So far, Wikileaks has published approximately nothing that is shocking or surprising or that reveals unlawful activity
Well, that's not untrue. It's not shocking that politicians all over the world lie to their people, even if it involves conspiring to torture, murder, or usurp the public will. It's not surprising that a lot of those lies have to do with the US and its involvement in other countries, be it military operations or pushing through laws. And it's certainly not unlawful to threaten sanctions upon other countries, lie to one's own people, etc. All of that pretty well describes the Pentagon Papers.
-- and I include the misleadingly edited "Collateral Murder" video in my consideration --
Almost certainly true. Like I said, it's quite legal to cover up a murder if your the government, it seems.
but it has published a lot of frank discussion and analysis that is similar to your private emails.
And for this you almost have a point, although I'm not sure if you realize what that is. The real issue is that Wikileaks isn't engaging in journalism. That is, a website like Wired might only post a quarter of a log involving the conversation of Manning and Lamo and state the rest is irrelevant/personal to the point. They do that based upon the idea that Wired as a journalist is a disinterested party who can be trusted not to hide "a lot of frank discussion and analysis that is similar to your private emails" (ie, personal and irrelevant information that the general public has no want for).
The major reason, beyond simply some sort of personal conviction, that Wikileaks dumps nearly everything is precisely because they aren't standing on some sacrosanct authority. To show they can be trusted to provide accurate information upon government abuses, as legal as they may be, involves also reporting lots of otherwise irrelevant information that shows Wikileaks isn't driven by some agenda merely to smear the US or any other organization. To that end, Wikileaks is very much more a whistleblower than a journalist.
Would you mind uploading your email archive to a web server for the rest of us to look over? If you wouldn't do that, why would you want the US government to do the same thing?
No, I wouldn't. But, then, I don't expect people to trust me with their lifes and lives. Meanwhile, the US government and other government frequent lies and manipulate other governments, often enough against the will of the people, and it's all quite legal. Given the fact that such abuse can occur and the only real chance to do anything about those abuses is to know about them, why shouldn't we know more about what the US government does, even if 99% of is the boring stuff that proves they aren't abusive? Isn't that what a government that wants to be trusted would do?
It isn't like Floyd Abrams red herring that we're asking for the ongoing diplomacy cables being used to stop a war (presuming, of course, those negotiations haven't been going on for 10+ years) or up-to-date troop locations. Why shouldn't we minimally known what our last President and his staff thought? It might mean that one President couldn't rehire some of an ex-President's staff? Or we might just accept that it's okay that a diplomat is an asshole, but we're okay with that if he gets the job done within the spirit of the law? Or let's just pretend that a King with a 50+ year term isn't like to have at least a few diplomat detractors who say less than nice things which might make it more difficult to manipulate that King in the long term, but quite honestly we're already at the point of heavy manipulation that I don't think that King probably gives a shit so long as he gets his money.
I'm sorry, I'm rambling. I just don't see the point of caring so much about bruised egos caused by 4+ or 5+ year old cables for which if we're dealing with democracies likely mea
Of course, the scaremongers are helped quite a bit by the fact that the theory is so often true in practice.
What percentage of the time and to what extent? In relation to how much quazi-Nazism, quazi-Fascism, and probably quazi-Socialism we'd see by people, business, gangs, etc if the government didn't take any action? Big examples are great to understand the possible scope, but it helps to also understand that the government is an ongoing human organization, not some theory to be disproven. The important thing is to figure out how to improve things, not just scaremonger about how horrible things could be.
For "exhibit A" consider the security apparatus. Because they could, the Department of Homeland Security took over airport security in the US and has everyone who flies on a commercial plane doing all sorts of humiliating things.
Airport security actually helped airlines. That along with billions of dollars in loans after 9/11 is precisely what restored a lot of air travel. It was, after all, an irrational, psychological fear that was the main reason for that drop off in air travel and the TSA, no matter how much of a placebo it might be, helped resolve that fear.
For "exhibit B" consider the Commerce Clause in the US Constitution and how it's been used over the past century or so to justify any regulation of any commerce (be it interstate commerce or not). A couple good examples of how this clause has been abused are the War on Drugs and the recent banning of the incandescent lightbulb (I believe the law takes effect in 2012).
The War on Drugs has been good for business. It means street drug prices remain high. It also means more prison construction, rehabilitation centers, etc. Besides, the War on Drugs was a rather direct method intended to effect business. As for the incandescent lightbulb, you're right that it's negative.
For "exhibit C", the Social Security number was explicitly promised not to be a national ID, but things turned out otherwise.
Which is entirely the fault of (a) US States who ignored the explicit law that it wasn't to be used as a national ID and (b) businesses who did the same thing. Either way, I don't see how the existence of a national ID is theoretical bad for business in any way.
For "exhibit D", consider the intelligence and law enforcement agencies over the past 90 or so years and the many illegal things that they've done.
90 or so? Try 10000+ years. Whoever wields power, be it a gangster, the village chief, your local police officer, or your neighbor who happens to be slightly more muscular than you, is in a position to abuse power and there are countless stories of that abuse. Government by no means is any magical panacea to that. Yet, government by the people allows the people some control to correct those abuses by having unity to combat that who would ignore their duty. The solution isn't to rally against "government" but against "police officer Joe" or "neighbor Smith" who has abused his power. To point at government instead of the people who abuse power misses the point and does nothing to fix anything.
And if someone in a position to do so had gone before Congress in 1990 and testified that in ten years or less, every 12-year-old in the country could have a box in his bedroom which would provide him with 24/7 access to unlimited, free hard-core pornography, the Internet would have been smothered in its crib.
They failed trying to do just that twice in the 90s. What finally was passed as constitutional was that if you got federal funds in the form of E-Rate discounts (for schools and libraries), you had to install filtering software. The fact that commercial interests in the internet started in 1992 but the CDA didn't pass until 1996 (under a Republican controlled Congress and a moderate Democrat President) makes it a bit unclear just what would have happened. One thing to note is that during the 90s, most children didn't have access to computers except through schools and libraries. Those who did could have potentially connected to hardcore porn BBSs since the 80s, so it's not like there wasn't at least some room to consider the lack of federal legislation on BBSs as a sign of something.
Politicians aren't the people to be making these decisions.
Or voters for that matter, apparently. It's apparently only through judges that the sanity of the Constitution was upheld. So, the FCC can't do unconstitutional things (like, say, banning all AOL chats) no matter how much people wish they do otherwise (but enough people and politicians could change the Constitution to make it legal), so the whole fear of the FCC trying to club the pre-internet to death is very much a moot point. Obsessive prudes using children as an excuse in the past simply hasn't worked nearly that sucessfully.
Each time a customer clears the cash desk and the cashier has to wait for the next customer to arrive, time is lost. Since the customer can't unpack his basket while the cashier is finishing with the previous customer, time is lost. It gets worse if a customer at the head of the queue doesn't realize that a cashier is available; everyone stands around waiting that extra bit of time. Yes, this can be offset by having a staff member playing shepherd, but that's extra expense for the store (and wouldn't it be better to have that employee actually manning a cash register?)
So it's like if you have three CPUS and many tasks. You can either setup the tasks in line for the CPUs prior to a task being complete to increasing the pipelining (and try not to create too long of a queue or allow tasks to switch CPU queues) or you can simply wait for each task to be done to reassign a task to the next available CPU (with perhaps some shepherd task to pre-prepare tasks for a CPU likely to open up soon). That about right for an analogy?
If you are standing at a podium, speaking your mind, and I rush you and duct tape your mouth shut is that free speech?
That'd be a great point, but that's not inherently what a DDoS is. It's much more like people crowding around the podium and all the speakers so they block other people's access to your speech. AFAIK, that's legal although not in keeping with the spirit of free speech. But, then, it's not really keeping with the spirit of free speech for you to be using speakers in the first place since obviously not everyone has access to them. In effect, the speakers are amplifying your voice above others in the same way a person or company can buy greater bandwidth and servers to communicate to more people. So, from the perspective of the spirit of free speech, the modern US is pretty fucked up about giving each voice an equal chance. But, then, that problem was true as far back as the founding of the US with newspaper barons.
