There are very, very few companies that contributed to Linux and open source in general as much as Red Hat did during last decade. In code, money, advocacy and jobs.
How much exactly did they contribute? AFAIK, RH does not have much more than a dozen full-time people working on GPLed Linux stuff. And this company generates $25m per quarter. This is insignificant. You just don't want to face it: the world divides in 2 categories; those who develop free code and those who use it. The ones who make money are the 2nd category. RH just commits a symbolic amount of ressources back to the community; the most of their R&D is in proprietary stuff. There's nothing morally wrong with that. When people give away something, they shouldn't expect (or demand) anything back; otherwise it's not a gift.
The single company that makes the most value out of Linux is IBM. They have the optimal structure (IBM Global Services), brand and product portfolio for that job.
That's the great ambiguity about "making money out of OSS". You can only make money if you take significantly more than you give. Does anybody knows about a corp. making money when 75% of their engineers write GPL code full-time?
my apologies to any French readers, I honestly mean no offense.
Yet, it is offensive. And of course completely inaccurate as any casual historical research would reveal. This enduring propensity of Americans to make fun of other countries' (real or alledged) military incompetence is really surprising, from an European POV. Nobody here would ridicule the German disaster in Stalingrad, the Polish cavalry charging against German Tanks or Mussolini getting mired in Ethiopia. I don't know, it just seems... inappropriate. Childish. Immature. Sort of like comparing dicks sizes; after a while, you realize it's pointless and just stop doing it.
While I fully agree with you that this censorship stuff is just some wackos with an agenda whining that nobody cares for their conspiracy theories; I can't help adressing the issues you raise:
* Where did all the UN Food for Oil money disppear to? Food for oil, I don't see much money in that deal. No money can't disappear.
* How much business did France and Germany do with Iraq in violation of UN resolutions? None that I know of. Of course I have seen a lot of this crap on public forums or frog-bashing sites. But no report of those on any remotely reliable source, not even on Fox News (only exception is an op'ed column by William Safire in the NYT, which allegations have been denied by the US administration itself). Given the unusually aggressive stance the Bush administration has taken against those countries, I guess that any credible lead on that subject would have been leaked to the press in no time.
* How the "sactions are killing millions of Iraqi babies" stories were bogus. Economic sanctions are a useful tool to destabilize a regime or prevent it from endangering its neighbours but you have to admit that the population ends up paying the highest price to them. It might eventually be worth the price (South African Apartheid regime) or not (Cuba comes to mind). In the case of Irak, I guess that the food for oil program somehow prevented the most severe famines but I don't know of hard facts. Do you have them?
* How much of the Arab and some European press were getting paid by Saddam Come on! You're not saying that any media that voiced opinions differing from the official White House point of view were sold to Saddam, are you? And which countries do you target in "some European press". Given your post's general tone, I guess you include France and Germany. But what about Spain, England or Poland. Even though these countries participated in the "Coalition of the Willing", their press (and public opinion) were mostly opposed to the war. Do you think the Blair administration would not have noticed or would have allowed it if the BBC was paid by Saddam? Do you know that the BBC is state-owned?
This whole hate story between the US and some other countries is childish and now sickening, with so many people dying. IMHO, all of this is the consequence of over-reaction from the US coupled with underestimation of the 9/11 trauma by most foreign countries. Add a layer of really poor diplomacy from both sides and you get the current diplomatic mess.
These conspiration theories and aggressiveness from both sides are really NOT constructive. Americans must understand that the reason why some countries opposed the war is that they genuinely thought that it was a Bad Idea (TM) that would not cure terrorism and may generate new problems. This has nothing to do with hatred of America of some more sinister goals. On the other hand, I think that the US (even the neocons) genuinely thought that Saddam's demise would help fight terrorism and bring more countries toward democracy. Considerations such as world hegemony or oil are absurd or secondary. President Bush's style and personnality is also secondary in comparison to the primary goal of bringing stability to Iraq. IMHO, he's not a very good president but I'm not saying that because of a European or leftish stance : I personally think that John McCain would have done a better job than both Bush and Gore.
Sorry for that long post, I guess I had to write it down somehow. And a disclaimer : If you hadn't guessed it yet, I'm French.
IIRC, this engineer (don't think he was a reverse engineer) gets into a contract with a highly secretive corporation. The deal is that he works for them for like 2 years, gets paid a truckload of cash but gets his entire memory of the experience wiped out. The story starts as he wakes up with this 2 years memory blank. He's told that he opted for a handful of trinkets as paycheck instead of the $$ just before undergoing the memory wipe. At first he's pretty pissed off against his former self. But he quickly realizes that some of these trinkets (wire, bus stub, poker chip...) prove incredibly useful. It dawns on him that his former self had a master plan in order to (i) survive and (ii) (re)discover a truth worth far more than the $. All in all, it's a pretty nice story. The unnerving feeling that he is remote controlled is mitigated by the fact that he is the remote controller. One of the good short stories by Dick. I hope Hollywood doesn't destroy the best ideas like Spielberg did in Minority Report.
Think about it, you're a terrorist or just someone who's heard about some terrorist act. Sure, you could walk to the closest US embassy and tell the CIA representative what you know. But this option has many drawbacks. You don't know how the CIA guy will reward you; and if someone sees you entering the US embassy, you're history.
Now with this system, you just connect to the net, bet $100 on "suicide bomber blows Knesset" (for instance); and anonymously reap your 10 or 100 thousands.
But since the purpose of this program is to prevent terrorist attacks, they have an issue here. What happens if your bet on "suicide bomber blows Knesset" warns Israeli security and enables them to prevent the attack? Do you still win? If so, what defines the ocurrence of the attack that you predicted? Who decides? If not, the system won't work since betting on some event will reduce its probability.
But the main issue is anonimity. You need to be sure that you can place your bets and collect your cash anonymously. Nobody wants his house to be targeted by a tomahawk missile. And who will trust the Pentagon's terms and conditions?
I want you to sell me a game like Jedi Knight, with a plot, with vast levels and worlds with convincing characters, that I can play with a group of friends
You know, I think you just defined a new genre. I mean nowadays, multi-player games are 1 vs 1 or few vs few or FFA (think RTS, FPS) or thousands of players more or less interacting (MMOLRPG). But very few games are few vs cpu ie. collaborative games. Of course games like commando or baldur's gate could be played with a couple of friends but were not designed in that goal (not First Person).
Now, what's the common point between most cool flix/books (star wars, matrix, LotR...) and plain ol' RPG? Both are about a bunch of friends trying together to reach some common goal. I would actually kill for a FPTRPG (need some more vowels here) or First Person Team RPG. First Person is the most immersive way to render a game; the reason why all RPG are Third Person is that you have to actually manage several NPCs in your group. If you only play ONE character and your party members are other PCs, you can stick to First Person. OTOH, MMRPG are First Person but are not really immersive because thousands of PCs make the world very unrealistic. For instance, the force is completely unmanageable in SWG. If they restrain player access to the force they breed frustration; and if everybody can get to the force you end up with scores of jedi-kids wielding light sabers and TKing rocks all over the place.
