WAAS is the limiting factor in most units and most cases (near urban areas) so this is a non-story. Besides, the people going for those kind of caches are experienced at reading environmental clues anyways, so not much effect there either.
All of this and no mention of Project Plowshare? It's disappointing to see Wired this far under journalistic par. Unless of course, you ignore that so that you can go on with a seemingly clever article.
The Great Depression began in 1929 and ended in 1939. Some argue that it actually ended sooner and, by the formal economic definition of a shrinking economy, it ended in 1934. US GDP in 1937 was greater than that of 1929 so only the fully ignorant would say that the depression persisted past 1939.
Now Roosevelt took office in 1933 and after being elected to an unprecedented fourth term, died in office in 1945 just weeks away from Germany's surrender during WW2.
So there you have it. Roosevelt outlasted the depression by at least 6 years which is in direct contradiction of your statement that the depression lasted throughout his time in office.
If you are a rational person, then I would welcome the sight of the kind of mental gymnastics it would take for you to assimilate these facts into your world view. My experience, however, indicates that you will just ignore them because it is safer to coddle your ego in warm, comforting ignorance than to face the world as it really exists.
Unemployment nation wide is closer to 7% while in California specifically it's more like 8.5% now.
H1B's affect wages more than they affect unemployment. With a strong economy registering unemployment near 4%, they keep wages in check by preventing labor demand from running away from supply. In a stagnating economy with unemployment nearing 8%, they allow companies the freedom to cut wages, benefits, hours, etc. These cuts are often permanent despite being described as temporary concessions in "tough times" since all future gains are measured from where you are and not where you were a year ago.
Growth in supply always depresses prices, it's simple economics. Add to that the fact that H1B's are a cheaper source of labor supply, and you have quite the corporate tool to control labor costs.
If I only knew about it yesterday so that I could trade on it. Thanks slashdot.
And to all of the poindexter's at the NBER, "Duuuuuhh!" The real news here is that the brains at NBER finally figured out how to click the "1Y" button on either Google's or Yahoo's DOW chart.
Yeah, but how well does it do against 4 experts from India? Hardware and software required to email images will hardly cost as much as this image recognition setup.
Re:They didn't state where the breakthrough came f
on
24 Hour Laptops From HP?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
CDW specs the battery at 6450mAh and this is an add-on unit so together with a typical 4400mAh battery, that only gives you 10,850mAh of juice which means that the 24 hour run time is only achievable with a marathon typing session where the screen is at its darkest setting. This configuration, which likely also turns the laptop into a beast, would really deliver something closer to 12 hour run time in practice.
They didn't state where the breakthrough came from
on
24 Hour Laptops From HP?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Even with the efficiency gains they mention, this battery needs to be in the 15,0000-20,000mAh range. While that would be awesome, I'm really skeptical.
When high capacity NiMH batteries came out, the gains turned out to cost battery lifetime (charge cycles). There may be something similar hiding behind this announcement.
These rights are more fleeting than the electrons delivering them to my computer. There are two reasons for this.
The first, including rights 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, is because company executives think that the number of pirated copies equals that many copies worth of revenue lost. This grossly overestimated loss of revenue means that they will spend more than the appropriate effort in trying to reduce pirated copies.
The second reason is that the remaining rights expect companies and their investors to be satisfied with some fixed return on their investment. Companies and especially corporations are there for one reason and one reason only, to turn a profit. Profit by definition is the spread between what one can charge for a product and what a product actually costs to make. Rights falling into this second category tie their hands with respect to reducing product costs. Turning out unfinished products saves money. Updates cost money. Lowering hardware requirements increases potential market for a game and therefore directly impacts the bottom line especially if they're desperate to recover fixed engineering costs.
These are all examples of how market forces are at odds with consumer demands. Companies only flock to fill consumer demand when there's money in it. Not only is there no money in these demands but there are risks in undertaking them.
So the answer to the question of how to create a proper incentive for these rights to be adopted is that you can't do that within the present system. You can't get there from here. It's the other side of the coin as lamenting about command economies not producing what citizens want to consume. You might as well be petitioning the ministry of gaming to make games that allow you to ridicule the state.
