Call me selfish, but if I create $100k worth of software, I better be paid $100k.
Right. 'Value' doesn't work like that.
What you're saying is that programmers won't mind making multi-billion dollar software and get paid peanuts for it. (granted, that's how open source works right now... but then that's why there are still corporate jobs where programmers -do- get paid for their work).
In those corporate jobs they will get only a tiny fraction of it.
In my case, customers pay me per day nearly 400% of what I earn (or about 600% of what get after taxes and pension and disability payments) for my services on long term contracts (consultancy rate is higher), and I work at a strictly non-profit institution (that actually makes a loss...).
The rest pays for management, insanely expensive 17th century palace office space, and legal/HR/accounting etc. departments. Even with al this 'support' I end up with 6m^2 office and still waste about 50% of my time (excluding the plane trips and hotel nights) on mostly pointless customer contacts, acquisition, filling out forms, auditing procedures etc.
Still without the reputation of the organization I am part of I would never be seriously considered as an option by my customers (ministries, tax administration, etc). I wouldn't even be able to make an appointment with anyone important, and even if I wanted to use my existing contacts they would tell me that I can't offer them continuity, that there are legal issues, etc.
Of course there are software houses with much lower overhead, like the subcontractors we sometimes use, but they don't get close to what their software is worth because they can't get a contract with the initial customer.
With consumer software you have the same thing. You need marketing, support, distribution, etc. Internet is a cheap marketing and distribution model, but you are not going to get what it could be worth.
I hope everyone realizes that "lower software costs" means "lower programmer salarys" or "fewer employed programmers" or some combination thereof.
Do you mean to suggest that the money paid for software almost exclusively pays for programmer's salaries? If that is the case then why is William H Gates III the richest man on Earth?
RTFA. Microsoft spends 30% more on advertising alone than on software development according to its own numbers. The rest of the money goes to lawyers, lobbyists, and shareholders. The point of TFA is that most of the difference is deadweight due to copyright.
An example of similar thinking [GOSPLAN reference].
Doesn't appear to work.
It worked admirably up to the sixties (6% growth average), and then the economy stalled. Why? Because of a combination of excessive investment expenditure and high defense expenditure. The USSR suffered from over-accumulation of capital, similar to today's IT industry (which has despite great success been unable to offer good return on excessive investment over the last decade). Draining money from the IT market is exactly what we need to do for a healthy software industry.
It does not follow that because a particular thing is done with government funding, that it wouldn't have happened otherwise.
I am sure something like the Internet would have happened otherwise, but it would have been something entirely different. Firstly, there might have been more than one, and secondly it would have been far more difficult to do something innovative with it without the consent of the (copyright) owners. The open source development model only took off because the Internet was initially an academic toy, funded by the taxpayer through (D)ARPA.
Just so that you know (in case you don't) money that goes into "someone's back pocket" does not just stay in that person's back pocket. [..] It gets invested, meaning that it's up for "sale" on the loanable funds market.
The same is true for taxes collected by the state, or 'protection' fees paid to the local mafia. It all gets circulated back into the economy eventually. Even if you bury or burn the money, the central bank will eventually replace and recirculate it. That doesn't mean we should be indifferent to where it ends up.
As you yourself noted, Bill Gates is not likely to consume the money. It's up for 'sale'. Looking at the interest rates nowadays it might as well be in his back pocket: there is too much capital and too little consumption, and mr. Gates is part of that problem.
The profit motive is what makes the market work. A government that guarantees a certain level of profits for a long time by way of copyright or patent is creating inertia in the market. In a perfect market profit will tend to dwindle quickly, and people like Bill Gates do not exist. Bill Gates will also recirculate it, but since the money ended up in the wrong hands it will by definition create less wealth for everyone.
Maybe Bill Gates is so much superior to us mere mortals that he will create more wealth, but that is not what classical economics tells us. If that were true, there would be equal reason to believe that the government can also spend your tax dollars better than you can.
The thing about charity and whatnot -- I just don't get why that would work as an incentive (i.e. I agree with you).