Now, back to our FPTRPG. You're a bunch of friends in this ship in the middle of a firefight with tie fighters. One player pilots the ship, dodging fire; two man the turrets and try to knock out the ties, the last one is fixing the machinery throwing every little bit of energy into the rear shields and trying to get this light speed engine back on. Afetr you evade the tie-fighters, you drop one player on some planet to investigate rumors about a new imperial secret weapon, two on another planet to convince them to join the rebels while the last one deals with the smugglers to improve your ship's equipment. That would be cool.
I realize that the game world would have to be way more flexible AND solid than current RPGs. You'd have to model the medium-term consequences of multiple simultaneous events. I don't know if the (AI?) technology is robust enough yet to make the perfect FPTRPG. But I feel that game studios can make a good enough product. And this one would be innovative for one.
All industries face that kind of price competition when they cease to innovate significantly. Decades ago, cloths, steel, shipyards, cars etc... became commodities and their production was gradually transferred to emerging countries. This is a Good Thing (TM) as it both lowers the price of standard products in developped countries while stifling growth and wealth in emerging countries.
The only solution for western producers is to continually innovate to support a superior price. Nowadays, nobody still produces cloth in developped countries except for high quality, high tech speciality stuff. The western car industry suffered tremendously in the 70's when the technology became mundane enough for Korea to mass-produce cars cheaply. The western industry reacted by a massive rightsizing, innovation (ABS, air-bags...), superior development process, better design and good marketing.
The steel industry is no different. The world's largest steel producer is Arcelor, an French-Belgian conglomerate. They have outsourced standard production to emerging countries and have developped high value added products (flat steels) that justify a double or triple price. And believe me, with all their taxes and social contributions, labor costs in France or Belgium are not cheaper than in the US.
Cost dumping will always exist. It drives costs down, stimulates innovation and allows third world development if managed correctly. Tariffs are a short-sighted answer. They delay the inevitable while artificially maintaining high prices and inefficient businesses.
Yet, I don't think westerners have much to do with the Egyptian ban on Islamist parties. The Egyptian constitution does ban them, not the US or EU or whoever else.
Also, I'd like to put things in perspective regarding the abstract, pro-democracy level. First, you can think of this ban as an equivalent of western separation of Church and State. Second, in many European countries, advocating Nazi ideas is illegal and Nazi political parties are banned. It might seem somewhat anti-democratic for Americans on the abstract level. Yet, the scars are still deep...
You, Sir, just proved yourself insensitive, arrogant and irrelevant.
Insensitive, because you just suggest, from the comfort of your couch, that other people's lives should be put at risk. Speaking of death and suffering so easily is indecent. Try to improve on this and you might have a chance to become a human being. Arrogant, because you just compare a whole nation with nursery kids. You don't have a fucking clue about what's going on in Egypt. But that doesn't stop you from demeaning people who deal with the issues everyday. What makes you think you're better? What makes you think you would behave better if you faced the same problems? Do you have the faintest idea of what are the problems we are talking about? Irrelevant, because this is not an issue of rewarding good and punishing bad. Airing the Matrix is not a reward for the good people; protecting them from death and injury is. Airing the Matrix is not a punishment for terrorists; preventing them from spreading further death and chaos is.
Heck, I'm rereading your post and I'm trying to put myself in an Egyptian's shoes. If I was Egyptian, I'd be infuriated by this. You don't have a clue, yet you talk like an expert (in a humiliating way) and you play with other people's lives because you don't care.
Ever travelled to Egypt? Ever read articles about the country from multiple sources (yes, that means other than Fox News)? Ever tried to genuinely understand what's going on over there and how Egyptians think?
Egypt is NOT a theocracy. Egyptian law actually bans Islamist political parties. Because Egypt has a HUGE problem with radical Islamism. One that dwarfs 9/11. Islamist terrorism does not mean "once, 2 years ago" in Egypt. It means "every month or so".
Egypt is not a full democracy either; at least not in the modern, western sense. Yet, they have made continuing progress on that path, considering that just 30 years ago, they were in a state of chronic war against Israel. They are now one of the most stable, reliable country in this region.
You're so obscured by your binary (good/evil) way of thinking that you can't even read. "Such religious issues, raised in previous times, caused crises." Violence also played a part in the decision, the committee said. "Screening the movie may cause troubles and harm social peace," according to the statement. Remember, we're talking about a country that has a long history of war against Israel and is painfully trying to get over it. They are plagued by groups of armed Islamist terrorists. This movie portrays Zion as the last hope of Mankind, as a sanctuary where good is besieged by evil. They KNOW that the Matrix is going to be targetted by terrorists. Setting up a bomb in a movie theater is incredibly easy. I don't think either of your 2 statements are true. I would put my money on: #3: This movie is offensive to most of our population. Violent groups will use this opportunity to bring death and chaos. The benefits of airing the movie do not exceed the costs.
This is really about protectionism, and keeping folks like yourself from shopping online, outside your own borders, by artificially inflating the costs of shopping abroad.
I think you got it wrong.
Today: If EU customer buys to EU vendor (e-commerce or brick&mortar), EU customer pays VAT. If EU customer buys to foreign brick&mortar vendor, EU customer pays VAT. If EU customer buys to foreign e-commerce vendor, EU customer does NOT pay VAT.
Tommorrow: If EU customer buys to any vendor (EU or foreign, e-commerce or brick&mortar), EU customer pays VAT.
In short, this is just the obvious solution to a current loophole that provided foreign e-tailers with an unfair advantage against everybody else. This is why nobody is complaining; AOL etc... are just happy they are not sued for the VAT they did NOT collect until now. Also this crap about putting an administrative cost upon US businesses is just that, crap. When a foreign company wants to do business with the US, it has to comply with US laws, taxes and regulations. Nobody whines about that.
to "dump" their prices in the traditional definition of the word, which is temporarily selling below your variable cost to eliminate competition. Thank you for your quick business lesson prof. Even according to your (inaccurate) definition of dumping, you fail to account for some very significant variable costs. You have sales costs (Cost D); this is sales rep salaries etc... For most ISVs, sales costs range between 20% and 40% of revenue. You have marketing costs (Cost E); the article specifically states that MS will invest hugely in direct marketing (promotions, ads, retail costs etc...). all modern companies consider those as direct, variable costs. So basically, variable costs for SW companies typically range in the 25%-50% range. Hence, MS selling at quarter price might be selling below variable costs.
