Reduce military spending by 90% and allocate those resources to the USPTO. We're told over and over that intelectual property is the single most important industry in the world and makes approximately many times as much money as all other industries combined (not to mention that civilization depends on it) so if given the choice between a new stealth bomber and a thousand new patents on business methods it should be obvious that the bomber is not the way to go. If another country wants to invade the USA, the USA can simply threaten to sue their companies for all the patents they violate; that should be a much larger deterrent than superior weaponry or nuclear-payload ICBMs.
Let's look at Iraq. Iraqi insurgents do well with AK-47s and pipe bombs but Iraq has virtually no patents. The US Army keeps losing soldiers over there but the American standard of living is much higher. It's clear that if the USA want to stay ahead the solution is cheaper guns and more patents.
The problem is that cloud apps only work on desktops or if you're inside a metropolitan area. Everywhere else you usually can't guarantee disruption-free fast wireless service (not to mention the fact that mobile internet is usually more expensive than wired internet + WiFi), thus a mobile device that relies exclusively on cloud apps will face a reduced market.
If we do run out of petroleum (in the sense that demand becomes much higher than supply) a sensible approach would be to restrict use of oil to situations where we really need it or haven't found a reasonable alternative yet. One part of that would be to stop the development of new fossil oil-fueled cars and to severely limit the operational time of such cars, for example by phasing out the sale of gasoline and diesel ofer the next N years.
People would need to switch to other means of transportation; as for cars that would mean more alternative fuels and, of course, electric cars. Lots of electric cars need lots of electricity, thus thorium reactors and uranium reactors with waste reduction through breeders would be the best short-term fix we have. Other approaches like the EU's solar thermic park in the Sahara could deliver some of the power, as well.
For a longer-term fix we could try putting some serious money behind fusion research. I'm certain that ITER, and subsequently DEMO, could be operational a bit faster if they had three times the budget.
I think that once China becomes more expensive people will simply outsource to other countries where they can find cheap labor. Those countries will stop being dirt cheap faster than China did but they'll be enough for another two or three decades of cheap production.
Well, it did lead to South Korea rolling their own system, SEED. Which their banks then implemented entirely in ActiveX. Which meant that every non-IE browser became useless for homebanking, which is one reason why South Korea is pretty much Windows-only.
Actually, "Steve Jobs announces new device" goes pretty well with a Mac Rumors link. The various rumor sites usually have live tickers (complete with photo streams) during his keynotes, thus they do have the news first. I think it's perfectly reasonable to first quote their ticker and then follow up with a link to Apple once the site is updated.
Do you knwo which other firmwares behave better? I'm aware of OpenWRT and Tomato but I haven't done much to compare them - one of my router runs OpenWRT because that's what I heard of first (and it does everything I need) and the other one runs DD-WRT micro because OpenWRT doesn't support it. When I finally make the jump to 802.11n it'd be great to know the relative strengths and weaknesses of my firmware options.
"Linux driver compliance" most likely translated to "we're fine with binary blobs for x86 and x86_64 as long as you release versions compatible with the current kernel every half year or so". "Linux driver" means "a pirece of software that allows Linux to use the device", not "a piece of software Richard Stallman would like".
Exactly. For example the maximum transmit power in the 2.4 GHz band (802.11b/g) for the USA is 300 mW, whereas for Germany it's 100 mW. The USA have 11 channels in that band while Europa has 13 and Japan has 14. Until recently, Spain only had channels 10 and 11 while France only had 10 and 13.
Without a board capable of doing all acceptable powers at all frequencies you'd have to develop and release different hardware revisions for each country on Earth.
Remember that iOS also runs on iPods. When I buy a PDA/MP3 player I don't necessarily want it to have a mobile phone built in. I also don't neccessarily want to pay some four hundred bucks for it. Plus there's the demographic of those who used the Back to School offer or bought their iPod second hand or refurbished.
