Shame on you, the Mexicans have a fine Police Force. It is just that some of them also work for the cartels, some are open to the highest bidder, and some are 6 feet under taking a well deserved rest.
The Iranian regime had no illusions about what high esteem they are held in Arab capitals, their lackies in Damascus not withstanding. This leak doesn't tell them anything they didn't already know, reports of Arab leaders urging the U.S. to attack Iran and even giving them a list of targets has been out in the media for at least a year....long before any of Wikileaks wet dreams.
War mongering? Against a country in their region trying to build nuclear weapons so they can threaten the rest? Yep, they be war-mongering against those nice Iranians who only started the last Mid-East war with their dogs, Hezbollah, because of their universal love for all peoples including Jews, homosexuals...women.
Diplomats are not politicians, they are not elected. They are supposed to give uncut views about their foreign circumstances. If every view is going to be made public, they won't bother telling Washington anything but what Washington wants to here and is neutered to the point of being useless.
Yep, Jobs should go out there and boast this the best since sliced bread so people like you can cut him down to size. So instead he says this, in our opinion, the best...so people like you can now accuse him of using weasel words. Or maybe you'd rather he come out say something like, "Hey, this is crap, but buy it because of my aura".
Oh, I see you want Apple to directly compete with Microsoft in their backyard? Why? Why would should Apple encourage the kind of dirty tricks Microsoft pulls to keep LInux off name box hardware? Apple wants to control the entire box so they are producing precisely what they wish to produce and are not at the whim of geniuses like Michael Dell who appears to change horses for merely a new bag of oats.
You somehow have the idea that software integrated with hardware should be sold at the price of the hardware alone. Microsoft charges for their software, just low enough to keep new entrants out of the market. With a bit of lockin, there is no room for Apple in that market. Even the box makers are fighting over crumbs. Now why would Apple wish to join them?
So what if it Apple doesn't dump a new Core-i machine on the market as soon as Intel dumps it on the box makers. Apple isn't necessarily competing against those box makers. It allows them time to get the software matched to hardware.
Managing a computer company in the environment of Microsoft and Intel isn't easy, and it when those companies are much larger than your tiny computer company, you too would probably play conservative with keeping your niche.
Nope, had nothing to do with Dubya. The stock market started tanking in the spring of 2000 when it looked like Gore would win the election. That too isn't the reason it tanked, it tanked because the techno-bubble popped. The final pin was the Year 2000 Bug turned out to be a dud mainly because of all the spending that went on during the techno-bubble to make sure it was a dud.
Then 9/11 happened and the U.S. was off into another recession because Wall Street got the willies. If a "stimulus" would wake up the U.S. economy, then the U.S. deficit spending on the Iraq War should have done the trick. It didn't. Where the Bush administration and the Clinton administration failed was in recognizing a housing bubble, they both backed policies causing it.
The reason Clinton was able to balance the budget was due to Bush Sr's tax increase and the techno-bubble. Also, he and Congress couldn't agree on how to spend money, so the Treasury was able to get fat without the Fixers in Congress coming in to clean it out.
"That's right. Gov't stopped spending on the war effort, and the capital that was diverted to that was then reapplied to the private sector and the cheap labor in form of the soldier, who returned from the war was then hired to produce the goods that the entire world needed."
Yes and no, without the war, the U.S. would never have built out its manufacturing capacity. After the war, there was a severe recession and those factories had to repurpose to domestic consumption. Since much of Europe and the Far East was destroyed, the U.S. could export without much competition as you mention.
However, the U.S. didn't export inflation, the U.S. was in recession after the war. Deficit spending started post-war in the '60s. By that time, Europe had recovered, Japan was just getting started.
Not really; if it is an FDIC insured bank (and most banks and credit unions are), then a bank "bailout" is the feds coming in and either paying off those accounts or recapitalizing the bank. They generally chose to recapitalize the bank. The bankers usually get fired. The Wall Street Investment banks are in a different league. The U.S. should have a policy of, over time, picking off those bankers and busting up those banks.