Now, there's the problem of the definition of dumping. In an answer to your original post, someone posted the following definition : Dumping [umich.edu] - Export price that is "unfairly low," defined as either below the home market price (normal value) (hence price discrimination) or below cost. Originally, dumping has been used in relation to industrial goods. With the economy moving from industry to services to information; the meaning of the term has evolved to include the below the normal price. Obviously the article used dumping in the sense of price discrimination.
So once again, Prof, thanks for the quick business lesson.
You know, we've seen countless books, studies, articles, posts etc... trying to explain what breeds violence. Depending on the author's agenda, the main reason for violence is Hollywood, video games (or AD&D a couple decades ago), porn, puritanism, poor parenting, a deep flaw in human nature, a genetic predisposition, the government, the corporations, poverty, advertising, space aliens... you name it.
What srikes me is that when a kid (or an adult actually) goes on a shooting spree, everybody tries to explain it by one or more of the above-mentioned reasons. But noone seems to state the obvious: (s)he killed because (s)he decided so. I'm not saying that no exogenous condition can ever have any influence on your behavior. But come on, is it so unthinkable that the main reason why one behaves badly is that (s)he decided to act selfishly? We all have felt strong surges of anger at some time without punching or killing anyone. We all know brothers and sisters with essentially the same genetic material and the same parenting, living in the same society who end up behaving very differently. Some kids grew up in Nazi extermination camps and ended up being decent people.
Why do we always need to find an external, causal relation to explain each and any of our decisions? Are we so afraid of facing the fact that we enjoy free will? That we should take responsibility in our own actions?
Everybody finds it easier to take responsibility for good actions than bad ones. I wonder if the general view that someone, somewhere, somehow is the cause of bad actions does not strengthen this natural trend. I don't think a human being ever does evil for the sake of it. Even the worst criminals have their own elaborate set of ethics that morally justifies their crimes in their own eyes. It always relies on a shift of responsibility over other people: "eveybody does it", "they started", "it's me or them", "I deserve more"... I can't remember any tiny (or not so tiny) evil thing I've done in my life without having such an excuse for myself.
In essence, all violence is caused by people who have a "good" excuse for doing so. And the excuse always relies on putting the blame on others. If you want to end violence, drop the excuse.
Then I guess you should go a little deeper in your science studies before jumping to conclusions.
There's this thing called Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle that states that you cannot know both the position and velocity of a particle with perfect precision at the same time. It seems that lots of things in the brain take place below Heisenberg's threshold, where causality is a bit more complex than in Newtonian physics.
Nope, Crime Against Humanity (CAH) doesn't "just" mean killing millions of people. When the allies entered Germany at the end of WWII, many people realized that the Nazis had committed crimes which exceeded what had been known before by several orders of magnitude. The concept of CAH was developped at that time.
IANAL, yet I've read a number of books about the Nuremberg trials etc... The extermination of Jews by the Nazis was very specific since it was conducted with the intent of destroying each and every Jew on the surface of the planet. They basically denied the Jews' human status. Its other aspects - perpetrated on a large scale (est. 6m people), "industrial" killing process etc... - strike the mind too. But any mass murder is not a CAH.
Of course, the notion of CAH has been used a lot with political second thoughts. Yet one should not forget that unique genocide dimension. So the Nazis killing communists doesn't qualify as CAH, their slaughter of Roms and Tziganes does, though. Communism and the Soviet regime have committed heinous crimes in history, yet not all of them are CAH. The organized famine against Ukrainian peasants in the early 30's do not qualify IMHO. It killed an estimated 10m people, yet Lenin's goal was to weaken opposition, not to wipe out a whole people. The massive deportation of whole ethnic groups qualify though, and the Cambodian genocide too. In the same vein, the slaughter of Indian tribes (or native Amercians if you prefer) by the US should not be considered as a CAH. The US built a civilization in which Indians could not survive meaningfully, yet destroying all Indians was not their goal.
All of this might sound like hair-splitting, but it is not. Yes, a crime is a crime. But some crimes are so alien, so unhuman that they deserve some special consideration.
So the grandparent could not have just said 10 million people, all Nazi crimes were not CAH. And there's no hidden agenda in pointing this out. Generally speaking, using the terms genocide, crime against humanity etc... too easily is dangerous since it blurs the limits. DRM protection may be a Bad Thing (TM), but talking of crime against humanity is just moronic.
Sorry, I've just read your reply. Don't know if you'll read this but since you seem interested, I'll post this anyway.
First about the desecration of UK (I didn't hear about US) WWII gravesites. I don't know how it was covered by US media, but you must know that It has been taken very seriously here. ALL major papers, TV channels and radio stations have mentioned it and condemned it. French Prime minister and a number of ministers have made public appearances to condemn it. Chirac has even gone to the very unusual step of writing a letter to UK's Queen (I suppose it's the correct protocol) apologizing and condemning it. Now, about what exactly happened AFAIK: some morons have drawn UK-hating signs and messages on a gravesite. No grave-digging. Happened just once. Basically, everybody in France was disgusted by this and I'm sure you can understand than in a 60 millions people country, there might be a couple wackos who could do something like that. This is an isolated incident and doesn't mean anything about French people.
About the article you linked to: this really is crap. First, I'm sure you realize that the tone of the paper is extremist and that the guy actually advocates racism. He just stops short of saying that all Arabs/Muslims are jew-hating rapists. I don't know who's that guy, but he's obviously an Arab-hating racist. Saying that Chirac is a friend of Saddam Hussein doesn't make sense. They met once in '77, at a time when Iraq was regarded by everybody (including the US, I read Rumsfeld met Hussein in '83) as a legitimate business partner. Period. I must admit that France has not always been very concerned about the human rights track-record of countries we're doing business with but hey, are the US sinless on that matter? Chirac has been under a lot of heat about the handling of public funds recently. Most French people (incl. myself) believe that he has been very generous with himself, but not on a huge scale. To put things in perspective, the media and opinion here are VERY suspicious on any connection between the state and corporations. A business executive joining the government while maintaining any kind of interest in a private business would be unthinkable here. All French politician advocate human rights, freedom and democracy. Recently, most French politicians have repeatedly stated that they considered the US our long-time friends etc...
Yes, Bush is often portrayed as a moron; but most of the times articles insist on the new doctrine from US neo-conservatives. Those are not portrayed as moronic but as slightly scaring. You can also quite often read people supporting the US position in mainstream papers or TV shows. All major papers have covered extensively on Irak's regime's crimes. Statements from Iraki officials are always taken with a huge grain of salt. But US statements too!!
Yes, we've had a surge in anti-semitic acts. Yes they mainly come from radical muslims. But pretending that we don't care or that we excuse them is just a plain lie. Everybody talks about it and the police have taken serious (and, might I say efficient) steps to prevent more of this. And giving the impression that France has now become a country where Jews are forced to hide is just a lie.