The one major difference is that in a command economy the barriers to such goals are few and easy to identify. They may be very difficult barriers but there aren't that many of them and they are fairly easy to examine. In a capitalist economy, barriers are nearly invisible and hard to quantify. That is one of the major reasons why capitalist economies resist change so well.
It's also possible that the input device will simply be another screen. Imagine a laptop without a keyboard but a traditional clam shell which opens up to reveal two screens. A traditional keyboard can still be displayed and the rest is just a giant track pad or can be configured as you like. The keyboard can even disappear for certain applications which will have their own custom input. The key is that you're not tied to the physical constraints of mouse/keyboard. Multiple touch points can get creatively fast in a hurry.
With the exception of some coal mines staying open for the jobs, Europe doesn't subsidize fossil fuels like the US.
There are quite a few large and very expensive science projects like the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station and even the Supercollider which was never completed. Just because a large amount of money is being spent doesn't mean that it's in production.
But I think you missed my point. I never said that wind can't scale. I'm a huge proponent of wind power and do believe it can scale as evidenced by my statement, "With DC transmission lines, you can even alleviate the peak demand to peak supply gap." This would require quite the build out.
My point was that wind will always be seen as an environmental charity case in the US because of the massive but silent subsidies handed out to the nuclear and fossil fuel industries. I'm not relegating wind to niche status, I'm proposing that it be given the fair shake in the market that it deserves by cutting subsidies to entrenched industries.
These schemes always go something like, "Renewable, blah blah blah, then a miracle occurs and everyone lives happily ever after." Let's all sing the monorail song now.
Natural gas is already a dead end. There's a reason why licenses for liquid natural gas ports have exploded and that is because domestic natural gas supplies are dwindling. Changing the transportation infrastructure to a fuel already in high demand at power plants is dumber than dumb.
Wind is awesome. It's cheap. It's safe and there's plenty of it. With DC transmission lines, you can even alleviate the peak demand to peak supply gap. The main problem is that the energy density isn't there. You have to put up a lot of capital up front to get the capacity you need. Wind doesn't need subsidies but until fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies dry up, there isn't enough market incentive to get it going on a scale that's more than a science project.
Hydro has already been overbuilt. There's no more energy to get out of that other than efficiency improvements at existing sites.
This leaves us with various solar technologies. The problem here is that there's a lot of manufacturing to be done before you start to see solar contribute significant energy to the grid. It's too late to make the transition painless. That should have gotten under way with Carter's energy plan. We would already be the beneficiaries of a new energy infrastructure today, but Reagan had to go and rip out working solar panels powering the Whitehouse as a sign to the oil hooligans that the party's on.
So no, the transition won't be painless. It won't even be bearable. It will hurt. My only hope is that the pain produces some real political change, hopefully within the framework of the constitution since I'd rather not see Americans shed blood however gratuitous the initial outbreak may be. That always turns ugly. From Tsar to General Secretary or King to Emperor, revolutions have little chance of settling on the median most people want.
A good start would be to actually uphold the existing constitution by impeaching the evil doers. At least then, you're guaranteed not to have to endure some asshole on a "bring em on" trip ever again.
You may be done with politics but politics is not done with you. Your paycheck won't magically stop deducting taxes. You won't suddenly be let through airport security without screening and your dollar won't stop depreciating just because you quit politics.
The only person you're screwing is yourself. Turns out that the right tool to control you is apathy.
These problems are endemic to executives in general because corporate governance does not work. In theory, the board of directors looks out for shareholder interests and keeps executives in check. In theory, communism is a worker's utopia.
In practice, because shareholder elections are a farce, most boards are compromised by being populated by other executives, typically leading companies in the same or similar industry as the executives they are supposed to oversee. This frees executives from shareholder control, essentially giving them reign over other people's assets. Lavish stock grants entrench executives by giving them share ownership which in turn increases their control over the board.
