies? OK, there's SAP. Any other? Microsoft? US; Oracle? US; Siebel? US; Adobe? US; PeopleSoft? US; Ariba? Progress? Autodesk? Symantec? BEA? etc... all are US companies.
The US have pioneered the business of software and have reaped huge profits from their prominent position. OSS threatens this position. Tocqueville, biased as they may be, have a point here.
A better analogy is that you opened the phone book's white pages to look up McDonald's, and saw a Burger King ad right next to the McDonald's listing.
I've RTFA but frankly, there's not much information in there. Still, I guess that the reason why Axa sued is that the ad links mentioned the brand name "AXA". So maybe the proper analogy would be that you opened the white pages to look for McDonald's and see an ad for "McDonald's something" with the address and phone# of a BK.
Still not sure that this would justify a lawsuit but at least it's not that clear-cut.
What you mention is the first step in playing OFFENSIVELY. Apple being a perfect exemple.
Here, Netflix is playing defensively. They basically prepare for the worst while dissuading competitors. Think about it, VOD needs huge investments, is a risky shot, will not be a big market before 3-5 years, and there's already Netflix. Not exactly what I call a great investment opportunity for a competitor.
As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, the EU anti-trust laws strike companies regardless of their country. Historically, a great majority of anti-trust cases were targetted on EU companies.
Just an example. In 2000 Alcan (Canada), Pechiney (France, EU member) and Algroup (Switzerland, NOT EU member) announced their merger into the world's leading aluminum producer. The deal was pretty much balanced between the 3 partners. Pechiney, the only EU company in the deal got a number of advantages, including the fact that their CEO would run the merged entity. At the same time (the day after) Alcoa and Reynolds, 2 US companies, announced their merger. Alcoa & Reynolds would be slightly bigger on the aluminum market than Alcan, Pechiney and Algroup combined.
Now, we have to pass anti-trust. The US anti-trust see no problem in letting Alcoa and Reynolds, 2 US companies (respectively #1 and #5 in the world) merge. Brussels, on the other hand, blocks the Alcan-Pechiney-Algroup merger, even though the combined entity would still only be #2.
Now the aftermath. Alcoa and Reynolds merged in 2000. at the end of taht same year, Alcan merged with Algroup. This left Pechiney (the one big aluminum producer in the EU) isolated and a distant 3rd in the market. in 2003, Alcan (having absorbed Algroup) offered to purchase Pechiney. The deal was far less interesting for Pechiney than the original threesome merger. Yet Pechiney's position was far weaker than in 2000. Pechiney was forced to accept the merger.
At the end of the day, Brussels did knowingly block an operation that would have benefited a European company against non EU companies. This is just an example. My point is that Monti's office are serious about this anti-trust and consumer-friendly things. I don't think there's more than that in the MS case.
You forgot Gauss's theorem. You should estimate the gravitational effect by measuring distances to the center of the earth, not its surface.
Tides are caused by the gravitational effect of the sun and the moon on the whole surface of the earth, not on a single point. Let's assume a flat distribution of water on earth's surface. Gauss says that the gravitational force applied to a sphere is equal to the force applied to the same mass positioned at the center of the sphere.
Now, the relevant comparison would be to estimate the relative gravitational effect of our asteroid and the sun. Mass(A)=5x10^7kg, Distance(A)=5x10^7m, Mass(S)=2x10^20kg, Distance(S)=1.5x10^11m. The sun's gravity field on earth is 1,600 times higher than our asteroid's.
So yes, the asteroid will have a negligible effect on earth's surface but not THAT negligible and not for the same reason. Using your logic, my mother (200kg) would have a higher gravitational impact on earth's surface than the sun provided she hovers less than 150m above the surface. Ok, she's fat but not THAT fat:)
Ok, I know this is a troll. It's not even a good one. It's also copied verbatim from the web. Yet, since I have half an hour to waste...
We have been laughing at the French since 1918, when we landed in their country, walked across it, and saw a war that had dragged on for years end within months of our entry into it.
