I'm not really getting the thrust of your argument. Informants are, by definition, most likely to be criminals or criminal accessories. What's your point?
No, it's simply that competition is less effective in the UK. In the US, if you try to gouge your market, someone will clone your product or service and wipe the floor with you. Here, people will go 'meh' and continue to pony up for overpriced junk. We're getting better, but not much.
I should probably stop before I get any more troll mods, but what the hell.
Structural adjustment policies were often badly presented to the receiving nations, but let's not forget those nations had already turned themselves into a basket case without Western involvement. The intentions were good and the effects, in the long term, certainly were. Now those countries are fucking it up again in the teeth of the current crisis, but that's another story.
Privatisation is another favourite bogeyman. The government has no incentive to run the organisation efficiently, and has no competitors, and is totally unaccountable, and can run at a loss for as long as they has paper to man the presses (see Zimbabwe). Despite this, people still claim that the discipline of having services pay for themselves is somehow morally wrong. There are some natural monopolies, but even here, there is good evidence that it still does not make sense to have the state run them. Back when Britain's BT was first privatised, it took nine months to get a new phone line installed. Within a year, the private company had brought it down to weeks.
Lowering trade barriers is good for both nations. No ifs, no buts. Look up comparative advantage and absolute advantage. It is simply not possible that reducing trade barriers reduces wealth in *either* country. There will certainly be job losses and reorganisation as the economy realigns itself, but that is no bad thing.
Since 1980, the global proportion of people living on $1 or less per day has halved. I'd agree that's nowhere near good enough, but you need to understand what will solve the problem. My second sentence above should have read "tariffs and subsidies to protect rich farmers". While agriculture is by far the worst, there are plenty of other industries that should have their protections taken away also. Despite all this, I'd remind you that the US, and most of the West to a lesser extent, run a current account deficit - in other words, there is a net cash flow to poorer countries (admittedly mostly China, but further liberalisation would improve that).
If Haiti can't grow rice profitably, then they should stop growing rice. Biofuels are big business at the moment, and there are plenty microfinance operations in Haiti. And as for the evil Western corporations, think about the last time you saw a report about a company shamed into ceasing the use of sweatshops. You probably saw pictures of the damp, dirty working conditions and the children working 12 hour days. Now that company has ditched that sweatshop, do you think those children are now in school, getting three meals a day and clean drinking water? Or is it more likely they are scavenging their way through a rubbish dump trying to find something they can eat? Nobody has to work for the evil Western companies; they choose to do so because it is better (in some way) than what was available locally.
And Stalin was no capitalist. He was in the machine right from the beginning, and proved only one thing: that any system will be exploited by someone who has the ability to do so. The Russian Revolution brought no gains at all: the economy was already down the tubes before Stalin took over. His only contribution was the realisation that his successor could only be one of the people he didn't kill first. And the Soviets never accumulated any wealth to speak of: sure, the party apparatchiks had their Zils and their dachas, but for some reason it didn't stop them defecting to the West in huge numbers. And wealth means nothing if it doesn't, eventually, improve everybody's position.
As for socialism, is there one country, place, town, village, that has consistently applied socialist principles over the last century or so of socialist theory and managed to remain a place you'd want to live? Your worldview is badly warped. You aren't alone: economic fallacies are endemic, and those of us who believe in free (really free) trade and the minimal state are often unheard voices.
I am so fucking angry I'm spitting as I type. Your bullshit is the reason third world farmers can't sell to the rich world, because assholes like you voted for tariffs to protect rich farmers. Your bullshit is the reason the West sat on its backside and let Stalin murder FIFTY FUCKING MILLION of his own people. You live in the most comfortable country on earth, the one that proved beyond any doubt that letting individuals pursue their own interests creates the wealthiest, richest society, and you have the nerve to come out with this.