The thing about charity makes sense if a lot of people transfer very small amounts of money. Refunding may be prohibitively expensive for a failed tender, and the promise of donating it to charity is supposed to convince people that the party that made the 'ransom' tender has no economic interest in the tender failing.
Hell, people open a package of cookies, eat 2 or 3, and then throw it on the ground and the managers do nothing.
Here in Amsterdam the staff might kill you, or at least beat you up, for behaviour like that. We have had quite a number of cases of excessively violent citizen arrests by staff in the last few years.
No, it's like fining somebody for leaving their door unlocked and _not_ getting burglarized.
Not locking doors is a form of soliciting crime, and it is therefore fined in some countries. Criminal law is enforced on behalf of the community that defends itself from being harmed by crime, not on behalf of victims, and negligence in protecting your property gives an incentive to criminals. For the same reason not reporting a crime you know of, even if you are the victim, may be an offense. By not locking the doors, you may be funding terrorism...
It makes sense to extend this to Internet, where 'unlocked doors' are common, to the detriment of the Internet community as a whole.
The reasonable thing would be to tax them in their place of presence.
IANA, but the reasonable thing to do seems to me allowing the taxpayer to choose domicile for the purposes of taxation. This creates competition between states for the favour of the taxpayer.
All civilized countries, including the US, have tax treaties establishing some domicile principle to prevent the obvious injustice of double taxation, but states inside the US apparently still have to solve this problem? I do understand it is problematic to negotiate a tax treaty with a state that does not have an income tax at all, but it's surprising that this can happen in 2005.
I'd really like a LaTeX with TeX's layout engine, but without the Turing-complete and output-enabled scripting language accessible to documents. Really, all the exciting stuff should be in documentclasses and packages, and the particular document should be straightforward data (which includes calling some things, of course, but only the reasonable ones).
I agree. Usually LaTeX documents only call packages that you already have, so you link the document with your own packages. There is no good reason for allowing the full scripting language in the document.
Doesn't a similar risk potentially exist with XSLT processors that allow multiple output documents?
But the only reason it isn't banned as a security hole is that people don't generally accept LaTeX documents from other people, but rather have them written into PDF or PS.
I have published my work with many different publishers, and we also have an in-house publishing business. I nearly never encounter a publisher that does not accept LaTeX, and internally we first make TeX out of other formats to produce the camera-ready.
Submitting a PDF is unfortunately not good enough if the submission is to part of a larger work. I agree that theoretically this is a huge security risk, but we never encounter malicious LaTeX. I suppose the primary reason is that it is harder to hide macros beneath the surface of the document, and LaTeX users are more likely to know that the code is malicious. Secondly, it is less interesting to write malicious code for a platform with a small market share. Third, everbody using LaTeX knows that LaTeX using people and companies are good guys. Fourth, we get it from the author and know where he lives.
Running someone else's LaTeX is similar to compiling and running unseen code downloaded from some website. I do that regularly with open source code. The difference with word docs is that I can read the LaTeX without running it automatically if I want too. XML is potentially better than LaTeX (XSL:FO works nicely for typesetting), but usually hard to read and edit in a text editor compared to LaTeX. Publishers nowadays often have dedicated XML pipelines for predictable stuff like legislation, but very few publishers ask their authors to send their input in some XML format.
But, for a living room coputer, isn't a laptop with wireless the ultimate solution, unless you're doing some media center thing?
I use a 1,6GHz centrino-based laptop & port replicator that I bought on eBay as a media center, with a Dazzle DVC 150 for video capturing. It is fanless 99% of the time, uses very little power, has its own backup battery and screen, can be used as a laptop after switching hardware config and taking it out of the port replicator, and it is fast enough. The only shortcoming of the thing is that it doesn't play all games I want to play on television.
No, and that is kind of the point. No, the US does not want two nations famous for their censorship of the Internet to have any more control then they already do.
This is a straw man argument. China and North Korea do not expect more control. They are happy if the US has less control. I don't expect the rest of the world to decide that the alternative root servers are to be placed in a UN bunker in Beijing, to be administered by a committee of ineffective UN bureaucrats from Iran, Russia, and North Korea.
I'll pass and take my chances with the nation that has seemed to have done a marvelous job keeping their hands completely off of ICANN.
