Well, here is the problem. Not really a problem but... You are looking at this logically from a right and wrong perspective. Don't do that just for a minute or two. Look at is specifically from a monetary gain perspective with most logic thrown out the window.
You see, MS most certainly can argue against itself in two unrelated cases covering the same areas of sorts. It's not likely that the differences in arguments will ever cross cases until one has been decided and that's only if they aren't past the point of offering evidence (the one court will just use the ruling of the other without caring about how what was argued).
Now, here is where logic gets completely turned upside down. If MS can perceptibly make more revenue from windows 7 for phones sales because of the Fear, Uncertainty, and Disinformation, then if they would lose in either patent dispute either way the cases swing, for any reason, it's still beneficial to them. It's monetarily logical for them to throw a roman pretending to be a christian to the lions in order to pack the stadiums so to speak. What I'm getting at is, it doesn't matter if they lose both cases for any reason. The big money will be somewhere else which is most likely why they are dragging both cases out- it exemplifies their indemnification as a value greater then the costs of using windows 7 for the phone over a free and open platform or even a cheaper pay platform. the patent case is more or less the bread and circuses while the real action is going on inside the emperors hidden life.
Sorry to use Roman analogies to explain that. It's just that I first learned of the art of willful deception or the attempt to hide the real issues with the examples of bread and circuses and thought it might translate this quite nicely. It's really a slight of hand trick, they are saying look here, why something else is happening, all along they are trying to charge a fee to see the show. Or at least that's how I see it.
I think they had a great strategy if you look into it deep enough.
They want this patent controversy and they want news of it in the main stream press because they are selling their windows 7 version of phone operating system and one of the key selling point they are making seems to be patent suit indemnification. With McBride and SCO Group more or less gone, the don't have a puppet company to show the dangers of patent suits. So they defend this case as illegitimate to show that due diligence isn't always enough, push their own case as legitimate, and claim you can avoid it all by using windows 7 and certified Microsoft products.
Actually, given the size and scope of the US military, you are right, 1 trillion dollars is about pocket change to most people.
I'm for increasing their budget more too. But I'm not sure that this outage wasn't planned. How better to test the ability to withstand a "cyber attack" then to lose your DNS servers and see if the your departments can fully function without them. This ability would greatly decrease the time needed to change to an alternative system if ever needed or more likely regroup resources and work around it. I'm not so sure that this wasn't just a readiness test of some sorts disguised as an accidental outage or something. It would make more sense to make it appear to be a problem server then actually gearing up to work around it that would create another potential target for any attacks.
As so could I. But I can't think of any that personalize the conflict in a way that potentially demoralizes the victims of it which is why this got so much attention.
It's really about who paid attention to it, spoke out against it, and the ability of them to gather sympathy from others. You can't quit put a face with this much power to the more despicable examples of war profiteering you may find. With this one, the face is the guy or woman, who for whatever reason found themselves serving in the military and through a chain of events largely outside their own control, was thrust into conflict with the enemy and harmed or killed in some way, that is now being exploited against their will. That has all the element of a Hollywood top-grossing block buster movie that the entire nation goes to see the little guy beat the perceived bad guys exploiting their good name.
I'm reminds of a saying a friend used to quote. I don't know the original author but it went something like, this is a free country, you are as free as you want to be, as long as you do what I say.
It's like you are saying that everyone else' freedom is worthless unless your version trumps it. You don't have to like what others do with their freedom, you just have to accept the premise that it won't always line up with your idea of freedom. This means you will win some and lose some, but that's what happens when people are free to act on their own.
So you are saying that in a free society, freedom is haw you say and not how it is? I mean seriously, when did the people complaining about the game lose the ability or freedom to complain? When did EA lose the ability or freedom to pull the game and change things in it?
Don't confuse controversy (most likely by design for publicity) and the caving into it as any losses of freedom. In fact, it's a proper exercise of freedom even though you do not like it. That's right, even though you lost a choice, the freedom of the people in control was used to execute the decisions they made through the influence of free speech. You are not going to say you hate freedom now are you?
Actually, it's a bunch of whiners who are trying to stop game manufacturers from profiting from the hardships they are still struggling to overcome. It happening to censor others is merely a distraction and EA went this route in order to avoid liability from all the lawsuits claiming that the characters were based on real life instances of "their fallen loved one" or "themselves (wounded maimed or whatever) or "pain and suffering caused by the game" whatever which seems to pop open quite often when powerful American lobbying groups don't get their way.
offending people who want blood and guts is not the same thing as offending people who have been traumatized by blood and guts. The simple fact is that they chose not to offend the families of/and the soldiers who lost loved ones or ended up getting maimed/wounded or even emotionally scared in combat. You see, the one set will not likely get off the couch to answer the door except when it's the Pizza delivery guy. The other will protest congress, their local shopping mall carrying the game, and about anyone else they can think of that might have an effect to stop it or actually sue them claiming they are profiting from someone's life and they deserve a cut of the revenue or something.. They also have the sympathy card in which allows them to pull bystanders in who are moved by their story as well.
That wasn't because of the fact that the dollar was tied to gold, that was simply because like all large technologies they were deployed in areas of high population density first, then spread out.
Wrong, wages increased and decreased based on the value of money. And yes, the value of gold increased and decreased quite often. This is no secrete.
The reason why every industrialized nation has moved away from gold is because a fiat currency gives a ton of power to the government. Governments, by nature, want more power.
