Pumping the brakes was taught because people were too lazy to learn to threshold brake... feel for where the tires slip, and let up just a bit from there. Pumping meant you got the maximum braking you could without thinking or learning to drive properly. Nowadays with a computer handling the "pumping" it happens so fast with ABS systems, that the car is effectively threshold braking.
All these tests are being done by people who maintain their car's brakes properly. Think every car on the road is driven by someone who cares enough to maintain it? I can't count the number of times I've passed or been passed by someone on the highway who's "Check Engine" light was on, and so obvious that I could see it in MY vehicle... How about we drop these stupid "Emissions Tests" and go back to having SAFETY checks done on everyone's vehicle's annually? And perhaps some recurrent driving training, or SERIOUS insurance discounts for those of us willing to go take a weekend course on a regular basis? Pilot's get discounts on insurance for taking additional training, and most take advantage of it... why not drivers? The road is full of soccer mom's in Priuses who have no idea what "low rolling resistance" tires are, that they're on their vehicle, and what it means to them when it starts frakkin' snowing....
Realize that a few top-end luxury cars already limit wheel angles above certain speeds unless you get nuts with the steering wheel, and there are 4-wheel steering pickup trucks that have no linkage to the rear wheels... already on the road...
How new is your Jeep? If new enough to be a Chrysler product, the brakes suck, no matter which Jeep model. Starting all the way back into the late 90s and the last model year of the Jeep Cherokee, Chrysler had dropped the Jeep brakes (bigger) and started using brakes off of other vehicles. The Cherokee finished up life with Chrysler Sebring discs on the front, and still had drums in the back in 2000. Jeep brakes suck.
Bwahaha... someone who thinks power can get from an engine to drive wheels with electronics only, and "no moving parts". Oh man, I'm dying laughing here. Quite rich.
Let ya in on a little secret there bub... electronic controls are just actuators moving real mechanical linkages that wear out over time JUST like ones moved by your own hand-power.
Not really? What's dumbed down about it? Has left/right buttons, and a scroll wheel (ball, really) and works fine. Wireless even, which is always nice.
Or if you're talking about the trackpads, the multi-touch "drop two fingers and tap the single physical button" thing is far easier than feeling for a left/right button with your thumb, and multi-touch out to four finger gestures nowadays is wicked fast once you have things set up the way you want them.
I can't think of anything I can't do with an Apple mouse that I can with any other mouse or pointing device. The design of my MacBook's trackpad sure kicks the shit out of the trackpad on my Lenovo T400 that work provides.
As someone else pointed out in the thread, the sheer consistency of the keyboard shortcuts in OSX and software that follows Apple's design docs, means I rarely lift a hand to move to the mouse/pointing device anyway. Keyboard shortcuts have always been the way to go for any OS... doesn't matter which one it is. It's nice that the commands stay consistent more often than not on OSX, vs. a number of "exceptions" I have to remember on the work Lenovo running XP. (And to a lesser extent, the home Vista box, and the Win 7 virtual machine on the MacBook.
At the end of the day I've never played this "my OS is bigger than your OS" crap, so I'm an expert on multiple OSs... so I enjoy the competitive advantage I have over closed-minded co-workers who'll only learn "one or the other" and actually believe the marketing BS that there's actually a battle going on. They're just OSs.
OS wars. Who cares? True pros know 'em all... Mac's not going away...Neither is Windows... nor Linux... OS/2 Warp, it's a little shaky these days.:-) Solaris OpenWin... not seeing that one too often, either, but know it too... and more...
The more you learn, the more you know. Closing off the brain to an OS because of marketing "war" nonsense, is dumb. One in ten laptops is a Mac. If you're a professional computer person who only does windows, you get a 90%. Another percentage point of market share, and you're down to a "B+" grade on laptop support. And falling...:-)
The industry is booming right now with tons of high-quality options in the marketplace. I'll avoid discussing Skype and other freebies, and tell you about the "pro" stuff. Everyone else is covering the freebies adequately, other than to point out that the things you want to know are... Resolution and frame rate. When something uses a non-technical term like "HD" to describe the box, as "HD at what resolution and frame rate?".