Even if they did keep their hands off the DNS root servers completely - they didn't - this argument is no more convincing than saying that country X has had nuclear weapons for a long time and never used them, and therefore that country can be trusted to have them. The US only has latent control of Internet by way of the DNS root servers, and that control can be easily taken from them without their cooperation by any individual country that sets up alternative root servers. They can abuse this control only once in a major way, and therefore have to keep their hands off ICANN. In the past nobody noticed, but now increasingly governments have cybercrime and cyberwarfare advisers to explain to them that the US controls things like DNS and GPS.
When they say "control of the internet" are they just talking about the root DNS servers? There's nothing the US can do to stop other countries from designating some root DNS servers of their own, right?
Not if the US recognizes the sovereignty of other peoples in this matter. There is nothing the US can do to stop other countries developing the same WMD the US has, right? There is nothing the US can do to stop other countries from legislating patents and copyright however they like, right? There is nothing the US can do to stop other countries from trading resources in whatever currency they like, right? As a matter of fact the US does claim jurisdiction on many issues it has no prima facie jurisdiction over.
Other nations are simply worried about the latent potential the US has for exercising control over the Internet, given the current way root DNS servers are administered. Taking away that latent potential is trivial on a technical level. By actively asserting 'control of the Internet' - meaning that the US apparently does NOT accept the freedom of other nations to regulate their communications infrastructure as they like - the US government proves that they are right to be worried.
If I share my internet subscription with my neighbour, over his phone line, and we get into a major conflict because I want an independent connection, then I do have reason to be worried about what he is doing with the Internet traffic I generate, right?
While in pinciple I fully agree that it's wrong to deny a drug for costs reason, I'm wondering where the limit is. Drugs save lives (well, the right one at the right time). Should they then all be free ? In every country ? For everyone ? Then we need to nationalize drugmaking... I can't wait for all the innovation that'll ensue.
Essentially we have a free rider problem here wrt. drug R & D on the national and international level. International diplomacy seems to me the obvious instrument to use, and obviously not violating a patent to safe lives when no other option is available is immoral and negligent.
The problem is many people don't understand the difference between an explanation (why something happened) and an excuse (why what happened is okay).
This has led to the belief that understanding terrorists is the same as excusing the terrorists.
This has led to us not understanding the terrorists, and thus being ineffective at fighting them.
I always considered this phenomenon a nasty rhetorical trick, akin to debate-spoiling tricks like ad hominem. Your observation reminded me of a phrase in a paper by Umberto Eco, who grew up under Mussolini:
When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
They are constitutionally incapable of doing so because rational debate on foreign policy will erode their power base, and therefore they are condemned to lose the war to keep their power. The puzzling thing is why this type of argumentation works for politicians, and why so many people copy these arguments.
Of course, by quoting this I put myself in the situation described by Godwin's Law, which is itself both an observation on a nasty rhetorical trick and a new nasty rhetorical trick.
...I am compensating you with 10% of the total money Amount, now all my hope is banked on you and I really wants to invest this money in your country, were their is stabilities of Government, political and economic welfare
Royal Highness,
Thank you for your kind letter. I am not going to help you to get the money. I already have enough money to buy whatever I want, and my government just keeps giving me more and more. 10% of that amount is simply too little for me to get of my lazy ass and do something. I do have some free investment advice for you: invest it in China, like I do. Those people work really hard for little money. Make your money work for you, instead of giving it to us. If you invest it wisely, then maybe someday you will be rich enough to get help from people like me.
It frightens me just how much violence Europe has experienced over the centuries. Considering how relatively peaceful North America has been for the past century or so, it REALLY frightens me to imagine the US finally becoming a bit too aggressive towards its northern neighbour.
You're being far too optimistic. The US fighting Canada is so unfair that part of the US will certainly join Canada: with evenly matched sides you get a longer war and far more destruction. People instinctively like the underdog when the sides are very uneven.
If I learn nothing else from history, it's to be afraid of the future.