WWI had been raging since August '14. Terrible war. 1.8m dead Germans, 1.4m dead French, 1.2m dead Austrians, 1 million dead British... Nothing to laugh at. The Germans were as exhausted as the French and British after 4 years of war and realized that they could not win if the US entered the war against them. The US definitely brought victory but did not participate in much fighting, less than 100k casualties. Thanks for the help. A pity it took you 4 years to cross the Atlantic.
We laughed at the French when we told them (and the rest of Europe) to stuff it and didn't join the League of nations.
Maybe you should have. A lot of nations would have benefited from US clairvoyance and insight.
We laughed at the French in the '20s and '30s, as the Germans rearmed and the French disarmed.
Not in the '20s. Germany was severely struck by the '29 crisis. Hitler came to power in '33. Then, Germany rearmed. France did not disarm.
We laughed when the League of Nations censured the Germans for violating the treaty of Versailles but took no action to enforce it.
Yep, definitely having the US in the League of Nations would have helped. Or maybe not. At that time, Nazism was pretty highly regarded in the US. Actually, there were many pro-Nazi people in most western countries in the '30s, ie in France, in the UK etc... but also in the US
We laughed at the French in 1939 when they failed to live up to their treaty obligations when Poland was invaded
This is really offensive. Germany invaded Poland on Sep 1st, 1939; France and UK declared war to Germany on Sep 2nd, 1939 in accordance with their treaty. US declared their neutrality in the conflict on Sep 5th, 1939. USSR joined Germany in their invasion of Poland and the country fell in 3 weeks, long before any decent French and British force could be mobilized.
We laughed when they said the Poles lost because of their stupidity and that a REAL fighting force couldn't be beaten so easily.
Don't know of anybody in France saying the Poles were "stupid" at that time. You're right on your second assertion though, France was over-confident.
We laughed when the Germans invaded France (again) through the low countries (again) and France evacuated Paris (again). We laughed when they rolled over and let the Germans occupy them.
Germany launched its offensive on May 10th, 1940. They invaded Netherlands, Belgium and France. They used an extremelly innovative tactic called "Blitzkrieg". Nobody could resist the German army at that time. The Dutch were overran in 1 week, the Belgians were overran in 3 weeks, the British troops in France were overran and evacuated in 3 weeks. The French were overran and surrendered in 6 weeks after Italy joined Germany in the war. Until 1942, nobody could resist the German army. Not Yugoslavia, not Greece, not USSR. It was just overwhelming.
We laughed when we had to sink their warships to prevent their use against us.
Part of the French fleet was sunk by Britain, the rest by French sailors. The US were not involved; at that time they were watching TV and selling weapons.
We quit laughing when the France's utter failure to prevent the spread of Nazi Germany put Britain on the verge of invasion. Rather than rolling over, the Brits fought the Nazis to a standstill.
Nonsense. After everyone interested in opposing the Nazis failed to stop their Panzers... The North Sea did. You might not be familiar with geography either, but let me fill you in... Britain is an island.
the French government said it would have to reconsider support for the entrance of several European nations into the EU based on their support of the US and the Iraq war
Not quite.
Chirac said that future newcomers' opinions were not welcome and that they should keep their mouths shut. While this was incredibly dumb, arrogant and counterproductive of him, it does not come close to threatening anything like what you mentioned.
C'mon, after all these posts about Diebold et al. I can't believe that so many people apparently still think that their vote will be counted.
Let's recall the facts:
1. 20% of American voters will use electronic voting.
2. These voting systems leave no paper trail.
3. The systems used are provided by private companies. Both hardware and software are closed source.
4. The top management of these companies have made public statements in favor of the Republican Party.
5. These systems are grossly insecure.
6. Most politicians are willing to try the nastiest tricks if it can serve them, they can do it and they believe it will not backfire.
Now, we are on slashdot. The population here is supposed to think rationally (I know, I'm not new here, notice the "supposed"). Let's use logic and see what we can derive from these 6 facts:
A. Should anyone have doubts with the election results, no double check is possible, thus no possibility to substantiate the doubts (from 2.)
