The period that Stephenson identifies with a decline in the ability to get 'big' things done coincidence near perfectly with the rise of neoliberalism in the west
I believe you mispelt 'big government welfare statism'.
The cold war was great for this. Massive amounts of money were dumped into stuff with the only goal being "get it done before the other guys".
And mostly it was a collossal waste of money. Trillions of dollars spent and nothing much of use at the end of it which wouldn't have been created anyway for far less.
Firefox leaks memory like a sieve and is extremely unstable. Chrome just works.
Firefox has been running here for over a week with seven windows and about twenty-five tabs open. It's using 190MB of RAM. Chrome hands your soul to Google. Hmm, which would I prefer?
Honestly, how do all these Google fanboys manage to get Firefox to crash regularly or eat RAM? I've rarely seen a crash and the RAM usage seems reasonable for the number of pages it has open.
Of course I do have noscript installed, but everyone should do that if they don't want their computer pwned by a remote exploit.
It's not a command line, it's a search box. Been that way for a while - it's actually surprisingly useful once you realize that.
Yes, and? I have one hand on the keyboard and one hand on the mouse. I move to the menu, click on it, click on the section I want and click on the application I want. It starts. I use the mouse to interact with the application.
Alternatively I can take my hand off the mouse, type some crap, hope Windows finds the right application and then put my hand back on the mouse again. Why would I possibly prefer that?
I assume you have used a search box before? Some newfangled web sites have started using them. Or are you still a Yahoo! Directory fan?
Yes, I understand, you're so totally l33t because you prefer inefficient UIs.
If you tap the Windows key and start typing, like in previous versions it will start searching for what you typed. So that still works the same, at least.
Yeah, I use a GUI because I love typing commands so much.
Which makes sense, if you think that everything should be funded by those who use it.
What possible reason is there to fund things any other way?
If, on the other hand, you think that everything should be funded by those who benefit from it, it makes more sense to weigh the tax against the businesses who are able to pull in millions of dollars each year due to the public infrastructure provided for by tax dollars.
Duh. Businesses don't pay tax. 'Tax on business' ends up being paid either by the employees or the customers; so all the class warriors demanding that 'companies should pay more tax!' are really demanding that 'wages should be lower and prices should be higher!'
Which isn't quite so bad if those customers are in another state so you're sucking money in from outside, but that's not the case here.
Dude, how can you free-market right-wingers spin everything around so much that you dare to make these claims, contradicting the most blatant reality?
Weird. Government sucks up 30-50% of the national income in Western nations, governments centralised banking and then set interest rates artificially low so that banks were lending money to people who couldn't possibly pay it back, governments bailed out the banks rather than let them go bust so the banks had no incentive not to loan out that money.
And the problem is the 'free market'?
I can only only wonder what planet you're living on. Not that it matters, because big governments are bankrupt and singing happy hippy songs isn't going to bring them back.
I cant speak to regulation per se, but taxes have been higher and businesses have been created here.
When taxes were higher they were higher in most countries where a business could be viable. Today anyone thinking of starting a business which doesn't require a physical presence in America can also look at dozens of other countries offering them better deals.
And the wealthy "job creators" are not creating jobs here.
Exactly, they're creating jobs in other countries which consider them to be something more than cash cows to be milked for taxes. So you agree that jobs aren't being created yet deny the very reasons why they're not being created.
It isnt the regulations and taxations that are killing the US economy, it is the lack of decent jobs.
Which is due to regulation and taxation. Who'd want to set up a new business in a high-tax, high-regulation nation? Who'd want to expand their business if most of the extra income would just go to the government in new taxes?
China seems to be doing fine so more and bigger government may work.
China is a basket case whose primary selling point is that it doesn't have the kind of obstructive government regulations that every Western nation does; or, at least, where it does have those regulations they can simply be ignored. Where it's been successful it's because the government has kept out of the way, and right now it's heavily reliant on US consumers, wages are rising enough that manufacturers are moving production to cheaper nations and much of the money they've made has gone into what is probably the world's largest housing bubble.
Windows won because it was absolutelly best product at the time.
Uh, no. Windows won because it was the cheapest product that got the job done. Windows was a toy compared to Unix and pretty poor compared to MacOS, but it worked and it was a fraction of the price.
