Patient: TB? My God! Are you sure?
Doctor: Afraid so, but we caught it early.
Patient: So my prognosis is good?
Doctor: Depends. we are in bad times right now for TB
Patient: Ghee I'd better pray then!
Doctor: It can't hurt (well that's debatable, apparently it can... but lets not go there right now)
Doctor: Meanwhile we have red and blue pills three times a day, what kind of insurance provider to you have ?
Patient: a couple of monthes latter: I was saved by prayers!, (or... dead)
Well not really, most probably there is no full credit called Darwin 101, but just a couple of courses. So yes they will maybe fail a question or two, but it will not prohibit them from getting their degree.
It will certainly make them unfit for research, but what they are interested in is becoming MD's not scientist, and they will be probably just as qualified as any other MD to give out collored pills to the masses. The wast majority of doctors look at symptoms, check in their big book of diagnostics, map it to the big book of medication, and "voila" patient cured (or not)...
So probably the only valid answer for them is: well thanks for making sure that advanced research stays in secular hands, could you please convert some of our "competitors" ?
Seriously he is just the dealer at the Three Card Monte game the government(executive+legislative) is playing with the citizen's brain... On the red card we will fix the economy, but look at this nice "therorist" card... Not only do we not care, but anything we would do would just be to solve this issue we have:
See people to find things like "bootleg blockbuster video" use various search engines... Now we would like to know exactly what was searched and found, with google or any other search engine.. So if we can get a nice "tagging" law 'to save the children' there is no reason we can not also have a global "tag the content" law... do not forget that lieberman is a "Hollywood Democrat"
Indeed , so it's a license fee for "something specific", and it is at least in theory managed by the "will of the people" UK citizen could theoretically elect people who would close it down. So it's "ok".
The trouble with private monopolies is that there is no democratic control whatsoever
the issue is not with the ISP, but with "content providers" who make trucload of cash in one country and pay taxes (or mostly avoid to pay taxes in another)...
Google makes probably 40 to 60% of it's income in Europe, and pays almost nothing. Same for most large content providers...
Doesn't mean that this tax/licence is a good idea, but at least it has some rationale.
A tax goes to the "general coffer" and is used as the government dems fit A licence goes to "something specific" even if it is state mandated
A non state mandated licence the almost everybody is forced to pay is a monopolistic theft, it's illegal, unless the monopol is real cosy with the government
Although in europe Football + Tennis + Cricket replaces NLF + NBA + Baseball, so to compare your should evaluate total expenditure per capital, I fundamentally agree, yes we should do that too.. And the issue is not just the players, but also the coaches, agents, and TV executive in charge of sports, etc...
Although at least we do not mix universities with sport, so it hurt a little bit less.
But yes sports became an opium for the people, and if you do a parallel between the fall of the Bizantine empire and us, it'll probably scare you (although in their case it was horse cart races...)
Well it's true that the US where on the right side during WWI and II although they came to help during WWI not when it was the decent thing to do, but when it threatened the credit line they extended to the allies. And europe paid back most of it, although it did push it into WWII. So it is certainly not a duty of anybody to be "extra nice", but asking to be thanked for self preservation is not very efficient. And the Euro is much stronger than the US dollars, the issue is the lack of political integration, not the global european economy. Moreover the Euro is not proped by the US, much more attacked by over production of "federal dollars". BTW you conveniently forgot to name ireland as a "failed european state", probably because you find it convenient that we let it be used by US corporations to operate essentially tax free in europe. So maybe european are not far from perfect in building a continent, but at least we are not confusing luck and talent.. The US got three breaks: - most of the original "owners" of the country got sick and died when the current inhabitant arrived, this gave you access "for free" to a large set of real estate and natural resources - it was just far en inconvenient enough from europe during the industrial revolution to get away with stealing intellectual property (which is probably why you want to make sure that the emerging economies do not get the same break) - european did not learn fast enough that nationalism is always : being proud for something you have absolutely done nothing for. So it was easy for failed states to stir the people to war... Do not count on a fourth one...
Well it's true that the US owes us much more cash to europe than europe owes to the US, what the heck does europe needs the USA for ? Natural resources ? no it comes from other countries and what the US has it keeps... Agricultural produces ? well we do import coca cola, but we could buy clones from other countries, OGM's well no thanks,... Manufactured products ? you mean those who are made in china ? Hollywood products, well we are kind of addicted to, but we can move over to bollywood:-) and watch UK series instead of US remakes... (We might make an exception for future seasons of Episodes just be drive the point home...