B. Should any rigging happen, only some people with the manufacturers can prove it (from 3.)
C. Should anyone have doubts with the election results, they will not be able to get a court to order a meaningful inquiry (from A. and B.)
D. Tampering with electronic voting systems will ensure a win in all but the most disproportionate races (from 1.)
E. Rigging the elections results is technically easy (from 5.)
F. Should any cheating happen, the people able to prove it will be reluctant to reveal it (from B. and 3.)
G. Politicians of all parties WILL cheat if they trust the manufacturers' management to keep quiet (from D. E. F. and 6.)
H. Republicans WILL cheat the election (from G. and 4.)
I. Republicans will win in all but the most disproportionate races (from H. and D.)
All of this may sound alarmist but it's not. Most people, even those who show outrage at the whole electronic voting issue don't really want to believe that such a scenario is possible, let alone likely. But if you think about it, this will happen unless (ALL senior republicans are honest) OR (ALL of the manufacturers' management are honest). To reverse the assertion, this will happen if (Ashcroft OR Cheney OR Rumsfeld OR... is dishonest) AND (any Diebold exec OR any exec at any other major manufacturer is dishonest).
We're living dark times for democracy in the US. The constitution states that power belongs to the people and has instituted checks and balances to prevent any small group from wielding too much power. Now the power belongs to a handful (litterally) of people with a strong vested interest in using it.
And before you talk about the second amendment, remember that nobody will know that a coup happened. Who makes a revolution because elections might have been stolen? Nobody did in 2000 (I don't claim that the 2000 election was stolen, I just say that many people thought it might have been stolen)
And notice that everything comes from fact 2. Not giving a means for the people to check that the election follows the rules is the mistake most (other) democracies did not make.
Slashdot Mirror
... would surrender their cell phones.
he was happy, he was not {getting drunk, doing drugs, making babies, killing, thieving, raping, pillaging}
Are we supposed to spot the one which does not fit in? I found it. Making babies. Am I a genius?
Come on. When you typed "making babies" in a list of disasters that include "killing, raping, doing drugs etc...", didn't anything stop you? Didn't the thought occur that creating life is not as bad as destroying it?
And the worst is that your post has like 6 replies and nobody seemed shocked by that. Am I the only one?
We've fought in wars all over the world and never took any more ground than was necessary to bury our dead.
Wow, Powell must be expecting huge casualties in Iraq, considering the size of the country.
Here's a question: Why do you think a President ought to be chosen by popular vote?
:
:"the founding fathers were better and wiser people than we'll ever be; there's no point in criticising, let alone trying to improve their work". To try a daring analogy with programming, it's like believing that Linus' code is always bug-free and the single best and most elegant solution to a problem.
I dunno, maybe because that's what democracy is about. The people... vote... for their leader...
But that's not my main point. The really interesting part of your post is the following
Plainly, the Founding Fathers thought otherwise
So what? I mean of course the founding fathers were great and wise people and the constitution they wrote should be held in great respect and everything. But finding out what the founding fathers thought does not close the discussion. There are many reasons why the founding fathers could have thought that way. Maybe, at the time the constitution was framed, the objective was to bring together 13 very independant-minded states and the US of A didn't actually make much sense as a nation. Maybe the founding fathers made the best decision considering the situation of their time and since the US have changed in 2 centuries, the best solution would be different today. Maybe the founding fathers were just yielding to the political pressure of current state leaders. Or maybe it served their own political agenda. Maybe they made a mistake... They were only mortals after all...
This quasi-religious worship of their constitution is one of the greatest mysteries I face when it comes to understanding Americans (I'm French BTW). Most Americans I know have a lot of self-confidence. They believe that whatever the opposition, they will find a way to prevail. As a society, America always question status-quo. Businesses innovate and reinvent themselves or they die. I think that Americans, maybe more than other people, have this capacity to change their way of doing things just because the world has changed and there's a better way. I really admire that.
