So all those people (51%) must be stupid right? After all they don't agree with you.
I never said ther are stupid. But I do belive that their priorities are somewhat wrong and confusing.
Your first step should be to understand why the people you disagree with see things differently than you do.
I'm trying.
Is it because they are stupid/crazy/bastards/wackos?... possibly, but probably not. If you assume they are just stupid and there can't be a good reason to disagree with you, then you alienate yourself.
I'm not trying to "out" someone for their political views. But If many of those that voted for Bush had known more about lets say Iraq and Economy then I belive they would have voted differently. And I'm not accusing them of being uneducated or stupid, it's just that many people aren't that interested in politics and the republicans did a very good job representing their views. Many of them might have perfectly adequte reasons behind their choice though.
>>> I have seen this for a long time that USA is turning more right than the rest of the world.
I would say the US has always been more right than the rest of the world.
Just to clarify my position on this as I was a bit unclear. I do belive that it's natural for USA to be more right (on a left-right scale) than Europe becasue of the history with communism and all that shit. But After the collapse of the Soviet Union Eurpe has moved right (deregulation of industries, more competition and lower marginal tax) and USA under Bush even more so.
Kerry lost this election that day in 1970 he appeared before congress spewing that bilge about American war crimes.
I don't think it made him unelectable but it certainly made it harder as some people were willing to create the Swift Boat Campaign and attack him on not his claims on war crimes but instead on medals and actions.
We could have endless discussions about how telling about war crimes ain't "spewing bilge" but let just agree to disagree on this one ok?
Except for Israel, Spain, and Russia, the rest of the world have not suffered terrorist attacks. The rest of the world seems far more interested in restraining American power than fighting terror. That is their perogative, but our interests are not aligned.
Apart from Western Europe and some other rich countries the rest of the world do have _far worse_ problems than terrorists attack or the war on terror. In many of these countries people are dying at the rate of hundreds each week. I don't think they care much about some islamist blowing themselves up even if they take with them some rich europeans or americans.
In Europe and the rest of the world many rich countries are interested in fighting terror. Most of them have forces in Afghanistan. Most have enforced legislation to track down terrorist funding. And most of them have helped USA diplomaticly or with intelligence. Apart from the Iraq issue I don't think European countries oppose the "War on Terror". We do however have some itches with that "we have the right to attack and reform any country if we suspect that they have WMD/support terrorists/is evil" attitude.
I belive that the long-term interests of Western Europe and USA are aligned, because the similarities exceeds the differences, but only if USA understands that it's not some unique country above everyone else.
I think the problem is that apart from maybe Russia and Israel you cant find a single somewhat wealthy/industrialized country where the democratic party would not be right wing.
Therer are other countries but they are either poor or not very democratic.
But some would argue that it demonstrates that the critical thinking skills of the voters themselves need "fixing".
First let me say that allthough I had hoped that Kerry would win, Bush victory was the most likly outcome. Disappointed? Yup. But it's _not_ the end of the world. USA will continue to be a somewhat decent country to live in compared to many other countries, even if the differences among people within USA will increase as well as the social mobility. Some folks may get insanly rich other might get a job in growing areas like small bussiness, debt collecting, flipping burgers, homeland security and security personell in the next rouge state to be liberated. The big losers will be those in the middle class that don't get to participate in the party and get their share of the economic growth.
The most disappointing thing though with respect to critical thinking, and the part I must addmitt I don't fully understand, is the irrationality and shortsightedness of US voters. According to the CNN exit polls (off by 2-3%) the most important issue for voters where Moral values 22% and Economy/Jobs 20%. If I understand US politics right that "Moral values" here means issues like Abortion, Gay marriage, christianity/religiousness, "family values" and and qualities like steadfastness and itegrity as well as "trustworthiness". How peolpe manage to prioritize these areas above Economy/Jobs, Iraq and terrorism is beyond me. Some of them are classic conservative areas but historically not to the extent that GWB has campaigned on them.
And those few qualities that I find magnetizing; fiscal responisbility and a small to medium sized effective non-intrusive non-religious state, they are _completely_ abandoned.
Do people expect a second Bush administration to win the "war on terrorism" on these qualities? And do they belive Bush can create a stronger economy while at the same time winning the "War on Terror" _and_ keeping the deficit from sliding into an almost unrecoverable state?
