I don't see why he should need all this security though, even if the worst does happen and someone blows him sky high it's not like he's even remotely irreplacable and someone else can take over his job a couple of hours later without anything disasterous occuring. And that someone who comes to power would be obligated to bomb whatever country is suspected of having a hand in the attack. Protecting the President is about stopping a potential war, not just keeping the President safe.
It's important to remember that most of Microsoft's Windows sales are to OEM and corporate customers, not directly to end-users via retail or online sales. So what? Most Windows users never buy a copy of Windows, they simply use whatever comes with the PC. Who actually buys Windows retail? Have you?
People don't actually like Windows, they just use it by default.
Actually, no. Actually, YES. Are you seriously implying that people bought more stuff in the 50s, or 60s, or 70s, or even 80s, than they do now?
Plus, quality-made goods are becoming far scarcer - so that appliance that once lasted for 10 to 20 years, now usually lasts under 1 year - but costs the same or higher. Ditto services.... What appliances don't last 10 or 20 years nowadays? I have never had a non-computer-peripheral appliance go bad, ever.
He probably means "level of disposable income", and we used to have a lot more of it than we do now. Consumption of goods and services in increasing. Clearly, people have much more disposable income now than they did in the past. Have you ever talked to people about what life was like in the 1950s, or 1960s? Chances are they didn't have 2 cars, a TV in every room, and didn't eat out 3 nights a week, like your typical middle class family now. The kids didn't have a bedroom filled with toys like they do now.
"Unemployment is low" is meaningless if you don't account for type of employment: the fact that more of us are gainfully employed in lower-level, lower-paying jobs is not good. Are you telling me that a higher proportion of workers where educated professionals back in the 1950s, or 1960s, or 1970s, than today? You are very mistaken!
A much better metric would be the level of personal savings, and that is not a pretty picture either. Too many people are barely getting by and don't have anything left to put away for a rainy day. That is a social change, that has nothing to do with free-trade. Making consumer goods MORE EXPENSIVE by banning their import most likely would reduce savings, not increase savings (as people would spend way more money in order to maintain the same standard of living).
We'd be better off dropping our cell phones, cable TV and satellite dishes, buying less useless crap at Wal-Mart, forgetting that V8-powered SUV this time around, and saving that money or investing in American manufacturing. U.S. manufacturing output is at an all time high. The U.S. manufactures more goods now than they ever did. The U.S. exports more goods and services now than they ever have. A trade imbalance (we buy more than we sell) does not mean that the U.S. doesn't manufacture stuff.
However, enviornmental laws, liability obligations, and high labor costs make many types of manufacturing impossible inside the U.S... Restricting imports of those goods would not mean that those goods would be produced in the U.S., it would simply mean that we wouldn't have those goods. You would put the people working at the Best Buy out of work selling Chinese DVD players, but you wouldn't create any jobs making DVD players in the U.S., because making consumer electronics in the U.S. is not possible legally or economicly.
Americans are getting cheaper in the very very short term... but how are Americans poorer? Americans are consuming goods and services at record levels. American have far more goods and services today than they did in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. Home ownership is at an all time high. Unemployment is low.
Are you using some wierd definition of "poor" that I don't understand?
Right, because forcing those catalytic converter things really fell through, it's too hard to enforce. Seat belts too. Third brake light. MPG standards don't currently exist either. No other state has adopted California Emissions standards because it takes too many resources. Luckily for us Energy consumption isn't very high on the priority list for the country. Actually, MPG standards are pretty much unenforced. Many vehicles don't meet MPG standards in real-life use. This is, of course, ignoring the fact that Americans use more oil per-capita than they did prior to fuel efficiency standards. Attempts to curb oil consumption through legislation has been a total failure.
And catalytic converters actually INCREASE greenhouse gas production (the type of polution that we are most interested in reducing because it leads to global warming).
I didn't mean to offend you by questioning the gloriousness of Big Brother. I am sure the government can micromanage every detail of our lives, while at the same time resulting in no loss of privacy, liberty, and it won't require any resources at all to do so (government, after all, can ignore the laws of conservation of matter and energy and reverse entrophy). I realize government to you is like Jesus to a Christian - Questioning government omnipotence is blasphemy.
But if you are going to be so sensitive about your religion, please keep those discussions to whatever you consider your place of worship - not everyone worships the same god as you. Some of us are even athiests.
I agree, you should be able to have the right to live in the suburbs...
