Your reasoning unraveled right there. By juxtaposing offended feelings in the second paragraph with censorship taken to limit offended feelings, you blur the moral distinction between feeling offended and taking action upon others to prevent feeling offended. People have the right to give and take offense, there's nothing wrong with Europeans taking offense at Holocaust denial, nor is there anything wrong with Muslims taking offense at blasphemy. The trouble comes from the action of silencing others. By transitioning in your post from a legitimate complaint about censorship to a complaint about double standards when/if Europeans feel offense when the tables are turned, you seem to be implying that feeling offended is enough to establish a claim of hypocrisy when it occurs in an environment that condones censorship. This logic does not follow.
If the two businesses merging have presence in the US and rely on US protection for their patents (as is the motivation for Google buying up Motorola), then I imagine yes. So, if Google and Motorola have a presence in China, and Google needs China's auspices to solidify its future patent war chest, then you bet they would do everything they can to get it. Also, tit-for-tat mentality is what leads to the shitfests like the entire Middle East. US and China are smarter than that.
I think he's saying that bribery is more common in societies that have (or have recently had) forced income equality. While "communism" itself doesn't apply to the modern China, which is Communist only in name, the culture of bribery is still rife due to its history. As a comparison, we hear of underqualified legacies getting into Ivies in the US, but how often do we hear of parents giving money to elementary or middle school officials to secure a place for their children? It happens in China, and the difference is not that one country does it while the other does not, but in the pervasiveness and cultural acceptance.
My guess for why it is this way is that while we can limit wealth, we cannot limit the influence a person can gather. So a person who wields greater influence than others in a income-equalized society may more often believe himself shortchanged by that society and thus "deserving" of bribe moneys for the amount of work they accomplish. Without a strong sense of patriotism or a deep emotional commitment to one's community, this sort of proactive recompense for perceived victimization goes unchecked. I'm not sure if this all has scientific backing, but it makes sense as one explanation, and is reflected by the CCP's resistance to calls for lower public servant wages -- their explanation to the public being that a high wage raises the bar for bribing an official thus preventing most attempts at bribery. You don't get to hear this sort of stuff in the US.
In response to your 3rd paragraph, the issue is not that China is wrong to subsidize, but that the US is not wrong in adding tariffs onto Chinese made panels. Subsidies are not inherently wrong, neither are tariffs that offset them. Look at the price of foreign cars in China, a mid-sized Buick is priced at over 50% more than a similar model bought in the US. These Buicks are made in China too, so shipping cost isn't the issue.
Or, as most often is the case, his beliefs and politics do not conform to your caricatured image of Tea Party members. Most of us who complain that the "other side" has maliciously stereotyped us, pigeonholed us into permanent roles as communists, neo-cons, all-or-nothing liberals or all-or-nothing conservatives, often have trouble restraining ourselves from doing the same.
Makedonsky was nothing. Genghis Mongolovski was more greater. Guess who he fighted? The EVERYBODY! He maked Turks very pride, so now Persian jealous and not call it real name, Mongol Gulf.
Yes, our conclusions and preconceptions must remain constant! When evidence runs counter to what we believe (that "Anonymous is always good and always for the people, Amen!"), it is not that our conclusion was wrong, it is the evidence that is wrong! Bring the sacramental breads and wines, bring the incense and holy water, and bear witness to the birth of an Anonymous Evangelist .
Maybe it's manipulating in the right direction. If reason alone can't change the average person person's habits (delaying system patches/anti-virus updates, throwing caution to the wind when receiving email/chat attachments), while a little fear can, then maybe that fear is a good thing. I'd say anti-smoking campaigns using shock/disgust to reach their audience are on the same level. At least we won't get our genitals fondled by strangers*
1. Those people you care about are already starving since NK was mismanaged to the point where food was prioritized to the military while SOE profits valued in the hundreds of thousands USD per year were spend on cognac for Dear Leader. If KJI had given up his drinking habit and bought rice instead, a few million NK lives would have been preserved.
2. Korean peninsula was liberated by the Allies from the Empire of Japan and divided between Soviet and US governance. NK, with the tacit backing of the Soviets, were the ones to first cross the 38th parallel, in the name of liberty for all Koreans
If being non-American is at the root of your current body of knowledge, then it seems you would benefit from immigrating to the US.