I'll stick to generalities below:
- Polycom, Cisco, Tandberg (now merging with Cisco), and LifeSize all make useful dedicated hardware at various price-points. - Company histories: Cisco is selling video as an add-on to the "full Cisco religious experience". They bought Tandberg recently. - Tandberg is well-respected and also has a large percentage of their business selling specialized boxes for video broadcast/cable TV, etc... that have nothing to do with videoconferencing. (Similar technology, obviously...) No one really knows why Cisco bought them, but it's interesting what will happen to all of their product lines. (Does Cisco really want to sell on-the-fly video transcoding devices to TV stations? Odd.) - LifeSize is former Polycom people who left to do HD. Polycom immediately did HD as soon as that happened. (LOL... hey, that's just MY personal opinion. I'm sure someone would argue with that, but I've seen that pattern happen at LOTS of companies.) - Polycom and LifeSize are the only two pure videoconferencing, focused on just videoconferencing players.
Other generalities:
- People say you don't need video. I used to say that too, I came from a company that was acquired by Polycom and figured audio was all you ever needed. I've gotten completely hooked on being able to see real human emotional responses during meetings, etc. It's more useful than you think. Granted, if you're in a tech group or not using a room-based system or even an entire RPX room... you're never quite looking "eye to eye"... techies especially have multiple monitors, and tend to be looking off to one side. But you can still see the other person winces when bad news is given... something you could only "imagine the worst" on an audio conference.
- Getting the video "job" OUT of your PC, even with two monitors on the PC (or more) is best if you do it a lot. Sooner or later, Windows is going to barf on itself during your call, or worse, you need information to CONDUCT the call, and you've got to reboot the thing you're talking through. I use our proprietary desktop client (CMA Desktop) when road-warrior-ing it, and it's great, but when I'm at my desk, a desktop unit like one of the switchable units that doubles as your second monitor, or to me, even better yet... the VVX 1500 I'm currently using, work very nicely.
Really general stuff: - On modern dedicated hardware everyone does HD. Remember however that HD has to be compressed heavily if you're not wanting to burn 14 Mb/s of bandwidth per call. No one does. - Everyone has something proprietary built in on top of the standards. - Everyone has complete ROOMS available that they'll build that include multiple HD units that act in conjunction to give you a "I'm looking into the other room" effect. HP started that with their HALO system, but it was rapidly mimicked by all. - Everyone makes desktop clients. Some do SIP, some do H.323, some do both. They're all limited by the quality of cameras available for the PC marketspace. - No one supports Mac well. (Stupid, since the Mac has a camera built-in)
Final note: - Tons of businesses are also moving toward everyone having Microsoft OCS for the desktop webcams, etc. It's 100% possible to completely integrate OCS desktops to dedicated room units, like ours, and vice-versa.
#1 Answer to your ENTIRE question: Find a Value Added Reseller that knows what they're doing. In the education environment I can tell you that the customers who found a clueful VAR who worked with them to INTEGRATE room-base
Okay, obviously you're a "big L" Libertarian who thinks roads, schools, fire departments, and police are unnecessary for modern society. Sorry I tried to have a rational conversation with you.
You might re-think that part about them not protecting your life, liberty, or property.
Without the FCC, pirates and others would find the "juicy" portions of upper VHF, UHF, and high UHF spectrum work really well for their "Billy-Bob's Hilltop Radio", and Public Safety agencies would have no protected spectrum with with to dispatch Police, Fire, and Ambulances to your House.
Without the NTIA working with the FCC, there'd be no way to keep civilians off of NTIA/Federal/Military spectrum, and things like search RADAR, AWACS aircraft, etc... wouldn't work properly.
I understand your Constitutional complaints, but I don't empathize with them. The Country's forefathers couldn't even conceive of RF spectrum or how useful the application of radio would be to the entire world, and certainly didn't prepare for it in the Constitution. But spectrum management is still a required function of any modern government if you want any RF-based technology to work.
Sorry, I'm not buying your whine, but I'll eat your cheese.
The FCC actually has done a pretty good balancing act of allowing many RF devices and services to be utilized WITHOUT licenses. Every 802.11 device is a "radio station" but there's no requirement for each one to be FCC-licensed for example. Part 15 devices make up millions of transmitters and receivers, in spectrum that's very range-limited by its high frequencies.
It took FCC *ENGINEERS* to flesh out those ideas a few decades ago... they need to continue to be an engineering-based organization. Your complaint seems to be that they're also a politically-driven one, and that - I can empathize with.
But the FCC's role in spectrum management is vital to virtually everything RF-based. Take them away and the chaos -- especially if it affected the Public Safety bands -- could literally kill you, if you required quick medical attention.
And what would Democrats do differently, tax everyone to make sure we all have a better life in a competitive world? LOL. That only goes so far. (One term, usually.)