Governments dream of a system that lets them print whatever currency they want so they can fun unneeded wars and settle debt.
So it's all a world wide government conspiracy- involving even nations that dislike each other, and everyone in a position of power is wrong but you are right. Gotcha there.
Bretton Woods failed because it was a poorly designed system, other countries realized that the dollar was being overprinted with nothing to back it up, so countries redeemed their dollars which were fast becoming worthless for gold which was stable, the fact that the US didn't have a 100% gold-backed currency was the reason it failed.
Wow.. Are you showing your ignorance wildly here. The value of the dollar didn't matter because they were artificially tied to a set value by force of law. The dollar could have dropped off the face of the earth and foreign nations was guaranteed the same value.
And the idea of monopolizing currency also fails when you do this, the government shouldn't be the only entity that can create money, if I have an ounce of gold just sitting around, I should be able to use it for currency. If we would switch to a sane method of using fixed units of weight to define money, it ends up making a lot more sense.
Why should you be able to use gold as money? I mean why should I have to accept it as payment. Currently, the dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of the government and is legal tender for all debts private and public. Your gold on the other hand, is just something I would have to sell in order to get legal tender. Just because you want it so doesn't make it a good idea. And all your other arguments have been shot down.
Which would make no difference. The prices of goods remain relatively constant to what people are making, excluding technological advancements. The advantage to gold is that my savings remain constant, my wages remain constant. When inflation makes the price of food rise $.25 for an average meal, my wages aren't going to go up to match that. My wages are "sticky", so because of inflation, I make less real money in the only term that matters: what that money can buy. With a gold standard, we aren't going to have inflation like that so that meal will stay proportional to my wages.
Did you ever take a Econ course? I doubt it, but how do you reconcile the fact that collective bargaining or increased in tax liability can cause inflation by increasing the costs of the products. Your wages are sticky because your employer is not finding any more value in your efforts and isn't afraid of you going somewhere else.
The gold pool only serves to show what I have already said, nationalistic units are bad. If you look at gold, it has been able to buy the same amount of goods for the same amount of gold.
Yep, you are suffering from market speak. Gold can currently purchase about 10 times what is could in 1998. In 1992, it could only purchase half of the 1998 high. Inflation in the currency has not moved as much to match.
And of course the governments want fiat currency, it gives them more power, there is not a single government in existence whos dream is not more power! A fiat currency lets governments pri
Ok, first off, our dollar is not based off of any economic indicator, the only thing backing it up is that the US has nuclear weapons and a strong army, that is it.
Oh, how delusional you are. The dollar value is tied to many economic indicators. Granted, they aren't tangible like gold is but they are tied to it pretty well. And of you think having nuclear weapons is the only thing proping the dollar up, you must be ignoring real history altogether. In fact, we just put trade sanctions in place on China for artificially manipulating the value of their dollar.
Yes they would, you don't seem to understand that a dollar is meaningless. What matters is scarcity, the raw materials used to make ramen noodles are abundant which is why they are so cheap. Making ramen noodles as currency would not change that value (it would probably decrease in value as more people made them).
And what you seem to be ignoring is that rarity only matters when someone wants it. The dollar is nothing but a medium to transfer wealth or value from one person/place to another. You can make something like Raman noodles but you can't actually make Raman noodles which is why it would work as money. How scarce something is is irrelevant outside of it being controlled by the one element the money is honored at.
You make the mistake of thinking that economies are closed systems, they aren't. Money needs to have intrinsic value to keep its value, the idea of "counterfeiting" money (excluding of course banknotes or checks) that have intrinsic value doesn't exist because it is the value of the item itself that gives it value. A gold coin isn't worth a lot of money because it is stamped in a certain way (disregarding collector value for a moment) but rather because it is made out of gold. True money is a commodity with intrinsic value, stamping weights and measurements on it is a way to make the exchange easier.
Money does not have to have value in and of itself. That's how we can use printed paper as money. Value can be assigned as easily as writing a check or the government of a nation making it legal tender for all debts public and private. Chickens and pigs can be money and have been in the past.
No, no it isn't. Tell me what is stopping Obama and congress from creating an extra $10,000,000,000 out of thin air? There is nothing stopping them from doing that. The idea that our currency is backed up by anything is laughable because there are no restrictions on currency creation. It doesn't matter if the country is poor or rich, they can create any amount of currency they like because it isn't backed up by anything.
Your right, there is nothing stopping Obama except for common sense, from printing an extra ten billion dollars. But you have to look at what that would do to the value of the dollar and derive why the value would change. If the money supply is 10k per person and it suddenly increases to 1000k per person, after adjustment for inflation, you will end up with a loaf of bread costing 100 times the previous amount (assuming a direct relation). Why would it be that much more? Because there is a value assigned to the loaf of bread that comes from the costs of manufacturing it and presenting it for sale along with a profit. That will not disappear over night and most likely would not even change because the value of the dollar is tied to a lot of economic indicators like GDP and purchasing power parity with other countries.
Yes, but that once cent would be worth a lot more and it would keep its value for longer. That one cent that today doesn't buy anything, might buy you a small meal with a revaluation of the dollar, and because gold is stable in relation to its purchasing power, that one cent would buy you the same amount of food in 20, 30, 40 years (assuming no problems in the supply chain, no famines,
You don't have to black out the windows completely. and the windows are taller then the person inside so texturing or painting just the top halves could likely do the job and still leave you with a pool side view.