Shutting down someone for saying something you don't like isn't free speech.
Assaulting someone is inherently wrong. It's unclear if any or all DDoS are assaults. That's the simple paradox of rivalry of a resource, be it one company buying up all coal to deny others access (and hence access to power their podiums) or a crowd of people blocking access to a podium. Feel free to draw up a magic line when you're suddenly wise enough to note how it's perfectly clear where the current circumstance falls.
I might need to get more tin foil, but when Russia 'attacked' Georgia or Wikileaks was under attack, the concept of DDoSing hadn't been in the news so much.
Those were basically treated as curiosities on the sidelines of more major news coverage.
The same today, which was the GP's point. Having said that, what Wikileaks does seems more important than a DDoS against it, so Wikileaks activities takes precedence. Mastercard's front page being down because of a DDoS seems more important than them cutting donation access to an organization (Wikileaks) even though the two are interconnected, so the DDoS takes precedence. In short, the news is focused on what "the average man" is likely to care about, not what "the average man" should care about. Of course, some exceptions do apply, but you're not going to get that sort of bias leak from the average journalist/reporter--one who likely doesn't know, for example, the naming issue of USB HiSpeed and USB FullSpeed.
After all, what's a little bandwidth choking when tanks and bombs are also involved?
Without bandwidth of some sort, how will you know there are/were tanks and bombs? At some point, communication is the backbone not only of coordinating and carrying out an attack but also in reporting that attack to others, something especially important when it's an unjustifiable attack. Why else do you think they were DDoS?
If Comcrap defines Youtube and Hulu as "unwanted" because their video offerings conflict with Comcrap's crappy, underfilled, looks-like-crap streaming video and extortionately-priced cable tv "services", your statement makes no sense at all.
And, of course, that's the absurdity of it. Inherently Comcast is in a much better position to offer high-quality streaming to its customers because the distance is much shorter in hops and they can offer very high last-mile speeds even if it doesn't translate into fast general internet speeds. But, of course, as you point out, they don't want to compete against themselves.
That doesn't explain why Verizon hasn't setup its own local Hulu-like enterprise (presumably if Hulu makes money, Verizon could too) in areas where it competes against Comcast, but then I guess they don't want to undercut themselves either for whatever cut they're getting from bundling TV service with their own internet offering.
Yep, it's the free market at work. Or, more precisely, an oligarchy/monopoly at work. Why compete on price and mow your competitor into the ground when your competition refuses to drop a high-priced service (phone for Verizon, TV for Comcast) when you can both optimize your costs for the service you provide and take in that extra cash for the service you have to outsource (Verizon might as well outsource their TV to Comcast and Comcast their phone to Verizon). It's a thing of beauty.
Personally, I'm still waiting for the US to threaten (and work to obtain) extradition of all Cardinals, Bishops, and the Pope of the Catholic Church for possible sex crimes. I mean, if the possible sexual misconduct with two women is worthy of Interpol cooperation, I'm pretty sure the US has plenty of room for conspiracy of child molestation to go on to at least legally summon them all for their involvement (or lack there of).
Meanwhile, we can also threaten (and work to obtain) arrest warrants and extraditions for plenty of the management of Halliburton, Transocean, and BP for negligent homicide of 11 people. I'm sure that those who are innocent won't be convicted. I mean, it's not like the government have intent to convict has resulted in ~90% of cases being plea bargained and an 85% conviction rate (effectively meaning ~98.5% of people indited are found guilty).
So, let's just bring them for questioning. I'm sure Interpol will help us out.
And when you meet American tourists in France do you greet them warmly, or do you pointedly ignore them because they are just ignorant Americans? You should probably examine how Americans are treated in your country before you judge them on how they treat you in theirs.
Should we judge these American "tourists" before or after they start dropping bombs on civilians? Or did you not notice this whole discussion started about just how unlike their government the American people are. The fact that the French, Germans, etc might be pricks to tourists doesn't matter a lot if their governments aren't running around in other countries killing people. It's, after all, the influence of the US on other countries which is so unavoidable that has so much of the world pissed off at the US. Meanwhile, if an American doesn't want to deal with a pissy French government or pissy French citizen behavior, he can just never go to France and be pretty well secure from it.
But, yes, try to point out that splinter in France's eye while we have that log in ours.
What they should call this is High Bandwidth, or High Speed Internet something along those lines.
High Speed Internet like High Speed USB? No, leaving it up to ambiguous prefixes/words like "Broad" and "High" won't do the job. Nor will "DSL" or "Fiber" do it since that's a pretty meaningless measure. LoCs would actually almost work, presuming the provider didn't effectively cheat the benchmark like some Australian telcos sort-of do (ie, cache a fast local copy and have low bandwidth caps and slow access for anything non-local).
No, the most sane thing is to actually give actual values of average available bandwidth (not simply "up to" values). Anything less and you're just opening yourself up for more marketing spin. Of course, then websites could actually advertise the average bandwidth they need for various things and people would have a notion of what service they want and need to buy. But, then, that just wouldn't sit well with a lot of people to find out their local telco sucks.
Other than that, I agree with the whole conflating thing. But your solution is just as guilty of the same thing, just at a subjective level instead of an objective one.
When you demonstrate that spending massive amount of cash are somehow better than the current model - you'll *have* a point. Any idiot can handwave and blow smoke, which is all you have on offer. It's not enough.
Again, according to the link it cost ~$70 Billion (~$67 Billion to be more precisely) to nearly eradicate polio. I'm fairly certainly that doesn't include any of the research, development, etc of the vaccine itself, so let's just focus on the 1988-2010 period. At ~$67 Billion for those 22 years, it's cost a minimal average of ~$3 Billion a year to eradicate polio (I have no idea on the actual funding pattern or if it could be sped up or yearly/total costs cut).
Now, with the Gates' foundations $33.5 Billion at 5.5% interest and payouts, they can only spend ~$1.8 Billion a year and remain perpetual. Presuming that eradicating malaria problem is only as costly as eradicating polio (ignoring that a vaccine is still being funded and developed), the Gates' foundation cannot alone eradicate malaria without a risk of no longer being perpetual (presuming they couldn't just take 36 years, spending the ~$1.8 Billion each year).
Of course, as you note, there's a lot of hand waving I'm doing. What if it's 10x as much to cure malaria as polio? What if it's 10% as much? If and when a vaccine is developed, how long will global deployment be delayed as the Gates' Foundation tries to find other donors so it doesn't have to bare the entire burden? Maybe it'll be 30+ years like polio. Maybe it'll be never.
Again, the reason Gates didn't just invest in extant foundations is because he wanted to see radical things done. Why not eradicate 20 diseases at once instead of one at a time? Because that requires big thinking, big organization, and big money and a commitment that might bankrupt a person, foundation, etc. And if none of that is true and the current system "works", why is that we still have whooping cough in the world?
So, you're suggesting that we replace something that we know works more or less... with something that 'might' work?
Obviously yes. Isn't it a wiser investment to eradicate a disease at a greater cost today than to hold it at bay indefinitely? And that doesn't even consider the risk of mutation.
Yet, under exactly this scheme, Polio is gone, as is Smallpox, and vast progress has been made on other infectious diseases.
Polio isn't gone, but effort and headway are being made on it. Smallpox and Rinderpest eradication are great milestones and I applaud their eradication.
Given that research takes years, and deploying the cures takes years, and that the current funding process pays off over years... I'd say that based on the evidence, infusions of cash on an annual basis precisely matches the requirements of the recipients.