They also need to bring back the controls that allowed the bubble. That won't be easy because, quite wrongly, the U.S. economy came to rely on the size of the housing market which only got that large because banks were able to securitize loans. This was an easy sell to conservatives who thought a free market means one can trust the bastards (ALL the bastards starting with the American people who overbought, signed for ARMs, took out second mortgages, flipped houses etc., and the bastard bankers who gleefully knew they were playing with hot potatoes but figured they themselves were the smart ones who never held a hot potato very long without finding a sucker to buy it), and it was an easy sell to the liberals who thought that owning a house meant that the proles were getting their just share of the rich peoples' money.
They were both wrong and unwinding the housing mess must mean unwinding the stupid philosophies of both groups.
Just out of curiosity, why would reliance on gold help anything? Ever watch the price of gold lately? Is it a bubble? Is is real wealth? If your country has a lot of gold, could you mine it all and make your people rich? If you think so, read about Spain when they looted a lot of gold from S. America. It created a devastating inflation.
Reliance on the gold standard wouldn't have prevented the housing bubble, or the techno bubble leading up to 2000, or the oil price shock of the 70's. Reliance on gold means tying one's economy in part to the commodities market. If you want to lose real money real fast, trying playing the commodities market.
I don't know about Ballmer, surely he is no motivator with that Leghorn Foghorn mouth...it's a turnoff. And he has no technical chops.
However, I think Microsoft is merely a product of their times. IBM handed them the opportunity for a monopoly, and they took advantage of it (and IBM). They managed to get their foot in the door when companies were building out their computing infrastructure when an IBM-centered infrastructure couldn't do would companies wanted. So Microsoft was able to ride the wave and integrate their software offerings, thus lockin. Playing dirty also helped them.
Now, the computing paradigm is changing again....or rather, it is moving along the same trajectory again after being stuck in the build out phase of IBM-free infrastructure. Now it is changed to what used to be called pervasive computing a few years ago...dunno what it is called now. The writing was on the wall in 2000 when pervasive computing was getting a head of steam at universities. Microsoft was caught flatfooted thinking their prowess at signing contracts with PHBs somehow meant they were on the cutting edge of innovation.
I don't think Apple saw their current success back when they started the iPod. I think they realized there might be a market for a good interface on a useful and potentially ubiquitous device. Once that hit big, they realized the gameplan of targeting a moribund but ubiquitous technology could be quite lucrative if they were able to move fast and demand an easy, intuitive interface. Microsoft isn't quick, they have no sense of class which is really what underlies an interface people really want to use, and they are stuck on selling to PHBs....who now have bean counters breathing down their necks. If it weren't for desktop lockin, they'd be dead. And if desktops turn into a moribund market, Microsoft is toast.
Ray Ozzie was forward thinking enough, but it isn't clear anyone at Microsoft was listening. Gates making a comeback won't help them, he's the guy to built the sclerotic Microsoft bureaucracy and yesterday's gameplan. IBM only managed because they found a ready market in business services and they knew the service industry since a lot of it still runs on their iron. Can Microsoft find such a market, or new business plan?
I'll bet it is a dud just like the last wikileaks publication. That was suppose to blow the lid off the war in Iraq. Maybe you missed the earthquake of reaction, I'm sure it was there..somewhere...
Why would you get that from raw diplomatic discourse. It isn't like its policy, that requires a lot of thought, give and take, etc. Every now and again we get some document leaked to the press which is some sensational bit about how the government is considering X, when in reality it was one player who had a wild idea. X never made into policy because it raw, unhoned, hadn't taken in the view points of the other policy makers. So in the end, you'll know no more about what the U.S. thinks of Canada than you do now.
BTW: Most of America doesn't think about Canada, ever. Y'all are real quiet.