Yes there has been a number of cases of gang rapes in some very unsafe cities. This is a crime problem and is dealt with accordingly. All countries have similar problems. I've lived in San Francisco and would not have let my girlfriend alone at night in the Tenderloin. One rape per month is terrible, but it's not a huge rate in a 60 million people country. Hinting that all Muslims are potential rapists is racist and untrue.
The problem is not Islam, it's radical Islam. Islam, with approx 6 millions souls is the second religion in France. This comes from both historic (Algeria was once a part of France) and geographic reasons. Overall, we've done a poor job of integrating them. They have a low average income and high unemploym
No offense meant, but you've just responded to an informed and supported post with a poor combination of FUD, wishful thinking and tinfoil hat conspiracy theories. While I certainly do not believe that record companies are exactly charities, I'd like to correct some facts:
BULLSHIT. You can't justify stealing with that argument. What they're saying is, "Most of our investments fail." Would you be satisfied with that performance rate as a business? If you accept that premise, why should a successfull artist have to support 99 crappy artists? Because they accept this BEFORE they are succesful. Record companies offer a simple deal to artists: upfront funding and marketing support versus some ownership on their production for the next few years. No artist is ever forced with a gun on his (her) head to accept this deal. The reason why they sign is that NOBODY knows beforehand whether the artist will be succesful or not. Please also note that small/independant labels do EXACTLY the same. It's not the privilege of big business or RIAA members. This is actually very similar to venture capital: invest in a number of companies, rake in on the few succesful ones. VCs are not exactly angels either, but I guess you get the point.
The answer is of course they're lying. They own the studios that record the albums, they own the song writers who write the songs, they own the plants that press the cds. It's called vertical integration. Wrong. Record companies unsually do not own pressing plants, it does not make economic sense. They outsource this job to (usually) independant companies with the industrial knowledge and equipment to produce huge numbers of CDs, DVDs quickly and cheaply. Cinram, for instance is a public company doing just that. Also, I'm sure that you know that since the civil war, nobody can own another person. Record companies don't own songwriters, they own some rights over their production, for a given length of time.
They produce the album as cheap as possible, CLAIM it costs a fortune, and pocket the rest:) You're implying that the labels are making huge profits. They are not. Check their publicly available financial data. Most record companies generate profits but not unusually high profits. For instance, operating profit for Universal Music is 8% of its sales, for Warner Music it's 2%. That means that when Warner makes $1 on a CD, their costs represent 98c. Before you claim that they lie on their numbers, please remember that underestimating your profits does not make much sense when you're a public company.
Do you really think the owners of record labels sit around and say "You know the thing that sucks about this business, we're always loosing cash." If that were the case record companies would go out of business all the time when their income sources (artists) dried up. Poor logic. There's a middle ground between overcharging and going out of business. And that's precisely where most record companies stand. And no, they are not sitting around; they're just trying to improve their bottom line like anybody else. This basically means reducing costs, increasing the efficience of their artists selection process and maximizing the cash they generate from each artist they sign. Nothing intrinsically evil here.
Now, once again, I'm not saying that these guys are the artists' or the public's best friends; they are just businessmen. I realize that most mainstream bands suck hard. I'm just trying to point out that this kind of posts is just a self-indulging attempt at finding a moral justification for your actions. Face it. You download mp3s because you can, not because it's right.
About government power: we tend to be less concerned than Americans about limiting it. Or more precisely, I believe that the government's involvement in economic matters (high taxes, high benefits) is more a problem of enonomic efficiency than of public freedom. BTW I loved your last Jefferson quotation : "The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
About the UN: I agree that the UN are far from perfect and I would gladly welcome any proposition to improve it. Yet I'm usually cautious about solutions based on razing and rebuilding from scratch. While this has been necessary in rare occasions, most "revolutions" in history have not met expectations.
About catering to the Muslim world: I don't know the exact figures but I believe we have more than 10% of Muslims in France. Generally speaking, we've done a poor job of integrating them and they have on average lower incomes and higher unemployment rates. Also, we've been very concerned these years about the rise of "communitarism" (is it a word in English?) i.e. the fact that an increasing number of people define themselves more by the community they belong to (religious, ethnic, even sexual preference) than by their French citizenship. Many people see this as a threat to the social bond and a sign of the failure of our integration model. This may well have been a significant factor in our government's decision to adopt its stance in the UN. Anything that would stir tensions between communities is regarded as a bad thing for our country. We already see too many people overtly supporting Saddam or shouting anti-semitic slogans in anti-war protests. And believe it or not, this is a real concern for us.
It's in my best interests for the U.S. to be on top. The United Nations doesn't hold my best interests. France sure as fuck doesn't.
You know, the same reasoning would (to some extent) make you prefer despotism to democracy. Your neighbor doesn't hold your best interests, you do. Still, you agree (I assume) to give your neighbor(s) some power over you. I don't think that France or French people want to decide what the US or American people should do in their everyday life. The idea here is that in some rare critical international issues (read "war") a "democratic" international body (the UN) should override individual countries interests. I'm not sure how far I can push this nations/people analogy, but I think you get the idea.
I consider the Constitution of the United States to be the single greatest document ever known to man Everybody in the US seems to believe this, or that no country is freer than the US, or whatever along the same lines... This is truly amazing! Do they tell you that repeatedly in school as soon as you can talk? Come on, who can say that the US constitution is better than any other democratic country's. Are you a consitutional lawyer? Have you actually read the US constitution? Have you read other countries constitutions? Besides, more important than the constitution is the way it is implemented. Have you visited other countries, do you read foreign newspapers? All democracies have their flaws. I acknowledge that most European countries have serious issues regarding corruption and excessive bureaucracy. But the US is far from flawless! To a foreigner, the deep (incestuous) ties between the government and big business in the US should be a major concern for any responsible American citizen. Also, many Europeans are puzzled (to say the least) by the absence of clear distinction between state and religion in the US. This feeling is exacerbated by the recent drift of the Iraq war toward a religious war. This seemingly absolute faith that the US is right or has moral superiority is both a strength and weakness for America. Yet I think that Americans should think about it a little bit more. It cant't hurt.
This post is not intended as a flame, nor does it want to protest or support the US intervention in Iraq. I'm just trying to improve my (and maybe your) understanding of these complex issues.
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There are very, very few companies that contributed to Linux and open source in general as much as Red Hat did during last decade. In code, money, advocacy and jobs.
How much exactly did they contribute? AFAIK, RH does not have much more than a dozen full-time people working on GPLed Linux stuff. And this company generates $25m per quarter. This is insignificant.
You just don't want to face it: the world divides in 2 categories; those who develop free code and those who use it. The ones who make money are the 2nd category. RH just commits a symbolic amount of ressources back to the community; the most of their R&D is in proprietary stuff. There's nothing morally wrong with that. When people give away something, they shouldn't expect (or demand) anything back; otherwise it's not a gift.