It's not history that repeats itself. It's people. The role of history itself isn't clear: sometimes it is the accurate recollection of the grudges of the previous war that causes the next one, and sometimes it is rosy legend of previous wars that makes people so naive to think they can get into one and get away with it unscathed.
On the other hand, Rome and some other superpowers have demonstrated that it is perfectly possible for some to get away with centuries of peace at home and war abroad before vengeance is served by Vandals, Huns, Goths, Lombards etc.;)
Also, Hitler ordered Paris to be destroyed and many explosives were placed but never detonated because Dietrich von Choltitz did not follow the orders from Hitler, risking reprisals against his family back in Germany. Paris was saved. There is a gripping book "Is Paris Burning?", as well as a movie by the same name that I haven't seen.
Yes. I remember I read that. Hitler certainly was very destructive in his last days. Run of the mill destruction usually happens for a good reason, though.
I do have the impression that as a general rule capitals are less often destroyed because the elite tends to live in the capital and surrenders when it is under threat, while other towns are supposed to let themselves get shelled for the fatherland.
The architects in the middle ages trusted their offspring to finish and maintain the cathedrals that the architects laid the foundations for. Seems that turned out ok - most of the cathedrals are still here and don't show signs of being stolen or vandalized. Even the Germans had the good sense to leave Paris alone during both wars and they're the original Vandals.
You are wrong. Most cathedrals are no longer there. Most cathedrals collapsed within two centuries after being built, and many others will collapse within 50 years because of car traffic.
You are also wrong about the Germans. A number of old inner cities and over 200 medieval castles in my country (the Netherlands) were destroyed beyond repair by the Germans in the 4 days we fought them. Paris was saved because it wasn't fought over. Still the Germans are not more destructive than our other neighbours. Overall they are our most peaceful neighbours.
The town I live in now was for instance razed and flooded by the sea in 1350 in a civil war, and razed again in 1572 by a Spanish army, who also murdered the entire population. It was rebuilt in 1574 with strong city walls and shelled again in the same year by the Spanish. It was shelled by the French in 1672, and by our own army liberating it in 1673. Last time it was shelled was again by our own side in 1814, after Napoleon lost the battle of Leipzig, and the French garrison refused to surrender to Dutch militia claiming the town.
The town I grew up in was destroyed by the English fleet in 1809. The inner city was largely destroyed again in 1940 and in 1945, when the Allies also flooded it by bombing the dikes. Sources also recount that the town was razed to the ground twice in the middle ages by the Flemish because of our excessive river tolls.
It is really just a fluke that some buildings survived over the centuries, and generally speaking it is the best buildings that survive.
I stumbled across this project 5 years ago & was immediately in love.
Me too. I stumbled accross the book "The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility" and bought it immediately.
Now I think that either our society or the clock cannot last 10,000 years. Ever noticed that mankind's great monuments are in awful, deserted places? The answer to the question why occurred to me when I learned that Roman bricks were reused in the medieval castles in my area. No monument will survive the proximity of a thriving human society, and there are now more people around than ever before. Everything will be recycled at some point, including the clock. Using cheap materials will not work, because the very presence of the working clock will make its parts valuable in the future. Cheap is a very temporary thing. They better start working on the machine gun of the long now.
Uhhh, you forget that it was German technology that went to the moon and most people outside the USA, where there are real public schools that actually teaches something, know that.
A space race is definitely a better way to show off technology than a world war. But Germany's reputation for quality technology predates WWII, and V2 missiles, just like Japan's image problem (that lasted into the eighties).
I agree in the case of the US. Nobody doubts Americans have the knowledge to make good products, although that doesn't necessarily translate to good value for money. The German government never needed to go to the moon for its manufacturers to acquire a reputation for quality.
The Japanese, however, suffered for a long time from a reputation acquired in the early 20th century of being yellow monkeys who merely made bad copies of our great white man's gadgets. The Chinese government actually has an argument for wanting the biggest buildings, a space program etc. Chinese products ARE worth less because they are considered inferior, and Chinese achievements will increase the value of the trademark 'Chinese'. The US does not have that argument.
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Particularly the ones for whom even small amounts of passive smoking triggers asthma attacks.