No excuses for this bullshit, none. You should know better. Try going to a poor country sometime and find out what they need instead of theorising on/. Your last paragraph says it all. Your 19th century Marxist pals said the same thing in their day about their countries, and nobody starves in the West today. Jesus, Solzhenitsyn died two days ago, he might as well have never lived to hear shit like that from the mouth of someone who hasn't got a clue about the world he lives in. Get a fucking grip.
Generally the value of this data is time-limited. I'm more concerned about how difficult it is going to be for the media to pick up important stories in a timely manner if they have to scour blogs and investor relations sites to glean newsworthy details. A third-party company can prioritise and feed important information to the market effectively.
Hmm, according to my researches, it will in fact take an infinite amount of time. Therefore if it does become a black hole, we can just shoot an arrow into it and get on with our lives while the arrow is digested in an infinite amount of time.
No, it's cryptographically broken, and has a history of problems. The latest version is better, but it is still possible to infer the existence of a hidden partition if you have access to the outer partition. You are however quite right, 99% of people using it are probably fucking it up in some schoolboy way as well.
kdawson. I like it when CmdrTaco is (increasingly rarely) on duty; he might be just as ignorant, but at least you get a balanced selection and the/. bullshitometer is applied before a story is submitted, rather than being left to the posters.
One, Truecrypt is broken and the existence of a hidden partition can be inferred without knowing anything more about it. Two, the very fact you are using it implies you do have a hidden partition; why else would you use it over an encrypted filesystem?
Usenet's slow decline was inevitable with the invention of the webforum. The main newsgroup I used to inhabit (not the above, btw) was freewheeling and ubiquitous: nobody posted somewhere else because they didn't like some other poster, because there was nowhere else. I eventually moved off elsewhere after a few determined individuals trashed the group. Now it's just a dumping ground.
The trick is to pay them instead of getting sued by them. Once ya start paying them, they suddenly start making sense (unless you're a dribbling lunatic).
The police are the wrong people to ask regarding the law. They don't really care what the law is per se, just what makes their lives easiest. And not having to field calls from your irate neighbours counts as easiest.
Do you still need to take action when the guy is *running away* from your house and your family? Shooting someone in the back is not self defence.
As for the stabber, we are talking about different cases - the one I was thinking about was one guy. However, yes, I have been assaulted and I have fought back. Humans don't fight in that (psychotic) way - we are actually very good at not seriously hurting each other when we fight, which is why learning martial arts or hand to hand combat is not particularly easy. And if there are three (or even only one) intruders in your house, the only correct reaction is to make a shit-load of noise and call the cops. Playing a hero is likely to get you or your family hurt, whatever your rights to defend yourself are.
First case: suit dismissed. Second case: burglar never entered the house, so could be done for nothing but trespassing. He was shot in the back as he was running away. Third case: the guy stabbed the intruder nineteen times.
I'm as against stupid judicial results as anybody, but just remember that if something doesn't sound right, try considering the possibility that it might not be right. I'm presuming we're talking about the same cases, BTW.
Sorry, but before you get on your high horse about wasting food, sort out the rich world's insistence on farm subsidies. Once the 3/4 of the planet that doesn't grow food efficiently because it can't access a market gets up and running, food waste will not be able to be an issue.
It's pretty self evident that the ratios of value of various commodities with liquid markets will stay constant over time. Still, if you were stuck in the middle of the desert with an empty tank, I'd bet you'd value a couple of kilos of gas rather higher than a couple of kilos of gold.
Pegging the value of money to the value of metal is stupid. Metal only has the value that we assign to it, and there's no practical difference between saying "This banknote is worth $1000" and "This piece of gold is worth $1000". As for the government printing money to pay its bills, look at Zimbabwe. Inflation, in small doses, is a good thing because it encourages you to use your money rather than hide it under the mattress where it loses value. And as for comparing inflation to serious decades, try going back several hundred or thousand years rather than basing them off the post-Depression years, and then talk to me about pegging currencies to precious metals.
Personally, I think we should get a big impregnable pit, and then fill it with some sort of long-lasting lethal substance which will stop anyone from going in there. How's that for a plan?