Freed from oversight, executive goals diverge from shareholder goals. The limits to this divergence are mostly appearance based. You can't appear to be diverging from shareholder goals too much. Image is everything. To achieve this, executives typically vet those they hire based on loyalty. Many employees, while they profess to understand this, do not. So I repeat. To achieve the goal of appearing to promote shareholder values, executives hire first and foremost on the candidate's ability to be loyal to the hiring executive. This results in the typical knuckle dragging tribal culture found leading today's corporations.
Saying that solving this problem is hard, is a major understatement because you are talking about making America's ruling class accountable. Solutions like co-determination do exist, however, but would require the right political climate to implement.
Second, when WalMart is the only game in town, it doesn't matter what their prices are, consumers are left with one choice, to buy or not to buy. When searching for a specific product, like say a hammer and the only ones you can find are made in China, then price doesn't matter either. Perhaps the consumer would actually pay more for a hammer made in the US, but guess what! You can't find one. Has the market failed that consumer? Hell, yes. Will that consumer buy a hammer? Of course.
Just as I have a reasonable expectation to eat at a restaurant and not get ill from it, I also have a reasonable expectation that shopping won't destroy my way of life. Both expectations should be fulfilled by laws. I shouldn't have to risk my life eating out just so that I can vote with my dollars next time and take my chances again at a different restaurant.
Economics is not a physical science like chemistry or geology and economies are not physical systems but rather man made agreements which determine how people distribute wealth. The market is a man made tool and not the result of some immutable law of nature. Man created the market and has a right to control it. The argument that because fire is good, it needs to be allowed to do whatever fire does in the interest of fire is stupid and yet those on the receiving end of wealth constantly argue that the present market is good and it needs to be allowed to do whatever the market does in the interest of the market. They are confounding their interest with the interest of the market and then attempt to convince people that the market is immutable because it is founded on some natural order and you can't go against nature. Bullshit.
Markets are not natural and therefore there is nothing unnatural about manipulating them. Society should be able to adjust any market however it wants. If people want more CFL's because it will benefit communities in ways not entirely capitalized, then their inability to get more CFL's simply shows a flaw in its politics, namely that the economy has been locked away from political influence.
Wired's front cover asks, "What went wrong in Iraq?" and then adds, "Hint: blame the geeks".
Even before you read the article, there is the problem of the question being framed to project the existance of some plan, the assumption that we know what that plan was and that America's campaign in Iraq is failing to achieve the plan's objectives.
Reading the article, you stumble upon another problem with the phrase and that is that by, "What went wrong" Wired means, "Why aren't we winning" and not, "What the fuck happened to the WMD's?"
"Wrong" can mean so many things. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for KBR? Nope. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for General Dynamics? Nope. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for Joe Middle-class American? You bet. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for America's underprivilaged? Hell, yes. America is not a monolith of interest.
The general public doesn't know "the plan" for Iraq but it is not in the interest of the parties who do to start letting on that the general public doesn't know. Any fairy tale is better than a void. Informed people don't know the plan for Iraq either, but at least they can make educated guesses and validate or invalidate those guesses based on short term outcomes. One thing can be said with certainty and that is that the plan benefits those in the know. I would speculate that the plan didn't account for what is happening right now not because of oversight but because those aspects of what is going on are irrelevant to the plan. Case in point is what happened immediately after Saddam's regime was deposed. Rumsfeld described the massive looting as, "Stuff happens". But, apparently stuff DIDN'T happen at the Iraqi Ministry of Oil because it was magically secured.
I take issue with the article for using the prevailing mainstream media propaganda about Iraq to lash lower level functionary geeks for not winning enough. I take issue with the article for suggesting that a war of choice could be made "more ethical" by the application of lessons learned. As if the pure morality of the American ubermensch is not satisfied with a mere ethical war for freedom and democracy. All questions of immorality need to have ironclad answers that invoke incontinent convulsions of antipatriotism in any individual who even implied to ask them so that ten others may fear to ask in the future.