Yet, when it comes to the constitution, this boldness and self-confidence disappear. It's as if Americans said to themselves
I don't know where this contradiction comes from. Maybe it's from something they teach you at school. I don't know. But I think it's worrying because it blocks progress. During the middle ages, in the chaos that followed the fall of the Roman Empire, huge chunks of human knowledge were lost. Fortunately, some books written by Greek or Roman scientists and philosophers were salvaged and cherished like the treasure they were by generations of monks. This prevented Europe from getting 2 millenia backwards. But at some point it became a 2-edged sword. There was so much respect for the Ancients that knowledge could only match them, not beat them. Noone could advance a theory beyond the point where Aristotle or Archimedes left it because it would have meant that he was better than Aristotle or Archimedes. And that was unthinkable. As a consequence (and also for a lot of other reasons), scientific progress was extremely slow during the middle ages.
Similarly, I think that political systems should evolve and improve. I'll try another geeky analogy : the constitution is democracy's firewall; whatever the skill, wisdom and insight the founders had, the constitution is bound to have holes or vulnerabilities. More to the point, if it was adapted to the USA of the 1780's maybe it's partly obsolete today.
I'm rereading this post and realize that I'm a bit harsh to the parent. Your post was actually insightful since it invited the reader to question his beliefs. Also it doesn't even explicitely state that the current situation is good because the founding fathers thought so. Lastly, I don't advocate dumping the US constitution or amending it thoughtlessly; I just feel that critical thought is always a good thing, even (especially) in relation to the constitution.
I don't know, maybe you're a genius, an artist in 2nd degree humor... Whatever, the juxtaposition of your sig right after this post is just perfect.
I'd like to see the other person suffer
Wow, that's a statement. Too bad you weren't born in the 15th century, the Spanish Inquisition had a perfect job for you.
Look, I dislike communism as much as any other guy, but I can't follow you when you infer that a communist can't be a patriot.
Honest, IMHO communists are mistaken and communism has brought more wrong than good to the world. Yet one cannot deny that communists have shown themselves to be fierce patriots throughout history. During WWII, communists have formed the backbones of many resistance groups in most occupied countries (Poland, Russia, Yugoslavia, France...)
My belief is that when the country is really in danger, all patriots are welcome, whatever their religion, skin color or political affiliation. Before that time, there's no way to know who really is a patriot.
I humbly beg to disagree :
/.er knows about their technology and business. We believe that Google has a solid business that will continue to grow profitably. Great! Even if we're right on this, will Google grow enough to justify the 30Bn valuation? The answer is : we don't have a clue.
products (or services) are generated as a direct result of investors buying stock
This is only true at the IPO or when any newly created stock is issued on the market. After the stock is issued, the company doesn't see a dime on transactions between investors. I'm too lazy to search for it but it once read that the money actually raised on stock market represented a tiny fraction of the transactions volume (far less than 1%). In other words, when 1 billion is exchanged on the market, only less than 10 millions actually go to companies. Of course, these exchanges are supposed to provide the liquidity that the initial investors relied on when they made their initial investment (still with me). Yet, this is debatable and saying that products are developped as a direct result of investors buying stock is abusive.
and more importantly, it is not a zero sum game
I call logical fallacy here. You're considering the stock transaction together with the company's value creation to determine the sum of the game. The stock transaction itself is in effect a zero-sum game (actually a negative-sum game because of brokers' fees and other transactions costs). In your exemple, the fact that person Y makes a profit has nothing to do with the transaction itself. If the transaction had not taken place, that profit would still had been there, but for person X, the original owner of the stock. The transaction has only transferred value from person X to person Y, no value has been created by the transaction.
There's also one very important thing you did not mention in your post. That is information asymmetry. In most cases, an individual investor knows far less than banks professionals about what makes the value of a given stock. Taking Google for example, any
Repeat after me: the stock market is *not* gambling.
How do you define gambling? For me, it's a money transaction which is useless, random and zero-sum. I have explained why I think buying on the stock market is 99%+ useless and it's also very close to random for an individual investor. If you take into account the transactions fees, it looks very similar to slot machines with their 95% redistribution rates. But you also have to consider the information asymmetry.