The voters will get what they requested on the "Moral value" issue essentially on gay marriage and abortion but my prediction is that they will _not_ get what they want on Economy/Jobs and "War on Terror".
The fact that people are voting increasingly on "values" leaves little room from critical thinking, unpopular/controversial choices and nuanced viewpoints. Among the people that said "Will bring change" (25%) is the most important quality Kerry got 95% of the votes. But among those that said "Strong Leader" and "Clear stand on Issue" are important Bush got 86% and 78%. So people voted for Bush because they belive he is the right Leader. To me as a foreigner that looks like a classic case of a country both divided and unsecure about the further course. People belive the President as a Moraly and Strong Leader can accomplish things that realisticlly are unlikly to happen.
Througout history many citizens have voted for the strong commander to miraculously lead them out of the trouble and a lot of the times it has only brought the into more problems. (To avoid long flamewars I will avoid naming any specific country and leave that to the historicans.)
I have seen this for a long time that USA is turning more right than the rest of the world. I will expect to see even more focus on the Wars (Crime, Drugs, Terror,), increasing amounts of security and surveilance creep and religion afflicting more of the public life. Bush needs to cut somewhere in order to finance the war on terror and my bet is on either health care or social security. Not drasticaly, but steady. Civil liberties will remain mostly intact but will have to cease in those areas where they threaten to disturb important policies. I'm not looking forward to the USA Bush will create as it's clarly not in the interest of most americans nor the rest of the world.
I know there was no official announcement, but the generalized concensus was that this guy was dead.
Uhh.. no. That was only the generalized concensus in some conservative/republican circles. Like the Bush administration or The Weekly Standard or Little Green Footbaals.
You see, when people want something reeeeaaalll bad that tends to screw their critical thinking on the subject. They read things out of events the way they see it so that everything fits into the picture of the world. Most people want bin Ladin dead; so as times goes by without any update on his status they will start to belive that he is dead. This isn't new. Throughout the history people have belived all kinds of wrong things because it gave them the comfort of not having to question the sources that fed them their reality.
(The "no DNA to compare it against" makes little sense as bin Ladins family is huge and their location known.)
4. Armor on APC's and HUMMVEEs. How many of the humvees had some form of armor/extra splinter protection? 15? How long did it take before they started to improve this? 8 months?
How much armor protection is enough? M1A2's side armor can't stop all RPG rounds used in Iraq. Do you have any idea how much extra weight additional armor creates? Or how much it costs to add additonal armor layers to every military vehicle? Maybe somebody should add a 120mm cannon on 5 ton trucks in case they are ambushed by enemy tanks?
Give me a break will you. I never advocated something as heavy as the steel encased deppleted uranium armour on the M1A2. And It's not neccessary for the armor to cover the whole vehicle, just the driver compartment. The same armor solution that the hummvees are getting would protect against a great deal of the small arms fire and smaller IED's. People I have talked with say that for $75000 it's possible to get some decent solution. That might sound like a lot, but compared to other things on the budget it's not that much.
5 ton trucks are supposed to be protected by other units, not to be some kind of independent battle fortresses. For troop carrying needs in combat zone there are armored APCs.
Allthough I don't want them to create some "independent battle fortresses" the idea of relying on protection from other vehicles doesn't work that well in the real world. Yes, the truck will to some extent rely on tanks/APCs etc for protection against enemy tanks. But addding a some hundred pounds of armor against treats it's impossible to gueard against isnt to far fetched.
The idea of the combat zone as some defined place wherer one can bring tank support is not consistant with an guerilla war where the enemy can attack almost anywhere. It would be easier and less expensiveto add some protection than to add the number of protectin vehicles in the convoys.
20 tons or more of extra armor makes it just an easier target.
20 tons? One can get some very good protection from 500 kilo (probably even less).
And it's not just the armor issue with the truck.
Bad brakes and lack of good seatbelts makes it dangerous to drive. These are issues that has been known for 15 years and only know are they getting around to fix it.
It's too easy to blame the current problems on technology. I would rather say that bad judgement mixed with wrong priorities on where the military spends its money
1. Troop levels. Most of the military observers belive that more troops would have done a better job. Estimates on the ideal number of troops range from 200.000-400.000.
2. Taking Bagdad fast.Yes I know that bypassing some of Saddams forces was intentional. But when they captured Bagdad they stood there with what? A couple thousand soldiers and some tanks/APCs/trucks? And without a plan.. People I have talked to say it took several weeks before troopl levels in Baghdad reached the level they needed to control the central ares in Baghdad.