Winers? No, that's the Europeans. They've wined for decades about how they need the U.S. to protect their sorry asses. Also the Japanese. What, us Japanese defend ourselves, no, no, no...we have the constitution right here, says we don't have to. Or the S. Koreans, it's been 60 years yet they still cannot fend for themselves. Or maybe you'd like everyone to be like the Swiss, "who us help fight the century's largest mass murders...you don't understand, we're Neutral". Yep, they were morally neutral.
Okay, how about you and your significant other start being brutally honest with each other all the time...let us know how that works for you.
"Perhaps governments should behave lawfully". Sure, who's law? Sharia, how about basing international law on that. The Christian countries won't mind covering up their women, paying a tithe to the Muslim nations for the sin of not being Muslim, etc. Or how about Chinese law? They have human rights there. Maybe you'd like Russian law which is more contact sport than anything else.
Ah, but you probably mean some International Law which springs forth immaculate from the bunny world of your imagination. Let's try that for awhile. Remember this is the same international law that allowed Darfur.
"We need to educate people about the need for security and how to implement it, not get someone else to take care of it so we can blindly go on our way.'"
And you seriously believe the proles are going to stand still long enough to be "educated". Hell, most of them look down on education as being something only geeks and nerds. I believe everyone could be educated, but I also believe not very many give a flying rat's ass about.
"If the Kremlin were a true supporter of NATO, why would the Russian "president" still present Russia as an adversary of the West?"
Precisely, the Kremlin believes that they need a credible foreign threat to keep themselves in power. Truly cooperating with the West would remove that and they'd be left with defending their regime using the same yardsticks as democratic regimes.
Slashdot Mirror
Shame on you, the Mexicans have a fine Police Force. It is just that some of them also work for the cartels, some are open to the highest bidder, and some are 6 feet under taking a well deserved rest.
The Iranian regime had no illusions about what high esteem they are held in Arab capitals, their lackies in Damascus not withstanding. This leak doesn't tell them anything they didn't already know, reports of Arab leaders urging the U.S. to attack Iran and even giving them a list of targets has been out in the media for at least a year....long before any of Wikileaks wet dreams.
War mongering? Against a country in their region trying to build nuclear weapons so they can threaten the rest? Yep, they be war-mongering against those nice Iranians who only started the last Mid-East war with their dogs, Hezbollah, because of their universal love for all peoples including Jews, homosexuals...women.
Diplomats are not politicians, they are not elected. They are supposed to give uncut views about their foreign circumstances. If every view is going to be made public, they won't bother telling Washington anything but what Washington wants to here and is neutered to the point of being useless.
Yep, Jobs should go out there and boast this the best since sliced bread so people like you can cut him down to size. So instead he says this, in our opinion, the best...so people like you can now accuse him of using weasel words. Or maybe you'd rather he come out say something like, "Hey, this is crap, but buy it because of my aura".
Oh, I see you want Apple to directly compete with Microsoft in their backyard? Why? Why would should Apple encourage the kind of dirty tricks Microsoft pulls to keep LInux off name box hardware? Apple wants to control the entire box so they are producing precisely what they wish to produce and are not at the whim of geniuses like Michael Dell who appears to change horses for merely a new bag of oats.
You somehow have the idea that software integrated with hardware should be sold at the price of the hardware alone. Microsoft charges for their software, just low enough to keep new entrants out of the market. With a bit of lockin, there is no room for Apple in that market. Even the box makers are fighting over crumbs. Now why would Apple wish to join them?
So what if it Apple doesn't dump a new Core-i machine on the market as soon as Intel dumps it on the box makers. Apple isn't necessarily competing against those box makers. It allows them time to get the software matched to hardware.
Managing a computer company in the environment of Microsoft and Intel isn't easy, and it when those companies are much larger than your tiny computer company, you too would probably play conservative with keeping your niche.
I wasn't. The techno-bomb nailed the economy pretty good. The final straw was 9/11.