While I'm not 100% certain of the last sentence, I have to wholeheartedly agree with the rest. There's another thing that irks me on the issue of piracy - the tendency for legit users to defend pirates. Pirates are the reason why we can't have nice things, yet we embrace them and provide them with dubious moral ammunition with which to perpetuate hostilities. Legit users should push back at restrictions from content providers, but we shouldn't defend pirates as if they're on our side.
That's a good point. It can be a problem if you're out in the country or far out suburbs, but if you live in a medium sized metropolitan area, you shouldn't be more than 2-3 miles away from the nearest branch. In any case, they'd only need to go once a week or so. I remember checking out 15 books at a time back in elementary, and they lasted me the 2 weeks till they were due. Car and airplane books with cutaway drawings, man, those were gold.
If the parents have already saved up the cash to pay for the initial $99 down + $15 for the first month, then they only need about $270 more to buy it outright. Assuming they charge it on a card with 18% interest rate and $15/month minimum repayment, they'll pay it off in 2 years and only be out a little over $50 in total interest. For comparison, $75 in total interest on a $270 charge with $15/month repayment represents a 25% rate.
Of course, if they can't afford a cash down payment, then the MS plan would make sense. (though, far less sense than just teaching the kids to enjoy the public library)
That makes no sense as a rebuttal. I mean Hannibal didn't tell the Romans "let me hang out in the Italian countryside for a while" either. That doesn't mean he wasn't working towards Rome's downfall, or that Fabius didn't have a plan to counter him obliquely (or that Fabius wanted to enslave his fellow Romans with made up stories about Carthaginian boogeymen*).
*which is what I gather many slashdotters would have said back in the day.
From 1991 on, NASA's budget has steadily gone down, through Democratic controlled congresses AND Republican controlled congresses. I think this is more of a reflection of the US becoming lax after the fall of the Soviet Union than some destruction committed by your anti-science boogeyman. Consider that the ISS began in the early mid 1990s and continued to be funded through consecutive Republican majorities from 1995 onwards, one cannot reasonably put all the credit on the LEFT and all the fault on the RIGHT.
And 99% of North Koreans support Kim Jong Un (the other 1% are in luxurious diet camps in the mountains). What's your point? Shit, a majority of Americans in February 2003 supported the imminent Iraq invasion. Guess that's alright by your book, and anyone who said anything different was a victim of anti-American propaganda right?
I think I acknowledged the Operation Paperclip part and the issue surrounding coercion of German scientists. And I also googled the same thing you did in searching for mass occurrences of US companies ignoring European patents, however those links didn't reveal anything near what was claimed:
US solved the problem by voiding any non-US patent and allowing its companies to produce whatever they wished regardless of any European claim to their products
Are there any examples where the US ignored European patents on a massive scale? I thought the US gained a massive boost in patents through German war reparations, and the influx of European researchers (patent holders) through Operation Paperclip. Now, one can criticize the possible coercive nature of Paperclip, but to my mind the patents were transferred to the US rather than wholly ignored as is often claimed.
Guy gets viruses on his computer -- botnet, porn downloader, everything. A co-worker comes by and offers to install anti-virus. He says "no thanks I'll trust Jesus." So he keeps working, ignoring the porn pop-ups, when a friend drops by and offers to install Linux. He says "no thanks I'll trust Jesus." So he just copes with it until his boss sees his screen full of porn ads and fires him. He loses his house, his wife, everything, and dies penniless in the gutters. When he finally sees Jesus he says "hey Jesus why didn't you help me out back there?", to which Jesus replies "dude I sent guys with anti-virus and linux"
I'd imagine slashdotters would say Russia has every right to build a defensive shield against the aggressive US, and that the US, in threatening Russia with first strike, is being unjustly belligerent to what is a defensive system. I get the impression that in the minds of many here, if the US acts offensively, it's in the wrong, and if the US reacts defensively, it's in the wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
you aren't allowed to be disgusted
Your reasoning unraveled right there. By juxtaposing offended feelings in the second paragraph with censorship taken to limit offended feelings, you blur the moral distinction between feeling offended and taking action upon others to prevent feeling offended. People have the right to give and take offense, there's nothing wrong with Europeans taking offense at Holocaust denial, nor is there anything wrong with Muslims taking offense at blasphemy. The trouble comes from the action of silencing others. By transitioning in your post from a legitimate complaint about censorship to a complaint about double standards when/if Europeans feel offense when the tables are turned, you seem to be implying that feeling offended is enough to establish a claim of hypocrisy when it occurs in an environment that condones censorship. This logic does not follow.