The single company that makes the most value out of Linux is IBM. They have the optimal structure (IBM Global Services), brand and product portfolio for that job.
That's the great ambiguity about "making money out of OSS". You can only make money if you take significantly more than you give. Does anybody knows about a corp. making money when 75% of their engineers write GPL code full-time?
my apologies to any French readers, I honestly mean no offense.
... inappropriate. Childish. Immature. Sort of like comparing dicks sizes; after a while, you realize it's pointless and just stop doing it.
Yet, it is offensive. And of course completely inaccurate as any casual historical research would reveal.
This enduring propensity of Americans to make fun of other countries' (real or alledged) military incompetence is really surprising, from an European POV. Nobody here would ridicule the German disaster in Stalingrad, the Polish cavalry charging against German Tanks or Mussolini getting mired in Ethiopia. I don't know, it just seems
While I fully agree with you that this censorship stuff is just some wackos with an agenda whining that nobody cares for their conspiracy theories; I can't help adressing the issues you raise:
* Where did all the UN Food for Oil money disppear to?
Food for oil, I don't see much money in that deal. No money can't disappear.
* How much business did France and Germany do with Iraq in violation of UN resolutions?
None that I know of. Of course I have seen a lot of this crap on public forums or frog-bashing sites. But no report of those on any remotely reliable source, not even on Fox News (only exception is an op'ed column by William Safire in the NYT, which allegations have been denied by the US administration itself). Given the unusually aggressive stance the Bush administration has taken against those countries, I guess that any credible lead on that subject would have been leaked to the press in no time.
* How the "sactions are killing millions of Iraqi babies" stories were bogus.
Economic sanctions are a useful tool to destabilize a regime or prevent it from endangering its neighbours but you have to admit that the population ends up paying the highest price to them. It might eventually be worth the price (South African Apartheid regime) or not (Cuba comes to mind). In the case of Irak, I guess that the food for oil program somehow prevented the most severe famines but I don't know of hard facts. Do you have them?
* How much of the Arab and some European press were getting paid by Saddam
Come on! You're not saying that any media that voiced opinions differing from the official White House point of view were sold to Saddam, are you? And which countries do you target in "some European press". Given your post's general tone, I guess you include France and Germany. But what about Spain, England or Poland. Even though these countries participated in the "Coalition of the Willing", their press (and public opinion) were mostly opposed to the war. Do you think the Blair administration would not have noticed or would have allowed it if the BBC was paid by Saddam? Do you know that the BBC is state-owned?
This whole hate story between the US and some other countries is childish and now sickening, with so many people dying. IMHO, all of this is the consequence of over-reaction from the US coupled with underestimation of the 9/11 trauma by most foreign countries. Add a layer of really poor diplomacy from both sides and you get the current diplomatic mess.
These conspiration theories and aggressiveness from both sides are really NOT constructive. Americans must understand that the reason why some countries opposed the war is that they genuinely thought that it was a Bad Idea (TM) that would not cure terrorism and may generate new problems. This has nothing to do with hatred of America of some more sinister goals. On the other hand, I think that the US (even the neocons) genuinely thought that Saddam's demise would help fight terrorism and bring more countries toward democracy. Considerations such as world hegemony or oil are absurd or secondary. President Bush's style and personnality is also secondary in comparison to the primary goal of bringing stability to Iraq. IMHO, he's not a very good president but I'm not saying that because of a European or leftish stance : I personally think that John McCain would have done a better job than both Bush and Gore.
Sorry for that long post, I guess I had to write it down somehow. And a disclaimer : If you hadn't guessed it yet, I'm French.
And my IQ is 373 Kelvin. I'm uber-genius.
I knew Saddam had bioweapons.
Besides, the bug thrives at 121C. Guess what's the current temperature in Iraq's desert. 121F. Cant' be a coincidence.
IIRC, this engineer (don't think he was a reverse engineer) gets into a contract with a highly secretive corporation. The deal is that he works for them for like 2 years, gets paid a truckload of cash but gets his entire memory of the experience wiped out.
The story starts as he wakes up with this 2 years memory blank. He's told that he opted for a handful of trinkets as paycheck instead of the $$ just before undergoing the memory wipe. At first he's pretty pissed off against his former self. But he quickly realizes that some of these trinkets (wire, bus stub, poker chip...) prove incredibly useful.
It dawns on him that his former self had a master plan in order to (i) survive and (ii) (re)discover a truth worth far more than the $.
All in all, it's a pretty nice story. The unnerving feeling that he is remote controlled is mitigated by the fact that he is the remote controller. One of the good short stories by Dick. I hope Hollywood doesn't destroy the best ideas like Spielberg did in Minority Report.
Hasn't transitioned yet to the metric system;
Is way too much influenced by the ads he's fed up all day long on digital terrestrial / cable / satellite / DSL TV (he's got ALL of them, I guess)
Wow, and I thought all slashdotters were sysadmins or IT consultants...
This could work as an anonymous bounty pool.
Think about it, you're a terrorist or just someone who's heard about some terrorist act. Sure, you could walk to the closest US embassy and tell the CIA representative what you know. But this option has many drawbacks. You don't know how the CIA guy will reward you; and if someone sees you entering the US embassy, you're history.
Now with this system, you just connect to the net, bet $100 on "suicide bomber blows Knesset" (for instance); and anonymously reap your 10 or 100 thousands.
But since the purpose of this program is to prevent terrorist attacks, they have an issue here. What happens if your bet on "suicide bomber blows Knesset" warns Israeli security and enables them to prevent the attack? Do you still win? If so, what defines the ocurrence of the attack that you predicted? Who decides? If not, the system won't work since betting on some event will reduce its probability.
But the main issue is anonimity. You need to be sure that you can place your bets and collect your cash anonymously. Nobody wants his house to be targeted by a tomahawk missile. And who will trust the Pentagon's terms and conditions?
I would rather have a single new original movie, instead of tons of the same old stuff.
Please, don't tell me you liked Hulk I!!!
I want you to sell me a game like Jedi Knight, with a plot, with vast levels and worlds with convincing characters, that I can play with a group of friends
You know, I think you just defined a new genre. I mean nowadays, multi-player games are 1 vs 1 or few vs few or FFA (think RTS, FPS) or thousands of players more or less interacting (MMOLRPG). But very few games are few vs cpu ie. collaborative games. Of course games like commando or baldur's gate could be played with a couple of friends but were not designed in that goal (not First Person).