However, I resent having to subsidize your lifestyle choice. The government funded highway and road system is essentially distorting the market to make it artificially cheap to live in the suburbs. It is extremly expensive to build and maintain the the network of roadways that make it possible for the vast majority of people to afford their suburban lifestyle.
If you had to pay the true cost of suburban living, instead of relying on a socialist welfare system to make it affordable for you, you might not be able to afford to live in the suburbs.
That's the thing, it's not new, it's not expensive, it certainly would help, so why isn't a bill passed requiring all new cars to display mpg statistics? You do realize, right, that the government has *FINITE* resources? That it can't possible enforce every "good idea" that someone comes up with?
I could argue, however, that the Work Choices legislation does in fact encourage fascism, in that it allows employers to remove those who do not comply with some sort of societal norm from their positions. Well, I agree with you it COULD encourage fascism, but not that it DOES encourage fascism. Sure, an employer could use that freedom to only hire people who comply with some sort of societal norm (to very minor effect, as these are small buisnesses and not big corporations that employ tens of thousands of people).
But it can be used for other legit reasons as well... such as starting a family buisness. Without the law, lets say a plumber would technically be "discriminating" by hiring his son as an assistant instead of a more qualified person. But we both know there is nothing racist or unfair about a guy hiring his son to teach him the family trade. Or, lets say an immigrant family from China opens a family resteraunt, and they want to hire other Chinese immigrants in the resteraunt in order to help them get started in a new country. There is nothing particularly sinister about such a thing, however those people would technically be commiting criminal activity under anti-discrimination laws.
The law is a lot like Free Speech. It is true, that a lot of Nazis have taken advantage of free speech to promote their hateful positions, but even more people (Martin Luther King, for example) used freedom of speech to promote peace and tolerance. Just because freedom can be abused, doesn't mean that freedom = abuse.
Fascism is an authoritarian form of government, where amoung other things the culture and economy is centrally planned by the state.
An small employer being able to fire their employees for any reason they want is not fascist. You might argue that it is "anarchist" or something... you can argue that it is morally wrong. But it is a case of the government forgoing centralized authority, it is an example of a regression of the police state, so it is not fascist in any way, shape, or form.
Giving power to hire and fire to individuals and small companies is inherently anti-fascist. Power is being redirected from the vast state/police/corporate machinery into small, widely distributed organizations. It is about as anti-fascist as you can possibly get.
Those kind of nut cases are the vocal minority of Australians. Family and/or religious groups like the American Family Association but with a much smaller member base per capita (but just as loud and annoying). Most Australians don't care, in fact not giving a crap is our national past time. No... they are not. While there is much disagreement about what and why things should be censored, most political ideologies support censorship. The Right Wing people want to ban people dissing their religion, or things of a sexual nature, or critism of war activity, etc. But people on the left want to ban speech that some consider hateful, they want to ban advertising, they want to ban political speech during elections, etc.. It is not unbelievable at all that they could unite in order to develop some sort of national firewall.
Greenpeace is not really an enviornmental organization any more... they are really a proxy political group established to target corporate rivals of other big corporations who fund Greenpeace. They have been funded by the big oil companies for years in order to attack nuclear power (sure, they attack the oil industry too... but since fossil fuels are already the established mode of energy production in our economy, those attacks are useless. However, Greenpeace is the primary reason that the only large-scale alternative to fossil fuels are essentially illegal).
If the big oil companies have Greenpeace in their pockets, why couldn't Microsoft by Greenpeace as well?
Or, maybe, just maybe, the article is playing sensationalism and not giving the whole story. Knowing that by giving only these reasons they'll get many more eyes and people will talk about it more.
Perhaps were missing the part when the kid had openly threatened people and bragged about utilizing the map he made to plan a strategic route for his killing spree.
ehh, you're probably right. It is a police state we live in. It *IS* a police state if we don't err on the side of the kid. Innocent until proven guilty!
Fascism died a horrible death in the 1940s. Nowadays, when people talk about "Fascism", what they mean is "totalitarianism" or "authoritarianism" or a "police state". So, while a political science professor might disagree with that usage of the word "Fascism", everyone else knows exactly what people mean when they call it "Fascism".
Lets remember than many Canadians die without the medical care they need, because the waiting list is longer than their life expectancy without treatment... or simply because the government of Canada forbids the treatment because it is too expensive. Lets also remember that there are plenty of medical treatments (joint replacement, types of back surgery, etc.) that are largly unavailable in Canada (or have a years long waiting list), that have no effect on life expectancy (which is usually used to compare health systems), but have a terrific effect on quality of life.