I would expect as much from the country's paper of record or any local bird cage liner so this raises questions about Wired's stake in this. Are they just another media outlet paroting the MSM for the sake of justifying extra real estate for revenue generating ads? Or, is there some super patriotic editor currying favor with his or her overlords?
It is hard to feel sorry for music artists when practically ever other human effort has been commoditized in the interest of low labor cost. The more the product of your labor is a commodity, the less you get paid which leads to higher capital returns for investors.
The last person in contact with a product before it reaches the consumer always makes the most money on it. Why is it that a car dealer makes a lot more money per car sold than the engineers who designed it and the factory workers who built it? The music industry is coming of age.
So artists have the option to suck it up or join with others to change the system. Capitalism and nationalism are plagues upon humanity. A cure is way overdue.
A good recent example is Gary Webb, who thoroughly embarrassed the CIA, LAPD and Justice Dept. The coroner could only conclude that the two bullet holes in his head were the result of a suicide.
But, I cannot give you definitive proof. No dissident is going to be tried for effective dissent because that would publicize how to resist or change the system. Their struggle inevitably causes them to resist state control which leads to ordinary charges. If they are not killed in the confrontation, then they will be incarcerated for resisting (David Gilbert). Others are simply incarcerated with fake charges and scripted trials (Leonard Peltier). Still others challenge the state's monopoly on violence and take up violent means themselves (Tom Manning).
The state has several defenses against change. Indoctrination is the most powerful and is sufficient to control the vast majority of citizens. The fact that you believe America to be free and just is enough to keep you straight. Belief that the system has the means to change itself will keep you from seeking actual agents of change. Maybe the Democrats will fix America this time? Maybe next time, fixing America will require Republicans? The idea that the system presents choices keeps you from choosing real solutions to your own problems.
The next defense is your milieu. Your employer exerts the strongest control by holding your job hostage. Rock the boat and you find yourself without the means of making a living. Your family and friends participate too.
The final defense is violence in the form of incarceration or death. If you show the ability to resist control through indoctrination, are not subject to consumer desires which would keep you employed, your social relationships like family and friends are not enough to reign you in and you are effectively changing the system or acting as an example of resisting it for others to follow, then the state has no use for you. Typically, officer friendly will make an appointment with you. It's called a pretext stop. Your left tail light could be out, you changed lanes in an intersection or you loitered in a place of commerce too long without buying something. It's the ancient "finger half an inch away from your eye while saying I'm not touching you" tactic.
Believe what you want to believe. Physical reality doesn't demand your belief in it, but eventually you will need to make excuses for what you believe because it won't match your experience.
The analogy was correct with respect to newspeak, "Healthy Forests Initiative", "Clear Skies Initiative", "Operation Iraqi Freedom", surveillance, indoctrination, militarism, "The US has always been at war with Al-Qaeda", nationalism, political use of fear and hatred and institutionalized ignorance, "Intelligent Design", "Stem cell research is murder". The only aspect that doesn't fit the analogy is socialism but you can have both right and left authoritarian societies. For every Stalin and Saddam, there's a Pinochet and Franco.
If you are comfortable living in a space 10' a side, then you'll never notice the 12' square cell that you're in. American statism has been so successful precisely because controls are hidden since overt controls foment discontent. People are indoctrinated with American exceptionalism from birth. It is a very powerful myth and the backbone of control. Conformity is constantly being reinforced by your employer, church, school, college, customers and the media. Commercial consumerism is the modern day soma, to borrow from another dystopia.
The main difference between 1984 and 2006 is that the state doesn't bother dealing with those who try to affect it rather than submit to its power because it only needs to neutralize effective dissidents. So, Noam Chomsky, for example, is allowed to do his thing because his message is neutralized by lack of access to mainstream media and the media's noise thrown up against it. Those who can't be reigned in by typical controls are incarcerated, disappeared or killed, "suicided" is the CIA term, as in any traditional authoritarian regime.
Stevens doesn't give a shit about the internet. He doesn't give a shit about his constituents because he won't even put the effort in to string a proper sentence together on the subject. All he cares about is that he's voting the way his moneyed sponsors want him to vote and that he take up some time on the floor to sound off about it.