Nope, had nothing to do with Dubya. The stock market started tanking in the spring of 2000 when it looked like Gore would win the election. That too isn't the reason it tanked, it tanked because the techno-bubble popped. The final pin was the Year 2000 Bug turned out to be a dud mainly because of all the spending that went on during the techno-bubble to make sure it was a dud.
Then 9/11 happened and the U.S. was off into another recession because Wall Street got the willies. If a "stimulus" would wake up the U.S. economy, then the U.S. deficit spending on the Iraq War should have done the trick. It didn't. Where the Bush administration and the Clinton administration failed was in recognizing a housing bubble, they both backed policies causing it.
The reason Clinton was able to balance the budget was due to Bush Sr's tax increase and the techno-bubble. Also, he and Congress couldn't agree on how to spend money, so the Treasury was able to get fat without the Fixers in Congress coming in to clean it out.
"That's right. Gov't stopped spending on the war effort, and the capital that was diverted to that was then reapplied to the private sector and the cheap labor in form of the soldier, who returned from the war was then hired to produce the goods that the entire world needed."
Yes and no, without the war, the U.S. would never have built out its manufacturing capacity. After the war, there was a severe recession and those factories had to repurpose to domestic consumption. Since much of Europe and the Far East was destroyed, the U.S. could export without much competition as you mention.
However, the U.S. didn't export inflation, the U.S. was in recession after the war. Deficit spending started post-war in the '60s. By that time, Europe had recovered, Japan was just getting started.
Not really; if it is an FDIC insured bank (and most banks and credit unions are), then a bank "bailout" is the feds coming in and either paying off those accounts or recapitalizing the bank. They generally chose to recapitalize the bank. The bankers usually get fired. The Wall Street Investment banks are in a different league. The U.S. should have a policy of, over time, picking off those bankers and busting up those banks.
They also need to bring back the controls that allowed the bubble. That won't be easy because, quite wrongly, the U.S. economy came to rely on the size of the housing market which only got that large because banks were able to securitize loans. This was an easy sell to conservatives who thought a free market means one can trust the bastards (ALL the bastards starting with the American people who overbought, signed for ARMs, took out second mortgages, flipped houses etc., and the bastard bankers who gleefully knew they were playing with hot potatoes but figured they themselves were the smart ones who never held a hot potato very long without finding a sucker to buy it), and it was an easy sell to the liberals who thought that owning a house meant that the proles were getting their just share of the rich peoples' money.
They were both wrong and unwinding the housing mess must mean unwinding the stupid philosophies of both groups.
Just out of curiosity, why would reliance on gold help anything? Ever watch the price of gold lately? Is it a bubble? Is is real wealth? If your country has a lot of gold, could you mine it all and make your people rich? If you think so, read about Spain when they looted a lot of gold from S. America. It created a devastating inflation.
Reliance on the gold standard wouldn't have prevented the housing bubble, or the techno bubble leading up to 2000, or the oil price shock of the 70's. Reliance on gold means tying one's economy in part to the commodities market. If you want to lose real money real fast, trying playing the commodities market.
Oh, given that history of which I wasn't quite aware, I think you are right.
I don't know about Ballmer, surely he is no motivator with that Leghorn Foghorn mouth...it's a turnoff. And he has no technical chops.
However, I think Microsoft is merely a product of their times. IBM handed them the opportunity for a monopoly, and they took advantage of it (and IBM). They managed to get their foot in the door when companies were building out their computing infrastructure when an IBM-centered infrastructure couldn't do would companies wanted. So Microsoft was able to ride the wave and integrate their software offerings, thus lockin. Playing dirty also helped them.
Now, the computing paradigm is changing again....or rather, it is moving along the same trajectory again after being stuck in the build out phase of IBM-free infrastructure. Now it is changed to what used to be called pervasive computing a few years ago...dunno what it is called now. The writing was on the wall in 2000 when pervasive computing was getting a head of steam at universities. Microsoft was caught flatfooted thinking their prowess at signing contracts with PHBs somehow meant they were on the cutting edge of innovation.