Now, what's the common point between most cool flix/books (star wars, matrix, LotR...) and plain ol' RPG? Both are about a bunch of friends trying together to reach some common goal. I would actually kill for a FPTRPG (need some more vowels here) or First Person Team RPG. First Person is the most immersive way to render a game; the reason why all RPG are Third Person is that you have to actually manage several NPCs in your group. If you only play ONE character and your party members are other PCs, you can stick to First Person. OTOH, MMRPG are First Person but are not really immersive because thousands of PCs make the world very unrealistic. For instance, the force is completely unmanageable in SWG. If they restrain player access to the force they breed frustration; and if everybody can get to the force you end up with scores of jedi-kids wielding light sabers and TKing rocks all over the place.
Now, back to our FPTRPG. You're a bunch of friends in this ship in the middle of a firefight with tie fighters. One player pilots the ship, dodging fire; two man the turrets and try to knock out the ties, the last one is fixing the machinery throwing every little bit of energy into the rear shields and trying to get this light speed engine back on. Afetr you evade the tie-fighters, you drop one player on some planet to investigate rumors about a new imperial secret weapon, two on another planet to convince them to join the rebels while the last one deals with the smugglers to improve your ship's equipment. That would be cool.
I realize that the game world would have to be way more flexible AND solid than current RPGs. You'd have to model the medium-term consequences of multiple simultaneous events. I don't know if the (AI?) technology is robust enough yet to make the perfect FPTRPG. But I feel that game studios can make a good enough product. And this one would be innovative for one.
Like there is anything steel-specific in this...
All industries face that kind of price competition when they cease to innovate significantly. Decades ago, cloths, steel, shipyards, cars etc... became commodities and their production was gradually transferred to emerging countries. This is a Good Thing (TM) as it both lowers the price of standard products in developped countries while stifling growth and wealth in emerging countries.
The only solution for western producers is to continually innovate to support a superior price. Nowadays, nobody still produces cloth in developped countries except for high quality, high tech speciality stuff. The western car industry suffered tremendously in the 70's when the technology became mundane enough for Korea to mass-produce cars cheaply. The western industry reacted by a massive rightsizing, innovation (ABS, air-bags...), superior development process, better design and good marketing.
The steel industry is no different. The world's largest steel producer is Arcelor, an French-Belgian conglomerate. They have outsourced standard production to emerging countries and have developped high value added products (flat steels) that justify a double or triple price. And believe me, with all their taxes and social contributions, labor costs in France or Belgium are not cheaper than in the US.
Cost dumping will always exist. It drives costs down, stimulates innovation and allows third world development if managed correctly. Tariffs are a short-sighted answer. They delay the inevitable while artificially maintaining high prices and inefficient businesses.
I get your point and I agree with its spirit.
Yet, I don't think westerners have much to do with the Egyptian ban on Islamist parties. The Egyptian constitution does ban them, not the US or EU or whoever else.
Also, I'd like to put things in perspective regarding the abstract, pro-democracy level. First, you can think of this ban as an equivalent of western separation of Church and State. Second, in many European countries, advocating Nazi ideas is illegal and Nazi political parties are banned. It might seem somewhat anti-democratic for Americans on the abstract level. Yet, the scars are still deep...
You, Sir, just proved yourself insensitive, arrogant and irrelevant.
Insensitive, because you just suggest, from the comfort of your couch, that other people's lives should be put at risk. Speaking of death and suffering so easily is indecent. Try to improve on this and you might have a chance to become a human being.
Arrogant, because you just compare a whole nation with nursery kids. You don't have a fucking clue about what's going on in Egypt. But that doesn't stop you from demeaning people who deal with the issues everyday. What makes you think you're better? What makes you think you would behave better if you faced the same problems? Do you have the faintest idea of what are the problems we are talking about?
Irrelevant, because this is not an issue of rewarding good and punishing bad. Airing the Matrix is not a reward for the good people; protecting them from death and injury is. Airing the Matrix is not a punishment for terrorists; preventing them from spreading further death and chaos is.
Heck, I'm rereading your post and I'm trying to put myself in an Egyptian's shoes. If I was Egyptian, I'd be infuriated by this. You don't have a clue, yet you talk like an expert (in a humiliating way) and you play with other people's lives because you don't care.
Talk about an uninformed, self-righteous post!!!
:
Ever travelled to Egypt? Ever read articles about the country from multiple sources (yes, that means other than Fox News)? Ever tried to genuinely understand what's going on over there and how Egyptians think?
Egypt is NOT a theocracy. Egyptian law actually bans Islamist political parties. Because Egypt has a HUGE problem with radical Islamism. One that dwarfs 9/11. Islamist terrorism does not mean "once, 2 years ago" in Egypt. It means "every month or so".
Egypt is not a full democracy either; at least not in the modern, western sense. Yet, they have made continuing progress on that path, considering that just 30 years ago, they were in a state of chronic war against Israel. They are now one of the most stable, reliable country in this region.
You're so obscured by your binary (good/evil) way of thinking that you can't even read.
"Such religious issues, raised in previous times, caused crises." Violence also played a part in the decision, the committee said. "Screening the movie may cause troubles and harm social peace," according to the statement.
Remember, we're talking about a country that has a long history of war against Israel and is painfully trying to get over it. They are plagued by groups of armed Islamist terrorists. This movie portrays Zion as the last hope of Mankind, as a sanctuary where good is besieged by evil. They KNOW that the Matrix is going to be targetted by terrorists. Setting up a bomb in a movie theater is incredibly easy. I don't think either of your 2 statements are true. I would put my money on
#3: This movie is offensive to most of our population. Violent groups will use this opportunity to bring death and chaos. The benefits of airing the movie do not exceed the costs.
This is really about protectionism, and keeping folks like yourself from shopping online, outside your own borders, by artificially inflating the costs of shopping abroad.
:
:
I think you got it wrong.
Today
If EU customer buys to EU vendor (e-commerce or brick&mortar), EU customer pays VAT.
If EU customer buys to foreign brick&mortar vendor, EU customer pays VAT.
If EU customer buys to foreign e-commerce vendor, EU customer does NOT pay VAT.
Tommorrow
If EU customer buys to any vendor (EU or foreign, e-commerce or brick&mortar), EU customer pays VAT.
In short, this is just the obvious solution to a current loophole that provided foreign e-tailers with an unfair advantage against everybody else. This is why nobody is complaining; AOL etc... are just happy they are not sued for the VAT they did NOT collect until now. Also this crap about putting an administrative cost upon US businesses is just that, crap. When a foreign company wants to do business with the US, it has to comply with US laws, taxes and regulations. Nobody whines about that.
to "dump" their prices in the traditional definition of the word, which is temporarily selling below your variable cost to eliminate competition.
Thank you for your quick business lesson prof. Even according to your (inaccurate) definition of dumping, you fail to account for some very significant variable costs. You have sales costs (Cost D); this is sales rep salaries etc... For most ISVs, sales costs range between 20% and 40% of revenue. You have marketing costs (Cost E); the article specifically states that MS will invest hugely in direct marketing (promotions, ads, retail costs etc...). all modern companies consider those as direct, variable costs.