Lets remember than in many Provinces, that patients are being housed in maintanence closets and hallways... and sharing a room with 3 other patients in pretty much standard unless you have the money to pay for an extra room.
The Canadian Health system is a crumbling health system on the verge of collapse. I have lived under both systems, and the Canadian system is absolutly dismal compared to even the poorest areas of the U.S.. However, he Canadian system is so linked to nationalism and Canadian identity, and so propogandized, that it is nearly impossible to have a rational discussion about the health care system in Canada. Canadians interpret any critism of the Canadian health care system as being a critism of Canadian culture or Canadian identity itself, which has a chilling effect on any discussion of the Canadian health care system.
But even the Canadian Parlament prefer private care for themselves - That is why the Canadian MPs, important government officials, members of the military, etc are exempt from the restrictions on private care that is placed on normal Canadian citizens. (many MPs go to private clinics in Ottawa that cater to foriegn diplomats... clinics that you, as a normal Canadian citizen, can't go to).
The United States health system has horrible problems... But Canada is the last place it should go looking to for solutions.
Blah... I am a big fan of Autechre, but I have seen their laptop performances twice, and they are BORING... They didn't have any sort of midi controllers or anything, they were just standing there fiddling with the mouse.
Definitly not worth the price of admission (ok, one of the concerts was free... that was worth the price of addmission).
I have seen some live footage of them in the early 90s with hardware, and it is way more exciting and perfomance oriented.
Yes, I think as a shareholder you too should be responsible for the actions of the corporation in which you hold ownership. Just as your capital risk is limited by your investment, so too would your personal liability be limited. The threat of a couple hours/days in jail as a result of something *your* company did would make people much more interested in how the company did business in general, not just the financials from this past quarter. Actually, I would just invest in a country that didn't have such retarded laws, and watch the economy of the U.S. disapear in a puff of smoke (or whatever country stupid enough to do such a thing).
Because previous to Visa, it was easier to continue to just use Windows. Switching from Windows XP to Ubuntu is now no more difficult than switching from Windows XP to Windows Vista.
Well, why shouldn't you be responsible for your deeds ? I'll make an analogy: If the company kills someone, then you could only sue the company, and not the person behind it... this creates LAWLESSNESS. The problem is not unique to corporations... the same thing exists with governments, churches, political parties, etc.
Should we arrest the pope for illegal activity done by a priest?
Should we arrest you for the illegal activity done by your mayor?
Should we arrest all members of a political party because some are involved in corruption?
Limits to liability are not unique to corporations. They exist for nearly any large collective of people. When I can sue you for violating my constitutional rights when you vote for censorship, or gun control, or the patriot act, or for being a member of a church that engaged in brutal crusades in the middle ages (or have you charged criminally), then that is the day you can sue me for owning a handful of shares of microsoft.
The main problem with nuclear energy is not the accidents, but the storage of the waste material, which remains extremely poisonous for a very long time. Maybe you didn't know that. There is no problem with waste if the waste was recycled. However, recycling the waste is illegal. This is a political problem, not a technical one.
Instead of choosing between cheap or expensive solutions, you should just use less energy. This is the real goal: a centrally planned economy via energy rationing. That is why so-called enviornmentalists are against nuclear power.
* As you said, taxation pays for health care in Ontario. Not all that far from the area in question is the Nanticoke Power Plant -- the largest coal fired power plant in North America. Pollution from fossil fuel fired power plants causes thousands of deaths in Canada per year, primarily of the elderly, who have to be hospitalized for lengthy periods of time due to respiratory problems. Pollution from fossil-fuel plants is already costing taxpayers. Reducing pollution will (in time) net a tax savings for taxpayers.
* Most of the large scale power plants in Ontario are ageing, and will be in need of replacement in the next 20 years. The Government has stated its intentions to close Nanticoke by 2009. If new generation capacity is going to be built anyhow, who do you think is going to pay for it anyhow? That's right -- taxpayers.
* Projects like this one will create jobs, which is a net increase for the Province when it comes to overall tax collections.
* As seen in the blackout of August 2003 (and I was living in Ontario at the time, and remember it quite well), Ontario's electricity grid and system of lots of large, distant power plants makes failure really easy. One of the potential solutions to mitigate the effects from such things occurring again is to have a lot more regional microgeneration plants. Encouraging the creation of such facilities can lessen the effect on the economy and the lives of citizens if such an event happens again. So instead of hiring a company with close ties to the Liberal Party to build an uneconomical green energy "showpiece" that will look good for the press but won't actually make a dent in the problem, How about the province build some more nuclear power plants, which are economicly competitive, which have worked extremly well in the past, and don't produce any emmissions?