The bottom line is: for an individual investor, buying on the stock market is VERY similar to playing a rigged slot machine.
I certainly don't hear a whole lot of French people complaining about the well-documented practice of French airlines assisting French corporations in industrial espionage.
I'm not new here, I should not be surprised. Everytime there's a political discussion, some neo-con starts bashing the French for the most unlikely reason.
I thought I had seen it all. According to our well-documented accusers, we sold weapons to Saddam during the embargo, we sold him nuclear weapons, we stole Iraq oil, we're antisemitic, we hate Americans, we've killed Rwandan babies, we protect Serbian fascists, we don't bath... But what I had not yet heard is that our airlines (that would be Air France, I guess) practice industrial espionage. Wow, that's a serious accusation! Bear in mind, next time you're on an Air France flight that your French competitor will know whether you chose beef or chicken!!!
Of course, nobody can never show any evidence for such well-documented facts. It doesn't seem to matter. The French apparently committed a deadly sin when they tried to prevent the US from doing (what IMHO is) a huge mistake in Irak. So anything goes against them. It doesn't matter if it makes sense or not, it's true as long as it bashes the French.
Some of these accusations might be true though. I'm perfectly aware that my country has not always be on the right side and that we've had our share of dark hours or shameful years. I just feel that as a whole, the balance is positive. Maybe I'm even wrong here. And I'm ready to discuss that with anyone interested in an honest debate. But all this constant hatred against the French is something else entirely, and frankly it's frightening.
I do not fear for my country. We've been through worse situations than being bad-mouthed by O'Reilly or some anonymous geek on Slashdot. No, I fear for the US. A country I and most French people love, whatever you're told on Fox News. You know, we're not perfect in France. Our words and actions are not guided by God, more by plain old human experience. And one lesson we learned from being occupied by the Nazis for 4 years: If you let yourself hate someone solely based on his religion, color or nationality, you're on a very, very dangerous slope.
Then there's Spain. I find the phrase "undermine political credibility in Europe" to be a laughable concept when an entire country changes its majority party in a radical direction because of a single terrorist bombing.
Yeah. I always thought that the US reaction to 9/11 was such an impressive display of nuance, balance and wisdom.
Can any knowledgable slashdotter answer a simple question: Why is it difficult to produce large OLED display? I understand that it more or less amounts to printing the pixels onto a substrate. If one can make 17" OLED display, where is the engineering complexity in making a 40" display?
I don't know. Does having the number one military in the world count as having "no force"?
Sure. If this military, mighty as it can be, can't achieve the political goals given to it, it has no "force".
This really isn't an opportunity to score cheap political points. I'm making empirical observations in the realm of game theory; forcing your political opinions inappropriately into the mix makes you look irrational and incapable of holding an adult conversation... at best.
Really? You start your post with a trollish and wrong premise (0% of resources); you pull out of your ass another moronic and unsupported statement (no will) then you build all of your "argument" on these two obviously wrong premises and you expect to be taken seriously? Do you really think that by not naming European countries, you would prevent your post from falling into the realm of partisan rubbish? That's pathetically childish.
See, you've rather missed the point (...) Having force doesn't mean you have to use it.
YOU miss the point. All your post relies on the assumption that not willing to use force at a given moment means having no force nor will. The fact that it seems easy to trash a third world country's military does not mean that it's in your best interest.
he never would have had the opportunity to "choose" not to go to war. The enemy would simply have chosen for him.
Nonsense. The choice to go to war has nothing to do with force. In WWII, the US had force, yet the decision to go to war was made by Japan.
Or, in the case of the continent I mentioned, you are stuck negotiating only with carrots and not with sticks, and regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the respective positions, that's not a strong position.
Sigh. Where to begin? I'll try to be nice and explain to you. When you negociate, the first thing to do is to list your objectives and estimate their respective importance for you. Then you list your tools and their respective cost to you. Then you estimate the same for your enemy. Then starts the game theory thingy. The Europeans' goal was to prevent Iraq from being a threat and they knew (from experience) the terrifying cost of a colonial war. They considered that economic pressure and weapons inspections would be sufficient to reach their goals (and they have been proven right so far, no WMD). Nobody knows what were the US's goal and clearly the US underestimated the cost (human, monetary, political...) of the war and overestimated what the military tool could achieve.