My touch cost me thirty-five bucks (Back to School; I was getting a new MBP and happened across the offer). Unless you can show me a Nokia smartphone for that price I'm going to be content with having to jailbreak it.
Plus, actions like this are an excellent way to make outspoken enemies out of ISPs and hosting companies. If these companies don't get any legal recourse (for instance because the hired DOSers sit in a country that doesn't care) they might turn to vigilantism themselves. In the end it will be hailing either subpoenas and injuncations or counterattacks.
Note that the original soundbite was "too many corners were cut". I interpret that as meaning that all involved parties cut corners, which added up to a structure that couldn't stand up to operator errors at all. The point made originally was that each of the involved errors should've never happened.
Admittedly, this has shifted towards criticism of BP only later on but I think that the original soundbite does bear some validity: It seems more realistic that the involved companies decided to skim off a bit more money by skimping on safety measures rather than that such gross mistakes were done entirely by accident and that it's a mere coincidence that all of them happened at the same rig/drill site and none happened to be noticed before it was too late.
In other words: It's possible that cutting corners was not a major contributor to the accident but it seems improbable. Thus the original soundbite seems to hold up well enough despite being an extreme reduction of a complex issue.
1. The EC submits the draft.
2. If the EP accepts, it's passed. Otherwise...
3. The EP rejects the draft and gives the EC a list of things they want changed.
4. The EC submits a new version of the draft.
5. If the EP accepts, it's passed. Otherwise...
6. The EC can try to reconcile with the EP and figure out a shared draft. If this fails...
7. The draft is dead and can't be resubmitted.
I think the EC could try to start a war of attrition with the EP but that could end with the EP just veoting anything looking remotely like IP legislation until the EC shuts up.
Unfortunately (for the USA) the EU is a major trade partner and not neccessarily dependent on the USA. "Or else" may well turn into "or else you'll have to soak up much of China's trade capacity, ensuring that we won't see money from either of you". The USA can't afford a trade war with a partner this big.
The days of "if the USA take their ball and go home, no one can play" are over. There are other big kids on the block and they bring their own balls.
In Germany we still have stamps (although they're self-adhesive now). However, business mail often uses either barcodes (for packages) or alphanumeric codes or DataMatrix barcodes in the envelope's window. I think that's a good split; you still get nice stamps for personal mail but business mail can use much more efficient ways of franking their mail.
Oh, we do however have stopped putting stamps on packages; those have a standardized adhesive label and are paid for directly at the post station. But at least the letters remain.
Again, I live in a country with legal prostitution and it just doesn't happen. Except maybe with extreme assholes who can't comprehend that there are women who aren't ready to spread their legs for them 24/7. Unsurprisingly, these people act like that everywhere on the world.
Prostitute is a job. We don't assume that people who don't advertise having that job do have it, even if they're technically qualified. To use a simile: People don't assume that everyone with a bicycle is a courier even though for small deliveries they have everything they need to be one.
Also note that casual prostitution may actually be made harder by legalization. So a woman does occasionally sell herself. Now she needs to declare that income on her tax report or commit tax fraud. Casual prostitution looks a bit different if you have to explain to the government where that extra money comes from - even with legal prostitution most people don't want to be associated with it, especially not officially. And depending on how regulated sex workers are in her jurisdiction she might then get hit with a penalty for workplace safety violations as she can't prove she passed the requisite health checks lately.
Yeah, but Shadowrun had a nice little portmanteau for it. I'm quoting them on that, not on the concept. (Of course they might have taken the word from someone else but I go with what I know.)
Well, no. Alcohol behaves exactly the same, just in a slightly different context. People don't take alcohol being legal as a sign that it's a good idea to start binge drinking during breakfast and in most places where guns are legal it's neither allowed not considered courteous to randomly shoot people in the head. Likewise people wouldn't take legalized prostitution as a sign that everyone is a hooker.
Of course that's my observation over here. Maybe alcohol is part of a balanced breakfast where you're from, in which case I'd avoid people bearing guns.