So good by and thanks for all the fish, but... it's not quite too late, just please fix your country. a) do not not vote for any incumbent (we should follow this advice also) b) make and execute a plan to divide by 10 your natural resource per capita intake. c) stop accepting a society that thinks it's "ok" to have about 3% of your population in prison, or under some sort of judiciary control. d) put a cap on salaries of professionals involved in sports (let's say 50% of an university professor or GP doctor whichever is lower) (this might actually make sport a game again)... e) put cap copyright protection period to 5 years, and patent protections to 6 month (and give artist some lessons on "saving for old age" so that the various mafiaa's cannot argue that poor old artists need "extended protections" because they are now so old.... and only have 75 year old records to feed them..
Do not be so sure, do not forget that is it not just being "poor", but there are many other lacks...
In a welfare slum you can still go to a library (most do not but it's their choice). In a welfare slum if you are gay, or different you life is probably harder, and for example in many european "slums" there is a big problem with various kind of discriminations, but at least they are illegal, and you can take some bus/subway to a nearby place where people will let you at least spend some time unmolested. In most african states many "differences" are against the law and the society is incredibly conservative and narrowminded. The job market is just as crappy, many places are very poluted (do you think the companies who are pulling the natural ressources out of the earth care ?).
So on some level you are right, most poor are not asking for any development, since they have no idea what it would be... What they are asking for is some safety for themselves and their children. Unfortunatelly we only think about it, and only trasmit this as an accumulation of "things"...
Development as freedom to paraphrase Amartya Sen is something most people do not really care for, and unfortunatelly due to an history of oppresion and lack of public discourse, most people in most emerging countries are only thinking about how everybody should obey them, and live as they think is right, and not of protecting the rights of the individuals.
So the airdrop will generate some nice photo-ops and that's it....
Unesco would be better with US only if the US would have a very different type of government... With the two current "incumbents", all the additional money the US bring to the Unesco only serve the goals of a few US corporations that nobody needs.
This is an excellent news for Unesco, It did leave it alone from 1984 till 2002/3 and this was mutch better than the years between 2003 and Now.
First it will remove a large cadre of US employees from Unesco staff, and since there is a total disconnect between the US point of view on education and culture and the rest of the world it will enable the Unesco to work more efficiently without having to focus on making large american corporations and large US private universities happy.
It also shows how spitefull the current administration is (well the other party would probably do the same), influence at the unesco is largelly dependent on the size of each state contribution, so the US with 22% would have buried the palestinian, in practice maybe one or two managers and at most half a dozen palestinian employees will be hired, and probably mostly active in some cultural history preservation task in the middle east.
The US could have said publicly that the vote of Unesco is not binding for them, and that the officially "protest" the cooptation of a non state as a full member, but that they would go on working with Unesco to further cultural, etc....
But no, they have to "punish" the UN, well certainly there are a lot of undemocratic and unsavory regime who have influence there, but remember many are "allies" of the US, and there is no easy way to get people of the world represented. To those who think that the US should "remove itself from the UN", just remember that this would in practice mean that "big countries" would unilaterally govern by "divide and conquer", so in the "best (from US point of view) case" you would have an "imperial republic" leading the world by having a small minority (only about 5% of the world population are US citizens) vote for everybody else, in the more likely case you would have the Communist Party of China ruling the world... (US waste of money in the financial system created the crisis which now pushes the European to borrow money from the PRC, how long do you think it will take till you have to pay the interests ?).
So meanwhile thank you very much leaving the Unesco alone...
So do not worry they will only knock after the next election, and I doubt very much that the result of the next election has any credible way to change this.
Unfortunatelly no, that is about 550 000 people who didn't see the first letter (was sent to the wrong email address) 90 000 who didn't read it (many people bellow 20 only use IM) 5 000 who do not care and would not vote anyway 2500 who would not have voted Sarcosy anyway 2000 who would vote for sarcosy despite this because they consider it little more than a parking fine.. 500 might change their vote maybe if they can bother about it...
Moreover the "socialist" (about as socialist as the US democrats are democratic or the republican are republican, that is very little) did not really fight the HADOPI, they did some populist show about a "global licence" from their "left wing" (that would be an ISP tax that would give a licence to copy, but only music not movies, so would have solved about nothing), but in reality they are thick in bed with UNIVERSAL...