Hell, most of the cell sites are down if the power's out anyway. The FCC tried to mandate a minimum amount of generator coverage for a percentage of the sites, but the carriers via whining and paying off politicos got that indefinitely postponed.
All CDMA is created and licensed... by Qualcomm. They're not efficient at rolling out new things, and the chipsets are an order of magnitude more expensive due to licensing.
There's only one problem - companies are drunk with "cheap" IT, and aren't easily going to be dragged back to the true costs without a concept of how much money TRULY integrated IT can save them.
It's a long climb back from where they're at today and they haven't exactly been hiring "entrepreneurial"-minded individuals and personalities necessary to kick-start this... what's essentially an internal "start-up" that will have to integrate themselves back into the company like the Borg, while proving they can make the company more efficient and more profitable, isn't going to be easy at all.
Actually there's a bit of truth in both your statements.
Banks loaned out money because if they didn't other banks would, because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were underwriting loans that no one in their right minds would have made to people who couldn't possibly afford them.
The fact that many of those people were of non-white races is more a commentary on the gap still present in our socio-economic system and educational system that tends to have large geographical areas where poverty reigns over large minority populations.
Mix those two together, and meddling from Congress to try to "fix" it by pouring money into neighborhoods that could never sustain anything close to an income/payback rate that could pay back the loans, and you end up with just the beginning of the problems.
Then take the fact that the banking system runs "pretty thin" and regulators are scattered far and wide, with no regulator really ever responsible for "the big picture", in fact the banks themselves are so large that they also run into this problem... the person responsible for regulating, say... whether or not the banks are insured properly -- is different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, with none looking at the bank's overall capitalization or insurance ratios.
Now make that bank a multi-national company, and quadruple the complexity of even seeing it all properly.
Next up, have most of the largest banks all insure themselves at one insurance provider. (AIG)
Anyway... like all good train wrecks, and airplane crashes... it took a very complex chain of events to cause it all. And the additional bad timing of having it all hit when the fairly "normal" ten-year market waves of up/down was also starting.
But to say that either a) It was all caused by Government... or b) that none of it was caused by those in Government who actually ORGANIZE around race (isn't that racist itself?)... like the Congressional Black Caucus who received MILLIONS in campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie, the underwriters of the vast majority of the bad loans...
Both statements are wrong. But they also both show an inability to think MUCH broader and see those two things that people are hung up on -- as just cogs in a much bigger whirling system that had numerous failures lead to near-catastropic melt-down.
The really fascinating thing about all of it... all parties involved from Government down to the individual loan holders, ALL acted in their own best interests. Usually when people do that, a general "common good" is found. In the case of the financial problems seen in recent years, what we found this time was the "common bad".
All it took was slight ethics tweaks...
"This loan looks a little shaky, but I'll do it." "I can't REALLY afford this, but I want it so bad." "I know taking care of my constituents at the cost of others is wrong, but I'll do it just this once." "If we sell more mortgages, everyone wins!"
This incredible group-think-to-hell extended to much of the WORLD's banking system, simultaneously.
"America's good for it, those bonds are rated AAA! We'll buy them even though we know there's no way they could possibly still be issuing AAA rated bonds anymore now that we've already bought billions of dollars worth." "As an Actuary, I shouldn't issue this insurance on these transactions because these CDO's are just too hard to accurately determine their true value. Even Warren Buffett says they're a joke." "As Fed Chairman, I know I shouldn't keep Interest rates this low for this long, but all my indicators tell me there's no inflation and people are doing well."
Etc. Etc. Etc. EVERYONE had insight into the problem. It was just that everyone only had a small piece of the full picture. And almost ALL lacked the moral fiber to say, STOP. THIS ISN"T MAKING ANY SENSE, when presented with the things they wanted.
Fascinating, isn't it? You're both missing the big picture that humans have an amazing ability to go after things we want so hard that we collectively have the ability to screw up the entire world. Even better? We do it all for pieces of paper (actually database entries these days) that have imaginary value.
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Pumping the brakes was taught because people were too lazy to learn to threshold brake... feel for where the tires slip, and let up just a bit from there. Pumping meant you got the maximum braking you could without thinking or learning to drive properly. Nowadays with a computer handling the "pumping" it happens so fast with ABS systems, that the car is effectively threshold braking.