So basically, variable costs for SW companies typically range in the 25%-50% range. Hence, MS selling at quarter price might be selling below variable costs.
Now, there's the problem of the definition of dumping. In an answer to your original post, someone posted the following definition : Dumping [umich.edu] - Export price that is "unfairly low," defined as either below the home market price (normal value) (hence price discrimination) or below cost.
Originally, dumping has been used in relation to industrial goods. With the economy moving from industry to services to information; the meaning of the term has evolved to include the below the normal price. Obviously the article used dumping in the sense of price discrimination.
So once again, Prof, thanks for the quick business lesson.
You know, we've seen countless books, studies, articles, posts etc... trying to explain what breeds violence. Depending on the author's agenda, the main reason for violence is Hollywood, video games (or AD&D a couple decades ago), porn, puritanism, poor parenting, a deep flaw in human nature, a genetic predisposition, the government, the corporations, poverty, advertising, space aliens... you name it.
What srikes me is that when a kid (or an adult actually) goes on a shooting spree, everybody tries to explain it by one or more of the above-mentioned reasons. But noone seems to state the obvious: (s)he killed because (s)he decided so. I'm not saying that no exogenous condition can ever have any influence on your behavior. But come on, is it so unthinkable that the main reason why one behaves badly is that (s)he decided to act selfishly? We all have felt strong surges of anger at some time without punching or killing anyone. We all know brothers and sisters with essentially the same genetic material and the same parenting, living in the same society who end up behaving very differently. Some kids grew up in Nazi extermination camps and ended up being decent people.
Why do we always need to find an external, causal relation to explain each and any of our decisions? Are we so afraid of facing the fact that we enjoy free will? That we should take responsibility in our own actions?
Everybody finds it easier to take responsibility for good actions than bad ones. I wonder if the general view that someone, somewhere, somehow is the cause of bad actions does not strengthen this natural trend. I don't think a human being ever does evil for the sake of it. Even the worst criminals have their own elaborate set of ethics that morally justifies their crimes in their own eyes. It always relies on a shift of responsibility over other people: "eveybody does it", "they started", "it's me or them", "I deserve more"... I can't remember any tiny (or not so tiny) evil thing I've done in my life without having such an excuse for myself.
In essence, all violence is caused by people who have a "good" excuse for doing so. And the excuse always relies on putting the blame on others. If you want to end violence, drop the excuse.
Then I guess you should go a little deeper in your science studies before jumping to conclusions.
There's this thing called Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle that states that you cannot know both the position and velocity of a particle with perfect precision at the same time. It seems that lots of things in the brain take place below Heisenberg's threshold, where causality is a bit more complex than in Newtonian physics.
Nope, Crime Against Humanity (CAH) doesn't "just" mean killing millions of people. When the allies entered Germany at the end of WWII, many people realized that the Nazis had committed crimes which exceeded what had been known before by several orders of magnitude. The concept of CAH was developped at that time.
IANAL, yet I've read a number of books about the Nuremberg trials etc... The extermination of Jews by the Nazis was very specific since it was conducted with the intent of destroying each and every Jew on the surface of the planet. They basically denied the Jews' human status. Its other aspects - perpetrated on a large scale (est. 6m people), "industrial" killing process etc... - strike the mind too. But any mass murder is not a CAH.
Of course, the notion of CAH has been used a lot with political second thoughts. Yet one should not forget that unique genocide dimension. So the Nazis killing communists doesn't qualify as CAH, their slaughter of Roms and Tziganes does, though. Communism and the Soviet regime have committed heinous crimes in history, yet not all of them are CAH. The organized famine against Ukrainian peasants in the early 30's do not qualify IMHO. It killed an estimated 10m people, yet Lenin's goal was to weaken opposition, not to wipe out a whole people. The massive deportation of whole ethnic groups qualify though, and the Cambodian genocide too. In the same vein, the slaughter of Indian tribes (or native Amercians if you prefer) by the US should not be considered as a CAH. The US built a civilization in which Indians could not survive meaningfully, yet destroying all Indians was not their goal.
All of this might sound like hair-splitting, but it is not. Yes, a crime is a crime. But some crimes are so alien, so unhuman that they deserve some special consideration.
So the grandparent could not have just said 10 million people, all Nazi crimes were not CAH. And there's no hidden agenda in pointing this out. Generally speaking, using the terms genocide, crime against humanity etc... too easily is dangerous since it blurs the limits. DRM protection may be a Bad Thing (TM), but talking of crime against humanity is just moronic.
Only the Protoss send probes. Terrans send SCV's.
Sorry, I've just read your reply. Don't know if you'll read this but since you seem interested, I'll post this anyway.
First about the desecration of UK (I didn't hear about US) WWII gravesites. I don't know how it was covered by US media, but you must know that It has been taken very seriously here. ALL major papers, TV channels and radio stations have mentioned it and condemned it. French Prime minister and a number of ministers have made public appearances to condemn it. Chirac has even gone to the very unusual step of writing a letter to UK's Queen (I suppose it's the correct protocol) apologizing and condemning it. Now, about what exactly happened AFAIK: some morons have drawn UK-hating signs and messages on a gravesite. No grave-digging. Happened just once. Basically, everybody in France was disgusted by this and I'm sure you can understand than in a 60 millions people country, there might be a couple wackos who could do something like that. This is an isolated incident and doesn't mean anything about French people.
About the article you linked to: this really is crap. First, I'm sure you realize that the tone of the paper is extremist and that the guy actually advocates racism. He just stops short of saying that all Arabs/Muslims are jew-hating rapists. I don't know who's that guy, but he's obviously an Arab-hating racist.
Saying that Chirac is a friend of Saddam Hussein doesn't make sense. They met once in '77, at a time when Iraq was regarded by everybody (including the US, I read Rumsfeld met Hussein in '83) as a legitimate business partner. Period. I must admit that France has not always been very concerned about the human rights track-record of countries we're doing business with but hey, are the US sinless on that matter?
Chirac has been under a lot of heat about the handling of public funds recently. Most French people (incl. myself) believe that he has been very generous with himself, but not on a huge scale. To put things in perspective, the media and opinion here are VERY suspicious on any connection between the state and corporations. A business executive joining the government while maintaining any kind of interest in a private business would be unthinkable here.
All French politician advocate human rights, freedom and democracy. Recently, most French politicians have repeatedly stated that they considered the US our long-time friends etc...
Yes, Bush is often portrayed as a moron; but most of the times articles insist on the new doctrine from US neo-conservatives. Those are not portrayed as moronic but as slightly scaring. You can also quite often read people supporting the US position in mainstream papers or TV shows. All major papers have covered extensively on Irak's regime's crimes. Statements from Iraki officials are always taken with a huge grain of salt. But US statements too!!