And read the above link on polio's eradication. We've had a vaccine since the 50s, yet we only started an eradication program in 1988. And that was 8 years after we were finished eradicating smallpox. Meanwhile, there's tons of other diseases which we have vaccines for and haven't remotely attempted to eradicate. Yes, those annual infusions of cash have made vast improvements on those diseases and is likely the first step in eradication, but it's hard to not feel we as a world aren't doing remotely enough given we have the tools available to eradicate so many diseases and yet those cash infusions we do give often pale in comparison to war budgets*.
Ask the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis (a disease virtually eradicated) - they became the American Lung Association and anti-smoking crusaders. Ask the trustees of Benjamin Franklin's estate (established to pay for apprenticeships)... which now funds college scholarships since nobody offers apprenticeships anymore.
I believe you missed the point of my statement. It is not one of "we can't cure the disease because then we'll have no purpose". It is "we can't risk spending 20% of the foundation's budget every year in trying to cure the disease because the foundation can't survive indefinitely that way". You found some instances where a foundation has been transformed because their original purpose is gone. But note that the former in striving to eradicate one disease has now turned its attention on more general and perpetual lung health issues; why didn't they focus on eliminating another lung disease? The latter foundation meanwhile continues to be what it was always meant to be, a yearly provider of the means to aid in education; that's a noble purpose and I applaud the efforts but it only bolsters the point that a foundation strives first for perpetuity.
*A quick google search returns a link about the cost of eradicating polio at the ~$70 Billion range which overly the course of decades is virtually nothing for many government budgets. So, why not start eradicating childhood diseases next in a combination vaccine?
Specifically which parts of the Gates Foundation approach to philanthropy do you disagree with?
The fact that a government or a foundation may be very unwilling to even consider many options because it could "kill" the government/foundation may make them rather unsuitable in to actually solving some problems.
In short, my issue is with it being a foundation. I'd assume it's a byproduct of Gates having a lot of money and not knowing, at the start, where to put the money. I can only hope that its foundation status doesn't get in the way of it actually achieving some of its stated sub-goals (like eradicating malaria, which if it does take 40+ years to develop a vaccine and deploy it means Gates likely won't be alive to insure that the priority is on eradicating malaria first).
Are there specific grants they have made you don't approve of?
None that I know of.
Do you disagree with their priorities?
Again, the fact it's a foundation and has so far acted to maintain itself as such; admittedly, this may be excusable in that it's a necessary evil to long-term goals, but that part isn't entirely clear.
Part of the point of philanthropic work is that the person who has the money gets to decide how he gives it away. Otherwise, it wouldn't be called "philanthropy"; it would be called "taxes".
Granted. But if the objective of philanthropy is desired to be met, there are certain decisions on how one gives one's money away that will get in the way of it being nearly or at all effective in its stated goals. A billion can try to end poverty by giving out $1 million checks to homeless people, and I think it not unreasonable to question the effectiveness of their methods.
I'd never suggest we should just take Gates money and spend it even if we could prove we'd do a better job of it. But, given that a stated reason why Gates didn't just give to other charities was a desire for results-geared work (ie, to cure problems, not simply hold them at bay), is it not at least reasonable to question the structure of a foundation? Of course, since Gates has active power over has the foundation's money is spent, it's quite possible that structure is a moot point. Time will tell.
No, you're full of bullshit. A one-time shot of a half-billion dollars will get pissed away in a year.
Why a one-time shot? Why pissed away in a year? That sounds more like a choice of the spender, be it a foundation or a person.
Put that money in a foundation and consistently donate the interest, however, and you get a significant chunk of change going to the cause every year, forever.
And perhaps never solve the problem. Spending the interest gained, say ~5.5% of $40 Billion (ie ~$2.2 Billion), indefinitely may stop the hemorrhaging of the disease indefinitely. But it might well take a good deal more, say $10 Billion per year, along with an actual plan to cure the disease. Governments have been for years doing the same sort of massive, yet inadequate, money and supply donations. It would seem the main problem is not having a plan in the first place.
The fact that a government or a foundation may be very unwilling to even consider many options because it could "kill" the government/foundation may make them rather unsuitable in to actually solving some problems. A person? He/she's going to die anyways--that's what the whole pledge is about really; so, why not "piss away" their billions and consider even outrageous plans?
Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippy, good timer, (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch.
President?
No one had gone bananas, not in that way at least.
Only six people in the entire Galaxy understood the principle on which the Galaxy was governed, and they knew that once Zaphod Beeblebrox had announced his intention to run as President it was more or less a fait accompli: he was the ideal Presidency fodder.
So, on the one hand these documents are unsurprising and don't contain a smoking gun or really damaging information and, on the other hand this is probably the work of a malicious person trying to get back at big bad America? Yea, that makes zero sense.
America doesn't become damaged in the eyes of the world or its citizens except when it shows itself to be a festering sore of corruption since it is precisely the transparent, high-minded concern for the rights of individuals that is the defining image of America*. Perhaps you mean attacking diplomats who make jackass comments for which they'd never say if they were accountable to the public or other countries for their words (mostly in being fired, likely)? Or perhaps you mean unmasking the face of advisors so you know just who it was who was pushing to bomb another country for which any honorable person should feel compelled to speak honestly and even publicly about the support (with some delay, perhaps, for military necessity)? Yea, I can see why those people who are misusing "national security" might feel being uncovered is malicious.
*Yes, yes, we all know no country is a perfect beacon and that various individuals will at times or even large populations will shamefully violate those tenets. But, there's a strong statement to the truth that "they hate us for our freedom". It is our own attacking of that and shaming ourselves which is most damaging. Confirming known breeches is only damaging in that such reports should have been declassified already not only to punish those who do go against the US ideals but also to not be or appear to be complicit in a cover-up of those crimes. In short, Bush, Obama, etc have damaged the US more in the War on Terror than any amount of leaks on Wikileaks ever could, I think.
Ahh yes, the shameless grabbing of money by idiotic governments so addicted to spending that even the bonds they issue are worth little more than junk.
Oddly enough, it's not that simple. For the US Federal Government, Treasury Notes are still one of the safest forms of debt to own, even though the US is obviously holding a huge debt. The reason has more to do with the risk of the US defaulting versus their ability to tax and/or grow their way out of debt. Meanwhile, a state like California has suffered from junk bond status on its debt because US states can default on their debt and California has anal laws when it comes to raising taxes yet trivial laws for increasing spending; ironically enough, California like most states has to balance its budget (ie, have no net debt*) every year (or few years, I'm not entirely sure which) so it'd seem to be much safer in the short term.
Shame on you. Instead of reaching your hands out for more money like spoiled children, how about making real efforts to cut spending.
Yea, that'd be the fault of voters. People say "cut spending", elect politicians on a vague platform to deal with the budget (since specifics would leave you unelectable), then turn around and vote out anyone who would actually make the tough choices and cuts spending (since it only takes a few percent of people to swing the vote and people selfishly vote on their own interests). And of course, cutting taxes** is great to get you reelected but it has nothing to do with solving a debt crisis generally.
There's a law of nature - the more you try to tax, the less money you actually get.
Two things. One, the Laffer Curve clearly indicates that in fact there's a range of tax rates that increasing the tax rate will result in greater tax revenue until a point; after that, tax revenue does go down. The evidence would seem to indicate the effective tax rate where tax revenue drops off is close to 50%. Two, I don't think anyone believes government should intrinsically work to maximize tax revenue; it just happens that voters keep electing for spending and that inherently requires more tax revenue to pay off.
People and companies eventually move - out of state, or out of country. It's a simple decision - if the cost of moving is less than the cost of taxes, we move. Careful when you raise the cost of doing business. All the rules, regulations, by laws, and other problems associated with employing people in the US is what is driving business offshore (where things are SIMPLER) to begin with.
Perhaps in part, yes. However, the standard nd cost of living in the US (and hence the inherent minimum wage) is larger than many other countries regardless of taxes, regulation, etc; hence if the product can be shipped and shipping is cheap, then businesses will sanely offshore as much as they can. Meanwhile, sufficient demand for goods eventually raises the standard and cost of living in offshored-work countries (presuming they're capitalistic) and the value of US goods to trade (or more precisely US currency which represents the ability to buy US goods) lowers in value resulting in US goods being more attractive to produce and export.