What you want is offered by independent retailers, however. At least in Germany all major online computer (part) retailers offer BTO, operating system and support optional. You pay for the hardware, a small fee for assembly and S/H costs. After that, the box is entirely out of the retailer's hands unless you bought a warranty plan.
The nice part is that European law forces them to offer the usual warranty (minimum of two years, for the first six months the burden of proof lies with the retailer) and you usually get retail boxes (plus accessories) for all components (perhaps sans case) so if something breaks you can RMA it.
Dell is maybe interesting for laptops but independent retailers give me total control about which parts go into my desktop at prices fairly close to Dell's, especially since I don't have to buy Windows unless I want it. If I do buy Windows I get a DVD, not a partition. There are no custom parts of unknown compatibility or preinstalled crapware, either.
Dell advertises how they offer BTO systems... but the truth is that other companies are doing it better, as far as the home user sector is concerned. As far as the singular customer is concerned, Dell has been out-Delled.
Prostitution is the greatest factor in the overwhelming AIDS epidemic in Africa.
Along with bad healthcare (AIDS isn't detected quickly), poverty (infected hookers can't afford not to work), lack of condoms (those things aren't free you know) and, in the war-torn areas, rape.
In the US there are serious problems with pimps in some cities that have been unending.
That's an artifact of prostitution being illegal. When Germany legalized prostitution, we immediately outlawed pimping, which has been fairly (but of course not entirely) successful. Without legalization, such control is not possible.
Then you will also find that the girls don't declare much in the way of taxes and have tiny Social Security checks and no retirement plans when they get old.
Another artifact of prostitution being illegal. Of course they're not going to declare illegal income. Prostitutes in countries with legal prostitution pay their taxes like everyone else and collect retirement benefits like everyone else.
They also are usually not the brightest bulbs when it comes to carrying health and disability policies.
That really depends, although it's again less pronounced in countries with legal prostitution. Legal prostitution can be regulated; for instance you can demand sex workers to have themselves checked for STDs at regular intervals. The police can do spot checks for correct, genuine paperwork. Also, as far as reportages are to be trusted, the better brothels usually have something like this as an internal policy - if you can't prove you have been checked in the last N months you're not allowed to work there. Infected hookers mean a bad reputation, which means fewer customers.
In cities where hookers normally work in strip clubs there are also serious organized crime connections as a norm.
Again an artifact of prohibition, although I admit that organized crime can be involved even where it's legal. Still, you're not going to reduce the involvement of organized crime by pushing the whole thing where society can't control it at all. Look at the prohibition of alcohol and the War on Drugs to see how that policy tends to be very profitable for organized crime.
It might be possible to regulate prostitution to a level that would eliminate many of the issues but it would take a lot of invasive laws and a huge governmental effort to regulate it correctly. And if we do regulate it we may create another host of problems. How easy would it be for a regulator to trade blindness for sex or cash?
Note that these concerns apply to a lot of legal jobs. How can we trust car importers not to traffic drugs? How can we trust waste disposal companies not to just dump the stuff in a lake? Why should pharma companies bother whether their products are 100% pure or not? We have a lot of professions that require regulation. Society hasn't collapsed yet.
Burma, the Philippines or even Jamaica already are places frequently used for sex vacations as forms of prostitution are very common in these places. Sadly this sometimes involves children.
...which wouldn't happen as much if you had legal prostitution in your own country where it can be regulated according to your own values.
Essentially you're positing that a world where not everyone has unlimited resources is a world without upsides as the economic struggle turns everyone into soulless monsters.
That's a pretty dark but certainly interesting philosophy.
Actually, no. Several countries have legal prostitution. I live in one. Most women don't want to be a prostitute and thus won't sell themselves for money. Those that do aren't going to flirt with you first - probably because that would mean spending an enormous amount of time getting paid the same as if they were up-front and had the sex right away.
For further information look at how legal alcohol didn't destroy society.
