I apologise for not directing my response enough. To clarify my post, I certainly agree with your sentiment and would love a way for it to work, but do not feel that there is a way for it to work with the world still on such an unequal economic footing. There was a very good survey discussing this exact topic in the economist about 2 weeks ago, but as it is a survey it will not be put online for another month or two so I cannot link to it and the studies it cites (I dont have the issue to hand right now). Incidently, one of the more memorable items from that survey was one of the Qing dynasty's emperors in China delaring that China no longer had any need for any foreign goods or services and that China was closing her borders to outside influence. Her GDP was 7 times the size of Britains. Britain sent trade emissaries in the 1790s but was firmly rejected by China. Fast forward and the industrial revolution was taking off with Britain now having the worlds largest economy and China still refusing outside goods and services as it endured 200 years of a poor economy from one (very) bad decision by one man.
Anyway, back on topic. Switzerland is the best example that you could have given me for a strong, independant nation with a good economy. Specific to farming, Switzerland does not have much arable land compared to most major countries (10% according to the world factbook, compared to 20%+ for the larger US, UK, France, etc), so perhaps that is a limiting factor for larger farms. There are more government regulations to encourage organic farming which lends itself more to smaller farms and requires higher labour input. There is not enough food produced in Switzerland alone though so they do need to import food as well.
When I read your comments though I do see them from a different angle. The EU and US corporate farms I view as being more down to the extreme levels of tariffs imposed by those countries on foreign farmers by the large amounts of aid given to the native farms (almost always billed as being there to save and encourage family farms but having the opposite effect). Your comment on American history (also not something I am too familiar with) instantly brings up in my mind the boost to US enterprise in the 19th century that came about from ignoring international restrictions such as patents.
My knowledge of Switzerland is limited to that which I have been exposed to as I have had little reason to seek out specific information about it, having only been to Geneva, and so I cannot argue too much without being beaten down by the inherent bias in my interpretation of statistics so I will not attempt to do so but would be interested in hearing any that you have. I do know it is a world centre of banking and trade which may have come about because it has remained neutral and has not used tariffs or restrictions anywhere nearly as much as the other large powers of Europe and the US, especially when it comes to immigration.
With regards to governments supporting free trade, I think that outside of scandinavia, most support it only as much as they have to and the pressures from non-economist sources push very hard in the other direction. There are many people in goverment today that want to be like the Qing emperor if it will mean getting themselves re-elected.
Specific to your human-rights linked index, I think that it would be too many shades of grey to be manageable. Compiling an accurate, comprehensive list of human-rights abuses would be extremely difficult. Secretive governments would be able to mask abuses a lot more easily by restricting the press where applicable. Violations would need to be verified otherwise people could start any rumours to damage their country before elections. Human rights are not a global standard. Women are (supposed to be) equal in the west for instance, but obviously are not in most muslim countries. Countries such as moldova which simply do not have the resources to cater for the disabled would be penalised, slowing their ability to grow an
I feel the need to disagree with your final point. Firstly, there has never been any point in history that these sorts of tariffs have worked. Any time they are applied, industries are less likely to do business with that country due to the relative instability of prices (see the recent Steel Tariffs debacle, or any very protectionist country like Iran). If a variable tariff is put on in some countries but not others (due to free trade areas such as the EU, non-adherance to the treaty, or whatever), those countries instantly gain an advantage. Wages are rising across the developing world (and in fact the developing world now, for the first time in well over a century, has over 50% of world GDP by PPP.) If some countries put tariffs on, this will initially reduce the demand for goods from that country. This will force down wages in that country again, increasing demand around the world for those goods, and making them even more competitive with the same goods produced elsewhere. If the market allows it, they will become very competitive with the protective nation again, but the citizens of the protective nation will be paying more for those goods than anyone else around the world, giving other people around the world more money to spend on other goods and services, but in the protective nations the money goes into government coffers instead of flowing around more people first, lowering their GDP. The global economy is not a zero-sum game, there is not a finite amount of money on earth, as more people join (roughly 3 billion work in the WTO world at the moment), the size of the pie increases. Developing countries increase faster than developed, but the main problem with the US at the moment are the trade balances and savings balances. With the US spending much more than it is creating, there will inevitably be a drain to its creditor nations. This is really down to national economic policy failures rather than any intrinsic problem with globalisation and protectionism will just hurt the US more.
As I understand it, heat is very bad for the lubricant in the drive, so when HDDs get too hot, the lubricant (eventually) dries out and vastly shortens the life of the drive. I might be mistaken, so does anybody have real experience with this?
