The problem is that alternatives are not (yet) economical, and will never be until they get economies of scale (which is a chicken and egg problem), or until cheap oil runs out.
Laissez-faire markets can only take us so far. Our addiction to oil is just another example of why we need to re-think the way in which markets are supposed to work, and to come up agreements on how we can internalize some of the environmental and other externalities. Things like carbon credits are crude measure, but it's a step in the right direction.
The problem is, that there is no such thing as a "collective conscience" when it comes to money.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but anybody following the smartphone market would tell you that manufactures (and carriers) strike deals with Google for the branding and also for development and customisation of Android for their phones. The fact that it's OSS doesn't mean that Google doesn't make money on it, and in fact not all of it is OSS. The default Google apps bundle is proprietary, and Google licenses it out. The Cyanogenmod cease and desist incident comes to mind.
The British system is actually quite pragmatic. The Queen routinely dismisses Parliament, but only does so under the advice of her (or his) Government (which is formed by a majority consensus in Parliament), when a new general election is called. The check and balances in this system were developed over the ages and, therefore, deeply rooted in convention, but some parts of the process is governed by statute.
The hypothetical situation is if the new Parliament is unable to form a new government, then what happens next. The speculation that Gordon Brown refusing to resign is just hyperbole. The Prime Minister can refuse to resign after any election (which is against convention and Parliamentary procedure), but he will not do so, as the political fallout will otherwise be unthinkable. The Queen has the power in theory to dismiss Parliament without advice (from her Government) under her reserve powers which will result in a new election called, but this power has never been used in modern times. As a reserve power, this is only used in emergencies when the Government is non-functional.
What you forget is that the UK is a Constitutional Monarchy, which basically means (in modern terms) that the Monarch governs by the consent of the people through a constitution. In fact, it would be more accurate to describe it as a Parliamentary Monarchy in which supreme power has been fully divested from the Crown to Parliament, governed by the Mandate provided by the public through suffrage.
"I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system"
And yes, it was taken out of context. It was obviously about legislation./Ignorance is strength.//War is peace
First things first, bond != shares. You can own 100% of the bonds issued by a company and it won't buy you any controlling interest as long as the company is solvent.
Now, on to the real discussion. The problem we have is that free trade (without a common market) artificially imports the lower regulatory standards from the exporting country. Even in the EU, you have issues like where Danish pork producers are utilising rearing technique which are discouraged or banned in other EU countries (and getting away with it).
Of course, a part of the price differential is because of the discrepancy in the cost of production, but a big component of that is how the legal and regulatory framework is established (or not) in the exporting country. How much of the social cost of production (ie. environmental damage) is internalized through taxes and fines? How much protection is offered to workforce producing the goods?
To make free trade work, there must be a common standard of not only the products themselves, but also how they are produced.
China has the power to divert their trade surplus into domestic stimulus quite successfully, and the great recession of the industrialized nations is barely felt.
Ironically, the only thing keeping China back right now is its giant foreign reserves from the trade surplus. If the US dollar collapsed, that would mean trillions in losses and problems in keeping the Yuan stable. Once they solve this problem, its a new world order, and it's only a matter of time.
The government was forced its hand not directly because of how regulation was handled, but directly because of the size of the market participants.
Even if the government had no hand at all in regulation, it would still be forced to take action because with the largest financial institutions insolvent, the economy would collapse.
The "capture" of the regulatory agencies is a different problem related to the effectiveness of regulation.
Problems with the NHS are hyped-up way over what they are in reality. I have lived and been treated in 5 countries including the UK, the US and Canada. In the UK you get prioritised by need. If you have a life-threatening problem, you get operated on immediately, no questions asked. If you want a knee-replacement that's not urgent, you need to wait (and it's getting shorter). If you don't want to wait that long, you can choose from a variety of options including paying for the procedure privately or by having health insurance. Frontline care is usually delivered by the NHS even if you have private health insurance. There's nothing *poor* about the NHS, and compared with the Canadian system, you also have a choice to go private if you wish. When you consider that the Canadian system costs 20% more and the American one 100% more, that's a pretty good.
"Some believe that it's an individual's responsibility to budget and take care of themselves."
Depends on where on the continuum you sit. If the state is is providing crucial services such as policing and fire rescue, why is it so hard to classify healthcare as one of these essentials that modern society needs to function?
What a particular market encompass is one of the main types of argument used in antitrust cases. Regulators usually try to narrow the market down to specific product categories, while companies defending usually try to widen the definition so that their market influence is relatively less from a bigger market. If you review antitrust cases, like those regarding Article 81 and 82 of the EC treaty, this is readily apparent.
You're right, there's nothing wrong with socialism, but the welfare state isn't exactly socialism. At it's core, the welfare state is a "safety net", rather than a comprehensive system to distribute resources in the economy. It's social and socialistic, but not to the point of socialism.