I've yet to see a mass market chipset that didn't work even with ndiswrapper. Try booting your kernel with NOAPIC, quite often IRQ conflicts on the PCI bus are to blame with wireless cards and for some reason no-one suggests it as a fix.
I'm not suggesting that my approach is infallible, just that it works a lot more than the naysayers would have you believe.
Slashdot Mirror
I read, I have no idea if it's true, that the plastic on the passport is designed to melt if an attempt is made to microwave it.
I'm not really getting the thrust of your argument. Informants are, by definition, most likely to be criminals or criminal accessories. What's your point?
No, it's simply that competition is less effective in the UK. In the US, if you try to gouge your market, someone will clone your product or service and wipe the floor with you. Here, people will go 'meh' and continue to pony up for overpriced junk. We're getting better, but not much.
Structural adjustment policies were often badly presented to the receiving nations, but let's not forget those nations had already turned themselves into a basket case without Western involvement. The intentions were good and the effects, in the long term, certainly were. Now those countries are fucking it up again in the teeth of the current crisis, but that's another story.
Privatisation is another favourite bogeyman. The government has no incentive to run the organisation efficiently, and has no competitors, and is totally unaccountable, and can run at a loss for as long as they has paper to man the presses (see Zimbabwe). Despite this, people still claim that the discipline of having services pay for themselves is somehow morally wrong. There are some natural monopolies, but even here, there is good evidence that it still does not make sense to have the state run them. Back when Britain's BT was first privatised, it took nine months to get a new phone line installed. Within a year, the private company had brought it down to weeks.
Lowering trade barriers is good for both nations. No ifs, no buts. Look up comparative advantage and absolute advantage. It is simply not possible that reducing trade barriers reduces wealth in *either* country. There will certainly be job losses and reorganisation as the economy realigns itself, but that is no bad thing.
Since 1980, the global proportion of people living on $1 or less per day has halved. I'd agree that's nowhere near good enough, but you need to understand what will solve the problem. My second sentence above should have read "tariffs and subsidies to protect rich farmers". While agriculture is by far the worst, there are plenty of other industries that should have their protections taken away also. Despite all this, I'd remind you that the US, and most of the West to a lesser extent, run a current account deficit - in other words, there is a net cash flow to poorer countries (admittedly mostly China, but further liberalisation would improve that).
If Haiti can't grow rice profitably, then they should stop growing rice. Biofuels are big business at the moment, and there are plenty microfinance operations in Haiti. And as for the evil Western corporations, think about the last time you saw a report about a company shamed into ceasing the use of sweatshops. You probably saw pictures of the damp, dirty working conditions and the children working 12 hour days. Now that company has ditched that sweatshop, do you think those children are now in school, getting three meals a day and clean drinking water? Or is it more likely they are scavenging their way through a rubbish dump trying to find something they can eat? Nobody has to work for the evil Western companies; they choose to do so because it is better (in some way) than what was available locally.
And Stalin was no capitalist. He was in the machine right from the beginning, and proved only one thing: that any system will be exploited by someone who has the ability to do so. The Russian Revolution brought no gains at all: the economy was already down the tubes before Stalin took over. His only contribution was the realisation that his successor could only be one of the people he didn't kill first. And the Soviets never accumulated any wealth to speak of: sure, the party apparatchiks had their Zils and their dachas, but for some reason it didn't stop them defecting to the West in huge numbers. And wealth means nothing if it doesn't, eventually, improve everybody's position.
As for socialism, is there one country, place, town, village, that has consistently applied socialist principles over the last century or so of socialist theory and managed to remain a place you'd want to live? Your worldview is badly warped. You aren't alone: economic fallacies are endemic, and those of us who believe in free (really free) trade and the minimal state are often unheard voices.
No excuses for this bullshit, none. You should know better. Try going to a poor country sometime and find out what they need instead of theorising on /. Your last paragraph says it all. Your 19th century Marxist pals said the same thing in their day about their countries, and nobody starves in the West today. Jesus, Solzhenitsyn died two days ago, he might as well have never lived to hear shit like that from the mouth of someone who hasn't got a clue about the world he lives in. Get a fucking grip.