I have that with lysol, and some perfumes, deodorants, and shampoos. Nobody cares about that. I have no problem with smokers.
Call me selfish, but if I create $100k worth of software, I better be paid $100k.
Right. 'Value' doesn't work like that.
What you're saying is that programmers won't mind making multi-billion dollar software and get paid peanuts for it. (granted, that's how open source works right now... but then that's why there are still corporate jobs where programmers -do- get paid for their work).
In those corporate jobs they will get only a tiny fraction of it.
In my case, customers pay me per day nearly 400% of what I earn (or about 600% of what get after taxes and pension and disability payments) for my services on long term contracts (consultancy rate is higher), and I work at a strictly non-profit institution (that actually makes a loss...).
The rest pays for management, insanely expensive 17th century palace office space, and legal/HR/accounting etc. departments. Even with al this 'support' I end up with 6m^2 office and still waste about 50% of my time (excluding the plane trips and hotel nights) on mostly pointless customer contacts, acquisition, filling out forms, auditing procedures etc.
Still without the reputation of the organization I am part of I would never be seriously considered as an option by my customers (ministries, tax administration, etc). I wouldn't even be able to make an appointment with anyone important, and even if I wanted to use my existing contacts they would tell me that I can't offer them continuity, that there are legal issues, etc.
Of course there are software houses with much lower overhead, like the subcontractors we sometimes use, but they don't get close to what their software is worth because they can't get a contract with the initial customer.
With consumer software you have the same thing. You need marketing, support, distribution, etc. Internet is a cheap marketing and distribution model, but you are not going to get what it could be worth.
I hope everyone realizes that "lower software costs" means "lower programmer salarys" or "fewer employed programmers" or some combination thereof.
Do you mean to suggest that the money paid for software almost exclusively pays for programmer's salaries? If that is the case then why is William H Gates III the richest man on Earth?
RTFA. Microsoft spends 30% more on advertising alone than on software development according to its own numbers. The rest of the money goes to lawyers, lobbyists, and shareholders. The point of TFA is that most of the difference is deadweight due to copyright.
An example of similar thinking [GOSPLAN reference].
Doesn't appear to work.
It worked admirably up to the sixties (6% growth average), and then the economy stalled. Why? Because of a combination of excessive investment expenditure and high defense expenditure. The USSR suffered from over-accumulation of capital, similar to today's IT industry (which has despite great success been unable to offer good return on excessive investment over the last decade). Draining money from the IT market is exactly what we need to do for a healthy software industry.
It does not follow that because a particular thing is done with government funding, that it wouldn't have happened otherwise.
I am sure something like the Internet would have happened otherwise, but it would have been something entirely different. Firstly, there might have been more than one, and secondly it would have been far more difficult to do something innovative with it without the consent of the (copyright) owners. The open source development model only took off because the Internet was initially an academic toy, funded by the taxpayer through (D)ARPA.
Just so that you know (in case you don't) money that goes into "someone's back pocket" does not just stay in that person's back pocket. [..] It gets invested, meaning that it's up for "sale" on the loanable funds market.
The same is true for taxes collected by the state, or 'protection' fees paid to the local mafia. It all gets circulated back into the economy eventually. Even if you bury or burn the money, the central bank will eventually replace and recirculate it. That doesn't mean we should be indifferent to where it ends up.
As you yourself noted, Bill Gates is not likely to consume the money. It's up for 'sale'. Looking at the interest rates nowadays it might as well be in his back pocket: there is too much capital and too little consumption, and mr. Gates is part of that problem.
The profit motive is what makes the market work. A government that guarantees a certain level of profits for a long time by way of copyright or patent is creating inertia in the market. In a perfect market profit will tend to dwindle quickly, and people like Bill Gates do not exist. Bill Gates will also recirculate it, but since the money ended up in the wrong hands it will by definition create less wealth for everyone.
Maybe Bill Gates is so much superior to us mere mortals that he will create more wealth, but that is not what classical economics tells us. If that were true, there would be equal reason to believe that the government can also spend your tax dollars better than you can.
The thing about charity and whatnot -- I just don't get why that would work as an incentive (i.e. I agree with you).