What you don't realize is that the US lost these negociations against Saddam. They paid what they got (what did they get again?) an insane price.
One last point since you seem to like game theory and negociations. Do you think that Iraq has made the bargaining position of the US stronger or weaker in future similar negociations (North Korea)?
facilitated by a healthy dose of taking inappropriate credit
Are you referring to the US who have been shamelessly taking credit for beating the nazis for 60 years and going? Yes, there was a country called USSR. Yes, they were involved in the war before the US. Yes, they lost 10 millions soldiers to the nazis. Yes, they caused 90% of German casualties in the war.
no will + no force = no bargaining position
The world is lucky that the US were not ruled by 12 years old bullies during the Cuba crisis. Kennedy then showed that you can have will AND force, yet decide not to go to war and yet still have a strong bargaining position. Good ole times...
In a given market, there are two ways to have power: either you own the product, or you own the customers. Depending on your industry's maturity and rate of innovation, the balance shifts between the two. If Dell can assemble products that compare with HP's just by using parts from HP's competitors, that means that HP is not innovating enough. Or maybe all major improvements have already been invented in the printer business.
Michael Dell says that his company is not a technology company, it's a logistics service provider. He's right, of course. Logistics become a key issue when products become commodities. Ironically, the frantic race to hardware performance only stresses the critical importance of the logistics.
Just watch Iraq. The US have an overwhelming military advantage there. Nothing in the whole country can even dent an Abrams tank. The US soldiers have the best protection, the best fire power, the best communications, recon etc... Yet they are slowly losing control of the situation.
Those futuristic weapons are designed to fight 20th century's wars, not today's or tomorrow's wars. What's the use of a gun that fires a million rounds per minute when you're trying to control a riot? How can space darts help you identify the terrorist hiding in the crowd?
Overwhelming weapon superiority does not work in Iraq; I don't think further increasing this superiority will work better.
It's obvious that Free software will cause the business in proprietary software fall sooner or later. It's just not news. The question is: is it a BAD thing?
I agree that it is not a BAD thing for mankind. But is it a BAD thing for the US? Come to think about it, can you name one major non-US software companies? OK, there's SAP. Any other? Microsoft? US; Oracle? US; Siebel? US; Adobe? US; PeopleSoft? US; Ariba? Progress? Autodesk? Symantec? BEA? etc... all are US companies.
The US have pioneered the business of software and have reaped huge profits from their prominent position. OSS threatens this position. Tocqueville, biased as they may be, have a point here.
A better analogy is that you opened the phone book's white pages to look up McDonald's, and saw a Burger King ad right next to the McDonald's listing.
I've RTFA but frankly, there's not much information in there. Still, I guess that the reason why Axa sued is that the ad links mentioned the brand name "AXA". So maybe the proper analogy would be that you opened the white pages to look for McDonald's and see an ad for "McDonald's something" with the address and phone# of a BK.
Still not sure that this would justify a lawsuit but at least it's not that clear-cut.
Also try throwing in a couple of basic words in their language. You know stuff like 'hi' or 'please' or 'thanks'.
You'd be surprised how much people can be helpful and nice if you show a hint of respect for them.
What you mention is the first step in playing OFFENSIVELY. Apple being a perfect exemple.
Here, Netflix is playing defensively. They basically prepare for the worst while dissuading competitors. Think about it, VOD needs huge investments, is a risky shot, will not be a big market before 3-5 years, and there's already Netflix. Not exactly what I call a great investment opportunity for a competitor.
As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, the EU anti-trust laws strike companies regardless of their country. Historically, a great majority of anti-trust cases were targetted on EU companies.