The Wikipedia articles don't do that guy justice.
Generally the value of this data is time-limited. I'm more concerned about how difficult it is going to be for the media to pick up important stories in a timely manner if they have to scour blogs and investor relations sites to glean newsworthy details. A third-party company can prioritise and feed important information to the market effectively.
Hmm, according to my researches, it will in fact take an infinite amount of time. Therefore if it does become a black hole, we can just shoot an arrow into it and get on with our lives while the arrow is digested in an infinite amount of time.
No, it's cryptographically broken, and has a history of problems. The latest version is better, but it is still possible to infer the existence of a hidden partition if you have access to the outer partition. You are however quite right, 99% of people using it are probably fucking it up in some schoolboy way as well.
kdawson. I like it when CmdrTaco is (increasingly rarely) on duty; he might be just as ignorant, but at least you get a balanced selection and the /. bullshitometer is applied before a story is submitted, rather than being left to the posters.
One, Truecrypt is broken and the existence of a hidden partition can be inferred without knowing anything more about it. Two, the very fact you are using it implies you do have a hidden partition; why else would you use it over an encrypted filesystem?
Usenet's slow decline was inevitable with the invention of the webforum. The main newsgroup I used to inhabit (not the above, btw) was freewheeling and ubiquitous: nobody posted somewhere else because they didn't like some other poster, because there was nowhere else. I eventually moved off elsewhere after a few determined individuals trashed the group. Now it's just a dumping ground.
The trick is to pay them instead of getting sued by them. Once ya start paying them, they suddenly start making sense (unless you're a dribbling lunatic).
The police are the wrong people to ask regarding the law. They don't really care what the law is per se, just what makes their lives easiest. And not having to field calls from your irate neighbours counts as easiest.
As for the stabber, we are talking about different cases - the one I was thinking about was one guy. However, yes, I have been assaulted and I have fought back. Humans don't fight in that (psychotic) way - we are actually very good at not seriously hurting each other when we fight, which is why learning martial arts or hand to hand combat is not particularly easy. And if there are three (or even only one) intruders in your house, the only correct reaction is to make a shit-load of noise and call the cops. Playing a hero is likely to get you or your family hurt, whatever your rights to defend yourself are.
Some of us think Chinese people are entitled to free speech too.
A little idle Googling seems to show that this quote comes from a CHinese foreign Ministry spokesman, not an IOC official.
I'm as against stupid judicial results as anybody, but just remember that if something doesn't sound right, try considering the possibility that it might not be right. I'm presuming we're talking about the same cases, BTW.
Sorry, but before you get on your high horse about wasting food, sort out the rich world's insistence on farm subsidies. Once the 3/4 of the planet that doesn't grow food efficiently because it can't access a market gets up and running, food waste will not be able to be an issue.
And you put up with it. Sounds like they have the measure of you.
It's pretty self evident that the ratios of value of various commodities with liquid markets will stay constant over time. Still, if you were stuck in the middle of the desert with an empty tank, I'd bet you'd value a couple of kilos of gas rather higher than a couple of kilos of gold.
Pegging the value of money to the value of metal is stupid. Metal only has the value that we assign to it, and there's no practical difference between saying "This banknote is worth $1000" and "This piece of gold is worth $1000". As for the government printing money to pay its bills, look at Zimbabwe. Inflation, in small doses, is a good thing because it encourages you to use your money rather than hide it under the mattress where it loses value. And as for comparing inflation to serious decades, try going back several hundred or thousand years rather than basing them off the post-Depression years, and then talk to me about pegging currencies to precious metals.
Personally, I think we should get a big impregnable pit, and then fill it with some sort of long-lasting lethal substance which will stop anyone from going in there. How's that for a plan?
I'm not suggesting that my approach is infallible, just that it works a lot more than the naysayers would have you believe.
I well remember those halcyon days when people seriously suggested there could be a real risk to Linux from these clowns