3. Armor on the 5 ton truck. Non-existant. Say no more. Allready in 1995 Russia discovered that chechnyan "rebells" attacked their underarmed and unarmored supply vehicles with small arms fire and IEDs. This forced the Russians to use up to 60% of their forces for protection/guarding/convoys etc.
4. Armor on APC's and HUMMVEEs. How many of the humvees had some form of armor/extra splinter protection? 15? How long did it take before they started to improve this? 8 months? And what about the M-113; uppgrade program going on for the last ten year and still some without the scheduled armor upgrade?
5. Availability of "bullet-proof" vests. I don't know much about this one. But the litle that I have heard about old flak vests doesn't exactly put the upper managment in a very positive light.
6. Disbanding the Iraqi army. 250.000 young males without a job. Riots in Baghdad.
7. Lack of guarding the Iraqi barracks, storages and weapon sites/dumps. Yes Iraqis do have an extensive weapon culture with AK's, grenades and maybe an RPG stacked under the bed "just in case". But few people store 200 pound bombs in their homes for future IED-use so they must get it from somewhere!
8. Mass-arrests in autumn 2003. Probably prisoning a lot of innocent people. Alienating suporters.
9. Abu Graib torture scandal. A nice mix of contarctors and the CIA. Enough said.
10. Scaling down troop levels in February 2004 and strategy of moving out of many small cities/villages into larger camps.
11. Leaving some areas, effectivly handing them over to the insurgents and making them no go zones.
12. So far, failure to train enough Iraqi troops of high enough quality.
The strange thing is that;
a. To some extent I find it hard to blame the Army/Marines on some of the above mentioned points as no one told them about the need to fight the kind of war they know are fighting.
b. Many of the points are related to non-existant political planning.
c. All the issues are related to #1. Troop levels. With more troops many of them would not have been a problem. So Rumsfeld should resign IMHO.
Yes, I know I'm only some 5 Karma Star Armchair General in front of a PC and it's easy to critize but still...
The waiting times in Canada are in most of the cases due to priorities between serious and urgent diseases and less urgent diseases.
Canada is population-wise a much smaller country than the USA by a factor of 9-1 so to some extent it's natural that some Canadians will shop around in USA rather than wait. Without having knowing much about the medical details I would think that USA because of its size have a broader spectre of available services.
And even in those countries with public funded health care most allow some private clinics to ecourage competition. Since most of the population is close to the US border it's natural for them get the stuff in the USA.
Also, in some cases the Canadian government buy operations is the USA because they don't have enough capacity on the short term due to natural variation in demand.
When all that is said I'm not so sure a public health care system would work in USA, due to various reasons.
And the system in Canada is far from perfect just because it suck less than in USA.;-)
Many negative folks here, just as everyone was negative when the PC arrived.
Anyway, this will sell because:
The $249 price mentioned in the article is prob. the western price. I would guess this thingy is made dirt cheap and they will start selling it slighly below that and then move downwards. As production pics up they can sell it for $199 then $149 then $99 then $49..
Remember that in the start the IBM PCs cost $10000.
Some economic folks I have talked to rant allot about all these new teories. Usually they are crap but latly they have been talking about this econ-guru from India and his "corporations should sell MANY cheap things to the poor and earn more money than selling a few expensive gadgeds to the rich"-teory. Fascinating stuff.
Some minor itches though:
-Modem? wtf? Where is the ethernet adapter or wifi card that you can but instead/option?
-Where is the small CD or CD-RW or DVD unit in the same design that you buy togheter or later as an addon? (Then you can stack them on top of each other. Neat. I want the credit if you use that idea later though.)
I'm not sure about the exact percentage malpractises constitue but overall you are right.
Blaming high health care costs on malpractise is the easy explanantion. It's a part of the problem but but can not alone explain higher premiums. The fact is that, and some conservatives might not like this, that the private health care system in USA doesn't work that well. Even with this "private" system where one have to buy health care privatly, public spending on health alone is higher than public spending in the UK and just 0.1% percentage (of GPD) below Canadas.
And overall spending (private+public) on health care is some 45-70%* higher than in Canada or any country in Western Europe.
But then again since all the free-market tinky-tanks says the system is so effective I guess they are right.