When we did a "demonstration" against DADVSI only 400 people came, for HADOPI we didn't even bother... We are living in a situation where government make laws that criminalize people but in a way that enforcement can be completelly arbitrary, it's very convenient, "everybody is guilty of something" we can arrest them whenever we want to... what fun...
You are absolutely right, there is no reason for Microsoft to support XP any longer, actually we would like them to stop all support of all versions:-)
There is freedom, good dictator and bad dictator..
Freedom is usually messy and complicated, good dictator is better than bad dictator...
If there are enough users, yes, and at least it is possible, whereas closed source is dead when the owner says so... and absolutely nothing you can do about it...
Actually you do not look at the death tick because if you can, you are not running XP any way, and with Open Source you see if the support are slowing down or not, it is not an "on/off" marketing descision...
Tsss, you should have used emacs, then you would have the office suite, OS and programming environment in one package.. And you do not need to mutate your brain to think in stacks, just grow a sixt finger:-)
Total cost of ownerships figures are debatable, what is not is that with closed source sofware you do not decide your own IT strategy. You just "do as told".. If you like that, be their guest...
This is very near to trolling, if you use a FOSS solution and the creator of the solutions decides to stop developping it you can find other people that might be interested, and because you have the source they can, and in practice they do. Oracle is not so much interested in OpenOffice, so "big deal" there are enough other people who care/need to go on supporting it.
I was not teaching english, and not in english, it would have scared 90% of the students away... Not all/. members live in the US or in any other english speaking country.
Nope, it's moving toward a "chanel centric" model of streaming junk to you but indentifying you in the smallest details to push advertisements and marketing actions. And it does follow you around where ever you are....
but customer centric, nahh, no way... (it would be commie anyway, what an idea...)
Slashdot Mirror
Funny but the true story is probably:
Patient: TB? My God! Are you sure? ... dead)
Doctor: Afraid so, but we caught it early.
Patient: So my prognosis is good?
Doctor: Depends. we are in bad times right now for TB
Patient: Ghee I'd better pray then!
Doctor: It can't hurt (well that's debatable, apparently it can... but lets not go there right now)
Doctor: Meanwhile we have red and blue pills three times a day, what kind of insurance provider to you have ?
Patient: a couple of monthes latter: I was saved by prayers!, (or
Well not really, most probably there is no full credit called Darwin 101, but just a couple of courses.
So yes they will maybe fail a question or two, but it will not prohibit them from getting their degree.
It will certainly make them unfit for research, but what they are interested in is becoming MD's not scientist, and they will be probably just as qualified as any other MD to give out collored pills to the masses.
The wast majority of doctors look at symptoms, check in their big book of diagnostics, map it to the big book of medication, and "voila" patient cured (or not)...
So probably the only valid answer for them is: well thanks for making sure that advanced research stays in secular hands, could you please convert some of our "competitors" ?
Seriously he is just the dealer at the Three Card Monte game the government(executive+legislative) is playing with the citizen's brain...
On the red card we will fix the economy, but look at this nice "therorist" card...
Not only do we not care, but anything we would do would just be to solve this issue we have:
See people to find things like "bootleg blockbuster video" use various search engines...
Now we would like to know exactly what was searched and found, with google or any other search engine..
So if we can get a nice "tagging" law 'to save the children' there is no reason we can not also have a global "tag the content" law...
do not forget that lieberman is a "Hollywood Democrat"
Indeed , so it's a license fee for "something specific", and it is at least in theory managed by the "will of the people"
UK citizen could theoretically elect people who would close it down.
So it's "ok".
The trouble with private monopolies is that there is no democratic control whatsoever
the issue is not with the ISP, but with "content providers" who make trucload of cash in one country and pay taxes (or mostly avoid to pay taxes in another)...
Google makes probably 40 to 60% of it's income in Europe, and pays almost nothing.
Same for most large content providers...
Doesn't mean that this tax/licence is a good idea, but at least it has some rationale.
because it's a windows licence fee....
A tax goes to the "general coffer" and is used as the government dems fit
A licence goes to "something specific" even if it is state mandated
A non state mandated licence the almost everybody is forced to pay is a monopolistic theft, it's illegal, unless the monopol is real cosy with the government
Although in europe Football + Tennis + Cricket replaces NLF + NBA + Baseball, so to compare your should evaluate total expenditure per capital, I fundamentally agree, yes we should do that too..