Of course, we have various regulations for a reason (for example, we don't like China-quality air in our cities) and people and businesses are often unwilling to move given the risks, hardship, and general dislike to leave what they view as home; besides businesses and effectively be in multiple countries at once. Let's not forget that California, even with its repetitive debt crisis, frequently mocked heavy-handed regulation, etc has the 8th largest economy of the world and represents 13% of US GDP and has about ~12.3% of the US population. So, it has slightly more GDP than one would expect for its population size and it has a large percentage of the US population even though it is trivial to move in the
I have never, not even once, thought of Windows as "snappy", especially when compared to Linux. But, I don't want to argue about it, I don't want to start a flamewar, and I don't doubt the sincerity of your statement; I merely have had a very, very different experience.
I don't want to start a flamewar either, but I'll throw in my two cents. My own experience has been that Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows 98SE (never really used ME) were snappy on the hardware of their day when it came to things like file browsing. This held true even after the installation of IE4 to IE6SP1 (although after every IE install it seemed less snappy). In comparison, Nautilus, Konqueror, Dolphin, and ROX all seem significantly slower on much more powerful hardware. With Windows 2000/XP on similar hardware I see similar behavior.
I'd assume it's all scheduling issues, personally. But, then, it could also be partially a perceptual thing. A file browser locking up for two seconds and displaying a full file list seems faster (and is less annoying) than a file browser that updates every half second (which is frustrating because things jump around) and displays a full file list after 1.5 seconds (although you'll probably have to wait until 3 seconds to make sure it didn't just seeming stall and will resume again). With Windows 9x, it seemed that whatever you were doing was always more responsive than what happened on Windows 2000/XP or Linux, nearly regardless of the power of the hardware.
It's funny, but Windows 9x came out at the time when hardware was finally powerful enough to have near instant user interactivity on most common tasks, so it's not hard to see why people might have fond and/or warped memories of the past. I know i do.
Steve Ballmer is CEO of Microsoft, an important technology company
Slashdot has a fixation on the evilness and failings of Microsoft (when there's plenty of tech company evilness and failings to focus on)
Recently the Microsoft Kin, a phone targeted at social networkers, was released and quickly withdrawn from sale
It sounds very much like one of the reason Microsoft Kin might have failed is that it did so horribly at fulfilling the expectation of social networkers, like having decent Twitter support
The Microsoft Kin was seen by many as an attempt by Microsoft to connect to the youth (or young adult, at least) culture to spure sales, a feat that seemingly Apple has done reasonably well
One of the seeming claims behind Apples success is precisely that its CEO becomes overly involved in product development
Given your statements about Steve Ballmer's lack of remotely heavy Twitter use, it seems unlikely he'd be of much help even if he copied Apple in that regard
Which leads to the final point, that as trendy and stupid as you might thing Apple is, they don't seem to engage their intended audience so badly in part because they don't try to connect in ways that are not their own strengths
How about, gee, I dunno, accepting that terrorists are going to do shitty things, like blow up planes, blow up cars, etc? Then terrorists' main weapon, terror (and its cousin, irrational fear), will be gone. Sure, that'll just mean terrorists will try to come up with different things to terrorize people.
But, it's the same thing with shock jocks, blathering political pundits, more "extreme" violent films and sexualized porn, etc: if you stop reacting, you'll start to recognize just how irrelevant they are and how much people overreact. Perhaps that's one reason moderates want either a sane bipartisan legislature or a gridlocked insane legislature. Nothing about the laws to stop violence, porn, terrorism, etc have had much effect because they're either the symptoms of a bigger problem or their prevalence have been overmagnified and broad laws that effect few people are unlikely to actually run into many people committing the crime.
It's no different to the common cold. Yes, doing absolute nothing ever is a bad thing and one should react as appropriate, but overreaction just turns into a situation where the overreaction is the major symptom of the common cold; the cold virus itself does marginal damage at best. It might be hard to actual do, but changing attitudes instead of merely enacting more rules and regulation is sometimes the best course of action.
The key thing is figuring out what is actually a justifiable and appropriate reaction, and that first starts with actually investigating the scope, scale, etc of the problem and a discussion about it. Have we even done that yet? Or has it all been conjecture with a solution trying to find a problem to solve?
They want to sell you a service that you will never use, in the hope they can sell the same service to lots of other people who'll also never use it and then they won't actually need to provide the service.
The US citizen got something concrete with defense spending. They get elimination of two hostile powers over the past ten years
While the elimination of the Iraq and Afghanistan governments might be concrete, I don't see how either has benefited the US citizen. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan attacked or were likely to attack the US. Al Qaeda still exists and seemingly just as capable of attempting rouge operations (their success being more thwartable probably more due to heightened anxiety/paranoia and and the intelligence community, not the military). The Taliban still exists and provides some level of safe harbor although admittedly less of it and a lot more directly (the Taliban in the past merely looked the other way in large part). Any actual gains to US citizens are a lot less concrete; I don't doubt they're there, but it's not something you could bring forwards as proof of the need for action.
and continued maintenance of a economic hegemony, worth trillions of dollars a year (IMHO).
Except that hegemony is deteriorating. China has and is growing at an enormous rate and it's unlikely that a military solution will somehow maintain the US's economy state in the world.
Also, the military spending continued to support the primary goal of protecting the US and its citizens from other military powers.
Not to mention protecting its allies indirectly by freeing them from having as large of standing armies. No doubt, we do need military spending. My point was that at over 100x the spending of the ISS, one should consider complaining about the actual waste there first, especially when a significant part of that waste gives you nothing.
To complain about military spending, you have to first understand the point of the military spending.
I think I understand the point of military spending. The fact is, while the point of the military might be and have been true for various purposes (maintaining the economic state of the US, attacking actually hostile states (not simply ones with possibly nasty rhetoric), etc), the military has often been abused for other things which have not been of much concrete value. Now, overall there's been a significant benefit. But, what I speak of could translate into perhaps a 20% waste of badly focused upon projects. Even if it were 1%, avoiding that waste alone would save $60 billion/year or 18x what the ISS costs yearly.
(And if it weren't for the considerable number of adults (getting towards 100 million adults) who don't pay any taxes, the number of dollars per taxpayer would be a bit under $3,000 per taxpayer.)
And then it'd be $14/year/taxpayer for the ISS. Either way, it's a lot of money both by percentage of taxes spent and as a raw number; added in all US residents doesn't change that figure much either.
My take is that the US is overpaying for military expenditures by a considerable amount, both through hiring private contractors at several times the costs to do jobs the military used to do, and by excessive cost for acquisition of military systems and logistics (which traditionally has always been high cost for what it provides).
The military also tends to fund multiple projects to do the same thing, given one or more might fail in development and each project if it succeeds is probably better suited for specific tasks. In any case, now that it's recognized the US probably overpays on the military, we can both agree that that should be corrected regardless of what is done about the ISS, right?
The ISS has a few concrete things as well. It's a demonstration of orbital assembly techniques and that you can have six people live in space indefinitely. It might do some useful science as well (the trick here being to find science that is both valuable and can only be done in space
I'm not saying they shouldn't do research, I'm just saying I don't want that much money coming out of my (taxpayer) pocket.
The ISS costs $100 Billion over 30 years, or $24/year/taxpayer. Meanwhile, defensing spending--which including the salaries, health care, etc of most troops along with most (all?) the jets, tanks, etc--is ~$4000/year/taxpayer. The Iraq/Afghan Wars are costing an additional ~$940/year/taxpayer. I'm not saying we shouldn't defend our country, I'm just saying that I don't want that much money coming out of my (taxpayer) pocket.