*GPD or Per capita PPP
(And BTW if the current trend continue you will reach the 20% of GPD spent on health care before 2010 and 25% before 2015.)
Some keywords on stuff that can seriously fuck up ones mood; artificiall light, constantly flashing/blinking light, random blackouts, rationed power, damaged food, long and boring repairs in the scheduled sleeping time and loss of even the most basic entertainment. And don't forget uncertainity like telling them halfway through the experiment that the government must cut the space budget and decided to start with the sallaries for the 500 days project.
Random change in mission plans and procedures are also classics.
If you ask me this claim about "North Korea has trained 600 EVIL AND SKILLED HACKERS OMG RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! is in the same category as the infamous story about How Saddam has bought 4000 new Playstations so his scientists can construct the MEGA BOMB*.
Both stories are guaranteed to go all the way around the world becauase of their newsworthiness. They are both impossible to verify. Both caters to technology fear and fears about "what will the dangerous future bring".
So I belive that both stories are propaganda. Where the propaganda comes from is another question.
And I somewhat doubt that North Korea could afford much of that Cisco stuff they would need to do some serious damage.
*What happened to that story anyway?
Thay didn't find stacks of Playstations in Iraq that's for sure.
There is no *way* that a dual P3/500 system will match an 1 GHz P4, not to speak of your claims of beating an 1.5 GHz P4.
Sure it is.
The first Pentium 4 CPU was slow compared with a P3 1 GHz. One would belive that a 1.5GHz CPU would beat the last generations 1 GHz CPU, but in many tasks the P3 was faster.
-The P3 pipeline had 12 stages the P4 had 20.
-The P3 Katmai had 512k L2 cache, the P4 had only 256k. I remember some MySQL benchmarks showing a single P3 500 MHz Katmai beating a P4 1400 MHz in some tasks.
So even with all the IDE stuff enabled a Dual P3 could be faster than a P4 in Gentooing.
Sustainable development is nothing new within environmentalism; in its modern form it dates back to 1983 and the ideas behind are even older. Probably from back in the hippie days when the western world started to think about the environment and later the oil embargoes in the early 1970's.
From a quick google search:
The apparent conflict between the interests of economic development and the interests of environment has created problems all round the world. In 1983 the United Nations appointed an international commission to propose strategies for "sustainable development" - ways to improve human well-being in the short term without threatening the local and global environment in the long term.
The Commission was chaired by Norwegian Prime-Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, and it's report "Our Common Future*", published in 1987 was widely known as "The Brundtland Report". This landmark report helped trigger a wide range of actions, including the UN "Earth Summits" in 1992 and 2002*, the International Climate Change Convention and worldwide "Agenda 21" programmes.
I don't understand CIA on this one. The CIA says it's a "federal republic". Teoretically true? Maybe, but then you have to be very kind towards Pakistan.
AFAIK the regions in Pakistan have little self governing status. I would say that Pakistan is more of a Oligarchical devolved republic, but then again that classsification is in the "practical level" not on the CIA "factbook" level.
Off course it's maybe too much to expect neutrality from the CIA these days when the subject is Pakistan..
But, when he says that "You've got a democracy in Pakistan" he implies that there is some kind of "good", satisfying or preferable situation in Pakistan.
I do understand that from a foreign policy relations view maybe it's not the moment to bitch about the state form in Pakistan. However I find it distastefull and WRONG to use a promise from a dictator about transition and reform to democracy scheduled to start in 2007 as "proof" of a successful Middle East policy.
infamous "tribal sovereignty" video.
Fun! Thanks! But at the same time
Sad! If USA elects that guy again.
How good would it be to see an interviewer sit down and totally grill Bush or Kerry for a good hour, with no aides or press secretaries, or time limits to force them to move on, and with no fear of losing 'access' and no drip-fed policy announcements and spin.
Q -- and you will be discussing at the EU summit and the idea of bringing democracy to the broader Middle East.
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
Q Is that something that really should start, though, with the solving of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think, first of all, you've got a democracy in Turkey. And you've got a democracy emerging in Afghanistan. You've got a democracy in Pakistan. In other words --
[My emphasis]
Well as you will understand after viewing that; there is a reason why this is the only lenghty interview with non-preapproved questions he will do with a decent journalist asking real questions not just picthing.
The next big release from Debian GNU/Linux after the one coming this fall will be Free Software only aka The Debian Free Software Guidelines compliant.