If this were a democracy then congress wouldn't have the incumbent retention rate of the politburo. Wake up. The joke's on YOU!
Somehow saying, "We want better weapons." doesn't have the same appeal as all of the idealistic crap that they did say. That's why it's called propaganda. It makes the idea of spending money on guns rather than butter plausible to those who respond to emotional messages.
Your frustration arises out of ignorance of the world and its function. You would have a hard time changing American propaganda, let alone Chinese, so a better plan is to learn to understand it for what it is.
This article may be summarized thus: - there's a large trough in state budgets - my company can not currently feed from this trough - fearmongering can open this trough for me - i want some sort of model citizen award for feeding at this trough
Slashdot Mirror
WAAS is the limiting factor in most units and most cases (near urban areas) so this is a non-story. Besides, the people going for those kind of caches are experienced at reading environmental clues anyways, so not much effect there either.
All of this and no mention of Project Plowshare? It's disappointing to see Wired this far under journalistic par. Unless of course, you ignore that so that you can go on with a seemingly clever article.
Ah, very well then, your dates are off.
The Great Depression began in 1929 and ended in 1939. Some argue that it actually ended sooner and, by the formal economic definition of a shrinking economy, it ended in 1934. US GDP in 1937 was greater than that of 1929 so only the fully ignorant would say that the depression persisted past 1939.
Now Roosevelt took office in 1933 and after being elected to an unprecedented fourth term, died in office in 1945 just weeks away from Germany's surrender during WW2.
So there you have it. Roosevelt outlasted the depression by at least 6 years which is in direct contradiction of your statement that the depression lasted throughout his time in office.
If you are a rational person, then I would welcome the sight of the kind of mental gymnastics it would take for you to assimilate these facts into your world view. My experience, however, indicates that you will just ignore them because it is safer to coddle your ego in warm, comforting ignorance than to face the world as it really exists.
Unemployment nation wide is closer to 7% while in California specifically it's more like 8.5% now.
H1B's affect wages more than they affect unemployment. With a strong economy registering unemployment near 4%, they keep wages in check by preventing labor demand from running away from supply. In a stagnating economy with unemployment nearing 8%, they allow companies the freedom to cut wages, benefits, hours, etc. These cuts are often permanent despite being described as temporary concessions in "tough times" since all future gains are measured from where you are and not where you were a year ago.
Growth in supply always depresses prices, it's simple economics. Add to that the fact that H1B's are a cheaper source of labor supply, and you have quite the corporate tool to control labor costs.
If I only knew about it yesterday so that I could trade on it. Thanks slashdot.
And to all of the poindexter's at the NBER, "Duuuuuhh!" The real news here is that the brains at NBER finally figured out how to click the "1Y" button on either Google's or Yahoo's DOW chart.
Yeah, but how well does it do against 4 experts from India? Hardware and software required to email images will hardly cost as much as this image recognition setup.
CDW specs the battery at 6450mAh and this is an add-on unit so together with a typical 4400mAh battery, that only gives you 10,850mAh of juice which means that the 24 hour run time is only achievable with a marathon typing session where the screen is at its darkest setting. This configuration, which likely also turns the laptop into a beast, would really deliver something closer to 12 hour run time in practice.
Even with the efficiency gains they mention, this battery needs to be in the 15,0000-20,000mAh range. While that would be awesome, I'm really skeptical. When high capacity NiMH batteries came out, the gains turned out to cost battery lifetime (charge cycles). There may be something similar hiding behind this announcement.
The first, including rights 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, is because company executives think that the number of pirated copies equals that many copies worth of revenue lost. This grossly overestimated loss of revenue means that they will spend more than the appropriate effort in trying to reduce pirated copies.
The second reason is that the remaining rights expect companies and their investors to be satisfied with some fixed return on their investment. Companies and especially corporations are there for one reason and one reason only, to turn a profit. Profit by definition is the spread between what one can charge for a product and what a product actually costs to make. Rights falling into this second category tie their hands with respect to reducing product costs. Turning out unfinished products saves money. Updates cost money. Lowering hardware requirements increases potential market for a game and therefore directly impacts the bottom line especially if they're desperate to recover fixed engineering costs.