I made that point because there is so much knee-jerk reaction to terms such as "redistribution of wealth" and "welfare state". Hopefully by just contradicting widespread misbeliefs, people can look up information by themselves.
That way of arguing will get you no-where. Most of the stuff we buy from China are cheaply manufactured consumer goods, made in factories staffed by labourers that comes mainly from the rural northern and central regions of the country. The problem of buying goods from China is not because of human rights, but because of the lack of regulation and protection of labour and the environment in general (and also the devalued currency due to capital controls in China). Why? Because this is what puts goods from the developed countries at a disadvantage. We are in effect exporting pollution and bad treatment of labour through this.
The only way for China to get any resemblance of human-rights that are available in the industrialized nations is for the Chinese people to fight for them. Think back on how long it took for rights to develop in England, for example, from the Magna Carta, to the Bill of Rights, to the development of Universal Suffrage and the Welfare State (no, it's not socialism). Now, when are the conditions right, I'm not so sure. But those in the know would definitely point to Hong Kong and Taiwan as a possible possible catalysts for this. Hong Kong is scheduled for Universal Suffrage in 2017, but many in the territory is trying to speed up the process while Beijing is trying to slow it down (as they fear it is a destabilizing factor to one-party rule in the mainland).
The people that nearly bankrupted the world are far from undereducated simpletons. Most in fact, were educated in the most prestigious of institutions of higher learning. Then they join the citadels of greed, with some select institutions transforming them into the "masters of the universe".
Tragically, the undereducated simpletons support them and vote for them against their own self interest.
The key question still stands, does this association link the product with the franchise? Does it cause customer confusion on whether the product was produced or endorsed by the estate of Philip K Dick?
See the ratio decidendi of Universal City Studios v. Nintendo 1982 for an example on how this test is applied in practice, successfully upheld on appeal. This is the Donkey Kong vs. King Kong case for those that still remember old school video gaming. Nintendo won and successfully countersued Universal for 1.8 million for acting in bad faith.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, well how about *not drill* then?
The problem is that alternatives are not (yet) economical, and will never be until they get economies of scale (which is a chicken and egg problem), or until cheap oil runs out.
Laissez-faire markets can only take us so far. Our addiction to oil is just another example of why we need to re-think the way in which markets are supposed to work, and to come up agreements on how we can internalize some of the environmental and other externalities. Things like carbon credits are crude measure, but it's a step in the right direction.
The problem is, that there is no such thing as a "collective conscience" when it comes to money.
Looks like you never used a sniffer (like tcpdump) before...
The accident is leaving off the filter that restricts the traffic you capture...
Try it on a machine you ssh into and you will know what I mean...
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but anybody following the smartphone market would tell you that manufactures (and carriers) strike deals with Google for the branding and also for development and customisation of Android for their phones. The fact that it's OSS doesn't mean that Google doesn't make money on it, and in fact not all of it is OSS. The default Google apps bundle is proprietary, and Google licenses it out. The Cyanogenmod cease and desist incident comes to mind.
/don't know if serious
The British system is actually quite pragmatic. The Queen routinely dismisses Parliament, but only does so under the advice of her (or his) Government (which is formed by a majority consensus in Parliament), when a new general election is called. The check and balances in this system were developed over the ages and, therefore, deeply rooted in convention, but some parts of the process is governed by statute.
The hypothetical situation is if the new Parliament is unable to form a new government, then what happens next. The speculation that Gordon Brown refusing to resign is just hyperbole. The Prime Minister can refuse to resign after any election (which is against convention and Parliamentary procedure), but he will not do so, as the political fallout will otherwise be unthinkable. The Queen has the power in theory to dismiss Parliament without advice (from her Government) under her reserve powers which will result in a new election called, but this power has never been used in modern times. As a reserve power, this is only used in emergencies when the Government is non-functional.
What you forget is that the UK is a Constitutional Monarchy, which basically means (in modern terms) that the Monarch governs by the consent of the people through a constitution. In fact, it would be more accurate to describe it as a Parliamentary Monarchy in which supreme power has been fully divested from the Crown to Parliament, governed by the Mandate provided by the public through suffrage.
The stupid, it burns.
Oh... Not this again..... /facepalm
This is what he said in his exact words -
"I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system"
And yes, it was taken out of context. It was obviously about legislation. /Ignorance is strength. //War is peace
Bad javascript is barely legible but it still beats good bytecode any day.
First things first, bond != shares. You can own 100% of the bonds issued by a company and it won't buy you any controlling interest as long as the company is solvent.
Now, on to the real discussion. The problem we have is that free trade (without a common market) artificially imports the lower regulatory standards from the exporting country. Even in the EU, you have issues like where Danish pork producers are utilising rearing technique which are discouraged or banned in other EU countries (and getting away with it).