And the issue is not just the players, but also the coaches, agents, and TV executive in charge of sports, etc...
Although at least we do not mix universities with sport, so it hurt a little bit less.
But yes sports became an opium for the people, and if you do a parallel between the fall of the Bizantine empire and us, it'll probably scare you (although in their case it was horse cart races...)
Well it's true that the US where on the right side during WWI and II although they came to help during WWI not when it was the decent thing to do, but when it threatened the credit line they extended to the allies.
And europe paid back most of it, although it did push it into WWII.
So it is certainly not a duty of anybody to be "extra nice", but asking to be thanked for self preservation is not very efficient.
And the Euro is much stronger than the US dollars, the issue is the lack of political integration, not the global european economy.
Moreover the Euro is not proped by the US, much more attacked by over production of "federal dollars".
BTW you conveniently forgot to name ireland as a "failed european state", probably because you find it convenient that we let it be used by US corporations to operate essentially tax free in europe.
So maybe european are not far from perfect in building a continent, but at least we are not confusing luck and talent..
The US got three breaks:
- most of the original "owners" of the country got sick and died when the current inhabitant arrived, this gave you access "for free" to a large set of real estate and natural resources
- it was just far en inconvenient enough from europe during the industrial revolution to get away with stealing intellectual property (which is probably why you want to make sure that the emerging economies do not get the same break)
- european did not learn fast enough that nationalism is always : being proud for something you have absolutely done nothing for. So it was easy for failed states to stir the people to war...
Do not count on a fourth one...
Well it's true that the US owes us much more cash to europe than europe owes to the US, what the heck does europe needs the USA for ? ... :-) and watch UK series instead of US remakes... (We might make an exception for future seasons of Episodes just be drive the point home...
Natural resources ? no it comes from other countries and what the US has it keeps...
Agricultural produces ? well we do import coca cola, but we could buy clones from other countries, OGM's well no thanks,
Manufactured products ? you mean those who are made in china ?
Hollywood products, well we are kind of addicted to, but we can move over to bollywood
So good by and thanks for all the fish, but ... it's not quite too late, just please fix your country. .... and only have 75 year old records to feed them..
a) do not not vote for any incumbent (we should follow this advice also)
b) make and execute a plan to divide by 10 your natural resource per capita intake.
c) stop accepting a society that thinks it's "ok" to have about 3% of your population in prison, or under some sort of judiciary control.
d) put a cap on salaries of professionals involved in sports (let's say 50% of an university professor or GP doctor whichever is lower)
(this might actually make sport a game again)...
e) put cap copyright protection period to 5 years, and patent protections to 6 month
(and give artist some lessons on "saving for old age" so that the various mafiaa's cannot argue that poor old artists need "extended protections" because they are now so old
Do not be so sure, do not forget that is it not just being "poor", but there are many other lacks...
In a welfare slum you can still go to a library (most do not but it's their choice).
In a welfare slum if you are gay, or different you life is probably harder, and for example in many european "slums" there is a big problem with various kind of discriminations, but at least they are illegal, and you can take some bus/subway to a nearby place where people will let you at least spend some time unmolested.
In most african states many "differences" are against the law and the society is incredibly conservative and narrowminded.
The job market is just as crappy, many places are very poluted (do you think the companies who are pulling the natural ressources out of the earth care ?).
So on some level you are right, most poor are not asking for any development, since they have no idea what it would be...
What they are asking for is some safety for themselves and their children.
Unfortunatelly we only think about it, and only trasmit this as an accumulation of "things"...
Development as freedom to paraphrase Amartya Sen is something most people do not really care for, and unfortunatelly due to an history of oppresion and lack of public discourse, most people in most emerging countries are only thinking about how everybody should obey them, and live as they think is right, and not of protecting the rights of the individuals.
So the airdrop will generate some nice photo-ops and that's it....
It seems that using real bombs would be more efficient that OLPCs to get rid of the poors ?
Oh... it's poverty, not poors... then it would probably not work..
Unesco would be better with US only if the US would have a very different type of government...
With the two current "incumbents", all the additional money the US bring to the Unesco only serve the goals of a few US corporations that nobody needs.