These are all examples of how market forces are at odds with consumer demands. Companies only flock to fill consumer demand when there's money in it. Not only is there no money in these demands but there are risks in undertaking them.
So the answer to the question of how to create a proper incentive for these rights to be adopted is that you can't do that within the present system. You can't get there from here. It's the other side of the coin as lamenting about command economies not producing what citizens want to consume. You might as well be petitioning the ministry of gaming to make games that allow you to ridicule the state.
The one major difference is that in a command economy the barriers to such goals are few and easy to identify. They may be very difficult barriers but there aren't that many of them and they are fairly easy to examine. In a capitalist economy, barriers are nearly invisible and hard to quantify. That is one of the major reasons why capitalist economies resist change so well.
It's also possible that the input device will simply be another screen. Imagine a laptop without a keyboard but a traditional clam shell which opens up to reveal two screens. A traditional keyboard can still be displayed and the rest is just a giant track pad or can be configured as you like. The keyboard can even disappear for certain applications which will have their own custom input. The key is that you're not tied to the physical constraints of mouse/keyboard. Multiple touch points can get creatively fast in a hurry.
With the exception of some coal mines staying open for the jobs, Europe doesn't subsidize fossil fuels like the US.
There are quite a few large and very expensive science projects like the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station and even the Supercollider which was never completed. Just because a large amount of money is being spent doesn't mean that it's in production.
But I think you missed my point. I never said that wind can't scale. I'm a huge proponent of wind power and do believe it can scale as evidenced by my statement, "With DC transmission lines, you can even alleviate the peak demand to peak supply gap." This would require quite the build out.
My point was that wind will always be seen as an environmental charity case in the US because of the massive but silent subsidies handed out to the nuclear and fossil fuel industries. I'm not relegating wind to niche status, I'm proposing that it be given the fair shake in the market that it deserves by cutting subsidies to entrenched industries.
These schemes always go something like, "Renewable, blah blah blah, then a miracle occurs and everyone lives happily ever after." Let's all sing the monorail song now.
Natural gas is already a dead end. There's a reason why licenses for liquid natural gas ports have exploded and that is because domestic natural gas supplies are dwindling. Changing the transportation infrastructure to a fuel already in high demand at power plants is dumber than dumb.
Wind is awesome. It's cheap. It's safe and there's plenty of it. With DC transmission lines, you can even alleviate the peak demand to peak supply gap. The main problem is that the energy density isn't there. You have to put up a lot of capital up front to get the capacity you need. Wind doesn't need subsidies but until fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies dry up, there isn't enough market incentive to get it going on a scale that's more than a science project.
Hydro has already been overbuilt. There's no more energy to get out of that other than efficiency improvements at existing sites.
This leaves us with various solar technologies. The problem here is that there's a lot of manufacturing to be done before you start to see solar contribute significant energy to the grid. It's too late to make the transition painless. That should have gotten under way with Carter's energy plan. We would already be the beneficiaries of a new energy infrastructure today, but Reagan had to go and rip out working solar panels powering the Whitehouse as a sign to the oil hooligans that the party's on. So no, the transition won't be painless. It won't even be bearable. It will hurt. My only hope is that the pain produces some real political change, hopefully within the framework of the constitution since I'd rather not see Americans shed blood however gratuitous the initial outbreak may be. That always turns ugly. From Tsar to General Secretary or King to Emperor, revolutions have little chance of settling on the median most people want.
A good start would be to actually uphold the existing constitution by impeaching the evil doers. At least then, you're guaranteed not to have to endure some asshole on a "bring em on" trip ever again.
The only person you're screwing is yourself. Turns out that the right tool to control you is apathy.
In practice, because shareholder elections are a farce, most boards are compromised by being populated by other executives, typically leading companies in the same or similar industry as the executives they are supposed to oversee. This frees executives from shareholder control, essentially giving them reign over other people's assets. Lavish stock grants entrench executives by giving them share ownership which in turn increases their control over the board.