The thing about charity makes sense if a lot of people transfer very small amounts of money. Refunding may be prohibitively expensive for a failed tender, and the promise of donating it to charity is supposed to convince people that the party that made the 'ransom' tender has no economic interest in the tender failing.
Hell, people open a package of cookies, eat 2 or 3, and then throw it on the ground and the managers do nothing.
Here in Amsterdam the staff might kill you, or at least beat you up, for behaviour like that. We have had quite a number of cases of excessively violent citizen arrests by staff in the last few years.
No, it's like fining somebody for leaving their door unlocked and _not_ getting burglarized.
Not locking doors is a form of soliciting crime, and it is therefore fined in some countries. Criminal law is enforced on behalf of the community that defends itself from being harmed by crime, not on behalf of victims, and negligence in protecting your property gives an incentive to criminals. For the same reason not reporting a crime you know of, even if you are the victim, may be an offense. By not locking the doors, you may be funding terrorism...
It makes sense to extend this to Internet, where 'unlocked doors' are common, to the detriment of the Internet community as a whole.
The reasonable thing would be to tax them in their place of presence.
IANA, but the reasonable thing to do seems to me allowing the taxpayer to choose domicile for the purposes of taxation. This creates competition between states for the favour of the taxpayer.
All civilized countries, including the US, have tax treaties establishing some domicile principle to prevent the obvious injustice of double taxation, but states inside the US apparently still have to solve this problem? I do understand it is problematic to negotiate a tax treaty with a state that does not have an income tax at all, but it's surprising that this can happen in 2005.
I'd really like a LaTeX with TeX's layout engine, but without the Turing-complete and output-enabled scripting language accessible to documents. Really, all the exciting stuff should be in documentclasses and packages, and the particular document should be straightforward data (which includes calling some things, of course, but only the reasonable ones).
I agree. Usually LaTeX documents only call packages that you already have, so you link the document with your own packages. There is no good reason for allowing the full scripting language in the document.
Doesn't a similar risk potentially exist with XSLT processors that allow multiple output documents?
But the only reason it isn't banned as a security hole is that people don't generally accept LaTeX documents from other people, but rather have them written into PDF or PS.
I have published my work with many different publishers, and we also have an in-house publishing business. I nearly never encounter a publisher that does not accept LaTeX, and internally we first make TeX out of other formats to produce the camera-ready.
Submitting a PDF is unfortunately not good enough if the submission is to part of a larger work. I agree that theoretically this is a huge security risk, but we never encounter malicious LaTeX. I suppose the primary reason is that it is harder to hide macros beneath the surface of the document, and LaTeX users are more likely to know that the code is malicious. Secondly, it is less interesting to write malicious code for a platform with a small market share. Third, everbody using LaTeX knows that LaTeX using people and companies are good guys. Fourth, we get it from the author and know where he lives.
Running someone else's LaTeX is similar to compiling and running unseen code downloaded from some website. I do that regularly with open source code. The difference with word docs is that I can read the LaTeX without running it automatically if I want too. XML is potentially better than LaTeX (XSL:FO works nicely for typesetting), but usually hard to read and edit in a text editor compared to LaTeX. Publishers nowadays often have dedicated XML pipelines for predictable stuff like legislation, but very few publishers ask their authors to send their input in some XML format.
But, for a living room coputer, isn't a laptop with wireless the ultimate solution, unless you're doing some media center thing?
I use a 1,6GHz centrino-based laptop & port replicator that I bought on eBay as a media center, with a Dazzle DVC 150 for video capturing. It is fanless 99% of the time, uses very little power, has its own backup battery and screen, can be used as a laptop after switching hardware config and taking it out of the port replicator, and it is fast enough. The only shortcoming of the thing is that it doesn't play all games I want to play on television.
I would give you a mod point if I had any and wasn't the parent of your post.
No, and that is kind of the point. No, the US does not want two nations famous for their censorship of the Internet to have any more control then they already do.
This is a straw man argument. China and North Korea do not expect more control. They are happy if the US has less control. I don't expect the rest of the world to decide that the alternative root servers are to be placed in a UN bunker in Beijing, to be administered by a committee of ineffective UN bureaucrats from Iran, Russia, and North Korea.