All these tests are being done by people who maintain their car's brakes properly. Think every car on the road is driven by someone who cares enough to maintain it? I can't count the number of times I've passed or been passed by someone on the highway who's "Check Engine" light was on, and so obvious that I could see it in MY vehicle... How about we drop these stupid "Emissions Tests" and go back to having SAFETY checks done on everyone's vehicle's annually? And perhaps some recurrent driving training, or SERIOUS insurance discounts for those of us willing to go take a weekend course on a regular basis? Pilot's get discounts on insurance for taking additional training, and most take advantage of it... why not drivers? The road is full of soccer mom's in Priuses who have no idea what "low rolling resistance" tires are, that they're on their vehicle, and what it means to them when it starts frakkin' snowing....
Realize that a few top-end luxury cars already limit wheel angles above certain speeds unless you get nuts with the steering wheel, and there are 4-wheel steering pickup trucks that have no linkage to the rear wheels... already on the road...
How new is your Jeep? If new enough to be a Chrysler product, the brakes suck, no matter which Jeep model. Starting all the way back into the late 90s and the last model year of the Jeep Cherokee, Chrysler had dropped the Jeep brakes (bigger) and started using brakes off of other vehicles. The Cherokee finished up life with Chrysler Sebring discs on the front, and still had drums in the back in 2000. Jeep brakes suck.
Bwahaha... someone who thinks power can get from an engine to drive wheels with electronics only, and "no moving parts". Oh man, I'm dying laughing here. Quite rich.
Let ya in on a little secret there bub... electronic controls are just actuators moving real mechanical linkages that wear out over time JUST like ones moved by your own hand-power.
He said "decent car" not some crappy 80's 1st generation diesel. LOL!
... because "rude" is an ever-changing non-objective target.
Change the definition of "rude" and the problem disappears.
Not really? What's dumbed down about it? Has left/right buttons, and a scroll wheel (ball, really) and works fine. Wireless even, which is always nice.
Or if you're talking about the trackpads, the multi-touch "drop two fingers and tap the single physical button" thing is far easier than feeling for a left/right button with your thumb, and multi-touch out to four finger gestures nowadays is wicked fast once you have things set up the way you want them.
I can't think of anything I can't do with an Apple mouse that I can with any other mouse or pointing device. The design of my MacBook's trackpad sure kicks the shit out of the trackpad on my Lenovo T400 that work provides.
As someone else pointed out in the thread, the sheer consistency of the keyboard shortcuts in OSX and software that follows Apple's design docs, means I rarely lift a hand to move to the mouse/pointing device anyway. Keyboard shortcuts have always been the way to go for any OS... doesn't matter which one it is. It's nice that the commands stay consistent more often than not on OSX, vs. a number of "exceptions" I have to remember on the work Lenovo running XP. (And to a lesser extent, the home Vista box, and the Win 7 virtual machine on the MacBook.
At the end of the day I've never played this "my OS is bigger than your OS" crap, so I'm an expert on multiple OSs... so I enjoy the competitive advantage I have over closed-minded co-workers who'll only learn "one or the other" and actually believe the marketing BS that there's actually a battle going on. They're just OSs.
OS wars. Who cares? True pros know 'em all... Mac's not going away...Neither is Windows... nor Linux... OS/2 Warp, it's a little shaky these days. :-) Solaris OpenWin... not seeing that one too often, either, but know it too... and more...
The more you learn, the more you know. Closing off the brain to an OS because of marketing "war" nonsense, is dumb. One in ten laptops is a Mac. If you're a professional computer person who only does windows, you get a 90%. Another percentage point of market share, and you're down to a "B+" grade on laptop support. And falling... :-)
So this is non-news in the U.S., because GSM = AT&T and T-Mobile. T-Mobile isn't good enough to handle an onslaught of iPhone users.
Unless there's a CDMA chipset/RF section version of the iPhone in the works. That would get Verizon, Sprint, and others into the fray.
Full disclosure: I work for Polycom.
The industry is booming right now with tons of high-quality options in the marketplace. I'll avoid discussing Skype and other freebies, and tell you about the "pro" stuff. Everyone else is covering the freebies adequately, other than to point out that the things you want to know are... Resolution and frame rate. When something uses a non-technical term like "HD" to describe the box, as "HD at what resolution and frame rate?".
I'll stick to generalities below:
- Polycom, Cisco, Tandberg (now merging with Cisco), and LifeSize all make useful dedicated hardware at various price-points.
- Company histories: Cisco is selling video as an add-on to the "full Cisco religious experience". They bought Tandberg recently.
- Tandberg is well-respected and also has a large percentage of their business selling specialized boxes for video broadcast/cable TV, etc... that have nothing to do with videoconferencing. (Similar technology, obviously...) No one really knows why Cisco bought them, but it's interesting what will happen to all of their product lines. (Does Cisco really want to sell on-the-fly video transcoding devices to TV stations? Odd.)