Oh, and I was running Linux on my laptop in 1996 developing my web site while I traveled; Windows 95 wouldn't even boot on such a low-end system, let alone run a web server and web browser and CGI scripts.
Get rid of H1B visas, if you want to work in America, become a citizen.
So the people who would have moved to America to work for US Software, Inc and paid US taxes instead stay in their country and start up Cheaper Than US Software, Inc and the jobs move abroad.
I read an interesting book a couple of years back which argued that empires grew large by being open and allowing the 'best and brightest' from around the world to move to the imperial hub where they provided the most benefit to the empire. Then at some point they closed the doors and soon after the empire collapsed. I'm not entirely convinced that it's true, but it makes sense and seems to fit with current US government behaviour.
I guess Germans and Japanese really are a master races then, doing better than Americans even with more government.
You are aware that:
1. Japan is in the middle of a demographic decline and few Americans would want to live the way the average Japanese citizen does? That's not even taking into account the high level of homelessness last time I was there. 2. The Germans, thanks to their wonderful big government, are facing a choice between massively increasing taxes to bail out the rest of the Euro zone or seeing the Euro and probably the EU collapse around them?
The current crisis was caused by big government and looks increasingly likely to take down big government throughout the West. Yet the solution is apparently more and bigger government?
Slashdot Mirror
The period that Stephenson identifies with a decline in the ability to get 'big' things done coincidence near perfectly with the rise of neoliberalism in the west
I believe you mispelt 'big government welfare statism'.
The cold war was great for this. Massive amounts of money were dumped into stuff with the only goal being "get it done before the other guys".
And mostly it was a collossal waste of money. Trillions of dollars spent and nothing much of use at the end of it which wouldn't have been created anyway for far less.
There is no camera in any ipass system nor any intention of doing so.
Governments always claim there's 'no intention of doing so' until the day they do it.
Go open at least 200 tabs to random pages and then start your normal browsing.
Yes, because opening 200 tabs to random pages is normal web browser usage and Firefox shouldn't need more than 2MB of RAM to do so.
All GMail rendering happens locally. Why would a "cloud" gaming service be different.
DRM, silly. You can't pirate a game that's not running on your computer.
Firefox leaks memory like a sieve and is extremely unstable. Chrome just works.
Firefox has been running here for over a week with seven windows and about twenty-five tabs open. It's using 190MB of RAM. Chrome hands your soul to Google. Hmm, which would I prefer?
Honestly, how do all these Google fanboys manage to get Firefox to crash regularly or eat RAM? I've rarely seen a crash and the RAM usage seems reasonable for the number of pages it has open.
Of course I do have noscript installed, but everyone should do that if they don't want their computer pwned by a remote exploit.
It's not a command line, it's a search box. Been that way for a while - it's actually surprisingly useful once you realize that.
Yes, and? I have one hand on the keyboard and one hand on the mouse. I move to the menu, click on it, click on the section I want and click on the application I want. It starts. I use the mouse to interact with the application.
Alternatively I can take my hand off the mouse, type some crap, hope Windows finds the right application and then put my hand back on the mouse again. Why would I possibly prefer that?
I assume you have used a search box before? Some newfangled web sites have started using them. Or are you still a Yahoo! Directory fan?
Yes, I understand, you're so totally l33t because you prefer inefficient UIs.
When Windows 95 was released, the Start Menu was declared an abomination by techies.
[citation needed]
Not sure, but the justification is that most people pin their most-used applications to the task bar.
Probably because the Windows 7 Start Menu is such a disaster that they can't find anything there anymore.
If you tap the Windows key and start typing, like in previous versions it will start searching for what you typed. So that still works the same, at least.
Yeah, I use a GUI because I love typing commands so much.
Which makes sense, if you think that everything should be funded by those who use it.
What possible reason is there to fund things any other way?
If, on the other hand, you think that everything should be funded by those who benefit from it, it makes more sense to weigh the tax against the businesses who are able to pull in millions of dollars each year due to the public infrastructure provided for by tax dollars.
Duh. Businesses don't pay tax. 'Tax on business' ends up being paid either by the employees or the customers; so all the class warriors demanding that 'companies should pay more tax!' are really demanding that 'wages should be lower and prices should be higher!'
Which isn't quite so bad if those customers are in another state so you're sucking money in from outside, but that's not the case here.