Hmmm, 5 years is really short. Makes you wonder if the government thinks its state companies will be able to get a competitive OS out in that time.
If the two businesses merging have presence in the US and rely on US protection for their patents (as is the motivation for Google buying up Motorola), then I imagine yes. So, if Google and Motorola have a presence in China, and Google needs China's auspices to solidify its future patent war chest, then you bet they would do everything they can to get it. Also, tit-for-tat mentality is what leads to the shitfests like the entire Middle East. US and China are smarter than that.
I think he's saying that bribery is more common in societies that have (or have recently had) forced income equality. While "communism" itself doesn't apply to the modern China, which is Communist only in name, the culture of bribery is still rife due to its history. As a comparison, we hear of underqualified legacies getting into Ivies in the US, but how often do we hear of parents giving money to elementary or middle school officials to secure a place for their children? It happens in China, and the difference is not that one country does it while the other does not, but in the pervasiveness and cultural acceptance.
My guess for why it is this way is that while we can limit wealth, we cannot limit the influence a person can gather. So a person who wields greater influence than others in a income-equalized society may more often believe himself shortchanged by that society and thus "deserving" of bribe moneys for the amount of work they accomplish. Without a strong sense of patriotism or a deep emotional commitment to one's community, this sort of proactive recompense for perceived victimization goes unchecked. I'm not sure if this all has scientific backing, but it makes sense as one explanation, and is reflected by the CCP's resistance to calls for lower public servant wages -- their explanation to the public being that a high wage raises the bar for bribing an official thus preventing most attempts at bribery. You don't get to hear this sort of stuff in the US.
In response to your 3rd paragraph, the issue is not that China is wrong to subsidize, but that the US is not wrong in adding tariffs onto Chinese made panels. Subsidies are not inherently wrong, neither are tariffs that offset them. Look at the price of foreign cars in China, a mid-sized Buick is priced at over 50% more than a similar model bought in the US. These Buicks are made in China too, so shipping cost isn't the issue.
Your final paragraph is interesting since I've addressed the issue before: if the goal is to help domestic solar production and adoption, then there is no need to subsidize export panels, the government only needs to subsidize domestic consumption. That this is not the case, points to a deep flaw in your premise.
Or, as most often is the case, his beliefs and politics do not conform to your caricatured image of Tea Party members. Most of us who complain that the "other side" has maliciously stereotyped us, pigeonholed us into permanent roles as communists, neo-cons, all-or-nothing liberals or all-or-nothing conservatives, often have trouble restraining ourselves from doing the same.
Makedonsky was nothing. Genghis Mongolovski was more greater. Guess who he fighted? The EVERYBODY! He maked Turks very pride, so now Persian jealous and not call it real name, Mongol Gulf.
Yes, our conclusions and preconceptions must remain constant! When evidence runs counter to what we believe (that "Anonymous is always good and always for the people, Amen!"), it is not that our conclusion was wrong, it is the evidence that is wrong! Bring the sacramental breads and wines, bring the incense and holy water, and bear witness to the birth of an Anonymous Evangelist .
..by more strangers, I mean.
Maybe it's manipulating in the right direction. If reason alone can't change the average person person's habits (delaying system patches/anti-virus updates, throwing caution to the wind when receiving email/chat attachments), while a little fear can, then maybe that fear is a good thing. I'd say anti-smoking campaigns using shock/disgust to reach their audience are on the same level. At least we won't get our genitals fondled by strangers*
*not to imply there aren't people who enjoy that.
1. Those people you care about are already starving since NK was mismanaged to the point where food was prioritized to the military while SOE profits valued in the hundreds of thousands USD per year were spend on cognac for Dear Leader. If KJI had given up his drinking habit and bought rice instead, a few million NK lives would have been preserved.
2. Korean peninsula was liberated by the Allies from the Empire of Japan and divided between Soviet and US governance. NK, with the tacit backing of the Soviets, were the ones to first cross the 38th parallel, in the name of liberty for all Koreans
If being non-American is at the root of your current body of knowledge, then it seems you would benefit from immigrating to the US.
seems to me it's more like running scandisk, and in addition to fixing read/write errors it also improves grammar in your document files.