Of course, a part of the price differential is because of the discrepancy in the cost of production, but a big component of that is how the legal and regulatory framework is established (or not) in the exporting country. How much of the social cost of production (ie. environmental damage) is internalized through taxes and fines? How much protection is offered to workforce producing the goods?
To make free trade work, there must be a common standard of not only the products themselves, but also how they are produced.
China has the power to divert their trade surplus into domestic stimulus quite successfully, and the great recession of the industrialized nations is barely felt.
Ironically, the only thing keeping China back right now is its giant foreign reserves from the trade surplus. If the US dollar collapsed, that would mean trillions in losses and problems in keeping the Yuan stable. Once they solve this problem, its a new world order, and it's only a matter of time.
The government was forced its hand not directly because of how regulation was handled, but directly because of the size of the market participants.
Even if the government had no hand at all in regulation, it would still be forced to take action because with the largest financial institutions insolvent, the economy would collapse.
The "capture" of the regulatory agencies is a different problem related to the effectiveness of regulation.
Problems with the NHS are hyped-up way over what they are in reality. I have lived and been treated in 5 countries including the UK, the US and Canada. In the UK you get prioritised by need. If you have a life-threatening problem, you get operated on immediately, no questions asked. If you want a knee-replacement that's not urgent, you need to wait (and it's getting shorter). If you don't want to wait that long, you can choose from a variety of options including paying for the procedure privately or by having health insurance. Frontline care is usually delivered by the NHS even if you have private health insurance. There's nothing *poor* about the NHS, and compared with the Canadian system, you also have a choice to go private if you wish. When you consider that the Canadian system costs 20% more and the American one 100% more, that's a pretty good.
Baidu is the market leader with ~60% marketshare. Bing has only ~6% of the market, mostly through Yahoo.
The Nexus One is built by HTC in Taiwan. The components are sourced from around the world though (eg. screen is from Samsung/SK).
It's perfectly possible to walk on the moon as well. Now about the amount of effort to get there.....
Well, have you ever been to LA? That is all.
"Some believe that it's an individual's responsibility to budget and take care of themselves."
Depends on where on the continuum you sit. If the state is is providing crucial services such as policing and fire rescue, why is it so hard to classify healthcare as one of these essentials that modern society needs to function?
What a particular market encompass is one of the main types of argument used in antitrust cases. Regulators usually try to narrow the market down to specific product categories, while companies defending usually try to widen the definition so that their market influence is relatively less from a bigger market. If you review antitrust cases, like those regarding Article 81 and 82 of the EC treaty, this is readily apparent.
You're right, there's nothing wrong with socialism, but the welfare state isn't exactly socialism. At it's core, the welfare state is a "safety net", rather than a comprehensive system to distribute resources in the economy. It's social and socialistic, but not to the point of socialism.
I made that point because there is so much knee-jerk reaction to terms such as "redistribution of wealth" and "welfare state". Hopefully by just contradicting widespread misbeliefs, people can look up information by themselves.
That way of arguing will get you no-where. Most of the stuff we buy from China are cheaply manufactured consumer goods, made in factories staffed by labourers that comes mainly from the rural northern and central regions of the country. The problem of buying goods from China is not because of human rights, but because of the lack of regulation and protection of labour and the environment in general (and also the devalued currency due to capital controls in China). Why? Because this is what puts goods from the developed countries at a disadvantage. We are in effect exporting pollution and bad treatment of labour through this.
The only way for China to get any resemblance of human-rights that are available in the industrialized nations is for the Chinese people to fight for them. Think back on how long it took for rights to develop in England, for example, from the Magna Carta, to the Bill of Rights, to the development of Universal Suffrage and the Welfare State (no, it's not socialism). Now, when are the conditions right, I'm not so sure. But those in the know would definitely point to Hong Kong and Taiwan as a possible possible catalysts for this. Hong Kong is scheduled for Universal Suffrage in 2017, but many in the territory is trying to speed up the process while Beijing is trying to slow it down (as they fear it is a destabilizing factor to one-party rule in the mainland).
"The proof of the pudding is in the eating", or as in the case of Microsoft, "the proof of the FUDding is in the beating"...
The people that nearly bankrupted the world are far from undereducated simpletons. Most in fact, were educated in the most prestigious of institutions of higher learning. Then they join the citadels of greed, with some select institutions transforming them into the "masters of the universe".
Tragically, the undereducated simpletons support them and vote for them against their own self interest.
The key question still stands, does this association link the product with the franchise? Does it cause customer confusion on whether the product was produced or endorsed by the estate of Philip K Dick?
See the ratio decidendi of Universal City Studios v. Nintendo 1982 for an example on how this test is applied in practice, successfully upheld on appeal. This is the Donkey Kong vs. King Kong case for those that still remember old school video gaming. Nintendo won and successfully countersued Universal for 1.8 million for acting in bad faith.
You mean I can get free access to detailed docs on the NT kernel?