(Whether you support this idea, think is ridiculous/unrealistic/unnecessary/not worth it etc. is another case.)
I agree with some of that and disagree with other things. I only have enough time to touch one subject though.
But to suggest that Afghanistan was deprioritized because of Bush's personal agenda is just silly.
Tell that to Gen. Franks. He is the one that had to do the job without UAVs/UCAVs because they were needed in Iraq before the invasion.
IIRC they shipped some of the stuff away from Afghanistan in October/November 2002.
This is a necessary evolution for american universities, it's nice to see that they know how to create the next generation of academics.
It's just beyond me how they could have accomplished that without Ipods, Napster 2.0 and some quality music like the hits from Will Smith.
Slashdot Mirror
We could have endless discussions about how telling about war crimes ain't "spewing bilge" but let just agree to disagree on this one ok? Apart from Western Europe and some other rich countries the rest of the world do have _far worse_ problems than terrorists attack or the war on terror. In many of these countries people are dying at the rate of hundreds each week. I don't think they care much about some islamist blowing themselves up even if they take with them some rich europeans or americans.
In Europe and the rest of the world many rich countries are interested in fighting terror. Most of them have forces in Afghanistan. Most have enforced legislation to track down terrorist funding. And most of them have helped USA diplomaticly or with intelligence. Apart from the Iraq issue I don't think European countries oppose the "War on Terror". We do however have some itches with that "we have the right to attack and reform any country if we suspect that they have WMD/support terrorists/is evil" attitude.
I belive that the long-term interests of Western Europe and USA are aligned, because the similarities exceeds the differences, but only if USA understands that it's not some unique country above everyone else.
Therer are other countries but they are either poor or not very democratic.
The most disappointing thing though with respect to critical thinking, and the part I must addmitt I don't fully understand, is the irrationality and shortsightedness of US voters. According to the CNN exit polls (off by 2-3%) the most important issue for voters where Moral values 22% and Economy/Jobs 20%. If I understand US politics right that "Moral values" here means issues like Abortion, Gay marriage, christianity/religiousness, "family values" and and qualities like steadfastness and itegrity as well as "trustworthiness". How peolpe manage to prioritize these areas above Economy/Jobs, Iraq and terrorism is beyond me. Some of them are classic conservative areas but historically not to the extent that GWB has campaigned on them.
And those few qualities that I find magnetizing; fiscal responisbility and a small to medium sized effective non-intrusive non-religious state, they are _completely_ abandoned.
Do people expect a second Bush administration to win the "war on terrorism" on these qualities? And do they belive Bush can create a stronger economy while at the same time winning the "War on Terror" _and_ keeping the deficit from sliding into an almost unrecoverable state?
The voters will get what they requested on the "Moral value" issue essentially on gay marriage and abortion but my prediction is that they will _not_ get what they want on Economy/Jobs and "War on Terror".
The fact that people are voting increasingly on "values" leaves little room from critical thinking, unpopular/controversial choices and nuanced viewpoints. Among the people that said "Will bring change" (25%) is the most important quality Kerry got 95% of the votes. But among those that said "Strong Leader" and "Clear stand on Issue" are important Bush got 86% and 78%. So people voted for Bush because they belive he is the right Leader. To me as a foreigner that looks like a classic case of a country both divided and unsecure about the further course. People belive the President as a Moraly and Strong Leader can accomplish things that realisticlly are unlikly to happen.
Througout history many citizens have voted for the strong commander to miraculously lead them out of the trouble and a lot of the times it has only brought the into more problems. (To avoid long flamewars I will avoid naming any specific country and leave that to the historicans.)
I have seen this for a long time that USA is turning more right than the rest of the world. I will expect to see even more focus on the Wars (Crime, Drugs, Terror,), increasing amounts of security and surveilance creep and religion afflicting more of the public life. Bush needs to cut somewhere in order to finance the war on terror and my bet is on either health care or social security. Not drasticaly, but steady. Civil liberties will remain mostly intact but will have to cease in those areas where they threaten to disturb important policies. I'm not looking forward to the USA Bush will create as it's clarly not in the interest of most americans nor the rest of the world.
You see, when people want something reeeeaaalll bad that tends to screw their critical thinking on the subject. They read things out of events the way they see it so that everything fits into the picture of the world. Most people want bin Ladin dead; so as times goes by without any update on his status they will start to belive that he is dead. This isn't new. Throughout the history people have belived all kinds of wrong things because it gave them the comfort of not having to question the sources that fed them their reality.