I'll pass and take my chances with the nation that has seemed to have done a marvelous job keeping their hands completely off of ICANN.
Even if they did keep their hands off the DNS root servers completely - they didn't - this argument is no more convincing than saying that country X has had nuclear weapons for a long time and never used them, and therefore that country can be trusted to have them. The US only has latent control of Internet by way of the DNS root servers, and that control can be easily taken from them without their cooperation by any individual country that sets up alternative root servers. They can abuse this control only once in a major way, and therefore have to keep their hands off ICANN. In the past nobody noticed, but now increasingly governments have cybercrime and cyberwarfare advisers to explain to them that the US controls things like DNS and GPS.
When they say "control of the internet" are they just talking about the root DNS servers? There's nothing the US can do to stop other countries from designating some root DNS servers of their own, right?
Not if the US recognizes the sovereignty of other peoples in this matter. There is nothing the US can do to stop other countries developing the same WMD the US has, right? There is nothing the US can do to stop other countries from legislating patents and copyright however they like, right? There is nothing the US can do to stop other countries from trading resources in whatever currency they like, right? As a matter of fact the US does claim jurisdiction on many issues it has no prima facie jurisdiction over.
Other nations are simply worried about the latent potential the US has for exercising control over the Internet, given the current way root DNS servers are administered. Taking away that latent potential is trivial on a technical level. By actively asserting 'control of the Internet' - meaning that the US apparently does NOT accept the freedom of other nations to regulate their communications infrastructure as they like - the US government proves that they are right to be worried.
If I share my internet subscription with my neighbour, over his phone line, and we get into a major conflict because I want an independent connection, then I do have reason to be worried about what he is doing with the Internet traffic I generate, right?
While in pinciple I fully agree that it's wrong to deny a drug for costs reason, I'm wondering where the limit is. Drugs save lives (well, the right one at the right time). Should they then all be free ? In every country ? For everyone ? Then we need to nationalize drugmaking... I can't wait for all the innovation that'll ensue.
Essentially we have a free rider problem here wrt. drug R & D on the national and international level. International diplomacy seems to me the obvious instrument to use, and obviously not violating a patent to safe lives when no other option is available is immoral and negligent.
The problem is many people don't understand the difference between an explanation (why something happened) and an excuse (why what happened is okay).
This has led to the belief that understanding terrorists is the same as excusing the terrorists.
This has led to us not understanding the terrorists, and thus being ineffective at fighting them.
I always considered this phenomenon a nasty rhetorical trick, akin to debate-spoiling tricks like ad hominem. Your observation reminded me of a phrase in a paper by Umberto Eco, who grew up under Mussolini:
When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
They are constitutionally incapable of doing so because rational debate on foreign policy will erode their power base, and therefore they are condemned to lose the war to keep their power. The puzzling thing is why this type of argumentation works for politicians, and why so many people copy these arguments.
Of course, by quoting this I put myself in the situation described by Godwin's Law, which is itself both an observation on a nasty rhetorical trick and a new nasty rhetorical trick.
...I am compensating you with 10% of the total money Amount, now all my hope is banked on you and I really wants to invest this money in your country, were their is stabilities of Government, political and economic welfare
Royal Highness,
Thank you for your kind letter. I am not going to help you to get the money. I already have enough money to buy whatever I want, and my government just keeps giving me more and more. 10% of that amount is simply too little for me to get of my lazy ass and do something. I do have some free investment advice for you: invest it in China, like I do. Those people work really hard for little money. Make your money work for you, instead of giving it to us. If you invest it wisely, then maybe someday you will be rich enough to get help from people like me.
It frightens me just how much violence Europe has experienced over the centuries. Considering how relatively peaceful North America has been for the past century or so, it REALLY frightens me to imagine the US finally becoming a bit too aggressive towards its northern neighbour.
;)
You're being far too optimistic. The US fighting Canada is so unfair that part of the US will certainly join Canada: with evenly matched sides you get a longer war and far more destruction. People instinctively like the underdog when the sides are very uneven.
If I learn nothing else from history, it's to be afraid of the future.