- LifeSize is former Polycom people who left to do HD. Polycom immediately did HD as soon as that happened. (LOL... hey, that's just MY personal opinion. I'm sure someone would argue with that, but I've seen that pattern happen at LOTS of companies.)
- Polycom and LifeSize are the only two pure videoconferencing, focused on just videoconferencing players.
Other generalities:
- People say you don't need video. I used to say that too, I came from a company that was acquired by Polycom and figured audio was all you ever needed. I've gotten completely hooked on being able to see real human emotional responses during meetings, etc. It's more useful than you think. Granted, if you're in a tech group or not using a room-based system or even an entire RPX room... you're never quite looking "eye to eye"... techies especially have multiple monitors, and tend to be looking off to one side. But you can still see the other person winces when bad news is given... something you could only "imagine the worst" on an audio conference.
- Getting the video "job" OUT of your PC, even with two monitors on the PC (or more) is best if you do it a lot. Sooner or later, Windows is going to barf on itself during your call, or worse, you need information to CONDUCT the call, and you've got to reboot the thing you're talking through. I use our proprietary desktop client (CMA Desktop) when road-warrior-ing it, and it's great, but when I'm at my desk, a desktop unit like one of the switchable units that doubles as your second monitor, or to me, even better yet... the VVX 1500 I'm currently using, work very nicely.
Really general stuff:
- On modern dedicated hardware everyone does HD. Remember however that HD has to be compressed heavily if you're not wanting to burn 14 Mb/s of bandwidth per call. No one does.
- Everyone has something proprietary built in on top of the standards.
- Everyone has complete ROOMS available that they'll build that include multiple HD units that act in conjunction to give you a "I'm looking into the other room" effect. HP started that with their HALO system, but it was rapidly mimicked by all.
- Everyone makes desktop clients. Some do SIP, some do H.323, some do both. They're all limited by the quality of cameras available for the PC marketspace.
- No one supports Mac well. (Stupid, since the Mac has a camera built-in)
Final note:
- Tons of businesses are also moving toward everyone having Microsoft OCS for the desktop webcams, etc. It's 100% possible to completely integrate OCS desktops to dedicated room units, like ours, and vice-versa.
#1 Answer to your ENTIRE question: Find a Value Added Reseller that knows what they're doing. In the education environment I can tell you that the customers who found a clueful VAR who worked with them to INTEGRATE room-base
I don't because governments are never really "fair" about anything.
Not enough applicants.
Okay, obviously you're a "big L" Libertarian who thinks roads, schools, fire departments, and police are unnecessary for modern society. Sorry I tried to have a rational conversation with you.
just-as-essential-as-the-last-three-editions ?
You might re-think that part about them not protecting your life, liberty, or property.
Without the FCC, pirates and others would find the "juicy" portions of upper VHF, UHF, and high UHF spectrum work really well for their "Billy-Bob's Hilltop Radio", and Public Safety agencies would have no protected spectrum with with to dispatch Police, Fire, and Ambulances to your House.
Without the NTIA working with the FCC, there'd be no way to keep civilians off of NTIA/Federal/Military spectrum, and things like search RADAR, AWACS aircraft, etc... wouldn't work properly.
I understand your Constitutional complaints, but I don't empathize with them. The Country's forefathers couldn't even conceive of RF spectrum or how useful the application of radio would be to the entire world, and certainly didn't prepare for it in the Constitution. But spectrum management is still a required function of any modern government if you want any RF-based technology to work.
Sorry, I'm not buying your whine, but I'll eat your cheese.
The FCC actually has done a pretty good balancing act of allowing many RF devices and services to be utilized WITHOUT licenses. Every 802.11 device is a "radio station" but there's no requirement for each one to be FCC-licensed for example. Part 15 devices make up millions of transmitters and receivers, in spectrum that's very range-limited by its high frequencies.
It took FCC *ENGINEERS* to flesh out those ideas a few decades ago... they need to continue to be an engineering-based organization. Your complaint seems to be that they're also a politically-driven one, and that - I can empathize with.
But the FCC's role in spectrum management is vital to virtually everything RF-based. Take them away and the chaos -- especially if it affected the Public Safety bands -- could literally kill you, if you required quick medical attention.
Demand already outstrips supply - my company has 20 open positions in Atlanta, GA. They can't find QUALIFIED candidates for most of them.