Just an example. In 2000 Alcan (Canada), Pechiney (France, EU member) and Algroup (Switzerland, NOT EU member) announced their merger into the world's leading aluminum producer. The deal was pretty much balanced between the 3 partners. Pechiney, the only EU company in the deal got a number of advantages, including the fact that their CEO would run the merged entity. At the same time (the day after) Alcoa and Reynolds, 2 US companies, announced their merger. Alcoa & Reynolds would be slightly bigger on the aluminum market than Alcan, Pechiney and Algroup combined.
Now, we have to pass anti-trust. The US anti-trust see no problem in letting Alcoa and Reynolds, 2 US companies (respectively #1 and #5 in the world) merge. Brussels, on the other hand, blocks the Alcan-Pechiney-Algroup merger, even though the combined entity would still only be #2.
Now the aftermath. Alcoa and Reynolds merged in 2000. at the end of taht same year, Alcan merged with Algroup. This left Pechiney (the one big aluminum producer in the EU) isolated and a distant 3rd in the market. in 2003, Alcan (having absorbed Algroup) offered to purchase Pechiney. The deal was far less interesting for Pechiney than the original threesome merger. Yet Pechiney's position was far weaker than in 2000. Pechiney was forced to accept the merger.
At the end of the day, Brussels did knowingly block an operation that would have benefited a European company against non EU companies. This is just an example. My point is that Monti's office are serious about this anti-trust and consumer-friendly things. I don't think there's more than that in the MS case.
You forgot Gauss's theorem. You should estimate the gravitational effect by measuring distances to the center of the earth, not its surface.
:)
Tides are caused by the gravitational effect of the sun and the moon on the whole surface of the earth, not on a single point. Let's assume a flat distribution of water on earth's surface. Gauss says that the gravitational force applied to a sphere is equal to the force applied to the same mass positioned at the center of the sphere.
Now, the relevant comparison would be to estimate the relative gravitational effect of our asteroid and the sun. Mass(A)=5x10^7kg, Distance(A)=5x10^7m, Mass(S)=2x10^20kg, Distance(S)=1.5x10^11m. The sun's gravity field on earth is 1,600 times higher than our asteroid's.
So yes, the asteroid will have a negligible effect on earth's surface but not THAT negligible and not for the same reason. Using your logic, my mother (200kg) would have a higher gravitational impact on earth's surface than the sun provided she hovers less than 150m above the surface. Ok, she's fat but not THAT fat
Ok, I know this is a troll. It's not even a good one. It's also copied verbatim from the web. Yet, since I have half an hour to waste...
We have been laughing at the French since 1918, when we landed in their country, walked across it, and saw a war that had dragged on for years end within months of our entry into it.
WWI had been raging since August '14. Terrible war. 1.8m dead Germans, 1.4m dead French, 1.2m dead Austrians, 1 million dead British... Nothing to laugh at. The Germans were as exhausted as the French and British after 4 years of war and realized that they could not win if the US entered the war against them. The US definitely brought victory but did not participate in much fighting, less than 100k casualties. Thanks for the help. A pity it took you 4 years to cross the Atlantic.
We laughed at the French when we told them (and the rest of Europe) to stuff it and didn't join the League of nations.
Maybe you should have. A lot of nations would have benefited from US clairvoyance and insight.
We laughed at the French in the '20s and '30s, as the Germans rearmed and the French disarmed.
Not in the '20s. Germany was severely struck by the '29 crisis. Hitler came to power in '33. Then, Germany rearmed. France did not disarm.
We laughed when the League of Nations censured the Germans for violating the treaty of Versailles but took no action to enforce it.
Yep, definitely having the US in the League of Nations would have helped. Or maybe not. At that time, Nazism was pretty highly regarded in the US. Actually, there were many pro-Nazi people in most western countries in the '30s, ie in France, in the UK etc... but also in the US
We laughed at the French in 1939 when they failed to live up to their treaty obligations when Poland was invaded
This is really offensive. Germany invaded Poland on Sep 1st, 1939; France and UK declared war to Germany on Sep 2nd, 1939 in accordance with their treaty. US declared their neutrality in the conflict on Sep 5th, 1939. USSR joined Germany in their invasion of Poland and the country fell in 3 weeks, long before any decent French and British force could be mobilized.