Yes, we've had a surge in anti-semitic acts. Yes they mainly come from radical muslims. But pretending that we don't care or that we excuse them is just a plain lie. Everybody talks about it and the police have taken serious (and, might I say efficient) steps to prevent more of this. And giving the impression that France has now become a country where Jews are forced to hide is just a lie.
Yes there has been a number of cases of gang rapes in some very unsafe cities. This is a crime problem and is dealt with accordingly. All countries have similar problems. I've lived in San Francisco and would not have let my girlfriend alone at night in the Tenderloin. One rape per month is terrible, but it's not a huge rate in a 60 million people country. Hinting that all Muslims are potential rapists is racist and untrue.
The problem is not Islam, it's radical Islam. Islam, with approx 6 millions souls is the second religion in France. This comes from both historic (Algeria was once a part of France) and geographic reasons. Overall, we've done a poor job of integrating them. They have a low
average income and high unemploym
No offense meant, but you've just responded to an informed and supported post with a poor combination of FUD, wishful thinking and tinfoil hat conspiracy theories. While I certainly do not believe that record companies are exactly charities, I'd like to correct some facts:
:)
BULLSHIT. You can't justify stealing with that argument. What they're saying is, "Most of our investments fail." Would you be satisfied with that performance rate as a business? If you accept that premise, why should a successfull artist have to support 99 crappy artists?
Because they accept this BEFORE they are succesful. Record companies offer a simple deal to artists: upfront funding and marketing support versus some ownership on their production for the next few years. No artist is ever forced with a gun on his (her) head to accept this deal. The reason why they sign is that NOBODY knows beforehand whether the artist will be succesful or not. Please also note that small/independant labels do EXACTLY the same. It's not the privilege of big business or RIAA members. This is actually very similar to venture capital: invest in a number of companies, rake in on the few succesful ones. VCs are not exactly angels either, but I guess you get the point.
The answer is of course they're lying. They own the studios that record the albums, they own the song writers who write the songs, they own the plants that press the cds. It's called vertical integration.
Wrong. Record companies unsually do not own pressing plants, it does not make economic sense. They outsource this job to (usually) independant companies with the industrial knowledge and equipment to produce huge numbers of CDs, DVDs quickly and cheaply. Cinram, for instance is a public company doing just that. Also, I'm sure that you know that since the civil war, nobody can own another person. Record companies don't own songwriters, they own some rights over their production, for a given length of time.
They produce the album as cheap as possible, CLAIM it costs a fortune, and pocket the rest
You're implying that the labels are making huge profits. They are not. Check their publicly available financial data. Most record companies generate profits but not unusually high profits. For instance, operating profit for Universal Music is 8% of its sales, for Warner Music it's 2%. That means that when Warner makes $1 on a CD, their costs represent 98c. Before you claim that they lie on their numbers, please remember that underestimating your profits does not make much sense when you're a public company.
Do you really think the owners of record labels sit around and say "You know the thing that sucks about this business, we're always loosing cash." If that were the case record companies would go out of business all the time when their income sources (artists) dried up.
Poor logic. There's a middle ground between overcharging and going out of business. And that's precisely where most record companies stand. And no, they are not sitting around; they're just trying to improve their bottom line like anybody else. This basically means reducing costs, increasing the efficience of their artists selection process and maximizing the cash they generate from each artist they sign. Nothing intrinsically evil here.
Now, once again, I'm not saying that these guys are the artists' or the public's best friends; they are just businessmen. I realize that most mainstream bands suck hard. I'm just trying to point out that this kind of posts is just a self-indulging attempt at finding a moral justification for your actions. Face it. You download mp3s because you can, not because it's right.
I didn't read your initial post as flame either.
: I don't know the exact figures but I believe we have more than 10% of Muslims in France. Generally speaking, we've done a poor job of integrating them and they have on average lower incomes and higher unemployment rates. Also, we've been very concerned these years about the rise of "communitarism" (is it a word in English?) i.e. the fact that an increasing number of people define themselves more by the community they belong to (religious, ethnic, even sexual preference) than by their French citizenship. Many people see this as a threat to the social bond and a sign of the failure of our integration model. This may well have been a significant factor in our government's decision to adopt its stance in the UN. Anything that would stir tensions between communities is regarded as a bad thing for our country. We already see too many people overtly supporting Saddam or shouting anti-semitic slogans in anti-war protests. And believe it or not, this is a real concern for us.
About government power: we tend to be less concerned than Americans about limiting it. Or more precisely, I believe that the government's involvement in economic matters (high taxes, high benefits) is more a problem of enonomic efficiency than of public freedom. BTW I loved your last Jefferson quotation : "The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
About the UN: I agree that the UN are far from perfect and I would gladly welcome any proposition to improve it. Yet I'm usually cautious about solutions based on razing and rebuilding from scratch. While this has been necessary in rare occasions, most "revolutions" in history have not met expectations.
About catering to the Muslim world
It's in my best interests for the U.S. to be on top. The United Nations doesn't hold my best interests. France sure as fuck doesn't.
You know, the same reasoning would (to some extent) make you prefer despotism to democracy. Your neighbor doesn't hold your best interests, you do. Still, you agree (I assume) to give your neighbor(s) some power over you. I don't think that France or French people want to decide what the US or American people should do in their everyday life. The idea here is that in some rare critical international issues (read "war") a "democratic" international body (the UN) should override individual countries interests. I'm not sure how far I can push this nations/people analogy, but I think you get the idea.
I consider the Constitution of the United States to be the single greatest document ever known to man
Everybody in the US seems to believe this, or that no country is freer than the US, or whatever along the same lines... This is truly amazing! Do they tell you that repeatedly in school as soon as you can talk? Come on, who can say that the US constitution is better than any other democratic country's. Are you a consitutional lawyer? Have you actually read the US constitution? Have you read other countries constitutions?
Besides, more important than the constitution is the way it is implemented. Have you visited other countries, do you read foreign newspapers? All democracies have their flaws. I acknowledge that most European countries have serious issues regarding corruption and excessive bureaucracy. But the US is far from flawless! To a foreigner, the deep (incestuous) ties between the government and big business in the US should be a major concern for any responsible American citizen. Also, many Europeans are puzzled (to say the least) by the absence of clear distinction between state and religion in the US. This feeling is exacerbated by the recent drift of the Iraq war toward a religious war. This seemingly absolute faith that the US is right or has moral superiority is both a strength and weakness for America. Yet I think that Americans should think about it a little bit more. It cant't hurt.
This post is not intended as a flame, nor does it want to protest or support the US intervention in Iraq. I'm just trying to improve my (and maybe your) understanding of these complex issues.
And yes, I'm French, you can start frogbashing.