Because they need to see the sun in order to make their measurements? Have you ever tried making accurate measurements in a dark room? That just doesn't work at all. They need light to read their instruments (and of course to make sure they're pointing in the right direction; you don't want to accidentally measure Mercury!), thus they go during the day.
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Reduce military spending by 90% and allocate those resources to the USPTO. We're told over and over that intelectual property is the single most important industry in the world and makes approximately many times as much money as all other industries combined (not to mention that civilization depends on it) so if given the choice between a new stealth bomber and a thousand new patents on business methods it should be obvious that the bomber is not the way to go. If another country wants to invade the USA, the USA can simply threaten to sue their companies for all the patents they violate; that should be a much larger deterrent than superior weaponry or nuclear-payload ICBMs.
Let's look at Iraq. Iraqi insurgents do well with AK-47s and pipe bombs but Iraq has virtually no patents. The US Army keeps losing soldiers over there but the American standard of living is much higher. It's clear that if the USA want to stay ahead the solution is cheaper guns and more patents.
The problem is that cloud apps only work on desktops or if you're inside a metropolitan area. Everywhere else you usually can't guarantee disruption-free fast wireless service (not to mention the fact that mobile internet is usually more expensive than wired internet + WiFi), thus a mobile device that relies exclusively on cloud apps will face a reduced market.
If we do run out of petroleum (in the sense that demand becomes much higher than supply) a sensible approach would be to restrict use of oil to situations where we really need it or haven't found a reasonable alternative yet. One part of that would be to stop the development of new fossil oil-fueled cars and to severely limit the operational time of such cars, for example by phasing out the sale of gasoline and diesel ofer the next N years.
People would need to switch to other means of transportation; as for cars that would mean more alternative fuels and, of course, electric cars. Lots of electric cars need lots of electricity, thus thorium reactors and uranium reactors with waste reduction through breeders would be the best short-term fix we have. Other approaches like the EU's solar thermic park in the Sahara could deliver some of the power, as well.
For a longer-term fix we could try putting some serious money behind fusion research. I'm certain that ITER, and subsequently DEMO, could be operational a bit faster if they had three times the budget.
I think that once China becomes more expensive people will simply outsource to other countries where they can find cheap labor. Those countries will stop being dirt cheap faster than China did but they'll be enough for another two or three decades of cheap production.
Well, it did lead to South Korea rolling their own system, SEED. Which their banks then implemented entirely in ActiveX. Which meant that every non-IE browser became useless for homebanking, which is one reason why South Korea is pretty much Windows-only.
Actually, "Steve Jobs announces new device" goes pretty well with a Mac Rumors link. The various rumor sites usually have live tickers (complete with photo streams) during his keynotes, thus they do have the news first. I think it's perfectly reasonable to first quote their ticker and then follow up with a link to Apple once the site is updated.
Do you knwo which other firmwares behave better? I'm aware of OpenWRT and Tomato but I haven't done much to compare them - one of my router runs OpenWRT because that's what I heard of first (and it does everything I need) and the other one runs DD-WRT micro because OpenWRT doesn't support it. When I finally make the jump to 802.11n it'd be great to know the relative strengths and weaknesses of my firmware options.
"Linux driver compliance" most likely translated to "we're fine with binary blobs for x86 and x86_64 as long as you release versions compatible with the current kernel every half year or so". "Linux driver" means "a pirece of software that allows Linux to use the device", not "a piece of software Richard Stallman would like".
Exactly. For example the maximum transmit power in the 2.4 GHz band (802.11b/g) for the USA is 300 mW, whereas for Germany it's 100 mW. The USA have 11 channels in that band while Europa has 13 and Japan has 14. Until recently, Spain only had channels 10 and 11 while France only had 10 and 13.
Without a board capable of doing all acceptable powers at all frequencies you'd have to develop and release different hardware revisions for each country on Earth.
Not if we can reinforce the sun's fusion the only way we know: We complete ITER, crank it up to maximum and shoot it into the sun.