It's not history that repeats itself. It's people. The role of history itself isn't clear: sometimes it is the accurate recollection of the grudges of the previous war that causes the next one, and sometimes it is rosy legend of previous wars that makes people so naive to think they can get into one and get away with it unscathed.
On the other hand, Rome and some other superpowers have demonstrated that it is perfectly possible for some to get away with centuries of peace at home and war abroad before vengeance is served by Vandals, Huns, Goths, Lombards etc.
Also, Hitler ordered Paris to be destroyed and many explosives were placed but never detonated because Dietrich von Choltitz did not follow the orders from Hitler, risking reprisals against his family back in Germany. Paris was saved. There is a gripping book "Is Paris Burning?", as well as a movie by the same name that I haven't seen.
Yes. I remember I read that. Hitler certainly was very destructive in his last days. Run of the mill destruction usually happens for a good reason, though.
I do have the impression that as a general rule capitals are less often destroyed because the elite tends to live in the capital and surrenders when it is under threat, while other towns are supposed to let themselves get shelled for the fatherland.
The architects in the middle ages trusted their offspring to finish and maintain the cathedrals that the architects laid the foundations for. Seems that turned out ok - most of the cathedrals are still here and don't show signs of being stolen or vandalized. Even the Germans had the good sense to leave Paris alone during both wars and they're the original Vandals.
You are wrong. Most cathedrals are no longer there. Most cathedrals collapsed within two centuries after being built, and many others will collapse within 50 years because of car traffic.
You are also wrong about the Germans. A number of old inner cities and over 200 medieval castles in my country (the Netherlands) were destroyed beyond repair by the Germans in the 4 days we fought them. Paris was saved because it wasn't fought over. Still the Germans are not more destructive than our other neighbours. Overall they are our most peaceful neighbours.
The town I live in now was for instance razed and flooded by the sea in 1350 in a civil war, and razed again in 1572 by a Spanish army, who also murdered the entire population. It was rebuilt in 1574 with strong city walls and shelled again in the same year by the Spanish. It was shelled by the French in 1672, and by our own army liberating it in 1673. Last time it was shelled was again by our own side in 1814, after Napoleon lost the battle of Leipzig, and the French garrison refused to surrender to Dutch militia claiming the town.
The town I grew up in was destroyed by the English fleet in 1809. The inner city was largely destroyed again in 1940 and in 1945, when the Allies also flooded it by bombing the dikes. Sources also recount that the town was razed to the ground twice in the middle ages by the Flemish because of our excessive river tolls.
It is really just a fluke that some buildings survived over the centuries, and generally speaking it is the best buildings that survive.
I stumbled across this project 5 years ago & was immediately in love.
Me too. I stumbled accross the book "The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility" and bought it immediately.
Now I think that either our society or the clock cannot last 10,000 years. Ever noticed that mankind's great monuments are in awful, deserted places? The answer to the question why occurred to me when I learned that Roman bricks were reused in the medieval castles in my area. No monument will survive the proximity of a thriving human society, and there are now more people around than ever before. Everything will be recycled at some point, including the clock. Using cheap materials will not work, because the very presence of the working clock will make its parts valuable in the future. Cheap is a very temporary thing. They better start working on the machine gun of the long now.
Uhhh, you forget that it was German technology that went to the moon and most people outside the USA, where there are real public schools that actually teaches something, know that.
A space race is definitely a better way to show off technology than a world war. But Germany's reputation for quality technology predates WWII, and V2 missiles, just like Japan's image problem (that lasted into the eighties).
I agree in the case of the US. Nobody doubts Americans have the knowledge to make good products, although that doesn't necessarily translate to good value for money. The German government never needed to go to the moon for its manufacturers to acquire a reputation for quality.
The Japanese, however, suffered for a long time from a reputation acquired in the early 20th century of being yellow monkeys who merely made bad copies of our great white man's gadgets. The Chinese government actually has an argument for wanting the biggest buildings, a space program etc. Chinese products ARE worth less because they are considered inferior, and Chinese achievements will increase the value of the trademark 'Chinese'. The US does not have that argument.