Fucking sleazy, blackmailing, tax dodger.
If you don't think you're paying enough tax, you could always send a check to the government. I'm sure they'll be happy to cash it.
Dude, how can you free-market right-wingers spin everything around so much that you dare to make these claims, contradicting the most blatant reality?
Weird. Government sucks up 30-50% of the national income in Western nations, governments centralised banking and then set interest rates artificially low so that banks were lending money to people who couldn't possibly pay it back, governments bailed out the banks rather than let them go bust so the banks had no incentive not to loan out that money.
And the problem is the 'free market'?
I can only only wonder what planet you're living on. Not that it matters, because big governments are bankrupt and singing happy hippy songs isn't going to bring them back.
I cant speak to regulation per se, but taxes have been higher and businesses have been created here.
When taxes were higher they were higher in most countries where a business could be viable. Today anyone thinking of starting a business which doesn't require a physical presence in America can also look at dozens of other countries offering them better deals.
And the wealthy "job creators" are not creating jobs here.
Exactly, they're creating jobs in other countries which consider them to be something more than cash cows to be milked for taxes. So you agree that jobs aren't being created yet deny the very reasons why they're not being created.
The Chicoms are too smart to make a bonehead move like that.
Yeah, the last thing the Chinese need is for their country to be flooded with Communists.
It isnt the regulations and taxations that are killing the US economy, it is the lack of decent jobs.
Which is due to regulation and taxation. Who'd want to set up a new business in a high-tax, high-regulation nation? Who'd want to expand their business if most of the extra income would just go to the government in new taxes?
China seems to be doing fine so more and bigger government may work.
China is a basket case whose primary selling point is that it doesn't have the kind of obstructive government regulations that every Western nation does; or, at least, where it does have those regulations they can simply be ignored. Where it's been successful it's because the government has kept out of the way, and right now it's heavily reliant on US consumers, wages are rising enough that manufacturers are moving production to cheaper nations and much of the money they've made has gone into what is probably the world's largest housing bubble.
The more trade you have the less of a chance that some country feels so screwed by everyone else that they start a war.
That was also the plan before WWI, wasn't it?
Windows won because it was absolutelly best product at the time.
Uh, no. Windows won because it was the cheapest product that got the job done. Windows was a toy compared to Unix and pretty poor compared to MacOS, but it worked and it was a fraction of the price.
Oh, and I was running Linux on my laptop in 1996 developing my web site while I traveled; Windows 95 wouldn't even boot on such a low-end system, let alone run a web server and web browser and CGI scripts.
We want the best and brightest of the world to become US citizens, not indentured servants.
So how does someone become a US Citizen in a few months?
Get rid of H1B visas, if you want to work in America, become a citizen.
So the people who would have moved to America to work for US Software, Inc and paid US taxes instead stay in their country and start up Cheaper Than US Software, Inc and the jobs move abroad.
I read an interesting book a couple of years back which argued that empires grew large by being open and allowing the 'best and brightest' from around the world to move to the imperial hub where they provided the most benefit to the empire. Then at some point they closed the doors and soon after the empire collapsed. I'm not entirely convinced that it's true, but it makes sense and seems to fit with current US government behaviour.
I guess Germans and Japanese really are a master races then, doing better than Americans even with more government.
You are aware that:
1. Japan is in the middle of a demographic decline and few Americans would want to live the way the average Japanese citizen does? That's not even taking into account the high level of homelessness last time I was there.
2. The Germans, thanks to their wonderful big government, are facing a choice between massively increasing taxes to bail out the rest of the Euro zone or seeing the Euro and probably the EU collapse around them?
The current crisis was caused by big government and looks increasingly likely to take down big government throughout the West. Yet the solution is apparently more and bigger government?
So your argument is that given enough time you are going to start a war with every other country.
Looking at recent history, the answer would appear to be a solid 'yes'.
Isn't that why GM was bailed out, to keep the industrial capacity in the US?
You think that if GM had been broken up the Chinese would have packed up the factories and shipped them to China?
GM was bailed out because Obama needs those union votes.
I wonder if the free marketeers on here think that limited liability, that outrageous interference in the market, should be done away with.
How do you have government-mandated liabilitiy limits in a free market?
Ah, you can't.