I feel that I have to whore out my computer price comparison site. It operates with a similar range of data to pricewatch but has a few differences. It is international (UK, US, Canada at the moment with more coming soon), and only deals with reputable shops (so the strange ones that pricewatch use quite often are not going to pollute the results with bait and switch tactics). The advanced search options allow filtering by Linux or Mac compatibility as well as windows, though this is still a work in progress so there are only about 3000 linux flagged products in the system at the moment. The site also tries to automatically figure out the best value products to save hunting for the price/performance sweet spot, so will figure out hard drives to the best value per GB for instance. Check it out anyway, and feel free to post any comments in my/. journal as feedback is very much welcome. It is nearing the end of the beta phase now, with more stores being added over the next few months.
Probably get some sort of sponsorship tie-in with Motorola now complete with funky modern phones. Still... if there was a phone on the market with stun/kill settings I'd probably get it.
Even Microsoft must be getting fed up with the instability caused by the patent system in the US. Do they benefit enough from having such a large number of patents that they would not put pressure on the system for change, or is everything building up to one big patent-lawsuit blowout with IBM/Sun/Every other major computer player (or does that work more like cold war style M.A.D.)?
Google operate businesses in countries where they operate, so have to obey local laws as they can be punished. Services like spamhaus are not legally based in other countries so only have to obey their patron law.
The link worked when I submitted it over 36 hours ago. Ah well, slow editors, here is an alternate link to the same AFP syndicated story: physorg and also Yahoo.
Although it sounds good, do people hate microsoft so much (thanks to windows) that it will not be a success compared to the more-respected apple? Or will ipod fatigue set in as people look for the next big thing, giving a decent boost to sales? Microsoft have always been fairly decent with hardware manufacturing (original xbox appearance and controller aside), and I would not be averse to getting a zune over an ipod.
About time! I am in the UK, but usually get a US or Japanese console so I dont have to wait for the games to come out over here. I am fed up with the stupid release schedules and ordering something from gamestop or lik-sang will normally get me a game 6 months sooner than if I waited for it to come out in the UK, and will almost always work out cheaper as well. I am very glad that I get to shop around for games for the Wii.
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I though you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again.
"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
The interview reads like Phoenix Wright but with less murder. It truely is a shame that so many judges seem to lack the technical knowledge required in these cases, but the US must be thankful that they are not criminal cases just yet and remain civil (criminal=prison, civil=fines). France has some very media-related politicians and are normally at the forefront of oppressive european legislation (along with the UK). One of the French politicians is actually married to one of the main players in the music distribution industry which is just a bit of a conflict of interest in these sorts of cases.
he he nicely put. An interesting side note on the marketing - it was so effective that it is now one of the most often used case-studies in relevant PR firms.
Out of curiousity, and if you dont mind answering, how long were you operating for and what sort of ballpark figure was it for number of people who wanted assistance?
Ahhh Red Dwarf. Up until season 7 was perhaps the greatest Sci-fi comedy ever. (Though futurama might have overtaken it now). If you have not yet seen it then do yourself a favour and watch it. (but bare in mind it dates back to 1988).
The best 'top X games of all time' site is GameRankings. You can sort by user votes or by reviews from magazines. The only problem is that 'all time' only goes back as far as 'N64' as that is when they started parsing reviews. Still worth a look though as it does not have 30 pages of adverts and is quite a nice search engine.
This is partially true, it is actually not a national law anymore, but is down to specific local laws. There are still some parts of England where the law has yet to be repealed, even though it was written in 1363 by King Edward III. Cue the 'Nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide' speak, as if you are in those areas and dont practice longbow on sundays, you indeed have something to hide!
But I think we know that will not happen. Instead wait for the interesting footage from the next 'free speech zone' at the next republican national congress.
Seems people have enough people voting for one person with one box to tick / hole to punch / whatever. Can you imagine the horror of diebold's software with ranked voting?!
It does make me wonder how long it will be before some rich person or company buys a few islands, establishes a country and bans children from them (think an almost-permananent vacation spot). I would assume that there are a lot of laws designed to push agendas based on 'protecting the children'and so I bet it would be quite an interesting country that only allows childless people to come and live there, and would certainly have interesting TV!
but is the amount of hassle worth the effort it takes to remain anonymous?
Yes if you are going to lose your freedom, or be executed because of it, probably not if you are a general user who does nothing that could ever be used against them, and only use it in instances where you actually need anonymity rather than using it for all activity.