PS - I'm pretty sure I've gotten a lot more out of the ISS so far in pictures, news stories, etc than I've gotten out of the Iraq/Afghan Wars and for a lot less cost or deaths. Yet, I still have higher expectations for the ISS. But, then, my expectations aren't focused on quickly marketable results as much as good science and long-term benefit. I do lament those who feel obligated to spin the ISS in such a way to obtain/sustain funding, especially if they're right about the necessity for such. Then I have to think back to people who talk about their "(taxpayer) pocket" but never seem to bother to go over the budget to actually have a clue where their money is being spent.
Moonlight/Mono is part of Microsoft's cross-platform Silverlight/.NET strategy in the same way that Libre Office's OOXML support is part of Microsoft's cross-platform document strategy. Ie, at best it's an attempt by others to support Microsoft's de facto standard as best they can to avoid using Microsoft's software (especially in places where Microsoft doesn't actually offer software for the platform) and at best it's Microsoft's push to lure others into creating inferior supporting applications* which will in turn lure people to use "the real thing" in the form of Microsoft's software (and the one or two platforms they actually support).
In short, no, Moonlight doesn't count given the context of the discussion.
*Btw, this is incredibly stupid on Microsoft's part. One of the major reasons people chose Microsoft products in the past is because they offered good enough at a cheaper price. Mono/Moonlight and Libre Office are good enough.
The prime interest of a politician is, and must be, to get reelected. After all, fail at that, and you aren't a politician anymore. So it takes precedence.
For some politicians, yes. But reasonably speaking a politician isn't merely a whore. Politicians do tend to have actual beliefs and they run on a platform of those beliefs. Yes, lobbyists, special interest groups, or simply experience can change those beliefs over time. But whatever beliefs they hold tend to take precedence. That means they tend to spin their beliefs in a fashion that voters will like (or, at least, not hate).
Ultimately that means keeping the voters happy.
Perhaps you should look into "negative campaigning". It's sufficient, many times, to simply have enough people in one's district who hold some core belief (gay rights, gun rights, etc) and to paint any possible other candidate, no matter how moderate (since in a district where pro-gay rights are an election issue, most people and hence most politicians are for pro-gay rights), as crazy to be reelected. More generally, it's better for many voters to have the "evil" they know (ie, reelect an incumbent) than to have a new "evil", even though in most instances it matters very little who is elected since laws generally reflect the mindset and/or apathy of politicians and the populace, especially when it comes to a radical shift in who is considered electable.
Now if the voters ignore the shit you pull, well then you can do as you please. However if voters hold them to account, then they'll do as they are told (or be replaced by ones who do).
Not really. One basically has to change the ecosystem of who is electable. One needs to make something, like say jailbreaking, such a fundamental issue that any politician needs to be for it to be elected. Yes, that does mean at some level choosing to vote out someone potentially on that issue. But, considering just how many issues there are, it is both silly and unreliably to try to merely use voting as a basis to select electable candidates. Even primaries aren't enough, really. Grassroots movements are the only real way to have that sort of change*.
So, if you keep that defeatist attitude, and espouse it to others, then yes, you'll have say at all. However if you wake up and realize that indeed the voters DO choose who is in office, then you'll realize that isn't the case. No, you as a single person cannot change things all on your own. However you shouldn't be able to, this isn't a dictatorship. Doesn't mean you can't make a difference. Let them know how you feel, and let your friends know to do the same. If enough people care, change will happen.
And that last point is the fundamental problem. You can't really force people to care. It's very hard to convince people to care about running custom programs on their XBox 360, but it's much easier to get people to care about running custom programs on their smartphone. Even then, the exemption wasn't the result of an election issue but the general mindset of politicians and the populace. Voters may matter but most vote on a few core issues with a wish that a politician is open to listen and change his mind according to the whim of the populace. To that end, I'd hardly call it defeatist to recognize that most people care more about their pragmatic desires than ideology; it's only that some ideologies seems to people to produce better pragmatic outcomes. I just don't see "game consoles as hackable computers" really fitting into the pragmatism of most and the ideology (very much the OSS/FSS movement) itself really doesn't seem to be very wide spread given the decades of grassroots effort to push it.
This crap of "Oh lobbyists control everything and there's nothing we can do!" is only true if people let it be true. Your vote, your voice, is just as important as anyone elses. However if you jus
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Well, that's not untrue. It's not shocking that politicians all over the world lie to their people, even if it involves conspiring to torture, murder, or usurp the public will. It's not surprising that a lot of those lies have to do with the US and its involvement in other countries, be it military operations or pushing through laws. And it's certainly not unlawful to threaten sanctions upon other countries, lie to one's own people, etc. All of that pretty well describes the Pentagon Papers.
Almost certainly true. Like I said, it's quite legal to cover up a murder if your the government, it seems.
And for this you almost have a point, although I'm not sure if you realize what that is. The real issue is that Wikileaks isn't engaging in journalism. That is, a website like Wired might only post a quarter of a log involving the conversation of Manning and Lamo and state the rest is irrelevant/personal to the point. They do that based upon the idea that Wired as a journalist is a disinterested party who can be trusted not to hide "a lot of frank discussion and analysis that is similar to your private emails" (ie, personal and irrelevant information that the general public has no want for).
The major reason, beyond simply some sort of personal conviction, that Wikileaks dumps nearly everything is precisely because they aren't standing on some sacrosanct authority. To show they can be trusted to provide accurate information upon government abuses, as legal as they may be, involves also reporting lots of otherwise irrelevant information that shows Wikileaks isn't driven by some agenda merely to smear the US or any other organization. To that end, Wikileaks is very much more a whistleblower than a journalist.
No, I wouldn't. But, then, I don't expect people to trust me with their lifes and lives. Meanwhile, the US government and other government frequent lies and manipulate other governments, often enough against the will of the people, and it's all quite legal. Given the fact that such abuse can occur and the only real chance to do anything about those abuses is to know about them, why shouldn't we know more about what the US government does, even if 99% of is the boring stuff that proves they aren't abusive? Isn't that what a government that wants to be trusted would do?
It isn't like Floyd Abrams red herring that we're asking for the ongoing diplomacy cables being used to stop a war (presuming, of course, those negotiations haven't been going on for 10+ years) or up-to-date troop locations. Why shouldn't we minimally known what our last President and his staff thought? It might mean that one President couldn't rehire some of an ex-President's staff? Or we might just accept that it's okay that a diplomat is an asshole, but we're okay with that if he gets the job done within the spirit of the law? Or let's just pretend that a King with a 50+ year term isn't like to have at least a few diplomat detractors who say less than nice things which might make it more difficult to manipulate that King in the long term, but quite honestly we're already at the point of heavy manipulation that I don't think that King probably gives a shit so long as he gets his money.
I'm sorry, I'm rambling. I just don't see the point of caring so much about bruised egos caused by 4+ or 5+ year old cables for which if we're dealing with democracies likely mea
What percentage of the time and to what extent? In relation to how much quazi-Nazism, quazi-Fascism, and probably quazi-Socialism we'd see by people, business, gangs, etc if the government didn't take any action? Big examples are great to understand the possible scope, but it helps to also understand that the government is an ongoing human organization, not some theory to be disproven. The important thing is to figure out how to improve things, not just scaremonger about how horrible things could be.
Airport security actually helped airlines. That along with billions of dollars in loans after 9/11 is precisely what restored a lot of air travel. It was, after all, an irrational, psychological fear that was the main reason for that drop off in air travel and the TSA, no matter how much of a placebo it might be, helped resolve that fear.
The War on Drugs has been good for business. It means street drug prices remain high. It also means more prison construction, rehabilitation centers, etc. Besides, the War on Drugs was a rather direct method intended to effect business. As for the incandescent lightbulb, you're right that it's negative.
Which is entirely the fault of (a) US States who ignored the explicit law that it wasn't to be used as a national ID and (b) businesses who did the same thing. Either way, I don't see how the existence of a national ID is theoretical bad for business in any way.