I don't need to cite anything here. What you need to do is pay attention to history and notice how being poor on a farm was much different then being poor in the city.
Given a sane monetary policy (hard-money standard, 100% reserve standard, etc) monetary spikes are nearly impossible to cause harm, if they even occur.
Really? Is that why every industrialized nation in the world has moved away from that? Is it some vast complicated conspiracy or something?
The reason why banks failed in the great depression is because they were using fractional-reserve banking, which, in essence is writing bad checks. When you put money in a bank in a savings account, you have the right to take it out whenever, just like when you are handed a check, you can cash it whenever. Only the banks didn't expect that people would ever cash their checks, or cash them all at once. Fractional reserve banking is simply fraud and needs to be outlawed.
Lol.. Your one of those people. I should have guessed. Listen, why don't you come back when you get your history from places other then contrieved political statements like Zeitgeist and the likes. The reason the banks fell in the great depression has a lot more to do with the geopolitical policies effecting the economies of several nations including but not limited to nationalism and domestic price protections. Whether fractional reserve banking was employed or not would have saw the exact same problem because banks are in the business of making loans with money deposited which is why they can offer you a service.
Right, because now the poor get screwed because of "sticky wages", that wages don't keep up with inflation, where the middle class and non-governmental rich get screwed because their savings become worthless. It doesn't mean crap if I have $100,000 in the bank if I started with $1 when now its $500,000 to get a candy bar. You can't look at things with the dollar amount and say "oh, I just gained money" because in reality you lost wealth, you lost purchasing power. That is what fiat currency does, it makes people lose purchasing power when they save.
Yea, lets exaggerate something way past anything that has ever happened in the free world in order to make a point that wouldn't otherwise exist. Listen, No one said it was perfect, only that it was better then what you are claiming to be perfect.
But it wouldn't happen because society wouldn't count that money as being "destroyed". If he -did- however burn a lot of fiat currency, it would be a very good thing for everyone else because their money would be worth even more.
It wouldn't? Then how to you account for the US and European banks conspiring to manipulate the gold markets to their benefit in 1961? They in fact did do so and was able to get the Brenton woods system dismantled in 1968 largely because of it.
What you don't seem to understand is that with fiat currency you are essentially allowing the government to determine the value of money. And right now it is in the government's best interest to print a shit-load of money because we are massively in debt. The government is not your friend, it is your enemy. There is no such thing as "good government", especially not when it comes to money because the government wants as much money as possible from every single source possible.
You are wrong. It's not in the interest of the government to print shit loads of money, if they do, they lose the ability to raise funds. Yes, we did print extra money to compensate for the amounts kept over seas, but it wasn't a shit load. And who cares if the government can determine the value of money. At least they are somewhat responsible to the people and have to answer by being reelected. And if you think it
Bullshit. The UN monitored the elections and outside a few small minor things like threats from the Taliban, nothing was wrong with them. And No, one election (there actually has been several but why let the fact get in your way) does not mean others do not follow nor does it mean they can't democratically change the government to any other style at any other point in time. In fact, most dictatorships result from internal workings inside existing democratic governments at some point in time. Look at Germany post WWI and Iraq. Hell, look at Iran even. Give it up, the facts and reality just doesn't agree with you.
I would agree until I found out they wear colored contact lenses and use makeup to manipulate the parts surrounding the eyes and they can find a lot of the bitch within.
Now I just pretend I'm a family man looking at a sports car. I will test drive them, if they are too slow, I take it back to the lot, if they are too fast, the same. If they need their valves adjusted every 10 miles, well, you get the hint. I'm just glad that Google Voice allows me to block numbers altogether.
A textured surface would somewhat scatter the reflecting light and not bring it to as sharp of a focus as it is currently. This would allow the heat to dissipate somewhat while not building up in the same spot as it interacts with more surface area. Changing the angle of the windows would have a simular effect.
As for painting, it would need to be a dark color to absorb most of the light. Their scattering effect on the film is probably defeated with the parabolic shape of the building. It would eventually either dissipate on it's path or end up in the same focal space if the refraction or reflection is scattered to another point in the building. Think of texture that basically inverts the parabolic shape that can defeat the actual shape of the building. Perhaps some ledges that protrude between the windows blocking some of the reflection from hitting other parts of the building.
Your right in that the heat would have to go somewhere. But moving the heat to a confined area has the benefit of being able to do something with it. In other words, while it wouldn't be ideal to move the heat into the building, they could pump it back out to a safer location with increased air conditioning. For the life span of buildings in Vegas (20-50 years as they are often tore down and replaced for the sake of appearances), it might be cheaper/cost effective to absorb the extra energy costs then replace the building or mare the view from the rooms.
The easiest way would be to dull the surfaces so they don't reflect as much light. Paint of a different color, perhaps some sort of UV screen shade, perhaps some sort of POV panel film and of course texturing the surface with something like this(which qualifies as PVO film) or anything else would break it up too.
All you need to do is absorb some of the light or reflect is elsewhere before it focuses.
I'm not sure causing pain and burning hair is exactly the same Archimede's death ray. At least not from the fables I remember reading. And melting plastic, well, I'm also not sure they had much plastic back then, let alone built boats out of it.
Well, it can function in another way (or two). Suppose the bandwidth relative to the ISP isn't maxed out, but to the consumer is. So if Google pays for it, then consumer requests for Youtube could take priority over Hulu or whatever to that consumer.