Slashdot Mirror
I apologise for not directing my response enough. To clarify my post, I certainly agree with your sentiment and would love a way for it to work, but do not feel that there is a way for it to work with the world still on such an unequal economic footing. There was a very good survey discussing this exact topic in the economist about 2 weeks ago, but as it is a survey it will not be put online for another month or two so I cannot link to it and the studies it cites (I dont have the issue to hand right now). Incidently, one of the more memorable items from that survey was one of the Qing dynasty's emperors in China delaring that China no longer had any need for any foreign goods or services and that China was closing her borders to outside influence. Her GDP was 7 times the size of Britains. Britain sent trade emissaries in the 1790s but was firmly rejected by China. Fast forward and the industrial revolution was taking off with Britain now having the worlds largest economy and China still refusing outside goods and services as it endured 200 years of a poor economy from one (very) bad decision by one man.
Anyway, back on topic. Switzerland is the best example that you could have given me for a strong, independant nation with a good economy. Specific to farming, Switzerland does not have much arable land compared to most major countries (10% according to the world factbook, compared to 20%+ for the larger US, UK, France, etc), so perhaps that is a limiting factor for larger farms. There are more government regulations to encourage organic farming which lends itself more to smaller farms and requires higher labour input. There is not enough food produced in Switzerland alone though so they do need to import food as well.
When I read your comments though I do see them from a different angle. The EU and US corporate farms I view as being more down to the extreme levels of tariffs imposed by those countries on foreign farmers by the large amounts of aid given to the native farms (almost always billed as being there to save and encourage family farms but having the opposite effect). Your comment on American history (also not something I am too familiar with) instantly brings up in my mind the boost to US enterprise in the 19th century that came about from ignoring international restrictions such as patents.
My knowledge of Switzerland is limited to that which I have been exposed to as I have had little reason to seek out specific information about it, having only been to Geneva, and so I cannot argue too much without being beaten down by the inherent bias in my interpretation of statistics so I will not attempt to do so but would be interested in hearing any that you have. I do know it is a world centre of banking and trade which may have come about because it has remained neutral and has not used tariffs or restrictions anywhere nearly as much as the other large powers of Europe and the US, especially when it comes to immigration.
With regards to governments supporting free trade, I think that outside of scandinavia, most support it only as much as they have to and the pressures from non-economist sources push very hard in the other direction. There are many people in goverment today that want to be like the Qing emperor if it will mean getting themselves re-elected.
Specific to your human-rights linked index, I think that it would be too many shades of grey to be manageable. Compiling an accurate, comprehensive list of human-rights abuses would be extremely difficult. Secretive governments would be able to mask abuses a lot more easily by restricting the press where applicable. Violations would need to be verified otherwise people could start any rumours to damage their country before elections. Human rights are not a global standard. Women are (supposed to be) equal in the west for instance, but obviously are not in most muslim countries. Countries such as moldova which simply do not have the resources to cater for the disabled would be penalised, slowing their ability to grow an
I feel the need to disagree with your final point. Firstly, there has never been any point in history that these sorts of tariffs have worked. Any time they are applied, industries are less likely to do business with that country due to the relative instability of prices (see the recent Steel Tariffs debacle, or any very protectionist country like Iran). If a variable tariff is put on in some countries but not others (due to free trade areas such as the EU, non-adherance to the treaty, or whatever), those countries instantly gain an advantage. Wages are rising across the developing world (and in fact the developing world now, for the first time in well over a century, has over 50% of world GDP by PPP.) If some countries put tariffs on, this will initially reduce the demand for goods from that country. This will force down wages in that country again, increasing demand around the world for those goods, and making them even more competitive with the same goods produced elsewhere. If the market allows it, they will become very competitive with the protective nation again, but the citizens of the protective nation will be paying more for those goods than anyone else around the world, giving other people around the world more money to spend on other goods and services, but in the protective nations the money goes into government coffers instead of flowing around more people first, lowering their GDP. The global economy is not a zero-sum game, there is not a finite amount of money on earth, as more people join (roughly 3 billion work in the WTO world at the moment), the size of the pie increases. Developing countries increase faster than developed, but the main problem with the US at the moment are the trade balances and savings balances. With the US spending much more than it is creating, there will inevitably be a drain to its creditor nations. This is really down to national economic policy failures rather than any intrinsic problem with globalisation and protectionism will just hurt the US more.
As I understand it, heat is very bad for the lubricant in the drive, so when HDDs get too hot, the lubricant (eventually) dries out and vastly shortens the life of the drive. I might be mistaken, so does anybody have real experience with this?