Remember that iOS also runs on iPods. When I buy a PDA/MP3 player I don't necessarily want it to have a mobile phone built in. I also don't neccessarily want to pay some four hundred bucks for it. Plus there's the demographic of those who used the Back to School offer or bought their iPod second hand or refurbished.
My touch cost me thirty-five bucks (Back to School; I was getting a new MBP and happened across the offer). Unless you can show me a Nokia smartphone for that price I'm going to be content with having to jailbreak it.
Plus, actions like this are an excellent way to make outspoken enemies out of ISPs and hosting companies. If these companies don't get any legal recourse (for instance because the hired DOSers sit in a country that doesn't care) they might turn to vigilantism themselves. In the end it will be hailing either subpoenas and injuncations or counterattacks.
Note that the original soundbite was "too many corners were cut". I interpret that as meaning that all involved parties cut corners, which added up to a structure that couldn't stand up to operator errors at all. The point made originally was that each of the involved errors should've never happened.
Admittedly, this has shifted towards criticism of BP only later on but I think that the original soundbite does bear some validity: It seems more realistic that the involved companies decided to skim off a bit more money by skimping on safety measures rather than that such gross mistakes were done entirely by accident and that it's a mere coincidence that all of them happened at the same rig/drill site and none happened to be noticed before it was too late.
In other words: It's possible that cutting corners was not a major contributor to the accident but it seems improbable. Thus the original soundbite seems to hold up well enough despite being an extreme reduction of a complex issue.
Nope. The EC has exactly two tries.
1. The EC submits the draft.
2. If the EP accepts, it's passed. Otherwise...
3. The EP rejects the draft and gives the EC a list of things they want changed.
4. The EC submits a new version of the draft.
5. If the EP accepts, it's passed. Otherwise...
6. The EC can try to reconcile with the EP and figure out a shared draft. If this fails...
7. The draft is dead and can't be resubmitted.
I think the EC could try to start a war of attrition with the EP but that could end with the EP just veoting anything looking remotely like IP legislation until the EC shuts up.
Unfortunately (for the USA) the EU is a major trade partner and not neccessarily dependent on the USA. "Or else" may well turn into "or else you'll have to soak up much of China's trade capacity, ensuring that we won't see money from either of you". The USA can't afford a trade war with a partner this big.
The days of "if the USA take their ball and go home, no one can play" are over. There are other big kids on the block and they bring their own balls.
In Germany we still have stamps (although they're self-adhesive now). However, business mail often uses either barcodes (for packages) or alphanumeric codes or DataMatrix barcodes in the envelope's window. I think that's a good split; you still get nice stamps for personal mail but business mail can use much more efficient ways of franking their mail.
Oh, we do however have stopped putting stamps on packages; those have a standardized adhesive label and are paid for directly at the post station. But at least the letters remain.
Again, I live in a country with legal prostitution and it just doesn't happen. Except maybe with extreme assholes who can't comprehend that there are women who aren't ready to spread their legs for them 24/7. Unsurprisingly, these people act like that everywhere on the world.
Prostitute is a job. We don't assume that people who don't advertise having that job do have it, even if they're technically qualified. To use a simile: People don't assume that everyone with a bicycle is a courier even though for small deliveries they have everything they need to be one.
Also note that casual prostitution may actually be made harder by legalization. So a woman does occasionally sell herself. Now she needs to declare that income on her tax report or commit tax fraud. Casual prostitution looks a bit different if you have to explain to the government where that extra money comes from - even with legal prostitution most people don't want to be associated with it, especially not officially. And depending on how regulated sex workers are in her jurisdiction she might then get hit with a penalty for workplace safety violations as she can't prove she passed the requisite health checks lately.
Yeah, but Shadowrun had a nice little portmanteau for it. I'm quoting them on that, not on the concept. (Of course they might have taken the word from someone else but I go with what I know.)
And let's not forget about great ideas like "the music plays on both channels but the vocals only play on the left one".