And what would Democrats do differently, tax everyone to make sure we all have a better life in a competitive world? LOL. That only goes so far. (One term, usually.)
You say that people "can't" do the right thing. I disagree. I use the word "won't". Very different meanings.
People really don't get this. We all REALLY vote with our DOLLARS. "Evil corporations" that buy off politicians, etc... get the money from CUSTOMERS.
Radically different, but not what people want to listen to. The audience that buys goods and services of the advertisers, gets what they want.
Everyone in power is a prick until you're in power. That's how the world has always worked.
Hell, most of the cell sites are down if the power's out anyway. The FCC tried to mandate a minimum amount of generator coverage for a percentage of the sites, but the carriers via whining and paying off politicos got that indefinitely postponed.
All CDMA is created and licensed... by Qualcomm. They're not efficient at rolling out new things, and the chipsets are an order of magnitude more expensive due to licensing.
There's only one problem - companies are drunk with "cheap" IT, and aren't easily going to be dragged back to the true costs without a concept of how much money TRULY integrated IT can save them.
It's a long climb back from where they're at today and they haven't exactly been hiring "entrepreneurial"-minded individuals and personalities necessary to kick-start this... what's essentially an internal "start-up" that will have to integrate themselves back into the company like the Borg, while proving they can make the company more efficient and more profitable, isn't going to be easy at all.
Actually there's a bit of truth in both your statements.
Banks loaned out money because if they didn't other banks would, because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were underwriting loans that no one in their right minds would have made to people who couldn't possibly afford them.
The fact that many of those people were of non-white races is more a commentary on the gap still present in our socio-economic system and educational system that tends to have large geographical areas where poverty reigns over large minority populations.
Mix those two together, and meddling from Congress to try to "fix" it by pouring money into neighborhoods that could never sustain anything close to an income/payback rate that could pay back the loans, and you end up with just the beginning of the problems.
Then take the fact that the banking system runs "pretty thin" and regulators are scattered far and wide, with no regulator really ever responsible for "the big picture", in fact the banks themselves are so large that they also run into this problem... the person responsible for regulating, say... whether or not the banks are insured properly -- is different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, with none looking at the bank's overall capitalization or insurance ratios.
Now make that bank a multi-national company, and quadruple the complexity of even seeing it all properly.
Next up, have most of the largest banks all insure themselves at one insurance provider. (AIG)
Anyway... like all good train wrecks, and airplane crashes... it took a very complex chain of events to cause it all. And the additional bad timing of having it all hit when the fairly "normal" ten-year market waves of up/down was also starting.
But to say that either a) It was all caused by Government... or b) that none of it was caused by those in Government who actually ORGANIZE around race (isn't that racist itself?)... like the Congressional Black Caucus who received MILLIONS in campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie, the underwriters of the vast majority of the bad loans...
Both statements are wrong. But they also both show an inability to think MUCH broader and see those two things that people are hung up on -- as just cogs in a much bigger whirling system that had numerous failures lead to near-catastropic melt-down.
The really fascinating thing about all of it... all parties involved from Government down to the individual loan holders, ALL acted in their own best interests. Usually when people do that, a general "common good" is found. In the case of the financial problems seen in recent years, what we found this time was the "common bad".
All it took was slight ethics tweaks...
"This loan looks a little shaky, but I'll do it."
"I can't REALLY afford this, but I want it so bad."
"I know taking care of my constituents at the cost of others is wrong, but I'll do it just this once."
"If we sell more mortgages, everyone wins!"
This incredible group-think-to-hell extended to much of the WORLD's banking system, simultaneously.
"America's good for it, those bonds are rated AAA! We'll buy them even though we know there's no way they could possibly still be issuing AAA rated bonds anymore now that we've already bought billions of dollars worth."
"As an Actuary, I shouldn't issue this insurance on these transactions because these CDO's are just too hard to accurately determine their true value. Even Warren Buffett says they're a joke."
"As Fed Chairman, I know I shouldn't keep Interest rates this low for this long, but all my indicators tell me there's no inflation and people are doing well."
Etc. Etc. Etc. EVERYONE had insight into the problem. It was just that everyone only had a small piece of the full picture. And almost ALL lacked the moral fiber to say, STOP. THIS ISN"T MAKING ANY SENSE, when presented with the things they wanted.
Fascinating, isn't it? You're both missing the big picture that humans have an amazing ability to go after things we want so hard that we collectively have the ability to screw up the entire world. Even better? We do it all for pieces of paper (actually database entries these days) that have imaginary value.