But it can be dragged out even more. Suppose the customer is limited to a basic 1.5 meg connection and he has it maxed out syncing to some CVS or something while his kid is playing an online game.. Now the consumer's wife or anyone else in the household wants to visit youtube and view movie clips of her aunt's birthday party or something. The ISP can increase the bandwidth on demand to the connection to prioritize the packets and instead of a 1.5 meg connection, they temporarily have a 2 meg connection as long as the paid transmissions/communications are active.
In both situations, it would be consumer requested preferences and not solely the ISP's deal with Google. Granted, it would be possible only because of a payment from Google, yet it would be consumer initiated and not to their detriment.
Yes, but the economy will adjust itself. Whenever there is more gold found society gains actual -wealth- when the government prints more money people lose wealth. And a scenario like yours, while possible is incredibly improbable, if you look at gold prices (in official British records) from 1257 onwards there never has been any massive inflation of gold. The thing is, gold is pretty rare, it has been mined since the dawn of humanity and its universally accepted as rare. I would put my faith in the fact that gold is rare much more than I would put my faith in the government not to mass produce worthless paper.
Yes, one could make an argument that fiat currency will reestablish itself after massive inflation, but when it comes down to it, fiat currency is near worthless when it comes to the sole purpose of money which is to store wealth. I need a way to change intangible things into tangible things. My time and skills are intangible, I need a way to transfer them into something that I can keep. Food goes bad and is bulky, I don't want to get paid in food because it is hard to store. Imagine getting paid in Ramen noodles, you'd pick up your paycheck which would be a car/truckload of noodles. So humanity needed to find a better way, different cultures used different things, for example the ancient Chinese used "knife money", others used rare shells or items of great craftsmanship but still others used gold/silver. The thing that all these things had in common is they could not be produced infinitely. It took time to make an item of great skill, it took resources to make knife money, etc. The fact is, is that barring major technical advancements all of them had set limits and could not be produced infinitely.
There is nothing magical about gold/silver that makes it be the only thing currency can be backed in, but it makes the most sense, both have high weight-value ratio when compared to other materials, both have a known rarity (unlike some items like Palladium)and they are resistant to corroding.
well, you have a few miss-assumptions that should be looked at here. First, money is not for the sole purpose of storing wealth. It's for trading wealth by proxy. the difference is that there is no correlation to the actual value of an object and the wealth contained within it. This makes gold no different then any fiat currency. It gets even worse when you figure in market strategies like maximum price points and so on. While true, it does allow you to move intangible items to tangible ones, your time and skills are not always worth something. For instance, take the Japanese work programs they were hoping to use to get out of their recession in the 90's and early 2000's. They hired people to dig ditches just so others could be hired to come behind them and fill it in. It was actually less efficient then letting them sit at home on welfare because the digging and filling required more calories to be used in the process of creating absolutely no wealth.
Next, the payment in Ramon noodles, you would only need a truck load to accept payment if you were conflating today's economic realities with the imagined one. If ramen noodles were the source of payment, their supply structure and distribution would be completely different then they are now and you would use considerably less. Just because they are 10 for $1.00 today doesn't mean they would be if they were a form of currency. Look at closed systems like prisons where cheap food or cheap cigarettes have become forms of currency, they are only worth something because of their artificial scarcity and the want or need of the people involved.
Third, while it might be improbable that a cash of gold is found all the sudden, it is probably that it could be removed from the system just as easily. This could happen perhaps by some deranged rich person or a fire at fort Knox. That would cause deflation, send us into a recession and only benefit the ones with the most money as they could dump it back in
You are ignoring a few factors like how harsh those adjustments or fluctuations really are and how saving is replaced with investment instead. Hell, even a savings account is an investment now with crappy returns in most situations. The idea of burying your money in the back yard is long gone, perhaps longer gone then the value of the dollar.
When society started moving away from self sustaining farm life and into industrialization with mass amounts of the population dependent on others for their survival, the old system needed to have it's corrections balanced out to alleviate the pain and suffering caused to those at the ends of the social classes by spikes in the monetary system. When deflation occurred, it usually corrected itself before the working classes could take advantage of it leaving them out of the increased value loop often leaving them unemployed. When inflation occurred, it caused employees to be underpaid and they couldn't afford to live. What this ended up with is a system where the poor was actually living day by day and could easily die due to swings in the monetary system.
When we switched to a fiat currency, those swings were much more stable and a lot less intense for the extreme ends of the social class ladders.
Now back to your savings point, taking money out of the system which is what burying it in your back yard would do, is about as bad as burning the money/gold/silver/whatever because it does cause changes in the valuation of the dollar. The rich could simply control the economy by withholding their money from it causing wild swings in the valuation of the dollar. Take someone like John D Rockefeller, he became the richest man in the world in 1911 with the break up of standard oil, if he removed all that money from society and tossed it into a pit somewhere never to be found again, what would have happened to the value of the dollar not only here, but around the world? It would have suffered from severe deflation. If after society adjusted to the change, he could dump it back in causing massive inflation. This mean that political powers were beholden to the wealthy for mere stability of the economy.