(The "no DNA to compare it against" makes little sense as bin Ladins family is huge and their location known.)
The idea of the combat zone as some defined place wherer one can bring tank support is not consistant with an guerilla war where the enemy can attack almost anywhere. It would be easier and less expensiveto add some protection than to add the number of protectin vehicles in the convoys. 20 tons? One can get some very good protection from 500 kilo (probably even less).
And it's not just the armor issue with the truck. Bad brakes and lack of good seatbelts makes it dangerous to drive. These are issues that has been known for 15 years and only know are they getting around to fix it.
1. Troop levels. Most of the military observers belive that more troops would have done a better job. Estimates on the ideal number of troops range from 200.000-400.000.
2. Taking Bagdad fast.Yes I know that bypassing some of Saddams forces was intentional. But when they captured Bagdad they stood there with what? A couple thousand soldiers and some tanks/APCs/trucks? And without a plan.. People I have talked to say it took several weeks before troopl levels in Baghdad reached the level they needed to control the central ares in Baghdad.
3. Armor on the 5 ton truck. Non-existant. Say no more. Allready in 1995 Russia discovered that chechnyan "rebells" attacked their underarmed and unarmored supply vehicles with small arms fire and IEDs. This forced the Russians to use up to 60% of their forces for protection/guarding/convoys etc.
4. Armor on APC's and HUMMVEEs. How many of the humvees had some form of armor/extra splinter protection? 15? How long did it take before they started to improve this? 8 months? And what about the M-113; uppgrade program going on for the last ten year and still some without the scheduled armor upgrade?
5. Availability of "bullet-proof" vests. I don't know much about this one. But the litle that I have heard about old flak vests doesn't exactly put the upper managment in a very positive light.
6. Disbanding the Iraqi army. 250.000 young males without a job. Riots in Baghdad.
7. Lack of guarding the Iraqi barracks, storages and weapon sites/dumps. Yes Iraqis do have an extensive weapon culture with AK's, grenades and maybe an RPG stacked under the bed "just in case". But few people store 200 pound bombs in their homes for future IED-use so they must get it from somewhere!
8. Mass-arrests in autumn 2003. Probably prisoning a lot of innocent people. Alienating suporters.
9. Abu Graib torture scandal. A nice mix of contarctors and the CIA. Enough said.
10. Scaling down troop levels in February 2004 and strategy of moving out of many small cities/villages into larger camps.
11. Leaving some areas, effectivly handing them over to the insurgents and making them no go zones.
12. So far, failure to train enough Iraqi troops of high enough quality.
The strange thing is that;
a. To some extent I find it hard to blame the Army/Marines on some of the above mentioned points as no one told them about the need to fight the kind of war they know are fighting.
b. Many of the points are related to non-existant political planning.
c. All the issues are related to #1. Troop levels. With more troops many of them would not have been a problem. So Rumsfeld should resign IMHO.
Yes, I know I'm only some 5 Karma Star Armchair General in front of a PC and it's easy to critize but still...
Canada is population-wise a much smaller country than the USA by a factor of 9-1 so to some extent it's natural that some Canadians will shop around in USA rather than wait. Without having knowing much about the medical details I would think that USA because of its size have a broader spectre of available services.
And even in those countries with public funded health care most allow some private clinics to ecourage competition. Since most of the population is close to the US border it's natural for them get the stuff in the USA.
Also, in some cases the Canadian government buy operations is the USA because they don't have enough capacity on the short term due to natural variation in demand.
When all that is said I'm not so sure a public health care system would work in USA, due to various reasons. ;-)
And the system in Canada is far from perfect just because it suck less than in USA.
Anyway, this will sell because:
The $249 price mentioned in the article is prob. the western price. I would guess this thingy is made dirt cheap and they will start selling it slighly below that and then move downwards. As production pics up they can sell it for $199 then $149 then $99 then $49..
Remember that in the start the IBM PCs cost $10000.
Some economic folks I have talked to rant allot about all these new teories. Usually they are crap but latly they have been talking about this econ-guru from India and his "corporations should sell MANY cheap things to the poor and earn more money than selling a few expensive gadgeds to the rich"-teory. Fascinating stuff.