I don't think Apple saw their current success back when they started the iPod. I think they realized there might be a market for a good interface on a useful and potentially ubiquitous device. Once that hit big, they realized the gameplan of targeting a moribund but ubiquitous technology could be quite lucrative if they were able to move fast and demand an easy, intuitive interface. Microsoft isn't quick, they have no sense of class which is really what underlies an interface people really want to use, and they are stuck on selling to PHBs....who now have bean counters breathing down their necks. If it weren't for desktop lockin, they'd be dead. And if desktops turn into a moribund market, Microsoft is toast.
Ray Ozzie was forward thinking enough, but it isn't clear anyone at Microsoft was listening. Gates making a comeback won't help them, he's the guy to built the sclerotic Microsoft bureaucracy and yesterday's gameplan. IBM only managed because they found a ready market in business services and they knew the service industry since a lot of it still runs on their iron. Can Microsoft find such a market, or new business plan?
I'll bet it is a dud just like the last wikileaks publication. That was suppose to blow the lid off the war in Iraq. Maybe you missed the earthquake of reaction, I'm sure it was there..somewhere...
Why would you get that from raw diplomatic discourse. It isn't like its policy, that requires a lot of thought, give and take, etc. Every now and again we get some document leaked to the press which is some sensational bit about how the government is considering X, when in reality it was one player who had a wild idea. X never made into policy because it raw, unhoned, hadn't taken in the view points of the other policy makers. So in the end, you'll know no more about what the U.S. thinks of Canada than you do now.
BTW: Most of America doesn't think about Canada, ever. Y'all are real quiet.
Winers? No, that's the Europeans. They've wined for decades about how they need the U.S. to protect their sorry asses. Also the Japanese. What, us Japanese defend ourselves, no, no, no...we have the constitution right here, says we don't have to. Or the S. Koreans, it's been 60 years yet they still cannot fend for themselves. Or maybe you'd like everyone to be like the Swiss, "who us help fight the century's largest mass murders...you don't understand, we're Neutral". Yep, they were morally neutral.
Okay, how about you and your significant other start being brutally honest with each other all the time...let us know how that works for you.
"Perhaps governments should behave lawfully". Sure, who's law? Sharia, how about basing international law on that. The Christian countries won't mind covering up their women, paying a tithe to the Muslim nations for the sin of not being Muslim, etc. Or how about Chinese law? They have human rights there. Maybe you'd like Russian law which is more contact sport than anything else.
Ah, but you probably mean some International Law which springs forth immaculate from the bunny world of your imagination. Let's try that for awhile. Remember this is the same international law that allowed Darfur.
Oh, I get it, the software + satnav receiver are actually free, 'cause you know, producing software costs nothing.
And Hovsepian, that bozo has been looking to sell out to MS ever since Novell stupidly gave him a job.
Damn, you caught us! Now we'll have to work double hard to hide those flying pigs we've been working on.
"We need to educate people about the need for security and how to implement it, not get someone else to take care of it so we can blindly go on our way.'"
And you seriously believe the proles are going to stand still long enough to be "educated". Hell, most of them look down on education as being something only geeks and nerds. I believe everyone could be educated, but I also believe not very many give a flying rat's ass about.
Seymour Hersh is a ambulance chasing conspiracy theorist. If he's what you are relying on for information, you need to get out more.
Wow, stop putting alum on your cereal or stop starching your shorts.
"If the Kremlin were a true supporter of NATO, why would the Russian "president" still present Russia as an adversary of the West?"
Precisely, the Kremlin believes that they need a credible foreign threat to keep themselves in power. Truly cooperating with the West would remove that and they'd be left with defending their regime using the same yardsticks as democratic regimes.
What makes you think it will never work?