Moving to a fiat currency eliminated that for the most part. Of course now we are seeing people who have amassed so much money that it appears to be rearing it's head again. But if they dump their money into a pit somewhere, all it would do is lose value. If they dumped their money into an investment or a bank somewhere, then it would earn interest and for the most part either keep up with inflation or surpass it. Take your 1/100th of the value from 1910. That's 100 years. If you placed $100 in a bank account earning 1.5% interest for 100 years, not only would you have the same amount as you started, you would have roughly 3 times (~$443 total) more because of compound interest. And with the money in an accessible form like a bank account, leaving it there does little for inflation/deflation compared to taking it out of circulation or placing it back in.
But I don't see why you are so worried about this. It's not like you would be earning $10.00 an hour digging ditched today if the money was still on the gold standard. Gold is something like $1200 an ounce and a gold backed bill is about 1/20th an ounce. If it still took $20 to buy an ounce of gold and all was the way you think it should be, then you would be paid on the order of about 1/60th of the $10.00 an hour or about 16 cents an hour. It's not like any of the economic realities that determine the value of labor and ability to survive would change. You would still be making 100k year with the same 100k purchasing power, just in 1910 currency valuations. The only major difference would be how hard the swings of the economy hit you.
You are mistaking the actions of the government for the reactions of the people. They are not one in the same and often bear no resemblance to each other.
What about if you come home while the thiefs are still their taking your stuff? Should the cops come and stop them, or wait until it's all done and take your statement?
I mean seriously, no defense shield is going to be able to autonomously say "they are attacking here, lets guard the doors". What they will likely do is be ready when company X says, I'm getting attacked at these ports by these IP's, then respond similar to a cop being called while the thieves are still cleaning out your house. But what it would do in addition to this, is create a centralized office in every government so that when thieves are tracked down, they can be pursued legally and don't escape the current conundrum where varying laws and unspecified places to report internet crimes typically get looked at funny and ignored once they cross international boundaries. In worse case scenarios, the government could probably access the router code and start dropping packets for the confirmed IP's making the attack much more difficult. It's not like the zombied PCs are normally visiting those sites.
Who needs a gun handed to them. It doesn't take much to turn the theory of operation into practice. Sure, it may not work as well as a $1000 pistol but it will work. Especially if the goal is to get close enough for you to see it coming but far enough away that you can't fight back.
BTW, I agree with your comment. This stance doesn't make existing laws go away. At best, it simply says that they won't invest time and money preventing it from happening.
I'm not the moderator or the do I believe you should have been modded as a troll, I still don't agree with your assumptions. You see, we aren't in a perfect world and basing a monetary system on gold or any other precious metals or rare resources is subject to the same inflation/deflation problems. The value of gold or anything else can increase or decrease with the amount of product in supply. If we find a gold deposit tomorrow that is akin to all the worlds largest city's trash dumps and as easy to remove as scraping the topsoil off, the value of gold would be something like 50 ounces to buy a candy bar.
what is happening with Fiat Currency is that political systems are in more control over the value of the dollar. Sometimes there are things outside their control but instead of limiting the production of gold and silver to cause corrections, you can much easier manipulate interest rates and taxes. so with a fiat monetary system, there is actually more precise control over the value of the currency if no one manipulates it to their benefit which seems to be the biggest problem facing governments today.
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Well, here is the problem. Not really a problem but... You are looking at this logically from a right and wrong perspective. Don't do that just for a minute or two. Look at is specifically from a monetary gain perspective with most logic thrown out the window.
You see, MS most certainly can argue against itself in two unrelated cases covering the same areas of sorts. It's not likely that the differences in arguments will ever cross cases until one has been decided and that's only if they aren't past the point of offering evidence (the one court will just use the ruling of the other without caring about how what was argued).
Now, here is where logic gets completely turned upside down. If MS can perceptibly make more revenue from windows 7 for phones sales because of the Fear, Uncertainty, and Disinformation, then if they would lose in either patent dispute either way the cases swing, for any reason, it's still beneficial to them. It's monetarily logical for them to throw a roman pretending to be a christian to the lions in order to pack the stadiums so to speak. What I'm getting at is, it doesn't matter if they lose both cases for any reason. The big money will be somewhere else which is most likely why they are dragging both cases out- it exemplifies their indemnification as a value greater then the costs of using windows 7 for the phone over a free and open platform or even a cheaper pay platform. the patent case is more or less the bread and circuses while the real action is going on inside the emperors hidden life.
Sorry to use Roman analogies to explain that. It's just that I first learned of the art of willful deception or the attempt to hide the real issues with the examples of bread and circuses and thought it might translate this quite nicely. It's really a slight of hand trick, they are saying look here, why something else is happening, all along they are trying to charge a fee to see the show. Or at least that's how I see it.
I think they had a great strategy if you look into it deep enough.
They want this patent controversy and they want news of it in the main stream press because they are selling their windows 7 version of phone operating system and one of the key selling point they are making seems to be patent suit indemnification. With McBride and SCO Group more or less gone, the don't have a puppet company to show the dangers of patent suits. So they defend this case as illegitimate to show that due diligence isn't always enough, push their own case as legitimate, and claim you can avoid it all by using windows 7 and certified Microsoft products.
Actually, given the size and scope of the US military, you are right, 1 trillion dollars is about pocket change to most people.
I'm for increasing their budget more too. But I'm not sure that this outage wasn't planned. How better to test the ability to withstand a "cyber attack" then to lose your DNS servers and see if the your departments can fully function without them. This ability would greatly decrease the time needed to change to an alternative system if ever needed or more likely regroup resources and work around it. I'm not so sure that this wasn't just a readiness test of some sorts disguised as an accidental outage or something. It would make more sense to make it appear to be a problem server then actually gearing up to work around it that would create another potential target for any attacks.