Freed from oversight, executive goals diverge from shareholder goals. The limits to this divergence are mostly appearance based. You can't appear to be diverging from shareholder goals too much. Image is everything. To achieve this, executives typically vet those they hire based on loyalty. Many employees, while they profess to understand this, do not. So I repeat. To achieve the goal of appearing to promote shareholder values, executives hire first and foremost on the candidate's ability to be loyal to the hiring executive. This results in the typical knuckle dragging tribal culture found leading today's corporations.
Saying that solving this problem is hard, is a major understatement because you are talking about making America's ruling class accountable. Solutions like co-determination do exist, however, but would require the right political climate to implement.
Second, when WalMart is the only game in town, it doesn't matter what their prices are, consumers are left with one choice, to buy or not to buy. When searching for a specific product, like say a hammer and the only ones you can find are made in China, then price doesn't matter either. Perhaps the consumer would actually pay more for a hammer made in the US, but guess what! You can't find one. Has the market failed that consumer? Hell, yes. Will that consumer buy a hammer? Of course.
Just as I have a reasonable expectation to eat at a restaurant and not get ill from it, I also have a reasonable expectation that shopping won't destroy my way of life. Both expectations should be fulfilled by laws. I shouldn't have to risk my life eating out just so that I can vote with my dollars next time and take my chances again at a different restaurant.
Economics is not a physical science like chemistry or geology and economies are not physical systems but rather man made agreements which determine how people distribute wealth. The market is a man made tool and not the result of some immutable law of nature. Man created the market and has a right to control it. The argument that because fire is good, it needs to be allowed to do whatever fire does in the interest of fire is stupid and yet those on the receiving end of wealth constantly argue that the present market is good and it needs to be allowed to do whatever the market does in the interest of the market. They are confounding their interest with the interest of the market and then attempt to convince people that the market is immutable because it is founded on some natural order and you can't go against nature. Bullshit.
Markets are not natural and therefore there is nothing unnatural about manipulating them. Society should be able to adjust any market however it wants. If people want more CFL's because it will benefit communities in ways not entirely capitalized, then their inability to get more CFL's simply shows a flaw in its politics, namely that the economy has been locked away from political influence.
Wired's front cover asks, "What went wrong in Iraq?" and then adds, "Hint: blame the geeks".
Even before you read the article, there is the problem of the question being framed to project the existance of some plan, the assumption that we know what that plan was and that America's campaign in Iraq is failing to achieve the plan's objectives.
Reading the article, you stumble upon another problem with the phrase and that is that by, "What went wrong" Wired means, "Why aren't we winning" and not, "What the fuck happened to the WMD's?"
"Wrong" can mean so many things. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for KBR? Nope. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for General Dynamics? Nope. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for Joe Middle-class American? You bet. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for America's underprivilaged? Hell, yes. America is not a monolith of interest.
The general public doesn't know "the plan" for Iraq but it is not in the interest of the parties who do to start letting on that the general public doesn't know. Any fairy tale is better than a void. Informed people don't know the plan for Iraq either, but at least they can make educated guesses and validate or invalidate those guesses based on short term outcomes. One thing can be said with certainty and that is that the plan benefits those in the know. I would speculate that the plan didn't account for what is happening right now not because of oversight but because those aspects of what is going on are irrelevant to the plan. Case in point is what happened immediately after Saddam's regime was deposed. Rumsfeld described the massive looting as, "Stuff happens". But, apparently stuff DIDN'T happen at the Iraqi Ministry of Oil because it was magically secured.
I take issue with the article for using the prevailing mainstream media propaganda about Iraq to lash lower level functionary geeks for not winning enough. I take issue with the article for suggesting that a war of choice could be made "more ethical" by the application of lessons learned. As if the pure morality of the American ubermensch is not satisfied with a mere ethical war for freedom and democracy. All questions of immorality need to have ironclad answers that invoke incontinent convulsions of antipatriotism in any individual who even implied to ask them so that ten others may fear to ask in the future.