We laughed when they said the Poles lost because of their stupidity and that a REAL fighting force couldn't be beaten so easily.
Don't know of anybody in France saying the Poles were "stupid" at that time. You're right on your second assertion though, France was over-confident.
We laughed when the Germans invaded France (again) through the low countries (again) and France evacuated Paris (again). We laughed when they rolled over and let the Germans occupy them.
Germany launched its offensive on May 10th, 1940. They invaded Netherlands, Belgium and France. They used an extremelly innovative tactic called "Blitzkrieg". Nobody could resist the German army at that time. The Dutch were overran in 1 week, the Belgians were overran in 3 weeks, the British troops in France were overran and evacuated in 3 weeks. The French were overran and surrendered in 6 weeks after Italy joined Germany in the war. Until 1942, nobody could resist the German army. Not Yugoslavia, not Greece, not USSR. It was just overwhelming.
We laughed when we had to sink their warships to prevent their use against us.
Part of the French fleet was sunk by Britain, the rest by French sailors. The US were not involved; at that time they were watching TV and selling weapons.
We quit laughing when the France's utter failure to prevent the spread of Nazi Germany put Britain on the verge of invasion. Rather than rolling over, the Brits fought the Nazis to a standstill.
Nonsense. After everyone interested in opposing the Nazis failed to stop their Panzers... The North Sea did. You might not be familiar with geography either, but let me fill you in... Britain is an island.
We were distracted
the French government said it would have to reconsider support for the entrance of several European nations into the EU based on their support of the US and the Iraq war
Not quite.
Chirac said that future newcomers' opinions were not welcome and that they should keep their mouths shut. While this was incredibly dumb, arrogant and counterproductive of him, it does not come close to threatening anything like what you mentioned.
Let's recall the facts:
1. 20% of American voters will use electronic voting.
2. These voting systems leave no paper trail.
3. The systems used are provided by private companies. Both hardware and software are closed source.
4. The top management of these companies have made public statements in favor of the Republican Party.
5. These systems are grossly insecure.
6. Most politicians are willing to try the nastiest tricks if it can serve them, they can do it and they believe it will not backfire.
Now, we are on slashdot. The population here is supposed to think rationally (I know, I'm not new here, notice the "supposed"). Let's use logic and see what we can derive from these 6 facts
A. Should anyone have doubts with the election results, no double check is possible, thus no possibility to substantiate the doubts (from 2.)
B. Should any rigging happen, only some people with the manufacturers can prove it (from 3.)
C. Should anyone have doubts with the election results, they will not be able to get a court to order a meaningful inquiry (from A. and B.)
D. Tampering with electronic voting systems will ensure a win in all but the most disproportionate races (from 1.)
E. Rigging the elections results is technically easy (from 5.)
F. Should any cheating happen, the people able to prove it will be reluctant to reveal it (from B. and 3.)
G. Politicians of all parties WILL cheat if they trust the manufacturers' management to keep quiet (from D. E. F. and 6.)
H. Republicans WILL cheat the election (from G. and 4.)
I. Republicans will win in all but the most disproportionate races (from H. and D.)
All of this may sound alarmist but it's not. Most people, even those who show outrage at the whole electronic voting issue don't really want to believe that such a scenario is possible, let alone likely. But if you think about it, this will happen unless (ALL senior republicans are honest) OR (ALL of the manufacturers' management are honest). To reverse the assertion, this will happen if (Ashcroft OR Cheney OR Rumsfeld OR
We're living dark times for democracy in the US. The constitution states that power belongs to the people and has instituted checks and balances to prevent any small group from wielding too much power. Now the power belongs to a handful (litterally) of people with a strong vested interest in using it.
And before you talk about the second amendment, remember that nobody will know that a coup happened. Who makes a revolution because elections might have been stolen? Nobody did in 2000 (I don't claim that the 2000 election was stolen, I just say that many people thought it might have been stolen)
And notice that everything comes from fact 2. Not giving a means for the people to check that the election follows the rules is the mistake most (other) democracies did not make.
Let's slashdot microsoft.com ;)