As so could I. But I can't think of any that personalize the conflict in a way that potentially demoralizes the victims of it which is why this got so much attention.
It's really about who paid attention to it, spoke out against it, and the ability of them to gather sympathy from others. You can't quit put a face with this much power to the more despicable examples of war profiteering you may find. With this one, the face is the guy or woman, who for whatever reason found themselves serving in the military and through a chain of events largely outside their own control, was thrust into conflict with the enemy and harmed or killed in some way, that is now being exploited against their will. That has all the element of a Hollywood top-grossing block buster movie that the entire nation goes to see the little guy beat the perceived bad guys exploiting their good name.
I'm reminds of a saying a friend used to quote. I don't know the original author but it went something like, this is a free country, you are as free as you want to be, as long as you do what I say.
It's like you are saying that everyone else' freedom is worthless unless your version trumps it. You don't have to like what others do with their freedom, you just have to accept the premise that it won't always line up with your idea of freedom. This means you will win some and lose some, but that's what happens when people are free to act on their own.
So you are saying that in a free society, freedom is haw you say and not how it is? I mean seriously, when did the people complaining about the game lose the ability or freedom to complain? When did EA lose the ability or freedom to pull the game and change things in it?
Don't confuse controversy (most likely by design for publicity) and the caving into it as any losses of freedom. In fact, it's a proper exercise of freedom even though you do not like it. That's right, even though you lost a choice, the freedom of the people in control was used to execute the decisions they made through the influence of free speech. You are not going to say you hate freedom now are you?
Actually, it's a bunch of whiners who are trying to stop game manufacturers from profiting from the hardships they are still struggling to overcome. It happening to censor others is merely a distraction and EA went this route in order to avoid liability from all the lawsuits claiming that the characters were based on real life instances of "their fallen loved one" or "themselves (wounded maimed or whatever) or "pain and suffering caused by the game" whatever which seems to pop open quite often when powerful American lobbying groups don't get their way.
offending people who want blood and guts is not the same thing as offending people who have been traumatized by blood and guts. The simple fact is that they chose not to offend the families of/and the soldiers who lost loved ones or ended up getting maimed/wounded or even emotionally scared in combat. You see, the one set will not likely get off the couch to answer the door except when it's the Pizza delivery guy. The other will protest congress, their local shopping mall carrying the game, and about anyone else they can think of that might have an effect to stop it or actually sue them claiming they are profiting from someone's life and they deserve a cut of the revenue or something.. They also have the sympathy card in which allows them to pull bystanders in who are moved by their story as well.
Wrong, wages increased and decreased based on the value of money. And yes, the value of gold increased and decreased quite often. This is no secrete.
So it's all a world wide government conspiracy- involving even nations that dislike each other, and everyone in a position of power is wrong but you are right. Gotcha there.
Wow.. Are you showing your ignorance wildly here. The value of the dollar didn't matter because they were artificially tied to a set value by force of law. The dollar could have dropped off the face of the earth and foreign nations was guaranteed the same value.
Why should you be able to use gold as money? I mean why should I have to accept it as payment. Currently, the dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of the government and is legal tender for all debts private and public. Your gold on the other hand, is just something I would have to sell in order to get legal tender. Just because you want it so doesn't make it a good idea. And all your other arguments have been shot down.
Did you ever take a Econ course? I doubt it, but how do you reconcile the fact that collective bargaining or increased in tax liability can cause inflation by increasing the costs of the products. Your wages are sticky because your employer is not finding any more value in your efforts and isn't afraid of you going somewhere else.
Yep, you are suffering from market speak. Gold can currently purchase about 10 times what is could in 1998. In 1992, it could only purchase half of the 1998 high. Inflation in the currency has not moved as much to match.
Oh, how delusional you are. The dollar value is tied to many economic indicators. Granted, they aren't tangible like gold is but they are tied to it pretty well. And of you think having nuclear weapons is the only thing proping the dollar up, you must be ignoring real history altogether. In fact, we just put trade sanctions in place on China for artificially manipulating the value of their dollar.
And what you seem to be ignoring is that rarity only matters when someone wants it. The dollar is nothing but a medium to transfer wealth or value from one person/place to another. You can make something like Raman noodles but you can't actually make Raman noodles which is why it would work as money. How scarce something is is irrelevant outside of it being controlled by the one element the money is honored at.
Money does not have to have value in and of itself. That's how we can use printed paper as money. Value can be assigned as easily as writing a check or the government of a nation making it legal tender for all debts public and private. Chickens and pigs can be money and have been in the past.
Your right, there is nothing stopping Obama except for common sense, from printing an extra ten billion dollars. But you have to look at what that would do to the value of the dollar and derive why the value would change. If the money supply is 10k per person and it suddenly increases to 1000k per person, after adjustment for inflation, you will end up with a loaf of bread costing 100 times the previous amount (assuming a direct relation). Why would it be that much more? Because there is a value assigned to the loaf of bread that comes from the costs of manufacturing it and presenting it for sale along with a profit. That will not disappear over night and most likely would not even change because the value of the dollar is tied to a lot of economic indicators like GDP and purchasing power parity with other countries.
You don't have to black out the windows completely. and the windows are taller then the person inside so texturing or painting just the top halves could likely do the job and still leave you with a pool side view.
I don't need to cite anything here. What you need to do is pay attention to history and notice how being poor on a farm was much different then being poor in the city.