While I'm not 100% certain of the last sentence, I have to wholeheartedly agree with the rest. There's another thing that irks me on the issue of piracy - the tendency for legit users to defend pirates. Pirates are the reason why we can't have nice things, yet we embrace them and provide them with dubious moral ammunition with which to perpetuate hostilities. Legit users should push back at restrictions from content providers, but we shouldn't defend pirates as if they're on our side.
That's a good point. It can be a problem if you're out in the country or far out suburbs, but if you live in a medium sized metropolitan area, you shouldn't be more than 2-3 miles away from the nearest branch. In any case, they'd only need to go once a week or so. I remember checking out 15 books at a time back in elementary, and they lasted me the 2 weeks till they were due. Car and airplane books with cutaway drawings, man, those were gold.
If the parents have already saved up the cash to pay for the initial $99 down + $15 for the first month, then they only need about $270 more to buy it outright. Assuming they charge it on a card with 18% interest rate and $15/month minimum repayment, they'll pay it off in 2 years and only be out a little over $50 in total interest. For comparison, $75 in total interest on a $270 charge with $15/month repayment represents a 25% rate.
Of course, if they can't afford a cash down payment, then the MS plan would make sense. (though, far less sense than just teaching the kids to enjoy the public library)
First person to sue for Google-induced-whiplash will be much earlier
That makes no sense as a rebuttal. I mean Hannibal didn't tell the Romans "let me hang out in the Italian countryside for a while" either. That doesn't mean he wasn't working towards Rome's downfall, or that Fabius didn't have a plan to counter him obliquely (or that Fabius wanted to enslave his fellow Romans with made up stories about Carthaginian boogeymen*).
*which is what I gather many slashdotters would have said back in the day.
From 1991 on, NASA's budget has steadily gone down, through Democratic controlled congresses AND Republican controlled congresses. I think this is more of a reflection of the US becoming lax after the fall of the Soviet Union than some destruction committed by your anti-science boogeyman. Consider that the ISS began in the early mid 1990s and continued to be funded through consecutive Republican majorities from 1995 onwards, one cannot reasonably put all the credit on the LEFT and all the fault on the RIGHT.
And 99% of North Koreans support Kim Jong Un (the other 1% are in luxurious diet camps in the mountains). What's your point? Shit, a majority of Americans in February 2003 supported the imminent Iraq invasion. Guess that's alright by your book, and anyone who said anything different was a victim of anti-American propaganda right?
Many electronic components emit ultrasound. Who's to say you're not already zombified by your overhead CFL bulbs?
I think I acknowledged the Operation Paperclip part and the issue surrounding coercion of German scientists. And I also googled the same thing you did in searching for mass occurrences of US companies ignoring European patents, however those links didn't reveal anything near what was claimed:
US solved the problem by voiding any non-US patent and allowing its companies to produce whatever they wished regardless of any European claim to their products
Are there any examples where the US ignored European patents on a massive scale? I thought the US gained a massive boost in patents through German war reparations, and the influx of European researchers (patent holders) through Operation Paperclip. Now, one can criticize the possible coercive nature of Paperclip, but to my mind the patents were transferred to the US rather than wholly ignored as is often claimed.
Modified old joke:
Guy gets viruses on his computer -- botnet, porn downloader, everything. A co-worker comes by and offers to install anti-virus. He says "no thanks I'll trust Jesus." So he keeps working, ignoring the porn pop-ups, when a friend drops by and offers to install Linux. He says "no thanks I'll trust Jesus." So he just copes with it until his boss sees his screen full of porn ads and fires him. He loses his house, his wife, everything, and dies penniless in the gutters. When he finally sees Jesus he says "hey Jesus why didn't you help me out back there?", to which Jesus replies "dude I sent guys with anti-virus and linux"
Someone who gives his friend a bullet proof vest is worse than the neighbor who says he'll kill you if you do it?
I'd imagine slashdotters would say Russia has every right to build a defensive shield against the aggressive US, and that the US, in threatening Russia with first strike, is being unjustly belligerent to what is a defensive system. I get the impression that in the minds of many here, if the US acts offensively, it's in the wrong, and if the US reacts defensively, it's in the wrong.