This is an excellent news for Unesco, It did leave it alone from 1984 till 2002/3 and this was mutch better than the years between 2003 and Now.
First it will remove a large cadre of US employees from Unesco staff, and since there is a total disconnect between the US point of view on education and culture and the rest of the world it will enable the Unesco to work more efficiently without having to focus on making large american corporations and large US private universities happy.
It also shows how spitefull the current administration is (well the other party would probably do the same), influence at the unesco is largelly dependent on the size of each state contribution, so the US with 22% would have buried the palestinian, in practice maybe one or two managers and at most half a dozen palestinian employees will be hired, and probably mostly active in some cultural history preservation task in the middle east.
The US could have said publicly that the vote of Unesco is not binding for them, and that the officially "protest" the cooptation of a non state as a full member, but that they would go on working with Unesco to further cultural, etc....
But no, they have to "punish" the UN, well certainly there are a lot of undemocratic and unsavory regime who have influence there, but remember many are "allies" of the US, and there is no easy way to get people of the world represented.
To those who think that the US should "remove itself from the UN", just remember that this would in practice mean that "big countries" would unilaterally govern by "divide and conquer", so in the "best (from US point of view) case" you would have an "imperial republic" leading the world by having a small minority (only about 5% of the world population are US citizens) vote for everybody else, in the more likely case you would have the Communist Party of China ruling the world... (US waste of money in the financial system created the crisis which now pushes the European to borrow money from the PRC, how long do you think it will take till you have to pay the interests ?).
So meanwhile thank you very much leaving the Unesco alone...
Yes, although rogue is acceptable also !
Assuming the Conseil Constitutionel takes the case, ... wich is not so clear..
Although some member might be interested in embarassing sarkosy
So do not worry they will only knock after the next election, and I doubt very much that the result of the next election has any credible way to change this.
Unfortunatelly no, that is about 550 000 people who didn't see the first letter (was sent to the wrong email address)
90 000 who didn't read it (many people bellow 20 only use IM)
5 000 who do not care and would not vote anyway
2500 who would not have voted Sarcosy anyway
2000 who would vote for sarcosy despite this because they consider it little more than a parking fine..
500 might change their vote maybe if they can bother about it...
Moreover the "socialist" (about as socialist as the US democrats are democratic or the republican are republican, that is very little)
did not really fight the HADOPI, they did some populist show about a "global licence" from their "left wing" (that would be an ISP tax that would give a licence to copy, but only music not movies, so would have solved about nothing), but in reality they are thick in bed with UNIVERSAL...
When we did a "demonstration" against DADVSI only 400 people came, for HADOPI we didn't even bother...
We are living in a situation where government make laws that criminalize people but in a way that enforcement can be completelly arbitrary, it's very convenient, "everybody is guilty of something" we can arrest them whenever we want to... what fun...
You are absolutely right, there is no reason for Microsoft to support XP any longer, actually we would like them to stop all support of all versions :-)
There is freedom, good dictator and bad dictator..
Freedom is usually messy and complicated, good dictator is better than bad dictator...
But all in all, freedom is more sustainable...
If there are enough users, yes, and at least it is possible, whereas closed source is dead when the owner says so ...
and absolutely nothing you can do about it...
Actually you do not look at the death tick because if you can, you are not running XP any way, and with Open Source you see if the support are slowing down or not, it is not an "on/off" marketing descision...
Tsss, you should have used emacs, then you would have the office suite, OS and programming environment in one package .. :-)
And you do not need to mutate your brain to think in stacks, just grow a sixt finger
(I would have moded funny :-))
Total cost of ownerships figures are debatable, what is not is that with closed source sofware you do not decide your own IT strategy.
You just "do as told"..
If you like that, be their guest...
This is very near to trolling, if you use a FOSS solution and the creator of the solutions decides to stop developping it you can find other people that might be interested, and because you have the source they can, and in practice they do.
Oracle is not so much interested in OpenOffice, so "big deal" there are enough other people who care/need to go on supporting it.
I was not teaching english, and not in english, it would have scared 90% of the students away... /. members live in the US or in any other english speaking country.
Not all
Nope, it's moving toward a "chanel centric" model of streaming junk to you but indentifying you in the smallest details to push advertisements and marketing actions.
And it does follow you around where ever you are....
but customer centric, nahh, no way... (it would be commie anyway, what an idea...)