No misunderstand the program. It isn't end-consumers who pay the $0.42/KWh, its the Province of Ontario, through the Ontario Power Authority. It simple gets pumped into the grid, and the consumers continue to pay the standard rate. The contract with the Province is good for 20 years. The consumers WILL pay the cost, in taxes. The only difference is that ALL consumers will pay, regardless of their energy usage (so it will not encourage energy conservation. God forbid that people in Ontario be forced to pay more for energy).
Ontario has a totally retarded energy policy. It is simultaniously trying to keep prices artificially low (which encourages over-consumption) by subsidies and price-caps, and at the same time trying to discourage consumption by propoganda. Needless to say, economic forces are much more powerful than overpriced "change your lightbulb" ads.
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Protecting the President is about stopping a potential war, not just keeping the President safe.
In your universe, two wrongs apparently make a right. Hitler + Stalin = Jesus.
People don't actually like Windows, they just use it by default.
However, enviornmental laws, liability obligations, and high labor costs make many types of manufacturing impossible inside the U.S... Restricting imports of those goods would not mean that those goods would be produced in the U.S., it would simply mean that we wouldn't have those goods. You would put the people working at the Best Buy out of work selling Chinese DVD players, but you wouldn't create any jobs making DVD players in the U.S., because making consumer electronics in the U.S. is not possible legally or economicly.
Americans are getting cheaper in the very very short term... but how are Americans poorer? Americans are consuming goods and services at record levels. American have far more goods and services today than they did in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. Home ownership is at an all time high. Unemployment is low.
Are you using some wierd definition of "poor" that I don't understand?
Why would auto companies want to kill the electric car? Other than they are big and evil and have long twirly mustaches and stuff?
And catalytic converters actually INCREASE greenhouse gas production (the type of polution that we are most interested in reducing because it leads to global warming).
I didn't mean to offend you by questioning the gloriousness of Big Brother. I am sure the government can micromanage every detail of our lives, while at the same time resulting in no loss of privacy, liberty, and it won't require any resources at all to do so (government, after all, can ignore the laws of conservation of matter and energy and reverse entrophy). I realize government to you is like Jesus to a Christian - Questioning government omnipotence is blasphemy.
But if you are going to be so sensitive about your religion, please keep those discussions to whatever you consider your place of worship - not everyone worships the same god as you. Some of us are even athiests.
I agree, you should be able to have the right to live in the suburbs...
However, I resent having to subsidize your lifestyle choice. The government funded highway and road system is essentially distorting the market to make it artificially cheap to live in the suburbs. It is extremly expensive to build and maintain the the network of roadways that make it possible for the vast majority of people to afford their suburban lifestyle.
If you had to pay the true cost of suburban living, instead of relying on a socialist welfare system to make it affordable for you, you might not be able to afford to live in the suburbs.
But it can be used for other legit reasons as well... such as starting a family buisness. Without the law, lets say a plumber would technically be "discriminating" by hiring his son as an assistant instead of a more qualified person. But we both know there is nothing racist or unfair about a guy hiring his son to teach him the family trade. Or, lets say an immigrant family from China opens a family resteraunt, and they want to hire other Chinese immigrants in the resteraunt in order to help them get started in a new country. There is nothing particularly sinister about such a thing, however those people would technically be commiting criminal activity under anti-discrimination laws.
The law is a lot like Free Speech. It is true, that a lot of Nazis have taken advantage of free speech to promote their hateful positions, but even more people (Martin Luther King, for example) used freedom of speech to promote peace and tolerance. Just because freedom can be abused, doesn't mean that freedom = abuse.
Fascism is an authoritarian form of government, where amoung other things the culture and economy is centrally planned by the state.
An small employer being able to fire their employees for any reason they want is not fascist. You might argue that it is "anarchist" or something... you can argue that it is morally wrong. But it is a case of the government forgoing centralized authority, it is an example of a regression of the police state, so it is not fascist in any way, shape, or form.
Giving power to hire and fire to individuals and small companies is inherently anti-fascist. Power is being redirected from the vast state/police/corporate machinery into small, widely distributed organizations. It is about as anti-fascist as you can possibly get.
Greenpeace is not really an enviornmental organization any more... they are really a proxy political group established to target corporate rivals of other big corporations who fund Greenpeace. They have been funded by the big oil companies for years in order to attack nuclear power (sure, they attack the oil industry too... but since fossil fuels are already the established mode of energy production in our economy, those attacks are useless. However, Greenpeace is the primary reason that the only large-scale alternative to fossil fuels are essentially illegal).