Some minor itches though:
-Modem? wtf? Where is the ethernet adapter or wifi card that you can but instead/option?
-Where is the small CD or CD-RW or DVD unit in the same design that you buy togheter or later as an addon? (Then you can stack them on top of each other. Neat. I want the credit if you use that idea later though.)
Blaming high health care costs on malpractise is the easy explanantion. It's a part of the problem but but can not alone explain higher premiums. The fact is that, and some conservatives might not like this, that the private health care system in USA doesn't work that well. Even with this "private" system where one have to buy health care privatly, public spending on health alone is higher than public spending in the UK and just 0.1% percentage (of GPD) below Canadas.
And overall spending (private+public) on health care is some 45-70%* higher than in Canada or any country in Western Europe.
But then again since all the free-market tinky-tanks says the system is so effective I guess they are right.
*GPD or Per capita PPP
(And BTW if the current trend continue you will reach the 20% of GPD spent on health care before 2010 and 25% before 2015.)
And don't forget uncertainity like telling them halfway through the experiment that the government must cut the space budget and decided to start with the sallaries for the 500 days project.
Random change in mission plans and procedures are also classics.
Fun for the people planning the exercise though..
Both stories are guaranteed to go all the way around the world becauase of their newsworthiness. They are both impossible to verify. Both caters to technology fear and fears about "what will the dangerous future bring".
So I belive that both stories are propaganda. Where the propaganda comes from is another question.
And I somewhat doubt that North Korea could afford much of that Cisco stuff they would need to do some serious damage.
*What happened to that story anyway?
Thay didn't find stacks of Playstations in Iraq that's for sure.
Don't mock their effort!
These people could have used up all the precious Icelandic Internet packets if they were allowed to continue.
Not by far now, but maybe by far in 2010.
The first Pentium 4 CPU was slow compared with a P3 1 GHz. One would belive that a 1.5GHz CPU would beat the last generations 1 GHz CPU, but in many tasks the P3 was faster.
-The P3 pipeline had 12 stages the P4 had 20.
-The P3 Katmai had 512k L2 cache, the P4 had only 256k. I remember some MySQL benchmarks showing a single P3 500 MHz Katmai beating a P4 1400 MHz in some tasks.
So even with all the IDE stuff enabled a Dual P3 could be faster than a P4 in Gentooing.
Sustainable development is nothing new within environmentalism; in its modern form it dates back to 1983 and the ideas behind are even older. Probably from back in the hippie days when the western world started to think about the environment and later the oil embargoes in the early 1970's.
From a quick google search:
AFAIK the regions in Pakistan have little self governing status. I would say that Pakistan is more of a Oligarchical devolved republic, but then again that classsification is in the "practical level" not on the CIA "factbook" level.
Off course it's maybe too much to expect neutrality from the CIA these days when the subject is Pakistan..
But, when he says that "You've got a democracy in Pakistan" he implies that there is some kind of "good", satisfying or preferable situation in Pakistan.
Fun! Thanks! But at the same timeI do understand that from a foreign policy relations view maybe it's not the moment to bitch about the state form in Pakistan. However I find it distastefull and WRONG to use a promise from a dictator about transition and reform to democracy scheduled to start in 2007 as "proof" of a successful Middle East policy.
Sad! If USA elects that guy again.
Your Prayers Have Been Answered.
Stream
Use Real, Real Alternative, Quicktime or VLC. Not sure about WMP.
A real interview with the President. With a real jounalist from Ireland. From late June 2004 with Irish broadcasting.
OMG do he look incompetent. This is the little known but infamous interview where he claims that Pakistan is a democracy!
From the transcript:
[My emphasis]
Well as you will understand after viewing that; there is a reason why this is the only lenghty interview with non-preapproved questions he will do with a decent journalist asking real questions not just picthing.
like Kyoto..., as in international treaties, not necessarily the specific Kyoto treaty.
(Whether you support this idea, think is ridiculous/unrealistic/unnecessary/not worth it etc. is another case.)
IIRC they shipped some of the stuff away from Afghanistan in October/November 2002.
This is a necessary evolution for american universities, it's nice to see that they know how to create the next generation of academics.
It's just beyond me how they could have accomplished that without Ipods, Napster 2.0 and some quality music like the hits from Will Smith.
Apple 20" WS; 1680 x 1050 = 1764000 pixels.
Nec 20" 4:3; 1600 x 1200 = 1920000 pixels.