I would expect as much from the country's paper of record or any local bird cage liner so this raises questions about Wired's stake in this. Are they just another media outlet paroting the MSM for the sake of justifying extra real estate for revenue generating ads? Or, is there some super patriotic editor currying favor with his or her overlords?
The last person in contact with a product before it reaches the consumer always makes the most money on it. Why is it that a car dealer makes a lot more money per car sold than the engineers who designed it and the factory workers who built it? The music industry is coming of age.
So artists have the option to suck it up or join with others to change the system. Capitalism and nationalism are plagues upon humanity. A cure is way overdue.
Oh wait, this law was written by corporations? Nevermind.
A good recent example is Gary Webb, who thoroughly embarrassed the CIA, LAPD and Justice Dept. The coroner could only conclude that the two bullet holes in his head were the result of a suicide.
But, I cannot give you definitive proof. No dissident is going to be tried for effective dissent because that would publicize how to resist or change the system. Their struggle inevitably causes them to resist state control which leads to ordinary charges. If they are not killed in the confrontation, then they will be incarcerated for resisting (David Gilbert). Others are simply incarcerated with fake charges and scripted trials (Leonard Peltier). Still others challenge the state's monopoly on violence and take up violent means themselves (Tom Manning).
The state has several defenses against change. Indoctrination is the most powerful and is sufficient to control the vast majority of citizens. The fact that you believe America to be free and just is enough to keep you straight. Belief that the system has the means to change itself will keep you from seeking actual agents of change. Maybe the Democrats will fix America this time? Maybe next time, fixing America will require Republicans? The idea that the system presents choices keeps you from choosing real solutions to your own problems.
The next defense is your milieu. Your employer exerts the strongest control by holding your job hostage. Rock the boat and you find yourself without the means of making a living. Your family and friends participate too.
The final defense is violence in the form of incarceration or death. If you show the ability to resist control through indoctrination, are not subject to consumer desires which would keep you employed, your social relationships like family and friends are not enough to reign you in and you are effectively changing the system or acting as an example of resisting it for others to follow, then the state has no use for you. Typically, officer friendly will make an appointment with you. It's called a pretext stop. Your left tail light could be out, you changed lanes in an intersection or you loitered in a place of commerce too long without buying something. It's the ancient "finger half an inch away from your eye while saying I'm not touching you" tactic.
Believe what you want to believe. Physical reality doesn't demand your belief in it, but eventually you will need to make excuses for what you believe because it won't match your experience.
If you are comfortable living in a space 10' a side, then you'll never notice the 12' square cell that you're in. American statism has been so successful precisely because controls are hidden since overt controls foment discontent. People are indoctrinated with American exceptionalism from birth. It is a very powerful myth and the backbone of control. Conformity is constantly being reinforced by your employer, church, school, college, customers and the media. Commercial consumerism is the modern day soma, to borrow from another dystopia.
The main difference between 1984 and 2006 is that the state doesn't bother dealing with those who try to affect it rather than submit to its power because it only needs to neutralize effective dissidents. So, Noam Chomsky, for example, is allowed to do his thing because his message is neutralized by lack of access to mainstream media and the media's noise thrown up against it. Those who can't be reigned in by typical controls are incarcerated, disappeared or killed, "suicided" is the CIA term, as in any traditional authoritarian regime.
* WAR IS PEACE
* FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
* IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
If this were a democracy then congress wouldn't have the incumbent retention rate of the politburo. Wake up. The joke's on YOU!
When legal teams, trust funds and financial institutions are involved, you can't exactly refer to the 1040EZ form. Check out Perfectly Legal.
Your frustration arises out of ignorance of the world and its function. You would have a hard time changing American propaganda, let alone Chinese, so a better plan is to learn to understand it for what it is.
Oddly enough, professionals are the least likely labor class to do that.
This article may be summarized thus:
- there's a large trough in state budgets
- my company can not currently feed from this trough
- fearmongering can open this trough for me
- i want some sort of model citizen award for feeding at this trough