I just hope that trideo* matures fast.
* Hey, Shadowrun described this stuff ages ago so why not stick to their nomenclature? It's handier than "3D TV".
Well, no. Alcohol behaves exactly the same, just in a slightly different context. People don't take alcohol being legal as a sign that it's a good idea to start binge drinking during breakfast and in most places where guns are legal it's neither allowed not considered courteous to randomly shoot people in the head. Likewise people wouldn't take legalized prostitution as a sign that everyone is a hooker.
Of course that's my observation over here. Maybe alcohol is part of a balanced breakfast where you're from, in which case I'd avoid people bearing guns.
What you want is offered by independent retailers, however. At least in Germany all major online computer (part) retailers offer BTO, operating system and support optional. You pay for the hardware, a small fee for assembly and S/H costs. After that, the box is entirely out of the retailer's hands unless you bought a warranty plan.
The nice part is that European law forces them to offer the usual warranty (minimum of two years, for the first six months the burden of proof lies with the retailer) and you usually get retail boxes (plus accessories) for all components (perhaps sans case) so if something breaks you can RMA it.
Dell is maybe interesting for laptops but independent retailers give me total control about which parts go into my desktop at prices fairly close to Dell's, especially since I don't have to buy Windows unless I want it. If I do buy Windows I get a DVD, not a partition. There are no custom parts of unknown compatibility or preinstalled crapware, either.
Dell advertises how they offer BTO systems... but the truth is that other companies are doing it better, as far as the home user sector is concerned. As far as the singular customer is concerned, Dell has been out-Delled.
Along with bad healthcare (AIDS isn't detected quickly), poverty (infected hookers can't afford not to work), lack of condoms (those things aren't free you know) and, in the war-torn areas, rape.
That's an artifact of prostitution being illegal. When Germany legalized prostitution, we immediately outlawed pimping, which has been fairly (but of course not entirely) successful. Without legalization, such control is not possible.
Another artifact of prostitution being illegal. Of course they're not going to declare illegal income. Prostitutes in countries with legal prostitution pay their taxes like everyone else and collect retirement benefits like everyone else.
That really depends, although it's again less pronounced in countries with legal prostitution. Legal prostitution can be regulated; for instance you can demand sex workers to have themselves checked for STDs at regular intervals. The police can do spot checks for correct, genuine paperwork. Also, as far as reportages are to be trusted, the better brothels usually have something like this as an internal policy - if you can't prove you have been checked in the last N months you're not allowed to work there. Infected hookers mean a bad reputation, which means fewer customers.
Again an artifact of prohibition, although I admit that organized crime can be involved even where it's legal. Still, you're not going to reduce the involvement of organized crime by pushing the whole thing where society can't control it at all. Look at the prohibition of alcohol and the War on Drugs to see how that policy tends to be very profitable for organized crime.
Note that these concerns apply to a lot of legal jobs. How can we trust car importers not to traffic drugs? How can we trust waste disposal companies not to just dump the stuff in a lake? Why should pharma companies bother whether their products are 100% pure or not? We have a lot of professions that require regulation. Society hasn't collapsed yet.
...which wouldn't happen as much if you had legal prostitution in your own country where it can be regulated according to your own values.
Essentially you're positing that a world where not everyone has unlimited resources is a world without upsides as the economic struggle turns everyone into soulless monsters.
That's a pretty dark but certainly interesting philosophy.
Actually, no. Several countries have legal prostitution. I live in one. Most women don't want to be a prostitute and thus won't sell themselves for money. Those that do aren't going to flirt with you first - probably because that would mean spending an enormous amount of time getting paid the same as if they were up-front and had the sex right away.
For further information look at how legal alcohol didn't destroy society.
Because they need to see the sun in order to make their measurements? Have you ever tried making accurate measurements in a dark room? That just doesn't work at all. They need light to read their instruments (and of course to make sure they're pointing in the right direction; you don't want to accidentally measure Mercury!), thus they go during the day.