If the big oil companies have Greenpeace in their pockets, why couldn't Microsoft by Greenpeace as well?
Perhaps were missing the part when the kid had openly threatened people and bragged about utilizing the map he made to plan a strategic route for his killing spree.
ehh, you're probably right. It is a police state we live in. It *IS* a police state if we don't err on the side of the kid. Innocent until proven guilty!
Fascism died a horrible death in the 1940s. Nowadays, when people talk about "Fascism", what they mean is "totalitarianism" or "authoritarianism" or a "police state". So, while a political science professor might disagree with that usage of the word "Fascism", everyone else knows exactly what people mean when they call it "Fascism".
Lets remember than many Canadians die without the medical care they need, because the waiting list is longer than their life expectancy without treatment... or simply because the government of Canada forbids the treatment because it is too expensive. Lets also remember that there are plenty of medical treatments (joint replacement, types of back surgery, etc.) that are largly unavailable in Canada (or have a years long waiting list), that have no effect on life expectancy (which is usually used to compare health systems), but have a terrific effect on quality of life.
Lets remember than in many Provinces, that patients are being housed in maintanence closets and hallways... and sharing a room with 3 other patients in pretty much standard unless you have the money to pay for an extra room.
The Canadian Health system is a crumbling health system on the verge of collapse. I have lived under both systems, and the Canadian system is absolutly dismal compared to even the poorest areas of the U.S.. However, he Canadian system is so linked to nationalism and Canadian identity, and so propogandized, that it is nearly impossible to have a rational discussion about the health care system in Canada. Canadians interpret any critism of the Canadian health care system as being a critism of Canadian culture or Canadian identity itself, which has a chilling effect on any discussion of the Canadian health care system.
But even the Canadian Parlament prefer private care for themselves - That is why the Canadian MPs, important government officials, members of the military, etc are exempt from the restrictions on private care that is placed on normal Canadian citizens. (many MPs go to private clinics in Ottawa that cater to foriegn diplomats... clinics that you, as a normal Canadian citizen, can't go to).
The United States health system has horrible problems... But Canada is the last place it should go looking to for solutions.
Blah... I am a big fan of Autechre, but I have seen their laptop performances twice, and they are BORING... They didn't have any sort of midi controllers or anything, they were just standing there fiddling with the mouse.
Definitly not worth the price of admission (ok, one of the concerts was free... that was worth the price of addmission).
I have seen some live footage of them in the early 90s with hardware, and it is way more exciting and perfomance oriented.
Because previous to Visa, it was easier to continue to just use Windows. Switching from Windows XP to Ubuntu is now no more difficult than switching from Windows XP to Windows Vista.
Should we arrest the pope for illegal activity done by a priest?
Should we arrest you for the illegal activity done by your mayor?
Should we arrest all members of a political party because some are involved in corruption?
Limits to liability are not unique to corporations. They exist for nearly any large collective of people. When I can sue you for violating my constitutional rights when you vote for censorship, or gun control, or the patriot act, or for being a member of a church that engaged in brutal crusades in the middle ages (or have you charged criminally), then that is the day you can sue me for owning a handful of shares of microsoft.
Recycle it.
* Most of the large scale power plants in Ontario are ageing, and will be in need of replacement in the next 20 years. The Government has stated its intentions to close Nanticoke by 2009. If new generation capacity is going to be built anyhow, who do you think is going to pay for it anyhow? That's right -- taxpayers.
* Projects like this one will create jobs, which is a net increase for the Province when it comes to overall tax collections.
* As seen in the blackout of August 2003 (and I was living in Ontario at the time, and remember it quite well), Ontario's electricity grid and system of lots of large, distant power plants makes failure really easy. One of the potential solutions to mitigate the effects from such things occurring again is to have a lot more regional microgeneration plants. Encouraging the creation of such facilities can lessen the effect on the economy and the lives of citizens if such an event happens again. So instead of hiring a company with close ties to the Liberal Party to build an uneconomical green energy "showpiece" that will look good for the press but won't actually make a dent in the problem, How about the province build some more nuclear power plants, which are economicly competitive, which have worked extremly well in the past, and don't produce any emmissions?
Ontario has a totally retarded energy policy. It is simultaniously trying to keep prices artificially low (which encourages over-consumption) by subsidies and price-caps, and at the same time trying to discourage consumption by propoganda. Needless to say, economic forces are much more powerful than overpriced "change your lightbulb" ads.