Really? Is that why every industrialized nation in the world has moved away from that? Is it some vast complicated conspiracy or something?
Lol.. Your one of those people. I should have guessed. Listen, why don't you come back when you get your history from places other then contrieved political statements like Zeitgeist and the likes. The reason the banks fell in the great depression has a lot more to do with the geopolitical policies effecting the economies of several nations including but not limited to nationalism and domestic price protections. Whether fractional reserve banking was employed or not would have saw the exact same problem because banks are in the business of making loans with money deposited which is why they can offer you a service.
Yea, lets exaggerate something way past anything that has ever happened in the free world in order to make a point that wouldn't otherwise exist. Listen, No one said it was perfect, only that it was better then what you are claiming to be perfect.
It wouldn't? Then how to you account for the US and European banks conspiring to manipulate the gold markets to their benefit in 1961? They in fact did do so and was able to get the Brenton woods system dismantled in 1968 largely because of it.
You are wrong. It's not in the interest of the government to print shit loads of money, if they do, they lose the ability to raise funds. Yes, we did print extra money to compensate for the amounts kept over seas, but it wasn't a shit load. And who cares if the government can determine the value of money. At least they are somewhat responsible to the people and have to answer by being reelected. And if you think it
Bullshit. The UN monitored the elections and outside a few small minor things like threats from the Taliban, nothing was wrong with them. And No, one election (there actually has been several but why let the fact get in your way) does not mean others do not follow nor does it mean they can't democratically change the government to any other style at any other point in time. In fact, most dictatorships result from internal workings inside existing democratic governments at some point in time. Look at Germany post WWI and Iraq. Hell, look at Iran even. Give it up, the facts and reality just doesn't agree with you.
I would agree until I found out they wear colored contact lenses and use makeup to manipulate the parts surrounding the eyes and they can find a lot of the bitch within.
Now I just pretend I'm a family man looking at a sports car. I will test drive them, if they are too slow, I take it back to the lot, if they are too fast, the same. If they need their valves adjusted every 10 miles, well, you get the hint. I'm just glad that Google Voice allows me to block numbers altogether.
A textured surface would somewhat scatter the reflecting light and not bring it to as sharp of a focus as it is currently. This would allow the heat to dissipate somewhat while not building up in the same spot as it interacts with more surface area. Changing the angle of the windows would have a simular effect.
As for painting, it would need to be a dark color to absorb most of the light. Their scattering effect on the film is probably defeated with the parabolic shape of the building. It would eventually either dissipate on it's path or end up in the same focal space if the refraction or reflection is scattered to another point in the building. Think of texture that basically inverts the parabolic shape that can defeat the actual shape of the building. Perhaps some ledges that protrude between the windows blocking some of the reflection from hitting other parts of the building.
Your right in that the heat would have to go somewhere. But moving the heat to a confined area has the benefit of being able to do something with it. In other words, while it wouldn't be ideal to move the heat into the building, they could pump it back out to a safer location with increased air conditioning. For the life span of buildings in Vegas (20-50 years as they are often tore down and replaced for the sake of appearances), it might be cheaper/cost effective to absorb the extra energy costs then replace the building or mare the view from the rooms.
The easiest way would be to dull the surfaces so they don't reflect as much light. Paint of a different color, perhaps some sort of UV screen shade, perhaps some sort of POV panel film and of course texturing the surface with something like this(which qualifies as PVO film) or anything else would break it up too.
All you need to do is absorb some of the light or reflect is elsewhere before it focuses.
I'm not sure causing pain and burning hair is exactly the same Archimede's death ray. At least not from the fables I remember reading. And melting plastic, well, I'm also not sure they had much plastic back then, let alone built boats out of it.
Perhaps you could tell me more about this.
Well, it can function in another way (or two). Suppose the bandwidth relative to the ISP isn't maxed out, but to the consumer is. So if Google pays for it, then consumer requests for Youtube could take priority over Hulu or whatever to that consumer.
But it can be dragged out even more. Suppose the customer is limited to a basic 1.5 meg connection and he has it maxed out syncing to some CVS or something while his kid is playing an online game.. Now the consumer's wife or anyone else in the household wants to visit youtube and view movie clips of her aunt's birthday party or something. The ISP can increase the bandwidth on demand to the connection to prioritize the packets and instead of a 1.5 meg connection, they temporarily have a 2 meg connection as long as the paid transmissions/communications are active.
In both situations, it would be consumer requested preferences and not solely the ISP's deal with Google. Granted, it would be possible only because of a payment from Google, yet it would be consumer initiated and not to their detriment.
well, you have a few miss-assumptions that should be looked at here. First, money is not for the sole purpose of storing wealth. It's for trading wealth by proxy. the difference is that there is no correlation to the actual value of an object and the wealth contained within it. This makes gold no different then any fiat currency. It gets even worse when you figure in market strategies like maximum price points and so on. While true, it does allow you to move intangible items to tangible ones, your time and skills are not always worth something. For instance, take the Japanese work programs they were hoping to use to get out of their recession in the 90's and early 2000's. They hired people to dig ditches just so others could be hired to come behind them and fill it in. It was actually less efficient then letting them sit at home on welfare because the digging and filling required more calories to be used in the process of creating absolutely no wealth.