90 or so? Try 10000+ years. Whoever wields power, be it a gangster, the village chief, your local police officer, or your neighbor who happens to be slightly more muscular than you, is in a position to abuse power and there are countless stories of that abuse. Government by no means is any magical panacea to that. Yet, government by the people allows the people some control to correct those abuses by having unity to combat that who would ignore their duty. The solution isn't to rally against "government" but against "police officer Joe" or "neighbor Smith" who has abused his power. To point at government instead of the people who abuse power misses the point and does nothing to fix anything.
They failed trying to do just that twice in the 90s. What finally was passed as constitutional was that if you got federal funds in the form of E-Rate discounts (for schools and libraries), you had to install filtering software. The fact that commercial interests in the internet started in 1992 but the CDA didn't pass until 1996 (under a Republican controlled Congress and a moderate Democrat President) makes it a bit unclear just what would have happened. One thing to note is that during the 90s, most children didn't have access to computers except through schools and libraries. Those who did could have potentially connected to hardcore porn BBSs since the 80s, so it's not like there wasn't at least some room to consider the lack of federal legislation on BBSs as a sign of something.
Or voters for that matter, apparently. It's apparently only through judges that the sanity of the Constitution was upheld. So, the FCC can't do unconstitutional things (like, say, banning all AOL chats) no matter how much people wish they do otherwise (but enough people and politicians could change the Constitution to make it legal), so the whole fear of the FCC trying to club the pre-internet to death is very much a moot point. Obsessive prudes using children as an excuse in the past simply hasn't worked nearly that sucessfully.
So it's like if you have three CPUS and many tasks. You can either setup the tasks in line for the CPUs prior to a task being complete to increasing the pipelining (and try not to create too long of a queue or allow tasks to switch CPU queues) or you can simply wait for each task to be done to reassign a task to the next available CPU (with perhaps some shepherd task to pre-prepare tasks for a CPU likely to open up soon). That about right for an analogy?
That'd be a great point, but that's not inherently what a DDoS is. It's much more like people crowding around the podium and all the speakers so they block other people's access to your speech. AFAIK, that's legal although not in keeping with the spirit of free speech. But, then, it's not really keeping with the spirit of free speech for you to be using speakers in the first place since obviously not everyone has access to them. In effect, the speakers are amplifying your voice above others in the same way a person or company can buy greater bandwidth and servers to communicate to more people. So, from the perspective of the spirit of free speech, the modern US is pretty fucked up about giving each voice an equal chance. But, then, that problem was true as far back as the founding of the US with newspaper barons.
Assaulting someone is inherently wrong. It's unclear if any or all DDoS are assaults. That's the simple paradox of rivalry of a resource, be it one company buying up all coal to deny others access (and hence access to power their podiums) or a crowd of people blocking access to a podium. Feel free to draw up a magic line when you're suddenly wise enough to note how it's perfectly clear where the current circumstance falls.
Google News begs to differ.
The same today, which was the GP's point. Having said that, what Wikileaks does seems more important than a DDoS against it, so Wikileaks activities takes precedence. Mastercard's front page being down because of a DDoS seems more important than them cutting donation access to an organization (Wikileaks) even though the two are interconnected, so the DDoS takes precedence. In short, the news is focused on what "the average man" is likely to care about, not what "the average man" should care about. Of course, some exceptions do apply, but you're not going to get that sort of bias leak from the average journalist/reporter--one who likely doesn't know, for example, the naming issue of USB HiSpeed and USB FullSpeed.
Without bandwidth of some sort, how will you know there are/were tanks and bombs? At some point, communication is the backbone not only of coordinating and carrying out an attack but also in reporting that attack to others, something especially important when it's an unjustifiable attack. Why else do you think they were DDoS?
And, of course, that's the absurdity of it. Inherently Comcast is in a much better position to offer high-quality streaming to its customers because the distance is much shorter in hops and they can offer very high last-mile speeds even if it doesn't translate into fast general internet speeds. But, of course, as you point out, they don't want to compete against themselves.
That doesn't explain why Verizon hasn't setup its own local Hulu-like enterprise (presumably if Hulu makes money, Verizon could too) in areas where it competes against Comcast, but then I guess they don't want to undercut themselves either for whatever cut they're getting from bundling TV service with their own internet offering.
Yep, it's the free market at work. Or, more precisely, an oligarchy/monopoly at work. Why compete on price and mow your competitor into the ground when your competition refuses to drop a high-priced service (phone for Verizon, TV for Comcast) when you can both optimize your costs for the service you provide and take in that extra cash for the service you have to outsource (Verizon might as well outsource their TV to Comcast and Comcast their phone to Verizon). It's a thing of beauty.
Personally, I'm still waiting for the US to threaten (and work to obtain) extradition of all Cardinals, Bishops, and the Pope of the Catholic Church for possible sex crimes. I mean, if the possible sexual misconduct with two women is worthy of Interpol cooperation, I'm pretty sure the US has plenty of room for conspiracy of child molestation to go on to at least legally summon them all for their involvement (or lack there of).
Meanwhile, we can also threaten (and work to obtain) arrest warrants and extraditions for plenty of the management of Halliburton, Transocean, and BP for negligent homicide of 11 people. I'm sure that those who are innocent won't be convicted. I mean, it's not like the government have intent to convict has resulted in ~90% of cases being plea bargained and an 85% conviction rate (effectively meaning ~98.5% of people indited are found guilty).
So, let's just bring them for questioning. I'm sure Interpol will help us out.
Should we judge these American "tourists" before or after they start dropping bombs on civilians? Or did you not notice this whole discussion started about just how unlike their government the American people are. The fact that the French, Germans, etc might be pricks to tourists doesn't matter a lot if their governments aren't running around in other countries killing people. It's, after all, the influence of the US on other countries which is so unavoidable that has so much of the world pissed off at the US. Meanwhile, if an American doesn't want to deal with a pissy French government or pissy French citizen behavior, he can just never go to France and be pretty well secure from it.
But, yes, try to point out that splinter in France's eye while we have that log in ours.
High Speed Internet like High Speed USB? No, leaving it up to ambiguous prefixes/words like "Broad" and "High" won't do the job. Nor will "DSL" or "Fiber" do it since that's a pretty meaningless measure. LoCs would actually almost work, presuming the provider didn't effectively cheat the benchmark like some Australian telcos sort-of do (ie, cache a fast local copy and have low bandwidth caps and slow access for anything non-local).
No, the most sane thing is to actually give actual values of average available bandwidth (not simply "up to" values). Anything less and you're just opening yourself up for more marketing spin. Of course, then websites could actually advertise the average bandwidth they need for various things and people would have a notion of what service they want and need to buy. But, then, that just wouldn't sit well with a lot of people to find out their local telco sucks.
Other than that, I agree with the whole conflating thing. But your solution is just as guilty of the same thing, just at a subjective level instead of an objective one.
Again, according to the link it cost ~$70 Billion (~$67 Billion to be more precisely) to nearly eradicate polio. I'm fairly certainly that doesn't include any of the research, development, etc of the vaccine itself, so let's just focus on the 1988-2010 period. At ~$67 Billion for those 22 years, it's cost a minimal average of ~$3 Billion a year to eradicate polio (I have no idea on the actual funding pattern or if it could be sped up or yearly/total costs cut).
Now, with the Gates' foundations $33.5 Billion at 5.5% interest and payouts, they can only spend ~$1.8 Billion a year and remain perpetual. Presuming that eradicating malaria problem is only as costly as eradicating polio (ignoring that a vaccine is still being funded and developed), the Gates' foundation cannot alone eradicate malaria without a risk of no longer being perpetual (presuming they couldn't just take 36 years, spending the ~$1.8 Billion each year).
Of course, as you note, there's a lot of hand waving I'm doing. What if it's 10x as much to cure malaria as polio? What if it's 10% as much? If and when a vaccine is developed, how long will global deployment be delayed as the Gates' Foundation tries to find other donors so it doesn't have to bare the entire burden? Maybe it'll be 30+ years like polio. Maybe it'll be never.