I feel that I have to whore out my computer price comparison site. It operates with a similar range of data to pricewatch but has a few differences. It is international (UK, US, Canada at the moment with more coming soon), and only deals with reputable shops (so the strange ones that pricewatch use quite often are not going to pollute the results with bait and switch tactics). The advanced search options allow filtering by Linux or Mac compatibility as well as windows, though this is still a work in progress so there are only about 3000 linux flagged products in the system at the moment. The site also tries to automatically figure out the best value products to save hunting for the price/performance sweet spot, so will figure out hard drives to the best value per GB for instance. Check it out anyway, and feel free to post any comments in my /. journal as feedback is very much welcome. It is nearing the end of the beta phase now, with more stores being added over the next few months.
Probably get some sort of sponsorship tie-in with Motorola now complete with funky modern phones. Still... if there was a phone on the market with stun/kill settings I'd probably get it.
Even Microsoft must be getting fed up with the instability caused by the patent system in the US. Do they benefit enough from having such a large number of patents that they would not put pressure on the system for change, or is everything building up to one big patent-lawsuit blowout with IBM/Sun/Every other major computer player (or does that work more like cold war style M.A.D.)?
Google operate businesses in countries where they operate, so have to obey local laws as they can be punished. Services like spamhaus are not legally based in other countries so only have to obey their patron law.
The link worked when I submitted it over 36 hours ago. Ah well, slow editors, here is an alternate link to the same AFP syndicated story: physorg and also Yahoo.
Although it sounds good, do people hate microsoft so much (thanks to windows) that it will not be a success compared to the more-respected apple? Or will ipod fatigue set in as people look for the next big thing, giving a decent boost to sales? Microsoft have always been fairly decent with hardware manufacturing (original xbox appearance and controller aside), and I would not be averse to getting a zune over an ipod.
About time! I am in the UK, but usually get a US or Japanese console so I dont have to wait for the games to come out over here. I am fed up with the stupid release schedules and ordering something from gamestop or lik-sang will normally get me a game 6 months sooner than if I waited for it to come out in the UK, and will almost always work out cheaper as well. I am very glad that I get to shop around for games for the Wii.
Douglas Adams rest in peace.
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I though you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again.
"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
The interview reads like Phoenix Wright but with less murder. It truely is a shame that so many judges seem to lack the technical knowledge required in these cases, but the US must be thankful that they are not criminal cases just yet and remain civil (criminal=prison, civil=fines). France has some very media-related politicians and are normally at the forefront of oppressive european legislation (along with the UK). One of the French politicians is actually married to one of the main players in the music distribution industry which is just a bit of a conflict of interest in these sorts of cases.
he he nicely put. An interesting side note on the marketing - it was so effective that it is now one of the most often used case-studies in relevant PR firms.
Nah it is getting to a point where we can go into a state of Xen
Not enough room in my wallet for a pope card AND a Necro donor card.
Out of curiousity, and if you dont mind answering, how long were you operating for and what sort of ballpark figure was it for number of people who wanted assistance?
Ahhh Red Dwarf. Up until season 7 was perhaps the greatest Sci-fi comedy ever. (Though futurama might have overtaken it now). If you have not yet seen it then do yourself a favour and watch it. (but bare in mind it dates back to 1988).
The best 'top X games of all time' site is GameRankings. You can sort by user votes or by reviews from magazines. The only problem is that 'all time' only goes back as far as 'N64' as that is when they started parsing reviews. Still worth a look though as it does not have 30 pages of adverts and is quite a nice search engine.
This is partially true, it is actually not a national law anymore, but is down to specific local laws. There are still some parts of England where the law has yet to be repealed, even though it was written in 1363 by King Edward III. Cue the 'Nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide' speak, as if you are in those areas and dont practice longbow on sundays, you indeed have something to hide!
you forgot 'Needs more funding for conclusive results'. Go bureaucracy!
But I think we know that will not happen. Instead wait for the interesting footage from the next 'free speech zone' at the next republican national congress.
Seems people have enough people voting for one person with one box to tick / hole to punch / whatever. Can you imagine the horror of diebold's software with ranked voting?!
It does make me wonder how long it will be before some rich person or company buys a few islands, establishes a country and bans children from them (think an almost-permananent vacation spot). I would assume that there are a lot of laws designed to push agendas based on 'protecting the children'and so I bet it would be quite an interesting country that only allows childless people to come and live there, and would certainly have interesting TV!
Yes if you are going to lose your freedom, or be executed because of it, probably not if you are a general user who does nothing that could ever be used against them, and only use it in instances where you actually need anonymity rather than using it for all activity.
Damn you are right... gasoline is so flammable that we must move on to a (slightly) more stable fuel. Big Oil's plan has failed mwahahaha.