Next, the payment in Ramon noodles, you would only need a truck load to accept payment if you were conflating today's economic realities with the imagined one. If ramen noodles were the source of payment, their supply structure and distribution would be completely different then they are now and you would use considerably less. Just because they are 10 for $1.00 today doesn't mean they would be if they were a form of currency. Look at closed systems like prisons where cheap food or cheap cigarettes have become forms of currency, they are only worth something because of their artificial scarcity and the want or need of the people involved.
Third, while it might be improbable that a cash of gold is found all the sudden, it is probably that it could be removed from the system just as easily. This could happen perhaps by some deranged rich person or a fire at fort Knox. That would cause deflation, send us into a recession and only benefit the ones with the most money as they could dump it back in
You are ignoring a few factors like how harsh those adjustments or fluctuations really are and how saving is replaced with investment instead. Hell, even a savings account is an investment now with crappy returns in most situations. The idea of burying your money in the back yard is long gone, perhaps longer gone then the value of the dollar.
When society started moving away from self sustaining farm life and into industrialization with mass amounts of the population dependent on others for their survival, the old system needed to have it's corrections balanced out to alleviate the pain and suffering caused to those at the ends of the social classes by spikes in the monetary system. When deflation occurred, it usually corrected itself before the working classes could take advantage of it leaving them out of the increased value loop often leaving them unemployed. When inflation occurred, it caused employees to be underpaid and they couldn't afford to live. What this ended up with is a system where the poor was actually living day by day and could easily die due to swings in the monetary system.
When we switched to a fiat currency, those swings were much more stable and a lot less intense for the extreme ends of the social class ladders.
Now back to your savings point, taking money out of the system which is what burying it in your back yard would do, is about as bad as burning the money/gold/silver/whatever because it does cause changes in the valuation of the dollar. The rich could simply control the economy by withholding their money from it causing wild swings in the valuation of the dollar. Take someone like John D Rockefeller, he became the richest man in the world in 1911 with the break up of standard oil, if he removed all that money from society and tossed it into a pit somewhere never to be found again, what would have happened to the value of the dollar not only here, but around the world? It would have suffered from severe deflation. If after society adjusted to the change, he could dump it back in causing massive inflation. This mean that political powers were beholden to the wealthy for mere stability of the economy.
Moving to a fiat currency eliminated that for the most part. Of course now we are seeing people who have amassed so much money that it appears to be rearing it's head again. But if they dump their money into a pit somewhere, all it would do is lose value. If they dumped their money into an investment or a bank somewhere, then it would earn interest and for the most part either keep up with inflation or surpass it. Take your 1/100th of the value from 1910. That's 100 years. If you placed $100 in a bank account earning 1.5% interest for 100 years, not only would you have the same amount as you started, you would have roughly 3 times (~$443 total) more because of compound interest. And with the money in an accessible form like a bank account, leaving it there does little for inflation/deflation compared to taking it out of circulation or placing it back in.
But I don't see why you are so worried about this. It's not like you would be earning $10.00 an hour digging ditched today if the money was still on the gold standard. Gold is something like $1200 an ounce and a gold backed bill is about 1/20th an ounce. If it still took $20 to buy an ounce of gold and all was the way you think it should be, then you would be paid on the order of about 1/60th of the $10.00 an hour or about 16 cents an hour. It's not like any of the economic realities that determine the value of labor and ability to survive would change. You would still be making 100k year with the same 100k purchasing power, just in 1910 currency valuations. The only major difference would be how hard the swings of the economy hit you.
You are mistaking the actions of the government for the reactions of the people. They are not one in the same and often bear no resemblance to each other.
What about if you come home while the thiefs are still their taking your stuff? Should the cops come and stop them, or wait until it's all done and take your statement?
I mean seriously, no defense shield is going to be able to autonomously say "they are attacking here, lets guard the doors". What they will likely do is be ready when company X says, I'm getting attacked at these ports by these IP's, then respond similar to a cop being called while the thieves are still cleaning out your house. But what it would do in addition to this, is create a centralized office in every government so that when thieves are tracked down, they can be pursued legally and don't escape the current conundrum where varying laws and unspecified places to report internet crimes typically get looked at funny and ignored once they cross international boundaries. In worse case scenarios, the government could probably access the router code and start dropping packets for the confirmed IP's making the attack much more difficult. It's not like the zombied PCs are normally visiting those sites.
Who needs a gun handed to them. It doesn't take much to turn the theory of operation into practice. Sure, it may not work as well as a $1000 pistol but it will work. Especially if the goal is to get close enough for you to see it coming but far enough away that you can't fight back.
BTW, I agree with your comment. This stance doesn't make existing laws go away. At best, it simply says that they won't invest time and money preventing it from happening.
I'm not the moderator or the do I believe you should have been modded as a troll, I still don't agree with your assumptions. You see, we aren't in a perfect world and basing a monetary system on gold or any other precious metals or rare resources is subject to the same inflation/deflation problems. The value of gold or anything else can increase or decrease with the amount of product in supply. If we find a gold deposit tomorrow that is akin to all the worlds largest city's trash dumps and as easy to remove as scraping the topsoil off, the value of gold would be something like 50 ounces to buy a candy bar.
what is happening with Fiat Currency is that political systems are in more control over the value of the dollar. Sometimes there are things outside their control but instead of limiting the production of gold and silver to cause corrections, you can much easier manipulate interest rates and taxes. so with a fiat monetary system, there is actually more precise control over the value of the currency if no one manipulates it to their benefit which seems to be the biggest problem facing governments today.