Again, the reason Gates didn't just invest in extant foundations is because he wanted to see radical things done. Why not eradicate 20 diseases at once instead of one at a time? Because that requires big thinking, big organization, and big money and a commitment that might bankrupt a person, foundation, etc. And if none of that is true and the current system "works", why is that we still have whooping cough in the world?
Obviously yes. Isn't it a wiser investment to eradicate a disease at a greater cost today than to hold it at bay indefinitely? And that doesn't even consider the risk of mutation.
Polio isn't gone, but effort and headway are being made on it. Smallpox and Rinderpest eradication are great milestones and I applaud their eradication.
And read the above link on polio's eradication. We've had a vaccine since the 50s, yet we only started an eradication program in 1988. And that was 8 years after we were finished eradicating smallpox. Meanwhile, there's tons of other diseases which we have vaccines for and haven't remotely attempted to eradicate. Yes, those annual infusions of cash have made vast improvements on those diseases and is likely the first step in eradication, but it's hard to not feel we as a world aren't doing remotely enough given we have the tools available to eradicate so many diseases and yet those cash infusions we do give often pale in comparison to war budgets*.
I believe you missed the point of my statement. It is not one of "we can't cure the disease because then we'll have no purpose". It is "we can't risk spending 20% of the foundation's budget every year in trying to cure the disease because the foundation can't survive indefinitely that way". You found some instances where a foundation has been transformed because their original purpose is gone. But note that the former in striving to eradicate one disease has now turned its attention on more general and perpetual lung health issues; why didn't they focus on eliminating another lung disease? The latter foundation meanwhile continues to be what it was always meant to be, a yearly provider of the means to aid in education; that's a noble purpose and I applaud the efforts but it only bolsters the point that a foundation strives first for perpetuity.
*A quick google search returns a link about the cost of eradicating polio at the ~$70 Billion range which overly the course of decades is virtually nothing for many government budgets. So, why not start eradicating childhood diseases next in a combination vaccine?
In short, my issue is with it being a foundation. I'd assume it's a byproduct of Gates having a lot of money and not knowing, at the start, where to put the money. I can only hope that its foundation status doesn't get in the way of it actually achieving some of its stated sub-goals (like eradicating malaria, which if it does take 40+ years to develop a vaccine and deploy it means Gates likely won't be alive to insure that the priority is on eradicating malaria first).
None that I know of.
Again, the fact it's a foundation and has so far acted to maintain itself as such; admittedly, this may be excusable in that it's a necessary evil to long-term goals, but that part isn't entirely clear.
Granted. But if the objective of philanthropy is desired to be met, there are certain decisions on how one gives one's money away that will get in the way of it being nearly or at all effective in its stated goals. A billion can try to end poverty by giving out $1 million checks to homeless people, and I think it not unreasonable to question the effectiveness of their methods.
I'd never suggest we should just take Gates money and spend it even if we could prove we'd do a better job of it. But, given that a stated reason why Gates didn't just give to other charities was a desire for results-geared work (ie, to cure problems, not simply hold them at bay), is it not at least reasonable to question the structure of a foundation? Of course, since Gates has active power over has the foundation's money is spent, it's quite possible that structure is a moot point. Time will tell.
Why a one-time shot? Why pissed away in a year? That sounds more like a choice of the spender, be it a foundation or a person.
And perhaps never solve the problem. Spending the interest gained, say ~5.5% of $40 Billion (ie ~$2.2 Billion), indefinitely may stop the hemorrhaging of the disease indefinitely. But it might well take a good deal more, say $10 Billion per year, along with an actual plan to cure the disease. Governments have been for years doing the same sort of massive, yet inadequate, money and supply donations. It would seem the main problem is not having a plan in the first place.
The fact that a government or a foundation may be very unwilling to even consider many options because it could "kill" the government/foundation may make them rather unsuitable in to actually solving some problems. A person? He/she's going to die anyways--that's what the whole pledge is about really; so, why not "piss away" their billions and consider even outrageous plans?
DNA was a wise fellow.
So, on the one hand these documents are unsurprising and don't contain a smoking gun or really damaging information and, on the other hand this is probably the work of a malicious person trying to get back at big bad America? Yea, that makes zero sense.
America doesn't become damaged in the eyes of the world or its citizens except when it shows itself to be a festering sore of corruption since it is precisely the transparent, high-minded concern for the rights of individuals that is the defining image of America*. Perhaps you mean attacking diplomats who make jackass comments for which they'd never say if they were accountable to the public or other countries for their words (mostly in being fired, likely)? Or perhaps you mean unmasking the face of advisors so you know just who it was who was pushing to bomb another country for which any honorable person should feel compelled to speak honestly and even publicly about the support (with some delay, perhaps, for military necessity)? Yea, I can see why those people who are misusing "national security" might feel being uncovered is malicious.
*Yes, yes, we all know no country is a perfect beacon and that various individuals will at times or even large populations will shamefully violate those tenets. But, there's a strong statement to the truth that "they hate us for our freedom". It is our own attacking of that and shaming ourselves which is most damaging. Confirming known breeches is only damaging in that such reports should have been declassified already not only to punish those who do go against the US ideals but also to not be or appear to be complicit in a cover-up of those crimes. In short, Bush, Obama, etc have damaged the US more in the War on Terror than any amount of leaks on Wikileaks ever could, I think.
Oddly enough, it's not that simple. For the US Federal Government, Treasury Notes are still one of the safest forms of debt to own, even though the US is obviously holding a huge debt. The reason has more to do with the risk of the US defaulting versus their ability to tax and/or grow their way out of debt. Meanwhile, a state like California has suffered from junk bond status on its debt because US states can default on their debt and California has anal laws when it comes to raising taxes yet trivial laws for increasing spending; ironically enough, California like most states has to balance its budget (ie, have no net debt*) every year (or few years, I'm not entirely sure which) so it'd seem to be much safer in the short term.
Yea, that'd be the fault of voters. People say "cut spending", elect politicians on a vague platform to deal with the budget (since specifics would leave you unelectable), then turn around and vote out anyone who would actually make the tough choices and cuts spending (since it only takes a few percent of people to swing the vote and people selfishly vote on their own interests). And of course, cutting taxes** is great to get you reelected but it has nothing to do with solving a debt crisis generally.
Two things. One, the Laffer Curve clearly indicates that in fact there's a range of tax rates that increasing the tax rate will result in greater tax revenue until a point; after that, tax revenue does go down. The evidence would seem to indicate the effective tax rate where tax revenue drops off is close to 50%. Two, I don't think anyone believes government should intrinsically work to maximize tax revenue; it just happens that voters keep electing for spending and that inherently requires more tax revenue to pay off.
Perhaps in part, yes. However, the standard nd cost of living in the US (and hence the inherent minimum wage) is larger than many other countries regardless of taxes, regulation, etc; hence if the product can be shipped and shipping is cheap, then businesses will sanely offshore as much as they can. Meanwhile, sufficient demand for goods eventually raises the standard and cost of living in offshored-work countries (presuming they're capitalistic) and the value of US goods to trade (or more precisely US currency which represents the ability to buy US goods) lowers in value resulting in US goods being more attractive to produce and export.
Of course, we have various regulations for a reason (for example, we don't like China-quality air in our cities) and people and businesses are often unwilling to move given the risks, hardship, and general dislike to leave what they view as home; besides businesses and effectively be in multiple countries at once. Let's not forget that California, even with its repetitive debt crisis, frequently mocked heavy-handed regulation, etc has the 8th largest economy of the world and represents 13% of US GDP and has about ~12.3% of the US population. So, it has slightly more GDP than one would expect for its population size and it has a large percentage of the US population even though it is trivial to move in the
I don't want to start a flamewar either, but I'll throw in my two cents. My own experience has been that Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows 98SE (never really used ME) were snappy on the hardware of their day when it came to things like file browsing. This held true even after the installation of IE4 to IE6SP1 (although after every IE install it seemed less snappy). In comparison, Nautilus, Konqueror, Dolphin, and ROX all seem significantly slower on much more powerful hardware. With Windows 2000/XP on similar hardware I see similar behavior.
I'd assume it's all scheduling issues, personally. But, then, it could also be partially a perceptual thing. A file browser locking up for two seconds and displaying a full file list seems faster (and is less annoying) than a file browser that updates every half second (which is frustrating because things jump around) and displays a full file list after 1.5 seconds (although you'll probably have to wait until 3 seconds to make sure it didn't just seeming stall and will resume again). With Windows 9x, it seemed that whatever you were doing was always more responsive than what happened on Windows 2000/XP or Linux, nearly regardless of the power of the hardware.
It's funny, but Windows 9x came out at the time when hardware was finally powerful enough to have near instant user interactivity on most common tasks, so it's not hard to see why people might have fond and/or warped memories of the past. I know i do.
Does that answer your question?
How about, gee, I dunno, accepting that terrorists are going to do shitty things, like blow up planes, blow up cars, etc? Then terrorists' main weapon, terror (and its cousin, irrational fear), will be gone. Sure, that'll just mean terrorists will try to come up with different things to terrorize people.
But, it's the same thing with shock jocks, blathering political pundits, more "extreme" violent films and sexualized porn, etc: if you stop reacting, you'll start to recognize just how irrelevant they are and how much people overreact. Perhaps that's one reason moderates want either a sane bipartisan legislature or a gridlocked insane legislature. Nothing about the laws to stop violence, porn, terrorism, etc have had much effect because they're either the symptoms of a bigger problem or their prevalence have been overmagnified and broad laws that effect few people are unlikely to actually run into many people committing the crime.
It's no different to the common cold. Yes, doing absolute nothing ever is a bad thing and one should react as appropriate, but overreaction just turns into a situation where the overreaction is the major symptom of the common cold; the cold virus itself does marginal damage at best. It might be hard to actual do, but changing attitudes instead of merely enacting more rules and regulation is sometimes the best course of action.
The key thing is figuring out what is actually a justifiable and appropriate reaction, and that first starts with actually investigating the scope, scale, etc of the problem and a discussion about it. Have we even done that yet? Or has it all been conjecture with a solution trying to find a problem to solve?
Who do they think they are? Banks?
While the elimination of the Iraq and Afghanistan governments might be concrete, I don't see how either has benefited the US citizen. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan attacked or were likely to attack the US. Al Qaeda still exists and seemingly just as capable of attempting rouge operations (their success being more thwartable probably more due to heightened anxiety/paranoia and and the intelligence community, not the military). The Taliban still exists and provides some level of safe harbor although admittedly less of it and a lot more directly (the Taliban in the past merely looked the other way in large part). Any actual gains to US citizens are a lot less concrete; I don't doubt they're there, but it's not something you could bring forwards as proof of the need for action.
Except that hegemony is deteriorating. China has and is growing at an enormous rate and it's unlikely that a military solution will somehow maintain the US's economy state in the world.
Not to mention protecting its allies indirectly by freeing them from having as large of standing armies. No doubt, we do need military spending. My point was that at over 100x the spending of the ISS, one should consider complaining about the actual waste there first, especially when a significant part of that waste gives you nothing.
I think I understand the point of military spending. The fact is, while the point of the military might be and have been true for various purposes (maintaining the economic state of the US, attacking actually hostile states (not simply ones with possibly nasty rhetoric), etc), the military has often been abused for other things which have not been of much concrete value. Now, overall there's been a significant benefit. But, what I speak of could translate into perhaps a 20% waste of badly focused upon projects. Even if it were 1%, avoiding that waste alone would save $60 billion/year or 18x what the ISS costs yearly.
And then it'd be $14/year/taxpayer for the ISS. Either way, it's a lot of money both by percentage of taxes spent and as a raw number; added in all US residents doesn't change that figure much either.
The military also tends to fund multiple projects to do the same thing, given one or more might fail in development and each project if it succeeds is probably better suited for specific tasks. In any case, now that it's recognized the US probably overpays on the military, we can both agree that that should be corrected regardless of what is done about the ISS, right?
The ISS costs $100 Billion over 30 years, or $24/year/taxpayer. Meanwhile, defensing spending--which including the salaries, health care, etc of most troops along with most (all?) the jets, tanks, etc--is ~$4000/year/taxpayer. The Iraq/Afghan Wars are costing an additional ~$940/year/taxpayer. I'm not saying we shouldn't defend our country, I'm just saying that I don't want that much money coming out of my (taxpayer) pocket.
PS - I'm pretty sure I've gotten a lot more out of the ISS so far in pictures, news stories, etc than I've gotten out of the Iraq/Afghan Wars and for a lot less cost or deaths. Yet, I still have higher expectations for the ISS. But, then, my expectations aren't focused on quickly marketable results as much as good science and long-term benefit. I do lament those who feel obligated to spin the ISS in such a way to obtain/sustain funding, especially if they're right about the necessity for such. Then I have to think back to people who talk about their "(taxpayer) pocket" but never seem to bother to go over the budget to actually have a clue where their money is being spent.
Moonlight/Mono is part of Microsoft's cross-platform Silverlight/.NET strategy in the same way that Libre Office's OOXML support is part of Microsoft's cross-platform document strategy. Ie, at best it's an attempt by others to support Microsoft's de facto standard as best they can to avoid using Microsoft's software (especially in places where Microsoft doesn't actually offer software for the platform) and at best it's Microsoft's push to lure others into creating inferior supporting applications* which will in turn lure people to use "the real thing" in the form of Microsoft's software (and the one or two platforms they actually support).
In short, no, Moonlight doesn't count given the context of the discussion.
*Btw, this is incredibly stupid on Microsoft's part. One of the major reasons people chose Microsoft products in the past is because they offered good enough at a cheaper price. Mono/Moonlight and Libre Office are good enough.
For some politicians, yes. But reasonably speaking a politician isn't merely a whore. Politicians do tend to have actual beliefs and they run on a platform of those beliefs. Yes, lobbyists, special interest groups, or simply experience can change those beliefs over time. But whatever beliefs they hold tend to take precedence. That means they tend to spin their beliefs in a fashion that voters will like (or, at least, not hate).
Perhaps you should look into "negative campaigning". It's sufficient, many times, to simply have enough people in one's district who hold some core belief (gay rights, gun rights, etc) and to paint any possible other candidate, no matter how moderate (since in a district where pro-gay rights are an election issue, most people and hence most politicians are for pro-gay rights), as crazy to be reelected. More generally, it's better for many voters to have the "evil" they know (ie, reelect an incumbent) than to have a new "evil", even though in most instances it matters very little who is elected since laws generally reflect the mindset and/or apathy of politicians and the populace, especially when it comes to a radical shift in who is considered electable.
Not really. One basically has to change the ecosystem of who is electable. One needs to make something, like say jailbreaking, such a fundamental issue that any politician needs to be for it to be elected. Yes, that does mean at some level choosing to vote out someone potentially on that issue. But, considering just how many issues there are, it is both silly and unreliably to try to merely use voting as a basis to select electable candidates. Even primaries aren't enough, really. Grassroots movements are the only real way to have that sort of change*.
And that last point is the fundamental problem. You can't really force people to care. It's very hard to convince people to care about running custom programs on their XBox 360, but it's much easier to get people to care about running custom programs on their smartphone. Even then, the exemption wasn't the result of an election issue but the general mindset of politicians and the populace. Voters may matter but most vote on a few core issues with a wish that a politician is open to listen and change his mind according to the whim of the populace. To that end, I'd hardly call it defeatist to recognize that most people care more about their pragmatic desires than ideology; it's only that some ideologies seems to people to produce better pragmatic outcomes. I just don't see "game consoles as hackable computers" really fitting into the pragmatism of most and the ideology (very much the OSS/FSS movement) itself really doesn't seem to be very wide spread given the decades of grassroots effort to push it.